The Sahitya Akademi Insurgency

The Sahitya Akademi Insurgency

The stagey and melodramatic Sahitya Akademi insurgency, sprung up like a sudden jack-in the-box, shows no immediate signs of abating. It spews righteous indignation, at ‘the unmaking of India’.

A score of eminent, mostly ‘vernacular’ writers are in the media for  protesting, quitting the Akademi, or returning their awards - a dancer from the  Sangeet Natak Akademi and one Padma Shri remembeing the 1984 pogrom on Sikhs and the recent butchering of Muslims, included.

The Akademi governing body has 24 members, one for each ‘recognised’ Indian language. In panic, it has called an emergency meeting to decide what to do; with Booker of Bookers writer Salman Rushdie signalling his support for the andolan from afar.

Those who dare mock the motives of these authors, like highly successful pulp fiction/film-script writer Chetan Bhagat, are soon covered in high-brow literary scorn.

With 25 of the Akademi recognised literary scholars and counting, returning their awards and citations and/or resigning outright, the outrage is palpable, and nothing to be sniffed at.

The three who resigned from the Akademi’s bureaucracy-  novelist Shashi Deshpande, K Sachchidanandan and PK Parakkadavu, might have stayed long enough to make some condemnatory noises in their official capacities, since nobody was  actually gagging them. One more has resigned since.

But, nevertheless, the flabbergasted and relatively obscure government funded Akademi, has never known such ill- deserved infamy.  After all, the Akademi, like the papacy, has never reacted to the doings of the government of the day - through pogrom, pestilence, and riot. It honestly believed it was meant to be apolitical!

Its office-bearers, have held, since 1954, that their sole job was to assess and award literary merit and achievement in all of India’s 24 official languages, using juries of peers. They probably don’t know what to do with this call to arms.  

The returnees and resignees are directing part of their ire at the Akademi’s overseer, Culture Minister, Mahesh Sharma, aka the ‘insensitive’ MP from Dadri.

But they are demanding broader brush statements of condemnation of the attacks on ‘civil liberties’ and the ‘culture of intolerance’. The upset, such as it is, refers to the Bisada beef murder, and that of Kannada writer M Kalburgi, specifically, but also those of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Gobind Pansare from Maharashtra.

But the list of grievances is getting longer with each new returnee/resignation. ‘Law and order’, for example, was added by someone recently. It is perhaps only a matter of time before the festering FTII issue is conjoined, then the censor board, and who knows, Smriti Irani’s HRD Ministry, and its goings on too!

While the outrage and anguish is understandable, the timing is considered suspect. It appears to be orchestrated, almost like a subversive public relations offensive. That it happens to have come shortly before and during the politically crucial Bihar Assembly elections is indeed curious.  

Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma, caught in the headlights for calling the beef murder ‘unfortunate’, and nothing stronger, is brazening it out with all the obtuseness and political arrogance at his command. He is quite content, he says, if those who disagree ideologically with the Akademi, go ahead and return their awards or even disassociate themselves entirely. And he does so, taking pains to point out that the Ministry of Culture is not directly involved.

The entire brouhaha was kicked off by 88 year old Nayantara Sahgal, a week ago. Sahgal, author of  11 novels, several works of non-fiction, a memoir, and many political columns, went to town with her views.

Sahgal, Nehru’s niece, is a far from favourite cousin of Indira Gandhi’s. She criticised Gandhi as PM regularly, and with increasing stridency, in her political columns of the 1970s and 1980s.  But of course, she had no Sahitya  Akademi award to return during Indira Gandhi’s lifetime, or during the infamous Emergency with its massive  abrogation of civil liberties and the jailing of ‘dissidents’. Sahgal only received hers in 1986, when her nephew, Rajiv Gandhi, was prime minister.

Others in the disgruntled line-up include Hindi poet Ashok Vajpayee, Malayalam writer Sara Joseph, Urdu novelist Rahman Abbas, a clutch of Punjabi and Kashmiri authors, and outside solidarity from the poets society of J&K.

Some, however, like iconoclast and Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy never did accept the award from the Sahitya Akademi, when it was offered in 2006. This, even though the Akademi even-handedly cited her collection of hypercritical essays:  The Algebra of Infinite Justice, written between 1998 and 2001, every word of it against Indian government policy on big dams, nuclear weapons, increased militarisation, and economic liberalisation.

When it comes to attacks of conscience, conviction, and even integrity can sometimes, evidently not always, be sacrificed to politics and the expedient.  

For: The Quint

(760 words)

October 13^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Simultaneously Shifting Right In The US & India

Simultaneously Shifting Right In The US & India

The most serious position to adopt in politics is the Centre. Farid Zakaria made this point on CNN recently. He held up the highly successful presidency of Bill Clinton as an illustration.  This, of course, in the context of the run-up towards the US presidential election in 2016.

But how does Zakaria’s notion fare in relationship to the ‘fastest growing major economy’ in the world, also its most populous democracy; and the oldest democracy, which is also the most powerful and rich country in the world?

The Clinton presidency was indeed economically brilliant. He created over 21 million new jobs, raised the GDP significantly, took a budgetary deficit of 4.7% in 1992 and turned it into 2.6% surplus by 1997.  Clinton was lucky too, with record low oil prices; 1999 prices were a mere $10 a barrel, and ‘gasoline’ sold at 95 cents a gallon.

Clinton appointed and supported Republican Alan Greenspan to manage interest rates with great success as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. Greenspan first came to be Fed Chairman in 1987, under  reformist, anti-big government/high taxation President Ronald Reagan.  And he left after five consecutive terms, during which the American economy boomed for two decades straight. Greenspan served without interruption under presidents Reagan, George H.W.Bush, Clinton, and finally George W Bush; three out of four of them, Republicans - handing over to Ben Bernanke, in January 2006.

Things have not been so good for the US economy since. And in hindsight, many of Greenspan’s monetarist and ‘easy money’ nostrums are being held responsible for the borrow-and-spend speculative excesses.

In India, successive pre-election opinion polls suggest a landslide victory in the Bihar Legislative Assembly elections for the NDA alliance. One just has to wonder why the promise of Vikas counts for more than everything else.

Particularly, given the recent beef controversy and murders, attacks on Dalits, the Sahitya Akademi awardees returning their citations, LK Advani acolyte Sudheendra Kulkarni being inked, the growing intolerance, farmer distress and suicides, all alongside trenchant criticism of the prime minister for neither speaking up against, nor reigning in, the Sangh Parivar/NDA ‘fringe elements’. And this, coming after the monsoon session of parliament was washed out with another set of controversies.

The use of a different yardstick to judge the Modi government has become routine. Though, it does seem strange how controversy after controversy seems to be raked up, almost as if they are being manufactured.

Recently the chief justice of India HL Dattu, observed he found it peculiar that there have been no further Vyapam scam related deaths reported since the CBI took over the probe monitored by the Supreme Court.  

However, if this latest Bihar poll results comes to pass; at a minimum, the  formulas and assumptions on the state’s electorate will have failed. The NDA is apparently set to win over 160 of 243 seats in the Bihar Assembly.

And, if that happens, the ‘Grand Alliance’ will be routed. The rising challenge to the Modi administration over the past months, after the NDA’s defeat in Delhi, will quickly disintegrate. 

Modi’s personal popularity ratings, which are impressive,  and not only in Bihar, according to a Mint/Instavaani poll in August, and yet another Pew poll in September 2015, will soar, and even greater authority will come to his elbow.

But can a win in the Bihar assembly elections be understood as overarching voter approval for the centrist, developmental approach of  Modi? This, in spite of the accusations that his party and government is promoting a majoritarian agenda?

The Opposition accuses the Modi administration of communal polarisation and saffronisation, both of institutions and national narratives; but voters, if the polls are accurate, don’t seem to care.

In America meanwhile, flamboyant businessman cum presidential aspirant Donald Trump, leads the GOP’s list of contenders. This suggests that the silent majority is reacting to the liberal policies of the Obama administration.

Donald Trump’s appeal, his continued lead in opinion polls, might just be suggesting this. The public may be endorsing his can-do brand of Reaganesque politics. Trump wants to make America great again, militarily and economically, and the public is responding favourably.Trump’s politics may well be to the far right of the GOP, but is the American public too, by backing him, wanting to return towards the Centre?

They probably do not want to particularly address the feminist radicalism of gender politics, after electing a man of colour to two terms in office. So they seem sceptical about both former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, front-runner for the Democrats; and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina amongst the Republican line-up too.

Centrism may also explain the decision to hold off at the US Federal Reserve Bank. Chairman Janet Yellen decided not to raise interest rates once again recently.

A rate hike, which some see as both warranted and overdue, would signal a change of policy. In anticipation of further hikes in series later, this might lead to a sharply strengthening dollar. But Ms. Yellen, and the business community in America would dearly like to see a 2% inflation rate arrive first!

This would signal that all the thousands of  billions of dollars spent on quantitative easing (QE) since 2008, plus the nearly zero rate of interest, has, in fact, managed to lift economic activity off the floor. Enough, to withstand a series of, say, 0.25% rate hikes going forward.

Concern also, for how an American rate hike may impact the international arena, including many of America’s trading partners, now that America is ostensibly growing again, is the new ground reality.

Not only would America’s recovery be threatened if its buyers couldn’t afford to buy its offerings, but the cascading effect would aggravate  challenges to world trade, already much slowed by economic and financial difficulties in Europe, China, and the oil exporting nations.

Indian politics may also be changing: from Socialism and Nehruvian pluralism towards an assertive  Hindu Rashtra, but one with concern and due regard for the minorities.  It is dawning on the kicking and screaming old guard that the NDA could be in power for a decade or more, judged from present trends, and the ground narrative may be forever altered.

Likewise, Donald Trump could well become the next president of America and stay for eight years too. This, not because he is a hatemongering, loud-mouth, right-wing looney; but because his candidature, salience, and possible eventual victory signals a return to the Centre for American politics.

So then, are both Modi and Trump custodians of Zakaria’s ‘most serious position’ ? Appearances, however much they may be negatively hyped, can sometimes be deceptive.

For: The Pioneer

(1,096 words)

October 12^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Modi: Trapped By His Hindutva Sea Legs

Modi :Trapped By His Hindutva Sea-Legs

Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas  is  the campaign slogan that has nailed Modi’s  credibility to the mast. Every passing day as prime minister, it seems to take a knock. One has to ask why, when it got him elected? Mufti Sayeed just reminded him of it, even as the cow, beef, and murder controversy raged.

Modi’s relentless projection of Vikas as his leit motif, claims to be inclusive. It is certainly ambitious, and showing some results 16 months on. But this economic inclusiveness cannot substitute for the all -encompassing bias in their favour that the minorities are used to.

Yet, the voting public, many of them young people, fervently want real progress. The superb popularity ratings that the prime minister still enjoys suggest that the people have not lost patience with him.

Modi elicits ecstatic responses from the diaspora too, and warm goodwill from other heads of government. But at home, the domestic intellectual,  and sections of the media, mistrust Modi’s Hindutva antecedents.

But the very foundations of the BJP are built  on it.  It is Hindutva that provides Modi his sea legs.  So, how can he pull off a submersion of its obscurantist and communal notions in a sarovar of Vikas?

This even as Modi’s economic intentions are believed. Perhaps to the extent that voters, most of them Hindu, are willing to see tears in the Nehruvian  fabric, as long as it delivers Gujarat’s 10% growth rates, jobs, and prosperity everywhere.  

As if to illustrate this, the latest Bihar Legislative Assembly pre-election poll gives the NDA an overwhelming majority. This soars above all the caste, class and religious calculations! But why?  Where is the Opposition  traction, despite citing Modi’s allegedly dark communal agenda?

But is Modi really intent on nudging the country towards a majoritarian future? And if so, is the voting public complicit in this, the sounding of warnings notwithstanding?

Certainly, the Sangh’s grassroots organisation, the best in the business today, will have its say. The Parivar, including, most significantly, the RSS, provides the lakhs of pracharaks  toiling away in Bihar. They are the ones doing the infantry work in the political trenches, working with zeal and dedication from the booth and block level upwards.  

What do they want in return? Can they be blamed for thinking this is their time, particularly now that the BJP is in power at the centre, and with an unprecedented majority?  

Besides, not only did the BJP/NDA win and form the government in May 2014, but, thanks, in good measure to  the pracharaks, it has won and/or formed all the state governments in coalition, since; with the sole exception of Delhi.

Modi consequently, voluble as he is, is trapped into deafening silence.  Speaking out against communal remarks and actions could destroy him politically, and be dangerous.  How can he deny his own political DNA?

The facile question however, is why not? Is he not meant to represent the entire nation?

  

If not this, then what? Can he, splice something on, and change the DNA of the Sangh Parivar itself? Will continued electoral success and the benefits of power help the endeavour beyond the maunvrat?

There are religious convictions underpinning Hindutva, of course, but can  they be diluted and taken out of policy making? After all, the ‘truly secular’ ideological and cultural shifts were also promised.

The Labour Party of Britain was once arch-leftist/ trade unionist/anti monarchical/anti EU, but quite godless. In between however, it went centrist, right through the Tony Blair years, before going far left once again lately!

Modi’s BJP and its Sangh affiliates are already on the economic and cultural right. Modi’s own head-and-shoulders-taller -than-the-rest style and veiled authoritarianism echoes, in fact, the ‘not for turning’ Margaret Thatcher.  

So, isn’t there an opportunity here? If anyone can remake the Sangh to make it fit India’s future destiny, it is Modi. Because, he alone has risen much beyond the expected, and probable bandwidth, of a life-long pracharak - to become, not only PM, but a budding  sabka statesman.

For: The Quint

(666  words)

October 11^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Election Time Polls: Manipulating The Odds Or Predicting The Winner?

Election-Time Polls:  Manipulating The Odds Or Predicting The Winner?

Election pre-polling/exit polls, can be a controversial ingredient and a shadow player. But only if viewed as a staged and paid- for manipulation, a rigged projection. Those who want all election polls banned subscribe to this idea, supported invariably by the side that looks bad in early polling.

However, whatever be the pros and cons, the Election Commission has banned exit polls between October 12^th 2015, when the first phase of polling for the Bihar Legislative Assembly begins, and November 5^th , when the fifth and last phase of polling ends.

Notwithstanding the elimination of exit polls in this instance, except at the close, and before the results are expected on the 8^th of November; most people see polling as a professional exercise to predict who will win, and in a secondary and broader sense, who, and what, do the voters want. The jury is definitely out on the ability of polls to influence the outcome.

In the case of the Bihar Legislative Assembly Elections for 243 seats, it looks as yet, after 4 pre-poll surveys, that it will be a closely contested thing, with two of the polls giving it to the Nitish combine, and the other two to the NDA. The phrase ‘neck-to-neck’ is being frequently used, two days before the bugles sound. 

The latest poll, announced on the 9^th, does hand it to the NDA. It will get more popular votes, they all suggest, but the people of Bihar would like to see Nitish Kumar returned as Chief Minister. While this may be an impossibility if the NDA does win, it suggests a close contest also.

One poll suggests the gap, of 42% of the vote to NDA, against 38% in favour of the Nitish/Lalu/Congress Combine, is narrow, and within the margin of error of such pre-election polls.

So at least, in this instance, four times over, with the pendulum swinging one way sometimes and otherwise the other, with findings from different pollsters, there is little room for suspicion that these are manipulated reports, faked to favour one side over another.

The pre-poll surveys of varying size, have apparently not materially affected for or against - the ‘odds of victory’, ‘campaign morale’, ‘turnout’, the illegal ‘betting’ such as it is, and/or the ‘fundraising’ .

But banning the post poll exit surveys between the phases, leaves it to the whisperers, over nearly a month, and the Satta Bazaar, to indicate which way the wind is blowing. The Satta Bazaar, on the eve of the first phase of the election, is saying the NDA will be able to form the government on its own.

Certainly, both sides, the main contenders, have been spending a lot of money on the campaign, and will attempt to continue doing so between the phases. This even as there will be 80 observers just to watch money flows used to ‘buy votes’ statewide; and 243 other general observers,  throughout, and in between the polling on 12^th, 16^th, 18^th, of October and the 1^st and 5^th of November.

All 62, 779 polling booths will be overseen by central armed police and monitored by drones, probably for the first time.  

Researchers in America, the birthplace of election polling, suggest that it is easier to predict who will win over who voters like. The is what Justin Wolfers and David Rothschild, economists at Microsoft Research had to say: “ Polls probing voters’ expectation yield more accurate predictions of election outcomes than the usual questions about who they will vote for”. Of course, this is America they are talking about.

But is voter psychology in urban and rural Bihar very different? In America ‘voter expectation’ surveys only got it wrong 8% of the time out of 214 surveys taken between 1932 and 2012. Neil King Jr wrote in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), that the ‘expectation question has ten times the potency as who will you vote for’.

The rest, will be made plain on November 8^th, 2015.

For: The Quint

(660 words)

October 9^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Slow Boat To India

Slow Boat To India

From the West, in the days when China was a very long horse ride away, a phrase for the slowest metaphorical journey was invented. It involved a slow boat to China.

There was even a popular song about it by Frank Loesser, a famous composer for Broadway musicals, involving the inveigling of a love interest to come take a very very long  journey together. This was in the post war haze of 1945.  

But the original boats to China, what were they? Maybe they were oar- drawn, like the Greek fleets of the Illiad, or the one in which Jason and the Argonauts went looking for the golden fleece. They might have been rafts to take advantage of sea currents.

Then came sailing ships and Sinbad the Sailor, and the Marco Polo days were suddenly over.

And afterwards, in accelerating sequence- steam, diesel turbines, and air travel. The Middle Kingdom got out of its induced opium stupor and promptly overthrew all and sundry. It turned Communist, and later still, the best Capitalist -Totalitarian state of them all.

This institutionalised capitalism via state policy grew formidably successful- they could have been, and were, before surpassing its arch-rivals Japan.  That is another country that turned its sense of regimentation to good purpose, rising phoenix-like from the ashes of WWII!

China still holds the title of Communist-Capitalist No.1. It proves the exception to the rule of oxymoronism, but perhaps not for too much longer. Its Communism might well survive because there are hardly any contenders left –maybe; if they can keep the lid on.

But the export/manufacturing/infrastructure building Capitalism is losing, perhaps has lost for good, its MGM lion roar.

This is because the export paid for all of the rest; and since most of it was labour intensive low-end product, dependent on volumes; when the US and Europe took a sharp tumble from a surfeit of debt in 2008, so did Chinese exports.

India, the world points out, is now the fastest growing major economy in the world. And this despite the fact that formulation of plans takes a month of Sundays here, and the pace of  implementation wouldn’t show up a snail.

But why? Are we innately inefficient? Is it the bureaucracy, that million legged centipede of babudom? Is the government bureaucracy, high and low, taking advantage of its permanent tenure, determined to maintain the status quo in which they reign supreme?

Are our elected politicians, inept at everything, except for winning elections, and the sundry arts of graft, corruption, intimidation and extortion?  How much time do they spend thinking about the development of this country?

How then, can an ascetic Modi use this system to transform India, unless he makes a few incisions? These cuts to the side of the gargantuan bureaucracy, steeped in an arcane language, an inpenetrable bureaucratese of its own, would perhaps be like letting in a breath of fresh air.

Singapore, tiny and efficient as it is, draws its bureaucracy from various walks of life in addition to the careerists and the tenured staff. America sweeps clean after each administration, though the Senators and Congressmen in The Capitol operate according to their own terms of office. It is  legislatively tough for the chief executive there too, particularly if he does not have the numbers in both the houses of Congress.

Yet, bipartisanship is held up as an ideal, and used lightly but tellingly where it counts. The hard fought electoral rivalries prevent more than that, and the electorate expects to be represented the way they voted it.

But because, the executive branch can sweep in a whole contingent of own men, generally from the campaign trail and support bases, the US is sometimes criticised for its lack of continuity in policy, both foreign and domestic.

And this, without necessarily intending to take up the contrary position vis a vis the outgoing government. And, of course, it also takes  the new set of operatives from the president downwards, quite a bit of time to get the hang of Washingtonese.

The fact is, no system is perfect, and any one of many can be made to serve, given sufficient political will. Of course, legislatures are tenure based too, and may not agree to be amenable. This can and does slow things down in any democratic set up.

But in India, there is little clarity on where the nation wants to take itself. Many regard the country essentially as a poor one, with the government entrusted principally in alleviating conditions for its poorest and least privileged.  This means, to its votaries, a tsunami of welfarism, tempered only by a better monitoring of the delivery systems and greater inclusiveness.

The health of the economy is secondary in this scheme of things, and huge deficits incurred in the pursuit of such laudable objectives are well worth it. What is the point of enhanced GDP if it does not benefit the ‘people’, goes this argument?

There is nothing particularly wrong with the essentials of this argument in a country of over 400 million very poor people, but an aversion to taking steps to enrich the country as a means to this very end, is the problem.

Also, is welfarism the best way to alleviate poverty? Is it not the old give a man a fish versus teach him how to fish conundrum?

The other thinking, one that India is yet to fully commit to, after decades and decades of the former strain of socialist thinking, is that growth is the panacea that can make all dreams come true.

And no, it will not just be a case of the rich getting richer to the exclusion of, and even at the expense of, the poor. This is standard communist propaganda after all, and even the communists have had to jettison it in favour of some form of capitalism in order to survive.

Those who didn’t, like oil-rich Venezuela, under erstwhile populist leader Chavez, have structurally ruined their economies, to the extent that it will be sometime, and take much austerity, before a revival can be engineered.

Now, coming back to an Indian political class and bureaucracy that is either ignorant of the demands of capitalist growth, or averse to it, what can be done? The key commonsensensical approach should be the injection of fresh blood of the right kind, and perpetual change.

Communists too have often harped on the dangers of entrenched thinking and vested interest. They have generally dealt with it via blood- letting and purges.

A democratic alternative could be a manning of at least a third of the key posts in the administration via the induction of private sector talent, those drawn from the Indian diaspora, and experts from other countries who can help us.

In addition, much of the swadeshi and self-reliance thinking has left us seriously behind the times. Attempting to reinvent the wheel is doubly fraught when we demonstrate no talent for applied research and development,  or even innovation beyond the ingenuity of jugaad.

Sadly, even if we look around the South Asian and South East Asian neighbourhood, we are fifty years behind most others by way of modern infrastructure, and that is at the very least!

We should therefore welcome expert foreign collaboration to speed things up, as we are just about beginning to at a policy level.

It would be best if the entire political and bureaucratic establishment backed by the intelligentsia and the media got over their split-personalities and backed the prime minister’s vision of ‘vikas’ as the tide that will indeed raise all boats.

Is this too much to ask for? If it is, then it becomes the entrenched and principal reason for our inability to realise our national potential.

 

For: SIRFNEWS

(1,287 words)

October 9^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

The Quantico Shift

The Quantico Shift

Talk about a cut to relevance in the present day. Priyanka Chopra has gone international, breaking through both the ethnic and gender barrier in doing so.

There has been, of course, talk of a possible black Bond, and even a female one of late, though the Ian Fleming purists can’t yet see how, any more than the Broccoli clan of 

James Bond movie producers can.

But the longest playing big budget franchise in Hollywood movie history stands changed quite a bit too. M has been played by a woman, the formidable Dame Judy Dench, for some time now. There has been a Malaysian Bond girl, of Chinese extraction, Michelle Yeoh, way back in 1997, no doubt with an eye to the massive South East Asian market and diaspora. There was also the rumoured consideration of  our own Aishwariya Rai Bachchan as an Indian Bond girl.

But what happened here is that another Indian beauty queen and Bollywood  movie star Priyanka Chopra, got herself a very good stateside agent. And ergo, she got results that were a good cut above the other two-way crossover artists from Bollywood.

She first test-marketed the western waters with her singing, recording and releasing an English pop song in collaboration with American rapper will.i.am that became a significant hit. And then, based on its success, Priyanka recorded as many as 45 other songs subsequently.

Then she bagged a starring role in brand new FBI drama TV series Quantico, recently debuted, and released in a 100 countries simultaneously.  While Quantico, Virginia, is the largest marines training base in the US in real life, the TV serial is probably a tip o’ the hat at the growing multi-ethnicity of the US, and indeed much of present day Europe too, in terms of its multi-racial casting.

Priyanka Chopra’s work in the series as FBI agent Alex Parrish, half Indian half Caucasian, has been broadcast in two episodes so far. It has been well received, beating another near simultaneous launch called Blood and Oil convincingly.

Chopra herself has been critically praised, and her ABC produced show has received good ratings as per Variety (US), with 6.9 million viewers per episode and rising. ABC, encouraged by the reception to its fast-paced and thriller plotted offering, is planning to put in repeat broadcasts to further enhance its viewership. And this is not counting Quantico’s reception in the 99 other countries its beaming to, including India.

Priyanka’s chosen launch vehicle in the field of Western entertainment is markedly different from that of all her peers in Bollywood. This, coming after a sustained stint as an A lister in Hindi cinema, where she is still in great demand.

In fact,Chopra has several films that highlight not just her looks, dancing ability and star appeal, all musts in Hindi cinema for top billing; but also her acting prowess, including  in ones called Barfi and Kaminey.

While the first episode of Quantico itself received favourable reviews, calling Priyanka Chopra  the show’s ‘best asset’, it remains to be seen how it does down the turnpike. As Chopra herself said in a recent interview - in India, her movies release on Friday and by Monday the box office collections tell you how you’ve done. But in a TV serial, the expectations are renewed every week.

The remarkable thing about Priyanka’s role as Alex Parrish, and that of her multi-racial/gender colleagues all training to be and working as FBI agents and analysts,  is  probably best stated by the current real-life FBI director.

He  says he is actually struggling to diversify the  overwhelmingly ‘white and male’ line up of  ‘bureau’ agents to reflect the new American reality.

Some other actors, from the UK’s Indian diaspora, have been working steadily on both sides of the Atlantic and sometimes in India too. Notably, there is Art Malik, famous from the award winning Jewel in the Crown(1984); the late greats Saeed Jaffrey and Zohra Sehgal. And the versatile Roshan Seth, who also played Nehru in Attenborough’s Gandhi, wherein home grown theatre director and adman  Alyque Padamsee played Jinnah.

Om Puri too more or less works only in English language films, mainly in the UK, after featuring in City of Joy(1992). Naserudeen Shah got to play Captain Nemo of the Nautilus in League of Gentlemen but has no lead roles there though he rarely plays the lead in India as well. Similar is the story with Irrfan Khan, another very fine Indian actor, as yet based in India, occasionally working abroad.

From a more recent vintage, there is Parminder Nagra, first introduced to the world in Bend it Like Beckham, and Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire along with home based star Anil Kapoor,  who have all taken the plunge into American TV serialdom, all well before Chopra.

Nagra essayed a role in Blacklist in the first season, and a long standing one in ER. Dev Patel is quite a prominent character in The Newsroom   where he plays an Indian IT nerd. And Kapoor worked in 21.  Freida Pinto, moved to the West permanently now, after being discovered in Slumdog Millionaire , has also worked in a number of middling feature films since.

But none  of these many actors have begun with the kind of pivotal starring role in a major and mass market production that Priyanka Chopra has bagged! Anil Kapoor is, in fact, making the Hindi version of 21 for Indian TV, and making sure he stars big in it now.

Priyanka’s chosen route outwards is also very differently thought out from the Cannes red carpet walking Aishwariya Rai Bachchan, fellow beauty queen and Bollywood star. Aishwariya, sometimes called ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’, acted in and adorned quite a few Hollywood movies alongside famous Hollywood actors, but alas without herself making much of an impact.  She does rather better being brand ambassador for a number of international luxury brands because she does photograph incredibly well.

Even her father-in-law, the 72 year old durable doyen of Indian popular cinema,  and living legend Amitabh Bachchan, only put in a fleeting appearance in Baz Luhrman’s flourescent version of the poignant  Scott Fitzgerald  classic The Great Gatsby.

If Priyanka Chopra’s first substantive acting effort overseas clicks episode after episode and segues into several seasons, she will become an international star too.

One other Indian has been down this path but long ago. He is Kabir Bedi, a handsome hunk and model in his heyday, but no great actor beyond the English language stage where he made the role of Tughlaq directed by Alyque Padamsee memorable. He, like Dalip Tahil after him, also from Padamsee’s English theatre stable, also made a large number of forgettable Bollywood films.

And then Bedi tried his luck abroad, in the late seventies, and found fame and fortune starring as a wildly popular and swashbuckling pirate in Sandokan, an Italian TV mini- series.  Bedi is fluent in Italian and still popular there. He was knighted by the Italian President as recently as 2010.

Sandokan, however, did not travel well in those celluloid days, way before digital copies, routine dubbing, international distribution agreements for European language  productions, and of course, satellite broadcasting.

But Bedi did work extensively nevertheless, but in lesser roles on both prime time and daytime TV serials in the US, and also, quite famously as the villain Gobinda in Octopussy, the Bond film, partly filmed in Udaipur.  

Omar Sharif  however, was probably the first to make the transition from East to West, way back in the sixties, moving from popular Egyptian movies of the 1950s to Hollywood. And once there, competing in sheer male beauty with Peter O’Toole in David Lean’s magnificent Lawrence of Arabia(1962).

Then came Doctor Zhivago (1965), again directed by David Lean, magnificently bringing Pasternak’s wonderful novel of love, sacrifice and revolution to the screen. It once again not only featured, but starred the accented and long eye-lashed actor, in the pivotal role of Zhivago.

Sharif ran through the rest of his long acting career, performing both in British and American productions but almost always in feature films. His dreamy Arab appeal sustained throughout his life in the West. His last film was released in 2013, though he never did act in Egyptian movies again.

Perhaps he was one of the earliest examples of a racially neutral transition, though David Lean’s insistence on casting an ethnically credible actor as Sharif Ali had a lot to do with it. Omar Sharif, unknown in the West at the time, earned an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor in this, his very first English language blockbuster. Before Egyptian Sharif, in the forties, there were a number of hauntingly beautiful Hollywood divas with some Indian blood- Merle Oberon and Vivien Leigh amongst them, but it was not the kind of thing you could admit to. 

When Omar Sharif hit the big screen, the US was just in the process of being desegregated. Blacks and Hispanics, let alone Arabs, Chinese, or Indians, did not get lead dramatic roles. Even if they were cast, they could not kiss the white girl heroine on screen, let alone have sex with her. Coloured people and foreigners were often portrayed in a demeaning manner - subservient, comic, caricatured.

But Sharif passed straight through into the White world, mostly cast as an exotic foreigner helped by his ability to speak English, French, Greek, Italian, Spanish and his native Arabic. He never had to be confined to stereotype in fezzes and long shirts, leaving that to the Western comedians playing Turks. He even spent his later semi-retired and retired years playing competitive and professional contract bridge and indulging his love for gambling in all the European capitals and on the French Riviera.

Those were big single screen cinema hall days, when Sharif was a matinee idol. Hit movies ran for weeks and months, eventually changing on Fridays. And the halls around the world had marquee names- Roxy, Minerva, Rialto, Metro, Bijou…

Television was still very young, beamed to flickering, boxy, sets; transitioning from B&W to Colour, the pace picking up considerably by 1965. But, TV had enormous traction right from the fifties, already showing daytime soap operas, Westerns, War serials, Variety programmes, game shows, mostly from America.

Later, even Bruce Lee, despite his stardom and formidable skills, was only ever seen in Kung Fu films. But Jackie Chan is an international star without borders, though to this day divides his time between Hollywood and the famous Run Run Shaw productions out of Hong Kong. Run Run died only in 2014, at the age of 106, and so some things about his media empire might change now.

Times however, have definitely changed. There is a black man in the White House, and Priyanka Chopra is accepted playing a patriotic American without preamble or  explanation.

For: Swarajyamag

(1,797 words)

October 5^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Regime Change And Protesting Too Much

Regime Change And Protesting Too Much

There is bound to be bloodshed when a regime changes. Parliamentary democracy and its presidential variations, with its elaborate institutions, laws, and election process mechanisms, tends to keep the naked tooth and claw in check.

One has only to reflect on the standard African strongman coup or the Latin American siesta-time dictatorial takeover, to understand the difference. Of course, if the drift is totalitarian, as in the October Revolution or the denouement of The Long March, then count your dead in millions please.

Elections, the free and fair variety, give vent to the wishes of the people, no matter how much the losing side may burn or attempt to subvert. And no matter how long stays in office tend to turn the incumbents a tad monarchical.  But for good measure, the Americans, no slouches at innovation, noticed this, and limited their presidents to two terms and no more.

But, like the brutality of mergers and acquisitions, divestments and sell-offs in the corporate world, there is no gainsaying the nature of the beast. Regime change wants blood, as in one part oblation, and one part sacrifice- aka payment for the price of change.

It is this shedding of blood that brings closure to the old and definition to the new. When an established bough breaks, hope only for cuts and bruises at best, and be thankful if there are only a few broken backs and necks.

The beef murder is occupying almost all the media space, bristling with as much outrage as it did in reporting the high society Indrani Mukherjea engineered snuffing. It replaced that obscenity, with a Modi goes to Silicon Valley interregnum.

It is an instance of instigated mob violence, a prejudiced lynching, that nevertheless exposes less than it reveals.  Let us not ignore or forget that other Muslims in the same village were given refuge by their Hindu neighbours when the mob came. Just as Hindus protected the Sikhs in Delhi when the Congress instigated mobs came. But that time, in the poorer neighbourhoods, thousands were slaughtered before the bloodlust eased.

Politicians, unlike the near extinct Indian vulture,  came swarming to Dadri, once, not too long ago, the site of an airline crash that rained bodies from the sky above. They came, talons out, looking for hand and toeholds in the atrocity, like flies drawn to an open, festering, wound.

But, it is still difficult to milk a tragedy into a conflagration in independent India.  The matches are damp and won’t catch.

Otherwise the Pakistani ISI would have set this country alight a very long time ago. And Mumbai will tell you if you ask that it wasn’t for want of trying. The Indian social construct and fabric is much more intact than the meddling politicians, their media backers, and sundry hatemongers would like us to believe. This despite caste and religion politics played relentlessly over nearly seven decades. And Pakistan’s malevolence.

And  that is why the Muslim women of Dadri stoned the media OB vans, held up Kejriwal, coming in third or fourth after Owaisi, Rahul Gandhi and another, and asked to be left in peace.

But, in the end, this was the death of one man, and the battering of another, his son, at the receiving end of an allegedly 200 strong mob, albeit just 50 km away from Delhi.

It is not, and cannot be portrayed as a microcosm of ancient hatreds being revived. Any more than a KKK lynching of a black man today, or even the over enthusiastic shooting of one by white policemen, would be a return to the bad old days of segregation in the US race relations saga.

It was not a Hindu-Muslim riot a la Noakhali that had Gandhi needing to fast unto death to quell. There was no call for a Suhrawardi, Owaisi’s arrival notwithstanding.

It wasn’t a cold blooded pogrom of indiscriminate murder, rape, arson and intimidation of innocents. Trying to link single bits of violence against Dalits elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh to the beef murder as illustration of fascist intimidation was ham-fisted. But it was pressed into service and forced to ride.

So why is the Congress cultured media, which makes up over 90% of all of it, trying to whip up such a soufflé ?

It used to be BBC or VOA in the radio days, and other Western ‘foreign hand’ avatars when we were regarded as a  morally pontificating Soviet satellite, that used to slant their coverage towards exotica or poverty porn when it came to India. They had no interest in the rest of our news and none in our views.

Likewise, in ironic imitation, today’s Indian media in the main wants to assert that Modi and his government, aided and abetted by the RSS and the rest of the Sangh Parivar, is trying to return India to the Laws of Manu, garnished with extreme hatred for the Muslim minority in particular. That it is regressive and will destroy India as we know it.

This is, of course, a dangerous lie, and pernicious propaganda to boot. As much as the narrative that said a gauche, communal, provincial CM like Modi, a mere ‘chai wallah’, could never be elected to the Centre, let alone become PM. And moreover, everything he has done in a year and a half in office, including lifting the GDP up to 7.5%, cutting back on deficits and inflation, is hot air.

But even as the lies and slurs become ever more frantic, the purveyors are fighting a rear-guard action. They are in definite retreat today, and perhaps gritting their teeth in preparation for the rout to come.

But since it is a battle for their very survival, it does not seem to bother these articulate agent provocateurs about the damage their fear-mongering may be doing. At any rate, it is dividing the intelligentsia, sapping the national will to power and progress, and divorcing them from the canny understanding of the masses, fed up with the lies. There, and to them, Modi is a figure of hope and redemption, not an evil wind.

After all the vicious but mealy-mouthed incitement they are spewing constantly, an all-out riot would suit their purpose, these people who say they are liberal, secular and concerned about the poor; and major bloodshed would suit their purpose even better.

They have their templates ready in advance to blame Modi’s hate politics rather than themselves. Not that they admit it, even remotely, to themselves.

According to their narrative, they are trying to preserve and protect the Nehruvian-Gandhian multi-cultural and pluralistic ‘Idea of India’. It is allegedly under threat from the forces of ‘saffronisation’, determined to turn India into a fascist Hindu state.

What they are trying to actually protect is their own relevance, their jobs, privileges and fiefdoms, built up over decades under the ancien regime. If Modi keeps winning elections they are done for, and they know it. Whatever they can do to prevent this is what they want.

Still, perhaps they realise, with the early prescience of the cunning, that they are doomed to oblivion; and like cornered rats, are putting all they have into their last stands.

What infuriates them the most, given the hysteria they have manifested, is the sphinx-like silence of the prime minister and his government in the face of this provocation. Barking dogs they may be, but are not too sure if they can hold out for the results they fervently hope for by way of opinion formation in their favour. And how can Modi afford to ignore them so serenely?

They do see, and in some despair, that they are merely preaching to the converted; the ‘bhakts’ seem untouched by their shenanigans, and the electorate at large is quite willing to let them drown in their own bile.

For: Sirfnews

(1,300 words)

October 4^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee