The Zanjeer on Devdas

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The idea for the present column first came to me after I watched (again) the 1975 Bollywood cult movie, Zanjeer.  As most would know, Zanjeer is the story of the angry-young-man-Amitabh Bachchan who is witness to the traumatic twin murders of his parents which orphans him as a child and how he takes revenge for that in his youth. Zanjeer established the hegemonic genre of “angry young man” films and put Amitabh Bachchan firmly on the road to superstardom. So domninating was this genre that it rapidly led to the eclipse of the romantic hero and forced everyone with “heroic” aspirations in Bollywood to enact “dhishoom – dhishoom” roles. In the post-Zanjeer era of Bollywood, only the angry-young-man character could deliver blockbuster hits. Exceptions like Love Story or Ram Teri Ganga Maili were precisely that – exceptions. Almost all other genres and characters were confined to niche audiences or forced to become supporting characters to the angry young man. Other hero-aspirants quickly learnt the new rules of the game and moulded themselves into similar screen personas.

A brief history of nagging

The nagging wife is the universal villain of married life. From the earliest pages of human history there is perhaps no literature and folk tradition where the character of the nagging wife is not found widely. Along with the sacrificing mother, forsaken lover, tragic hero and evil lord, the nagging wife will be found in all societies and cultures at all times in history. Even in today’s world, irrespective of the differences of race, wealth, religion, culture, language and social reform, the character of the nagging wife is universal. She keeps popping up in jokes, films, songs, novels and other cultural cultural creations.

Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher, is supposed to have had a nagging wife who drove him to spend his time in the city squares and gymnasia, much to the benefit of philosophy. The figure of the nagging wife finds mention in the Bible, (indirectly) in the Quran and is a crucial moment in the story of the Ramayana. She is to be found in renassaince Italy, in medieval England, on the expanding border of America’s “wild west”, in the bedrooms of colonial India and in the sit-coms of post-modern Europe.

The Greatest Genocide in History (Part III): The Way Ahead

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In the past two weeks, this column has tried to understand why is it that China and South Asia (historical India) account for a 92 million out of the 100 million “missing women” of the world. Patriarchy is common to all historical societies yet it is the civilisations of these two regions which have developed this ghastly tradition and not others. While the reasons may be numerous, it seems that there was something common in particular forms of feudal culture which developed in these two civilisations which have promoted this particularly vicious and murderous form of patriarchy.

The Greatest Genocide in History (part II): India, China and Femicide

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Last week this column had spoken about the fact that there are about 100 million women less on this earth than there should be. Women who are “missing” since they are aborted, burnt, starved and neglected to death by families who prefer sons to daughters. This column had also identified the countries of South Asia, East Asia, West Asia and Saharan Africa as the main regions which were missing most of these women. The estimated number of women who are missing are 44 million in China, 39 million in India, 6 million in Pakistan and 3 billion in Bangladesh. This is the single largest genocide in human history. Ever. Some researchers have coined a word for this phenomenon: Femicide, or the killing of the human female because she is female.

The Greatest Genocide in History (Part I)

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It is estimated by historians that about 72 million people were killed during the second World War. Of this number 25 million died in combat, as much as 11 million were killed in the Nazi Holocaust and another 20 million perished in war induced famine. But this is not the single event with the largest killing of human beings in history.

Demographers and economists estimate that today over a 100 million women have been killed globally by societies which prefer sons over daughters.

The Strange Case of Patriarchal Feminism

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Some months ago, during the Lal Masjid standoff in Islamabad, the world was treated to sights of burka-clad women with sticks coming out to impose their version of morality on the city streets as well as to defend the Masjid from the police. In neighbouring Iran, women have been in the security forces and participate in public activities, albeit under segregation from men. Over India, a significant number of women have come out to actively work in the public sphere for militant Hindu nationalist organisations like the Durga Vahini and other such organisations. Similar examples can be found in almost every country of the world where women have become active in the public sphere on an agenda that is conservative and celebrates the traditional roles assigned to women in society.

The Battle of Valentine’s Day

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What is it about Valentine’s Day that gets so many people so riled?

The past decade and more has seen the growing popularity of Valentine’s Day in South Asian countries as a festival of romance, specially for the urban youth. And it has also attracted significant opposition, often violent, from religious groups and conservative opinion which have attacked it for destroying our religion(s) and culture with its Christian, Western and commercial character.

Are men and women equal? Part III (concluded)

 

This column pointed out last week that ideologies and politics which deny the equality of men and women are growing stronger in today’s world despite women having gained unprecedented political rights and social acceptance for public activity.

Are men and women equal? Part II

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(The first part of this article can be seen here)

This column ended last week by arguing that women’s struggle for equality cannot be fought independent of the larger struggle for human equality. Does that imply that an independent women’s movement is not desirable? That it could actually be self-defeating in the longer run? Would celebrating the International Women’s Day (which falls tomorrow) split the unity required to struggle for human emancipation by disconnecting women’s issues from larger concerns?

Women’s Day, Lenin and a riot in Copenhagen

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Newspapers for the past few days have been carrying reports of riots and firefights between anarchist squatters and police in Copenhagen, Denmark over control of a 19th century building now called the Ungdomshuset or “youth house”. It appears that this municipal building was given to young people in the 1970s and since then has been the site for a vibrant “alternative” youth culture in Copenhagen.

The Guardian makes a brief mention of the fact that this building was constructed by the Danish labour movement in the last years of the 19th century and hosted Vladimir Lenin. We’ll come to that later, but what is most interesting, ironic even, for me is that two days before International Women’s Day the building where this idea was first conceived is being pulled down.

Are men and women equal?

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This is perhaps one of the defining questions of the modern world.

Irrespective of the country and culture one lives in, it is next to impossible to negotiate life today without running into this question lurking behind office desks, popping out of the messy bed sheets, and mixing with the food on our plate. How we ask and answer this question marks our politics, paints our ideology, highlights our socio-cultural context as well as gives hints about how we live our private lives.

So I might as well ask and answer this question, even though I can hear Alexander Pope whispering in my ear: “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread”!

Hyderabad Muslims

These three articles were published in April 2003, as a special report on the Muslims of Hyderabad.

World Social Forum, Mumbai, January 2004

The following are my reports from the World Social Forum held in January 2007 in Mumbai published in The Hindu. I was part of the team of journalists from this paper assigned to cover this event.