The monsoon session of Parliament ended on Friday (August 11, 2023) with a predictably unsuccessful no-confidence motion moved by the opposition against the Modi government dominating the debates for 16 days.&nbsp;Given the huge majority that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has in Parliament, the result of the motion was a forgone conclusion. But despite limited numbers and firepower, the opposition succeeded in making the Prime Minister come to Parliament and speak on Manipur, something that he had been avoiding in the wake of the ongoing ethnic conflict that has claimed the lives of over 150 people and rendered thousands of families homeless - the conflict that came to light through a video showing mass sexual violence against women.Opposition leaders like Gaurav Gogoi, Mahua Moitra, Supriya Sule and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary categorically stated the motion was basically a ploy to bring the Prime Minister to the House and hold him accountable in keeping with the constitutional and democratic ethos of the country.&nbsp;<img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/image_2023_08_12_144434146_1024x576_eb2d0dff64.png" alt="image_2023-08-12_144434146-1024x576.png">Gaurav Gogoi speaking in Lok Sabha/ Credits: Sansad TVAccording to Congress member Gaurav Gogoi, who introduced the motion, it was “aimed at making the Prime Minister stop making speeches in foreign parliaments and come to the Parliament of India and deliver his speech here. And the second objective was justice for the people of Manipur.”&nbsp;But in his much-awaited reply to the motion, Modi sounded more like a politician addressing an election rally rather than a Prime Minister answering three simple questions raised by the Congress MP:1) Why did he not visit Manipur till date?2) Why did it take almost 80 days for him to finally speak on Manipur and, when he did speak, did he speak on the subject just for 30 seconds?3) Why has the Prime Minister not sacked the Manipur Chief Minister so far?”&nbsp;Modi, as expected, spent most of the time accusing the opposition parties of corruption and anti-India activities, while revelling in self-admiration and self-obsession. And historical facts went for a toss. He falsely claimed that the Indian Air Force attacked its own citizens in Mizoram under the Congress rule in 1966. In a complete departure from the positions taken by the past governments and his predecessors, he called Operation Bluestar as an “attack on Akal Takht.”Modi blamed the Congress for the ongoing ethnic conflict in Manipur but didn’t speak on the violence in Haryana’s Nuh, which is hardly 100 km from New Delhi, and the subsequent selective demolition drives by the administration against the Muslim community. A major part of his speech that concluded the three-day debate on the motion, was sound and fury signifying little. All that he had to offer after a studied silence on Manipur for the last three months was whataboutery, finger-pointing and scapegoating.&nbsp;Modi’s speech, which was largely aimed at lampooning the opposition unity, inadvertently ended up exposing as bogus Amit Shah’s assertions that the ruling party wanted a serious discussion on the Manipur violence. In a speech that lasted 133 minutes he gave barely four minutes for Manipur and that too after the members of the INDIA bloc staged a walk out. Interestingly, the INDIA alliance members were soon joined by Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD). <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/image_2023_08_12_142527305_1024x576_fafe2d7da5.png" alt="image_2023-08-12_142527305-1024x576.png">Rahul Gandhi speaking in Lok Sabha/ Credits: Sansad TVIn contrast to Modi’s empty rhetoric, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who had returned to Parliament following a Supreme Court ruling revoking his disqualification from the Lok Sabha, attacked the government with renewed vigour. His speech visibly electrified even those parties that are not part of the NDA or INDIA. Amid the ruling party members’ heckling, and jeering, his flamboyance was remarkable. At the very outset of his explosive speech, he mockingly assured the ruling party MPs not to worry. “Relax! I won’t speak on Adani today,” he said. As anticipated, his speech was expunged at several places. Though he spoke for 15 minutes and 42 seconds, Rahul Gandhi was shown only for only four minutes on the Lok Sabha TV. Speaker Om Birla got 11 minutes and 8 seconds.Speaking to media persons outside Parliament, Rahul said: “The Prime Minister spoke in Parliament for 2 hours and 13 minutes. In the last two minutes, he spoke on Manipur. People are being killed. Rapes are happening. Children are being killed. The Prime Minister was speaking laughingly. He was cracking jokes. It does not suit him.”&nbsp;Interestingly, his Bharat Jodo Yatra, the expulsion and then reinstatement in Lok Sabha have raised Rahul Gandhi’s political profile. While being away from the House, he travelled with truck drivers, met with labourers and motor mechanics. He was seen ploughing farms with farmers in Haryana. And most importantly, he went to relief camps in Manipur and met with people from different sections of the society affected by sectarian violence. <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/image_2023_08_12_142951378_f90bc47a6b.png" alt="image_2023-08-12_142951378.png">Rahul Gandhi with truck drivers/ Credits: X/INCIndiaThe BJP had egg on its face when C. Lalrosanga, the lone MP of the Mizo National Front (MNF), an ally of the BJP-led NDA, voted in favour of the no-confidence motion. Though many BJP leaders, both publicly and privately, have criticised the Modi government for mishandling the Manipur crisis, Lalrosanga in his media interviews disagreed with what Modi said inside the Lok Sabha. “They (Modi government) are not doing enough. They could not take the tribals into confidence. The Kukis, Zos and Mizos don’t have confidence in the State government,” he was quoted as saying. In a 25-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, C. Lalrosanga expressed his disappointment over Modi’s speech in the Lok Sabha, saying his party was expecting “more and better.” To discuss Manipur, he said he has been trying to meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah for the last 100 days but has not been given an appointment. <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/image_2023_08_12_142728892_1024x576_c35fa1e3f2.png" alt="image_2023-08-12_142728892-1024x576.png">Amit Shah speaking in Lok Sabha/ Credits: Sansad TVThose who spoke from the government side, including Home Minister Amit Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, adopted the strategy of highlighting the internal differences in the INDIA alliance. Clearly rattled by the unprecedented unity of the opposition, Amit Shah took a swipe at the Congress over the presence of an old and ailing former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in the House. Amit Shah mocked INDIA for making the Aam Aadmi Party its ally. Shah said the AAP would pull out of the INDIA bloc as soon as the Delhi Services Bill was passed.The opposition members under the banner of INDIA came up with a forceful presentation of the pitfalls of the Modi government.Leaders from the opposition parties <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/FTR_3_2_e1691832186515_1024x346_923f1e4d01.jpg" alt="FTR-3-2-e1691832186515-1024x346.jpg">The debate has set the stage for the 2024 general election. INDIA alliance is holding its next meeting on August 31 and September 1 in Mumbai, where it is expected to form a 11-member coordination panel. Ever since the 26-member alliance came into existence, the BJP, which seems to have mastered the art of controlling political narratives so far has been finding it hard to counter INDIA despite Narendra Modi.<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/KSFE_AD_768x768_3_cde581553d.jpg" alt="KSFE-AD-768x768 (3).jpg" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_KSFE_AD_768x768_3_cde581553d.jpg 156w, https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/small_KSFE_AD_768x768_3_cde581553d.jpg 500w, https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/medium_KSFE_AD_768x768_3_cde581553d.jpg 750w" sizes="100vw" width="750"></figure>

12-08-23.jpg

The monsoon session of Parliament ended on Friday (August 11, 2023) with a predictably unsuccessful no-confidence motion moved by the opposition against the Modi government dominating the debates for 16 days.

Modi’s Missing Confidence

The Lotus and the Swan, is a documentary film shot in the Digital format by Nirmal Chander, the acclaimed  film-maker.  It is on Sardar Gurcharan Singh who, after having started in pottery, simply to earn a living, discovered quite early in life, that it could become a medium of serious artistic expression like painting, sculpture and various branches of graphics. Nirmal Chander, also did sixty to seventy per cent of the camerawork- two others, namely the highly talented veteran Ranjan Palit  and K Nanda Kumar also did stints  behind the camera, a digital  Sony F S 5.  The beautiful visually consistent look that lent an emotional unity to the documentary, was achieved through subtle, painstaking colour correction. This 71-minute work on the life of an artist, who rose from becoming an artisan of ever- increasing competence to expressing his personality in clay with as much integrity as others working in other ‘officially’ recognised areas of visual expression gives the viewer an opportunity to enter his deceptively simple world.
<img alt="WhatsApp-Image-2023-08-01-at-1.31.11-PM.jpeg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/Whats_App_Image_2023_08_01_at_1_31_11_PM_dc9e021a1b.jpeg" />
Sardar Gurcharan Singh
The director, who started his project in 2019, was hampered by the wholly unforeseeable appearance of the Covid Pandemic, and the absence of the artist; he had passed on at the age of 99 in 1995. Through sheer grit and intrinsic artistic intelligence, Chander managed to create a wholly satisfying portrait   of Sardar Gurcharan Singh, who, single-handed, raised pottery to a form of artistic expression, and that of a warm hearted, giving person who lived in the everyday world with simplicity and grace, giving freely of himself and his work to hundreds of students, over three generations and also people who came to him for material help.
<img alt="POTS-MADE-IN-INDIA-01900.jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/POTS_MADE_IN_INDIA_01900_4bdd6f5aea.jpg" />
Pottery art by Sardar Gurcharan Singh
The making of the documentary involved enormous amounts of work during the research, the preparation period, identifying Gurcharan Singh’s work that was to be found all over India and also abroad, photographing them to satisfaction ,identifying and interviewing people connected with his work as well as his family,  going to Japan, where Gurcharan Singh studied  pottery  at the Higher  Technical School in Tokyo from !919 to 1922,  collecting archival material, mainly photos of the subject, alone and with others, apart from photographs of Delhi and Andretta, Tokyo. Nirmal Chander and Reena Mohan, his wife and co-editor of the film, through sheer persistence and faith in the work and backed by the consistent, generous support of Delhi Blue Pottery Trust, also the Producers of the venture got to make The Lotus and the Swan in an aesthetically satisfying way.
Gurcharan Singh’s life was a curious mixture of the ordinary and the extraordinary. He began by studying Geology, which,according to his son, Mansimran Singh, aka ‘Mini’, also a well- regarded potter/ceramist,’’led to his qualitative understanding of ores and minerals.’’ ( Prarthana Asija, conversation with Mansimran Singh) when studying in Tokyo he met fellow ceramists  Bernard Leach,Kenkichi Tomimoto, Shoji Hamada, Kanjiro Kawai, all of whom destined to make a name for themselves in their chosen metier. Gurcharan, also held his first exhibition, when in Tokyo. It was then, he began to be aware of the conflict between pottery being a source of livelihood and a form of self-expression.  He overcame these hurdles with humility, confidence and hard work, as if they were a given in this art called living.  The Lotus and the Swan expresses these aspects of his life effortlessly.
<img alt="PHOTO-3-scaled.jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/PHOTO_3_scaled_c9b392d552.jpg" />
He joined Ram Singh Kabuli, his father’s friend, in Delhi Potteries in 1919, learning to make bricks. It was there that pottery captured his imagination. Watching Pathan potters at work, particularly Abdullah, whom he respected and who remained an associate till late in life, well after Gurcharan Singh had started his own set up, Delhi Blue Pottery in 1952. It was this sense of loyalty and fair play towards the people who may have helped at crucial times in his life that earned him the love and respect of all those who worked with him or were his students. These aspects of his life as well as his generosity in sharing his hard-earned knowledge of pottery/ceramics with others for the larger cause of the art itself gave him an exceptional stature; Chander,  and co-editor of the work Reena Mohan, captured them with absolute ease.
<img alt="PHOTO-2-3-scaled.jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/PHOTO_2_3_scaled_8a4c83eba4.jpg" />
With most of the shooting done, it dawned upon the director and his co-producer that the film would acquire muscle and blood only after shooting some crucial sequences in Japan, covering his apprenticeship at the Higher Technical School in Tokyo and his auspicious beginning as an artisan-artist. Two important interviews with Prof. Yuko, an expert on the Mingai Movement, that gave  precedence to hand-made objects of everyday use, primarily in ceramics, created by ordinary amateurs (of talent) over those by  professionals having access to factories, and, another with Prof. Hashimoto, a professor of Letters,  give credence to Gurcharan Singh’s decision  to choose studio pottery over mass produced works, as the right one.
<img alt="POTS-MADE-IN-INDIA-020-1.jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/POTS_MADE_IN_INDIA_020_1_f0fb90f6ba.jpg" />
On his return to India and work at Delhi Potteries, he was unhappy. It was difficult to just  earn his living, knowing that he could make beautiful objects as a studio potter. In Ambala, after  the Partition in 1947, he worked as  Superintendent of the Pottery Training Centre, thus ensuring a regular income. He retired in 1952, came back to Delhi after years with his mentor Abdullah to start Delhi Blue Pottery.  ‘’He used stoneware clay body and high temperature glazes, fired at 1300 degree centigrade in coal kilns. He supported himself by making glazed tiles and ceramic lattices which were bought by architects in Delhi.’’ (Indian Ceramic Art Foundation). A word about the blue colour that made him famous. Its origins were in Persian Blue, which came in three shades, the most sensual being the one that most resembled the colour of Lapiz- lazuli, a semi-precious stone used in jewellery. The Blue tone, he formulated to use in ceramic creations, became his visual signature, though, he also used other colours with flair in his very many creations. The lotus, an often seen motif in his work, came probably from his appreciation of its curving lines, Its arabesques. The curves of a swan in motion inspired him to add it as a motif to some of his creations.
The Japan shots of Tokyo Technical University, College of Liberal Arts, Osaka, Kanazawa,Nara Temple, and various street scenes are lovely to look at and add a nimbus to the story of Gurcharan Singh’s becoming the realised artist, modest, despite considerable achievement. The images of present- day Japan intercut with archival photographs, and some documents give a clear idea of how he evolved as a ceramic artist, how his sensibility was gradually shaped into understanding that a utilitarian calling like pottery could become an art form to be taken as seriously as painting, sculpture and drawing.
<img alt="PHOTO-5-scaled.jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/PHOTO_5_scaled_25bd047d94.jpg" />
The are very many people who talk on camera about Gurcharan Singh affectionately called ‘Daddyji’ since his association with Delhi Blue Pottery which began in 1952. This was probably because of his protective, fatherly personality. All his life, since his return to India in 1922, he had shown a distinct ability to bring like-minded people together to serve a common cause, that of Studio Pottery.   Those of whom felt at ease in his protective, nurturing presence, called him ‘Daddyji’ spontaneously.  There is a lot of talk about ‘Daddyji’ and his kindness and generosity as a teacher and many students like the well- regarded ceramic artist Deepali Daroze speak about the necessity he felt of passing hard-earned knowledge of the craft of pottery to aspiring potters.  He talked her into teaching more students at the studio -school than was possible due to a lack of manpower. Nobody could say ‘no’ to him because he led by personal example.
Chander manages quite a feat by marshalling a plethora of facts about Gurcharan Singh’s life, achievements; the honours he received including a Padma Shri from the Government of India, the appreciation of artists here and abroad; his struggles-the government suddenly in 1986, decided to take away a sizeable portion of the land allotted to him for his kiln and studio, on Ring Road, Delhi thus cramping his working space – into a compelling narrative. However, the spoken word does not dominate the film, because there are plenty of examples of the artists’ work judiciously juxtaposed and sensitively photographed to bring out their beauty. What remains in the memory, as a result, is this touching visual experience of a pioneering artist’s work and his life of struggle and fulfilment.
<img alt="KSFE_ad-1024x1024.webp" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/KSFE_ad_1024x1024_5a7c6970db.webp" />

unnamed-3.jpg

The Lotus and the Swan, is a documentary film shot in the Digital format by Nirmal Chander, the acclaimed  film-maker. 

The Lotus and the Swan - A Television Documentary on Gurcharan Singh by Nirmal Chander

We have read enough stories about how a whizkid named Bill Gates developed a software which was later developed as Microsoft, and how it made him the richest man on earth. The Microsoft family of softwares was copyrighted, but created a paradigm shift that revolutionised the entire software landscape. <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_3_d460cd47f9.jpeg" alt="images-3.jpeg">Richard StallmanAt the same time, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a visionary called Richard Stallman who believed in users' freedom to study, modify, and share the source code announced the GNU Project (GNU's Not Unix). The timelines are interesting. While MS-DOS was officially released in 1981, Stallman announced the GNU Project in 1983. Since its inception in 1985, Windows 1.0, the first Operating System (OS) of Microsoft with graphical user interface, almost monopolised the software industry. While Gates focused on a historic software product, hacker-turned-software-evangelist Stallman prioritised the fundamental concept of freedom and aimed at steering clear of monopolies.During the fall of 1991, a Finnish software engineer called Linus Torvalds, attracted by the ideals of Stallman and his free software movement, decided to turn his licence for path-breaking Linux prototype kernel into GNU licence. Earlier that year, he had released the kernel with a licence that prohibited commercial usage (Interestingly Linus also authored the hugely popular open-source versioning system, Git). Its open-source model allowed developers to access, modify and distribute it freely under its licence. It attracted a large community of software developers and enthusiasts around the world and gave birth to popular Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Redhat, Debian, Fedora, CentOS and many others. <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_5_1_14d7c1d1c3.jpeg" alt="images-5-1.jpeg">Linus TorvaldsThe operating systems are only base building blocks of software. The next decade saw a tough rivalry between two technology stacks- free software and proprietary software. With the rise of the Internet, the ecosystem of programming languages, web servers, databases, standards and other related technologies began to grow together in both spectrums (Proprietary as well as Free Software). In the enterprise sector, while Microsoft continued with its technology stack proprietary segment with .NET framework, SQL server and windows server, the free software counterparts included Java/J2EE and Apache technology stack and free databases like MySQL and Postgres. With the advent of the cloud era, where softwares, applications and computing were packaged as a service, the difference between these two technology stacks gradually became irrelevant.It is interesting to see who stands where at the moment. Microsoft continues to command a significant presence in the OS market, maintaining over 75% global market share in the desktop/laptop sector. But the enterprise applications and technology sector is hugely dominated by open source software. A staggering 90% of software businesses leverage open-source solutions to varying degrees, as reported by Digital Information World. <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/ca_1024x641_e6cfe5104c.png" alt="ca-1024x641.png">Source: Digital Information WorldOver the last decade, the mobile application industry has witnessed unprecedented growth in its user base. The proprietary software iOS, developed by Apple and open source Android are the key operating systems in the race. Android tends to have a more substantial presence in emerging markets and have 70% global market share.Fast forward to 2023, Generative AIIn the past couple of years, Artificial Intelligence has risen to prominence, becoming a transformative force across almost all domains. This rise in AI's influence can be attributed to advancements in ML research, increased computing power, and the availability of big data. One of the major milestones happened in November 2022, when the OpenAI consortium unveiled ChatGPT, a cutting-edge language model that took the world by storm. It was designed as a conversational chatbot model which can understand text inputs and produce human-like responses. The OpenAI consortium initially had non-profit beginnings, with backing from the likes of Elon Musk and Infosys soon changed its stance after gauging its potential. After its remarkable success, Microsoft started heavily investing in OpenAI, planning to use these Large Language Model (LLM) foundations in its software products like Bing, Edge, Microsoft 365 and others. Search giant Google, then came up with its own version of generative AI called Bard, which boasts of responses based on real time data unlike ChatGPT. <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/Screenshot_20230731_104405_Chrome2_a92727495f.jpg" alt="Screenshot_20230731_104405_Chrome2.jpg">ChatGPT Login screenOne can only say that the competition has just started. While ChatGPT has already reaped the rewards for being first in the market, Google, equipped with its superior data search engines and vast data, is expected to catch up swiftly. But one interesting thing to take note is that both are proprietary.Enter Llama 2, the Game changer!When Microsoft and Google made heavy inroads, the other tech giant Meta (former Facebook) launched its own LLM in February 2023. But unlike other two models Meta has released its model under a non-commercial licence focussed only on research use cases. They pledged themselves with responsible AI practices by focussing on known issues like bias, toxicity and misinformation. <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_1_2_9fa13c75b2.jpeg" alt="images-1-2.jpeg">Llama 2 AnnouncementOn July 18th, 2023 Meta came up with a later version, Llama 2, by making the model free and open even for commercial use. Meta's decision to embrace the open-source philosophy can be likened to Linus Torvalds' pivotal move when he declared his Linux operating system under the GNU license. Just as Torvalds released Linux to the world as a open-source software, inviting collaboration and encouraging widespread adoption of the operating system, Meta made its language model, Llama 2, freely available for free research and commercial use. Currently the latest updated model, Llama 2 can be downloaded from Meta, AWS, Azure and HuggingFace. <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/IMG_20230731_WA_0003_5fce273072.jpg" alt="IMG-20230731-WA0003.jpg">Courtesy: Andre Havro/LinkedInLlama-V2 is getting widespread acceptance from technologists, researchers and academia across the world for its open source approach. Following is a statement signed by hundreds of leading personalities in the field.“We support an open innovation approach to AI. Responsible and open innovation gives us all a stake in the AI development process, bringing visibility, scrutiny and trust to these technologies. Opening today’s Llama models will let everyone benefit from this technology.”<a style="background-color:transparent;box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;margin:0px;padding:0px;transition:all 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://about.fb.com/news/2023/07/llama-2-statement-of-support/"><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Read the full statement here.</a>While AI opens up multiple dimensions in business and technology, it also creates a lot of ethical and social challenges. There are a lot of questions that need to be addressed related to inherent bias, fairness, malicious usage, misinformation and privacy. While making the model public, one can argue that Llama’s claim for “Responsible AI” is one step ahead. Its transparency allows one to scrutinise the datasets for bias and fairness. But this can also be a double-edged-sword, as it is unpredictable when technology reaches malicious hands. But the open-source model has been there for quite some time, survived and thrived. (https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1681336284453781505)The business scenarios are swiftly changing. The ChatGPT large language model APIs were the toast of technologists across the world until a few days ago. Let me suggest one example from my own experience. agentrunner.ai, a leading AI startup based in London, which primarily focuses on creating autonomous AI agents was largely focussing on OpenAI LLMs till a few weeks ago. It has adapted quickly to the Llama 2-based model which offers better flexibility. Many companies are now following this trend. Why would small or mid-sized startups invest millions in procuring proprietary APIs?Meta's decision to embrace Responsible AI and open-source philosophy with Llama 2 is undoubtedly commendable and has won widespread praise. It also remains to be seen how Meta's move will benefit their own ecosystem of software platforms, including Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads, and Instagram, in the long run. <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_2_4f2112df6a.jpeg" alt="images-2.jpeg">Applications from Meta Inc.It will be intriguing to watch how OpenAI, Microsoft and Google will respond to this challenge. Remember, Microsoft already declared its support for Llama-V2, probably because it has recognised the extreme complexity of ethical and social challenges LLM technology. Collaborating or working in a hybrid mode in this endeavour may prove more effective than facing it alone.References: - <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ai.meta.com/blog/llama-2/">Meta Newsletter</a> -on LLaMa 2 Wikipedia LLaMa 2 Announcemen Hugging Face &amp; LLaMa 2 Integration Desktop OS Market Share Open Source Software Market share <img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/KSFE_ad_1024x1024_1_a485d571ee.webp" alt="KSFE_ad-1024x1024 (1).webp">

16907813939505303461996395728589.jpg

We have read enough stories about how a whizkid named Bill Gates developed a software which was later developed as Microsoft, and how it made him the richest man on earth.

Llama 2: Unleashing the Open-source Generative AI model

A number of disturbing questions have come up in the context of the communal violence that has engulfed Haryana over the last three days and the manner in which it is spreading to neighbouring regions including Delhi, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. There are striking similarities to a repeating political narrative and project previously tried out in the run-ups to earlier elections in several States and the Centre.
The AIDEM discusses the varied issues related to the obviously orchestrated violence in the Nuh district of Haryana and its political ramifications. The panel consists of Aridaman Jit Singh, a former BSF Officer and a Security Affairs Specialist who has done a lot of groundwork in the region, Sheetal P. Singh, political analyst and senior journalist and Venkitesh Ramakrishnan, Managing Editor of The AIDEM.
Discussion anchored by senior journalist Anand Haridas. The discussion unravels the complex social mechanisms at work, which are constantly under attack by the forces of communalism.
<img alt="KSFE_ad-1024x1024 (1).webp" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/KSFE_ad_1024x1024_1_a485d571ee.webp" />

FTR.jpg

A number of disturbing questions have come up in the context of the communal violence that has engulfed Haryana over the last three days and the manner in which it is spreading to neighbouring regions including Delhi, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

The Causes Behind the Haryana Communal Violence: And Why is it Spreading to Delhi?

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The sub-prime crisis upended the U.S.&nbsp;economy in 2007. President George W.&nbsp;Bush found it convenient to arraign the&nbsp;credit&nbsp;rating&nbsp;agencies for the fiasco. They&nbsp;had a harrowing time facing the crisis of confidence.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Jharkhand-born Deven Sharma had just moved in to head Standard &amp; Poor (S&amp;P) in the U.S. Four years later, Standard &amp; Poor found it appropriate to downgrade the U.S. Government’s long-term debt rating from AAA to AA-. Barack Obama was at the helm then. He too fumed and fretted against the rating agencies. Senator John Kerry chose to dismiss it as “Tea Party Downgrade”. Damned if you, damned if you do not! Deven Sharma resigned from S&amp;P after 18 days of piloting this rating downgrade, which was the first of its kind in 70 years. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) went after Deven Sharma. Has the Enforcement Directorate in India taken a leaf out of this witch-hunting?<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Deven’s&nbsp;team found the debt ceiling stand-off as the reason for this downgrade. This announcement was on a Friday. The markets tanked&nbsp;next Monday. S&amp;P 500 lost 6.5% on first day after the downgrade in 2011.&nbsp;The benchmark U.S.&nbsp;ten-year sovereign bond yield, ideally, must have climbed. But it dropped, possibly at the intervention of the U.S.&nbsp;Federal Reserve.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Twelve years later, Paul Taylor, CEO of Fitch Ratings, decided to bite the bullet. His agency had sent out a downgrade warning in May. It too downgraded the U.S. from AAA to AA+. This announcement was made after the markets closed on Monday. Will he last the next 18 days? The ides of August need to be watched. Deven of S&amp;P could not withstand the 18-day war of Mahabharata! Beyond the debt ceiling standoff, deteriorating governance concerns and fiscal profligacy have combined to press Fitch to effect the downgrade.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">A&nbsp;day&nbsp;after the downgrade in 2023, S&amp;P 500 shed 1.38%, NASDAQ Composite Index lost 2.17% and&nbsp;the&nbsp;benchmark U.S.&nbsp;ten-year sovereign yield rose by 2.4% to 4.08%. On the second day,&nbsp;the yield&nbsp;was&nbsp;further up at 4.11%. A rating downgrade reflects heightened default risk. But&nbsp;the credit&nbsp;default&nbsp;swap&nbsp;levels have remained unmoved.&nbsp;Perhaps, a&nbsp;one-notch dip&nbsp;from the top&nbsp;is too far away from default.&nbsp;If the safe haven theory should hold good, gold&nbsp;price&nbsp;must have gone up. But it dropped by 0.5% to $1934 per ounce, as in 2011. Down the line, will any rating agency downgrade&nbsp;the&nbsp;rating for&nbsp;gold!<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Just like the market, reactions of people who matter have been on predictable lines. Janet Yellen, the Secretary of U.S. Treasury and Jerome Powell, Chairman of Federal Reserve, have rebuffed the rating action, accusing Fitch of relying on inaccurate data. Are they questioning their own data? While Fitch is now aligned with S&amp;P on U.S. debt rating, Moody’s is still maintaining the AAA rating.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Globally, ten economies still retain the AAA rating by Fitch and 11 by S&amp;P. Of the 11, Canada is rated AA+ by Fitch. Australia, Denmark, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Singapore make up the rest of the ten. (<a style="background-color:transparent;box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;margin:0px;padding:0px;transition:all 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.tradingeconomics.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1691653641233000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3Gpzon2CBq7cUoAL7ccqor">www.tradingeconomics.com</a>) India too can boast of a double A in its rating, albeit with a “B” at the front and 3 at the end, making it “Baa3” with astable outlook, pecking it at the lowest of investment grade rating.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Let us look at the following data across&nbsp;the&nbsp;U.S.&nbsp;(AA+), Australia (AAA) and India (Baa3) to&nbsp;understand&nbsp;if such rating divergences really reflect underlying weaknesses or perceived strengths. Data is as of March 2023, sourced from&nbsp;<a style="background-color:transparent;box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;margin:0px;padding:0px;transition:all 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.ceic.data.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1691653641233000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1GkBAcS29auPQ6qURFN3rU">info.ceicdata.com</a>.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/image_2023_08_09_141331714_1_d4d939a500.png" alt="image_2023-08-09_141331714 (1).png" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_image_2023_08_09_141331714_1_d4d939a500.png 245w" sizes="100vw" width="245"></figure><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;display:inline !important;float:none;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;orphans:2;text-align:center;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Investment Grade Ratings/Source: <a style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;font-family:Manjari;font-size:15px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:center;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;transition:all 0.4s ease 0s;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.ceicdata.com/en">CEIC</a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;display:inline !important;float:none;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">With the government debt to GDP remaining at 121%, the U.S. economy is puffing along on borrowed money. The next table will reveal that the holding of this debt by the U.S. is negligible, bracketed with others at 2%. This is also corroborated by the high external debt to GDP ratio of 96%. Yet, the U.S. perceived itself to be safe for more than eight decades! At 7%, the U.S. has the highest fiscal deficit to GDP among the three. Fitch has rightfully expressed heightened concerns on fiscal profligacy. U.S. citizens appear to have been so pampered with social security and health benefits that they forgot to save for themselves. Their gross savings rate is at negative 18%. “Yatha Rajah, thatha Prajah”. Just like the government, the citizens are also enjoying living on borrowed funds. Yet, US claims to be safe haven!<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/image_2023_08_09_141447561_2_9ec2a8151b.png" alt="image_2023-08-09_141447561 (2).png" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_image_2023_08_09_141447561_2_9ec2a8151b.png 245w" sizes="100vw" width="245"></figure><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;display:inline !important;float:none;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;orphans:2;text-align:center;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Foreign Holders of U.S. Debt/Source: <a style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;font-family:Manjari;font-size:15px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:center;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;transition:all 0.4s ease 0s;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/">US Federal Reserve</a><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Asia (led by China) holds 70% of U.S. debt. The U.S. is bracketed with others and still comes to less than 2%. Clear examples of leveraged economies that preach to the corporate world on high gearing!<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">It is high time U.S.&nbsp;citizens made themselves aware of the sixth verse in Bhagavad Gita Chapter 3.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">karmendriyāṇi&nbsp;sanyamya&nbsp;ya&nbsp;āste&nbsp;manasā&nbsp;smaran indriyārthān&nbsp;vimūḍhātmā&nbsp;mithyāchāraḥ&nbsp;sa&nbsp;uchyate&nbsp;(Chapter 3:6)<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Those who restrain the external organs of action, while continuing to dwell on sense objects in the mind, certainly delude themselves and are to be called hypocrites.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;" dir="auto">The mention of the “mithyachara” by the Lord is about the hypocrites, who find it convenient to huff, puff and rebuff as per their convenience.&nbsp;The ones who extoll the&nbsp;“façade” in Johari Window need to remove their facades fast.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;"><img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/KSFE_ad_1024x1024_1_efada5f369.webp" alt="KSFE_ad-1024x1024 (1).webp">

9th-august.jpg

The sub-prime crisis upended the U.S. economy in 2007. President George W. Bush found it convenient to arraign the credit rating agencies for the fiasco. They had a harrowing time facing the crisis of confidence.

Huff, Puff and Rebuff at the Rating Downgrade

The Kerala Police has arrested and jailed GROW Vasu, a 93-year-old activist who was protesting against the killing of two Maoist activists in Nilambur close to the State in a police encounter that happened 7 years ago. The incident described as the Nilambur encounter was criticised by a section of the media and social workers as extrajudicial killing. In November 2016, when GROW Vasu along with his co-activists held a demonstration in front of the mortuary of the Kozhikode Medical College where the bodies were kept, an arrest warrant was issued against him by the Kunnamangalam First Class Judicial Magistrate Court. It is by way of executing this long-standing warrant the police arrested GROW Vasu on July 29, 2023 on the charges of obstructing the police in the line of their duty and unlawful assembly. GROW Vasu has refused to apply for bail and was remanded and sent to Kozhikode sub jail for two weeks.
On November 24, 2016, the police shot dead Kuppu Devarajan and Ajitha (Kaveri) inside the Nilambur forest, in a place called Padukka forest which is part of the Karulai forest range. When their bodies were brought to the mortuary of Kozhikode Medical College, GROW Vasu and his co-activists staged a protest and demanded a judicial enquiry into the killings.
<img alt="Photo-size1.jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/Photo_size1_900fb5e2a6.jpg" />
 GROW Vasu at Court
GROW Vasu is known to the residents of Kozhikode town as a social activist who is always ready to intervene in issues affecting the marginalised and the voiceless. He has been living in the town for as many years as one could remember, in an old and dilapidated ‘peedika’, which in Malayalam means shop. Peedika is a cramped tiny room with a single archaic wooden door, flanked by similar shops _ a familiar site in Kerala. His conspicuous moustache, the Giant Malabar Squirrel that he befriended and lived with him and his bright smiling face remained a source of curious joy and lighter moments for journalists like me whenever we approached him for a comment on a case of human rights violation or social injustice. The photos of Karl Marx, Lenin, Ambedkar, and P. Krishnapillai adore the walls of his ‘residence’ along with the photos of the innumerable protest events that he had been part of. All that he ‘owns’ is an old television set, a table and a cot. His staunch and unwavering commitment to transforming society into a haven of justice is a source of inspiration for us.
He was a Naxalite once, to be precise, in the 1960s. He had participated in the Naxalite attack and killing of a feudal landlord by a group of Naxalites – an incident better known to Keralites as Thirunelli Naxalite Action- and was jailed for 7 years. Maoist literature and Radio Peking were their source of immediate motivation to attempt to bring about a Marxist-Maoist social order through violent means. The government led by C Achutha Menon crushed their attempted uprising and the leaders were sent to jail for many years. A few activists and some innocent people caught in the ideological crosswire lost their lives too. Though Kerala society saw this small group of young men who carried out these sporadic police station attacks as a bunch of unrealistic dreamers, who thought that the villages would rise up to engulf the cities and a just communist society would be established through an armed revolution, many members of that group later changed their course into democratic means of protest and action and made a significant imprint in society. GROW Vasu was one among them.
GROW, a Unique Union
In the 1980s, GROW Vasu became a staunch supporter and leader of the trade union struggle of the Gwalior Rayons Organisation of Workers (GROW), a union which, most probably for the first time in history, demanded the closure of the factory they worked in. The Mavoor Gwalior Rayons factory was manufacturing Rayon, a celluloid fibre that is made from bamboo. In 1958, the Birla Group and the Government of Kerala signed an agreement to establish this factory with a capacity to process 100 tonnes of pulp a day as the government saw this as an opportunity for industrial growth for the State; this was the largest industrial project in the state until then. The government even allowed the company to collect the raw material, bamboo, at a nominal price and with exclusive rights from the State’s forest lands.
<img alt="Ayinoor_Vasu.jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/Ayinoor_Vasu_e684a956df.jpg" />
 GROW Vasu speaking at an event
The factory was situated on the banks of river Chaliyar, the lifeline of many villages located on its banks. For the people of the village, the river is a source of not only drinking water but also livelihood in that they earned an income by selling the fish they caught and the mussels they collected from the river. No sooner than the factory started functioning, the effluents and clouds of smoke from the factory disrupted their lives and livelihoods. An abnormal rise in cases of cancer and respiratory diseases in the villages in the vicinity of the factory aggravated the situation leading to the villagers, and the civil society as a whole, demanding its closure. In this struggle that eventually led to the closure of this industrial unit, GROW Vasu led the factory workers. The moniker, GROW Vasu, stuck.
History of Encounter Killings
The modern history of encounter killings in Kerala began with the killing of Varghese, a Naxalite leader belonging to the same group of ‘revolutionaries’ as GROW Vasu. Varghese was shot dead by the police on February 18, 1970, in the Thirunelli jungle in Wayanad, another forest district of Kerala. Varghese was hugely popular among the poorest of the poor of that region. The shocking revelation that came from a police constable, Ramachandran Nair, many years later that he was commanded to shoot Varghese at point-blank range evoked a controversy and a series of debates on encounter killings. The case was reopened in the wake of the revelation and a police IG who ordered the killing of Varghese was sentenced by the CBI court.
Fast forward to 2016, and there began another series of police encounters with the Maoists. They did not have a big presence in Kerala and always lived on the fringes of the border forests, their contacts with the society limited to the tribal people living there. In many first-person accounts of tribal and local people recorded by Kerala’s TV channels, it became clear that the Maoists reportedly went to them just to get some rice and groceries.
The anti-extremist commando group of the police, The Kerala Thunderbolts, has been behind the recent encounter killings in Kerala. The simultaneity in the formation of the Thunderbolts and the encounter killings has raised many eyebrows in civil society. The question asked was: ‘Has the availability of huge financial support from the Centre to create and run such a commando group become a motivation in itself for the Kerala Police to continue such operations that were out of proportion to the extremist problem?’ Apart from the arrest of GROW Vasu’s arrest, a few more incidents have come as a shock to the civil society, including the 2019 killing of C. P. Jaleel, a Maoist leader, and the gunning down of 3 Maoists in the Attappady forest of Palakkad district. Though the Government of Kerala ordered probes into these encounters, the reports are yet to see the light of the day.
<img alt="images-1-1.jpeg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_1_1_be099518b9.jpeg" />
 GROW Vasu
Of late, GROW Vasu has been a micro-entrepreneur, with his hand-made umbrella brand, ‘Marivillu’ getting featured in local news. It was reported that he makes 20 umbrellas a day and this is not a hobby but his source of livelihood. No doubt that the nonagenarian will be at peace in his prison cell; the condition of his self-chosen dwelling is nothing better. The question is, why the Kerala government and police are losing their sleep over a 93-year-old who has long ceased to be a live wire years ago.
<img alt="KSFE_ad-1024x1024 (1).webp" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/KSFE_ad_1024x1024_1_0e3066f65a.webp" />

Vasu1-.jpg

The Kerala Police has arrested and jailed GROW Vasu, a 93-year-old activist who was protesting against the killing of two Maoist activists in Nilambur close to the State in a police encounter that happened 7 years ago. 

Why is the Left Government Afraid of a 93-Year-Old Man?

This is a French-Tunisian writer’s reflections on France’s Bastille Day.
People often think about Christmas, Thanksgiving, or other religious holidays as their favourite time of the year. Usually, it involves family, food, and a spirit of communion. For me, it has always been Bastille Day, celebrated on 14 July in France to mark the 1789 storming of the Bastille prison in Paris. 
Since I was a child, I remember waiting gingerly for the military parade that would be broadcast live on television. I listened to the presenters sharing their notes, hours of trivia on military schools and units which sounded like gibberish filler to the mesmerising images which drew me most, but I liked it all the same. I often heard fighter jets piercing the sky from our home west of Paris moments before they appeared on TV. Then the ground troops. The horses. The motorcades. The distinctive uniforms of the pioneers of the légion étrangère, with their beards, axes, white gloves, and leather apron.
<img alt="Champs-Elysees-Paris-France.jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/Champs_Elysees_Paris_France_339fda4859.jpg" />
 Champs-Élysées, Paris, France
On these images, the Champs Elysées looked mighty, powerful, strong. It was the Paris of history books, luxury brands, and tourists, of De Gaulle and Catherine Deneuve, far from the greyness of the banlieue where I lived. After the military parade, the President addressed the nation. That, too, I would watch religiously, because it became a tradition. And then we would eat. 
“Bastille Day,” as it is called in English, was named Fête de la Fédération when French people first celebrated the day in 1790. The name itself underscores a desire and need for unity. It’s always been about concord and cementing common affinities. 
During that first celebration, the festivities centred on the union of the King with the new representative assembly, and his people. Given the upheavals of the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon, the return to monarchy, and various regime changes, Bastille Day has been variously commemorated through time. 
Yet it became enshrined, so to speak, when the day was declared a “national day” in 1880. From then on, Bastille Day was to be observed annually in codified festivities that included, for instance, the famed military parade. That year, the Republican motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” was also displayed on all public buildings. 
This timing corresponded to an important shift in the way that France would look at itself and negotiate contestations, first as a republican nation, and second, as a colonial empire and postcolonial society. In many ways, official festivities represent a mirror of society, crystallise public image-making, and shape a contemporary mythology that affirms identity.
As such, Bastille Day is not about celebrating a specific political figure or the constitutive differences that make up France. Rather, it is about a homogenous expression of Frenchness in its proud, patriotic display. Two bodies are celebrated: the army and the broader citizenry. 
But when people celebrate an aggrandised version of France; they do so on the back of a very historical event that highlights recent contradictions. The storming of the Bastille was brutal and deadly; witnesses reported instances of cannibalism and vile desecration of bodies. It shocked and marked an acceleration of the revolution, which by now, the king had ruefully underestimated. Because of this violence, the celebration of that day hasn’t always been consensual. The politicisation of the French Revolution meant that the memory of Bastille Day was often pulled between two camps and two diverging historical narratives—the monarchists and the republicans. 
But in the collective psyche today, the storming of the Bastille has melded with France’s political emancipation as these earlier dichotomies no longer take hold. It is a “good riot,” a turning point that upholds noble values of resistance and courage as well as embodies a fight for an honourable cause. The rioters of summer 1789 considered that the revolution was in danger. They wanted to seize gunpowder and weapons to protect it and stormed the Bastille, a medieval fortress that symbolized arbitrary arrests and tyranny. 
The event elevated the notions of sacrifices and personal integrity. On that day, I can’t help but think of other moments of grief when the celebrations turned to horror, such as the Bastille Day of 1953, when a peaceful march for the independence of Algeria was disrupted by the police. Seven people were killed, among whom Algerian nationalists and a labour unionist. Most people have forgotten it but they remember Bastille Day, 2016, when a terrorist drove a cargo truck into the crowd in Nice, killing more than 80 people.
The recognition of the storming of the Bastille as a good riot for more than 140 years contrasts with what French political elites have characterised as bad riots, a negative qualifier often assigned to riots led or involving Arabs and Africans. I watched, helplessly, the footage of 17-year-old Nahel Marzouk, killed at point-blank range by a policeman on June 27. He looked like a brother, a cousin. Like him, I hail from North Africa. Like him, I’ve lived in a differentiated space where my face allows the police to racially profile me. 
<img alt="bastille-day-comp.jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/bastille_day_comp_63c5cce31f.jpg" />
 Storming of the Bastille
Young men like Nahel are “killable,” a term used by French sociologist Kaoutar Harchi. Their ardour must be tamed. Unlike the depreciated non-white masculinities, my female body descends from 19th-century odalisque Orientalist paintings—servile, seductive, worth sexually conquering. My face will never be Marianne, the bust that personifies chaste France, the portrait of the goddess of Liberty. 
Following Nahel’s killing, youth from low-income estates protested police brutality. Although statistics on race are not allowed in colour-blind France, the police ID-checks people passing as Arabs and Blacks disproportionally more than the rest of the population. Seventeen people die every year in police custody or during arrest in France, a figure higher than its neighbouring countries. 
Over several days then, youth vandalised property, looted, and confronted the police in tense exchanges that erupted like wildfire throughout France. Quickly, the questions of who (Arabs and Africans) and what (illegitimate violence) supplanted why (decades of racial discrimination, targeted police checks, humiliations, and broken social ladder). The main police union described the rioters, who are overwhelming French citizens despite being extraneously labelled as migrants or descendants of migrants, as “hordes of savages.” 
What these young people denounced in their raw expression is a two-tiered reality. They rejected the growing fracture between French people for whom the words Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity correspond to a daily exigency, and themselves, for whom the same words represent empty and broken promises. The lack of belonging they have encountered also stems from France’s refusal to embrace a multicultural, postcolonial trajectory that would love all its children equally, without questioning the Frenchness of some. 
<img alt="modi-in-france.jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/modi_in_france_c47bb49521.jpg" />
Narendra Modi at Bastille Day Parade in Paris, 2023
As this year’s celebration unfolds, I feel a growing sense of dissociation. I watch the armed forces parade with their ready-to-buy military equipment, people being arrested for booing the president, and the theatrical accolades of our president with Narendra Modi. A fundraiser for the family of the policeman involved in Nahel’s killing has reached over EUR 1.6 million. Many people see this as a booty, a reward for killing an Arab boy. 
Sometimes, I wonder if we are returning to two camps when the elites accuse minorities of being “separatists” when they point out to shortcomings in the social contract or when they want to live their faith unimpeded. Issues of systemic racism are still ignored and minimised. Justice and equity ring as urgently in 1789 as they do today, but this Bastille Day tells me that some riots are more legitimate than others because some voices are more valid and valued than others. My favourite holiday is a flawed one I realise. France’s mirror needs to be repaired—urgently.

21-07-23.jpg

People often think about Christmas, Thanksgiving, or other religious holidays as their favourite time of the year. Usually, it involves family, food, and a spirit of communion.

Good Riots, Bad Riots

In 2019, a few weeks after the Indian National Congress suffered yet another resounding defeat at the hands of the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP), a small group of Delhi-based journalists, including this writer, had an occasion to interact with Rahul Gandhi in the precincts of the Congress Parliamentary Party office within the Parliament Building. During the brief, impromptu interaction, Rahul Gandhi said that he and the Congress had worked hard and to the best of their abilities but were found wanting in making the big change.
<img alt="images-5-300x168 (1).jpeg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_5_300x168_1_4af654c532.jpeg" />
Oommen Chandy with Rahul Gandhi during Bharat Jodo Yatra
Hearing this, I came up with a totally unsolicited advice. “Bring Oomen Chandy to Delhi on a special organisational post. Give him authority to prod your line of leaders in the organisational structure across the country. He will make your units across the country spring to a new life. He himself will not sleep. And he will not let other leaders in your party sleep too.” Rahul Gandhi, just smiled and moved on. 
Later, I sent word to Chandy through one of his close associates, about my “message” to Rahul Gandhi. The associate reported back saying that Chandy too responded to my suggestion with a smile, but had later added that he wished he could actually live up to my impression about him, if given a chance. Apparently, he used to talk about this “organisational possibility at the Congress centre” from time to time. “In a sense, he had taken up this as a promise to himself”, said the associate of Chandy. But several factors, including Chandy’s ill-health, prevented him fulfilling this promise in the past four years. 
<img alt="Capture-300x187 (1).webp" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/Capture_300x187_1_23cc80f11e.webp" />
Oommen Chandy sloganeering
Political observers who have observed the organisational abilities of the former Kerala Chief Minister would agree with my assessment. There was little doubt about his connect with the people. Also that 24×7 activity characterised Oomen Chandy’s political life throughout his nearly six-decade long career. Fellow politicians, political observers and journalists have often been dumb founded by Chandy’s capacity to put in inhumanly long hours of work.
Senior politicians belonging to different parties, including his arch rivals in the Communist Party of India (Marxist) have seen how he could be on his feet for almost as long as 10 hours, meeting and interacting with people.
A fellow journalist recounts often an unbelievable official encounter with Chandy. Chandy was Chief Minister at that time and the journalist, an elected leader of a journalists’ union. The latter had an important issue to discuss with the Chief Minister. The union was building an office in one of the Kerala districts and had to get some official clearances. To an official request for an appointment, the Chief Minister’s office replied that the meeting was fixed for 4 a.m. in a train reaching Shoranur Junction then. Looking at the time and place of appointment, the journalist and his colleagues had surmised that the meeting would not happen. The Chief Minister would most probably be asleep at that time, they thought. However, they decided to take a chance and reached the station. The train reached the railway station and the man who opened the train’s door was a fully awake and bright looking Chief Minister himself. The journalists had a fruitful discussion with Chandy in the train. Later, the union’s project came to a smooth completion.
There were several leaders in the Congress as well as many regional parties in northern India such as the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Janata Dal (United) who knew about this passionate working style of Chandy. Old timers in the Uttar Pradesh Congress, such as Ram Kripal Singh and Pramod Tiwari, used to term it “Chandy’s personal value addition to a long-standing Kerala stamp in Congress politics”. They remember how, when Indira Gandhi was leading the party, young leaders from Kerala, such as A.K. Antony, Vayalar Ravi and Oomen Chandy had occupied important positions in the central bodies of the party. They viewed it as a period of creativity in the grand old party.
In the view of these leaders, it was Chandy and K.C. Venugopal, organisational secretrary in the current Congress Working Committee (CWC), who essentially represented this Kerala stamp in national politics in contemporary times. Interestingly, Venugopal considers himself a sort of protege of Chandy. Both Singh and Tiwari had pointed out to The AIDEM that Chandy’s political personality had particularly captured, the attention and imagination of the political class as a whole, particularty Congress functionaries, in different parts of India during the two terms when he was Chief Minister of Kerala. 
<img alt="The_Chief_Minister_of_Kerala_Shri_Oommen_Chandy_meeting_the_Prime_Minister_Dr._Manmohan_Singh_in_New_Delhi_on_March_13_2013-300x181 (1).jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/The_Chief_Minister_of_Kerala_Shri_Oommen_Chandy_meeting_the_Prime_Minister_Dr_Manmohan_Singh_in_New_Delhi_on_March_13_2013_300x181_1_a6fde85eb5.jpg" />
Oommen Chandy meeting the then Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh in New Delhi
This began right from his first tenure as Chief Minister in 2004. The very fact that he was chosen to replace somebody like Antony after the rout of the Congress in Kerala in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections had evoked interest across the country. This had grown steadily over his first tenure as Chief Minister until 2006. “It rose to greater heights during the, second tenure, which began in 2011,” Singh said.
Chandy’s tireless physical dynamism and energy were often cited as examples of the new-age political quotients of high value. Even politicians like Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, who stands at a considerable distance from the Congress in political and ideological terms have commented on this aspect to me personally.
At the level of larger politics, however, there have been questions on Chandy’s ideological orientation and commitment. I had myself raised a pointed question on this when he was Chief Minister. Chandy had responded by stating that he did not believe in categorisations such as Left, Right or Centre and his basic ideology was welfare of the people and overall development. Many journalists and observers who had heard this interaction immediately categorised it as mindless generalisation by the leader. 
Even in the midst of this criticism, there was also an acceptance that at the policy level, there were many things that Chandy had done as Chief Minister which had the potential to evolve into more ideologically coherent political plan. Indeed, there were many things that militated against any form of ideological orientation. 
There is a general impression that the present-day Kerala, by and large, does not produce the kind of mature politicians that the larger society of the State deserves. This is a view shared even by those academicians and analysts who have showered praise on the Kerala model of development. Clearly, there is a need for greater application, enhanced creativity, and better innovation to make Kerala adapt itself to the new, emerging world.
Perhaps, Oomen Chandy’s passing away would trigger a broader and more involved debate on this issue in the days to come. Even as one mulls on this possibility, there can be little denying that Chandy had a very high application quotient and that he had brought back some attention to the Kerala stamp in Congress politics at the national level.
In such a context, the unkept promise that he made to himself on bringing more vigour into the Congress at the national level would pain a large number of his followers and friends.

Oomman-Chnadi-05.jpg

In 2019, a few weeks after the Indian National Congress suffered yet another resounding defeat at the hands of the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP), a small group of Delhi-based journalists, including this writer, had an occasion to interact with Rahul Gandhi in the precincts of the Congress Parliamentary Party office within the Parliament Building. During the brief, impromptu interaction, Rahul Gandhi said that he and the Congress had worked hard and to the best of their abilities but were found wanting in making the big change.



Oomen Chandy and an Unkept Promise to Himself

Milan Kundera was part of my youth and growing up, and I toted his works and held on to them as if my life depended on them. During my post-graduation, I lived through his novels, empathized with his female characters, and slipped into the glum of existential angst throttling me from my imagined reliving of his books. Often, I walked under the shadow of his graphomania, entangled or surrounded “with his own writings as with a wall of mirrors cutting off all voices from without.” Significantly, Kundera often talked about being immersed in ‘alien cultures’ and the theory of two civilizations and the essential conflict between them. While he argued for the cultural significance of then Czechoslovakia in the contemporary age, he believed that his country was “culturally in the West and politically in the East” and resented being bundled off as part of the Western civilization. I, too, weighed under the heaviness of cultural alienation, a small-town Malayali girl, weighed down by the distant gloomy chimes of the death knell of the Prague Spring in a far-away time; and, almost intellectually titillated by it, I was enamoured with a novelist who defied all categorizations thrust on him. In an interesting anecdote, when The Joke (1967), his first novel, was simplistically dubbed as “an epitome of the utter denunciation of the Stalinist regime,” Kundera protested with his razor-edged vehemence. “Spare me your Stalinism, please. The Joke is a love story!” 
Incidentally, I picked up The Joke from a lending library, misled by its title. I searched for the joke throughout the book as I realized it was the story of Ludvik, who was still a grudging fan of the ‘still-young Communist regime.’ During his summer break, a girl in his class wrote to him about “optimistic young people filled through and through with the healthy spirit” of Marxism; he replied, “Optimism is the opium of mankind! A healthy spirit stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!” It is evident that Kundera pursued laughter and humour rigorously and persistently in many ways than one. In The Joke, The Book Laughter and Forgetting (1979) and Laughable Loves (1974), he explored the gruelling semantics of black humour, piecing together the jarring elements of history, philosophy, broken love affairs, unconsummated sexuality and personal reflections, through the narration of social commentary and existential contemplations. In these novels, as in most of his other works, through individual and collective memories, the complexity of relationships, memory and forgetting, political repression, love, and the nature of laughter flock together as reflections on human conditions. 
<img alt="milan-booka-1.jpg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/milan_booka_1_0fc0a8da0d.jpg" />
<pre><code>Milan Kundera’s Books
</code></pre>
Ironically, in his extended treatise on modern aesthetics, Testaments Betrayed (1993), Kundera observes, “If I were asked the most common cause of misunderstanding between my readers and me, I would not hesitate: humour”. Referencing Octavio Paz, he believed, humour is the great invention of the modern spirit” and by claiming that this humour’s birth, coinciding with that of the novel in Rabelais and Cervantes, is absolutely fundamental to modern European culture. Milan Kundera believed that his stories led to a fresh approach to specific knowledge of life. On the other hand, he also argued that “the novel doesn’t answer questions” but leads the reader to reread and find new surprises every time she reads.
The novel never provided an absolute truth for him. Instead, he defined the genre as “the great form in which the author thoroughly explores some great themes of existence, using experimental selves (characters).” But he often wrote them as “wisdom of uncertainty”, especially like many other writers like Kafka, Broch and Hasek, who were ardent adversaries of totalitarian truths, and peppered their writings with ‘irreverent truths.’ Kundera was also obsessed with the concept of betrayal, both in literature and in real life became manifested in artistically different forms, such as political, artistic, and personal betrayals. Kundera examines various historical events and figures, drawing connections between their actions and the theme of betrayal. 
<img alt="WhatsApp-Image-2023-07-13-at-09.58.54-204x300.jpeg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/Whats_App_Image_2023_07_13_at_09_58_54_204x300_4837e07edf.jpeg" />
 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Interestingly, while Kundera loosened the knots of conventionality, he simultaneously rebuilt nihilistic, self-destructive meanings with the same vigour. Sometimes, inter-genre interference of music can be read into many of his works. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being can be read as polyphonies or musical interfaces where the narrator’s and the characters’ voices fuse into a mixture creating new strains of non-linear meanings. 
Kundera’s treatment of ‘sexuality in his novels’ had elicited strong and unfavourable responses over time. For him, sexuality is a microcosm of power struggles, almost always involving the dominance of one person over another, of strength over weakness. There’s nothing personal or pleasurable in sexuality; in The Joke, Ludvik’s pursuit of Helena is an expression of his desire for revenge against Zemánek, but his sexual tyranny is equated as brutal as that of the Communists, and the reader becomes increasingly uncomfortable about Ludvik’s obsession with violating women. Kundera’s outspoken sexual narratives satirize the taboos and individual prejudices regarding sexuality. He effaces the spaces of sacred and profane with his erotic descriptions and non-apologetic violence in sexual engagements and, sometimes, collision. Out there, the personal and political are closely knit, and the comic sexual faux pas are tied to the extensive struggles of the state, where the state suffers a similar, ridiculous predicament. Interestingly, since the same impulses and ambitions underlie public and private life, Kundera argues that the personal and the political cannot be separated as distinct entities. In his words, “Politics unmasks the metaphysics of private life; private life unmasks the metaphysics of politics.”
Milan Kundera has been criticized for the excess of violence and misogyny in his novels. Critics like John O’Brien exposed the strands of misogyny in his novels in caustic terms. He wrote, “Kundera might see himself as a paradoxical, post-structural, or an eroticist exploiting the taboos proliferated by cultural stereotyping”, and at the same time, he critiques Kundera for ‘types’ of women portrayed ad-nauseum in his novels. His vignettes of women are often fragmentary and often couched in the patriarchal idealism that is unconsciously built into his works. The erogenous bodies of women and the brutal violence perpetrated on them in his novels were also subjected to bitter criticism. 
<img alt="WhatsApp-Image-2023-07-13-at-09.58.53 (1).jpeg" src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/Whats_App_Image_2023_07_13_at_09_58_53_1_254e96a575.jpeg" />
 Church of Our Lady before Týn, Prague, Czechia 
Kundera consistently rallied laughter and satire against the grim realities of the history of persistent repressions and subjugations Czechoslovakia had undergone for ages. Before the World War, the country wilted under the iron boots of the Austro-Hungarian empire and was eventually invaded by Hitler during the Second World War. Once liberated from German occupation by the Red Army in 1945, the country formed alliances and fell apart under the instability of the coalition till the Communist Government completely took over in 1948. After twenty years of an oppressive Communist rule, Czechoslovakia saw the brief dalliance of liberalism and humanity in the euphoria of the “Prague Spring” whipped up under the leader Alexander Dubcek, the General Secretary of the Community party, in 1968. But the uprising ended disappointing, as Dubcek and his followers were under duress and forced to sign a treaty which meant the end of reform. Along with the moment begins “the struggle of man against power”, which is synonymous with “the struggle of memory against forgetting.” (The Book of Laughter). He adds that the Prague streets were haunted by the ghosts of “moments demolished – demolished by the Czech reformation, demolished by the Austrian counter-reformation, demolished by the Communists.” In an autobiographical account, “The Angels”, Kundera confessed his entrapment in the initial days of Communist euphoria. “I, too, danced in a ring. It was the Spring of 1948. I took other students by hand… and we took two steps in place, one step forward… and we did it just about every month., there being always something to celebrate, an anniversary here, a special event there, old wrongs righted, new wrongs perpetrated, factories nationalized, thousands of people jailed… and we smiled the smile of happiness.”
Exiled to France in 1975 for forty years, the writer never hesitated to fathom the deep and existential questions — “the lightness/weight opposition is the most mysterious, most ambiguous” — and wrote with a relentless indictment against totalitarianism, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Interestingly, his writer’s journey, hemmed into interesting phases, voiced the totalitarianism of the state (The Joke), unleashed a direct attack against the Communist regime (The Book) and slowly metamorphosed to political narratives under the gossamer veils of allegorical subjectivity (Identity, Immortality). However, his last novel, The Festival of Insignificance (2014), talked about four men bumping into each other, recounting anecdotes, their mothers, narrating philosophical and playful conversations, and received mixed reviews. 
Years later, in1990, following the Velvet Revolution and the fall of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Kundera was invited back to his home country, though he declined and remained in France. At ninety, in a touching, symbolic gesture, his Czech citizenship was revoked, eliciting the author’s tongue-in-cheek response. “”All I know is that before I left, I was terrified of ‘losing home’ and that after I left, I realized — it was with a certain astonishment — that I did not feel loss, I did not feel deprived.” 
Twenty-five years later, at the news of Kundera’s death, I was again taken back to memories of my small-town world where I was grieving the rise of a totalitarian regime and the fall of liberalism and human rights in a distant country. Back home, though I was deluded by the ideals of democracy, Kundera’s novels evoked the horrors of fallen optimism and the stories of totalitarianism where oblivion aces over memory as the only strategy to survive. The red flags of human suffering swept over the borderlines of the nations and reached out to me and the readers worldwide echoing Kundera’s words, “The Czech anthem begins with a simple question: ‘Where is my homeland?” The homeland is understood as a question. As an eternal uncertainty.” The world’s tribute to the great writer is in remembering the fact that between the effaceable lines of certainties and uncertainties, laughter and tears, memory and forgetting – some great stories were told, pickled in the horror of laughter.

Kundera-1.jpg

Milan Kundera was part of my youth and growing up, and I toted his works and held on to them as if my life depended on them. During my post-graduation, I lived through his novels, empathized with his female characters, and slipped into the glum of existential angst throttling me from my imagined reliving of his books. Often, I walked under the shadow of his graphomania, entangled or surrounded “with his own writings as with a wall of mirrors cutting off all voices from without.” Significantly, Kundera often talked about being immersed in ‘alien cultures’ and the theory of two civilizations and the essential conflict between them.

Stoking Unbearable Memories against Forgetting: Reading Kundera’s Works from a Different World

Television tells you many things even in an era of untruth, if you know what to look for. As a practised viewer and reporter, I’m lucky. I know to look past the text of Modi’s speech at the U.S. Congress and listen to the applause.The first thing that struck me is how the claps kept coming at regular intervals in exactly the same strength, as if exactly the same number of hands were clapping at the same intensity to the ministering of an invisible conductor. The sound came from the upper section of the hall in the Senate, where an occasional camera positioned at a wide angle threw a glance at pliant Indians in raptures as their leader spoke.Modi was rolling out a speech with trademark Indianisms, which is a polite way of saying that it was replete with stock phrases and homilies that brought on one round of applause after another.“Standing here, seven Junes ago…” said Modi with a dramatic flourish, “…the hesitations of history were behind us.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean, you or I may ask, not the professional clappers.Encouraged by the sounds from above to say more, Modi kept the gems flowing.“Through the long and winding road we have travelled, we have met the test of friendship.” You could almost hear the heaving Indians ushered in to the top benches of the Senate shouting ‘sixer, maar diya!’<img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_5_2_fab04cdd5b.jpeg" alt="images-5 (2).jpeg"> Narendra Modi is US CongressThen, an extraordinary thing happened. Modi quoted from the Hindu scriptures in Sanskrit, as he is given to doing.“Ekam Satta, Vipra Bahudha Vadannti.”This was followed by the same ecstatic applause before he read the translation in English. It was amazing that an entire section of the U.S. Senate could now understand Sanskrit.The translation was read while the claps were in progress.“The truth is one but the wise express it in different ways,” Modi explained.Could I be imagining this? Was I a hyperactive viewer? But it happened again.<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;display:inline !important;float:none;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“<a style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;transition:all 0.4s ease 0s;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/video/watch-indian-pm-modi-s-full-address-to-congress-184163909824">Our vision is, sabka saath, sabka vikaas, sabka vishwaas, sabka prayaas</a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;display:inline !important;float:none;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">” (See 20:36 mins)This time, our multilingual Senate understood Hindi before Modi could follow through with the English version.There were other observations I made, less about the semantics, more about the troubling substance of Modi’s speech. There was the spinning of the usual Hindu nationalist yarn that India has overthrown a thousand years of slavery, implying that India was unfree under Mughal and pre-Mughal medieval rulers.There was the blatant and cruel joke of the Prime Minister talking of cooperative federalism at a time when back at home, Manipur burned because of the lack of precisely the kind of federalism Modi was pontificating about and the Delhi government was protesting against the constant attempt by the Centre to snatch away autonomy from a government by an opposition party.This made me raise bigger questions of the farcical performance at hand. Where is the word democracy in this show, if a Senate in search of money and an Indian market has to kowtow to a visiting dignitary in this way. The upper stalls were reverberating with war-cry like gasping chants of `Modi-Modi’ peppered with whistles.If America calls itself the world’s oldest democracy, where does it hide itself after such a display? On the one hand, America is replete with government-funded think tanks acting as self-appointed arbiters of democracy. It creates storied telling the world where it stand on the democracy index.On the other hand, Americans are well aware of how capital can twist and distort democracy into an ugly mobocracy that can literally rip the insides of their White House to shreds. They are barely back from precisely such a precipice so they know what a megalomaniac who likes to preen in public can do. They’ve seen it. The Senate that clapped and allowed clapping has seen it.But all of us glued to our television screens watching the speech could also see Vice President Kamala Harris keep a steely stoicism as she sat directly behind the Hindu dictator, her Indian roots called into play as part of the programme.We ought to know how to read the signs. The same tropes play out whether it is the pre or post-Trump regime. Biden, Obama, Trump are all conflatable into one big business ball prepared to pay the price, any price, any act to run their local markets and keep local voters happy.While this show runs to full house, let us now call into play the last such choreographed act when Obama was at the helm. Circa 2016, Modi’s rock-star type show at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Cameras hovering over the audience rows showed people in skullcaps all sitting together. That must have taken some doing. It was another level of absurdist theatre where you would need to imagine what would have had to play out if indeed all Muslims entered Madison Square at the same time and booked seats next to one another.Google the video. Then let’s imagine what we are supposed to.Says one Muslim to another in this imaginarium: “Hey, do you know Modi is coming to town? Let’s book tickets together and oh don’t forget your skullcap. And listen, let’s get all our friends to come watch how much we love Modi and let’s show him we care by entering the hall together sitting in one place.”“Yes, let’s all do that, what a good idea.”If world politics is about which leaders are shunned and who is feted, if America sits in judgement on who is democratic and who should be in a G 8 group or the United Nations Security Council, then it has a lot to answer for. And we, the enraptured viewers have even more to think about, as we sit eyeballs and ears peeled for this display.Should we stop looking in the official places for holding up the image of liberty equality, fraternity? Where should we turn to instead to understand the true value of freedom and dissent? If the 99 percent matters, if Black Lives and Dalit Lives Matter, can we stop using vacuous references to the democracies like world’s largest and world’s oldest? Also, should we turn our gaze elsewhere for a freedom index?Can we look at how Taiwan is fighting the monolith that is China? Can we look at aboriginal movements in Australia and New Zealand? Can we ask the LGBTQi in Brazil how they bent the votes against Bolsanaro? Can we look at a post-apartheid South Africa? And the next time when someone uses hyperboles such as ‘the world’s biggest’, ‘the world’s oldest’, greatest’, ‘fastest’, and ‘fattest’, can we collectively agree that these are salesman-politicians in Teflon democracies and look away?This article was first published in The Wire. <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;display:inline !important;float:none;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The article can be read <a style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;transition:all 0.4s ease 0s;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://thewire.in/politics/us-senate-modi-applaud-sanskrit">here</a><a style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;transition:all 0.4s ease 0s;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">.</a>

images-5.jpeg

Television tells you many things even in an era of untruth, if you know what to look for. As a practised viewer and reporter, I’m lucky. I know to look past the text of Modi’s speech at the U.S. Congress and listen to the applause.

The Amazing Grace of the US Senate That Clapped When Modi Spoke in Sanskrit

Malayalam (ml)

Tamil (ta)

English (en)

Hindi (hi)

Telugu (te)

Kannada (kn)

<img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/IMG_20240930_WA_0007_770x470_d5062615d1.jpg" alt="IMG-20240930-WA0007-770x470.jpg" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_IMG_20240930_WA_0007_770x470_d5062615d1.jpg 245w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/small_IMG_20240930_WA_0007_770x470_d5062615d1.jpg 500w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/medium_IMG_20240930_WA_0007_770x470_d5062615d1.jpg 750w," sizes="100vw" width="undefined" height="undefined"><div class="post-body clearfix single-blog-header single-blog-inner blog-single-block blog-details-content" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(85, 85, 85);font-family:Manjari;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;"><div class="entry-content clearfix" style="box-sizing:border-box;counter-reset:footnotes 0;margin:0px;padding:0px;">Communication is an art that many struggle with, but few realize it can be learned. Whether you’re talking to a friend, colleague, family member, or stranger, mastering this skill is within reach. Ever struggled to start a conversation or keep it going? Finding common topics of interest can be tricky, and navigating differing social or political views can feel like a minefield. But with the right approach, you can turn any interaction into a meaningful exchange.&nbsp;How do you find the right approach? More importantly, can you learn the required skills?“<a style="background-color:transparent;box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;margin:0px;padding:0px;transition:0.4s;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.charlesduhigg.com/supercommunicators">Supercommunicators</a>,” written by Charles Duhigg, is a book that teaches you to learn the skills to convert a conversation into a connection. It distills the art of conversation, any conversation, including the ones with your friends and family, into actionable steps that you can readily practice and improve.<a style="background-color:transparent;box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;margin:0px;padding:0px;transition:0.4s;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.charlesduhigg.com/">Charles Duhigg</a> is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and author of bestselling books. I read his first book, “The Power of Habit,” which is a constant presence in many bookstores, and liked it. I read it in 2013, and it convinced me about the importance of habits. Last year, I read his <a style="background-color:transparent;box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;margin:0px;padding:0px;transition:0.4s;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/11/the-inside-story-of-microsofts-partnership-with-openai">article</a> on the ChatGPT saga and liked it for its reporting breadth and depth.<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="border-width:0px;box-sizing:border-box;clear:both;display:block;height:auto;margin:15px auto;max-width:100%;padding:0px;vertical-align:middle;width:629px;" id="attachment_30055" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-30055"><img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/811bz_Oshn5_L_AC_UF_10001000_QL_80_F_Mwebp_7ad3ac888f.webp" alt="811bzOshn5L._AC_UF10001000_QL80_FMwebp_.webp" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_811bz_Oshn5_L_AC_UF_10001000_QL_80_F_Mwebp_7ad3ac888f.webp 98w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/small_811bz_Oshn5_L_AC_UF_10001000_QL_80_F_Mwebp_7ad3ac888f.webp 314w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/medium_811bz_Oshn5_L_AC_UF_10001000_QL_80_F_Mwebp_7ad3ac888f.webp 472w," sizes="100vw" width="undefined" height="undefined"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing:border-box;display:block;font-size:15px;line-height:20px;margin:0px;padding:12px 0px 0px;text-align:center;" id="caption-attachment-30055">Cover of the book ‘Supercommunicators’</figcaption></figure>This book starts by breaking down every conversation into three types: Analytical, Emotional, and Social. Every conversation is essentially one of these three types. In analytical talk, the conversation is a transaction where facts and details matter. In emotional talk, the conversation is all about the feelings. In social talk, the conversation is about an identity. Now, listing the types helps in nothing. You still need to know what to do with this information.Suppose you argued with your father in the morning over a trivial issue. You reach the office and share the incident with your friend. Are you looking for a solution? Do you want to be listened to intently, get advice on who was wrong, or would just a hug do ? Suppose you differed with a colleague about a work issue. Another colleague, a friend, was listening. What do you want to hear from your friend? Advice or silence or just a hug? Suppose you hear about the sudden death of a friend’s loved one. What do you say to your friend? Advice or listen or a hug? As situations differ, so does the conversation, hence the importance of its type.After breaking the communication into its types, Charles goes on to break it into a step-by-step process of turning every conversation into meaningful, often joyful interactions, and in some cases, less stressful ones, even with a person with contrasting views. He uses psychological studies and instances of experts’ communication to establish the rules of effective communication.Stories form the backbone of narration and writing style, making it easy for everyone to understand, relate, and remember the content. Charles has used his recommendation to write the book as the writing oscillates between personal anecdotes, stories, and facts, often combining all three. As you turn the pages, you gradually get convinced about the process.<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="border-width:0px;box-sizing:border-box;clear:both;display:block;height:auto;margin:15px auto;max-width:100%;padding:0px;vertical-align:middle;width:767px;" id="attachment_30056" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-30056"><img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/high_rez_duhigg_headshot_20160720afmduhigg0082_thumb_1536x1536_1_53a5660a0f.jpg" alt="high-rez-duhigg-headshot-20160720afmduhigg0082-thumb-1536x1536-1.jpg" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_high_rez_duhigg_headshot_20160720afmduhigg0082_thumb_1536x1536_1_53a5660a0f.jpg 245w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/small_high_rez_duhigg_headshot_20160720afmduhigg0082_thumb_1536x1536_1_53a5660a0f.jpg 500w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/medium_high_rez_duhigg_headshot_20160720afmduhigg0082_thumb_1536x1536_1_53a5660a0f.jpg 750w," sizes="100vw" width="undefined" height="undefined"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing:border-box;display:block;font-size:15px;line-height:20px;margin:0px;padding:12px 0px 0px;text-align:center;" id="caption-attachment-30056">Charles Duhigg</figcaption></figure>If you have read books on personal growth, they tend to follow a pattern. Every chapter makes a proposition supported by academic research or theories, followed by a story that establishes the usefulness of the proposition. Stories of failures are not part of this scheme. This book is no exception to this formula. However, this conformance should not take away the usefulness of this book.A few days after finishing the book, I took a train journey to New Delhi. The train starts at 6 in the morning from Varanasi, requiring me to get up at 4 AM. I always travel with a book, sometimes 2. If it is a mid-noon journey, I prefer reading books to talking to a co-passenger. But, early in the morning, I like a slow warmup to come to my full senses before picking a book. Opening a conversation with a co-passenger who is perhaps also in the same state has always been a nervous affair. But I had read this book, so at least I knew a theory I could test.<img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_2024_09_30_T164448_607_ee3a11384b.jpeg" alt="images-2024-09-30T164448.607.jpeg" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_images_2024_09_30_T164448_607_ee3a11384b.jpeg 245w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/small_images_2024_09_30_T164448_607_ee3a11384b.jpeg 500w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/medium_images_2024_09_30_T164448_607_ee3a11384b.jpeg 750w," sizes="100vw" width="undefined" height="undefined">Charles suggests starting a conversation with a question that doesn’t have a 1-word answer. He calls them Deep questions. For example, instead of asking questions like, “Where are you going?” or “Are you from Varanasi?” you may ask, “What do you like about early morning train journeys?”. I started with a similar question. However, a few minutes into the conversation, the person said, “I do not like the Congress party (India’s principal opposition party).”Now, I like the Congress party. Had I not read the book, I would have gone on to list several reasons to prefer the Congress party. I would have given one argument after another, countering his response with facts and figures. I would have transformed myself into an evangelist, on a mission to reform this man and make him fall in love with the Congress party. After a few minutes of conversation, he would have silently waited for me to drain all my energy and stop. We would have withdrawn into our shells for the rest of the journey, talking only to ask for a way to leave the seat. Thankfully, I had read this book, and none of this happened.I instead said, “They give many reasons to people to dislike them.” It opened him up to offer his reasons for this blanket statement, which allowed me to steer the conversation to his upbringing, parents, childhood, values, work, motivations, etc. When I shared about my organization’s work with school children from economically underprivileged families, he shared his wife’s efforts of sheltering orphaned street dogs. We agreed on several issues, including the complete failure of the current central government, despite opposing political preferences. Neither did I contradict his personal experiences, nor did he contradict mine. Moreover, we agreed that our experiences shape our views, which are bound to change if we remain open.<img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_2024_09_30_T164615_165_ec71a30e5a.jpeg" alt="images-2024-09-30T164615.165.jpeg" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_images_2024_09_30_T164615_165_ec71a30e5a.jpeg 245w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/small_images_2024_09_30_T164615_165_ec71a30e5a.jpeg 500w," sizes="100vw" width="undefined" height="undefined">“Supercommunicators” book taught me to treat every conversation as a learning opportunity. It taught me not to approach a conversation as a right vs wrong battle but to connect by sharing stories and anecdotes more than the facts. Ultimately, you can convince a person more by listening than by speaking. In a world getting more polarised, we all need to learn to talk to each other and listen better. Thankfully, we have this book.</div></div>

IMG-20240930-WA0007-770x470.jpg

Navigating Difficult Dialogues: How 'Supercommunicators' Can Help in a Polarised World"

<img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_34_770x393_796d24e9a6.jpeg" alt="images-34-770x393.jpeg" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_images_34_770x393_796d24e9a6.jpeg 245w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/small_images_34_770x393_796d24e9a6.jpeg 500w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/medium_images_34_770x393_796d24e9a6.jpeg 750w," sizes="100vw" width="undefined" height="undefined"><div class="post-body clearfix single-blog-header single-blog-inner blog-single-block blog-details-content" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(85, 85, 85);font-family:Manjari;font-size:17px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;"><div class="entry-content clearfix" style="box-sizing:border-box;counter-reset:footnotes 0;margin:0px;padding:0px;">Prolific documentary filmmaker R.P Amudhan’s body of work is unique and striking, especially in the manner in which his creations address issues and concerns of the marginalised sections of society. He is known as a media activist too. Hailing from Madurai, in Tamil Nadu, he founded the Marupakkam Media Activist Group (MMAG) in in his home district. The MMAG produces documentaries, screens films, and conducts workshops. He has over 20 documentaries to his credit. His films primarily focus on caste and labour issues. In this Interview with poet and writer Rashida Nasriya, filmmaker Amudhan RP discusses his craft, concerns and challenges.&nbsp;Rashidha Nasriya: What do you consider as the most significant challenge you have faced during the making of your documentaries?Amudhan RP: The biggest challenges I have faced in documenting the kind of social issues I have chosen to film are threefold. First, identifying a crucial topic which requires in-depth understanding and sufficient data to substantiate the narrative. Once I have a clear understanding of the topic, I would conduct thorough research and convince people, that is the characters in my film and their kith and kin. This has been my approach from my very first film, Leelavathi, a documentary on a Communist Party of India (Marxist) – CPIM- cadre killed in Madurai in 1997. I was relatively young at that time and the task of persuading her family and the district CPIM committee took a lot of effort. I finally did get their consent. It was a difficult task to get their trust.The second challenge – although a joyful one – is researching and gathering credible information, while the third is securing funding. As a solo filmmaker, I have learned to be self-sufficient. But still finding funds is a challenge. Any filmmaker would go through these challenges in varying degrees.<img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_35_721e230496.jpeg" alt="images-35.jpeg" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_images_35_721e230496.jpeg 208w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/small_images_35_721e230496.jpeg 500w," sizes="100vw" width="undefined" height="undefined">Nasriya: Did your activist background influence your decision to become a filmmaker?Amudhan: During my MA studies, I attended a workshop in Madurai organised by Center for Development of Instructional Technology (CENDIT), an organisation based in New Delhi. Here, I was exposed to several powerful documentary films. This experience opened my eyes to the significance of political documentaries. I was introduced to the concept of using film as a tool for social change, and I immediately knew I wanted to become a documentary filmmaker and an activist. This workshop sparked my passion for creating and screening films that inspire critical thinking and trigger meaningful conversations. It was a turning point that led me to merge my interests in social activism and filmmaking, ultimately shaping my identity as an activist-filmmaker. Activism and filmmaking are deeply intertwined for me – they’re two sides of the same coin. My filmmaking is an extension of my activism, and vice versa; the two are inseparable.Nasriya: Your film “My Caste” examines the intersection of caste, hegemony, and consensus in Indian society. What has driven your focus on caste in your activism and filmmaking?Amudhan: I wanted to take on the Caste issue from the perpetuator point of view rather than from the victim’s or survivor’s point of view. I wanted to get into the minds of the people who either follow or negotiate or negate caste in their lives. I wanted to know what happens in people’s minds when they deal with caste matters. That’s why I made the film ‘My Caste’ ‘recording the views of various people on caste related questions.<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="border-width:0px;box-sizing:border-box;clear:both;display:block;height:auto;margin:15px auto;max-width:100%;padding:0px;vertical-align:middle;width:951px;" id="attachment_30033" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-30033"><img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/IMG_20240927_WA_0021_d0a7a9b78c.jpg" alt="IMG-20240927-WA0021.jpg" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_IMG_20240927_WA_0021_d0a7a9b78c.jpg 154w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/small_IMG_20240927_WA_0021_d0a7a9b78c.jpg 495w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/medium_IMG_20240927_WA_0021_d0a7a9b78c.jpg 743w," sizes="100vw" width="undefined" height="undefined"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing:border-box;display:block;font-size:15px;line-height:20px;margin:0px;padding:12px 0px 0px;text-align:center;" id="caption-attachment-30033">Amudhan speaking at an event</figcaption></figure>Nasriya: Can you give some details on how you investigated labour exploitation in Tirupur’s garment industry for your documentary “Dollar City”?Amudhan: Many of my films focus on labour issues, with a considerable number exploring labour practices. For my trilogy on hegemony and consensus, I chose Tirupur as a case study. This city exemplifies how consensus is manufactured to prioritise the industry’s interests.In Tiruppur, a tacit understanding exists among industries, trade unions, workers, NGOs, and political parties to protect the industry at all costs. The prevailing narrative is: ‘Without the industry, we cannot survive.’ This consensus leads to widespread compromise and adjustment, perpetuating the exploitation.<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="border-width:0px;box-sizing:border-box;clear:both;display:block;height:auto;margin:15px auto;max-width:100%;padding:0px;vertical-align:middle;width:739px;" id="attachment_30028" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-30028"><img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/images_36_2e37ef3154.jpeg" alt="images-36.jpeg" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_images_36_2e37ef3154.jpeg 245w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/small_images_36_2e37ef3154.jpeg 500w," sizes="100vw" width="undefined" height="undefined"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing:border-box;display:block;font-size:15px;line-height:20px;margin:0px;padding:12px 0px 0px;text-align:center;" id="caption-attachment-30028">During production of Amudhan’s documentary</figcaption></figure>I want to capture this complex dynamic in my film, highlighting how Tiruppur’s industry-centric consensus affects labor rights and social justice.&nbsp;Nasriya: How did you approach exploring the complex and sensitive topic of manual scavenging in your film “Pee (Shit)”?Amudhan: I wanted to make a Tamil version of Lesser Humans – a documentary on Manual Scavenging in Gujarat by Stalin K. Although I wanted to make a similar comprehensive film about Tamilnadu, my encounter with Mariamma, a sanitary worker in Madurai convinced me to make a short documentary which practically covers every aspect of the work.I realised a shorter format could powerfully convey the urgency of this issue, making a compelling argument against manual scavenging. This inspired me to create the film titled ‘Pee’ (Shit) [Watch Below], highlighting the harsh realities of manual scavenging.<div class="raw-html-embed"><iframe width="640" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a0eWOHAvVn4" title="Shit - a documentary by Amudhan R.P." frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div>&nbsp;Nasriya: What inspired you to create a documentary about Mercury pollution in Kodaikanal?Amudhan: The film ‘Mercury in the Mist’ was initiated by workers from the Kodaikanal thermometer factory, who had been fighting against the company’s harmful practices. They sought my help to create a documentary supporting their cause, highlighting the devastating health effects of mercury exposure and their ongoing court battles. It was partially funded by the workers and their well wishers like Nityanand Jayaraman and others.&nbsp;Nasriya: Do you think the documentary can contribute to the border understanding of the challenges facing Indian democracy?Amudhan: Documentary watching is, in my opinion, one of the most engaging and intellectually stimulating activities. It offers a unique blend of education, art, and social awareness, empowering individuals to become responsible citizens. By watching documentaries, we gain perspectives on the world around us, exercising our right to informed decision-making and participatory governance. Through my screenings, I aim to create opportunities for social and political education, fostering a culture of critical thinking and civic engagement. Documentaries provide a valuable platform for raising awareness on critical issues, making meaningful conversations and inspiring social change.&nbsp;Nasriya: How crucial is creative freedom in documentary filmmaking for fostering critical thinking and public debate?Amudhan: In documentary filmmaking, merely reporting or recording is not enough. It is an opportunity to critically examine any subject, sparking meaningful discussions. We must be courageous enough to ask difficult questions, amplify marginalized voices and confront uncomfortable truthsUnlike commercial cinema, documentary filmmakers must take risks, challenging the status quo and pushing boundaries. By doing so, we humanize overlooked stories, Inspire critical thinking and foster empathy and understanding.&nbsp;Nasriya: How did your initiative “Marupakkam” come about…?Amudhan: Marupakkam is a network of people collaborating to promote documentary filmmaking and social change. We invite participation from individuals across India in various capacities, including funding, research, topic development, filmmaking, screening, and documentary workshops.&nbsp;<figure class="wp-caption alignright" style="border-width:0px;box-sizing:border-box;display:inline;float:right;height:auto;margin:5px 0px 20px 20px;max-width:100%;padding:0px;vertical-align:middle;width:1080px;" id="attachment_30029" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-30029"><img src="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/Screenshot_20240927_1713542_bec309fa73.png" alt="Screenshot_20240927-1713542.png" srcset="https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/thumbnail_Screenshot_20240927_1713542_bec309fa73.png 245w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/small_Screenshot_20240927_1713542_bec309fa73.png 500w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/medium_Screenshot_20240927_1713542_bec309fa73.png 750w,https://strapi.bangalore2.com/uploads/large_Screenshot_20240927_1713542_bec309fa73.png 1000w," sizes="100vw" width="undefined" height="undefined"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing:border-box;display:block;font-size:15px;line-height:20px;margin:0px;padding:12px 0px 0px;text-align:center;" id="caption-attachment-30029">Homepage of Marupakkam [Visit <a style="background-color:transparent;box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(255, 53, 36);display:inline-block;margin:0px;padding:0px;transition:0.4s;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://marupakkammadurai.blogspot.com/?m=1">Here</a>]</figcaption></figure>Our activities involve screening documentaries, researching social issues, making films on relevant topics, teaching documentary filmmaking, and showcasing films made by others. Through these efforts, we aim to foster a community that inspires social change through documentary filmmaking.&nbsp;&nbsp;Nasriya: As a prolific documentary creator what advice would you give to emerging filmmakers?Amudhan: To young and upcoming filmmakers, I say: read widely, travel extensively, and cultivate an open-minded perspective. Listen to diverse voices, even in everyday settings like markets, where numerous perspectives converge. If you don’t have an open mind, you will only hear the voices that confirm your existing views. But with an open mind, you will identify and appreciate the varied voices, even within the same marketplace.</div></div>

images-34-770x393.jpeg

Amudhan’s Craft, Concerns and Challenges

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The victory of Marxist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Presidential election in Sri Lanka has been described as a political Tsunami by international politicians and observers. Sri Lanka based Independent policy analyst and writer Amita Arudpragasam analyses the context of the results in detail and points out that it was the economic mismanagement and corruption of earlier, dynasty oriented, regimes as well as Anura’s clean image that propelled significant sections of voters towards the Leftist JVP leader.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">She also points out that while the victory does indeed signify the emergence of new hopes in the country, it would be too early to predict dramatic policy and ideological shifts, including in the island nation’s orientation towards India and China. Watch the interview here.<hr><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">ഈ വിഷയത്തിൽ പരിസ്ഥിതി പ്രവർത്തകനും എഴുത്തുകാരനുമായ കെ സഹദേവൻ എഴുതിയ കുറിപ്പ് ചുവടെ നൽകുന്നു:<h2 style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:25px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.2;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">അദാനിയും ശ്രീലങ്കയിലെയും ബംഗ്ലാദേശിലേയും ഭരണ വ്യവസ്ഥയിലെ വമ്പൻ മാറ്റങ്ങളും</h2><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">ശ്രീലങ്കയിലെയും ബംഗ്ലാദേശിലെയും എന്തിന് ഓസ്‌ട്രേലിയയിലെപ്പോലും രാഷ്ട്രീയ ഭരണമാറ്റത്തിന് പിന്നിലെ പൊതുഘടകത്തെ കണ്ടെത്താൻ ശ്രമിച്ചാൽ ഗൗതം അദാനിയിൽ ചെന്ന് മുട്ടും. ഉഭയകക്ഷി ബന്ധങ്ങളെ വ്യവസായി താൽപ്പര്യങ്ങൾക്കായി ഉപയോഗപ്പെടുത്താൻ ഭരണകൂടങ്ങൾ തുനിഞ്ഞിറങ്ങിയാൽ അതിന്റെ അനിവാര്യഫലമെന്നത് ആ രാജ്യത്തിന്റെ സാമ്പത്തിക സുസ്ഥിരത തകർക്കപ്പെടുക എന്നതായിരിക്കും.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">ബംഗ്ലാദേശിന് വൈദ്യുതി വിൽക്കുന്നതുമായി ബന്ധപ്പെട്ട കരാർ അദാനിക്ക് ലഭ്യമാക്കുന്നതിന് ബീഗം ഹസീനയ്ക്ക് മേൽ സമ്മർദ്ദമുയർത്താൻ നരേന്ദ്ര മോദിക്ക് യാതൊരു മടിയുമുണ്ടായിരുന്നില്ല. 2015ലെ മോദിയുടെ ബംഗ്ലാദേശ് സന്ദർശനത്തിന്റെ മുഖ്യ അജണ്ടതന്നെ അദാനിക്ക് വൈദ്യുതി വിതരണക്കരാർ നേടിയെടുക്കുക എന്നതായിരുന്നു.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">ഇന്ന് ബംഗ്ലാദേശ് ഭരണകൂടത്തിന്റെ മുന്നിലുള്ള പ്രധാന അജണ്ട അദാനിയുമായുള്ള കരാറിൽ നിന്ന് എങ്ങിനെ രക്ഷപ്പെടാം എന്നതാണ്. ശ്രീലങ്കയിൽ 400 മില്യൺ ഡോളറിന്റെ ഗ്രീൻ എനർജി പ്രോജക്ടുകളാണ് അദാനി നേടിയെടുത്തത്. 225 മെഗാവാട്ടിന്റെ കാറ്റാടിപ്പാട നിർമ്മാണ പദ്ധതി നേടിയെടുക്കുന്നതിനും നയതന്ത്ര ബന്ധങ്ങൾ ഉപയോഗപ്പെടുത്തപ്പെട്ടു.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">ഇതിനുപുറമെ 700 ദശലക്ഷം ഡോളറിന്റെ കണ്ടൈയ്‌നർ തുറമുഖ പദ്ധതിയും നേടിയെടുക്കാൻ അദാനിക്ക് സാധിച്ചു. ഈ രണ്ട് പദ്ധതികളും ശ്രീലങ്കയുടെ ദീർഘകാല താൽപ്പര്യങ്ങൾക്ക് വിരുദ്ധമാണെന്ന ആരോപണം പാർലമെന്റിലും പുറത്തും ശക്തമായി ഉന്നയിക്കപ്പെട്ടുകൊണ്ടിരിക്കുകയാണ്.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(39, 39, 39);font-family:Manjari;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.7;margin:0px 0px 15px;orphans:2;padding:0px;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">ഓസ്‌ട്രേലിയയിൽ അദാനി നേടിയെടുത്ത കാർമൈക്കൾ കൽക്കരി ഖനന കരാറും ഇതേരീതിയിൽ അതിശക്തമായ രാഷ്ട്രീയ എതിർപ്പ് ക്ഷണിച്ചുവരുത്തിയ ഒന്നാണ്. ഒരു ദശകക്കാലത്തെ കൺസർവേറ്റീവ് ഭരണത്തിന് അറുതിവരുത്തിക്കൊണ്ട് ലെഫ്റ്റ് ചായ്വുള്ള ആന്റണി അൽബനീസ് ഗവൺമെന്റ് അധികാരക്കസേരയിലെത്തിയതിന് പിന്നിലും ഗൗതം അദാനിക്കെതിരായ പ്രതിഷേധത്തിന്റെ വേരുകൾ കണ്ടെത്താൻ കഴിയും…

Modi’s Missing Confidence

The Lotus and the Swan - A Television Documentary on Gurcharan Singh by Nirmal Chander

Llama 2: Unleashing the Open-source Generative AI model

The Causes Behind the Haryana Communal Violence: And Why is it Spreading to Delhi?

Huff, Puff and Rebuff at the Rating Downgrade

Why is the Left Government Afraid of a 93-Year-Old Man?

Good Riots, Bad Riots

Oomen Chandy and an Unkept Promise to Himself

Stoking Unbearable Memories against Forgetting: Reading Kundera’s Works from a Different World

The Amazing Grace of the US Senate That Clapped When Modi Spoke in Sanskrit

Navigating Difficult Dialogues: ...

Amudhan’s Craft, Concerns and Ch...

What Next in Sri Lanka After Lef...

The Incandescent Lights Of “Kish...

Because We Must Not Forget: An A...

featured

Latest Posts

Latest Categories