Shri Giriraj Singh is a master at making controversial statements. He has now said something which has further added to his record of offending the famous. Even so, there is a kernel of truth to what he said which should not be missed.

I read Giriraj Singh as saying that Indians are racist, when it comes to people Indians think are dark. He conjectured that had Rajiv Gandhi married a Nigerian woman rather than a white European, the Congress may not have elected such a woman to be president.

Apparently Sonia Gandhi and the rest of the Congress are incensed. Lalu Prasad Yadav has made a counter statement that is insulting to women, especially dark women. Even so, the truth is that when Rajiv Gandhi married Sonia Manio, the Delhi elite was incredibly snooty. White she was, but was she not beneath Rajiv in status? They said he had married an au pair!

Later the BJP had a lot of difficulty accepting the idea of Sonia as PM and threatened dire acts of self-mutilation if that came about. So even though she was not a Nigerian or black, she was not accepted as an Indian even after 35 years of living in India.

Indians have a versatile, though asymmetric, racism. Scratch an Indian at home or even among the diaspora in the West and you will discover contempt for black Africans when Indians speak to each other in languages others can’t understand. Indians don’t think they are black.

Indeed looking at any marriage website or newspaper adverts will convince the ‘Man from Mars’ that Indians think of themselves as fair-skinned people, at least in the North Indian imagination. Indian consciousness is such that while located in Asia, our sights are firmly fixed Westwards; our imagination is European.

Even so, when a white European tries to join Indian public life, xenophobia kicks in. Indians may envy the white Westerner, but at home they would want to register their superiority. Hence the prejudice against Sonia all these years within the extended Nehru family as much as in the Congress. Recall that Sharad Pawar walked out of the Congress because he did not want a foreigner to head the party. Senior leaders in the Congress stayed snooty until she became their “salvation”.

Bollywood has reflected this attitude. Over the years, the white woman has been an exotic character seducing the local hero from his path of virtue. No one today would recall Kishore Sahu’s Mayurpankh with Odette Ferguson, or Shakespeare Wallah with the Kendal sisters and Shashi Kapoor. But you would never find a black African heroine or a Sub-Saharan African country used as location. Indeed even a dark Indian heroine is a rarity. V Shantaram tried casting Sandhya as a dark heroine in his Teen Batti Chaar Raasta, but the audience would not buy it. In mythology, Krishna can be a dark god, but Radha must be fair-skinned.

Even so, there is every reason for Indians to take Africa seriously. Nigeria has just had a transformative democratic election. It is the first peaceful change of government in Nigeria’s 55-year history as an independent country. Nigeria is not just the most populous African nation, but it also has the potential to be the first prosperous economy in Sub-Saharan Africa. It has oil reserves. It has come through years of misrule, including a civil war and many corrupt military dictators.

Nigeria’s struggle to be a democratic country resembles that of Pakistan. Military rulers have done it no favours and democracy needs constant reinforcement. The country is large and is divided between a Muslim north and a Christian south. Just as Taliban troubles Pakistan, Boko Haram terrorises Muslims in Nigeria. Muhammadu Buhari, the newly-elected President, faces many challenges. He was briefly a military dictator 30 plus years ago. He has refurbished his image and persuaded Nigerians to vote him in as a new-born democrat. Nigerians have decided to ignore his past and put faith in his promises of reform and anti-corruption crusade for the future. That should sound familiar to Indians.

Nigeria needs India’s attention and respect. Giriraj Singh notwithstanding.

courtesy : ‘Out of My Mind’, “The Indian Express”, 05 April 2015

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/out-of-my-mind-speaking-of-nigeria/

The five lives of Narayan Desai

Narayan Desai, who died last month, was the last living link to Mahatma Gandhi (picture), the last person still around who knew him well and at close quarters. He was born in December 1924, the only child of Gandhi's gifted secretary, Mahadev Desai, and his wife, Durga. Narayan grew up in the Sabarmati Ashram, with his parents following the Mahatma to Sevagram when he moved there in 1936.

In the winter of 1933-34, Gandhi undertook an 'anti-untouchability' tour of southern and eastern India. Towards the end of the tour, when they had reached Odisha, Gandhi and Mahadev were joined by their wives. During the day, the men toured the countryside, preaching against the pernicious practice of untouchability. At night they returned to their camps, where their long suffering wives were waiting for them.

One day, while their husbands were away preaching, Kasturba and Durga learnt that their camp was merely a few miles from the great Jagannatha temple in Puri. The two ladies, devout Hindus dedicated to prayer and to worship, decided to go visit it. As Kasturba Gandhi and Durga Desai set out for Puri, they were dissuaded by a nine-year-old child, the child of Durga and also of Mahadev. Narayan Desai told his mother and (adoptive) aunt that 'Bapu' would be very cross with them for going to the temple, since its priests forbade Hindus born in 'untouchable' castes from worshipping there. They went regardless.

Kasturba and Durga had their darshan of Lord Jagannatha and returned quietly to the camp. Later, when the men returned, the boy Narayan told them what the women had done. A row broke out, with Gandhi scolding Kasturba for the transgression. How could he ask Hindus to rid themselves of untouchability when his own wife gave legitimacy to temples that practised untouchability?

Mahadev Desai once joked that "To live with a saint in heaven is a bliss and a glory/ But to live with a saint on earth is a different story". It was tough being Gandhi's secretary, and even tougher being Gandhi's wife. It is hard not to sympathize with Kasturba for not wishing to give up the only chance she had of visiting the Jagannatha temple. On the other hand, one has some sympathy with Gandhi too, for expecting that his own family would first adhere to the wider social reforms that he wished to bring about.

In August 1942, Gandhi gave the call to the British to "Quit India". The Mahatma was arrested at once, and incarcerated in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune with his wife and secretary. A week later, on August 15, Mahadev died of a heart attack. Meanwhile, his 18-year-old son had courted arrest, as one of tens of thousands of Indians who gave up their liberties in order that their country may be freed.

When, in August 1947, the country gained its independence, many erstwhile jailbirds became ministers and members of parliament. Narayan Desai, however, joined the fewer (and far less known) group of freedom fighters who chose to focus on constructive work instead. With his wife, Uttara (daughter of the remarkable Odia Gandhians Nabakrushna and Malati Chaudhuri), he set up a school for tribal children in Vedchhi in south Gujarat.

As a social worker, Narayan Desai was active in rural education and in land redistribution through his participation in Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan movement. He was also a precocious critic of the country's nuclear energy programme. Because it has the power to make bombs, the Atomic Energy Commission has always held the State and powerful politicians in thrall. But to Narayan Desai, the AEC's military potential did not make its civilian programmes immune to scrutiny. He was not convinced that nuclear power was economically viable. He worried about the cloak of secrecy that surrounded the industry, and the dangers this complex technology posed to human health and ecological integrity. The questions he raised 30 years ago have never been satisfactorily answered by the country's nuclear establishment.

In the 1990s, Narayan Desai was persuaded by his friend, Mahendra Desai, to take a break from social work. Although the two Desais were unrelated, they shared a great deal in common; both had grown up in the Sabarmati Ashram (Mahendra's father, Valji Desai, had joined Gandhi even before Narayan's father did), and both had gone to jail during the Quit India movement. Mahendra now urged Narayan to write a life of Mahadev Desai. Although closer (and arguably more important) to Gandhi than Raja ji, Patel, Nehru or Azad, the self-effacing Mahadev had so effectively written himself out of the Gandhian narrative that unlike those other men he had been largely forgotten.

Narayan Desai's biography of his father presents a many-sided picture of Mahadev, the writer and scholar, traveller and seeker, patriot and partisan. The original, Gujarati version of the book won the Sahitya Akademi award; it is also available in English under the title, The Fire and the Rose. Its success encouraged Narayan Desai to write a biography of Gandhi himself, this likewise published in Gujarati as well as in English. While in the first instance a close study of Gandhi's life and campaigns, it ends with a moving evocation of the Mahatma's relevance to our times. Thus Narayan Desai writes: "Those young men and women, who under the leadership of Dubcek bared their chests before the Russian tanks in Czechoslovakia; the black and white men, who [during the Vietnam War] stood before the Pentagon with flowers; … the brave women of Karnataka, who courted death by jumping into the foundations of a nuclear reactor at Kayaga" – these were among the hundreds of experiments in satyagraha inspired by Gandhi, "where injustice was fought with justice, where tyranny was resisted with love".

In February-March 2002, there was a pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat. Visiting the state shortly afterwards, I was told by a veteran Gandhian that what had occurred was akin to "the second assassination of Mahatma Gandhi". Narayan Desai himself was deeply disturbed by the violence in his native state. Already in his late seventies, he thought he was too old to lead a campaign against the perpetrators of the pogrom. Instead, he would seek to mould popular opinion by rendering the Mahatma's ideals in a form comprehensible to the contemporary generation.

By 2002, Narayan Desai already had four careers – Ashramite, freedom fighter, social worker, and author – and acquitted himself admirably in each. Now began his fifth career, that of bard and story-teller. He created a "Gandhi Katha", where, through poetry, songs and stories, he took the Mahatma's life and message to audiences across Gujarat. Later, he also did some renditions in Hindi. These performances were widely appreciated, and are now available on DVD. As Narayan Desai's close colleague and translator, Tridip Suhrud, writes, the "Gandhi Katha is an act of faith. It seeks to reaffirm faith in [the] quest for Truth, for non-violence, for the essential sameness of all religions and in the primacy of dialogue as a means of resolving conflict in modern civil society".

I shall end with a personal memory. In 2007, I attended a meeting in Sevagram, convened by the culture ministry to discuss the identification of Gandhi Heritage Sites. It was chaired by Narayan Desai. After the meeting ended, the officer sent by the ministry went around with a sheaf of forms, asking the participants to claim their TA/DA (travelling and dearness allowance). As the rest of us filled in our flight details, Narayan Desai waved the forms aside. He had, he told the earnest official, come by train from Ahmedabad via Mumbai on his freedom fighter's pass. The babu, undeterred, asked him to at least claim his taxi fare from Wardha station to Sevagram. Narayan bhai answered that he had in fact travelled this last section by bus, adding: "Does one need to be compensated or reimbursed for coming home?"

e.mail : ramachandraguha@yahoo.in

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150404/jsp/opinion/story_12470.jsp#.VR-43mbyqcY


અમેરિકાના પહેલા અશ્વેત રાષ્ટ્રપ્રમુખ તરીકે બરાક ઓબામા પહેલી વખત ૨૦૦૯માં ચૂંટાયા, ત્યારે તેમની સામે હારનારા ઉમેદવાર જોન મૈકેને એક શાનદાર વાત કરી હતી, "સદી પહેલાં જ્યારે બુકરે વ્હાઇટ હાઉસમાં પગ મૂક્યો ત્યારે જ બરાક ઓબામાના અમેરિકન પ્રમુખ થવાનાં બીજ વવાઈ ગયાં હતાં!" આ બુકર એટલે બુકર ટી. વોશિંગ્ટન, એક અશ્વેત અમેરિકન શિક્ષણકાર, જેમણે અમેરિકામાંથી રંગભેદને નાબૂદ કરવા માટે શિક્ષણના યજ્ઞ થકી આજીવન એક શાંતક્રાંતિ ચલાવી હતી.

બુકર અમેરિકાના એવા પહેલાં આફ્રિકન-અમેરિકન / અશ્વેત નાગરિક છે, જેમને અમેરિકાના પ્રમુખ દ્વારા વ્હાઇટ હાઉસમાં આમંત્રિત મહેમાન બનવાનું બહુમાન પ્રાપ્ત થયેલું. એટલું જ નહીં, એપ્રિલ-૧૯૪૦માં અમેરિકાની ટપાલ ટિકિટ પર સ્થાન મેળવનારા તેઓ પહેલા અશ્વેત નાગરિક બનેલા. એમ તો તેમની છાપવાળો અડધા ડોલરનો સિક્કો પણ ચલણમાં મુકાયો હતો.

પાંચ એપ્રિલ, ૧૮૫૬ના રોજ અમેરિકાના વર્જિનિયા સ્ટેટમાં જન્મેલા બુકર ટી. વોશિંગ્ટનનો આજે જન્મદિવસ છે. માત્ર અમેરિકન જ નહીં વિશ્વભરના અશ્વેત અને પછાત-વંચિત લોકોના પ્રેરણામૂર્તિ એવા બુકરની જિંદગી કેવી સંઘર્ષમય હતી, તેના વર્ણન માટે માત્ર એક જ વાત કાફી છે કે તેઓ ગુલામ પરિવારમાં પેદા થયેલા અને એ પણ કોઈ ગોરા પુરુષ થકી, જેનું નામ તેમને આજીવન જાણવા મળ્યું નહોતું. તેમની અટક સાવકા પિતા પાસેથી 'ઉપકાર' રૂપે મળેલી!

બુકર આમ તો મવાળવાદી ગણાતા હતા, કારણ કે તેમને ઉગ્ર-લોહિયાળ સંઘર્ષ કરતાં શિક્ષણની શક્તિ પર વધારે ભરોસો હતો. બાળપણથી જ ભણવામાં હોશિયાર એવા બુકરને પહેલેથી સમજાઈ ગયું હતું કે રંગભેદને નેસ્તનાબૂદ કરવો હોય અને અશ્વેત લોકોને પણ ગોરાઓના સમકક્ષ બનાવવા હોય તો શિક્ષણ વિના ચાલવાનું નથી. અલબત્ત, શિક્ષણ એટલે માત્ર અક્ષરજ્ઞાન મેળવીને કોઈનું ભલું થઈ શકે નહીં, અશ્વેતોની નવી પેઢીને શિક્ષિતની સાથે સાથે આર્થિક સ્વાવલંબનના પાઠ ભણાવવા અત્યંત જરૂરી છે, તે અંગે પણ તેઓ સભાન હતા અને એટલે જ એમણે માત્ર પચીસ વર્ષની યુવાન વયે ટસ્કેજીમાં શૈક્ષણિક સંસ્થા સ્થાપી ત્યારે શિક્ષણની સાથે ઉદ્યોગને પણ એટલું જ મહત્ત્વ આપ્યું હતું. ટસ્કેજીમાં અશ્વેત વિદ્યાર્થીઓને ઉદ્યોગ-વ્યવસાયનું વ્યાવહારિક જ્ઞાન મળે, એ માટે વિશેષ કાર્યશાળાઓ ઊભી કરી હતી. અબ્રાહમ લિંકન, બુકર, કાર્વર, માર્ટિન લ્યુથર કિંગ જેવા અનેક મહાનુભાવોના પ્રયાસો પછી એક અમેરિકન અશ્વેત આજે વ્હાઇટ હાઉસમાં રાજ કરી શકે, એટલો સક્ષમ થયો છે.

બુકરના જન્મદિવસે અશ્વેતના ઉદ્ધારની સાથે શિક્ષણની ચર્ચાપણ કરવી જ રહી. અમેરિકામાં વસતી એક ગુજરાતી યુવતીએ તાજેતરમાં ગુજરાતના એક વિચારપત્રમાં અહેવાલ લખ્યો છે, જેમાં અમેરિકામાં શિક્ષણ ક્ષેત્રની બદહાલતનો આછો ચિતાર મળે છે. આ અહેવાલમાં ૧૨મી માર્ચ, ૨૦૧૫ના રોજ ન્યૂ યોર્ક શહેરની લગભગ ૨૦૦ શાળાના વિદ્યાર્થીઓ અને વાલીઓએ કરેલા વિરોધ-પ્રદર્શનની વાત છે. પબ્લિક સ્કૂલના શિક્ષકોના મૂલ્યાંકન માટે રજૂ થયેલા ખરડાના વિરોધમાં લોકોએ દેખાવો કર્યા હતા. શિક્ષણના નામે બાળકો પર લદાતા બોજ અને શિક્ષણના ખાનગીકરણ સામે અવાજ ઉઠાવવામાં આવ્યો હતો.

આશા રાખીએ બરાકના રાજમાં બુકરના શિક્ષણ અંગેના વિચારો, જે ગાંધીજીના વિચારો સાથે ઘણું સામ્ય ધરાવે છે, તેને ફરી યાદ કરીને અનુસરવામાં આવે.

… અને આપણે ત્યાં ? વાત છોડો ને યાર ! 

e.mail : divyeshvyas.amd@gmail.com

સૌજન્ય : ‘સમય સંકેત’ નામે લેખકની કોલમ, “સંદેશ”, 05 અૅપ્રિલ 2015


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