Zabaan Sambhaal Ke: The Evolution of Language in Bollywood

(First published on NewsYaps)

The elite in India treat their own languages rather oddly. We live our lives in our mother tongues but when it comes to anything serious, say education or for that matter, online articles (ahem!), we immediately turn to English. As a result, our languages are extremely stunted when it comes to being used as vehicles of our own culture. India’s most talked about novelist, for example, isn’t a Hindi, Bengali or Tamil writer, it’s, whether you like him or not, Chetan Bhagat. In all of this, cinema comes as breath of fresh air. It’s the only place where the masses as well as the elite come together and partake of art in their own language. Which is why it’s so interesting to see how cinema, and specifically Bollywood—as it completes its a hundred years—uses language to express itself.

Since this is a piece on the language Bollywood uses, I'm going to start by defining a few terms. Firstly, I am going to consider Hindi and Urdu to be the same language. This is not my personal opinion but the standard linguistic view given the two have identical grammar. Of course, that’s not to say that there are no differences within the language. The language exists in a continuum where you can use Persian words (Urdu) or Sanskrit words (Hindi) to express yourself. So for the sake of this article, I will refer to this common language as Hindustani and affix Persianised or Sanskritised as adjectives wherever necessary. So, for example, Ghalib's poems are written in Persianised Hindustani and Dinkar's in Sanskritised Hindustani. Capiche?

The Beginning (1930s-1960s)

Unlike Ghalib or Dinkar’s poetry, though, Bollywood has always been a commercial endeavour, a means to make money. For this, it has always had to cater to the lowest common denominator which means that the language it has had to use has always been the popular, day-to-day dialect that is spoken in cities across North India. Back when talkies first came into being, everyday Hindustani, not very different from what we speak today (minus the English vocabulary), ruled the roost as an everyday language and lingua franca. However, a highly Persianised idiom was also popular, given its wide spread as the official register of education and administration (Urdu along with English were the two official languages of British India). Modern Sanskritised Hindustani (Shudh Hindi) was still in its infancy then—the first work of literature in that register had come out as late as 1888—the novel Chandrakanta, which was, a century later, made into the extremely popular TV show. So, for example, when Ram Prasad Bismil wanted to write a popular song of resistance, he penned down the fairly Persianised Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna. While that song is still extremely popular today, most people wouldn’t even know what the word ‘sarfarosh’ in its title means (farosh means vendor. The word, therefore, means someone who is ready to give away his head i.e. a daredevil). Same goes for Netaji’s INA, two-thirds of whose motto, “Ittehad , Itmad aur Qurbani” (unity, faith and sacrifice) would seem incomprehensible to Indians today given its heavy Persian tilt. And when Gandhi wanted to promote a new system of education he gave it the name Nai Taaleem and did not, as the government does today, use the word shikshaa.

Given this state of affairs at the time, it’s not surprising that Bollywood started off with a Persianised idiom. The name of the first talkie—Alam Ara (Adorning the World)—itself attests to that. And while it would need to be “translated” for most Indians today, the film’s success meant that at the time everybody did get the meaning just fine.

The real force of Persianisation, though, wasn’t in the titles or the dialogues, which were still, more or less, in everyday Hindustani, it was in the lyrics. Nobody typifies this more than Sahir Ludhianvi who, like many lyricists at that time, was also an Urdu poet. Here’s a sample of some of the words from his most famous film, Pyaasa (taken from the song, Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par Vo Kahaan Hain :

Muhaafiz, ismat, zard, dareechon, fiqare, tanuumand, ham-jins, ummat, rehbaron, manzar

Bet you didn’t get too many. While this song was written only 50-odd years back, given its vocabulary, it’ll be incomprehensible to most today. India, in 1957, though, was a very different country. Far from being incomprehensible, the songs of Pyaasa were, to use a Bollywood term, a super hit and Sahir was the star credited for their success. In fact, so miffed was SD Burman (the composer for Pyaasa) for the attention and acclaim that Sahir got, that he refused to work with him from then on. Pyaasa made Sahir such a celebrity that he actually got paid more than the singers who sang his lyrics, something that would be unheard of today.

In the Middle (1970s-1980s)

30 years and counting as a free country, India had a whole new generation without any formal Urdu education. To quote from a Sahir poem written in 1968:

Jin shehron may goonji thi Ghalib ki nava barson
Un shehron may ab Urdu benaam-o-nishan thehri

(Cities, where for years Ghalib’s voice echoed/In those very cities, Urdu is now without a trace)

Without formal education, the capacity of the paying public to follow highly Persianised vocabulary declined. “Yeh public hai, sab janti hai”(the public knows everything) sang Rajesh Khanna for Roti. Bollwywood’s faith in the public was just as strong. Given its audience’s new linguistic capabilities, it toned down some of its own high falutin’ Persian vocabulary. Sahir himself had to adapt. His most famous song from the period, Kabhie Kabhie is a highly simplified version of one of his poems (recited by Amitabh’s character here).

This period saw a very interesting linguistic trend. For half a century now, Bollywood had used a register oscillating between everyday Hindustani and Persianised Hindustani to express itself. But 30 years after independence, the development of Sanskritised Hindustani had made Shudh Hindi a player as well. And, moreover, given its use by academia, literature and the government, the register carried a weightiness of its own. This is why, as Mukul Kesavan notes in his fantastic essay, Urdu, Awadh and Tawaif: the Islamicate Roots of Hindi Cinema, when directors such as Benegal and Nihalani wanted to title their New Wave films, they chose Sanskritised names such as Ankur, Nishant, Manthan, Bhumika, Akrosh and Ardhsatya. They wanted a clear demarcation between the mainstream, “song-and-dance” Bollywood and themselves. Choosing weighty Sanskritised titles, never used before in the industry, helped them achieve that branding.

Now (1990s- )

A spurt of old-style Persianised lyrics came in the 90s. Unfortunately, however, these were the last throes of a dying animal. This period is typified by the cringe-inducing vacuousness of Sameer with his endless cycle of sanams and saajans, dils and mohabbat. More of a caricature than anything else.

It took some time but as Bollywood entered the 2000s, it had made yet another linguistic shift. This time it introduced a language with generous helpings of English vocabulary, in keeping with the current register prevalent in urban India and even in large parts of rural India. While on a trip to Chhapra in Bihar, a waiter in a local dhaba was unable to understand me when I asked him whether he had any “ghosht” or “maans” dishes. Comprehension dawned on him though when I used the word “meat”. That’s how embedded English vocabulary is in India today so it’s not surprising that Bollywood has followed suit.

Just take a look at some of our recent film titles: Mere Dad Ki Maruti, I Me aur Main, Murder, Anybody can Dance, No one Killed Jessica, Bodyguard, Rockstar, Agent Vinod, Vicky Donor, I Hate Love Storys...you get the point. English vocabulary is today a significant part of Bollywood’s reality.

“I can talk English. I can walk English. I can laugh English. Because English is a very phunny language,” rattled off Amitabh Bacchan’s character in the 1982 movie Namal Halal, poking fun at the Queen’s language. In 2007 though, one of Bheja Fry’s main comedic elements was the fact that the character of Bharat Bhushan (Vinay Pathak) spoke purely in Hindi. In less than three decades Bollywood went from making fun of English to being made fun of because one did not know the language.

The last bastion that English vocabulary is still to breach in Bollywood remains song lyrics. This is a hurdle that, interestingly, Sanskritised Hindustani has still not been able to clear. Songs would still use a dil rather than hriday, kismat rather than bhagya and khoon rather than rakt. In fact, the Sanskritised Hindustani equivalents, if used, would sound downright odd in some cases. English, though, has had better luck.  In Karan Johar’s saccharine sweet family saga, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Hrithik Roshan woos Kareena by crooning, “You are my Sonia” as a crowd of blondes gyrate behind him. Sheila’s introduction to her fans is “My name is Sheila” and, while in an earlier age, love would drive people paagal or deewaana, Aishwariya, instead, is driven “crazy” in Dhoom 2 by her lover’s charms.  Even Gulzar had to bend, getting his characters to ask “personal” questions (Kajrare from Bunty and Bubbly). That said, as the recent song Khushamdeed (Go Goa Gone) shows, Persianised vocabulary does pop up now and then as far as lyrics go even as more Anglicised vocabulary takes over the dialogues.

Given the trend, though, it’s only a matter of time before the industry switches completely to Hinglish as the standard medium of expression. If you’re a purist, this might make you sad. Tough cookies but Bollywood really doesn’t care. It has accurately reflected the way Indians speak for 80 years now and that’s something that is not going to change.

Locking Away History

(First published on NewsYaps)

King George V’s Coronation Memorial

In 1832, after a decade of fighting, Greece managed to gain independence from the Ottoman Empire. Greece had been under Ottoman rule for almost four centuries now, a period that had seen numerous revolts. Naturally, when independence was finally achieved, passions ran high. The new Greek state, therefore, embarked on a campaign to destroy as many Ottoman buildings as it could. Of this destruction spree, the most famous is the demolition drive at the Acropolis including that of a small mosque inside the Parthenon. Independence wasn’t enough. Greece wanted to erase all vestiges of its past as a part of the Ottoman Empire.

Like Greece, India has also had to grapple with the thorny issue of how to deal with an unpleasant period of colonialism. India’s reaction to British rule, though, was and is complex. To understand just how complex, though, you'll need to take a trip to North Delhi’s Coronation Park.

The Coronation Park, as the name suggests, was a site used to celebrate the British Monarchy at a time when they ruled over India. In 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India at this site. In 1903, her son’s coronation was commemorated here. And finally in 1911, the park saw its final and grandest ceremony which celebrated the coronation of King George V.  The final ceremony is marked by a bare sandstone obelisk at the centre of the park. Built on a square plinth, which is reached from all four sides by flights of stairs, the obelisk carries plaques in English and Urdu noting that the new emperor had received “homage and allegiance” from India’s people and princes. Indeed, Ahmed Ali’s classic Old Delhi novel, Twilight in Delhi bitterly recounts how some of the city’s residents had bowed and scrapped to the Emperor on that day—apparently even the walls of the Jama Masjid were emblazoned with gold letters to mark the occasion.

What’s most interesting though are the 5 marble statues which surround the obelisk. You’ll immediately recognise them as British and that’s exactly what they are. The largest is a 50-foot tall statue of King George V which sits there triumphantly facing its own coronation memorial.  The other statues are of various viceroys and architects.

These statues once adorned intersections all over Delhi and were transported here sometime after independence. Greece might have decided to run away from its history by obliterating it but our approach was a bit more nuanced. We hid the most obvious markers of our colonial past, the statues of our rulers, in an obscure park no one would even think of going to. Clever, eh. Yet

, our new rulers kept on residing in the very buildings that were also built by the British. Ironically, the statue of King George V was designed by architect Edward Lutyens, the same man who built Rashtrapati Bhavan and indeed the entire zone called Lutyens’ Delhi in which the crème de la crème of our political class now have their bungalows in.

An unknown statue with an Ashok Chakra panel next to it. The panels are a later addition and were a part of the plan to reopen the park on Delhi’s centenary. Bureaucratic delays, though, meant that 2 years after the centenary, the park has yet to be opened to the public.

R.K. Narayan had once noted this irony in a lovely short story called Lawely Road. At independence, the town of Malgudi, at great cost and pain, manages to remove a statue of one Sir Frederick Lawley, whom they believe had been “a combination of Attila, the Scourge of Europe, and Nadir Shah, with the craftiness of a Machiavelli.” In a typically humorous Narayan twist though, it’s only after the statue has been removed (the recalcitrant statue had to be blown up using dynamite) that the town municipality learns that Lawley had, in fact, been a virtuous governor who had advocated for India’s independence and died in the attempt to save villagers from drowning in a flood.

India has had a complex relationship with its colonial past. On the one hand there is revulsion, even hate, not surprising given the hugely destructive consequences of British rule. This statue uprooting is not confined to Delhi. Bombay’s best kept secret is a small, ramshackle 6X5 feet corrugated tin shed besides Elphinstone College. If you peek through a hole in the shed’s wall you’ll see the ghostly silhouettes of the statues of King George V and King Edward VIII in full military splendour. As in Delhi, these statues once dotted the city. Bombay, though, was so ashamed of these relics of its past that it actually locked them away, lest their presence corrupt the nation. It’s no wonder that a few decades later, the city changed its very name.

Our revulsion, though, is tempered by the fact that we are also products of colonialism. Our government takes large chunks of its functioning from the colonial state which it succeeded. Our police and the IAS, the two pillars of our administration, still function exactly as our colonial masters meant them to.  Our elites (and that means you, dear reader) read, write and, increasingly, speak in English. And, in what is almost poetic in its symbolism, our Parliament functions out of a structure built by the Raj. The complexity of our relationship with our colonial past is bought out by the fact that Calcutta’s most famous public space, the Victoria Memorial still carries the actual statue of its plump namesake, sitting pretty on a throne, patiently accepting pigeon droppings as morning walkers pace frantically around her. Unlike Delhi and Bombay, Calcutta, it seems, is not scared by dead monarchs. And while Bombay hides away its King George V statue, the Gateway of India—built to commemorate the same monarch’s 1911 visit to India—still functions as an emblem of Bombay...sorry, Mumbai. Talk about confused notions of shame and pride.

The fact is, whether we like it or not, we are products of our past. We might not like the past but that does not change the fact that we exist because if it. Attempts to deny history are fraught with danger and are, ultimately, useless. To deny our past, good or bad, is to deny who we are. And that can never be a good thing. 

Sonepat's Durga Masjid and Other Wonders

On 29 May, 1453, after almost two months of laying siege to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Ottoman sultan Mehmed II entered the city. His first stop was the Hagia Sophia, the largest cathedral in the world at that time and a focal point for Orthodox Christianity, the state religion of the Byzantine Empire. As his troops pillaged the city, the sultan exercised his new found power to declare the Hagia Sophia a mosque. The Ottomans introduced essential mosque architecture such as minaars and mehraabs into the mosque while removing obvious Christian elements such as bells and altars as well as plastering over a number of mosaics. This sort of thing religious conversion though wasn’t unexpected for the Hagia Sophia. 250 years back in 1204, as part of the Fourth Crusade, Western Europeans had attacked Constantinople and plundered the Hagia Sophia. Like the Ottomans, though, just plunder wasn’t enough. The Roman Catholic invaders wanted to humiliate the Orthodox Christians religiously. The Hagia Sophia was therefore converted into a Roman Catholic cathedral and remained so till the Byzantines managed to expel the Latin Christians from their city and convert the Hagia Sophia back into an Orthodox church.

As the Hagia Sophia amply shows, the capture and conversion of religious monuments during conflict sends a strong symbol to a defeated people. It’s one thing to be defeated in war. But to even see your gods defeated...that must hurt.

The city of Sonepat, 40 odd kilometres from Delhi, has a small example of that symbolism.

Driving though the city centre, I noticed two tall minaars towering above the city. Apart from their great height (~60 feet), their obvious antiquity tickled my curiosity. I stopped the first passerby I saw and asked him what that was and how I could get to it. He replied that it was a Durga Mandir. Not having seen too many mandirs with minaars before, I nodded condescendingly and asked someone else. As you might have guessed by now, “Durga Mandir” was the answer again. Intrigued by this minaar studded mandir, I made my way to Mohalla Kalaan where this structure was located. There in front of me stood what looked exactly like a medieval mosque but with a red stone facade, an obvious modern day addition with the words “Sri Sanatan Dharm Sabha Panji Durga Mandir” written on it in Hindi.

The facade of the Durga Mandir

Unfortunately, the mandir was shut when I chanced upon it. I did manage to locate the pandit and convinced him to open the gate for a quick darshan. The interiors of the mosque have been completely refurbished and coated with white marble, an odd choice of stone given the structure’s red sandstone exterior. In the middle sits an idol of Durga. On the way out I gingerly quizzed the pandit on oddity of a mandir having two minars and three domes.

“It’s a sixty year old story,” he said looking at me suspiciously.

 I flashed him my most winning smile. “Partition?,” I ventured stating the obvious.

“Haan, it’s a tale from ’47. The Muslims has all left for Pakistan so we took over their mosque and made it into a temple.”

“Didn’t that cause any problems?”

“No, not really. There were no Muslims here at the time. There is a court case on but you know how those work.”

I nodded knowingly, assuring him that I knew exactly how the judicial system worked in India.

“So there are no Muslims in Sonepat anymore?”

“Now there are but these have come recently as labour from Bihar and UP. No Muslims from here”

I thanked him for his time and left the mandir.

Once I reached home I did some more research from the Interwebs. What is today the Durga Mandir was the Jumma Masjid of pre-1947 Sonepat, its main congregational mosque. During Partition the mosque was converted into a makeshift mandir. Today construction is going on at full swing at the monument to make that change permanent. Till some back (see pic below), there was no red stone facade. Most probably within a few days the mosque will be unrecognisable.

The mandir from a few years back before the renovation. [link]

In 1947, Haryana was part of the British province of Punjab one of the two provinces to be divided between the newly created dominions of India and Pakistan, the other province being Bengal. While Bengal saw its fair share of communal violence the Punjab just erupted into a bloodbath. East and West Punjab both empted themselves of their minorities. Lahore and Amritsar, the two largest cities of united Punjab had a more or less equal balance between Muslims on side and Sikhs and Hindus on the other. Today you’d be hard put to find Hindus and Sikhs in Lahore and Muslims in Amritisar.  Sonepat, it seems, just followed the example of the more illustrious Punjabis cities. And just like the Ottomans chose the Hagia Sophia, the city had chosen its Jama Masjid to act as a symbol during those mad times.

[Further reading: a couple of interesting articles on similar phenomenon I came across from the Other Side while doing my research: Pakistan's disappearing temples and churches, Pakistan’s long forgotten Hindu temples and Gurdwaras]

***

If the tale of the Sonepat’s Jumma Masjid fills you with despair, do not you worry. Just a few hundred metres away in the same bazaar, Sonepat presents to you a shining example of communal harmony. In the 800-year old Mama Bhanja Dargah lies buried Hazrat Nasiruddin. The first chaadar at the annual Urs of the mazaar is to be only offered by a member of the Brahmin Kanwar family as this plaque in Hindi proclaims.

The story behind it is that at the site of the Dargah once stood a temple looked after by an old, blind pandit. Nasiruddin came to pandit one fine day and asked to be buried in the temple. He also asked the pandit to go to Rohtak and call his bhaanja (nephew). The pandit agreed to the dying bit but running this errand was a bit too much, it seems. He pleaded helplessness citing the fact that he was blind. Nasiruddin then apparently used his powers to cure the pandit and lo and behold! he could see (using his powers to call his nephew in the first place is something that, I guess, never occurred to Nasiruddin). The pandit called the nephew and then asked for two more boons. One that the Yamuna shift seven kos away from Sonepat as it did (and the fact that it’s still there even after 8 centuries should lay all doubts to rest). Second that this brahman’s family be allowed to offer the first chaadar at the Urs—a custom that’s still followed.

In what might be a modern day take on Nasiruddin’s syncretism, the sajjaadaa nasheen of the mazaar calls himself a ‘pujaari’ now (see pic above).

The entrance to the mazaar. It was locked when I was there.

***

Sonepat has another another saint buried within the town who goes by the name of Khwaja Khizr. Unfortunately, the Khizr does not refer to the Green Man of Islamic tradition, a fact that greatly excited me at first. Of course, it struck me a moment later that a mausoleum for Khizr would be decidedly odd. Khizr, like Hanuman in Hindu tradition, is supposed to be still alive today. The tomb is of a noble at Sikander Lodhi’s court who gave it all up and became a saint. The maqbaraa was completed in 1524.

Situated in the middle of a large, neatly-laid out garden, the mausoleum acts as a sort of hang-out place for the local populace given that it’s probably the only park-like space in the city. The mausoleum itself is beautiful. It’s cleanly built and stands on a high plinth, at the south end of which stands a finely done doorway. The monument is made of a white stone (whose name I don’t know) and red sandstone. The combination of the two results in an extremely elegant structure.

The place is still an active place of worship and I was reminded rather rudely by a few men outside to remove my shoes before going in. The structure contains two huge tombs with chaadars, flowers and incense sticks littered about. One tomb must obviously be of the saint named Khizr, the other is unknown.

The Maqbara

The doorway to the mausoleum

The plinth is made of brick and is around 7 feet high

The two graves inside the maqbaraa. The blue thing on top of the right one is a chadar. Sorry for the glare but there something wrong with my phone camera.

The lotus on either side is a typical feature of Lodhi architecture and represents the Indian influence on this style of architecture 

The kalash was also a regular feature in Lodhi archtitecture

Captured from the South-East

Sonepat is around an hour’s drive from Delhi. If you ever decide to visit the town, apart from the blessing of Goddes Durga, Khizr and Nasiruddin, do get some eats from Sukhdev Dhaba at Murthal as well. The place has some rather awesome paraanthas (served with small mountains of white butter) which are best washed down with a glass of thick lassi.

India and the Nehru-Gandhis: A Love Story

Pictures of Rahul Gandhi at his father’s funeral have him dressed in a white kurta-pajama as he goes about conducting the last rites. He is 20. A thick mop off curly hair and over-sized spectacles make him look like a high school nerd. In spite of his square jaws he looks shy, timid; vulnerable even. Even at that weakest of moments though, he is one of the most powerful people in India. His father, grandmother and great-grandfather have been prime ministers. In the future, his mother would rule India by proxy. As a Nehru-Gandhi, Rahul’s path to power was already laid out. All he had to do was set out on it. [Read more]

I have an article up on Newsyaps which explores the Nehru-Gandhi phenomenon in Indian politics. Go read, share and comment. [Article]

Reliving 1971 (part II of II)

This is the second and concluding part of post which describes a visit to Bangladesh’s Liberation War Museum in Dhaka. The first part dealt with the pre-1947 period of the museum. This deals with the post-1947 part

Post-1947

The museum is extremely acerbic about the birth of Pakistan calling it an “artificial” state. The year 1947 is also treated with despair as “British Rule” is replaced with “Pakistan Rule”. 1947 was never an achievement for the Bengali Muslim even at the time. The second partition of Bengal was, as Joya Chatterji shows in her book Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932-1947’ driven mainly by Hindu bhadhralak fears of ‘Muslim rule’ (echoing Urdu-speaking Muslim fears of Hindu Raj in North India)as well as the callous use of Bengal as a bargaining counter by the central Muslim leadership of India. In fact, large parts of the Bengali Muslim leadership including League leaders such as Suhrawardy and Abdul Hashim made a last ditched and, ultimately, futile attempt for a united, independent Bengal just a few months before Partition.

Almost immediately after independence the language question sparked tensions between the two wings. The tension between Bengali and Urdu speaking Muslims had always existed even before 1947 with AK Fazlul Haq leading the Bengali charge against the aristocratic Muslim Leaguers who till then had dominated Bengal politics. Post 1947, shorn of a common Hindu “opposition” the incipient tensions between the two sides erupted fiercely.

Ayub’s ‘horrid dream’ (note to journalist: look up the word ‘nightmare’) was in fact once upon a time Jinnah’s pleasant dream. Well, not exactly a ‘dream’ but a Plan B nonetheless. Jinnah was convinced that East Bengal without Calcutta would have been an economic basket case. When it became clear that under no circumstance was Calcutta going to Pakistan, he had extended tacit support to a plan for a “Greater Sovereign Bengal” that Ayub seems to despise.

*slowly shakes head*

Qaamrul Hassan’s demonic depiction of Gen. Yahya Khan with a call to "annihilate" Pakistanis

The British press does its bit

The Bangladeshi version of Unity in Diversity.  The poster reads: “Bengal’s Hindus, Bengal’s Christians, Bengal’s Buddhists, Bengal’s Muslims, We are all Bengalis”

“Help the freedom fighters. They are also your children.”

 “Every vigilant, Bengal's freedom fighters”

Picture of a statue of Buddha broken by the Pak Army when they entered the Triratna Sharan Buddist Monastry in Naokhali

Picture shows a young woman raped and then killed by the Pakistani Army as she was fleeing to India. As you can see the museum does not shy away from being graphic in order to make a point.

Record sleeve of the famous concert

Human remains from massacres conducted by the Pak army in Mirpur

Newspaper reports victory. The Headline reads “Jai Bengal Jai”. The scratched out word in the title is ‘Pakistan’ replaced now by the word ‘Bangladesh’ cheekily driving home the new political reality.

In spite of the graphic nature of some of the exhibits as well as its attention to detail, the museum seems to have (intentionally?) skipped two major characteristic about the 1971 killings: the selected targeting of Hindus as well as the massacre of Bihari Muslims by Bengalis before the start of Operation Searchlight

“Why kill him? I asked with mounting concern.

“Because he might be a Hindu or he might be a rebel, perhaps a student or an Awami Leaguer. They know we are sorting them out and they betray themselves by running.”

“But why are you killing them? And why pick on the Hindus?” I persisted. 

“Must I remind you, Rathore said severely, how they have tried to destroy Pakistan? Now under the cover of the fighting we have an excellent opportunity of finishing them off."

This is a conversation between Anthony Mascarenhas and a Pakistani Army officer, published in the former's path breaking Sunday Times article on Operation Searchlight. As Mascarenhas has noted, targeting Hindus was official policy for the Pakistan Army in 1971. Numerous massacres—Madhyapara, Burunga, Shankharipara, Jathibhangam and Chuknagara, just to name a few—were primarily targeted at Hindus and while exact numbers are difficult to come across, there is no doubt that Bengali Hindus were murdered proportionally in far greater numbers than other Bengalis. Shockingly, the museum does not even touch upon this fact preferring to let this great crime by the Pakistan Army go unreported.

The other great crime which 1971 ignores is the killing of Bihari Muslims before Operation Searchlight began. But then again, given that this is an official narrative you’d have to be a bit of a demented Pollyanna to expect this to have been there in the first place.

I ended my tour of the Museum by entering the souvenir shop and buying a poster of Ginsberg’s haunting September on Jessore Road written when he visited a Bangladeshi refugee camp in Calcutta. Can’t think of better way to end this article than by quoting a few lines from what he saw and felt:

Millions of babies in pain
Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children nowhere to go

Reliving 1971 (Part I of II)

A common observation made by articles in the Indian media about Shahbagh is the participation of the youth. While commending the trend, most articles can’t but let a note of surprise creep into their narratives: Why is a 20-year old so passionate about an event that happened 20 years before he was even born? There are two complementary answers to this question. One is that Shahbagh is as much about Bangladesh today as it is about 1971. The other is that, for Bangladesh, 1971 is not the past—1971 is a living thing for Bangladesh; an incident so seminal that it still serves to define the nation. Of course, freedom is a big deal for any nation. But in conversations with Bangladeshis you realise that 1971 isn’t an ordinary sort of freedom. It’s not a banal transfer of power. For the average Bangladeshi, 1971 is almost like the beginning of History. Talking to people in Government, industry development professionals, even rickshaw-wallas, you just can’t not hear the phrase, “Since 1971...”. It’s almost as if pre-1971, Bangladesh didn’t even exist or even if it did, it existed in such a dark state, a period of Jaahiliaa if you will, that talking about it isn’t even necessary or is to be avoided at any rate. All progress, all development, all that’s good, begins after 1971.

Bangladesh’s progress since 1971 though is nothing to sneeze at. In 1947, the region was so poor that Jinnah was convinced that by foisting this region (minus Calcutta) on him, the Congress and Mountbatten were out to sabotage his country right from the start. Today Bangladesh has overtaken India in terms of a wide range of basic social indicators: life expectancy, child survival, fertility rates and immunisation rates [see table].

Progress or no progress, ideologies such as Shahbagh aren’t made in a vacuum. Like all narratives there is an act of building them up, of creation. Since the word ‘narrative’ often carries pejorative connotation of untruth let me hasten to add that that I do not mean to criticise when I say this. It’s just that mass narratives and ideologies, “good” or “bad” need to be buttressed by propaganda. It was to understand the nature of this propaganda that one Friday morning (a holiday in Bangladesh after it switched from the Christian to the Muslim Sabbath sometime in the 80s) I decided to head to Bangladesh’s Liberation War Museum or, to use the far more impactful Bengali name, the Mukti Jodha Jadughar (Freedom Fighter’s Museum)

Dhaka is not an unpleasant city at first glance. In fact by South Asian standards, the city is rather neat and clean and some of the posher areas such as Gulshan are quite pleasant. Looks, though, can be deceptive. Like all South Asian cities Dhaka hates its citizens and its primary mode of attack is traffic. Traffic in Dhaka is debilitating, bone crushing , spirit sapping. My hotel and the War Museum were separated by only 10 kilometres but on a weekday this might take almost 2 hours to cover. On the blessed day of Jumma, though, even Dhaka makes way for those who wish to travel. My CNG (what Dhakais call auto rickshaws) had me reach the museum in 15 minutes flat.

The museum is unobtrusive in the extreme and looks just like a large house. Even more incongruously it’s situated far away from the main road inside a warren of lanes. The ticket counter was manned by a sleepy woman and was deserted. I stepped up and said, “One” (in Bengali) raising up my index finger to rule out any confusion as to the number of passes I wanted. Lulled by skin colour as well as language and unable to latch onto my Kolkata accent due to my accidental brevity, she issued me a Taka 5 pass meant for Bangladeshis. The pass for foreigners is worth considerably more which makes kind of makes sense. I guess if you’ve taken the trouble to be a part of freedom movement, the least you could expect is a discount when you go to visit the museum of the movement.

Pre-1947

The first gallery starts off with ancient and medieval Bengal. Odd, you might think given that this is a museum about 1971. The purpose of this gallery though is to show that the region of Bengal was the bestest most tolerant place ever. Was, that is, till the British and then the Pakistanis came in. Most of the gallery deals with Bengal’s rich Buddhist past. A bit ironic given its treatment of the Chakma and other minorities post 1971.

Sharee woven with yarn spun on  a charkha during the Non-Cooperation Movement

The colonial period follows next with much breast beating over Plassey and Mir Jaffer. This it does, somewhat lazily, using a British painting by Francis Hayman which was once hung up in Vauxhall Gardens to massage British pride. The good thing about this section is that, unlike state history in Pakistan, Hindus are given their place in the freedom movement. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Khudiram Bose, Leela and Anil Roy, Bose, they’re all there with liberal mentions of Congress-led movement such as Non-Cooperation as well as the Civil Disobedience movement. The most striking display in this section though deals with the 1905 Bengal Partition.  Here’s what the museum has to say:

“In 1905, Lord Curzon divided Bengal in to two parts creating a wedge between Hindus and Muslims in the national struggle. The protest against partition of Bengal provides impetus to the national struggle. The Muslim elite led the movement in support of Partition” (emphasis mine)

This could have been taken out of my class 10 board text book, it’s that close to the official Indian take on it. In contrast this is what the website Story of Pakistan has to say about 1905:

“The Muslims of India welcomed the partition of Bengal, but the Hindu community strongly opposed it. They launched a mass movement, declaring October 16 as a day of mourning in Calcutta. Influenced by the Chinese boycott of American goods, the Hindus started the Swadeshi Movement against the British. In the meantime, the Hindus raised the Band-i-Mataram (sic) as the national cry protecting worship of Shivaji as a national hero. This organized anarchist movement took a terrorist turn resulting in political sabotage and communal riots.”

The biggest departure from Pakistani historiography though comes in the actual depiction of Partition. In nationalist Pakistani historiography, Partition is treated as an achievement; a grim achievement given the violence but an achievement nonetheless. Hardly surprising given that it resulted in the nation’s birth. You could argue that Partition has also, even if incidentally given rise to Bangladesh. It was only Partition which allowed for 1971. The Museum though takes a less than sanguine view on Partition. Here’s what it has to say:

Even for the Lahore Resolution, the Museum pretty much ignores all parts of the document other than the part that promised Federalism for the new state echoing the first of Mujib’s Six Points: “The constitution should provide for a Federation of Pakistan in its true sense based on the Lahore Resolution....”.

In a departure from both Indian and Pakistani mainstream history, the museum all but ignores Jinnah as well as his Two-Nation theory. No mention is made of those two even when discussing the Lahore Resolution.  The is oddly enough apt given the fact that Jinnah was, by and large, a bystander when it came to Muslim politics in Bengal. In fact the relations between Bengal tallest pre-partition Muslim leader, Fazul Huq and Jinnah were, if anything, strained. Just a year after the Lahore Resolution, Huq (who moved the Resolution) broke with Jinnah accusing him of placing the interests of the Muslims in the minority provinces (such as UP) over that of the Muslims of Bengal. Such was the depth of the split that in 1941, Huq decided to form a coalition with the Hindu Mahasabha in Bengal (with Shayma Prasad Mukherjee as Finance Minister) with the League sitting in the opposition.

[End of part 1 of this post. Part 2 of this post, dealing with the post-1947 section of the Museum, can be found here]

Dilli Dilwalon Ki

What explains Delhi’s neurosis? Let’s face it, what happened on that bus is just a reflection of the city’s social structure. Discussions around laws and punishments and all that are great but if anybody thinks those rapists on the bus rationally considered what they did (“Sirf saath saal ki saza hai, rape kartein hai” vs “Oye, yeh sab mat kar. Capital punishment hai. Inko next stop par utaar dete hai”) they are deluded.

Anybody who’s been in Delhi for even a little while knows how it treats its women. And it’s not just confined to its women: Delhi is angry towards everyone. It’s an angry, rude city teetering on the brink. And this behavior cuts across classes. The same rage that drove those people (poor, Hindi medium types to gang rape and torture the woman saw a Jet Airways pilot (rich, English-medium type) purposely run over a restaurant manager in the middle of Khan Market, last year.

 Historically, Delhi hasn’t been a city so much as large cantonment. Francois Bernier, Aurangzeb’s French physician recorded that when the Mughal emperor moved out from Delhi, the city’s population reduced to a quarter of its original. So much so that Urdu—meaning cantonment in Farsi—was used as a metonym for Delhi, a fact that eventually gave the language its name—the language of Delhi. . Rana Dasgupta says, in his Granta essay on Delhi, “Delhi is a city of traumas”. Nadir Shah, 1857, Partition, 1984, historically, Delhi is used to violence like perhaps no other Indian city.

Of course to connect today’s Delhi to any sort of historical Delhi might be a mistake. Or rather, using the plural “traumas” is a mistake. Delhi is a city of one trauma: Partition. Maybe a large part of Delhi’s neurosis stems from the fact that almost all of its population has, at best, spent one and a half generations in the city. The history of Delhi might be a 1,000 years old but the history of Delhi-ites is only 66 years old. It’s unfair that Bombay is called a city of immigrants—Delhi is. Also, people migrated to Bombay for money. It was a leisurely migration. You boarded a train, disembarked and then started your job. You maybe still had family back in the village who then gradually moved as well and you became a Bambayya family. Delhi’s, on the other hand, was an instant wholesale migration under the threat of death. Within months, the entire population of Delhi had been changed. Could this have somehow seared itself into Delhi’s consciousness? Could the violent uprooting have engendered a violent society?

What about Delhi’s disconnectedness? Delhi is unique as an Indian city in as much large swathes of the city have no slums. Go to a Calcutta or a Bombay and the slums and five-star hotels rub up against each other. Not so in Delhi. This of course does not mean Delhi does not have slums. The city has managed to preserve its colonial character in as much there is a sharp spatial distribution of population by class. The slums are there is East Delhi neatly hidden away from the South and West Delhi-ites. That’s where the drivers and maalis live. This disconnectedness married to Delhi’s rootlessness makes for an explosive cocktail.

Maybe these factors, at some subconscious level, make every man in Delhi feel he can randomly comment on a girl's breasts, mow down a pedestrian or just be plain rude to the next guy who asks him road directions. Or maybe not. Delhi does certainly have a problem. That much is easy to see. Finding out why it has the problem: not so easy.