In a bizarre twist to the insurgency in Northeastern India, the BBC reports:

Rebels in India’s north-eastern state of Tripura are making pornographic films to raise money for their separatist campaign.

This phenomenon seems to have been around for just a couple of years. It seems these films are dubbed in Bengali, Burmese, Thai and Hindi. I wonder if it has anything to do with horrible incidents like the murder of the two women in broad daylight in Bombay. Not to say that porn causes violence, but Northeastern women occupy a peculiar place in mainstream India, and I am sure porn made under coercive circumstances does nothing to help that.

Tribal women in the northeast, have been the target of abuse for a long time, and not only from the insurgents (BBC). Society in the northeast is much less sexist than the rest of India, and the abuse of women used to be rare. So these reports of violence by rebel outfits are very disturbing. The NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura) had started recruiting more women, when their reputation for sexual abuse got out of hand, but stopped when some of their recruits developed relationships and wanted to drop out and lead normal lives. So now they are back to oppressing them.

The rebels may have legitimate grievances, but once they make the bodies of innocent people their battleground, they lose any moral right to address those grievances. Why is that so difficult to understand?

My films Bollywood Terror and Eunuch Alley are screening at a fundraiser for Raksha, an Atlanta based non-profit. Its on the 27th and for a good cause so if you live in Atlanta, please consider going and encouraging your friends to do the same.

RAKSHA:  Celebrating 10 Years of Service - Kickoff & Fundraiser!

Don’t miss Atlanta’s first ever Bollywood & Gender Bender Party!
Saturday, August 27th, 8:00 p.m.

Short films, Dances & Performances, Live set with Asian-Massive pioneer Sharaab and more!

Venue: Sutra Lounge, 1136 Crescent Ave, Ph: 404-607-1160 

Date/Time: Saturday, Aug 27th, 8:00 p.m.- 10 p.m.

Donations: $15 Minimum, $20 Suggested donation (includes a free drink ticket)

$25-$50: “Friends of Raksha” – Private VIP lounge access all night + delicious Indian Food + a Free Drink ticket (Please RSVP)

For RSVP (VIP access) & other details: 404-876-0670 or director.at.raksha.org or Evite.

All proceeds go to Raksha, Inc which provides support, services, education and advocacy for the South Asian community.  www.raksha.org

Manish over at Sepia Mutiny has a funny post riffing on the acronym for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ being the same for the ultra right wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. It got me thinking of another words that have unintended double meanings, like ‘Dasani.’ Apparently the Coca Cola company chose this name for its bottled water because “it means nothing,” and suggests something cool and refreshing. Now, if I understand my Sindhi correctly, ‘Dasani’ means ‘from the house of slaves.’ So does this mean that Coca Cola’s bottled water comes from slave labor? or they track down the finest slave households and put a bottle to their taps?

I am trying to think of other words that work like RSS and Dasani, it would probably make a good little playlet. Meanwhile, the humorless Hundutva sympathizers have been posting comments at Sepia Mutiny, and I am guessing there is enough hateful stuff there for the comments to have been closed for that particular thread. I wonder if those who worry about injuries done to Coca Cola’s pride will post here with any enthusiasm? or doesn’t poor Coca Cola have any righteously indignant defenders?

The Hindu sunday magazine has an article by Ramachandra Guha on K. Kamaraj (1903-1975), the politician from Tamil Nadu. Kamaraj was instrumental in overseeing the prime ministership pass from Nehru to Lal Bahadur Shastri (1964) and Indira Gandhi (1966). He was a member of the ’syndicate,’ a group of powerful regional Congress party leaders who had ambitions of being power brokers at the national level. Even though most history books remember him in the role of kingmaker, Kamaraj was much more than that, he seems to have been an able organizer and administrator and was the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for thirteen years. He had a reputation for honesty (a rarity among politicians). One of the signs of his incorruptibility was the fact that he had never married, something that was often cited in the case of Vajpayee as well. I suppose the logic is that if you don’t have a family, why would you need to be corrupt? And being single is a sign of celibacy, which is saintly and good. Quite the opposite in the US, where if you are not married, it means you are gay which seems to be an anathema for most politicians, gay-friendly or otherwise, exceptions for folks like Barney Frank.

There is a very hagiographic website devoted to Kamaraj, which has some great photographs from his early life.

Very often, Indian newspapers have the word ‘flaying’ in their headlines. E.g today’s Rediff article: BJP flays Sonia’s ’silence’ on Nanavati report. The Dictionary.com website defines flaying as:

1. To strip off the skin or outer covering of.
2. To strip of money or goods; fleece.
3. To whip or lash.
4. To assail with stinging criticism; excoriate.

The papers mean #4 when they say flay, not #1, the way I understand the term, and which is how most people, I think, understand the term. As far as I can remember, it was not a popular term till the eighties. Whence its popularity? Maybe there is a whole S and M level to public discourse that I am unconscious of. Think of it. A national obsession with “twatcha,” the skin that needs to made ‘fair and lovely.’ The brides who are homely but ‘wheatish’ in complexion. Tales of British colonial brutality that often involve whipping with ‘hunters.’ My own experience in school with corporal punishment for not doing homework. Brides being killed with attacks on their “twatcha” with kerosine and a match. The resurgence in separatist violence in the eighties in the Punjab and Kashmir. I wonder what the connections are.

If you’ve been following the news on the tabling of the report on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, you probably know that Jagdish Tytler has had to resign from the cabinet, and Sajjan Kumar is in trouble. Manmohan Singh announced that investigations against these folks will be re-opened. With Tytler becoming a political liability for the Congress, one hopes for a certain symmetry, where Modi becomes a liability for the BJP. That remains to be seen. Hopefully, the Tytler resignation is a truly positive sign, and not another false beginning, even if its too little, too late (criminals like HKL Bhagat have been completely exonerated).

Its been interesting to read the papers on what prompted this development. The Telegraph reports that the CPI and CPM refused to support their coalition partners in parliament against a NDA/BJP motion to adjourn the house, unless something was done about the culprits by the central government. The Indian Express on the other hand:

Refuting suggestions that the Left parties had occupied the `Opposition space’, she said except for the BJP and Akali Dal, “not once did they (Left) obstruct the proceedings in both Houses or get them adjourned on this issue”.

The truth is probably somewhere in between, more in line with The Hindu report, which sort of falls in the middle of these two positions, and talks about the dissent within the Congress itself, which the other two papers don’t mention. Kind of interesting, given the conventional wisdom that the news has a left bias.

The Nanavati commission report was presented in parliament today. The outcome to say the very least, is very disappointing (see earlier post on it). The more powerful Congress leaders like Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler will go scot free, not only that, many lower ranked police and bureaucrats will go free as well. These people are responsible for nearly 3000 deaths in the anti-Sikh riots in 1984.

Rediff has a sampling of the recommendations of the commission, which makes for depressing reading. Sikh groups in India are understandably very disappointed. HS Phulka, the lawyer who has been fighting for justice for almost two decades, reflects what I fear is the consequence of this injustice (rediff):

“….After over 20 years of fight, we realised that this country is not governed by the rule of law.”

This is very disheartening. It sets a negative precedence for stopping political violence in the future. It undermines the recent directions given by the Supreme Court to the Gujarat police to apprehend the accused in the 2002 riots.

Update: The BBC has a story today on the protests that have met the Nanavati report. Unfortunately the victims voices are drowned under the shrill tones of BJP harridans like Sushma Swaraj, who are calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister. Kind of sickening, considering that the worst violence in India’s recent history, where the state was deeply complicit happened under the BJP’s watch, when folks like Swaraj were in power.

Also see Dilip D’Souza and Amardeep Singh on this travesty.

The BBC reports:

Village council candidates in India should be allowed to stand for election only if they have a toilet at home, the rural development minister says.

The venerable minister, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh’s reason for proposing this rule is:

Mr Singh told the BBC that more than 65% of India’s rural population defecated in the open, along roadsides, railway tracks and fields, generating huge amounts of excrement every day. “This finds its way into the water sources,” Mr Singh said.

In a country where only thirty percent of the population has access to adequate sanitation and produces 900 million litres of urine and 135 million kilogrammes of faecal matter per day, the scale of the problem boggles the mind (From the Toilet Museum in New Delhi).

As amusing as this proposal sounds, I have several questions and thoughts. I wonder if the rule is being proposed to encourage people to install toilets, or to keep those who can’t afford toilets out of the race. The other aspect of this whole toilet business is the group of people who clean up after the others–the Dalits (See the BBC story on excreta collectors in Bangalore). Kerim has an account of our meeting with Pavan, a former tailor who came from a community of bhangis in Jaipur. One of the things that really stayed with me regarding that conversation was learning that higher caste/class women weren’t allowed to go out of the house to defecate, hence bhangi women were needed to clean up after them. This situation made it particularly difficult for Dalit women to change their occupation; there was a whole system in place to keep them doing their jobs, often backed by violence, not only from outside the community, but also from the men within their community.

So the minister’s insistence on flush toilets doesn’t sound so outlandish after all.

Charles Sobhraj had his day in court yesterday, and the Patan Appellate court sentenced him to twenty years in prison. His lawyers tried to make a case based on a case heard in the Indian Supreme Court in 1996, which was about a murder case in Varanasi which resembles the Kathmandu murder. Charles was freed on the lack of evidence in the Varanasi case.

This article is in several news outlets. Considering its about my films, I guess I am allowed to quote it in full:

Charles Sobhraj Released - on Silver Screen

by Sudheshna Sarkar

His eventful life makes for a perfect movie script - serial murders, young, beautiful women and daring escapes from prisons across the world. Now, Charles Sobhraj, one of the most wanted serial killers of the 1970s, has made it to the silver screen.

Indian filmmaker Shashwati Talukdar, who hails from Dehradun in India’s Uttaranchal state, has made two films on Sobhraj.
Read the rest of this entry »