Folks,
Culture Unplugged is an unique initiative with a really remarkable collection of films. This makes for great news for independent film makers. So do go and have a look see. Fellow conspirator and independent documentary film maker Meenu Gaur’s film is show cased in this body of work at http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/464/Paradise-On-A-River-Of-Hell
Cheers
For those who are watching and following the unfolding situation in Kashmir, I am putting up some useful background pieces. The first is ‘Kashmir: State Cultivation of the Amarnath Yatra’ by Gautam Navlakha.
The origins of the conflagration in June in Kashmir on forest land allocation for construction of facilities for the Amarnath yatra lie in open state promotion of the pilgrimage. The yatra has caused considerable damage to the economy and ecology of the area. The high-handed actions of the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board only aggravated the situation.
Read the rest here.
Also revisit the post from more than a month ago on SMC when the protests had just erupted by our Guest Writer in Kashmir who had pointed out the the ways in which the yatra has been communalised over the years.
Following up on the APDP report we published on the site yesterday… This comes from our Guest Writer Uma Chakravarti
Of Mass Graves and Mass Burials: What is Buried is State Accountability in Kashmir
We have been meaning to put up this report on the site for very long but the recent events in Kashmir have had everybody’s attention elsewhere. However, here is the recent report done by the APDP on mass graves in Kashmir.
Dear friends,
We are sending a report titled “Facts Under Ground“, recently released by Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), a constituent of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society. The report is a result of the fact-finding mission on nameless graves and mass graves in Uri region of Jammu Kashmir. We have been able to identify 940 persons buried in these nameless graves and mass graves.
The report has evoked a strong public response. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Asian Federation Against involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) and many more human rights groups have so far issued the statements.
We would appreciate if you could:
1. Issue a statement of support
2. Organise solidarity manifestations
3. Send urgent action appeals to Government of India.Regards,
Khurram Parvez
Here is a related article by by Angana Chatterji published in the Etala’at - Disquiet Ghosts: Mass graves in Indian Kashmir.
From our Guest Writer Ratnakar Tripathy
The recent explosions in Bangalore, Surat and Ahmedabad have sent renewed shivers among the common citizens all over India, where we have a rich variety of ‘terrorists’. As usual, there has been a spate of articles and statements demanding stricter laws and better intelligence. And yet no one is willing to admit that if an individual/group seriously decides to kill people and is willing to pay the price, there is nothing much you or me or the state can do about it except after the event. All you can do is keep an eye on how kids are growing up in your neighbourhood over time. Call it communal policing if you want. But this is not a counsel of despair.
Ironically, as the terrorists discover greater individual liberty and empowerment on behalf of the common citizen, it is often the common citizen that ends up becoming the target of these attacks and not the state – a zero sum game. Hitting out at the state via the common citizen is a very unethical but also a very circuitous idea. I reckon that in any terrorist group, half the members would be people with qualms, and the rest must be men and women who were anyway on their way to turning into suicides, serial killers, or child and wife beaters. It’s just that they find an excuse in a cause, and settle down to a humdrum career in violence. Many such people in India become cops and political leaders and succeed in sublimating their bestiality to various extents.
Watch Nimra Bucha as the Dictator’s Wife in a special Edinburgh Fringe preview at SOAS.
Our contributor Ratnakar has recently started a blog that I have the pleasure of promoting here. He describes its aim the following way:
Do pay Juxtaposing Cinemas a visit!
From Guest Writers Manash Bhattacharjee and Richa Burman
(This is a re-look at the so-called popular classic ‘Black’, which was sent for the Oscars like so many other, ridiculous Bollywood entries. Aamir Khan’s recent comments on the film which provoked Amitabh’s shallow response behoove us to sum up the most glaring, distorted and offensive mistakes Bhansali made in his fantasy-project.)
The film ‘Black’ was lapped up by film critics and the middle-class “sensitive” crowd. The drugged intellectual connivance had never been so blatant between these two superimposed categories of people and their dream-masters, the Bombay film world. English speaking Indians have become so desperate down the years for a Hindi film to achieve world fame – the mere sight of something ‘different’ provokes their mind to lose sight of the most obvious banalities in a film and praise a cardboard copy of misplaced excellence. One shudders at how the official Indian entry to the Oscars last year was ‘Eklavya’ – a film which creates a montage out of a story which was only clear to the director. But audiences in India love marvels without substance and that meant we found much appreciation for the film. It is important in such circumstances, to look back at ‘Black’ and deconstruct the hyper-sensitive narcissism of a director like Sanjay Leela Bhansali and to address his distortion of a sensitive issue by a paradoxical attempt at romanticizing the physically challenged protagonist, where she is turned into a representational showpiece on the one hand, and on the other, reduced to a mournful figure fighting exaggerated difficulties.
From our guest writer Manash Bhattacharjee
Despite a frightful and laughable take-off on Sholay, I was surprised to see an excited crowd queuing up on the very first day to watch Ram Gopal’s next film, Sarkar Raj. Against all my wisdom, I too was present for the show. And even before the film ended, I had to painfully accept that when I paid for the ticket I had also paid for my foolishness.
Bollywood always manages to produce in people a chronic desire to hope against history. Even if justice is repeatedly denied to a viewer’s expectations, nostalgic winds take him to the theatres with the hope of finally watching a satisfying spectacle. If it turns out badly, he will of course know how to point out the flaws with passion and meticulously lay the blame on the shoulders of those responsible for the debacle. But that will never deter him from being a victim of the next film with questionable merits. The desire to watch yet another Bollywood film is far greater than the repeated disappointments a viewer undergoes. Like all repressed fantasies, the desire for Bollywood movies is endless. But having said this, it is still important to put the finger on Bollywood’s nature of crime. It will surely help to know that even victims of Bollywood have a mind of their own, and are more aware of Bollywood’s problems than, perhaps, Bollywood itself.
From our reporter/guest writer who would like to remain anonymous for now.
The Indian media has been alive with stories on the huge protests in Kashmir for the last six days. The protests were sparked off by the transfer of forty hectares of forest land to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board by the J&K government which organizes the Amarnath Yatra – an annual Hindu pilgrimage to the Holy Amarnath Cave by the devotees of Lord Shiva in Kashmir. These protests – which are largely pro-freedom protests – are being framed by the Hindu Right as a communal reaction against the transfer of land to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB). The protests began against the transfer of the land to SASB but the protests have been so huge and defiant of a heavy security presence that it appears even after eighteen years of attrition, the sentiment for azaadi (freedom) remains as strong with Kashmiris as it did in 1990. As the BBC reports: “ it appeared as if the entire population of the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley had taken to the streets.”
Image Courtesy BBC URDU.com
From our guest writer Ratnakar Tripathy.
Most of the posts here are focussed on the media in India. We are critical of the media’s practices and more often than not, scornful of news production values.There are good reasons for such critique. The tools we use however are often theories developed in the west, notions of objectivity, dissemination of information, a knowledgeable public sphere and so on. I have been especially scornful of the doses of nationalism which permeates into the language of Indian media. The western media is generally not our sphere of discussion, but today I chose to make an exception.
Many of you will have heard the case of Simon Mann, SAS guerilla who was caught while trying to assassinate the president of Equatorial New Guinea. Yesterday, he was produced in court in the country. The Guardian is the flag bearing liberal newspaper in the UK. The use of language thus becomes even more interesting. The reporter almost accuses the country’s courts for conducting proceedings in Spanish. I wonder if England would have Tamil language court proceedings if an LTTE member is arrested for a coup against the government. The report makes a deal about security proceedings. This by a security obsessed West. The Us and Them game is played out blatantly. My rantings could go on and on but read the story here.
Happy to introduce Syed Haider. Syed Haider teaches A’level English and Sociology at Ebrahim Community College. He read a BA in English at Queen Mary University of London and an MA in Intellectual and Cultural History, with a concentration on the intellectual history of the 1960’s focussing on Foucault, Derrida, and Khun. He is currently a PhD student at the School of Oriental and African Studies working on Islamic Modernity in India.
News of a new journal and call for papers
Call for Papers
Studies in South Asian Film and Media (SAFM) is the most promising new journal in the field. It is committed to looking at the media and cinemas of the Indian subcontinent in their social, political, economic, historical, and increasingly globalized and diasporic contexts. The journal will evaluate these topics in relation to class, caste, gender, race, sexuality, and ideology. The last few decades have witnessed South Asian cinema and media emerging as significant areas of academic inquiry. The journal is dedicated to building a space for a critical and interdisciplinary engagement with issues, themes and realities of cinema and media theory. The scope of the journal will incorporate the concerns of scholars, students, activists and media practitioners.
In this era of global communication, when the all-pervasive presence of media is no more in question, an intense debate concerning its political, ideological, and cultural impact has led to a highly complex and rapidly evolving field of inquiry. SAFM’s first special issue aims to describe, question and expand the contours of the discipline and field of film and media studies. We need to ask: What is at stake? Why do film and media studies matter? What are the most compelling issues today?
I have stopped putting up my weekly column for Metro Now for several months now. I just could not reconcile our imagined audience of this blog to those commuting every morning from North Delhi to Central and from Karol Bagh to Nizamuddin. The result was gaffes and mistakes. Against my better judgement but on the insistence of a fellow blogger I put up my last column. I apologise in advance for simplifying Foucault’s aesthetics of the self and Marxist dialectics. Here goes:
Home Minister Shivraj Patel, going against the popular sentiment recently stated that people who ask for Afzal Guru’s hanging cannot demand leniency for Sarabjit. This got me thinking about our relationship with the enemy country, my friends here in London and Pakistan and the past few years of joy.
I first met Adnan Sattar in the dimly lit corridors of a student housing complex in London, corridors smelling of stale smoke, cheap liquor and hurried sex. Adnan had the room opposite me and I thought it was someone’s idea of a joke, put these blokes together and lets see if they fight.
This comes to us from SMC friend Bochka
RELEASE DR BINAYAK SEN
PUBLIC MEETING AND FILM SCREENING
2.30pm Saturday 7 June 2008
Room S75, Ground Floor, St Clements Building,
London School of Economics
Houghton Street,
London WC2A 2AE.
(nearest tube: Holborn)
ANJAAM
A FILM ABOUT BINAYAK SEN BY T.G. AJAY
Followed by discussion with speakers including
Ramesh Gopalakrishnan, Amnesty - South Asia Team
.
Dr Binayak Sen is a renowned paediatrician and human rights activist who has been working with the poorest people in Chhattisgarh state in central India for the last 25 years. On 14 May 2007, Dr Sen was arrested on trumped-up charges and has been imprisoned without trial ever since.
Anjaam is a film about Binayak Sen’s work by Chhattisgarh film maker and human rights defender T. G. Ajay. Ajay, who has been documenting problems faced by adivasi (indigenous) communities in protecting their rights, has himself been arrested and imprisoned since the film was made.
PRESS RELEASE FROM THE PROTEST IN EDINBURGH!
Supported by:
Amnesty International (Scotland), Scotland against Criminalising Communities, Edinburgh Peace & Justice Centre, Campaign against Criminalising Communities, Peace in Kurdistan Campaign and distinguished Members of Scottish Parliament– Iain Gray, Robin Harper, Shirley-Anne Sommerville, Bill Wilson among others
Also,
South Asia Solidarity Group, CMC Vellore Alumni Association – UK Branch, Dr Wendy Savage MBBCh FRCOG MSc (Public Health) Hon DSc, Campaigner on Public Health, South Asian Alliance, Peace and Human Rights Trust, The 1857 Committee, Indian Workers Association (GB), Birmingham Anti-SEZ Campaign, International League of People’s Struggles, Campaign against Forced Displacement, DEEP - Defenders of the Environment and Ecology of Panjab, Hillingdon Asian Women’s Communication Service
Further information on Dr. Sen and background to the State conspiracy
Dr Binayak Sen is a renowned paediatrician and health and human rights activist who has been working with some of the poorest people in the world, in the state of Chhattisgarh, central India, for the last 25 years. As a doctor, Binayak Sen is widely respected for his unshakeable commitment to providing health care to poor adivasi or ‘tribal’ communities. He was instrumental in setting up the cooperative Shaheed hospital for mine workers in Dalli Rajhara, and has campaigned tirelessly against violations of human rights of the poor. His work has shown that the Right to Health and other Human Rights and Civil Liberties are inextricable.
PROTEST ILLEGAL ARRESTS OF HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS
Recipient of Jonathan Mann Award For Global Health And Human Rights Cannot Receive Prize Due to Illegal Detention
VIGIL FOR THE RELEASE OF
DR BINAYAK SEN
12.30pm -2.00pm, 29 May 2008
Outside St. John’s Church, West End, Edinburgh
Dr Binayak Sen is a renowned paediatrician and human rights and health rights activist who has been working with some of the the poorest people in the world, in the state of Chhattisgarh, central India, for the last 25 years. On 14 May 2007, Dr Sen was arrested on trumped-up charges and has been imprisoned without trial ever since. This arrest has been condemned worldwide by human rights groups including Amnesty International, PUCL, Human Rights Watch, several Nobel laureates and other prominent personalities like Noam Chomsky, Aruna Roy and Amartya Sen.
In 2005, Chhattisgarh Government enacted the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, with barely any debate in the Chhattisgarh State Assembly. The law, one of the most draconian security legislations in the world, makes it possible for the government to keep a person in prison for an unspecified period, without any evidence. This law is being actively used by the government as an instrument to throttle the Rights to free speech, legitimate dissent, and trample the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of India.
We are glad to organize a book reading and Q&A with the author Mohammed Hanif. Who knows, we might even serve a few glasses of free wine for the Q&A with the director afterwards if we don’t drink it all ourselves. So please spread the word and welcome.
The specifics:
Book reading and Q & A with Mohammed Hanif
28th May, 6:30pm, JCR
SOAS, Russell Square
About the book:
“Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: On August 17, 1988, Pak One, the airplane carrying Pakistani dictator General Zia and several top generals, crashed, killing all on board –and despite continued investigation, a smoking gun–mechanical or
conspiratorial–has yet to be found. Mohammed Hanif’s outrageous debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, tracks at least two (and as many as a half-dozen) assassination vectors to their convergence in the plane crash… the book has been aptly compared to Catch-22 … but it also can trace its lineage to Don DeLillo… and Kafka’s The Trial, with its paranoid-but-true take on pathological bureaucracy. Recent events pushing Pakistan into the worst kind of headlines make A Case of Exploding Mangoes a timely and entertaining read… –Jon Foro”
All,
As a part of my official duties that helps keep me fed for now, I am helping organize this course in July at the University. Don’t know what exactly to expect from this, but seems somewhat linked to the topics we have been bellowing out here around Nandigram and Som’s diabolic rants. So check out below the poster and some descriptions below it …
The organizer says:
Sorry for the group email. You’ve received it because you took part in one of our public debates, perhaps in the Reporting the World series, or one of our media-savvy workshops; published, reviewed or contributed to something we wrote, or otherwise joined in the rich and stimulating conversations we enjoyed, while in London, about the media’s role in conflict and peace.
We’ve since moved to Sydney, where those ideas are being debated and developed, both among journalists and activists and in universities. We’re now completing the circle by bringing the dialogue back to London, with our course this Summer in Conflict-resolving Media (flyer attached).
This announcement comes from Prof. Laura Mulvey.
Geographies of Film Theory
A two day international conference. A collaboration between the Screen Studies Group and the Institute for German and Romance Studies at
Birkbeck College, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1
26-28 June 2008
Jean Epstein’s, 1947 Le Tempestaire
Key note speakers: Francesco Casetti , Mikhail Iampolski, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Soyoung Kim.
This international conference investigates the intellectual origins of film theory and its global diffusion. It will open by tracing the contexts in which film theory was first articulated (between disciplines, national borders and in a close relation to the politics of modernity) in Europe during the early twentieth century. The conference will then examine the ways in which film theory traveled in key non-European, cultural and political contexts during the second half of the twentieth century, particularly its new configurations, translations and its re-politicisation.
For more details see: http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/events/conference/conf_geographies.htm or download the registration HERE.
So I’ve been rather busy doing some theoretical work and preparing for a long vacation. I shall hopefully post some of the more theoretical thoughts here shortly, dealing mostly with stuff such as the co-evolution of media technology and how we imagine models of communication, the slippery concept of the in-between (intermezzo, interstice, thirdness) and so forth. This stuff we must do, I suppose, when trying to become doctors who cure nobody.
But breaking the silence here for two separate notes. The first is an interesting development in India … Google beds Sonia Gandhi and the plot thickens. Full article HERE and HERE. I quote TechChrunch:
Today we’re hearing of another arrest, this time in India. 22-year-old IT professional Rahul Krishnakumar Vaid. His crime was writing in an orkut community named “I hate Sonia Gandhi.” Sonia Gandhi is a prominent politician in India.
Vaid was charged under section 292 of Indian Penal Code and section 67 of the Information TVechnology Act because he created a profile and then posted content in vulgar language about Sonia Gandhi in the community.
This comes from Kalpana Wilson from the South Asia Solidarity Group:
VIGIL FOR THE RELEASE OF
DR BINAYAK SEN
1.00pm -3.00pm, Tuesday 13 May 2008
Indian High Commission, The Aldwych, London WC1
(nearest tube: Holborn)
Dr Binayak Sen is a renowned paediatrician and human rights activist who has been working with the poorest people in Chhattisgarh state in central India for the last 25 years. On 14 May 2007, Dr Sen was arrested on trumped-up charges and has been imprisoned without trial ever since.
As a doctor, Binayak Sen is widely respected for his unshakeable commitment to providing health care to poor adivasi or ‘tribal’ communities. He was instrumental in setting up the cooperative Shaheed hospital for mine workers in Dalli Rajhara, and has campaigned tirelessly against violations of the human rights of the poor. On 21 April this year, he was awarded the prestigious Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights in recognition of his work as a public health activist and defender of human rights.
Image Courtesy Extramirchi.com
Mallika Sherawat’s black backless dress has caused “mental agony to the Tamil people” according to the President of the Hindu Makkal Katchi. He says that the dress has “hurt” the feelings and pride of the Tamil people. This is not the first time though, this organization has filed a case, there was one against Khusboo for her views on pre-marital sex, against Shriya for her attire and apparently against all three of them of them for sitting cross legged! Imagine the president sitting infront of the TV - watching and taking copius notes- who sat cross legged, who used the word “sex” and how many times, what they wore to functions, and to what effect. Ah before we get all snobbish lets confess that this too sounds a bit like content analysis! 
Shriya later apologized to the ‘Hindu community’ saying,
Accepting her ‘mistake’, she said she never intended to hurt the feelings of Hindus or Tamilians. She had deep respect for the long standing tradition and culture of Tamil Nadu.
‘’I was unaware of the repercussions that would arise because of the attire I wore during the function,'’ she added.
“She would be sending a letter of apology to Mr Karunanidhi and members of the Hindu community who were offended by her attire.”
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