The Gupta Empire Trilogy: Filling a Gaping Hole in Indian Historical Fiction

“The story of the Gupta emperors was indeed lost for many, centuries, even though the Gupta Age was India’s ‘first spring’. . . It was economically prosperous, politically strong, vibrant, cosmopolitan, cultured, liberal and enlightened. However, the Gupta Emperors have, unfortunately, not received the kind of interest or patronage that turned Emperor Ashoka before them and the Mughals after into an intrinsic part of our cultural consciousness.”

That is Nandini Sengupta writing in her foreword to her third book in the Gupta Empire trilogy, The Ocean’s Own. The other two are The King Within and The Poisoned Heart. All three have been published by Harper Collins.

The Ocean’s Own is the story of Samudragupta, his ascension to power after his father Chandragupta’s death, how he secures his empire and expands it to encompass the Dakshin (southern) kingdoms of Kanchi and Palakka. It is also about his turbulent and complicated relationship with Angai, the warrior princess from Kanchi.  

Though this book is the third in the series, the other two are about Samudragupta’s descendants. The King Within is about his son, Chandragupta Vikramaditya and The Poisoned Heart is about his great grandson (Chandragupta Vikramaditya’s grandson), Skandagupta. So if someone is interested in reading the trilogy and has not already read the first two, it is best to start with the third book first.

Nandini Sengupta has very deftly interwoven historical facts with a bit of fiction (and historical figures with fictional characters) to give three wonderful stories. Each story has a woman character with whom the emperor has a complicated relationship – Angai in the case of Samudragupta, Darshini, the courtesan-turned-Buddhist in the case of Chandragupta and Rohini, the half-Hun enigma in the case of Skandagupta.

Between the three books, the Gupta era and the social mores, the governance, the attire and fighting techniques are depicted wonderfully. The research is stupendous. What’s more, details are woven in so deftly into the narrative that at no point does the interest flag.   

In the preface, Nandini Sengupta lamented the lack of attention to the Gupta era. This trilogy is certain to pique interest in the Gupta dynasty and the period during which it ruled. More importantly, it also fills a gaping hole in Indian writing in English – fiction set in ancient India.

Book Review: Insightful Takeaways on Governance

 

METHOD IN THE MADNESS: Insights from my career as an insider-outsider-insider. Parameswaran Iyer. HarperCollins, 2021. Pp 245. Rs 499

When I started reading this book, India was reeling from the utter collapse of governance and administration in the wake of the second wave of the Covid pandemic. Questions were naturally being asked about bureaucratic competence as well as inflexibility, and the hoary generalist-versus-specialist debate had resurfaced. I hoped this book would give some answers. Fortunately it did.

The day after I finished it, the clip of a district magistrate physically assaulting a young man for violating the lockdown in Chhattisgarh had gone viral. That brought back memories of another district magistrate in Tripura, who was also caught on camera slapping people at a wedding for a similar offence. Obviously one started wondering about bureaucratic arrogance and whether something in the system either actively fosters it or simply fails to discourage it. Unfortunately, this book doesn’t yield any answers on this count.

But this is just an aside. It would be unfair to burden Method in the Madness with the expectations of readers revolving around incidents the author is not even remotely connected with. In any case it isn’t Parameswaran Iyer’s failing alone. From what I remember of the memoirs of other bureaucrats that I have read, no one touches upon this very real problem of high-handedness with the public. They dwell on, as does this book, their training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, being constrained by – and getting around – hidebound rules and budget constraints, navigating political undercurrents and corruption, the specialist-generalist debate. But this issue is glossed over. Maybe some future memoir will make up for this lack.

Iyer, who was in the Uttar Pradesh cadre of the IAS, became a household name because he was the face of the Swachh Bharat Mission, but he also has under his belt the success of the Swajal rural drinking water programme in the mid-nineties. And he also went back and forth between the government and the World Bank, specialising in the water and sanitation sector. So this book ends up offering wonderful insights on work cultures and problem solving approaches – not just in the government and World Bank but also in other countries he dealt with when working with the latter. It is a very readable account and Iyer peppers it with pithy management tips highlighted in boxes.

So what are the key takeaways from the book?

One, there is a case for specialisation after a point of time (Iyer feels it should be after 15 years of field experience), but specialists with a good grounding in administration/management can deliver better results. But the civil services system is not inclined to encourage specialisation. A year into the Swajal project, Iyer was offered a more attractive posting but he turned it down to his senior’s befuddlement. This was a case of him being offered something; he might well have been transferred summarily. Indeed, how can any developmental project succeed if the person helming it is to be transferred within a year? After his return from the World Bank, Iyer was posted in higher education despite his domain expertise and then to environment in less than a year. Such stories abound in the annals of civil service history.  

Related to this is the issue of lateral entry into the civil service – can domain experts with no knowledge of how the `system’ functions be effective? People like Mantosh Sondhi, Raja Ramanna, D.V. Kapur have proved they can but this may not always be the case. Iyer’s stint outside the government certainly helped him implement SBM with innovative methods, including getting young professionals to help district magistrates. But could he have, say, broken down silos without the benefit of knowing how the system works?

Two, it is important to get the political leadership on board. In 2002, Kerala was all set to launch a public-private-partnership for handwashing with soap (PPP-HWS) along with Unilever. But the state government scrapped it, despite the support of the senior bureaucracy, as it was seen as a “World Bank/capitalist (multinational soap company) ploy to undermine the socialist traditions of the state”. Years later, while helming SBM, Iyer met Akhilesh Yadav, then Uttar Pradesh chief minister, who promised all help to get two districts open defecation free. Nothing happened for months. Things changed, he writes, when Yogi Adityanath became chief minister.

And then there are chief ministers like    Mayawati who do not let political considerations override good economics and administrative practices. In the mid-nineties, Mayawati overruled opposition from her entire cabinet to a proposal to get rural communities to share the capital cost of the Swajal scheme. Women have to bear the burden of fetching water and a small contribution by the community to get piped water to villages is perfectly alright, she said. No wonder Iyer observes “political leadership is a golden ticket to implementing big ideas”.

An interesting tidbit: when touring China during his World Bank days, Iyer found that water was not supplied free; water utility managers had to collect a minimum percentage of the dues and even poorer households were willing to pay.

Three, any successful development programme requires community involvement. Iyer demonstrates this in the context of the Total Literacy Campaign during his years as district magistrate, Swajal as well as SBM. In the case of Swajal, community involvement reduced the project scheme cycle from 27 months to 18 months.

Four, the lack of enthusiasm among district level officials for a particular development programme is not always due to their apathy. In many cases, it is because of the sheer number of schemes they have to implement along with other responsibilities; they find it difficult to focus on any one.   

Iyer has edited a volume on the Swachh Bharat revolution, but the account in Method in the Madness is more suitable for the lay reader. It is a fascinating telling of the two daunting challenges of scale and speed, overcoming resistance within the bureaucracy, deciding between the carrot or stick approaches, involving the community, breaking social taboos, using whatever leverage was available, dealing with negative commentary in the media and much more.

This is a good read for anyone interested in how the government works and how it can work.

Book Review/A Much Needed Compilation of Dalit Icons

MAKERS OF MODERN DALIT HISTORY by Sudarshan Ramabadran and Guru Prakash Paswan; Penguin, 2021. Pp 172; Rs. 399 

To anyone who is not a Dalit, any discussion on Dalit icons instantly brings to mind the names of B.R. Ambedkar and then social reformers like Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule as well as politicians like Babu Jagjivan Ram, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati. Names like Sant Janabai and Soyarabai (key figures in the Bhakti movement), Dakshayani Velayudhan (the first Dalit woman graduate), Kerala folk musician Ayyankali and Telugu poet Gurram Jashuva would be mostly unheard of – except perhaps in the regions/states they hailed from, and even then, it is quite possible that their caste may not be known.  For example, everyone familiar with the freedom struggle would know that Udham Singh killed Sir Michael O’Dwyer; hardly anyone would know he was a Dalit.

Makers of Modern Dalit History attempts to address this lack, profiling eighteen personalities who are believed to have shaped Dalit history and consciousness. Regretting that many of these personalities “have been redacted from mainstream historical and intellectual discourse”, the authors say the book attempts to “enable them to be a source of inspiration to the Dalit community” (though they also say the book is not just for a Dalit readership). This is, no doubt, an important task – any community which has suffered oppression for centuries (and continues to face discrimination and humiliation) needs more than one or two iconic figures to look up to.

The profiles of the lesser known personalities are eye openers. Nandanar, one learns, was the only Dalit Nayanar (the sixty-three Saivite saints from Tamil Nadu). Janabai, a maidservant of Sant Namdev, earned the title of Sant. Dakshayani Velayudhan was not only the first Dalit woman graduate but was also a member of the Constituent Assembly.   

And yet one finishes the book with a sense of discontentment, as the chapters fail to flesh out the individual personalities or highlight pivotal incidents in their lives.

Take the example of Dakshayani, who was from the Pulaya community in Kerala which was forbidden to walk on public roads and whose women were not allowed to cover the upper part of their bodies – at the most, they could use beads. The fact that she was the first girl from the community to cover her upper body with cloth is buried in the chapter! What gave Dakshayani the courage to do what she did, what was the reaction to her very inspiring act of defiance? One doesn’t know. Apparently the name Dakshayani (which means Durga) was never used by the depressed classes told. Who chose the name? What role did her parents play in her evolution into a strong woman?

Of the six pages on Rani Jhalkaribai, two are about how Indian academia has been unfair to historical figures like her. This is a general problem, not specific to her. Kabir, we are told, was one of the few figures in history to have undertaken holistic intervention to end casteism. But one would have liked more details on how exactly. His being equally critical of Hindu and Muslim orthodoxies does not explain his approach to Dalit upliftment. This lack of elaboration on such crucial issues is a lacuna in other chapters as well and, unfortunately, stands in the way of a good book becoming a great one. For this, the publisher has to bear the larger blame. This is the kind of shaping of a book that editors should do.

Perhaps this could have been addressed if there was conceptual clarity: is the book about people who determinedly shaped Dalit consciousness or people who became icons because they overcame innumerable odds to achieve success?

One reason for this shortcoming could be, as the authors admit at one point, lack of information about these figures. Perhaps they could have spent some more time researching and writing about the lesser known figures if they had consciously decided to leave out the more well-known personalities? The life and work of Ambedkar, Savitribai Phule, Jagjivan Ram, Kanshi Ram, K.R. Narayanan have been very well documented. Fitting them into this has resulted in their achievements being summarised in nine to ten pages, which does not capture the magnitude of their achievements.

Their inclusion was perhaps necessitated by the title of the book – any compilation of modern Dalit history without these figures will be preposterous. But what if the book was about Forgotten Dalit Icons or The Other Dalit Icons? Then perhaps space could have been devoted to the other thirteen personalities, which include Ved Vyasa and Valmiki, and how they `made’ modern Dalit identity. Also, other lesser known personalities could have been included; there could have been a chapter on, say, Dalits role in the 1857 war of independence.

The conclusion chapter, which lists what the authors call ‘today’s Dalit heroes’, is quite problematic. This is not to question the credentials of those included – Milind Kamble and Kalpana Saroj of the Dalit Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DICCI), economist and Rajya Sabha member Narendra Jadhav, educationists Bhalchandra Mungekar and Sukhdeo Thorat, to name just five. These are very worthy names.

The problem is really about exclusion. Two names come readily to my mind – that of Chandrabhan Prasad and Bezwada Wilson.

Prasad was, along with Kamble, one of the driving forces behind the setting up of DICCI; indeed Prasad has been advocating Dalit capitalism for long. He is at the forefront of shaping a Dalit narrative that is more empowering rather than the purely atrocities-led narrative that finds favour in popular discourse. Prasad and DICCI seem to have parted ways but mentioning Kamble and not Prasad makes the authors as guilty of airbrushing personalities as the academia they accuse of redacting the personalities that figure in this volume.

Wilson has been campaigning relentlessly against the practice of manual scavenging – an occupation that is still reserved for Dalits. Ideologically, he is the exact opposite of Prasad and Kamble; not for him ideas like Dalit capitalism. His criticism of right wing ideology and politics can be extremely harsh and strident. But that should not have led to his being excluded from any list of those shaping the modern Dalit narrative and situation.

These quibbles, however, do not detract from the importance of this book.  It is actually more than a compilation of profiles. The nearly forty-page introduction gives an insightful snapshot of the history of Dalit awakening, including the evolution and importance of the term Dalit. It talks about how subaltern literature has come to represent the quest for dignity. It takes readers through early Dalit literature in the nineteenth century – from Maharashtra, the erstwhile Central Provices, Bengal and Punjab, with special praise for the last. “No other language perhaps has so far had Dalit literature of such high literacy calibre.”

There are, no doubt, a number of academic works doing much the same. But those would not appeal to the lay readers – Dalit and non Dalit. This book does and that increases its value immensely. Sudarshan Rambhadran and Guru Prakash Paswan deserve to take a bow for this work; and they deserve applause.

On Her Own Terms

 “This picture defines auntie”, a young woman in my neighbourhood said when she saw this. The very words I had used when I sourced this picture from my niece. This dates back to 2009 when the two of us and my sister’s family had gone on a trip to Himachal Pradesh. This was on the lawns of the hotel in Narkhanda where we made the first stop. The paper was either Indian Express or The Tribune.

Rangamani Parthasarathy simply HAD to read the newspapers – note the plural – every day. And she would make sure she got it. On that trip, whenever we passed a wayside shop, the car had to stop and we had to check if an English newspaper was available.

Amma was always up to date on the news – after going through the newspapers, she was constantly switching between her Tamil serials and television news channels. Often it was she who informed me about breaking news events, knowing that I don’t watch television news. She knew the biases of every news channel and which anchor is fair and which one is patently unfair. `Yenna adaavadi (what brazenness)’, was a constant refrain as she watched the 9 pm panel discussions. She would give me the low-down on the discussions and I would tell her to stop wasting her time on those. 

How does one even begin to describe her?  She was a bundle of contradictions in many ways. She was beautiful, as these photographs show, but she frowned on any preoccupation with looks (she has never applied lipstick; pottu (bindi) and kajal were her only adornments). She combined tradition and modernity in her own unique way. She was the source of strength to her four daughters but was never the conventional mother. She was God fearing but shunned ritualism in any form. She lit the lamp in front of her deities every morning and spent some time in silent prayer, but she never chanted mantras or observed fasts or attended bhajan sabhas/kirtan sabhas. But she made sure all festivals were observed the way they should be.

The first photo was when she was one or two years old; the second when she was 16; and the third when she was in her 40s. 

Where she came from is best described in this post about her family. She was highly educated – BA from Queen Mary’s College, Madras, BEd from Central Institute of Education, MA through correspondence course in geography from Aligarh Muslim University, and PhD in urban geography from the Delhi School of Economics. Her PhD thesis was a talking point when she submitted it in the seventies. The central argument was that Connaught Place would decline in importance as a retail destination and markets in what were then the suburbs – Greater Kailash, South Extension etc – would rise in importance. She was interviewed by Hindustan Times, I remember. Her prediction did come true, though Connaught Place is regaining its lost glory now. I remember accompanying her on her field trips, as she went around markets noting down details of shops and talking to residents about their shopping habits.

She was all dynamism, but she lacked that certain something that should have made her a successful career woman – she taught in schools for short spells and did some post-doctoral research. That was just about it.

Her focus on her education – even though she was married straight after school – did not mean even the slightest neglect of her daughters. She wanted all four of us to be strong, highly educated, independent women with successful careers and went all out to ensure we got the best possible education. As one of her sisters-in-law once said: “Ranga lives for her daughters”.

But the relationship is best described in the modern lingo: “it’s complicated”. She was a strong-willed woman – some would call her headstrong and she would accept it as a compliment. So were her four daughters. Clashes were, therefore, inevitable, though she backed us to the hilt in our choices of academics, careers and life partners. So what were the clashes about? When one looks back, trivial things in comparison to the areas where she let us simply be.

One frequent reason for fights used to be her penny-pinching ways. ‘For heaven’s sake, we are not so badly off, I can afford this,’ one of us would invariably snap. `Just because you can afford it, doesn’t mean you have to blow up money,’ she would retort. And the final word was always hers: `It is because I am like this your father never had to take a loan for educating all you or for marriages.’

But was she perhaps also responsible for some of our weaknesses? She was never one of those pushy mothers who put pressure on their children to top the class, come first in school, excel in this, surpass in that. Knowledge was more important for her than a mere exam, substance scored over appearance/style. But even in those days, marks and appearance were becoming more important than mere knowledge and substance. I keep swinging between “I wish she had been like that (switching between conventional and pushy mothers)” and `Thank God she wasn’t like that’.

She would say marriage should not define a woman, but she worried herself sick that I did not marry. But she also tried her best to ensure that I never came to know of this, just so that I did not feel pressured into getting married. When my younger sister was going through a divorce, a neighbour came and said `hamare sanskar mein divorce nahin hota’ my mother snubbed her saying in her broken Hindi (she spoke atrocious Hindi even after six decades in Delhi) that if one goes by tradition, then she should not have allowed an inter-caste marriage. There was no confusion in her mind – her daughter had made a mistake and wanted to correct it and she had to give her full backing.

Concentrating on her education also did not mean neglect of the kitchen or outsourcing to a cook. We had two brief spells of cooks, but even then it was her domain. The sweets/snacks at every festival were made at home till she was well into her sixties.

One lady in her neighbourhood told my sister, `aapki mother to gai thi, gai’. We all had a hearty laugh about that. Amma was no gentle soul, as plumbers, electricians, carpenters, masons and neighbours who were a nuisance very soon realised. We would cringe with embarrassment and try to stop her but to no avail.

In the eighties and early nineties she was involved in the consumer protection movement. She came up against crooked ration shop owners and stood up to them. One dared to send our rations home. She not only returned it immediately, but went to his shop and ticked him off. Another took the name of the local MLA. Off she went to see him and tell him what the ration shop owner said. Soon the MLA would invariably make a stop at her home when he was on his rounds and touch her feet.

She used to control the queue at the Delhi Milk Scheme counter and at the vegetable trucks sent by the Delhi government civil supplies department (something she was instrumental in arranging). Invariably that involved clashes with those trying to jump the queue. Some times there were personal attacks, and that became another source of our fights at home. But she wouldn’t stop. Soon many of those who had fought with her would concede that she was fair and often ask her to arbitrate.  She became famous as doodh vaali auntie and alu-pyaaaz vali auntie!

She continued to remain physically and mentally active till the end (she was discussing politics with my aunt till one hour before she passed away). If the maid didn’t come, she would not leave vessels piled up like many much younger women would. If we stopped her from doing anything or from going out to the market alone, she would get furious:  `don’t make me an invalid’. Of late, she had stopped her evening walks (she was diabetic) because she found walking difficult but that didn’t stop her from climbing three flights of stairs to her sister’s home just because she wanted to go there on account of having missed the cremation.

I would tell people, my mother is never going to suffer from Parkinson’s or dementia and I was right – she went quickly, peacefully, in full control of her faculties till the end. In her eighty-six years, she had never been hospitalised except for the deliveries of her daughters. She didn’t trust government hospitals and was sure private hospitals only exist to fleece patients. And she ensured that she was not admitted to hospital even at the fag end of her life - she had a heart attack and was declared brought dead when we took her to the hospital, so there was no question of her being admitted.  

I guess this is one of the rare examples of someone who lived and died on her own terms.

The Amazing VK family

There  are  just  three left now. Out  of a brood of 11. And what  a brood – bright, strong, temperamental, tempestuous, best of friends, best  of enemies, innocuous conversations leading to massive fights where  some wouldn’t talk to each other for months, years. The VK family fights and politics were legendary. And if any of us cousins railed against this or ribbed them about it, the combined put  down was swift – we may have our fights, but in times of trouble we will always be with each  other. And as one aunt married into the family said today – look, they always used to say they would be together despite all the squabbles and so Babu and Sukumaran went within days of each other and  Mythili (my aunt, sitting) and Ranga (my mother, standing) within less than 24 hours.

I often used to say the oddballs of  the VK family need to be chronicled, but today I will forget about their eccentricities and celebrate them.

The VK referred to V. Krishnamachari, my grandfather. He trained as a lawyer but refused to practice after a point because he didn’t want to wear trousers – his way of opposing British rule. So he became a journalist in The Hindu. He  retired as assistant news editor and was a legend there. G. Kasturi particularly held him in high regard. My mother and her elder brothers have read proofs of pages carrying news of World War II that used to come home for checking. But journalism was such a badly paying job that he didn’t want any of his children to become one. Many years later, his youngest son (who was just four when he died) became one – in The Hindu. And then two granddaughters also did, one me and the other  in The Hindu again.

Then there was his wife Chellama. Daughter of a railway  official, my mother is not sure if she went to school but she was a voracious reader in Tamil and English and  apparently even wrote short stories in a little notebook. So broad-minded was she that when  my mother nervously told her that my eldest sister wants  to marry a baniya from Uttar Pradesh, she said, if they are decided  then  just  fix the earliest auspicious date.  And when my second sister took her Kerala Christian husband to meet her, she immediately took my sister to buy her utensils. Not once did she come in the way of her daughters’ education.

Between VK and Chellama, they raised a remarkable brood, particularly the four daughters.

My grandfather was insistent that  all his daughters would be at least graduates. My mother, Rangamani (sibling number 3, daughter number 1) was married straight after school, but when searching for a groom, my grandfather insisted that she should be allowed to go to college and become a graduate.  She went on to do her BA (she was pregnant with my eldest sister while giving her third year exam), MA, B.Ed and PhD (she was pregnant with my youngest sister then).

After her was Mythili (sibling  number 4, sister number 2), who became a doctor. When VK died of a heart attack a few months after my birth, his youngest son was only four years old. Mythili shouldered the burden of educating all her younger siblings, deciding to remain unmarried.

Sister number 3 (sibling number 6) Shakuntala Chellappa (the second of the siblings to die) was a school teacher as well as a gifted singer who was a staff artiste on All India Radio, Hyderabad. She passed on her musical genes to her daughter, Nandini Srikar. Daughter number 4 (sibling number 8) Vatsala Mani is an economics PhD from the precursor  of JNU - School of International Studies. By the way, all the daughters had to learn music.

The sons were qualified and highly respected professionals – from a telecommunications engineer (V. K. Aravamudhan, a crack solver of cryptic crossword puzzles); a veterinary  doctor (V. K. Seshadri, a voracious reader who could quote passages out of books he had read years earlier); a mining engineer (V. K. Raghavan); IAS (V.K. Srinivasan); IPS (V.K. Rajagopalan); journalist (V.K. Raghunathan). V.K. Soundarajan was the only one who lagged behind, thanks to an overdose of anasthaesia when he broke his arm as a child. The reputation of Srinivasan and Rajagopalan for being non corruptible bureaucrats and sticklers for rules was legendary in IAS and IPS circles. Raghu too got drawn to music – rock music - in college and continued his interest through his career. He had his own band at one point.
All the siblings had a ear for music. With Tata Sky, Srinivasan, Mythili and my mother would often be tuned to Carnatic music programmes on various channels and would be constantly calling each other almost every  evening to listen to this new singer on this channel or an established singer on another channel. 

I’ve just read this again and it reads flat. That’s because the eccentricities of the VK family don’t figure. But that’s for another day. 

Fight Crackers on Your Own; Don't Bring the Government, Courts into It

Last year on Diwali day I wrote this article, Everyone Who Criticises The Way Festivals Are Being Observed Is Not A Hindu Hater, that earned me the wrath of, and consequently countless abuses from, the cultural right, a loose group that claims it is out to save Hinduism not just from other religious groups but also what they call `Hindu-hating Hindus’. I was making a simple, nuanced point: I don’t agree with the campaign against crackers, but not everybody wanting them banned or restraint on their use is a festival shamer or Hindu hater. Of course, I was promptly labelled as both (apart from a lot of other things).

This year, my criticism of the Supreme Court order banning sale of fire-crackers  in Delhi before and till well after Diwali could earn me another label, this time from those who are rejoicing over the court order – Hindu fanatic. Apparently only this lot, which wants to add to Delhi’s air and noise pollution and has no consideration for people and pets affected by the smoke, will object to the order. 

Now, one has reconciled to the death of nuance in any debate, but even then this is a bit much. When will people get this: someone asking for a ban on crackers or for some restraint in over-the-top celebrations of any festival is not necessarily a Hindu-hater. And someone criticising the Supreme Court order is not necessarily an inconsiderate Hindu fanatic/sanghi/BJP-sympathiser.  

That apart, the Supreme Court order is wrong because it is a clear case of judicial over-reach. 

There is no clinching evidence that firecrackers are the main cause of air and noise pollution in Delhi. Monday’s Supreme Court judgement quotes an earlier order of September 12 which says: 

. . . from the material before us, it cannot be said with any great degree of certainty that the extremely poor quality of air in Delhi in November and December 2016 was the result only of bursting fireworks around Diwali. Certainly, there were other causes as well, but even so the contribution of the bursting of fireworks cannot be glossed over. Unfortunately, neither is it possible to give an accurate or relative assessment of the contribution of the other identified factors nor the contribution of bursting fireworks to the poor air quality in Delhi and in the NCR. (emphasis added)

So, then, why the ban? Apparently the 2016 order restricting sale of firecrackers came  after Diwali and the Court wants to see the effect of the ban around Diwali this year. This is not convincing enough. 

Those welcoming the order say this judicial intervention was necessary because this is a serious and very real social problem that affects the health of people in Delhi and the government was not doing anything about it. Okay, point conceded. But then wasn’t the issue of accidents on highways due to drunken driving also a serious social issue, which led the Supreme Court to prohibit state governments from granting licences to liquor vends and bars  along state and national highways? 

But that sparked enormous outrage from the very sections that are hailing the current Delhi-centric ban. Many of the arguments at that  time cited lack of evidence that all drunk driving deaths on highways were caused by people who drank at liquor vends along these roads. So why doesn’t this lack of evidence apply now? 

Gautam Bhatia and other legal experts have pointed out on social media that the order on firecrackers is faulty because there’s no specific law being violated. Bhatia also cited the example of the Court’s interim order on standing for the national anthem, which was justified on the basis of the lack of a law on the subject, as another example of overreach. 

But that order attracted widespread condemnation by the very sections that are welcoming Monday’s order. Go figure.

Am I indulging in whataboutery? Yes, unapologetically so. Sometimes whataboutery is needed to call out hypocrisy. One cannot say judicial intervention is justified when it serves your pet cause but not justified when it does not. (Incidentally, this applies to the `cultural right’, that is lambasting the order, as well. You cannot hail the Supreme Court when it orders people to stand up for the national anthem and criticise it for banning firecrackers on Diwali.)

The Indian Constitution, which many of those welcoming the order swear by, has certain tasks set out for the three arms of government. There is a principle called separation of powers. The issue of liquor vends along highways, firecrackers during Diwali and standing up for the national anthem are all areas where the executive and legislature need to act. Just because you cannot persuade them to do so, you can’t seek and justify judicial intervention.  

Am I belittling the issue of the problem of over-the-top firecrackers during Diwali? No. It is a serious problem and not just in Delhi. Even someone like me who loved bursting firecrackers (and  initiated my nephew  into bursting them) and think Diwali is incomplete without them cringe at what goes on these days. I know the problem asthma patients face – my sister used to be asthmatic and my parents had a hard time keeping her away from crackers and keeping her indoors when  the smoke got too much (incidentally, she  did not stop her son from bursting crackers). I know a lot of devout Hindus who are distressed by the noise and smoke. In Delhi, at least, crackers have always been more about display of wealth than anything else.  

But getting the government, or failing that, the Supreme Court to ban it is not the solution. This only gives the government more power over our lives. We cannot  bring the state into every your-freedom-ends-where-my-nose-begins issue. There are some issues we have to address ourselves. 

So, go ahead appeal to your colonies/housing societies to regulate use of crackers, raise awareness  about the ill-effects of crackers, call the cops when you find people bursting crackers beyond  10 pm (instead of  saying `how can we complain about our neighbours, it doesn’t look nice’), don’t give or accept sweets and presents from neighbours  who burst  crackers. But don’t bring the government or the courts into it.

Goodbye Brave Gauri

I was sitting at my computer and writing an article – was not on the net and don’t watch news television – when my mother called. “Didn’t you have a friend called Gauri Lankesh?” “Yes,” I said, “but I haven’t been in touch since. . .” My mother cut me short: “She’s been shot dead in Bangalore.”
As I got on to Facebook and Twitter and switched on the television, numbed, so many memories came to life.
Perhaps the most poignant one was a practical joke Gauri played, which backfired badly.  It was the first memory of Gauri that popped into my mind as I grappled with the news.
This was in the mid or late nineties. After some years in Times of India, Delhi, where we were colleagues, Gauri had moved to Bangalore office. She, me and Kalpana Jain used to exchange letters over the office air bag. Gauri’s Hindi was a joke and once she wrote a letter to us – Hindi in English script. Kalpana and me responded with English in Hindi script.
Some days later, I was on night shift when I got a call from office saying news has come that Gauri has died of a heart attack. If I remember right, there was then a call saying this was a practical joke (or perhaps I learnt about it when I reached office).
This is what had happened. Gauri, the brat that she always was, had sent a message over the office telex machine addressed to Kalpana and me, saying “this is to inform the sad demise of Gauri Lankesh. She died after receiving a letter in Hindi. . ..”
The teleprinter operator had handed it to Kalpana, who was on the afternoon shift. She read the first sentence and, shaken, didn’t read beyond it and handed it to the news editor. He too did not read beyond the first line. Apparently the editor was informed, a short meeting was called, condolences offered. Then one of the senior editors – either editor Dileep Padgaonkar or resident editor Ajay Kumar - called the resident editor of the Bangalore office to get some details. He was taken aback saying she’s right here hale and hearty! Gauri had to face some disciplinary action for that (since the office telex had been used) but she bounced back.
Oh, how I wish this news too was just a practical joke. Unfortunately , it is all too real.
Gauri was spunky. In those days in Times House, women journalists who did smoke would not do so in the large hall on the second floor where journalists of Economic Times, Times of India and Navbharat Times sat. They would go to the women’s loo and smoke. So did Gauri initially, seeing the others. It used to irritate me and I used to tell them to smoke openly in the hall like the men did. One journalist said she couldn’t because her father (also a journalist) would come to know. Another had some other feeble excuse. But Gauri decided to go ahead. One night shift, after the dak edition andas we were preparing for the city edition, she lit up. The peons were aghast. But the unwritten rule had been broken.
So many times I have rested at her home in Defence Colony when I was out on meetings for an article I was writing and had to report to for night shift on the desk. My first haircut went horribly wrong and it was Gauri who took me to another and told him what to do. I continued with him for nearly 10 years.
Like I said earlier, I hadn’t been in touch with her for ages – just the normal drifting apart that used to happen in those days when there were no cellphones or email or Facebook. I used to keep hearing news of her and reading about her. The last time I had a serious discussion about her was when she lost the defamation case. When I read about details, I felt she had been on weak ground on that and had talked to a former boss and another journalist about it.
I doubt whether Gauri and I could have bonded like we used to very much if we had met recently, given our political leanings. That would have come up after the initial pleasantries. But she did not, absolutely did not, deserve to be shot dead.
Goodbye brave Gauri.