Citizen Husain?

The caption in TOI says:

CARD-CARRYING INDIAN: M F Husain, who has recently taken Qatari citizenship and has had to surrender his Indian passport, shows his Overseas Citizen of India card in Dubai. It denies him voting rights but the artist claims he was never interested in the political process anyway

This is a rather telling statement. I absolutely do not understand how the word 'citizen' is used in such a card when individuals are not interested in the political process. Husain was candid about it, and we know from his stint in the Rajya Sabha that he came up with caricatures/illustrations of politicians and Parliament proceedings since he said that he was an artist and that is how he could make a statement. (Are Rajya Sabha MPs nominated to convey statements? That is another issue.)

What about all those overseas Indians who want to intervene in every aspect of political life in their home country? There has been a demand to grant them voting rights too. If we pull up electoral candidates for not knowing their constituencies, then on what basis must we permit expats to vote for someone they know precious little about or political parties that have outgrown their memories of it?

These are people of Indian origin and not citizens. They have chosen another country, another passport.

As for M.F.Husain, much in the manner we dig up our ancient Indian heritage, he is more Pandharpur than India to flaunt his commitment to the soil.

Anand Jon and the Immigrant Dream

Designer Anand Jon has been sentenced to 59 years in prison by a California court for sex crimes. He kept a conquest diary. He recorded in detail what he had done and to whom. The girls were said to be as young as 14; his abusive streak started in 2001. This picture was taken during the New York Fashion Week in 2004.


So, what are we on to?

His sister, Sanjana, has revealed there was mistrial on 15 counts. She has also said that one of the jurors attempted to take her out and she underwent a polygraph test for this allegation and passed it. The judge admitted juror misconduct but denied a mistrial.

I am also not terribly enthralled by news reports that emphasise how Jon was one of Newsweek magazine’s people to look out for. That is the real problem. Some have indicated racism. These are not issues that one can make quick conclusions about, especially when we see cases of rapists managing to keep pre-pubescent children underground for years.

The fashion and entertainment industries (remember Chaplin’s love for nubile girls?) are notorious for such abusive behaviour. However, there is a time span until which this can go on and all are most certainly not equal before the eyes of the very high society they sponge on and are sucked into.

In 2007 when the designer’s case came into public glare, I had written a column in the Asian Age about the immigrant and sudden fame. I shall reproduce part of it here:

Jon might well have been just another fresh off the boat immigrant. He did the unthinkable. He did not wallow in diaspora depression. Instead, he did what a small-town man in India does when he gets to the big city – lets it all hang out until someone notices.

He is not being merely held culpable for a crime – rape and lewd behaviour for which the courts have charged him – but for a sin in the rehashed morality that is overtaking America. Being surrounded by nubile girls and flashing what they now call his feeble credentials is not unusual. Paris Hilton, his client and friend, is certainly no babe-in-the-woods. Why did the accusations suddenly start rushing out in spurts?

Yes, he was given the celebrity treatment in India. The boy from Kerala had made it. It wasn’t Kerala, though, that laid out the red carpet; it was the metro matrons. Today, they pretend they did not know anything about him.

Were all those screeching “Sanjaya” fans merely interested in his singing abilities on American Idol? Just suppose he had won and gone around town with some of these teenagers, wasn’t there a likelihood of someone accusing him? And what about the American gay critic who went completely berserk in his fascination for the contestant, saying that he had a thing for pretty boys with big mouths? Why was the United States silent over this sexual innuendo directed at a youngster?

Sanjaya was their trump card until a trigger-happy South Korean took away their prime-time toy-boy. Papa Malakar could drop those exiled tears any minute – trained classical singer trying to make it in phoren land and getting into roots mode.

People love to watch angst-ridden sagas. Please note that all our diaspora writers and film-makers play the Western stereotype making full use of their origins. Most expats formulate their political opinions sitting in regional hovels. Is it any wonder that most of them have an immensely narrow vision?

Does anyone bother to question them about the immigrants who don’t quite make it? Does anyone ask them to prove their loyalty to the country of their birth even as they give their best to another land?

Anand Jon, besides a few karma-print clothes, did not try hard enough to market his desi-ness. He shamelessly aped the Sunset Boulevard vaudeville.

- - -

In a related news item, sometime actress, Suchitra Krishnamoorthi, who did not quite make it has now revealed that she experienced the casting couch while struggling to get a break in Bollywood. She has recently recollected that “many years ago, I had gone to meet a very successful producer about a film role at a plush suburban hotel. They were looking for a new face to launch.” A report states that after a discussion about academics, family and work experience, the producer asked her to call her father to tell him that she was spending the night with him at the hotel and that he should pick her up in the morning.

Bollywood does have a casting couch. It is known. Some producers are blatant about it. But would a producer tell a wannabe to call up her father and tell him she would be spending the night with a strange man to get a job knowing that no parent would allow it and he would get into trouble?

She is the former wife of filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and had used his website to blast him in a poem not too long ago. The world is far too complex and answers too pat if that’s how we like them.

Taslima and Her Technicolor Boat

On the Heels of Sir Salman
Taslima and Her Technicolor Boat
By Farzana Versey
August 10, 2007, Counterpunch

Taslima Nasreen, like many contemporary Muslim writers, is trying to portray the victim of religion. The best manner in which to do so since Sir Salman (before he was knighted) showed the way is through the dark Islamic tunnel. Let the pot sizzle with some concern for the backward Muslim world. Take large doses of the Quran, the veil, the Prophet and carefully carve it into little bits for easy consumption.

The problem is that Muslims are a bunch of fools. They imagine that most of these books will have an impact. They don’t. On Thursday, a group of activists from the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) barged into her press conference and apparently roughed her up. Television channels showed us this unruly mob get into a scuffle and throw bouquets of flowers still covered in cellophane. Taslima in her blue saree stood aside. No channel showed us what transpired before.

As always, they brought in a ‘conservative’ and he naturally said what conservatives do: she deserves it for constantly maligning the religion and the Prophet. The television anchor smiled and turned to the ‘liberal’ in the studio. This liberal has suddenly discovered she is a Muslim and the usual stuff about freedom of expression was dished out.

I don’t think Taslima or anyone should be physically attacked. What no one has bothered to find out, though, is that the organization that was involved is not a sanctioned Muslim outfit; not many Indian Muslims outside the city of Hyderabad have even heard about it. But, what is the message being sent out to the world? That not only are Muslims a bunch of uncouth fellows, they also beat up women. I can imagine the Western world nodding in agreement and saying, “We told you so.”

When Taslima Nasreen was not allowed to return to Bangladesh for fear for her life, she went to the West for a while. She could not adjust there, so she found solace in India. India that has been busy shunting out Bangladeshi immigrants became her temporary home. She did not have a word to say about the migrants who were being denied citizenship rights even though they have lived in India for 30 years or more.

If Taslima is all about this major literary voice being stilled, why is it that very little analysis is being done of her writings? Why is she always in the news for a perspective other than one of literary or ethical significance? Even when she wrote an autobiographical account in which several writers and political figures were mentioned, not for their role in damaging society but for sleeping with her, she was harping on freedom of speech. How different is this attitude from one of those Hollywood satellite social climbers that claim their pound of tabloid mileage and money based entirely on having had a close encounter with a celebrity? She has imprisoned her own mind and then goes out crying for escape.

Give her complete freedom and she won’t know what to do with it. She has nothing much going for her. Lajja revealed what one always suspected since that day in July 1993 when a fatwa demanding her head was pronounced in Bangladesh – that she was wallowing in quasi-historical truths to suit her convenience. She had ended her 13-day saga with false hope, “Let us go away…to India,” she made her character Sudhomoy Dutta, the sturdy secularist and patriot, say.

Does she imagine that India is some sort of Utopia? A few months ago, she had been ranting against Pakistan’s “tyrannical” yoke, quite forgetting that she lived in a different country. Of course, since she wants to make India her home, this is the best she could do. She felt that all talk of pan-Islamic or Muslim unity was essentially a myth, and nothing had shattered it more convincingly than the breakaway of East Pakistan from its parent unit in the west.

If there is no unity in the Islamic world – and most of us have been long saying so – then on what basis does she paint the whole Islamic world with the same brush? There are pockets of fanatics and she has had to deal with some. I have to belabor the point that a fatwa is an opinion by an individual or a group; it is not a sanctioned edict. If it were so, then all those who have fatwas on their heads would have been killed by now and not managed to write their life stories or create magic realism in Manhattan.

The only reason Taslima prefers India, specifically Kolkata, is the language. This is ironical. East Pakistan moved out of the ‘tyranny’ of West Pakistan largely due to the language issue. Now, she is speaking out against parochialism and perpetrating it herself.

What is she trying to prove? Her ‘humanitarianism’, which hangs round her neck like an albatross, weighty, but drawing sufficient attention to her prized position? Or is she just another writer with perfect timing and a sharp marketing sense? Take the reference to a sentence in her first book: “Most of Suranjan’s friends were Muslim. None of them thought he was Hindu.” What does this mean? Was she trying to say that a religious person could not have friends from another community? Is faith designed to make you inhuman? Then Marxists should be the most human and humane people on earth, and she herself would have written about communal harmony in the purest sense instead of sprinkling stereotypes from Bollywood movies.

If she scratched herself, she would be faced with a truth she refuses to acknowledge: She is so insecure that she feels the need to deny her antecedents. Were it restricted to a personal position it would have been all right, but she uses characters insidiously to make generalizations only in order to anoint herself as a progressive.

Shrewdly, she has selected a time when Islamic or fringe Muslim societies are going through a phase when the red alert sounds every time their names get mentioned. She has a nice bandwagon to ride on.