Author Archives: amardeep

Saxophone Desi Style: Rudresh Mahanthappa, Kadri Gopalnath

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The saxophone in the opening credits to this Tamil Film (“Duet”) is by Kadri Gopalnath; it’s unlike any other commercial film opening credits music you’ve ever heard. Gopalnath has been in the news quite a bit over the past few weeks, following his collaboration with Indian American jazz-maestro Rudresh Mahanthappa, who has a new album out called Apti. I haven’t “Itunesed” Mahanthappa’s album yet (any reviews? the excerpts played on Rudresh’s NPR interview sound great), though I will be, but it prompted me to check out the Indian musician he’s talking about. (Incidentally, Kadri Gopalnath has several albums for sale on Itunes as well, at the bargain price of $3.99 each.)

Here is a quote from the New Yorker piece on Mahanthappa that describes what Gopalnath is doing on Sax:

While Mahanthappa was at Berklee, his older brother teasingly gave him an album called “Saxophone Indian Style,” by Kadri Gopalnath. As far as Mahanthappa knew, “Indian saxophonist” was an oxymoron, but the album amazed him. Gopalnath, who was born in 1950, in Karnataka, plays a Western instrument in a non-Western context—the Carnatic music of Southern India (distinct from the Hindustani musical tradition of Northern India). Gopalnath, who generally plays in a yogalike seated position, has perfected something that jazz saxophonists have been attempting for decades: moving beyond the Western chromatic scale into the realm of microtones, a feat harder for wind instruments, whose keys are in fixed positions, than for strings or voice. Jazz players, such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler, had gone about it by varying intonation, blowing multiphonics (two or more notes at the same time), or squawking in the upper register, where pitches are imprecisely defined. Gopalnath does none of that. Using alternate fingerings and innovative embouchure techniques, he maintains faultless intonation while sliding in and out of the chromatic scale. (link)

I don’t play any wind instruments, and I have no idea technically what “innovative embouchure techniques” might be describing, but it sure sounds hard.

Also check out: Mahanthappa interviewed on NPR. Continue reading →

Pakistan: Behind the Latest Protests (Updated)

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pakistan stone thrower.jpg

Well, here we go again. Mass protests have erupted in Pakistan, as Nawaz Sharif and others have embarked on a “long march” to protest a recent judicial decision barring the Sharif brothers from holding office. Among other things, the protesters are demanding the reinstatement of Supreme Court Justice Iftikar Choudhry. But one gets the feeling that what is really at stake here is Zardari’s grip on power.

[Update: According to Reuters, Zardari has agreed to reinstate Choudhry, which should defuse the crisis somewhat, and perhaps stabilize his own grip on power. Also see SAJA, and #longmarch at Twitter, for the Tweets of the Twitterers]

First, let me just point readers to a blog from the newspaper, Dawn, with updates on the “Long March” protests. If the stuff hits the fan on Monday in the next few weeks, when the protesters go to Islamabad, this might be a good place to get the latest information.

Second, weren’t we just doing this in Pakistan last year? In a recent post on Michael Dorf’s blog, Anil Kalhan argues that the parallels are too strong to ignore. I’m not entirely sure I agree, since Musharraf was a much stronger leader before his power started to erode. That said, Zardari’s over-zealous response to threats to his authority has had a lot in common with Musharraf’s own response.

There is also a very detailed account of the back-story behind the current protests by Beena Sarwar here. Among other things, Sarwar notes that the coalition supporting the current protests, which includes the Jamaat-e-Islami, might cause progressives abroad to pause before we raise our fists in pro-democracy solidarity:

In this situation, political instability is distracting at best and dangerous at worst. The ‘long march’ demanding the reinstatement of chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Choudhry, spearheaded by the legal fraternity and sections of civil society, has ready allies among the right-wing political opposition.

This includes Sharif’s PML-N and the Jamaat-e-Islami, a mainstream religious party sympathetic to militant Islam, as well as others sympathetic to the Taliban, like ex-chief Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and anti-India hawk Gen. (retd.) Hamid Gul, retired bureaucrat Roedad Khan who brutally quashed political opposition during the Zia years, and cricket hero-turned politician Imran Khan, chief of the Tehrik-e-Insaaf (Movement for Justice).

All these forces boycotted the 2008 polls, except Sharif who rescinded his boycott decision after Bhutto convinced him that elections were the only way forward.

Long-festering tensions between the PPP and PML-N came to a head with a Supreme Court ruling of Feb 25 barring Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif from holding elected office. Bhutto’s widower, President Asif Ali Zardari is widely believed to be behind this controversial ruling. (link)

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Amartya Sen, on the Recession, Adam Smith, Keynes, and Kerala

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I was recently talking to a financial consultant visiting from India about the state of the Indian economy (she recently married my cousin; congrats. P & S!). She seemed to think that, despite how gloomy the Indian television news analysts tend to be, the Indian economy is actually continuing to grow somewhat even as western economies are sliding into a deepening recession. A quick look at the Economist’s latest country data for India seem to confirm that outlook: India’s economy is still forecast to grow at a 5% rate this year. That’s down from 9-10% in the past few years, but growth is growth. (She suggested that Indian business news analysts might be channeling the gloom of their western counterparts, rather than using actual data particular to the Indian economy.) Have readers seen other data about the state of the Indian economy as a whole?

That might lead us to Amartya Sen. Sen has an essay re-appraising of the works of Adam Smith in light of the current global economic recession in a recent New York Review of Books. His basic point seems to be that Adam Smith was right, though perhaps hardcore free market types today tend to misread Smith as advocating unregulated free markets. Sen also notes that Keynes is currently more popular than ever, though he argues that Keynes’ contemporary at Cambridge, Arthur Cecil Pigou, might be more helpful to us today because of the latter’s work on the role of behavior in shaping markets (behavioral economics), as well as welfare economics.

In a discussion of the possible role that reforming health care might play in government-supported economic recovery programs, Sen makes an interesting side-note about health care in Kerala as compared to China:

A crisis not only presents an immediate challenge that has to be faced. It also provides an opportunity to address long-term problems when people are willing to reconsider established conventions. This is why the present crisis also makes it important to face the neglected long-term issues like conservation of the environment and national health care, as well as the need for public transport, which has been very badly neglected in the last few decades and is also so far sidelined—as I write this article—even in the initial policies announced by the Obama administration. Economic affordability is, of course, an issue, but as the example of the Indian state of Kerala shows, it is possible to have state-guaranteed health care for all at relatively little cost. Since the Chinese dropped universal health insurance in 1979, Kerala—which continues to have it—has very substantially overtaken China in average life expectancy and in indicators such as infant mortality, despite having a much lower level of per capita income. So there are opportunities for poor countries as well. (link)

Interesting that Sen singles out Kerala; I wonder where he got that information from. Also, I wonder what the differences are between Kerala’s current health care policy and that of other Indian states. (Or, is this just yet another case of “everything is better in Kerala”?)

Also see: Wikipedia on Health Care in India, Palliative Care in Kerala Continue reading →

The Peace That Almost Was in Kashmir

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In this week’s print issue of the New Yorker, there’s a long, satisfying piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll on India and Pakistan’s attempts to resolve the status of Kashmir over the past few years. The big surprise is just how close the two countries were to permanently resolving the seemingly insoluble problem. The agreement, which was in its final stages in the spring of 2007, was never put into effect or publicly revealed because it was being finalized just when Pervez Musharraf’s government began to unravel. Musharraf had hoped to simply postpone the public summit where the deal would have been announced, but instead the whole thing had to be shelved.

The article isn’t online at the New Yorker‘s web site, but you can read it here, at the New America Foundation:

By early 2007, the back-channel talks on Kashmir had become “so advanced that we’d come to semicolons,” Kasuri recalled. A senior Indian official who was involved agreed. “It was huge–I think it would have changed the basic nature of the problem,” he told me. “You would have then had the freedom to remake Indo-Pakistani relations.” Aziz and Lambah were negotiating the details for a visit to Pakistan by the Indian Prime Minister during which, they hoped, the principles underlying the Kashmir agreement would be announced and talks aimed at implementation would be inaugurated. One quarrel, over a waterway known as Sir Creek, would be formally settled.

Neither government, however, had done much to prepare its public for a breakthrough. In the spring of 2007, a military aide in Musharraf’s office contacted a senior civilian official to ask how politicians, the media, and the public might react. “We think we’re close to a deal,” Musharraf ’s aide said, as this official recalled it. “Do you think we can sell it?”

Regrettably, the time did not look ripe, this official recalled answering. In early March, Musharraf had invoked his near-dictatorial powers to fire the chief justice of the country’s highest court. That decision set off rock-tossing protests by lawyers and political activists. (link)

And from there that it just went downhill for General Musharraf. Now, with weak and unstable new leadership in Asif Zardari, and a possible change in leadership coming in India as well this spring, it’s unclear whether anything can be done anytime soon.

The actual details of the almost-agreement aren’t spelled out entirely in the article, but we do get some promising inklings: Continue reading →

MLK’s Address on All India Radio, March 1959

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Martin Luther King, Jr. visited India in 1959, an event which is described in detail at the King Encyclopedia (a site that has been linked to before at Sepia Mutiny). King, as is well known, modeled his approach to civil rights in the United States on Gandhi’s successful mass non-violence/civil disobedience campaign for Indian independence.

On NPR last week, there was a story about how All India Radio has recently discovered in its archives the recorded version of the address given by Dr. King at the end of his visit to India.

Through a little bit of digging on Google, I found the actual recording posted on the internet, at the website of the Indian Consulate of Chicago.

For me the highlight of the address is the closing, which I’ll take the liberty of including here:

Many years ago, when Abraham Lincoln was shot – and incidentally, he was shot for the same reason that Mahatma Gandhi was shot for; namely, for committing the crime of wanting to heal the wounds of a divided nation. And when he was shot, Secretary Stanton stood by the dead body of the great leader and said these words: “now, he belongs to the ages.” And in a real sense, we can say the same thing about Mahatma Gandhi, and even in stronger terms: “now, he belongs to the ages.”

And if this age is to survive, it must follow the way of love and non-violence that he so nobly illustrated in his life. Mahatma Gandhi may well be God’s appeal to this generation, a generation drifting again to its doom. And this eternal appeal is in the form of a warning: they that live by the sword shall perish by the sword.

We must come to see in the world today that what he taught, and his method throughout, reveals to us that there is an alternative to violence, and that if we fail to follow this we will perish in our individual and in our collective lives. For in a day when Sputniks and explorers dash through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war.

Today we no longer have a choice between violence and non-violence; it is either non-violence, or non-existence. (link)

Perhaps the meanings of King and Gandhi’s respective messages have changed as times have changed. India is no longer a country with a colonial chip on its shoulder, and minorities in the U.S. have a shining example of success in President Barack Obama (among many other signs of progress). It is probably a bit too easy and nostalgic to simply savor those past struggles without continually seeking to apply them to our messy current situations; with too much familiarity and Big Talk, these two icons of struggle risk becoming bloated relics. (For example, by the 1970s, Gandhianism in India had become an easy symbol, devoid of substance — one thinks of the overweight Congress politicians in homespun, happily siphoning off crores of Rupees for Swiss bank accounts.)

Also, it may be that rigorous non-violence cannot mean the same thing for us today as it did for African Americans who demanded a seat at the American table, or Indians who demanded sovereignty (a seat at the table of nations). Perhaps King and Gandhi’s shared dream of a total, worldwide movement away from a social order based on violence (active or potential) is one we’ll have to put away for the foreseeable future, as simply not in keeping with human nature. Satyagraha is a brilliant strategy for mobilizing the Indian masses to defeat the most powerful, thoroughly armed Empire the world has ever known, without bloodshed. But in my view it is neither effective nor appropriate as a response to Jihadists on the streets of Mumbai, or Maoist rebels in eastern India, to name just two examples. (I am not a pacifist myself for this reason.)

And yet, is it not still chastening to hear these words, even in these times? (Listen to the speech.) As I say, some of the diacritics may have changed, but I think King’s warning still stands: “they that live by the sword shall perish by the sword.” Gaza. Sri Lanka. Iraq. India-Pakistan. Isn’t that still the truth we need to hear? Continue reading →

And Then They Came For Lasantha Wickramatunge

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Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickramatunge was assassinated in broad daylight outside of Colombo last week. SAJA has a helpful round-up of coverage of the event, including some background on Wickramatunge’s journalistic record. What stands out is the fact that he has been a consistent dissenting voice in Sri Lankan politics, sharply criticizing the previous government for years. In recent years he had also become a critic of the new government of Mahinda Rajapaksa, whom he had earlier supported. Indeed, Wickramatunge and Rajapaska were until recently rather close friends.

Wickramatunge’s assassination is widely believed to have been carried out by forces allied with the government, if not directly sponsored by the government itself. His memorial service, which took place yesterday in Colombo, was attended by thousands of people (see a Flickr photostream of the event here).

This past Sunday, the Sunday Leader, the Sri Lankan newspaper founded by Wickramatunge and his brother, carried a posthumous editorial authored by Wickramatunge himself. It’s called, “And Then They Came For Me,” and it’s written with the understanding that it would only be printed in the event of the author’s assassination.

It’s a moving statement, which ought to be read by anyone who doubts whether freedom of the press or freedom of speech is, after all, an essential right. Wickramatunge begins by asserting his primary goal as a journalist over the fifteen years he had worked with this newspaper:

The Sunday Leader has been a controversial newspaper because we say it like we see it: whether it be a spade, a thief or a murderer, we call it by that name. We do not hide behind euphemism. The investigative articles we print are supported by documentary evidence thanks to the public-spiritedness of citizens who at great risk to themselves pass on this material to us. We have exposed scandal after scandal, and never once in these 15 years has anyone proved us wrong or successfully prosecuted us.

The free media serve as a mirror in which the public can see itself sans mascara and styling gel. From us you learn the state of your nation, and especially its management by the people you elected to give your children a better future. Sometimes the image you see in that mirror is not a pleasant one. But while you may grumble in the privacy of your armchair, the journalists who hold the mirror up to you do so publicly and at great risk to themselves. That is our calling, and we do not shirk it.

Every newspaper has its angle, and we do not hide the fact that we have ours. Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy. Think about those words, for they each has profound meaning. Transparent because government must be openly accountable to the people and never abuse their trust. Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours, secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united. Liberal because we recognise that all human beings are created different, and we need to accept others for what they are and not what we would like them to be. And democratic… well, if you need me to explain why that is important, you’d best stop buying this paper. (a link)

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Satyam: The “Truth” Will Out

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By now, most people have probably heard about the huge Satyam scandal, where the company’s founder and chairman, Ramalinga Raju, has taken responsibility for massive fraud in reporting the company’s earnings, profits, and cash balance. Satyam, one of India’s largest consulting and IT companies, has admitted it claimed $1 billion in assets that simply did not exist for just one three month period in 2008. The company is now facing the abyss, as its share prices are evaporating, and clients are starting to defect to rivals (including IBM and Accenture). Satyam currently employs 53,000 people.

As background, Reuters has an informative story on the status of Ramalinga Raju as a symbol of Hyderabad as a new IT hub (“Cyberabad”) and the whole, now deeply tarnished “India Shining” mythology.

And that’s not all. Two American legal firms are filing lawsuits against Satyam, claiming fraud. Distressingly, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, the accounting firm that signed off on Satyam’s accounting practices for years, never detected the fraud.

What went wrong? Salil Tripathi has a provocative Op-Ed at the Wall Street Journal, where he addresses the aspects of Indian business culture that enabled this to happen. For Tripathi, one of the key factors in Satyam’s case is the clan-like structure of Satyam’s upper management and Board of Directors, which are heavily populated by relatives and close friends of the chairman: Continue reading →

Dabbling in Regional Indian Cinema on an Air India Flight

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BakulaNamdevGhotale_acass_246x250.jpg People talk trash about Air India, but it has one distinct advantage — if you’re lucky enough to fly to and from India on one of their newer 747s, which are equipped with personal video screens, you have a wealth of Indian TV, movies, and music to entertain yourself with, while eating Chiwda (instead of peanuts) and not-too-bad shrimp curry. (You still have to sit in a cramped little chair for 16-24 hours without losing your mind, but that would be the case on Lufthansa too.)

Our son wasn’t too much trouble on our recent Mumbai-to-Newark flight (he slept through much of it), so I was able to sample a range of subtitled Indian movies in different languages that I otherwise might not see. In some cases, I didn’t watch whole films — sometimes just an hour or so — but it was an interesting experiment to compare a group of films that normally are only seen by members of specific linguistic communities. People sometimes talk about Indian cinema as if the only films worth watching are made in Hindi and produced in Mumbai, but perhaps the folks who are saying that only watch those films?

The most entertaining, and highest production value film I watched was the Tamil film, Sivaji, The Boss, starring Rajnikanth (star of several YouTube “superhits,” including “Little Superman”). I initially enjoyed the sense of Tamil ethno-linguistic pride in the film (Rajnikant’s love interest is named “Tamizhselvi”), though it did start to get old after a little while (I did not see such an obsession with regional identity in the Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, or Punjabi films I sampled on this flight. Is the Tamil-centricness of Sivaji, The Boss unique to this film?).

Rajnikanth’s manic physical comedy and dancing, and the film’s over-the-top sets and situations, are really why someone who is not a long-term Rajnikanth fan watches a film like this. I couldn’t say that the anti-corruption plot made any narrative sense, though there were some powerful “crowd” moments here and there; there’s just a whiff of the rough edges of actual Indian politics. More than anything else, it seemed like Rajnikanth’s mission in this film is to entertain the audience as fast as possible, and continue doing so until every last bit of amusement is squeezed out of every damn frame of the film. (I wish I knew where he gets the energy.)

Incidentally, Sivaji, The Boss was the most expensive Indian film ever made, in any language, as of 2007. It was a super-hit in the South, and successful even dubbed into Hindi. Continue reading →

The Swinging Sounds of Goa: the 1960s

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One of the most famous Konkani pop songs from the 1960s is Lorna’s “Bebdo”. Here it is, with lyrics and translation:

Pretty swinging, huh? The sassy tone and subject matter reminds me a little of Trinidadian Calypso from around the same period. It’s true that there is a dark side to these types of songs (alcoholism, and the hint of domestic violence), but there is also a buoyancy and power in her voice that I really appreciate; it sounds like she won’t let anything get her down. (Are there other 60s Goan/Konkani tracks available on sites like YouTube that readers would recommend?)

When this was first recorded in 1966, the effect on the local music scene was electrifying:

From a kiosk on the beach, a pretty lady named Bertinha played records on the speaker system provided by the Panjim Municipality. She had a weakness for Cliff Richard tunes, Remo says. But that evening, she spun out a song called Bebdo (Drunkard). Miramar Beach was hypnotised. “The Panjim citizenry stopped in its tracks, the sunken sun popped up for another peep, the waves froze in mid-air,” Remo has written. “What manner of music was this, as hep as hep can be, hitting you with the kick of a mule on steroids? What manner of voice was this, pouncing at you with the feline power of a jungle lioness? And hold it no, it couldn’t be yes, it was no was it really? Was this amazing song in Konkani?”

Bebdo had been recorded a few months earlier by Chris Perry and Lorna in a Bombay studio and released by HMV. The jacket bore the flirty image that would later hang outside the Venice nightclub. The 45 rpm record had four tracks, opening with the rock-and-rolling Bebdo and ending on the flip side with the dreamy ballad, Sopon. “Sophisticated, westernised urban Goa underwent a slow-motion surge of inexplicable emotions: the disbelief, the wonder, the appreciation, and then finally a rising, soaring and bubbling feeling of pride,” Remo says. “The pride of being Goan. The pride of having a son of the soil produce such music. Of having a daughter of the soil sing it thus. And, most of all, of hearing the language of the soil take its rightful place in popular music after a period of drought. Chris and Lorna had come to stay.” (link)

The article from which that story is taken is by Naresh Fernandes, and he goes on to give a really interesting (if digressive) account of the links between Goa and the mainstream Hindi film music world.

First, even from what little I’ve heard, it’s pretty evident that Goan pop music (which is deeply influenced by big band, bebop, and 1960s R&B) overlaps strongly with the “modern,” R.D. Burman sound that emerged in Bollywood in the late 1960s and 70s (think “Ina Mina Dika”). The reason for that is simple: the majority of the musicians employed by the film studios were Goans: Continue reading →

Tahmima Anam on the Bangladesh Elections

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Since we have been on the topic of corrupt South Asian leaders who go on to have a second chapter in their political careers, it seems worth pointing out that Sheikh Hasina, leader of Bangladesh’s Awami League Party, has been elected back into office in that country.

Naheem Mohaiemen has his enthusiastic take here, and his account of voting (for the first time) at The Daily Star.

But since I recently reviewed Tahmima Anam’s A Golden Age, here is her response, published in The Guardian’s Comment is Free:

The BNP were at the helm of power in the last electoral cycle. During this time, Khaleda Zia promoted cronies to high positions of power, corrupted the courts with political appointments, and oversaw the theft of government funds on an unprecedented level. In 2007, the party orchestrated a coordinated effort to rig the elections, leading to the army’s intervention and two years of military-backed rule.

In this election, the BNP allied themselves with the Jamaat-e-Islami and conducted a campaign of fear-mongering, with slogans decrying the corruption of religious values and predicting a threat to Islam through foreign influence. By contrast, the Awami League ran a campaign that was purposefully secular and progressive. Though no stranger to allegations of corruption, the Awami League cleansed its party of much of the old guard. In the end, it campaigned on a platform of change, promising jobs and economic regeneration. The result was not only victory for the Awami League, but a near annihilation of the Jamaat-e-Islami. (link)

I’m certainly pleased whenever parties (in any country) advocating Sharia are soundly defeated like this. But I wonder why the silence on Sheikh Hasina’s own poor performance in her earlier term in office? Anam’s optimism and enthusiasm seems to be the consensus amongst progressive Bangladeshis from what I can tell; there is simply great relief that the rising tide of Islamism seems to have been reversed.

But I’m curious if there are other perspectives. One articulate dissent I’ve come across so far comes from a commenter on Anam’s article at The Guardian, who identifies himself (or herself) as SMohamed:

As a British Muslim of Bangladeshi decent it has been disheartening to often hear the land of my forefather denigrated as corrupt and ‘dirt poor’. In my opinion the ‘ladies’ in question are the main reason for the corruption through the incompetence and downright disregard they have for the peopple of Bangladesh. Dynastic politics do not work. The ladies in question lead only in name with far better players pulling the strings. I would be proud if Bangladesh actually had a lady in power who was not associated to previous leaders. She may actually have a mind of her own and bring about the change that is so desperately needed in a country on the verge of natural annihilation. (link)

Is Bangladesh now going to be in a better position on the global stage, or will it be stuck where it has been for years? Is there evidence that Sheikh Hasina might be a more effective, less corrupt leader of her country this time around? Continue reading →