Nativity of Christ, painted in the Mughal empire, around 1800 AD
“The central celebration is the birth of a child. There is no culture that does not celebrate this event, because all of us who belong to the human race can see our collective future in the pudgy little face. We marvel at this conjuring act, the miniature miracle, at its tiny fingernails and budlike nose.” — Jerry Pinto, Indian Christmas: Essays, Memoirs, Hymns, an anthology edited by Jerry Pinto and Madhulika Liddle
Christmas centres around the birth of a child who impacted a large part of the world and urged us to love others despite differences, to be kind, to embrace those who suffered… and that is the spirit that continues to unite humankind to move towards a future where people thrive in harmony, with love in their hearts. Despite all the darkness that broods over the world, Christmas has come around. The sun still moves forward in time and at some point, the darkness will give way to light. Perhaps, Christmas will remind people of the values they need to uphold to live in a world that is not filled with fear, greed or the lust for power and they will stop killing ruthlessly and without any sense of coherence. With that in mind, we have tried to evoke the spirit of Christmas cheer by presenting writings that talk of celebrations.
This is a season that should be filled with hope, goodwill, peace and love. The celebrations — depicting variety, a departure from conventional norms — by writers who reach across borders and time, rekindle our belief in the wonder created by these values, which is what Christmas is all about. We start with Tagore, a Brahmo by religion but his poem in English dwells on the wonder he feels at the idea of this unique birth of Christ. Our other writers from across the world pitch in with what Christmas means to all of them, whether it creates a sense of goodwill, nostalgia, invokes curiosity or just evokes plain laughter. Hopefully, we can all join together to ring the bells of kindness, love, humanitarian help and peace this year!
Poetry
An excerpt from Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘The Child‘ a poem originally written in English by the poet to celebrate Christmas. Click here to read.
In I Went to Kerala, Rhys Hughes treads a humorous path while exploring Christmas in Kerala. Click here to read.
In Hold the Roast Turkey Please Santa , Keith Lyons writes from New Zealand, where summer solstice and Christmas fall around the same time. Click hereto read.
In My Christmas Eve “Alone”, Erwin Coomb has a strange encounter on Christmas eve… Is it real? Clickhere to read.
Nativity, a fresco by Italian artist Boticelli, created around 1467
A conversation with the author,Afsar Mohammed, and a brief introduction to his latest book, Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad. Click hereto read.
A conversation with Meenakshi Malhotra over The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle, edited by Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri and a brief introduction to the book. Click hereto read.
In His Unstable Shape, Rhys Hughes explores the narratives around a favourite nursery rhyme character with a pinch of pedantic(?) humour. Click here to read.
Mother & Child by Jamini Roy (1887-1972)Mother and Child by Picasso (1881-1973)
‘Victory to Man, the newborn, the ever-living.’ They kneel down, the king and the beggar, the saint and the sinner, the wise and the fool, and cry: ‘Victory to Man, the newborn, the ever-living.’
This is the month— the last of a conflict-ridden year— when we celebrate the birth of a messiah who spoke of divine love, kindness, forgiveness and values that make for a better world. The child, Jesus, has even been celebrated by Tagore in one of his rarer poems in English. While we all gather amidst our loved ones to celebrate the joy generated by the divine birth, perhaps, we will pause to shed a tear over the children who lost their lives in wars this year. Reportedly, it’s a larger number than ever before. And the wars don’t end. Nor the killing. Children who survive in war-torn zones lose their homes or families or both. For all the countries at war, refugees escape to look for refuge in lands that are often hostile to foreigners. And yet, this is the season of loving and giving, of helping one’s neighbours, of sharing goodwill, love and peace. On Christmas this year, will the wars cease? Will there be a respite from bombardments and annihilation?
We dedicate this bumper year-end issue to children around the world. We start with special tributes to love and peace with an excerpt from Tagore’s long poem, ‘The Child‘, written originally in English in 1930 and a rendition of the life of the philosopher and change-maker, Vivekananda, by none other than well-known historical fiction writer, Aruna Chakravarti. The poem has been excerpted from Indian Christmas: Essays, Memoirs, Hymns, an anthology edited by Jerry Pinto and Madhulika Liddle, a book that has been reviewed by Somdatta Mandal and praised for its portrayal of the myriad colours and flavours of Christmas in India. Christ suffered for the sins of humankind and then was resurrected, goes the legend. Healing is a part of our humanness. Suffering and healing from trauma has been brought to the fore by Christopher Marks’ perspective on Veronica Eley’s The Blue Dragonfly: healing through poetry. Basudhara Roy has also written about healing in her take of Kuhu Joshi’s My Body Didn’t Come Before Me.Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed a book that talks of healing a larger issue — the crises that humanity is facing now, Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World, by ex-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Nobel Laureate Michael Spence, Mohamed El-Erian and Reid Lidow. Parichha tells us that it suggests solutions to resolve the chaos the world is facing — perhaps a book that the world leadership would do well to read. After all, the authors are of their ilk! Our book excerpts from Dr Ratna Magotra’s Whispers of the Heart – Not Just A Surgeon: An Autobiographyand Manjima Misra’s The Ocean is Her Titleare tinged with healing and growth too, though in a different sense.
The theme of the need for acceptance, love and synchronicity flows into our conversations with Afsar Mohammad, who has recently authored Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad. He shows us that Hyderabadi tehzeeb or culture ascends the narrow bounds set by caged concepts of faith and nationalism, reaffirming his premise with voices of common people through extensive interviews. In search of a better world, Meenakshi Malhotra talks to us about how feminism in its recent manifestation includes masculinities and gender studies while discussing The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle, edited by her, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri. Here too, one sees a trend to blend academia with non-academic writers to bring focus on the commonalities of suffering and healing while transcending national boundaries to cover more of South Asia.
That like Hyderabadi tehzeeb, Bengali culture in the times of Tagore and Nazrul dwelled in commonality of lore is brought to the fore when in response to the Nobel laureate’s futuristic ‘1400 Saal’ (‘The year 1993’), his younger friend responds with a poem that bears not only the same title but acknowledges the older man as an “emperor” among versifiers. Professor Fakrul Alam has not only translated Nazrul’s response, named ‘1400Saal’ aswell, but also brought to us the voice of another modern poet, Quazi Johirul Islam. We have a self-translation of a poem by Ihlwha Choi from Korean and a short story by S Ramakrishnan in Tamil translated by T Santhanam.
Our short stories travel with migrant lore by Farouk Gulsara to Malaysia, from UK to Thailand with Paul Mirabile while chasing an errant son into the mysterious reaches of wilderness, with Neeman Sobhan to Rome, UK and Bangladesh, reflecting on the Birangonas (rape victims) of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war, an issue that has been taken up in Malhotra’s book too. Sobhan’s story is set against the backdrop of a war which was fought against linguistic hegemony and from which we see victims heal. Sohana Manzoor this time has not only given us fabulous artwork but also a fantasy hovering between light and dark, life and death — an imaginative fiction that makes a compelling read and questions the concept of paradise, a construct that perhaps needs to be found on Earth, rather than after death.
The unusual paradigms of life and choices made by all of us is brought into play in an interesting non-fiction by Nitya Amlean, a young Sri Lankan who lives in UK. We travel to Kyoto with Suzanne Kamata, to Beijing with Keith Lyons, to Wayanad with Mohul Bhowmick and to Langkawi with Ravi Shankar. Wendy Jones Nakanishi argues in favour of borders with benevolent leadership. Tongue-in-cheek humour is exuded by Devraj Singh Kalsi as he writes of his attempts at using visiting cards as it is by Rhys Hughes in his exploration of the truth about the origins of the creature called Humpty Dumpty of nursery rhyme fame.
Poetry again has humour from Hughes. A migrant himself, Jee Leong Koh, brings in migrant stories from Singaporeans in US. We have poems of myriad colours from Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Patricia Walsh, John Grey, Kumar Bhatt, Ron Pickett, Prithvijeet Sinha, Sutputra Radheye, George Freek and many more. Papia Sengupta ends her poem with lines that look for laughter among children and a ‘life without borders’ drawn by human constructs in contrast to Jones Nakanishi’s need for walls with sound leadership. The conversation and dialogues continue as we look for a way forward, perhaps with Gordon Brown’s visionary book or with Tagore’s world view of lighting the inner flame in each human. We can hope that a way will be found. Is it that tough to influence the world using words? We can wish — may there be no need for any more Greta Thunbergs to rise in protest for a world fragmented and destroyed by greed and lack of vision. We hope for peace and love that will create a better world for our children.
As usual, we have more content than mentioned here. All our pieces can be accessed on the contents’ page. Do pause by and take a look. This bumper issue would not have been possible without the contribution of all the writers and our fabulous team from Borderless. Huge thanks to them all and to our wonderful readers who continue to encourage us with their comments and input.
Here’s wishing you all wonderful new adventures in the New Year that will be born as this month ends!
A brief introduction to Remaking History:1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad, published by Cambridge University Press, and a conversation with the author, Afsar Mohammed
Afsar Mohammad
In a world given to wars and fanning differences, an in-depth study of history only reflects how we can find it repeating itself. In Remaking History:1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad, academic and writer, Afsar Mohammad, takes us back to the last century to help us fathom a part of history that has remained hoary to many of us.
On 15thAugust, 1947, when India and Pakistan ‘awoke’ to a freedom amidst the darkness of hatred and bloody trains and rivers, there was a part of the subcontinent which remained independent and continued under the rule of a Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII. This was Hyderabad. Later, in post-Jinnah times, when India decided to integrate the independent kingdom, which had even found a name for its independent existence — ‘Osmanistan’ — what broke out was an episode called Police Action, code name Operation Polo. Mohammad’s book is an exhaustive relook at the integration of a people into the mainstream nation of India, using the voices of common people.
There were strands of communists in the Telangana movement and the mercenaries we know of as Razakars. His own family was involved in the events, and he had an uncle arrested for the performance of Burra Katha, a form of theatre used by Left to educate the audience, somewhat like a musical street theatre. Mohammad has interviewed survivors extensively and knitted into his narrative findings which make us wonder if religion or nationalism were used as a subtext of power play and greed. For, we have the local cultural lore where the people despite differences in faith had a tehzeeb or a way of life, where Hindu writers wrote in Urdu for the love of it and Muslims used Telugu.
Afsar Mohammad interviewing an activist from abasti in Old Hyderabad. Photo Credits: Sajaya Kakarla
Hyderabad was perceived by some as a sanctuary, like writer Jaini Mallaya Gupta. He contends: “Like me, many leftist writers and activists had migrated to the city at that point and they became popular by using pseudonyms. Hyderabad was like a sanctuary as it could hide us in its remote neighborhoods where we were supported by local Muslim community too. But we all became really closer to each other and more connected to the Urdu literary culture that indeed provided a model for our activities.”
But did things stay that way post Operation Polo? Razia, a witness to the police action, states: “It was a phase of unfortunate turns—everything so unexpected! Not about the Razakars or the Nizam, but most of the ordinary Muslims (ām Musalmān) whom I know fully well since my childhood had a hard time. Particularly young Muslim men and women … all suddenly became suspects and many of them from their homes leaving everything. They just wanted to live somewhere rather than dying in the bloody hands of the Razakars and Hindu fundamentalists.”
That cultural hegemony has a tendency of typecasting languages based on political needs is shown as a myth by Mohammad as both Hindu and Muslims used Urdu and Telugu in Hyderabad. His book revives Hyderabadi tehzeeb as the ultimate glue for defining a Hyderabadi. This is somewhat similar to what Bengal faced which had been divided along religious lines in 1947. Professor Fakrul Alam, a well-known academic, essayist and translator, tells us in his essay on the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, “The key issue here was language and the catalyst was the insistence by the central government of Pakistan that Urdu should be the lingua franca of the country…” Bangladesh emerged as a protest against linguistic and cultural hegemony. Eminent writer, Aruna Chakravarti, goes further back in history in her historical novel, Daughters of Jorasanko (2016), and shows how Tagore was involved in preventing the division of Bengal proposed by Lord Curzon in 1905. However, despite these historic precedents, we are seeing the world suffer wars from such divides and common people continue to be affected by the violence and bloodshed, losing their homes, livelihoods and often, their lives. What happened in the last century continues to reiterate itself more virulently in the current world. In times such as these, Remaking History surfaces as a book that has much to offer, perhaps if humanity is willing to learn lessons from history.
Your book is focussed on a small group of people, the common people of Hyderabad who suffered during the integration into a nation. Why would this be important in a larger context? How would it assimilate into stories of the world? By stories, I would mean plight of Rohingyas,Muslims, Jews … more or less plight of minority groups of people. Do you see any emerging patterns in all these stories?
In this work, I’ve consistently used the category of ordinary people as related to Hyderabad and Deccan. I needed this term to speak about both Hindus and Muslims as I was constantly reminded of the divisive politics persistent in this region and throughout South Asia. Despite the focus on the Muslims of Hyderabad, this work emphasises the inseparability of Hindus and Muslims when it comes to the violence and trauma of the Police Action of 1948. According to many interlocutors, the violence had inflicted the entire community — mostly the ordinary people of the Deccan.
I started writing this book with a primary idea that this lens of ordinariness helps us to not just this 1948 violence in Deccan, but many other religious conflicts now rampant through the globe. The examples you just mentioned above are not an exception. Since we’re blind to an ordinary person’s approach or emotional life, we totally failed to capture many dimensions of these violent events. Most patterns, either subjective or objective, that emerge out of this violence and trauma have their origins in this search for ordinariness.
Along with a few interviews, you have brought up the issues through writings of great Telugu and Urdu writers of that time. Can you tell us if literature actually translates to real life situations?
To be honest, being a writer and poet by myself, I’ve always believed that literature is half-truth which is filtered by multi-dimensional subjectivity of a writer. Specifically, when there’s a political situation, literary writings also tend to project a partial reality. However, these gaps could be filled by empirical evidence that we gather from the stories of ordinary people who not only witnessed the violence, but also suffered many setbacks caused by such violence. Yet, we require a balanced perspective to level these oral narratives and written materials. In this way, rather than relying fully on a singular story, we can explore the possibilities of multiple stories of a singular event.
Your family and you profess Leftist leanings. And yet, you write of religious minorities. Historically, the Left professes to be above traditional religions, like Hinduism and Islam. How do you integrate religion into communist ideology? Would you agree with Harari that Left is a religion unto itself?
One of the major critiques in this work is to contest the left-centric approach to 1948 and even the Telangana armed rebellion of 1946-1951. As I argued in this book, leftist writers, poets and ideologues completely failed to capture the reality of the day. I’ve presented evidence for this argument from various writings and witness narratives too. Since their high emphasis on economic determinism, many key social and religious dimensions remained their blind spots. Various religious and caste developments during the periods of the 1930s and 40s were determining factors of modern Indian history. Yes, of course, I still believe in the Leftist ideology, but never worship it though! To put it simply, I’m a critical Leftist and critical Muslim!
‘Popular understanding is largely shaped by what exists in circulation. This is what we see in the form of how people understand the Police Action across India as well as folklore, including the reconstructed folk narratives such as Adluri Ayodhya Rama Kavi’s burra katha. Such popular representations further reinforce the larger narrative peddled by the state.’ What exactly is burra katha? And what was your family involvement in it?
Burra katha was a popular storytelling and music genre in Telugu utilised by the leftist organisations to circulate their idea of resistance against the status quo in Telangana and elsewhere. Shaik Nazar was an icon of this radical narrative tradition and he also trained hundreds of disciples in this genre. Most artists and writers from the leftist camp were busy producing stories based on the Telangana armed rebellion and other resistance movements to gather the people in the public meetings between 1946 and 1952. My family also had some role in the production and circulation of this genre. However, it’s a story beyond my family’s history and had numerous political and performative implications that I’ve discussed in my book. I already have a detailed narrative of these personal and professional connections in my book and I encourage my readers to access them directly from the book. Just a brief note, many performers were arrested and put in prisons for months and months during this armed rebellion and they also suffered heavily due to the oppression of the Nehru’s government.
A burra katha performance
Do you see a parallel between what was happening then to such performers and protest writers in more recent times? Do you find still that popular opinion is being shaped by stuff circulating in media?
I see many parallels between the past and the present conditions of performers and writers who speak out against the hierarchies and status quo. Recent times, we see more strategic ways of silencing such protest and performance genres. Various apparatuses of the state have become extremely powerful and most writers/performers are being cleverly trapped into a governmental system. Nevertheless, there’re always exceptions. This book captures such intense moments that stubbornly contested the government-led media or privileges. We need more such strong voices to change the current state of things.
Were Razakars the Nizam’s army? I had been under the impression that they were mercenaries — irrespective of religion. But you say they were volunteers. Can you explain who were the Razakars exactly?
During the earliest phase of the Razakar activism, this was not Nizam’s army. It was supposed to be a group of young Muslims who volunteered to initiate radical changes in the Hyderabadi-Deccan Muslim community. In that sense, Razakar was a “volunteer,” the actual literal meaning of the term. Later, when Kasim Razvi became the president of this group, it took on a totally different manifestation. Razvi promoted a version of the Razakar activism that eventually served the military needs of the Nizam. I actually tried to show these different faces/phases of Razakar activism by collecting evidence from various writings and oral histories.
Before the Indian government ‘integrated’ the state of Hyderabad, there seems to have been a simmering of resentment against the Nawabi lifestyle and the common people, irrespective of their religious beliefs as you have shown. Do you find in the world context such reactions against wars or cultural hegemony currently?
Before, during and after the integration of the state into the Indian national government, it was an extremely complicated situation which we could name it as a “transition” period. It was similar to many states in India, but Hyderabad state had a peculiar situation due to its local politics and Deccani identity. Of course, there was a resistance to the Nawabi lifestyle as the new generation Muslims were engaging with many facets of modernity and embracing a reformist version of Islam. Nevertheless, these changes were not merely the products of local Muslim life. As I argued in the book, local Islam and Muslim sense of belonging was in constant dialogue with the larger networks of Islam and Muslim politics. I see similar thread continuing in contemporary Muslim discourse since 1992 when Hindu nationalism became a defining factor for many identities.
Did and do common people resent the “integration” as they did the Nawab? What would be the cause of that? Was it religion or economic and social discontent that becomes the focal point of riots then and as of now?
Whereas the Nawab’s resistance had his own political and private reasons, as I noticed from the evidence, the resistance from ordinary people had more to do with the common good and also, there was a protest against the way the entire military invasion was initiated and promulgated. People were concerned about the atrocities of the military which were aimed at wiping out the leftist movement on the first hand. At the end of the day, the Nawab and the Nehru government remained safe and friendly, while thousands of people were killed for this power sharing. Despite several different viewpoints, most of the public opinion was against this military invasion and the killings.
Why is evolving a Muslim, or for that matter any religious identity, important in today’s world? Will these not lead to conflict as we are experiencing in the post-pandemic twenty first century?
It’s not about a specific religious identity: now it’s high time for any identity to be discussed and disseminated. I see this more as a conflict resolution so that we become aware of our differences and learn the limits of our discourses. We’ve bigger issues that the pandemic. We’ve caste, religion, gender and regional issues that we need to sort out gradually. Many conflicts around us are due to our failure to acknowledge these identities and their role in the making of our community.
“The nationalist/textbook version of history is determined by the nation-state as is seen in how a nascent India emphasized and celebrated the ‘integration’ with an utter disregard for native opinion or the costs people paid associated with the bloody event.” Is this true not just in the Indian context but in context of the battles we see happening in the world?
Yes! Absolutely! The desire for “integration” is a product of hegemonic politics and turning into global phenomenon and we’re all plagued by the idea of nationalism and we’re forced to declare a singular nation, culture and language in many instances. We’ve too many examples right now to prove this and I don’t have to rehearse everything here.
Can you suggest a solution to finding and enforcing, peace, love, kindness and forgiving?
At first, we need to realise our mutual desire for such love and compassion. Our sheer dependence on political parties and making their goals as our own goals is a self-defeat by all means. I see community as a larger concept and we need to acknowledge its real sources of being and belongingness.
Thanks for your time and the comprehensive book.
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
In conversation with Meenakshi Malhotra and a brief introduction to The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle (Scopus Index), edited by Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri, published by Routledge
Dr Meenakshi Malhotra
Why would one half of the world population be seen as evolved from the rib of the first man, soulless or as merely subservient to fulfil the needs of the other half? This is a question that has throbbed for centuries in the hearts of that half that suffers indignities to this date, women. While feminism became a formalised idea only in the 18th-19th century and things started improving for certain groups of women around the world, in some regions, like Afghanistan, the situation has deteriorated in recent years. Their government, recognised by world leadership, has ensured that women do not have schooling, cannot work in senior positions, have to be accompanied by men if they go out and remain covered as the feminine body could tempt bringing shame, strangely, to the female but not to the man who has the right to be tempted and hence to violence and violate her body and her mind.
Given this ambience, any literature voicing protest for patriarchal mindsets that accept situations like in current day Afghanistan passively, should be celebrated as an attempt to shard the silence of suffering by one half of the world population. The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle, edited by three academics, Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon and Rachana Johri, does just that. At the start, we are told: “This book situates the discourse on the gendered body within the rapidly transitioning South Asian socio-economic and cultural landscape. It critically analyzes gender politics from different disciplinary perspectives…”
Featuring 22 writers, the narratives take up a range of issues faced by women in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Srilanka. The Pakistani implementation of Islamic law, under the Hudood ordinances, has been addressed in a powerful essay by Aysha Baqir, subsequently by Anu Aneja, in her discourse on Urdu poetry. It was interesting to read how the ghazal form started as a male-only art form where women were depicted as mysterious houris or pining with sadness. Birangona — a phrase that was given to rape victims of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War — has been explored by Sohana Manzoor through a classic, Rizia Rahman’s novel, Rokter Okshor[1](1978), written about such women driven to prostitution. Women’s voices in the Sri Lankan LTTE have been explored by Simran Chaddha. Nayema Nasir has taken up decadent customs in the progressive Bohra community in Mumbai and shown how things are moving towards a change. Colonial and Dalit voices have found a hearing in Malhotra’s essay on Mahasweta Devi’s short story, ‘Draupadi’, set against the Naxalite movement of 1970s.
Dotted with women’s responses to a variety of current issues, including the Anti-CAA-NRC uprisings (Tamanna Basu), Shaheen Bagh (Meenakshi Gopinath, Krishna Menon, Rukmini Sen and Niharika Banerjea), and the pandemic (Krishna Menon, Deepti Sachdev and Rukmini Sen), there is even a case study by Shalini Masih dealing with psychiatric trauma where both the psychiatrist and the patient, who might have evolved into a stalker or a rapist without the therapy, heal. A certain sense of hope echoes through some of these narratives, a hope to heal from wounds that have sweltered over eons.
The flow of words is smooth and the ideas should be able to rise against the tide of erudition to touch our lives with lived realities. There are responses that transcend the heaviness of academic writing for instance the impassioned start made by Giti Chandra in her narrative: “A woman’s body is a story that men tell each other. When it is full-hipped, it is a tale of their healthy children; when it is fair, it speaks of their wealth; when it is narrow, it proclaims their access to gyms; and when it is tanned, it flaunts their ability to vacation on sunny isles. If its feet are not small enough to convey a leisure that does not require walking, they are bound and made smaller and more childishly submissive; if its legs are not long enough befitting its trophy status, bone-crippling heels are added to them. When it is raped it is an assertion of power, a chest-thumping; when it is raped it is an aggression over its owner; when it is raped its womb is stolen from the enemy…” Chandra points out some things that make one think, like quoting Rahila Gupta, she suggests victims is not the word we should use for women, but we should refer to the sufferers as survivors.
This collection of essays questions social norms and niceties to realise what early woman’s rights activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, drafted, that “all men and women [had been] created equal” in July 1848. While the struggle continues through centuries and the discourse of these narratives, the last essay by a man, Brijesh Rana, attempts to give a broader and more inclusive outlook to the whole human body. The book comes across as a tryst — of academic and feminist voices — to speak up for mankind to equalise.
To further understand the intent and scope of this book, we have in conversation one of the editors— Meenakshi Malhotra, who teaches gender studies and literature, has to her credit two Charles Wallace fellowships and a number of books. She reflects on the bridge that is being attempted between scholarship and activism.
How and when did you conceive this book? Tell us a bit about your journey from the conception to the publication of the book.
This book was originally conceived due to the positive response my co-editors and I received after presenting a panel at an American Association of Asian studies (AAS) conference back in 2017. We were approached by an international publisher who encouraged us to take forward the work with a focus on South Asia. We were unable to take it forward at that time, however we revived the project a few months into the lockdown in late 2020 when we felt we had a little more time. Also, along the way, we were able to reach out to fellow travellers, working in and on Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Three of you have collaborated to compile and edit this book. Collaborations to bring out books are not easy. Tell us about this collaboration.
As we three had presented on the same panel, the collaboration was a natural corollary since we had a sense of being fellow travellers and sister academics/scholars. That worked well for us because each of us were engaged in research and research guidance and wanted to showcase the recent work in this area. Both the co-editors, Krishna working on gender and its intersections with politics and Rachna on gender and psychology are very well-established scholars in the field of gender. I work on gender and literature, had my own network and I must mention that in the course of writing for Borderless Journal, I was able to access the work of others on that platform.
Explain to us the significance of the title of your book.
I think we arrived at the title through two processes-one was the immediate situation of Covid which left us in a state of precarity. However, we felt that even within the context of the contagion, women — and other genders — were endangered in specific ways. Second is the understanding that the body is always already produced by multiple matrices of gender, race, caste etc. The human body is also always a gendered body.
We had initially suggested that we call it ‘The Gendered Body and its Fragments’ to connote the bundling of several discursive strands on gendered bodies, but the idea was vetoed (by the initial reviewer) since “fragments” had resonances and nuances which we did not have space (or expertise) to go into, at that point.
You have a variety of contributors, some of who are non- academic. What did you look for when you chose your content?
Variety as you point out, is the key term. We were looking for something new, something interesting, flagging the variegated cultures of South Asian societies. The book comprises a mix of experienced researchers and some researchers whose essays are their preliminary forays into publishing.
Your book is divided into different sections ‘Negotiation’, ‘Struggle’, ‘Resistance’, ‘Protest’, ‘Critique’, ‘Representations and New Directions’. Can you tell us the need to compartmentalise the essays into this structural frame?
Just to give it a structure, organisation and coherence. Having said that, there are also frequent overlaps.
Would you call this book feminist? Feminism is as such a human construct. Why would this construct be essential for treating people equally? What is the need for feminism?
It is feminist in its orientation to the research areas as well as its methodologies. The key concept here is collaboration and therefore we have two conversation as an expression of feminist epistemology or knowledge-making.
Feminism, like other modes of affirmative action — like reservations, quotas — are an attempt to create a level playing field for historically disprivileged groups and oppressed minorities.
Having said that, I/we would like to point out that feminism has become inclusive and an umbrella term that also includes the work on masculinities and trans-identities since the 1990s.
Isn’t feminism the forte of only women?
Not at all and that is why we have the term feminisms. We hope to do more work subsequently on masculinities, on trans bodies in the future.
You have 21 women writers who write of women’s issues. Yet the last is an essay by a man — not on feminist issues— but more to create a sense of inclusivity, if I am not wrong. Why did you feel the need for this essay?
It is not so much about women’s issues as much as about gendered bodies in contemporary South Asia, about identities, subjectivities, bodies in motion gearing up for political action(the conversation and the essay on campus movements are instances).
Also, the last essay which articulates a post-humanist perspective, I felt, would take us beyond the materialities of gendered bodies and flag the way recent research/scholarship has looked at the Anthropocene. It was attempting to give a meta perspective, to bring in a way of seeing, which probably will have an impact on how we understand and conceptualise human bodies.
Your book blurb says: “Topical and comprehensive, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of gender studies, sociology, political sociology, social anthropology, cultural studies, post-colonial studies and South Asian studies.” Why would you limit the scope of your book when you have some essays that should be read by many and are like eye openers, like the ones on Hudood, Birangonas, Bohras, even your own on ‘Draupadi’ and more?
I think Routledge as an academic publisher, probably does this routinely, to highlight the academic terrain any new book covers.
Having said that, we would definitely want the book to be of general interest. Some of the essays discussed issues which were possibly eye-openers for us as well.
What is the difference between academic writing and non-academic writing? You do both, I know.
Academic writing has often a thesis and an argument underpinning it, which is not to say that non-academic writing — especially the essay — cannot have them.
Also, many of the essays were based on student papers/MPhil and even PhD dissertations. The panel we were a part of was an academic conference on South Asian studies.
Would this book be classified as women’s writing as majority of the writers are women and have written on women’s issues… and yet there is a man? Is it necessary to have such classifications? Would it rule out male readers?
Not at all to every question. It just happens that many of our contributors are women, but I would like to dispel the idea that “gender” is about women only. It is about boxes, stereotypes and role-based expectations, which are to be questioned.
Thanks for giving us a powerful book and your time.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976)
1400 SAAL OR The YEAR 1993
A hundred years ago O poet, you had thought of us With such immense affection, A hundred years ago!
Mystical one; child of mystery, Taking off the cloak covering your eyes, When did you arrive from some far-off haven? Heading from the south and opening a window of our house, O secret stroller into our dreams, You came with the fragrance wafted by the spring breeze, To where a hundred years later I was reading your poem At nighttime. An absent-minded butterfly, you saw us with pain-brightened and moist eyes— With silent wings, Fluttering casually, you went languidly away. And we, a hundred years later, Keep reading your poem, dyed in the tenderness of youth, With rapt attention, affectionately. In a reverie, and sleepy, with eyes drooping, My beloved listens to your prophetic song With tear-moistened eyes.
Alas, to this day, The shut southern window Opens again and again. The restless spring breeze cries out in pent up pain. In minds and forests and in murmuring blossoms, Moist flowers shed from their braided beds, Again and again.
The dark eyelids of the blossoms keep fluttering softly. The female bee snatches honey from the beak of her mate.
The dark-eyed buds flutter in the gentle breeze. Drenched in pollen, bees drink honey-sweetness fully. The she-dove loses herself at the warbling of her mate. The forest bride has decked herself in crimson robes of youthfulness. Every now and then earth’s heart gasps At the breeze’s passionate outbursts.
Immersed in the depth of your being, a hundred years later, Oh sun-suffused one, I have been reading your poem, With immense adoration. At your gesture I wake up to your music, O artful one, I’ve grasped your artfulness! Stealthily you tiptoe To our far away youthful beings, In poetry, songs and in lush tones and colourful dreams. All flowers that have bloomed today—all birdsongs, All crimson hues, Caressed by you, O ever-youthful poet, Have become livelier! In the morning hours of this spring festival, You’ve become the song in our youthful festivities. Once a darling child and now immortal in a bower All of us youthful men and women await your nuptial hour. Sing O dear one, sing again and again The songs you would sing amidst blooming flowers, Songs my beloved and I sing on our own or together, Songs at whose end I slide into sleep, only to hear In a dream appearing in a midnight hour, My beloved weep, “Dearest poet, friend and wise one—“ Till my dream ends suddenly And I view my beloved’s eyes moisten Until tears trickle down her eyes.
I remember now, how a hundred years ago You had stirred—and others too had awakened In some far away cloistered state. At your gesture a sad tune had spread its wings and flown. Glancing back from the window momentarily, It had caressed the tears lining your eyelids. It had bent the curling tresses of flower buds. And then vanished—leaving you sitting silently. Moistened by the dewdrop of your eyes, Your messages blossomed; some bloomed, Some even resonated instantly, And then were tucked away inside our dreams.
All of a sudden a door opened In the spring morning your greeting came through. The envoy of spring you’d sent a hundred years ago Filled us youthful ones with intense yearnings.
O Emperor of all poets, though we haven’t seen you, The Taj Mahal you created, Sparkling like sandalwood on the forehead of time Entrances us and we behold it breathlessly. We curse our youth— “Why did it have to be a hundred years later?” Alas, in this day and age, We’ve never been able to glimpse Mumtaz and behold the Taj!
A thousand years later—O emperor of poets, New poets keep coming to sing your praise From sunrise to sunset songs celebrate your feats And the tune that wandered away from you Fill groves and forest shades with your message anew.
And in our time A hundred tunes keep sounding from veenas in our homes And yet the heart remains unfulfilled and the soul keeps yearning Traversing a hundred years your song drifts into our dreams Then it occurs to me our poet You have settled in our horizon to light it up forever— Our very own and eternal sun!
A hundred years ago, You had greeted us -- young ones -- warmly, Vibrantly and affectionately. The same greeting is being sent to you this day As a floral wreath to decorate your feet.
O perfect poet, it seems you’ve appeared in imperfect guise Amidst us, softly, silently! And with a trembling voice imperfect being that I am, I sing your spring song in your spring bower And send it to you a hundred years later!
(First published in Kazi Nazrul Islam: Selections 1, edited by Niaz Zaman, Dhaka: writers.ink, 2020)
Clickhere to read Tagore’s 1400 Saal, the poem that inspired this beautiful response from one of the greatest poetic voices of all times.
A rendition of Nazrul’s poem in response to Tagore’s 1400 Saal in Bengali
Born in united Bengal, long before the Partition, Kazi Nazrul Islam(1899-1976) was known as the Bidrohi Kobi, or “rebel poet”. Nazrul is now regarded as the national poet of Bangladesh though he continues a revered name in the Indian subcontinent. In addition to his prose and poetry, Nazrul wrote about 4000 songs.
Just as George Orwell (1903-1950) envisioned a bleak future in his novel, 1984, Tagore left his optimistic vision filled with hope for posterity – a vision which has also been borne true. Written in the Phalgun or spring of the Bengali year 1302 (1895), ‘1400Saal‘ or ‘The Year 1993’, was first published in Tagore’s collection called Chitra (Picture) in 1895.
Art by Sohana Manzoor
1400 SAAL or The YEAR 1993
A hundred years from today… Who are you reading my poetry With eager curiosity? A hundred years from today. I won’t be able to give you Even a small fragment of the Exuberance of this spring morning — A blossom or a birdsong, The passions that Drench us. A hundred years from today…
Still, once, open your Southern door, Sit by the window, Gaze at the distant horizon, And imagine — One day, a hundred years before, A lively, euphoric cluster wafted from Heaven into the heart of the universe, Like a new-born Phalgun day — Free of ties, ecstatic and restless, Adrift with the scent of flowers. The Southern breeze Rushed to colour the Earth With a youthful glow, One hundred years before you. On that day, the soul of a poet soared With a song-soaked heart — To find words which bloom With an abundance of love, One hundred years ago.
A hundred years from today Which new poet will strum Lyrics in your hearths? I felicitate the poet with delight In your joyous spring — But let my vernal songs, Find echoes in your hearts for a while, Like the buzz of bees, Like the murmur of leaves... One hundred years from today...
About 32 years down the line, Nazrul responded to this poem of Tagore’s with a rejoinder, which is from the standpoint of a young poet and depicts his adulation for the older one and his poetry. Nazrul’s poem in Bengali is also called 1400 Saal and has been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. The translation can be read by clicking here.
This poem was also discussed and translations read in 1993, the Gregorian calendar year for 1400 in the Bengali calendar, in a function jointly organised by the Nehru Centre of the High Commission of India in London and the Tagore Centre of London and held in the premises of the Nehru Centre. The translations included a rendition of Tagore’s own rather brief and ‘loosely translated’ version, according to the keynote speaker and scholar, Brian A. Hatcher, published in the poet’s collection called, The Gardener and reprinted in The Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore (New York, 1966).
Tagore’s own vision of his songs being remembered after one hundred years has been not only borne true but also his hope that poets and poetry will continue to impact our lives, stirring hope and love in our hearts. The role of a poet as seen by Tagore, perhaps, is what Uma Dasgupta’s research on Sriniketan reinforces — as that of a visionary and not merely a recorder of events.
Tagore reciting his ‘1400 Saal‘ in Bangla
This poem has been translated by Mitali Chakravarty with editorial input by Sohana Manzoor and research by Sohana and Mitali on behalf of Borderless Journal
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The old woman with disheveled hair squinted her eyes while surveying the barren plain that lay around them. Finally, she looked at the sulking boy and said, “It hardly matters. We’ll just walk till we get there.”
The girl in her late teens looked warily at the singed-brown landscape. She could not spot a single tree or a blade of grass, let alone any other living creature. Finally, she said, “This place looks worse than the Sahara Desert. It’s like we can just die here and nobody would know.”
The woman giggled. “Die? You mean, disappear? You think it will happen anytime soon? That would be such a relief!”
The siblings looked at her with uncertainly.
As they walked, the boy said, “Did mom ever tell you about this place, Rumu Apu[1]? Why… this …” he looked about with distaste and finished the sentence with vehemence, ‘Ditch! Yes, that’s what it is – a ditch!”
His elder sister shook her head, “No, Pappu. I don’t think I ever heard of this area.” She wondered where their parents had disappeared. And where was their elder brother? Why would they just leave them at this God forsaken place in the middle of nowhere?
“We didn’t do anything bad, did we?” Pappu asked. Yes, he and his sister Rumu were having a bit of bickering in the car, but that was nothing new between the two of them.
The old woman walked ahead of them unperturbed.
Rumu said, “So, where are we headed again? Why don’t you just take us to Tilkati Lake? We can find our way from there.”
The woman stopped and looked at them with a big grin. The siblings realised with a shock that she did not have a single tooth in the cave of her mouth. Earlier, they had thought that like other village women, her teeth were plain black from chewing betel leaf with zarda[2]and tobacco leaf. For the first time, they also noticed her strange attire. Instead of a saree, she wore a greyish sack. The two shuffled uneasily and finally Pappu puffed up his chest and asked, “You know Tilkati Lake, right?”
The woman merely stared at them.
“It can’t be far from here,” Pappu persisted. “Our dad was saying that we were only a kilometer away from Tilkati Lake.”
Rumu added, “It’s very close to our grandparents’ house. You know the Chowdhuries? Hisham Chowdhury is our maternal grandfather.”
The woman finally said, “Once you’re here, you can’t go back. I will take you to the Old Man.” She turned around and said, “Follow me.”
Pappu cried, “What are you talking about? And what old man?”
Rumu clasped her brother’s hand and said, “I think she is a bit crazy. But let’s follow her— we need to get out of here.”
Rumu and Pappu trudged along with the strange woman through the parched wildernesses.
Then Pappu yelped, “What’s that?”
“Where?” Rumu looked around perplexedly.
“There, near that large rock on the left,” Pappu pointed to a boulder about twenty yards away from them.
At first, Rumu did not see anything. But as she looked carefully, she thought she saw something bright floating in the air. There was a pair of them, white and shimmering, and suddenly they flickered and disappeared.
Their companion held out her palms in a strange gesture and muttered something under her breath.
“Yes, you’ll see them sometimes,” she said.
“But what the hell are those?” Pappu was on the verge of tears.
The woman looked at them mournfully and said, “Eyes.”
Suddenly, Pappu started to bawl. He was only ten years old after all. He was also the darling of his family, born as a “sweet mistake” on his parents’ part. Used to having his wishes fulfilled all the time, the situation drove him crazy. He wanted his mother. Rumu vaguely recalled that they were driving to their grandparents’ place on the outskirts of Kumilla. Something happened when they were half a mile away from Tilkati Lake, but she could not remember exactly what.
When she woke up, she was sitting on a dirt road and the familiar green fields were replaced by a barren landscape. Pappu was lying near her on the ground and there was no sign of her parents, elder brother, or their car. She never wore a watch herself, and her mobile phone was in her purse, which was probably in the car. She tried the watch on Pappu’s hand, but it was smashed. Rumu looked up at the sky—what kind of a lurid color was that? And where was the sun?
Pappu’s incessant sobs brought her back to the present and she held him close. “There, there, don’t cry, Pappu. We’ll make it, I promise.” She looked at the woman and said sternly, “If you can’t say anything helpful, just keep quiet. Don’t scare my little brother.”
The woman shrugged and said, “But I was trying to help.”
Somewhere in the distance something howled. It was eerie and inhuman. It sounded like the lamentation of many people. Pappu sprang up and Rumu froze. They stood still hugging each other until the sound died down. Then they gritted their teeth and kept on walking.
Finally, however, they were brought to an abrupt halt in front of a tall building with an open door. Rumu looked up and realised it was not a building, but the facade of a mountain. She recalled the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin who took the children of the town to such a mountain and disappeared through a door. She shivered, but slowly followed the woman and dragged Pappu after her. At least, they would be able to rest. Rest? She realised with a jolt that she was not actually tired. Nor was she thirsty. Yet they had walked for hours without any food or water. She bent down to look at Pappu. Unlike her, he seemed exhausted.
Rumu whispered to the woman, “Can we have some water? Pappu is tired. He needs water. And food too.”
For the first time, the woman was ruffled out of complacency. Her eyes widened as she bent down to examine Pappu. Muttering something to herself she bade them in. On entering the place, Rumu saw a long tunnel diving endlessly into some dark interior. There were small oval shaped openings on both sides of the tunnel. She ushered Rumu and Pappu into one of those holes and hurried off.
The small room was roundish in shape and the floor was smooth. There was, however, no bed or chair. Rumu sat on the floor and put Pappu’s head on her lap. After a while, the woman returned with an earthen jug. She was followed by an old man. He was small and thin and carried a staff in hand. For some reason, he reminded Rumu of Yoda from The Star Wars. The woman sat before them and poured water between Pappu’s lips, Rumu noted detachedly that there was no glass.
As Pappu slowly woke up, the woman brought out a small bowl with some fruits in it. Rumu did not recognise any of the fruits. As Pappu munched on his food, Rumu stared at their hosts who were speaking in low voices.
“Where did you find them?”
“The usual place.”
“Hmm, but the boy is not supposed to be here…”
After that Rumu could not hear anything clearly.
By then Pappu was done with eating, and he wanted to sleep. They brought out some ancient looking bedding and tried to make him comfortable. Then the old man asked Rumu to go with him. Rumu was reluctant to leave Pappu, but the old man said with a smile, “He will be safe here. Don’t worry.”
Unlike the woman, the old man seemed kind and concerned. Rumu turned to look at her brother who had already fallen asleep on the makeshift bed. She felt an acute pain in her chest as she was convinced that she would never see him again. But she had no will to protest. She felt she was living in a dream and she surrendered herself to the inevitable.
Rumu and the old man walked through the endless tunnel which looked dark. However, after a few steps, things seemed tolerably clear. The ground probably was an uneven black surface smoothed by years of usage. The walls emitted a greyish light, and they could see in the dark. But the girl suspected that her companion knew the path well and probably did not even need the light.
After a long, long walk, without any warning they reached an opening. Turning right Rumu found herself out in the open. Her feet touched something soft and she saw that she was standing on a bed of pale blue grass. Rumu realised that though the sky was still lurid, the garish landscape had softened into pastel shades here. Not too far away, there were clusters of people.
For some reason, she felt a strong urge to remember what had happened before she and her brother arrived here, but everything seemed hazy. She shook her head and went closer to the old man. She could see the people more clearly now– one woman was crying for her jewelry, another weeping over a lost child. Suddenly, a young man appeared before them and said, “Hey oldie, can’t you send me back? I just got married. I can hear my wife crying everyday.”
The old man replied, “No going back. Even if you go back, she won’t recognise you.”
The man covered his ears with both hands and howled. Then he sat down on the ground and started to sob. Rumi slowly stepped forward and asked the old man, “Can you please tell me where we are?” Her voice sounded hoarse even to her own ears.
The old man remained silent.
“Am… am I dead?”
The old man turned to look at the girl and said, “We have to wander around till we forget everything about the world we come from. No hunger or thirst. No need to rest or sleep. Here it’s all about waiting.” He raised his staff and pointed to something in the air. As Rumu squinted her eyes to see better, she noticed those strange bright things again. They shone for one last time before vanishing into the air.
“Those are the last remnants of what you call human. Once the eyes disappear, the owner of the eyes will enter the realm of the dead.”
She stared at the bright things mesmerized. “How long does it take?” she whispered.
The old man shrugged. “There’s no way to count time. No watch. No sun. But the sooner you forget the world you left the better.”
“How long have you been here?” the girl asked. “And what’s your name?”
“Time does not matter. Names neither. All those belong to the other world.”
She remembered Pappu. “Pappu…? He’s not dead, is he?”
The old man smiled. “You’re sharp. No, he’ll go back. He’s gone to sleep, and he’ll soon wake up somewhere in the old world with his family.
In the distance, she saw some people who were very small in size, and yet they were not children. Her companion said quietly, “They are closer to getting to the other side. Very soon, their bodies will disappear and only the eyes will remain. Once the eyes are gone, their journey here is over.”
“How long…” then she remembered there was no way to measure time here.
The old man said, “All you can do is wait. That’s why it’s also difficult to forget the world you left behind. But forget you must. Or you will be swirling around in this no man’s land forever.”
“No Man’s Land!” The words sounded like some kind of enchantment.
[2] Dried and boiled tobacco leaves, limes, arecca nut, additives, spices, and tannins – used to flavour paans or betel leaves.
Sohana Manzoor is an Associate Professor at the Department of English and Humanities at ULAB, a short story writer, a translator, an essayist and an artist.
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The final two sections of one of Tagore’s finest long poems, inspired by the life of Jesus Christ. Tagore wrote the poem first in English, in 1930, and translated it himself into Bengali the following year, titling it ‘Sishutirtha’.
IX
The first flush of dawn glistens on the dew-dripping leaves of the forest. The man who reads the sky cries: ‘Friends, we have come!’ They stop and look around.
On both sides of the road the corn is ripe to the horizon— the glad golden answer of the earth to the morning light. The current of daily life moves slowly between the village near the hill and the one by the river bank. The potter’s wheel goes round, the woodcutter brings fuel to the market, the cow-herd takes his cattle to the pasture, and the woman with the pitcher on her head walks to the well. But where is the King’s castle, the mine of gold, the secret book of magic, the sage who knows love’s utter wisdom? ‘The stars cannot be wrong,’ assures the reader of the sky. ‘Their signal points to that spot.’ And reverently he walks to a wayside spring from which wells up a stream of water, a liquid light, like the morning melting into a chorus of tears and laughter. Near it in a palm grove surrounded by a strange hush stands a leaf-thatched hut, at whose portal sits the poet of the unknown shore, and sings: ‘Mother, open the gate!’
X
A ray of morning sun strikes aslant at the door. The assembled crowd feel in their blood the primaeval chant of creation: ‘Mother, open the gate!’ The gate opens. The mother is seated on a straw bed with the babe on her lap, like the dawn with the morning star. The sun’s ray that was waiting at the door outside falls on the head of the child. The poet strikes his lute and sings out: ‘Victory to Man, the newborn, the ever-living.’ They kneel down, the king and the beggar, the saint and the sinner, the wise and the fool, and cry: ‘Victory to Man, the newborn, the ever-living.’ The old man from the East murmurs to himself: ‘I have seen!’
‘Mother and Child’, painting by Rabindranath Tagore. Photo Courtesy: Indian Christmas: An anthology
We all know that Christmas Day, the night that Jesus came to earth, bringing with him peace and love for all humanity, is celebrated by Christians all around the world with great enthusiasm and merriment. Interestingly, for a multicultural country like India, Christmas is equally celebrated — not only as a religious festival but also as a cultural one. For a country where less than three percent of the population is Christian, the central celebration is the birth of a child, but it takes on new meaning in different Indian homes. Known in local parlance also as “Burradin”[big day] Indians from all classes and communities look forward to this day when they can at least buy a cake from the local market, shower their children with stars, toys, red Santa caps and other decorative items, and go for a family picnic for lunch, dine at a fancy restaurant or visit the nearby church. This syncretic cult makes this festival unique, and for Jerry Pinto and Madhulika Liddle editing this very interesting anthology comprising of different genres of Indian writing on the topic – essays, images, poems and hymns, both in English and also translated from India’s other languages is indeed unique.
Mary and Jesus’ a painting by Sister Marie Claire. (Picture courtesy: SMMI Provincialate, Bengalaru) ‘Adivasi Madonna’, a painting by Jyoti SahiImages from Indian Christmas: Essays, Memories, Hymns
In his introduction which he titles “Unto All of Us a Child is Born,” Jerry Pinto reminisces how he was surprised when he saw his first live Santa Claus. He was a figure in red that Akbarally’s, Bombay’s first department store, wheeled out around Christmas week. “He was a thin man, not very convincingly padded… seemed to be from my part of the world, someone who would climb up our narrow Mahim stairs and leave something at the door for us at three or four a.m., then take the local back to his regular job as a postman or seller of second-hand comics. The man in the cards and storybooks preferred London and New York. And a lot of snow. … Today, it is almost a cliché to say that Christmas, like every other festival, is hostage to the market.”
The other editor, Madhulika Liddle in her introduction “Christmas in Many Flavours” states, “According to the annals of the Mambally Royal Biscuit Factory bakery in Thalassery, Kerala, its founder Mambally Bapu baked the first Christmas cake in India”. It was way back in 1883, at the instance of an East India Company spice planter he set about trying to create a Christmas cake. Liddle wondered what that first Christmas cake tasted like; how close it was to the many thousands of cakes still baked and consumed at Christmas in Kerala? She also writes about the situation in India, where instead of wholesale and mindless importing of Christmas ideas, the people have been discerning enough to amalgamate all our favourite (and familiar) ideas of what a celebration should be and fit them into a fiesta of our own.
Images from Indian Christmas: Essays, Memories, Hymns: dressed up as Santa Claus leave for school in Punjab. (Picture courtesy: Ecocabs,Fazilka).
There are several other aspects of Christmas celebrations too. The Christmas bazaars are now increasingly fashionable in bigger cities. The choral Christmas concerts and Christmas parties are big community affairs, with dancing, community feasts, Christmas songs, and general bonhomie. Across the Chhota Nagpur area, tribal Christians celebrate with a community picnic lunch, while many coastal villages in Kerala have a tradition of partying on beaches, with the partying spilling over into catamarans going out into the surf. In Kolkata’s predominantly Anglo-Indian enclave of Bow Bazar, Santa Claus traditionally comes to the party in a rickshaw, and in much of northeast India, the entire community may indulge in a pot-luck community feast at Christmas time. Thus Liddle states:
“Missionaries to Indian shores, whether St Thomas or later evangelists from Portugal, France, Britain, or wherever brought us the religion; we adopted the faith, but reserved for ourselves the right to decide how we’d celebrate its festivals.”
Apart from their separate introductions, the editors have collated twenty-seven entries of different kinds, each one more interesting than the other, that showcase the richness and variety of Christmas celebrations across the country. Though Christianity may have come to much of India by way of missionaries from Europe or America, it does not mean that the religion remained a Western construct. Indians adopted Christianity but made it their own. They translated the Bible into different Indian languages, translated their hymns, and composed many of their own. They built churches which they at times decorated in their own much-loved ways. Their feasts comprised of food that was often like the ones consumed during Holi or Diwali.
Thus, Christmas in India turned to a great Indian festival that highlighted the syncretism of our culture. Damodar Mauzo, Nilima Das, Vivek Menezes, Easterine Kire, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, Nazes Afroz, Elizabeth Kuruvilla, Jane Borges and Mary Sushma Kindo, among others, write about Christmas in Goa, Nagaland, Kerala, Jharkhand, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Shillong and Saharanpur. Arul Cellatturai writes tender poems in the Pillaitamil tradition to the moon about Baby Jesus, and Punjabi singers compose tappe-boliyan about Mary and her infant. There are Mughal miniatures depicting the birth of Jesus, paintings by Jyoti Sahi and Sister Claire inspired by folk art, and pictures of Christmas celebrations in Aizawl, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kochi and these visual demonstrations enrich the text further.
Seventeenth-century painting depicting Mary and Joseph travelling to Bethlehem. From a Mir’at al-quds of Father Jerome, 2005, Cleveland Museum of Art. (Wikimedia Commons) ‘Mother Mary and Child Christ’. Mid-eighteenth century, late Mughal, Muhammad Shah period. National Museum of India, New Delhi (Wikimedia Commons)Images from Indian Christmas: Essays, Memories, Hymns
Interestingly, the very first entry of this anthology is an excerpt from the final two sections of one of Rabindranath Tagore’s finest long poems, inspired by the life of Jesus Christ. Tagore wrote the poem “The Child” in 1930, first in English and translated it himself into Bengali the following year, titling it “Sishutirtha.” But many years even before that, every Christmas in Santiniketan, Tagore would give a talk about Christ’s life and message. Speaking on 25 December 1910, he said:
“The Christians call Jesus Man of Sorrow, for he has taken great suffering on himself. And by this he has made human beings great, has shown that the human beings stand above suffering.”
India celebrates Christmas with its own regional flair, its own flavour. Some elements are the same almost everywhere; others differ widely. What binds them together is that they are all, in their way, a celebration of the most exuberant festival in the Christian calendar.
Apart from the solemnity of the Church services, there is a lot of merrymaking that includes the food and drink, the song and dance. The songs often span everything from the stirring ‘Hallulujah Chorus’ to vibrant paeans sung in every language from Punjabi to Tamil, Hindi to Munda, Khariya and Mizo tawng.
Among the more secular aspects of Christmas celebrations are the decorations, and this is where things get even more eclectic. Whereas cities and towns abound in a good deal of mass decorating, with streets and public places being prettied up weeks in advance, rural India has its own norms, its own traditions. Wreaths and decorated conifers are unknown, for instance, in the villages of the Chhota Nagpur region; instead, mango leaves, marigolds and paper streamers may be used, and the tree to be decorated may well be a sal or a mango tree. Nirupama Dutt tells us how since her city had no firs and pines, she got her brother’s colleague to fetch a small kikar tree as kikars grew aplenty in the wild empty plots all over Chandigarh. In many entries we read about how Christmas decorations were rarely purchased but were cleverly constructed at home.
A very integral part of the Christmas celebrations of course is music. In many Goan Catholic neighbourhoods, Jim Reeves continued to haunt the listeners in his smooth baritone: “I’ll have a blue Christmas without you/ I’ll be so blue thinking about you/ Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree/ Won’t mean a thing, dear, if you’re not here with me.” Simultaneously, the words and music of “A Christmas Prayer” by Alfred J D’Souza are as follows: “Play on your flute/ Bhaiyya, Bhaiyya/ Jesus the saviour has come./ Put on your ghungroos/ Sister, Sister/ Dance to the beat of the drums!/ Light up a deepam in your window/ Doorstep, don with rangoli/ Strings of jasmine, scent your household/ Burn the sandalwood and ghee,/ Call your neighbour in, smear vermillion/ Write on his forehead to show/ A sign that we are one/ Through God’s eternal Son/ In friendship and in love ever more!/ Ah! Ah!” But the most popular Christmas song was of course “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way….”
In “Christmas Boots and Carols in Shillong”, Patricia Mukhim tells us how the word ‘Christmas’ triggers a whole host of activities in Meghalaya and other Northeastern states that have a predominantly Christian population. Apart from cleaning and painting the houses, everything looks like fairyland during Christmas, a day for which they have been waiting for an entire year. She particularly mentions the camaraderie that prevails during this time:
“Christmas is a time when invitations are not needed. Friends can land up at each others’ homes any time on Christmas Eve to celebrate. Most friends drop by with a bottle of wine and others pool in the snacks and the party continues until the wee hours of morning. It’s one day in the year when the state laws that noise should end at 10 p.m. is violated with gay abandon. …Shillong [is] a very special place on Planet Earth. Everyone from the chief minister down can strum the guitar and has a voice that could put lesser mortals to shame. And Christmas is also a day when all VIPism and formalities are set aside. You can land up at anyone’s home and be welcomed in. It does not matter whether someone is the chief minister, a top cop, or the terrifying headmistress of your school.”
One very significant common theme in all the multifarious entries is the detail descriptions provided on food, especially the makeshift way Christmas cakes are baked in every home and the Indian way meat and other specialties are being prepared on the special day. There are several entries that give us details about the particular food that was prepared and consumed at the time along with actual recipes about baking cakes. “Christmas Pakwan[1]” by Jaya Bhattcharji Rose, “The Spirit of Christmas Cake” by Priti David, and “Armenian Christmas Food in Calcutta” by Mohona Kanjilal need special mention in this context. Liddle in her introduction wrote:
“Our Christmas cakes are a reflection of how India celebrates Christmas: with its own religious flair, its own flavour. Some elements are the same almost everywhere; others differ widely. What binds them together is that they are all, in their way, a celebration of the most exuberant festival in the Christian calendar.”
Later in her article “Cake Ki Roti at Dua ka Ghar[2],” the house where they lived in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, she wrote how her parents told her that ‘bajre ki tikiyas’, thin patties made of pearl millet flour sweetened with jaggery, used to be a staple at Christmas teatime at Dua ka Ghar[3], though she has no recollection of those. She of course vividly recalls the ‘cake ki roti’. This indigenisation of Christmas is something that’s most vividly seen in the feasting that accompanies Christmas celebrations across the country. While hotels and restaurants in big cities lay out spreads of roast turkey (or chicken, more often), roast potatoes and Christmas puddings, the average Indian Christian household may have a Christmas feast that comprises largely of markedly regional dishes.
In Kerala, for instance, duck curry with appams is likely to be the piece de resistance. In Nagaland, pork curries rich in chillies and bamboo shoots are popular, and a whole roast suckling pig (with spicy chutneys to accompany it) may hold centre stage. A sausage pulao, sorpotel and xacuti would be part of the spread in Goa, and all across a wide swathe of north India, biriyanis, curries, and shami kababs are de rigueur at Christmas.
This beautifully done book, along with several coloured pictures, endorses the idea of religious syncretism that prevails in India. As a coiner of words, Nilima Das came up with the idea that ‘Christianism’ in our churches is after all, a kind of ‘Hinduanity’ (“Made in India and All of That”). This reviewer feels guilty of not being able to mention each of the unique entries separately that this anthology contains, so it is suggested that this is a unique book to enjoy reading, to possess, as well as to gift anyone during the ensuing Christmas season.
Borderless 