Modi And His Look Alike On The Global Coronavirus Firmament

Modi And His Look Alike On The Global Coronavirus Firmament

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

A piquant picture of the post pandemic world appeared in the spa town of Lazne Bohdanec east of Prague when Czech police patrol ordered a bevy of committed nudists to “cover up” – with face masks, the new fig leaf. The police penetration of their idyllic parks has caused deep consternation: nudism brought them close to nature, ofcourse, but also helped them tan. The latter objective stands compromised because of the pigmentation difference between the masked and unmasked parts of the body.

The minor turbulence in nudist parks, notwithstanding, the Czech Republic, indeed, countries of Eastern Europe, are feeling a little more satisfied than their West European cousins in the way they have controlled coronavirus. There is intense debate that borders between nations be sealed for longer than was imagined. Balkanization of Europe is therefore in the cards. There is, in Hungary, that looming figure of strongman, Viktor Orban, causing a flutter in libertarian hearts because he accords efficiency, with an iron fist, precedence over freedom. He calls his system “illiberal democracy”. Does Modi’s state also qualify for such a change in name?

It would be disingenuous to hint that our very own Modi takes notes from Orban at dictation speed. There is just a coincidence:

In form and feature, face and limb

I grew so like the Hungarian

That folks went taking me for him

Though I’m a vegetarian

Yes, the manner in which Orban has consolidated power in the guise of fighting coronavirus, bears resemblance. Orban has appropriated emergency powers for good; there is, on the other hand, no “declared” emergency in India. The Prime Minister does not need a formal emergency. His hold on the people is absolute. Can Orban, or any strongman anywhere in the world, bring the nation to its balconies beating pots and pans? Modi created the thousands of years old festival of Diwali lights in his very own image.

There could be some similarity with Orban in the way medics in the battle against coronavirus are being protected. Any interference with epidemiological isolation will attract a six year imprisonment in Hungary. Modi, in his ordinance, has gone one better: there will be seven year jail and Rupees 50,00,000 fine if anti corona doctors are obstructed.

The perverse will say God has blessed Modi with luck. Just when the economy was in a nosedive, came the pandemic, inviting a lockdown which has devastated the economy. The historian, like the godi (lapdog) media, will explain away record unemployment and looming hunger, on the virus.

Ek na shud, do shud, goes the Persian saying, which means: the second has come as if one were not enough. Modi has been gifted with more grist to his mill of communalism.

The international “Markaz” or centre of Tableeghi Jamaat, a Muslim reform moment, headquartered in Nizamuddin, erupted last month with cases of coronavirus. Tableeghis from a dozen or so countries held a seminar on their mission. They are an innocuous group: they do not convert, nor do they preach jehad. But in their appearance they look like the two groups. A world in the grip of post 9/11 Islamophobia must have found the Tableeghis as Godsend sources of information.

One has to fall back on the testimony of Shishir Gupta of Hindustan Times. According to him National Security Adviser Ajit Doval visited the Markaz on March 28, strangely, at 2.00am to meet the Chief of Jamaat, Maulana Saad Khandalwi. The Maulana is since, either missing or in a Saharanpur safe haven.

As a result of this summit all the 6 to 8 floors (only deep insiders have been to the highest floor) of the Markaz have been cleared of devotees. During peak season, the Markaz can accommodate 10,000 devotees. During the conference in early March there were 6,000 Tableeghis in the Markaz.

A question the media has chosen not to ask: which official agency has over the years given permission to the Jamaat to build floors upon floors of structures which are brazenly illegal. Two floors were added in the past two years. This, when the Nizamuddin Police Station shares a wall with the Markaz. Nor does the archeological survey show any interest in recovering Ghayasuddin Balban’s palace, the earliest such building in the area, which the Tableeghis have encroached. It is an interesting aside that the Nizamuddin basti, its social texture, totally divorced from the Tableeghis, has not reported a single case of the virus.

It cannot be denied that infected Tableeghis somewhat stupidly travelled in all directions – Andaman and Nicobar, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Kashmir and so on.

Meanwhile, what is one to make of the BJP leadership accelerating cases under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act – Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumbde, Omar Khalid and Jamia Students associated with the anti CAA agitation which ballooned into the Shaheen Bagh movement. One had somehow, naively maybe, expected a more cooperative post corona atmosphere. A more confrontational one is swimming into ones ken.

All of this is happening at a time when the lockdown is increasingly in bad odour. Experts like Dr. Satyaprakash Muliyil, former Principal, Vellore Medical College, Dr. Mathew Varghese, St. Stephen’s Hospital and Prof. Johan Griesecke, Internationally recognized Swedish expert, have been advocating: “herd immunity” as the preferred option. The theory being that the coronavirus has come to stay, just as dengue and chikungunya have become unfortunate parts of our lives.

What does Modi do now? Does he lift the lockdown and face attending risks? A spike in cases and he will face the flak. If there is a no spike, the decision to have locked down will begin to look like a government-made-economic disaster. In any case, when and how does the lockdown end?

Has Veer Abhimanyu entered the Chakravyuh and there is no Arjun or Krishna to guide him out of it?

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The Calamitous Coronavirus, Caste, Class And Colonialism

The Calamitous Coronavirus, Caste, Class And Colonialism

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

The caravan of the dignified, despairing and the defeated will remain etched on my mind like a Biblical catastrophe, custom made for a Cecil B De Mille extravaganza.

Firaq Gorakhpuri’s couplet is apt:

“Palat rahe hain gharibul watan palatna tha,

woh kucha ru kash e jannat ho ghar hai ghar phir bhi.”

(Those in self exile are returning because they have no choice,

In any case, these alien streets may have promised a paradise, but home is home after all.)

In Firaq’s framework the “exiles” are returning where idyll once was. In the swirl of new economics, they may well be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. But even so, as Garcia Marquez reminds us, “home is where someone of your’s is buried.” That was where the multitudes were headed.

There were always two lockdowns: a medical lockdown for “us” and an economic lockdown for “them”. I am flattered that my sacrifice, in the course of this confinement, qualifies me as one who “helped” the nation: I have stopped going to the gym in the nearby hotel. People had made sacrifices, the Prime Minister said, by not visiting gyms, malls, cinema, clubs etcetera during the lockdown.

Since the gym is also patronized by hotel guests, many of whom are foreigners, there was a real danger: I could have contracted the disease. I stopped visiting the gym only in mid March. But once the lockdown was imposed our mobile would not stop ringing. There was advice galore: Manju, who helps part time with cleaning and dusting should be asked not to come. She may be a carrier. I did put forward my plea for Manju. I was much more likely to infect her than she the family. I was the one who met foreigners. Poor Manju met no one except her frequently drunk husband.

I was simply trying to be logical. My head is spinning with volumes of data on the pandemic. Of the countless images, the one that has stayed in my mind is a thick, wide band, in the same latitude as Wuhan, hanging in the air. This band encircles all the countries intensely hit by the virus. We in India have been sporadic recipients of the infection from visitors and Indians returning from Italy, Spain, UK, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, the Gulf, US and, above all, China. One has to make a return journey to Shanghai (as this reporter did) to meet throngs of traders during the flight travelling to the remotest parts of China.

What does poor Manju have to do with international travelers? But we asked her not to come for the time being. In doing so, I could not stop spotting in ourselves an easy acceptance of segregation instinctively.

How can I forget neighbours, indeed a cross section of metropolitan India on TV: kitchenware transformed into drums, people blowing conch shells, clapping, leaning over balconies of their high rise houses. Later, with equal enthusiasm, they lit candles, and “mashaals” reminiscent of some forgotten victory. People were celebrating because they were secure and protected from the virus. But with Manju gone, who would scrape the floor of melted wax? Who would clean the house? Then came word from the grapevine: her neighbours had joined the trek on foot to heaven knows where.

This calamitous experience has been a mirror, showing up the warts we had forgotten. My wife and I were surprised by the response of friends we called. We were trying to share our concern at the hundreds of thousands on the move. “Look after yourselves” we were told. We were being advised not to be nosy. The unstated message was transparent: those who had started walking to their villages would be eventually looked after. Traces of “fatalism” we are heir to?

Socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia’s principal objection to the “class analysis” of the communists was straightforward: “In India, class and caste is coterminous.” How does Lohia’s dictum apply to the impoverished multitudes on the walk? Do they all end up on the lower side of the caste divide?

I suppose we have to bring in Manto to settle the issue: “the religion of an empty stomach is Roti (bread).” In his scheme, shared distress is a greater equalizer than all affirmative action. In this regard, there is a lesson in the profile of the Indian indentured labour in South Africa, Fiji, West Indies, Mauritius and Reunion. Shared experience on the sugar plantations was an “equalizer”. Books by Fiji’s best known author, Satendra Nandan are replete with stories of “Jahazbhais”.  Jahaz or the ship which carried them from the interiors of UP and Bihar became an unforgettable experience in bonding.

The narrative of the post Corona poor on the move is starkly different. The indentured labour and their progeny turned their backs on their villages. They placed whatever they had left behind on what Ghalib calls “taaqe nisiyan” or the cornice of amnesia.

The caravans of the famished on foot who balanced their tiny bundles on their heads, to the contrary, turned towards the villages they had once abandoned. How will they ever comprehend arcane viruses? Figures mean nothing to them. In 2017, for instance, 87,000 children of ages upto four years died every month, mostly from malnutrition. 938 adults died everyday from respiratory ailments. 1,421 from diarrhea and so on. How will they ever understand that in the US an average of 79 per million of population had died from Corona virus as on April 15. The comparable figure for India was 0.3 per million. They don’t know viruses. In a daze, they are staring at another wolf salivating on them. A bigger shock awaits when they reach their destinations: over 11,000 farmers commit suicide each year. But we, in our apartments are grateful for being effectively protected from the virus.

Let Satendra Nandan, now Emeritus Professor at the Australian university, Canberra, have the last word: “British colonialism was cruel to the indentured labour. Our ancestors suffered. But consequences of colonial action look benign compared to the experience of the migrant labour in his own country?”

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In Solitude Of Lockdown, Resolving Ravi Shankar-Vilayat Khan Dilemma

In Solitude Of Lockdown, Resolving Ravi Shankar-Vilayat Khan Dilemma

                                                                                       Saeed Naqvi

Mut sahel hamein jaano

Phirta a falak barson

Tub khaak ke parde se

Insaan nikalte hain.

(Don’t take me easy;

For years this cosmos turns on its axis;

Only then does a human being appear

From behind the curtain spread across this earthly creation)

In the classic couplet by Mir Taqi Mir I would replace “human being” with “Ravi Shankar” for my immediate purposes. In fact Mir is to Urdu poetry what Pandit Ravi Shankar is to Hindustani music. This begs a question: if Ravi Shankar or Robu as his Guru and father-in-law, Ustad Alauddin Khan addressed him, was the “Mir” of our sangeet, who then is Ghalib, to sustain the metaphor? Anyone exposed to the universe of classical sangeet, has been tormented by the bipolarity in the world of Sitar: who is greater, Ravi Shankar (1920-2012) or Ustad Vilayat Khan (1928-2004)? To continue the equation, Vilayat Khan would end up as Ghalib – beyond this, the metaphor would get mouldy.

Put it down to my perverse priorities, I found it difficult to ignore Ravi Shankar’s centenary earlier this week (April 7): it would have been a sacrilege – Corona lockdown or no Corona lockdown.

This despite the fact that our earliest musical loyalties were with Vilayat Khan, a fact which I can trace to the first concert we attended at Sapru House, the only concert hall in New Delhi in the early 60s. He played Tilak Kamod, its melodic lines, pure poetry, every stretch of the “meend” embraced all the notes of Tilak Kamod. The “drut” or fast passages measured upto poet Momin’s description: “Shola sa lapak jaaye hai, awaz to dekho”. (every passage leaps up, like a flame)

Aruna, my wife was then learning the sitar and we were hooked on Vilayat Khan’s Desh, Behag, Bageshwari, Piloo, Kedara, Jaijaiwanti – all the ragas of thumri my ears were familiar with since childhood. As I grew in the world of music, limitations in the romance with Vilayat Khan surfaced. What was touted as “gayaki” ang or “vocal” style were actually the emotional, sentimental melodic lines of thumri, Dadra and Kajri.

I am not for a moment suggesting that Vilayat Khan’s repertoire was limited: he could play with authority, ragas like, Darbari, Shahana, Shankara, Bhairav. He did, and brilliantly too. But when he broke into song, quite spontaneously, was exactly when the sitar began to look a plaything in his hands. That was when he was in his “gayaki” ang mode.

It is one of the best kept secrets in the world of Hindustani music that in her deep enunciation of alaap, Ravi Shankar’s wife, Alauddin Khan’s daughter, the reclusive Annapurna was in a different zone of music altogether. Ravi was hemmed in by geniuses – Ali Akbar, Annapurna and Vilayat Khan.

I am not in on the reasons for the breakdown of the marriage, but professional incompatibilities may well have been a cause – Annapurna’s musical Puritanism versus Ravi’s flashy innovations.

This flashiness, he once told me, was a function of his exposure to life in Paris as part of his brother Uday Shankar’s famed dance troupe which was at the heart of the 1948 film Kalpana, when Ravi was 28 “I loved wearing my three piece suits and lighting a cigarette in a holder.” At this time, Z.A. Bukhari of All India Radio, who baptized many musicians into AIR, had given “Inayat Khan’s son” (Vilayat) a garage behind the AIR office at Alipur Road with strict instructions to “practice, practice, practice.” Vilayat followed these instructions to the last syllable. “At the end of a month the garage looked like a site where a hundred chickens had been slaughtered – the walls had blood marks.” The blood was from the fingers of his left hand as it glided up and down the strings and the frets with “lightening speed.”

Ravi had the advantage of living for decades in virtually a one-man music academy – Baba Alauddin Khan. What is more he had challenging peers, Ali Akbar and Annapurna.

Vilayat, on the other hand, had to fend for himself from the age of 10 when his father died. He was far too talented for uncles and his father’s colleagues to ignore, but vis-a-vis Ravi, he developed a “poor cousin” complex. The better he played, the more Ravi’s growing international reputation bothered him.

The epic contest between Ravi and Vilayat at the Constitution Club in 1952 remains one of the greatest events in musical history. It was billed as a Ravi-Ali Akbar duet but the sudden, dramatic appearance of Vilayat changed the complexion. Baba Alauddin protested but the audience prevailed. In the faster passages of Manj Khammaj, Vilayat had the audience standing on their feet. Ravi’s strings snapped. It was a fiasco for Baba’s Maihar gharana.

Even so, nursing a false sense of victimhood, Vilayat remained his worst enemy. He would play for AIR only if he was paid a rupee more than Ravi. He refused the Sangeet Natak Akademi award and the Padma Vibhushan for similar reasons. After stellar performances at the Edinburgh music festival, Ravi continued to accumulate successes. Violinist Yehudi Menuhin became his “chela”. He became a guide to the Beatle, George Harrison. Then, lo and behold, he turned up at Woodstock music festival in 1968. A helicopter had to ferry him over 4,00,000 strong crowd. Once on the stage his tabla accompanist, Allah Rakha closed his eyes: youngsters below the stage were making copious love.

Vilayat Khan heard these stories with amusement and envy. I remember his last performance at Siri Fort Auditorium. He played Bageshwari quite brilliantly. Just when the hall resonated with his jhala, he paused and picked up the microphone. “You have to emerge not from a helicopter but from your mother’s womb to play like this.” This was his swipe at Ravi’s Woodstock fiasco.

To resolve the comparison let us leave the verdict to Satyajit Ray: he invited Ravi Shankar to be the music director for Pather Panchali but for Jalsaghar, the musical score was Vilayat Khan’s.

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Tablighi Jamaat Markaz, One Of World’s Biggest Puritanical Movements

Tablighi Jamaat Markaz, One Of World’s Biggest Puritanical Movements

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

In the early 70s, Indian missions in West Asia received a curt directive from South Block: do not issue visas to applicants travelling to attend the international conference (Ijtema) of the Tablighi Jamaat, Missionaries for purification of Muslims, at their Markaz (centre) in New Delhi. There were Arab applicants, ofcourse, but also some from the West, including the US.

There are missions and missions: some follow instructions others are more precocious and make inquiries. The subject came up for discussion over drink and discreet, diplomatic dinners. Some of the western diplomats did not hide their anxiety. The exponential growth of a little known religious, but totally apolitical organization across 150 countries, with a membership of 150 to 250 million caused raised eyebrows. The TJ was different from any other Islamic group: it did not seek to convert non Muslims. It was not the Islamic version of the Salvation Army. It only sought to bring its flock more in the line with the teaching of Prophet Mohammad.

This dour, dark, vision of Puritanism would have seemed a distant, dream. But the hundreds of millions of dedicated foot soldiers across the globe keeping the flock on the straight and narrow, a sort of double distillation of faith, made them out to be an enormously successful organization with extraordinary reach.

The 70s were a period of great contestation between the West and the Muslim world. In Egypt, Nasser had made way for Anwar Sadat in 1970, who eventually turned up in Israel in 1977; Black September; war between Jordanians and Palestinians in 1970-71; Yom Kippur war of 1973 leading to Arab quadrupling of oil prices.

In the midst of so much conflict, the ant-like precise movements of Tablighi Jamaat attracted western notice and for a good reason. At a time when the West was trying to pull the Muslim world out of narrow Islamism, laying out North Tehran under the Shah as worthy of emulation the TJ was weaning Muslims away from modernism into deadly, pious practices. And they were doing it successfully.

Pressure must have been brought to bear on South Block. Which explains the instructions to the Indian missions in the Muslim world to deny visas to luminaries headed for the Markaz at New Delhi’s Nizamuddin.

The address of the Markaz leads to an unhappy mix up. One of the great Indians of all time, the 13^th century Sufi Saint of the Chisti Silsila, or lineage, Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia, had his khanqah or abode in the area. Nearby was his favorite disciple, the multitalented genius, Amir Khusro, poet, musicologist, jurist, statesman and soldier. Their shrines, around which the colony evolved bearing the great guru’s name, became the centre of what is celebrated as India’s syncretic culture.

That the Nizamuddin shrine should be overshadowed by the Markaz, a six story structure with a capacity to house 10,000 Tablighi volunteers is an aesthetic affront. It also misleads the world which sees the address, “Markaz, Nizamuddin” as same or similar entities. Now that the Markaz has been cleared for fumigation for the mess the TJ have foolishly left behind, there is a case for the centre to be moved to a suitable location.

The Jamaat was founded in 1927 just when there were reverberations across North India after the British moved from Kolkata to New Delhi in 1911. In 1930, Lutyen’s Delhi was inaugurated. The British, who had taken power from Muslims, were now in close proximity to Maulana Mohammad Ilyas of Khandal, near Meerut. The Maulana started his mission to secure his flock against blandishments of modernism. The target area for Maulana Ilyas’ mission were the Meos of Mewat, spread over Haryana, Rajasthan and a portion of Western UP.

Even though the Meos were converted to Islam in the 16^th century, they obstinately held onto their Hindu culture. Not too long ago, night long recitations of their exclusive Mahabharat called Pandun ka kada were common. Meos claimed descent from characters in the Mahabharat. All Hindu festivals – Holi, Diwali, Dussehra were mandatory. My friend, Ramzan Chaudhary, a lawyer and chairman of the All India Mewat Association, remembers his father as a professional singer of Holi and Mewati Mahabharat. His grandmother wore a “Ghaghra” and performed Govardhan puja – all taboo in Maulana Ilyas’ book.

The Maulana must have been an organizational genius. Today, in each one of the 1,500 or so villages in Mewat is a Tablighi Jamaat Markaz. The number of volunteers is simply staggering.

Two things can therefore be said about the Jamaat. No violence or “Jehadi” activity can be traced to them. Also, they are simply not interested in proselytizing non Muslims.

They are saving the saved. Indeed, they are the Muslims variant of humourless, Calvinism, exactly the sort of self appointed religious constabulary whom Urdu poet describes as Sheikh, Zahid, Mohtasib, Waiz – in brief, an interfering bore.

A puritan, said H.L. Mencken, is someone who is always worried that someone, somewhere may be having fun. In the TJ book the way Bangladesh celebrates Poila Baisakh on April 14 is all “shirk” fit for damnation. Assam, Tripura, West Bengal, Bangladesh, in brief, people of Bengali heritage celebrate Poila (which means pehla or first) in the same way quite irrespective of religious belief. In fact, in my experience, celebrations in Bangladesh are by far the most spectacular. Women in the celebrated Dhaka sarees apply a bindi on the forehead of any woman guest who enters the house. Parks are filled with men and women singing Rabindra Sangeet and Nazrul geeti. While Tagore’s songs are secular, Qazi Nazrul Islam’s geets are charged with Tandav, Shakti, Kali, Durga. At this Maulana’s group would through a fit.

The present leader of the group, Maulana Saad Khandawi’s stupidities during the corona crisis, compounded by police and administrative negligence call for an independent inquiry. Baying for Muslim blood as some channels seem to suggest is rank bad taste.

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