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Home Category Table Hyderabad Jan 04
Hyderabad Jan 04 PDF Print E-mail
Written by Administrator   
Thursday, 24 July 2008 12:34
Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India

Friends, including indians, want to know why we keep coming back.  I
tell them: because this is an interesting place.  They are puzzled. 
they shouldn't be.  Just open any newspaper to know.  Here is a
recent issue of Indian Express, dated Dec 14, 2004, from Kerala, in
South India (the most prosperous and advanced and some say best
governed state in India) -- a sheet which happened to be used as a
wrapper and so happened to be to hand this morning...  just read and
rejoice:

RSS activists (RSS is the brownshirts of Hindutva -- the right wing
religious nationalist paralimilitary SS), have, on the night of the
13/14, about 1 am, attacked and demolished the home of a CPI
(communist party of India) leader in Trivandrum (the state capital). 
Bad bad RSS.  Two hours later, the communist party (which, having
been the ruling party in Kerala for many years -- until recently --
is definitely part of the respectable establishment in India)
retaliated by doing the same to the home of a known RSS activist. 
Good good CPI.

Unknown perpetrators firebombed a (Muslim-owned) liquor shop in
Trivandrum.  Cause unknown.  RSS attacking Muslim businesses? (That
would be very bad news, Kerala, until now, has prided itself in
exemplary sectarian relations). Or perhaps some persons offended by
the immoral fire-drink?  (Muslims aren't supposed to drink, even less
peddle the stuff, by Mohammad's own decree.  Many Hindus are starting
to get the same idea – strangely, for the Vedas are full of
references to getting high on soma).  Or just a private vendetta?  A
mystery with many possible meanings.

The state government announced that it will not prosecute parties
accused by Vigilance and Anticorruption Bureau, an independent state
level watchdog, in its most recent expose because it (the government)
has not prosecuted those exposed in the last 7 cases (scores of
officials during the last 2 years alone).  Why?  Because prosecuting
the newest batch while not prosecuting the older ones would amount to
unfair singling out.  (Wait, haven't I heard this term somewhere
else?)

The Congress Party of Kerala is gripped by a personal feud between
its leaders.  Unable to solve the problem, they have turned to Sonia
Gandhi, the Italian born wife of former Prime Minister and now leader
of the Congress Party (largest opposition) to adjudicate.  Sonia, in
typical Sonia fashion, prevaricates --  any decision she makes will
make enemies, and Sonia wants to be popular.  Elections loom. Kerala
will be lost.  Does Sonia realize that?  Does she care? 

Maybe she doesn't care.  She just lost, to the ruling religious-
nationalist BJP, in by elections, 3 large central states, in a
landslide.  Yet, Sonia is still in power.  Not her fault, apparently,
the central committee says, the local party organizations did not
focus their campaigns sufficiently on Sonia – and instead tried to
run on local issues.

One of those defeated  in the said by elections, the former Chief
Minister of one of the states, was caught, on videotape, offering
cash to a group of winning BJP members as an inducement for them to
break away from BJP and form a government with Congress.  Apparently,
his crime was not that he was offering them cash, but that he was
trying to convince elected members to break away from their party,
something to be made illegal now (no party hopping, damn it…  Cash is
OK, though?)  Oh, he also mentioned Sonia's name on the tapes.  For
this, he's been fired from the party.  (Loose lips…?).

The newly formed BJP governments of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh
moved on the first day on matters of real importance -- to ban
slaughter of cows.  To demonstrate that they will attend to the
important issues, no doubt.  The Madhya Pradesh government also
decided to rehire the thousands of useless state employees the state
cannot afford and  who were made redundant, with excruciating
difficulty, by the previous government.  Kiss good bye fiscal
responsibility?  But kiss hello the cows of Madhya Pradesh!  (They
are pretty, and they do look philosophical.  I'd kiss them, too!).

Back in Kerala, the courts are taking up the case of a tribe of
Adavasis (these are "tribals" or small ethnic groups, probably
predating the arrival of Dravidians, speaking their own languages,
practicing their own odd customs, and living at the edges of the
Indian society, once in mountains and forests, but now increasingly
in the city slums) who last February seized a large section of a
protected state forest, declared it their own panchayat
(administrative unit).  Thousands of Adavasis moved in and squatted
on the land.  Police arrived and a long siege followed.  At last, in
a pitched battle, in which some policement were seized as hostages
and doused with kerosense but, luckily, not actually set on fire, the
Adavasis were evicted.

The Doodarshan, the national TV channel, missed this morning's
Malayali (local language) news broadcast because the producer of the
program did not show up.  Apparently, there have been some personnel
changes recently resulting in uncertainty regarding who should be
where doing what.  There is talk of politics – an intentional attempt
to discredit the producer who did not show up.  Lesson for
politically vulnerable producers?  Show up, damn it. 

And on the reverse of the sheet is the real gem:  a photo of a pudgy
policeman, with toothbrush moustache and an Elvis hairdo (he looks
like all south Indian movie stars and all south Indian policemen)
whacking the heck out of a long haired, half naked saddhu (holy man)
with a long, mean-looking stick – he leans into the blow on one leg,
like a skater executing a piruette, in a movement of grace quite
incongruous with his action and his pudgy features.  What is that all
about?  Shiv Sena, another religious nationalist organization, pulled
into the bus station in Trivandrum with a dozen bullock carts in
order to block and disrupt traffic as part of their campaign to
demand that the state make travel to the pilgrimage site of Sabrimala
(hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visit the temple every
December/January) free to all pilgrims.  The police saw their chance
for light exercise.  The pitched battle lasted 25 minutes.  There are
scores of wounded.  The police gave a statement that they arrested
dozens of perpetrators and that "the bullocks are safe in police
custody."  (So much for the shield value of these lovely creatures). 

And all of this you can take in, reading a random sheet of packing
paper during your morning visit to the loo.  So even a visit to the
loo is interesting in India. 

Not to mention looking out the window:  here are ladies in colorful
sarees, each in a different, shockingly clashing set of colors (they
love to shock in the south) walking to their offices to work, ringing
with all their bangles and anklets and earings and belts.  Here are
half-naked pilgrims, in black skirts and heavy rosaries, walking to
the temple for a morning puja.  Here is a Brahmin on a bicycle, in a
traditional Brahmin 3-piece suit – a dhoti (a hitched loin cloth), a
sacred thread across his hairy chest, and a neck cloth. Here comes a
beautiful, thoughtful bullock ruminating on the meaning of it all. 
Here are some religious muslim ladies, covered in black brukas head
to toe, ogling men from behind their veils (veils make them anonymous
and therefore brave).  Here are two southern gentlemen, in muslin
shirts and long lungyis (a sort of skirt, very elegant) arguing
politely over who shall have the right to pay for the rikshaw,
bobbing their heads and gesticulating gracefully in large, expressive
gestures.  Oops, a bus, decorated with gods and flowers, plows
through the middle of the crowd honking like mad, and everyone
scatters to the side…  Interesting?  You bet!