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Posted by sarwar Jul 30, 2003 09:43 pm

Hatred of India springs from school texts in Pakistan

Juliette Terzieff, Chronicle Foreign Service Wednesday, July 30, 2003

San Francisco Chronicle

Islamabad, Pakistan -- Sohail Khan thinks he knows all he needs to know when it comes to Pakistan`s larger, predominantly Hindu neighbor, India.

``Hindus cannot be trusted,`` the 15-year-old said firmly. ``Since the day Pakistan got independence, India has been trying to destroy us any way they can with the help of other infidel nations.``

Dismissing renewed efforts by both countries to reconcile their bitter and bloody 55-year-long rivalry, he insisted, ``Talk of peace hides a different plan that only they know.``

Young Khan`s harsh words -- echoed widely in varying degrees by Pakistanis across the social and political spectrum -- are hardly surprising, because they are the product of a government-endorsed curriculum taught in public schools around the country.

Pakistan`s madrassa (religious school) system, where ultra-conservative Muslim clerics dole out an excruciatingly narrow world view, has achieved global notoriety for producing thousands of young men dedicated to holy war. But the public school curriculum weaves in many similar concepts -- including insensitivity to other religions, militancy and the glorification of war.

``Honestly speaking, there should be less fear of madrassa curricula, which is comparatively limited in scope, and more fear of the books being used in public schools,`` said Ahmed Salim, director of Urdu publications at Islamabad`s Sustainable Policy Development Institute (SPDI).

``While President (Pervez) Musharraf has spoken passionately about the goal of a modern, tolerant, progressive Pakistan, the curriculum used is serving exactly the opposite purpose and will reflect upon his policies badly,`` Salim said

Public school textbooks are replete with examples.

A Muslim chauvinist view dominates the curriculum, and knowledge of Islam and the Koran is compulsory, even for non-Muslim students.

Social studies teachers in grades 1 through 5 are ordered to include units each year that instruct students in the concept and importance of jihad (holy war), and even require youngsters to deliver speeches on the subject.

The 10th-grade Pakistan studies textbook minces no words in its endorsement of Islam:

``A good person is one who leads his life according to the teachings of Allah and the Holy Prophet. He is pious and virtuous. He follows the principles and teachings of Islam individually and collectively and makes an effort to promote them. According to the teachings of Islam, a person who follows the right path is distinguished from others.``

Intolerance toward other religions is often stated unequivocally.

``Hindu has always been the enemy of Islam,`` according to the fifth-grade Urdu textbook.

The sixth-grade social studies book, chapter 5, tells of how higher-caste Hindus have abused humanity by crushing the lower castes, and how Buddhism was eventually corrupted after it arose to challenge Hinduism. One sentence declares: ``Islam preached equality, brotherhood and fraternity. The foundation of Hindu (society) was formed on injustice and cruelty.``

The curriculum also stresses male superiority over women, sometimes in subtle ways.

From the early grades, girls are depicted nearly exclusively in traditional roles -- such as helping their mothers in the kitchen, taught in the pages of a third-grade Urdu textbook. Rarely are they described as playing sports or having professions -- and when they are, they appear as foreigners or non- Muslims, like ``Mrs. Brown,`` the airline hostess in the grade 8 English book.

Even famous Pakistani and/or Muslim women are cast in stereotypical roles. Fatima Jinnah, one of only a handful of women to appear in Urdu textbooks, is cited only for serving as the nurse and fervent supporter of her brother Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

Fatima Jinnah, in fact, was a pioneer, beginning her adult life as a dentist who founded and ran her own clinic in Bombay before abandoning the profession in the 1930s to join her brother`s political fight. She set up the All India Muslim Women Students Federation in 1941 in Delhi and then formed the Women`s Relief Committee in 1947 (which eventually morphed into the All Pakistan Women`s Association, still active today). She later ran for president against Mohammad Ayub Khan in 1965.

Warped accounts of history and reverence for Muslim or military figures are drilled into students` heads -- a holdover from the need after the 1947 partition to create a vision of Pakistan as a nation separate from India. The vision was then further refined by successive governments for their own political goals -- especially the military, which has ruled by force for 30 of Pakistan`s 55 years of existence.

Salim says: ``Throughout the formative years, children are presented with pious glorious images of the military and given numerous glorified accounts of military heroics and the respect that gains. If a child learns that violence is a positive attribute, then that child is more likely to resort to violent means in situations that don`t justify the action.``

Textbook depictions of the subcontinent`s bloody partition, a time when 1 million people lost their lives through atrocities by both Hindu and Muslim militants, are one-sided.

A passage in the fourth-grade social studies book stresses the agony of Muslims making their way to Pakistan while glossing over the price paid by others:

``They came . . . leaving their homes, shops, agricultural, goods and beasts in India. On their way to Pakistan, a large number of immigrants were killed by the Sikhs and Hindus. They suffered a lot during their journey. At that time Sikhs and Hindus as well left Pakistan for India.``

There were, in fact, enough atrocities to go around, and the textbooks omit a two-month rampage in the Pakistani military city of Rawalpindi that saw thousands of non-Muslims beaten, killed or maimed.

For most older Pakistanis, last year`s riots in Gujarat, India, during which mobs of Hindus hunted down Muslims after militant Muslims torched a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, were a lamentable continuation of post- partition scarring. But students see the event as course work come to life.

``It`s plain to see the Hindus can murder women and children and go unpunished, but when the Muslims stand for themselves in India, they are called terrorists,`` said teenager Khan.

School Principal Raifakat Hussein says that the curriculum`s selective history prevents a proper understanding of events and does little to encourage self-criticism and analysis among the younger generations.

``Children need to learn the truth about the history of their country, society and government -- even if it`s not all pretty and neat,`` said Hussein, who oversees the Montessori Primary School in the eastern city of Lahore.

Educators, psychologists, lawyers and minority representatives joined with the SPDI to study the current curriculum after its revision this spring by the Musharraf government -- which included improvements in English grammar sections, and the slight toning down of the glorification of holy war and dismissive references to non-Muslims.

Classroom priorities are centralized under the command of the Education Ministry`s Curriculum Wing.

``We are constantly looking at ways to revise, reorder and update,`` contended Haroona Jetoi, joint education secretary of the Curriculum Wing. ``Where there are problems they are addressed, and will continue to be.``

But participants in the study call the recent curriculum changes ``poorly defined alterations`` unlikely to filter down into a mass revision of textbooks.

``Historical inaccuracies, omissions and incitement to violence remain key features,`` said Salim.

Some government and education officials quietly admit that most textbooks remain the same, and that many provincial-level education officials are lax or content with the status quo.

There are no plans on the table for further curriculum changes in the next five years.

And therein lies great danger, educators say.

``Children are impressionable -- they are molded by what they are taught,`` said principal Hussein. ``If they learn intolerance and hatred at a young age, it will stay with them their whole lives.

``If we are seriously talking about peace with India, modernization and being part of the global community, how can teaching our children to hate be compatible with those goals?``

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/07/30/MN241108.DTL

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Let’s talk about Bollywood

Posted by sarwar Jul 30, 2003 04:15 pm

Bollywood FAQs
Richard Corliss is back, with questions about his favorite new national cinema. You provide the answers

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/corliss/article/0,9565,471885,00.html

Wednesday, Jul. 30, 2003
Where have I been all these weeks? Forty days ago, in my last column, I self-diagnosed my Bollywood fever — the addiction for Indian popular cinema that smote me a year ago — and promised another column or two in succeeding weeks. Then, like a levitating snake at the climax of a fakir`s performance, I disappeared. My army of constant readers e-mailed me to ask whether my next Bollywood column had been lost in cyberspace. Both of you deserve an explanation.

To quell the rumors... Perhaps I was fully occupied with my day job: writing for TIME not-com. (I did have a few assignments for the magazine, but I try not to let ephemera get in the way of my vocation.) Perhaps the fever had again abated, and my Hindiscretion cooled to Hindifference? (Not a chance.) Perhaps I had developed Indian reservations. (No way, and enough with the egregious puns.) Perhaps I thought there was nothing more to say on the subject. (Au contraire: too much.) Perhaps I went on holiday. (Yes, and I try not to let my vacation get in the way of my vocation, either. I took tapes of a dozen Indian films with me, and pored over Bollywood history books in the Massachusetts and upstate New York sun. On the way, I made a convert. I played the CD of A R Rahman`s West End show ``Bombay Dreams`` for my brother-in-law, George Horn, who was so beguiled by the music that he played it even while I wasn`t with him. At the end of our trek, I gave him my spare copy of the CD.)

Cramming for a nostalgia column: the idea is preposterous. The memories are supposed to well up and spill through my typing fingers. But sometimes what`s an old feeling for others — in the case of Bollywood, a billion others — is new, and news, to me. I can think of three such cinematic revelations in the past 15 years: when the TNT channel, and later TCM, opened the vaults of those sassy antiques, the Warner Bros. films of the early 30s; when I went kung-flooey for Hong Kong movies; and now, with the masala movies of Bombay and sometimes Madras. You see the connections. All three cinemas are marked by vigor, visual ingenuity, signposts to a land so remote and exotic it is measured in decades, or ten time zones. These are territories I can explore for years, yet not exhaust their riches.

As for Indian pop cinema, I`ve stepped inside and, like Alice, am falling into a weird, magical world. Ask me today to name ten great international filmmakers, and the list would have to include Guru Dutt — the supersensitive actor-producer-director whose ``Pyaasa`` (``The Thirsty One,`` 1957) and ``Kaagaz Ke Phool`` (Paper Flowers,`` 1959) are rhapsodic expressions of a poet`s dreamy isolation. Ask what`s the best film I`ve seen this summer, and I might reply ``Awaara`` (1951), Raj Kapoor`s volcanic parable of righteous paternal mistrust, with one of the all-time sadistic-sexiest beach scenes and a dream sequence that starts in delirium and revs up to delicious. Ask what actress has my heart at the moment, and I`d confess, without guilt or irony, Waheeda Rehman, the whore-muse in ``Pyaasa`` and Dev Anand`s radiant, misunderstood companion in ``C.I.D.`` (1956) and ``Guide`` (1965).

I traveled the length of Indian cinema — from the 1935 ``Devdas`` to the latest films — though not the breadth; there`s still so much to discover. So where have I been? I`ve gone Bollywood. And I haven`t come back. This is a message from deep inside the fever.

This time, let`s address ten Bollywood FAQs. Frequently Asked by me, that is. I don`t know the answers to all these questions. Some Hindi-film adepts, including author-screenwriter Suketu Mehta and Internet Movie Database staffer Michel Hafner have offered help. I`d also like to hear from readers. At the end I`ll give you some lists to be explored in the next column (soon). You`re the experts.

1. I love Bollywood movies, but why are they sooooooooooooo looooong?

I fell into this Bollywood trap, you may recall, when I lightly mocked the Oscar-nominated Indian film ``Lagaan`` as a four-hour film about cricket. That Aamir Khan blockbuster is longer than most Indian movies, but not much longer. Pictures starring top-guy Shahrukh Khan, supersmashes like ``Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham`` and ``Mohabbatein,`` typically have a running time (or lightly sauntering time) of three to 3-1/2 hours. In the 50s — to me, India`s Golden Age — the big movies ran between 135 and 180 mins., an hour longer than most American films of that day. And the hits just keep gettin` longer. Are Indians length freaks?

The way I heard it, Indian dramas have always been lengthy. Even a Western version of an Indian myth, Peter Brook`s ``The Mahabaratha,`` ran eight hours on stage and nearly 5-1/2 hours when filmed. When Indians go out for an evening`s entertainment, by Vishnu, they want an evening`s entertainment — in scope as well as in length. They want the full, three-generation saga, the life story, with full-throttle melodrama and comic relief, with fights and beautiful sets and aching, soulful stares. And of course with songs.

2. Why don`t the characters kiss on the mouth?

OK, sometimes they do. In the 1933 ``Karma,`` Devika Rani and Himansu Rai shared a long full-mouth kiss, with the woman on top. But these are rare exceptions. The typical Bollywood sex or love scene has, for 70 years, been nothing but a lip-tease: either an urgent hug that one might give Mom or a series of prissy kisses on the face, strategically missing the lips — to quote the title of the latest Mani Rathnam film, ``A Peck on the Cheek.`` (In Rathnam`s 1995 ``Bombay,`` Hindi hero Arvind Swamy tells his Muslim beloved Manisha Koirala, ``The quicker we marry, the sooner I kiss you.``)

The ever-helpful bollywhat.com website, which has the answers to many other Indi-movie FAQs, offers this reason for osculatory obfuscation: ``Ideas of morality differ widely from group to group. Why include a kiss when you can easily leave it out and avoid the risk of offending customers?`` Granted that Indian movies are shown in Muslim countries with stricter social standards, but since a film is often released in different versions at different lengths, why not permit the occasional lip-lock? It is the visual metaphor for passion the world over.

In this year`s semi-steamy ``Jism`` (that`s right, American readers, and the word means the same in Hindi), supermodels Bipashu Basu and John Abraham finally smooch up a storm an hour-and-a-quarter into the film. This low-budget bodice-ripper — which is still way tamer than any of U.S. cable`s late-night erotic series, or for that matter Mira Nair`s 1996 ``Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love`` — proved a surprise hit in India. So, of course, other producers will now be inspired to tilt at the censors and go racy. But they`ll be fighting a silly, endearing prohibition that has held fairly firm for most of a century.

3. Virtually every Bollywood film is a musical. Why do the characters have to sing and dance?

A few possibilities are suggested. Song and dance are an integral part of Indian dramatic tradition — in Sanskrit, drama and dance are the same word. The first Indian sound film, ``Alam Ara,`` boasted 20 songs, and when it became a hit other producers (all other producers) made musicals too. ``Into the new medium came a river of music,`` write Erik Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy in ``Indian Film,`` their seminal history book, ``that had flowed through unbroken millennia of dramatic tradition.``

Indian talkies started as musicals and stayed that way. The first songless film, J.B.H. Wadia`s ``Naujawan,`` was released in 1937, after some 500 sound films in Hindi and another couple hundred in Tamil, Bengali, Telugu and Marathi. Soon producers discovered another reason to keep singing: the numbers from a movie, and later the soundtrack album, would be released weeks or months in advance, become hits and help sell the movie, as well as contributing crucially to the film`s profitability. Today, the river of music is a major revenue stream

Still... big production numbers in every thriller, every romantic melodrama, every socially uplifting tale of the downtrodden? I here except art films, from ``Pather Panchali`` to ``Bandit Queen.`` Indeed, the major difference in India between popular and ``artistic`` movies is that one sings, the other doesn`t.

Mind you, I`m not complaining. For non-Indian movie lovers who miss the vanished buoyancy of old musicals, the formal strategies that allow a hero like Shahrukh Khan in Mani Rathnam`s 1998 ``Dil Se`` to switch instantly from moping about a lost love to mouthing the Rahman-Gulzar Sufi chant ``Chaiyya Chaiyya,`` while dancing like a spasmic Stallone with dozens of chorines atop a train speeding to a rendezvous with a gorgeous terrorist, are among the giddiest pleasures of going Bollywood. That`s partly because ``Chaiyya Chaiyya`` is my absolute favorite song of the past few years. And to reader Jenny Ketcham, who wondered which version I preferred — the film original or the one used in the West End musical ``Bombay Dreams`` — my answer is b. It`s tighter, bolder, more expertly sung. (You can download the original at A R Rahman Music Central.)

But just because I love the trope of movie people singing at wildly inappropriate dramatic moments doesn`t mean I can defend or explain it.

4. The movies are musicals, but the actors don`t sing; they lip-synch to songs previously recorded by playback singers. How come?

Once upon a time, in early talkies, all sound was ``live``; actors like K.L. Saigal, in films like ``Street Singer,`` had to speak their lines, sing their lyrics, and the match of voice and face made them stars. When the playback technique was developed, it gave producers the option of having on-screen actors mime tunes that had been recorded by vocalists in a studio. This happened occasionally in Hollywood — Lauren Bacall`s singing voice in ``To Have and Have Not`` was supposedly provided by the young Andy Williams! — but the only well-known playback singer was Marni Nixon, who sang for Margaret O`Brien in ``The Secret Garden,`` Deborah Kerr in ``The King and I,`` Natalie Wood in ``West Side Story`` and Audrey Hepburn in ``My Fair Lady.``

In Indian films, the dubbing practice become the norm. Few stars in the last half-century — Kishore Kumar was one — did their own singing. (In ``Jism,`` the male lead had not just his singing but his speaking voice dubbed.) But I don`t understand why stars don`t sing. And while I`m at it, why are there so many actors, so few singers? All-time playback diva Lata Mangeshkar, who sang for Nargis in the late-40s classics ``Andaz`` and ``Barsaat`` and kept going through ``Dil Se`` and ``Lagaan,`` has recorded something between 30,000 and 50,000 songs; any way you add and divide, that`s thousands of movies. Her sister Asha Bhosle was pretty prolific herself, as was the top male singer Mohammad Rafi.

These singers could vary their tone and delivery to suit different actors, but their own star status required them to be recognizably themselves. And their influence was so seismic that their vocal timbre — Lata`s trilly soprano and Rafi`s clear tenor — could make or break careers. Amitabh Bachchan, the Hindi megastar who was voted Actor of the Millennium in a BBC News Poll (way to stuff that ballot box, Bollywood fans!), had trouble getting jobs early in his career because his voice was thought to be too deep and surly: who could sing for him? Plenty, it turned out, including Rafi. And, on a few occasions, Amitabh himself.

Still, the playback practice dominates. Why? In a land of a billion people, there must be some actors who can sing as well as they dance. Which, come to think of it, raises the indelicate question:

5. Why can`t they dance?

I could be arrested for exposing my cultural ignorance here, but here goes. The production numbers in Bollywood musicals are as extravagant as a Busby Berkeley wet dream, yet the dancing skills of the performers seem rudimentary by Western standards. In the last 15 years, the MTV mode of quick cutting has hidden some of the physical gaucheries, but it can`t give them graces they don`t possess.

The men`s movements especially look raw: vigorous but clumsy. With their jacket sleeves rolled up and their fists rhymically pounding imaginary doors, they display the stolid athleticism of a 70s steelworker unexpectedly teleported from the health club to the Studio 54 dance floor. Gene Kelly, George Chakiris, Donald O`Connor, John Travolta for Pete`s sake: these dancers had astonishing athletic skills too, plus a lot more finesse in revealing personality — a man`s subtle joys and profound chagrins — through dance. They also had lots more moves.

Indian actresses, at least, get to express themselves in dance; their supple bodies speak ancient semaphore, a kinetic language developed over centuries of pleasing God and man in temples, palaces and bordellos. No Indian actor has, to my knowledge, become a star mainly on his dancing skill, but actresses have. Madhuri Dixit, barely 21 when she made ``Teezab`` and ``Dayavan`` in 1988, exuded a Madonna-ish sensuality in dance numbers that became instantly notorious. ``A star is porn,`` one critic said. Anyway, a star was born, and Madhuri danced flamenco on men`s libidos for the next decade. Similarly, Urmila Matondkar, a movie moppet from the age of six, grew up fast in the 1995 ``Rangeela`` (she`d just turned 22) with a series of pert, vigorous, taunting dances. Urmila is still at the top; she gets scared witless in this year`s ghostly thriller ``Bhoot`` — a movie, incidentally, with no songs or dance numbers. (Maybe that`s why its running time is under two hours.)

I showed my dance-savvy wife Amitabh`s ``Shava Shava`` number from the 2001 blockbuster ``Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham``: goofy and elaborate, with Amitabh switching in a wink from patriarchal elegance to jerking his body like a deranged marionette as 112 partygoers cavort around him. I`d hoped Mary would be beguiled. Instead, she remarked that the choreography was ``sub-West End.`` Ouch: the ultimate insult, as anyone who has seen Brits try to match the muscular precision and ease of Broadway terpers will realize.

We could both be wrong. Indian choreographers and actor-dancers could be working in some gestural code we don`t understand. They could have seen Astaire and Rogers and rejected a dance style we find sublime. In the Indian tradition, their form of dance could be tripping the light fantastic above ours, not clodhopping beneath. But Indian film imitated and transformed virtually every other aspect of Hollywood movies. Why wouldn`t they dance the way Astaire or Travolta did, except that they couldn`t?

6. Another touchy question: Why are the actors usually light-skinned, even in films from Southern India?

A billion people of all shapes and shades: you`d think some of the darker beautiful ones would have become stars. Not that I`ve noticed — though it took me a while to realize they are worth looking for. The melancholy fact is that in countries with lighter and darker citizens, the light ones dominate movies. It happened in Italy, Mexico, Hong Kong. In the U.S., when black actors were forbidden to be in most Hollywood films, and libeled as shiftless or scheming when they were in films, the one prominent African-American director, Oscar Micheaux, notoriously favored light-skinned blacks. What I wrote last year about Micheaux`s movies may be true of many films from many countries: if they`re not racist, they`re certainly shade-ist. Indian films would be even more glorious if they displayed the rainbow of handsome, powerful talent available.

If I`m sadly benighted on this subject, please enlighten me.

7. What`s with those kooky credits?

To study movie credits is to learn much about an industry`s inner workings and, sometimes, that of the larger society. The opening credits on Indian films differ in many instructive ways from those on Hollywood pictures of the same period.

Start with the studio logo. For the past 80 years, most Hollywood movies have came out of six to eight large studios, and their logos — the Paramount mountain, Warner Bros. shield, the MGM lion — are icons known worldwide. Indian film production is much less concentrated. In the Golden Age, producer-directors released films through their own companies, and some of the top auteurs had their own logos. Mehboob Khan`s films (``Andaz,`` ``Mother Earth``) began with the image of a hammer-and-sickle monument — odd, since Mehboob wasn`t Communist — logo and a voice intoning an Urdu saying, which can be loosely translated as ``Don`t let the bastards grind you down; God will do that for you.`` Raj Kapoor`s films (``Awaara,`` ``Shri 420``) would open on a shot of the star-director seated in prayer, swathed in incense, which dissolved to the R.K. Films logo: a silhouette of Raj holding a fainting Nargis.

In one way, Bollywood`s credits are like Hollywood`s: they`re in English and, usually, only English. (Question: If only two to three percent of Indians read English, how does the other 97% know who`s in the movie, and who made it?) Yet the film titles are usually untranslated. ``Awaara`` is known as ``Awaara,`` not ``The Vagabond`` or ``The Rogue,`` in the English-speaking world. ``Do Bigha Zameen`` is easily translated as ``Two Acres of Land,`` and the all-star 2001 hit ``Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham`` as ``Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Sad,`` but no one in the West calls them by their English titles. Then again, it`s so much more fun to say ``Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham`` — or, in current shorthand, ``KKKG.``

Hollywood films of the 30s would name perhaps a dozen actors and a few craftspeople — director, writer, cinematographer, music director, maybe art director. (Today, of course, the end credits of big films may cite 500 or more contributors; every chauffeur and caterer gets to see his name on the crawl.) Golden Age Hindi films listed many more names and crafts. First would come the star actors, often listed in order not of their star power or importance in the film, but by age. In ``Awaara,`` Prithviraj Kapoor (Raj`s father) gets top billing over his son and Nargis; ``KKKG`` toplines veteran star Amitabh Bachchan over current idol Shahkrukh Khan. Indians, or Indian credit-deciders, must respect their elders.

Even in the 50s the list of actors ran to 20 or more, some with mono-monikers that sound goofy to a Western ear: Cuckoo, Nimmi, Dyke, just to name three players in movies by ... Mehboob. (Don`t forget Johnny Walker, the comic whose name was taken from a bottle of scotch, and which was often spelled ``Johny.``) Then another 40 names, or upwards of that, from every craft: the playback singers (often listed simply as Lata, Asha and Rafi), the sound engineer on the set and the one in the recording studio, the people who did the publicity and took the on-the-set photos, plus a dozen assistants. Some credits are mysterious, tantalizing: in ``Awaara,`` Kapoor gives the large credit just before his own to ``A Friend.``

8. A lot of Bollywood movies bear a suspicious resemblance to earlier Hollywood movies. What`s the Hindi word for ``plagiarism``?

In the East, I guess, it`s called hommage. Hong Kong frequently swiped whole plots from distant climes — e.g., ``Black Cat,`` filched from ``Nikita.`` In India, the purloining is bolder and balder. As one thieving filmmaker rationalizes In ``Bombay Dreams``: ``Copyright means the right to copy.``

Sometimes just one element is used: Guru Dutt`s ``Pyaasa`` borrowed the twist from ``Sullivan`s Travels`` where the hero gives his coat to a derelict who is then killed by a train and mistaken for the hero. But sometimes a whole Hollywood movie is Bollywized. A half-dozen Hindi films, from Raj Kapoor-Nargis ``Chori Chori`` (1956) to the Aamir Khan-Pooja Bhatt ``Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin`` (1991), are uncredited, unpaid-for remakes of the 30s Oscar-winner ``It Happened One Night,`` right down to the rich girl`s jumping from her yacht into the water and the poor guy`s attempt to thumb a ride. Recent thefts include ``Raaz`` (``What Lies Beneath``) and ``Jism`` (``Double Indemnity`` and ``Body Heat``). Strangest cine-larceny: the 6th episode of Krzysztof Kieslowski`s Polish TV series ``Decalog,`` which he expanded into the minor art-house hit ``A Short Film, About Love,`` and which last year became the sexy-ish Manisha Koirala thriller ``Ek Chhotisi Love Story.``

There are many such unacknowledged adaptations. Readers are encouraged to list a few famous films I haven`t mentioned, and to explain how the world`s largest movie industry (Bollywood) gets to steal so regularly and blithely from the world`s most popular one (Hollywood).

9. Throughout the 90s, India produced something like 1,000 movies a year, with ``only`` about 200 coming from Mumbai / Bombay / Bollywood. What about the other 800?

India has traditionally been a country of regional film sites, with each state producing films in its own language for its own audiences. In the 1970s, the polyglot production pulse raced, with feature films in 18 different languages. By the end of that decade, an average of 100+ movies were being made in each of four languages: Hindi (Bombay), Telugu (Andra Pradesh), Tamil (Madras) and Malayalam (in the southwestern state of Kerala). Indeed, in 1978 and 1979, there were more films produced in each of the other languages than in Hindi.

Today, each film region has picked up its own nickname. The Telugu industry is known as Tollywood. With the T-word having been taken, Tamil film folk called their industry Kollywood. (Shouldn`t it be Tamalewood?) The Malayalam film center is called Mollywood; I`d prefer Keraliwood. I guess Bengali films — Calcutta — must be made in Bengaliwood. I`m not sure what the adjective is for the movie biz in Kannada, a region that produces more feature films per year than Canada. Canadian?

I`d like to see this fun formation spread to other countries. Poland would be Pollywood, Japan Jollywood, Finland Follywood, Mexico Mexicaliwood. West Africa could have a production center called Somaliwood. The South Pacific needs a film industry: Baliwood? Germans moviemakers could hum Wagner on the soundstages of Valhalliwood. In rainy England, film workers could take their umbrellas to Brollywood. And Israeli picture people would munch on a bagel in Bialywood. (OK. Back to work.)

Alas, India`s regional film industries are faltering. Tamil-film output has dropped by more 70%, from 150 to 43 (though Rathnam, the top Madras director, continues to make his movies there). In the same period, Telugu-language film production is down 50% in 20 years, from 152 to 65-70. The culprit is cultural centralization. Moviegoers and movie renters in every part of India now lap up both the Bombay-made product, usually dubbed from Hindi into the local language, and the American films that have long dominated the world box office and have recently made crucial inroads on the subcontinent. It`s a trend not unique to movies: the big get bigger, the small get bit. So once-flourishing regional art-industries surrender to Hindi and U.S. juggernauts: the two major Ollywoods.

10. I hear the voice of the Bollywood novice: ``OK, you`ve browbeaten us into a mild interest in Indian film. So where can I get them?``

Chances are, if you live in a city or near one, in the U.S. or Western Europe, there`s a Little India near you. Follow the curry scent and ask a local where the video store is. Come prepared with a list of films, from IMDb or Upperstall.com. The movies will be offered, as at any video store, in DVD and VHS, for sale or rental. Chat up the clerks; they`re usually helpful, and chances are they speak EDnglish as well as you do.

If you`re stranded, or shy, try the Internet. Yash Raj Films owns some of the classic films, often with beguiling extras: a homemade documentary on Raj Kapoor that accompanies the discs on ``Barsaat`` and ``Shri 420,`` and, on the ``Aar-Paar`` and ``Khagaz ke Phool`` discs, an impressive Channel 4 docu on Guru Dutt (by Nasreen Munni Kabir, who expanded the three-part show into the excellent book ``Guru Dutt: A Life in Cinema``).

Netflix.com, the rent-by-mail online service, has about 400 Indian titles, mostly of recent vintage. A bit less than half of the films I`ve mentioned here are available there, but not some of the prime ones: ``Aware,`` ``Do Bigha Zameen,`` ``Mother Earth,`` ``Jism`` (gotcha!). Your subscription price depends on how many films you have out at a time, from $13.95 for two films to $39.95 for eight. IndoFilms.com has a much more comprehensive library — 2,500 titles in eight languages — including most of the older films I`ve mentioned. ``The Hindi collection,`` says a press release, ``ranges from 1940s films such as ‘Devdas` with Dilip Kumar to the present day ‘Devdas` with Shah Rukh Khan.`` Never mind that the Dilip ``Devdas`` came out in 1955; try IndoFilms. You sign up to get two DVDs a month for $14.95, four a month for $24.95.

I hope I haven`t numbed those new to Bollywood, or shocked the savants. Some of you surely know the answers to these ten FAQs. And if you want to aid me in our next endeavor — the Bollywood Ten, a column of lists — try these topics:

1. Top composers in Indian film history.
2. Top poet-lyricists.
3. Bollywood`s best songs.
4. Top Indian cinema pioneers.
5. Most prominent actor-politicians.

Bollywood Gupshup

Posted by sarwar Jul 30, 2003 04:15 pm

Bollywood in the Panic Room

Posted by sarwar Jul 30, 2003 04:15 pm

Lahore is Bombay

Posted by sarwar Jul 30, 2003 04:15 pm

Coming to Terms with Kargil

Posted by sarwar Jul 28, 2003 07:42 pm

US ambassador’s emotional sign-off at Ficci today

What India Means To Me

Robert D Blackwill

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=38990

Ten days ago, I gave my final policy speech as US ambassador to India. Today, I shall share with you personal thoughts about how this country has shaped me during these past two years.

Unlike Siddhartha, my meditations while preparing this address have not produced total Enlightenment. Unfortunately, Brahma and Saraswati, because of my own limitations, will not adequately inspire my remarks on this occasion with regard to my spiritual and intellectual advancement. I clearly need to spend more time at Brahma’s temple in Pushkar. And, despite my continuing contemplations, I am not always able to follow Krishna’s wise words, “Be thou of even mind.” He might have added, including at your Round Tables at Roosevelt House.

Notwithstanding my many inadequacies and the persistence of Maya, the ever-present veil of illusion, please permit me to proceed since India is the great storyteller, and because I am soon leaving this amazing country.

Shortly after my arrival, I took the train from New Delhi to Mumbai to see and feel the land and people of India. You must understand that I love to ride the rails. Paul Theroux, the glorious American writer who was my friend in the Peace Corps in Africa more than thirty years ago, describes train travel like this, “the train soothed and comforted me and stimulated my imagination. It...provided access to my past by activating my memory. I had made a discovery: I would gladly go anywhere on a train.” That’s also me.

So let’s quickly take the train around India, pausing in Delhi before we begin. Learning about the seven cities. Presenting my credentials to President Narayanan in the Rashtrapati Bhawan, hearing my name read out by an official with the deepest voice on the planet. I so wished that my mother, Roma from South Dakota, may her soul rest in peace, could have been there to see her boy, Bobby Dean, on that splendid occasion.

I was astonished to find myself there. She would not have been surprised.

Visiting Humayun’s tomb with US Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill who commented that when it was erected, those living on my continent had built no structure higher than twenty feet. So you see, we Americans fell behind you Indians very early on in the architectural sweepstakes. It seems doubtful that we will ever catch up.

Back to travelling in India. Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal - the heat, the dust, and the glacial source of the Ganga. Like so much of India, alpha and omega provide conflicting context. The vale of Kashmir, yearning to be again a normal place. Dal Lake, which Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith once told me, was as close to heaven as one could get on this earth. Ladakh’s high plateau with the Buddhist prayer flags flapping in the mountain wind. Sugar in strong tea, a taste that I acquired in India only in the last two months. I will now treasure that for the rest of my life. Someday, I am going to drive from Manali to Leh, listening to jazz all the way. Want to come along? Has this possibility never entered your mind? Not yet.

Think about it. I recall speaking to jawans on the Siachen. Those men from all over India give new meaning to the word tough. Listening enraptured to a male singer accompanied by a harmonium in the Golden Temple. Gyrating frenetically in a borrowed red turban with a professional local dance group outside on a lawn on a balmy evening in Chandigarh. My ambassadorial reputation may have survived my hip-hop performance, but barely. However, here is a real curiosity. After my extremely energetic and, I thought, dazzling audition that night, I received no offer to join that dance team. I can only conclude that they could not find my address in India. I could be wrong, but my guess is that they are still trying to locate the mysterious long legged whirling dervish of that evening.

As I speak with you today, perhaps they will see me on television and be in touch. Have no doubt. I am always ready to dance, fast or slow. It liberates me. How about you? As you can hear, I could go on along these lines for several months. But don’t you worry. I have arranged meals and bedding for all assembled here so that you will be comfortable as I continue my extended tour.

As has been said, the world is divided into two parts - those who have seen the Taj Mahal, and those who have not. I am proud to be in the first, still too exclusive group. The Shatabdi Express transported me there and back in great comfort. A wonderful train. All of Rajasthan entrances me. The noble Rajput legacy. Jaipur. Udaipur. Jodhpur. And perhaps my favourite, the medieval walled city of Jaisalmer, land of the Bhatti princes, born of the moon. Parapets into the sky. On some nights, there must be stars nowhere else above the planet because they all seem to be over Jaisalmer. I am surprised some city in northern Europe has not sued Jaisalmer for stealing all the stars. Be sure and take your sunglasses along when you go there — to deal with the starry nights. Standing in Jaisalmer, close your eyes for a moment and see the camel caravans coming through this desert town a thousand years ago, which I now realise by India’s civilizational standards is only yesterday - a fellow on the street might have said to me, “yes, they came through Jaisalmer, just a little while ago.”

The Jain Dilwara Temples at Mount Abu. Exquisite wonders of the world. As has been so often the case during my stay in India, I had only two hours to look. I needed more than two lifetimes there and elsewhere in this uncommon land. Let me go on following the map and the train tracks. Inspired by the endurance and courage of the Gujaratis as they recover from the earthquake. Pulsating Mumbai. Speaking with its effervescent business community is for me like breathing pure oxygen. I cannot get enough of it.

Sitting around in a small circle on wooden chairs, trading opinions with a half a dozen distinguished Mumbai painters for an hour about abstract expressionism in New York in the 1940’s and 50’s (Pollack, Kline and the rest). What a special treat. Exploring the Ajanta and Ellora caves and their wall paintings of people who felt all of the emotions that we currently carry around with us, including especially the elements of abiding love.

Andhra Pradesh with its path-breaking e-governance, and food hotter than hot. Don’t let anybody tell you differently; those Andhra peppers are without doubt weapons of mass destruction. Ancient Christianity in Kerala; world class IT in Bangalore; the game park near Mysore where I first heard of the Columbia tragedy and stayed up all night writing my poem for Kalpana; the blend of Hindu and Islamic architecture in Chennai; the elephant carvings at Mamallapuram; the exquisite culture of Kolkata; the flowers and forests of Sikkim and the border at Nathula with no shortness of breath; the Northeast, Kaziranga and the Brahmaputra. What a country this is. And I have hardly experienced any of it.

In these places, my omnipresent security detail from the Indian police - my gunmen as a good friend called them — who accompanied me everywhere in India, who kept me safe, and who were ready to give their lives to protect me. Oh, this India that I have come to know ever so slightly. The form and function of Indian architecture with its creation, assimilation and adaptation. Magnificent Mughal miniatures. Like you, I wish I owned two dozen of the originals. Or one. India’s innumerable and distinctive dances, beginning with the classical. The Vedas and the Upanishads.

They mean so much more when I read them here: “It is the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the speech of speech, the breath of breath, and the eye of the eye. When freed (from the senses) the wise, on departing from this world, become immortal.”

Indian family values, which I admire as essential first principles, and see in action many times every day in this country. The living symbolic power in this ancient civilization, the abiding aura, of — the tree. Of the circle. Of the triangle. Arranged marriages. The fourteen hundred years of Islam in India. Friday prayers. The Indian novel in English. Who is writing better fiction today than these folks? Mesmerising Hindustani music whose origins are deeply spiritual and therefore of particular meaning and comfort to me.

The mighty Himalayas. They humble even Blackwill, at least when he is in sight of them and it isn’t a cloudy day. Can we move them to the Potomac to give me more balance and perspective? I would not be the only one in Washington who would be grateful. Fabulous cuisines. India is unquestionably the only country in the world where this Kansas lad raised on beefsteaks could happily be a vegetarian. But please don’t tell my relatives back on the mid-West farms. Holi. Kashmiri carpets. Weavers everywhere capturing India’s enveloping colours. The Bengal tigers in the wild at Ranthambhore. How could they be more in command? I could use their skills in my new responsibilities back home, and have sent them an email with a job offer. Haven’t yet heard back from those big cats yet, but I remain hopeful.

The Monsoon that rains life into India. Surely this happens by God’s grace. The singular smell and sound as the drops strike the parched earth. Like so much of India for me, absolutely unforgettable. And more than any of this, the remembrances of the character of the people of India, which I will take back to America with me - of countless individuals over these two years who have taught me, counselled me, guided me, and protected me - who were generous to me beyond imagination. I could not repay their kindnesses to Wera and me no matter how many times I was reincarnated.

Before I close these, my final ambassadorial remarks in India, I want to deal briefly with another subject. Many in this country have remarked upon my strong views against terrorism. In these feelings, to a considerable extent I draw on the white hot anti-terrorist convictions of my President, George W Bush — and on the September 11 attacks on the American homeland. But on this subject, like so many others, India has left its dominant and enduring imprint on me.

While I was preparing for my Senate confirmation hearing in early 2001 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I started to read regularly the Indian press. It was then that for the first time I encountered the devastating fact of terrorism against India. Sitting in my office at Harvard, I began to keep a daily count of those killed here by terrorists. Three on Monday. Seven on Tuesday. Fourteen on Wednesday. Five on Thursday. Two on Friday. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. India’s death toll from terrorism mounted as the snow fell and melted in Cambridge, and that New England winter turned to spring. And I became more and more angry. Innocent human beings murdered as a systemic instrument of twisted political purpose.

Terror against India that rose and fell with the seasons, year after year after year. By the time that I left the United States for India in the summer of 2001, this very personal death count that I was keeping had reached hundreds. And, for me, these were not abstract and antiseptic numbers in a newspaper story. Each death, I forced myself to remember, was a single person — an individual man, woman, child — with family, loved ones, friends. They each have a name. Just like us, they each had a life to lead. These are our mothers, our fathers, our brothers, our sisters, our babies, and our friends. Each had laughs to laugh. Tears to shed. Loves to love. Meals to eat. Accomplishments to record. Setbacks to overcome. Places to go. Things to do. Prayers to offer. All snuffed out by the killing hand of terror.

On September 11 in America. Nearly every day in India. No respectable religion could excuse these merciless acts. No moral framework could sanction these abominations. No political cause could justify these murders of innocents. And yet, they go on. But, my friends, these terrorist outrages against my country and against yours will not continue indefinitely. We know this from the Ramayana, and many other holy books. Good does triumph over evil, although it sometimes takes more time than we would like.

We will win the war on terrorism, and the United States and India will win it together - because we represent good, and terrorists are evil incarnate. God will make it so. In this context, let me conclude with a word about India’s religious beliefs. Someone once said, “the most sublime purpose of religion is to teach how to know God.” India has been working on that challenge from a variety of perspectives for several millennia. It has been my immense privilege during these two years to experience, and to profit from, these profound wellsprings of Indian spirituality.

I will return to India. How could it be otherwise? Thank you, my friends, for listening to these, my personal musings. And, thank you India for every single thing that I have discovered here. Mother India has changed my life — forever.

(Text of speech at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry to be delivered on July 29, 2003, in New Delhi).

India is South Asia’s Natural Hegemon

Posted by sarwar Jul 28, 2003 07:42 pm

Coming to Terms with Kargil

Posted by sarwar Jul 28, 2003 07:39 am

Op-ed: Trying to ‘Indianise’ Afghan problem

Ahmed Rashid

Pakistan has not built a single hospital, school or road in Afghanistan. There is no Fatima Jinnah hospital for women or Mohammed Iqbal School for children to compete with the Indira Gandhi, Nehru and other signposted Indian monuments to reconstruction

The Indians have built schools for Afghan children, hospitals for Afghan women, Indian buses by the hundreds ply Kabul’s streets and the national airline Ariana is being resurrected by the free gift of three airbuses. India is building roads in western Afghanistan and repairing dams in eastern Afghanistan.

India has developed a highly constructive, imaginative reconstruction strategy for Afghanistan that is designed to please every sector of Afghan society, give India a high profile with the Afghan people, gain the maximum political advantage with the Afghan government, increase its influence with its Northern Alliance friends and turn its image from that of a country that supported the Soviet invasion and the communist regime in the 1980s to an indispensable ally and friend of the Afghan people in the new century.

Clever?

No, not at all, just common sense. Iran, Russia and the Central Asian Republics are doing the same. This is the time to curry favour with the Americans and the international community who place Afghanistan only second to Iraq. By doing good in Afghanistan you do good to the Afghan people, show your worth to the international community and most of all do yourself some good by building close relations with a country that is the strategic heart of the Central Asia region.

And what about Pakistan? We have not built a single hospital, school or road in Afghanistan. There is no Fatima Jinnah hospital for women or Mohammed Iqbal School for children to compete with the Indira Gandhi, Nehru and other signposted Indian monuments to reconstruction. We have given little to the Afghan people of the promised US$100 million that we had offered at the Tokyo conference except for a US$10 million grant for the Afghan budget last year. Our promise to build the Torkhum-Jalalabad-Kabul road has not been fulfilled. There is no attempt to carry out high profile projects.

We have no reconstruction strategy and prefer living off our “past sacrifices for the Afghan people” such as providing succour to the refugees and backing the Taliban. To top it all, after adopting this totally negative strategy, President Musharraf, his generals, his agencies and most lately his ministers Shaukat Aziz, Sheikh Rashid and Faisal Saleh Hayat — incredulously claim that its Indian interference that is wounding Afghanistan, damaging our relations with Kabul and supporting terrorism.

Blame it all on India. The easiest thing in the world is to “Indianise” our lack of good relations with Afghanistan and our refusal to build better relations with President Hamid Karzai. However this time round, this worn out agency line doesn’t have any reverberations amongst the Pakistani people.

While the army sweeps into FATA to re-conquer Pakistan’s historic territory, the agencies allow hundreds of Taliban to regroup in the Quetta-Chaman-Pishin triangle without much interference. While Balochistan is used as a training ground for the Taliban in a replay of 1994-5 when the Taliban emerged from Chaman, in the NWFP we are fighting terrorism, extremism and tribalism.

While the Americans can be taken for a ride because they are blind to the difference and the neo-cons in Washington do not really mind a few of their troops getting shot at by the Taliban, the populations of Balochistan and NWFP are thankfully not so dumb. They see the distortions from the reality on the ground. Most Pakistanis see Afghanistan not as a new arena of tensions with India but as an arena to do business, trade, sell and buy.

General Musharraf has constantly told the Pakistani people that he alone knows, understands and has the authority to carry out what is in the ”national security interests” of Pakistan. Is it in our interests to wrap up our failures in Afghanistan in a tissue paper and say it is all India’s fault.

Despite the government’s best efforts not to have a good relationship with Afghanistan, the Pashtuns from Peshawar are trading like mad in Kabul, 6000 skilled and semi-skilled Balochis are labouring in Kandahar, Pakistani cement is being sold all along the border and Pakistani construction companies are trying to win some of the sub-contracts for road building.

Pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes is not gong to work this time. Pakistanis know where their best interests lie and they are not likely to listen to the well-tutored ministers or anyone else. They want to do business with Afghanistan, improve relations and help in the reconstruction of that country – in short, prosper and let prosper.

Ahmed Rashid is a journalist and author of the famous book on the Taliban

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_28-7-2003_pg3_3

Afghanistan Reflections

Posted by sarwar Jul 28, 2003 07:39 am