Author Archives: amardeep

Subcontinental Scripts: Urdu vs. Hindi

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As part of a scholarly project I’m working on (on Saadat Hasan Manto), I recently taught myself how to read the Urdu script. I had briefly learned it as part of a Hindi class in college many years ago, but then immediately forgot it.

I must admit, I’ve been finding Urdu quite difficult. Reading from right to left isn’t so hard to get used to, but there are some letters that seem to be interchangeable (i.e., two different ways of writing ‘k’/’q’), and other letters that look painfully similar to one another on the page (‘d’, ‘r’, ‘v’, etc). Also, some of the vowel markers one sees in Hindi/Devanagari, though they do exist in Urdu as diacritic marks, are frequently omitted, so you often have to guess which vowel should be used based on context. Oh, and did I mention that there often aren’t clear word breaks (depending on how the typography is done in a given book or newspaper)?

But once I got the script down (roughly), I was pleasantly surprised to find that Manto’s Urdu vocabulary isn’t that far off from standard Hindustani — but then, he’s a prose writer known for his accessible style. By contrast, the vocabulary of much Urdu poetry (i.e., Ghalib) is so full of Persian words as to be unintelligible — at least to a barbarian ABD like myself.

Via the News Tab (thanks, ViParavane), I came across a great post at the Language Log blog with a historical linguistics explanation for how the script (and language) divide came to be. I don’t have much knowledge to offer on top of what Mark Liberman says, so the following are the just the quotes in Liberman’s post I found to be most interesting. Continue reading →

I’m Rudy Giuliani, and I Approve This Crass Ad

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In Vinod’s post last week following Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination, there was some legitimate debate about whether and how to criticize the recently deceased (not that we need to restart the argument ;-).

Well, it’s been a week, and we’re starting to see various media outlets printing sharp critiques of Bhutto (see Dalrymple, for instance, in Outlook…). But more than that, we’re seeing American politicans crassly exploiting the tragedy to promote their own sorry asses:

The biggest problem with ads like this, of course, is that they tell people to vote based on fear rather than logic. Continue reading →

Call Me Dubious: Japanese Envying Indian Schools?

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There’s a long tradition of “Dubious Trend Line” (DBL) stories in the New York Times, and today’s article on how Japanese parents have suddenly become interested in the Indian educational system seems to more or less fit the pattern.

The idea is, Japanese students are no longer tops in Asia when it comes to math and science. While India itself is nowhere near the top, there are apparently numerous signs that Indian ideas about education (including rote “memorization and cramming”) are becoming more popular:

Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills” and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.” Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.

And Japan’s few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.

At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian, and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales. The kindergarten students even color maps of India in the green and saffron of its flag.

Little Angels is located in this Tokyo suburb, where only one of its 45 students is Indian. Most are Japanese. (link)

This quote presents us with some amusing titles (“Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills”! Catchy…), but it also contains the article’s first major problem, which is statistical: the only concrete example in the entire piece is based on this one school (“Little Angels”), which only has 45 students. (Other Indian International schools are mentioned in the second half of the article, but in those schools the vast majority of students are currently Indian expatriates, not Japanese.)

The second major problem in reasoning is in the following passage:

Much of Japan has long looked down on the rest of Asia, priding itself on being the region’s most advanced nation. Indeed, Japan has dominated the continent for more than a century, first as an imperial power and more recently as the first Asian economy to achieve Western levels of economic development.

But in the last few years, Japan has grown increasingly insecure, gripped by fear that it is being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication. The government here has tried to preserve Japan’s technological lead and strengthen its military. But the Japanese have been forced to shed their traditional indifference to the region. (link)

If a Dubious Trend Line journalist goes to broad geopolitical generalizations when trying to explain a much more specific cultural event, they’re likely grasping at straws.

In general, I don’t disagree that a focus on the fundamentals might be useful in the early years (and I have my doubts about the Montessori method), but there’s nothing especially “Indian” about that, is there? Isn’t the memorization simply a hold-over from the old British educational model? Overall, the article does little to convince me that this is anything other than a mini-fad — if that.

(Note, check out the comments on the News Tab for more detailed dissection of this article.) Continue reading →

The Art Behind ‘The Namesake’

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I’ve been watching Mira Nair’s Director’s Commentary on The Namesake DVD, and it’s been surprising to see how much of the film was inspired by other film directors and visual artists’ work. This was a film I liked quite a bit when I first saw it, and it had the unusual distinction of being a film my parents also liked. (I also liked the book, though I know from earlier discussions that a fair number of readers did not.) Watching the Director’s Commentary I realize there was a great deal in Nair’s film I had missed earlier.

Despite the immense amount of craft that went into the making of the film and the strong performances by Irfan Khan and Tabu, I doubt that The Namesake will get much attention come Oscar time. Why not is an endless question; one might point out that the Oscars don’t really award the year’s “best” films so much as the films the major studios feel are at once somewhat “serious” and “commercially viable.”

Still, the nice thing about writing for a blog is, you can pay tribute to the films that caught your attention from a given year, even if no one else agrees with you. (Readers, what desi-related films — produced in India or elsewhere — stood out to you from 2007?)

In the post below, I explore some names from among the large array of people who inspired Nair and collaborated with her as she put together the visual and aural elements of the film. The artists are both Desi (mostly Bengali) and American, though it’s really the former group that leaves the biggest impact on the film.

I hope you enjoy the links below as much as I did assembling them; they make for quite an art history lesson! Continue reading →

Zakaria on Obama, Identity

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Ruchira sent me a link to a recent Newsweek column by Fareed Zakaria, and it seems like it could use a comment box. Zakaria says he likes Obama, surprisingly, because of “identity.” It’s surprising because, as Zakaria himself admits, he’s not one for identity politics:

Obama’s argument is about more than identity. He was intelligent and prescient about the costs of the Iraq War. But he says that his judgment was formed by his experience as a boy with a Kenyan father—and later an Indonesian stepfather—who spent four years growing up in Indonesia, and who lived in the multicultural swirl of Hawaii.

I never thought I’d agree with Obama. I’ve spent my life acquiring formal expertise on foreign policy. I’ve got fancy degrees, have run research projects, taught in colleges and graduate schools, edited a foreign-affairs journal, advised politicians and businessmen, written columns and cover stories, and traveled hundreds of thousands of miles all over the world. I’ve never thought of my identity as any kind of qualification. I’ve never written an article that contains the phrase “As an Indian-American …” or “As a person of color …”

But when I think about what is truly distinctive about the way I look at the world, about the advantage that I may have over others in understanding foreign affairs, it is that I know what it means not to be an American. I know intimately the attraction, the repulsion, the hopes, the disappointments that the other 95 percent of humanity feels when thinking about this country. I know it because for a good part of my life, I wasn’t an American. I was the outsider, growing up 8,000 miles away from the centers of power, being shaped by forces over which my country had no control. (link)

Zakaria’s approach to “identity” is in some sense negative. He wouldn’t argue that Obama is better because he’s black, or mixed-race, or part-African, etc. But he will argue that Obama has enough of a personal, experiential link to the world outside of U.S. borders (non-U.S.) that it will benefit his judgment.

One could argue that the key distinction here is “experience” vs. “identity,” and that it’s “experience” of the non-U.S. we’re talking about really, not “identity.” But the way Zakaria phrases it (and from some of the other points he makes in the column) I sense that he’s talking about something much more visceral than what one might learn on a semester abroad in college. Perhaps he really does mean “identity” — as in, a set of immutable attributes — not “experience.” What do you think? Continue reading →

Announcement: Abhi and Amardeep on Houston Public Radio

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Abhi and I will be on a Houston-based radio show called Border Crossings Wednesday night (12/19) at 10 PM Central time (11 PM EST). If interested, you can listen live via streaming audio here, or download a podcast of the show later here.

The topics? I just had a chat with one of the show’s organizers, and topics that came up were things like: the ABD/DBD identity question, the question of the meaning or value of “South Asia” (yes, that old chestnut again), globalization (especially the changing nature of the diaspora), the rise of Bobby Jindal, and the elections in Gujarat. Other topics will likely come up, and some of those topics might well be skipped if inspiration doesn’t strike (I get the feeling that this show is very free-form in nature.)

There will also probably be a some amount of “meta” discussion about blogging, the relationship between new and old media, and the nature of internet community.

Since a big part of what makes this blog work is the feedback and insight from readers, I wanted to ask you: are there particular posts or topics we’ve covered in the past few months that stood out to you as things to possibly discuss on the radio? Or particularly good comment threads, perhaps? Continue reading →

Documentary: “I For India”

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I recently got a chance to see an excellent documentary called I For India (thanks, Kate!). It’s a kind of family documentary that spans nearly forty years. When Yash Suri moved to England, in 1965, he decided to buy two Super 8 film cameras, two tape recorders, and two projectors. One set he kept, the other he sent to his family in Meerut. He filmed and recorded his family’s life and growth through the 1970s and 80s, his family in India did the same — and they sent each other the tapes, as a way of staying in touch. The result is an amazing archive of what happens to a family when one part of it goes abroad. Yash’s daughter Sandhya Suri assembled and edited the material into a unique 70 minute statement. Here is a brief clip:

(You can also supposedly see a clip from the film at the BBC, though when I tried it I couldn’t get the video to play.) Continue reading →

“Our Vanity Is Matched Only By Our Persecution Complex”

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Meera Nanda has a detailed summary and analysis of the most recent Pew Global Attitudes report from the Indian point of view:

The Pew poll asked people in 47 countries if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others.” Indians topped the list, with a whopping 93 per cent agreeing that our culture was superior to others, with 64 per cent agreeing completely, without any reservations.

Now all people have a soft spot for their own culture. But to see how off-the-charts our vanity is, let us compare ourselves with the other “ancient civilisations” in our neighbourhood. Compared to our 64 per cent, only 18 per cent of the Japanese and only 20 per cent Chinese had no doubt at all that their culture was the best. Indeed, close to one quarter of Japanese and Chinese — as compared to our meagre 5 per cent — disagreed that their ways were the best.

The U.S. — a country universally condemned for its cultural imperialism — comes across as suffering from a severe case of inferiority complex when compared with us. Only 18 per cent Americans had no doubts about the superiority of their culture, compared with our 64 per cent. Nearly a quarter of Americans expressed self-doubts, and 16 per cent completely denied their own superiority. The corresponding numbers from India are five and one per cent. (link)

The obvious question to speculate on (and please, speculate away) is where this discrepancy comes from. I personally don’t know though I’ve definitely seen some evidence of it in the hyper-patriotic way many Indians cheer for the national cricket team.

A bit more:

The strange thing is that for a people who think so highly of our own culture, we are terribly insecure. A startling 92 per cent of Indians — almost exactly the same proportion who think we are the best — think that “our way of life needs to be protected against foreign influences.” Here, too, we beat the Japanese, the Chinese, and the Americans by about 25-30 percentage points. When it comes to feeling embattled and needing protection, we are closer to our Islamic neighbours, Pakistan (82 per cent) and Bangladesh (81 per cent). Indeed, we feel so embattled that 84 per cent of us want to restrict entry of people into the country, compared with only 75 per cent of those asked in the U.S., a country where legal and illegal immigration is of a magnitude higher than anywhere in the world.

So, paradoxically, our vanity is matched only by our persecution complex. (link)

It is kind of surprising that more Indians want immigration controls than Americans, especially considering how hot the immigration issue is in the U.S. right now. (Perhaps India is like Iowa; the fewer immigrants you actually have, the more you worry bout immigration?)

Nanda also summarizes the report’s findings on Indians’ attitudes to the role of government on helping the poor, and the proper role of religion in government (Indians are personally religious, but they also strongly support separation of church and state). The entire report can be found here (PDF) and the Pew Center’s brief summary is here. Continue reading →

Hassan Askari Performs a Mitzvah

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Anti-Semitism is alive and well, even in New York. But so is good Samaritanism: the other day, a Bangladeshi named Hassan Askari stepped in to assist a group of Jews who were being attacked by a gang of ten thugs on the subway.

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What’s slightly amusing to me about this headline is how small Askari is (140 pounds), and how big (and intimidating) Walter Adler seems to be, what with the leather coat and all. But I suppose in these situations there’s a lot of power even in the symbolic act of stepping up and challenging the mob — even if you’re just going to get pummeled by guys who look like this. (Apparently, Askari’s intervention gave Adler time to pull the emergency brake, which alerted the cops.) According to the New York Post story on this, afterwards Adler invited Askari over to his house to celebrate Hanukkah. A nice touch.

Incidentally, before people start speculating, the goons in question are Caucasians; two of them have even been charged with hate crimes–against blacks–before.

(Earlier desi hero story here. Apparentely Amarjit Singh hasn’t been doing so well, but the NY Daily News started a fund to help him out.) Continue reading →

For the Ladies: “Tell Me What,” A DBD/ABD Hip Hop Video

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Check out the following video, which is currently in rotation on MTV India:

Who are all these people? I hadn’t heard of any of them: the producer and male rapper calls himself Deep (he seems to be an ABD rapper). The woman singing in Hindi (with the short hair) is Pratichee (she is definitely a DBD). The woman singing R&B style, in English, is Janina Gavankar (who has had a role on “The L Word”; she was also featured in an earlier Sepia Mutiny post by Abhi). And the woman rapping — ferociously! — in Punjabi is Navraaz (could not find any links; I have no idea who she is).

I won’t try and translate the Punjabi rap (any takers?), except to say that the English chorus (Back the **** off me) makes a good summary. (I might also add that the lyrics might make even Ms. Hard Kaur blush…)

Incidentally, the label responsible for this track, IndiAudio, has made an MP3 available for downloading here.

What say you? Continue reading →