Table of contents for 03 April 2017 in Open Magazine

editor@openmedianetwork.in LETTER OF THE WEEK The Uttar Pradesh elections have validated Prime Minister Modi’s national charisma and appeal (‘More to Moditva’, March 27th, 2017). While many polls predicted the BJP win, the sheer numbers with which it surpassed all other parties was both impressive and a sign of what the electorate is expecting from its leaders. The BSP and SP-Congress combine went wrong by assuming that political tactics and gameplans that had worked five years ago would still be relevant in contemporary times. The young generation has moved beyond petty religious and caste politics to a kind that will assure them a good quality of life and sustained development and encourage their academic and professional dreams. Additionally, the SP had not met any of the promises it had made earlier.…

A DAY AFTER YOGI Adityanath was sworn in as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the world and India celebrated International Day of Happiness, one more instance of the oft-forgotten adage that correlation is not causation. The same day, the United Nations released its fifth World Happiness Report, ranking countries by how happy its people are. India, to put it mildly, did not come out with flying tricolours. Even meaningless let’s-burn-someother- people’s-money UN exercises have a method to it, and so, as per its report, the main factors found to support happiness are ‘caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance.’ Likewise, ‘six of the key variables used to explain happiness differences among countries and through time—income, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on in times of trouble, generosity,…

BECAUSE I HAVE been profoundly immoral all my life, I have had ample opportunity to watch and observe the moral policemen of Kerala over the decades. The first moral policeman in my life was, of course, my late father. Considering his excellence and expertise in this field, I had thought that he was eligible for the post of the DGP. Then, later, with each falling- in-love escapade, I became increasingly worried that there was something wrong with me. The men I was attracted to were extreme moralists who were worse than my father. I realised that my life was doomed to be third-degree torture when it came to morality. Over time I have realised that it is not only my father and other men I knew, but almost 95 per…

HE would become Yogi Adityanath, the successor to Avaidyanath, and be entrusted with leading Guru Gorakshanath. Over two decades later, he has been entrusted with redeeming UP ON THE MORNING OF March 20th, a day after Yogi Adityanath took charge as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, 5 Kalidas Marg, known as 5KD, is getting ready for a puja. Several young priests, accompanied by Pandit Ramanand Tripathi, head priest of the Gorakhnath temple, are here to perform the housewarming rituals and Rudra abhishek. In the afternoon, the Yogi drops in for a quick visit, but there just aren’t enough hours in his day. In two decades of active politics, Adityanath has achieved enough and more to make his opponents inside and outside the BJP envious, and to inspire scores of religious…

AURANGZEB: THE MAN AND THE MYTH Audrey Truschke Penguin Viking 189 Pages | Rs 399 ONCE THE BRITISH had succeeded in crushing the rebellion of 1857, they started a systematic campaign of what has been described as the ‘British Policy of Divide and Rule’. What they unleashed was much more than just a stratagem to create a divide between the followers of two faiths who had by and large lived with each other peacefully for centuries. The colonialists were developing a discourse that stretched beyond the borders of South Asia; they were developing an insidious world-view, the purpose of which was to split the entire world into two perpetually antagonistic belligerents who could never reconcile because of their inherent contradictions. The foundations of this discourse rested on falsehood, distortion, a…

IT COMES AS no surprise that even after being made a minister in Punjab’s Amarinder Singh government, Navjot Singh Sidhu insists on continuing with his comic act on TV. This bolsters his reputation as a maverick unready to follow conventions and norms. Purists might protest that public service is no laughing matter and it requires undivided 24x7 engagement, but the cricketerturned- politician has other ideas. He will change his persona depending on the day of the week. Thus, he would play minister on a couple of days, keep another couple for his constituents in Amritsar who sent him to the Assembly, and then earmark one day for fellow legislators and reserve another for playing a loud prop on Kapil Sharma’s popular comedy show. Wearing different hats on different days of…

IT IS RARE for a Chief Justice of India to suggest an out-of-court settlement of an issue. Yet, that is what Justice J S Khehar did on March 20th when he suggested that the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case be settled amicably by mutual agreement. In his remarks during a hearing, the CJI said “If the parties want me to sit between mediators chosen by both sides for negotiations, I am ready,” adding that if required, the apex court can also choose a principal negotiator for finding a solution. Predictably enough, the reactions to what the CJI said were divided along political lines. The BJP welcomed it while the secular opposition was cold. What Justice Khehar said, however, should be taken in the context of the legal dispute and not in political…

What’s in a handshake? Plenty, actually. After all, are we not told that a handshake makes one of the first impressions? It should be firm but not tight, swift but not limp, and never clammy. And some prudes even advise that the elder—or senior—person should initiate it. Recently the handshake came to the fore when it appeared that US President Donald Trump declined to shake hands with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit to the White House. With Merkel, the custom of shaking hands became especially political for gender reasons. Given all the fuss around the handshake, one can’t help but be grateful for our very own namaste gesture, self-contained as it is, and requiring no reciprocal action. WORD’S WORTH ‘We don’t know where our first impressions come from…

THIS MAN IN power marks the lowest point of Indian democracy. As an embodiment of criminality and immorality, he makes the institutions of a much-battered civil society vulnerable to the perversions and pathologies of the kind of politics he practises: exclusivist and explosive. The fault lines of an exhausted system may have made his ascent inevitable, the range of his hate speeches may have won elections, but the repudiation of this evil is the only course available to us in the fight for the restoration of lost decencies and dignities in politics. India is too precious a place, even if lately corroded by the impurities of popular choices, to be left to the vagaries of mass minds fed on hatred. The size of the victory should not be interpreted as…

TIRUMALA: SACRED FOODS OF GOD Av Ramana Dikshitulu Kota Neelima Lustre Press Roli Books 176 Pages | Rs 695 DOES GOD CONSUME food? This is the question posed by Av Ramana Dikshitulu and Kota Neelima in Tirumala: Sacred Foods of God. The answer is that Lord Venkateshwara, a manifestation of Lord Vishnu in Tirupati, certainly enjoys having at least three multiple course meals a day, and a few snacks in between. Since Av Ramana Dikshitulu is the hereditary head priest, the Archaka of Tirumala, and while awakening the God (suprabhatam), he utters a mysterious collection of shlokas (hymns) to invite Lord Vishnu onto himself so that he will become Vishnu, he, one supposes, should know something about the God’s habits. This is because only Vishnu is eligible to worship Vishnu,…

IT IS A truth universally acknowledged that the BMC is in want of good management. For the uninitiated, those initials once stood for the Bombay Municipal Corporation. But when the Shiv Sena, in its single biggest historical achievement, changed the city’s name to its Marathi original of Mumbai, shouldn’t the initials have changed to MMC? Sometimes those who are not good, can be clever: BMC stayed unaltered, but its full form became Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. It’s by far the richest municipal corporation in the country, with a budget larger than that of some of India’s smaller states. That, of course, can’t be the reason why political parties contest the five-yearly elections so bitterly: the real reason must be that elected corporators really want to serve the interests of the people…

WHO INVENTED ROCK ’n’ roll? It’s one of those big messy debates music historians have been having for decades. Some will cite Jimmy Preston’s Rock the Joint (1949) or Fats Domino’s The Fat wMan (1949), some will point to Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 (1951), some elsewhere. The truth is nobody really knows. There was no Big Bang moment. Its origins are mostly hazy, believed to have come together sometime around the 1940s and 50s. This was when former slaves and their descendants were moving to urban centres, Blacks and Whites living closer than they ever had, emulating each other’s fashion and music. And this coming together, with White musicians taking up Black music, led to a blending of all sorts of musical traditions, from jazz, swing and blues to gospel,…

IT’S AN IMPRESSIVE figure, 400 million, the subscriber base that Vodafone and Idea will boast of once these two telecom companies merge. The deal catapults the combine to India’s top spot, leaving the earlier market leader Airtel about 130 million short, and makes Vodafone the world’s second largest connector of calls after China Mobile, which claims 850 million customers. Size, no doubt, makes business sense. With more than every third Indian mobile number on Vodafone-Idea’s billing roster, just the bragging rights of being No 1 can be exercised to attract customers. And with a wider band of spectrum at its disposal, it could use its airwaves more efficiently to address calldrop disgruntlement. The new entity, in which the UK-based Vodafone will have a 45-per cent stake and the Aditya Birla…

Waiting and Watching Priyanka Chopra hasn’t signed a new Hindi film in months, but the Quantico star has been reading scripts and preparing a wish list of potential projects, it appears. According to the grapevine, PC is waiting until the release of Baywatch in May to decide if her next movie should be in India or back in the US again. One of the projects she’s reportedly zeroed in on is a heroine-driven film with Pink director, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury (aka Tony). Little is known about the film, except for the fact that it’s been written by Pink scribe Ritesh Shah, who especially flew to New York to meet PC to give her a complete narration of the script recently. More than likely she will produce the film under her…