Tag: Politics

A promo still from the film Uri, 2019. Once upon a time in Hollywood, socially conscious cinema would be frowned upon. It was a standing joke in Hollywood that a studio-era executive, on hearing a sober, earnest script with deep substance would swoop down on the table and say: “if you want to send a message, use Western Union.” (Westwell 2013). While the humour drives home the apathy, it also draws attention to the nature of cinema itself. Cinema…

Biplab Sarkar, Be Waiting. Watercolor and pen on paper, 2019. Shot by the author at the Art Fair, Delhi, 2020. (co-authored with Rajendran Narayanan) The prime minister has taught people to measure their state exclusively against others’ miseries, tricking them into forgiving his many sins – from demonetisation to jobs to Swachh Bharat. There’s an old folktale that goes like this: to redeem his ills, a man prayed hard and long. His prayers bore fruit when god appeared and granted…

A painting titled Typewriter, 2019. (co-authored with Rajendran Narayanan) In spite of his so-called popularity, Modi has never been the Prime Minister of India. And now, he is not even pretending to be one. A senior functionary of Boston Consulting Group India, Janmejaya Sinha, wrote a piece in the Indian Express last month extolling the virtues of Narendra Modi as a political leader. He has wallowed in Modi’s capacity to lead, to take strong decisions and to instil confidence in the citizenry.

A painting by Laluprasad Shaw It would be wrong to say that the BJP is taking the Left’s place in Bengal. (co-authored with Anirban Biswas) Jayanta Ghosal’s article ‘Among the believers in Bengal’ (IE, March 26) is so full of cocky generalisations and mistaken observations that it needs a riposte. To begin with, his argument bestows a monolithic identity on the “Bengali”, while using bhadrolok and “Bengali” as interchangeable nomenclature. To remind that within the overarching umbrella of the linguistic…

Pandora’s Vox What if the EVM could approximate voter behaviour? Your cheeky editorial about the speaking, pontificating, buttoned-up voting machine (‘I, EVM,’ IE December 12) gets it mostly right except that one, nagging doubt: If the EVM can be spoken on behalf of, can it not be thought-controlled too? The editorial claims that the EVM is, after all, the messenger of people’s will and not the will itself. Is it? What if, just what if, the EVM has grown a…

Red deluged. Photo by author. In Bengal, the party turned institutions into fiefdoms, just like the RSS now wants to make JNU and the government bureaucracy its own.  There is no reason to mourn the death of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). One did hear such laments after the Tripura results came last week. Some on social media and in newspaper columns asked the CPI(M) to introspect. They urged the party to ‘emerge again’ as the chief custodian of…

Durga as a homeless mother. Painting by Bikash Bhattacharjee Durga Pujo was never overtly religious. Moreover, the contempt of orthodoxy is a sacred responsibility of the secular public. The controversy regarding an advertisement in local dailies in West Bengal by the popular salon chain Jawed Habib has attracted some attention. The advertisement shows the retinue of Durga, her children and their vahanas visiting a Jawed Habib parlour to get decked up for their visit to the earthly domains. The illustration…

Photo Sumit Chakraborty on Unsplash Modi’s India is a faith-based economy where all the apparent democratic means –principles of liberty, free speech and equality –are bartered for an autonomous institutionalisation of vacuous moralism. The eye-popping misogyny and vicious violence from the followers of the faith-based economic empire run by Gurmeet Singh at his Dera Sacha Sauda carries one strong lesson. It should draw our attention to the idea of what faith- divorced from logic, objectivity and accountability – can do to its…

People walking past destroyed furniture caused by riots on Wellesly St in Calcutta, 1946. Archival image. The BJP has long had its eye on West Bengal, because without it, its idea of a Hindu Rashtra cannot fully be realised. The political locus of Bengal is rapidly shifting. In early April this year, the BJP used Ram Navami – an obscure festival in the local calendar – to flaunt a toxic brand of Hindutva, arming the children and youth with swords…

As I write this review, India is in the middle of another proxy war, televised hate speech is deified as prime-time journalism and a cynical public is deeply divided and communalised. In such times, an anthology that ennobles the opposite of these ailments is a surprising, but welcome, infringement. It is difficult to imagine a time when politicians were also statesmen, read widely and debated vigorously, when they agreed to disagree with civility and yet partook in an…