So what does this mean for young India? Personally, I’ve been hoping and praying for a long time now that someone in the education ministry would come to their senses and do away with the board exams. Not just because of the pressure it puts on students nowadays (I am sick of hearing about kids who kill themselves because of examination stress) but also because, in the long run, your results at these exams actually count for very little. It’s important because it is probably the last general examination a student will do before specializing in either science, arts or commerce and it helps the student, and more importantly schools, decide what stream the student has better aptitude for. But ironically, the entire purpose of these traumatic papers pretty much ends when that decision has been made. Of course, this is but a first step in overhauling our education system for one that guarantees quality education for every student in the country. Sure, the grading system is a sigh of relief for burdened teens but now we need to ask; what about quality teachers? What about free education for all without compromising on quality? Hopefully, it’ll be soon enough.

Today morning, I was reading this in THE HINDU literary review. The first Sunday of every month is always special because of the literary review, one area in which this news paper, I am sure, cannot be beaten easily. Navtej Sarna writes about Old Delhi - “Her new fancies stare me in the face, I notice her love of brick and mortar, of steel and glass; I rue her fascination with glitter. I watch her flaunt, with an imperial sweep of her overly bejeweled hand, her soaring new flyovers, the rising stadiums, her shiny new metro, her crazily crafted road corridors, her multiplexes and malls. And I shield myself against the callousness with which she has rejected so much that we once shared - my flower-laden roundabouts, my little theater cafe, my corner shop and even my favorite bookshop, owned by an owner who knew his books.”

Now, this is writing of very fine quality that, reading it becomes an act of indulgence. What is beauty? Is it only about physical perfection or only about the pleasure of the senses? Apart from the sensuous aspect, is there anything more to it? To me, the answer is a resounding yes! Indeed, as the dictionary says, it is a “combination of qualities giving pleasure to the sight, mind etc”; “an excellent specimen of something.”

When I read good books, what I am in fact doing is indulging in beauty - a fact that is lost to people who say it is boring and monotonous to sit in a corner with a book. How I wish they knew what they are talking about so carelessly! How I wish that they partake in this indulgence and experience the pleasure themselves! The pleasures and advantages of reading are multitude.

To sum them broadly, I would say:

• Reading expands the horizons of the mind. In helping me imagine far off lands, cultures and customs, not only does it introduce me to whole new worlds, by making me every bit a part of the unfolding stories, it broadens the knowledge of the world.
• It has helped me empathize with others readily. To be able to acknowledge the feelings of others and see them for what they are requires a conscious effort to observe minutiae and perceive with a keen attention. I am indebted to the books for this more than anything else.
• Books as companions - this is something wonderful particularly when loneliness threatens to engulf. I pick a book and forget the world around. At first, I thought I was escaping reality and getting cocooned elsewhere in the confines of an imaginary landscape, but with age, I have brushed aside these thoughts.
• Reading good works, as the first few paras of this post demonstrates, is to the intellect what sensuality is to the senses. Beauty is more often than not, elusive. In imagining that it is obvious to the wandering eye, we deceive ourselves. It is in the detail, often deceptively petty, but on a keener discernment, quite evident. When I chance upon an especially good work, I get the feeling that I am blessed and relish it with happiness.

This post is inspired by reflections on reading the article quoted in the first para. When words transcend their perfunctory existence on paper and assume greater meanings that our intellect assimilates, there is no greater joy to the reader. Great authors never seem to take an extraordinary effort; instead there is an easy rhythm by which we are swept away. In being moved by writing, we exhibit a sense of humility and surrender which is so pure. Perhaps that is why - since books give so much and demand little - mankind will continue to be fascinated by them as long as the written word exists!

I had read the book about 3 weeks ago and then procrastinated writing my thoughts about it. But then isn’t that befitting? Considering how the book speaks so highly of the protagonists’ procrastination amongst other things of course.

My Friend Sancho (MFS) is the debut novel of India’s star blogger Amit Varma (more about Amit here). The book is short and addictive and one should seriously finish this is one go. Three pages down and I was laughing out loud, while reading it on a sofa, waiting for my turn at Barbeque Nation. Yes, I know its annoying, never thought I’d have to wait for a table in Hyderabad. Happens.

It’s very very funny. The book I mean.

Abir Ganguly, the book’s lead character, is one heck of a journalist. He is a self proclaimed armchair cynic; jaded, horny and works in the crime beat to come up with gems such as Man swats himself to death. I loved Abir’s character. The exaggerations which are random at times, the pertinent observations and everything else, really made me feel as if I had known Abir all my life.  Okay, so maybe I down played the exaggeration part a bit. The lizard is part of the cast, though not big enough to disrupt the storyline. You get the idea.

So Abir’s all fine and chillin’, just another nut in a huge machine. However, things get complicated when he is asked to come up with a story humanizing one Md Iqbal, who was killed in a police encounter.

And thus enters Muneeza, Iqbal’s daughter. And with it the wheels of an innocent love story are set into motion. Varma does a wonderful job of limiting the cliches here. Because Abir does get a boner while Muneeza is pouring her heart out. Just saying.

Now there’s something I must confess. Is it just me (no, turns out I have company)? Or did Muneeza remind you folks of Zaheera from the Best Bakery fiasco too? Because as hard as I tried, I couldn’t fight off that picture.

This was one of my main complaint from the book. The character of Muneeza. Not enough information was given about the sort of girl she was, or maybe the book just ended too quickly. I would have loved the story to extend a little longer. Because after every page I got more and more confused about the sort of person Muneeza was.  The end seemed abrupt. I was seriously expecting there to be more to the story.

Okay, I think I sounded a tad too harsh in that last paragraph. Trust me, I simply adore the book. Because of its simplicity and easy nature. Because of Inspector Tombre and what might have been one of the best speeches delivered by a civil servant in the history of this nation. I think one should buy the book for that speech itself. Because Amit so wonderfully expresses human emotions and because I have not laughed so much in a span of 200 pages for a long long time.

Strangely, I can compare it to the feeling I got when I first started reading xkcd. There are things we feel and seldom put on paper. MFS does exactly that. For example, look at this

I worked for a couple of hours. That is to say, I tried to work. My mind kept wandering, and the internet gave it places to wander to. Every three minutes I told myself, Just two minutes more, let me just check out this page, then I will work. But I’d check out that page, and click on a link there, or think of something because of what I was reading and go somewhere else, and so on and on until it was almost lunchtime and I was better informed about the world but less so about my own piece.

And that’s just one instance.

Another thing I really enjoyed is that every character has their distinct voice and Amit doesn’t compromise with that.

Dissecting each and every part of the book is something I don’t really intend to do. So I shall say this, do definitely give it a read. Its really easy going yet doesn’t mock your intelligence. Its fun and light. And there is a bit of self publicity, but it’s all in good taste.

I guess at the end of it, one could look at the book as Abir’s myopia.

The book was longlisted for the for the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize. Read the first chapter here

After the success of his other books like ‘Lexus and the Olive Tree’, ‘Longitudes and Attitudes’ and more recently, ‘The World is Flat’, the new theme the New York Times columnist has got in is global warming. Global warming is a problem common all throughout the world. Well, for one it is real. There is an astonishingly high number of people for whom it took too late to understand that ‘global warming’ is not any political innovation. It is already happening. Your experiences in May (in case you are in Northern Hemisphere) give you a receipt of this repeatedly. The 2006 European Wave that took some 35, 000 lives is one big receipt. Of course, Hurricane Katrina and 2004 Tsunami were other that affected other parts of the world.

Globalization or rather flattening of the world has brought up many a people from poverty into middle classes. More and more people coming into middle classes marks a new phenomenon and that is, ‘flat meets crowded’. The case with world is such that it doesn’t matter how many people live on earth, what matters is the number of people living a typical American Dream, where the energy consumption is high. Fighting global warming is quite an urgent issue, but Thomas Friedman leaves no bone in elaborating his well researched points that can help economically as well.

There are five major reasons that Friedman gives in his books: Energy and natural resources supply and demand, petro – dictatorship, climate change, energy poverty and biodiversity loss. There are chapters dedicated to almost each of this term in the first half of the book.

Supply and Demand: The oil price rise that we saw in May 2008, when oil peaked at $147, was driven by the imbalance between supply and demand. This was not about geopolitics as it was in case of the 1970s oil embargo. This was purely because the demand had grown, from China and India and from other developing countries.

Petro – Dictatorships: This is another important issue in combating global warming and in coming up with alternative energy / fuels. Oil as a resource, is found with mostly all authoritarian regimes of the world. Saudi Arabia, Russia (which is a complete autocratic state at high oil prices), Nigeria (democracy was best there at oil $10 in 1995), Venezuela, etc. Graph of oil price vs. freedom is given in the book.

Climate Change: ‘Global warming’ is kind of a misnomer. In fact, it is ‘global weirding ’or rather‘climate crises’. Al Gore had first called it global warming, but later on he named his website of his documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ as www.climatecrisis.net .The term climate crisis describes the term more aptly.

Energy Poverty: This is all about load shedding/blackout and I am experiencing it greatly! Yes, this problem is grave. Developing countries are rising, and so is the demand for electricity. Blackout is common all across Africa, especially Zimbabwe and South Africa, and in India as well. Renewable energy is necessary now, also for environmental concerns, and for business concerns. The country that will come up with something substantial in energy technology is going to lead the world next. US and China both are doing well in this regards, and Obama administration has paid heed to this pressing issue. Can you imagine a day without electricity? No computers, no internet!!

Biodiversity Loss: This mainly deals with the deforestation that is taking place at a very fast speed in Brazil, and Indonesia, two of the countries in the world that have claim to one of the biggest and dense forests. Different species have started becoming extinct, and let us hope human race is not one of them!

This revolution, green revolution is unlike other. There is not a single revolution in the history of the earth, in which no one got hurt. In green revolution, everyone is enjoying. It is going to help us all as it is a question of human survival in the end. It is rather a green party.

The second part of the book is well researched and provides solutions to the American industry on what to do next. It gives a 7 – page example of an experiment that was carried out in Washington, US on efficient electricity utilization. It saved electricity by 70%! This is no exaggeration. The model is described in detail in the book. It is all about a smart grid to be used, in every home as well in every block.

After the recession in 1991 that gave birth to IT it is the turn of ET after this global recession equivalent to The Great Depression. It will make a good entertainment to see which country gets a major share in it. As of now, US and China have the highest chance of getting it, though Israel has a good chance too owing to a successful electric car experiment there. India has all resources but no political will.

The world at present is all about going green!

Obama in this book written in 2006 when he was senator, has managed to weave together the personal with the political experiences beautifully and engagingly. Though the references are largely to the American politics, some of the issues that he speaks of and the concerns he says, unite Americans across “race, region, religion and class” transcend geographies and seem to be the same in our country too. Therein lies the beauty of this book; one doesn’t have to be an American to be able to gauge Mr. Obama’s sincerity. It shines throughout palpably and is one of the biggest reasons why the book has become very popular. Since it offers glimpses of what Roosevelt, Kennedy, Lincoln, Reagan, Johnson, Clinton and Bush stood for during their reign at the helm of America in a broad fashion, it is highly educating and informative to read each and every page.

Values:

What struck me quite clearly, as very different, was a whole chapter devoted to Values; a politician talking about values in such a fashion as Obama has did is quite astonishing. As in all the other chapters, he uses the book to express his stand on various issues. In the chapter devoted to values, for example, he talks about executive pay among others.

The language of the book is rich with intricately woven sentences; in their every curve and bend are nuggets of wisdom to be cherished, and revelations abound about the functioning of a sharp, intensely observant, shrewd and empathetic mind. At various points in the narrative, he stresses on the need to find common ground; to find in people the common value that everyone shares. How aptly it applies to the Indian context where we see politicians competing against one another in finding grounds to divide the electorate in pursuit of votes.

Constitution:

In the chapter on “Our constitution”, Mr. Obama throws light on the judiciary’s interpretation of the constitution as lifestyle changes sometimes make the Government’s role in a large democracy debatable. Ultimately, the conclusion drawn merits appreciation for who can rightly discern what the intent of the founders was!

Politics:

Obama candidly observes that the more time one spends in the limelight of politics, the farther it takes the person from the problems of ordinary people. Talking about the amounts of money required for funding, suffering defeat, living by stereotypes, he convincingly gives an insider view of the traps and pitfalls that a Politician has to traverse. He is at his very best when he describes how complicated it is to decide either on an aye or a nay vote when both sides have some merit. He is also critical of the media who always want a “yes” or a “no” for an answer to complicated questions thereby always putting politicians in a spot in an attempt to trap them. In this particular aspect, the Indian media excel and our politicians either sadly don’t recognize their traps or are naive enough to fall into them and pay the price.

Opportunity:

Obama talks about his meeting with the founders of Google – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – when he doesn’t meet any black or Latino in the group of new recruits. He realizes the potential trouble for the US economy as more companies hire non US employees to get their work done. As juxtaposition, he describes the meeting with a group of union leaders of a plant on the verge of laying off American workers. Now as we know that he has announced large stimulus packages to kick start economic activity, it comes as no surprise to read “…in each and every period of great economic upheaval and transition we’ve depended on Government action to open up opportunity, encourage competition, and make the market work better”. Some of these give broad outlines on how the president may act on grave issues that need American action.

He proceeds to suggest three investments to make America “more competitive in the global economy” – investments in education with reforms of high impact on student achievement, in science and technology with focus on R&D, in energy infrastructure to reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels. One of my favorite chapters, Obama ends with an explanation of his vote against Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), as a “means of registering protest against White House’s inattention to the losers from free trade”.

Faith:

Tackling the issues of abortion and gay marriage which we know dominated the discourse of debates in the run up to the Presidential elections, Mr. Obama feels his pro-choice stance and stand on homosexuality makes him “human and limited in the understandings of God’s purpose”.

Race:

Obama clearly acknowledges on the issue of race that, there is a need to “acknowledge the sins of the past and the challenges of the present without becoming trapped in cynicism and despair”. There is optimism and subtlety employed judiciously to defend affirmative action and placing some responsibilities on the minorities. In his earnestness to address the nexus of unemployment and crime, there is the urge to tackle the root causes impeding progress. Will any Indian Politician boldly address the pathetic infrastructure of the public school system and wean the focus away from just quantity to a combination of quality and quantity?

The Outer World:

Titled “The World beyond our borders”, Obama traces the rise and fall of the land he grew up in – Indonesia. After reading this, what stays with the reader is the trajectory of US foreign policy from isolationist sentiment in the world war era to the interference of today. How successive US Presidents felt the pressure to sound “hard” on communism, how certain resultant policies led to a loss of credibility – there is a touch of candid and critical self introspection.

Family:

Obama ends the book by ravishing praise on his wife and commenting on the increasing role of women as breadwinners. It is a fitting end by a man who loves his family as much as his nation.

In its sweeping look at history, broad and honest examination of grave issues, it is an engrossing read and one that is strongly recommended.

Amitav Ghosh’s novels are all meticulously researched and Sea of Poppies is no exception. With the opium trade and the opium wars as a background, the book explores in detail the East India Company-run opium factory at Ghazipur, the workers whose lives depended on it and its produce. At another level, it also tracks the origins and journey of the first batch of the Indian Diaspora, the indentured laborers of the nineteenth century. This class of people, who supplied cheap labor in the British Empire after slavery was abolished, traveled under horrendous conditions to escape the poverty and deprivation in their native land. The book chronicles well, the life and ambitions of the grandiose empire builders and the effect of their actions on ordinary Indian people.

Against this background, Sea of Poppies paints a poignant picture of the human devastation caused by imperialism. The fertile farms of the Ganges plain are blooming only with poppies - beautiful, deadly, denying the peasants the crops to sustain them and indebting them to moneylenders and landowners, themselves indebted to the buccaneers of the East India Company. Skillfully and seemingly randomly, Ghosh assembles those who will set sail in his narrative of the Ibis, an old slaving ship that is taking indentured laborers to Mauritius.

The characters are many and diverse and yet richly etched. He begins in the villages of eastern Bihar with Deeti, soon to be widowed; her addicted husband, who works at the British opium factory at Ghazipur; and Kalua, a low-caste carter of colossal strength and resource. Moving downstream, we meet a bankrupt landowner, Raja Neel Rattan; an American sailor, Zachary; Paulette, a young Frenchwoman, and her Bengali foster-brother Jodu; Benjamin Burnham, an unscrupulous British merchant, and his Bengali agent, Baboo Nob Kissin; and  an assortment of nautch girls and Indian sepoys and soldiers in the service of the Company.

As they sail down the Hooghly and into the sea, their old family ties are washed away, and they view themselves as jahaj-bhais (ship-brothers) who will build whole new lives for themselves in the remote islands where they are being taken.. Cut off from their roots, in transit, and looking ahead to a fresh start, the migrants are prone to invent new names and histories and innovatively try to recreate rituals surrounding marriage , funerals and other rites of passage which can no longer be performed in their original form.

The novel closes with the Ibis in mid-ocean in a storm. Serang Ali, leader of the lascars, has abandoned ship, along with the convicts and the condemned; the first mate as well as the subedar are dead; of the key figures only Deeti, Paulette, Nob Kissin and Zachary are left, watching from the deck the disappearance of the long boat and those close to them. the deliberately ambiguous ending of the novel which leaves the reader speculating about the fat of those left behind on the ship as well as those who have sailed away on the boat seems to have in its kernel the seeds of the other parts of the trilogy that Ghosh is said to be writing around the them of the opium wars.

Amartya Sen’s book, “Identity and Violence’ examines the unfortunate connection between violence and our tendency to identify with one key trait — our ethnicity, or religion, for example — to the exclusion of all others. Sen argues that we can combat this tendency by rejecting this narrowly defined, limited sense of identity, and embracing a broader, richer and more complex understanding of ourselves.

Speaking of his own identities, he says:

” I can be, at the same time, an Asian, a British citizen, a Bengali with Bangladeshi ancestry, an American or British resident, an economist, a dabbler in philosophy, an author, a Sanskritist, a strong believer in secularism and democracy, a man, a feminist, a heterosexual, a defender of gay and lesbian rights, with a nonreligious lifestyle, from a Hindu background, a non-Brahmin…This is just a small sample of diverse categories to each of which I may simultaneously belong. “

He bemoans our predisposition to separate human kind into many different boxes – he cites Samuel Huntington and his Clash of Civilizations stereo types. Huntington of course contrasts Western civilization with “Islamic civilization,” “Hindu civilization,” “Buddhist civilization,” and so on. The supposed conflicts of religious differences are incorporated into a sharply fractured vision of hard-boiled divisiveness. In fact, of course, the people of the world can be pigeonholed according to many other subsets, each of which has some—often far-reaching— importance in our lives: nationalities, locations, classes, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and many others. While religious groupings have received much expression in recent years, they cannot be supposed to eliminate other characteristics. Amartya Sen contends that our society is driven as much by confusion as by hatred. Challenging the division of people by race, religion, and class, he presents an alternate understanding of a world that can be made to move toward peace as firmly as it has spiralled in recent years toward brutality and war.

Sen also notes the inclination to create a random -often historically inaccurate- identity of the self in order to distinguish it from the other. Here he criticizes the idea of the Western mind whereby certain ideas (e.g., democracy) are claimed to be the sole property of the Occident. Citing examples of Buddhist councils during the reign of Emperor Ashoka (3rd Century BC) and tracts on religious freedom during that of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (16th Century AD), Sen attempts to demonstrate how such an identity can be quickly disputed.

A lot of the book is preoccupied with the Muslim identity because much of the attention is directed towards the perception and understanding of this identity in the world. Moreover, much that is valuable in the Western civilisation is a legacy of Muslim as well of other, such as the ancient Hindu, civilisations. In other words, watertight compartments between civilisations are historically unsustainable. And, of course, people themselves are blends of several civilisations so that it is not correct to assume that there is such a thing as a uniform, homogenous, monolithic Muslim civilisation.

But is it really possible to fix the responsibility for all the violence that we witness today on the failure of people to recognize the various identities of others? Would that not be as naive an attitude to take towards the occurrence of violence as the perpetrators of aggression take towards identity? How are identities really shaped and very importantly how are they correlated to more concrete, real-life processes that go on in the world? Again, while it is true that everyone has multiple identities what compels one person to prioritize one of these many identities over all others? That is for us, the readers to figure.

Darfur, Sudan – We hear about it every now and then; we read about the conflict there in news papers and occasionally through the electronic media. UN Peace keepers, genocide – these are things that I have heard, spoken about, but not until reading ‘Tears of the Desert’ by Halima Bashir, I could have claimed some knowledge about the gravity of the situation.

This is a true story of one woman (Halima Bashir) who “survives” the “horrors” of Darfur. The book is organized into four parts – ‘Child of the desert’ about the experiences of growing up told beautifully from a young girl’s perspective, ‘School of the desert’ about the initial education and the nurturing of ambitious dreams, ‘Desert of fire’ about the life in university and the withering away of hope and ‘Desert of no return’ about the flight from the horrors of the conflict.

Non-Fictional accounts of cruel acts are disturbing. They make us realize how fortunate we are in comparison to the multitude whose only mistake is to have born in a conflict zone. We complain, crib and cry, but seldom do we appreciate the checks and balances guaranteed by our constitution.
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The story opens in New York with the Egyptian computer programmer/data analyst Antar discovering an ID card of a missing acquaintance through his Ava/IIse, a computer with an attitude. Ava, who is frighteningly human at times, can speak every language on earth and does not hesitate to show off or throw a tantrum on occasion. Through her, Antar enters an intriguing, timeless world, so compelling that he can scarcely keep himself from becoming involved with the adventures of his fellow programmer, the missing Murugan, or from believing Murugan’s theory of a secret, powerful group operating in complete silence that controls the destiny of mankind. As Antar is drawn in by Murugan’s tale, he is transported to a Calcutta hundred years in the past, into the laboratory of Ronald Ross and Ross’s experiments in malaria research. Here he sees how several fortuitous (yet in Murugan’s mind, suspicious,) circumstances leads Ross to discover the method of transmittal of malaria to human beings.

The Calcutta Chromosome is an admirable science fiction novel (It won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award) but it is also much more. It has elements of a horror story, medical history. The book is about the shadowy story of the discovery of the malaria parasite by a British medical man in colonial India, Dr. Ronald Ross. The fictional Ross is green in his profession but is aided by a shadowy religious sect which pushes him in the right direction. They plan on using his discoveries for their own purposes, which rely on the parasite’s ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and extend far beyond a malarial cure.The medical aspects of malarial fever make it fertile ground for a work of fiction. It can provoke wild dreams and hallucinations, which its remedy, quinine, does as well. And intentional malarial infection was once used as a treatment for syphilis, another disease with end stages marked by mental degeneration:

Drifting in and out of events, like the insubstantial morning mist, are a pair of mysterious figures, the untouchable Mangala and her companion Lakhan. Antar sees them resurfacing again and again but in different time periods, ranging from Ross’s 19th century Calcutta to the Calcutta of the 1990s. Antar discovers too that in its modern avatar, the city can still hold many dangerous secrets. He meets (through Murugan) fascinating characters like Urmila, a journalist with a chip on her shoulder, Phulboni, a poet with a mission, and the beautiful, dramatic ex-actress Sonali Das. As Murugan seeks to find the logic in this seemingly chaotic scenario, Antar follows in his enthusiastic wake till events loop back to New York and Antar finds himself in the eye of the storm.

The concept of time plays a critical part in “The Calcutta Chromosome.” At one level, it seemed to me, that all events described in the book were taking place simultaneously. At another, it appeared to be linear as one event follows the other chronologically. Ghosh’s skillful manipulation of time keeps the reader slightly disoriented and on edge. Perhaps this is what he was aiming at. After all, the jacket of the book describes it as “A novel of fevers, delirium and discovery.”

Like all good science fiction, “The Calcutta Chromosome” makes you think. What is the nature of time? Can souls transmigrate through genetic tampering? Can the history of mankind be pre-written by a few? Amitav Ghosh has written a fascinating book with its sly and humorous mingling of science with myth. Capable of being read at several levels, it is the sort of story that remains with you long after you’ve shut the final page.

Times of India Mumbai carried a front page story (Jan 4 2008) about the city’s police “advising” book stores to remove works by Pakistani authors fearing attacks from the right wing parties such as MNS. According to the report, the city police commissioner Hasan Gaffoor, rejected any such directive being issued. When the journalist Ananhta Mukherji persisted with the local police station from where the “advisory” was issued she was met with the “are you a Pakistani” slur:

Mumbai: A city book shop, the Oxford Bookstore, said it had been urged by the police to take Pakistan-authored books off its shelves. However, the policeman from the Marine Drive police station who visited the store said he had not advised anybody against stocking Pakistani literature, but had simply dropped in to “check that everything was all right.” When this reporter persisted and asked the policeman what the problem was with Pakistani books, he asked her whether she was Pakistani. He then added that it was important that people took precautions, so that crimes were not committed.

It’s not just the police who advised Oxford Bookstore against selling books by Pakistani authors. A store employee who belongs to Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) also urged Thakur not to display Pakistani books. When contacted by TOI, the employee demanded, “After the recent attack on Mumbai, why should we have any Pakistani material in our bookstore?’

It is not just Pakistanis who will not be tolerated by lumpen elements. Any voice or discourse that upsets the sensibilities of the Hindu right will be met with force, including those belonging to Indians. For an earlier Times of India report on cultural and academic censorship in the public sphere click here and read Shashi Tharoor’s opinion piece here on M.F. Hussain here.

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