Bill Gates did say: "My kids will have
computers of course, but they will have books first”. I am blessed to
have been born in a family that had a very large library. All kinds of books
and all kinds of music too. I grew up on a diet of books and music. It was
probably one of the largest private libraries around my neighbourhood. From
Indian classics to western ones, from politics to drama, from serious novels to
the Panchatantra. As a youngster I read Swami Vivekananda, western classics,
Panchatantra and, of course, Asterix too. I firmly believe my education would
have been incomplete without the Panchatantra and Asterix. Then we had music.
From Chitti Babu’s Veena to George Harrison’s guitar riff. From Lalgudi
Jayaraman to Yehudi Menuhin. From Bollywood soundtracks to western rock and
classic. Music has always remained with me. Why am I telling you all this? I
just want to warn you for the record: I am not “Tone-Deaf”. Not that Girish
Karnad (GK) has a problem with me.
Somewhere in that large crowd of books was also V.S. Naipaul’s (VSN) “Area of darkness”. It also had Girish
Karnad’s “Hayavadana”. I’ve read neither of them but I know what Hayavadana is
about and through reviews and news reports I’m also aware a bit about what
Naipaul writes. In short, I know a litter bit about both. I don’t read as many
books now except for some quick reads during travel. I have a good excuse for
this. After all didn’t Albert Einstein
say: “Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind
too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his
own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking”. You see? I’ve
taken Einstein seriously but not everyone has; especially not GK. His thinking
has been lazy for 10 long years as good old Einstein suggests. So GK comes out
with an ugly burst of anger and diatribe against VSN in a Litterfest that was
also meant to honour the latter with a lifetime award. And his problem? Its VSN
got this award, is anti-Muslim or not secular like him. Er.. make that a “professional secularist” as GK likes to
call himself. Also that VSN got a Nobel
Prize in 2001.
The accusation GK makes against VSN is that in all his books he has
never mentioned Indian music. Then the other one is that VSN is anti-Muslim,
that VSN blames Muslims for destroying Hindu culture. Okay! Now whether a
writer chooses to mention music or not is really no big deal. So I’ll just
throw that nonsense back into GK. The second point is that VSN is probably one
of those writers who has challenged and annoyed the glorious Commie writers of
Indian history. Our school text books will tell you how glorious those Mughal
rulers were and how much they contributed to Hindu culture. VSN just started
talking about what those school books didn’t tell people. Nowhere in the world
has an invasion by an alien culture and religion invaded a part of the world
and caused so much death, havoc and destruction of everything that the locals
valued. The problem for GK is that more people are openly talking about it than
ever before. It threatens the very survival of people like him and those who
follow a political ideology similar to his. I had predicted on Saturday,
November 3 that our TV channels, particularly NDTV and CNN-IBN, will
try to wash the sins of GK. And they didn’t fail.
To even suggest that because we speak of and lampoon the crimes of
Muslim invaders and that is hate for muslims is something only extra-ordinary
idiots can conjure up. Fact is nobody is holding present day Muslims in anyway
responsible for any of those historical crimes. And did those violent invaders
manage to destroy Hindu culture? It’s probably the only culture that Islamic invasion
has never managed to wipe out; not even by a sensible measure. If they had
managed that India today would be an Islamic republic. We would have been a
Pakistan. The true problem lies with “fake
secularism”. Secularists like GK and many others have militantly advocated
that muslim crimes must be covered up or muslims should be treated with a
higher priority than others. Even MMS has stated that they have the “first
right” to resources. This indeed is the present day problem with Muslim
appeasement. If you protest this appeasement, if you seek uniform civil code,
if you seek equal treatment of all Indians you are likely to be branded “Communal, fascist, hater”. This is the
political trick that GK plays on everyone.
Instead of discussing his political trickery our TV channels are
foolishly discussing a battle between GK Vs VSN when VSN has not even joined
the battle. Like a wise man VSN has simply ignored the idiotic outburst of GK.
The other important thing to note that is our Litterfests are no different from
our Page 3 characters. There’s jealousy, there’s back-biting, there’s bitching
and, in more soapy cases, open slandering. That VSN got the Nobel Prize is
probably bothering and upsetting GK. It’s a prize that is recognised and valued
across the world. What about GK? Well, he is mostly decorated with awards from
the establishment and the govt of India. He should be happy. He’s got the Padma awards and that places him in the
august company of the likes of Teesta
Setalvad; so why crib about some LitterFest award? Even Anil Dharker, a small time writer and
director of the Litterfest, claims he’s “secular” because he fights 200 cases
against Narendra Modi. Wow! I guess we can now have ‘secular justice’ and
‘communal justice’.
There is absolutely no problem with whatever GK had to say about VSN or
his writings. He can spew as much hatred as he wants. Of course, it doesn’t fool
anybody but the commie media morons are thrilled. Make no mistake, humiliating a
person in a function where he or she is to be presented an award not only
reflects poor professional culture but also smacks of a serious lack of
character. My mind goes back to Stephen
King’s horror movie “Carrie”.
Being an odd one out, her jealous and bitchy college friends don’t want Carrie
to win the ‘prom queen’ award as she had bagged the best boyfriend around.
Predictably, Carrie wins the award but the bitches have already set their
revenge in place. As she stands on the stage with her prize, a huge bucket full
of pig’s blood is rained on Carrie, drenching her from head to toe in red
filthy blood. In the horror that follows Carrie uses her telekinetic skills to
set the whole hall on fire and burns everybody to death. Fortunately, in GK’s case
no such horror befell him but he was no different from the bitches in Carrie
and has as much pig’s blood on his hands. The only consequence GK faces is that
he is now looked down upon as a very petty, pathetic figure and will not
command the same respect as before. He may possibly not care.
The other reason why many are so worked up over VSN appears to be the
international acclaim he has achieved, at least GK does. In slamming VSN,
Karnad even quotes Salman Rushdie
commenting on VSN winning the Nobel prize: “A fellow
traveller of fascism who disgraces the Nobel prize”. And GK is quoting
him because he calls VSN anti-Muslim. Where can you really find a moron like
him? Muslims world-wide have actually called
Rushdie a muslim-hater, anti-Islamic and have put a bounty on his head. No Muslim
anywhere in the world has called VSN a muslim-hater or Islam-hater or put a
bounty on his head except probably our very own “professional secularists”.
Now, the typical secularist will argue that the bounty on Rushdie has no merit.
Well dear secularists such hatred and bounty on VSN’s head, particularly in a
function honouring him has no merit either. If he writes crap, you speak crap
and maybe write crap too. So save the crap exchange!
I had long back thought that these petty literary figures are nothing
more than those petty bitches in Carrie. They hate anyone else being successful
or applauded. Does that explain why they look down on someone like Chetan Bhagat? I haven’t read a single
book of Chetan Bhagat but I have to say that he is an extraordinarily
successful writer. Forget that he may never win a Nobel or any award at all. In
an interview with Arnab Goswami
prior to the release of his book on Revolution, if that’s the name, there is
one stunning fact that CB revealed. The
first print run for that book was 5 lakh copies. Have you ever heard of
that in India? 5 lakh copies? At the very least CB has taken the reading habit
farther than any pompous litterer like GK or VSN. Increasingly, these so called Litterfests seem to be becoming more and
more a gather of littering minds, not literary minds. The garbage they
leave behind takes a lot of cleaning up.
wow, I was just waiting for today's blog and there you are :)
ReplyDeleteI fully agree with your views. I used to look up to Girish Karnad in high esteem but he ensured that the respect gets dimmed among his fans. GK shouldn't have made his views at a public forum like the fest (which has gained more fame than ever before I am sure, thanks to GK :) )
I should thank my instinct, I always found him committed communal, obstructionist, bad mouth, intolerant, ignorant, oxygen waster .....
DeleteNow he has substantiated with his action as well ...
Thanks Karnad ...
the basic fabric of Secularism is to be accommodative even the views don't not align with your views ..
Dear Ravinar,
ReplyDeleteLoved your writing on literary festivals.In fact it felt like a welcome exit from reading constantly about only Greedy self serving Journalists. Many amongst us who either have been or not been reading literature would never understand how such writers could steep so low when it comes to back bitching. Mr Girish Karnad was loved by many not as a writer but by his acting skills somewhat similar to Amol Palekar. We hope he sticks to something which gave him recognition instead of bitching against the great VS Naipaul.It really seems that the communists cannot digest any kind of greatness & waste their whole life with hypocrit crying for Poor. Mentally Sick fucks.
Brilliant piece on the warped minds of our writers. I can quote that one Booker jury member once said he doesn't feel good about the Indian Booker authors. I can say that I rate Ludlum, John Grisham, Jodie Piccult any day higher than the commie Indian bookers. I also rate even Malayalam authors like O V Vijayan/MTV Nair or S K Pottackad although they too are leftists higher than the Indian bookers. Literature is a business as the Harry Potter industry alone is worth about $7 billion! So more English books in India means more business for the literary agents, publishers, replica and movie makers. The UK literary and media industry contributes about $30 billion to the GDP almost as high as the $32 billion contributed by the Hollywood industry to the US GDP!
ReplyDeleteRanveer, great piece as always! :)
ReplyDeleteJust curious. Are you Narendra Modi?
DeleteRefreshing and Enjoyable take on this "Professional Paid Secularist" and his ilk. By stating that for 10 yrs he was waiting for an opportunity to pour out his venom on VSN, he has proved to be a an idiot apart from petty!
ReplyDeleteThe government of India should start a new constitutional body called Department of Secularism, and should ID cards to those who are secular only and these should be more Valid than all other ID cards given by government departments.
ReplyDeleteThe Chairman of the department can be Mr.Geelani of Kashmir, Dy. Chairman can be Mr.Owaisuiddim of Hyderabad or Mr.Bhukari god knows which place he hails from. All the NAC members will be automatic members.
The formation of this department seems to be important for national integration, because every other idotic person is talking about secularism these days. It is confusing who is more secular,
Girish Karnad is a JnanaPeeth awardee. After this petty & jealous outbursts of agyan, one wonders, how he was chosen for the award. Ironically he had to receive the award from the communal BJP Govt. Now a days awards are doled out in return for the secular services rendered by these professional secularists.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"Nowhere in the world has an invasion by an alien culture and religion invaded a part of the world and caused so much death, havoc and destruction of everything that the locals valued"
ReplyDeleteseriously? you say this and then you criticize girish karnad for not getting his history right?
Stop reading leftist history propagated by morons in JNU and Aligarh University.
Deletehttp://archive.frontpagemag.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=21094
About Writer: Serge Trifkovic received his PhD from the University of Southampton in England and pursued postdoctoral research at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. His past journalistic outlets have included the BBC World Service, the Voice of America, CNN International, MSNBC, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Times of London, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He is foreign affairs editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. This article was adapted for Front Page Magazine by Robert Locke.
Moslem invaders began entering India in the early 8th century, on the orders of Hajjaj, the governor of what is now Iraq. (Sound familiar?) Starting in 712 the raiders, commanded by Muhammad Qasim, demolished temples, shattered sculptures, plundered palaces, killed vast numbers of men — it took three whole days to slaughter the inhabitants of the city of Debal — and carried off their women and children to slavery, some of it sexual. After the initial wave of violence, however, Qasim tried to establish law and order in the newly-conquered lands, and to that end he even allowed a degree of religious tolerance. but upon hearing of such humane practices, his superior Hajjaj, objected:
Delete"It appears from your letter that all the rules made by you for the comfort and convenience of your men are strictly in accordance with religious law. But the way of granting pardon prescribed by the law is different from the one adopted by you, for you go on giving pardon to everybody, high or low, without any discretion between a friend and a foe. The great God says in the Koran [47.4]: "0 True believers, when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads." The above command of the Great God is a great command and must be respected and followed. You should not be so fond of showing mercy, as to nullify the virtue of the act. Henceforth grant pardon to no one of the enemy and spare none of them, or else all will consider you a weak-minded man."
@Panduranga Gundappa
DeleteI would have liked it if you had elaborated a bit..
1) Neither VSN nor GK are historians in the true sense.
2) I dont even think GK is any specialist on history and that's the last thing hes being criticised for. So I wonder where you got to read that in the whole post.
3) GK is simply being pointed out that he has "pig's blood" on his hands and that his motives were political and not literary. Nothing more, nothing less.
Thanks.
I agree with the overall point you are making. Frankly, GK is burned out - his last good play came out in the 80s. It looks to me like a clear cut case of professional jealousy (poor GK was last seen in Ek Tha Tiger!)
DeleteMy only issue was with the statement quoted, which I think is a bit of an overstatement. Worse has happened elsewhere and to deny it would be wrong.
Umesh, What ignorance ! ( or is it hindutva venom?) Moslems visited the barbaric society of India to train them in architecture and sufi music. RSS demolished their architectural edifices and built pagan temples over them. Check up with Romila Thapar or Girish Karnad. Or simply vote for Congress to get baptised.
DeleteMany years after, we hindus will be told that the concept of tridev is borrowed from xstian. we were tought civilization of moslem and xstian.
DeleteGK's very problem is that he does not have any GK (General Knowledge).
ReplyDeleteGK is known hindu baiter and cheerleader for the minorities. A guy who has won all accolades through intense lobbying and being on the right side of the left establishment. During his younger days he had directed 2 kannada movies based on books by S L Bhyrappa. Recently, he turned against SLB and accused him to be communal. Young GK was nonentity and needed a famous author like SLB's work to make a movie but after he acclaimed fame he turns around and slaps SLB, a typical behaviour of a commie. He also in vain tried to project Tippu Sultan as a very secular king and was roundly trashed by SLB who quoted historic facts to prove GK was wrong. This has infuriated GK further against the right wing writers like SLB and VSN. His Jnanapeetha Award was also got through lobbying and so was his Padma award. There is a joke among us kannadiga's that you need someone to translate GK's Kannada to Kannada :)
ReplyDeleteAmong the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981) AUTHOR V. S. Naipaul
ReplyDeleteWow this is a great piece.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed your reference of 'Carrie'. Now we know that you also spend time watching good movies when not fighting paid media.
I wish all Hindus could unite and open their 'third eye' to obliterate paid media and so-called secularists (maybe not through voilence) but some means sufficient to deliver the message to the world.
The icing on a well-made cake:"No Muslim anywhere in the world has called VSN a muslim-hater or Islam-hater or put a bounty on his head except probably our very own “professional secularists”."
ReplyDeleteWe make movies for them, we interpret their religion,we re-write our history for them, we completely urduize hindi-films and songs, we call every Muslim actor "bhai"; in short , we are willing to eviscerate ourselves for others, without reason. This is much more than the Stockholm Syndrome; it is mental slavery.
Very well said. We need to change, that's it.
DeleteIn the days when they ruled India, the British, pursuing a policy of divide-and-rule, whitewashed the record of the Moslems so that they could set them up as a counterbalance to the more numerous Hindus. During the struggle for independence, Gandhi and Nehru downplayed historic Moslem atrocities so that they could pretend a facade of Hindu-Moslem unity against the British. (Naturally, this façade dissolved immediately after independence and several million people were killed in the religious violence attendant on splitting British India into India and Pakistan.) After independence, Marxist Indian writers, blinkered by ideology, suppressed the truth about the Moslem record because it did not fit into the Marxist theory of history. Nowadays, the Indian equivalent of political correctness downplays Moslem misdeeds because Moslems are an "oppressed minority" in majority-Hindu India. And Indian leftist intellectuals always blame India first and hate their own Hindu civilization, just their equivalents at Berkeley blame America and the West.
DeleteIt is mental slavery on part of Hindus. But for how long? When will our people wake up to truth and take corrective as well as preventive action to really achieve freedom in true sense?
Deletejanne bhi do yaaro! GK got his headlines in media. That was all what he must be wanting.
ReplyDeleteDus saal seenay mey badlay ke aag! quite filmi.
Ignore his rantings.
Poor GK, must have got more than he bargained for. He was trying trying very hard to spit on Sun, but missed his target. Never mind GK, keep trying like a good sport. We all wish GK well for festive season, which may calm him down and get him reason better now than in past.
ReplyDeleteGood work Ravi. Keep exposing very very sick people like GK.
Poor Gk! It is pathetic that the 'sickular' brigade used his ageing shoulders to place a gun and fire at VSN who would hardly bother! But then, it was so much in bad taste! Of course, nothing better can be expected from these 'commies'. This article is just brilliant! Words are insufficient to praise it! Best wishes Ravi! May your tribe flourish!
ReplyDeleteI had read Naipaul books long ago and thanks to Karnad, I re-read them with relish. I have decided to purchase his other books and this may be the case with many readers. Some years ago another Karnad-like man called Lankesh, author and journalist, severely criticised celebrated Kannada novelist and author S.L. Byrappa for his Hindu leanings,and I came to know that Byrappa was a nationalist only after reading Lankesh. Of course Karnad and his ilk in Bangalore were not far behind in roasting alive Byrappa.So I started reading Bhyrappa novels, became his fan and purchased all his books and even now I won't miss purchasing his latest novels. Thanks to people like Karnad, Bhrappa is the best-selling Kannada author today.
ReplyDeleteIs Girish Karnad all right? Now he shoots his mouth off on Tagore! I mean, is he angling for another award from the Govt?
ReplyDeleteIts one thing to have an opinion on somebody's work - but in fields such as Art, Drama, Music etc, there cannot be a firm "Yes" or "No" - unlike say, in Athletics! There are people with different tastes, different sensibilities and hence one give a verdict that my opinion is the final one - which is something what Karnad is attempting!