Globalisation in question

It was undergirded by a set of meta-assumptions, all of which are now being contested.

Thoughtful critics of globalisation had always warned of the possibility of a backlash against it. The current conjuncture is making the spectre of that backlash more imminent. Unlike anti-globalisation movements of the recent past, the current anti-globalisation sentiment is now working through the electoral politics of almost all democracies and states. This makes it more subtle and powerful.

The desire for deepening global economic interconnections was never driven by a technical economic argument. Globalisation is more uneven and complex than presented in caricatures. But at its best, it had an ethical impulse, a new imagination about the possibilities of organising human society; at its worst, it was elites and special interests seeking new pastures of opportunity even when the overall benefits were in doubt. But for the last three decades, globalisation was undergirded by a set of meta-assumptions — part myth, part possibility — all of which are now being contested.

The idea behind globalisation was that it is possible to imagine a system of economic interdependencies which are structured in such a way that mitigated the zero sum aspects of global trade. In an era that did produce some intra-country convergence, notably through the rise of China, the big beneficiary of the recent phase of globalisation, without seemingly provoking major political backlash in advanced economies, this assumption came to seem politically plausible. Even after the 2009 financial crisis, the inherited system of interdependence was strong enough to withstand calls for rolling back further liberalisation. But the basic undercurrent of contemporary politics is that further globalisation is very much a zero sum game. The stagnation of living standards in advanced economies has buttressed this argument, though the proportion of blame that should fall on technology- and productivity-related factors or globalisation is a matter of debate. But whatever the truth, globalisation will be blamed. This is in part because politicians find it hard to prepare their populations for the idea that continual growth may not be taken for granted. It could be argued that the zero sum game construction was always a fantasy; it was an ideological mystification that allowed various policies to be enacted. But in a way the paradoxical case for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), that it is about positioning some countries advantageously, only gives the idea that globalisation is not about creating a zero sum game. The inherited complexity of globalisation may make drastic disengagement difficult; but the political pressure to do so will increase. One argument is that the growing inequalities within the advanced countries are behind the resentment against globalisation. The scepticism of globalisation is really scepticism of the plutocracy, and the privilege that it produced. There is much to this argument. But this argument also has its limits. It assumes that anti-globalisation is a product of the revolt by the marginalised and dispossessed. This story is probably more mixed. In the United States, it appears to have taken roots amongst the white working class, the biggest losers in the recent phase of globalisation. It would be unfair to place the blame for xenophobia on the doors of the working class; you suspect often the interests of the working class are used by establishments to express their own nativism. But the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment, right-wing parties, and greater xenophobia cannot all be explained by inequality: Scandinavian social democracies are as much susceptible to right-wing backlash as the US; within Europe, big successes like Poland are in its grip as much as economies that have done less well. The discomforting thought is that the nationalist critique of globalisation is gaining ground. Globalisation did make many societies more deeply multi-cultural. But its proponents underestimated the political and cultural challenges to assimilation. The fears associated with globalisation have turned to embracing ethnic chauvinism. Some would argue this fear of ethnic chauvinism must not be generalised. In the contemporary era of globalisation, it has a specific target, Islam. In this view, the rise of xenophobia and nativism is less a product of globalisation; it is more straightforwardly a clash of “ideologies”. Islam has become the “other” of globalisation, in ways that now deeply threaten the globalisation project. But whether this shows the limits of Islam or the limits of liberal societies is a debatable question. But this construction of Islam has contributed to putting under stress the fantasy of globalisation replacing exclusionary nationalism. Globalisation also had a complex relationship to military power. The fantasy of globalisation was to render territoriality less salient and to mitigate great-power military conflict. Territory-based great-power tensions are back on the agenda. From China to Turkey, the temptation to use power to exercise influence is growing; the contest between assertion of ambition and pure economics is growing. The US is also in a complex position. In some ways, globalisation had this paradoxical positioning for American nationalism. At one level, it is a projection of American success, its ability to create Pax Americana. Globalisation was an intelligent way of enhancing its pre-eminence and influence. So, for a powerful hegemon like the US, it was easy to sustain the illusion of national power and globalisation both growing together. Liberal internationalism was just a smarter nationalism. But this was challenged from two directions. On the one hand, the ground realities of emerging multipolarity made sustaining that hegemony harder. But also the disastrous intervention in Iraq, the changes in global energy markets, the lowered appetite for bearing the costs of war made sustained intervention in the Middle East difficult. Barack Obama ran on a promise of that kind of disengagement. Libya was a massive mistake, not the least because it reduced options in Syria. The Syrian crisis has had far-reaching domestic political reverberations in Europe. Obama was caught in a “damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t” bind. But the net result is that in domestic politics, American engagement with the external world is now seen as being undertaken from a position of weakness. Hence the demand for a more “muscular” foreign policy is back. Globalisation’s critics had a point that it was oversold, was uneven in its effects, and did not do enough for losers. It is being felt by nations as a loss of control. But at its best, it was a hope of a non-zero sum world, a faith in the possibilities of open societies, and a hope that the prosaic demands of commerce will trump the more exalted passions of national grandeur. As nationalism gains ground, there is a real danger that nuanced debates on globalisation will be replaced by a more atavistic revolt against its possibilities. 

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi, and contributing editor, ‘The Indian Express’ -

Source: Indian Express, 19-03-2016

We exaggerate the lives of our historical subjects’

Author Sunil Khilnani on the challenge of profiling fifty historical figures in his new book

Picking just 50 Indians over a period of 2,500 years to profile is no easy task. In his new book Incarnations: India in 50 lives, Sunil Khilnani, director of the India Institute at King’s College London and author of The Idea of India, gets a fine balance between kings and mathematicians, freedom fighters and poets. The book attempts to complicate the stories of historical figures rather than simplify them and features the well known (Gandhi and Periyar) as well as the forgotten (Malik Ambar). In an interview over Skype, Prof. Khilnani speaks about dispelling myths about historical figures and humanising them, and how Indian history belongs not to political parties but to citizens. Excerpts:

In the introduction to Incarnations, you have written that one of the reasons you decided to write about 50 Indian historical figures was to address the “inevitable simplifications” that involve the defining of India as a predominantly Hindu nation. How have you sought to address this in your book?

The book is certainly directed at taking away from the simplification of Indian history. The aim was to partially demythologise our historical subjects, whose lives tend to get appropriated for political purposes. There is a tendency to simplify the lives of historical figures, be it Gandhi, Bose or Shivaji, by mythologising them, as if they are above human fallibility. That is a deep mistake. Political appropriation of historical figures is often a consequence of such simplification. Individual lives are never so clear-cut, which is why we need to approach history through individual biographies in order to understand their motivations. Complicating the stories of their lives only enriches us.

Aryabhata, for instance, did not discover zero. We have to be critical about these false claims being made about their lives to foster national pride. What I have attempted in this book is to try and bring out a more accurate and realistic view of their lives. Gandhi, I have called a great manager of the media in the book. Saying so was not to diminish him. But unfortunately, with all these historical figures, we exaggerate their lives and achievements, making a joke of it. I have also focussed on their afterlives, to understand precisely how these historical figures continue to live amidst us.

In The Idea of India, Nehru played a central role and you were deeply empathetic to the spirit of nationalism he espoused. So, was the decision to write about the lives of 50 people born out of a desire to look beyond Nehru?

Nehru was an important figure in The Idea of India. In Incarnations I have attempted to broaden the historical panorama, as it were. Nehru is one amongst the many figures that shaped Indian history. Here I have tried to bring in some of the other voices. In fact, Nehru’s own thoughts were shaped by these other voices which he was drawing upon. Nehru was remarkable, but not exceptional, as a historical figure. Both his opponents and his friends tend to overemphasise his uniqueness. The book spans 2,500 years of Indian history so the idea was not just to focus on a few 20th century figures. I have focussed on forgotten figures like Malik Ambar, the Habshi military figure from Ahmadnagar who fought the Mughals, to drive home the point that our current manner of telling history excludes many prominent players like him.

You have mentioned that it was a challenge to research these lives as sources were few. Were there any figures that you wanted to write about but dropped from the list due to lack of material?

The absence, destruction, or loss of sources is a problem, especially when it comes to writing about women. While researching for this book, I found it particularly hard to find primary sources on the lives of women, like temple patrons or even ordinary women. If one were to use real primary sources, then there are only a limited number of women one could write about. Take Mirabai, for example, who I write about. There were only a few fragmentary writings on her. Or take the case of Razia Sultana, the extraordinary woman sultan of Delhi. It would have been interesting to include her, but I didn't feel there was enough reliable information. One of the decisions I took, therefore, was to include descriptions of the lives of women from history into other chapters, such as the essay on the Buddha, who had to be persuaded to bring women into the sangha, or in the chapter on Periyar who worked for women’s rights. And so with Tagore, who talked about giving women the freedom to love whom they chose.

Was there a sense of urgency in writing this book? Do you see a threat to ‘the idea of India’ as many intellectuals have commented on the current political climate in the country, of there being a silent Emergency of sorts, which prompted you to writeIncarnations?

Yes, it does seem like the idea of a pluralist and Hindu nation is under challenge now. But it is also important to understand that it is during these moments of crisis in Indian history that people have shown amazing originality and innovation in how they respond to it. The nation often comes out stronger during difficult circumstances. Think of our freedom fighters like Gandhi, Tagore, etc., who showed the ability to retain their freedom of thought in the most difficult times of colonial suppression. It was that constrained pressure that provoked them to be strong, critical and brave and that should be the positive, inspirational aspect of what is happening in India right now.

Indira Gandhi was blamed for the Emergency, but at the same time she helped to provoke a response from within India which strengthened our democratic institutions, and helped with the re-emergence of civil society as the defender of the nation. I write about that in the book. Therefore, the current sense of threat and danger might precisely provoke a recommitment to democratic rights, to pluralism, and a multicultural ethic. There are a thousand pluralities and different views that comprise the life blood of India. Our creativity lies in how we advance or redefine this.

Often it is within academia, the media, and the arts that such creative work takes place. But the recent incidences of suppression of thought and expression in universities, for instance, has put a question mark on whether controversial aspects of our national present or past can be openly discussed.

It is critical to defend spaces like university and research institutions as spaces for free exchange of ideas. You have to take them seriously. But if you come to think of it, it has always been a challenge to think freely in any society, not just India. We have had a capacity to think freely even in very oppressive societies. Today, for a young historian or scholar in India, to freely investigate the past requires a certain commitment or courage. We need to offer whatever support we can. But trust me we do have sufficiently rebellious minds in our society who can do this.

If you were to look at the language in which historical debates are being framed in the current political milieu, history is either Nehruvian or non-Nehruvian. How do you respond to these developments in your work?

I am not interested in either of these two versions of history. And my work doesn’t fit into any ideological narrative be it that of Congress nationalism or Hindutva nationalism. There is a much more interesting expanse of Indian history if you care to look beyond these ideological narratives, because what they produce are dull, boring national heroes. But look at these figures closely and what you will see are troublemakers, rabble-rousers, and that is what is interesting about them, not the conformist personalities we hear about. The idea of writing Incarnations was to precisely introduce that energy into our historical narrative. Think of a person like Guru Nanak, for example. He was a complete rebel. Take Bose, Gandhi, Jinnah… in each case, the idea was to give them a much more nuanced picture. No one can own them so easily. Vivekananda, who is today being seen as a figure of Hindu nationalism, was in reality also a profound critic of aspects of Hinduism. Bose, again a brave and committed nationalist but with a terrible political judgment, who established affiliations with Hitler and the Japanese. Here is a deeply flawed personality, who showed remarkable personal courage. And then there is Gandhi, a great manipulator of the media, or Jinnah, who is again a very complicated figure. None of them belong to any political party or movement. Indian history belongs to all of us, as citizens.

vidya.v@thehindu.co.in

Keywords: Sunil Khilnani, Incarnations: India in 50 lives, The Idea of India

Source:  The Hindu, 21-03-2016

When You Don't Bite

SRI M





Once, there lived a cobra, so dangerous that no one dared to cross its path near his hole.One day , a young brahmachari on pilgrimage had to cross the village. Despite warnings that the cobra was sure to kill him, the yatri told them not to worry since he knew enough charms to keep the snake at bay .As he approached the snake's hole, he saw the cobra with its hood raised, ready to strike.He tamed him with his mantras and snake became his disciple. He taught the snake the elements of spiritual practice.He also told the snake that, if he wanted to lead a spiritual life, he had to give up biting people. The snake agreed.
On way back, after a year, the pilgrim stopped at the same village. He saw that the street where the snake lived was no longer deserted, people walked up and down fearlessly . He asked about the snake. “Ah,“ they said, “he is still there in the hold. But who cares for him any more; he has stopped biting. Even when we pelt him with stones, he does not bite.He is now an invalid and comes out with great difficulty only in the night for his food.“
The pilgrim went to the hole and called out to his disciple softly . “Gurudev,“ said the snake in a feeble voice, “I followed your advice and stopped biting. See what happened to me.“
Said the yatri, “Why did you not use your common sense?
I told you not to bite, but did I tell you not to hiss? All you had to do was to hiss and nobody would have dared approach you.“

Teaching/Faculty Positions at Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar [LD:12/04/2016]

Teaching/Faculty Positions at Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar [LD:12/04/2016]

TEACHING/FACULTY POSITIONS AT 

CENTRAL UNIVERSITY OF GUJARAT

Sector - 29, Gandhinagar - 382 030 (INDIA). 

Employment Notification No. 18/2016, Dated 26th February, 2016


CUG called for the direct recruitment to faculty positions in various Schools/ Centres of Studies on regular basis through open competition on all India basis.

LAST DATE: The Last date/crucial date for submission of applications complete in all respects is 12th April 2016. 
DOWNLOAD Notification.

Source: http://www.cug.ac.in/career/career.php (14.03.2016)

Surat railway station cleanest: survey

The survey was conducted in January-February this year and passengers were asked questions on 40 cleanliness parameters.

Surat has the cleanest railway station in the country, followed by Rajkot and Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh), according to an Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) survey, released on Thursday.

However, the railway station in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency Varanasi is ranked poorly in terms of cleanliness; it stood at 65 among the 75 A-1 railway stations (those earning revenue more than Rs. 50 crore) surveyed. The survey that was conducted based on feedback from around 1.34 lakh passengers is a part of Mr. Modi’s pet project ‘Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan’.

“The idea is to make the entire rail network clean, including stations, tracks and other railway premises. We decided to do a survey to bring out the present situation…This is a beginning to bring all the stations at par. We will also launch major [passenger] awareness programme,” Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said while releasing the Preliminary Report on Assessment of Cleanliness Standards of Major Railway Stations.

The survey was conducted at 407 railway stations, which included 75 A-1 stations and 332 A category stations. Around 40 per cent of all the stations surveyed fared ‘average’ in terms of cleanliness.

Among the A-category stations (those with revenue between Rs. 6 crore and Rs. 50 crore), Beas (Punjab) followed by Gandhidham (Gujarat), Vasco Da Gama (Goa), Jamnagar (Gujarat), Kumbakonam (Tamil Nadu) and Nasik Road (Maharashtra) were among the cleanest railway stations.

The survey was conducted in January-February this year and passengers were asked questions on 40 cleanliness parameters.

IRCTC will soon submit the final report to the Railway Ministry that will include responses from railway staff and non-railway service providers.

Keywords: IRCTC, Surat, Rajkot, Bilaspur, Varanasi railway station, Swacch Bharat Abhiya

Source: The Hindu, 19-03-2016

How to be free in the 21st century

The experience of liberal democracies elsewhere shines a light upon the outdatedness of the sedition law that India uses so loosely.

In little more than a month since a partisan and heavy-handed Delhi Police arrested Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union President Kanhaiya Kumar and slapped him with the charge of sedition, reams of newsprint have been dedicated to challenging that odious legal provision of the Indian Penal Code, dating back to 1860, principally on the grounds that it is draconian and specifically that its abuse impairs a critical feature of liberal democracy:dissent

In the process the troubling history of Section 124-A of the IPC has been clearly traced, especially its remarkable survival from the pre-Independence era, when it served the colonial government as a weapon of mass suppression against all opposition, into modern India, where it has now become an untenable blot on the right to free speech guaranteed by Article 19 of the Constitution.

At the heart of this ongoing battle for India’s liberal soul is the argument that speech that is alleged to be seditious may be considered illegal only if it is an incitement to violence or public disorder, a view that has been clarified by a multitude of legal precedents including Kedar Nath Singh vs State Of Bihar(1962), Indra Das vs State Of Assam (2011), Arup Bhuyan vs State Of Assam (2011), and most recently the well-known case of Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2013).

Yet by no means is the tension between the right to freedom of speech and the ambitions of a government to quell criticism of its policies a new dilemma for democratic politics worldwide, and indeed the experience of liberal Western democracy shines a light upon what could be considered a reasonable position on this subject.

Consider first the experience of the U.K., where laws on seditious libel and criminal defamation were summarily abolished by Section 73 of the Coroners and Justice Act in 2009 nearly 40 years after the British Law Commission first recommended doing so, albeit after “after a century of disuse,” according to Professor John Spencer of Cambridge University.

Modern Britain’s struggle with the chilling effects of sedition on free speech dates back centuries to the times of the Star Chamber, and was poignantly illustrated in the 1792 trial of political theorist Thomas Paine, whose work was influential in igniting the American Revolution, specifically for his publication of the second part of the Rights of Man.

In that tome Mr. Paine effectively argued that popular political revolution was permissible when a government no longer safeguarded inalienable rights of its people, rights that stemmed from nature and not any government-written document, not even a Constitution.

Unsurprisingly when an estimated 50,000 copies of Mr. Paine’s manuscript started circulating in Britain it led to a massive furore within government, a trial in absentia, and finally conviction for seditious libel against the Crown. Fortunately for Mr. Paine he was at the time a resident of France and hence “unavailable for hanging,” and so he got away with never returning to his homeland.

In the early years sedition came with rather steep punishments, including perpetrators having their ears cut off for a first offense and put to death for recidivism. Later it became punishable up to life imprisonment and/or a fine, and in most cases “Not only was truth no defence, but intention was irrelevant.”

However in line with what Professor Spencer had indicated to The Hindu, on multiple occasions 21-st century debates in the House of Lords agreed that “the common law of sedition had rarely been used in England over the course of the past century,” and the last major case in the country where there was an attempt to try an individual for sedition involved the publication of Salman Rushdie’s book, The Satantic Verses.

Reports in the U.S. Library of Congress quote allegations made that Mr. Rushdie’s book was a “scurrilous attack on the Muslim religion,” and that it resulted in violence in the UK as well as a severance of diplomatic relations between the UK and Iran.

Taking matters further an individual was said to have attempted to obtain a summons against Mr. Rushdie and his publisher, alleging that both parties had committed the offense of seditious libel, a claim that was denied after judges found that there was not a seditious intent by either of the parties against any of the UK’s democratic institutions.

In the U.S., Congress enacted the Sedition Act of 1798 in anticipation of a possible war with France, according to Professor Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago, and the Act made it a crime for any person to make any statement that brought the President, Congress, or the government into contempt or disrepute.

Unlike the U.K.’s sedition law, truth was a defence, but still it was bitterly opposed by those who sought to criticise the government, and the government used it to prosecute numerous journalists and politicians who criticised its policies, Professor Stone said to The Hindu.

While the Act expired by its own force in 1801 amidst condemnation as a serious violation of the First Amendment guaranteeing the right to freedom of expression, a series of compulsions relating the wartime politics, from 1798 to the present led to reinstitution of seditious libel laws.

These included, Professor Stone notes, the government putting some presses out of business during the American Civil War; the government enacting the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 during World War I, which were used to prosecute around 2,000 individuals for criticising the war and the draft; and the federal government and most states enacting laws prohibiting anyone to advocate the violent overthrow of the government During the “Red Scare” of the 1950s.

Notwithstanding this regressive shift during the war years, the U.S. Supreme Court began to address the constitutionality of these laws for the first time during World War I. Although it found them to be constitutional at that time, the Court’s questioning set off a “fierce challenge,” to sedition as a legal concept, Professor Stone said, particularly by Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis.

From that time until 1969 the U.S. Supreme Court struggled with sedition laws and ultimately came to the view in Brandenbug v. Ohio that the government could punish speech because it turned people against the government or might cause them to engage in unlawful conduct only if the speaker expressly incited unlawful conduct and only if the speech is likely to cause such conduct imminently.

Since that time no restrictions on seditious libel have been upheld in the U.S. and Professor Stone argues that this has largely been because the nation and its government have come to encompass the understanding that “It is more important to protect a vital freedom of speech than to suppress views we do not like. The suppression of criticism of the government, we have come to understand, is fundamentally incompatible with the aspirations of a true democracy.”

The Government of India frequently speaks of India becoming a superpower comparable to some democratic Western nations. Yet as this government goes about arrogating to itself the right to victimise those who challenge the legitimacy of its actions, or raise dissenting slogans against widespread inequities in the country, it may have pause for thought if it bothered to glance through the historical evolution of jurisprudential thought on sedition laws in these very same nations.

narayan@thehindu.co.in

Keywords: sedition law, JNU row, JNU president Kanhaiya Kumar

Source: The Hindu, 19-03-2016

Defining minorities and their uses in India requires a change of thought

Has India always, or at least since 1947, had a ministry of minority affairs? At any rate, it is probably a necessity in the present government. Since the BJP came to form the government with a healthy mandate, there have been questions about the security of, and social and political equality for, the minorities and wholehearted commitment to these from our rulers and the forces they control.

To be fair, the questions have only arisen in the context of the Muslims and Christians of India. Those who favour and follow what is known as the Hindutva ideology, or at least the extremists of this tendency, stand accused of attempts to characterise Muslim Indians as not quite full-fledged citizens. I am trying to choose my words carefully.

The killing of an individual suspected of storing beef in his refrigerator, the murder of scholars who are in any way critical of the emerging ideology, the attack on Muslim actors who have made determinedly sensible and patriotic remarks, the battles on university campuses which characterise perfectly legitimate protest and obey the tenets of free speech as treason — these and other sinister developments might merit stronger language.

I am sure all the members of the present government don’t support in any sense this tendency. There is Najma Heptullah, the minister for minority affairs, who surely dissents from it. I think one of her outstanding tasks is to redefine the brief of her ministry. Indian Muslims should not be seen as the ‘minority community’. Here’s where arithmetic and political expression come into conflict. Yes, there are fewer Muslims in India than there are Hindus and that should give them the status, not of a minority but of a ‘smaller majority’. It may seem like a semantic quibble but from such quibbles, policies of empowerment of social justice should flow.

Read| Sufi meet to Time interview: Six times Modi spoke on freedom of faith

The real minorities of India, and I am sure Najmaji has very many definitions and categories of them, are, by religion, the Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jews and Zoroastrians.

The Hindutvaterrati have attacked Christian missionaries in very vicious and even murderous ways, but seem to have left the rest of us minorities (I write as a Parsi of Zoroastrian descent) alone and even on occasion celebrated them.

I don’t suppose the ministry of minority affairs has any business with the question of banning ‘Sikh Jokes’, for which there is an individual case initiated in the courts. It doesn’t seem to have attracted the support of millions of Sikhs, who perhaps, as the late Khushwant Singh did, tolerate the jokes and see laughing at oneself as a sign of cultural maturity.

If Sikhs were the only minority to suffer such jokes, the objection would carry more weight. Just as Americans have jokes about Poles and the British have jokes about the Irish, Pakistanis have funny stories about Bangladeshis, Indians have jokes about Bengalis, Malayalis, Biharis and Parsis.

As a member of the Parsi community, I quite enjoy Parsi jokes, especially those perpetrated by one of us. A Parsi journalist, asked about why our numbers were dwindling, said, “Because half of us are gay and the other half are statues in Mumbai!”

And then there was the one about a gathering of Parsi gentlemen where one says to the other “my wife is pregnant,” to which the reply is “Oh dear, I’m so sorry, whom do you suspect?”

I don’t think any Parsi will go to court about these or indeed appeal to Heptullah to initiate a parliamentary bill banning them. In fact, I gather that Heptullah is quite supportive of this particular minority community and her ministry has sponsored an exhibition called The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination in the National Museum in New Delhi.

The exhibition opens today and is open till May 31. The reason I’ve already seen it is because it was curated by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of University of London and was shown in London in 2013. It is now on the first step of what its originators call an ‘International Tour’.

Accompanying the exhibition will be an extension, which wasn’t a part of the display at SOAS. It features, among other things, a recent Bollywood film called Ferrari ki Sawaari. The title doesn’t give away the film’s connection with the history of Zoroastrianism, but I’m sure its selectors have some critical criteria which relates this 2012 Bollywood comedy to the theme of The Everlasting Flame.

The film, directed, acted (with the exception of Zoroastrian Boman Irani) and produced by non-Parsis tells the story of a Parsi father determined to get his son to play cricket at Lord’s. The determination leads him to steal the Ferrari of Sachin Tendulkar and the car’s journey introduces a gaggle of comic characters in set-piece situations and some genuine drama.

The film was a critical and financial success and may delight its audiences, but the only connection that one can see to 3,000 years of Zoroastrian history is that Parsis have evolved from being the Achaemenid rulers of the known world and the Sassanian conquerors of Rome to being good fun for Bollywood audiences. We have our uses.

(Farrukh Dhondy is an author, screenplay writer and columnist based in London. The views expressed are personal)

Source: Hindustan Times,19-03-2016