Well, at another plenary Zizek spoke - or ranted rather - characteristically for the United European Christian Brotherhood - and admonished the middle classes for thinking thought that comfort was to be had in marching against regimes on saturdays. In many ways - objectionable though his position on Europe, Christianity, Brotherhood may be - he had a point. The solace or worse the high ground that European middle classes had assumed from having walked ten steps on a cold spring Saturday against the war in Iraq - was actually rooted in something quite hollow. Where Zizek characteristically slipped was in his attribution of the hollowness. Christian Europe was acting in too Christian a manner in countering this barbaric threat of terrorism from a militant Islam - according to Zizek. I.e Zizek though the middle classes were being too civilised about the war and the roots of the clash.
One can of course pick on each bit of Zizek's argument to reveal centuries of prejudice, but let that be for another time. But
I think he did pick on something interesting in talking about the solace of the middle classes - and the general futility of political protest on the street and that's what I want to pick up here.
It's like feminism. Just because women in Euro-America are giving up work in favour of becoming consumerism driven (largely) yummy-mummies, the rest of us are forced to reckon with the world as having become 'post-feminist'! Just try to run past that logic anywhere outside Euro-America and you sound like retrogressive and not post-anything at all really! Similarly, the likes of Zizek and theri pampered kin reckon that the world is supposed to have become bored of political protest, shouting in the street, or so it seems. In Zizek's Europe, the only reason one would put on our black march shoes would be for comforting the soul and not ousting a regime, but then really chicken soup is better and easier to do!
I heard this relentless attack on the 'rest of the world' by Zizek and empathised with a friend who did out his Christian soft spot, to which Zizek replied - "fuck you, i am christian and proud of it." We heard Zizek indulgently and a week later, images of monks in Burma began to flood the screens - tv, internet, newspapers, to say nothing of the frenetic activity in blogosphere! So perhaps Zizek did have a point - the middle classes in Euro-America protest in namby-pamby way (blogs, for example) and politics is reduced to its virtual version. And in the non-middle class world, non Euro-American world this world of namby-pamby, softly softly, please can i protest today, sort of way, protest has absolutely no connect with the polity and the polity has no regard for it.
But in recent months Nepal, Burma, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan - protest here is not made up of the middle classes. Or that they do not form its only or dominant platform. Because ultimately here what is at stake is not a politics of solace, of feel-good, of soft-power, but of what tomorrow looks like and how you can limit the opponent from defining it completely. Realpolitik. So perhaps Zizek was right about the middle classes - but except he was not. He critiqued protest more than he criticised power in his talk. And like a good Christian European philosopher forgot to mention, remember that he was talking about and from a culturally specific position and that there was a whole world that thrived outside it. Even if blogosphere does not, the monks in Burma have showed Zizek his relative place.
Thursday, 27 September 2007
Friday, 21 September 2007
"Get real, Prof!!"
"Get real, Prof!!"
(Renuka Narayan, columnist, to the historian Professor Shrimali, on We The People, NDTV)
"A book you wish you’d written?
David Lodge’s Small World. The last in a trilogy, it’s a scathing satire on academic hypocrisy. I wish I could write a similar one on our own jholawalas."
(Excerpt from an interview with Ira Pande, sometimes author, in Tehelka)
Last evening I was with friends and recounting the chain of statements on the latest episode of Barkha Dutt's slugfest show, and wondering aloud how and why a new attitude that can be characterised as dismissiveness at best and downright contempt at worst has begun to target the Indian social scientists in particular and academics in general. And when I chanced on Pande's statement whilst browsing this afternoon, at first it incensed me. What precisely was the ground Pande thought she was standing on from where she could just rattle off an attack of that nature? Or had I misread something?
Gradually the anger subsided I and instead I became more puzzled by this new target of venom and public ridicule. Many questions that we had thrown up collectively the precious evening rang ever more pertinent. For example, what could be the source of this new-found confidence and legitimacy to shout down a university professor, who was if nothing else just presenting his own (no doubt qua expert) opinion on the wretched Ram Setu issue, just like all the other experts on the show, including three politicians and Narayan as an journalist specialising in faith issues? I suspect that someone like Narayan would not easily allow themselves to be so utterly aggressive in full public glare to even the least respected and respectable politician, bureaucrat or any other kind that makes it to such televsion shows. I'm not concerned here about the content of her fracas with Shrimali - and I do not advocate for a second that consensus and politeness should dictate politics generally. Nor is it the fact that journalists and academics have been all lovved up. All the same, what the outbursts from Pande and Narayan signal is something new, and I think its roots do not lie in the mutual suspicion society that journalists and academics have run all along.
Consider Pande's light touch on these matters - what is she griping about? That the so-called jholawalas are hypocrites. For they practice not what they preach. The assumption is that the jholawalas are left-leaning in their sympathies, and write left-leaningly, but live otherwise. Pande's attack is not directed at the content and/or its merit of the jholawala's work (she would be hard-pressed to do that), but something other than that - i.e. their lifestyle. But she should perhaps consider the white khadi-wearing politicians, whose scale of hypocrisy is perhaps more worthy of analysis. Or even the hypocricy of our bureaucrats, who actually do not deliver on what they've signed up to. And what Narayanan is angry about is that the historian is out of touch and does not really understand what was going on at ground zero.
And I want to ask why Pande would not pose these questions to a whole raft of others, if at all personal lifestyle is to be made a measure of professional acumen, and Narayanan (and Barkha Dutt by extension) why she chose to shout that way not at even the CPI nominee who was giving a much more pogrammatic line on scieintific nationalism, but at Shrimali. MWhilst journalists and social scientists had much more in common in mission and status up until recently, the corporatisation of the media in India has shifted allegiances of the profession (in terms of salaries and mission) in sometimes unwitting opposition to those of the critical social scientist.y hunch is that the two instances of easy aggression have something to do with the lowered tolerance for criticism of India Shining. Unlike their scientist bretheren, social scientists in India are perceived by the chatterati as being irritants if not completely useless in the neoliberal food-chain.
Lack of criticism and an overbearing consensus is a recipe of disaster in any society. Fortunately, even though they are the most visible and pampered and locquacious, the middle classes in India are not all that make up India and the whole country does not dance to their favourite tune. Ask the BJP!
(Renuka Narayan, columnist, to the historian Professor Shrimali, on We The People, NDTV)
"A book you wish you’d written?
David Lodge’s Small World. The last in a trilogy, it’s a scathing satire on academic hypocrisy. I wish I could write a similar one on our own jholawalas."
(Excerpt from an interview with Ira Pande, sometimes author, in Tehelka)
Last evening I was with friends and recounting the chain of statements on the latest episode of Barkha Dutt's slugfest show, and wondering aloud how and why a new attitude that can be characterised as dismissiveness at best and downright contempt at worst has begun to target the Indian social scientists in particular and academics in general. And when I chanced on Pande's statement whilst browsing this afternoon, at first it incensed me. What precisely was the ground Pande thought she was standing on from where she could just rattle off an attack of that nature? Or had I misread something?
Gradually the anger subsided I and instead I became more puzzled by this new target of venom and public ridicule. Many questions that we had thrown up collectively the precious evening rang ever more pertinent. For example, what could be the source of this new-found confidence and legitimacy to shout down a university professor, who was if nothing else just presenting his own (no doubt qua expert) opinion on the wretched Ram Setu issue, just like all the other experts on the show, including three politicians and Narayan as an journalist specialising in faith issues? I suspect that someone like Narayan would not easily allow themselves to be so utterly aggressive in full public glare to even the least respected and respectable politician, bureaucrat or any other kind that makes it to such televsion shows. I'm not concerned here about the content of her fracas with Shrimali - and I do not advocate for a second that consensus and politeness should dictate politics generally. Nor is it the fact that journalists and academics have been all lovved up. All the same, what the outbursts from Pande and Narayan signal is something new, and I think its roots do not lie in the mutual suspicion society that journalists and academics have run all along.
Consider Pande's light touch on these matters - what is she griping about? That the so-called jholawalas are hypocrites. For they practice not what they preach. The assumption is that the jholawalas are left-leaning in their sympathies, and write left-leaningly, but live otherwise. Pande's attack is not directed at the content and/or its merit of the jholawala's work (she would be hard-pressed to do that), but something other than that - i.e. their lifestyle. But she should perhaps consider the white khadi-wearing politicians, whose scale of hypocrisy is perhaps more worthy of analysis. Or even the hypocricy of our bureaucrats, who actually do not deliver on what they've signed up to. And what Narayanan is angry about is that the historian is out of touch and does not really understand what was going on at ground zero.
And I want to ask why Pande would not pose these questions to a whole raft of others, if at all personal lifestyle is to be made a measure of professional acumen, and Narayanan (and Barkha Dutt by extension) why she chose to shout that way not at even the CPI nominee who was giving a much more pogrammatic line on scieintific nationalism, but at Shrimali. MWhilst journalists and social scientists had much more in common in mission and status up until recently, the corporatisation of the media in India has shifted allegiances of the profession (in terms of salaries and mission) in sometimes unwitting opposition to those of the critical social scientist.y hunch is that the two instances of easy aggression have something to do with the lowered tolerance for criticism of India Shining. Unlike their scientist bretheren, social scientists in India are perceived by the chatterati as being irritants if not completely useless in the neoliberal food-chain.
Lack of criticism and an overbearing consensus is a recipe of disaster in any society. Fortunately, even though they are the most visible and pampered and locquacious, the middle classes in India are not all that make up India and the whole country does not dance to their favourite tune. Ask the BJP!
Sunday, 16 September 2007
Parzania
Parzania (n.) A fantasy land where castles are made of chocolate and halwa and people never fight.
Well, if Chak De India suggested that the national community is one that has to be constantly worked into being, then here it is where you start from and watch it crumble. Set in the context of the Gujarat riots, the film makes a compelling case of the fragility of goodness in everyday lives. All saccharine and sweet family life of a Parsee family is brutally destroyed by a marauding mob of Hindu fanatics on the hunt for every last drop of Muslim blood.
My point follows from my previous post on Chak De India. Even in this most brutal and unpunished act of genocide committed in recent times, it is not the Indian Muslim who has a chance of becoming the subject of this narrative - just the backdrop, perhaps the excuse, if not the reason, why the plight unleashed by this most inhumane episode can be and must be told. Parzania is a story about the unwitting victims of this inhumanity. It seems impossible even in this supposedly magnanimous tale of disenchantment with the forever failing state that the first and foremost target of Modi's marauding can speak and demand justice from the state and call its flight from responsibility on its face!
There are of course many other things to say about Parzania, but for the moment, and in the light of the last post - let this suffice.
Well, if Chak De India suggested that the national community is one that has to be constantly worked into being, then here it is where you start from and watch it crumble. Set in the context of the Gujarat riots, the film makes a compelling case of the fragility of goodness in everyday lives. All saccharine and sweet family life of a Parsee family is brutally destroyed by a marauding mob of Hindu fanatics on the hunt for every last drop of Muslim blood.
My point follows from my previous post on Chak De India. Even in this most brutal and unpunished act of genocide committed in recent times, it is not the Indian Muslim who has a chance of becoming the subject of this narrative - just the backdrop, perhaps the excuse, if not the reason, why the plight unleashed by this most inhumane episode can be and must be told. Parzania is a story about the unwitting victims of this inhumanity. It seems impossible even in this supposedly magnanimous tale of disenchantment with the forever failing state that the first and foremost target of Modi's marauding can speak and demand justice from the state and call its flight from responsibility on its face!
There are of course many other things to say about Parzania, but for the moment, and in the light of the last post - let this suffice.
Thursday, 6 September 2007
Yesterday I saw Chak De India for the second time. Heart-warming stuff, mostly. A young player beleaguered by history, a team of women hockey players with more seconds than firsts in its repertoire, a narrative imperative to beat all patriarchal odds, world domination as a reward - truly heady mix to match contemporary India's mood of We Can Do It All, despite the ills that bedraggle and obstruct - for example differences of race, belief, status, opinion, power, intent.
And it's refreshing stuff the reviews say - no romantic angles, no song-and dance, and SRK not allowed to do what he can do really well - ham, that is.
Yet, I come out of the cinema hall for the second time feeling agi-tagi. And I think I want to spoil the Chak de party a little bit and share with you why.
Of course this IS a love-story, a love-story par excellence, if not par-venu - for this is a classic tale of romancing the nation-state. That much is clear, and it's a fairly obvious point to make. There is plenty of song-and-dance made about what you can do for the country and what the country can do for you. BUT, and here come the pernickety bits:
It has already been pointed in other posts that after all the fanfare with which India's margins and marginals from Mizoram, Jharkhand are introduced, they eventually remain just margins, chorus-line stuff, and the main story of success is driven by the strength, talent and competitiveness of the rustic Punjab, the caustic Haryana, and uber-urban Chandigarh!
But even more than the point about the dream space of the margins in the dream-tale of the nation, I want to focus on the protagonist. Because if Chak de is a love-story, then who are its Romeo and Juliet? If Dream India is the Juliet, then it's Romeos are several - Team India, audiences, but most of all it is Kabir Khan, in whose person this role and responsibility are vested. And here lies the Chak de party pooper!
There are posts on the net that reckon that Chak de is a first for its times of the kind Garam Hawa was for its. But is it? Chak de is hailed as 'bold' for portraying a Muslim man in the leading male part. Yes. But under what constraints, one must ask and clarify. For Kabir Khan is no ordinary leading male role in Hindi cinema. Refreshingly, or not, he plays hockey, and not cricket - but then this alludes more to the traditional subaltern base of hockey more generally. Refreshingly, or not, he drives (or rather walks) a scooter, and not a flashy sports car. Refreshingly, or not, he lives in a mohalla, and not in a Hansel and Gretel la-la land. Refreshingly, or not, there is no love-interest that he has or rather is allowed to have other than the love and loyalty for his country. Despite all the opposition and easy suspicions that are thrown his way. His mother is a widow (the only obvious and jarring piece of hamming in the entire film). The third identified Muslim character in the film is the player Gul, who arrives in Delhi surrounded by a humoungous family. No family planning here, the narrative yet again raises our suspicions about the loyalty of this lot to the cause of the nation!
My point is a simple one: under the heart-warming stuff of the film, there lie uncomfortable truths - about the nation's minginess, its meanness, its tight-fistedness. The Indian Muslim, this tight-fistedness holds, must remain an incomplete person, must be denied the regularity of a common life of common aspirations. S/he must not have anything other than the nation to dance to, no other love-song other than the national anthem to hum to. The only permanent thing is the trace of suspicion - symbolised in the crossing out of the word 'gaddaar' (or traitor) as a sign of forgiveness from the national community - crossed out yet visible. Forever tainted and only tainted!
Anyway - that's my gripe.
Labels: chak de india
And it's refreshing stuff the reviews say - no romantic angles, no song-and dance, and SRK not allowed to do what he can do really well - ham, that is.
Yet, I come out of the cinema hall for the second time feeling agi-tagi. And I think I want to spoil the Chak de party a little bit and share with you why.
Of course this IS a love-story, a love-story par excellence, if not par-venu - for this is a classic tale of romancing the nation-state. That much is clear, and it's a fairly obvious point to make. There is plenty of song-and-dance made about what you can do for the country and what the country can do for you. BUT, and here come the pernickety bits:
It has already been pointed in other posts that after all the fanfare with which India's margins and marginals from Mizoram, Jharkhand are introduced, they eventually remain just margins, chorus-line stuff, and the main story of success is driven by the strength, talent and competitiveness of the rustic Punjab, the caustic Haryana, and uber-urban Chandigarh!
But even more than the point about the dream space of the margins in the dream-tale of the nation, I want to focus on the protagonist. Because if Chak de is a love-story, then who are its Romeo and Juliet? If Dream India is the Juliet, then it's Romeos are several - Team India, audiences, but most of all it is Kabir Khan, in whose person this role and responsibility are vested. And here lies the Chak de party pooper!
There are posts on the net that reckon that Chak de is a first for its times of the kind Garam Hawa was for its. But is it? Chak de is hailed as 'bold' for portraying a Muslim man in the leading male part. Yes. But under what constraints, one must ask and clarify. For Kabir Khan is no ordinary leading male role in Hindi cinema. Refreshingly, or not, he plays hockey, and not cricket - but then this alludes more to the traditional subaltern base of hockey more generally. Refreshingly, or not, he drives (or rather walks) a scooter, and not a flashy sports car. Refreshingly, or not, he lives in a mohalla, and not in a Hansel and Gretel la-la land. Refreshingly, or not, there is no love-interest that he has or rather is allowed to have other than the love and loyalty for his country. Despite all the opposition and easy suspicions that are thrown his way. His mother is a widow (the only obvious and jarring piece of hamming in the entire film). The third identified Muslim character in the film is the player Gul, who arrives in Delhi surrounded by a humoungous family. No family planning here, the narrative yet again raises our suspicions about the loyalty of this lot to the cause of the nation!
My point is a simple one: under the heart-warming stuff of the film, there lie uncomfortable truths - about the nation's minginess, its meanness, its tight-fistedness. The Indian Muslim, this tight-fistedness holds, must remain an incomplete person, must be denied the regularity of a common life of common aspirations. S/he must not have anything other than the nation to dance to, no other love-song other than the national anthem to hum to. The only permanent thing is the trace of suspicion - symbolised in the crossing out of the word 'gaddaar' (or traitor) as a sign of forgiveness from the national community - crossed out yet visible. Forever tainted and only tainted!
Anyway - that's my gripe.
Labels: chak de india
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