Land of Lime

This is a busy news week, what with Bush in South Asia and pundits holding fort on that great annual ritual, Budget, to which two sections of Indians looked forward to eagerly: Industrialists, who were seeking more sops from the Finance Minister and middle class Indians, who anxiously awaited income tax relief with elaborate plans to spend any unexpected saving on consumer durables. More on budget (presented every year on February 28th) later, once I have a chance to don an old and long discarded hat.

On Bush’s visit to South Asia, I will have more comments, but please be warned that Charlie Rose has been broadcasting from India; he will speak to politicians, journalists and industrialists. Fareed Zakaria has already compared Bush’s India trip to Nixon’s historic trip to China and there seems to be some buzz. You can also watch the Charlie Rose interviews on Google Video, free of cost for a day.

Indian Press too has gone into overdrive, publishing OPEDs from pragmatic pundits and radical Bush critics/haters. Arundhati Roy has this OPED in The Hindu and I have been thinking about it since I read it last evening. I am no fan of Bush but in the shrillness of his critics, I see, very ironically, this typically Bushian disregard to engage the opponent in a serious dialogue. Ms. Roy is no exception. Her piece, though, is engaging and fun to read. In particular, see this comment on Bush’s predicament, since he couldn’t be provided with a proper location to address the Indian audience. Well, his WH staff is familiar with that problem in America too and have perfected the art of bypassing media/critics, as he seeks to address the people directly.

Ironic isn’t it, that the only safe public space for a man who has recently been so enthusiastic about India’s modernity, should be a crumbling medieval fort?

Since the Purana Qila also houses the Delhi zoo, George Bush’s audience will be a few hundred caged animals and an approved list of caged human beings who in India go under the category of “eminent persons.” They’re mostly rich folk who live in our poor country like captive animals, incarcerated by their own wealth, locked and barred in their gilded cages, protecting themselves from the threat of the vulgar and unruly multitudes whom they have systematically dispossessed over the centuries.

So Bush’s audience in India will consist primarily of caged animals, living in the Delhi zoo and caged rich people, who live in the gated communities of Indian metropolitan cities.

Oh, by the way, given the proximity to Purana Qila, Bush will have a wise old man, residing in Nizamuddin, eavesdropping. I suspect Ashis Nandy will also not be summarily dismissive of George W Bush and offer more interesting insights. Dr. Nandy, will drop by with a bottle of single malt soon and let us have a go at GWB.

In the meanwhile, I will have more on Bush all through the week, including some additional commentary on my own OPED, which should be posted online wednesday night US central time. I read every word he has uttered in the last 6-7 years and I want to subject you all, unsuspecting readers, my punditry. As you all know, Bush ain’t no Lincoln (or Hariscandra) but should that stop us from demanding that he stand by his own words?

Well, more than a thousand reporters are in New Orleans to cover Mardi Gras. Mainstream Media always brings a saner perspective always. Indians may be stealing our jobs but South Asia be damned. We know what our audience craves for.

Two brief updates:

First, watch this BBC slideshow/photoessay with commentary on the Mahamastakabhisheka at Sravanabelagola. My earlier posting on this theme has more details on the events and history of the place, including that cool virtual abhisheka.

Second, in response to a spirited debate on Carnatic music (see my review of Sandhyaraga) several weeks ago, I had promised Arun to do a genealogy of Carnatic and Karnatak. Arun, here is a brief note on the history of areas associated with this term.

Well, I didn’t know where to begin until Prof. Alam unexpectedly referred to Mughal characterization of non-Maratha South India as Karnatak. He also referred me to the memoirs of Bhimsen (b 1650), Tarikh-i-Dilkasha, which was translated into English by Jadunath Sarkar. Bhimsen Saksena is a Kayastha from present day Uttar Pradesh, whose father, Raghunandan worked as an accounts officer for the Mughal Emperors in Deccan. Bhimsen himself grew up in Burhanpur and Aurangabad, was trained by his father and even worked for him a while. From the late 1660s, he worked for many Mughal governers in Deccan and after his retirement in 1707, he wrote his memoirs in Persian.

Bhimsen was a witness to many critical events of the second half of thd 17th century, in particular to Aurangzeb’s campaigns in the Deccan and Shivaji’s ascendence to political prominence. He describes the battle of Purandar, meeting of Shivaji and Jai Singh (who was the Mughal commander), Shivaji’s visit to Agra and Aurangzeb’s arrival in Deccan in 1681. Bhimsen describes his campaigns against Marathas as well as the annexation of Golconda and Bijapur. Even a quick look confirms that Bhimsen’s work is not only usefulor historians but also is a nice, quick fun read too.

Our objective here is Bhimsen’s reference to Karantak, in particular to Bijapuri and Hyderabadi Karnatak. Bhimsen describes the people of this region, especially their prosperity evident in the number of temples and large tax revenue that accrues to the state. Well, what else would be an accountant notice? But what’s noteworthy is the completely natural way in which he refers to non-Kannada speaking regions as Karnatak. My point here is a simple one. In the 17th century, the non-Maratha South India seems to have been referred to by the Mughals as Karnatak and within that specific regions were qualified by their place names. Hence the usage of Hyderabadi Karnatak and Bijapuri Karnatak. Other Kannada speaking regions were under the rule of Maratha feudatories or the biggest Kannada kingdom of the period, Mysore. To my knowledge, none of these regions were called Karnatak nor was does Bhimsen refer to the Tamil speaking regions of the Coramandel coast, which came to be known as Carnatic within the next hundred years.

Prof. Alam also suggested that I look at Irfan Habib’s ‘Historical Atlas of Mughal India’ which this morning was missing from the Regenstein library. If there are any other Mughal era insights, I will add an addendum later.

For our story, what is pertinent is the new development that I referred to above, the naming of Coramandel coast as Carnatic in the 18th century, as both French and English East India companies enter the South Indian politics in a significant way. Carnatic here is surrounded by Mysore, Malabar and Travancore in the east, Northern Circars (which is the coastal Telugu speaking regions), Nizam and Marathas in the north. Major developments of Carnatic music in the 18th century occurred in this region, which is why Carnatic music acquired its name. Now, of course, Karnataka refers to the lingustic state of Kannada speaking regions but that wasn’t always the case.

One of these days, I will change my wordpress theme, if only to be able to link some photos and maps from my flickr account. I could insert a map here too but the display is often not satisfactory. Well, some changes are in the offing in the next two weeks.

My two entries earlier this week focused on conferences and archives. Before I move on to more interesting themes like the much postponed series of postings on Hariscandra, I wanted to add a set of comments on both those themes.

Last week, Naim saab suggested that my first question in my earlier posting on Archiving wasn’t clear. Now as I reread the post, I thought I should add an explanatory note. Well, the issue is the reclassification of declassified historical documents at the National Archives, which in the present day context of a secretive U.S. Administration involved in a global war on terror raises all kinds of questions. John Wertman, who worked in the Clinton White House between 1999-2001, has an article in the Washington Post entitled Bush’s Obstruction of History, in which he writes about a consequential Presidential decree by Bush. Now, former Presidents or their legal heirs could bar the release of any document ‘for almost any reason’, as Wertman puts it. He also argues that this decree flies in the face of the intent of an earlier Congressional Act Called ‘Presidential Records Act’ passed in 1978 and might have serious consequences for historians who want to study the Bush era. All efforts by historians to lobby Congress or to seek legal redress haven’t produced any result so far and if this decree holds good, then Bush Presidential Library will turn out to be a library in name only.

So, one of the two questions I asked was as follows: what is the value of National Archives and official government documents for uncovering historical truth?

Since I am not a historian who works exclusively out of places like National Archives, here or in India, I am hesitant to provide even a provisional answer. On occassions, for certain aspects of my research, I have used National or State Archives but what I discovered in such places like that hasn’t been critical for my work. Like all historians, I too operate with a conception of an archive, however unconventional it is. But my theory of archive isn’t what I would like to discuss here; rather, it would be beneficial to think about the value of National Archives. Among other government documents, National Archives include classified documents and reports, which hadn’t been made public for a fixed period, usually twenty five years. These documents, I am sure, would be of critical importance for those who work (contemporary) histories of state institutions, public and foreign policy. One could also find corroborative evidence through interviews and extensive ethnographic work but historians are more likely to be able to cite published and official documents and reports, rather than an informant. Such methodological preferences of historians towards the official and the written is what we should keep in mind. Innovative historical schools such as the Subaltern Studies have taught us how to read these official documents in between the lines to identify traces of a subaltern presence, even if the documents themselves were produced by the dominant.

Perhaps our inquiry could take us in two different directions. First, identification of projects for which National Archives would be necessary. Second, the notion(s) of truth that historians possess. So comments invited from more knowledgeable historians, especially from those who are desperately waiting to use the George W Bush Presidential Library, which is likley to be established at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas. You may not find much, if you don’t raise your voice now.

How is (historical) truth to be archived?

Scott Shane reports in The New York Times on a seven year old secret program at the National Archives, as part of which Intelligence Agencies have been reclassifying thousands of publicly available documents and removing them from public access. Also see this note edited by historian Mathew M. Aid here, where you could also see a list of some of the reclassified documents; also follow more stories and links here. Quoting historians who have used the archive in the past and now have found documents missing, Shane suggests that many of the reclassified documents were possibly innocuous. This shouldn’t surprise us. Nor should the response of J. William Leonard, the Director of the Archive’s Information Security Oversight Office. Aid and others have also sent a petition to Leonard, who has ordered a review of some reclassified documents but we, both the users of the archive (historians) and those who depend on the users of the archives (non-historians) for information, can not know anything because both the initial reclassification and its review are secret.

Alright, before we go nuclear on the Chosen One’s White House, let us recognize that this program appears to be the brain child of Intelligence agencies and began under the Clinton administration. No doubt, the atmosphere of fear that the Chosen One has engendered only encourages this process. Funny, many historians could now be sent to jail since they already copied and possess some of these newly reclassified documents. I only hope the Vice President doesn’t know about this program. Otherwise, historians are in grave danger.

So it is not only Al Qeida conversations that the Intelligence agencies are interested in but also boring historical documents, which would be read by only ‘grave’ historians, who will then pass on their knowledge to their ‘chosen’ graduate students.

I want to ask two questions in light of this program.

First, what is the value of National Archives and official government documents for uncovering historical truth? As a historian of dissent, I have learnt to read in between the official documents in the best of Subaltern History tradition and make even Ranajit Guha proud. But unlike some other historians, I have never left a truthbursh in the Archives’ restroom. Nor have I ever chosen themes for research that would depend on a great deal of archival research. So it would be nice to get other people comment on the importance of having access to as many documents as possible - both in theory and practice.

Second and related, how is historical truth to be archived? Note that the question of government documents would be a subset of this larger question. My concern in raising this question is to compel us to think about the openness of our soceity. A creative historian (which isn’t an oxymoron, by the way) would still find a way of figuring out what the Clinton or the Bush administration did at any given moment, with or without the documents. But secrecy and suspicion, in our government and amongst ourselves, would eat away the very openness and freedom we claim to cherish. Using this excuse, any embarrassing document could be removed. Anyway, my concern is with a suspicion that arises within me (and in many others) about the entire operation. We would find it difficult to believe that the Intelligence Agencies would be fair in this process. Losing that trust is a bigger loss of legitimacy for the State, even if only democrats and some liberal historians are concerned about this program, at the moment.

So, in the meanwhile, what do we do to show our support to Mathew M. Aid and his colleagues?

Back in a cold Chicago from sunny and warm northern California. Well, it was cold and raining in San Francisco too. Sepoy and I complained about the weather much but soon after landing in Chicago, we realized there is cold weather and then there is cold weather.

As I was busy all of last week, I haven’t managed to post two more entries on Hariscandra, which I will do soon. The South Asia conference at the University of California, Berkeley was ostensibly the reason for us, the inhabitants of colder regions to escape to the more temperate climes of San Francisco. The Berkeley conference is much smaller and more intimate compared to the South Asia conference at Madison, although as towns both Madison and Berkeley are enjoyable. Anyways, common to both are some good panels, company of friends (old and new) and post panel celebrations. Although I couldn’t go to this panel on saturday morning, it was extremely gratifying to see a full panel on Dalit literature entitled ‘Defiance and Disillusion: Narrative Strategies in Contemporary Dalit Literature’. I did have a long conversation with one of the panelists, Laura R. Brueck and I eagerly look forward to this new body of work on Dalit literature.

Yet after listening to many papers / panels and talking to friends at length about our work, I am still thinking about two things. What is the goal of these conferences both for individual participants and for institutions? I know the conventional ones. To present our work and get feedback from elders and colleagues; to have informal conversations with fellow participants and find potential collaborators; professional networking. There are some more which aren’t appropriate for a ‘family’ blog such as this. But I also think it would be worthwhile if the participants (including myself) were to take these events more serioulsy and at least make sure the panelists would have worked together closely to achieve a thematic or analytical (hopefully both) coherence. These days, technology makes it easy for panelists to adopt a WIKI approach or use Writeboard to initiate a conversation amongst themselves, exchange sections and drafts of their papers. Now, once the abstracts are written and panel proposal is sent, the only conversation that seems to happen is to arrange a post-panel celebration. I believe we need to be more demanding of ourselves and offer more to the audience, than racing through our 12 pages of text in twenty minutes. Yes, we all have too many demands on our time but our responsibility is to make sure we do adequate preparation as a group and ensure a panel is a panel.

Secondly, what is an appropriate theme or talk to give on these occasions, given the twenty minute time limit for each presentation? What kind of questions can be asked in these twenty minute talks, given that the audience (and quite often even the discussant) would not have read the papers beforehand or may not have known much about the texts? Of course, panelists too would not have any idea about the audience. Then, how should we approach our esoteric themes, texts and questions? This is the most difficult part of presenting at conferences. We often forget that the written thirty page essay or its ten page presentation version are both written documents and while one could effectively read (present?) that written document, an oral presentation ought to have a different rhythm and perhaps even (rhetorical?) structure to reach an audience. I usually fiddle until the last moment, trying to arrive at a framing idea or a proposition to present my theme but it is challenging.

As the Chicago graduate student conference approaches, we need to think more on these questions.

Speaking of California, read this open letter by Vinay Lal on the history text book controversy. I have been meaning to write on history and the anxieties of Hindus in light of California history text book case but that’s for later this week. Now I am back home, I will write more and post regularly.

First, enjoy these award winning wonderful photographs by Tomasz Gudzowaty and Judit Berekal. They were taken at the Gopalaswamisvara Garadi (wrestling ring) in Naalabeedhi, Sunnadakeri, Mysore.

Now seriously, I have spent my entire life in and around universities, hanging out with writers and thinkers. In all these years, I have never come across a ‘cooler’ ‘research project’ (I should just say theme instead of this inelegant phrase) than that of my friend, Ishwar’s. I know him ever so slightly, mostly through common friends, but I have stayed awake many a night thinking excitedly about his theme and questions, being seriously jealous of all the cool, fun stories he had access to, back home in Mysore. I would often initiate conversations with him, to compel a normally reticent Ishwar share some of his stories.

When I met Ishwar nearly ten years ago, he had begun writing an oral history of untouchable wrestlers of Mysore. He had chosen to write on a colony in which he had grown up and still lived; further, being a prominent Dalit student leader in Mysore and a wrestler himself, he had easy access to all those whom he needed to talk to. But to explain why this is the coolest theme ever, I need to write about his field site, Ashokapuram and about wrestling itself, especially in the context of Caste.

Ashokapuram is an untouchable colony, which has now become part of Mysore city. If my memory serves me right, the Maharajas of Mysore resettled untouchables (mostly, the right hand caste of Holeyas) in what was then the southern outskirts of the city, about hundred years ago. I will do some research and provide a more substantial history but for the time being, all we need to know is that this was one of the villages/settlements in the outskirts of Mysore city. Now all these villages (even as they retain their traditional appearance) have become part of the city, surrounded by middle class neighborhoods. Inhabitants of these villages, who practiced traditional occupations such as agriculture or crafts in addition to providing useful services to Mysoreans as recently as ten years ago, have now become well integrated in the city life, through education and by entering the workforce.

Even then, these villages have added a distinct flavor to the culture of city, through their cultural performances (especially all night plays and harikathas), festivals and yes, wrestling. Wrestlers from Ashokapuram, like all other neighboring areas/villages such as Kannegowdana Koppal and Vokkalageri, were very well known personalities and stories on their legendary fights to save the honor of the Mysore court are told with much relish and pride even today.

To my mind, Ishwar’s dissertation potentially raised all the questions one could want to ask about modern India. How could an untouchable wrestle with a caste Hindu or Muslim, who wouldn’t consider touching or even perhaps even train with him?

Well, we all know that body is the site of caste discrimation. Impurity resides in the body of an untouchable. This impurity and social discrimination caused by it could be overcome only in liminal spaces such as the wrestling areana (akhada or garadi). True, bodily contact and sexual relations between the men of upper caste and lower caste women has been sanctioned even by dharmasastras. But here contact involves two men and such contact is allowed only inside an akhada. I am not aware of wrestling schools where untouchables practiced with others but compete they did!

Stories and legends on Mysore wrestlers always were about defeating an outside challenger, thus saving the prestige of the Mysore kings, and the city. Usually, the story would begin with an outsider, who would come to the court of Mysore and challenge Mysoreans to either defeat him or wear bangles and cook a meal for him. When all formidable wrestlers of the court had been defeated, someone from one of the outlying villages would enter the arena and quell the challenge of the outsider. When an untouchable performed such a task, then he gained prestige and dignity for his caste too.

So to write about untouchable wrestlers is to write about memory, pride, dignity and honor of these communities. It is also about discrimination and inequality and discrimination, competition and sport, body and touch. Ishwar and I, along with our friends, often talked about the disabilities one couldn’t overcome, in spite of gaining the respect of those above oneself. But we never lost sight of another more significant aspect: wrestling arena still remained a liminal space, where all discriminations and inequalities were temporarily set aside. More importantly, here was a site where a certain kind of purity could be sought; this world, especially in Kaliyug as my friend Shankar would remind me often, isn’t a place where respect and purity could be achieved easily. But wrestling house is a self-defined area, where a different set of rules exist and where not only purity could be sought but achieved too!

I spent much of my childhood and youth within a two-mile radius of Ashokapuram. By the 1970s, this quiet untouchable colony had become a hotbed of radical Dalit politics, thanks to Dalit politicians who had gained a voice and a sizeable number of students who had entered Mysore University. Young Dalit activists never tolerated any insult and often physically challenged anyone who insulted them or discriminated against them. In fact, rest of Mysore feared passing through a main road that passed through Ashokapuram. Wrestling houses declined as this new activism arose, although there is no correlation between these two evetns.

Closer to my parents home, another village, Kannegowdana Koppal (named after Kannegowda and now famously known as KG Koppal) had an even more illustrious wrestling history, thanks to such accomplished wrestlers as Basavayya. My exposure to popular culture, especially to popular interpretations of epics and myths was through the all night plays and Harikatha performances at this village. A local and marginal perspective especially on stories such as Hariscandra and Shani could only be gotten from such sites and my appreciation of epics and epic imagination deepened because of the time I spent at these places. By the early 1980s, when I began frequenting these villages, wrestling had become less popular, although Mysore boasted of many traditional ‘gyms’, where ‘Gurus’ would teach through traditional means and equipment the art of danda and samu (traditional wrestling exercises), even to those who were interested primarily in ‘physical culture’, rather than wrestling per se. Their legendary diet – pista, badam and other such nuts, milk, eggs and ghee – attracted many enthusiasts. Like boxing for African-Americans in modern American cities, wrestling was also an opportunity to gain dignity and some material benefit too, especially before independence, when a great performance in the court could bring land and cash award from the king. During the annual Dussera festival, wrestling would be the main feature under the Maharajas. It still is, even today; Dussera kesari and Dasara kumar competitions usually attract thousands of enthusiastic viewers in October, although the sport itself has lost its glamour.

This morning, when I read a news item in my favorite Star of Mysore on the above mentioned photographs on the wrestlers of Mysore, I was reminded of Ishwar, his ‘cool’ work and indeed, the wrestling culture of Mysore. One of these days, I need to do something more substantial than a LOL entry on the wrestlers of KG Koppal and Ashokapuram, indeed on the history of wrestling culture in Mysore. Ishwar’s work would be a good place to start along with these photographs.

In the meanwhile, enjoy the photos. Thank you, Tomasz and Judit. If you need some text to accompany these photos, I can help you with both research and writing. But the photos by themselves are marvelous and tell a mighty story.