I haven’t seen too much discussion about this on the blogs, I guess people get tired of getting hate mail from the SS (Saffron Sympathizers). I am assuming most people have heard of the arrest of MS University Art student, Chandra Mohan who seems to have simultaneously offended the self-appointed protectors of Hindu and Christian sentiments, with his MFA thesis paintings:

A group of VHP activists led by Niraj Jain, an advocate and a local VHP leader, barged into the university campus at around 3.30 pm on Wednesday, when the internal evaluation of the student works was being held. They allegedly manhandled Mohan and hurled abuses at the faculty members and other students.

They had tipped off the local police who were soon at the spot and took Mohan into custody, as he was ‘a threat to the secular atmosphere of Baroda’.

Yes, you heard right, the saffron shirts barge into a university examination, not open to the public, rough up people, and the victim gets arrested.

The dean, Shivji Panniker would like to file a complaint against the attack, instead he has been suspended by the vice chancellor of the university who apparently apologized to the attacker. The students have responded by arranging an exhibition of religious art, and the faculty has released a press release in support of Chandra Mohan and the dean.

The latest news is that Chandra Mohan has been denied bail, and the Rev Immanuel Kant (does the man know he shares his name with an Enlightenment philosopher?) is planning a rally to protest Chandra Mohan’s depiction of Jesus.

I haven’t found any images of the offending paintings, but MS University has one of the top Art departments in the country, and from what I have seen of the work of their students and faculty, its a well deserved reputation. So its hard for me to believe that the student’s work is simply crude and aimed at being offensive.
Still, I would be willing to accommodate Jain’s assessment that these paintings are offensive if I could actually believe that the man is a competent art critic. But given similar brouhahas in the past, I am not so sure. Remember the whole anti-Hussein protest last year? Here is an example of one of the paintings that was being protested. The caption on the web page says: Goddess Durga in the nude having sexual intercourse with a tiger. I looked at this picture for a long time and just couldn’t see it as such, a rather tired reference to Cubism, but intercourse? Nope. I guess you need to have a dirty mind to see it. (See the whole series and what is supposedly objectionable about them here)

Update: The Fine Arts faculty at MS University has a blog with updates and links.

2nd Update: Here is a video of the incident (via Chapati Mystery)

Micropixie, that other worldly “single beige female” who has landed in San Francisco via India, Uganda and the UK will be performing in Los Angeles and New York City.

Micropixie, accompanied by Saadat Awan on tablas
Tuesday April 3rd, 11pm
Kili Lounge,
81 Hoyt St
(between Atlantic Ave & State St)
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Free!

Girls Gone World!!!
Three Indian singers from planet Earth bring you ambient soulful sounds…
Featuring: Manisha Shahane, Micropixie and Sumitra
Sunday, April 15, 2007
The Temple Bar
1026 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90401
$7 advance - $10 door
Show starts: 9pm

Check out this lovely video she has made about her feet.

I had blogged Lord Macauley’s birthday celebration a couple of days ago; An occasion where a portrait of Goddess English was unveiled. As a result of that post, the organizer, Chandrabhan Prasad very kindly e-mailed me an image of this fantastic portrait by Shant Swaroop Baudha.

In his e-mail Prasad said:

Will the future generations of Dalits/Adivasis fit into a world shaped by their own Goddess? The answer is a clear NO. The remedy for that NO is to accept the Goddess in Her entirety – and become English speaking at the earliest.

Goddess English is all about emancipation. Goddess English is a mass movement against the Caste Order, against linguistic evils such as Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telgu and Bangla for instance. Indian languages as more about prejudices, discrimination and hatred and less about expressions and communications.

I don’t know if I would characterize Hindi and Marathi as linguistic evils, but I couldn’t agree more about the importance of learning an international language.

Anything that will be a step towards stopping another Kherlanji from occurring again is welcome.

My writer friends google themselves often, mostly to make sure that they are not getting ripped off by companies using their work for commercial gain, or doing unauthorized productions of their plays, and finally to find out which unlikely places they may have turned up in.

Since I am procrastinating instead of editing our documentary, I googled myself and came across the following:

Bikiinimõrvar jääb pikaks ajaks trellide taha

It is a news headline, and the language is Estonian, which took me a while to figure out. It’s a story about Charles Sobhraj, and somewhere in the end it mentions a film by me, I think:

Mees on jõudnud ka filmilinale, sest tema elulugu pakub ainest huvitavale käsikirjale: kümned mõrvad, noored ja imekaunid naised ning julged ja edukad põgenemised maailma eri vanglatest. Nii on India lavastaja Shashwati Talukdar näiteks teinud sarimõrvarist juba kaks filmi.

I don’t know what it means, maybe it just says, “and some idiot Indian filmmaker thinks Sobhraj makes good fodder for films.” I have no way of telling, but it sounds cool to know that I,”näiteks teinud sarimõrvarist juba kaks filmi.”

Update: Language Hat actually owns an Estonian dictionary, and here is what he has to say:

I’m afraid I don’t know Estonian, but I have a small dictionary, which
sheds a bit of light:

Nii [so] on [?] India lavastaja [producer] Shashwati Talukdar näiteks
[for example] teinud [second? another?] sarimõrvarist [serial
killer??] juba [already, yet] kaks [two] filmi [film(s)].

Sari is ’series’ and mõrvar is ‘murderer,’ so I don’t know what else
sarimõrvarist might mean. Make of it what you will!

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.

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)

Today is the 6th of June, 2006. In short, 666, and those who are afraid of it have the phobia mentioned in the title. And I am just adding to the internet clutter by pointing you to sites that say that UPC bar codes contain 666, Dutch Evangelists are holding a “violent day of worship” (BBC) because:

“We know the Devil hates it when we worship God.”

Moreover:

The number 666 is a simple sum and difference of the first three 6th powers:
666 = 16 - 26 + 36

Did you know that Carbon Dioxide has been unfairly maligned? well, it was, till something called the Competitive Enterprise Institute came to the rescue. The CEI is a think-tank funded by the energy industry. In its attempt to help the deluded public regarding global warming, it has produced two television spots. Without so much as batting an eyelid, the ad declares, “They call it pollution, we call it life.” And there is no irony here people.

Watch the ads here. They also have some anti-An Inconvenient Truth ads, whose success (it is the top grossing independent film this week) must not be giving them too much comfort. The Intersection has a list of “We Call It Life” tag lines. Also see a script (via Cup of Java) for an alternative ad on Global Warming Watch.

Today we went to the Dragon Boat festival at a lake near our house. There were boat races and things to eat, including these lollipop like hot dogs, kind of like Taiwanese versions of a corn dog. I made Kerim take a picture.

In my wanderings, I came across a delightful blog called Rikshaw which is dedicated to phrases written on the back of rikshaws in the sub-continent. Here are some of my favorites:

Main bare hokar truck bannun ga
When I grow up, I will be a truck.

Jinnay apni maa noo sataya, Onay saree umar ricksha hee chalaya
He who is troublesome to his mother, spends his life driving a rikshaw. (How is that for a desi Oedipus?)

Kabhee side say aatee ho kabhee peechay say aatee ho,
meree jaan horn day day kar mujhay tum kyon satateey ho
Sometimes you come from the side, sometimes from the back,
my love why do you torment me with blowing your horn?

Sometimes these gems can just be a phrase, like Khatarnak Rambo (dangerous Rambo), or even one word, which as my sister reports, could be Monica! which was emblazoned across rikshaws at the height of the Lewinsky scandal. It caused my mother to change the spelling of her name from Monica to Monika.