Who was Luckier - Lee or Singapore?

Recently, Lee Kuan Yew, the person responsible for making Singapore what it is today, died. We in India, particularly those with scant awareness about foreign affairs, were familiar with Singapore as a place of prosperity and aspiration, lights and glitz, long before we woke up to the global significance of China and the vulnerability of America as a super power.  

In India, various political leaders at different times have told us they would be making our cities like Singapore if brought to power but none have.

But the bigger question is why Asian countries aspire to be like Singapore? It is not just Singapore’s economic success but the fact that it combines all the virtues of a desirable place: cleanliness, discipline and great law and order.  Even the great Western democracies fall foul on some of these counts.

Law and order may be different and even cleanliness is achievable in many places but discipline , as many of us know, may not be easy to bring about in a democratic society, which is by nature chaotic. In fact, the existence of such societies depends on absence of discipline. There is little doubt that Singaporeans had to pay a price for the kind of economic success Singapore achieved, for which you have to both thank Lee Kuan Yew and call him lucky.

Thank Lee for Singapore’s success because after its independence from Britain and following its ouster from Malaysia in 1963, he steered his nation in the direction which was unique in those days, the 60s, and also frowned upon by others. Among the countries that won freedom at the time Singapore did, Singapore was the only one to embrace market-economy, in its most unapologetic form.

Call Lee lucky because even with Lee’s sure-handed capitalism, Singapore would not be possible without Singapore’s advantages – a largely homogeneous society, a city state, etc –quite unique to Singapore.  

But many of these attributes were disadvantages to start with. When Singapore had been dispelled by Malaysia because of racial tensions (Lee its premier was in his early 40s then), it didn’t have any army to defend its borders; it didn’t have any economy to speak of. Its small size – and therefore less significance - would have made it vulnerable to a takeover – or at least an invasion - by a bigger power, particularly one from the Soviet bloc. Fearing it, Lee befriended the US.

To make Singapore militarily strong, Lee sought the help of Israel. He created a police-judiciary to eliminate corruption. To the same end, he raised the salaries of officials to the level of those in high positions in private sector – and said, “If you pay pee nuts, you attract monkeys.” He removed political opposition by reducing Singapore to a single-party polity.

He made spitting on road, littering chewing gums on road etc. punishable offenses. 

(Remember, we heard, in our growing up years, that in Singapore you would be punished for throwing chewing gum on road?) He told Singaporeans to speak good English and develop clean habits.

He completely muzzled the press. Singapore Herald’s license was seized because of a critical article it had carried about Lee’s government and three years later the government amended its constitution to make it mandatory for media houses publishing out of Singapore to renew their license yearly. And publications of foreign media houses critical of the Singapore government but without any production base in Singapore were simply banned.

Although Singapore never saw the likes of Tienanmen Square or Capture Wall Street, winds of change are blowing in the island nation. Living costs are very high in Singapore and the gap between poor and rich has grown over the years.

There is a groundswell for more inclusive policies. It led to a slump in Lee’s party’s (People's Action Party of Singapore) popular vote, following which Lee stepped down making way for his son. Any nation, however successful, yearns for change in a passage of 40 to 50 years. Singapore, however different it may be from the rest, should not be an exception. But Singapore will always consider itself lucky to have had Lee in its formative years and not the other way around. 

Absence of India Conservative Intellectuals - By Ramachandra Guha

Caravan has carried a very interesting article by Ramachandra Guha, Where Are India’s Conservative Intellectual? The article addresses what has long worried people who see merit in the economic policies of conservative politics, in India, but at the same time disapprove of their religious agenda.

If you remove the Muslim majority countries from the mix, India is the only major democracy where religion finds an important place in conservative politics. Guha attributes this to the fact that those who espoused this brand of politics in India, mainly in pre-independence era, a time when the conservative voice was quite strong, were affiliates of organizations with a deeply Hindu character.

In a post-independence India, Guha observes, conservatives gradually lost their prominence in Indian politics as mainstream Indian politics gravitated towards the Left – where both the ruling party – the Congress – and its principal opponents – Nehru and his detractors (Jay Prakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia and the Communists) - represented socialist, liberal political orientation.  This left-orientation was also found in academia.

Guha dismisses the current lot of columnists and opinion makers with a soft spot for conservatism on the ground that their body of published work is limited to 300 to 400 word articles. This absence of conservative intellectuals in India, Guha concludes, is responsible for religion being a major part of the conservative thought.

Conversely, he says, the West has always had intellectuals in conservative politics who have always kept religion out of it. Western conservative thinkers, Guha says, base their idea of identity around which conservative politics revolves on cultural and geographical similarities. 

To press his argument that the presence of conservative intellectuals would have helped Indian conservative politics keep religious extremism at a distance, Guha cites the example of Jagdish Bhagwati, the conservative economist who is an economic adviser to the current conservative government in India, for advising the BJP government to reign in the religious fringe if it wanted to carry on with its development agenda.

Guha poses Rajaji (C. Rajagopalachari) as a model conservative intellectual. Guha says Rajaji was patriotic who could rise above his personal differences with his political opponents and unite with them in national interest, like he had supported Nehru on the Kashmir problem despite his personal personal differences with Nehru. Rajaji was religious but far from being an orthodox. His economic outlook was conservative in nature and therefore opposed to Nehru’s. Rajai had argued for more openness in economy but Nehru had dismissed his views calling them reactionary and unsuitable for India only to be proved wrong a few decades later.

Guha’s analysis of Western conservatism is mainly theoretical and that’s why it misses an important point. Although theoretically Western conservative parties have kept religion out of their identity mix, the tendency of conservative politics to be majoritarian, even if based on demographics, automatically excludes communities following minority religions in Western societies. Identity and religion are hard to separate, especially due to rising religious radicalism however desirable it may be.

Byomkesh Bakshi - a Detective with a Difference

A detective novel deals with a dual challenge: one is to examine human nature and tie up its tendencies with requirements of an air-tight plot and the second is to simplify it beyond any shred of ambiguity for the reader…who, unlike the reader of a literary novel, will not settle for anything less than complete clarity. In other words, ensure instant intellectual gratification, no slow-seeping comprehension acquired long after the novel is read and shut. This is true of any detective novels.

But however homogeneous detective novels may otherwise be, the author endows something unique on every imaginary investigator, in terms of style of investigation, dressing, even background. And while the homogeneity that characterizes mystery novels – a tight plot with the culprit lurking behind a maze of facts and the detective removing them one by one to bring him to the reader – makes you want to read another mystery, you want your mysteries solved by the distinct style of the detective you like.

Ever since the Byomkesh Bakshi bug bit me some time in December, I have been mulling over the uniqueness of Byomkesh Bakshi vis a vis others in his fraternity. What is that I will read a Byomkesh novel for? I watched several episodes of Byomkesh Bakshi serials and then a few weeks back I bought a Puffin Classic, a compilation of three Byomkesh whodunits. And I find myself yearning for more.

The Rhythm of Riddles is about a building full of tenants. The tenant staying on the ground floor suddenly gets murdered. The killer leaves some clues but they together lead, if anything, to confusion. Slowly Byomkesh unravels the mystery discovering threads leading to pre independence Bangladesh and blackmail. In Byomkesh and Barada, Bakshi exposes a man appearing in the guise of ghost to scare away the occupant of a house so that he can get his hands on the diamonds hidden in it.

Dibakar Banerjee the film director whose movie on Byomkesh is going to release shortly has written a very good introduction telling why a certain atmosphere – an uncle’s house located in a small town - is important to enjoy Byomkesh and that he discovered the charms of Boymkesh in a similar setting in the 60s while visiting an uncle’s house and has remained a fan since.

The one I liked the most is the last story in the collection, The Death of Amorto. A complex plot, it is set in the period after world war two. American soldiers, after staying for some time in interiors of Bengal, have left leaving behind their arms and ammunitions which have fallen into the hands of locals to the concern of law-enforcement authorities. A boy, who had ventured into a forest, has been found dead by his friends who had gone into the forest search of him following a gunshot. The death of Amroto is followed by the death of another local, this one a gruesome murder. Byomkesh removes lot of red herrings, details, contradicting facts to demystify matters and shine a light on the killer and his motivations.

One of the things I find unique about Byomkesh is that among all Bengali detectives I know, Byomkesh is most rooted, a complete Bengali middle class without any trace of cosmopolitanism undermining his Bengaliness, unlike Faluda, for whose creator - Ray - Sherlock Homes was a major influence, and Kakababu by Sunil Gangapadhay, who is more obsessed with worlds affairs than the neighborhood murder. 

Feluda and Kakababu had to be made cosmopolitan in keeping with changing taste of audiences in a post-independence India, but Byomkesh, having been written into existence by Saradindu Bandyopadhay many years before independence, didn’t have to meet the requirements of changing taste in a post-independence India.

Another way in which Byomkesh is different from other literary detectives is that Byomkesh is a more rounded character than the average literary detective. We know Byomkesh had once fallen in love and married a lady, Satyabati. Byomkesh’s father was a math teacher and Byomkesh holds a degree in physics, etc. We also know Byomkesh calls himself Satyanweshi, a seeker of truth, and not an investigator or detective.

On the other hand, we know very little about other famous detectives beyond the fact that they have an analytical bent of mind. In fact, Conan Doyle had revealed very little about Sherlock Homes as a person (the pipe-smoking thing is not a personality trait or a circumstantial detail, just a style) in his early novels and not until Doyle matured as a writer, many years later, that he realized that what he had drawn was a mere character sketch and not the entire character – and to make Homes more human he revealed more bits of Homes personality and background in his later Homes novels. (In fact, some critics have observed that the reason why Homes is one of the easiest literary characters to adopt for movies is that Doyle wrote very little about Homes as a person, which allows the film maker to interpret Homes however he wants.)

Similarly, we know very little about Feluda as a person and about many, many more detectives who may dazzle us with their investigative skills and sharp repartees but still be scantly known even if we read their exploits in novel after novel.  

Even after being adopted for several movies and once by Satyajit Ray too,  Byomkesh was largely a parochial affair until Rajit Kapoor made Byomkesh Bakshi a household name by playing the sleuth to perfection in an eponymous tele serial on Doordarshan, Byomkesh Bakshi, in the late 80s and early 90s (before cable TV arrived). Since then although many have enacted the detective on TV, I have not been able to separate Rajit Kapoor from Byomkesh. When I think of one the other automatically springs to mind.   

Again there is a renewed interest in Byomkesh Bakshi. Many new actors are bringing the sleuth to life on television, in Bengali. I hope they will endear the new generation to Byomkesh. And just as Arthur Conan Doyle is remembered as the creator of Homes, the numerous film-adoptions notwithstanding,   I hope  Saradindu Bandyopadhay will be remembered as the creator of Byomkesh Bakshi regardless of how many times Byomkesh is adopted for TV and movies.

Changing English usages

English usage is changing. Some of it is because of ignorance of grammar and some convenience.  Many usages that were severely frowned upon before are perfectly acceptable today.  It is perfectly all right to say reference (noun) when you actually mean refer (verb). Similarly, or equally quizzically, in corporate parlance, value add has replaced value addition.

However, the wrong usages I see most often, made even by people with reasonably good English, are those related to apostrophe and capitalization. In fact, they have become so common (found in office mails, hoardings, banners etc) that I fear the correct usages will be soon forgotten and lost to posterity.

Many now use the apostrophe as a means to pluralize a word.  So the plural form of ball becomes ball’s. This owes itself to  the practice of pluralizing abbreviations by using an apostrophe, to set the ‘s’ apart from the rest of the letters, like URL’s as opposed to URLs; which is all right because one of the legitimate roles of apostrophe is to be used to pluralize a word not established in English orthography. But ball’s as a plural form is certainly inexcusable.

Another grammatical error which has become very commonplace is wrong capitalization. People seem to spare very little thought for what’s a name (a perfect noun) and what’s not. Important words in a sentence are capitalized. A generic noun following a perfect noun is capitalized – The Bluestar Hotel instead of The Bluestar hotel. If the name of the hotel is Bluestar Hotel then it’s all right to capitalize the first letter of hotel, but not when the name of the hotel is only Bluestar and ‘hotel’ is just a modifier.

Honestly, these usages, however widely available, have not made their way into print or television media. Alas, ‘corporate’ the adjective form of ‘corporation’ has. When you use corporate it should be followed by a word for which it would act as an adjective – corporate style, corporate India etc. When used without the following qualifier it should be corporation. 

I find this mistake in The Times of India regularly; maybe it’s the style they consciously follow now, but The Hindu (and its other publications) still uses corporation where corporation should be used and otherwise. Similarly, the semi colon is another chip off the old block which is on its way out; it has been replaced by the comma. 

The list is very long and getting longer all the time.

The road to Charminar

I have stayed in and been to many big and small, famed and little known lanes of Indian cities but none like Gulzar Houz, an obscure place which is host to one of the most famous historical towers of India,  Charminar. Recently I visited Hyderabad and my curiosity about Hyderabad Biryani took me to Shabad, a popular biriyani joint located near Gulzar Houz. But before I ate at Shadab I decided to walk to Charminar to knock off an item from my Hyderabad itinerary. On my way to Charminar, I started feeling I had been transported to another time and space.

I was walking through a bazaar which looked commercially active but totally devoid of anything even remotely modern or western. Not a mobile recharge shop (at least nothing that drew my attention), not a computer shop, not a shop selling jeans or any other western clothes. Perfumery shops sell attar, cloth shops, only traditional Muslim outfits. The road was a sea of humanity, only women with black veils and men in traditional Muslim garbs. What should have been a 10 minutes’ walk took me about half an hour to cover.  On either side of this bazaar you have narrow lanes, each one home to a mini market, selling essentially the same stuff as in the main bazaar.

When I looked up, there were old buildings which may not mind the lack of change they have undergone since their construction a few centuries ago but may complain about the lack of maintenance.  I shuddered to think that maybe beyond those rickety wooden balconies and giant doors, people still live. I saw some boards announcing the presence of dawa khanas (health centers).  

Actually, at a time when lanes change the way they look every two to three years, Gulzar Houz’s stubborn resistance to change may be refreshingly different for many but its complete renouncement of modernity may come at a cost to its residents. Hyderabad is going to have its metro in some time. And the residents of Gulzar Houz could have had the metro passing through Gulzar Houz but for the resistance shown to the project by Gulzar Houz locals – who feared that metro construction would spoil the old look of the place and threatened that if the administration went ahead with the project despite their opposition, they would destroy the construction.  

I visited Wikipedia on Gulzar Houz and found this photo. This is how Gulzar Houz looked in 1880.  The Gulzar Houz I saw last week was different only in three ways. It doesn’t have the fountain on the way to Charminar you see in the photo. (In fact, the fountain has completely disappeared and had it not been for Wikipedia I would not know there was ever one – the Wiki article says it’s the fountain and not the place which was called Gulzar Houz). I didn’t see any horse-drawn carriages. And the Gulzar Houz I saw was much, much crowdier.

David Copperfield - a very long canvas autobiographical novel

I recently finished Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. I enjoyed the book – and found myself wanting to finish it only towards the end – and that too partly because my book purchases had formed a pile by now and it was demanding attention.

But let me first start on a note of disappointment. (It’s so difficult to admit to disappointment over a time-tested classic, isn’t it?) The book is an autobiographical novel and I expected it to tell how Dickens developed as a writer, his source of his early inspirations etc. It’s not that Dickens doesn’t talk about his beginning, development and finding of fame as a writer, but not as much as I had expected from a book which I had chosen to buy to read primarily about Dickens as a writer.

An eponymous and large-canvas novel, it traces the life of David Copperfield his birth onwards and takes you through the various phases of his life. The novel changes its mood several times over as David’s life goes through various phases, meeting and parting with friends.  

Dickens had called David Copperfield his best work. He had written it during the later phase of his career (after his visit to the US). The change in style and temperament is understandable if you have read any Dickens from the earlier part of his career. I read Oliver Twist many years ago and felt DC was a little more introspective, character treatment a little deeper.

One of the highlights of the book for me is how Dickens has handled the changing shades of relationship among different characters. There is a romantic sub-plot which runs across the story. David meets Agnes as a child at a school. Agnes’ father runs the school and David becomes very close with the family and remains so through the rest of his life – and what also remains is David’s soft spot for Agnes, an affection which changes its complexion over time and goes from brotherly liking, bordering on obsession and excessive admiration, to a full blown romantic feeling.

And finally, towards the end of the story, David’s first wife dies and he proposes marriage to Agnes and some bouts of indecision later she accepts. Dickens had a wide readership. And, in what were Victorian times in Britain, many would have frowned upon it.

Another is Mr Macabre, which Dickens modeled on his father. Mr Macabre flits in and out of the story, such that I felt Dickens used him to provide the reader a departure from the monotony of an ongoing subplot. Mr Macabre is one of the most famous characters of literature. And, I feel, the utter idiosyncrasy of Mr Macabre makes him so talked about.

His language is so erudite and sentences so convoluted as to be incomprehensible. He goes from bouts of depression to optimistic outbursts with lightening frequency, which is one similarity he shares with Dickens’ father. He moves from one professional disappointment to another, which is another similarity he shares with John Dickens, who was always hard up. Another one is both Mr Macabre and Dickens’ father were irresponsible with money. Finally Mr Macabre finds success and fame in a new country, Australia (this, however, he doesn’t have in common with senior Dickens).

David’s relationship with Mr Macabre changes its shades. David meets him as a boy and is left awe-struck by his world (so does the reader – there are wonderful descriptions of Mr Macabre’s life which are very visual). The Macabre family welcomes David into their lives with open arms and David finds a home. He is somewhat grateful for this generosity but later as he sees Mr Macabre’s plights David develops an understated sympathy mixed with affection for Mr Macabre – from a benefactor he starts seeing Mr Macabre as his friend who deserves his kindness and consideration. And these remain his emotions for Mr Macabre for the rest of his life.

David’s outlook towards Uriah Heep, another famous character of David Copperfield, remains the same throughout the book. He loathes him and treats him shabbily throughout the book, partly because during the book Agnes was betrothed to Uriah, a relationship which breaks later.  But partly also because Uriah is a greasy, scheming and opportunistic character who uses humility, he owes to his humble origins, as a decoy.  

David Copperfield is full of characters, sub plots – the canvas and sweep of time, in fact, are so large that when Dickens throws in a reference of a character long lost in the swirls of the plot, you feel a pleasant nostalgia. 

How we remember Nehru and why

On every birthday of Nehru, emotions spill over both from the Congress and BJP camps. BJP blames Nehru for all the ills that plague India, from economic to political, and the Congress credits Nehru for most of India’s successes as a modern nation state. 

While BJP wants to project Nehru to the current generation as an elitist who forced foreign ideas on India without much caring about the sentiments of Indians, the Congress says any departure from the path of Nehru (socialism and secularism) is a disaster for India. There is a grain of truth in all these accusations and approbations. All these also form how Nehru is remembered in India.

Some blame him for his political mistakes. Some call him a nation builder. Some say his socialist economic policies are responsible for India’s lack of economic growth. Some remember him as an atheist who had utter disregard for India’s religious character. And so on. But funnily, these views are not held sporadically across all sections of society. Different sections of society remember Nehru in different ways, but there is a uniformity of views within each section.

Generally academics and left leaning intellectuals see Nehru as a builder and guide of modern India. Communists remember him as a representative of bourgeois class to be hated because he suspended the first communist government in India, in Kerela. The business class dislikes him for his socialist model. The conservative middle class criticizes him for his romantic dalliances, videshi ways and, to an extent, his atheism. 

But to the current generation, in general, Nehru comes from so distant a past that he is not much worth caring about. There are several reasons for this.

There was hardly anything muscular about Nehru. He was a gentle, sober politician (his occasional mood bursts notwithstanding) whose speeches used to be inspiring and eloquent but without any thunder.

Like his daughter, war-winning was not among his achievements (in fact, he had lost one as a PM). Nehru disliked the Hindu right and also the Communists; but there wasn’t any campish  character to his loathing – it was a dislike based on ideological differences. The divide between the two sides became pronounced in later years due to self-styled Nehruvians and the progenies of Shayamaprasad Mukherjee.

The other chief reasons for his slide into oblivion with the current generation are the two ideals he stood for and is most remembered by – socialism and secularism.  Both socialism and secularism have had a rough time, in India, in post-Nehru years.

Indira Gandhi, unlike her father, had no sincere loyalty to socialism; for her garibi hatao was a political plank not an ideological obligation. Rajiv Gandhi moved away from socialism – in fact, his was the first Congress government (actually the first since independence) to flirt with market economy (now his son attributes the entry of computers into India to Rajiv, though the claim is contested by BJP).

In 1992 India opened up its markets to the world and with passing years the economic reality of India started shifting away from what it was in the pre 90s. And as India’s economic complexion has changed year upon year since then and the middle class increased, socialism has more and more looked like a relic of the past which is best kept at a distance.  

On the secular front, too, India has not fared any better in post Nehru years. Several provincial riots had taken place since Partition, but nothing had made national headlines.

That changed when Indira Gandhi fell to the bullets of two Sikh security guards leading to anti-Sikh riots - something Congress is still blamed for (and as later reports suggested rightly so).

Rajiv Gandhi, a few years later, by now a PM for a few years, dealt Indian secularism, which was already smarting under 1984 effects, another severe blow with the Saha Banu case.

In the post 90s, the rise of the BJP confronted the Congress with a new threat, a potential loss of the Hindu vote, pushing the Congress to reclaim its secular space. 

And secularism and whether the version of secularism followed in India is a departure from actual secularism borrowed by Nehru from the West – became a bone of contention between the two largest national parties.

And the two parties constantly clashing on the question of secularism divided the Indian political narrative into two halves – the Hindu right and the secular front. Gradually the Right narrative found legitimacy in national politics. 

In reality, Nehru may still be the founder of modern India, but, due to the follies of his very own, to the current generation, Nehru has become the grand sire of all that the Congress has done wrong since Nehru. And if his own have degenerated his legacy, the changing times (both globally and in India) have made the merit of his ideals a little contestable and  anyone representing them appear a little out of tune with times.