Celebrating Dalit Struggles & Pride

Ever since the advent of metro network in Delhi and surrounding regions, I have started to explore unfamiliar parts of the city and NCR. Every time I visit Delhi, I try to visit some new places. In 2019, I decided to visit the Dalit Prerna Sthal Park and Okhala Bird Sanctuary, near the eponymous metro station on the Magenta line of Delhi metro.

This post is about my adventures while trying to visit these two tourist venues located in NOIDA (UP) close to the Delhi border. I take this opportunity to also reflect on caste discriminations in India.

While independent India opted for laws against caste-based discriminations and affirmative action for persons from lower and backward castes, I thought that continuing deaths of persons asked to clean the sewers was a big blot on nation's dignity. It is only in 2023 that Government of India has decided to allocate specific funds to stop manual cleaning of sewers - I hope that efficient action will be taken on this point and make sure that no one dies due to this act anymore. 

Rashtriya Dalit Prerna Sthal

RDPS or the National Inspiration Memorial of Dalits was commissioned in 2011 by Ms. Mayawati, a Dalit leader, who was at that time the chief-minister of UP state. The word “Dalit” literally means “Downtrodden” and denotes persons belonging to the so called “lower” castes in India, who have been marginalised and exploited for centuries by persons of other, so-called “higher” castes.

Before Mayawati, dalits have had some other famous representatives, who have left a mark in Indian history. Dr. Ambedkar, one of the most important dalit leaders during the independence struggle, is considered the father of the Indian constitution. Babu Jagjivan Ram, a dalit leader belonging to Congress party, had been a famous minister in the Indian national government for more than a couple of decades. Another dalit leader from Congress party, K. R. Narayanan, had become vice-president of India in 1992 and president in 1997.

After the independence of India in 1947, gradually Dalit population groups had also started organising themselves politically. A dalit leader, Mr. Kanshi Ram, had founded a political party called Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 1984 to represent their political aspirations. Mayawati, a leader of BSP, formed the state government in UP in 1995, the most populous state of India with more than 200 million population at that time. After more than a decade of coalition governments, Mayawati formed her first majority government of dalits in 2007. By becoming a symbol of Dalit power and visibility, Mayawati has represented the collective rise of dalits.

Construction of the Dalit Prerna Sthal (Dalit Inspiration Memorial) in NOIDA close to Delhi, was a way to remind the people about this transformational journey of marginalised dalit people. For this reason, many persons also call it Dalit Garv Sthal (Dalit Pride).

Reaching Dalit Pride Park

The first Delhi Metro station had opened in 2002. Since then it has grown into one of the biggest metro network in the world with more than 250 stations and covering about 350 kms. The Magenta line going to Okhala Bird Sanctuary station had opened in 2017. It connects Janakpuri in west Delhi to Botanical Garden in UP in the east, covering a little more than 38 kms with 25 stations.

Check the latest metro map to see how you can reach Okhala Bird Sanctuary metro station from your home/hotel.

My Adventures in visiting Dalit Pride Park

My first motivation for this visit was the Okhala Bird Sanctuary. It was January and I had read about thousands of migratory birds visiting the Okhala area around the river Yamuna. On the Google map I had seen that Dalit Pride Park was very close so I had decided to visit both these places.

My journey had began in Gurgaon and I had taken the magenta line from Hauz Khas, reaching Okhala Bird Sanctuary Metro Station in a little more than one hour.

Getting out of metro station I had my first encounter with the reality – the exit stairs crossed a wide and busy road, full of fast traffic, and came down to a narrow platform in the middle of the road. There were no signs about how to reach the Bird Sanctuary or the Dalit Pride Park around the Metro Station. Crossing the road to reach the sidewalk was my first dangerous adventure. There was no sidewalk and the shops occupying the area, were not able to tell me how far was the Dalit park, except to indicate the general direction.

A 20 minutes of walk, with an occasional sidewalk that was covered with garbage in places, including a bridge over a canal carrying foul smelling refuse waters, finally brought me to the gate of the Dalit Park.

My satisfaction was short-lived, as the children playing there told me that this gate was locked and to enter the park, I needed to walk to the next gate. Another 15 minutes of walk brought me to the next gate, but it was also closed. Resigned I walked to the successive gate, where a young man selling the spicy fruit-chaat explained to me that all the park gates were closed and the only gate open to public was gate number 5, another half-an-hour of walk away.

By that time, the sun was up and it had become warm. I had been walking for more than one hour and was already tired. I tried looking for an auto but after 10 minutes gave up the idea. Finally, deflated and defeated, I started my walk back to the metro station.

Along the outer wall of the Dalit Park, there were narrow openings from where I could look inside and take a few pictures. It looked green and lovely with a lot of columns in a pink stone, with elephants at the top, which are the electoral symbol of BSP. In the centre of the park there was a monument with statues of Kanshi Ram, Mayawati and other Dalit icons. Through the narrow openings, the pictures have not come out so well and all the statues looked grey or black.

Looking from outside, I did not see any visitors in the park except for a few uniformed men sitting in the shade near the locked gates, looking bored.

Back at the metro station, frustrated and tired, I half-heartedly asked persons about the way to the Okhala Bird Sanctuary. They pointed vaguely towards the bridge on the river. To reach that part, I needed to cross a wide road full of fast-moving traffic without any place for pedestrians. In the end, I thought that it was time for me to lick my wounded pride and retreat from this visit. My only consolation was that I had seen some parts of the park from the outside.

Need for Dalit Pride Parks

Caste is a huge and deeply rooted issue in Indian society. Caste related reservations in educational institutions and government jobs are sources of resentment among persons of "higher" castes. Proposed as a temporary measure at the time of India's independence, it has now grown into a multiple-headed hydra with different caste groups claiming backwardness and right to reservations.

On the other hand, in spite of the equality guaranteed by the Indian constitution, marginalisation and oppression of Dalits continues to be a serious issue in many parts of India, especially in small towns and rural areas.

Yet, there is no systematic way of promoting discussions on this theme in India. During my school years, the only mention of caste discriminations had come during discussions on Mahatma Gandhi and perhaps during the lessons on medieval bhakti poets of India. There was no lesson on how caste discriminations work systematically across our daily lives and nothing about continuing inhuman treatment of specific "lower" caste groups even today. For example, manual scavenging was declared unlawful long time ago, yet there are still places where human beings are forced to carry excreta on their heads and unprotected men are forced to go down in the gutters and manholes to clean them manually, even in the national capital. Many educated Indians growing up in big cities feel that caste discriminations was something belonging to the past because they do not believe in caste distinctions, and have no idea of its continuing terrible impact.

In such a situation, I feel that Dalit Parks can play important roles in promoting public discussions on castes and its negative impacts. For example, they can help in informing public about the reality of caste discriminations through testimonies, films, art and sculptures. They can also showcase important contributions made by dalit leaders to create positive role models. School children should be taken to these Dalit museums, to learn about India's history, its continuing social disparities and to make a vow to fight these.

To Uttar Pradesh Tourism Board

Metro is an accessible public transport that brings tourists to different parts of the city. UP Tourism Board should make an effort to make it easier for persons reaching the Okhala Bird Sanctuary Metro Station to visit the Dalit park and the bird sanctuary. It will be good if a tourism department official actually travels by Metro to understand how difficult it is for people to come out of the metro station and to visit these 2 places.  

Allowing only one gate of the park to be open and choosing that gate which is most far away from metro station for this purpose, seems not only illogical, but also against poor and middle class persons, who do not have their own cars or vehicles for travel.

The tourism board should also put relevant sign boards at the metro station to guide the interested persons. Finally, if they can also make arrangements to facilitate visits by persons with disabilities and old persons (like me), it would be wonderful.

I can guess that the reason why only one gate of the Dalit Park is kept open for public, is to sell tickets and control entry. However, if you check how much money this park is earning from the visitors and if it is a small amount, make the entry to Dalit Park free so that more persons can visit it, experience what it means to be Dalit and face caste discriminations and learn about the pernicious effects of caste-system in India.

Conclusions

I believe that visiting Dalit park and learning about discriminations and inhuman treatment of dalits in India is a great idea – similar to visits to holocaust sites and genocide museums in Europe and monuments to Black-resistance sites in the USA. Often, people and government seem embarrassed to accept that India still has caste-related discriminations. Instead, we need to openly talk about it, make it a prominent discussion point and highlight all that which has been done by national and state governments as well as, by activists to fight it. I hope that UP Tourism Board and Government of India will wake up to its importance and make it an essential part of visits for tourists coming to India.

 

 

Hiding our difficult past and the uncomfortable parts of our present reality because we feel ashamed of it, does not help us in tackling it. We need to talk about it openly, so that we can understand it better and find ways of overcoming it.

There are still many aspects of caste-related exploitation that are not well understood. For example, while oppression and exploitation of “lower” castes by “higher” castes is a big problem, I feel that hierarchies and intra-caste inequalities and discriminations among the “lower” castes is also an issue. Unless we talk about these aspects, how can we hope to transform India into an equal and progressive society?

Our Upanishads, the ancient Hindu sacred texts, say that there is the same universal consciousness in all living beings. Similar messages from all different religions of India also need to be celebrated in the dalit parks to promote a change in mentality.

Like the queer communities across the world celebrating GLBTIQ pride parades, perhaps one day all cities of India will have colourful and joyful dalit parks and dalit pride parades, where people can learn about our social history and express our pride in our identities.

Note: Post originally written in 2019 and updated in 2023

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Writers and Celebrities: Times Lit Fest

I was back in Mehboob studios in Mumbai after forty years. This time it was for the Times Literary Festival. It was a day of listening to writers and journalists as well as to two Bollywood celebrities - Kangana Ranaut and Karan Johar.

Nothing looked the same at the Mehboob Studios, starting from the entrance gate. Forty years ago, we had been stopped at the gate by the guard wanting to know who were we meeting. Inside we had been wide-eyed with wonder as we had seen the Bollywood stars of that era - Ashok Kumar, Jitendra, Navin Nischol and Prema Narayan. Except for Jitendra, who is known as father of Ekta Kapoor, probably people today won't even know the names of those other persons. For the Lit Fest, the studio halls were converted into discussion rooms and though there were a film actor and a film director, there were no film sets or shootings going on.

I had come to Mumbai for the launch of the new film of Sujoy Ghosh - Kahaani 2. Along with the well known Vidya Balan and Arjun Rampal, the film also has the film debut of my niece Manini Chadha, who plays the wife of Arjun Rampal in the film. If you have seen the film, do tell me if you remember Manini and how did you like her!

My Mumbai days were hectic - apart from the literary festival and the launch of Kahaani 2, it was a time for family reunions, as well as, some work meetings related to a research project. However, this post is only about my impressions from the Times Lit Fest.

Arguing About Politics - State of Democracy in India

My morning started with the two well known journalists, Rajdeep Sardesai and Tavleen Singh. It was good to see both of them in person but in terms of what they were saying, both seemed to reiterate what they write every day in their columns. Which means that Sardesai was more critical of Modi while Singh was more critical of the liberal-left.

Talking about the state of democracy in India, Singh said that it was a democracy without justice as even serious criminal cases of murder and rape dragged for twenty years. She also felt that the inability to ensure decent education for the children and minimal health services for the citizens were failures of the Indian democracy.

Sardesai said that there were limited choices for the democracy in India as we are only asked to choose between Congress, a family-owned private limited party, or a street populist like Kejriwal or a demagogue like Modi. He also felt that over the past few years, media has also failed to stand up to the Government.

Singh felt that media had been co-opted by the Government immediately after independence of India when Nehru had offered government houses and other perks to big journalists who had accepted those perks. When you are taking benefits from the government, how can you criticise anything, she asked.

In another session in the afternoon, I listened once again to Sardesai and Singh. This time they were accompanied by two more journalists - Jyoti Malhotra and Kumar Kekar. In this session, Sardesai became more emotional, complaining about the pressure of the Modi government on the media houses and how this is affecting journalism.

Kekar also joined in the criticism of Modi by raising the issue of 2002 Gujarat riots and claiming that Modi Government has suppressed the new book "Gujarat files" of Rana Ayyub. (I am not sure about the suppression of Ayyub's book as I saw it displayed in a book shop at the Mumbai airport. It seems to be a best seller.)

Singh asked why media continues to focus only on Modi, forgetting the other riots in India such as the riots against Sikhs in 1984 and the infamous Maliana killing of 42 youth.

Overall, this session was like listening to one of the debates that they have on the Indian TV channels on most evenings, without anything new in it.

Equality, Liberty and Sexuality

I was looking forward to this session on alternate sexualities and it did not disappoint. The session had three well known persons - French author Charles Dantzig, Isreali author Gil Hovav and Indo-German artist Katharina Poggendorf-Kakar. It was moderated by Vikram Doctor.

Vikram Doctor started the session by talking about the rise of nationalism and the power gained by conservative right wing persons/parties in different parts of the world, asking if this is going to create new challenges for persons of alternate sexualities.

Charles Dantzig explained that it is not correct to equate political right wing persons with sexual conservatives. For example, Marine Le Pen has many gay friends and many French gays support right wing parties in France because they are afraid of Arab immigrants. Even the other rising figure of French right, Francois Fillon had started his career with support from an important gay parliamentarian.

He felt that perhaps more public hypocrisy and restraint was needed and that he had been shocked by the kind of backward things said by people against same-sex marriage law in France.

Gil Hovav supported Dantzig's position by explaining that in Israel, in spite of the right conservative parties which are in power and gay marriages are not legal, the government and society are very accepting towards alternate sexualities. He lives with his companion, his former commander in the department of Israeli intelligence, with their daughter, who is biological daughter of his companion with a Lesbian friend. The Israeli society is very accepting and they have not faced any kind of prejudices.

Being a gay or a lesbian is also not a issue in the Israeli armed forces where all are expected to do service, while in France, the army is more anti-gay.

Gil also spoke about the Palestinian issue by saying that he completely supports the right to freedom of the Palestinians. He agreed that the persons with alternate sexualities face a lot of difficulties in the Palestinian society and many of them prefer to live in Israel, but he feels that right to sexual freedom is less important than the right to freedom of the Palestinian people.

Katharina Poggendorf-Kakar said that like gays and lesbians, even for the women, it is difficult to say if they are margainlised by conservative regimes since many women play an active role in these right wing parties. It is the same in India, where women play an active role in the oppression of other women, for example, mothers-in-law in the families. It is more about patriarchal mindsets then about the parties and more dialogues are needed on these issues starting from the schools.

Katharina also said that expressing love in public by persons of same sex is threatening to public because it forces them to confront their own sexuality. The changing society threatens notions of masculinity and patriarchy and thus there is rage among young men. While she feels that the percentage of rapes is higher in Europe than it is in India, here the rapes are more vicious and violent because there is much more rage among young men in India than there is in Europe.

I enjoyed this session very much, it was very thought-provoking. My only complaint was that for the one hour or shorter sessions, they should not have more than 2 speakers since it is difficult to give sufficient time to more persons.

Jonathan Clements, Pallavi Aiyar and Kangana Ranaut

Both Clements and Aiyar are travel writers, writing about Asia. Clements has written exclusively about China and he feels that knowing the local language and a deep knowledge of local culture is necessary to write about a country. His interest in China came at an early age since his father was part of a band, which played in a Chinese restaurant. "Whichever place in the world I visit, I always stay in the Chinatowns", he explained.

Aiyar, on the other hand, writes from a more external point of view without getting too much mixed up with local cultures. She was in the US when she first went to visit her Spanish husband in China and it hooked her, resulting in her first book. Since then she has written about other Asian countries.

Aiyar raised up the issue of the country stereotypes that dominate media. For example, in 2008 during the Olympics in Beijing, the foreign media wrote extensively about the pollution in the city. Two years later, in 2010 when the commonwealth games were held in Delhi, though the city's pollution was as bad as in Beijing, no one ever wrote about it, focusing instead on women oppression and rapes.

I found this session a little boring. My disinterest was probably also because I have not read either of them. So I left their session half-way to go and listen to the bollywood star Kangana Ranaut.

Kangana, being a Bollywood celebrity, had her own session in a big hall, full of people. She was being interviewed by journalist Manu Joseph. She is very articulate. However, the hall was too crowded and I thought that I had already read so much about her views in the newspaper and magazine interviews, so after five minutes, I decided to give it a miss.

The Ethical Slut

This was another session related to sexuality, asking if polyamory is the answer to our promiscuous instinct. The short answer to this question was "No", though the different persons present in this session came to that conclusion very differently.

There were 3 persons in this session – Dossie Easton, Barbara Ascher and Hoshang Merchant. It was moderated by Pragya Tiwari. Both Dossie and Barbara were a kind of therapist-counsellor-spiritual writers kind of persons while Hoshang, is a more rebel poet, looking from his role as a gay activist.

It was not a good combination of persons, because Hoshang clearly did not agree with many of things the other two were saying and came out a bit too strongly. The other two seemed a bit unsure of how to deal with him. Each of them had a lot of interesting things to share and merited their own separate sessions, grouping them together like that did not allow enough space for any of them. It was not a dialogue between them but rather a conflict, till Hoshang decided to leave the stage.

The discussions touched on ideas of romantic love and how these initiated in Europe in medieval period and later came to be seen as universal. Hoshang felt that the ideas of romantic love originated among gay poets and was later taken over by heterosexuals, who began to question if gays can experience romantic love or if they are just sexually promiscuous.

Another area of discussion was instinct versus culture and the possibilities of learning new ways of thinking and controlling the instincts. Regarding polyamory and the ideas of having multiple romantic/sexual partners, the discussions also touched on the role played by jealousy.

I was not satisfied with this session because it did not give me enough time to listen to the views of the three speakers. However, after the Lit Fest, I looked for and bought Dossie Easton’s book “The ethical slut”, because I want to read more about her ideas. I have already read some of the works of Hoshang.

Devi and Demon

I was really looking forward to this session, hoping to hear some stimulating discussion. Arshia Sattar has translated Ramayan while Amruta Patil had done a graphic novel on Mahabharat. Thus the session was organised to focus on the figures of goddesses and demons in these two books and was coordinated by Devdutt Pattanaik.

Pattanaik started the session by talking about the contraposition between the ideas of hermit versus householder in the Indian philosophy and how these two books look at these two ideas.

The session was a little disappointing since both Arshia and Amruta were unable to point towards any new facets of the Devi/Demon characters from the two books. Amruta did talk about a relatively unknown character of Mahabharat, Satyawati, but she was not able to express it in an interesting way. Similarly, Arshia talked about the Shakuntala story but it lacked the spark. The most interesting part of their discussion was about the figures of Mriga (deer) hunting in the two epics.

Both Arshia and Amruta emphasised the need to look at the context of the two epics rather than jumping to conclusions about the motivations and actions of specific characters. For example, Arshia talked about Ram and the difficult choices he makes throughout his life, while grappling with the responsibilities of his public role leading to the negation of his personal desires.

Compared to Arshia and Amruta, Pattanaik was a much more interesting and articulate speaker, but his role in the session was limited.

Loneliness of Men and Women

Before leaving the Lit Fest, I also went to the session of Karan Johar who was interviewed by Jitesh Pillai. Like the Kangana Ranaut session, this was also in the big hall and was full of people. As usual, Johar was very articulate and also seemed sincere in sharing his thoughts and angst. However, most of it was not new since he had already spoken about these things in his numerous interviews in magazines and newspapers.

Others

Among others, I also saw William Dalrymple, Ramchandra Guha and Sudhir Kakkar.

I briefly listened to an Australian Aboriginal poet, Lionel Fogarty, in a session moderated by Ranjit Hoskote.

Conclusions

Overall the festival was a good occasion to see many persons whose works I have read and admired. In terms of new ideas and discussions, there was not so much and the quality was uneven, however that is inevitable in the events of this kind.

It was a bit sad to think that the literature festival organised by one of the most important publication groups of India had not even one big Indian literature figure and no one from the world of Indian languages. Probably after Mahashweta Devi, we do not have any towering literary figures in India any more. Is it because our society today is all about superficial fun-and-having-a-good-time, and there is no time to stop and worry about literature which does not bring any money or power?

It was not possible to participate in all the sessions. For example, I would have loved to attend Devdutt Pattanaik’s session “Is God a boy or a girl? And what about Devil?” I would have also loved to listen to Ram Chandra Guha on history as it happens and history in hindsight. But these sessions were planned too late in the afternoon for me, as I had some other engagements.

However, as a result of the festival, I am planning to read the works of two authors that I have not read before, Gil Hovav and Dossie Easton. So I can say that it was a worthwhile experience.

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Leela Naidu: The Person Behind the Image

I think that it was 1966-67 when Doordarshan had shown Bimal Roy’s 1960 movie “Anuradha” and I had fallen in love with Leela Naidu. In the film, she had played the title role of Anuradha, a famous singer and dancer, who follows the man she loves, an idealistic doctor played by Balraj Sahni, to the village where he lives and works. In the process, she has to sacrifice her passion for music and singing. From that movie, the favourite image I have is near the end, when she sings the haunting “Hai re wo din kyon na aayen”.

I think that the idealistic doctor played by Balraj Sahni in this film was one of the reasons that had given me the idea of studying medicine. No wonder the film has been a personal favourite and I have watched it many times.

After “Anuradha”, I had not seen any other film by Leela Naidu for almost four decades. Only a few years ago, I had seen her looking older but still good-looking, in Shyam Benegal’s 1985 film “Trikal”. I had also been sad when I had heard about her death in 2009, at the age of 69.

A couple of months ago when I had come across her autobiography, “Leela – a patchwork life” (Penguin India, 2010), written with Jerry Pinto, I was very tempted to read it and at the same time, I was not very sure that it would be a wise thing.

Through experience I have learned that favourite film persons are better seen through the sepia tinted glasses of nostalgia. Knowing them as persons ruins their magic. However, in the end I had not resisted. The book has definitely changed my perception about Leela Naidu, the person behind the image.

Leela’s early life and upbringing

She was born in France in 1940, during the second world war. Her father was a well-known Indian physicist (Dr Ramaiah Naidu), while her mother was a French musician. Through my own experiences of living in Europe and my mixed Indian-Italian family, I could relate easily to her descriptions of growing up in France and Switzerland, and experiencing the casual discrimination and racism as a mixed race child.

While reading about her childhood in Europe, I found echoes of her life in a place that I had also visited and a person that I had known.

It was not such a big coincidence to find that a celebrity has been to a small little-known place, to which I have also been. The place was Divonne les Bains, a tiny town in France close to the Swiss border. In the book, she tells that once she had accompanied her mother to Divonne for a piano concert.

While reading this part, I had remembered my stays in Divonne with a friend and my walks around the place where they organise concerts in the summer. It was like having a direct connection with her, I could imagine her visiting the place with her mom sixty years ago.

Another coincidence was to find in her book, Abbe Pierre, the founder of Emmaus movement aimed at promoting missionaries for helping poor and destitute persons. Abbe Pierre's figure was a bit similar to that of Mother Teresa. Around twenty years ago, as a part of my humanitarian work with an Italian organisation, I had also met him.

In Leela’s biography, Abbe Pierre appears as a religious teacher in her school in Geneva. He does not make a very flattering figure in it:

I remember the conversation I had with Abbe Pierre, the religious preceptor at the Catholic school in Geneva to which I was sent. “In India” he told the class once, “they revere crocodiles and venerate fish. Their gods are wood and stone.”
If ever there was a misreading of the inclusive tradition of Hinduism, if ever there was a more narrow minded reading of the representation of the Ganga as crocodile and Matasya avatar of Vishnu, I have yet to hear it.
I was young but I was ready to stand my ground against such notions. “But Monsieur l’Abbe”, I said, “The statue of the Virgin Mary in the Chapel is also made of wood.”
He sputtered his contempt of this remark. Of course his statue was only a representation and a mnemonic, a reminder of the beloved Mother Mary. It was not an idol, it was a way of focusing attention on the Divine. I believe that even as he said it, he knew he was a digging a hole for himself, so he changed the subject.

From my own meeting with Abbe Pierre (1912 – 2007) in the early 1990s, I have more pleasant memories as we had briefly talked about Mahatma Gandhi and his work with leprosy affected persons.

However, it is not uncommon to find narrow views among Europeans about Hinduism, focusing on some specific aspects and unable to understand it because it is so different from their religious views, so I could visualise the discussions between a young Leela Naidu and a much younger Abbe Pierre in the 1950s.

Leela Naidu’s life experiences

Many famous persons, from Mahatma Gandhi to Indira Gandhi to Ingrid Bergman, Jean Renoir and different directors and actors of Indian cinema, appear in the book.

As you can guess from the part about Abbe Pierre above, Leela Naidu does not mince words or hide behind banalities to express her opinions about the people. In the book, often she has scathing views about these persons and she shares them without censoring herself. The only parts of her life she does not touch in the book are those related to her first marriage to Mr Tikki Oberoi, her divorce and her battle for the custody of her twin daughters.

Even those of you looking for tit bits about her marriage and divorce to Dom Moraes would be disappointed – she talks about him a bit, but does not go into any details.

About the different famous personas of the cinema world with whom she had worked including Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, R. K. Nayyar, Sunil Dutt and Balraj Sahni, she remains a bit critical, calling the ways of working of Indian cinema industry as superficial, with need for constant improvisation due to lack of planning. There are no traces of the usual fawning and divification about these persons that usually appears in books and articles.

For example, her comments about Balraj Sahni during the making of “Anuradha”, shook the gentle nice-guy image I had about him:

Sahni was a perfect gentleman. But like many other perfect gentlemen, he was not above trying his luck. One day he dropped me home from the studios.
“I think of you all the time”, he said.
“That’s kind of you”, I said.
“You are in my head”, he said.
“And how is your dear wife?” I asked. I have found that this question generally manages to quench the libido of the perfect gentlemen.

She has few words of praise for any person in her book. However, she reserves her most caustic comments for the writer-activist Arundhati Roy, with whom she had worked in the film “Electric Moon”. The film was directed by Pradeep Kishen (ex-husband of Ms Roy), while Ms Roy was looking after the production.

I must say I admire the way that Arundhati Roy has turned her status as celebrity writer into a catalyst for causes she cares about, but there was very little of that caring Ms Roy on the sets of Electric Moon …

... and so when I watch her pleading for the disenfranchised and the marginalised, I think back to the ruthless Ms Roy on the sun drenched plateau in Madhya Pradesh and I wonder whether it is easier for us to sympathise with anonymous masses than with the actual people we are confronted with in the real life.

If you like reading nasty stories about the well-known people, which they hide behind their public personas, you will like Leela Naidu’s autobiography.

Conclusions

I think that Ms Naidu had a difficult life even if she was considered as one of the ten most beautiful women of the world by the American magazine Forbes in the 1960s.

Her first marriage in the rich Oberoi family, her divorce, her challenges in being close to her daughters, were difficulties in her personal life. In her working life as well, she laments that did not get her due from Hindi cinema.

I don’t know if it was these difficulties that made her bitter or if it was her character of being an outspoken and direct person that led to some of those problems.

The book is a good read. I could find a lot of resonance of my own life in the parts of the book regarding her work for the U. N. organisations, her travels across different countries, her work with disabled children and her interest in documentary films.

At the same time, I felt a little sad for her that she had so few good things to tell about the people. Most of her stories are about negative experiences. I am sure that people including celebrities are not saints, but I can’t believe that almost everyone we meet has only negative things.

Often, the stories show that the lives of beautiful women are not always very happy - she seemed to fit in with that stereotype.

***

Monuments to celebrate freedom, peace and dignity

During my travels I often see monuments built to remember and celebrate events that have marked the history of the countries and their people. These monuments can be about freedom from colonialism, freedom from despots and oppressive regimes, finding a safe sanctuary where their families can live with dignity and hopes for peace. This post is about such monuments from different parts of the world.

The Uhuru monument (Freedom monument) from Nairobi, Kenya (Africa) shown in the picture above is a good example of what makes the freedom monuments. Usually it has freedom fighters, national flag, common men and women of the country and symbols expressing hopes for peace and prosperity. Most such monuments have some of these elements.

In this photo-essay, I have taken the significance of "freedom" in a wider sense, and thus, the events represented in this post are very different. We may not even consider all of them as "freedoms", some could even be monuments made by regimes to showcase false freedoms that are missing from their daily realities.

This post is the second part of a photo-essay that had focused on war monuments. With this brief introduction, lets start with liberty monuments from Africa.

FREEDOM MONUMENTS FROM AFRICA

The image below shows another part of the Uhuru monument in Nairobi (Kenya) where the dove symbolizes the desire of the people for peace and prosperity. The Uhuru monument celebrates the freedom of Kanya from the colonial rule.

The image below is from Robben Island in Cape Town (South Africa) where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. It was taken in the courtyard where Mandela used to break stones, shown in the central picture in this image. Mandela is a symbol of freedom from tyrannies and injustices through peaceful protests, along the path of non-violence shown by Mahatma Gandhi.

The next image is of the President's house from Bissau (Guinea Bissau) in west Africa. The house was damaged during the military coup followed by a civil war that took place in Guinea Bissau around 1998. 10 years later the house still showed the signs of the war and was abandoned, though a fragile democracy had returned to the country. Guinea Bissau had won freedom from colonialism in the 1970s.

It seemed that some of its islands had become a convenient transit point to manage drugs towards Europe, with the complicity of some military persons. For me, this building in Bissau was a symbol of difficulties of finding peace and freedom for the people, when more powerful interests prefer to continue wars and poverty. Thus it is not a real freedom monument but a symbols about its absence.

FREEDOM MONUMENTS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST

The two monuments from the Middle East in this post are both from Palestine. The first one shows the rotor blades of a ship that had tried to force its way through the Israeli blockade of the sea around Gaza. For me it symbolizes the continuing struggle of Palestinian people for their freedom.

The second image from Palestine is of the flag monument from Ramallah in the West Bank showing a boy climbing a pole to hoist the Palestinian flag.

While the Palestinians fight for their liberty from the Israeli occupation, some parts of Palestine also seem to be going towards a more conservative version of Islam, that curtails the civic liberties, especially of the women and minority groups like gays and lesbians.

Thus the fight for freedom, peace and dignity can be seen at different levels - against others and also against our own societies.

FREEDOM MONUMENTS FROM ASIA

I have selected three images of the freedom monuments from India. The first one shows a statue of Veeranga Jhalkari Bai from Jhansi during the war with the British in 1857.

I like this image for different reasons - first of all, because it represents an ordinary soldier. Most of the recorded history is about kings and queens and India is no different. Thus, when history mentions the Indian freedom fight of 1857, it is mostly about nobles and royals like Laxmi Bai and Nana Saheb. Jhalkari Bai had dressed up as the queen during the war, allowing the real queen (Rani Laxmi Bai) to escape.

Another aspect of the 1857 freedom fight is about who wins the war and writes the history. Thus, while Indians talk of the 1857 war as their freedom struggle from the British, British historians call it "mutiny" or "rebellion".

The second image from India is of the monument depicting Mahatma Gandhi's Dandi march in 1930, when he had launched the protest against the British by challenging their law that prohibited Indians from making the salt. It was a key event in India's freedom struggle and it brought common persons into active protest against the British. This monument is in New Delhi.

The third image of freedom monuments from India is again from New Delhi - a 27 metres (60 feet) long national flag on a a 63 metres (207 feet) high pole in the central park of Connaught Place was placed in March 2014, and has quickly become one of the most photographed monuments of Delhi.

The next freedom monument is from Tien-a-men square in Beijing, showing China's war against the nationalist forces and the role of chairman Mao Tse Tung in shaping the destiny of the country.

Reading the history of events in late 1950s and early 1960s, including the personal testimonies of persons affected by it, Mao's Cultural Revolution led to freedom of the peasants and atrocities against its thinkers, artists and philosophers.

Thus, we can discuss if that event and the monument representing it can be called a "freedom monument" but without doubt, it was a period that had a profound impact on the lives of millions of persons.

The next image is from the Parliament square in Ulaan Baator in Mongolia showing the monument to Changis Khan, considered a symbol of national pride.

Thus persons symbolising national pride and freedom in one country, can also be seen as oppressors or invaders by other countries.

The next two images are from Manila in Philippines. The first image shows Lapo Lapo, an indigenous leader who is considered the first freedom fighter for the liberation of Philippines from colonialism.

The second image from Philippines is from a park in central Manila where statues of different leaders who played an important role in the liberation struggle and building up of the nation, are displayed.

The last image from Asia is from Vietnam - the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum in Hanoi. On one hand, the fight between south Vietnam supported by USA against the communist regime in north Vietnam, was supposedly for freedom from communism. But for the Vietnamese, it was the fight for freedom of a small country against the mighty forces of a powerful nation.

For most of twentieth century, the overt and covert wars waged by USA with support from its Western allies against communists regimes, were usually waged as "wars for freedom". On the other hand, the communist regimes justified the curtailing of civic liberties to liberate the poor peasants from the oppression of their own rich classes, sometimes leading to immense disasters as in Cambodia.

Those kinds of wars have become less important in the recent histories because even communist regimes have embraced capitalism. Only future will tell if these changes will lead to real freedoms for people or they will only substitute oppressors, equally ruthless against the poor persons and their environments in their quest for profits.

FREEDOM MONUMENTS FROM NORTH AMERICA

The next 3 images are from New York in USA. The first monument is the Irish Hunger monument from the Battery park, that remembers the journey of thousands of Irish immigrants to USA to escape the great famine in Ireland between 1847 to 1852.

The second image is of the Immigrants monument that expresses the feeling of freedom among the immigrants from different parts of the world on reaching the American shores. I have preferred to show this rather than the better known "Statue of liberty" to talk about immigration and freedom.

Every years, hundreds of thousands of persons try to escape from oppressive regimes or from poverty, to more developed countries. On the other hand, the receiving countries almost always look at these immigrants as "problems" and try to block their entry. Every month, hundreds of people die trying to cross from Mexico to USA or from North Africa to Europe.

"Illegal" immigrants are considered a problem in many parts of the world, including in India, and thus it is not easy to find monuments celebrating the immigrants.

The third image from New york is of the monument to the people who had died in the September 11 attacks in 2001. Increasingly terrorism and killing of civilians is an increasing problem in different parts of the world and it is rare to find monuments remembering the victims of such attacks.

When faced with relentless oppression by a powerful regime, some times people justify terrorism, and say that terrorism is a "freedom struggle" of those without power. Personally I do not agree with this view point - I feel terrorism and killing of civilians can never be justified because blood baths never lead to justice and peace, they only lead to a different group of oppressors.

FREEDOM MONUMENTS FROM CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICAS

The next 3 images are about persons who played an important role in the liberation of countries in South and central Americas but these monuments are from New York (USA).

The first monument is to Jose de San Martin who played an important role in the freedom of Argentina from the Spanish colonialism.

The next monument shows Jose Marti Perez, a national hero from Cuba, who was a poet, journalist and revolutionary philosopher.

The third image from New York is of the Simon Bolivar monument, who is considered a national hero in many countries of Latin America including Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.

The next three images are from Brazil in South America. The first image shows the peace monument in Goiania (Goias) that is an hour-glass shaped construction carrying small pieces of earth from different countries of the world.

The next image shows the Flag monument from San Paulo in Brazil, built to celebrate 4th century of foundation of San Paulo city.

To me, this monument also symbolizes the power of time to cancel part of our unpleasant memories - if we think of the Amerindian people living in Brazil before the arrival of colonialists and of the African slaves brought by them, we can also see it as a monument to remember the killing of Amerindians and slavery.

The third image is from Salvador in Bahia state of Brazil and presents the monument remembering Zumbi dos Palmares, a slave brought from Africa who led the rebellion against the colonialists.

The last image from the Americas is from Quito in Ecuador, presenting the national monument, expressing the subjugation of natives under the colonial rule.

FREEDOM MONUMENTS FROM EUROPE

Different European countries were responsible for the colonialism in Asia, Africa and the Americas. However, many of them also had histories of their own struggles for freedom.

The first image in this section is from Vienna in Austria and shows the Roman general Marc Antony riding a chariot pulled by lions. A commander of Julius Caesar, Antony became the ruler of eastern provinces of Roman empire and had an affair with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Thus, this monument is not about freedom but about empire building and shows that the struggles for freedom have a very long history.

The next 3 images are about the changes in Eastern Europe over the past 2 decades. The first image is of a ruined house from Rijke in Croatia, that can be considered as a symbol of the different wars that characterized the breaking up of Yugoslavia.

The next image is from Prague in Czech republic and shows the monument of the victims of the communist regime.

The third image regarding Eastern Europe has a piece of the Berlin wall displayed in Cape Town in South Africa.

The next image is from Dublin in Ireland and shows the statue of Jim Larkin, a Trade Union leader.

During the twentieth century, trade unions played an important role in promoting freedoms by improving the lives of factory workers. The recent years have seen a dismantling of trade unions in different parts of the world under the impact of globalization and corporate capitalism.

At the same time, in some countries, the trade unions are no longer representing informal or irregular workers, but are seen as safeguarding the interests of those who already have good jobs.

The last image of this post is from Como in Italy and shows a statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was instrumental in unification of Italy in the nineteenth century.

 CONCLUSIONS

The monuments to freedom, peace and dignity come in different shapes and sizes. Sometimes the ideas they represent are more complex and can even be seen as monuments to injustices, massacres and oppression.

A key event missing from the images in this photo-essay is that of a holocaust memorial.

On the other hand, our cities can present us living monuments of how our freedoms are often under attack. For example, these monuments do not talk about women - the violence against women, their genital mutilation, the abortion of female embryos, forcing women to wear burkas and cover their bodies in the name of religion or traditions. These monuments also do not talk about indigenous people fighting for their rights, being displaced from their homes without proper compensation or rehabilitation.

Gods, lords and great persons

In today's Hindustan Times, there is an article by Amish in which he writes about his feelings for "Lord Ram" and his answer to a woman about use of the title "Lord":

A lady friend spoke with me after the event. I know her well and can certify that she is not a secular-extremist (the kind who have a distaste for every religion, especially their own). She is religious and liberal. She asked why I used the honorific ‘Lord’ for Lord Ram. I said I respect him. I worship him. I will call him Lord. She said that she sees me as a liberal who respects the women in his family; then how can I respect Lord Ram, who treated his wife unfairly? She then went on to make some very harsh comments about Lord Ram.

In his answer to this accusation, Amish goes on to look at the lives of three great men - Ram, Mahatma Gandhi and Buddha - and concludes that great men often think of greater good of human beings and in the process are not always fair to their wives and their families, "We have every reason to love them, because they sacrificed their own lives so that we could have a better life. But had we been their family, maybe we would have cause to complain."

The way Amish explains it, it does make sense. However, I was wondering about a kind of gender bias in terms of such stories, where "great men" are excused for their family lives because they were thinking of greater good of the society, but are we equally understanding about "great women", when they want to sacrifice their family lives for the greater good?

So I was wondering are there similar examples of women. The only person I could think of was Mira Bai, though I think that it is not a perfect example. She sacrificed her family life because of her feelings of devotion to Krishna. Though her husband and her family did not like it and even gave poison to her, she is considered a saint by the people.

Another similar example can be of another woman saint from Karnataka - Akka Mahadevi. Can the readers give me other examples of such women as public figures who are respected or worshipped in India, though in terms of their family lives they were less than perfect? Or is it just men who "forget" their families in their quest for greater good?

At another level, similar accusations of mistreating their wives and families have been made against a number of artists, writers, film makers and public figures. Their public image be that of sensitive persons, and they make sensitive portrayals of women and life's injustices in their works, but their wives and families accuse them of neglect, psychological and even physical violence. Perhaps in this regard, it will be easier to find examples of successful women artists, writers and film makers, who have been accused of similar behaviour by their spouses and families!

Going back to the original debate that started this reflection - Amish's explanation about why he prefers to say "Lord Ram" and not just "Ram", I have another consideration. I agree that if you believe in a religion or a god or a figure and you wish to use words like Lord, bhagwan, prophet, etc., it is fine. These titles and words should reflect the faith and devotion you feel in yourself.

However, often the faithful get angry if others do not use such titles and take this as a kind of insult to their religion. They would like to force others to use these titles - in that case, I think that such words are empty of devotion, rather they are at best, a hypocrisy!

***

Tulsi Das: Retelling Ramayana

Ramayana (Story of Rama) is an ancient Indian tale about prince Rama. Centuries ago, the tale of Ramayana had spread from India to the neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. In the sixteenth century, Tulsi Das rewrote Ramayana as "Ram Charit Manas" in Avadhi language (close to Hindi language). Till that time, the most well known version of Ramayana in India was in Sanskrit, written by Valmiki. Thus Tulsi Das is credited with making the sacred text accessible to a large number of persons in India, because Awadhi is a language of common people while the knowledge of Sanskrit is limited to a few.

Tulsi Das (1554 - 1644), is credited with different literary works in Awadhi and Brajbhasha variations of Hindi. A contemporary of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), his influence on large parts of India has been enormous, but unlike Shakespeare, Tulsi's historical figure and his literary abilities have largely been ignored by academics in India and internationally. In recent years, Tulsi's figure has been "taken over" by some conservative Hindu groups, who give a selective interpretation of his works that supports specific political and socio-religious ideologies.

This article reviews “Manas ka Hans” a bio-fiction about Tulsi Das, written by Hindi author Amrit Lal Nagar in 1972.

INACCESSIBILITY OF RELIGIOUS TEXTS

A few years ago, while visiting Mongolia I had started thinking about the way different religions use languages across the world, to ensure that sacred texts are not understood by majority of their followers. We were in the Gandam Buddhist monastery in Ulaan Bataar and I had asked the person accompanying me, to tell me about the words written on a giant bell in the temple courtyard.

“I can’t tell you what it says, because the monks use Tibetan language for all their prayers!” he had told me. Buddhism had come to Mongolia through the Tibetan monks and even today in their temples their prayers continue to be in Tibetan.

I had heard something similar in Vietnam, where the temples often have their prayers in Chinese and not in Vietnamese.

In Catholic churches around the world, the mass was celebrated in Latin till some decades ago. It is relatively recently that the Bible has been translated to languages like Malayalam (some years ago I had met Fr Sebastian, who had done this translation).

In India, majority of Hindu prayers for specific religious rites, are in Sanskrit. Thus, Tulsi’s "Ram Charit Manas" played a fundamental role in making Ramayana accessible to common persons. Because of this, many persons consider him as a saint and call him Sant Tulsi Das or Acharya Tulsi Das.

HISTORICAL FIGURE OF TULSI DAS

If you look for information about Tulsi Das on internet, you will mostly find mythical stories - about his being an incarnation of Valmiki, his miracles and his meetings with ghosts and gods such as Hanuman and Ram.

He was born around the time Mughal emperor Hamayun had returned to India in 1554 AD. Tulsi saw the reigns of three more Mughal emperors during his life time - Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. He was a writer and a poet during those reigns. Yet analysis of his historical figure are few.

In recent years, some persons have worked on collecting historical information about Tulsi Das. For example, some years ago Anshu Tandon had presented a play called "Jo chaho Ujiyyar" focusing on Tulsi's struggles as a Hindu reformer. Excerpts of this play (in Hindi) are available on Youtube. Still much more can and should be done to understand the historical figure of Tulsi Das. (Below a scene from"Jo chaho ujjiyar" play)

BIOGRAPHIES OF GOSWAMI TULSI DAS

According to Amrit Lal Nagar in his introduction in the book “Manas ke Hans”, there are five biographies of Tulsi Das written by persons who were his followers - Raghubar Das, Beni Madhav Das, Krishna Dutt Mishra, Avinash Rai and Sant Tulsi saheb. However, Nagar explains that according to expert academics, none of these biographies is accurate,and they differ from each other about significant events in Tulsi Das' life.

For writing "Manas ke hans", Nagar looked at these biographies, as well as, looked at other oral traditions and works of academics on Tulsi Das. He also did a critical reading and analysis of Tulsi Das's own writings. He acknowledges that the information he found was not complete and thus his book is a bio-fiction rather than a biography.

Nagar mentions two additional important sources of information, " Among others, I want to make a loving mention of friend late Rudra Kashikey (Pen name of Shiv Prasad Mishra) who could not complete “Rambola bole”. Rudra ji was a walking encyclopedia of Kashi. Late Dr Rangey Raghav had also expressed his ideas about Tulsi Das through his work “Ratna ki baat".

TULSI DAS'S LIFE HISTORY FROM "MANAS KA HANS"

The book is written in flashbacks from the point of view of an old Tulsi Das telling his story to his followers.

Context: In 1540, Hamayun had to leave India after losing the war to the forces of Sher Shah Suri. Over the next 12 years, Sher Shah was followed on Delhi's throne by Islam Khan and Adil Khan. In 1554 when Tulsi Das was born in Vikrampur, Hamayun was engaged in the war with the Pathan forces of Adil Shah.

Childhood: Tulsi's mother Hulsi died while giving birth to him. His father Pandit Atma Ram prepared his son's horoscope and found that his son had an unfortunate mix of planets in his birth chart and asked the child to be given away.

Muniya, a shudra ("low caste") servant in the home of Atma Ram, took the baby across the river to her mother-in-law Parvati amma, a beggar. Soon after, Mughal forces destroyed Vikrampur and Pandit Atma Ram died childless after some years. Parvati amma named the child Rambola, and he grew up as a singing beggar, who walked the village streets asking for alms and singing prayer songs (bhajans) of poet saints like Surdas, Kabir and Mira. When Rambola was five years old, Parvati amma died and Rambola, tormented by the Brahmins of the area, ran away to Sukar, at the junction of Ghagra and Saryu rivers.

At Sukar, Rambola was taken as a disciple by Swami Narhari, who took him to Ayodhya for his religious initiation and thus Rambola became Tulsi Das.

Young Tulsi: Tulsi studied with Guru Shesh ji Maharaj in Varanasi and received the title of Shastri. During this period, he composed "Hanuman Chalisa" (Prayer to Hanuman) to overcome his fear towards the evil spirits (bhoot-pichash) and became famous for his singing of religious texts and compositions of prayers.

He journeyed as a rich young Brahmin man, to the place where once his birth-village Vikrampur had stood, and there he built his new family home and a temple. His fame as a singer and a poet brought back many other persons who had lived in that area in the past and knew his family. Thus a new village called Rajapur (named after Tulsi's friend Raja Bhagat) came around his house.

Marriage: Raja convinced Tulsi Das to visit Pathak maharaj, an old friend of his late father, pandit Atma Ram. Pathak had no sons, and wanted a learned husband for his daughter Ratnabala, so that he could leave his valuable book collection to his son in law. Pathak asked Tulsi to marry his daughter and finally Tulsidas agreed.

Tulsi fell in love with his wife and together they had a son Tarapati. For earning livelihood, Tulsi Das decided to go to work in Varanasi, while his wife went to stay at her father’s home. After a few months, Tulsi Das went to see his wife. During this visit, Ratna said to him that he did not have self-control and that he could not wait for sex.

Renouncing of marriage: Hurt by his wife’s words, Tulsi Das left home that night and went to Ayodhya. For different months he wandered around as a beggar and did occasional work - including work as an accountant in a math (Abbey of Hindu monks) for some time. In this period, he travelled in different cities of the region between Ayodhya, Varanasi and Chitrakoot. For a period he was responsible for a gaushala (cow home) in Varanasi, and thus earned the title of Goswami or Gosain.

Full of remorse, Ratna went to see her husband to ask him to come home, but Tulsi Das was firm that he had renounced his household duties, he was now a Brahmachari (celibate) and that he would not go back to married life. Their son Tarapati died due to small pox. Thus, Ratna lived alone in their house in Rajapur.

Writer Tulsi Das: Tulsi Das on the other hand, continued his writing of prayer-poems and retelling of "Ram Charit Manas", the story of Ramayana. Other Brahmins of Varanasi felt that making the sacred book accessible to general public was against the scriptures and thus started different campaigns against him. However, with popular support, Tulsi Das managed to thwart their machinations. Called “mahatma” (Great spirit) by general public for his literary works and for his emotional singing of prayers, Tulsi Das died in Varanasi at the age of ninety years.

In the book Tulsi’s faith in the figure of Ram constantly moves between the life and stories of Ram as the God incarnate and Ram as the symbol of a formless infinite God.

VIEWS OF TULSI DAS ABOUT CASTE SYSTEM

It must have been painful for the child Tulsi to understand that his father had preferred to believe in the stars and had abandoned him. Perhaps that was the reason, why as a grown up young man, he went back to his old village and built his home there, as a message to his father that he was not unlucky and that he had managed to accumulate enough wealth to build himself a house?

How much of those early experiences of rejection from his father and his life as a child-beggar  searching for an identity and security, influenced his later decisions to renounce married life and to fight with Brahmins?

I felt that his early years as a child growing up in a "low-caste" shudra home and his difficulties at different periods of life with the Brahmins in Ayodhya and Varanasi, should have given him an understanding and a feeling of solidarity about the oppression and marginalization faced by persons who are seen as inferior in the caste hierarchy.

At the same time, I had read other criticisms about Tulsi Das. For example, a line from Ram Charit Manas "Dhol Ganwar Shudra Pashu Nari, Sakal Tadan ke Adhikari" (Drums, the illiterate, lower caste, animals and women, all need to be beaten to make them work), is often quoted to explain Tulsi Das's views on castes and women.

Thus, while reading "Manas ke Hans" I was curious to read about Tulsi's socio-religious views. Since the book is a bio-fiction, we cannot say that these were really the views of Tulsi Das but these can be considered as the understanding of the writer Amrit Lal Nagar about Tulsi Das. In the introduction to the book, Nagar explains how he wrote it:

"Before writing this novel, I read with particolar care "Kavitavali" and "Vinaypatrika". Vinaypatrika contains different invaluable moments about inner conflicts of Tulsi, and thus I thought it appropriate to build the psychological framework of Tulsi on their basis. Even about the psychological background to his writing of "Ram Charit Manas", I found help in "Patrika". Some details about Tulsi's life can be found especially in Kavitavali and Hanumanvahak and occasionally in "Dohavali" and "Geetavali". From the innumerable oral-stories that are so popular about Gosain ji, I have included those that could fit in with this psychological framework..." 

In the book, Nagar's Tulsi answers these accusations about his being a casteist and being against the women by explaining, "Ram Charit Manas is a story and in the story, different characters have different beliefs. If you take the beliefs of any of those characters and say that this is Tulsi Das' belief, then it is wrong. You can also find some other character in the story who has completely opposite belief." Thus Nagar felt that it was manipulative to quote of a line from Ram Charit Manas as a justification for characterizing the personal views of Tulsi Das.

The book also has an episode where Tulsi helps a hungry chamar (one of the "untouchable" castes) man who is accused of killing a Brahmin and gives him food, going against the Brahmins of the city. In this episode, Tulsi justifies the killing of the Brahmin because "he was cruel and did not behave as a Brahmin." (p. 319-20)

The book also has different references to poet-saints of his time - there is a small episode (p. 179) about young Tulsi's meeting with eighty-five year old Surdas in Mathura and another episode about his meeting with Rahim (p. 364). The book mentions some disagreements between Tulsi and the followers of Kabir, though Tulsi expresses respect for Kabir's ideas (p. 325). As these poet saints were reformists and against the caste oppression, we can see that Nagar's Tulsi Das was more humane and progressive figure.

TULSI DAS, MUSLIMS AND BABRI MOSQUE

Babur had come to India in 1526 and he had died in 1530. Thus building of Babri mosque at the site of Ram Janamabhumi (birth place) had occurred a couple of decades before Tulsi Das' birth. He had lived through the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Though the book was written in 1972, I was also curious to know about how Nagar has depicted Tulsi Das' relations with Muslims and if he had written about the Babri mosque controversy, that had inflamed opinions in India in 1992 when the mosque was demolished by some Hindu groups.

In the book Nagar depicts the UP villages as places where Hindu and Muslim communities have been living together in close relationships. Many episodes of the book located in Tulsi's native village Rajapur, have different Muslim characters, shown as Tulsi Das's close friends and neighbors. For example, in the book, a Muslim neighbor, Bakridi baba, born a couple of days before Tulsi, tells the story of Tulsi's birth and his banishment to Parvati Amma's village. They also come to him for his advice about stars and future foretelling.

There are different episodes in the book where Nagar mentions Babri mosque. Here are some examples:

After a pause Medha Bhagat said, "Recently I was in Ayodhaya. There, where after destroying the holy temple of the birthplace, king Babar has built a holy mosque. Nearby, on a hillock I met a young man [Tulsi Das], lost in Rama's love... from morning till sundown, sitting behind a tree, he kept on gazing at the mosque. Sometimes he laughed, sometimes cried, and sometimes like a yogi he became lost in meditation .." (p. 135)

[A disciple asked to Tulsi] "After leaving the abbey, where did you go?" "I stayed in Ayodhaya, where else could I go? I begged for food and in the night, I slept outside the mosque together with other fakirs .." (p. 283)

One day he went to the Babri mosque that was built at the site of Rama's birth place. A Sufi saint was reading the verses of Mohammed Jayasi to the soldiers and the public. Written in dohe and chaupai (two and four lines verses), that divine love poem was so beautiful that even Tulsi lost himself in its words. (p. 294)

The date of Ramanavami (Rama's birth date) was close. A lot of movement had started in Ayodhaya because of it. Ever since, they had destroyed the birthplace temple and built the mosque in its place, since then followers of Rama could not enter the place to pray to their lord. Everywhere in India, the holy day of Ramanavami brings joy but in Ayodhaya, this day comes on the sharp edge of a sword... the area of Rama birthplace is made wet with the blood of martyrs every year... thus the ruler prohibit any public telling of the Rama's story.. the followers celebrate the day hidden in their homes .. Tulsi felt these things in his heart. In Rama's birthplace, Rama's story cannot be told was an unacceptable injustice for Tulsi. .. Everyday around mid-day he always went towards the Babri mosque. Behind the mosque, a short distance away, there was an old hillock. Tulsi used to sit on that hillock in such a way so that he could see the mosque built on the birthplace. For long time he sat there. He was friends with Muslim fakirs who sat in front of the mosque. (p. 295)

[When Tulsi was not allowed to sit behind the mosque:] "Lord Rama, you are my witness that I have never thought anything bad about this mosque. A place of worship remains worthy of worship even in this form. Even now, it is a place where people pray in front of the infinite formless supreme consciousness. When I had come away from Ramanujiya abbey, I used to come to sleep here. I was friends with these same persons, but then I was also seen as a fakir but now I am seen as a Hindu. Rama, please come back to stop this injustice." (p. 296)

Around mid-day, the drummers announced in different parts of Ayodhaya .. the government of emperor Akbar had sent orders from Delhi that in the courtyard inside the Babri mosque, people can make a platform for the worship of Rama. .. Tulsi was very happy. (p. 298)

[While Tulsi was writing Ram Charit Manas] Ever since the platform for worshiping Rama was built in the mosque and people could visit it, the people of Ayodhaya were happier. The soldiers of the mosque behaved less harshly. The anger between Hindus and Muslims had reduced. Even though some conservative Muslims were against this decision of Akbar, but they did not have any power. Tulsidas, every day, before starting writing, used to visit the Rama's statue on the platform inside the mosque. (p. 301)

Thus, Tulsi's views about Babri mosque in Nagar's book ask for the possibility of praying to Ram but they are also about living in harmony and friendship with Muslims and respecting the mosque. Nagar's Tulsi is happy to worship Rama in the courtyard of the mosque and looks at it as a place of the worship to the "infinite formless God".

CONCLUSIONS

Tulsidas was a historical figure whose name has been familiar, not just to a lot of Hindus, but to most Indians. He had played an important role in simplifying the story of Rama and making it understandable to the common public.

He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare. Like the influence of Shakespeare on the English literature, Tulsi Das' literary works have had an enormous influence in India. However, while Shakespeare's works have been the subjects of an enormous amount of studies and analysis, Tulsi Das did not receive much academic attention. In the recent decades, there has been some attention towards Tulsi Das' work but often it is in mythological terms rather than historical. It also tends to make a manipulative use of his works to justify specific political and religious ideologies that support conservative Hindu worldviews.

However, the biography of Tulsi Das written by Amrit Lal Nagar, presents him as a more humane and progressive thinking, creative and mystic person, who was shaped by his early life experiences of marginalization and exclusion. In the book he comes through as a person of his times. At the same time, he is someone, who was also linked to some of the key progressive figures of those times.

Note: I have translated from Hindi the different passages from the Book quoted in this article. I have tried to remain faithful to the sense of the phrases rather than doing literal translation.

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