Mumbai Attacks: Terror as a Religion

This placard from the Mumbai peace march struck a chord with me. It's probably meant to be an insinuation about Islam but inadvertently ends up asking an important question about the role that religion plays in politics.

I first felt uneasy about the religion and politics connection when my ninth grade English teacher asked the class if Gandhi thought religion to be separate from politics. I zealously replied, "Yes". "Wrong", she shot back, and went on to quote Gandhi: "Those who think religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means". As the year drew to a close, the Babri masjid was demolished. For many of us midnight's grandchildren that time will forever be a point of reference, an origin from which we map out our political selves. Like Americans who map themselves to the Kennedy assassination, Mumbaikars of my generation recount their personal histories of the '93-'94 days. We all knew someone who was killed, injured, or had barely escaped death. Those who lived through the Partition doubtless feel the same way about '47.

But the mix of religion and politics is as old as history itself. Today's religions are, after all, yesterday's politics.
Terrorism has a myriad of causes, perhaps none of them generally more powerful than another. First, there is the undeniable socio-economic angle; pernicious ideology is likely to find fewer takers in societies with greater general well-being. If the account given by the captured Mumbai attacker is to be believed, he was stuck at a dead-end job that paid him 200 rupees a day and desperately wanted to rob a bank.

Then there is that nagging sense of the victim hood and oppression of one's people - whether real or imagined - and the urge to lash out against it. I'm thinking not just of the 9/11 perpetrators and extremist groups in the Middle East (where Western powers have cynically exploited extremism to their advantage, exacerbating the violence) but also of extremist Hindus. Many Mumbaikars who support the two Senas feel hapless and victimized by some imaginary other; a typical complaint is that "they" take up all the state government jobs.

Having said that, I think it's important not to discount the role religion plays in terrorism. The captured Mumbai attacker's frustrations found a perfect expression in LeT, where he was reportedly shown videos of "atrocities on Muslims in India". This, in his case,was enough to turn a prospective bank-robbing dog-day-afternoon kid into a terrorist.

I'm not suggesting that religion is solely responsible for violence, nor am I saying that it's more bad than good. There's some evidence, for instance, that religious people are more likely to be altruistic. And in some ways, we're all religious. All of us have pet peeves, blind spots and noble passions. Who in their right mind can be against poetry, art, ethical behavior and a sense of awe about the universe and our place in it? But religion isn't all bhajans, qawwalis and Christmas carols. It does provide legitimacy and righteousness to actions and ideas that the moral instinct might otherwise find indefensible - if only in its skewed interpretations. As Steve Weinberg has said, "For a good person to do a bad thing, it takes religion". What would the rath yatra be without the powerful symbolism of those larger-than-life, Adonis-like Rama cutouts? Gandhi understood this symbolism very well; he tried to use this inseparability of religion from politics constructively - Vaishnav jana to is an eloquent ode to empathy. But just as religion may turn out to be inseparable from politics, within religion it may be impossible to pick the good and leave out the bad. Even Gandhi, after all, wasn't above tainting his politics with bad religion. At a conference presided over by Jinnah, Gandhi introduced him as "a learned Muslim gentleman .... an eminent lawyer and not only a member of the Legislature but also president of the biggest Islamic association in India". If a religious Gandhi was capable of being divisive, so was a secular Jinnah. That's another thing about religion - it can creep up in unexpected places. It's a common discriminatory marker of people, and leaders time and again exploit that.

I don't know if there is a solution to this; I hope there is but I don't know. I don't have any answers. I'm just another angry Mumbaikar trying to make sense of terror. Perhaps we'll always have people who turn an ideology into a religion and fight over it. Carl Sagan saw this (rightly, I think) as an innate conflict between the destructive and creative impulses within homo heirarchicus. I just can't help thinking that if we as a species want to survive we'd better root for the creative side.

Farewell, Faraz

(First at Desicritics)

Ahmed Faraz succumbed to kidney failure on August 25th in Islamabad. My first Urdu book ever was his "Be Aawaaz Galii KuuchoN meN" (In Voiceless Lanes and Quarters). But that's just one of those trivia you think of and smile wistfully when you learn of the passing of a writer you've admired.

Faraz was admired by many. Along with Faiz and Parveen Shakir (whom he graciously referred to as the most read poet after Faiz in Pakistan), he formed the holy trinity of Urdu poetry in Pakistan. Much like a Hindu god, he had many titles bestowed on him - progressive, communist, traitor, rebel, non-conformist and what not. Both India and Pakistan heaped their highest literary awards on him. But labels never do justice to an artist. So we may call him a Pakistani but he has said,
ab kis ke geet sunaate ho, woh mulk ke jo taqsiim huwaa

What nation do you sing of now, the one that broke?

With Akhtar Shirani, he penned the most eloquent paean to the country he left behind, "O des se aane waale bataa" (Tell me, o visitor from my country). Despite the Persian slant in its diction, Faraz's poetry had an earthy, colloquial quality about it. He could be scathing when, for instance, speaking of the hypocrisy of the religious. Here he notes how after the pious return from Mecca, they're back to their deceiving ways.

bazm-e-hareefaaN phir sajtii hai
kizb-o-riyaa kii daf bajtii hai

the wily craftsmen meet again
and drums of falsehood beat again

And here's an unflinching introspection:

merii bastii se pare bhii mere dushman hoNge

par yahaaN kab koii aGhyaar kaa lashkar utraa

aashnaa haath hii aksar merii jaanib lapke

mere siine meN meraa apnaa hi Khanjar utraa

I may have foes outside, indeed
But no army besieged us from without
Familiar hands sought to kill me
My own blade tears my breast, no doubt

Of course these laments against the hypocrisy of the pious and self destructive politics are particularly relevant to Pakistan, but good poetry is never prisoner to its context.
Faraz often displayed a deft satirical genius. In a single sher, perhaps my personal favorite, he could pull the rug from under all civilization:

raftah raftah yeh hii zindaaN meN badal jaate haiN
phir kisii shah'r kii buniyaad na Daalii jaaye
eventually, they become prisons
lets never build cities again

His 'Kaneez' is the only Urdu poem I know which speaks of the sexual abuse of servant-women by the feudal gentry. And, in keeping with the golden rule of speaking for the oppressed, the poem comes from the victim's point of view; the narrator, the kaneez, is pleading to a drunken master at her doorstep to leave.
Faraaz wasn't content with lament and demanded that we act.

shikwah-e-zulmat-e-shab se to kahiiN behtar thaa
apne hisseh kii koii sham'a jalaate jaate

Rather than complain of the night's darkness
Wish you'd've lit your share of lamps

The beloved in his poems was often the country he lost to the Partition - famously in ranjish hii sahiih - but he could be playful and optimistic about this troubled romance of nations.

awwal awwal kii dostii hai abhii
ik Ghazal hai k ho rahii hai abhii

Its a new and budding romance.
A Ghazal being formed, per chance

Note the clever use of "Ghazal" in its traditional sense, as a conversation between lovers.

It's a cliche, but it’s true: the passing of Faraz is the passing of an era. Here's a poet who has seen his country go from Jinnah to Musharraf via Zia, and on every occasion spoken against the injustice and questioned the prevailing absurdity of the day. He will be missed, no doubt, but the huge body of work he leaves behind is fertile ground for more of his ilk.

dil giraftah hii sahiih, bazm sajaa lii jaaye
yaad-e-jaanaaN se koii shaam na Khaalii jaaye

Meet and sing, O poets! sad though the heart may be
No evening should pass without her memory

Rustic Bond

(First published at DesiCritics)

The Blue Umbrella opens with a telling sequence: when you’ve taken in the snowflakes and the pine trees synonymous with a Himachal winter, you squint to notice a little girl with an umbrella, camouflaged in the scenery. And it’s a telling sequence because in presenting little Biniya (Shreya Sharma) as completely one with the region she belongs to, Vishal Bharadwaj is simply mirroring Ruskin Bond’s idyllic vision of a pahaaRii people seeped into their surroundings.

An interesting dualism emerges from Bharadwaj’s work so far. The films he’s made with child protagonists (Makdee, The Blue Umbrella) are infused with the innocence that adult nostalgia projects onto childhood, and his adult films (Maqbool, Omkara) are unmistakably dark. In this film, the nutty Nandkishore Khatri (Pankaj Kapur) embodies this conflict between childhood and growing up. His coveting the blue umbrella – Biniya’s little piece of heaven with clouds sprinkled on its canopy – is after all an adult's longing for a lost childhood.
Having spent a calculating life in pursuit of profit, Nandu sees his possessing the umbrella as his one shot at redemption – priceless precisely because it offers no real advantage, like “watching a sunset”. And this is what gives the plot its bite: Having grown up, we too have robbed childhood of its gay innocence and coated our worldly concerns on it. We too have, as it were, stolen and painted the umbrella red.

The film is a visual delight - the use of the blue and yellow tinted night scenes, a toy scarecrow, a woman sieving wheat, a Ferris wheel in a tizzy, and the picturesque Himachal hamlet with its motley characters - all make the quotidian seem quaint.
Mark the swooshing shot of the umbrella’s descent, as if it were an angel seeking Biniya out. Bharadwaj’s background score and the gifted Gulzar’s lyrics add an adorable touch to the proceedings. There’s a lot to laugh about: the idiomatic dialogue; Nandu swaying his head religiously to a bhajan set to the tune of “You are my Sonia” from Kabhie Khushii Kabhii Gham; or a Beatrix Kiddo-esque montage of Biniya wielding the umbrella followed by a remark emphasizing what “khilbil” (mayhem) she caused!

The only false note is the morphing of Ravana’s heads into Nandu’s; the cut from Nandu’s speech to the Ravana-burning shot is enough to convey Nandu’s villany; spelling it out robs it of its subtlety.

Pankaj Kapur deserves a hundred hat-tips for his comical, childlike, neurotic and vulnerable rendition of Nandu. Here is an actor for all seasons: quirky carrot-loving detective (Karamchand), tormented cop (Raakh), tragic scientist (Ek Doctor Kii Maut), harassed teacher (Zabaan Sambhaalke) and Marlon Maqbool Brando. Clearly, the man is no Phateechar when it comes to acting.

In some ways, Vishal Bharadwaj is the most Indian of mainstream Hindi filmmakers. He seeks out the rugged, rustic, forgotten-by-Bollywood India – a decadent Urdu speaking Mumbai mafia, a political fiefdom in the cow-belt heartland, and a tiny Himachal hamlet. And he’s at home in this ‘other’ India; he isn’t the voyeuristic urban outsider (think Swades). Instead, he revels in becoming and making us become one with them. That is what makes his cinema refreshing and real.