Author Archives: Ennis Singh Mutinywale

Delhi Pogroms and Nanavati Commission Report

Posted on by

The best coverage I have seen on this topic comes from the Human Rights in India Blog, run by the Human Rights organization Ensaaf. Ensaaf has done some truly excellent work on the Delhi 1984 Pogroms. Here they compare the Nanavati Commission report to their own investigation of the subject:

The report fails in similar ways as the Misra Commission report. In its report, Twenty Years of Impunity: The November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India, ENSAAF analyzes thousands of pages of previously unavailable affidavits, government records and arguments submitted to the 1985 Misra Commission, established to examine the Sikh Massacres in Delhi, Kanpur, and Bokaro. The report reveals the systematic and organized manner in which state institutions, such as the Delhi Police, and Congress (I) officials perpetrated mass murder in November 1984 and later justified the violence in inquiry proceedings.

… police officers not only passively observed the violence, but also actively participated in the attacks and made promises of impunity to assailants. Senior officers: ordered their subordinates to ignore attacks against Sikhs; ordered policemen to disarm Sikhs to increase their vulnerability to attack; systematically disabled and neutralized any officers who attempted to deviate from the norm of police inaction and instigation; released culprits; and manipulated police records in order to destroy the paper trail of the violence and protect criminals from the possibility of effective future prosecutions. At all times, the police and their superiors had sufficient force and knowledge to effectively counter the violence.

ENSAAF’s report further demonstrates the involvement of the Congress Party in organizing the massacres. Senior political leaders provided for details such as deployment of mobs, weapons and kerosene, as well as for the larger support and participation of the police. They conducted meetings the night before the onslaught of the massacres where they distributed weapons, money, voter and ration lists identifying Sikhs and their properties, and in inflammatory speeches, instructed attendees to kill Sikhs.

Continue reading →

My name is Biswas … James Biswas

Posted on by

Everybody knows the James Bond theme music, right? Well, did you know that the tune was originally written for a musical based on a VS Naipaul story?

Norman first wrote the classic tune … for a musical version of VS Naipaul’s novel A House for Mr Biswas. After he was hired to provide music for the first Bond film, Dr No, he reworked the song as a theme tune. [BBC]

The tune was then given its distinctive, big band orchestration by composer James Barry. Monty Norman (the composer of the original tune) is now going to record it, with its original lyrics intact. The song was called “Good Sign, Bad Sign” and the lyrics are as follows: bond.jpg

I was born with this unlucky sneeze

And what is worse I came into the world the wrong way round

Pundits all agree I am the reason why

My father fell into the village pond and drowned. [BBC]

Kinda bollywood actually …

p.s. am I the only one who finds the idea of a VS Naipaul musical in 1961 (?) really bizarre? Continue reading →

All look same and sound like Apu

Posted on by

The prosecution of various Indian store owners swept up by Operation Meth Merchant has run into some problems. For one thing, they’re having a hard time demonstrating intent on the part of the store owners:

… when a government informant told store clerks that he needed the cold medicine, matches and camping fuel to “finish up a cook,” some of them said they figured he must have meant something about barbecue.

In some cases, the language barriers seem obvious – one videotape shows cold medicine stacked next to a sign saying, “Cheek your change before you leave a counter.” Investigators footnoted court papers to explain that the clue the informants dropped most often – that they were doing “a cook” – is a “common term” meth makers use. Lawyers argue that if the courts could not be expected to understand what this meant, neither could immigrants with a limited grasp of English.

“This is not even slang language like ‘gonna,’ ‘wanna,’ ” said Malvika Patel, who spent three days in jail before being cleared this month. ” ‘Cook’ is very clear; it means food.” And in this context, she said, some of the items the government wants stores to monitor would not set off any alarms. “When I do barbecue, I have four families. I never have enough aluminum foil.” [NYT]

Honestly, even having grown up in the US and knowing something about drug culture, I don’t know whether I would have caught the word “Cook” as drug slang in this context. The deeper root of the problem here, however, is that it’s very hard to write an effective law that says that something is legal unless it’s meant to be used to nefarious purposes. Sudafed, matches, camping fuel are either legal or illegal. You shouldn’t foist the burden on a convenience store owner to figure out how such common items will be used.

Another problem was that the prosecutors kept mixing up the different (unrelated) Patels involved:

Prosecutors have had to drop charges against one defendant they misidentified, presuming that the Indian woman inside the store must be the same Indian woman whose name appeared on the registration for a van parked outside, and lawyers have gathered evidence arguing that another defendant is the wrong Patel.  [NYT]
Continue reading →

Politicians are full of …

Posted on by

It’s a very common observation to remark that politicians are full of fecal matter[NSFW], but usually this is a metaphorical remark about their character and moral worth. Very little attention has been paid by people to literal politician droppings … until now. It turns out there is no topic beneath the attention of the Indian bureaucrat: squat.JPG

Village council candidates in India should be allowed to stand for election only if they have a toilet at home, the rural development minister says. He said too many elected members “do not have toilet facilities in their own houses and defecate in the open”. Mr Singh said this activity was the main cause of the high incidence of diarrhoea in rural areas. [BBC]

Nor (surprisingly) is this a new issue:

Some states have already made amendments in the Panchayati Raj Act, which deals with the election of village councils, to ensure that elected members have toilet facilities in their households. The rural development minister suggested all chief ministers make similar provisions. [BBC]

Actually, concern with morning stool has long been a staple of desi culture. Mahatma Gandhi’s daily greeting to women was:

“Have you had a good bowel movement this morning, sisters?” [cite]

Indeed, one critic pointed out that

… Gandhi seems to have written less about home rule for India than he did about enemas, and excrement, and latrine cleaning [cite]

It seems the minister is merely following a path made by giants … Continue reading →

Why does Pakistan support Jaish and Lakshar? [updated]

Posted on by

I have a most un-mutinous confession to make – there are lots of things in the world I don’t understand, yet I still blog about them. One of these things is the Pakistani government’s continuing support of Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, two Pakistan based militant/terrorist groups that claim Kashmiri independence as their goal. As I mentioned earlier, the Pakistani government has a very soft policy towards these two organizations:

Some security analysts in Pakistan have been critical of the government’s seemingly soft stance in relation to Harkat and Jaish – wondering why they have not been dealt with as severely as some of the other groups. [BBC]

These two groups were implicated in the attack on the Indian Parliament that came just a few months after the 9/11 attacks in the USA:

The atrocity of 13 December [2001] when five terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament, killing eight officials and a gardener, has given New Delhi the high moral ground. New Delhi insists that the five were Pakistanis and belonged to two Pakistan-based terrorist groups – Jaish-e-Mohamed (Army of the Prophet Mohamed) and Lakshar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pious). Islamabad has denied the claim and refused to accept the bodies. [cite]

They’re also the only terrorist group linked with the first group of British bombers:

Not only is there no clear link between the two sets of suspects, there is no established link between either group and al-Qaeda or any other known terror network, say British officials. There are lots of tantalizing links back to Pakistan from the July 7 gang, three of whom had parents born there. When Shehzad Tanweer — who killed seven on a train near Aldgate station — and Mohammed Sidique Khan — who killed six at Edgware Road station — left Leeds to visit Pakistan in 2004, they were frequently seen with members and recruiters of the banned militant organizations Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, according to several people in Samundri, a town near the village where Tanweer stayed with his uncle. [cite]

Here’s the question – why does Musharraf continue to support these two groups, given the high costs involved?

Continue reading →

Desi Lord Mayor of Manchester

Posted on by

Pretty soon, the press will be full of stories concerning  the alienation of British Asian Muslims. While this is an important perspective, and may be an accurate depiction of a segment of British Muslim society, it is not the whole picture. 

There are also success stories like that of Mohammed Afzal Khan, Manchester’s first Asian Lord Mayor. Khan was a high school dropout who worked  in the textile mills until he had a typically desi epiphany:

One night in the late 1970s, clocking off from work following another long night shift, he began the trudge out of the valley toward his home. At the top of the hill, he turned to survey the scene: the chimney jutting out of the mill, the red-tiled roofs on the terraced housing emblematic of working-class northern England.
“I thought, ‘Do I want to spend the rest of my life in this mill?’ ” Khan recounts. “The answer was no. That was the moment that changed everything. I realized that education is paramount.”   [CSM]

Khan went back to school to learn the basics, working his way through college while his wife (he got married at 19) trained as a dentist. After a series of jobs “from bus driver to youth worker,” he became a police constable. Although he had achieved a measure of security and status, this wasn’t enough for Khan.

He spent 2-1/2 years as a police constable, developing a keen interest in the law. When he was informed he would not be allowed unpaid leave to study, he took a risk and quit.
“My police superintendent said, ‘You’re making a big mistake, your future is here,’ ” he recalls. “I said ‘I’ll live with my mistake.’ And I have.”  [CSM]

Continue reading →

Chai Egg Creams?

Posted on by

The Grey Lady lets us know that desis have crossed a new frontier, with desi cooks infiltrating older ethnic food establishments in different parts of New York:

Exhibit A: the egg cream. For New Yorkers of a certain age, this was the nectar of a Jewish neighborhood, and Gem Spa was the drink’s sacred temple, certified as such by magazines and travel writers. Gem Spa is still there, still turning out egg creams at its narrow patch of a soda fountain in the East Village. But the person who owns the store and taught the staff to make this curious concoction of seltzer, milk and chocolate syrup is Ray Patel, a 62-year-old immigrant from Gujarat state in India.

He learned the recipe, including the secret stirring motions that create a frothy head resembling beaten egg whites, from the previous owner (Italian), who learned it from the old owner (Jewish).

“People try to learn new things in a land of opportunity,” is Mr. Patel’s elegant explanation for how an Indian came to make a drink that is considered exotic west of the Hudson River, let alone in Gujarat.

I’ll bet they wrote the same article 30 years ago when the guy behind the counter was Italian. Gujarat is now as exotic as Sicily used to be, so the story becomes interesting enough to retell. What they miss is how little has changed. The owner may be a bit darker, but he’s still named Ray.*

However, don’t look to Ray to spice up the old standards. Ray’s probably a purist,  but somewhere there is a young Jewish foodie who’s hybridizing the old Egg Creams with desi flavors. Cultural appropriation goes both ways. Continue reading →

Ain’t nobody here but us chickens (updated)

Posted on by

Poor Pervez. Too much pressure!

Two or three of the four London bombers may have visited Pakistan last year. Musharraf’s response? Blame the UK and tell it to get it’s own house in order.  Problem solved!

But the Little General didn’t get even one moment to rest. After Saturday’s bombings, the Egyptians started to look for six Pakistanis and things got uncomfortable again. Even after the Egyptians stated that the Pakistanis are not suspected of the bomb attack (it’s a “routine security check”) it still left a bad taste.

So “Our Man in Pakistan” decided to settle the matter once and for all. He called a press conference and told the world that “Al-Qaeda does not exist in Pakistan any more.”

Got that? Stop blaming Pakistan! No more hatin’!

Pakistan has destroyed al-Qaeda’s ability to operate on its soil, President Pervez Musharraf has said. He said the network could not have orchestrated deadly bombings in London, Egypt or elsewhere from his country. President Musharraf said al-Qaeda “sanctuaries” in Pakistan had been over-run, and that Pakistani security forces had arrested 700 of the movement’s fighters.

“We have shattered and eliminated their command system there,” he said. Al-Qaeda’s communications system had been reduced to a “courier network”.

“Is it possible in this situation that an al-Qaeda man sitting here, no matter who he is, may control things in London, Sharm al-Sheikh, Istanbul or Africa? This is absolutely wrong,” the president said.  [cite]

I feel so much safer now that he’s clarified all of this. Don’t you?

UPDATE: Radio Open Source has a show “at bat” on this subject, so you should check out their entry … Continue reading →

The cult of the “strong man”

Posted on by

I’ve been musing about the cult of the “strong man” and how we think of masculinity. Two examples, a personal anecdote, and some thoughts on the subject of what it is to be a man.

In Gujarat, history textbooks that praise Hitler were re-issued this year:

A Jesuit priest and social activist, Cedric Prakash, says the books contain more than 300 factual errors and make little mention of the holocaust. In the chapter entitled “Internal achievements of Nazism,” one textbook quoted by AFP states: “Hitler lent dignity and prestige to the German government within a short time, establishing a strong administrative set-up.”

The Gujarat government has dismissed the charges as baseless. [BBC]

Similarly, in Kanpur, a Hindu manager at ICICI-Prudential decided to use OBL to motivate his employees to sell more insurance:

A branch manager and staff of ICICI-Prudential in the city of Kanpur allegedly dreamed up the scheme to sell 275 policies in three days. Staff were told of Osama Bin Laden’s “focused determination” and would be rewarded glass tumblers for “kills”. A police official in Kanpur, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, said the staff organised a sales promotion meeting last week, putting up banners and posters on the wall. A flag of Pakistan was also allegedly used in the show. The promotion was called “Mission Jihad”.

But as the initiative attracted media publicity, staff panicked and tried to burn the publicity material. Police searching the company’s premises say they found a half burned banner and a few posters containing slogans such as “Mission Jihad: kill one enemy and take home a beautiful crystal glass. Kill more, take more.”  [BBC]

As Americans, we are often puzzled by the way in which America’s enemies often show up as folk heroes abroad, even in countries that love the US. Osama T-shirts sold well in Thailand, a hedonistic paradise that idolizes America. Despite our head scratching, it’s not all that hard to understand. Everybody wants to be a badass; everyone wants to emulate the alpha-male.

In 1999, I was travelling in a very pro-American Third World country and would get incensed when locals would call out to me “Hey, Gaddafi! Hey Bin Laden!” The sister of a close friend had died in Lockerbie, and OBL had already attacked the WTC once and killed many in Tanzania and Kenya. I was not amused.

To paraphrase Cool Hand Luke, what we had here was a failure to communicate. The guys on the street thought they were complimenting me. To them, Gaddafi and Bin Laden were strong men, and that was good in and of itself. Might makes right, after all. Continue reading →

Hari Puttar and the half-caste raja

Posted on by

Following up, the BBC reports that 13 year old Trisha Mittal, from Delhi, was India’s representative to the great Hari Puttar Gala in Scotland for the official release of the book of the book. She beat out 2,500 other children from India (is that all?) for the honor:

“We are supposed to be brought into the castle in carriages and ushered into a great hall on the launch night to meet Rowling and get an autographed copy. It sounds so exciting,” she says.

After speed-reading the book through the night, Trisha will be present as one of the 70 “cub reporters” from around the world at Rowling’s press conference the next day, asking questions and filing a report for the Indian paper. [BBC]

She’s a Hari Puttar drama geek, acting out her own plays and movies based on the characters:

Trisha is an active member of a flourishing Potter sorority in her housing block in Delhi. Along with friends, Neha, Rachita, Shanoo and Esther, they go around doing pithy Potter skits and plays, enacting roles and borrowing lines from the books. They even tweak a character “to make it funnier or grimmer” and videotape their homegrown contribution to the Potter mania that is sweeping India. [BBC]

You may not realize this, but the Hari Puttar launch was simultaneous around the world for countries that were ahead of the UK – bookstores released their copies at midnight BST. [Some places in India, as usual, were two hours late] Because of the logistical complexity of the task and the need for tight security, the company that handles Indian exam papers was chosen to distribute the book:

Safexpress’ experience of handling earlier projects of such high profile like CBSE question papers, PMT exam papers, UGC papers and earlier book releases including Harry Potter have come in handy for bagging this project. For Safexpress, the logistical feat here is the simultaneous delivery nationally to hundreds of outlets in over 50 Indian cities, as the India launch is to coincide with the worldwide launch. The simultaneous delivery impact gets higher considering the time of delivery to stores is to match the midnight of 15 – 16 release of the book in London.

With reports of leaks coming in from different parts of the world, Safexpress has implemented stringent measures across its warehouses. In every city, the books have been placed under constant electronic surveillance with guards manning storage centers. All kinds of electronic equipments like phones; cameras etc are prohibited inside the premises. [cite]

Continue reading →