The Princess of Travancore and The English Tongue

Three thousand kilometres southwest of Dalhousie Hilltop School, at the opposite end of the country, I discovered that in some families in India, the English language had been taught for over 200 years, for political reasons, almost as a matter of necessity. Inside the old royal family of Travancore, Her Highness Princess Pooyam Thirunal Gouri Parvathi Bayi had grown up hearing English spoken around her all the time. Consequently, when she began to learn it formally, it was almost effortless, as natural as paying obeisance to Lord Padmanabha, a representation of the supreme deity Vishnu.

Every member of the royal family of the erstwhile Travancore kingdom was a dasa, a slave, to the god with the rare ‘right-turning’ conch. Even when Princess Gouri Parvathi Bayi travelled to other parts of the world, reminders of home popped up, in the most unexpected places. On a visit to the Isle of Wight, she had just entered the Durbar Room in the Osborne House where Queen Victoria had breathed her last when the princess felt that something in that place was calling out to her. Sure enough, among the displays was a gift to the queen from her family—an ivory carving of Lord Padmanabha.

Likewise, on another visit to the Windsor Castle, she noticed a throne among the exhibits, and told her friend that there was something about it that spoke to her. They walked around to the back of the chair and, there, engraved on it was the emblem of the Travancore royal family, Lord Padmanabha’s conch. When she went back to her palace in the old city of Thiruvananthapuram, the princess discovered that in 1851 the throne had in fact been gifted by her ancestor, the Travancore maharaja, to his pen pal Queen Victoria, for the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park.

Book Extract, Books

By Kalpana Mohan

October 3, 2019

Kashmiris In the Hindu Rashtra

Anticipating BJP’s design for Kashmir, Mridu Rai writes about the events in the run up to the Abrogation of Article 370 in the book Majoritarian State which was published in early 2019. Stating that it is perilous for historians to turn soothsayers, she stops short of predicting that this is bound to happen. However, broadly hinting at it she concludes: “In national elections, J & K counts for very little: it sends up only six members to the Indian Parliament. However, by providing the powerful symbols of Islamic terror within the nation that the BJP alone can defeat, Kashmiris will continue to be useful in corralling many of the 540-odd members of the Lok Sabha.”

Kashmir is isolated through various discursive strategies to make it serve both as a dangerous exception threatening the Indian/Hindu body politic but also as a containable menace. A specialty of the Hindu Right—shared in different degrees by other parties—has been the construct of religious differences mapped onto the three sub-regional segments of the state. This becomes the basis for a three-way perspectival division of the state. In this view, Jammu is Hindu, Ladakh Buddhist and Kashmir Muslim.

The BJP has reinterpreted the outcome of the 2014 elections to confirm this understanding. Its majority win there made Hindu Jammu a reality—and ‘the backbone of the nation in the state’—and its routing in the Valley reinforced the paradigm that Kashmir is Muslim and anti-national. But the BJP won no seats in Ladakh either: the Congress won three out of four, an independent Shia candidate taking the last. Yet a supposedly Buddhist Ladakh—Hindutva claims Buddhists as ‘their own’ on the erroneous premise that their religion is merely an offshoot of Hinduism—is automatically assimilable in the rashtra.

Book Extract, Books

By Mridu Rai

September 30, 2019

A Rohingya Speaks: First, They Erased Our Name

We move to New Thatkaybyin, close to where Mum was born. It is on the outskirts of Sittwe, where nearly all the city’s Muslim neighbourhoods, except Minghala, are located. On arrival, I discover that Granny’s so-called abundant ponds in her backyard are actually really small, with just a few fish swimming around, which she sells at the market or occasionally fries up to eat. I soon find out that the house where Mum used to live in Thatkaybyin is now part of Military Training Camp 313, where Rohingya and other prisoners are interrogated and tortured.

The population of Thatkaybyin has been relocated eight miles away to New Thatkaybyin, which is where Granny now lives. The original village was ransacked during Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation, in which every house was searched, and hundreds of villagers, including some of my uncles, cousins, and mother’s friends, were interrogated and arrested, while others were forced to surrender their property or pay fines. Some disappeared, always for the same crime of simply existing.

The authorities make families submit an official list of family members that allows them to monitor the movements of every person in every household as they patrol our neighbourhoods. If a family member fails to return home before curfew, he or she is arrested. If someone disappears, the whole family suffers. We are now registered on Granny’s family list and, every evening, we have to be back in her hut before sunset. They are keeping a close watch on us.

Book Extract, Books, Features, International, Non-Fiction, People, Religion

By Sophie Ansel

September 17, 2019

The Many Incarnations of Kuriyedathu Thatri

More than a century after the sensational excommunication of Kuriyedathu Thatri and a very large number of men whom she allegedly reported to be her paramours shook the aristocracy of the Hindu kingdom of Kochi, the story continues to haunt the imagination of Malayalis. Her story of revenge has invited many interpretations. These interpretations take place in both high literary forums as well as in popular culture.

Lalithambika Antharjanam, one of the earliest women to gain recognition in the field of Malayalam literature, retold Thatri’s story, hailing her as the Goddess of Retribution who struck at the roots of the rot that had beset traditional Malayali Brahmin life. There have been prurient retellings that exploited the pornographic possibilities of the tale, turning it into a series of sexcapades of a cloistered, high-caste woman.

Modernist retellings, which include Madambu Kunhukuttan’s Outcaste, have cast Thatri as the embodiment of cosmic female energy sweeping away the decadence of the Brahmins and preparing the ground for new beginnings, or as the embodiment of aesthetic refinement whose lust was for art, not the male body.

Books, Culture, Features, History, Kerala, Literature, Society

By J Devika

September 11, 2019

The Quest for Truth

There is an old Puranic story about Truth. It seems a brash young warrior sought the hand of a beautiful princess. Her father, the king, thought he was a bit too cocksure and callow. He decreed that the warrior could only marry the princess after he had found Truth.

So the warrior set out into the world on a quest for Truth. He went to temples and monasteries, to mountain tops where sages meditated, to remote forests where ascetics scourged themselves, but nowhere could he find Truth.

Despairing one day and seeking shelter from a thunderstorm, he took refuge in a musty cave. There was an old crone there, a hag with matted hair and warts on her face, the skin hanging loose from her bony limbs, her teeth yellow and rotting, her breath malodorous. But as he spoke to her, with each question she answered, he realized he had come to the end of his journey: she was Truth.

Book Extract, Books, Non-Fiction, Religion

By Shashi Tharoor

August 26, 2019

The Ivory Throne: The book that I had been waiting to read

What would it have been like if, in 1947, the princely state of Travancore, located in present day Kerala, had chosen to remain independent, and Government of India had approved that decision?

The first insignificant thing that comes to my mind is that today many, including myself, would be living in India as expats. But who knows how many of us would have remained Travancoreans, and what such an act of staying outside would have entailed?

In the final months of the British Raj, when most princely states joined the Indian Union, the powerful kingdoms of Travancore, Jammu & Kashmir and Hyderabad were reluctant to follow suit and had to be coerced into joining, just days before the declaration of Independence.

Book Review, Books, Non-Fiction

By Jeena R Papaadi

August 11, 2019

The Flood

Vellapokkathil by Thakazhi Sivsankara Pillai; translated by Santhosh Alex & Edited By Minu Ittyipe

The temple sits in the highest part of the town. There too, the God is immersed in neck-deep water. Water, water everywhere! All the people of the village have gone searching for the shore. If they had a boat, one person would stay back to guard the house. The temple has three rooms on top, where there are 67 children, 356 people and domestic animals like dog, cat, goat, hen et al. All of them are harmoniously together. No quarreling at all.

Chenaparayan had been standing in water a whole day and a whole night as he did not have a boat. It has been three days since his master had fled for his life to a safer place. In the evening, as the water started to enter the hut, he made a platform with coconut-frond and splints. He sat there expecting the water level to recede in a couple of days. If he abandoned the place someone would surely steal the things there.

Books, Fiction, Literature

By Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai

August 6, 2019

The Language of Resistance

Apart from the splendour of its landscape, the beauty of its freshwater lakes and Mughal gardens, its people’s hospitality and its Sufi culture of tolerance and transcendental spirituality, Kashmir is also known for its humour, satire and creativity. Through the years of oppression and suffering, Kashmiris have learned to laugh and poke fun at themselves and their perceived oppressors. In the new culture of resistance, hidden forms of expression are as relevant as the visible forms, displayed through slogans, graffiti, cartoons, music, protests, sit-ins, hunger strikes, candlelight vigils, and even stone pelting. How effective are the different forms of resistance? And what exactly constitutes creative forms of resistance?

As touched upon before, there is a widespread perception among the people that the narratives of India and Pakistan on Kashmir are written from hegemonic positions with monolithic projections that gloss over the realities and complexities of the conflict. These contentious perceptions have induced creative responses and endeavours, which go beyond prose, to investigate and study in order to challenge representations seen as ‘propagandist’ and ‘rhetorical’. That is why Kashmir has witnessed the emergence of new indigenous voices that not only offer fresh perspectives but also give us a sense of how Kashmiris have lived and experienced their conflict.

Cartoonists like Suhail H. Naqshbandi and Mir Suhail Qadri, rap artists like Mohammad Muneem and MC Kash, and musicians like Ali Saffudin are some of those who are employing creative forms to tell Kashmir’s story. Kashmir’s new literature of resistance cannot be brushed aside as merely a literature of propaganda or of protest. Rather, this new culture of writing and documentation offers an outlet to suppressed aspirations and an articulation of collective memories of pain and resilience. Kashmir’s award-winning artist and sculptor, Masood Hussain, came up with an artistic portrayal of the civilian uprising after Burhan Wani’s killing. He told Barkha Dutt on NDTV 24×7, in a programme aired on 18 August 2016, that he remained a silent spectator for a month, but once he saw pellet-hit children lying on hospital beds in distress and pain, something stirred within him. He saw the future of the young steeped in darkness and their dreams crushed.

Book Extract, Books, Culture, Non-Fiction, People, Society

By Gowhar Geelani

August 1, 2019

Book Extract: How Chandra Shekhar joined the Congress

It is important to understand the background of Congress party’s overtures to the progressive and socialist elements in Indian politics. Nehru’s idea of relaunching ‘Congress with socialist characteristics’ did not materialize out of thin air; rather, it was shaped through some fortuitous circumstances and perspectives of certain individuals. The idealism nurtured during the independence movement had brought new vision, vigour, verve and valour to the country in the immediate aftermath of independence. This idea of rejuvenation within politics and society gradually began to fade.

The loss to China in 1962 impacted domestic politics. Nehru was a shattered man. The other Congress leaders realized that they needed to revitalize the party by transforming themselves and the party programmes. Congress seemed like a defunct saviour and Nehru’s aura diminished post the Sino-Indian War. The party was in desperate need of some new vigour and new energy. In this scenario, the Congress party revived its goal of working towards a socialistic society that was adopted in the Avadi session in 1955 and extended an invitation to all those who believed in the socialist ideology to join hands with the Congress.

In the aftermath of the 1962 military debacle at the hands of China, May of 1963 witnessed three of the fiercest critics of Nehru getting elected to the Lok Sabha in the by-polls—Minoo Masani from Rajkot, Acharya Kriplani from Amroha and Dr Ram Manohar Lohia from Farrukhabad. In this backdrop, it was a good strategy for the Congress to attract progressive forces from other political outfits. The coming together of some of the PSP leaders and the Congress party should be studied in this context.

Book Extract, Books, Non-Fiction, Politics

By Harivansh Narayan Singh

July 30, 2019

Chandra Shekhar: The Last Socialist

Chandra Shekhar, India’s last socialist icon, steadfastly held to his political convictions in a career spanning over five decades. As socialist politics metamorphosed into identity politics in the post-Mandal nineties, and gradually degenerated into family-run enterprises, Chandra Shekhar: The Last Icon of Ideological Politics written by Harivansh Narayan Singh (co-authored with Ravi Dutt Bajpai), Chandra Shekhar’s former media adviser and journalist, and now, Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, is a relevant read.

Harivansh Narayan Singh observed Chandra Shekhar from close quarters and this is reflected in some of his minute observations. Apart from his own interactions with the socialist stalwart from 1978, the author has relied on extensive conversations with Om Prakash Srivastava, Chandra Shekhar’s friend of over half century, and Zindagi Kaa Kaarawan, Chandra Shekhar’s biographical sketch (by Ram Bahadur Rai and Suresh Sharma) to write the book. The author’s admiration for Chandra Shekhar is clearly reflected in this biography but it does not dissolve into a hagiography

The seven chapters reveal many hitherto unknown facts and facets of a man who didn’t really get his due in Indian politics. The high point of his career was becoming Prime Minister for seven months but it would be grossly unfair to judge him by that short tenure.

Book Review, Books, National, Non-Fiction, Politics

By Anand Kochukudy

July 29, 2019

The Courtesan, the Mahatma & the Italian Brahmin: An Engaging Read

The Courtesan, the Mahatma & the Italian Brahmin by Manu S Pillai is a rich tapestry of historical essays, myths and legends that have escaped the attention of historians—perhaps because of their ordinariness or, as is often the case with history, the nuanced characters not being on the winning side of the narrative. But the protagonists are anything but ordinary. The 60-odd essays delight us at every turn of the page as they speak of extraordinary lives that shaped the destiny of modern India with all its paradoxes.

Divided into three parts—Before the Raj, Stories from the Raj and an afterword, the book has been carefully curated from the author’s own columns in the Mint Lounge and other publications. You encounter an eclectic potpourri of characters—from an Italian Brahmin to the three-breasted deity Meenakshi, the warrior Princess; a Muslim deity in a Hindu temple; the Courtesan who became a princess; and others, blurring lines between myths, legends and facts that persisted in medieval India.

These stories are vital, not just enabling us to see glimpses of a past that have eluded us, but also to understand how we have emerged as a nation, caught between religious, caste and gender conflicts. As the author himself reiterates in the introduction:

Book Review, Books

By Husna Mohammad