Table of contents for 22 October 2018 in Open Magazine

editor@openmedianetwork.in TIME TO REVISE OLD NORMS The right to equality of all citizens affirmed by our Constitution entails women’s right to worship in religious spaces (‘A Matter of Faith’, October 15th, 2018). The Supreme Court has rightly struck down a rule that barred girls and women from entering the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. All religious spaces must honour this decision. The custom, still prevalent in many communities, that treats menstruating women as impure and keeps them out of kitchens and temples has no scientific basis. Such norms cannot be justified legally either. Mahesh Kumar In a landmark decision on Sabarimala, the Supreme Court has taken a huge step in the direction of social reform and in line with what Ambedkar envisaged as the goal of India’s Constitution. The judges have…

WE DIDN’T NEED the papers to tell us we were being wrung dry by global warming: our bodies told us that, sending us scurrying to turn on fans faster than fast, air-conditioners cooler than cold. October in Mumbai is the worst month: the monsoon has departed and winter has still to set in. But keen observers of weather (that’s all of us) noticed a few things which gave advance warning that all was not well. The monsoon hadn’t gone, as it always does, with its farewell histrionics of thunder and lightning; instead, it had departed quietly and early, as if running away with its tail between its legs. Then came the heat wave: October 5th: 36°C; 6th: 37.2°C; and 7th: 37.8°C. It was the second hottest October day in a…

THE INDIAN COMMUNITY in the US has traditionally been full of Republicans, while in India preferences often swing towards the Democrats (just compare how Indians viewed George Bush and Barack Obama). Much of the NRI affinity for Republicans can be attributed to economics. They are successful professionally, more than the American average, and the Republican party is the one that cuts taxes and supports business. It is too early to say how this affinity has changed in the age of Donald Trump and his unleashing the White-male backlash against migrants. Work-visa regulations have been tightened, which affects Indians, and the general insecurity of a return to racism has unsettled the community. Nikki Haley meanwhile remained the reassuring Indian-American presence in the inner circle around Trump. This week, however, she announced…

Great Lakes Institute of Management, founded in 2004 by Padma Shri Dr. Bala V. Balachandran, is among India’s leading business schools and is consistently ranked among the top 10. Led by exceptional academic faculty, steered by an outstanding advisory council and buoyed by the international collaborations, Great Lakes, within a short span of 13 years, has emerged as a top-ranked business school in India. It offers One Year full time MBA (PGPM) for experienced professionals, Two year MBA (PGDM) with focus on Emerging Markets, Part Time Executive MBA Program, and Weekend Executive MBA Program. Great Lakes has a 27.5 acres LEED Platinum rated green campus in Chennai and 7.2 acre campus in NCR, Gurugram. Great Lakes alumni currently numbering 7,000+, work at world renowned organizations both in India and overseas…

IT’S A REGULAR AFTERNOON ON A FILM LOCATION IN MUMBAI. A MASSIVE SET HAS BEEN erected, over 50 actors are ready in their positions, and everyone is looking up to one man, the director. Except, the director in question is Anurag Kashyap. Just recently, he announced that his company Phantom Films (which he owned with Vikramaditya Motwane, Madhu Mantena and Vikas Bahl) has been dissolved—the outcome of a sexual-assault allegation against his business partner Bahl. Kashyap is visibly distracted this afternoon, his attention flitting between his incessantly ringing phone and the monitor that shows the scene he’s supposed to shoot. “I’m not sure how it’s going to pan out for the next few days, but I’m ready to take anything that comes my way. I’m going to stand up for…

“One of the fundamental things in fighting for Telangana was to fight for self-respect and self-rule, not to prostrate before Chandrababu Naidu”KT RAMA RAO IT minister of state and son of K Chandrasekhar Rao IN 2006, SEPARATIST leader and the founder of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), quit as MP of Karimnagar and a partner of the UPA at the Centre, ending an era of compromise in the long and bloody battle for statehood. His resignation inspired others’, including, unknown to him, that of his son as regional director of sales across the subcontinent for Intrra, a global trade and transport company. “He was very upset when he found out. At the time, there was no way to be sure we would get Telangana and he…

A VACANT BLUE STOOL is stationed on a white-tiled floor marked by a yellow-and-black geometric pattern in front of a red-and-blue curtained backdrop. There is the suggestion of an absent sitter. The framing is generous enough for us to see more than the photograph that would have been taken from a similar angle by a different pair of eyes, one more accustomed to casting a studio glance. This exquisite simplicity is the hallmark of this definitive image taken by Ketaki Sheth in a studio in Manori, a coastal village 50 km from Mumbai. She was possibly surprised by the directness of its unassuming visual language. It set her off into many directions that would eventually converge into Photo Studio, her latest series, currently on display at Photoink, Delhi. For those…

THE LAST ENGLISHMEN: LOVE, WAR AND THE END OF EMPIRE Deborah Baker IN HER LONG essay about life and writing, The Getaway Car, the novelist Ann Patchett observed: ‘Dorothy Allison once told me that she was worried she had only one story to tell, and at that moment I realized I had only one story as well (see: The Magic Mountain—a group of strangers are thrown together...), and that really the work of just about any writer you can think of can be boiled down to one story. The trick then is to learn not to fight it, and to thrive within that thing you feel deeply and care about most of all.’ This is a point that can be easily misunderstood. Patchett herself has accomplished incredible things with her…

Judges are legal experts, not theologians (‘A Matter of Faith’, October 15th, 2018). Yet they have to bear the burden of deciding religious disputes in a diverse society without losing sight of either constitutional morality or the limits of jurisprudence. By its intervention in the Sabarimala dispute, the Supreme Court has entered a domain that largely involves questions related to tradition. While we must appreciate the Court’s noble intentions, we must remember issues of faith cannot be settled by courts or governments. Without accompanying social change, the law might create disaffection and discrimination in new forms. The three branches of the state must encourage the spirit of equality and freedom enshrined in the Constitution without forgetting the many failures we have seen since Independence. Idealism is necessary to push society…

THE BOMBAY HIGH Court recently sent a notice to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry asking for a response to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that shows on internet streaming services must be checked before being put online. The PIL gave the example of Sacred Games as using ‘sexually unpleasant and indecent scenes, which are beyond the permissible limits. It is submitted that, more importance is given to nudity, obscenity and vulgarity than the original plot of the story just to fetch the attention of youth’. The Ministry has to reply by October 31st and it has the potential of censorship of services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hotstar. They have now started showing content made in India for Indian audiences. And thus the question: if movies and Indian TV channels…

Birla Global University (BGU) is a self-financed private unitary university set up by the Birla Academy of Art and Culture. BGU is established under the Birla Global University Odisha Act,2015. With its lush-green campus with state-of-art buildings spread over an area of nearly 30 acres in Gothapatna, Bhubaneswar, BGU offers a wonderfully congenial atmosphere conducive to learning and research. BGU has been established with a goal to be the ideal destination for aspiring achievers in the fields of Management, Economics, Commerce, Law and Communication. With its best-in-class infrastructure and finest of faculty members drawn from academia and industry, BGU, at present has the following Schools : • School of Management offering MBA and BBA (Hons) • School of Social Sciences & Humanities offering M.A. and B.A.in Economics • School of…

MUSLIM WIVES HAVE been finally freed from the Damocles’ sword of Triple Talaq, homosexual men and lesbian women are finally free to express their sexuality without fearing arrest, and adulterers can make the choice to commit such acts without being penalised by the state. On October 3rd, 2018, a 4-1 majority of a Constitution Bench of India’s Supreme Court held that Sabarimala Temple’s practice of barring the entry of women between the ages of 10-50 was unconstitutional. The temple authorities had justified the exclusion of a sub-set of women from the temple as being an ancient custom. Section 3 of the 1965 Kerala Hindu Places of Worship (Authorisation of Entry Act) requires that places of public worship be open to all sections and classes of Hindus, subject to special rules…

Madhubala’s first adult film role was at 14. Made to provide for the extended family by her father ataullah Khan, she was not allowed to marry the love of her life, dilip Kumar, and when permission was finally granted by her father, she was embroiled in a court case where they were pitted against each other Put to work as a child star when she was six by her ambitious father ali bux, Meena KuMari married director Kamal amrohi to escape her father’s clutches only to become amrohi’s prisoner, being forced to return home by 6.30 pm every day and not allowed to have a child Popular child star daisy irani was raped when she was six by the man supposed to be her guardian. she now says her mother’s…

A FORTNIGHT AGO, I was catching up with the news over breakfast when a headline punched me with a vindictiveness almost personal. Coffee abandoned, I plummeted into a gloom that I’ve battled since. It was irrational. The article had nothing to do with me. It was about a man who has been dead for nearly four centuries. Yet the anguish it provoked was unbearable. I told myself this was because it echoed the story of another life I’ve been exploring for 15 years. It was only natural the article should disturb me, but surely, not to this degree? The insult was immediate, close to the bone. It had hurt me. Worse, it might harm others too—7.2 billion others. How could a tale of two dead men possibly do this? How…

LOVING SOMEBODY ELSE’S WIFE IS never easy. There is too much enthusiasm and desire one has to curb. The fear of discovery is exacerbated by the guilt of deception. You can only text at certain times, and you can only meet when your schedules and stars somehow align. With togetherness largely depending on chance, there may be consummation, but often enough, there is little or no culmination. For 158 years, the illicit Indian lover has had to suffer more than just heartache. Not only was he doing something ‘wrong’, he was also doing something criminal. Section 497 made adultery an offence that was punishable by a fine or five years in jail. Only the husband’s ‘consent or connivance’ could protect the lover. Considered the property of her husband, the wife…

A AT 46, CANADIAN premier Justin Trudeau couldn’t quite make the cut when he touched down in India this February for a seven-day visit, thanks to ties of his Liberal Party with Khalistani separatists. Eight months later, it is the turn of a 59-year-old balladeer from Ottawa, Canada, to rock the Indian stage. Going by the 100 million-plus albums Bryan Adams has sold worldwide and his mass popularity across generations in India, maybe he can. His India visit would be the sixth to the country and a part of global ‘The Ultimate Tour’, the 19th concert tour by the Canadian singer in support of his sixth compilation album, Ultimate, which could well be his last. In a recent interview to a TV channel, the soft rock legend said that CDs…

AT LONG LAST, the #MeToo contagion has reached our shores as well. It was a bit late coming, but if it does any good to temper male behaviour, it ought to be welcome. But why be selective? Media and entertainment guys are not the only ones with an excessive libido. Right now, it is open season on a former editor who, on switching roles, finds himself the target of a concerted attack. It’s a bit unfair, of course. Were he to have continued as a powerful editor, one suspects, some of the alleged victims now relating decades-old stories would have thought long and hard before going public. Maybe that explains why none of the in situ media bosses has been dragged into this muck, though one knows of quite a…

THERE IS SOME good news for the Indian economy in an otherwise difficult situation. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has maintained its forecast of 7.3 per cent growth for India in 2018-19 and projected that figure at 7.4 per cent for 2019-20. The country remains one of the fastest growing economies in the world. These numbers come amidst a gloomy global scenario. The IMF has kept its growth forecast for the world at 3.7 per cent in 2018-19 and 2019-20. These figures should be seen against the backdrop of a trade war between the US and China which has the potential to hurt global growth as collateral damage. For countries like India, the dangers are clear. On one hand, the country’s trade performance has been tepid for a while. This…

LIFE Pope Francis has compared getting an abortion to hiring a hit man, using the argument that a human life cannot be taken just to solve a problem. But the reason why many don’t agree with him is that his definition of life itself is suspect. If an undeveloped foetus is life, then so is sperm, and then it could be said that masturbation is the killing of life. Also, you can stretch it even further by saying that lifelong vows of celibacy that Catholic priests take prevent life from coming into being, which is also the taking away of potential lives.…

While most B-Schools take pride in saying that they prepare managers of tomorrow, only a few B-Schools across the country have the vision to create business leaders, who can foresee the disruptive trends and technologies that is changing every business model across every industry. At Great Lakes Institute of Management, where practice precedes preaching, a holistic curriculum helps the students to adapt and ace this business fluidity. With top international accreditations like AMBA and SAQS, Great Lakes is a consistently top ranked B-School in India by leading Business publications including Outlook India as well as by NIRF ( an HRD Ministry initiative) . What sets Great Lakes truly apart is its range of programs that offer specializations in technologies and tools that are expected to dominate the business landscape in…

FOUR YEARS AGO, WHEN THE fashion magazine Vogue came out with a campaign for women’s empowerment, a video it commissioned had Alia Bhatt heading home in a car on a late lonely night. It breaks down and she sees an SUV in the other lane with menacing-looking men in it. The vehicle takes a U-turn towards her. Instead of being frightened, she walks up and asks for help. They get out, shifty-eyed, and try to fix her car. When it doesn’t get repaired, she asks for a ride home, sits cheerily among them and gets dropped home without harm. The video ends with the line ‘Can We Give Her the World that She Believes Exists?’ The director of that video: Vikas Bahl. You could call it poetic irony that the…

IN A 17TH CENTURY ITALIAN painting you can see today’s MeToo movement play out with surprising accuracy. Two women with muscular arms hold down a man. One pins his arms, even as he tries (in vain) to throttle her, while the other slams one fist down on his cheek, and uses a knife to slice his throat. His eyes are rolled back, but open. He knows his assassins. Blood streaks down the sheets. The women look neither scared nor flustered. Instead, their faces are calm, as if this were just another day in the kitchen, decapitating a particularly feisty chicken. To any casual viewer, this is a brutal painting. The women seem unmoved by murder, by the man’s sufferance, by his dying, by his death. But dig a little deeper…

“The process of curating led up to this book. In curating you distil an artist’s work to the most coherent, magic essence”SIDDHARTH DHANVANT SHANGHVI SIDDHARTH DHANVANT Shanghvi’s third offering The Rabbit & The Squirrel (illustrated by Stina Wirsén; Penguin; Rs 399; 48 pages) marks a sharp departure from his two previous novels, The Last Song of Dusk (2004) and The Lost Flamingos of Bombay (2009). The cover features a watercolour-style illustration of a rabbit and a squirrel perched on a giant rock, suggesting a children’s book at first glance. The subtitle—‘A Love Story about Friendship’—sets an equally innocuous tone. But by the time the reader makes it past the second page, she will realise the author has borrowed the condensed structure and simple language of a fable to narrate a…

Back to the Grind The suspense over Deepika Padukone’s next move is finally over. No, wait… next on the cards is definitely shaadi to Ranveer Singh in November, so let’s speak of her next ‘career move’. The actress, who’s only made two films in two years (xXx: Return of Xander Cage and Padmaavat) has signed on to star in Raazi director Meghna Gulzar’s next. Deepika will play real-life acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal in the film, and has revealed that she will produce it too. After her film with Vishal Bhardwaj was shelved some months ago, Deepika reportedly met multiple filmmakers about potential roles. Apparently there was serious talk about a Chaalbaaz remake and a film with Masaan director Neeraj Ghaywan. But it appears that the film with Meghna will…