Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Issai - Inter-religious Bollywood

Artists don't believe in conventions, everyone knows it. Ordinary mortals are expected to follow the social rules, but for artists we are usually ready to make exceptions. Look at Bollywood. It is common enough to find marriages and relationships that go accross religious lines in Bollywood.

But if film artists can go beyond social conventions in their private lives, they also need to sell the tickets of their films. Do people go to watch films that defy social conventions?

In this three parts article, I will look at - (1) inter-religious families in reel-life Bollywood; (2) inter-religious love in reel-life Bollywood; and, (3) inter-religious stories from real life Bollywood. This first part of the article is about inter-religious families in Bollywood films.

Multi-religious societies & Cinema

I think that among all the different films made in different parts of the world, Bollywood and Indian cinema have touched on the issue of inter-religious issues many more times, compared to all other countries. May be it has something to do with the way Indians perceive themselves?

Almost all the countries of the world today are multi-religious. However, most of them do not think of themselves as multi-religious. Or rather did not think of themselves as multi-religous till recently. On the other hand in India, we think of ourselves as being part of a multi-religious country for a long time. May be it is because of our history. It may be also because many religions started in India.

In India 80% of the population is Hindu, though Hinduism can be interpreted very differently among different groups of people in different parts of India, and remaining 20% is composed of different religions. In US, about 75% of population is Christian (protestants and Catholics), while the remaining 25% belong to different religions, including those who do not believe in any religion. In UK about 70% of the population considers themselves as Christians. In Italy, 80% of the population identifies itself as Catholic. So more or less, all these countries have similar percentages of majority groups and minority groups.

Yet, in my opinion, the awareness about different religions and their beliefs, is much higher in India than any where else. Could that be the reason why Bollywood has been extra-sensitive to the issue of inter-religious relationships?

If I think of films from any other country - USA, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, China ... I can't remember even one film on the subject of inter-religious relationships. Even when their films have characters from other countries/religions, usually they are shown in a way where religious differences are not an issue. However, I have seen some American documentary films on this subject, specially on the issue of inter-religious marriages between Christians and Jews.

If you know of some examples of mainstream films from any country touching on inter-religious relationships, please do let me know.

Persons of different religions in Bollyworld

Bollyworld is the make believe world of Bollywood that exists only inside the cinema halls and DVDs. In Bollyworld, the idea of including persons of different religions is so pervasive that it hardly makes news. For reaching out to people of different religions, often Indian films include persons of different religions, most common being Muslims but also Christians and Sikhs, shown usually as "almost family" like friends.

Films where Muslims, Christians or Sikhs or Parsi are the main protagonists are less common, but there are some examples of these. Muslim socials was distinct category of Bollywood films till 1980s with films like Nikaah, Mere Huzoor and Mere Mehboob. However, this genre of films is less common today. Sikh culture has found greater expression in Punjabi cinema, though there are some examples from mainstream Bollywood such as Singh is King and Jo Bole So Nihaal.

More commonly, Bollywood places its main stories in Hindu famlies, while persons of other religions are shown as friends, or less commonly as villains. There was a time when this practice allowed film makers to introduce specific things like ghazals and shairo-shayari in the narrative. It is hard to think of films which did not have such characters from 1960s and 1970s. From Hrikesh Mukherjee, to Ramanand Sagar, Prakash Mehra, Manmohan Desai and Tarachand Barjatya, all their films had such characters.

Even more recently, some of the big box-office successes of Karan Johar, such as "Kuch kuch hota hai" and "Kabhi Khushi kabhi gham", have continued with this idea of close family-friends kind of relationships with persons of different religions.

I think that the basic idea behind it is to make sure that persons of all religions can relate to the film (and make it a commercial success). At the same time, it does reflect the real-life reality of India, where it would be impossible to find any person who has not interacted with persons of other religions in the neighbourhoods, friends and workplaces.

Mixed Religion families in Bollywood

While the more popular Bollywood films used characters of different religions in close family and friendship relationships, they also maintain clear boundaries between them. Thus, in most of these films, Muslims are always married to Muslims, Christians to Christians and Hindus to Hindus.

However, the idea of mixing up of religions in the Bollyworld families has been touched upon many times. When I think of significant Bollywood films that have touched on theme of inter-religious families I think of four films - Dharamputra, Amar Akbar Anthony, Zakhm and Bombay.

There are other significant films like the recent Kurbaan, but I see them more about inter-religious love stories rather than about inter-religious families. However, I do concede that this division into inter-religious love and inter-religious families is arbitrary and subjective.

Dharamputra (1961): This Yash Chopra film was my introduction to a world united and yet divided because of religions. It was about a Muslim girl (Mala Sinha) who has to give away her son, born before her marriage, to a Hindu couple who are her family friends (Manmohan Krishen and Nirupa Roy). Years later, that son (Shashi Kapoor) grows up into a Hindu fanatic and during the partition riots goes to burn the house of his Muslim mother.

Amar, Akbar, Anthony (1977): This Manmohan Desai film is another old favourite about three brothers who get separated when they are young, and grow up in three different families beloning to three different religions - Amar (Vinod Khanna) grows up as Hindu, Akbar (Rishi Kapoor) grows up as a Muslim and Anthony (Amitabh Bacchan) grows up as Christian. One of its most celebrated scene had blood transfusion tubes running from the arms of the three brothers and going into the arm of a blind woman (Nirupa Roy) who is actually their mother, but they don't know it.

The film looked at religious differences as being important for the individuals and yet almost unimportant for the relationships among people. The three brothers growing up with different religions, are shown to be in love with girls from their own religions. They are shown living in the worlds made of persons of their own religions. The film never discusses the impact of religious differences but rather seems to take it for granted that the persons from different religions would love each other "because they are brothers".

There are no religious fanatics or any speeches about religions in this film. Thus, I see this film as an allegory for the ideal multi-religious India, where each religion can maintain its distinctiveness, its own costumes, and yet be like a family.

Zakhm (1998): This is one of the my favourite films of all times. Directed by Mahesh Bhatt, this was an autobiographical film. Against the backdrop of religious riots in Bombay, the film tells the story of an old woman (Pooja Bhatt), who has been burned alive by a Muslim guy. As she struggles for her life in the intensive care unit of a hospital, her younger son, with the help of Hindu hardliners would like to take a revenge on the Muslims. Her elder son (Ajay Devgan) tells the story of their family to his younger borther.

It is the story of a Muslim woman in love with a Hindu film director, who dies in an accident leaving her with two sons. She hides her own faith and brings up her two sons as Hindus, even though she is rejected by her husband's family.

The film had a powerful performance by child actor Kunal Khemu as the elder son, during the parts in flash back, where Ajay tells about his childhood.

In South Asia, the boundaries between religions can often be hazy. Many families carry hidden histories of inter-mixing of different religions. I felt that this film brought out the issue of those hidden histories in a powerful way. It was also a strong voice against the fanatics and the hate-mongers of different hues.

Bombay: This 1995 film by Mani Ratnam is one of those rare films that touched on a vital question in all inter-religious marriages - the question of the religion of their children. The Hindu-Muslim couple in the film opt for a civil marriage and ignore the religions.

However, their two fathers would like that their grandchildren follow the family religion. The couple has twins and thus, the two grandfathers decide that one grandchild can receive Muslim religious knowledge and the other can be Hindu. Only when there are Hindu-Muslim riots that threaten the lives of the two children, it makes them understand the futility of religious fights.

Many mixed-religions couples today are like the couple of this story, who do not feel very religious and who feel that they can continue to follow different faiths. However, the issue of their children's religions is a thorny one, especially when there are family expectations and pressures from the two sides.

The different ways in which families deal with this issue, I think that it needs to be tackled in more films.

Conclusions

Bollyworld often shows persons of different religions, living together as close family friends or relating to each other in positive ways.

In a way it is a reflection of the Indian society and at the same time, I believe that it strengthens knowledge and relationships between people of different religions in India.

The past few decades have been marked by shifting of religions towards more exclusionist and radical positions, not just in India but all over the world. In such a situation, I think that Bollywood's role in promoting a multi-religious society is important.

There are many examples of mixed-religions families in Bollywood cinema. Personally, I believe that in this direction, Bollywood (and Indian cinema in other languages) has been much ahead of all other cinematic traditions in the world.

So if you think of Bollywood films dealing with inter-religious families, are there any films that have impressed you? Are there any such films from other countries, that you know of?

In the next part of this article, I will touch on inter-religious love stories in Bollywood films.

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This article is part of my reflections for an email based research on mixed religious couples and families. This research is called "Mixed Doubles: You, I and our Gods".

If you are or were a part of a mixed religious relationship or if you grew up in a mixed religious family, please consider joining this research by sending me an email at: sunil.deepak(at)gmail.com

You can find more information about this research at the Mixed Doubles Blog.

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Firoze Manji: The Voice of Africa

Firoze Manji is founder and editor of Pambazuka News, a newsletter with articles, news and links about different countries, people, civil society organisations and movements of Africa. Pambazuka News provides weekly information and links to articles on new developments in Africa in English, French and Portuguese by email. You can also read Pambazuka News along with its archive of hundreds of articles on its website.

Recently I interviewed Firoze through email for an article in the AIFO magazine. So this interview will appear in Italian in the issue of June 2012.

I think that for all persons interested in development issues in Africa and in reading and listening to the more important voices of African thinkers and civil society leaders, Pambazuka News is one of the most important gateways. I join Firoze in asking you to become friends of Pambazuka and help in maintaining it independent.

Here is the interview

Sunil: How did the idea of Pambazuka came and how was the idea turned into reality?

Firoze: Pambazuka News was the serendipitous offspring of a programme established to harness ICTs for strengthening the human rights movement in Africa. Its birth was intimately intertwined with an attempt to develop distance learning materials for civil society organisations in Africa. In 1997, Fahamu (ndr: an African network of civil society organisations with offices in Kenya, South Africa and Senegal) set out to examine how developments in information and communications technologies can be harnessed to support the growth of human rights and civil society organisations in Africa. Like many others, we saw the potentials opening up with the growth in access to the internet. One of the outcomes was that we began receiving requests from human rights and other civil society organisations for assistance in finding information on the web, and with disseminating information about their own work.

Initially, we responded on a case-by-case basis, sending off the results of searches or disseminating by email information we had received from others to those on our modest contacts list. But soon the demand became overwhelming. We simply could not respond to all the requests we received.

We decided to establish Pambazuka News as a means of sharing information relevant to the this constituency, but rather than just send out information, we decided also to include op-eds that would provoke reflections about the potentials for freedom and justice in Africa. From a small base of subscribers in December 2000, Pambazuka News has grown rapidly with 28,000 subscribers, and an estimated readership approaching one million. Today we publish some 20-30 articles every week, with contributions from more than 3200 authors across the continent and the African diaspora.

We have published some 580 issues of the English edition of Pambazuka News over the 11 years of our existence. And four years ago, we started publishing a French language edition, and two years ago a Portuguese language edition.

Pambazuka News is used widely by activists, commentators, social movements, alliances and networks to foster debate, disseminate analyses and share information. We monitor some 250 websites related to Africa, and publish summaries every week of some 100 sites.

Sunil: What are the biggest challenges Pambazuka has faced since its inception

Firoze: Perhaps the greatest challenge we have faced has been to keep up with the demand from the growing constituencies that depend on Pambazuka News as an advocacy tool as well as to get an African progressive perspective on Africa and world affairs. To respond to these demands means that we need the necessary resources, and those are hard to find.

There are very few funders who fully understand the importance of what we do, despite the fact that most of them depend on Pambazuka News as a source of analysis and information. And with the growing African awakening that we have written about in our recent book "African Awakening: the emerging revolutions", there is a critical need for Pambazuka News to grow and provide support for the struggles for freedom and justice taking place across the continent.

Which is why we have decided to turn to our readership: we have asked our readers to join the Friends of Pambazuka and to donate to keep Pambazuka free and independent.

Sunil: In which ways Pambazuka has changed and evolved since the beginning?

Firoze: Pambazuka News has grown substantially in terms of the amount of coverage provided as well as the quality of the articles. We have attracted some of the leading thinkers across the continent to write commentary and analyses, while a the same time providing a platform for social movements such as Abahlali base Mjondolo in South Africa and the Bunge la Mwaninchi in Kenya.

We have produced radio programmes as well as podcasts and multimedia materials such as the 'Burden of Peace", a documentary on violence against women during the post-election violence in Kenya. In 2008 we expanded our operations to including a book publishing enterprise - Pambazuka Press. Today, Pambazuka News is produced by staff in Senegal, Kenyam South Africa and UK.

Sunil: Who are the most popular writers or star writers at Pambazuka?

Firoze: There are many 'star writers' such as Mahmood Mamdani, Sokari Ekine, Samir Amin, Horace Campbell, Issa Shivji and many others who are well known - but we are proud that there are many regular contributors from social movements and the activist community who also write and who enrich the dialogue, debates and analyses that appear in Pambazuka News.

Sunil: Any information campaigns launched by Pambazuka that resulted in change on the ground?

Firoze: Perhaps the best known campaigns was the support we provided to the campaign for the ratification of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, coalition of some 30 regional organisations, producing special issues profiling important aspects of the protocol as well as publishing a 6-part radio soap opera in English, French, Portuguese and Kiswahili.

We also developed and hosted a petition on the Pambazuka News website in support of women’s rights that involved the development of an SMS function that enabled people to sign the petition by SMS and receive SMS updates about the campaign. This campaign led to the fastest ratification of any international instrument in the history of Africa - today more than 30 countries in Africa have ratified the protocol.

Sunil: How does Pambazuka reach out to French and Portuguese speaking Africa?

Firoze: We publish a French and Portuguese language edition of Pambazuka News. Originally we thought that these editions would be merely translations of the English edition, but in practice these are distinct editions, with articles originated in those languages. As a result, the three editions of Pambazuka News contain articles that have been cross translated from each other.

Sunil: Is there going to be a Kiswahili Pambazuka?

Firoze: I would hope so. There are certainly demands for a Kiswahili edition, but this will require raising resources to make that possible. We also want to develop an Arabic language edition of Pambazuka News, and are trying to raise the necessary resources for that.

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Jasoos: remembering our desi spy

These last few days everyone was talking about Agent Vinod. That's the way how it is these days whenever a new big Bollywood movie arrives. Producers, directors and actors give hundred thousand interviews, repeating the same things to everyone. However, all these discussions made me remember Ankhen, another desi spy film of many decades ago.

The review of Agent Vinod seem to be very mixed. I don't know how good is Agent Vinod, but the name sure brought with it memories of the innocent days of reading Indian jasoosi novels. When I was a teenager, inspector Vinod and detective Sunil were so much closer to my own fantasies than Mr. Bond or Mr. Bourne could ever be. They had to discover the nefarious plans of villains, similar to those who are exemplified in the Bollywood world by the dumbass Robert or Mr. Deng and their molls in the clinging gowns, Mona or Lily, made iconic by actors like Ajit and Premnath, and starlets like Faryal and Jayshree T.

The jasoosi stories written by authors like Surendra Mohan Pathak are well alive and kicking, selling more copies in the railway stations, bus stands and mufassil towns of India, than all the more famous Hindi literature writers combined together. Among Pathak's characters, some like detective Sunil, detective Sudhir Kumar Kohli and undercover agent Vimal, are well known to millions of his fans, who eagerly wait for his new books to come out.

I don't know if Pathak's books are translated into English. If they are, may be, they would have a limited appeal for the people who read authors like Chetan Bhagat, but I think that their special charm is to be read in Hindi. They have dialogues like "Ki haal hai sohniyon?" They won't have the same charm if translated into "How are you baby?" But may be they can be translated into Hinglish, "How are you, sohniyon?" that keeps a bit of their original charm!

My own favourite Hindi jasoosi movie was "Ankhen" (1968) by Ramanand Sagar. Dharmendra as the undercover agent Sunil was a real hero to my teenage eyes.

Story outline of Ankhen: The film had Nazir Hussein as the Major Saab (Nazir Hussein), an old military man from Azaad Hind Fauz of Subhash Chandra Bose, who runs a private spy group against the "desh ke dushman", in support of Indian Government. His son Sunil (Dharmendra) is part of his group. Apparently, they don't need to work or to have a job, as they seem to be rich persons. Sunil's sister (Kumkum) stays along with her young son Babloo in her father's home, as her husband works in merchant navy and is away for work.

In a spy mission in Japan, Sunil meets Meenakshi (Mala Sinha) a half-Indian, half Japanese girl, whose father was also in Azaad Hind Fauz. She falls in love with Indian jasoos. However Sunil says that his life is for his country and he cannot accept her love.

One of Major's men sends a message from Beirut about a gang that supplies bombs and weapons to anti-Indian groups in India. Major asks Sunil to go to Beirut to discover the gang and also to find out the names and addresses of their Indian partners.

In Beirut, Sunil is supposed to get help from Nadeem (Sujit Kumar) in Beirut but Nadeem seems to be mixed up with anti-Indian arm suppliers' gang.

However, Major has also arranged other persons to help Sunil in Beirut and this group includes Meenakshi (Mala Sinha with Madhumati, Mehmood, Dhumal, etc.). Sunil makes friend with Zenith (Zeb Rehman), who is supposed to an Arab princess, but is a member of the anti-Indian gang. Then with help of Meenakshi he discovers that real Nadeem is a prisoner in an old ruin and helps to liberate him. They kill the false Nadeem and then ask real Nadeem to take his place in the anti-Indian gang.

In India, the anti-Indian gang (Jeevan as Dr X, Madan Puri, Lalita Pawar and Daisy Irani) with the help of Akram, son of a close friend of Major, kidnap Babloo and force Babloo's mother to accept Dr X's right hand Madam (Lalita Pawar) in their home as their "old aunt from Banaras". Madam wires Major's radio receiver and listens to all his secret conversations with his gang.

In Beirut, Sunil and Meenakshi manage to bust the anti-Indian gang and discover that someone is staying in their home and listening to their messages. So they send a false message that Sunil is dead and their mission has failed. Sunil and his team then reach India and attack the dungeon of Dr X. After a fight, they save Babloo and Dr X is caught.

Finally Sunil accepts that he is also in love with Meenakshi, and walk into sunset singing, "Milti hai zindagi mein mohabbat kabhi kabhi".

Comments: The morse code radio hidden in the cupboard, camera hidden in the microphone that Meenakshi uses to take pictures while singing, the parts shot in Beirut with Mala Sinha, Mehmood and Dhumal singing "Allah ke naam pe de de" dressed as beggers, Mala Sinha dressed as the princess, Dharmendra's fight with the tiger in the dungeon, many scenes of this film had great impact on me. I was also very much taken by a shot of paddle boats in a lake in Japan.

Lalita Pawar as the vamp, dressed as the cunning aunt-in-law, with her one eye smaller than the other and her crooked smile, used to give me nightmares.

Those were the years after the Chinese war of 1962 and the Pakistan war of 1966, thus the idea of spies exploding bombs in India sounded quite plausible. Though today the small camera, telescope, micro-films etc. look laughable, at that time, these gadgets had great effect on me.

It was the time when our heroines used to do classical Indian dances and folk dances and there were no east European dancers doing chorus in bikinis. The songs were simple but meaningful, like "Gairon pe karam, apno pe sitam, ae jaane wafa yeh zulm na kar". The background music was loud and melodramatic, like the scene when Major's man called Saleem is killed in the ship. Our spies use code names like Musafir and Taj Mahal. They dress in disguise as fakirs, beggers and princess. And they invariably speak in a mixture of Hindi and Urdu, even in Beirut and everyone seems to understand Hindi, the lingua franca of the world.

Compared to today's standards, technically that film was ages behind. Yet compared to the modern spy and action thrillers, I think that Ankhen was much more like the books of detective Sunil and agent Vinod, more fun and much more rooted in Indian ethos.

Its heroine, Meenakshi, was much more independent and entreprising than today's heorines (Mala Sinha at 32 years, was still a big force in Bollywood those days, infact, in the titles, her name came before that of Dharmendra).

Probably I will enjoy the thrills of new Agent Vinod and I will admire the mujra of Kareena Kapoor, but they won't make me dream like Ankhen had done more than forty years ago.

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Immigrant identities, globalization & Bollywood

I wanted to write about the changing images of NRI women in some of the recent Bollywood films like "Ek main aur ekk tu" and "Anjana anjani". However, once I started, I found myself thinking about some of my travels to different parts of the world over the past 25 years and my encounters with immigrants from Indian sub-continent.

Thus, it has come out as a rather long-winded article, where it is about NRI women in Bollywood, but it is also about so many other things such as changing self-identities of immigrants, new technologies and globalization!

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Immigrants in a time warp

Till a couple of decades ago, leaving India and going to live in other parts of the world meant cutting off many of the ties with the homeland. Telephones were less common, and making a call often meant calling an operator and sometimes waiting for a few hours. Getting news from India was difficult. Letters took 10-15 days to reach the destination. It was the same for emigrants of other countries and continents.

In 1992 I went to Guyana for the first time. Guyana is in south America, next to Brazil and Venezuela. Colonial powers had divided that part into three countries - British Guyana with Georgetown as its capital, Dutch Guyana, also known as Surinam and French Guyana with Cayenne as its capital. I had gone to the British Guyana.

During my Guyana visit, I met the persons of Indian origin, whose grandparents or great-grandparents had been brought there from India between 1840 to 1920. I had some strange feelings when I met them. So many of them, especially elderly persons, seemed to be living in a kind of time-warp, anchored to India of old times when their ancestors had sailed off from India. Many of them spoke only in Bhojpuri. I think that they were a reflection of ghettoed lives they were forced to live by their colonial masters.

However, even the younger generations also seemed very much anchored into "Indian culture and traditions". They spoke English, they went out in the community and for work. They interacted with persons of other cultures and religions who compose Guyana - persons of African, European and other Asian countries' descents. Yet, in their private lives, these different cultural-religious groups hardly ever seem to mix with each other. Talking to persons of Indian origin, I had the sensation that for them being "Indian" was as important or may be even more important than being part of the multi-cultural society of Guyana.

One of my Afro-Guyanese friend with whom I was travelling for work, told me once that when we went around chatting and laughing together, people looked at us strangely and with some hostility because mixing up with persons of different races was seen as threatening by both sides.

Guyanese television had Indian channels that showed Bollywood films and songs, as well as programmes of prayers and religious talks by various swamis and gurus who regularly came from India. There were cinema halls showing Bollywood films. In 1994, I had watched Rajshri's "Hum aap ke hain kaun" in a cinema hall of  Georgetown. It had been running there for some months and the hall was full of persons of Indian origin.

I had also been to Mauritius. However, since pesons of Indian descent are the majority on the main island, dominate, so it did not feel like a ghettoed community. Still I could see many similitaries between Mauritius and Guyana, in the way Indian immigrants felt about their old traditions.

In those years, I had also visited some Italian, Japanese and German communities in Brazil. These encounters had many similarities to those with the "Indians" of Guyana and Mauritius - all the immigrants seemed closed in time warps anchored to their pasts in their homelands, isolated in some ways in their ghettoes that they safeguarded jealously.

Over the past three-four decades, there have been many reports of immigrants living in developed countries, who regularly send back money to support the "safeguarding of traditions" in the countries they had left behind. They have been blamed for all kind of religious and cultural fundamentalism, funded with dollars and euros. Sikhs in Canada and US, Muslim groups in UK and Germany, Jews in US and Europe, Hindus in USA and Australia, there are many examples of persons sending money to "defend their religions".

Perhaps this phenomenon of sending money to fund conservatives and orthodox groups in our homelands, has something to do with the same insecurity about traditions and cultures among immigrants, that makes us close inside our ghettoes?

Complex identities

Issues of race, culture and religion among immigrants are a complex area. I remember once meeting an Indian looking woman wearing a sari in London. I needed some information about a street I was looking for and she gave me directions. "Which part of India are you from?" I had asked her and she had responded to me with a bit of irritatation that she was from Kenya and not from India.

In "Imaginary homelands", Salman Rushdie had written of these homelands that we immigrants carry in our hearts. These homelands are no longer real because while we are away, our homelands continue to evolve and change. So when we go back, we find that the place does not match the image we carry in our hearts.

In the lands we have emigrated to, we are always "other", "immigrant", "Indian". And when we go back to our homeland for a visit, we are no longer completely Indian, we are the immigrants who live and belong to some where else.

National identity and role of women in India

Uma Narayan in her book "Dislocating cultures - identities, traditions and third world feminism" has an interesting chapter on "Eating cultures - incorporation, identity and Indian food". In this chapter she talks about the role of women in safeguarding traditional cultures among immigrants:

"Just as nineteenth century English memsahibs in India avoided Indian goods and dishes to maintain their "cultural distinctiveness", twentieth century Indian women in Indian diasporic communities are expected to safeguard the "cultural distinctiveness" of their communities by refraining from dating, from marriages that are self-arranged, and most stringently of all, from same sex relationships."

Uma Narayanan links this role of women to safeguard their traditional cultural values to the similar role of women in the nationalist movement for independence of India and quotes Partha Chatterjee on this theme:

"Indian nationalist project involved "an ideological justification for the selective appropriation of western modernity" that continues to this day. ..the twin moves involved in the nationalist project were "to cultivate the material techniques of modern western civilization" while "retaining and strengthening the distinctive spiritual essence of the national culture". Learning from the colonizers "the modern science and arts of material world" was necessary to match the colonizers in strength to overthrow them. ..In the entire phase of the nationalist struggle, the crucial need was to protect, preserve and strengthen the inner core of national culture, its spiritual essence. No encroachments by the colonizers must be allowed  in that inner sanctum. In the world, imitation of and adaptation to western norms was a necessity; at home, they were tantamount to annihilation of one's very identity. .. the home was the principle site for expressing the spiritual quality of national culture, and women must take the main responsibility of protecting and nurturing this quality."

Immigrants in Europe, North America and Australia, seem to be driven by similar motivations. So, children are expected to study hard and make careers in outside world. Yet, they are expected to not to date or marry outside their communities. This is especially true for women. "My big fat Greek wedding" explored this theme in a Greek community in America.

Similar issues towards arranged marriages to men from their homelands also hound Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrant families. As many young women from these communities try to rebel against such marriages and families that resort to violence or even murder to "save family honour", the whole system of arranged marriages has come to be seen as "something barbaric and old fashioned, something against human rights" and other people often feel that "such marriages must be without love and are imposed on young people".

Immigrants in a new world

I went back to Guyana last time, some 4-5 years ago. In this visit, I felt that the younger generations had become much more comfortable with their Guyaneseness and there was a little more openess between races, cultures and religions among them.

For all these groups of immigrants, even more so for their descendents, I feel that the walls that used to surround these ghettoes have many more doors and windows today then there were twenty years ago.

I think that partly this change has come because of increasing possibilities of inter-continental travels and development of new technologies, especially internet. These mean that today we can always be in touch with what is happening in our homelands and we can go back and visit whenever we want. So now we can relax and enjoy being outside our homelands, in our new countries, to meet and experiment with the new cultures that surround us. We don't need to cling to "our" traditions and way of life with the fear of losing them.

NRI women in Bollywood

Bollywood or rather the world of Hindi movies understood these immigrant insecurities very well. Thus in nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties, heroes came back to India for marriage (heroines went out of India for studies rarely but they were also expected to follow this rule). Western culture was equal to villains drinking alcohol and women who were cabret dancers (played with wonderful aplomb by Helen) or vamps. Indians going out to Europe or America were cautioned against the "decadent western values". Manoj Kumar's "Purab aur Paschim" (1970) and a more recent, "Namastey London" (2007) epitomised this world view.

Films about NRI families came in to vogue with Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (DDLJ, 1995). From DDLJ to K3G (2001), the boundaries for women in families of Indian origin were laid out, in line with the ideas of "women's role in preserving our Indian culture". So they had arranged marriages and celebrated karvachauth. May be they were not so openly crticial of western values as in "Purab aur Paschim", but very clearly, they were smug about the superiority of "our Indian values".

However in "Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna" (2006), Karan Johar changed tracks. Suddenly the NRI family had to deal with adultery. In "Dostana" (2008), another film produced by Karan Johar, homosexuality came out of closet, even if hidden behind glossy sheen of two guys running after the same girl.

More recently, "Ek main aur ekk tu" from the same production house has a woman lead, who has had six boyfriends, she has had sex with some of them, but it is not a big deal. She is bubbly, full of life and has the Indian hero panting after her.

There have been other NRI films in recent years, from "Neal and Nikki" to "Anjana Anjani", where the women are no longer "guardians of Indian traditions". They are cosmopolitan women, their dress and behaviour can be like any American or European girl except that their surnames are still Khanna-Kapoor-Bedi and they occasionally sing songs in Hindi.

The stories of most of these films are "inspired" by Hollywood films, though most still continue to have some scene about a father or mother trying to fix some sort of arranged marriage for them. You can argue that they are essentially Hollywood films made with some Hindi and some English, dialogues and songs.

I have a sneaking feeling that on a rebound, the women of these films have discarded everything remotely Indian (except that they tend to fall in love with Indian-origin heroes, but that is the compulsion of Bollywood story-telling). They go to Beethovan concerts and wish each other "merry christmas", have no idea about "indigenous" words like deewali or puja. They have overcome all the taboos related to sex, can drink wine or tequila shots. They can even have dads who wink at them and ask if they have slept with their boyfriends (in "Ek mein ekk tu", conveniently a "christian" dad), though they are not discussing their favourite kamasutra positions for having sex, at least not yet.

For the persons who emigrated out of India in the second half of twentieth century, Bollywood films had been one of their main connections to India. In a world where links to the homeland were tenous, it was an essential lifeline for families.

Children growing up in Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi emigrant families grew up on the Bollywood diets, with parents ferverently hoping that some of their "cultural values" will rub off from the films onto their impressionable minds.

What does this changing figure of NRI women in Bollywood mean for them? For immigrants families from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, that feel threatened by their encounter with the liberal and more egalitarean cultures of their new countries, these new cosmopolitan women of Bollywood, who have embraced western values, would be seen as an additional threat? However, for their children, growing up in closer contacts with these liberal values, finally Bollywood can be an ally that supports their desires to be "modern" and to get out of stifling grip of "traditions".

May be with the possibility of being in constant touch with our homeland cultures, families and events, there won't be need for Bollywood to play its earlier role of repsenting and preserving our traditions? At the same time, there are Bollywood fan clubs and dance groups of Italians, Germans and French. People experiment with Indian cuisine, dresses and mehndi. They are not looking for the new liberated and cosmopolitan Indian women in Bollywood, they are interested in traditions.

Will this ease of being connected to our homelands and cultures, also change the way immigrants have been funding orthodox and fundamentalist religious groups in their countries? I would like to believe that.

An interesting 1994 TED talk by Danny Hillis presented a new understanding about evolution. "We are in a transition period. Through new technologies, the multi-cellular forms of life are getting connected in a network, to start a new phase of evolution", he explained in this talk.

In this new world, perhaps the whole meaning of being an immigrant is going to change, when we physically leave a place but remain connected to it and to other people from our lives all the time. In the long run, this always connected world, how is it going to influence us all, NRIs living outside and other persons living in India?

***

The Hurt Syndrome

The news came from a Japanese friend. She had forwarded a message from a common friend in the US and the message said:

... I am asking that each of you send an email to Nick Park and Aardman Annimations to object to the manner in which persons affected by leprosy are being portrayed in the soon to be released movie titled, "The Pirates! Band of Misfits." In the event you have not seen the trailer, the characters board a "pirate leper ship" and a body part falls off one of the sailors. This is a cruel portrait of the millions of persons affected by leprosy and negatively creates a lasting image on the minds of the young viewers from throughout the world who will see this movie ...

For past couple of decades I have been working in the field of leprosy. One of the key issues that continues to trouble the finding of new cases with leprosy and then ensuring their treatment and rehabilitation is the common image of this disease in public perceptions all over the world. Afraid of the social stigma and virtual social banishment that the disease can cause, people with leprosy often try to hide as long as possible.

However, over the past three decades, the actual situation of leprosy has changed drammatically. Today it is possible to get free treatment all over the world and the persons can get cured easily and completely. Therefore, it should no longer be seen as a disease that causes fear and is seen as "curse of the God".

I can understand the anguish of my friends because when we talk of this disease today, it is about thousands of persons who still get it today and have to face the social consequences of having a "dreaded disease" that are unjustified. Though most persons feel that leprosy is a kind of relic of the past, the reality is that every year there are about 250,000 new cases of leprosy every year. India and Brazil are the two most important countries in terms of number of new cases of leprosy today.

However, I do not believe in banning of films or insisting that they cut the scenes that are wrong in our view. This is what all the groups seem to be asking for when they feel that their depiction in the media is inappropriate. They make protests and ask for changes.

Here are a few examples of fights of other "misrepresented" groups from recent past asking for censorship or banning:

(1) In India, such protests are common place with persons of different religious, caste and social groups getting angry is a person of their community is shown in a negative way or in humour. The protestors frequently threaten violence and often end up destroying public property. Most the the time Indian Government gives in easily to such demands refusing to protect the writers, actors, directors and producers, and hides behind the bogey of "law and order situations".

Similar protests in relation to Islamic symbols/ideas in other parts of the world also has had many violent episodes.

(2) Persons with mental illnesses and persons with disabilities in many parts of the world have been fighting for not using their sterotypes in the different media including TV and films all over the world.

(3) Using caricatures of jews as being nasty moneylenders, and of arabs or Muslims as being terrorists are some other common examples from Hollywood.

I believe that if we go on like this, artists, writers and film makers will always be forced to express their ideas in narrower spaces and the world will be a poorer place for all of us.

I do not believe that banning films or censoring them to cut certain scenes is correct, whatever their provocation unless it is explicity asking for violence or expressing hate about some group.

We all have a right to criticise and if we find depictions in a film to be wrong or derogatory or stereotypes, we have the right to express our opinions, to debate and to discuss, to write about it on our blogs, to organise forums and if we feel very strongly, to promote calls for boycotting. If you don't agree with something don't go to see it, don't watch it, don't read it, and tell all your friends to do the same.

If you feel that it may not be understood by children, ask that it should be only for those above a certain age.

But I believe that no one should be asking for banning of people or their books, art or films or websites just because you feel that it gives a negative view of your religion/caste/community/gods. And no government should give in to such demands.

The only exception  to this, in my opinion, is those expressions that ask for killing, violence and hate against specific group of persons.

***
PS 6 February 2012: I have heard that producers of the film "Pirates the band of misfits", following the protests, have decided to review and modify the parts related to persons affected with leprosy.

About language

I read an article on Chimurenga Chronicle about "Somali invasion of Nairobi" written by a Kenyan writer called Parselelo Kantai, and I was struck by the wonderful way that he describes the "Nairobi English" of a woman:

"For a people for whom ‘negative ethnicity’, the newspaper euphemism for the prevailing ethnic rancour that had shredded the nation into a farcical edifice of a thousand cuts, ‘othering’ the Somalis restored a sense of collective indignation. Hate and rancour were the only things holding us together…

I was surprised at her vehemence. She had always talked in a language that irritated me – the exultant language of the reaspora bubble in leafy-suburb Nairobi. It was a velvety, arriviste Nairobi English, full of possibilities and faux tourist innocence. It was an insider language that walked on water, saw no evil, advertised its privilege with cocktail kisses, intimate nods, bursts of happy laughter. It was used to suggest non-contamination, that one’s head was above the loud sucking sounds of this place, the descent into naked Nairobi calculations, pettiness, desperation. It was not the other thing: that guarded edge in your voice that revealed a loss of independence and optimism, that now your diaspora dollars were running dangerously low and you had recently turned a page in your contact book, and made the call to a powerful uncle for a job, a contract, a deal.

But Kileleshwa, an old mzungu suburb whose civil servant houses were being transformed into apartments for the yuppy beneficiaries of the Kibaki-era economic boom and the returning Western diaspora, exiled for two decades by Moi repression, was now under siege. There was no velvet to couch this new fear..."

Isn't it beautiful?

***

A Scare

It was evening, I was working on my computer at home, and I clicked on the link to one of my blogs - a strange message appeared - "Your blog has been removed".

How strange, I thought, I had checked it 15 minutes earlier and it was working all right. Curious, I tried to open my other blogs, the same strange message appeared. All my blogs were gone.

Then I noticed my Gmail account had disconnected and there was a message that my password was wrong. I tried to connect to the Gmail account and the message said that I had changed my password. So I could not connect to my Gmail account.

I keep a copy of all my gmail posts so that was not a problem, but I was worried that someone could use my email account to send those fraud messages asking for help such as "that I was stranded in London and needed money".

I panicked, I had heard of hacking of gmail accounts.

How is it possible for someone to find out my password of Gmail? It is a real tough password (even I can't remember it) and I use it only for Gmail. At home, I did not even need to enter it, because no one else uses my computer so I am always connected to that Gmail account.

After another ten minutes, on trying to access Gmail again, I found a message that they had noticed some unusual activity on my account and I was asked to give my cell phone number to receive a security code. When I entered their security code, my account was restored.

A short time later, all my blogs were also restored.

After this, I have changed my password again, but I am worried. How did the hackers get my Gmail password and get in?

I have checked my computer for virus and malaware, but it seems clean. The only unusual thing that had happened yesterday was that while searching for something on Google, I had opened a page that had persistent pop-ups that refused to go away. At that time, my Gmail was also open. Whenever I tried to close those pop-ups new ones opend. It was strange because, normally my browser (Chrome) blocks all pop ups. After 3-4 minutes of struggle, through "Ctrl-Alt-Canc" I had managed to close off my browser and those annoying pages.

It had happened 5-6 hours before the Gmail scare episode. Could that be related to the account hacking?

What else can I do to improve my computer security?

And, if you have received an email from me yesterday saying that I am in trouble and need help, cancel it. It is not from me. I am fine.

***