IT training open magazine TruePDF 04 march 2019

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched scores of welfare schemes that will take time to deliver results.. in a photograph clicked for the front pages, we saw them in the front seats o

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4 march 2019 / rS 50

SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY PROFILES MAMATA BANERJEE

JAMES ASTILL ON THE THRILLS OF CARIBBEAN CRICKET

Pulwama borrows from a history of deception and subversion

By MJ AkBAr

ThE wILD EAST OF INDIAN POLITIcS

nOt PEOPLE LiKE Us

Katrina saves the day

By Rajeev Masand

66

32

JOsh GOnE awry

The brashness inspired by a

Hindi film cannot help in Kashmir

By James Astill

52

thE LiGhtnEss Of BrOnzE

A new museum commemorates the life and works of Amar Nath Sehgal

From Varanasi to Gorakhpur, from Modi’s constituency

to Yogi’s fief, the combined might of SP and BSP and the charisma of Priyanka Gandhi hope to make a dent in the BJP bastion

By Ullekh NP

42

GOd aGainst LiBidO

Where’s the reformer who will nail a thesis on the door

of the Catholic Church?

By Stephen David

thE writEr Of smaLL thinGs

Mirza Waheed in his new novel excavates the grey area between complicity and consent while exploring the banality of evil

thE rachEL PaPErs

The Indian service industry

Pulwama borrows from a history

of deception and subversion

52

4 march 2019

4

stuck with caste

Regardless of how much I might loathe it, anyone who has lived in Uttar Pradesh understands politics in this state always revolves around caste and religion (‘Caste, Cows and the Countryside’, February 25th, 2019) The BJP’s 71 MPs from this state helped it achieve a Lok Sabha majority in 2014 But if both the SP and BSP fight elections together this year, it will hurt the BJP significantly The BJP was never expected to repeat its 2014 performance in UP

The alliance between the SP and BSP and the Congress’

decision to formally induct Priyanka Vadra Gandhi into the state’s politics are going to make it even more difficult for the BJP to retain its posi-tion Yadavs, OBCs and Jatavs

Bal GovindWhen the British ruled India, caste hardly mattered Un-fortunately, now that we are ruling ourselves, only caste matters Modern India is un-able to give up its premodern politics Caste should have

no relevance in an India of the 21st century This ‘strati-fication’ of people is merely a political tactic A section

of politicians wants to take advantage of caste, the mark of an orthodox society

It has no positive tion to make today and is

contribu-an impediment to economic development It runs counter

to the country’s ambition

of becoming a super power

To fulfil their shortsighted goals of power, our politicians want to drag India back by a few centuries Caste-based politics is retrograde

Mahesh Kumar

don ’t veer off vikaas

The interview with Ruchir Sharma made it clear why the BJP must stick to its promises

on development if it wants

to come back to power (‘The Expectations of Modi Were Unrealistic’, February 25th, 2019) Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched scores of welfare schemes that will take time to deliver results The ruling party cannot expect all its goals to

be achieved in one term, but that does not mean it should

give up on vikaas

M Kumar

the missing money trail

Claims regarding the Rafale deal cover two broad issues: contract overvaluation and crony capitalism (‘A Defence-less Democracy’, February 25th, 2019) But when there

is no money trail to reveal corruption, how can Rahul Gandhi say Modi benefited personally?

Vinod C Dixit

C letter of the week

Your Kumbh Mela photographs brought out the exuberance, enthusiasm and religious fervour of the world’s largest gathering (‘Leaps of Faith’, February 25th, 2019) Like always, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath did not miss a chance of deriving political mileage from the once-in-six-years Mela The state showed impressive organisational capabilities in keeping such a huge event largely accident-free It also tried its best to convert visitors’ religious devotion into political commitment Let’s not forget the state govern-ment went the extra mile to make the Mela grander with an eye on the upcoming General Election It will

be interesting to see if Mela management really has

an impact on voters and the not-so-subtle political messaging endures till polling time Tapping such reli-gious sentiments, the BJP seems confident it will defeat the challenge from the combined opposition in UP at least What is not clear is whether it will just manage to win or sweep the state the way it did in 2014 Won’t it be

better then for Yogiji to arrange some festivals of

minority communities as well to expand the party’s reach and live up to its ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’

spirit? There’s no harm trying, even if it doesn’t convert into votes for the BJP

Jaideep Mittra

Editor S Prasannarajan

managing Editor Pr ramesh

ExEcutivE EditorS aresh Shirali,

ullekh nP

Editor-at-largE Siddharth Singh

dEPuty EditorS madhavankutty Pillai

(mumbai Bureau chief) ,

rahul Pandita, amita Shah,

v Shoba (Bangalore), nandini nair

crEativE dirEctor rohit chawla

art dirEctor Jyoti K Singh

SEnior EditorS lhendup gyatso Bhutia

(mumbai), moinak mitra

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chiEf of graPhicS Saurabh Singh

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veer Pal Singh

Photo Editor raul irani

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aSSociatE PuBliShEr

Pankaj Jayaswal

national hEad-EvEntS and initiativES

arpita Sachin ahuja

gEnEral managErS (advErtiSing)

rashmi lata Swarup,

Siddhartha Basu chatterjee (West),

uma Srinivasan (South)

national hEad-diStriBution and SalES

ajay gupta

rEgional hEadS-circulation

d charles (South), melvin george

(West), Basab ghosh (East)

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SEnior managEr (PrE-PrESS)

cfo anil Bisht

chiEf ExEcutivE & PuBliShEr

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4 march 2019

magology is a neologism best explained by milan

Kundera in his novel Immortality ‘imagologues create

systems of ideals and anti-ideals, systems of short duration

which are quickly replaced by other systems but which

influence our behaviour, our political opinions and

aesthetic tastes, the colour of carpets and the selection

of books just as in the past we have been ruled by the

systems of ideologues,’ he writes while talking about the

‘planetary transformation of ideology into imagology’ last

sunday in islamabad, all it took was a picture to tell a bad story

ever so badly in a photograph clicked for the front pages, we saw

them in the front seats of a mercedes, Prime minister imran Khan

of Pakistan as the chauffeur and Crown Prince mohammed bin

salman of saudi arabia as guest it was a gesture that defied

protocol and brought out the cool contemporaneity of imran,

whose election six months ago marked a ‘change’ in a country

otherwise dismissed by some as a historical error, and where

scriptural cold-bloodedness still has quasi-official protection

and the prince, affectionately abbreviated as mBs, heir apparent

to the throne of the House of saud, too, launched himself onto the

world stage as an agent of change, and panegyrists even went to

the extent of calling him a gorbachev in a keffiyeh, ushering in

reforms in the rich and repressive kingdom of saudi arabia so, in

islamabad, it was a perfect piece of ‘imagology’

imagology is a manufactured

metaphor for a lie as ambitious as

ideology Take the chauffeur

Pakistan needed a redeemer, and

imran, an apolitical politician who

initially projected himself as the

conscience keeper of a country

savaged by generals and complicit

democrats, had the necessary

image He was the outsider, untainted

by the transgressions of power, and

his base was young and restless He

could have been the protagonist of a

Pakistani spring in power, he didn’t

do much to repudiate the lingering

suspicion that he, in spite of the imagologues at his service, struck a fine balance between the military and the mullah, the twin pillars of the state within the state Power neutralises the romance of the outsider, and imran’s current bluster and braggadocio reveal the true work beneath the imagology of the outsider: another stereotypical Pakistani leader who too realises the existential uses of an enemy

Now take the prince, who was given a welcome worthy of his wealth and ‘strategic’ power in Delhi, his next stopover The imagologues had photoshopped him to perfection when he began his ‘reforms’ by letting women drive and by opening movie theatres in saudi arabia and his ‘ethical purge’ had its dramatic moment when scores of princes and princelings with

a combined net worth of billions were locked up in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton—a gulag for the rich Things turned problematic when a group of saudi hit-men armed with a bone-saw descended on the saudi Consulate in istanbul to receive Jamal

Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post and a severe

critic of the regime investigations by the Cia and Turkey had established that the dismembering and killing of Khashoggi,

a saudi exile living in Washington, was ordered by the highest echelon of the kingdom The american president rejected the findings of his own agency and maintained that saudi arabia contributes so much to the Us economy by buying weapons worth billions of dollars that he cannot afford to blacklist the prince Trump’s transactionalism won the day

and the prince, meanwhile, needed a lot more from his imagologues

The prince’s asian blitz—next stop, China—is post-Khashoggi imagology at work Delhi too treated him with the kind of special indulgence a prince of such ‘strategic’ importance is worthy of strategic, that is the word that comes to aid whenever a transactional government defends a repressive kingdom whose extra-territorial brutalism still goes on unabated beyond the headlines in yemen mBs needs more than all the perfumes of arabia to humanise his image after the bone-saw vengefulness He needs more fawning asian hosts in thrall to his benevolence to create an illusion of modernity.morality is seen as naiveté—or idealism without responsibility—in the age of transactionalism so by talking

about the bone-saw kingdom, you run the risk of being accused of falling for a Western libertarian narrative Which,

in a sense, leads to another reality: Third Worldism has only lost its geography, not its morality or mindset so we still need to indulge bone-saw princes let’s nevertheless end this column with a quote from Khashoggi: “When i speak

of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then i tell you that i’m from saudi arabia, are you surprised?”some of us are, still

Mohammed bin Salman Jamal Khashoggi

4 march 2019

6

Kuldip nayar’s 16th and last

book, On Leaders and Icons: From

Jinnah to Modi, was released at a gala

function a few days ago in one of the

finest five-star hotels of the capital

in this book, Kuldip reminisces

about events of pre-Partition days

in the Modi era Celebrities whom

he met, what they said and saucy

tidbits about them are all littered in

the unputdownable book now, you

would expect Kuldip to write about

politicians, but his insider account

of filmstars of his time came as an

eye-opener For example, he throws

new light on the life of Bollywood’s

famous tragedienne, Meena

Kumari How she was exploited

by her estranged husband Kamal

amrohi, how she fell head over

heels in love with Dharmendra, who

nonetheless did not show up at her

funeral, and the most sensational

of all revelations that Kamal

amrohi’s brother was behind her

death because he believed she had

brought shame to the family due to

her excessive drinking and the

much-talked about affair with the then

struggling jat hero from the back of

beyond in Punjab

even as the who’s who of the

capi-tal sat engrossed flipping through the

book while simultaneously catching

snatches of the tributes paid to the

late author, there was a little drama

going on behind the scenes Former

Prime Minister Manmohan singh

had begged off at the last minute,

declining to release the book; his

ex-cuse was that Kuldip had written that

PMo files were sent to 10 janpath,

something various others, including

sanjaya Baru, his media advisor, had

duly committed to paper Kuldip’s

sons, rajiv, a senior high court lawyer,

and sudhir, an ex-Hindustan lever

executive, were now hard put to

arrange another speaker Former uPa minister Kapil sibal and ex-diplomats Pawan Verma and Hardeep Puri, a union Minister in his new avatar as a politician, were joined by navtej sarna, till recently our man in Washington sarna was called in on the morning of the book release Well-known tV anchor rajdeep sardesai moderated the discussion

However, what surprised one in the crowded ballroom of the recently renovated hotel was sibal engaging alone with sardesai while former diplomats, Pavan Verma, navtej sarna and diplomat-turned-Minister Hardeep Puri waited on the side of the stage two separate ses-sions looked odd while all four were

every-to discuss the book until yours truly learnt from the actors involved that sibal declined to share the stage with the others, allegedly on the ground that all three were junior to him to soften the blow, the three were told that sibal was in a hurry to leave for another function Puri, however, thought that sibal’s reluctance to share the stage with him stemmed from the mauling he had received

at his hands when both had pated in a discussion on his book at the recent jaipur literature Festival, despite the session being moderated

partici-by the feisty sagarika Ghosh who flaunts her anti-saffron credentials

on her sleeves When the other two former diplomats learnt of the real reason for sibal’s reluctance, one of them cattily commented, “How can

he call us ‘juniors’ when he failed not once but twice in the indian Foreign service exam?” amen!

tHe ParliaMentary poll

is upon us Most sitting MPs are not weighing their chances of winning, which will come later, but being fielded yet again by their par-ties in the national capital, BjP chief amit shah is set not to repeat at least three of the seven MPs their names are on the chopping block the other three are certain to get BjP tickets the fate of one is hanging in the balance Heading the list of those to

be denied tickets is the member from new Delhi constituency, Meenakshi lekhi the chatter in the party is overwhelmingly against her, though often this is attributed to her not being a good constituency MP while proving her worth in Parliament

unfortunately, what counts with voters is whether you have got someone a job, someone else’s uncle

a transfer, someone’s child school admission, etcetera Distortions in the role of a Parliament member have been the undoing of several leaders

in the past Meenakshi seems to be falling victim to an injection of the local in national politics

anD tHey say there are

clamps on india’s free media imposed by the Modi sarkar in the ongoing hearing of the Kulbhushan jadhav case at the Hague, Pakistan’s attorney General approvingly quoted two indian journalists, Karan

thapar and raghav Bahl of Bloomberg

Quint need not say more n

INDRAPRASTHA

virendra kapoor

4 march 2019

8

The blue synagogue is no

longer blue For years,

Mumbai-kars have seen a distinctive building in

one of the small lanes off Kala ghoda

which stood out for its colour, a kind of

sky blue but how many of us actually

went inside? not too many, I imagine,

because people are never sure whether

you can enter a religious place unless

you belong to that faith

The blue synagogue which is no

longer blue is now open to all; more

im-portantly, you can visit it without the

Wrath of god literally coming down

on your head because the structure

has been repaired and strengthened

simultaneously, the blue façade has

given way to indigo and white because

abha narain lambah, the celebrated

architect who worked on its

restora-tion, so decreed it (she says it’s the more

authentic colour palette and we have to

take her word for it since the building

is 135 years old and unless a guinness

World Record holder for longevity is

hiding somewhere, no one from 1884,

when it was built, is around anymore.)

‘are you Jewish?’ people asked

sangita Jindal, head of JsW

Founda-tion, when she decided to fund the

restoration of course not, she said,

what does that have to do with it, thus

emphasising once again the secular

nature of the Foundation’s philosophy

and her own liberal view of the world

When you think of it, the synagogue—

of the Jewish faith though it might

be—is a symbol of the liberal

under-pinnings of our country after all, it was

erected by the sassoon family that fled

baghdad in 1832 due to persecution

there and found a home in bombay

In fact, the history of the Jewish

community in India goes much further

back in time: bene Israeli Jews in the

2nd century bCe fleeing from

persecu-tion in galilee were shipwrecked off

the Konkan Coast and found refuge in

India later, towards the end of the 18th

century, members of the Jewish

mer-chant community escaping from Iraq,

syria and other West asian countries settled here and played an important role in the development of bombay

The blue synagogue (officially, Knesset eliyahoo synagogue after eliyahoo sasoon, father of David who built it) was designed by the british architectural firm gostling & Morris

The inside has ornamental pillars and wonderful stained glass, now beauti-fully restored although primarily de-signed as a typical baghdadi synagogue, the english architects incorporated neo-Classical and gothic-Victorian architectural elements The exterior

is made of Porbandar stone, while the floor tiling inside was imported from stoke-on-Trent in england These com-binations make the synagogue itself

a secular and cosmopolitan symbol

Much like Mumbai that was bombay

Much like bharat that was India

‘ResToRaTIon’ Is a tricky

business, especially when ous attempts by amateurs result in disastrous shortcuts a common mis-take is to paint over paint, quite often ignoring the original colour palette and material used, as abha narain lamba found in the synagogue an-other is to paint over polished wood, which is the fate of most old buildings

zeal-(To my surprise, I found this at anand bhavan, the nehrus’ home in allahabad, now converted into a museum It’s an unfussy and elegantly designed museum, but all the doors are painted white, whereas there’s enough wood-panelling in the building to sug-

gest that they too were polished wood.)The recent renovation of Flora Fountain has revealed the same ascendancy of paint over imagination: after two years of restoration, Mum-bai’s iconic fountain was found to have layers of not only paint, but also plaster and cement! goddess Flora, the central figure atop the fountain, now turns out to be not marble-white, but a luminous off-white

The fountain’s location makes it look as if it stands in the centre of the city; that impression is reinforced by its being in the middle of a traffic-free square around which the buzz and hub-bub of Mumbai rushes by The square’s wonderful symmetry, however, is somewhat marred by a soviet-style statue placed in 1960 to honour the

105 people killed in the samyukta Maharashtra agitation to keep bombay a part of Maharashtra (hence the square’s official name, hutatma Chowk, or ‘Martyrs square’)

Flora was a Roman goddess of Flowers The whole edifice is deli-cate, and Flora herself is exquisitely carved (by an english engineer James Forsythe, the fountain being designed

by another englishman, R norman shaw) Its name was supposed to be Frere Fountain, after sir bartle Frere, the then governor of bombay who commissioned it Realising that Flora Fountain was equally alliterative but less vainglorious, the name was changed to the goddess’ as with much

of urban history, no one asks why an english governor, an english designer and an english sculptor chose a Roman goddess as the centerpiece of an Indian metropolis, but there it is It just goes

to show that however hard nationalist fervour and regional chauvinism may try to erase the past, it stays with us

as received memory Tell a taxi-driver

to take you to hutatma Chowk and

he won’t know where to go history, mercifully, ignores all our wrong turns, however many we might take n

MuMbai NoTebook

Anil Dharker

4 march 2019

10

Just days before saudi arabia’s Crown Prince

Mohammed bin salman made his maiden visit to India,

New delhi quietly signed a $1.5-billion deal with the us

for the supply of three million tonnes of crude oil It is

a sign of the times that one of the world’s largest producers

of crude oil wants to invest in energy, refining, mining,

infrastructure, health and education in India diversification

of economic interests is something that is propelling closer

relations between India and saudi arabia

salman’s visit came at a charged time on february 14th, at

least 40 security men were killed by a suicide bomber in

Pulwa-ma in Jammu and Kashmir, leading to greatly elevated tension

between India and Pakistan the saudi crown prince returned

home for a couple of hours after completing his Pakistan visit

before he flew to India Purely in political terms, this appears a

somewhat cynical move to give an appearance of a ‘stand-alone’

visit, but the symbolism was important: India wants no truck

with Pakistan when it comes to developing ties with other

countries, even if they are close partners of Islamabad

It is unrealistic to hope that no comparison will be made

between salman’s visit to India and to Pakistan just a day before

he landed in India at one level, any such comparison reveals a

surge in positive expectations, which was inconceivable even

a decade ago at another level, the comparison is troubling

as the nature of relations between

saudi arabia and the two countries

is premised on different outlooks

and goals Pakistan and saudi arabia

have deep military and political ties

spanning a period all the way back

to the creation of Pakistan the two

countries have a formal military

alli-ance dating to 1982 but even before

that, Pakistan was closely involved

in the fight to end the seizure of the

grand mosque in Mecca In 2017,

Pakistan dispatched its soldiers,

led by its former army chief raheel

sharif, to help saudi arabia pursue

its interests in yemen the two

coun-tries are members of the

organisa-tion of Islamic Cooperaorganisa-tion (oIC),

the ‘collective voice’ of the Muslim

community worldwide India, despite a vast Muslim population, is not a member of the oIC

India, in contrast, has a very different basis for ties with saudi arabia based on energy security—we buy large quantities of crude oil from the kingdom—and has a substantial diaspora there until some years ago, there could be no realistic compari-son between saudi arabia’s ties with India and Pakistan on one side were shared religion and military dependence and on the other side little more than an oil buyer-seller relationship there has been much protestation about shared cultural values and historical ties, but the skew in favour of Pakistan was obvious

It is against this background that salman’s visit to India should be seen the carefully worded joint statement issued late

on february 20th did make a mention of the importance of starting a comprehensive dialogue with Pakistan the statement noted, ‘His royal Highness appreciated consistent efforts made

re-by Prime Minister Modi since May 2014 including Prime ter’s personal initiatives to have friendly relations with Pakistan

Minis-In this context, both sides agreed on the need for creation of ditions necessary for resumption of the comprehensive dialogue between India and Pakistan.’ but this was quickly followed by condemnation of the attack on security forces in Pulwama and,

con-in rather general terms, the need to fight terrorism

In contrast, when he was in Islamabad, the saudi arabians

echoed the sentiments of their hosts when they said, ‘during the official talks in Islamabad, His royal High-ness the Crown Prince and deputy Prime Minister, Minister of defense praised openness and efforts of Prime Minister Imran Khan for dialogue with India and the opening of the Kartarpur crossing point and the ef-forts exerted by both sides, stressing that dialogue is the only way to en-sure peace and stability in the region

to resolve outstanding issues.’there’s nothing surprising here Joint statements are carefully choreo-graphed diplomatic documents In both New delhi and Islamabad alike, salman stuck to the formulations

of his hosts Nothing more can, or

A Partnership for the Future

NOTEBOOK

Saudi Arabia has announced a potential investment

of $100 billion

in India If this happens, it will be a huge upswing in business relations between the two countries

4 march 2019 www.openthemagazine.com 11

should, be read into these statements

there is, however, a whiff of positive change when it comes

to India saudi arabia has announced a potential investment of

$100 billion in India If this happens, it will be a huge upswing

in a commercial relationship that is at best tepid In the first

nine months of 2018, saudi arabia’s foreign direct investment

(fdI) equity flow to India was a paltry $10 million for

comparison, the united arab emirates (uae), saudi arabia’s

neighbour, had an inflow into India of $629 million even

India’s much smaller trading partners have fdI flows in tens of

multiples of what the kingdom invests in India

Much of this change reflects India’s status as a favourable

fdI destination and saudi arabia’s own priorities at economic

diversification, a move being pioneered by salman there is

mutual interest here: India not only needs crude oil but also as

much fdI as it can get, given the current weakness in

invest-ment growth Here, the contrast with Pakistan could not be

more glaring In Islamabad, salman promised $20 billion to his

host country that, however, is in the nature of an emergency

dose of help for a country that is constantly teetering on a

balance-of-payments crisis Were it not for the largesse of China

and saudi arabia, by now Pakistan would have been forced to

go to the International Monetary fund (IMf) for a bailout on

rather onerous terms It says something about the

India-Paki-stan-saudi arabia relationship that one country wants money

from the kingdom to avoid borrowing more from the IMf,

while the other, India, is attracting investment on its own

eco-nomic strength and not by leveraging a special religio-political relationship on one side are military and economic depen-dence and on the other side lie progress and mutual interests

If only for these reasons, it is difficult to foresee political relations between India and saudi arabia develop along the lines seen in the case of Pakistan and the Kingdom In any case, there is no reason why that should be: India’s interests in saudi arabia are based on the four pillars of energy security, the well-being of its large diaspora there, closer security and intelligence cooperation, and closer economic ties on all four there is visible progress over the last five to eight years Modi’s extra push has helped this process further as long as bilateral ties progress along these lines, it will be a matter of satisfaction

It is worthwhile to imagine a counterfactual situation suppose Crown Prince salman had not been accorded the welcome that he received from Modi—hug and all that What would have happened? by now a different form of criticism would have been at hand: that his reception was lukewarm as Modi does not give any importance to furthering relations with countries of the Middle east that would have led to an uproar about all manner of issues, secularism included If the last five years are any guide, the current Prime Minister has gone out

of his way to further these relations His reasons remain embedded in a key goal of India’s foreign policy: furthering India’s economic development n

By siDDHARTH singH

Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in New Delhi on February 19

4 march 2019

openings

This must be the golden age of internet cat videos Funny cat videos,

grumpy cat videos; cats on Facebook, on Youtube—as far as our eyes can

turn, they appear in the digital landscape Who then is the most famous?

there is Grumpy Cat, often called the most pessimistic feline, whose

unim-pressed visage has garnered it 2.4 million followers on instagram there is

samson or Catstradamus, a four-foot-long maine Coon Cat, larger than most

dogs these are very popular cats appearing in movies and tV shows

then there is Choupette, a white birman cat who if not the most famous

is certainly the most pampered, glimpsed occasionally on the parody twitter

and instagram accounts ‘ChoupettesDiary’ she has two maids, a bodyguard

and a private medical consultant, travels by private jet, and has a taste for

caviar and chicken en gelee with asparagus how did she manage this?

Courtesy her master, of course but Choupette is now bereaved because he,

the legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, is dead

Lagerfeld is believed to have met her late in his life, in 2011 unmarried

and childless (he was last known to be in love with Jacques de bascher,

who died from AiDs in 1989) and with a fiendish reputation for little time

outside work (he told the New Yorker mockingly, “this is another cliché—the

loneliness i have to fight to be alone Loneliness is a

luxury for people like me”), Lagerfeld is believed to have fallen in love with her when the original mas-ter, model baptiste Giabiconi, had him cat-sit her for two weeks When Giabiconi returned, Lagerfeld

refused to part with her he told Numéro magazine

the cat stole his heart because “she is pretty to look

at and has good poise, but her main quality is that she doesn’t talk” by 2013, he proclaimed he would marry her if it were legal

An eccentric with outsize influence over fashion, Lagerfeld was always in a uniform, if one could call it that, ever since early 2000s he gave himself the look, consisting of a razor-thin black suit, white shirt, fingerless black biker gloves and sunglasses, after

a drastic weight loss of 40 kg his preternaturally white hair—as white as Choupette’s fur—pulled into a pony tail and his large belt buckle encrusted

with diamonds he told the New Yorker he didn’t

wear t-shirts and jeans like other male designers cause “i don’t think i’m too good for what i’m doing”.Nobody helmed so many labels for so long he headed Chanel, Fendi and intermittently his own-name brand before him, Chanel meant dignity and restraint Lagerfeld gave a bad-girl dash to it, slashing hemlines and adding glitz to dull tweed suits, chang-

be-ing the direction of fashion itself Vanity Fair wrote,

‘he injected an industry once famously fusty and white-gloved with daring, youth and irreverence.’

he was also something of a caricature endlessly quotable, known for put-downs On Paul

mcCartney’s designer daughter stella’s ment at Chloé he said, “i think they should have taken a big name they did—but in music, not fash-ion.” he called his friend and rival Yves saint Laurent

appoint-“very middle-of-the-road French, very pied-noir, very

provincial” Lagerfeld was also reviled—by animal rights activists for unapologetically working with fur (PetA uK director mimi bekhechi called him

“an undertaker”); and for his ‘sexist’ comments, like calling Adele “a little too fat”

even his early life story was an invention he lied about his birth date september 10th, 1933, is deemed most reliable he claimed his father was a swede who made a fortune importing condensed milk, and his mother, a German ‘of culture’ Others said his father was just another businessman and mother a lingerie saleswoman in one version, his family suffered deprivations under hitler

Who will take care of Choupette now? On

‘ChoupettesDiary’, that is a far more pressing issue than who will take care of Chanel n

By Lhendup g Bhutia

The Icon

The last eccentric genius in fashion

in memoriam Karl lagerfeld (1933-2019)

ap

4 march 2019 www.openthemagazine.com 13

anGLe

The Problem WiTh STingS

advertisement in which sachin

tendulkar cheerfully says, “boost is the

secret of my energy.” before him, Kapil

Dev appeared in similar ads saying the

same thing Did you pause to think

about the coincidence? that the energy

of indian cricket’s biggest superstars of

succeeding generations is the result of a

tablespoon of sweet brown powder with

milk everyone knew it was just a

make-believe line to sell a product by someone

being paid for it No one expects salman

Khan to be washing Dixcy scott

under-wear with Wheel detergent in real life

When investigative website Cobrapost,

as per its own description ‘exposes three

dozen bollywood celebrities, including

fa-mous singers, comedians & actors, willing

to post messages as their personal opinion

on social media, on behalf of political

par-ties, All for money’, the obvious question

then is, why not? tendulkar saying boost is

responsible for his energy is also a message

couched as personal opinion the only

difference now is the product is a political

party and the platform, social media

You could argue endorsing a political

party is different but then you would

need to say why should you be more

con-cerned about eating something that goes

inside your body based on a celebrity’s

rec-ommendation or swinging to his or her

opinion on a political issue? As something

that directly affects you,what would you

want a better ethical framework for? the

endorsement of boost or political tweets?

Celebrity endorsements have been a

normal feature of modern societies for

a couple of centuries now to say social media is another medium in which dif-ferent rules must operate is absurd the whole point of social media, beginning with those who created platforms like Facebook to twitter, is the generation of profit People participate in it to make money or, by being users (or a ‘count’), they become mediums for others to make money A sting like this operates on the assumption that it is a moral arena it

is not it is from start to end a true ist enterprise and it is realising its market-ing potential now, a reason why people with a wide following take such business deals seriously when approached

capital-What then is Cobrapost banking on

when all that was shown are exploratory negotiations that are neither illegal nor il-legitimate? it is the power of the visual me-dium the idea that because something

is shown on a hidden camera, it must be assumed there is something wrong being done because someone says ‘okay’ to make a few tweets, there is something heinous involved that someone asking for a crore makes it all the more criminal, when all that is being exposed is idiocy

such a sting then banks on the enmity between ideological players on social media to pick a side and take the story’s momentum ahead sting journalism’s problem, even when in public interest, is

it is bereft of any context that has not been managed at the editing table even civil behaviour exhibited, like politeness as someone hears out a proposal, makes the person guilty of a crime that no one can spell out but is sure about n

‘A photograph is usually looked at, seldom looked into’

Ansel AdAms

american photographer

Word’s Worth

They exploit the faulty idea that anything shown on

hidden camera must be a wrongdoing

By madhavankutty piLLai

romance

there are few images as iconic as that of the sailor at times square kissing the nurse at the end of World War ii the picture taken by Alfred eisenstaedt and published

in Life magazine came to symbolise

romance the truth, of course, was more boring the sailor, George mendonsa, was drunk and out on a date with another woman when he dashed into the street after hearing about the end of the war and saw the nurse, Greta Zimmer Friedman her uniform apparently reminded him of the nurses he’d served with overseas the kiss, as it turned out, was non-consensual According to Friedman, “he was just holding me tight it wasn’t really a romantic event.” mendonsa died recently Less than 24 hours later, a statue recreating that moment in Florida was found vandalised with ‘#metoo’ spray-painted over it We don’t need

to blame the metoo movement for ruining this moment reality has a way of getting into things the kiss was never romantic n

4 march 2019

14

For visitors from overseas, the biggest risk to

health in india is what i have coined: ‘militant’

hos-pitality Any occasion, indeed any excuse, means

that one must press some special food and drink on

one’s guests for extreme hospitality moments, i have tried

to master the trick of putting my arm over my plate to stop

more food being added but i am no match for a good hostess

who always manages to slip the spoon neatly underneath

my family has always offered food and drink to any

visitor and i have a horror of running out of food for guests

one London Book fair, i blithely said to mr D that he should

invite all his publishing friends as no one would come out

in the cold wet winter weather and they’d all have jetlag

Eighty people showed up and all were fed and watered i

had to recruit some assistance to wash up for multiple

settings and we were as crowded as a Bombay local in rush

hour, but we had a jolly time

i remember visiting other Brits as a child where people

would postpone a meal, often for an agonisingly long

time, rather than invite others to join them my mother

regarded this as rude, always asking my friends who had

dropped in if they would like to call home to say they’d be

joining us for lunch there’s a running gag on the

long-running British radio comedy I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue,

“You’ll have had your tea”, which translates as: “so i don’t

need to offer you anything.”

i have no idea why my mother was so hospitable

Perhaps it was just her nature i try to keep this going,

though nowadays no one just drops by in London but we

often have people home for meals A sense of humour and

an abandonment of perfectionism are essential, as is a

partner who pours a good glass

in a similar vein i remember once giving a nice bottle of

single malt to an indian friend i was struck when he said

to us that he wanted to share it with special friends A Brit once said, while giving me something similar, that we’d want to keep it for ourselves

i don’t buy the Brit argument that they don’t need to return indian hospitality as it’s easy to host in india because of servants While it makes life easier and one can spend more time with guests rather than taking turns to sit with them at all times, there’s still planning to be done indian guests expect a different type of hospitality: a larger number of dishes, which enables catering to many complex food requirements We keep it simpler We don’t serve beef or pork (unless requested); we separate strictly veg and non-veg; and i always ask the egg questions: Will you eat them at all? if you can’t see them? if they are completely concealed? We also prepare for the stampede to leave as soon as dinner is over this hospitality extends to indian hotels some of my wealthier European friends don’t enjoy top-end indian hotels they complain that they’re not top-end enough and the wine lists are poor and the food not so great these are not my concerns the two main indian chains train their staff impeccably and they also show genuine enthusiasm in offering real service

We tend to avoid hotels with large family groups, tour groups and wedding parties, but still wish we could avoid the entitled guest yelling, “Don’t you know who i am?” (Answer, yes, an ill-mannered moron.)

We often stay in clubs which we adore, the royal Bombay Yacht Club in particular, and independent hotels sometimes the coffee matters the Neemranas are always a joy, although

i had another coffee incident in tranquebar last year with only instant coffee fortunately, i was restored by on tap

‘kaapi’ in the Bangala in Chettinad although i had an

By Rachel Dwyer

The Indian Service Industry

Where the guest is god

THE RACHEL PAPERS

4 march 2019 www.openthemagazine.com www.openthemagazine.com15 15

alarming moment when we were served western food as we

were mistaken for being part of a European tour group who

wanted soup and sandwiches Honour was swiftly restored

in a ‘Death by paniyarams’ experience

We tried the raas in Jodhpur on a friend’s

recommen-dation i responded sulkily to the apologies for the broken

coffee machine though it didn’t stop me eating a hearty

breakfast When we left for Jaisalmer, the staff at the desk

apologised profusely When we returned, the first thing

they told me was that the machine was repaired they

insisted we had a top-end room to compensate i was

mortified by my childish behaviour but they seemed

genuinely upset that they had disappointed me

i loved the thali service at shreyas hotel when

researching the National film Archives in Pune there

were photos of all the famous guests and i was sorely

disappointed never to feature, despite my great feat of

eating so many dahi vadas (it may have been twelve) that

the cook came out to meet me

When i was a teenager and a junior lecturer, i stayed in

some truly awful hotels and more recently in some nasty

guesthouses terrifying bathrooms, flickering tube lights,

smelly carpets, air conditioners (such luxury) that flashed

blue sparks, oily imprints of former guests on chairs and

sheets, unwanted flora and fauna, fans which could make

the noise of helicopter without moving the air and breakfasts

of greasy tea and soggy toast the sorrow of the staff at

serv-ing such misery was apparent on their dirty clothes addserv-ing to

the odour of disappointment at failing to be hospitable

i have been welcomed in so many homes in india that i

can never reply the kindness shown i would never invite a

traveller in to use the bathroom, yet this has happened often

to me when travelling in non-touristy areas in Kerala and

odisha When i was researching my PhD on the Gujarati

poet, Kavi Dayaram, i visited his hometown of Dabhoi i

drank 17 cups of tea that day as a refusal was met with ‘Well,

you did in the last place you visited.’

my friends have lavished hospitality on me, remembering

my love for dal and anything with a pulse (groan), making

me my favourite dishes Even those who prefer a risotto will

take me to eat chaat even if they don’t indulge themselves.

the tradition of hospitality goes back to ancient india

in the mahabharata, Kunti welcomes the sage Durvasas

into her father’s home and he rewards her with a mantra

to give birth to sons the same sage, who is described as

‘sulabhakopa’ (quick to anger) cursed shankuntala for

failing to show him proper hospitality the curse was that

the one whose memory distracted her (Dushyanta) would

forget her only her friends’ pleas persuaded the sage to

allow a token of recognition to lift the curse so that her

husband would recognise her

one of my favourite film clips of tales from the

mahabharata is a story of mahasati savitri savitri has

unexpected visitors in the ashram whom she cannot feed

she prays to a cow on whose body the gods are manifest,

with Annapurna Devi sending forth thalis, mats, and

maidens to fan the guests to redeem the family’s honour

in the film Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge? a distant relation from

Gorakhpur visits a family in mumbai the greatest of his many disasters is to destroy a film set he visits Although the family are driven to distraction by his behaviour, when they discover it was all a mistake and he isn’t a relative at all, they have become so fond of their guest that they decide that he

is an honorary relative and ask him to stay on with them.twenty years ago, a friend and i flew to Lucknow as we

were invited by the son of a landed family to their ancestral palace in UP We were surprised not to be met at the airport nor the family’s palace in Lucknow, but were warmly wel-comed after a five-hour road journey to the palace We were shown our rooms after an amazing dinner and then as we sat on the terrace, our host asked politely who we were and why we had come as no one had informed him of our visit truly in india, ‘Atithi devo bhava’ n

In AtIthI tum KAb JAoge? A dIstAnt relAtIon vIsIts A fAmIly

In mumbAI Although the fAmIly Are drIven to dIstrActIon by hIs behAvIour, when they dIscover

It wAs All A mIstAKe And he Isn’t

A relAtIve At All, they hAve become so fond of hIm thAt they decIde he Is An honorAry relAtIve And AsK hIm to stAy on

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4 march 2019

18

hile others tried to outdo the Bharatiya Janata Party in belching fire and brimstone at Pakistan or retreated into cowed silence, Mamata Banerjee lashed out at Narendra Modi in terms

that recalled Émile Zola’s ‘J’Accuse!’, the letter that famously led to the end of that shameful outburst

of prejudice and persecution that was France’s dreyfus scandal

‘Most people start their life with an aim,’ Banerjee once wrote ‘i too had a dream Mine was to do something different—to look at politics from a humanitarian angle.’ And so she did in challenging Modi on the timing of the Pulwama tragedy, its relevance to the lok sabha election, the massive

“intelligence failure” it revealed, and insufficient respect shown to the victims Yet, even in her fury the Bengali Chief Minister is not unlike the Gujarati Prime Minister Both are intensely political, proudly solitary, sharply incisive didi, elder sister, is Modi with a human face her “What was the national security advisor doing?” wasn’t a question it was a blistering indictment that perception enables her in these dire times to appreciate omar Abdullah’s plea that “Kash-mir isn’t just a piece of land, it’s the people that inhabit it” and seek a humanitarian solution to the most daunting challenge india faces.she alone dares to broadcast what others mutter in secrecy for fear of provoking vengeful authority her criticism of the Prime Minister for inaugurating projects just after the killings broke the taboo on personal strictures against Modi the media savaged indira Gandhi who was worldly enough to take criticism in her stride But the life insurance Corporation’s suspension of an employee in durgapur or the charges slapped on a Guwahati college teacher confirm that today’s authority hits back hard didi is prepared to take the risk because she cares

she is no goongi gudiya But, then, indira Gandhi soon shrieked out of court ram Manohar lohia’s dismissal of her as a dumb doll

Mamata Banerjee is equally vociferous she is no doll either she is calculatingly impetuous, humbly haughty, austere and

flamboyant, a daughter of the people bundled in a cotton sari flip-flopping up the greasy pole in rubber slippers as she has done ever since 1984 when an unknown young girl felled the mighty somnath Chatterjee

since the illusory mahagathbandhan hasn’t chosen a leader (nor decided on its foot soldiers), she can’t be called prime

minister-in-waiting But—echoes of the ‘historic blunder’ that denied Jyoti Basu the ultimate accolade—the BJP’s Bengal satrap, dilip Ghosh, says,

“if there is any Bengali who has the chance to be the PM, then she is the one.” the compliment could be a trap having had so many likely political bedfellows, didi understands devious machinations to subvert the opposition alliance she once knotted a black shawl round her neck at a mammoth rally and threatened to strangle herself because she suspected the Congress of being secretly in cahoots with the CPM her suicidal dramas, like her indefinite fasts, begin in a blaze of raucous publicity, but peter out in silent obscurity

un-the year after she became Chief Minister Time magazine named her one of un-the ‘100 Most influential People in un-the World’ Bill

Gates praised her eradication of polio as a milestone not only for india but the world Unlike many successful female politicians, she did not need a man or a murder (multiple murders in hasina Wazed’s case) to rise her reticence on prime ministerial yearnings re-calls Morarji desai who snapped at the reporter who asked if he wanted the top job, “don’t you want to be editor?” she didn’t repudiate

Anna hazare who backed her for the position instead, she dismissed the notion of a third Front—the mahagathbandhan of that era—

The strongwoman with a human face

the iron sister

open essay

W

By sunanda K datta-ray

4 march 2019 www.openthemagazine.com 19

as “third class” and sought a “federal front” which she could

dominate Understanding the dangers of a one-to-one contest

between Modi and rahul Gandhi, she sees herself as destiny’s

instrument to cleanse the land of saffron as she rid Bengal of red

the last-minute cancellation of last year’s trip to China

because she would not meet people of the “appropriate level”

betokened confidence in her destiny india’s potential prime

minister refused to hobnob with anyone lower than the seven

members of the standing committee of the Communist Party

of China she has to be strict with Marxists and Maoists, her

fa-vourite terms of abuse Adding insult to injury, india’s foremost

Marxist, sitaram Yechury, forged a pre-poll alliance with the

dravida Munnetra Kazhagam President MK stalin (surely a

Bolshevik, with that name?), without so much as

a by-your-leave to the trinamool Congress chief thankfully, she nipped in the bud subversive plans to pair Kolkata with Kunming some col-leagues might have hoped that with darjeeling

in ferment, the lakes and hills of Yunnan would provide pleasant alternative r&r But just as didi boasts of creating london and Paris in Kolkata, she can create Yunnan and Kunming too if the trip hadn’t fallen through, a replica Great Wall

of China might have snaked its way through the dereliction of tangra it would have joined copies

of Big Ben and the eiffel tower (and perhaps one day a giant Ferris wheel like the london eye) to confirm Kolkata lives on imitation

that’s modernity for a woman who proudly flaunts her lower-middle-class origins she may not be sure of her birthday, but has her finger on the public pulse it’s only Kolkata’s indignant elite that accuses her of leasing pavements to ven-dors, painting the city blue and white, slapping

gold paint on stately colonial edifices, and festooning lamp posts with twinkling lights Clearly, her pet contractors cheat her right, left and centre, for the paint is peeling and many lights have fallen off What remains gives villagers something

to gawp at in addition to Kalighat, the Victoria Memorial and Jadu Ghar, the Museum With them behind her, didi thumbs her nose at snooty critics

like Modi, she doesn’t take kindly to criticism A farmer was branded Maoist and jailed for asking inconvenient questions about rising fertiliser prices at a public rally; an academic was both assaulted and arrested for posting a critical cartoon on the internet she has stalked out of a national television talk show

in her rumbustious lok sabha days, she dragged durga Prasad

SHE IS CALCULATINGLY IMPETUOUS, HUMBLY HAUGHTY, AUSTERE AND FLAMBOYANT,

A DAUGHTER OF THE PEOPLE BUNDLED IN A COTTON SARI FLIP-FLOPPING UP THE GREASY POLE IN RUBBER SLIPPERS AS SHE HAS DONE EVER SINCE 1984 WHEN AN UNKNOWN YOUNG GIRL FELLED THE MIGHTY SOMNATH CHATTERJEE

getty images

4 march 2019

20

saroj, a samajwadi Party MP, by his shirt

collar from the well of the house for

daring to question the Women’s

repre-sentation Bill on another occasion, she

flung her shawl at ram Vilas Paswan,

then Union railway minister, for

sup-posedly ignoring Bengal’s needs

A red band round her head (like the

red ribbon round empress Josephine’s

neck which the guillotine nearly

sev-ered) advertised her escape from Marxist

murderers i listened to her roundly

abusing Basu at the indian Chamber of Commerce just before

the patrician Marxist stepped down “only wearing a dhoti

doesn’t make one a bhadralok, gentleman!” was her cutting

fina-le, delivered to fervent applause by businessmen and

industrial-ists who had applauded Basu the previous day her latest dharna

during which she held Cabinet meetings in a police outpost and

distributed gallantry medals from a makeshift roadside dais

confirmed that—as with Modi—politics’ gain is theatre’s loss

MAMAtA BANerJee stANds with indira Gandhi and

israel’s Golda Meir as “the only man in her Cabinet” even

colleagues who badmouth her privately like lord Carrington,

Britain’s foreign secretary who once described his boss, Margaret

thatcher, as that “fucking stupid, petit bourgeois woman” love

her Partha Chatterjee, the industries minister, praised her so

effusively in singapore that “singaporeans thought he might

have been speaking of the Goddess durga” A Western high

commissioner visiting Calcutta noted that Amit Mitra cancelled

their confirmed appointment as soon as he discovered the Chief

Minister wasn’t seeing him she gives officials a patient hearing

but they are not sure she even hears what they say she treats her

party with contempt knowing that the businessmen, writers,

artists, actors and civil servants who clambered aboard her

band-wagon when she swept like a hurricane through the state would

just as happily serve the left Front, Congress or BJP didi has no

confidantes outside her family rumours abound about the

in-fluence exercised by her brothers and nephew, a trinamool MP

saradha could be her downfall Few of the more than 1.7

million investors—mainly low-income families—duped by

swindlers in more than 200 saradha companies have got their

money back ready to believe the worst of didi’s aides—not of

her personally—they provide the BJP’s ammunition “When a

few thousand farmers lost their land in singur and Nandigram,

didi fasted for days,” Amit shah taunts “But now that 17 lakh

poor people have lost their deposits to the saradha scam, why

don’t you feel like fasting?” he has the answer “You are not

fast-ing because it’s your cronies who are involved in the scam.” one

of them, Ahmed hassan imran in the rajya sabha, is accused of

diverting saradha funds to the Jamaat-e-islami in Bangladesh

the BJP’s creeping rise is another worry it could herald the

return of communal polarisation having earned the nickname

of ‘Mumtaz Banerjee’ by offering namaaz

in a burkha, finding legal loopholes to

give mullahs an allowance, and ing to have fulfilled 90 per cent of the sachar Committee’s recommendations, Mamata Banerjee must feel particularly concerned reports of Muslims who abandoned the CPM for trinamool defecting to the BJP seem like betrayal None of this would have mattered

claim-much if the promised poriborton, change,

had taken place Yes, villages now have potable water, electricity and better roads But trinamool’s manifesto spoke of turning rivers into highways, of Bengal as an

‘export hub’ and ‘logistics hub’ with ‘a transport corridor’ from Punjab to ‘Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and the entire Northeast region’ didi promised a ‘scientific land map for every district’ with agricultural and industrial land clearly identified industry

is still shy, jobs are scarce and educated young Bengalis have no option but to migrate to other states even the labouring classes have little employment when the only visible economic activity

is building condominiums for which there are few takers For someone with the common touch, Mamata Banerjee sometimes seems strangely unsympathetic her initial

response to the saradha scam was “Ja gechey ta gechey…” (What’s

gone is gone) although she did then create a rs 500-crore relief fund introducing a new tobacco tax to raise money for victims, she urged people to smoke more it was “a petty matter” when

a student died in police custody she dismissed a horrendous

rape in fashionable Park street as a “saajaano ghatana” or put-up

job When middle-aged trinamool leaders dragged out and assaulted the principal of raiganj College, she said the culprits

were only “chhoto baachchaas” (small children) More recently,

she accused her enemies of “making a mountain out of a hill to tarnish the image of Bengal” when policemen stormed Jadavpur University in the dead of night to attack peaceful student protestors who wanted a fresh probe into a girl’s complaint of sexual harassment these lapses won’t cost her the top job What will is the emerging convention that failing a single-party majority, the President should first invite the head

mole-of the largest pre-poll alliance that demands a

mahagathband-han before the election with her at its head the obstacles and

objections to that are obvious

despite occasional blunders, Mamata Banerjee hasn’t abandoned her promise “to look at politics from a humanitar-ian angle” Amidst the upsurge of rattling sabres, boiling blood and hearts bursting with anger, she alone thought of the last rites for the dead jawans Why were they not despatched with the honour given to politicians? “i demand 72 hours mourning for the ultimate sacrifice of the soldiers,” she thundered “only

one flag is not enough.” her politics is steeped in compassion n

Sunanda K Datta-Ray is a journalist and author of several books

He is an open contributor

open essay

DESPITE OCCASIONAL BLUNDERS,

MAMATA BANERJEE HASN’T ABANDONED HER PROMISE ‘TO LOOK AT POLITICS FROM A HUMANITARIAN ANGLE’

We heard the same denials Jinnah did not ‘know anything’

about the raiders of 1947;

Ayub Khan feigned ignorance

of Operation Gibraltar;

General Zia-ul-Haq insisted

Khalistan secessionists; Nawaz Sharif claimed he was hoodwinked

by his own generals during Kargil;

and Pervez Musharraf was

‘innocent’ as masterminds in

Pakistan ran the barbaric assault on

Mumbai in 2008 Today, Imran Khan sings the same tune and demands

“actionable evidence” How can the wilfully blind and the consciously deaf see or hear evidence? To go down that route of trust is to participate in fraud.

By MJ akBar

C ov e r S t ory

Pa k i s ta n

ImRan khan

or hiStory buffS, Gibraltar is the last outpost of a british empire that once stretched from the West indies to hong Kong for indians, Gibraltar should be an indelible part of national memory it was twice used as a signature codename in Paki-stan’s 72-year Jihad against india.

there is a misconception in some quarters that Pakistan turned to ‘war by other means’ or a ‘hybrid war’ only after its de-cisive defeat in the 1971 war Pakistan has been using terrorists, both in militia formation and in small cells, since october 1947 Pakistan described that first offensive as a ‘jihad’ and used the term as inspirational fodder for recruits for over seven decades, Pakistan has tried to seize Kashmir through a combination of covert terrorism dressed up in a theocratic idiom, duplicity, denial, false narratives, formal war and the constant drumbeat

of deceptive diplomacy

Patterns established in 1947 echo down to 2019 the cal leadership maintains hypocritical ignorance in its public stance, and gives the nod in secret the Pakistan Army always claims that the violence is part of a ‘popular uprising’, while its officers and men arm and train terrorists in clandestine camps the use of ‘Gibraltar’ as a codename was neither whimsical nor accidental

politi-Gibraltar is a corruption of Jebel al tariq, Arabic for ‘Mount

of tariq’ in 711 Ce, a small army of berber Muslims led by tariq bin Zaid landed on this tiny Spanish island dominated by a fa-mous 1,398-foot-high rock, and located on the northern mouth

of the Mediterranean the first thing that Zaid did was burn the ships that had brought his force the message was clear: victory or death tariq’s famous victory over the visigoths created a launch pad for Arab rule over the iberian peninsula, which lasted till the last sigh of the Moor at Alhambra in 1462,

or seven-and-a-half centuries later

in 1947, the Pakistani army officer who led the planning and operations in the first invasion of Jammu and Kashmir, Colonel Akbar Khan, was its director of weapons and equip-ment at General headquarters in rawalpindi but since deceit was at the heart of this operation, he was given an alias: ‘General tariq’ the government and army wanted in 1947 what they continue to want in 2019: deniability

Pakistan founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s first strategic decision was to seize the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir through war the second decision was that this would be a war

F

The time has come

to aver that the integration

of Kashmir into India

is a closed chapter

We must take it off the

agenda of talks There is

nothing to discuss with

Islamabad, except the

withdrawal of its troops

from ‘Occupied Kashmir’

Then why should such a

qualified status be given

to a province which is

an equal member of the

Union of India?

Smoke bIllowS fRom a ReSIdentIal

buIldIng wheRe mIlItantS had taken Refuge

duRIng a gun battle In PIngIlana vIllage of

Pulwama dIStRIct on febRuaRy 18

C ov e r S t ory

Pa k i s ta n

getty images

of terror there would be no formal declaration of war

‘Gen-eral tariq’ was put in charge When hostilities began, Colonel

Khan was posted as military adviser to Liaquat Ali Khan, to

smoothen the line of command between the Prime Minister

and the invaders

Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan presided over the long

meeting where a plan called ‘Armed revolt inside Kashmir’

was finalised finance Minister Ghulam Mohammad joined

this meeting for a while A Military intelligence assessment by

Colonel M Sher Khan factored in the possibility of an indian

Army intervention, but concluded that it would not be able to

respond until the spring of 1948 because of the Kashmir winter

the plan was to arm and train some 5,000 tribals, mobilised

from the frontier region, and unleash them across the

Kash-mir border in a campaign of terror and territory they would

pretend to be Kashmiris seeking ‘liberation’ from the ‘hindu

rule’ of Maharaja hari Singh

Confirmation of this deception comes from a british source

as well Sir George Cunningham, then governor of the North

West frontier Province, wrote in his diary on october 17th,

1947, that he had been informed by a member of his staff that

‘there is a real movement in hazara for a jihad against Kashmir’

there were more details in the entry, including the fact that

rifles had been collected for the operation

the manner in which these rifles were obtained provides a

clue to the Pakistani mindset in 1947 the invaders had asked

for 500 rifles, but Colonel Khan knew that this would be

inad-equate he commandeered, with the help of the local

admin-istration, 4,000 rifles sanctioned for the Punjab police these

rifles would have helped the police curb communal riots still

raging across the land but riots were not a priority for Pakistan

A war over Kashmir was

on october 20th, 1947, Pakistan announced an economic

blockade against Jammu and Kashmir, further confirming its

government’s role as sponsor and strategist At first light on

october 23rd, just a little more than nine weeks after freedom,

Pakistan launched what would be the first Jihad after World

War ii Pakistan was already responding to its theocratic genes

Liaquat Ali Khan’s role is not disputed but some apologists

for Jinnah try and slice him out of the framework of

responsi-bility Shuja Nawaz, whose brother Asif Nawaz rose to become

the Pakistani army’s chief in August 1991, writes in his book,

Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within: ‘Given

the nature of the Prime Minister’s relationship with Mr

Jin-nah, it seems unlikely that all this planning was being done

without Mr Jinnah’s tacit approval ’ Doubtless, if the raiders

had captured Srinagar, Jinnah would have been given a starring

role in every Pakistani school-text as a military genius

As Lord Mountbatten told ian Stephens, then editor of the

Statesman, on october 28th, 1947, “Jinnah at Abbottabad

had been expecting to ride in triumph into Kashmir he had

been frustrated ” (quoted in Mission with Mountbatten by Alan

Campbell-Johnson, the viceroy’s head of personal staff and

press attaché)

In its nascent phase, Pakistan had

a dysfunctional administration, negligible resources and a massive humanitarian refugee crisis And yet

Jinnah and his acolytes,

particularly in the military, could only think of war

At first light on 23rd October, 1947, just a little more than nine weeks after freedom, Pakistan launched what would

be the first Jihad after World War II Pakistan

was already responding

to its theocratic genes

hy DiD JiNNAh opt for a jihad in ber 1947 when he could have waited for talks to resolve the problem? Going to war was an astonishing decision by any standards of logic, international behav-iour or even common sense.

octo-in its nascent phase, Pakistan had a dysfunctional admocto-in-istration, negligible resources and a massive humanitarian refugee crisis And yet Jinnah and his acolytes, particularly in the military, could only think of war

admin-the status of Jammu and Kashmir was still undetermined Maharaja hari Singh had signed a stand-still agreement with both india and Pakistan that preserved the status quo until a final decision further, india and Pakistan were both Domin-ions in 1947, which is why a british citizen, Lord Mountbatten, could be appointed india’s first Governor General (equivalent

to the President) it also means that britain had a place at the table, at least as long as Mountbatten was in Delhi Discussions over Jammu and Kashmir were expected to begin in the spring

of 1948 And yet Jinnah preferred to pursue by war what could have been, and would have been, settled in peace Why?the answer lies in fabrication and distorted ideology.one of the foundational myths created by its leadership af-ter 1947 was that Pakistan was born out of some long struggle Perhaps this untruth was necessary as some kind of antidote for lingering embarrassment over the charge that the british had handed over Pakistan to Jinnah as part of a secret deal.but facts remain what they are Jinnah and the Muslim League never once initiated any kind of people’s movement, let alone a jihad, against british rule No Muslim League leader ever went to a british jail this is indisputable Conversely, there

is no eminent Gandhian leader during india’s freedom struggle who did not go to jail

Pakistan was the end-product of cooperation between Jinnah and the british during the six-year World War ii for understandable reasons, the manpower-starved british were deeply grateful to Jinnah for support in mobilisation, particu-larly from Punjab and the frontier, during their darkest hour, in

1940 and 1941 by the end of the war, about 2.5 million indians were serving in the british war effort, a substantial proportion

of whom were Muslims the british rewarded Jinnah by giving him a veto on minority rights; and he converted that veto into Pakistan the british raj was Jinnah’s ally, not his foe.the only jihad that Jinnah launched before 1947 was against hindus in 1946, after the failure of the Cabinet Mission, Jin-nah gave a call for ‘Direct Action’ on August 16th, 1946, and the Muslim League cadre and its National Guard did indeed swing into action the epicentre was Calcutta, which witnessed the

‘Great Calcutta Killings’ the cruelty and bloodshed of that day spawned further massacres on both sides, and all hopes

of a united india died with the corpses

After Partition, a slogan encapsulated the League

reinven-tion of history: ‘Ladh ke liya Pakistan, ladh ke lenge Kashmir’ (We

have fought to take Pakistan, we shall fight to take Kashmir)

The numbers involved

have been estimated at

3,000 on the low side

and 30,000 on the high

Their mission, as in 1947,

was to replicate Tariq bin

Zaid’s bold dash, not to

Spain but to Srinagar

a caPtuRed PakIStanI tank

duRIng the 1965 waR

it was heady vainglory, also nurtured by racist myths

includ-ing the absurd notion that hindus could not fight in 1965, as

we shall see, Ayub Khan made this absurd assumption part of

his military doctrine the most grievous kind of deception is

surely self-deception those who started this fight are still in

the grip of that delusion, even as the anguish and havoc they

cause is all too real innocent blood flows in the rivulets of a

continuing tragedy

N 1965, PAKiStAN repeated 1947, but with greater care

once again the conflict began with a web of deceit the

deception stage was officially codenamed operation

Gibraltar

All aggression begins in the mind field Marshal

Mo-hammad Ayub Khan, dictator of Pakistan, and his

obstrep-erous foreign minister, the young Zulfiqar Ali bhutto, gloated

over india’s traumatic defeat in the 1962 conflict with China

they saw an opportunity for Pakistan as india’s physical and

psychological wounds took time to heal india had begun to

re-arm after the disastrous depletion of its indigenous arms

pro-duction during the tenure of Defence Minister Krishna Menon,

but it would take time to reach full strength in contrast,

Paki-stan’s army had doubled in size since 1947, with most recruits

coming from within a radius of 160 km from rawalpindi this

was a continuation of british policy in recruitment from what

were called ‘martial races’

egged on by a belligerent bhutto, Ayub Khan ordered top

secret planning to begin in 1964 Among the very few in this

loop were Aziz Khan of the foreign office, Major General

Akhtar hussain Malik, GoC 12 Division, which was

responsi-ble for large sections of the Kashmir sector, and two brigadiers,

irshad Ahmad Khan, director of Military intelligence, and Gul

hassan Khan, director of Military operations

operation Gibraltar began on July 24th, 1965 the

numbers involved have been estimated at 3,000 on the low

side and 30,000 on the high their mission, as in 1947, was to

replicate tariq bin Zaid’s bold dash, not to Spain but to Srinagar

i quote Shuja Nawaz again, to indicate that this is not an

indian version of events: ‘Gibraltar was based on the

infiltra-tion of trained guerrillas under Pakistan Army officers into

indian-held Kashmir to help foment local dissent and an

uprising the total force was subdivided into subsidiary units

named mainly after Muslim military heroes: tariq [bin Zaid],

[Mahmud] Ghaznavi, Salahuddin, [Mohammed bin] Qasim,

and Khalid [bin Waleed] one force named Nusrat [meaning

victory] was designated to conduct sabotage behind indian

forces at the cease-fire line.’

infiltration, sabotage, attacks on indian military and

paramilitary forces: it is all too familiar

these trained soldiers and officers, once again claiming

to be ‘Kashmiri’ civilians, were to mingle with pilgrims to

the shrine of Pir Dastgir Sahib by August 8th, enter Srinagar

the next day, take over the airfield and radio station, set up a

I

www.openthemagazine.com 27

On 29th August, 1965,

Ayub Khan ordered his

armed forces to proceed, claiming, stupidly, that “as

a general rule, the Hindu morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows at the right time and place” He learnt about India’s morale the hard way

‘revolutionary Council’ and formally ask Pakistan for help stan would then initiate the second stage, operation Grand Slam, which constituted a regular attack across the Cease fire Line on paper, it looked good but in retrospect, Gibraltar seems more a child of cartoon history, and Grand Slam a sign that the Pakistan high Command had become inordinately fond of bridge.the jihadis of ‘Gibraltar 1965’ lost the plot, literally Most of them did not speak Kashmiri; nor had they been given simple information, like the change in indian weights and measures

Paki-from seers and maunds to a modern system they were exposed

as Pakistanis when they went to shops inevitably, many were arrested; under interrogation, some of their officers sang like birds on holiday the Gibraltar fiasco, however, did not deter the field Marshal

on August 29th, Ayub Khan ordered his armed forces to ceed, claiming, stupidly, that “as a general rule, the hindu morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows at the right time and place” he learnt about india’s morale the hard way.the Pakistani objective was to head south towards Akhnur and cut off indian troops in Kashmir from the rest of the country before applying the squeeze Details of how the war unfolded are well known; they need not detain us instead of conquest, Pakistan ended up losing key passes, including the strategi-cally crucial haji Pir, and decisive battles like Asal uttar the war ended with the tashkent Pact in January 1966, where the much-loved Prime Minister Lal bahadur Shastri died of a heart attack tashkent destroyed Ayub Khan’s credibility, and he was forced to leave office

pro-if india had held on to haji Pir, the third Pakistani effort to enter the Kashmir valley, through Kargil in 1999, might have been far more difficult however, a similar game-plan was repeated in Kar-gil Pakistan denied that its soldiers were involved, and kept saying

so till it was forced to retreat india’s handsome victory under the leadership of Prime Minister Atal bihari vajpayee is still fresh in public memory having won the war, vajpayee did his utmost for peace; going to Lahore and offering Pakistan a solemn commit-ment that included a desire for resolution of all disputes What india got in return was the December 2001 attack on Parliament, repeated terrorist violence, the horrific 2008 murder of innocents

in Mumbai, and now Pulwama

N 2019, AS so often before, the people of india have a tion: What do we do about this persistent, insistent, searing terrorism?

ques-the answer so far has done nothing to persuade Pakistan

to change its behaviour india asked Pakistan to take action against self-confessed terrorist groups like Jaish-e-Muham-mad, which flourish in the safety of Pakistani territory All we got in return was prevarication india did not even withdraw the Most favoured Nation trade status granted unilaterally to Paki-stan until it was cancelled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi Also, Delhi has always honoured its commitment to the indus Waters treaty

denied that its soldiers

were involved and kept

saying so till it was forced

to retreat India’s

handsome victory

under the leadership

of Prime Minister

Atal Bihari Vajpayee is still

fresh in public memory

bofoRS gunS dePloyed

In the kaRgIl waR, 1999

And we heard the same denials Jinnah and the Pakistan tablishment did not ‘know anything’ about the raiders of 1947; Ayub Khan feigned ignorance of operation Gibraltar; General Zia ul haq insisted that he had nothing to do with Khalistan secessionists although they got sanctuary, funds and arms in Lahore; Nawaz Sharif claimed he was hoodwinked by his own generals during Kargil; and Pervez Musharraf of course was the ultimate ‘innocent’ as masterminds in Pakistan ran the barbar-

es-ic terrorist assault on Mumbai in 2008 today, imran Khan sings the same tune, and then demands “actionable evidence” how can the wilfully blind and the consciously deaf see or hear evi-dence? to go down that route of trust is to participate in fraud.there is a military response to Pulwama and a political one

We can leave the first to the military; as the Prime Minister said, they know what to do and when but one aspect of the political response has not been given the attention it deserves, because of

a certain dichotomy in our stance that began when Prime ister Jawaharlal Nehru took the Kashmir issue to the united Nations it is time to end this dichotomy

Min-Pakistan disputes the integration of Jammu and Kashmir into india We may not be able to alter Pakistan’s attitude, but we can change ours the time has come to aver that the integration of Kashmir into india is a closed chapter We must take it off the agenda of talks there is nothing to discuss with islamabad, ex-cept the withdrawal of its troops from ‘occupied Kashmir’ this position also reflects a formal resolution passed by india’s Parlia-ment We have not taken that resolution to its logical conclusion.that conclusion requires a final step, the full integration

of Jammu and Kashmir into the union of india there is a sic flaw in our understanding of Article 370, which gives the province a special status Article 370 was the beginning of the process, not an immutable end-game it may have been es-sential in 1947, and relevant till much later but today it is an anachronism that impinges on the unity of our nation every Kashmiri is an indian citizen there is no such thing

ba-as a ‘special’ indian or a ‘conditional’ citizen then why should such a qualified status be given to a province which is an equal member of the union of india?

the process began on october 17th, 1949, when

Gopalaswa-mi Aiyangar moved Article 306A in the Constituent Assembly; this became Article 370 one member of the Assembly, hasrat Mohani, asked, “Why this discrimination, please?” there were cheers when he hoped that in due course Jammu and Kashmir would become as integrated into the union of india as other princely states the ‘due course’ is surely now overdue

revenge is not a word that should exist in the

dic-tionary of a civilised and sensible government; but justice is the two have one thing in common: both are best served cold n

MJ Akbar is an MP and the author of, among other titles, tinderbox: the Past

and future of Pakistan

4 march 2019

C ov e r S t ory

Pa k i s ta n

Vajpayee did his

utmost for peace; going

to Lahore and offering

Pakistan a solemn

commitment that included

a desire for resolution of

all disputes What India

got in return was the

Books, books and books The reviews make my week with Open And yours?

Ramana M, Hyderabad

openthemagazine

www.openthemagazine.com Tell us why you read Open

y the time the sound of gunfire subsided in Pulwama in South Kashmir on February 18th, it was clear that the indian security forces had suffered more losses than what they had bargained for Four soldiers of the Army died, including an offi-cer, as they engaged three Jaish-e-muhammad terrorists hiding

in a house Before the last terrorist fell after a 16-hour gun battle, three senior officers, two of the Army and one of the police, received injuries and had to be taken away for treatment then television took over images of fallen soldiers, the honour salutes and emotional scenes filled up living rooms, interspersed with reports of Kashmiri muslim students being harassed in some parts of the country

As for the losses in the Pulwama gunfight and the biggest toll taken on security forces in three decades of insurgency in Kashmir four days earlier, there is little mention Despite the disproportionate losses in the February 18th encounter, the Government’s spin doctors held it as an emollient for the kill-ing of 40 CRPF personnel at a spot not very far from the site of the hostilities One of them tweeted that the mastermind of the CRPF-convoy attack (Kamran, one of the operational com-manders of Jaish, killed in the gunfight) had been killed within

100 hours of the blast; he even used a line from a recent hindi film on the Uri surgical strike that has become a BJP trope in

the last few weeks the irony of the line, ‘Yeh naya India hai, ye

ghar mein ghusega bhi aur maarega bhi (this is new india, it will

enter your home and also hit you)’ was lost on many ment supporters like him

Govern-Who got in where and who killed whom? And what new india?

Some critics did post an old video clip of Prime minister

C Ov e R S t ORy

K a s h m i r

B

In the light of the

recent suicide attack,

it is not enough for the

Army to say that anyone

who picks up a gun will

be eliminated That the

security forces have been

doing anyway for years

4 march 2019

Brashness inspired by a Hindi film

cannot help in Kashmir

Josh Gone Awry

By Rahul Pandita

lal chowk, srinagar

abid bhat

Narendra modi, taken from his pre-2014 speeches, speaking

of the weakness of the then manmohan Singh regime in it,

modi berates Singh for being unable to stop the infiltration

of terrorists and arms and explosives from across the border

As coffins carrying the remains of the fallen soldiers reached

their towns and villages, it became clear that india’s response to

terrorist attacks had not changed at all, and that spirit of ‘how’s

the josh?’ (‘josh’ as in brio), which had been fetishised for weeks,

has been ill-placed all this while

in Bihar, modi said that the time for talks with Pakistan was

over he said a fire was raging in his heart he said that

secu-rity forces have been given ‘khuli chhoot’ (complete freedom)

to deal with militancy two days later, a police officer in

Pul-wama could be seen almost begging a mob that had turned

up to disrupt the operation against terrorists to go back to

their homes modi also said that the neighbouring country

had been isolated Less than 100 hours later, he was hugging

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince who had earlier visited Pakistan

and promised that country investments worth $20 billion (the

Pakistani novelist mohammed hanif called it ‘a happy

mar-riage between God and budget deficits’) many now argue that

this is diplomacy and that modi has india’s best interests at

heart But for those who watched images of mohammed bin

Salman alighting from his aircraft in Delhi, it was hard to

ig-nore the sound of celebratory drums in the background What

part of diplomatic protocol necessitates a nation in mourning

to do this?

the candlelight marches will soon be over the tv cameras

will move to humdrum election news But some questions

on Kashmir will remain unaddressed, as always Does india

have a Kashmir policy? it is one thing to invoke insaaniyat and

jamhuriyat in a poetic flourish humanity and democracy But

what do these mean on the ground? What is the ambit of

in-saaniyat? helping out a people ravaged by floods and

ensur-ing they are not harassed anywhere in the country is a nation’s

duty But does it also mean that a CRPF jawan returning from

duty has to silently endure blows from a few men, his helmet

being tossed away?

the police and Army will keep on doing their assigned jobs

terrorists will keep on getting killed in twos and threes But

what will dry up new recruitment? how will many young

Kashmiri muslims quit the path of radicalism?

in 2010, in Kashmir valley, as pitched battles were being

fought between the police and young men, i met a small group

of college students whom the police were on a lookout for

hav-ing indulged in stone-pelthav-ing, they were in hidhav-ing i picked

them up from a spot on the outskirts of Srinagar city As we

were driving around to find a suitable place for an interview,

two of them on the rear seat began recounting their clashes

with security forces they seemed to have developed a certain

ease about the prospect of death they spoke about how one of

their friends had fallen off the banks of the Jhelum river earlier

while being chased by the police and how his brains had spilt

out i asked them about Afaq Ahmad Shah, a 17-year-old

Kash-miri who had blown himself up in an explosive-laden car in front of an Army cantonment 10 years earlier they fell silent Finally, one of them said that he felt uncomfortable with the idea of what Shah had done

veN iN 2010, there was little space left to draw miri youth from the brink of disaster But with an-other Kashmiri blowing himself up to inflict maxi-mum damage on the might of the indian state, this

Kash-question needs to be asked: forget josh, do we have any hosh—consciousness—of what we are trying to do in Kash-

mir? even after the recent terrorist attack, there seems to be no clarity on how to make proper interventions the Government put out a list of separatists from whom state security would be withdrawn; within hours, one of the names on it was taken off much of the bipolarity among Kashmiris today stems from Delhi’s own ambiguity and adhocism vis-à-vis Kashmir Con-sider the BJP’s fetid alliance with the PDP in Kashmir, the PDP remained a mascot of soft separatism, while the BJP was seen by many as an ultra-nationalist party those who were

‘anti-national’ before 2014 suddenly became worthy of an brace that friendship is over, but the damage is done Under the PDP’s leadership, South Kashmir went out of hands A Kashmir which hardly raged after the hanging of Afzal Guru turned into a war zone after Burhan Wani’s killing in village after village, young men either took to militancy or became near-combatants to help terrorists escape security cordons the police claim that recruitment to militancy has come down, but it would be foolish to assume that more men won’t join terrorist organisations

em-What india’s final response to Pakistan will be is not clear yet A General election is two months away and the modi Government is under pressure to prove that he is serious about avenging the attack on the CRPF Whatever the outcome of that possible step might be, it would be wise to develop a visibly coherent policy on Kashmir

to begin with, the entire sequence of events leading to the suicide attack on the CRPF convoy must be probed, and secu-rity lapses, if any, must be made public Secrecy around inves-tigations of deaths in action (like in maoist areas) has been a perpetual problem with the CRPF

in a message issued a day after the Pulwama gunfight, the operational commander of the hizbul mujahideen in Kashmir warned that soon children will be carrying out suicide bomb-ings against indian security forces in the light of the recent suicide attack, it is not enough for the Army to say that anyone who picks up a gun will be eliminated that the security forces have been doing anyway for years, especially in the last three years after South Kashmir flared up

the thing to worry about is: how does one stop speeding vehicles filled with explosives and driven by a man determined

to create mayhem? Because in the end, a Bollywood line will remain just that n

www.openthemagazine.com 33

E

4 MARCH 2019

34

A View from the

i

From Varanasi to Gorakhpur, From modi’s constituency to

oF priyanka Gandhi hope to make a dent in the bJp bastion

n Ballia, known for its links to

in-dia’s freedom struggle and various melas,

a strange morning ritual along narrow lage roads stuns you Men are seen taking their pigs out for a walk, waving canes, as

vil-if herding sheep that need to graze or ing dogs that must attend their call of na-ture Here in the countryside, not far from the Rasra area of Ballia district in eastern Uttar Pradesh—which is associated with names like Mangal Pandey, hero of the

walk-1857 war of independence, and Chandra Shekhar, the late Prime Minister once known as a ‘Young Turk’—rotund, hairy

pigs along with agile smaller ones, and even enthusiastic little piglets, do their matutinal rounds while cleaning up food waste thrown along the narrow streets

Rajender kumar, a roadside tyre-shop owner, looks at the sight with familiarity and scorn as he says that he will vote for the BJP in the General Election of 2019 so that narendra Modi becomes Prime Min-

ister again “These are men from neech

jaati (lower castes) taking their pigs for a

walk They are like their family They eat them too,” says this Rajput with a know-ing smile, clearly pleased with himself for