Eklavya- a weak movie

Eklavya proves yet again that when it comes to the profound subject of Hindu philosophy, the mainstream Bollywood movie makers are upstarts. Its essentials are lost to them, and they are clueless about its adaptation to the modern times. Earlier attempts like telly-Mahabharata, Aks and Ashoka were similarly uninspiring and disoriented. 

Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug is one movie I recall that borrows poignantly from aspects of Mahabharata and leaves you mighty impressed with its relevance. In television, Chanakya was the only serial that was repectful to India’s history and focussed more on meaning than theatrics.

Talking of Eklavya, the film might seem to reverberate with raw power to some reviewers – but beneath the convenient grandeur of Rajputana, heavy Dharma phraseology rendered in AB’s heavy baritone, and a collection of good actors, lie a fuzzy interpretation of Hinduism and a clichéd apology for it. 

 If it appears like a treatise to people, it is because understanding of Hinduism is little among pulp-Mahabharata loving audience, and Chopra has enough experience to cover his limited vision with serious-looking theatrics.

A low caste guard sleeps with his master’s wife and makes her pregnant. Then years after, in the name of Dharma, he easily finishes off all his master’s upper caste killers, but when it comes to punishing his own son, he invokes the story of Eklavya, gives a totally new version of Dharma and lives happily ever after with his son who is the new ruler of the fiefdom; everything, from start to finish, to his advantage. All in all, the father-son duo literally screws the upper-caste royal family end to end.

Tell me, where is Dharma in this? Where is the conflict?The only forced conflict is in AB’s mind, and he resolves it unabashedly in his favor.

If the movie is taking a dig at religion-sanctioned caste system in Hinduism, then its version is terribly lop-sided. If Hindu traditions were so blatantly unjust to low castes, why is there such a glowing account of Eklavya’s dedication and skills in Mahabharata? Doesn’t the story itself show that quality does not depend on caste? For starters, Dronacharya was not a freelancing teacher. He was in royal employment. His Dharma was to see the best interests of the princes were met- not to train their competitors and create threats to them -caste or no caste.

It has become customary to pick up these allegorical fables in Hindu epics and twist them around, try to show the unjust aspect of the myth as Hindu tradition, while the mythology itself is screaming about how to set right the unjust part.

Krishna is the Lord of Mahabharata. And I don’t think he is considered an upper caste. King Shantanu married a fisherman’s daughter.  Karna, though famous as a weaver’s son, was made a king due to his incomparable bravery.

The epic is so clear about the uselessness of caste stereotypes.

In Eklavya’s character, dedication and Guru-reverence is the primary theme. Caste, if anything, is a sub-text. For Eklavya, not giving away his thumb would have been the easy option- the easy way that AB’s character takes, notwithstanding all his humming and hawing. Everyone would take the easy way out.

Giving the thumb was greatness, and so we respect Eklavya of the epic.

Along with the misplaced and jarring blabber of Sanjay Dutt about caste atrocities, the film seems to suggest that you can kick your lifelong Dharma out of the window as long as your act suitably serves the politically correct and apologist agenda of caste injustice.

If only AB’s character had given a punishment to his killer son (such as leaving him forever, though not killing him) could his non- stop Dharma blabber- which included a juicy mistress screwing reward- made sense. Right now, the ending seems to go no where, except in the maker’s pocket.

Still, maybe this is the best we can hope for. At least we are saved from the chain-smoker Shahrukh hamming and pretending to be a historical great. 

 

On laloo

Very touching! How this gentle, sincere deliverer has been misunderstood in his own country. See with thou eyes, ye doubters, the Yankee herself kneeleth before the messiah. And you doubteth him- you blithering desi ignoramuses? 

When the railway or any other department does well in any other country, it is a matter of routine. When it does well in India, we must sing, dance, invoke Lord Krishna, and choke with emotion at our good fortune. 

And who are the most devoted servants of this new avatar of the deliverer? Not the gullible masses that wallowed for fifteen years in a living nightmare, before their churning stomachs made them stop momentarily of thinking about jaat. No, it is a bunch of- possibly ‘crore salary’ candidate- MBAs. The railway turn around is a good case study for these rootless, contextless, blind herd of the gatekeepers of convention.

To help them, the following case-studies are suggested for their starved curricula: 

The unending corrosion of all government departments – of which Railways is just one. They should ask why there should have even been a turnaround at all. What were his predecessors doing? Was it so easy that a looter and an incompetent, who destroyed the lives of ten crore people for generations to come, rigged elections and under whose protection mad  terrorists like Syed Shahabuddin ran a parallel goonda rule, could do it?

The interesting study of a mass leader – how an enemy of the welfare of the masses, a traitor of the country, an abuser of a powerful post was anointed a cabinet minister rather than being thrown in to a dungeon.  

India – heading for chaos under Congress

Our policy makers are people who are so horrendously uncouth that you would not like to see them enter your house, and so incompetent they could not pluck grass from your garden for a living. Yet these quasi-humans are deciding our destiny. 

Interesting news item on how issues are decided in the Parliament: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/25629.html 

Ten years from now, a starry-eyed student will go to such an institute, in case it ever gets built He will imagine that the institute was conceptualized by great people who thought of how good it will do to the society, and then they planned and executed it. Little will he know that the willy-nilly prime-movers were chappal-throwing jokers engaged in a circus of competitive politics. There are hundred of institutes that never got built due to their intolerable shenanigans and hundreds of lives doomed to difficulties, misfortune, even death. 

And they go around under security cover. They should be shot like mad dogs. The government of today is acting like a smart ass. It thinks it can make a mockery of constitutional guarantees, play vote-bank politics and its minions can enjoy the loot. It thinks it can flagrantly violate constitution provisions, while the public will behave like good boys- paying taxes, following laws, and thinking good things about the country. They will fall in line due to fear.   

A relevant article on this: http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/mar/13sareen.htm This has never happened anywhere and never will. A fractured, frustrated society cannot be tamed for long. 

Let the GDP-growth touting schoolboys keep dreaming about the great day of glory for India. Unfortunately that day of glory will never come, because governmets such as these are digging the graves of the Indian nation. 

The scenario ahead, and already happening on a grand scale,  is one of extreme uncontrolled population explosion, deep divisions in the society and  infighting by vested interest groups based on caste, region, blind economic gains (deforestation for real estate, for example).  I have no doubt that India’s GDP will be among top 3 by 2050. Likewise I have no doubt that just as a body loaded with jewellery can be severely diseased, the life in India will be a veritable hell, and this GDP will prove mighty incapable to answer the surge of human misery. 

Cynicism and anger are the norm in Indian life today. Civic sense has vanished due to a cruel day and night struggle in an unmanaged, chaotic, exploitative setup. Law and order is a joke. You can see the beauty in spite of all this, and I can too. But I see some trends- increasing ugliness and decreasing beauty. 

The least we can do is break the hands of cruel people who have brought us to such a sorry pass. 

I don’t’ know how much we can salvage the country, but at least we can prevent these rakshasas from looting us and getting fat on our money, and also do a service to humanity. Let us protest these robbers stridently in every sphere of life.

Comment on ‘Let Indian Languages wither’ in rediff

This is the link

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/mar/08inter.htm

We have to give credit where it is due. His efforts may seem like an effrontery against Indian languages and thereby Indian culture, but he is only doing and saying things blatantly, which all of us do all the time by force of habit, conditioning and inherent inferiority complex.

How many of us would give an Indian language preference over English in our minds? How many of us would have preferred to study, or educate our children, in an Indian language school than an English one? How many of us would, in the capacity of interviewers, give preference to a candidate who is weak in English, but good in Tamil/Hindi, compared to the case where it is just the opposite?

How many times have you seen Indians, even after having studied in an English medium system all their lives, using horrid accents to sound American, and hide their shame of Indianness? Have you wondered why our film stars-who earn their bread and butter from Hindi/Tamil/Telugu films, would not be caught dead talking in an Indian language in an interview or a public forum? They take awards and thank everyone in English. That’s the extent to which we mental slaves worship English.

Is it not a fact that a lack of knowledge of English equals inferiority in social circles? Who filled us with this shame for our own languages? Not the Dalits, for sure. It’s largely the upper castes. This guy is only taking our shame for our languages to the extreme. He is just being brutally honest. So what’s wrong? Do you think he should wait till eternity for our senile netas and moribund bureaucracy to take education to his caste men? Remember he is not working for his country. He is working for his caste. He has to be urgent and sincere.

This guy is atleast not asking the Dalits to sit like lazy bums asking for reservations. He is hundred times better than cold-blooded upper caste netas who have done nothing for the poor brethren of their own caste, but have instead tried to achieve short-term glory with cynical reservation policies for the Dalits and BCs – for whom their corrupt hearts bleed.

The guys’ statement that Brahmins have been thrown out of the political system is so true. Frankly I have lost sympathy for upper castes who see all their fundamental rights tramples everyday but are too full of suicidal hoity-toity attitude to get together and do anything. They are so thoroughly disorganized that their own netas like VP and Arjun find it more rewarding to dig their graves than work against the interest of other castes.

Let’s first clear cobwebs from our minds.

Jawed gadha Naqvi show the way to Hindus like a faithful dog

This article appeared on June 12, 2006 in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn. It is old, but relevant. So I couldn’t help replying to the author.

Here is the link    http://www.dawn.com/2006/06/12/fea.htm#2 

Here is my reply (also sent to the author):   

Dear Javed, I read with interest your article “In search of a balanced picture” It was written a long time ago. But I couldn’t resist letting you know some views contrary to yours, in case you still hold them.

In the first line you contradict yourself when you say, “THERE were 16 per cent downtrodden Dalits in India at the last count. There were eight per cent adivasis or tribespeople. The Indian constitution guarantees 22 per cent job reservations for them in nearly all government departments. That quota was never filled up. Thus, between them the two communities share just two per cent of government jobs, a heavy component of these being lower division clerks and menial workers, including sweepers.”

Evidently, if dragging on for 22% reservations for 50 years (year of last count?) gives you 2% of seat-filling-success, wouldn’t you agree that this policy is a colossal failure? What do we need to reach 22% then- a reservation of 220%?Why don’t we bring quota down to 5%, achieve that target, take it to 10%, then 22% and so on. Why for your deep love of 22%, should ‘upper-caste’ educated guys go around begging for food and jobs in these days of extreme unemployment? Oh, I forgot. All upper-castes were born in royal families. Only the dalits were the life and soul of the freedom struggle, while the upper castes drank honey and nectar from gold bowls.

You probably also would not want to know that in the educational institutes (the ones producing doctors, MBA, engineers) the rate of occupancy of reserved seats is many times higher ( In my college, a regional institute of technology- a relatively high-tier college, all SC/ST seats were full). And yet by your own admission if they are only 2% of jobs-that too mostly sweepers- wouldn’t you care to know what went wrong in the colleges? Do you know that nearly all SC/ST students get hefty scholarships? Most of them drink heavily, study little and fail so many times that either they are thrown out or have to sober up and study so that they pass out atleast in a few additional years time. I shouldn’t wonder. Reservations have made them slothful and devoid of self-esteem. They want crutches everywhere. They will argue, blame, squabble, talk of persecution- but they won’t work their butt out to glory.

Also in my college, BCs were as good as the upper -castes in studies, and coolly used the reservations to their advantage to fill both the reserved and the general quotas hugely with their numbers.

I don’t know why shirt-tearing students qualify less for your sympathy than dalits, but I can see a severe disconnect of your views from the enormous complexities (chiefly introduced by the neta’s ill-intent) of the issue. Why should you not see that the more you do ‘positive -discrimination’ against upper-castes, the more hard-work they put in and find newer areas to shine. And once they have established themselves in these enterprises, social-justice rats come around snooping- ‘What, no dalits here! Discrimination!!’ I read a dalit leader protesting that Infosys is run by a Brahmin (namely, Narayanmurthy). What hope these sad leaders have for their followers?

I know of many upper-caste and lower-caste ordinary people of my and my parents’ generation- who threw themselves in the cauldron of competition- and came out with success and self-respect. My father used to go around from house to house to tie rakhi and get a day’s food. And he finally ended up as a pretty high functionary in a public-sector company. I just cant understand what stops your mama’s boy dalits, but I guess lying around drunk singing lewd songs in the hostel premises, all at the public’s’ expense, is more fun.

It would surprise you to know that many upper caste Hindus wouldn’t love more to see an equal society. Many of their numbers have done a lot for dalits, most notably Gandhi. What gets us mad is these lazy, cynical, divisive, blind policies created by impotent and decaying politicians like VP and Arjun (upper castes for you, with no other claim-to-fame than shortcuts to social justice) masquerading as social justice.Nothing exposes their rabid hypocrisy more than their resistance to reserving seats for lower-castes in the Parliament on the lines of other government jobs, to the tune of 50% at least.

Who will deny that a person who loves India will want an equal society? However if the netas believe upper-castes hate equality, it must follow they hate India- so try them for treason and have them killed or deported. Decide once and for all, for God’s sake; stop this daily nautanki of weak-kneed policies.

Frankly, expecting upper castes to live in poverty because of their akas’ stunted social-justice programs will always remain what it is – a perverted and unfulfilled dream.

Where else in the world will the dalits find policies so favourable to them but India? Who will ‘positively’ discriminate on their behalf with such wild abandon, giving finger to the ‘equality of opportunity’ and thereby the  ’right to live’ doctrine ? By all intents and purposes, India is first their country. It is in their interests to keep it healthy. Why are they digging its roots with so much hate-mongering? They will be left with a rotten country in the end from which to claim their benefits.

What good is a policy that alienates such a huge proportion of the people? What are these leaders for- don’t they know how important it is to look equitable, as well as to act? Where did they learn leadership-in a fish market?

You might say that exceptions in a caste may happen. Not necessarily so. I find Arun shourie’s advice good- implement reservations on an individual level, not on a caste level.

My advice- Teach them to fish. There is no moral principle behind reservations. It is wrong.

This is with reference to the other part of your article. DO Indians suffer from inferiority complex of sorts as a people? President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam gave an indication last week that unnecessarily perhaps, but they do…………………
 

India is by no definition a developed country. It is severely underdeveloped. Why are you so gleefully pointing out its flaws? We know where we stand. I can understand the satisfaction of Pakistani readers when they read all this in the spirit of ‘even they have problems -hee, hee”. But battling the ghosts of inferiority complex of a colonised country is a laudable mission. Atleast we are trying to improve.

Pakistan unfortunately has fallen to such depths of decay that ‘Pakistani’, is synonymous with ‘terrorist’. Part of the inferiority complex of Indians living abroad stems from the fact that they look like Pakistanis, and hence are liable to be looked upon as cold-blooded killers. Will you write about it? If not, how do dark reports about India help Pakistanis readers?

Of course, Journalists do a lot of picking and choosing while reporting, based on what they want to say. Your fellow journalist M. Saleem Chaudhry has this to say in his article “Two future economic powers: India, China ” in Dawn: There is no centre in this world economy. India is becoming a power house very fast. The medical school in
New Delhi is now perhaps the best in the world. And technology graduates of the Indian Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore are as good as any in the world. Also India has 150 million people for whom English is their main language. So India is becoming a knowledge centre. “  

I think that in a country that is attempting to drastically improve, journalism needs to be done in a positive spirit. Cribbing, negative reporting infests Indian newspapers, matched only by those riding the latest hype, and I think they are both a burden. They are of little good to any society wanting to move ahead. Dr. Kalam’s predominant mission in life is to make Indians positive. His single-handed leadership of India’s missile development is unmatched by anyone else in any other country. It requires self-belief of a massive magnitude. Surely you are not trying to teach him?

Warm Regards

Abhishek 

2007 Oscars: Deepa Mehta’s water is diarrhoeic

In my entire life I am yet to see any person as ungainly and grotesquely dressed in a saree as Deepa Mehta at the 2007 Oscars. A saree makes a woman look more beautiful that any other dress. But she wore it in such a foul manner that it was an insult to the beautiful garment. And if, as is more likely, this rudderless reformer made this garment look bad by association, it is incredible that none of the members in the huge retinue she was walking along with in the Oscars told that to her on her face. It is quite surprising because this retinue of also-ran starlets and wannabes claims it is not afraid to talk about uncomfortable truths, hold a mirror to society, and such gibberish.

 

The retinue of this Canadian-citizen included, among others, a white trophy husband, a white trophy son-in-law, and a daughter who gave up her family name in favour of the this white trophy son-in-law. Lisa Ray, who looks bluer and whiter than a white woman and John Abraham whose Hindi (though he is a Mumbaikar), is so bad that Sonu Nigam had to lend him voice in his first film Jism, completed the motley crew of people who were purportedly present to showcase the Indian –nay Hindu- culture. 

Deepa Mehta has been making films for quite a while. I saw Fire when I was in my third year of college. I read very little about current affairs in those days; so the fact that it was an artistic ‘spoof’ on Hinduism was lost to me. I thought here was someone trying to make a film on lesbian relationships- a taboo subject- let’s encourage her. What I saw was a crude attempt to show all the men in bad light, some supposedly ‘steamy’ scenes and a worse then horrid attempt to shock the audience with the scenes of a masturbating servant. The desperate attempt to sell her product was disgustingly apparent to me. Since then I have had no illusions of her artistic abilities. 

But evidently that monstrosity was not enough. Here comes her new film, brazenly trying to suck some dollars out of the life of widows who ceased to exist a few years after 1938. And this time, her monstrosities have stepped out of her film reels, and she regales us with her shallow tripe and flashes of uncontrollable greed.

 I do not know whether I am cynical or others are naïve, but the way her cinematic exploits are being reported in the press make me wonder whether reporters have completely abdicated thinking or grosss irresponsibility is the norm in the journalistic quarters these days. To be precise, some of the following issues are being grossly overlooked in the media. 

To begin with, there is the completely unwarranted mixing up of the vandalism around her shooting and the quality of her movie. In every interview she harps on her difficulties in shooting. Ok, we got the point, you encountered immense difficulties. What else did you expect from a society that is mired in orthodoxy by your own portrayal? But I cannot understand for the life of me why that makes the movie somehow better or more watchable. 

 I assume that by mixing the two issues, Mehta’s admirers want to justify her efforts in ‘exposing’ the orthodox Hindu society. In this context I would only like to say that though she have got the juiciest enemies she could have asked for in the shape of these vandals- dense goondas who have helped her come out of the whole ‘struggle’ pure and shining- these retards do not represent any aspect of Hinduism. By deliberately assigning them the role of the torch-bearers of aggressive Hinduism, she is staging a false battle. Unlike Mehta, her dear opponents do not have the luxury of so much of media in their toe. They do not know that a battler for Hinduism- if indeed anyone bothered to give these hooligans such an onerous mantle- would fight her on an ideological plane, question her laughable assumptions, and use the power of the media intelligently to show her worth. He will not let her run away with free publicity. Such a person would explain to the whole world that for a bruised culture like Hinduism, the first thing is to earn self-esteem. But the cleansing needs to happen at home, not showcased like a hapless exotic animal to a detached Western audience. The highlighting needs to be done of the positive aspects of the Hindu culture first. Isn’t that how you would deal with a person too? You would first give a person the right to respect herself, and then show her the negative points, not butcher her with criticism twenty-four hours of the day. That is the way to go with a society, nation or religion, especially ones that have been through a difficult period of slavery and subjugation. 

Unfortunate it is – for a casual search on Google of Deepa Mehta+ Water +Hinduism will throw a thousand results on how she has shown the darker, ‘fundamentalist’ (oh the bad days this word has fallen to) aspects of Hinduism, but only a handful that talk against her abject hypocrisy. This is how well Hinduism’s propaganda machine is working, praise be to the Hindus.

 Hindu society has ills- as any other one. Human society is a complex phenomenon. Things will degenerate. They have to be corrected. It has to be done by the society itself. Hindus do it all the time. The very reason that they take any attack on their religion so silently, being sure that they deserve it for their backward practices, is also proof that they will not tolerate irrational practices to carry on for long in its fold. Hinduism, the oldest religion, has the longest history of corrections of the social malpractices that threaten it. The points were well taken and in the coming days, as knowledge and awareness spread, I will not be surprised to find Hindus the most rational people on the planet. 

The last thing I would like to see is  self-professed social reformers and opportunistic India-born Canadians offer us pearls of insight into Hinduism, and then salivating for an award, tongues hanging out, at the Oscars. 

God, it was awful.