doublethink

  Politics of Hope - Politics over Dead   New India, Young India, Aspirational India, Swachcha India, Atmanirbhar India – many Indias have popped up in the last few years. In quick succession, one India arrives while the other has not been even graciously discarded into the archive of the nation’s memory. Some of them live only to be dusted and polished, to be presented with gust and élan under a new tag (for instance, the earlier ‘made in India’ changed into ‘make in India’).    Almost, one feels, the force of compulsive commoditization is at work behind the swift pace with which new brands keep appearing. What does it say about the politics of our times? Why is there a need to brand a country again and again? A country, which obsesses over History right from within the whisper-soaking walls of the living room to that of the frenzied zeal of a mob that turned a monument into a pile of rubble, equally adores being recurrently decked in a new identity. Why is branding...

  A small note on liberal buoyancy     As Trump probably clutches the golden curtains of the White House in a desperate attempt to not vacate the office, the Indian liberal class’ buoyance to the exit poll predictions of Bihar’s election is not to be dismissed in a light manner. There are not many things that link Bihar and the U.S. organically except perhaps a very old joke on an imaginary meeting between Laloo Prasad Yadav and the then president, Bill Clinton. The joke is not even funny any longer but for those who have forgotten it, it went like this: if Laloo and Bill were left locked in a room for a month with each other, it was believed or rather hoped that Laloo would emerge from this one-month seclusion speaking impeccable English. The joke’s punchline was that Clinton almost mastered his non-existing Bhojpuri in that period.  (screenshot of image taken from  https://thedailyguardian.com/understanding-the-caste-factor-in-bihar-elections/)   The natu...

In 1930, a sadhu named Dhoortanand had come to a wealthy household of one Lalaji, promising him to double his wealth by conducting a three-day tapasya (penance, ritual). The next morning, Lalaji had to go to the police station to report on the absconding sadhu and the missing wealth. Apparently, Lalaji was not the only one to have fallen prey to the promise of becoming richer; such a tapasya, according to the police, was conducted in at least twenty-five households. Published under the title Gerua Daaku (Ochre-Robe Robber) under a Kahkaha series (joke-stories), the story and the name itself – Dhoortanand, meaning deceitful – symbolised the extent to which the figure of the sadhu had become the stock of social mocking in the early decades of the twentieth century.   Cutting across layers of time, perhaps there is no other Indian figure that comes close to sadhus in being seen as the bearer of disguise and artiste of deceit. From the times of the Ramayana when Ravana disguised as ...