a change is just around the corner

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Works and Curations

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Secularism, India and Commonsense.


Posters for Anand Pathwardhan's Film, Ram Ke Naam

This is clearly not a research paper...so it has not been footnoted and referenced- but at the same time i would be happy to share references if you ask me to....
Uploading a combined version of two emails i sent to a friend during the election period answering some questions about religion, othering and secularism. Many conversations i overheard after the 16th of May made me want to share this...the mails are un edited.  


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I have seen my Muslim friends in Gujarat become more communal in their thinking ...and slowly very narrow minded communal...how it happened...how did my friends end up staying in large urban ghettos....and listing to hardcore Saudi Arabian version of fundamentalist Islam. 
India had been ruled by Muslim kings and since a child i was taught that even though some of them were 'great' but they destroyed Hindu temples and cultures...this was the commonsense we all grew up with...these stories then were strengthened through our history books as facts. 
as i grew up and started studying history i realized that all these 'facts' were completely fabricated....and the fabrication was not done through lies but by telling one part of the story.....and that fabrication was also made possible by us not asking too many question. 




During my studies i learnt few things that completely changed my understanding of Hindu Muslim history
  1. If one looks at history till the coming of British more Buddhist and Hindu temples have been destroyed by insiders (Hindus and Dalits) then the destruction done by Muslims. Large temples were looked at as storehouse of wealth and the pride of the king...so as a principle kings who own battles plundered temples or monasteries....or sometimes after the death of the king or after he becomes weak Dalits have plundered Hindu temples in acts of militant political resistance against the Bramhins. 
  2. What we know and celebrate as the Indian Hindu culture today is a result of direct patronage by Muslim kings...from Tulsidas's Ramayana and the Hanuman Chalisa to nearly all the books and music we cherish has developed after 1100 AD in Muslim ruled North India, often under the direct patronage of Muslim kings...almost all the support of translating Sanskrit verses to Bengali Guajarati, Hindi and Urdu...and publishing them as books happned under Muslim patronage.  The spread of Jainism in India was made possible by Akbar. We just read one line in history books that Akbar was a patron of Jainism...but we are never told to what degree he supported the religion. Akbar was the first king to have a 'all India' ban on animal slaughter on the birth anniversary of Tirthankaras. One year one such anniversary fell on bakri id...Akbar ruled that law was law and so no animal sacrifices would happen.The Muslim were so angry that there were riots!!!
  3. More than 50% soldiers of Prithwiraj chahan's army were Muslims and more than 70% soldiers of the invading Mulsim king’s army was Hindu...Babar was invited into India by Hindu kings. Could never understand why our so called neutral school history books hide these stories and by doing that they do they make it sound communal?
  4. it was the eurpeans not hindus who had a historic problem with the muslims..and for 400 years before coming to india, these europeans have been fighting muslims in the middle east (israle, palestine turkey iran iraq ) in the long war known as Crusades. when they came into india they came in with the cultural baggage and started supporting hindus against muslims. 
  5. when the british came in the muslims were the strongest political class..this along with the crusades lead to Britishers framing policies that went against the muslims...and also they actively recruited more hindus to work under them....western education became the norm to get jobs and in school all the kids read books written by the british...slowly generations of hindus and muslims grew up looking at each other increasingly in a communal manner. since the mainsteam history was only one sided, the muslims began slowly  to belive the history told by the mosque to be their true history. the hidus were very comfortable with the history the britishers taught them...it gave them a sense of victimhood...and made them feel that now 'your time has come to rise and shine' . 
  6. Traditionally islam in india has been resistant to maulabis and mosques and has spread more through sufi saints and dargas..and it is only after independence that slowly this is becoming reverse. 
  7. the partition brought out the worst communal nightmares and since then Pakistan and India were formed. Pakistan declared itself to be Islamic ..India chose to be secular...but the idea of secularism it was learning and practicing was the British idea...with the British gone...and Hindus ruling India again ..we did not rethink how silently carrying on with British polices and history will disturb the culture of secularism...by then our commonsense was so formed ...we had grown up understanding history in such a communal way...so much latent inter community distrust and anger.This inability to inculturise secularism is hurting many post colonial nation states. 
  8. from the 70's on congress stared playing votebank politics they never did anything for the befit of muslims...but they supported all the bad cultures within islam...from propeerty to education to marriage as a nation we went on passing laws pushing the hindus towards being modern and contemporary...but in the game of pleasing them...congress made the muslims completely backward. 
  9. the combined wave of Arab/Pakistani sponsored terrorism and RSS lead saffronistion (the sponsors and producers of both Ramayana and Mahabharata are businessmen with close bjp/rss connection and the ayodha temple movement was a rss master-plan) completely began to sandwich both the hindu and muslim moderate voice...slowly.
  10. the babri masjid controversy fully exposed how even normal middle class educated hindus had become narrow and communal. people easly made up their minds that babri masjid should be destroyed. they completely forgot that that is not how historical corrections are done. that way we will have to vacate our cities cause originally farmers used to stay there and have been sometimes violently displaced. before the babri masjid ramayan mahabhata wave...bjp used to always win 2-10 seats . the wave saw them jump to 82 in one election. it was actually a 80 seat jump just based one one large saffron wave. around this time they quickly judged that one can encash this congress created situation....muslims are unhappy and backward...hindus are not happy thinking congress in doing vote-bank politics and supporting muslims. 
  11. i used to stay in gandhinagar and just outside my house some late nights or early mornings there would be rss meets..apart of singing and exercise...and other stuff...there used to be be a section....what is the state of hindus...and what should hindus do? to my ears it sounded exactly like a hindu version of madrasa history. 
all these lessons gathered and made me realise that for India to be a sustainable culture we have to slowly rethink our commonsense and maybe the first step is by not justifying one position and justifying the others position..slowly creating space for the other to justify your position

i might not show it but i am a deeply patriotic man who is very proud of the culture of our land...love the country like my mother and i can fight with her if i am feeling that she is doing something wrong. 
also feel that we have really opened up a very disturbing window for radical islam to spread in india. 
What i dont like about the bjp is that having seen the crisis created by the congress they do not want to solve or address it...instead they are trying their best to be naughty...to play with the problem and gain by creating more mischief. 

As at the etichical level one can never forgive riots...but a politicaly cornered me, can forgive Modi after the Gujarat riots. every politician is a cold blooded murderer and Modi just encased upon a already communal Gujarat. i have now lived in many cities and it is only in Gujarat and in Bombay that which religion, which caste questions are asked so much. after marring into a Gujarati family even some friends hailing originally from other states went through a change. in bengal bihar assam we always say bengali, bihari, asames..and call call people by their culture...They have now started saying he is a Gujarati and he is a Muslim. ...this othering is increasing in Gujarat ..not going away...and it has become a part of commonsense...so any good politician will use it. 

what i am uncomfortable with the bjp is that the party silently creates and nurtures this commonsense...that little othering is there in all of us...but whether it is played up or played down by the leaders make a lot of difference . 

it has been 12 years since Gujarat riots..it is so easy for me to hold no grouse ... my opposition against Modi since the riots has been more of his development model then of anything else...in this 12 years the quality of government funded health care and education has gone very low in Gujarat...government electricity supply  has not become better at all.Only the privatized networks get little expensive but continuous electricity...Gujarat was already a prosperous state with good roads and hard working businessmen...also he as a style of working which is appealing in a leader...projects himself to be dictatorial  efficient...things that we as a nation need. but that alone is not enough...efficient at doing what is also a question. i first began to have doubts when he began to say that he will implement the Gujarat model in India. 

anyone with little understanding of the country and economics will know that laborer, working class,farmer, businessman ratio is very different in Gujarat compared to any other major state...in Gujarat there is hardly any opposition party.....and the funny part is in a 15-17 posts cabinet modi himself holds all the important portfolios...such style of working will not work. infact i always tell my pro bjp fiends if modi comes to power what will be the ministry!

but that really sent alarm bells ringing that Modi's first decision after being chosen as bjp's PM candidate was to nominate Amit Shah as campaign head of Uttarpradesh! believe me it was his first decision... even if one forgives Modi for 2002 one cannot forgive Amit Shah the chief mastermind. one knew amit shah was been sent to uttarpradesh to polarise it and spread trouble cause without at-least 40 seats from UP there was no hope. Sure enough within a month there was riots in muzaffarabad in western UP a key Bjp target area. 'Google why did modi send amit shah to up'

the last 10 years of the congress has been very bad for the country's middle class and the poor ...Modi is offering no new policies but saying will do same things more efficiently! that itself is also chilling. 

i don't think congress deserves a vote at all...in fact for me it is a slap on my face that congress and bjp are the only options...one party selectively communal another partly compulsively communal...both funded by corporates to further their interests.....looking at Manmohan as a good economist who likes american style pro corporate policies they funded the congress....finding him inefficient they are funding Modi. 

all news papers and tv channels are owned by them !
Map of Early growth of Islamic Kingdoms in India 

and you know how much we don't think!
we were always told that Muslims came from outside...we were also told that they were Mohammed of Ghor and Muhammad of Gazni ....we never even asked where Ghor and Gazni are...both of them are in Afghanistan re...very much a part of pre British north India...Afghanistan was known as Gandhar...in Mahabharata we also have a gandhari (queen from gandhar desh)....so now it seems history of muslim invasion as history books tell us is not invasion at all!..kings from our land only fighting other kings...
we just do not ask basic questions



Monday, May 19, 2014

Conceptualizing FLOW | Thinking through Vibha Galhotra's Artistic Practice.


“FLOW-II” metal beads {ghungroos} on fabric, 48“ x 96”, 2014



This text has been written for Vibha Galhotra's Solo booth Art|Basel Hong Kong|May|15--18


Vibha Galhotra has emerged as one of the most important sculptural abstractionist; developing a language within ‘new genre sculpture’. Over the years her works have carried deep empathy with concerns about public spaces and environment, which have been encoded in large sculptural poetries. As one of the rare artist who makes large scale sculptures and assemblages, and give them a value beyond the ‘Spectacle'*, Galhotra’s works gives us moments of pause and contemplation in the ‘contemporary society of the hyper spectacular’. Matte, monochromatic, darkness, rust come into making a language that has created an alternative to the bling, plasma, and fluorescent dominated contemporary visual culture. 

Galhotra symbolizes the eclectic turn in contemporary understanding of medium and material. Her practice has always resisted being framed by the medium.She works in varied mediums including photography, animation, found object, performance, installation and sculpture. Each material is used for a reason to convey the conceptual thread. Monumental scale and intimate use of material open up ways to go beyond the dystopia of mainstream urbanity and imagine an alternative narrative. For her medium becomes a mean to create and consider different narratives about globalization and growth. Her work has always transgressed the zones between art and citizenship - challenging definitions of art, ecology, economy, science, spirituality and activism.

Abstraction has always been a significant tool for artists seeking to (re) create emptiness (void) in space and time. Philosophically this question of absence and presence has been felt to be one of the biggest challenges for artists. For Galhotra these questions of emptiness, void, pause have been the most important formal challenges. Especially because her work is (also) a medium for her to express deep concerns about public spaces and lived environment along with her emotional connect with nature. Ideology and detachment both become important for Galhotra. This makes Galhotra an artist who transgresses the definitions of narrative and abstraction.

“FLOW is a series of work which started with mapping of the river passing by the city I live in. My intention is to recreate an image by deconstructing the existing image. As mentioned above that the walks around the flowing river which is dead now has been the inspiration for this series of work. I being an observer and documenting the time, layering life with the flowing river. I am creating a organically sewn, aesthetical surface to invite the viewer, to the clean and beautiful facade to talk about the chaos behind.”
Vibha Galhotra



“FLOW” metal beads {ghungroos} on fabric, 84 x 96, 2014


When mighty rivers flow, they carry with them memories of land they flow by as sediments. From being fertile, to being toxic, to healing, these sediments are embedded with markers of the lands and civilizations and their relationship with nature. Flow is a metaphor that works within the zones of temporality and permanence; we attach it to time, water, life and thoughts. Her practice works within the poetry around the aesthetics of flow and the memories of sediments.

The murder of Yamuna by all the toxic waste being pumped in by the city of Delhi was very disturbing for the artist and brought her to the doors of exploring larger questions about relationship between rivers and the civilizations. Emotionally there was a realization that these rivers have been suffocated and poisoned by the great cities that they have nurtured. One can register this as the basic impulse that has lead the artist to explore rivers and work with the markers and memories they carry.

Gallery View-  SEDIMENTS AND THE OTHER UNTITLED..... at Exhibit320


However Galhotra is not interested in lapsing the space between aesthetics and ideology, in fact working with both, yet bypassing both these binaries creates the key value in her artistic practice. Thus we come across a body of works which is deeply (in) vested in citizenship, yet marking the confluence of aesthetics and hermeneutics in an neo-Kantian manner, exploring how narratives and temporality interact and ultimately return to the question of the meaning of being, the self and self-identity.
Flow layers the discourse of Globalisation with Universalism and Neo Kantian Humanism. The rivers and their sediments become reflections of contemporary humanity and the environment that we shape. Yet these reflections are not shiny, they don’t jump out asking you to see them, they open the space for imagination to travel, for the senses to get a break away from the visual culture of contemporary urbanity. Creating metaphors through shapes she fashions space and time for the reflection to come from within.


*“The Society of the Spectacle” by Guy Debord. First published during 1967 in France.