kriticulture

South Asian Ensemble An Interface of Arts, Literature and Culture for South Asian Diaspora South Asian Ensemble is a Canadian quarterly devoted to the arts, literature and culture of the South Asian diaspora. The inaugural issue is now available online: http://www.southasianensemble.com/

By Badri Raina Ruchika, golden fawn, your Joy-filled, wide-eyed view Of the world Was too untutored to see The wolf in the office room. You trusted his disguise And paid fatal price. You must have been taught How this is the land Where women are put On the deified grandstand. Too young a pupil you to know There is that here which is worshipped And that other which is true; That throughout the ages It has been so. Or that wolves that roam the Indian prairie Are also known to band together In all sorts of weather. But times now are a changing. You might just have been the little fawn Whose blood is set to secure A whole world of fawns, And bring many a wolf to book. Your pristine little life, so abused, So defiled, so murderously denied, May just have put tongue Into a million mouths That had no voice before. The cruelty of your going May just have made a whole nation Realize how rotten we are to the core.

Sach Di Siyasat ( The Politics of Truth ) by Amarjit Singh Grewal Published by Chetna Parkashan, Ludhiana, 2009 Pages: 184 Price: Rs. 220 Rajesh Kumar Sharma (Extracts from the book review to be published in the winter number of South Asian Ensemble ) Amarjit Singh Grewal’s Sach Di Siyasat ( The Politics of Truth ) proceeds through a series of structured deflections. It begins with a reflection on the possibility of grasping the “truth” of Guru Arjun Dev’s martyrdom, moves on to explore the truth value of the historiographic object in terms of poststructuralist theory, the discourses of science and game theory, and goes on to unfold the world-historical specificity of Sikhism as a cultural-political project of humanization with implications for the emerging global society. Along the way, it briefly pauses to consider also the contemporary social situation in the light of what the Gurus had arguably envisaged. --- --- --- --- Grewal’s most significant accomplishmen...

From Manzur Ejaz of wichaar.com The gypsies or the Roma people, presently settled in Europe, are of Punjabi origin. In this movie if you follow the dailogues you will recognize Punjabi words like pee (drink) kha (eat) main (me) tu (you) etc . This is very intresting film about seperated Punjabis. http://www.wichaar.com/videos/gadjo-dilo/gadjo-dilo-part-1-video_3a6c85ee4.html Some artiles about Roma people. On the road to Roma people Tarot of the Romas Roma People

By Badri Raina At Copenhagen they met— Greed and Need. Greed said, “ cut down your need”; Need said, “enough of your greed.” Greed retorted, “the Earth cannot wait For your need to become greed”; Need rebutted, “you are a great one To say so, Having created all our need.” Greed, you know, Of course wished to have the cake And eat it too; Need knew if that continued to be done, There would be no place for Need in the sun. Everyone Swore they would cut down their carbon, And save the Earth For a renewed birth, But not before Capitalism had its full-bull run. Greed said, “Capitalism is ours; we made it; Leave it to us; you do that which is fit For your station. We shall carry the corporation To your lands, And t...

(Published in Filhaal, No. 5, Oct-Nov 2009, Pp. 13-17) Rajesh Kumar Sharma Harvinder Bhandal’s review (“ Sach di Siyasat ate Siyasat da Sach”) of Amarjit Singh Grewal’s Sach di Siyasat ( Politics of Truth ) in Filhaal (Oct-Nov 2009) is a well-written and interesting piece, but as someone who has read Grewal’s book I wish Bhandal had re-read the book before hastening to ‘demolish’ it. The form and argument of the book demand that it be read and re-read, and seen from a distance. Intellectual judgements are best not made in haste and passion. And it is always good to reflect on one’s opinions before rushing out to proclaim them in the streets. There certainly are several problems with Grewal’s book, but Bhandal’s hasty reading only puts them out of focus, thus forestalling a fruitful critical discussion that should rightly follow the arrival of a work of serious intent. Bhandal probably misreads the book because of his own un-deconstructed position. The first evidence of this is...

M. L. Raina 1. Collected Screenplays by Andrei Tarkovsky Translated by William Powell and Natasha Synessios Faber, London.Xxv+564 Pages. $ 25. 2. The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue By Vida T. Johnson and Graham Petrie. Indiana University Press, Bloomington Xvii+331 pages. $ 25.95 3. Mirror: A Film by Andrei Tarkovsky Artificial Eye Video Production, London 102 Minutes. 24 Pounds. Let me confess at the outset that I am a Tarkovsky addict. He reminds me not so much of other filmmakers, as of a number of Russian writers from Turgenev and Chekov to a much younger contemporary, Andrei Makine even though the latter writes in French. They share a cultivated sensibility that allows them to be at home in the quintessential Russianness of their heritage and, at the same time, encourage an uninhibited acceptance of Western ideas. One thinks of Tolstoy and Turgenev (particularly ‘Sportsman’s Sketches’ and ‘Ayesha’), of the poems of Lermontov and Pushkin, the plenit...

A Day In New York Remembered By M L Raina My New York is not the city Thomas Pynchon’s V explored through its sewers, nor the city that Garcia Lorca thought diabolic as well as inviting. My New York is a city on whose symmetrical streets and avenues I have walked miles and capped milestones of memory and remembrance. One such memory is of a day more than ten years ago, a memory that is evoked as I rediscover those streets on a day’s walk. I arrive in New York a few days after India blasted its way into the nuclear club. Suitably puffed up with patriotic fervour I recall the words of the actor George Scott, playing World War II’s prima donnish general Patton in the Hollywood movie of that name: “No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other bastard die for his country”. So, on arrival, my first impulse is to see how the other bastards, Pakistanis, were coping with our new-found pride and self-respect. What right, I ask, has the American Preside...

A timely article, a semi-obituary. . . But I still have hope that the history of cultural studies might matter to the university—and to the world beyond it. My hopes aren't quite as ambitious as they were 20 years ago. I no longer expect cultural studies to transform the disciplines. But I do think cultural studies can do a better job of complicating the political-economy model in media theory, a better job of complicating our accounts of neoliberalism, and a better job of convincing people inside and outside the university that cultural studies' understanding of hegemony is a form of understanding with great explanatory power—that is to say, a form of understanding that actually works. Link: http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-the-Matter-With/48334/

“Identity and Cultural Dynamics Tribes of South Africa, Nigeria and North East India” Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India October 28-30, 2009 A three-day International Multidisciplinary Seminar on “Identity and Cultural Dynamics: Tribes of South Africa, Nigeria and North East India” is being organized by Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India in collaboration with the African Studies Association of India, New Delhi, from October 28 to 30, 2009. Papers are invited on any of the sub- themes of the seminar. Please send in the abstracts (not exceeding 300 words) by 30th September 2009 and full research papers by 15 October 2009. For further details please contact: 1. Dr. Shreya Bhattacharji Seminar Coordinator Email: bhattacharjishreya@gmail.com shreya_bhattacharji@yahoo.com shreya_b3@rediffmail.com 2. Mr. Miazi Hazam Email: miazimiazi@rediffmail.com “Identity and Cultural Dynamics Tribes of South Africa, Nigeria and North ...

By Rajesh Kumar Sharma It was a tight, neat cabin. Files were piled up like trophies against a wall. An air-conditioner peeped out of the twisted mouth of a window. Across the table sat the gatekeeper, the all-potent PA, chattering with some malevolent soul on his elegant white-gray telephone. “I am like a mongrel’s carcass, torn to shreds by those vile crows,” he said with the touching vanity of a poet who has just discovered himself. The tall man looming over him with a file and a smile frowned at the comparison, unable to determine whether the first simile was more honourable or the second. “VIP after VIP has been tearing into my flesh, but I tell them I can’t get them an appointment with the Sahib. At least not yet.” I was amazed at the range of images his uneven head could harbour – from disintegrating dogs and scavenging crows to exhausted courtesans! Keats’s negative capability, or the ancient seers’ aham brahmasmi? Had I yielded to a fit of that idiotic sentiment which sometime...

Memories come like winter sunshine when the mind turns to those who have been my teachers. Now that I have myself been a teacher for several years, I have begun to realize how difficult – impossible even – it is to become, and remain, one. Teaching, like learning, begins – as the story of Nachiketa and Yama hints – with dying. The will to know, which sprouts in the will to be, must crash against the farthest bounds of being. To seek is to eternally destroy and create your being. It is to be, like Nachiketa, the flames of yajna agni (sacrificial fire) . . . even as it is to be Yama, the one who lives dying . ...

Rajesh Kumar Sharma Even as the country moves towards evolving a comprehensive higher education programme, we need to steer a middle course between euphoria and cynicism. Comprehensive restructuring is urgently required, but it should not lead to a monolithic system. Diversity needs to be nurtured if only to realize the larger purpose of restructuring, which is to develop global competencies in an increasingly challenging world. Innovation and creativity flourish most in the soil of diversity. In place of a New Delhi-centric conception, a multi-centric conception of higher education would therefore better serve the purpose. It is possible to strive for uniformly high standards while keeping the focus on specific regional and local priorities. Moreover, the needs of rural India also should be adequately integrated into the project of restructuring. Care has to be taken that the project does not become a prisoner of the metropolitan agenda. The guiding mantra of restructuring should be g...

Alain Badiou Translated by Alex Ling and Aurélien Mondon Philosophy only exists insofar as there are paradoxical relations, relations which fail to connect, or should not connect. When every connection is naturally legitimate, philosophy is impossible or in vain. Philosophy is the violence done by thought to impossible relations. Today, which is to say “after Deleuze,” there is a clear requisitioning of philosophy by cinema — or of cinema by philosophy. It is therefore certain that cinema offers us paradoxical relations, entirely improbable connections. Which ones? Link

Mary Beard (Courtesy: TLS Online ) I wouldn't want to claim that exams are as bad for the markers as they are for the sitters. But the Cambridge Tripos is still a big investment of time and hard work for the dons. It's not just that you have to read each paper carefully (and I have spent more or less the whole of the last week on this, more than 12 hours a day). You have also to decide what principle of marking to adopt. Put simply, if you are dealing with standard "essay" papers, you can either go question by question (that is mark all the answers to question one, then all the answers to question two and so on) -- or you can go candidate by candidate (that is, mark all the answers from candidate a, then move on to candidate b and so on). The advantage of the former is that you can compare the answers more directly and see more easily which candidates have got new or more interesting material. Link to the article

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy (born 11 July 1950) is Professor of High Energy Physics and the head of the Physics Department at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He graduated and also received PhD from MIT and continues to do research in Particle physics. He received the Baker Award for Electronics in 1968, and the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics in 1984. He has authored various scientific research papers in peer-reviewed journals. He is also a prominent environmental and social activist and regularly writes on a wide range of social, cultural and environmental issues. He is the chairman of Mashal, a non-profit organization which publishes Urdu books on women's rights, education, environmental issues, philosophy, and modern thought. He is a staunch opponent of Wahhabist militant Islam in Pakistan and an advocate for democracy in the country. His article, ‘India Through Pakistani Eyes’, is worth a read and is appended below. It was emailed by my frie...

(New Scientist Science in Society May 13, 2009) It will soon be possible to boost human brainpower with electronic "plug-ins" or even by genetic enhancement. What will this mean for the future of humanity? Would it widen the gulf between the world's haves and have-nots -- and perhaps even lead to a distinct and dominant species with unmatchable powers of intellect? It won't be long before... Read here

The age of the printed book is drawing to a close. But there's no need to mourn its passing, says Jürgen Neffe In the shadows of the global financial crisis of the early 21st century, another revolution is gathering pace, whose repercussions reach far beyond the current correctable economic buckling. It impact on the world will compare with Gutenberg's. And with it, the era of the printed book will come to a close. Dissolved digitally like sound and image beforehand, limitlessly copyable, globally downloadable by the million with the click of a mouse, the book is entering the world of multimedia like its disembodied cousins from film, photography and music. This is the disintegration of the oldest serially produced data carrier in terms of form and content. Read here --

By John L. Jackson Jr. (Courtesy: The Chronicle Review ) My one-year-old and I spent the bulk of this week down at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, sitting in on both a dissertation defense and a dissertation proposal defense. It was a wonderful way to spend three days. I always tell people that my favorite moment as a Columbia graduate student had to be during the two hours (maybe it was only an hour and a half) that I spent discussing/defending my dissertation proposal with a dissertation committee that included faculty members from Columbia and NYU, the Department of Anthropology and Columbia Law. They were critical and encouraging. They cautioned me against methodological missteps and challenged me to think more ambitiously about my intellectual endgame. I appreciated them taking the time to really engage my work, and the session gave me the nerve I needed to strike out for “the field” and begin my ethnographic research. But the other side of that dissertational experienc...

Aarttee Kaul Dhar To quote S Vivekananda, “The Ramayana and Mahabharata are the two encyclopedias of the ancient Aryan life and wisdom portraying an ideal civilization which humanity has yet to aspire after.” Tracing Indian philosophical and literary history is an interesting exercise as it reveals records of religious and philosophical developments all striving towards ‘samanvaya’ which is synthesis, reconciliation and concord. Cultural patterns different environments diverse racial contributions and numerous local and historical traditions must have though influenced the Indian culture and philosophy they could not but affect its continuity during six thousand years or more. It would be impatient on my part to just talk of the epics without mentioning the itihasas, puranas, dharmas and other shastras significant in their own way providing necessary base and background to the whole picture in this humble tour-de-force. It is a huge topic but this is just a glimps...