Meghna Jayanth's Blog, page 7

"It’s good to have a few rocks in your heart—they echo soundsWhen every walking trail is..."

“It’s good to have a few rocks in your heart—they echo sounds

When every walking trail is treacherous, I can arrange the rocks one after another

And go all the way to the distant door of autumn’s pale stars for a look

At the naked use of poetry, of waves, of Kumortuli’s idols in gaudy, sequined, embroidered costumes.”

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Shakti Chattopadhyay in Caravan Magazine

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/poetry/five-poems-0#sthash.wEW4vn6G.dpuf

"“The Preacher” centers on Yusef, an ambitious sheikh whose television preaching has brought him..."

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“The Preacher” centers on Yusef, an ambitious sheikh whose television preaching has brought him wealth, fame, and a tastefully decorated villa that he shares with his extended family. But mutinies are brewing amid the muted lighting and sectional sofas. In the series première, his brother-in-law Hassan, who is also a preacher, begins to question Yusef’s strict interpretation of the Koran; at a family dinner, Yusef lashes out at his younger sister Marwa for bringing home a birthday cake (Muslims should celebrate only religious holidays, he tells her). In episode three, Yusef rejects the young man Marwa wants to marry because he’s an actor (haram); in episode five, he discovers that another younger sister is secretly playing the violin (haram, again), and smashes the instrument to pieces.

Television preachers started appearing in Egypt a decade ago, helped by a rising conservatism and the proliferation of private satellite channels. Clerics have traditionally gained followers through their knowledge of the Koran, but the new televangelists attracted people with their accessibility, charisma, or religious fervor. One Salafi sheikh has called for the destruction of Egyptian antiquities; several have accused famous actresses of promoting immorality. The clash between art and extremism culminated in the spring with a sit-in against the appointment of an Islamist culture minister. People accused the Muslim Brotherhood of hijacking the country—and destroying their vision of a cosmopolitan, tolerant Egypt.

“I started feeling that this was a very important time for our country: we will either advance, or we will go backward five hundred years,” Medhat el-Adl, who wrote the script for “The Preacher,” told me. “We felt this was the right time to speak.”

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- Egypt’s Soap-Opera Islamists, NYT

"In India, ambitious intellectuals have likewise wished to learn a foreign tongue to advance their..."

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In India, ambitious intellectuals have likewise wished to learn a foreign tongue to advance their scholarship and their career. This has almost always been English—once the language of the colonial rulers, now the language of the global marketplace. The spread of English among the intelligentsia has been extremely rapid, so much so that many Indian writers and professors are now more comfortable in that language than in their own mother tongue. Even so, bilingualism and multilingualism are ubiquitous in India—particularly in towns and cities. Telugu and Tamil speakers are a large presence in Bangalore, in theory the capital of a Kannada-speaking state. Gujarati and Hindi speakers each number in their millions in Mumbai. Most Indians are entirely adjusted to, and comfortable with, their fellow citizens speaking, reading, or writing Indian languages other than their own.

For all the homogenising impulses generated by globalisation, this still seems to be a genuine point of difference between China and India. In theory and more so in practice, we remain a linguistically plural society and state.

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A Nehruvian in China by Ramachandra Guha

Completely fascinating article about diversity and pluralism - diversity is a social condition, pluralism is a political programme. China and India are both diverse, but China is not a plural society. A sociological perspective on confluences and contrasts between these two vast Asian states - and a good reminder that pluralism is not something that just happens, but the result of constant efforts by individuals and organisations that must be maintained and tended.

FUCK YEAH SOUTH ASIA!: a krishna menon story

FUCK YEAH SOUTH ASIA!: a krishna menon story:

joethought:

VK Krishna Menon, Nehru’s close friend and ally, was India’s representative to the United Nations from 1952 - 1960. Known for his outspokenness and unapologetic championing of India all through the world, Krishna Menon was referred to by various names by the media in the…

"The peddlers and the maritime workers were coming to the U.S. when the immigration laws were closing..."

“The peddlers and the maritime workers were coming to the U.S. when the immigration laws were closing in on them. The U.S. passed a series of racist laws that basically said if you were Asian you couldn’t enter the U.S. like other immigrants and you weren’t fit to become U.S. citizens. On top of that, the peddlers were going into the heart of the south when segregation laws were being imposed, and in a period that had the highest rates of lynching of black men in U.S. history. They survived by building networks of kin and relying on the help and partnership of others within U.S. communities of color. Other historians have documented the cases of anti-Indian violence that were occurring in this period on the west coast – the riots and driving-out campaigns that targeted Punjabi laborers in California and the Pacific Northwest. With the peddlers I looked at, who were moving through the Jim Crow south, they were facing much more individual levels of threat.”

- Interview with Vivek Bald, author of Bengali Harlem in the WSJ - so interesting to trace these erased immigrations, that of Bengali peddlers and sailors and maritime workers to the US - often with immigrants intermarrying into other communities of colour, and having to navigate segregation & Jim Crow. Contrast this great N+1 article on White Indians and the desi lack of solidarity with other peoples of colour and deracination, especially in the US today. The erasure of certain types of immigrations and immigrants has far-reaching effects.