| A four-letter word — book — is hitting the headlines again as politicians in Maharashtra come together to trash James W. Laine's work on Shivaji. But Smitha Verma and Sonia Sarkar argue that banning books — the State's favourite pastime — is a weapon that's losing its edge | ||||||
The poor man didn't know what hit him. India's best loved sardarji was on a visit to Calcutta when he made some candid remarks about Bengal's best loved poet Rabindranath Tagore, turning his nose up a bit at his poetry. The city — with its people — was so incensed that the speaker — a former editor — had to retract his words. Khushwant Singh should have known better. After all, any casual survey would have told him that India has more per capita Holy Cows than any other country. "Every nation or rather community has its own heroes," agrees writer-historian Ramachandra Guha. "But Indians do not allow scrutiny or scholarly inspection of their heroes. There is a deep sense of insecurity about our prominent figures." So Bengalis worship Tagore and Subhas Chandra Bose, who is still believed to be alive at 113 — and will not hear a word against them; southern sentiments zealously guard the memories of leaders such as Annadurai and Periyar; Dalits have Ambedkar. And Maharashtra has Shivaji — something that American scholar James W. Laine knows well, having been at the receiving end of a collective Maharashtrian ire.
The Laine controversy refuses to die out. His book Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India which refers to jokes about Shivaji's parentage, created such a furore after it was published in 2003 that mobs went on the rampage. A ban was imposed on the book, which the Bombay High Court lifted in 2007 — a decision that the Supreme Court endorsed earlier this month. The move provoked Maharashtrian legislators to unite like never before in roundly condemning the book and the author. The state government has said it will not allow the book to be released in the state. And a move is being planned to prosecute authors who "defame" leaders. "We will not allow anyone to malign the image of icons in our state or nation," asserts Shiv Sena spokesperson Anil Desai. "And if Laine comes to India, (Sena supremo) Balasaheb Thackeray will see how to deal with him." What's clear is that a ban on a book, as historian Mushirul Hasan stresses, is usually "politically orchestrated". Not much seems to have changed since The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie was banned by the Centre in 1988. Hasan, the former vice-chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi, spoke out against the ban, and faced a long and violent students' protest.
Twenty-one years later, the campaign against Laine's book dismays Hasan. "It's about time we stopped constructing myths. If the government takes an unprincipled position and encourages myths, there would be no end to such bans. And politically motivated people would continue to exploit primordial sentiments," he says. At any point of time, a book is castigated for "hurting the sentiments" of a certain section of people. Sometimes, it's a party that gets affected. Last year, the Bharatiya Janata Party was embarrassed when one of its stalwarts, Jaswant Singh, wrote a book praising Pakistan founder Jinnah. In June, the Congress spewed venom at a book by Spanish writer Javier Moro. The author said The Red Sari was a fictionalised account of Congress president Sonia Gandhi's life — and had been published in Spanish and Italian. But the Congress was aghast. "The work was completely unauthorised, defamatory and salacious, so we cannot allow the book's release in India," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi reiterated. The party will resist the book's appearance in India, but the publishers are not quite ready to give up the battle yet. "It's in the pipeline," says Pramod Kapoor, publisher, Roli Books. "I don't think the book will have anything that is non-factual or controversial. A copy will be sent to the parties concerned and if anything is highly distorted, we'll look into the matter," he says.
Clearly, for publishers, the banning of books is a double-edged sword. The days before the ban — when there is an outcry surrounding a controversy — is the golden period when the book sells the most, as it happened with Singh's Jinnah: India–Partition–Independence. The book caused tremors for weeks. And while Singh was expelled from the BJP, the sales rocketed. "Publicity coming out of controversy would lead to… more sales," agrees Kapish Mehra, the head of Rupa, which published Singh's book. "But if a book is banned from sales how would any kind of publicity help?" Thomas Abraham, managing director of Hatchette India, stresses that publishers would "conceptually" like to uphold freedom of speech. "But a legal tangle is not the issue. The problem is that in India it can degenerate into extra-legal measures in a flash, leading to vandalism and hooliganism." Still, he stresses, most publishers would rather "publish and be damned" than reject a controversial project.
Yes, despite the continuing hullabaloo over the Shivaji book, most believe that the tendency to ban books can't last long in India. The Internet gives a free platform to disparate views — and even banned books can be ordered at the click of a button. The fact that the BJP has now readmitted Jaswant Singh into its fold testifies that agitations over matters such as books and views don't have public support. Singh, for instance, says he will not disown his book for it's his "baby", while decrying the lack of "creative freedom" in the country. Out in the street, nobody is bothered. "Did banning The Satanic Verses help us in getting rid of terrorism? Or would banning another book resolve the price rise issue," asks Inayatullah Gawai, the managing editor of a news website. "We are not bothered about bygone figures but present day reality." Raju Waghmare, executive director, Shrushti Communications, a Pune public relations firm, agrees. "I really don't understand why Maharashtra politicians are talking about a dead issue. They should move on." And if politicians are still bothered about a book, the best they can do — as Guha advises — is not to read it. "Or else, write a rejoinder," he says. "Better still, publish a book, countering the attacks." States call the shots When it comes to banning books, the states are a step ahead of the Centre. The laws are the same for everybody, but state governments can bring in legislation to introduce more stringent parameters to curb freedom of expression if they wish to. "However, anyone can challenge this legislation on the ground that it restricts one's freedom of speech," says Calcutta High Court lawyer Joymalya Bagchi. Section 95 of the Criminal Code of Procedure (CrPC) gives the government the right to declare some publications "forfeited" if the "publication... appears to the Government to contain any matter the publication of which is punishable". The list of objectionable matter is a long one — and can include anything from spreading communal disharmony to posing a security threat to the nation. Gaga about Gandhi
If there is a man for all seasons, it's a dhoti-clad, toothless gentleman called M.K. Gandhi. More than 62 years after his death, books delving deep into his life continue to flow. And going by these tomes, if Gandhi had a middle name, it was controversy. Yet, in a country where bans and fans go together, Gandhi's family and followers have seldom agitated for proscribing books on Gandhi. On the contrary, members of his family have disclosed aspects of his life that would have rocked the nation had similar facts emerged about the lives of other political leaders. For instance, in the 2007 book Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire, his grandson Rajmohan Gandhi wrote how the Mahatma was "powerfully drawn" to Saraladevi, a niece of Rabindranath Tagore. He had touched on this in his 1995 book The Good Boatman as well. Earlier this year, Jad Adams's Gandhi: Naked Ambition portrayed him as a hard father. Adams also detailed his experiments with sex. The 2004 book Mira and the Mahatma in which writer Sudhir Kakkar fictionalised the relationship between Gandhi and his disciple Madeline Slade (Mira) as a romance didn't greatly trouble Gandhians either. His supporters believe that people feel free about interpreting Gandhi because a lot of what appears now was disclosed by Gandhi himself in his writings. Not surprisingly, while there have been protests about some works, most controversial books have survived without a ban. After all, the man did believe in turning the other cheek. No-no band Some books that got the axe 1 Rangila Rasul by Pandit Chamupati is believed to be the first book to face the wrath of the authorities. The book, banned in 1924, was supposedly an answer from some Hindus to a derogatory pamphlet published by a Muslim 2 Angaray by Sajjad Zaheer was banned in 1936 by the British government which feared it could hurt religious sentiments 3 Nine Hours To Rama, written by Stanley Wolpert, published in 1962, was banned because it pointed fingers at people responsible for security lapses that led to Gandhi's assassination 4 India banned Bertrand Russell's Unarmed Victory published in 1963 because it dealt with the 1962 Sino-India war, which India lost 5 Ram Swarup's Understanding Islam through Hadis, published in 1982, was banned for its critique of political Islam 6 Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim, by Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, was banned in 1987 for highlighting murky political deals 7 Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, was banned for alleged blasphemy against Islam 8 Soft Target: How the Indian Intelligence Service Penetrated Canada, published in 1989, by Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew, was banned for obvious reasons 9 A few Indian states have banned Bangladesh author Taslima Nasreen's Lajja, published in 1993 10 The 1999 book The True Furqan by Al Saffee and Al Mahdee has been prohibited because it supposedly threatens national security 11 Islam – A Concept of Political World Invasion, by R.V. Bhasin, was banned in Maharashtra in 2007 because of fears that it could promote communal disharmony 12 Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence, by Jaswant Singh, was banned in Gujarat, in August 2009. The ban was later overturned by the Gujarat High Court |
A tale of two Roys | ||||
| Just who was Sannyasi Charan Roy? His granddaughter tells Amit Roy that the "poor man's doctor" in England was the eldest brother of Bengal's first chief minister | ||||
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Did Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, West Bengal's iconic chief minister from 1948 until his death in 1962, have a mystery elder brother by the name of Sannyasi Charan Roy in England? The experts in India are adamant he didn't. Back in England, though, a remarkable tale has emerged of how Charan, said to be the eldest of the five Roy siblings, arrived from India in 1900, followed nine years later by his youngest brother, Bidhan. Bidhan returned in 1911 with an FRCS and an MRCP after enrolling at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. But Charan, who also qualified as a doctor but from Edinburgh and settled in Leicester, was nicknamed "Frankie" and married a local English girl called Constance Annie Scott in 1909. He was called "the black doctor" but this changed to "the poor man's doctor" after he overcame racial prejudice with his selfless service to patients in the slums of Leicester. He was killed in a car crash in Leicester in 1935. Charan and Constance had three sons, Philip, Keith and Theo, born in 1910, 1912 and 1915, respectively. Keith, who worked for the Indian Civil Service in India, and Theo, who "did nothing", married — but died without children. Philip, who also married a Leicester girl, Hilda Florence Cannon, worked as technical adviser to the Indian High Commission in London from 1947 until his death in 1971. Philip had two daughters, of whom the elder, Diana Roy, married an American, James Hennen, and has two sons, Jonathan, 29, and Christopher, 25. In notes left for Diana, Hilda said that she had learnt from Philip that "of the two brothers, Bidhan was tall and incredibly handsome, while Charan was of smaller stature." "The Roys in England have died out and as I get older I find myself wanting to impart much more knowledge to my two sons as I am the last link," admits Diana, who was encouraged to talk by The Telegraph. Though brought up as impeccably English, Diana, who is 62 and has battled cancer, explains: "Probably I have the time and space now because of impeding mortality. I guess I am wanting to close a story, square the circle. I could let it be but there are forces beyond my control." But experts back in India have rubbished Diana's detailed account. Whatever Charan was, he wasn't Bidhan's brother, they say. "Bidhan Chandra Roy was born on July 1, 1882, at Bankipur in Patna, the youngest of five children of Prakash Chandra Roy, an excise inspector, and Aghorkamini Devi," the records state. It is less clear whether Bidhan had two brothers and two sisters or three brothers and one sister. One report has even suggested that he was "the fifth boy" born to his parents. Two of the brothers were Subodh and Sadhan — the latter's daughter Renu Roy studied English at Newnham College, Cambridge, married fellow communist Nikhil Chakravartty, and had a son, Sumit, who edits Mainstream which his father had founded. Sumit Chakravartty, who is based in Delhi, hasn't heard of Sannyasi Charan Roy. Neither has Dr B.C. Roy's biographer, Nitish Sengupta, who told The Telegraph: "When I wrote the biography of Dr B.C. Roy, it was known for certain that he had two brothers elder to him — Subodh and Sadhan. All three of them went to England for higher education. Subodh became a barrister, Sadhan an electrical engineer and Bidhan a doctor. They had two sisters. We know for certain that there was no other brother, not to speak of any Sannyasi Charan Roy." Sengupta adds that several other young men stayed at Bidhan's parents' residence and were educated by them. "It is possible that one of them may have been Sannyasi Charan Roy. He was certainly not Bidhan's own brother nor does it seem possible that he could have been cut out by his adopted family back in India for marrying an Englishwoman. Bidhan's parents were much too modern in their outlook." And that ought to be that — except that every bit of information Diana has provided, barring the moot point of whether Charan and Bidhan were brothers, have checked out against official UK census and medical records. "Our archivist can confirm that Bidhan Chandra Roy became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 8 June 1911," The Telegraph learnt from the Royal College of Surgeons. "There is an entry in the Medical Register — Sannyasi Charan Roy at Laurel Villas, East Park Road, Leicester. It states: Date of Registration 26 November 1902 (Scotland) MB, CM, 1902, University of Edinburgh." Pamela Forde, archivist at the Royal College of Physicians, identified listings for Charan in the Medical Directory for 1910 and 1911, while Edinburgh University says Charan gave his Calcutta address as "Garden Retreat". There is a record of Charan's marriage to Constance in 1909; and the 1911 census reveals he was born in India in 1875 and resident in Leicester. Diana's response to having cold water poured on her detailed account is: "It was just a given that my grandfather was the eldest brother of Bidhan. Renu was referred to as the red-hot communist cousin of my father." When Philip and Hilda married in 1947, Bidhan's wedding gift was a silver framed photograph of himself, says Diana. As a schoolgirl, Diana and her parents visited Keith in Mumbai in 1954, 1961 and 1964 but there was no contact with Bidhan in Calcutta. Diana has not been back to India for 46 years but is telling her sons as much as possible about their Indian heritage, starting with Charan Roy's arrival in 1900: "If something happens to me, 'Here's the story, boys.' " A DNA test would establish whether Diana has any relatives in India but maybe this is a case where Sherlock Holmes and Feluda ought to put their heads together. | ||||
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Where have all the children gone? | |||
| Teenagers in the Kashmir Valley are being arrested on charges of rioting or even attempt to murder. Sonia Sarkar turns the spotlight on how many of these children are being illegally detained and abused in police custody | |||
It was the hour before midnight — and the by-lanes of Parimpora, near Srinagar, were cocooned in silence. After a day of protests, Bilal Ahmed (not his real name) and his parents were about to go to bed when the police came knocking. They took away 13-year-old Bilal with them. A month later, the Ahmeds are still waiting for him to come back. "Bilal was not alone. Around 100 teenagers — mostly under 16 — were picked up by the police from Parimpora in June for stone-pelting and raising slogans against security agencies," says advocate G.N. Shaheen, the general secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association and counsel for Bilal and others. They have been booked under several sections of the Indian Penal Code for "rioting and endangering the life or personal safety of others" — offences that can lead to 2-4-year prison terms, says Shaheen. "But worse, they are being charged with attempt to murder which can mean life imprisonment," he adds. More than a month after violence erupted in the Valley — leading to the killings of 15 youths, allegedly by armed forces — thousands of teenagers have been protesting and many have been arrested. "More than 420 children have been either detained or arrested from Srinagar in the first three weeks of the recent unrest. The numbers would be in the thousands all over Kashmir," says Bar Association president Mian Abdul Qayoom. The role of children in Kashmir's insurgency has always been a contentious issue. In the 1990s, intelligence agencies reported that children were paid Rs 50-100 by militant groups across the border to pelt stones and shout slogans. "Some throw stones because it pays well," chief minister Omar Abdullah recently told The Times London. Experts, however, hold that stone-pelting or kaeni jang as it is known in Kashmir, is not a sponsored act. Ever since parts of Kashmir erupted over the 2008 Amarnath land row affair — when the government transferred forest land for setting up shelters for pilgrims going to Amarnath, a Hindu shrine in Kashmir — there have been several incidents of children joining demonstrations. "For us, it is an expression of resistance," says a 17-year-old boy who took part in the latest protests. "Previously, young boys in Kashmir took to guns; now they have resorted to a comparatively less destructive form of protest. Often, we do it on an impulse. But it gives us immense satisfaction to attack the security forces." The chief minister said that there are no "pigeon holes" when it comes to throwing stones. "For some of these youths it's ideological; some have nothing better to do; some are deeply frustrated and cannot see a better future; some are angry because they have not benefited from the economic progress elsewhere in India," he told The Times. With the reasons mounting, the resistance seems to be picking up too. "The lock ups at police stations are overcrowded with young boys these days," says lawyer Parvez Imroz of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies. The police deny the allegations. "We never book children under the IPC or the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA). Nor do we keep children in lock ups," maintains Kashmir's inspector general of police Farooq Ahmad. Lawyers hold that the arrests are happening illegally. "Children under 16 should be booked only under the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act," says Shaheen. But the state doesn't have a JJ Act even 13 years after it was ratified. Last month, the high court directed the state government to set up juvenile courts and homes within three months but the government is yet to take measures. "We need to make some amendments to the existing JJ Act before implementing it. And this will take some time," says social welfare minister Sakina Itoo. Meanwhile, lawyers claim, children are being booked under the non-bailable PSA. Under this, the detainees do not need to be told why they are being arrested and can be re-arrested for the same charge later. "We have come across many such cases," says Syed Faisal Qadri, state co-ordinator of Human Rights Law Network. But the police shrug off the allegations. "Since there is no JJ Act, we detain children for a few hours or for a night before handing them over to their parents. We counsel both children and their parents to stop stone-pelting," Ahmed says. Bilal's counsel refuses to buy that. "If they don't arrest these boys, how are they produced in court and granted bail," asks Shaheen, who last week got bail orders for Bilal and 27 others arrested in Parimpora. Not that bail means freedom. A top counter-intelligence committee releases the accused only after a separate investigation. "Here, judicial orders are null and void," rues Shaheen. The police refuse to comment on individual cases, but local lawyers maintain that children are routinely picked up because it is one way of blunting an agitation. "The detention of a child often instigates fear in the minds of the family," says Qadri. On the other hand, a senior cop, seeking anonymity, says the police have no choice. "For the first 10-15 minutes, we can handle it. Then it becomes too much as the stones start raining on us," he says. So the arrests take place — often leaving scars on the young. "Sometimes the child completely withdraws from the world. He refuses to go to school or play. Or he can turn violent," says Srinagar psychiatrist Dr Arshad Hussain. "Later, as adults, they find it difficult to get a job or even get a passport with such police records," stresses Kashmir expert Angana Chatterji, professor, California Institute of Integral Studies. Dr Husain says arrested children are affected by depression and anxiety attacks. "The child can also take to substance abuse," he warns. For many Kashmiri children, childhood ends just when it's begun. |
On a song and a prayer | ||||||||
| Many mainstream singers are foraying into devotional music. V. Kumara Swamy on what makes the genre stay on top even if the music industry founders | ||||||||
Kunal Ganjawala has been hitting all the right notes. When the popular Hindi singer who made his mark in the film industry with his characteristic voice was asked if he'd like to recite Sanskrit chants set to music for an album, he didn't give the offer a second thought. "I latched on to it," says Ganjawala. The result was Shiva Trance, released last month. It's not just Ganjawala. Mainstream singers are jumping on to the devotional music bandwagon with alacrity. Punjabi pop star Daler Mehndi, composer-singer Shankar Mahadevan and popular Hindi film vocalist Sonu Nigam are all coming up with spiritual albums. And it's not surprising, for that's one category of music with steady sales in the music industry, which has had its share of ups and downs in recent years. "This is one genre that has held its ground even in difficult times. While other genres such as film and pop music have seen a decline in the past, the sales of spiritual albums either remained steady or grew," says Adarsh Gupta, chief operating officer, Times Music. Plunging sales — because of, among other reasons, Internet music downloads and piracy — have badly dented the Rs 700 crore music industry, which is now trying to regain lost ground, growing at a modest rate of 3-4 per cent. The turnover stood at Rs 1,200-1,300 crore before it started to decline, mainly because of piracy, in the late 1990s. "I would say piracy is a Rs 700-1,000 crore market," stresses Savio D'Souza, secretary general of the Indian Music Industry (IMI). But thanks to its niche audience, the devotional music section, said to be worth Rs 70-100 crore, is going strong. And the entry of popular singers has only added to the allure of the genre. "When youngsters browse through our shelves and come across popular singers, they don't mind buying the music," says Mukul Kumar, manager, Planet M music store at Delhi's Select City Walk mall.
Mehndi understands this better than anyone else. When he decided to make a comeback, he did it with a spiritual album called Mere Raam. "People may listen to my bhangra songs a few times and forget them. But that's not the case with devotional songs. If the tunes catch on, they will be popular forever," he says. There was a time when spiritual music was limited to a handful of small labels, and T-Series was the only major player. That changed when the big boys such as Saregama, Music Today and Times Music forayed into the genre at the start of the decade. In fact, looking at the steady revenues spiritual music generated, some companies dumped other genres to concentrate on this. The Chennai-based Kosmik Global Media (formerly Kosmic) is one such company. "We wanted to have a presence in most genres. However, in time, we decided to focus on our core strengths, namely, classical, devotional and spiritual. Our current focus is on increasing the spread of classical and spiritual Indian music in national and international markets," says Rahul Guha, business head, Kosmik Global Media. Kosmik has had top singers such as Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Hariharan, Nigam and Mahadevan on its charts. Companies find the spiritual music category attractive also because it doesn't need to be heavily promoted. According to Mehndi, on an average, a music company spends around Rs 1 crore on promotional activities on albums in other categories. Spiritual music, on the other hand, hardly needs a marketing blitzkrieg. "It's fairly easy to recover costs on devotional albums. They become famous mostly through word of mouth, and sometimes even through ringtones," says Mehndi. That's no surprise, for spiritual music is the most popular category of music outside Hindi film songs. According to IMI's D'Souza, it constitutes 10-12 per cent of all music sales. New film music tops the charts with a 40 per cent market share, followed by old film music with a 20 per cent share. Spiritual music is next, ahead of Hindi pop, regional film music and international music. Apart from the market in India, it's a big draw abroad. "Spiritual, devotional and classical music are quite popular abroad, even among foreigners," states Guha. Music that fuses Indian and Western traditions is particularly in demand. Industry insiders stress that the buyers of this genre are a committed lot, who keep coming back for more. "Unlike Bollywood music, we may not sell in several lakhs, but we have consistent buyers. These are niche audiences who will always be there," asserts Kanchaman Babbar, chief executive officer, Mystica Music, a Delhi-based music company that produces spiritual music. One such committed listener, Dheeraj Kumar — a software engineer based in Boston in the US — scans the Internet daily in search of the latest releases. "I have loads of devotional albums by singers such as Anup Jalota, Jagjit Singh, Lata Mangeshkar and many others, but I like the new experiments in this space, including discourses by famous gurus and the chant of mantras," he says. Indeed, the genre is no longer confined to devotional songs. Music companies that want to stay one step ahead are coming out with albums with chants and discourses by religious and motivational leaders such as Anandmurti Gurumaa, Balaji Tambe and Deepak Chopra. Other innovations include instructional albums that teach meditation and chants that are supposed to lead to health benefits such as lowering high blood pressure and regulating heart rates. There is an album for every occasion — pujas for festivals, ways of achieving nirvana, chants for peace and instructional albums that teach yogic exercises. There are devotional songs to be sung at sunrise, Sufi music, Buddhist chants and other content for spiritual uplift. While film songs can be immensely popular one day and forgotten the next, devotional music aficionados stress that their genre is for ever. "Our people are so religious that they wouldn't mind listening to devotional music at any point of time in the day and on every occasion," says Anup Jalota, who has sung around 1,200 bhajans and cut 200 albums in eight languages. The influx of new singers — Ganjawala et al — only underlines the popularity of the genre, says Jalota, who adds that spiritual music also makes commercial sense. That message seems to have spread across industries. The sale of CDs is not the only source of revenue for music companies that produce devotional albums. One of the biggest revenue earners is the digital downloading of ring tones and caller tunes. "Spiritual music is one of the more popular categories with our mobile customers and it's consumed in many languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, Telugu, Malayalam and Gujarati," says Shireesh Joshi, chief marketing officer, mobile services, Bharti Airtel. "Discourses of spiritual leaders are available in a very small quantity, while shlokas and mantras form a large component of spiritual downloads," Joshi says. According to some estimates, almost 30 per cent of the industry's revenues are earned through the sales of ringtones and caller tunes. Clearly, prayer can not only move mountains — it can also move albums. And, in the process, rake in the moolah. | ||||||||
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Palash Biswas
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