The writer for a musical I edited has written a young adult novel, Sex Kittens and Hawn Dawgs Fall in Love, and is in trouble for it, and no, this is not a Kaavya Vishwanathan story. Rosemary Wood’s book is one of the ten books banned by the Hernando County School Board in Florida. As Rosemary puts it:

People sometimes assume that these sorts of ban attempts arise “naturally” from conservative parents, but this incident is a great example of how that’s not always the case: a conservative radio station instigated this by calling a school board member to complain about the school’s book order. She then went to some of the fundamentalist websites that list “books that should be banned” and used that to make a list. No one read the books, no one researched the books, the head of the school board, the school principal and librarian all opposed it, but with TV cameras running this school board got manipulated by fundamentalist media forces outside their own community into striking these ten books from the high school library’s purchase order until they could be reviewed by “a committee.”

You can find links to stories in the press on her blog.

Banning a book, or film which they haven’t read or seen is so obviously absurd, one wonders at the regularity with which these things seem to happen.

While the Hindu screams, “Biggest crash in stock market,” the Indian Express tells us that the police is on alert near canals and lakes, why? because of the potential for suicides after the stock slide. The senseless tragedy of it all.

After reading Amardeep’s post on the subject last year, Kurban Said has been at the back of my mind. So when I found a copy of The Orientalist at the Strand on my last visit, I picked it up. The author, Tom Reiss, spent five years on the trail of Kurban Said, the author of Azerbaijan’s national novel, Ali and Nino, it turns out that Kurban Said was Lev Nussimbaum, an Azeri Jew, who also called himself Essad Bey, converted to Islam, wrote several popular books and article on Islam, the Middle East, the scourge of Bolshevism, and a well respected biography of Stalin.

I enjoyed the book enormously, despite the author getting carried away, at times, with his subject’s enthusiasms. I mean, what in the world is a “Muslim” garb? I thought Turks dressed differently from Indians, who dressed differently from Egyptians, and so on, unless the author was using the term ironically, and I don’t think he was. Regardless of these slippages (after all, Orientalism is entertaining), the book itself reveals a complicated and contradictory person, who is never-the-less a product of his time.

Its been interesting to read the book reviews. Most of the reviews insist on the alluring mysteries of changing identities, and then some go on to complain how the historical notes in Reiss’s book are too long. I found the juxtaposition of the praise and the complaint quite interesting. First of all, from the presumably fixed vantage point (which I suppose remains fixed) of the reviewers, the poor souls crossing cultures and changing identities below are very dazzling in their mystery. The book itself takes pains to clarify that it is not so mysterious after all, which it does through its discussions of history, the particulars of which one might quibble with, but it is an interesting place to get to, never the less. So when a reviewer complains that these discussions are keeping them away from the business of being entertained, it begins to smell of, “I don’t really want to know, just keep your guy performing for us.” One begins to wonder on Lev’s choice to call himself Kurban (sacrifice).

A rather sad story from the BBC about Verrier Elwin’s widow, who is living in extreme poverty in a village in Madhya Pradesh.

After he arrived in 1927, Verrier Elwin was one of the first anthropologists to write with great sympathy and understanding about India’s tribal communities. In 1940, the 37 year old Elwin married Kosi, a 13 year old Gond girl. They were divorced after ten years. For a few years Elwin sent Rs. 25 per month, and when he stopped, Kosi took jobs doing farm work to support herself and her two children.

Perhaps one should not be too surprised that a man who showed great sensitivity towards marginalized communities, should have shown such callousness towards the girl (an underage one at that) he married. Somehow those with ambitiously compassionate projects, seem to have none to spare for those who are around them.

The other day I had to change my cell-phone plan. Predictably I was on hold for a long time, and was bounced around from representative to representative. The whole process took a good portion of the day. Eventually, I got a phone call from a “verification” service without which I could not get any service. The verification process included the verifier asking me all sorts of questions that included, “Who is xyz Talukdar? Answer yes or no to the alternatives.” “Is he your father?” “no,” “Your brother?” “yes.” Bingo! correct answer. The verifier assured me that all this information was on public record. That may be, but the fact that someone is actually collecting all this information and can use it so easily, makes one pause. Its creepy being the object of surveillance.

There is a new dating website out of Bombay, named after the erstwhile Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi.

“We were inspired by Laloo Prasad and the marital bonding he shares with his wife,” said Bullet Mehta of Wiantech, the Mumbai-based software company promoting the website ‘laloorabri.com’.

I have often wondered about the peculiar “inspiration” Lalu and Bihar in particular excite in the national Indian imagination. Most people are apt to roll their eyes in despair at the mention of Bihar, followed by a sigh of relief that they don’t actually live there. On the other hand there is a constant invocation of Bihari-ness that seems very important to national life. To take a ubiquitous example, Hindi movies that need a rustic character would be bereft without a Bihari. Indian village life is always somewhere in ‘Dehat,’ a sort of netherworld in the Eastern UP/Bihar region, and as such a fixture in our national cinema. I had blogged earlier about a film called Padmashree Laloo Prasad Yadav, and the general impression that most people think of Bihar as a joke, and if it doesn’t irritate them, it amuses them.

I wonder what role this folklorization (I use this term loosely and not entirely accurately, but you know what I mean. I hope) has to play in making sure Bihar never develops, and never stops being the provider of much of India’s raw materials and cheap labor.

Also look at Amitava Kumar’s rant about a newspaper ad in Bombay.

I had written about textbooks being changed in India, and how the Hindutva folks don’t like the proposed changes. Now they can take comfort, all they need to do is go to California.

The history and social science textbooks for grades 6-8 have sections on India. The school board has accepted most of the changes proposed by the saffron brigade. The changes make for interesting reading. Predictably the text book seems to full of the usual cow-worshipping, pantheistic, caste-ridden crap, and of-course the proposed changes disfavor the Aryan invasion theory, sweep under the rug the uncomfortable facts about the caste system or status of women.

I am as sick of googly-eyed Westerners and their salacious interest in inequalities, Indian style, and the Hindutva idiots who see insult and injury under every stone.

There is going to be a hearing on the matter on Dec. 2nd. A letter signed by various scholars has been going around about this issue.

The last few weeks have been full of getting things ready for the production. I have been spending all my time shopping, a stressful activity in itself, testing out equipment and exchanging faulty pieces of gear. In the midst of all this we’ve been clearing out things from our storage space, so life has pretty much been a dust-filled frenzy.

Yesterday when we visited our storage space, tired and streaked with dirt, on the elevator to the basement, the elevator man suddenly announced, “I had a dream. It was snowing. But it was only snowing on me. Everywhere I walked, the snow would follow me.” Then Kerim said, “Yeah, some days are like that.” This Thanksgiving I am thankful to be reminded that Bunuel wasn’t making stuff up.

An interesting bit of news from The Hindu, about chapters on Babri Masjid and Godhra in the standard XII Political Science textbooks, among other things:

The two events will be discussed under Chapter X titled “Recent Issues and Challenges” that will look at various issues including challenges and responses to globalisation, the new economic policy of the Government and opposition to it, rise of other backward classes in North Indian politics, and Dalit politics in the electoral and non-electoral arena.

Textbooks, especially History textbooks, are a hugely politically contentious subject in India. When I was in school, we mostly had the conservative historian RC Majumdar’s version of history, then things changed with the rise of the BJP (which thankfully, I escaped) and the tug of war continues, the Hindutva brigade is already making noises about these changes.

The changes described above seem a lot more interesting than what we had to study in school. Interestingly, its how to teach Political Science and History that become political issues, and not Creationism, or “intelligent design” like in the US. India is just not as religious or religious in the same way as the US.

Religious conversion has managed to become a highly charged issue in India. What with missionary activity being closely related with colonialism, and the more recent Hindutva activity around attacking missionaries, and “re-converting” Tribals. In the midst of all this the Bnei Menashe community in Mizoram and Manipur finds itself in an odd position.

First, a brief history of the community from Wikipedia. The Bnei Menashe claim to have been expelled from Northern Israel by the Assyrians 2700 years ago. They wandered along the silk route, finally settling in Northeastern India. Christian missionaries converted them in the 19th century, and it was only in 1951, when a pastor from the community had a series of visions, that they realized that their oral history and religious practices were Jewish. And indeed there is some evidence from population genetics that points to ancestors in the Levant, through strands of DNA carried by the women-folk of the community.

It took them twenty five years before the Israeli government would accept their claims of being one of the lost ten tribes of Israel. After being recognized, they were allowed to migrate to Israel and settled in the Occupied Territories (where else?). In order to migrate they need to be accepted as Jewish and have to undergo a conversion ritual, a requirement fulfilled by visiting Rabbis. However, the Indian government frowns on conversions. The BBC reports:

“The Indian authorities, through official channels, told us they do not view positively initiated efforts at conversions to other religions,” Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said.

The Israeli government is taking the complaint very seriously, since India buys a sizable amount of arms from the Israelis.

This convoluted story leaves me with several questions. First, I thought Judaism was similar to Hinduism in the sense that you were born into the religion and couldn’t really convert. Second, if these people claim to be Jewish, then why would they need to be converted again? I guess it just proves religious laws can be made to bend whichever way you want. Whether its the government of Israel or India, the Hindutva folks or Jewish orthodox and not so orthodox groups.