kriticulture

 By Rajesh Sharma Less than a week to go – and it will be a month since Shruti Sachdeva was abducted on September 24. The probe is on. The police is being blamed and ridiculed by turns. The opposition has taken out the whip to thrash the government right and left. True, it is the wretched state of law and order which a minor girl’s abduction by a spoilt brat with ‘criminal’ record has highlighted. But is that all? Is not the crime also a symptom of some deeper, more insidious malaise? To put it briefly but not sweetly, the girl’s abduction is the ripe fruit of a poisonous tree that has been cultivated over the years by all sorts of people among us. The brand of politics that has established itself as the only viable kind, with its deadly blend of wealth, force and an extremely uncouth disrespect for law, comes first to mind. Next, one thinks of the new economy which treats the spectacle as the only reality. Phrases like ‘reforms with a human face’, ‘the feel-good fa...

Rupa Publications, 2012 Rs. 275 Rajesh Sharma Why does Amandeep Sandhu write novels? To release the ghosts knocking under his rib cage? Admittedly. And much else adds up – attracted by the art of story-telling, prompted by the urge to delight his imagined reader, forced by the market’s monstrous hand. Paradoxically, despite a few avoidable, sometimes clichéd, musings on language and literary theory, the stock of additions includes a host of deletions that lurk spectrally under the printed words and make me wish, like a lover in fairy tales, for an undelete button that would be embedded somewhere in the novel. I dream of a publishing utopia in which the writer, like Marcel Proust’s ideal writer, does not have to be anxious about anyone’s approving eye.             Like his first novel Sepia Leaves (2008), this one too – his second – is a fruit of Sandhu’s struggle to come to terms with a difficult past. “ My attem...

A letter from the teachers to the teachers of Punjabi University (Part of the Campaign by Teachers for Intervention in Education) 19 September 2012 Dear Friend,     The PUTA polls are over, and yet not over. The electoral process has been stalled, and on ridiculous alibis - evidence enough that substantial reasons do not exist for doing what has been done. Everyone has witnessed the reluctance of the authorities to read the clear-as-daylight orders of the Honourable Court in the right spirit. The Court has obviously intervened in defence of democracy and the rule of law. That intervention, however, has been wilfully so read as to offend democracy and to assert an excess of arbitrary power.  Anyone can see that much more is stake than just elections.     But the collective aspirations of the teachers cannot be sealed and silenced in any box. Indeed, those aspirations have been already aired and the message has gone out loud and clear that the n...

"Judge justly, that you too may be judged so. " One day each one of us will be judged. And each one of us must judge one day. That is the day when we are called upon to stand by that light within us which discerns the truth behind the veil. That day has arrived today. There are those who tried to put off that day for ever. They thought they could sit behind glass walls and ignore us. They thought they were gods, eternally seated on their thrones. They isolated us, the independent-minded teachers. Let us tell them what they have done with the power which is given to humans to make the world more beautiful, more equal, more just, less evil. Let us tell them the truth with our silent act of judgement. Let us wield our vote like an instrument of speech. So that bad history does not repeat itself. ----- Panel of candidates: Rajesh Kumar (Department of English) – President Surjit Singh (Department of Punjabi) - Secretary ...

tIcrz &wr ieMtrvYNnSn ien AYjUkySn mnorQ-p`qr ipCly do dhwikAW dOrwn in`jI munw&y nUM isrmOr mMnx vwlI nvIN ArQ ivvsQw dy ADIn kIqy jw rhy ‘suDwrW’ nUM isry cVHwaux leI is`iKAw dy Kyqr ivc qbdIlIAW kIqIAW jw rhIAW hn[ socI smJI skIm ADIn iv`idAk pRbMD ivc ivgwV pYdw kIqy jw rhy hn[ iek pwsy qW vfyrw ividAwrQI vrg is`iKAw dy h`k qoN vWJw ho irhw hY, dUjy is`iKAw dw imAwr lgwqwr hyTW if`g irhw hY, qIjy AiDAwpkW nUM aunHW dI smwijk izMmyvwrI inBwaux leI loVINdI spys qoN mihrUm kIqw jw irhw hY Aqy aunHW nUM smwijk qOr ‘qy byloVI/ mh`qvhIx hsqI bxwaux dIAW koiSSW kIqIAW jw rhIAW hn[ aunHW dI BrqI dI pRikirAw AijhI bxweI jw rhI hY ik ilAwkq, Xogqw Aqy inAWSIlqw dI koeI pu`C pRqIq nhIN rhI[ ies leI ieh koeI hYrwnI vwlI g`l nhIN ik srkwrW Aqy XUnIvristI pRSwsn AiDAwpkW dIAW mMgW, zrUrqW, svYmwx Aqy Awdr vl koeI qv`jo nhIN idMdy[ nvyN AwriQk inzwm ivc aucyrI is`iKAw dIAW sMsQwvW ivc kMm krn vwlIAW purwxI qrz dIAW AiDAwpk j`QybMdIAW pRBwvkwrI nhIN rhIAW ikauNik aunHW ny n...

Punjabi University, Patiala  Declaration of Objectives During the last two decades changes have been underway in education which aim at making the economic ‘reforms’ a success. This is part of a larger agenda of treating private and corporate profits as the highest good under the so-called new economic order. Education is being subjected to deep-rooted and widespread perversions in a systematic and studied manner. Vast numbers of students are being deprived of any opportunity for meaningful education. The overall standards of education are dropping. Teachers are being robbed of the space in which they can respond ably to the call of their vocation; they are being reduced to insignificant appendages of a dehumanizing system that treats profits as more important than human beings. The system of recruitment of the faculty has been slowly distorted so much that competence, scholarship and legitimate claims to employment no longer have any value. It surprises no o...

By Asad Zaidi (Asad Zaidi's note on the superstar is so insightful that I could not resist the temptation to steal it from facebook and post it here.)   One often forgets the political backdrop to important changes in popular culture and trends in mass entertainment media. The fading of Rajesh Khanna as a superstar in the mid-1970s and the remarkable rise of Amitabh Bachchan as the new hero ran parallel to the rise of Sanjay Gandhi in Indian politics. The romantic-idealist and often vulnerable screen persona of Rajesh Khanna didn't fit in the emerging new India of पाँच सूत्री कार्यक्रम (5-Point Programme). It is said that the real social engineers of Bombay cinema in that era, the loutish duo of script and dialogue writers Salim-Javed, had offered an 'image makeover' to Rajesh Khanna but he wasn't interested. Amitabh Bachchan then famously underwent the 'transformation' to become the proto-fascist 'angry young man' of...