A few days ago, the BBC reported on the ritual death of Vimla Devi in Jaipur, who committed Santhara, sanctioned by Jainism, where a person voluntarily gives up food and prepares for death. Vimla Devi’s fast was challenged and now the courts are considering whether Santhara should be considered suicide. The argument for not considering it suicide states that committing Santhara is a rational decision that requires the sanction of a cleric, and the person’s family, and is not an impulsive private act like suicide (though I doubt if suicide is impulsive). Those who oppose Santhara are worried about it having a resemblance to Sati, and the possibility of sick and old persons being pressured to voluntarily starve themselves.

Santhara itself has public and performative aspect, similar and different from Kafka’s Hunger Artist. From India Today:

The period of the fast that leads to death varies. Harchand Surana of Sardarsahar in Bikaner starved himself for 103 days before breathing his last and Surajkanwar of Ajmer did not drink even water during the last 11 days of her life. And it is not only the aged who go for it. The youngest reported case in recent times was of Kiran, 20, for whom death came 38 days after beginning her fast. When her body was subsequently tied to a pillar, devotees thronged the small town of Ladnu to pay their respects.

The requirements of a Santhara are pretty extensive. The director of the LD Institute of Indology quoting 2000 year old scriptures says ( Outlook):

“As per these scriptures, a person cannot perform Santhara without the permission of their Guru”, Shah said.

“A person deciding to attain Santhara first prays, meditates and practices fasting every day. Then the person gradually give up solid food, confines oneself to a bed and finally reliquishes even liquid-diets,” he said explaining the ritual.

“Though even a ‘Stravak’ (ordinary person) is permitted to attain Santhara, not everybody can do it,” he said adding the ritual requires a lot of dedication coupled with several hours of meditation.

I’ve always loved going to Jain temples, which have a genuine air of peace and sense of grace. The religion itself has a sort of severe beauty, which always intrigued me, given that all the Jains I knew growing up were very materialistic, the only concession to their religion being strict vegetarianism. Therefore it was surprising to learn that more than 200 people commit Santhara every year, the first chronicled case being from 250 BCE. I don’t think India is unique in having concepts of a ritualized death or a death in the context of religion, the Japanese have Harakiri, Christians and Muslims have their martyrs, and of course there is always Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. But some of the ideas of Santhara seem very particular to Jainism. Jainworld.com has an account of the vow one takes for the fast, whose violations include:

1. Desiring worldly status like becoming an emperor, or wealthy after death,
2. Desiring to become a divine personality after death,
3. Desiring prolonged life with the view of becoming popular,
4. Desiring early death, in order to cut short the physical pains, etc., or
5. Desiring sensual pleasures of the world.

Today was the last day of the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. They have a list of the most “challenged” books from different years. The 2005 list still has J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, after 55 years of being in circulation! Other authors challenged over the years include Mark Twain (for Huck Finn), Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck (we’ll all turn into communists if we read him), J.K. Rowling (can’t have un-Christian sympathies for Witchcraft), James Joyce (I can’t believe any of the challengers have actually read Joyce), Harper Lee and our own Bapsi Sidhwa. Predictably, Judy Blume, and anything to with sex ed or homosexuality makes the list. I guess people like Bataille and de Sade pass completely under the radar.

You can see a list of banned classics from Google and a pretty comprehensive list with reasons given for the banning, from banned-books.com. The list includes the American Heritage Dictionary from 1969 (?!)

My friend Yousuf Saeed, a filmmaker from Delhi has been in the States since mid-September showing films made by him and others, including Girish Karnad, on the syncretic culture of India. Yousuf’s latest film is a beautiful exploration of the classical music in Pakistan (quite an antidote from the usual horror stories about madrassas etc.) Boston University has a nice article about him and his films, the following is an excerpt from that article. If you are in a position to see these films, hope you will take the opportunity to do so.

In front of a small but attentive crowd last night in Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences, Indian documentary filmmaker Yousuf Saeed presented two documentaries detailing cultural diversity, prompting a discussion among those in attendance.

Beginning at BU and working his way across the country — to as far as Chicago and Austin — the award-winning director said he plans to expose American students to the diverse cultures of Southeast Asia.

Saeed said he believes now is as good a time as ever to spread his message.

“As the world becomes smaller, not everything has to be uniform,” he said. “The diversity of cultures has to be respected and appreciated.”

In the first of a two-part series, Saeed showed two documentaries, his own — Train to Heaven — and Indian actor and director Girish Karnard’s Niche in the Lamp. While Niche, about Islamic Sufism, was filmed in a familiar documentary style, Train took the form of a short musical.

Train to Heaven draws together a harmonious montage of images. Train, primarily drawing a Hindu audience, features Sunni and Shiite imagery together in a rhythmic array of colorful posters.

“[It] portrays the diversity of culture . . . even religions are not monolithic,” Saeed said. “[In India], every few kilometers, you can find a different language.”

By presenting his films across the United States, Saeed “would like to introduce the fact that there are more than just Bollywood films in India.”

While Bollywood is the more mainstream and melodramatic Indian medium, Doordarsham, India’s national television station, features educationally and historically insightful documentaries.

Saeed came to the United States and BU on a grant from the Humanities Foundation and with help from modern foreign languages chairman and professor Chris Maurer.

You can read the rest of the article in the BU paper. Here is a schedule of the screenings.

Oct. 03, 2006: 1:30 pm to 4 pm
Wellesley College
Also at the Music department, Wellesley College the same evening:
Khayal Darpan – A Mirror of Imagination (105 mins) A film about classical music in Pakistan

Oct. 06, 2006:
University of Texas, Austin (Center for Middle Eastern Studies)
1. Films on Syncretic Festivals of North India
2. Khayal Darpan: a film about classical music in Pakistan

Oct. 11, 2006, 12:30 pm
Columbia University, Southern Asian Institute (SAI) at NY
Theme: Multifaith Festivals of South Asia 
Film 1: Basant (13 mins) about the sufi festival of spring held at Delhi every year. 
Film 2: Muharram (12 mins) rituals of Muharram at Amroha (north India)
Film 3: Lahore Basant (23 mins): Directed by Samina Aslam

October 16, 2006: 5 pm
Chicago University (South Asian Studies)
Theme: Plural Symbolism in the Literature, Images and Rituals of South Asia
1. Sukhan: a film about Amir Khusrau, a 13th century poet (30 minutes)
2. Basant: a film about a Sufi festival of spring (12 mins)
3. The Train to Heaven

Today is the anniversary of the massacre in 1941 at Babii Yar, near Kiev. Here is a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko about the event. I especially like the italicized lines (mine), about the monuments that nature builds when societies refuse to acknowledge the history in their midst. It reminds me of the poetry of Night and Fog. I am not too keen on the line about the “Philistines” considering where that sort of thing has led us, but the poem is worth reading nonetheless.

Babii Yar

No monument stands over Babii Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.
Now I seem to be
a Jew.
Here I plod through ancient Egypt.
Here I perish crucified, on the cross,
and to this day I bear the scars of nails.
I seem to be
Dreyfus.
The Philistine
is both informer and judge.
I am behind bars.
Beset on every side.
Hounded,
spat on,
slandered.
Squealing, dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace
stick their parasols into my face.
I seem to be then
a young boy in Byelostok.
Blood runs, spilling over the floors.
The bar-room rabble-rousers
give off a stench of vodka and onion.
A boot kicks me aside, helpless.
In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies.
While they jeer and shout,
“Beat the Yids. Save Russia!”
some grain-marketeer beats up my mother.
O my Russian people!
I know
you
are international to the core.
But those with unclean hands
have often made a jingle of your purest name.
I know the goodness of my land.
How vile these antisemites–
without a qualm
they pompously called themselves
“The Union of the Russian People”!
I seem to be
Anne Frank
transparent
as a branch in April.
And I love.
And have no need of phrases.
My need
is that we gaze into each other.
How little we can see
or smell!
We are denied the leaves,
we are denied the sky.
Yet we can do so much–
tenderly
embrace each other in a dark room.
They’re coming here?
Be not afraid. those are the booming
sounds of spring:
spring is coming here.
Come then to me.
Quick, give me your lips.
Are they smashing down the door?
No, it’s the ice breaking…
The wild grasses rustle over Babii Yar.
The trees look ominous,
like judges.
Here all things scream silently,
and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
turning gray.
And I myself
am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here.
I am
each old man
here shot dead.
I am
every child
here shot dead.
Nothing in me
shall ever forget!
The “Internationale”, let it
thunder
when the last antisemite on earth
is buried forever.
In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
In their callous rage, all antisemites
must hate me now as a Jew.
For that reason
I am a true Russian!

(Translated by George Reavey)

About 30,000 Jews were killed over a period of 48 hours in the ravine of Babii Yar, and later 60,000 Roma, Soviet POWs and other “undesirables” were slaughtered at the same spot.

I suppose the poem could work just as well for Delhi 1984 and Gujarat 2002.

Now that the Borat movie, in set to be released, and the imdb board is trading briskly in insults, it occurred to me that there was something interesting about the fact that Sacha Cohen, the comedian with the persona of a Kazakh TV journalist, is Jewish.

First, I was reminded of Lev Nussimbaum (See mine and Amardeeps post), an Azerbaijani Jewish man who passed himself off as Essad Bey in pre-war Germany. And second, I was reminded of a conversation Kerim and I had in London. In essence our friend, a British Jew said that despite being upper-middle class and very well educated there was only so much hope of advancement, his Jewishness would ultimately hit a glass ceiling, Disraeli and Rothschild notwithstanding.

If Jews have been Europe’s first “other,” or if Shylock came before the battle of Plassey (1757), it stands to reason that an “resident Oriental” like Borat/Cohen would “self-Orientalize” and take on a Kazakh persona, much like Lev Nussimbaum, who found a career in Oriental drag. So what Borat/Cohen is doing is not very new in a sense.

I don’t know how I feel about his show though, at times I find it quite offensive, and at other times its very funny. One of the interesting things about his performance is how he takes on Englishness, and I mean Englishness, not Britishness. In one of the clips I saw, he goes to a boat race, and proceeds to examine the mascot of one of the teams which is a Hippopotamus, and sits next to a gentleman in a pin striped suit and learns about the appropriate rituals and responses demanded by the situation, much like a Colonial anthropologist, or Diane Sawyer! Also interesting is the moments of anti-Semitism and racism Borat exhibits or gets his guests to display.

I guess what I am suggesting is that Borat the Kazakh is about being Jewish in modern UK, and examining being Anglo. And if I were a Kazakh, I think I might be annoyed at being used as an instrument so that Anglos can understand themselves better. Nobody wants to be a mere mirror.

(Also see Siddartha’s post on Sepia Mutiny)