Peri Sai Teja
Respected NL Hafta,
Having experienced unreliable (mis) information everywhere, I commend independent journalists such as yourself in providing accurate and verified information. Now that there is a ceasefire in place, we must start asking uncomfortable questions like how the attacks are happening in the first place. Was it a security failure and who is responsible?
Despite being a Vishwaguru, it seems Trump does not care much for India’s concerns. I am afraid Operation Sindoor does not stop independent journalists from asking questions to the government. Also please discuss and condemn in strongest of terms the deplorable proclamations by MP ministers against Col. Sofiya Qureshi for the sole reason that she is a Muslim.
Courage is contagious but also in very short supply.
My recommendation to the panel: The four-part documentary by DW titled “Hitler’s Reich: Diaries of supporters, opponents and victims”. Must watch for Abhinandan and team.
Peter Cat Recording
In an earlier Hafta, Shardool said that during the UPA years, India lacked strategic depth, which is why Manmohan Singh was criticised, while the Modi government is now doing a better job. I disagree. What did the theatrics around Balakot really achieve? Five years later, we’re back to square one with no tangible gains. Manmohan’s restraint, on the other hand, rallied global support, diplomatically isolated Pakistan, and helped maintain relative calm – until Modi and Doval reignited tensions in Kashmir.
Vaibhav
Dear NL Team,
Thank you for your wonderful work. I love Manisha but seeing her arguing about sindoor not being a symbol of patriarchy was quite disappointing. The symbols may be different but each culture has practices which reinforce patriarchy. Normalising such symbols as part of culture is the most dangerous of all.
The measure of if something is a symbol of patriarchy or not is quite simple: 1) Does it apply to both men and women equally or not? 2) Are women subjected to social judgement (persecution in the extreme) for not following it?
If you observe closely, the institution of marriage itself doesn’t pass these tests. It is an unequal relationship (where you stay, who owns the majority of assets, how inheritance is distributed, etc) and I don’t need to tell you the social judgement that unmarried women have to face.
The progress that has happened is because of scientific development in our knowledge and the women’s movements which fought against all such practices.
Vasundhara
Hi NL team,
I'm ‘96 born so I believe that qualifies me as a Gen-Z?
I think sindoor is patriarchal. As are the mangalsutra, toe rings, bindis, and white sarees. When society makes decisions for what is appropriate for people to wear depending on their marital status without a parity between the men and women, it is patriarchal.
Hindu society denied privileges to women who were not married, allowed them to marry only once (remember sati), and these things are very obvious outward markers. Girls are conditioned to want to wear these things watching their mothers. But they can only do so if they marry and lose the right again if their husbands die before them. Sindhoor is not like makeup or jewellery.
I also think marriage is patriarchal. In Indian society, women’s social position and acceptance changes depending on whether they marry, whether they can have children, whether they have sons, how many sons they have. Men are not judged as much.
Keep up the amazing work!
Srikanta
To Abhinandan, who dismissed patriotism as a primitive virtue...I wonder if the prefix patri- is the problem. He and Raman were frivolously cribbing about sindoor being a symbol of patriarchy. Is patriotism primitive because it has aadi praasa with patriarchy? Strange to see lefties having problems with “fatherly” references. Does matriotism sound any better? It is silly to equate harmless customs to ghettoising symbols of oppression. On a side note, who are Arunachalam, Kirpal and Sekhri in surnames? Vestiges of patriarchy? Why aren’t they gone? If being primitive is a problem, a bacterium, supposedly primitive, is more advanced than humans, and bacteria will outlive all life forms.
More seriously, see R Guha’s “patriots and partisans” where he explains what he means by patriotism (see excerpt), which is among many useful one.
*As a general point – If I want to convey something that I wish to share with fellow subscribers, it will be within 150 words. If not, please do not compress longer emails on air. Acknowledging is enough.
Excerpt:
Patriotism is not to be confused with nationalism, still less with jingoism or xenophobia. The genius of Mahatma Gandhi was to disentangle love of one’s country from adherence to a particular language or faith. The genius of Rabindranath Tagore was to show how one could love one’s country and yet have an open admiration for other cultures and countries. In countries as different as Pakistan and Israel, citizenship has been defined by adherence to a common faith and common language, and identification of a common enemy. To be a good Israeli means to be a Jew, speak Hebrew, and disparage Arab culture. On the other hand, to be Indian one does not have to be a Hindu, or speak Hindi. One does not even have to hate Pakistan.
Tragically, the language of patriotism has in recent years been appropriated by the Hindu right. In this they have been helped by the Marxist left, whose Fatherland has always been some nation other than their own – once Russia, then China, then Vietnam, then Cuba (the current country of choice for the Indian Marxist appears to be Venezuela). They have also been helped by liberals and non-party leftists, who – dismayed on the one side by the jingoism of the right and intrigued on the other by the high-sounding talk of global citizenship in an increasingly inter-connected world – have been too shy to think or speak of themselves as ‘Indian’.
My own patriotism is inspired by the legacy of the great Indian reformers of the past, whose work I have studied as a historian, and by the example of some Indian democrats I have had the privilege of knowing. Of these I may be allowed to single out three. I therefore salute Shivarama Karantha and Mahasweta Devi, whose patriotism was expressed in the work they did for their home state. Acclaimed novelists – in Kannada and Bengali respectively – they were deeply immersed in the life of their people. Karantha, almost single-handedly, built an environmental movement in Karnataka (along with reviving the Yakshagana dance–drama, promoting widow remarriage).
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