Re Series of Malice by Khushwant Singh.

In one place Khushwant Singh seems plaintive in complaining about how his freedom to express his views was impinged upon by Bengal being furious about his very negative views about Bengal in general and their specifically having produced no great geniuses, and even more specifically stating that Tagore's poetry and general literary work was nothing much, nor were other great people of stature from Bengal that Bengalis were so proud of.

This might seem naive on his part, and it would be easy to point out that his right to express his opinion is not curtailed by others' disapproval of it, since they have not lost their right to express their opinions of him when he was accorded by the right by the same constitution.

That would be easy, but naive, since he is not a terrible two toddler even though more often than not his attitude is precisely that of one, including much verbal fondling and exposing of his nether equipment. He has been to not merely the most progressive school begun and sponsored in India by Indians, but also colleges and universities across various nations (that since split in two, and then more parts depending on how one counts them) to study, and then to various other places to lecture and more, all without any merit whatsoever if one is to judge by his writing. He is good at reading, observing, listening and then penning down a summary, by standards more applicable to high school.

In reality the baffled reader at his atrociously bad view of a very talented and prolific people might give it up as a bratty idiot's way of making himself noticed, until one comes across the reasons why
the homeland he had to give up at partition split further into two. And then one realises his posturing is merely copy of attitudes of the worst in the erstwhile homeland where he himself states he and his ilk was ignored and never much part of the general majority who drove them away and massacred millions when the said homeland was designated for faith of the majority.

He and his community of those that had to leave northwest for mainland India at independence due to partition have never given up pining for it, and they have clung to attitudes reflecting those of their lost neighbours no matter how atrocious those attitudes, how racist, perhaps from a perverse loyalty in hope that they might one day be accepted back. That they know this is not likely, and if it were there just might be yet another genocide by the same faith that drove them away, does not deter them in this attitude albeit it makes them silent as to the reasons for the loyalty, and for continuing racism on lines of pak attitudes.

'71 war for independence of Bangladesh was due chiefly to the pak attitudes of racism and denigration of their larger half of nation - larger by populace count - with very frank discriminatory speech that still continues about how the Bengal people are dark, short, unlike the tall and fair and hefty Northwest, and how they are poor and frugal. That the pak leadership was responsible for the poverty is conveniently forgotten - they fleeced the nation and allocated the largest share to Punjab alone, chiefly to capital and to military and a few political leaders, leaving all Bengal then and all the rest then and now in dire poverty - and even post losing half the nation, the same fleecing is applied to other parts of the nation, fleecing of Baluchistan going on since six decades although that part never joined willingly, and of other provinces.

What was worse, and still continues in parts still under occupation by pak military such as Baluchistan and more, was genocide. East Bengal had massacre of three million people of all ages across genders by pak military in the single year of '71 after the cyclones and subsequent famine had claimed a large number already, and this was not all. UN had to open abortion clinics to deal with half a million women of east Bengal raped by pak military, and that was just for vengeance. For use, they had fifty thousand or so women kept chained and naked so they could not escape or drown themselves in any river in the land full of water so much so it is colloquially nicknamed "Jol Baangla" - literally, Water Bengal.

This does not end the list of horrors perpetrated - Dhaka university had a separate genocide perpetrated by the pak military, to finish off a huge number of intelligentsia of Bengal that prides itself on flowering of intellect in every field. Notably, even now the pak attitude is of denigration about Bangladesh expressed in a dismissive "it was only intellectuals, a few of them, who wanted independence". It would be easy to remind them the new nation has been free to rejoin the pak union during the four decades since. Easy, but futile, since they know they are lying to cover up their atrocities.

And Khushwant Singh and his ilk have hearts bleeding for the rapist, massacring brethren of theirs who once did it to their own, before they did it to east Bengal. So their solution is to join in denigrating all Bengal and all geniuses of Bengal. In Khushwant Singh's own favourite imagery, it is a contest of how far can he write his name in sands of his lost homeland.
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There are readable pieces of course, and often information one is unaware of about people one has known a bit about or famous ones in any case. More often it is about denigrating those respected and defending some atrocious person or event or action.

One example that comes to mind is about a very respected film producer and director, Chetan Anand, whom this author knew in college in Lahore and was enamoured much of - he never fails to mention his good looks, his fair complexion, and other qualities he was impressed with. One would already conclude he was in love with Chetan Anand, if it were not for the prolific mention of how he took trouble to watch women as and when he could without being caught, including women whom he would normally not get a look even at the face of such as those from household of Nawab of Bhopal (Pataudi?) as they bathed in a spot they thought was secluded.

Even in the first mention of Chetan Anand he takes care to denigrate him with a careless mention of how he became a producer and never amounted to much. In this he mentions meeting him in Mumbai and abusing him thoroughly in public, before his very young and beautiful inamorata the ethereal Priya Rajvansh, too - which one can be sure he took special delight in doing, for the show rather than for any real feeling of injury at being ignored by the man he had probably cherished unknown to the object of cherishing.

One of course can be very sure he never gave this treatment to anyone from across the northwest border post independence, however atrocious their behaviour, but that is obvious. With them it is a slave-like devotion he exhibits even when they are hanged and deserve it for the genocide if nothing else.

Reality is, Chetan Anand was much respected for his eclectic productions, and for his direction of films, in the few chosen ones he worked with, usually under his own banner. He was not prolific in numbers like his two younger brothers, but his work offers some assurance of not being merely for commerce, and his brothers as his colleagues respected him for it, and quite rightly too. His most famous brother kept some of that quality in his own productions, while the middle one was very good making success of a venture in market. When two of the three worked together, it was gold.

But then, Khushwant Singh was in all probability either jealous or was reacting like a lover rejected in favour of a beautiful woman that Chetan Anand chose instead - quite possible, the latter, too, since his extraordinarily prolific discussions about women and nether parts cross all possible borders of decency and even of disgusting and become tedious to the point of boring, not that different from effect of looking out of a train window around early morning in India in overpopulated parts - perhaps he is merely protesting too much, since his faith in all probability won't allow him to acknowledge the real object of his passion, and the faith of his masters would likely stone him to death after having used him to his satisfaction.
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Monday, June 15, 2015.
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(Re Maneka Gandhi, Younger daughter in law of Indira Gandhi. Khushwant Singh describes her being thrown out of her marital home after she lost her husband and was made to sign away her rights to her husband's share of property as a condition of her being allowed to stay. Most witnesses and friends including Maneka herself exculpate Indira Gandhi of blame, all agreeing that she needed her elder son and he would have been made to leave his mother if Maneka had not been thrown out without a penny.)

Khushwant was as frank in labeling his malice as he was about copious descriptions of his and other people's nether parts, or his watching various women in various stages of undressing, or worse. A good deal of it is simply provoking by a puck, if one is provoked he has victory and if not he is willing to go to lower levels of disgusting.

But honest or real journalist he was not and if he heard would probably say he did not claim it, and was frank he merely gossiped on strength of his familiarity with so called high society. In this too however, he is as circumspect as any social climber, unlike Tavleen Singh who managed to maintain decency and courage and journalistic ethos and more.

When emergency was declared in mid seventies Khushwant Singh couldn't stop praising not only the then newly dictator but also her younger son and his very young wife, Maneka Anand who was a new addition to the Nehru dynasty of Indira Gandhi family. That this praise might render him slightly ridiculous seems to have bothered him far less than a possible incarceration like others of the time who were honest in disapproval of the times and political measures.

In the series of books with malice in titles where various pieces of gossip about society are collected, there is at least one piece about the finale of the chapter of the young couple, Sanjay and Maneka. This was written post Sanjay's death and he was eyewitness to the events as they unfolded around the exit of Maneka from the home of her mother in law where she had arrived as a bride and lived until then.

There are others who wrote or spoke about it. Pupul Jayakar mentions the event in her biography of Indira Gandhi and it is a very open, honest account of the conversation the two friends had. Maneka herself speaks of this and of her married life until then, in a conversation with the ever elegant Simi Garewal. But this account by Khushwant Singh is notable for a flavour missing from other accounts.

By any standard applicable to the situation, this exit of a poor young woman who had been made to sign away any and every right to share of property due to her husband as a condition to her staying in the home with her son, was a despicable act on part of the in-laws. Both Pupul Jayakar and Maneka herself exculpate the mother in law who was fragile with the loss of support of the younger son that was her chief support at family and in politics, and was dependent on the elder son who never wanted politics and had a wife who was supposedly against it all, their friends all either western or high society or both. Indira Gandhi is quoted by Pupul Jayakar as saying, what could she do, she needed her son. Maneka puts the blame squarely on her sole sister in law for having her thrown out of the home where the two women had an equal right morally, traditionally, and in every other way possible.

Khushwant Singh cannot deny any of it, but would rather play it safe, and most people in the situation remain silent as the party did. Not he - he has an extra point to prove, to claim that in spite of sharing a communal tie and of his having specialised as an academic by translating religious texts of his faith, he was not exactly on side of the young woman thrown out penniless from her marital home.

So he resorts to gossipy account of how she did not go quietly, how she let loose verbally and insisted on having dinner before leaving. All to indicate that she was not pathetic but a fighter, and to perhaps allow a reader to speculate that her character was unpleasant and was responsible for her losing family, rights to property, et al. Total bs of course.

One wonders if he needed to cover up so strenuously only because he was of the same community that Maneka belonged to, or was he afraid he would be targeted by the elder sister in law and mafia to boot, or was it worse? Who knows.

It is always easy to blame a victim, especially a young widow who has signed away her rights to share of wealth, and has a small son to bring up to boot. She is expected to beg and placate others, with the one in power at marital home in position of making her a social outcast.

One expects better of those supposedly brought up in high society with a decent education, however. In this respect as probably in all others the three women - Pupul Jayakar, Simi Garewal and Tavleen Singh - fare far above.

Perhaps courage is a feminine virtue after all. .....................................................................................................

Wednesday, June 24, 2015.
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India, World, Culture, .... Seen Through Prism Of Western (And Colonial) Caste -

Reading various books by Khushwant Singh, so far collections of his short pieces published during his life and his autobiography, began with a doubtful mind for good reason - and the reasons seem more than justified, albeit reading it is not harmful unless waste of time is a serious criteria, and that it is. But perhaps reading this author began with a question of whether one was being influenced by prejudices due to his writing one read in periodicals decades ago, and whether one was missing an author worth only due to prejudices. He has name and fame and more, awards and titles and acquaintance with hoi polloi of his time in various spheres, and one wondered if the former was for good reasons and latter makes it worth going through his work.

So far, the latter is partly true.
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If it were limited to what he wrote as short pieces that are collected in various books, it would be a questionably good read, most of the part anyway - he does have some sort of germ in his head so to speak in language familiar to him, in that he is not happy giving intelligent commentary and rare beautiful descriptions of people and places; he absolutely must disgust the reader in general, possibly delighting a few, by copious and explicit references either to nether parts of his own or other people; or worse, explicit description leaving the reader in no uncertainty how he viewed the other half of humanity only as a package to contain those parts.

In this he is far from content to merely insult all people with higher sensibilities or all women, including his own family. In a forward to one such collection by one of the many the young protegies of his who met him some time when she was young and he far from that, she mentions how he spoke explicitly humiliating a Nobel prize winning much revered poet of his nation and how he delighted in insulting and provoking a whole people, and one can only surmise from his copious references to various other poets from parts that separated from the motherland depriving him of home he had to forever hanker after, that this was his revenge on the motherland that gave him refuge, revenge for having been deprived of his home by those that threw out all other communities that they could not live with and demanded a separate nation via breaking up the motherland with threats of massacre executed before and during the partition.

His own parents lived in the capital, and his bringing up was in many places including the capital, but he was in tears when visiting his childhood village where he spent his early years with his grandmother, and where he is very aware of the community that surrounded them was always keeping away from them, no matter how friendly he or his community or even those in majority in the nation as a whole were, then or since. And his response is to be friendly with them, visit them, regret how they are not responding generally, and insult those that gave him not merely home but positions and honour despite not quite proven merit.

The pieces themselves are readable, no more and no less, in most part. If one misses them it is no big deal. And this can be said about all such collections of pieces by this author, perhaps even by all that he wrote.
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That is even more true about


Why I Supported the Emergency: Essays and Profiles
by Khushwant Singh,


judging by the very first piece that provides the title for the book.

Emergency was a traumatic period of history in India post independence, and that is saying something about a nation that was beset by various problems and is only now emerging a little out but not by far. There had been famines before that, riots provoked by those that thrived politically only due to lack of harmony in communal scenario and depended on vote bank politics, and wars due to attacks by nations across the borders. Emergency was traumatic, and that was not merely for the western educated upper and middle class and political elite, or intelligentsia alone - if that were so it would hardly provide a wavelet in a nation that survived a millennium of various marauders and invaders and colonial rules.

Emergency was traumatic to the nation as a whole, because democracy was and is seriously ingrained in the very fabric of the nation where even faith is a matter of personal choice and family, community fabric, not enforced with threats of hell. This, apart from diversity of every other sort - languages, dress, food, cuisine, not to mention the geographical and climatic diversity, is essential to the nation's  very soul.

Emergency was imposed when a high court ruled that the election of the then prime minister was illegal due to a person in administrative office being used in political work - not that this is unusual, it was only that it was carelessly done in that it could be proved in court. Various political persona and intelligentsia suspected of freedom of thought and likelihood of not complying and obeying the ruling party diktats were summarily thrown in jail, and some suffered great deal due to health and age. This author was not one of them, and was free to support it for stupid reasons as many then did.

One wishes his reasons were some profound secrets now exposed, so one could sympathise at the very least. But no, the reasons were simple - a matter of law and order, which he says is more paramount than question of security and liberty of individuals that was suspended during the time, which the nation was uncertain for how long, or whether it was going to be forever, with democracy forever gone.

There were many others who spoke in accord with this sentiment about preferring law and order, and this is very reminiscent of those that praised Germany during pre WWII era, for trains running on time. This author went part of the way to support it for those reasons and describes how his publication was suspended for a few weeks, until it was pointed out that the ruling dictatorship could not care less, when he began publication. Perhaps that is to win back approval.

Yes, it is important to maintain law and order, to have trains run on time and streets clean. But at the expense of life and liberty of populace as a whole, no it is not. When people had their homes bulldozed summarily and young people lost chance to have a family without their consent to the process, people simmered with disapproval, and India was fortunate enough in being able to exercise her democratic rights and show the world and the stunned prime minister and her party that the people did care, and used their rights to protect, for democracy.

This author on the other hand had during those years gone on to praise not only the dictator and her action but did - and in various pieces included in various collections - praise the younger son who was, it is believed across India for credible reasons, responsible for the emergency and various actions that wreaked havoc during the time. He however did not limit himself to that, and went ridiculously further.

Now one finds why - his own background is responsible for some part of that. He came from roots that were built on much wealth and much much more bestowed on people due to favours from rulers, rather than achievements of one's own in academic and other fields, and this favoured status brought forth not merely wealth and title and upper class life with all the other privileges that one can see naturally going with it - social connections with other upper class and political persona and hoi polloi generally, including various foreign diplomats and others - but also grants and positions that more deserving candidates ought to have had, and would have done more justice to.

So naturally he saw nothing amiss with praising in national publications young people who had power to back them up in whatever they wished to do and very little qualifications - and if he had praised them in a judicious manner being familiar with them personally, that would be excusable, but no, he had to cross limits of ridiculous where it became apparent it was a court jester perhaps doing a clown act for fear of life and liberty and more, of his wealth and titles and future.

One would see that as the reason and excuse him as India does anyone helpless with fear for family welfare, but here he goes and includes the first piece that mentions law and order as the reason for disapproval of freedom of individuals and democracy in general, and even more, goes on to say he disapproved of a person whose life and work followed that of the so called father of the nation, in opposing a dictatorial rule in peaceful ways of civil disobedience.

Of course, his own privileged and bestowed status being due to bestowal by the colonial rulers who were questionably worse, and his love for the people who broke up the nation and his forever hankering after that broken off piece and the people who were with those that massacred innocents, at cost of insulting and humiliating people of high culture and more, is all in accord with the justification of emergency and praise for the young in power who had done little in way of achievement.

But none of that can be called fair or just or anything remotely of that sort. Then again, he gave up his career in law, had never done well academically, and frankly states that he took up writing about his community as a means to make a career by specialising in something. In that too, he began by translating prayers of his faith, and then went on to denounce all religions and spirituality in general and those that he was not afraid to attack in particular. Attacking Bengal is not as expensive as attacking those across the Northwest border post partition, and their culture or faith. He refrained from indulging in this. It all comes to childhood taboos in his case, and caste as practised everywhere other than India.
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Migrants' Grief Turned To Derision, Even Hatred, for the Home of Refuge - And Castes Old And New.

About

Truth, Love & A Little Malice; by Khushwant Singh.


If one is put off by copious references and more copious descriptions of nether equipment of various characters including the author, and lacks the patience and determination to go past it to see why this person was so famous and had such status, this book is not what one ought to take up.

At that it is uncertain if one should even if one does possess the virtues needed to go through it - rewards are very few, say one reference to a charmed moonlit night with nightingale, and another to magnolias (which he does not seem to have noticed blossom in Europe too, and in India in cooler places, albeit another variety - golden from cream to gold-saffron shades, in relatively less cool places too).

Other than this, one repents having read it, especially if one is not interested in gossip and malice and huge egomania of the author, especially when it is against good people, or when he seems not to notice he is criticising those that share his most severe faults. For instance he complains about a fellow author who was more interested in precisely what he himself describes copiously, rather than blossoming fields of saffron or other beauties of India he was shown - and fails to notice the irony of the complaint (or was that a deliberate devilish act, complaining against someone else who does it, just so one says "oh, but you know, you are doing it too" and he has his laughter about how naughty he has been both ways?).

What happened when I proceeded to begin this review was almost surrealistically as if KGB knew I was going to write negatively about a small tool of their infamous boss, and proceeded to undo various settings for security of my pc - sites inviting me to buy horrendous unwanted stuff would not go away, and advertisements pretending to be chat sites where supposedly young attractive blond females kept plaguing the pages of shelfari and reappearing. When I managed to remove it all, my computer informed me they had changed the dangerous settings I had installed, and the filth reappeared. It was almost a premonition about this book, except it was after reading it and before being able to begin writing this review.

It is unlikely this guy was a tool of stalin, but you never know, after all there would not be a label to the effect would there, except he was more likely working for the other side, what with his various prestigious assignments from US mentioned extensively here - from Rockefeller foundation funding his writing about history of his people (which he assures us is the only reason he maintained his hair and dressing style for, not religion but communal identification), to teaching at various universities including Princeton. All this would point at his being a great mind and a scholar, if not for reading this book or other pieces elsewhere, where such a calibre is notable by its absence. And if he wished to hide it for sake of appearing a buffoon only so his hidden career would go unnoticed, then the various prestigious scholarly assignments and copious funding thereof by various institutions of the world is completely baffling.

The author is a product of what might transpire if the much maligned caste systems of India or even England and Europe generally - although the latter two are different from that of India, and were practised in colonies very differently when it came to local people - are demolished with no other system to take their place. The author was born into a family that was placed by sheer luck in way of destiny, in that his father was one of the builders given contract to build New Delhi, built a major part of it (and his own palatial homes in centre of the new city, with "leftover" material and labour), was knighted for the trouble apart from the wealth made on this project, and thus the family was in high circles of politics and hoi polloi of the city and the nation, with contacts that were therefore not merely local or national but international, and various prestigious assignments one after another as he himself went on giving up job after job deciding it did not suit him, having proved no merit for either the next assignment or the past one, and definitely not of the level he kept on getting more and more of.

This basically is society as it gets if all old caste systems with breeding and training in family and society is done away with - money buys everything through social contacts if not directly, while poor with real and far superior talent go begging.

Various refugees and migrants of various lands one has known over decades share this, with one another largely and specifically with this author, that they hate having had to leave for survival, they grieve and mourn those that they left, they attempt to befriend then over life just so they themselves are not guilty of having left for just reason, and they turn their grief and pain of separation into a subtle or open tool of disdain and derision against precisely the land, the nation that gave them a life, a refuge, honour and more.

This author is honest in admitting and declaring how unfriendly the people of the homeland he was separated from were, but he is not merely attempting to befriend them lifelong, he is forever denying the nation they created is doing anything wrong, even when it is all too obvious; and he disdains and more, generally and specifically, the people who made his final homeland possible at all. It is as if the freedom, the possibility of learning and achieving a social status, is all merely his due, as is destroying all sorts of people who were on the whole beyond good, while befriending dictators and worse of his earlier home.

And having done his worst in all of this he proceeds to complain about the visitor who notices filth more than beauty shown him by the author.

Why does one read this, one might ask. Apart from a wish not to be put off by his deliberate filth in the first few pages, one might wish to know more about the history of the nation told in an intimate view - his father built New Delhi, he lived amongst the hoi polloi of the land and knew people of wealth and power in Delhi over the lifetime of his long life - and one might have read another, far more interesting and better written account by another, younger, author. The aims of reading if limited to this fail, however. He is there to expose anyone of quality with a view of their backside exposed so to speak figuratively, as long as they are of majority of India. Or anything respected by the said majority.

For example he congratulates himself about having saved Penguin India by pointing at an extremely offensive part of Ginsberg's book describing all Goddesses of India as prostitutes, final result being the book was published in India without the said offensive part but elsewhere with it, with no protest from either India or majority of India, but he stands by ban on Salman Rushdie in India, with no comment in that context about freedom of speech or authors.

One wonders if the hypocrisy is deliberately exposed by him here, just to see if he could set fire to majority of India by informing them of Ginsberg's offensive remarks, or if he wished to see if they read him at all and reacted if they did. Wonder if it was a disappointment, in that so far there seems to have been no protest against Ginsberg in India.

If one does not read this, one has lost very little.