Graffiti Wall - political parties

Liberalism, anyone?

Some are saying that liberalism is dead or ought to be; others say it is under siege and ought to be saved; still others say that it is nothing but an elitist conceit or intellectual soft headedness or even colonial mulattohood; yet others say it is the vitalizing layer of all thought. The narrative is on the boil globally since Brexit, Trump, etc and in India it has got fresh vim after the recent general elections. Here are two bits adding to the narrative, which is not going to be squared soon.                                        

The first bit is about what actually is liberalism. What is it? What are its doctrines, its tenets, its beliefs; what is its Book? Nobody knows. Odd, no?

Historically the European word and idea originated in Latin during the ancient Roman empire to designate some senators who did not represent particular geographical or commercial interests. These senators were called liberal – free – who did not have obvious “agendas”. Such liberals were valued and considered necessary in the agenda-packed Roman senates, much more so after republicanism gave way to Caesarism.

The word and the idea have evolved through the subsequent French, Spanish, and English templates of political thought. And we find in the 21st century that liberalism retains a similar connotation. It means an approach, an attitude, to matters which is “free” of the rigidities normal to these matters; an approach to liberate, not bind people to imperatives.

Seen this way the liberal approach is as old as mankind. In India the Rig Veda, which is a samhita – a compendium, is full of delightful and free floating hymns quite different from the business of the main body and bulk of the Indra-Agni hymns. Upanishads were liberalism par excellence of course; so was the entire shramana tradition. In China Confucian orthodoxy was diluted by Taoist strands, Islam was always shadowed by Sufism, Judaism by the Cabbala, and so on.

But liberalism is not, it should be noted, a standalone thing. It is not a doctrine but an accompaniment to some doctrine; certainly not a revolt or even an adversary. The liberal senators of ancient Rome were integral to the senate not reactionaries. The Upanishadic rishis did not repudiate the Vedas. The Sufis do not challenge Islam. Liberalisms leaven the doctrines, humanize them; make them more palatable.

Democracy, monarchy, communism, fascism, etc are mainline business things in political thought and practice, with substantial doctrines and precepts – these can be upheld or trashed as you please. And as may be expected we also have liberal democracy, liberal monarchy, liberal communism and so on. But curiously upholding or trashing these is not quite the same thing; does not carry intellectual punch. Why?

The answer may be found in the question: why do doctrines yield liberalisms? Mainly because the full range of diversities of life cannot be contained by any doctrine. Then there are also reasons of differences in geography, historical epochs, nativities, and sheer contingencies and cussedness of human condition. Truth is doctrines tend to become dogmas. And liberalisms try to soften the hardening edges; bring in nuance, layering, chanciness, even disguise. No surprise that liberalism seems to have a life of its own! And when liberalism is being calumnied and trashed it shields the underlying doctrine but it is really the doctrine that is under attack. This often gets overlooked.

During the 20^th century the West has seen the spectacular rise and fall of both the Left and the Right. Their subsisting liberalisms, now without centre of gravity, have a disembodied look today. They are mere specters haunting Europe – dealing with issues like abortion, immigration, gender, race, LGBT, gun laws, rights in general; no doubt important things but hardly mainline stuff. The post Reagan-Thatcher era is neoconservative and  in Newspeak it is called neoliberal,  but by now it has become clear that it is just global capitalism and there is nothing liberal about it; actually it is brutal capitalism in the same sense as was 19^th century colonialism.

In India and indeed in most of Asia and Africa the story is very different, where the initial, post independence dalliances with the Left are now over, and the current close encounters with the Right are on. In these parts bashing liberalism really is no more than bashing the departed Left.

Nothing gives bone structure and sinews and substance to a doctrine than its embrace by a state. The European 20^th century moulds of the Right are being reshaped and naturalized in the 21^st from Turkey to Philippines, in native forms and styles that are rich and strange. In India the turn to Right started with post-Janata Party Indira Gandhi of 1980 but officially from 1991 by Congress led regimes, with their habitual hypocrisy and half heartedness. The later BJP led regimes have been more forthright and energetic. But Indian Right is very much a work in process which is evolving creatively; it is not wholly contained within the early 20^th century bunch of doctrines of its founding gurus. Same goes for Asia as a whole, mutatis mutandis.

Sensing an emerging doctrine, the central features of which will not be drastically different from the 20^th century European Right, a liberalism of the Right is burgeoning in India. If our Left liberals` habitat was the Universities and the Indian Coffee Houses – but never Khan Market – the Right liberals have found refuge in the newly spawned fledgling Foundations and WhatsApp/Twitter. About half the Right liberals are erstwhile Left liberals who have simply moved over.

The second bit is about who owns liberalism. Where does liberalism reside in the society? Which segment of the social layers works as the native habitat of liberalism as a cognitive slant?

The elites? They seem to own all isms – in fact the entire mental space of social narratives. Regular incomes are wonderful jumping boards for ideas, this way or that way. But when ideologies shift with times the seemingly embedded elites often get stranded. In India today the left liberals are floundering while the greenhorn Right liberals do not yet make the grade for the first eleven. Twentyfive years from now things might well be different. The old liberal narrative now is of doom and gloom. Along with liberalism the old elites are facing a bashing.

 But all over the world elitism of the day is always an expedient, a matter of shifting politics, because elites are moored with the ruling regimes and always function as the machinery of governance in public and private sectors; elites have no nativity of vision. The 20^th century has shown mankind that elites can easily become very illiberal indeed. Elites won`t do. Their liberalism is tactical, not natural. We have to look elsewhere.

 As noted, liberalism arises from the demands of infinite changeableness and contingencies of life itself. The “ignorant” working masses – the shudra castes, women, antyajas – will bow to Ram & Sita, also to Shiva, Hanuman, will also tie a hopeful thread around a boon tree, also go to a gurdwara or a dargah of a pir alongwith their neighbours, and also fold hands to an ochre daubed stone on the path to his/her field of work, wear a charmed bead or locket round the neck, and do all such things. S/he will go to all gods and powers: who knows what will work and who cares if something works? S/he will go for any science or superstition: who knows the difference, and when one changes into the other? The scenario is similar all over the world. S/he has been doing this for centuries, giving primacy to practical life over ideas and doctrines: this is the wellspring and aquifer for liberalism, at once both vulgar and protean. Syncreticism, a word much used but opaquely, is a clumsy and condescending name for this.

The working masses all over the world have always owned their liberalism, picking their way through thickets of dogmas. This native liberalism is ontological, an openness in seeing and accepting reality itself, very much like quantum physics. They would not have survived without it. The elites have merely to join up if they wish. Liberalism is safe and well, far from extinct.

Politics, politics, politics : The Great Wall of Graffiti

Thought of the day

                                          " Don`t take the play
                            out of the players "

                                                 -Anon.
                                        
                                          (..., er, this is mainly about football)

Nobody is Charlie Hebdo

                                

 (Or, liberalism vs. fundamentalism today)

                                                                                   

   From a certain point onward                                         

   there is no longer any turning point.                                     

   That is the point that must be reached.                          

--The Trial, Franz Kafka.                            

       Although origins are hard to pinpoint in these matters it probably started when a geriatric America got a second wind from the windfall of the implosion of the Soviet Union and Bush the Elder let loose the dogs of war for redrawing the map of the West Asia, if not when a similar redrawing that had been done by the victorious colonial powers – mainly Britain and France -- at the end of World War 2.

    The recent Parisian Charlie Hebdo affair of professional slaughter was carried out in the name of Islamic religious sentiments. The well televised mass rally of global politicians afterwards was the reaction -- in the name of democracy and freedom – carrying banners saying We Are All Charlie Hebdo. Worldwide TV repeated this banner a thousand times. Not much else happened. Till the St. Denis mayhem. The spectacular warlike reactions to that massacre – again well televised -- had followed the same template, more or less.

    Since then there have been many similar such action-reaction binaries. Nothing new is happening.  It is Charlie Hebdo 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, or more of the ongoing death-waltz of West versus Islam. Of course Charlie Hebdo affair is just one randomly picked instance; one can pick 9/11, Bali, Nigeria, Germany…, etc before and since. This was not the most important or the most violent skirmish between the two sides, and by now the global narrative has boiled it down to yet another event in a supposedly unfolding serial civilizational clash between megatrends of liberalism and jihadism -- the current manifestations of capitalism and Islam respectively. A close look on this civilizational clash is called for, but there is a practical difficulty.

    A lot of discussions of capitalism and islam -- and there is a lot of these around -- easily get sidetracked, not necessarily because the discussants are at fault but because these are genuinely complicated matters. So a calibrated and yet representative sampling from the ongoing complex battles may prove useful, for a neat case study. Let us take the Charlie Hebdo affair as that sample since it is now distant enough for the purpose, as a biopsy of the defining malady of our times.

    In the Charlie Hebdo thing the terrorists saw and projected themselves as public agents for the cause of Islam. They wished to convey the message that Charlie Hebdo and such other media were transgressing the sanctities of Islam and were therefore to be made public examples of so as to deter other transgressors. The actual point at issue happened to be depiction of Islam`s prophet Muhammad in some cartoons, which is supposed to be banned in Islam. The subsequent St. Denis shootings and bombings were a continuation of the same outrage, an escalation -- as retaliation to deeper depredations done by the West to Islam. It is the same war.

     It had been pointed out by diligent liberal commentators that such a ban is not a foundational tenet of Islam, but is a historically evolved convention. It was said that from the earliest to the medieval times many islamic texts describe the prophet unhesitatingly, and his depictions were common even in medieval western (not always disparagingly) and Asiatic paintings, murals, and architectural motifs, oral narratives, and even down to posters in modern times (Shia, yes). It was implied, therefore, that the current ban in depiction of the prophet Muhammad is a “fundamentalist” and retrogressive step  for Islam and therefore should not be seen as a reasonable cause to be defended in our enlightened times.

    Description and depiction of Muhammad was indeed common in the early centuries of Islam when it was growing in catholicity and depth, and expanding beyond the Arabia. This fed the natural and pious curiosities of the growing new adherents of Islam. But having originated after transcending the narrow, tribal idolatries of Arabia – centered round the Qabaa in Mecca – Islam has had a very understandable taboo against idolatry at its foundational core. While it tolerated and indeed imbibed the often rich artistic traditions it encountered during expansion – in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia – it remained vigilant against idolatry.

    Then there was a major accident. Islam was nearly decimated, like much else in west Asia, by the onslaughts of Changhez Khan and the later Mongol hordes --  when Imam al-Ghazali famously declared “Islam is (now) in the books, and Muslims are in their graves”. And later feudalization of islam`s  post-Mongol  political dispensations in the conquered lands curbed and curtailed its original emancipatory impulses, including scientific and artistic ones. By the time of the (Eurocentrically-called) Renaissance (actually, Naissance) for which in fact Islam had been the midwife for Europe, it had gone into a conservative decline and defensiveness. And still later by the time Islamic and African lands started going under the yoke of European colonization from the 18^th century CE, its fundamentalist strands (Salafism, Wahabism, etc) started hardening the leftover fertile liberalism of the now colonized people, as a strategy of resistance and survival. Perhaps a mistaken strategy; it is too early to say.

    The point about depiction of the prophet is just one item in this huge saga, and should be seen as such. In a war any point can become a trigger point.

     Now idolatry is one thing and idol-worship is something else, and use of idols and icons for liturgical purposes is yet another kind of thing – not to mention use of images for artistic narratives (in epics, for example)). Idolatry holds the idol to be the sole and complete site and manifestation of the godhood itself. Historically it is associated with the tribal/pre-agricultural stage (James Fraser had called it the magical stage)  of religious sensibility. Evolving into gradually more inclusive and catholic stages the religious sensibility and imagination begins to permit more pervasive and non-localized and also multiple godhoods, even allowing idol worship wherever necessary or expedient, while leaving idolatry behind. The sensibility can and does evolve even beyond this too, of course. Evolution of Christianity and Judaism, both as monotheistic as Islam, has historically followed these trajectories. Evolution of Islam was drastically derailed by the Mongol devastations; and its feudal period was too short before European colonization engulfed its social bases globally. So its encounter with the question of idols has been modest and fraught with nerves.

   Add to all this the unfortunate xenophobic burden peculiar to all the three Abrahamic religions – of being the chosen people of god – which automatically imparts almost a military/strategic dimension to every religious issue.

   OK. A sidelight will yield useful perspective and nuance. Hinduism has gone through the whole spectrum of religious evolution, and has managed to retain alive, owing to its specific historical and social bases in India, all its formative strands. But it was only after colonial subjugation in the 18^th century CE – exactly like in the case of Islam – that a new strand was added to the Hindu manifold, the strand of fundamentalism. Instead of seeing Hinduism`s wide catholicity as a prime strategic resource, and exposed as it was to the triumphal and predatory Christian evangelism of colonial British and Portugese varieties, this new strand sought to fabricate an equal and opposite Hindu evangelism. It deplored the Hindu tendency of tolerance as “weakening”, tried to erase most of its living history of pluralist diversity as “divisive”, and felt ashamed of its liberalism as “emasculating”. In short, aping the colonial conqueror, the Hindu fundamentalist political project of resistance and defense used religious faith as an instrument – exactly like today`s Islam. Not surprising.  Religious instruments forged for purely political purposes do tend to be crude everywhere. The issue was political.

    Our  historical detour helps to prop up the depiction issue nicely in its twin dimensions. On the one hand it seeks to draw allegiance and support of the Muslim masses by positing itself as a tenet of the beleaguered faith itself. On the other hand it seeks to represent and convey the political force of Muslims in their resistance to the 21^st century re-colonizing Christian Powers, with Britain and France superseded now by America. Therefore pooh-poohing the ban on depiction of the prophet as mere religious regression misses the political point, just as is done by treating the “lunatic fringe” agitations by Hindu fundamentalists over historically remote temple-destructions as mere religious bigotry. If only things were that simple!

    Truth is, after the interesting times of the 20^th century the nationalist streams of resistance against colonialism everywhere harnessed in their arsenal the nativity and specificities of the colonized people and these were not wholly atavistic, pre-modern, and feudal in motivations as is made out by the traditional Left. Likewise, the internationalist streams drew sustenance from universal and emancipatory impulses of humanity and were not wholly democratic and scientific in their motivations – e.g. the question of racism( the as yet unanswered Jewish Question).

    By the onset of 21^st century it has become clear that these various strands are more tangled than what was thought earlier, and the equations are far less linear. Colonialism is deeper stuff. Understanding it is unfinished business yet. Some scholars like CLR James, Aimie Cesaire, Fanon, Gunder Frank, Samir Amin, Edward Said, Amiya Bagchi, Partha Chatterjee, Bhabha, etc have been struggling with it, as also, of course, non-scholars like Conrad, Greene, Naipaul, Rushdie, Achebe, Ghosh, etc. These were generally 20^th century people; the 21^st century has already yielded more such thinkers. 

     Disproportionately suspicious of nationalism, mainly due to its horrendous European legacy of 20^th century, the Left has abdicated the rich terrain  of historical nativities and cultural concreteness and has got mired in an abstract and infertile internationalism. On the other hand, disproportionately afraid of the anarchism and plurality inherent in proletarian movements, the Right has abdicated its economic policy sphere in favour of the bourgeoisie. It must be remembered that both had started in early 20th century primarily as responses to working class distress!

    This is probably a good place to look at the post-Charlie Hebdo chorus built up in the self-righteous intellectuals of the West: Why doesn`t Islam reform itself, like the Christianity did after Renaissance? And not only in the West. The chorus was, interestingly, less vocal about needed reformation in Judaism; and this restraint was not because of Nazi guilt as is made out by its apologists but because of the agenda of the constituting social elements of  ruling American imperialist ideology. The question is obviously rhetorical and vacuous. Religions don`t reform themselves; socio-political needs of the human societies do this job – religions merely reflect and adapt themselves to the socio-political changes. Christianity got its Reformation in order to adapt to emerging capitalism in Christian societies. Judaism was not there at the starting line-up. Islam and Hinduism were there but were hobbled by colonial bondages – so they didn`t get their Reformations. Reforming Islam today means reforming Islamic societies of today, embattled as they are against a post-capitalist imperial America. Do these intellectuals understand what they are talking about? But, then, understanding is not what it is about.

     Within Islam in post colonial times, it must be remembered that the narrative has not been only of fundamentalist strands like Salafism, Wahabism, etc, although these have dominated the mass narrative space. Many modern Islamist thinkers – and India`s Muhammad Iqbal was among the earliest of this trend -- have been attempting reinterpretation of Islam in the opposite direction, within ideas of modern capitalism and democracy. So far these voices remain incubating in academic spaces.

    Which brings us – staying with the Charlie Hebdo affair -- to the other side: the cynical and pretentious marches and rallies in Paris and elsewhere in the white Christendom – hours and days of televised solidarity for democracy and freedom. This side too is agonizingly twin-stranded, the roots of which can also be traced back to colonialism.

    Starting with democracy it is old hat that mass genocides of indigenous people in north and south Americas and Australia by civilized colonizers, institutionalized slavery as economic foundations of economies of north and south Americas, the two WWs, covert and overt wars of aggression in Palestine, Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Indonesia, contemporary war crimes in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Africa – the whole planet really -- are not a shining testimony to the liberal, democratic credentials of the West. The airtight repression of modern crusaders of democracy and freedom like Manning, Assange, Snowden, etc without any major public outrage shows the deep rot within. The knowing people know that by the 21^st century  the civilized West has been effectively subverted by warlordism of NATO centered powers and the cutely named Non State and Deep State actors of the military-industrial complex of imperial America – the earliest warning against which was given during WW2 by, of all people, Eisenhower!

    These failings are of course well known, but there is more. Deeper thinkers also of the West have been pointing out, at least since the WW1, a hollowing out of the foundational spirits and sensibilities which have been the wellsprings and aquifers of the liberal-democratic project of European Enlightenment – by racial, religious, gender, and class self-centeredness of the ruling elites. In the current era of Trump-Erdogan-Modi-Duterte-etc there is widespread disquiet even in the deep conservative circles about the probable demise of the whole Liberal Project itself.   The only people who can`t or don`t see this even today are those blighted by the MBA-centric education or the globalised 24^7 drip of the compromised aqnd complicit corporate-controlled media.

    So, it is easy to be cynical and reductionist against the West too, and to reject its democracy/freedom parades out of hand. But this would be a mistake, equal and opposite to ridiculing the ban on depiction of the prophet Muhammad. Let us see.

    Here is an enigma. It is sobering to recall that when Socrates, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, etc in ancient Greece were spouting their admittedly profound ideas on Democracy, Reason, Humanity, etc they were living in a civilization based on institutionalized slavery of horrendous barbarity. There was a similar economic underpinning( of colonialism) to  the Western -- ironically today, actually the French -- political philosophers like Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, etc who provided as political principles the ideational framework of modern mass democracy and individual liberties, which are used extensively today according  their own lights both by the Left and the Right.  The point here is this interesting co-incidence: just as ancient Greek ideas on democracy and freedom were riding on slavery-based surpluses, the modern ideas on these matters were being reborn and polished precisely when the whole non-white mankind was being crushed under an unprecedented super-slavery of colonialism. Great philosophers always have had huge blind spots!

    To bring the story home, it is fascinating to see that the lofty ideals of democracy and freedom, elitist and exclusionary to begin with, have by today been as much hollowed out of moral force and pedigree-value as has been the nuanced Asiatic religious sensibility that, e.g., underlay the restraint on the depiction of prophet Muhammad among the plebian and excluded masses – both by the same process of colonization. Today`s democracy/freedom rallies and candle marches, reduced to being mere fig leaves, are as much a fundamentalist and desperate talisman as the ban on the prophet`s depiction. Colonialism has degraded both sides, as they stand face to face today -- mirror images of each other. The Liberal or, the Enlightenment Project started by Europe in the 16^th century CE has, it must now be finally admitted, reached its end -- drained on both sides by the colonialism. We are back to a new Middle Ages – barbarian, stagnant and short-sighted.

    Of course this idea has been around for some time; voices like Spengler, Nietzsche and Caudwell keep echoing in the newer voices even today. Of course the West vs. Islam duel is just one face of the end of the Enlightenment project, which is by far a much bigger catastrophe. The world has barely started sensing its enormous dimensions. Sample this: not much of epochal significance has happened in their respective fields after Picasso, Tolstoy, Einstein, Schrodinger, Fellini, Keynes, Pasteur, Freud, Marx, Brecht, the Beatles – and they all look terribly dated today. The unending economic stagnation, the spiritual ennui, fear of future, loss of hope, moral apathy… one shivers. But that is another story.

   

    It could not have been otherwise, of course, since Enlightenment cannot be sustained in class-divided societies, and all the revolutions – from the French, through the Russian, to the Chinese – have not succeeded in liberating the laboring classes so far. But that is yet another story.

    So what had really happened in Paris?

    Here it is, in bald, Post-Enlightenment terms: The colonial powers got rich and civilized (in the algorithm of capitalism) by appropriating the fruits of  labour of the colonized people. After formal decolonization in mid 20^th century this appropriation was threatened. The ex-colonial powers countered by importing legally and semi-legally the laboring people of their ex-colonies to function as the bottom layers of their working class and congratulated themselves for their gracious “multiculturalism”. All working classes everywhere, steadily impoverished by the neo-liberal economic policies imposed through the whole rigged institutional Disneyland nicknamed Washington Consensus, are now rebelling. The multi-culti ruling elites are dividing the working classes by singling out for blame and by police/court repression only the “immigrant” segments. These segments being now native to the ex-colonist nations are retaliating with extra indignation, understandably. See the Trump episodes.

    There is the usual petulant outcry against this boring, old deprivation-mongering of the wimpy liberals: See, the shooters and bombers at Charlie Hebdo or St. Denis are not the deprived, madarsa-bred and impoverished mad mullahs blowing themselves up in misguided frenzy, but professionally trained and educated youth carrying out their retaliatory operations with expertise and finesse equal to their nations` Special Forces! How can you bring up deprived-classes theory every time?

    This is a Tory sort of myopia, if not idiocy. The main tectonic fault-line of society always remains the class divide, and it acts as the mother-lode for emergence and indeed proliferation of many other subsidiary but more vicious divisions of societies -- and feeds these divisions their motive energies. Like the working classes crushed by poverty everywhere in the world, the barely subsisting poor of north Paris would not have had the energy and gumption to contemplate retaliation against, say, Charlie Hebdo or the Stade de France but their relatively fortunate brothers/sisters would!

    The crux is that ex-colonizing nations are caught in a dilemma. Under the neo-liberal umbrella they cannot have a viable economy without the underpaid labour of their immigrant people; and at the same time without the underpaid immigrant people being given proportional political representation they cannot have a viable and stable polity. Something has to give. America has so far resolved it by simply creating an officially non-existent vast substratum of illegal, immigrant labour army – corralled and managed below the radar by the police forces alone.

    Nobody is mentioning the elephant in the room – Colonialism 2.0 led by America, with Europe as its wholly owned subsidiary since the Marshall Plan. This emerging post-Capitalist mode is akin to the ancient slavery mode, in a sort of outsourced/subcontracted template. And it is busy cynically plundering, degrading, and crudely re-ordering the global economic sphere according to its needs -- and devil take the hindmost. Why is America attacking and degrading Afro/Arabian nations who happen to be Islamic?  Because of oil and minerals. Ergo its Non State adversaries -- most often covertly USA-spawned -- are al Qaeda, ISIL, Boko Haram, etc, apart from the State-adversaries like the most often democratically elected, official, regime-changeable Arab States. Medieval wars 2.0? The idea of a nation formed recently in the 19^th century is already flaking away? Well, it certainly looks like we live in pre- Westphalia Treaty times now. This reversion, this neo-colonialism, is what it is all about.

    To clinch the matter why not do an old fashioned “thought-experiment”, a much liked tool of the likes of Einstein, Schrodinger, etc? It is a useful but neglected tool of inquiry and analysis. It will expose the prevalent bipartisan neo-barbarism starkly?

    Tomorrow some globally strategic mineral as important as petroleum gets discovered solely buried around the Alps and its plateaus in Europe! What will happen? It will take a decade or two but NATO will be reconstituted. Destruction/degradation/redrawing of boundaries of Western Europe will begin. Regime changes will happen in France, Italy and Germany.  West-European refugees will flood the black markets of labour globally. The discourse will shift to, say, race – not Christianity vs. Islam anymore but Anglo-saxon vs. Goths & Gauls and so on.  Think tanks will re-strategize. Prima donna professors will write new books. Films and TV and Internet will be re-scripted. Thor Phalange, Odin Brigade, Asterix Delta-force, etc will replace Al Qaeda, ISIL, etc…

    Unthinkable? Far from it. Remember the then unthinkable 20^th century World Wars – whites and Christians killing wholesale whites and Christians, and they were doing it for the colonies. It is the economy, stupid. Always.

    Nobody is Charlie Hebdo anymore.                                                   

Glorious pasts : The Graffiti Wall

Cow, Aadhaar, Drama : Cartoon Tota-Myna

Bob Dylan Nobel Prize : Cartoon Tota-Myna

War and Truth : Graffiti Wall

Advanced democracy, USA : Cartoon Tota-Myna

IPL`s lost fizz : Cartoon Tota-Myna

Bank defaults - fault lines : Cartoon Tota - Myna

Mystery of Law : Graffiti Wall

Mother & Motherland : Graffiti Wall

Showing up the Powerful : Cartoon Tota-Myna

Poetry of the day

          

         Ending Up

    It is true:

    all bits were heedless, one time things;

    a catching up at the end,

    some sort of a reckoning,

    was never on the cards.

    What washes up is: children`s families,

    newspapers, TV, books, etc

    or a soiled notion

    that there just might be another life,

     another chance yet.

socialism vs. capitalism : Graffiti Wall

Riddles today

                                  

                               

     

Tota: Governments come and go but nothing seems to change. Life remains  hard for most. Why is this?

Myna: This is because development is not happening.

Tota: Why is development not happening?

Myna: Our PMs have put this question to topmost businessmen of India.

Tota: What answer did they give?

Myna: They said development is not taking place because there is not enough demand in the country.

Tota: What does that mean?

Myna: It means that so many Indians are so poor that they cannot buy the stuff produced by the businessmen.

Tota: And why can`t they buy?

Myna: Because there is not enough work in the country doing which they can earn regular incomes.

Tota: But why there isn`t enough work in India?

Myna: Because development is not happening.

Tota: ?

Myna: Yes.

Murdering literature

                                                             

                                                        

“When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable,

                   must be the truth.”

                        -Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle), 

                         in the Sign of Four, 1890.

         

         The stories of Sherlock Holmes came to us as the first fascinating jolt that the world of grownups was sensible after all, as a tantalizing promise that growing up could be worthwhile too, and  also as a hair raising awareness that life was awash with cunning, evil forces, although conquerable by the power of reason. The dog which did not bark spoke volumes; the state of heels of a person’s shoes told us where he or she had been and was in what profession; that every crime left clues to be discovered.    

                                                          

      If not Sherlock Holmes, it could be the detective Byomkesh Bakshi in Sharadindu Bandhopadhyay`s 32 stories, Kiriti Roy in Nihar Ranjan Gupto’s nearly 200 detective novels in Bengali, or some other iconic  jasoos in over 125 crime novels by Ibne Safi in Jassosi Duniya in Hindi/Urdu. It was the same story in other languages too, French, Spanish, German, Marathi, Mandarin, and so on. Every book shop in the world, from huge emporia in Oxford street, London to a plastic sheet on the pavement in Connaught Place, New Delhi, has a big corner of crime fiction books, at all times, for  over a hundred years. Not accidental surely? Crime fiction calls to something deep in us.      

             

          Look at the date, Watson: 1890. What does it tell us of the Times? The fruits of industrial revolution were finally available to the masses. New, factory based economic activities had started; these attracted new laboring  classes from the countryside to the cities, which expanded in area and character; roads were widened; railways had started; doctors and lawyers had emerged to address the health and wealth of  the new urban citizenry, a lot of it women for the first time in history.  In short, modern civilization had commenced. Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889 while the first the World Exposition in London had already been held in 1862. The colonial empires of Britain, Spain, and France were at their peak and spanning the globe.

          All this was underpinned by mass education. The new citizenry was educated; it was fresh and optimistic while facing the new urban life; it wanted to know what was happening around it. The traditional “high” literature was geared for tastes of the upper classes and was distant, if not alien in every way. A new literature was sorely needed. Crime fiction was thus born, Watson -- interestingly, at the same time as newspapers, magazines, photography, films, telephones and telegraphs – and automobiles soon followed.

          The 1920s and 1930s have been called Golden Age of crime fiction. Dozens of new writers emerged nearly half of them women (unlike in high literature), led by the Three Queens: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham. Other famous writers were F. W. Crofts, Michael Innes, G. K. Chesterton, Ngaio Marsh, Georges Simenon, Ellery Queen (actually pseudonym for two men), Austin Freeman, Josephine Tey, Anne Hocking, John Dickson Carr, etc.

          New heroes emerged alongside Sherlock Holmes. Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot in over 30 novels was a domesticated and fuzzy version of the hard, diamond-like brilliance of Sherlock Holmes, while Miss Marple was probably her own self in about 12 novels. Inspector Maigret of Simenon`s nearly 100 novels was a Frenchified and rakishly brooding Holmes. Father Brown of Chesterton was the comforting, insightful local parish priest solving wicked mysteries which baffled all. It was best seller business. Publishing exploded. Books were filmed extensively. Murder on Orient Express based on Agatha Christie`s novel of the same name, for example, remains a often remade film till today.

          It was an era of logical puzzles and whodunits. The world was basically a reasonable place, and writers left oodles of clues for the readers to guess the murderer, and the final outcome was logically just about possible. Classic templates for crime fiction were formed in that Golden Age. Corpse In A Sealed room, Two Suspects With Equal Motives, Murder By Vanishing Poison, Someone Else Posing As Murderer To Shield A Loved One, etc are still in robust use.

          This Golden Age can also be called the Age of Hope, when there was hope of making out a reasonable life and investigation of crime usually involved exposure of criminals`collusion with  local police, judiciary, business, and politics as regrettable but remediable exceptions. This subaltern, anti-establishment altitude has remained imprinted on the DNA of crime fiction till today; indeed it has become the norm . Hence its popularity.

        

                                            

                                                                                                                        

    “The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect 

      mechanism. If you press exactly the right 

      buttons – and are also lucky – 

      justice may show up in the answer.”

        - Raymond Chandler, in the Long Goodbye, 1954.     

 

                Note the date once again, Watson. The unprecedented scale of soul-shattering slaughter of WW I could have been shrugged off as a one-off bad dream but the even higher scale and ferocity of WW II dented permanently something deep in what was hitherto thought as mankind’s assured march towards civilization. Some iron entered its soul. As inevitable, crime fiction reflected this change. The long era of Hard Boiled crime fiction started in earnest, and to those born on the wrong side of 1980s it has not ended yet.

          Wildly popular magazines played a big role in this era. Magazines like Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Detective Fiction Weekly had large circulation and helped spawn a wide spectrum of readers and writers, with centre of gravity shifting to America. Dashiell Hammett gave all-time classics like The Maltese Falcon introducing Sam Spade as the classic cynical, anti-hero private dick. The Thin Man followed, as did a dozen other novels. Raymond Chandler’s hardnosed, wry and unsentimental Christopher Marlowe, in classics like The Big Sleep, Farewell  My Lovely, and The Little Sister remain the paradigm even today. James M. Cain gave perennial favourites like The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Double Indemnity. Micky Spillane gave us My Gun Is quick, Vengeance Is Mine, One Lonely Night.               At the same time Graham Greene gave us the “Greeneland”, in his hugely popular “entertainment” crime novels like The Brighton Rock, The Third Man, A Gun for Sale, etc.   

                                   

          The tone and tenor had hardened. Crimes were now harsh, cruel, full of wanton violence; the mood was of cynicism, fast burn out, and blood-guts-and gore and the social setting was of pervasive corruption, sleaze, psychosis, serial killing and horrific sociapathy. Many sub-genres emerged from this Pulp Fiction, which is another name of  Hard boiled. Legal strand popularised by Erle Stanley Gardner has writers like John Grisham, Steve martini, and Scott Turow. The forensic strand has writers like Kathy Reichs, Patricia Cornwell, and Jeffry Deaver. A promising strand, of psychological crime novels, has writers like Dennis Lehane, Christopher Fowler, Jo Nesbo, James Patterson, Mo Hayder, and John Connolly. Medical thrillers of Robin Cook have spawned medical crime novels by Tess Gerritsen, Michael Palmer, Joshua Panogle, and Keith Baker. And finally, the police-procedural novels with writers like Michael Connelly, Martin Cruz Smith, John Sandford, and James Ellroy – a strand which has had an astonishing growth and has taken crime fiction well beyond the Hard Boiled era. Not coincidently, considering the contemporary zeitgeist many films were and continue to be, particularly in TV, anchored in hard boiled fiction. Some other famous writers of Hard Boiled / Pulp Fiction era – what might be called the Age of Doubt -- are Sue Grafton, Chester Himes, John D. Macdonald, Walter Mosely, and Ross Macdonald. The Hard Boiled age had lost its innocence about the “system” but still had hope. This age is not over yet.

     “On the one hand, everything is  connected,

     on the other hand, it is not."              

          -  Henning Mankell, in Before the Frost, 2002.

          Also note the tone this time, Watson. At the turn of the last century and the millennium, starting from 1990s an entirely new category has been added to crime fiction. Post Soviet Union, Post Berlin Wall, Post Hedge Funds, Post Bush-Blair-Putin, a new mood has emerged. While the Hard Boiled strands continue to be written, this new type has overshadowed it in today’s crime fiction market. 

           The focus has shifted from the private eye to the police inspector, who is a loner, at odds with the police system, and with a dysfunctional family. He or she is undermined and so tagged by corruption not only in police-system and politics but also in society itself. He/she solves crime, yes, and at the same time is witnessing the globalization of crime, criminals and also of victims. Befuddled by new, post-millennial existential drift and lost in the moral ambiguities of the new century the police detective is a Hamletian creature. This new type may be called Unboiled Crime Fiction -- of the Age of Disillusionment. This has caught today’s public imagination like fire. Not unexpectedly the centre of gravity has shifted out of anglo-american boundaries and has become globalized. Curiously, each writer now remains centered around a single city and keeps exploring its inner psyche.

          This Unboiled crime-fiction has another interesting dimension, and pundits are chewing over it. The curious point is that this style, which merges the two types of literature, the literary fiction and crime fiction, has come at a time when “high” literature is at a low ebb. Let alone Joyce and Steinbeck, etc or even Mailer, Bellow, etc what high literature has to offer today is no higher than Coetzee, Mantel, or McEwan.  Unboiled crime fiction is a fusion of both types which were hitherto considered separate. Readers of both  genre are loving it.

          Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus novels, which also gave a sparkling BBC films series( A Good Hanging, Set In Darkness, Complaints, Exit Music ) with dour, Scottish, despairing drunkenness of the criminal cityscape of Edinburg continue to be reprinted again and again. Henning Mankell`s Inspector Kurt Wallander novels – also a huge BBC film series – has  Inspector Wallander working in the small Swedish town of Skane, uprooted completely in personal life, tackling globalizing crime with a brooding angst like an Ingmar Bergman character ( Before The Frost, The Man Who Smiled, The White Lioness, The Man From Beijing ).  Michael Dibdin’s Inspector Aurelio Zen, both a pawn and  a victim of corrupt Italian police  and politics, can neither let go his pursuit  of crime nor do it unhampered (Cabal, Dead Lagoon, Back to Bologna, A Long Finish).

                                  

          Tantalizing and absorbing new literary locations have come to the fore. Robert Wilson with Inspector Falcon books centered around Seville, Spain and Inspector Medway novels centered around Benin, Africa have given us A small Death in Lisbon, The company of Strangers, and The Silent And The Damned. Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti`s charming novels centered around Venice are as much about the new Italy as about crime (A Death in Venice , Noble Radiance,  Fatal Remedies ). Michael Stanley (duo) have given us Inspector Kubu novels like A Carrion Death and A Deadly Trade centered in Gaborone, Botswana with breathtaking elegance and sad insights characteristic of Africa. Andrea Camilleri`s likeable but unpredictable Inspector Montalbano, with staunch left-wing altitude, solves crimes in Sicilly with panache and humour (The shape of Water, The Terracotta Dog, The Scent Of The Night, etc). John Burdett’s startling and cynical novels have Inspector Sonchai Jitleecheep vainly tackling crimes of sex, drugs, and global politics in Bangkok ( Bangkok Tattoo, Bangkok Haunts and Vulture Peak ). Arnaldur Indridason’s Inspector Erlendur explores the cold and dark landscapes of Iceland as much as crime ( The Draining Lake, Silence Of The Grave, and Jar City). Petros Markaris has his dictionary reading Inspector Haritos solving Athen`s crimes with cool aplomb ( Late Night News, Che Committed Suicide, and Expiring Loans ). Unboiled crime fiction has lost hope in the “System” and is just carrying on doggedly.

          Indian crime writing is by and large imitative or stuck in the Hard Boiled mode or just plain whackiness – although a new bunch of writers is now taking up crime fiction seriously, as also a clutch of new publishers. Will Indian crime fiction finally come of age and become global in style and maturity? Time will tell.  

          But this new and expanding Unboiled crime fiction, now over 20 year old globally, has already launched the 21^st century in its Age of Disillusionment.

                                                

God`s message : Cartoon Tota-Myna