The India International Centre, where Hussain’s ‘Mughal India’ painting series are on dispaly, suspended the exhibition for Saturday after it received the threats from Bajrang Dal, sources said.

The IIC had received the Bajran Dal threat which said it has to face ‘serious consequences’ if the capital’s high-profile cultural organisation continued to exhibit the works of the controversial artist, they said.

More here

The gruesome Nandigram murders, the death of Rizwanul who married an upper caste Muslim girl and Taslima Nasreen’s expulsion from West Bengal are all three interlinked events. Had it happened anywhere else, it might have been easy to understand. That it happened in West Bengal ruled by an ostensible progressive party with an ‘ideology’ of sorts was most depressing. Is it the case that finally we are witnessing the end of the secular, progressive politics of West Bengal that we all had envied for so long..

A young Muslim computer graphics teacher, Rizwanur Rahman, was found dead in highly suspicious circumstances on September 21, one month after marrying his sweetheart Priyanka Todi. It quickly emerged that the police, including senior police officials, had harassed and threatened Rahman at the urging of Todi’s father, Arun Kumar Todi, a rich and well-connected Hindu industrialist, who was bent on breaking up the marriage.

The couple was repeatedly summoned to appear before the police after they started living together in Rahman’s modest dwelling and Rahman was repeatedly threatened with arrest if Priyanka did not “voluntarily” return to her parents for a week. Twelve days after Prikanya went back to her parent’s house, Rizwanur’s body was found beside a railway track.

This shocking episode caused widespread demands for an independent enquiry, but for weeks the Left Front government failed to take any serious action against the police involved in the Rahman case and lent credence to police claims that Rizwanur had committed suicide. On October 11 Chief Minister Bhattacharjee ruled out both a CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) probe into Rahman’s death and the removal of three senior police officers, including Kolkata Police Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee, who were allegedly involved in the harassment campaign against Rahman.

The government indifference to police corruption and the blatant class and communal character of Arun Kumar Todi’s opposition to his daughter’s marriage caused a public outcry. “This incident has inflamed the people,” explained sociologist Bula Bhadra, “because they have realized that if the police can meddle in a marriage between two consenting adults, our very civil liberty is at risk—and at risk from those who are supposed to uphold it.”

Read more here on the related issues and the sad decline of an era.

Thanks to Beena Sarwar’s updates, I read this moving account, THE OTHER HALF in ‘Srinagar diary’ by Kalpana Sharma.

… the Indo-Pak peace process, the people to people exchanges, the opening up of meeting points along the Line of Control have
raised some hope that permanent peace is possible. Apart from the larger questions, what concerns the ordinary person is finding ways to increase communication between divided families and communities straddling the LoC. This was the question that engaged a group of almost 50 women from both sides of the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

Fourteen women from the Pakistan side of Kashmir crossed the Wagah border in mid-November, travelled by road to Jammu and then flew in to Srinagar to meet their counterparts on this side of the border.

This was the first time such a meeting was held between women from the two sides.The result was unusual and memorable. For the women from the Pakistan side, it was a deeply emotional moment. Many of them came with preconceptions. They had heard of the sufferings of people on this side of the border. They were upset at seeing the soldiers on the street. They were even more perturbed that they could not call their families and inform them of their safe arrival.

Taslima Nasrin is now a “sensation” of another kind in India. She has attracted the attention of those segments of Indian media that love to sell anything that brings Islam and Muslims related controversies into the public domain. (more…)

In an era when most British officials were interested only in exploiting India, a few remarkable men celebrated Hindu art and culture. William Dalrymple explores the rich legacy of their collections and commissions. See more.

by Vidya Rao

 I was fortunate to be one of the women invited to the first meeting of the Grandmothers’ University at Bija Vidyapeeth early this year. (more…)

Agar Gaiti Sarasar Bad Girad,
Chiragh-e-Chishtiyan Hargiz Namirad

If the entire universe is devastated by the storm
the lamp of Chishtiyan shall not cease to illuminate

Just as Eid announcement was made in this part of the world, the sad news of bomb blasts in India were splashed all over TV channels. In particular, the blast in Ajmer Shareef - opposite the dargah - was shocking. Despicable and pusillanimous!

How could the enemies of peace target a shrine that is above the Muslim/Hindu and other formal identities. Ajmer is the fulcrum of a Sufi practice and represents the broad spiritual, syncretistic consensus in South Asia.

The reaction of authorities was quite predictable as if an automated, pre-recorded message was ready with the officials:

Union Home Ministry sources in Delhi said it was a terror strike in which militants had used a low-intensity improvised explosive device.

They said the terror outfits, including Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, were against Sufi Islam and they could be prime suspects behind the blast which came barely 10 days ahead of the meeting of Indo-Pakistan anti-terror mechanism here on October 22…

However, the latter has some validity as we have a track record whereby the extremist elements always resist any progress towards the much needed peace - Let us not be daunted by this cowardice.

But this is so so sad. Though in the words of the devotees:

Ilahi ta-abd-astana-i-yar-rahe
Yeh-asra-hai-gharibon-ka-barqarar rahe

Oh God, may this Shrine of the beloved exist till the last day
may this refuge of the poor remain forever!

End of an era: Ainee Apa 1927 - 2007

Why do we all find ourselves present in this particular context, in this particular place? How have these pictures assembled here in this jigsaw puzzle? Soon, something will happen, pieces will scatter and become part of a newer pattern? This time will pass? (From My Temples, Too)

The death of Qurratulain Hyder marks the end of an era of the finest writing in Urdu. Hyder, also known as Ainee Apa, dominated the world of Urdu literature for over six decades. She started writing as a child and published her first novel, Meray Bhi Sanam Khanay (later trans-created as My Temples, Too), when she was 22 years old. The novel set a new trend in Urdu literature: a voice of modernity, yet one rooted in the traditions of the Indo-Muslim ethos as it struggled to narrate the tragic tale of the birth of two new nations. Even her worst critics, the doyens of the Progressive Writer’s Movement, acknowledged her innate gift for writing. Within three years, her second novel was published and she had unwittingly kick-started the revival of the Urdu novel from the point where Munshi Prem Chand had left it in the early twentieth century.

Her genius found a panoramic range of expression in Aag Ka Darya, which for its canvas, historical consciousness and characterisation, surpasses most novels written in any language. This novel deals with the plight of the human condition in the Indo-Pakistani setting from the fourth century BC to the 1950s. Starting with a translation of a TS Eliot poem, it traces multiple eras, with characters disappearing and reappearing in different guises, pitted against the broad strokes of history and time.

It was an epoch-making event in Urdu literature, but ran into trouble in Pakistan, as the novel highlighted the thousand year old composite Indo-Muslim culture of pre-Partition India, something which was not in line with the official version of history being constructed in Pakistan. Ideologically driven right-wing critics considered it a threat to their nationalism. (more…)