Khaps and Taliban — Sometimes Misunderstood?

The idea that the khap panchayats want to get an image makeover is not new. They tried it earlier. So, will it be any different when they launch their website on December 14?

Whether we like it or not, khaps play an important role in villages, especially since the ministers are too busy in circuit houses, if they ever show up. Often, the regressive attitudes expressed and, worse, action taken against women, including honour killings, are not exclusive to panchayat members, but part of the conditioning and attitude.

Sunil Jaglan of Jind's Nogama khap has been quoted as saying:

"We feel positive work done by khaps is not highlighted by the media. Khaps resolve disputes related to property and matrimonial affairs but these do not get prominence anywhere.''

This could well be true, and given that there is more and more a need to delegate, khaps can play an important role. Perhaps a policy of reward, by way of recognition for their good work, might help them to understand why there is a negative perception based on their diktats and how detrimental it is to the society they claim to represent.

It is obvious that they are essentially trying to woo the media and the outside public, and such a website might not even be accessible to the villagers. However, the fact that they are in the open would be a check on their activities. In fact, it might help if they also dealt with issues not restricted to their domain. It would then reveal how the big bad city denizens behave, too.

The flipside of such 'reaching out' could be self-censorship of news and views, and if the media depends solely on their version the truth might never be out. Or, it might be reported as sensational items, like the Deoband fatwas that nobody except the mullahs sitting in there care about.

If the khap initiative does turn out to be an exercise in such value judgments, then it would end up telling the rest of the country who is boss.

For now, the benefit of doubt is due.

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Another case of an organisation that will never get good press is the Taliban. There was a news item about how the Talibs told Pakistanis that howsoever great cricketer Sachin Tendulkar is they should not praise him, but instead praise their own Misbah-ul-Haq, even if he is a bad player. Headlines like “Stop praising Indian Cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, Taliban warn Pakistani media" made it to all major international and national newspapers, with the usual moral authority that comes with being on the side of the good guys.

Turned out that the intelligensia got it all it so wrong that the Taliban statement came across as superbly nuanced!

The media took one para out of context and missed out on the analogy, exemplified in this last bit:

"This logic certainly opposes reality, just like the example of cricketers I just gave, everyone knows how much it is opposite of reality to not admire the greatest cricketer [Tendulkar]."

Of course, there will be many who would ask: "But haven't the Taliban done so many vile things? They are capable of saying this."

Yes. But there is no ethical reason for those who are 'superior' to mislead. This is not just about what the Taliban says, but how it is perceived in a generally antagonistic Indo-Pak context.

I was particularly struck by the photograph I have used here. It seems to suggest that Sachin is under threat from the Taliban.

It is a little amusing, though, that these guys want to clarify their stand on a cricketer. But, I do sigh in relief that no one has used the done-to-death headline saying that the Taliban bats for Sachin.

It was a 'no ball'.

© Farzana Versey

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Cartoon: The Hindu
Image: Express Newsline

Sunday ka Funda

...for Dr Verghese Kurien 


"The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall."

- Che Guevara 

Dr. Verghese Kurien did not need to do that. He just made the villagers of Anand in Gujarat realise that the milk their cattle produced could reach all of India if they got together. It came to called the White Revolution in the mid-70s. The brand Amul is now part of every household in some form.

I once saw him at Mumbai airport. Bureaucratic safari suit. Eyelids with many folds. The face of a philosopher. To my surprise, many people recognised him - those one might consider to be more likely fans of film stars or cricketers were either staring at him or wanting to talk with him. It was the sheer power of what he had created. How else could one explain this at a time in the mid-90s when there was no exposure via social media or quick snapshopts on TV? At a time when I recommended to a friend visiting from overseas the film Manthan (produced by the milk cooperative) that I had watched thrice and his response after the first few scenes was, "Did not know you were such a dehati (villager)?

I can recall so many scenes and that simmering one where Smita Patil is washing her legs and her eyes meet those of Girish Karnad, loosely based on Dr. Kurien, and the rustic Naseeruddin Shah who keeps spitting out "Aa sisotee" (this society, for the cooperative).

The song from the film continues to be used in ads. This is what revolutions are - when people are not encouraged to protest but create. And the milk and movement continue to flow...

Fighting Shit

Everybody needs to use the toilet. Every day. But in India, we exaggerate it. By doing so we do not give it importance; we merely magnify it in the lab under a microscope. More appropriately, we bring awareness to people who probably have a bidet, use perfumed toilet paper, and have a warm jet of water to clean up with.

National award-winning actress Vidya Balan is now the brand ambassador for the sanitation drive. This is the brainwave of Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, who said:

"It is going to be a two year programme. She's had a dirty picture in reel life, but this will be a clean picture in real life. I think she will help in making sanitation a national obsession."

This is a silly comment, the transposition of dirty and clean. It is also a cheap gimmick. Ms.Balan’s giggle act and repetitious references to the film was bad enough, now a central minister wants to ride on it. There are people who have to shit in the open, in fields, in dug-up holes, and sewage even from hotels near water sources floats into our rivers and seas. Those people would have liked to have such facilities long ago. What does the minister mean by saying she will make it into a national obsession? The film became a publicity-geared obsession only for those involved. The others bought tickets, whistled, got off and moved on.

Using public facilities is a basic need. What is obsessive about it?

For Vidya Balan it is just one more satellite benefit for The Dirty Picture. She does not have to say it. Instead, the words are typically managed:

“It's an honour for me to be the brand ambassador for the sanitation drive and like Mr Ramesh just said, it needs to become a national obsession and I am going to do everything in my capacity to make sure that the message is taken across to every person.”

What will the ads tell people living in slums or in the interiors? It is the job of the government to provide public toilets and ensure that women do not have to hide their faces behind umbrellas as they sit alongside drains on roads to empty their bowels. Have you seen such scenes? Do you know how heartbreaking it is? Do you know how young women have to take someone along because there are predators waiting? Do you know that many cannot afford even the two rupees to use the public loos? Do you know that the cloth they use during their periods has to be washed in dirty water because there isn’t enough of it? Do you know that they stand for hours to fill buckets to use the water for drinking and cooking and recycle what is left? Do you know that children squat for hours only to see their malnourished droppings taken over by flies?

We look away, hold up our noses. Vidya Balan is doing it out of “conviction”, she says. Every Indian she reaches out to will remember her as she lectures on sanitation. They will probably have an inauguration in some cleaned up poor locality. After that, there will be clips on what to do and how to keep your environment free of disease on television.

The municipalities and panchayats should be regularly visiting these places. They ought to involve key workers from those areas, people who belong there, have suffered. I know that with Ms. Balan it is possible to get some industrial houses to shell out money. Yet, it won’t really reach out unless the infrastructure is in place.

I am waiting for someone to compare her to Mahatma Gandhi the minute she holds up a broom in her hand. It’s been over six decades when he started it. Has it made any difference? It did not then. It will not now. Except to honour the celebrities for their sanitised concern and conviction.

Heart of the Market

Do you pledge to play more often with Leo? Do you pledge to use the treadmill? Do you? Your heart and its well-being are not only an advertiser’s paradise, but they are used to convey the wide disparity that exists between the social classes.

The Times of India has started the Billion Hearts Beating campaign together with Apollo Hospital. The ads refer to an audience that will have access to the good things of life. The assumption is that heart diseases affect only the urban individual, that only their health is of any consequence.

You might say that readers of the TOI are not living in villages, so it is perfectly fine to address this group. Here is the problem: It creates a closed group that begins to believe that only certain sections suffer; the rest are peripheral.

Some of you might recall that a while ago Quaker Oats had joined in. I had written then about what a sad trend it is of marrying concern with consumerism and blatantly plugging products. While Apollo Hospital does have facilities for such care and is directly involved, what do oats and newspapers have to do with it? You’d quibble that this is sponsorship and support, and the corporate sector can help in educating. I’d have gone along with that if it were only about you and me.

Of the millions who will suffer from heart diseases, how many eat oats or are amenable to the idea? How many even know what oats are? Quaker is not an Indian company; it is a multinational that wants to make a dent in the Indian market. Is there any proven study that shows oats reduce the risk of heart problems or reading a particular newspaper will educate you more?

I called it a trend. It is worse. This is a money-making racket through fear.

We already have false images of people in white coats telling you that your toothpaste has been certified by them so little children can eat as many chocolates and ice-cream as they want. There is one absolutely ridiculous ad where a kid is complaining of a tummy ache and the ‘doctor’ model says it is not the stomach to blame but the germs that find their way into the hands. You get the right soap and all is well. While the germs-on-hands theory is true, the stomach does have a mechanism of its own. No one bothers to ask or tell us that children or adults do not walk around with soap.

If these heart waalas are concerned, and there has got to be more education here, then they could have added some simple message of eating daliya, which is porridge, which is what oats amount to. The minute you want to ride on the salesman’s gravy cart, there is a chance of credibility going under the horse’s hooves.

All about Eve

This Devi prefers her devta’s dad

When we hear regressive statements by so-called progressive women, here comes a story of a woman in a Bihar village. Lalita Devi is 25. Her husband left their home in Dhamiapatti village in Madhubani district to work in a factory in Gujarat. While he was away, she had an affair with her father-in-law.


When the guy returned and saw his pita and patni locked together, there was much hullabaloo. Instead of feeling chastised and doing what one would expect a village woman to do, she declared that she was leaving him and their children to marry her papa-in-law. She made the decision.


It is possible to make several moral comments here, but why?

Uma’s Umang

Remember how the RSS had objected to Uma Bharti’s friendship with their pracharak K. Govindacharya, reminding them about celibacy?


The lady was sharp enough to continue with the party, marketing herself as the bold sanyasin. Now that she has competition in Sadhvi Pragya – younger and a bike rider – she has promptly got her mentor to join hands with her.


Very cunning move. If she was serious about his contribution, she would not have waited just ten days before the Madhya Pradesh elections. They are opposing the BJP, and as Govindacharya said,

“It’s time the nationalist forces pitched in. The two major conglomerates in Indian politics (Congress and BJP) have become pro-rich, pro-minority and pro-foreign... There’s a political space vacant and that is one of the reasons for me to join active politics again.”

Does this mean that their organisation Rashtriya Swabhiman Andolan (RSA) will be pro-poor, pro-majority, pro-swadeshi? This would statistically amount to 80 per cent of the country. Clearly, the nation is interested in other things.


Their new slogan is:

“Jab milenge roti-Ram, tab hi banenge poore kaam (when we get food and Ram together, then our work will be complete). So far, political parties have either spoken of Ram or of ‘roti’ but none has spoken of both together.”

Super. Kapda and makaan don’t matter. After all Lord Ram spent time in the forest in a little hut.


Does food then mean picking black berries?

Her time to show the jerks

I hear literary agents are wooing Sarah Palin. I can also hear the tut-tuts doing the rounds with a sneer. Oh dear, she will cash in on this, they will say. Sure as hell she will, as she must.


If others can capitalise on her “blonde moment” and her banality, then so can she. Forget her politics, whatever it may be if it is at all, she has indeed led an interesting life that meandered towards the mundane to again catapult her to the limelight.


Chances of some academics pontificating on the ‘Sarah factor’ filling up tomes that will grace library shelves are possible. We already got glimpses of them in a slew of serious thesis-type articles. After all, they have done Barbie and Madonna with much fervour, so what will stop them from doing Sarah? They will peel her layer upon layer. It begs the question: does one invest so much in so little?


We have our reasons for understanding fluff. I am a great believer in analysing pop culture, and anything that fits into the genre – people, ideas, events – are grist for the writer’s mill.


She may do a whitewash job, she may play to the gallery, she may come up with a sob story, she may rant against the “jerks”. But it is her story and she has as much a right to tell it as anyone else.


People make millions just flashing stained skirts to show as achievement. Some get invited to pose for Playboy; others go on lecture tours and earn big bucks.


Sarah Palin’s may not be a great story but for the naysayers here’s a sop: You got Obama because she was so not on, right?

She flexes their muscles

BJP’s candidate from Jodhpur, Suryakanta Vyas, looks like the sort of woman you would see making dung cakes, not walking around with beefcakes. She has done just that. Roped in these bodybuilders to campaign for her. Since the party has a bare-bone manifesto, she is at least providing the meat.

It takes a village...

I recall visiting this hamlet in Mahad years ago on assignment. It was with a group of people who had adopted that village. We reached around late afternoon and were taken to the circuit house for lunch. Then we went to a small guest house.

I spent a sleepless night. Dogs were barking a little distance away, the lady I was sharing the room with was wheezing from asthma; I had never met anyone who suffered from asthma until then…and I was worried sick that something would happen and I would get hauled up to the police station.

New to the profession, this was my first real village experience, and all my ideas about the gaon ki gori (the village belle) walking around with a matka (pot) perched on the hip were brought crashing down.

Next day we set out to see the work being done - what they made, how it was sold. I realised they had flourished because, although financed by outsiders, they were empowering themselves. People tend to be more comfortable with their own and that is what I keep harping on: the best way to bring about change is to use ‘key workers’ trained from within the community.

On the last night we went to the interiors. Our group had torches. We came into an opening and saw lanterns flickering; the smell of kerosene emitted from them. Women were sitting with rice in straw trays open at one end; they'd hoist it up so that when it came down the heavier pits would be visible. Then they’d pick them out and throw them. A little away, large vessels heated on wooden stilts held brown watery dal. We sat there talking even as some sang folk songs; they did not stop work even as they spoke.

They run a community kitchen to save on firewood. After the food is cooked and eaten and they have cleaned up, the lights are dimmed and they sleep in utter darkness.

Why am I recalling this today? I had recalled it a few days ago when I wrote about my bed lamp. I realised with some discomfort that the colour of the walls that I adore so are almost the shade of a villager’s hut. They did not even have basic electricity. And here I was romanticising about the play of light and shadow.

How do I deal with the conflict of what I possess and what others don’t?

- - -

This picture is only a representative sample; it was taken in a village in Bhuj, Kutchh on a non-working trip.

Is a life worth Rs. 70,000 only?

Maverick: Those damned villagers ruined the car
by Farzana Versey
The Asian Age, Op-ed, April 17, 2007

Imagine you are a villager and have to depend on a daily wage. The sole earning member of your family has been killed. You are handed just enough money to last you four years if the normal daily income is Rs. 40. Is this justice?

Is justice about killing seven construction workers due to rash driving and getting away with a six-month jail sentence and a Rs. five lakh fine, most of which will be distributed to the family of those who were mowed down?

Is justice about “Man may lie, but circumstances never,’’ as the judge Ajit Mishra stated while letting off the accused, Alistair Pereira?

Is justice about the judge being aware that something was wrong but blaming it on bad police investigation and even worse prosecution? This is what he said: “One thing is certain... there was an accident by the car and seven people lost their lives. A chemical analysis report speaks of alcohol levels in blood but the prosecution did not examine any witness who said Pereira had consumed liquor.’’

Is there a law where the prosecuting lawyer can be sued? And the police? Why was this case wrapped up in five days and only six months after the accident?

Why did no political party visit the site at the time or offer any compensation? The workers had refused to claim the bodies because they had no money for the funeral.

These horrendous realities are bad enough.

I was shocked to read the headlines scream out in the papers then: “The Church speaks out – We’ll leave no stone unturned to ensure that the culprits in the Bandra case will not go scot-free...”

Since when did the Church become the custodian of justice in criminal cases? It is true that all those in the car were Catholics, but how does that make them better or worse?

A spokesperson for the archbishop had said, “But drunken driving is also a serious offence and a sin”. If the culprit had confessed, then would the parish have come to his rescue? Would he be forgiven by the Church? Does that change anything?

Joe Dias of the Catholic Secular Forum, a community group, took this even further, “Unfortunately, incidents like these will feed the stereotype of Catholics as alcoholics.” This is ridiculous. Drunken driving is a huge social problem, especially in metros. The Catholic Church seemed to be only concerned with its reputation. What stereotypes? True, Hindi films show Catholics enjoying their tipple, but that too is changing and for those labourers these stereotypes hold no value.

Who are they? The emphasis tends to be on the ‘youth of today’. This is a typical urban obsession. We know little or nothing about the labourers. Most work in farms in their villages and come to the cities after the harvest because there is nothing to grow. For all the talk about the Rajus in the interiors who are learning computers there are many more who have to do without electricity. And why does upward mobility always have to do with the metropolitan version of it? These people are considered outcastes and illegal immigrants when they come to the cities even if it is to build homes for us. Yet, there is no attempt to link our lives with theirs. Where are their roads, their transport, their hospitals?

They work in rich people’s houses where they barely get a decent salary. And they have to mimic the burra sahib fantasy of “Bearer chai lao”. In homes where food is cooked in desi ghee and tea isn’t Earl Grey but good old masala chai, this becomes a complete caricature.

Now we have a supposedly renaissance query thrown at the finalists of a beauty pageant: “If you had to convince a rural woman to compete in the Miss India pageant, what would you say to her?’’ The contestant who won the top honour had said, “I would first remind her that she has every right to such privileges as a Miss India would have. If she wins she could go back to her village and the improvement she would bring about would make the achievement of the pageant irreplaceable.”

I find the question itself disgusting. It means that rural women are seen as creatures from a different planet and have no place in such a contest anyway, which is why they would need to be ‘convinced’.

As for the reply, what rights does a pageant winner get except to realise some ambitions that are elitist to begin with? The rural woman could go back to her village. Of course! Are we being told that the ‘improvements’ she brings about would be due to walking on the ramp in designer clothes and giving rehearsed answers?

Are the hungry predators eyeing the villages? If you want development then educate them. Education does not mean learning to walk like you are holding something between your thighs, learning to talk as though you are at a school elocution competition, and looking like a million bucks which is roughly what it costs to get you to look that way. Please leave the rural woman and man out of the flashy drama.

And this also means their life is not worth 70,000 bucks each. Alistair Pereira’s killer Toyota Corolla cost more than Rs. 5 lakhs.