Author: Mahendra Ved

Slave Trade – A Stain That Refuses To Go

By Mahendra Ved

They are part of the past of many countries of origin, and of folklore that is fading into public memory as time moves. India is one of them. They are the unsung part of its diaspora, the world’s largest.

Those captured and shipped out as slaves are conveniently forgotten while India respects their successors, the indentured labour that left the shores with an official nod, never to return. Only, the past captors and the new consent-givers were the same.

Enslaving the weak and the vulnerable as part of the warfare caused by the thirst for territory and power is as old as mankind. But it became a lucrative business in the 17th century. The armed captors came stealthily, riding boats and ships, using the cover of darkness and local help, confident that the law was asleep.

Moving guns with goods for trade, also using religion when and where convenient, European powers colonized the world. They created national borders where none existed, to suit their geo-economic interests. The traders carved out empires where they impoverished the people and divided them into ethnic/faith/regional lines.

That colonial-era slavery is today surfacing across the world, Europe especially, as racism, apartheid and sectarian violence in countries that colonized and their erstwhile colonies alike. Note the shootouts, the terror attacks, the ethnic strife and much that is happening today.

The Empire is striking back as former colonizers struggle to co-exist with their former subjects. While this may be arguable, the recurring violence that is the consequence of colonization is not. And it is only going to escalate with time.

The provocation for writing this is the apology tendered last week by Dutch King Willem-Alexander. He laid a wreath at the slavery monument after apologising for the royal house’s role in slavery and asking forgiveness. Only, it has come on the 150th anniversary of the date when slavery was officially outlawed. And with the ban had come compensation, not for the slaves but for slave owners.

Old records say the Dutch pioneered slavery as “the world’s oldest trade”, soon to be joined by Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and Britain. The last-named defeated them all in Europe and/or in the distant colonies and became the world’s largest colonizer-Empire builder where, as it was famously said, the sun never set.

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To be fair, some European Union members are working to return the precious artefacts their ancestors stole from erstwhile colonies. But there is no such move in evidence in ‘Brexit’ Britain.

Unsurprisingly, sections of the Dutch opinion-makers last week said there is nothing to apologise for. They fear that this might open Pandora’s Box with former slaves and subjects asking for reparation. Didn’t the Britons bristle when India’s Shashi Tharoor held up a stained mirror to them at the 2015 Oxford debate?

India, the ‘jewel’ of the British Empire was perhaps the biggest ‘exporter’ of manpower. The context here is South Asia as, for nearly two centuries, its entire peninsula from Gujarat to the Arakans was the catchment area for slaves – 600,000 as per some estimates.

According to a study by Ruchi Singh for Migrationpolicy.org: “The 1833 abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire transformed the colonial system, replacing slavery with indentured servitude. In the eight decades that followed, the United Kingdom relocated millions of bonded Indian workers to colonies across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.”

A million ‘girmitiyas’ – those who signed an agreement – found work, but their poverty was replaced by another type with inclement weather and working conditions and what became their permanent separation from home. The story of the slaves and the indentured labour overlaps, with only shades of differences.

On the studied silence on slavery, Hubert Gerbeau has acutely observed, “The specialist in the slave trade is a historian of men and not of merchandise, and he cannot accept the silence of those transported.” While trans-Atlantic slavery from the western African shores to the Americas has been fairly well-documented, the Indian Ocean region is not.

Indeed, the study of how European traders set up ‘factories’ to trade, and forts for protection, took advantage of weak Indian Rajas and turned maritime powers. The competition in trade included the slave trade. It was huge, even though the records of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) cynically put the proportion of the slave trade as merely five per cent of the total.

The Portuguese imported Africans into their Indian colonies on the Konkan coast between about 1530 and 1740. Slavery in India continued through the 18th and 19th centuries. During the colonial era, Indians were taken into different parts of the world as slaves by various European merchant companies as part of the Indian Ocean slave trade. Slavery was prohibited in the possessions of the East India Company by the Indian Slavery Act, of 1843, in French India in 1848, in British India in 1861, and in Portuguese India in 1876.

There is hardly a mention of slavery – from India and by Indians. For, India was also a large slave trade hub in which all communities participated and benefitted. In historical terms, it was the latter-day business enterprise succeeding what each invader to India did and by those who built kingdoms through internecine warfare. Each battle – and they were numerous, history says – meant enslavement by the victor of the vanquished – men, women and children – who were killed or converted and many shipped out.

Scholars of the slave trade say that the practice continued, stealthily, with an unofficial nod, long after slavery and trade were banned by the Europeans. Keeping slaves was as common as keeping concubines wherever feudalism married business enterprises. The former helped with abundant manpower that the latter needed for indigo, cotton and tea cultivation, or to build roads and railways.

One may not call it slavery. But labour under duress is rampant in most of the former colonies. Is it surprising to see today under-aged boys at wayside restaurants and factories (despite the Factories Act) and little girls minding babies while ‘memsahib’ is at a kitty party or simply surfing on a cellphone or watching the latest film?

The writer can be contacted at mahendraved07@gmail.com

For A Land Far From Homeland

By Mahendra Ved

Growing up in the 1950s Bombay, one frequently heard of a neighbourhood ‘David’ migrating to Israel, to live in the homeland of the Jews.

The next decade saw a proliferation of English coaching classes to improve the language essential to “go phoren”. That continues, it is not difficult to guess, wherever people want to seek a better life in a far-off land, no matter the hardships and uncertainties that means.

My first contact with migrate-come-what-may was with the Gujaratis fighting to enter Britain. British passport holders had fled Idi Amin’s Uganda. Refused entry and unable to return to Kampala, they were in New Delhi, squatting at the British High Commission. Denied even basic facilities, they were shut out once they left the premises, becoming the ‘nowhere’ people. Till London grudgingly accepted them.

Fifteen years later, I met some in downtown London. It was heartening to see them fairly well-settled. Newspaper kiosks were one business and running motels was another. By that time, Patels had become synonymous with motels in America as well. The children from those families went to prestigious universities they could only have read about in an earlier era.

The process of migration from poor and developing nations to industrialised ones, legal or otherwise – more of the latter – has multiplied and proliferated over the decades. All indicators are that it is going to increase, with growing poverty, the global recession, climatic changes, sectarian violence, the emergence of dictatorial and ‘nationalist’ regimes and currently, an unwinnable, but economically debilitating, Ukraine conflict.

The industrialised nations of the West are feeling the pinch of illegal migration. Earlier this month, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, dressed in a bulletproof vest, participated in operations to identify those who cross the English Channel illegally. The European Union’s border and coast guard agency says that the number of attempts by migrants to enter Europe without authorisation reached around 330,000 in 2022. They are from Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and African of various nationalities – dogged by natural calamities and man-made ones like armed conflicts. Even if peaceful, urbanisation, industrialisation and the building of roads have uprooted people who have lived off the land, not required to leave their homes.

Less talked about India’s otherwise win-win engagements with the developed world these days are its illegal migrants and over-stayers. In Britain alone, Indians are now the second largest group of migrants crossing into the UK over the English Channel on risky small boats, according to the UK Home Office. As per the data, 675 Indian nationals entered the country by small boat between January and March, amid a “surge in attempts to evade work visa restrictions”, The Daily Mail has reported.

The migration scene is similar across the Atlantic. I am reminded of two films both, incidentally, bearing the same name, The Illegal. They narrate stories of the young chasing the American ‘dream’ and what it entails. The 2019 film is the Indians’ saga. But let me pen the poignant climax of the1970s film that is difficult to locate on the Internet. It has a Mexican couple with a pregnant wife. The man is struggling at the American Immigration Counter when the lady gets labour pains. She darts bypassing the border police and clutches the American flag and delivers. “My baby is American,” she screams with a mix of pain and satisfaction.

Flash forward to this year when an entire family from Gujarat – a man, his young wife and two children – died in a road accident while illegally being ferried from Canada to the USA. The tragedy occurred during what was, perhaps, the last lap of their travel undertaken over two months, after selling the family’s property back home.

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Shahiza Raza, a Pakistani woman field hockey player and 170 others – Afghans, Pakistanis and Iranians – set sail from the Turkish port of Izmir in February and crashed near the Italian coast. Only her body returned to Quetta to her mother and brain-damaged child.

Over the years, we are familiar with “boat people” who travel via Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia having Australia as their dream destination. They are unwanted. The social tensions that ensued made a former prime minister warn: “We are a Christian country.”

For close to 50 years, the Gulf boom has attracted millions of people from across the globe, more than the populations of those Sheikhdoms who have benefitted from the burgeoning oil economies. That region from where many developing countries earn billions as remittances is also getting impacted by geo-political and geo-economic changes like the Ukraine conflict that choked Europe’s energy supplies at one end and on the other, had Russian oil sold at concessional rates. The Gulf boom is bound to be hit and the first impact will be on the workforce.

Pakistani attorney-author Rafia Zakaria writes in Dawn newspaper on the latest boat tragedy on the Mediterranean Sea that had 750 people, 400 of them said to be Pakistanis. She notes that the gradual decline in employment opportunities available in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf in general, all of which are trying to transition to more locally staffed workforces, are one reason that more and more Pakistanis have been found travelling on migrant boats.

She draws a larger picture for every nation, whether importing or exporting the labour force. Her warning about the foreseeable future cannot be ignored.

“As artificial intelligence and remote work get more integrated into the workforce, developed industrialised democracies in the EU and also the UK and US are going to decline further. In other words, all of these countries are looking at the impending employment crises, particularly in the low-skilled sector.”

She points out: “Already, stores have stopped hiring cashiers and shelf stockers because these jobs have become automated. Soon jobs that do not require much local context information, such as computer programming, data sciences etc, are also going to end up in countries that can provide these services at the lowest cost.

“Developed economies are aware of this and of the fact that low-skilled workers will become redundant first. This is going to require these wealthier countries to institute some sort of benefits such as a universal basic income so that the poor in their countries can survive.”

This transformation is bound to create complexities that make migration increasingly difficult. They have already begun to go beyond the normal protectionism of local economies. They will generate cultural forces such as ever-increasing racism and xenophobia to support these restrictive policies.

The writer can be contacted at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Chinmaya Gharekhan

Unrolling The PMO Paradigm

By Mahendra Ved

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) was a small unit under Jawaharlal Nehru that grew with time and with each prime minister. Little is known of its current strength and those who man it. But undoubtedly, under Narendra Modi’s stewardship, it is the strongest entity governing the country.

A common thread runs through them all. As happens in any parliamentary democracy, a PMO grows at the expense of the Cabinet Secretariat. Over the years, the PMO has become the instrument through which decisions on complex issues are taken and relayed to the right authorities to be enforced. And till that is done, the officials are on their toes.

They may pertain to anything – administration, politics, Centre-state relations, foreign and security affairs. In a sense, the PMO oversees the working of the entire nation. And since it has become a top-down process, mistakes occur and fault lines develop in a vast polity like ours.

Its work is being written about and discussed. The Narasimha Rao years have been written about by his biographers and recently, by his spokesman, S. Narendra in India’s Tipping Point. The Vajpayee years were analysed by the late Shakti Sinha. Manmohan Singh’s decade was treated in an erudite manner by Sanjaya Baru but ended up becoming an election-eve film that did little credit – forget the filmmaker — to the supposed protagonist.

At a time when the current government does not exactly heap praise on the Nehru-Gandhis, it is interesting to read how their PMOs dealt with challenges faced nearly four decades ago. But it confirms the common trend. Ambassador Chinmaya R. Gharekhan, who worked for them (1981-86), notes that “the concentration of power in the PMO has tended to depreciate the expertise of the civil service machinery.

“In a bureaucracy, access is everything” and having the PM’s ear inspired a feeling that he could “influence decisions even more than the foreign secretary,” he says in Centres of Power: My Years in the PM’s Office and Security Council. A year after he left the PMO, in 1987, Rajiv announced the sack, at a press conference, of Foreign Secretary A P Venkateswaran.

Gbarekhan says the system ensures the politician’s supremacy: “Even puppet politicians are politicians first and puppets later”.

Proximity to PM matters. Shakti Sinha was the “first and last man Vajpayee would see in the day through much of the mid-1990s — during his 13-day tenure in 1996, his stint as leader of opposition between 1996 and 1998, and then during the critical 1998-99 years when India went nuclear, embarked on ambitious reforms, and fought and defeated Pakistan in Kargil.” The reviews of Sinha’s book Vajyapee: The Years That Changed India say he understood the PM intimately during the numerous meals the two would share, alone — in total silence.

Those who reviewed Gharekhan’s book released last month, include K. Natwar Singh, a former foreign minister and Krishnan Srinivasan, a former Foreign Secretary. Srinivasan confirms two little-known things. Narasimha Rao mistakenly did not appoint Gharekhan as the Foreign Secretary. More importantly, when Natwar Singh resigned as Foreign Minister in 2005, Sonia Gandhi wanted Gharekhan to take over. This did not work out.

Gharekhan enjoyed working with the Gandhis. His accounts and anecdotes are both revealing and refreshing. Indira wanted to be accepted as a stateswoman and hoped to get a Nobel. And Gharekhan headed a committee to canvas for the prize. This was “as bizarre as that sounds. Clearly, some in high places in Delhi were, then as now, remote from reality.”

She did not share Nehru’s ideological affinity for Russia, was pro-British and was solicitous over British visitors, though she disliked the Commonwealth, “perhaps because in that forum several heads of government indulged in very plain speaking.” She cared about her coverage in the media, especially the Western press.

ALSO READ: Narasimha Rao – A Rebel And A Reformer

Gharekhan speaks of how the Americans were “most excited” about Rajiv Gandhi’s assumption of office and took advantage of Rajiv’s inexperience to flood Delhi with a host of envoys of dubious quality. That, one would surmise, is typical diplomacy, and not confined to the Americans.

While Indira changed drafts of statements, messages and speeches “like a sub-editor”, Rajiv simply had no time and patience for them. He did not like to be told how his mother worked or would have worked, on a particular issue. But both were trusting and caring of their officers. Indira would instruct staff to prepare ‘khichdi’ since Gharekhan had a bad tummy.

Gharekhan got on well with Indira. From time to time both would converse in French to the discomfiture of officers and ministers. But all that has not prevented him from being critical of the two bosses.

That she was superstitious is well-known, and so is her immaculate dress sense. Gharekhan had to reassure her once that her saree was perfectly worn, except a “little high on the left.” And as she corrected it, she would ask the poor official to “look away.”

Where else would anyone get a boss who keeps a tab of the officer’s cultural pursuit, outside of official work? Indira would listen to Gharekhan’s Hindustani Classical rendering on the radio and convey her appreciation of the performance. This is the stuff of which a good book is made.

Natwar Singh notes a word from Gharekhan that has a message for the present dispensation: “1962 had done harm to India and to Sino-Indian relations. All that changed when Deng Xiaoping told the Indian Prime Minister to leave the border aside and develop good neighbourly friendly relations in other areas like trade and tourism, exchange of students etc. From 1988 to 2020 there was no conflict between the two countries.”

Considered a ‘progressive’ in the PMO, despite his proximity with both the PMs he served, Gharekhan disliked Indira’s invocation of family heritage – “the emphasis on the family did not sound decent in a democracy”, adding, in another context, there “was no half-way house between democracy and dictatorship”.

What worked for Gharekhan was “my non-offensive, non-combative style”. It enabled him to ride the contradictions inherent in the system he worked within. His swan song before he left for the US to spend his remaining years shows him as a calm, composed and unruffled diplomat. We are talking of a different era.

The writer can be contacted at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Read More: lokmarg.com

Kashmir To Kerala

Kashmir To Kerala, The Propaganda Potpourri

By Mahendra Ved

It must be stressed at the outset that no film, once cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), should be banned or prevented from being shown to the public. No individual or group – political, social or religious – should be allowed to act as an extra-constitutional authority.

On the ongoing controversies, it needs to be noted that no Kashmiri will make The Kashmir Files and no Malayali will make The Kerala Story. Kerala, especially, has a record of good cinema. Filmmakers from Kashmir know their state well and also know the damage a misleading picture can cause.

The focus is on Muslims – men in The Kashmir Files and women in The Kerala Story. The likely content of The Bengal Files, supposedly in the making, can be guessed from the West Bengal Chief Minister’s claim. Her state has a significant Muslim population and borders a Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

The ‘honour’ for the two films goes to Bollywood. Although a pejorative, the popular name for Mumbai-based cinema, to the exclusion of a dozen other film-making centres, it has legitimate claims of a global reach. This underscores the global damage bad cinema can cause and is evidently already causing. Britain has stopped The Kerala Story showing.

To carry out these ‘jobs’, however creative and lucrative, marks deterioration for Bollywood which has a record, without a formal political label, of promoting secular values. It has creative people from all communities. It gave the world My Name is Khan… when the West was witnessing aggressive promotion of Islamophobia post-9/11.

The fact is that Bollywood’s leading lights are anxious to stay on the right side of the political divide. After a century-plus of being the entertainment hub, Bollywood, or its influential sections, are no longer afraid of taking sides. The motivation, besides money which is okay, is political.

Films have caused controversies, even violent protests – some even when they were under production – in the past as well. The recent ones are part of the political and social churning and have contributed to the widening schism. But that, again, is no reason to ban a duly certified film.

Films are powerful tools that shape ideas, attitudes and social norms. They have a greater ability to sway opinions and spread ideas compared to other media forms. As such, the sudden slew of political films and biopics, and the timing of their release have raised questions about politicians capitalising on the power of Bollywood and Indian cinema in general for political mileage.

Cinema and politics have often intertwined in India. Several actors have turned to politics post their film careers while Indian movies have also tackled social and political concerns in plotlines, albeit implicitly and allegorically.

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The present spree is in time for the national elections a year away, interspersed by many assembly polls. Its justification can well be that when other arms of the media are profiting from participation, why single out the cinema? And of this medium, the over-the-top (OTT) platforms, where content is not subject to censorship, have yet to join the electoral bandwagon. If and when they do, it will be really no-holds-barred.

The picture is not very different from 2019 except that it is more strident. An in-your-face biopic on Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray, a derisive film on former premier Manmohan Singh and a highly laudatory one on the present incumbent, Narendra Modi were released. Potshots taken against Singh stood in contrast with the forceful hagiography of Modi. The release of the Modi biopic was so close to the polls that the Election Commission had to force a delay.

But these films would seem benign today when compared to the current crop, with more in the offing. The difference in the approach needs to be noted. The film fare of 2019 had the government of the day, while remote-controlling, seeking to appear neutral. It left all action to the party leaders and cadres. But the ‘files’ on Kashmir and Kerala have enjoyed direct, in-your-face, endorsement from the top-most political authority, especially during the recent Karnataka elections. That the voter rejected divisive discourse is a different, if reassuring, story. Unless there is an attempt at course correction, this is more likely to persist over the next year.

The partisanship has penetrated and widened this time. The maker of The Kashmir Files, who continues to court controversy long after the film’s release and the diplomatic fracas it caused when shown at the country’s most prestigious international film festival, is a member of the CBFC. If he participated in the certification process of his own work is beside the point. The real issue is that the authority that appointed him retains him in that post through the controversy and after.

As for The Kerala Story, the official and political endorsement has come amidst almost universal criticism of its content and treatment and brazen juggling of figures – from 32,000 women being affected to just three and then the film’s producer argues that the numbers do not matter.

The Kerala Story was banned in West Bengal but the filmmakers secured a stay on the ban from the Supreme Court. The apex court, quite appropriately in principle, but ignoring the political overtones, asked why the film is banned. Whatever the contents’ quality, the two films have been projected as box office hits. Meanwhile, some BJP-ruled states have declared The Kerala Story tax-free.

Film certification has been a central subject, a carry-over from the colonial era. It can be argued that this is untenable in a quasi-federal polity where many provinces, particularly in peninsular India, have cinemas that reflect their distinctive culture. But given the divisiveness that already exists, one hesitates to add to the list of issues ranging from language, land borders to river waters.

Like much else on the agenda of various political parties, the debate is about the extent to which cinema can influence the minds of the viewers as potential voters. Indeed, the minds that work in the darkness of the cinema theatre (or the cosiness of home) and the exclusively covered polling booth where the vote is cast are the ultimate battlegrounds.

While it is true that propaganda is no longer a candidly top-down process with the proliferation of social media, the experience of the last century shows that films that are undisguised and naked political propaganda are not able to influence people. People may watch them but they see through the design and reject their crudity in its entirety. We will know where the Indian viewer/voter stands next summer.

The writer can be contacted at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Read More: lokmarg.com

Devji Bhimji – A Gujarati Who Became Malayalam Media Mogul

By Mahendra Ved

Millions of Malayalis in Kerala and across the globe may not have much idea that printing and publishing in their language were pioneered by a businessman hailing from distant Gujarat, 2,300 kilometres away.

Nor for that matter, the people in Gujarat who, otherwise proud of their trading prowess wherever they have gone and settled, have set in motion the process of globalisation, long before the world began to talk about it.

The story of Devji Bhimji, the pioneer and his work needs re-telling after 146 years since it is also the account of the first clash between princely India and an entrepreneur who succeeded in establishing his right to print and publish – in sum, the freedom of expression. The Kerala Media Academy (KMA) records term it as “the Royal Wrath”.

“It fell to a Gujarathi’s lot to launch the first systematic ‘newspaper’ in Malayalam. Devji Bhimji started a printing press at Cochin in 1865 under the name of the Keralamitram Press. In running the press Devji Bhimji had to face heavy odds. There was the obvious disadvantage of embarking upon a hitherto uncharted course. But more discouraging was the unhelpful attitude of the authorities.

“In an unprovoked gesture, the police authorities slapped an order on Devji Bhimji requiring him to submit all matters meant for printing for the prior scrutiny and approval of the authorities. On his preferring an appeal seeking reconsideration of this blanket order the authorities retaliated by forcing the closure of the establishment.

“Devji Bhimji was not daunted. He approached the Divan on at least six occasions for a redressal of his grievances. But the Divan was averse to rescinding the censorship orders. In exasperation, Devji Bhimji now turned to the British Resident, Henry Neville, for justice. His perseverance paid at last after almost a year of forced closure of the press when the British resident prevailed upon the authorities to withdraw their orders.”

Sir Henry Neville directed the Diwan that his administration annul all restrictions, including the Press Regulation (Censorship) law, and unsealing of the printing press. This was in 1865.

Yet, history tells us that numerous more battles continued to be fought in British India. Among the more celebrated fighters, as recorded in these columns earlier, was a Briton, Benjamin Guy Horniman, who exposed the infamous Jalianwala Bagh massacre in Punjab. The story of Devji Bhimji precedes that by 55 years.

There is no record of his family from Kutch moving to Mattancherry, a Cochin suburb, to set up businesses, including stationary and gold jewellery shops. What we know is that his family followed a long line of migration to Kerala that began way back in the fourth century. Settled along the coast, the Gujaratis traded in pepper, cardamom and other spices.

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Devji Bhimji pioneered the publishing business with an old printing press. Till then, Malayalam prose and literature were in cyclostyled sheets. Journals and periodicals in Malayalam were first started by missionaries, in most cases for propagating religion. Their contribution to the development of Malayalam prose and journalism, however, has been considerable, according to the KMA’s study.

“Reading matter was spread across the pages with neither columns nor cross-heads to break the monotony.” Among them was Rajyasamacharam by a German missionary, Herbert Gundart, a renowned scholar and grandfather of poet Herman Hesse.

Devji Bhimji took publishing beyond the religious literature that missionaries of all faith published till then. The success against the Cochin Travancore administration emboldened him to go for newspapers and journals and educational material.

His Kerala Mithram was the earliest Malayalam language newspaper, published in the first and third week of every month. The first editor-in-chief was a bright 24-year-old, Kandathil Varghese Mappillai, who went to found Malayala Manorama. The deputy was T.G. Paily.

Devji Bhimji also launched The Western Star in 1860, entrusting the editorship to a Briton, an absolute greenhorn with no prior experience. A weekly, it was the first English-language journal published in Kerala.  Its Malayalam edition was called Paschimatraka.

The KMA study records: “Ironically, the first of this genre to be published from Kerala was in the English language…..  Charles Lawson, who had left England after completing his studies, took over as the paper’s editor. This was Lawson’s maiden essay into journalism. The assignment obviously stood him in good stead when he migrated to Madras to launch the Madras Mail in later years.

“The Western Star continued from Cochin for a long time. In due course, there were changes in ownership as well as the location of the paper. The publication base was shifted to Thiruvananthapuram. Thereafter its appearance was irregular.”

Devji Bhimji improved the printing machinery and by 1886, he was publishing in Sanskrit, English, Marathi, Gujarati and Malayalam. Hindi included Amarkosh, Kadambari and Padmasamhita. They had a wide readership in the north.

Kerala Kokil served Marathi readers everywhere, till sold to Krishnaji Athale, who took it to Bombay in 1898. References to Devji Bhimji’s contribution to Marathi literature and journalism are found in 1898 made by Mahadev Govind Ranade, one of Maharashtra’s tallest jurist-scholar and social activists. 

The port city where Devji Bhimji began his endeavour, still has 500-odd Gujarati families, while dwindling numbers are in Allapuzha, Changnacheri, Ponnani and other places in Kerala.

In a sense, Devji Bhimji sowed the seeds of Malayala Manorama. His experiences in the field of publishing “were happy for he was already toying with the idea of starting a paper on his own. This blossomed into reality with the launching, on New Year’s Day of 1881, of the Keralamitram. In a number of respects, the Keralamitram can be hailed as the first “newspaper” in the Malayalam language.

“The Keralamitram was fortunate in that it had as its first editor none other than Kandathil Varghese Mappilai who later founded the Malayala Manorama. With Kandathil Varghese Mappilai’s flair for journalism and Devji Bhimji’s acumen as an entrepreneur, it is no wonder that the new publication made a lasting impact on Malayalam journalism.”

Kerala’s success story as one of the most literate states is inseparable from that of this newspaper chain. First published as a weekly on 22 March 1888, it currently claims a readership of over 9 million (with a circulation base of over 1.9 million copies). According to the World Association of Newspapers, as of 2016, it was the 14th most circulated newspaper in the world.

The Gujarati merchant was way ahead of his time. What is left of his legacy is a crumbling building with the signboard: “Devaji Bhimji Trust, Cochin-2.”

The writer can be contacted at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Narasimha Rao – A Rebel & A Reformer

By Mahendra Ved

Two books symbolize the sea change India witnessed as the last century ended and is still on. The author of one, S. Narendra, spent a better part of his communicator’s career articulating the government’s ‘socialist’ policies. Till the prime minister, his finance minister, and India itself, opted for economic reforms.

Four years after he stepped down as the prime minister, P V Narasimha Rao, who helmed the risky, resented-by-many change, lamented to A. Krishna Rao, the other author, that he had lost Andhra Pradesh’s chief ministership to advocating the Nehruvian model, and then, the prime ministership for pushing the reforms, though he did not regret either.

As one who provided the political sinews needed to enable finance minister Manmohan Singh to enforce the reforms, Rao was and remains, the man who opened the door. After Nehru who is demonized, albeit for reasons beyond his combining socialism with welfare, Rao, billed as the modern-day Chanakya, is India’s most written-about ex-premier today.

Four reasons have motivated analysts to dwell on him almost two decades after he died in 2004. All of them are relevant.

He died virtually shunned, even despised, by the Congress that he served. The party is under dire stress today battling Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP juggernaut. It lacks political direction and ideological coherence. It can neither shed nor grow under the Nehru-Gandhis.

Rao, PV for short, helmed the government when the controversial Babri Masjid was demolished. Its rubble has continued to contaminate a pluralist India’s sinews, casting a dark shadow as it seeks its place on the global table.

Though not the first or the last time, financial scams coloured Rao’s five-year tenure (1991-96). Many more have surfaced since. Adani is the latest.

The present political dispensation has sought to appropriate Rao. Like Sardar Patel, put on the world’s tallest pedestal, not so much for his contribution to the nation, but because Congress ignored him. It’s a political me-too. In Rao’s case, the Bharatiya Janata Party wants to make inroads into the Telugu-speaking South.

The analysts’ fourth reason should actually be the first. For, Rao-launched economic reforms are why India and the world should recognise his legacy. They woke up the sleeping giant.

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Three decades on, reforms have been embraced by successive governments, not only of Manmohan Singh, Rao’s nuts-and-bolts man but also those of Nehruvian I K Gujral and BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The Modi Government is building on that edifice, whether or not it admits it.

Narendra correctly titles his book using the Narasimha Rao years (1991-96) as India’s Tipping Point (Bloomsbury India). An ‘insider’, he was Rao’s media advisor, but insists, “not a confidante”. Rao pitted him, a civil servant, before his doubting political critics led by Arjun Singh, to justify the choice of an unshackled elephant as the reforms’ symbol.

“India is a large, polyglot, federal, parliamentary democracy. The decision-making process is slow but surefooted, the giant steps are impactful. Other countries already have tigers and lions. Moreover, the elephant is identified with Lord Ganesha”, Narendra succinctly explained. He got into many Congressmen’s crosshairs.

He insists that PV, no “reluctant reformer”, well understood the Indian ethos. India had lagged behind Southeast Asia’s ‘tiger’ economies by decades and an adversarial China by 12 years. Yet, the ‘elephant’, being stirred up for a tiger’s leap, unlike the others, needed to have “a human face.”

Both authors dwell on the Rao-Congress relationship in their separate ways. The first Congressman, not a Nehru-Gandhi, lacking their looks and charisma, Rao ran a minority government for a full term. One problem was that he was from the South. That the two authors are also from peninsular India helps shed that bias.

If Narendra’s approach is to-the-point, Krishna Rao, a senior journalist, portrays PV, as the title of his book suggests, The Quintessential Rebel (SR Publication). Yet another biographer, Vinay Sitapati, calls Narasimha Rao, as the name indicates, a “half-lion”. Rao’s critics may not appreciate these nuances. To them, these descriptions may not jell with the image of a sensitive, soft-spoken man. But they would agree with what Narendra calls Rao’s deep personality flaw of being indecisive and uncommunicative in the face of a crisis.

That fatal combination governed the immediate aftermath of Babri’s destruction. In hindsight though, one is left wondering how and why a seasoned politician like Rao believed in the BJP leadership and specific commitments made before the Supreme Court and then cried ‘betrayal’. It was a collective failure on which Rao presided and that, like Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, shall always remain his negative legacy.

Crises dogged Rao even after the loss of power and retirement. The last bit was thanks to his ungrateful party which “let the law take its course” when Rao was charged in a court, the first former premier thus hauled up, for allegedly paying lawmakers to save his government. This stance was missing when the Sonia-blessed Manmohan Singh Government was on a similar sticky wicket. Or now, when Rahul Gandhi is convicted, however controversially, for a poll-time verbal faux pas.

Heading a disparate coalition, Rao was a weak premier, weakened further by the ‘bushfires’ lit by fellow Congressmen. Many family loyalists were his ministers. The more ambitious ones succeeded in driving a wedge between Rao and Sonia and on her nod, launched a rival party that cut into Congress votes in 1996.

Rao lost and went home. But the party has also lost, despite wielding power for a decade (2004-2014) under another non-Gandhi, but Sonia nominee.

There is no denying Rao’s hesitancy in acting against ministers who came under the scanner in the Harshad Mehta scam, and later in dealing with the sugar import scam.

A fuller study of Rao, as the authors have attempted, must include steering the Indian ship in the post-Soviet world, amidst Dunkel and Kickleger pressures by the newly-emerged sole superpower. It must cover Kashmir, the Pandits’ exodus, and cross-border infiltration. It must analyze how the BJP and the Left united to thwart all his plans.

Related to reforms is another lasting legacy of Rao. The “Look East Policy”, now called “Act East Policy”, has provided India with an entire region next door and a much-needed platform that has evolved into Indo-Pacific.

Narasimha Rao was many things, but essentially, a poet. Krishna Rao, a poet himself, quotes PV’s August 15, 1947 poem:

“For ages, he had silently
Bearing injustice with a smile,
Now, he is seething with anger
With redness of dusk
Reflecting on his face;
He is a revolutionary sage!”

That was the common Indian man when he gained freedom at midnight.

The writer can be contacted at mahendraved07@gmail.com

China Plays Peace Dragon In West Asia, What Next?

By Mahendra Ved

With the double whammy scored in a matter of a month by brokering a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia and by boosting an isolated Vladimir Putin by meeting in Moscow, China has attained the global centre stage. The twin diplomatic feats pose a direct challenge to the United States-led West that has long determined war and peace in West Asia and is out to defeat Vladimir Putin’s Russia in Ukraine.

There is a message for India. It has, for now at least, missed the bus in both regions. It has centuries-long cultural and commercial ties with the West Asian region. Millions of Indians work there. But relations with individual nations in the region have not added up to an image and presence in West Asia. The newbie China has done it.

Walking the diplomatic tightrope of the Ukraine conflict and refusing to condemn Putin’s actions, India has hoped to play the mediator at some stage. Prime Minister Modi’s acolytes would have you believe this. President Xi Jinping’s set of peace proposals to end the conflict in Ukraine, coming from a partisan, are unlikely to be accepted by the West. But they pre-empt any Indian initiative for now.

Indeed, for the Western nations boosting Ukraine’s resistance, such a Chinese move would amount to a strategic sacrilege. China is the reason why Russia, besides its own enormous strength, is able to rough it out in Ukraine where it did not anticipate being bogged down. But it shows no sign of suing for peace either.

Xi’s Moscow visit signals that Beijing is firmly behind Moscow, and that, having invested heavily in diplomatic and economic terms, with likely future gains for itself, it will not allow Russia to lose. If that prolongs the conflict, and destruction of Ukraine, so be it. It’s all taking place as US ties with China, which began to fray with former President Donald Trump’s trade war, keep worsening under Joe Biden. As Bloomberg reported, after talking to many Biden administration officials, the US ‘fears’ that a war-weary world may embrace China’s Ukraine peace bid.

Saying all this, however, is different from an overwhelming number of Western analysts, and most Indian analysts who take their cue from them. They all warned Modi against the ‘folly’ of tacitly supporting Russia. Concessional Russian oil has helped ‘grease’ the Indian line of reasoning, though. Russia is now India’s largest oil supplier and in 2022, the bilateral trade between the two countries touched a record high of $31 billion.

Western interests are unwavering against China, and Russia — Ukraine or no Ukraine — is secondary. For India, too, closer to the Western camp than ever before, while China is the principal threat, Russia, a traditional friend, can be chided and warned from time to time since India must remain and appear ‘balanced’ in the eyes of the Western allies.

Xi’s Moscow sojourn confirms China as Russia’s major partner. To that extent, this reduces India’s diplomatic space in Moscow, and that could push India further into the US-led camp. Already, India and China’s relations are strained over the military deployments at the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which has also turned violent at times. China has openly expressed displeasure about India’s proximity to the United States and also criticizes any developments related to the Indo-Pacific.

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Watch the power play in the Indo-Pacific. Xi’s trip to Russia was preceded by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s to Ukraine. And Kishida, before going there, conferred with Modi. And Modi had by then met Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

But while Ukraine, the current distraction shows all signs of lengthening, the real tussle is in the Indo-Pacific. The US and Europe would like to have their domination, while China is striving for a favourable balance. Thus, major power polarization has become the order of the day. This is a warning sign for all nations, including India, of the shape of things to come.

Taking together Xi’s visit to Moscow and his new foreign minister Qin Gang’s hosting of Saudi Arabia and Iran, the message is more for the US and Europe than anyone else. It signals the loss of credibility if not of strength.

Europe’s economies, already slowing, have been hurt by the Ukraine conflict. They were not ready for the Russian energy embargo in retaliation to their economic sanctions. Following President Joe Biden’s entry into Ukraine, they want to ‘defeat’ Putin, but cannot spell how. They are unlikely to roll back the NATO expansion, the reason why Putin invaded Ukraine. And now the latter has become the sacrificial goat in this proxy war.

The US and Europe have shown consistency in pushing NATO’s frontiers that Russia finds too close to comfort. By contrast, right under their nose, China has shown quiet consistency in forging ties with West Asia, at least over the last ten years. Xi visited Saudi Arabia and had meetings with the Iranian leadership – enough to hold their hands and end their mutual distrust.

China has been a major presence in the West Asian region for several years. It is a major buyer of their energy, a major trade partner, an investment partner and a logistical partner. The new thing is that it has extended its role with regard to political issues.

As retired Indian diplomat and a veteran West Asia scholar Talmiz Ahmad points out: “Every major university in the world has Chinese scholars. Every major Chinese university has a centre for West Asian studies. They have more than 1,000 West Asian scholars in China. China now has very high stakes in the region’s stability.”

China has stepped into space vacated by the West. Iran and the US have been cross with each other for over four decades now. And the Saudi Crown Prince has for a year now been trying to reduce his dependence on the Americans. As The Financial Times says, “This is a challenge to the United States, whose traditionally strong relations with Riyadh have cooled.” In a sense, West Asia has come of age.

To put the two complex developments in simple terms, it is China’s ‘soft’ power at work – achieving success without the use of force – against the use of force by the US-led alliance.

The writer can be contacted at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Pakistan Imran Khan

Pakistan – Hurtling From One Crisis To Another

By Mahendra Ved

Pakistan has reached a precipice, going by the developments this week that point to an uncertain future. Commentators have for some time darkly warned of a fourth phase of Martial Law. But that is something one will have to wait till it actually happens — or does not happen.

It may not, if the much-vaunted ‘establishment’ pushes a via media among the squabbling politicians. The all-powerful army is silent. Its new Chief, Gen. Syed Aseem Munir, is silently settling down amidst calumny about its predecessor and the top army brass.

The saving grace from his standpoint is that the army remains both respected and feared. The politicians, even when they malign it or assert their democratic credentials, turn to it to clear the mess they accumulate — with or without the army’s contribution — from time to time.

The attempt on March 15 to arrest former Prime Minister Imran Khan miserably failed and given the judicial intervention, is unlikely to be repeated. It seemed doomed from the beginning and raised doubts about the wisdom of the incumbent government, especially Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who has an enviable record, otherwise, of governing the populous and powerful Punjab for five years.

It has made Khan a hero and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) could sweep the national elections and in the provinces, particularly Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, that seem likely to be held sooner than later.

But for that to happen, the ‘establishment’ will have to consider far too many factors, on which horse (or stable) to back. It has tried out the Bhutto-Zardaris and the Sharifs in the past and must evaluate Khan afresh.

For, Imran Khan is the latest of the army’s ‘proxies’ to turn rogue, to the extent of publicly asserting this month that he does “not need the establishment.” He has maligned it day in and day out since he lost power in April last year.

And yet, from within the confines of his home on March 15, with violence and protests raging outside, he asked the ‘establishment’ to withdraw support to the Sharif government if it wanted the political stalemate to end.

Out of power, Khan has retained political support, going by his bye-election victories. He enjoys support from the vocal middle classes. But the craze for Khan among many Pakistanis is emotional, and not rational.

Support has come from sections of polarized media; notice the way some respectable media outlets saw no difference between ‘firing’ and “firing of teargas shells” while reporting the standoff outside Khan’s Lahore residence.

Part of the confident and defiant show Khan put up came from the judiciary which has a record of acting in tandem with the army. One court ordered his arrest for failing to appear before it, and the other court halted or suspended the arrest when met with protests from Khan’s supporters. The judiciary has done and undone elections, poll schedules, even forced resignations of the prime minister, and much more, depending upon pressures coming from powerful quarters.

Khan is known to enjoy the support of sections of the army that abhors the two ‘dynasties’ and perhaps, thinks a charismatic Khan is a better horse to back, notwithstanding his famous “U-turns”. Everyone knows that his anti-military fulminations are bound to end the day general elections are announced. There will then be a scramble for support from the ‘institution’. The popular word for the favourite is ‘laadla’.

The ball remains in the army’s court – notice the way Shehbaz Sharif has belatedly joined in, long after Khan’s relentless attacks on the controversial former chief, Gen. Qaisar Javed Bajwa. Without saying it in so many words, principal contenders for power, it would seem, are looking to the current Chief to act.

What the “ides of March” and the coming weeks have in store for Pakistan, is not clear. But even the general elections, due in August anyway, may not solve the multiple issues confronting Pakistan. High on the long list is violence by militants unleashed at will by the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other groups.

The Sharif Government has so far failed to ease the economic distress with a tranche of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). That Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had to telephone the American Embassy in Islamabad seeking its intervention is an indicator.

The way the global lender has delayed it has brought the Sharif Government to its knees. The problem began with Khan who dragged his feet for nearly four years while engaging in anti-West rhetoric meant to please the domestic audiences. But this is precisely what feeds the political discourse in Pakistan and it is likely to heighten as the country nears elections.

AAP ka Impression

AAP ka Impression

By Mahendra Ved

For one born of an anti-graft movement that captured the nation’s imagination ten years ago, corruption charges are why the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is facing its worst moment. Manish Sisodia, its virtual Number 2, resigned as Delhi’s deputy chief minister when put behind bars. Critics ask whether he could have acted without a nod from his chief, Arvind Kejriwal.

The duo’s liquor marketing briefly made the National Capital a boozer’s paradise when it emboldened some private liquor vendors to introduce buy-one-get-one-free offers. The Delhi Government earned about ₹8,917 crore through bidding against a reserve price of ₹7,041 crore and ₹768 crore in the first month. But it was withdrawn within eight months amid allegations of corruption and favouritism in license granting.

Investigations are on and even the legality of Sisodia’s arrest is being questioned. Judicial scrutiny is on the cards that, under prolonged media glare, will see AAP’s further spanking. Until its outcome is known, one should not prejudge it.

But politics is different. Unsurprisingly, both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), disrupted by the newbie’s rise have screamed ‘excise scam’. The Congress blames AAP’s forerunner, the “India Against Corruption” movement for its downfall and its Delhi debacle. Ajay Maken calls it an “open and shut case”.

Swarajya editor R Jagannathan, known for his pro-BJP stance has, however, cautioned against it. He points, with justification, to the rot in the system, how and why it has landed into money swamping all political activity and hence, governance. No money, no vote, no prospects of power. This applies to all, just all, players – no exceptions.

Home to the nation’s capital, Delhi has been a unique Centre-dominated half-state. In ruling it, both the Congress and the BJP resented the Centre breathing down their necks. But in recent years, Delhi’s political discourse has taken a toxic “pehley-aap” mode, literally. Each Lt. Governor has behaved as the Centre’s ‘Laat Sahab’, perennially confronting the elected representatives. Taking the Centre-state tussle to the Supreme Court has not helped. The apex court has to intervene even to get Delhi’s civic bodies to function.

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Add to these – a key part of the problem – the role of the Centre-governed Delhi Police. Count the strictures it has earned from the state judiciary and higher courts, particularly in the investigations and trials of the February 2020 violence in North Delhi. Incidentally, AAP legislator Amanullah was acquitted by a court on the day Sisodia was arrested.

That, plus serious doubts over the Centre’s use of various investigative and enforcement agencies. But then, Delhi is not alone. Most opposition-ruled states have proactive, even combative central government representatives. They could knock on any door. One hears of ‘silence’ observed by some prominent opposition leaders, ostensibly on this score.

Politically, AAP has been a significant disrupter as shown by its two landslide wins in Delhi, also in its civic bodies, and in Punjab last year. It has sought to spread its wings to other states in its bid to become a national party, opening accounts in Goa and Gujarat.

Complexities abound in the BJP-AAP relationship. One reason for AAP’s success is that Kejriwal understands the Modi pulse well. He attracts the charge of being BJP’s B team when he tries to climb the Hindutva platform. But then, Congress, too, engages in projecting Rahul Gandhi as a ‘janeudhari’ Brahmin. With Congress, AAP’s relationship is simply hostile in the way it has undercut its support base. The Congress, too, has kept the AAP out of the opposition unity moves it has initiated.

Both Congress and AAP were wary of taking a clear stand on the farmers’ agitation and North Delhi’s violence targeting the Muslims. This underscores the fact that BJP determines the agenda for its opponents.

Besides running Delhi with its hands tied, Punjab, the sensitive border is witnessing the return of separatist forces. Not just political, this extends to national security and external threat perceptions. AAP cannot afford to err in its governance tasks.

The political challenge to AAP is heightened with assembly elections in some states where it seeks to expand, and the general elections just a year away. Kejriwal was in Karnataka for the election campaign while the crisis brewed in Delhi. Contesting and winning elections, after all, has become the core of the political game in the country. AAP cannot be different.

Its emergence is the story of the last decade – of the 2010s – that engulfed many countries where mass movements captured the public imagination. Many of them have sadly lapsed into seeing personality cults built on aggressive ‘nationalism’. This trend shows no sign of ebbing and feeds the current global political discourse.

Kejriwal has made a difference by enforcing a generational change and enrolling young professionals who had practically no role in the political discourse unless they chose politics as their full-time profession. AAP has so far retained the support of the young among the urban middle class in a country that is getting fast urbanized.

The rise of AAP or the rot in it – depending upon how one views it, whether as a middle-class movement or just another political party in pursuit of power – was inevitable, even if considered undesirable. I learnt of its internal churning and its developing differences, of all the places, in the toilet in a mall.

I spotted one of its leading lights, legal luminary Shanti Bhushan, coming to see a film. After a brief reminder of my having interviewed him, I popped the AAP question. He spoke about it long before the party took a formal shape, to the chagrin of many in the intelligentsia, seeking change without being in politics.

Mass movements need messiahs, and Anna Hazare, with due respect, is no Vinoba Bhave. Unwittingly, Hazare became part of a political churning that he either couldn’t help or didn’t mind. Little wonder, his occasional fulminations carry no weight and little media attention.

Nobody likes corruption, but few shun it when the push comes to serve and fewer understand its dynamics. A decade after the anti-graft movement and the clamour for an ombudsman who would expose it and punish the guilty, it cannot be said that corruption has been reduced in India, let alone eliminated. Only, its pursuit is selective, depending upon who wields power — political power, not moral. Given human nature, it is forever on the man’s to-do list, an ideal to be pursued.

AAP succeeded in Delhi and Punjab because it was perceived as a movement against traditional politics. It was a revolt against an establishment ruined by corruption, crime, conspiracy, and money and muscle power. It is a very difficult path. It walks it or joins the rest. We shall see.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

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Dadamoni – The Actor Who Could Do No Wrong

Dadamoni – The Actor Who Could Do No Wrong

By Mahendra Ved

What can one write about Ashok Kumar, who died 22 years ago, at age 90, and whose last film was in the last century? A lot, actually, if the present film fraternity eyeing the future is looking for a case study from the past. It may find some answers, though not all.

His legacy needs a re-look when the country’s cinema is facing multiple crises. For one, institutional challenges to the studio and the star systems. Ashok Kumar straddled both. His Bombay Talkies, a major studio, lasted till the studio system itself had to yield place to the star system. Kumar was among the early beneficiaries of the change.

Now the star system is threatened. Today’s frequently-failing stars can’t sustain the country’s 12,000 cinema theatres. Jubilee times – silver, golden et al – are past. They are forced to take recourse to the OTT (over-the-top) platforms proliferating with their own global cinema, breaking geographical barriers. Alongside, films are being financed by a new set of foreign-financed studios that dictate terms to individual filmmakers. Film-making has become increasingly money and technology-driven.  

Two, on his success, Ashok Kumar invited Bimal Roy to Bombay. Along with the 1947 Partition, this triggered the influx of many more and not just from Bengal. This evolved into what is Bollywood today.

That Mumbai-based network producing Hindi films faces challenges from some of the regional language films. Bollywood must meet it by reaching out to those cinemas. But more importantly, by injecting a measure of discipline into its money-washed work culture. Collaboration in the making and marketing of RRR (2022) indicates some action on the first. On the latter, one can only hope that Bollywood is resilient enough to apply correctives — without awaiting lessons from some retired colonel that Ashok Kumar portrayed in Chhoti Si Baat (1976)!

Three, discipline was one reason behind Kumar’s success, of being sought after by three generations of filmmakers. He came to work on time, left on time and spent evenings, besides being with his family, rehearsing his next day’s dialogues. If Amitabh Bachchan is busy at 80 today, and his contemporaries and some younger lot are not, it is because of his punctuality and work ethic.

It would be impossible, even disastrous in the present times, to follow Ashok Kumar’s stipulation that he would not embrace the heroine. His smiling eyes did the romancing. He was called ‘dadamoni’, the affectionate elder brother, by everyone, including his legion of heroines. There were no scandals around Ashok Kumar, his biography by Nabendu Ghosh, who wrote many of the Bimal Roy classics, tells you.

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Ghosh wrote Dadamoni: The Life and Times of Ashok Kumar when the thespian was around. It has got a new life with a Foreword by Kumar’s eldest daughter, Bharti Jaffrey, and an Afterword by Ratnottama Sengupta, Ghosh’s journalist-curator daughter. Together, the two ladies bring Ashok Kumar alive with innumerable insights and anecdotes.

The quintessential family man kept the promise he gave to Himanshu Rai, the man who launched his reluctant acting career, to stay away from ‘flappers’. Such a story would be boring today for those who devour filmy gossip and social media that get juicy bits, often from the stars themselves.

Dadamoni’s is not a rags-to-riches story. His well-heeled family did not mind his working as a laboratory technician in a film studio but was enraged at his becoming an actor. His engagement broke. He was pushed into an arranged marriage that lasted a lifetime. Society then enjoyed watching the film stars but treated them as social outcasts.

Shedding Ganguly, his surname, set the trend for ‘Kumars’: Uttam, Rajendra, Raaj, Manoj, Sanjeev, even Dilip (Yusuf Khan). Indian cinema’s first male superstar, he launched or promoted many, including Dilip, Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand — the troika that ruled the Hindi screen for decades. In his later years, he did supporting roles with them.

A sucker for good author-based films, he promoted writers like Sadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chugtai and Shaheed Latif. He produced Parineeta based on Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyaya’s novel. It helped that he became a partner of Bombay Talkies and then the owner. He also launched his own production house. An astute businessman, he owned prime property around Kala Ghoda in South Bombay and nursed Rhythm House, the city’s iconic music hub.

Biographer Ghosh, also a fan, finds nothing negative about his idol. But Kumar’s younger daughter Priti recounts his smashing the Chinaware when in a foul temper, which was rare. She ended one on a hilarious note. She pleaded that he was about to smash an expensive crystal. He angrily demanded a cheaper one. She obliged. Dadamoni’s temper came crashing down instead.

Films had begun to ‘talk’ by the time he began but had yet to sing. Kumar sang with Devika Rani in Jeevan Naiya (1936). Pre-playback, Ghosh recounts, the composer and his team, perched on a tree branch to record Dadamoni and Devika singing, came crashing down. But Ashok Kumar did not give up singing. He was India’s first rapper with his “rail gaadi” in Ashirwad (1968).

With his smooth, natural style, he was the first to free acting and dialogue delivery from theatrics. No swagger. Less of speaking; he felt that was ‘preaching.’

Though beholden to the beauteous Devika Rani, he boycotted her years later. She had refused to meet Jawaharlal Nehru, the future prime minister. He called her ‘vain’ and ‘too proud’ of her beauty, film writer Gautam Kaul records. The boycott persisted till she met Nehru.

The variety of roles Dadamoni played, even their opposites, would be the envy of any actor, anywhere, anytime. The British rulers loved him as a cop but threatened to arrest him when he portrayed a rogue cop. Given his popularity, they reasoned, the public would get the wrong message.

He was a judge – also one accused of murder in Kanoon (1960). He played the thief in Jewel Thief (1967) because the Anand brothers – Dev and Vijay – were confident that given his image, none would suspect him of being one. He showed a flair for comedy, teaming up with Pran 27 times. Soap opera Hum Log was the flavour of the 1980s, the golden era of the government-controlled Doordarshan. Audiences waited to see how an episode they loved would end with Ashok Kumar’s message.

Despite hits from the word go, his stardom was not easy. A Brahmin romancing a Dalit, Achhut Kanya, a great social message, did not please the conservative. His song in Kismet (1943) ‘Door Hato Aye Duniawalo Hindustan Hamara Hai’ drew British censors’ wrath during the war years. The song was against the Germans and the Japanese, not the British. This worked. He stood for democratic values. When Hitler, on seeing Achhut Kanya sent a congratulatory telegram, he tore it off.

He admired Hollywood, but he refused an invitation from the legendary David Lean. He did not want to be typecast in bit roles. “I am an Indian and have no ambition to conquer the world,” he wrote back to Lean.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

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