Mohammad Hanif’s 'A Case Of Exploding Mangoes' as a Return Home Novel of Justice Redressed

Mohammad Hanif’s A Case Of Exploding Mangoes as a Return Home Novel of Justice Redressed                                                                 

Abstract

Authors with global travelling and migrating experience develop a perception of their birth culture in a self-critiquing mode, and in the case of Mohammed Hanif, it is to critique the existing practices of justice in his home country. His novel 'A Case Of Exploding Mangoes' is a political satire. This paper brings in the argument of Amartya Sen   that every society builds its model of social justice or redressal system and tries to view Hanif’s presentation of social justice from this perspective. It highlights the point that the rising middle class is Europeanized to a certain extent in East Asian societies and have begun to bring in democratic values into their social systems. Hanif resorts to mythmaking as the facts regarding the real life incidents are not available and the paper attempts to see it as a feature of the Asian ability to create myths stressing on the ‘curse’ factor.  

Key-words:  niti,  nyaya, untouchability, Dalit, mythmaking, middleclass

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Return home novels have the advantage of looking back from a slight emotional distance and thrives in this displacement as this gives ample space for critique. Transnational living clearly defines one’s identity and its roots and some writers tend to think it is their duty to ‘reform’ the home counter. Mohammad Hanif’s novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes  has a ring of self-diagnosis of the social system to which he belonged and has moved out of and stayed elsewhere, nevertheless has not been able to keep his emotional and intellectual commitments away its clutches.

 Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan and graduated from Pakistan Air Force Academy as a Pilot Officer, but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism. He has worked for Newsline, India Today and The Washington Post, and has written plays for the stage as well as the screen play for the critically acclaimed BBC drama What Now, Now That We Are Dead? His feature film The Long Night has been shown at film festivals around the world and he currently heads BBC’s Urdu Service and he lives in London.   

The novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes, a political satire, darkly humourous, discusses the story of man’s longing for power ruled by fear of losing it, presenting the story of a  Third World country engaged in political, social and cultural negotiation with the rest of the world.  Niranjan Takle’s article on Pakistani prisoners,  the cover story of The Week, April 1, 2012 issue, presents the details of prisoners in Pakistan jail and has reported about a prisoner called Surjit who was arrested when Gen.Zia-ul-Haq was in power. The man was charged with espionage, he was sentenced to death and the sentence was commuted to life in 1986. He is now 80 years old and has been a prisoner in Pakistan for over three decades. Hanif’s accounts of Pakistan’s prisons are accurate going by this news item.

In his introduction to The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen discusses Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, in which Pip says ‘there is nothing so finely perceived and finely felt, as injustice.’  A Case of Exploding Mangoes   can be compared to Great Expectations  that it too studies the “remedial injustices around us which we want to eliminate,” if we can borrow the phrase from Sen and apply it to this novel of Mohammed Hanif. The novel is a writer’s attempt “to achieve a perfectly just world.”   “Redressable injustice” is central to human arguments says Sen and goes on to diagnose injustice  in his book The Idea of Justice (Amartya Sen 2009, vii).

We also have to note that Pip is an imaginary character born in British imagination and after recently exposure given to the Titanic ship’s sinking in the media, we realize more intently the British understanding of the concept of justice as ‘consciously and impartially planned out rules’ and whether we can take this phenomenon as a global characteristic is in itself an argument. Because, there have been races in India that have accepted social injustice as ‘destiny’ and do not do anything whatsoever to demand redressal. Sen takes a model from European imagination which itself can be argued as a ‘return home’ feature. Throughout this book, Sen takes great pains to prove that every society has its system of justice not taking into account of the 25% of Dalits or the ancient tribes of India who have  been enslaved in the most cunning manner possible ingraining in their psyche that they can never be equal to the others.  

Sen departs  from John Rawl’s “rightly celebrated approach of ‘justice as fairness’” (xi) and explores the theory of justice from a philosophy of moral and political stand. His “principles of justice” are not “defined in terms of institutions, but rather in terms of the lives and freedoms of the people involved” (xii). He assesses democracy “in terms of public reasoning, which leads to an understanding of democracy as ‘government by discussion’” in the line of John Stuart Mill’s thinking. His approach views democracy “in terms of the capacity to enrich reasoned engagement through enhancing informational availability and the feasibility of interactive discussions. Democracy has to be judged not just by the institutions that formally exist but by the extent to which different voices from diverse sections of the people can actually be heard.”  Sen puts forward the idea of “global democracy and global justice” calling them “understandable ideas that can plausibly inspire and influence practical actions across borders” and “not just within a nation-state.” Amartya Sen presents the idea of justice not only as a tradition of Europe’s political history, but also as a part of “Indian intellectual history’ and also from other non-Western societies, presenting the idea of justice and the “powerful traditions of reasoned argument” as a global phenomenon (xii-xiii). He goes on to say: “It is my claim, rather, that similar – or closely linked – ideas of justice, fairness, responsibility, duty, goodness and rightness have been pursued in many different parts of the world...”(xiv).

Hanif located in London writes about his birth country looking at its administration  and its guiding principles from an egalitarian and democratic perception. He studies the authority organism and autocratic style of governance and its mental and physical configuration and rationale and continues to point out the unjust practices, and investigates into the ideologies at the back of these practices viewing them as fundamental and narrow. 

The novel elucidates how an Air Force officer, Colonel Shigri, takes revenge on a dictator who becomes morally responsible for his father’s death. He tries to use a democratic method of interacting with the power system,  by writing a letter to the dictator, to express his thoughts. This act is read as an act of rebellion and audacity by the hierarchical powers.   Grossly misunderstood by the default autocratic authority structure he is severely punished. It is the story of a non-interventionist man warring against constriction and the boundaries of despotism.

Mohammed Hanif brings an inner-view of a closed society in the manner of Amitav Ghosh’s  In an Antique Land (2009)  that portrays the Egyptian monotheistic society. Amitav Ghosh’s work, all said and done, has emotionally stayed away from the  Egyptian people more on the travelogue kind of writing.  Hanif’s novel also depicts another monotheistic society,  but  with a deep passion, involvement and a high sense of the need to reform. The strength of return home texts carry this immense dose of deep analyses of the home region, native - self, and the distant outlook collected as a result of staying out because of the displacement that adds poignancy to the narration.  Emotional story telling takes place only if the writer has felt the experiences in such a way that it becomes his personal, unforgettable disturbing experiences. Amitav Ghosh’s combination of travel writing and fiction narrated in a scholarly vein undermines the story element, though it creates a trans-national argument as it lacks the emotional subjectivity of a geopolitical location a story needs. Hanif is comfortable in his creation of the artistic plot, the division of good and evil and sometimes the narrator’s voice merges with the character’s voice giving much more authenticity to the story. The make-belief of the objective narration gives way to an unpretentious subjective story telling creating a war between good forces and evil forces. Hanif pictures autocracy as evil and democracy as good and argues that social injustices can be removed, only if nations practice democracy in their theoretical constitutions and praxis.

The cynical, western and sophisticated voice of Colonel Shigri deriding values of his society, iconoclastic in every way is the omniscient voice of the novelist as well. It is a kind of easy, intelligent narration in the manner of Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance (1974). The racy style of Robert M. Pirsig that discusses Kant in a casual manner: “This a priori  motorcycle has been built up in our minds over many years from enormous amounts of sense data and it is constantly changing as new sense data come in” (127)  is the kind of writing Hanif does.  It handles Muslim laws, Military laws and prison systems, all in the same ironic, non-committed manner with mild iconoclastic humour running throughout that  reflects in his choice of words too. There is nothing ‘Eugene O’Neill like’ about his writing in the sense no pessimism whatsoever. Shigri puts up with all the prison tortures and comes out bravely representing the common humanity’s need to succeed in life, the feature of a best seller text. Eugene O’Neill’s characters in Long Day’s Journey into Night,  his autobiographical play, portray  depressed people’s  sensitive approach to life representing the dramatic and tragic elements of life. The suicidal tendencies depicted by O’Neill are also displayed by Marsha Norman in her play ‘Night Mother. These American plays have been applauded critically as they have delved in to the psychological impact of the American Depression. The Asian society portrayed in A Case of Exploding Mangoes is on the other hand is giving a good fight back to the unjust system. The blind girl in the novel keeps inventing herself to suit the climate and does not lose herself in emotional depression. She helps fellow prisoners and feeds the birds. Hanif narrates more like Pirsig than the American playwrights mentioned.

Societies have not become truly classless in individual practices, though democratic institutions are in existence. Institutionalizing the democratic system has not resulted in the freedom of individual lives;  fair interaction does not take place between the power systems and ordinary citizens.  General Zia is caricatured by Hanif as the representation of authority and the character is created with a natural edginess. Hanif critiques this model of behavior and the dictatorial type of political model of governance and parodies it.  The “much photographed man” flashes his “unnaturally white teeth” and his moustache “does its customary little dance for the camera.”  The picture presented is comical with a reference to the General’s age and his inability to give a genuine smile and Hanif maintains the same tone throughout the novel.  “He is walking the walk of a constipated man,” says the writer later describing how the General walks to board a plane (1). The novel’s two alternate narrating voices – the voice of the omniscient, democratic, the epic storytelling  raconteur who links all the characters in mythological associations,  and the  narrating voice of the intelligent, suave and cool-headed Colonel Shigri – both critique autocracy and the tyranny it brings. Shigri thinks: “Heads of State, especially the Heads of State of developing countries, seldom get the time to sit back and admire their own achievements” (114).  Shigri represents the elite, English reading/speaking middleclass of the Third World with ideals of perfect, free liberal States, who laugh at the lack of self-criticism in their political leaders: these middle class intellectuals refuse to treat their democratic leaders as anything more than ordinary people and demand that they behave normally and with fairness.

The satire takes on the shape of a mock-epic,  in omniscient narration that reinforces Shigri’s voice throughout the novel, as the hero of the story, “The Man of Truth, the Man of Faith, the man who lectured women on piety on prime-time TV, the man who had fired judges and television newscasters who refused to wear a dupatta on their heads” is found the victim of losing his self-control and staring at the exposed “white flesh” of Ms. Herring from USA “with such single-mindedness” (117)  “with his eyes wide open and staring, like the eyes of a child who has wandered into a sweet shop to find its owner fast asleep (115). The General appears like a fool who is childish in display of  basic instincts and thus makes a mockery of all that he stands for.

The novel begins with the narrator of the story who with a twinkle in his voice states how he has been a part of an air crash and still alive, laying the plot of a detective story.  Within this framework of suspense and thrill, he builds a story of a political system that refuses equality and creates autonomous centers of unlimited power shadowed by deep fears. The novelist is laughing at history – a medium that cannot capture the real truths – and says:   “But this afternoon, history is taking a long siesta, as it usually does between the end of one war and the beginning of another” (3).   The job of finding out what could have actually gone wrong in the case of ‘exploding mangoes’  falls on the shoulders of fiction as facts fail. History has not  recorded the ‘real’ reasons for the death of General Zia as truths are either suppressed or that everyone knows only their part and may not be aware of other links. A historian might not be able to link all the threads, as facts can be hidden or simply forgotten or even not be aware of the connection between lateral elements. The writer has an advantage of imagination and creates a story where ethical links can be added that cannot be a part of the scientific historical programme. History will not believe in ‘crows’ as Hanif’s novel projects the agency of destiny designed by the law of causality. The crow avenges the injustice meted out to the blind girl Zainab. Her curses become the significant climax of the novel: “ ‘May your blood turn to poison. May the worms eat your innards’ ” (306).  All these ultimately come true, showing both  the power of the innocent and the capacity for mythmaking in Asian societies. It is the ‘curse’ of the blameless blind girl who is good at heart that brings down the fall of a cruel power system, the novel says. 

In one of the many versions of Ramayanam, the narrative voice analyses why Ram had to suffer so much in his life. The analysis goes like this:  Raman as a child is very naughty and is used to fling flint stones on the hunch-backed woman called who is the personal maid of Kaikeyi, his father’s third wife. The poor hunch-backed woman is not able to retaliate as he is the Prince, and day after day this ‘game’ continues. While Raman plays the ‘game,’ his friends laugh, and the poor woman silently curses him.  Ramayanam portrays  this woman as one  who  gives certain ideas to Kaikeyi that Ram ultimately leaves for the forest for 14 years leaving the kingdom to his younger brother. There is another well used analysis too:  Dasarathan kills the boy  Shravan at night mistaking him to be an animal, the only son  of  blind parents by mistake and they ‘curse’ him that the king will die of a similar loss of a beloved child. Later when Raman leaves the country to go to the forest as per his father’s vows and predicament, Dasarathan weeps at his death bed remembering the incident of the ‘curse’ before his death bereaving for his beloved Raman.

There are many such ‘curses’ that have to be tackled in A Case Of Exploding Mangoes: the torture chamber of the army does not investigate cases in a democratic manner and practices blind judgment without giving a ‘chance’ for the victim to justify himself. The authorities construct a false case involving the innocent Shigri who narrates even his tortures with a kind of an ironical glee that makes the meaning come out with more ferocity:

Even professional torturers must procrastinate sometimes, I tell myself. Or maybe it’s some kind of do-it-yourself torture system; you stand and stare at these instruments and imagine how your various body parts would respond to them. I try not to think about the amber light on the iron. Major Kiyani did say no marks (140).

The darkness of the solitary dungeon is better than the bathroom where he spent the previous night Shigri feels. He is shoved into a small room blindfolded and though his hands are untied he is not able to unfold the blind as the cloth is too tight.   He starts his ‘push ups’ and keeps his sanity. Hanif’s characterization of Shigri as a man of ironic humor is justified carefully by the writer throughout and Shigri thinks: 

One hundred push-ups; a thin film of perspiration is covering my body, and an inner glow brings a smile to my face. As I sit back with my back to the wall I think that Obaid could probably write an article about this, send it to Reader’s Digest  and fulfill his dream of getting one hundred dollars in the mail: ‘Aerobics for Solitary Prisoners’  (p.157).

The tone of the writer keeps him away from the location of the story capturing reality in a mock-serious slant critiquing regional political history from another position. This position is the privileged position of a language that is global, giving the needed confidence to the writer that reassures him that he is speaking to the world at large where there are more people who might view history of a particular region in the same way. Anglophile predilections by Indian English writers have been critiqued   by writers like Aijaz Ahmed who also writes in English and we can use these ideas to understand a Pakistani writer too.  Ahmed (2000)  says:

These enlarged uses of English in India, and of the metropolitan languages in virtually all the ex-colonial countries of Asia and Africa, are connected, furthermore, with the consolidation, expansion, increased self-confidence, increased sophistication of the bourgeoisie classes, in these countries, including its middle strata, especially the modern petty bourgeoisie located in the professions and state apparatuses  (75). 

 

Ahmed goes on to say how Anita Desai and Bharathi Mukherjee thus are viewed as the Indian voices representing the Third World literature.  He refers to these perceptions as “post colonial consolidations and expansions” (75). The writers writing in English attempt at getting a national readership and they base their works on treating the nation as one unit, and here they differ from the regional writers who keep the region as their cultural and spatial location. Ahmed  identifies  English as one of India’s  “own” languages (77).  Partha Chatterjee is yet another critic who views the situation in a similar manner. Reading Asok Sen’s  analysis of the   Bengal reformer   Iswar Chandra  Vidyasagar of the 19^th century British India,   Partha Chatterjee  (1993) quotes Asok Sen:

The new intelligentsia was stirred by various elements of western thought – the ideas of liberal freedom, rational humanism and scientific advance...For a middle class with no positive role in social production, the theories of Locke, Bentham and Mill acted more as sources of confusion ... the middle class had neither the position, nor the strength to mediate effectively between polity and production. There lay the travesty of imported ideas of individual rights and rationality (25).   

This  formation of Indian modernity and Indian middleclass is to a large extent because of the colonial encounter and English  language and the new kind of knowledge it carried into India  and cannot be easily  removed from the variegated skin of Indian life and then discarded (Amit Chaudri as quoted by Krishna Sen 119).  Once again we can extend these remarks to suit the Pakistani intellectual climate too and view Mohammad  Hanif as yet another writer critiquing the nation/state from a western stand point.   Interestingly, Amartya Sen argues that we need not think either the East is responsible for the European Enlightenment or the West is responsible for the East’s reasoning abilities. Every society would have engaged in some kind of similar intellectual activity leading to the practice of justice, if we are able to search and explore for these details, Amartya Sen says (xiii-xv). 

Every society also would have engaged in some kind of autocratic attitude leading to injustice is what is revealed by Shura Darapuri’s historical positioning of Indian social practices today. Darapuri is the Head, Department of History, BBAU, Lucknow and his article in The Hindu recently, talks about caste discrimination surveys quoting from the book, Untouchability in Rural India authored by Ghanshyam Shah, Harsh Mander, Sukhadeo Thorat, Satish Deshpande and Amita Baviskar published by SAGE Publications, New Delhi in 2006. Accordingly, 27.6% of Dalits are still prevented from entering police stations; 12% of villages refuse permission for Dalits to enter polling booths or get them separate booths; in 48.4% of villages Dalits are denied access to common water sources; Dalits have internalized discrimination as their fate and they dare not raise voice against their tormentor for fear of punishment; they are kept out of key official positions through shrewd manipulations; only recently, on 15^th February 2012, at Daulatpur village in Haryana’s Uklana region, a Dalit youth’s hand was chopped as he drank water from a pot located in the upper caste premises. Untouchability (a word that is created by Indian English to refer to how certain poor people are kept away from social, physical and spiritual power centres – touching them will mar one’s purity and hence, they have to be kept away) remains a matter of shame and concern for India despite extensive provisions against the practice. Darapuri points out that “the caste system with graded inequality remains popular amongst those whose privileges are associated with it” though the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment keeps publicizing to the people about Sections 3 to 7 of the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955,  and these facts are showing the discrepancy between niti  and nyaya. The article justifies in a way Amartya Sen’s argument that ‘every society would have engaged in some kind of similar intellectual activity leading to the practice of justice.’

Similarly, Mohammad Hanif’s novel becomes a search for justice in a society where the dominant groups function in an autocratic and totalitarian style suppressing voices that are different. Amartya Sen distinguishes between the two schools of thought – niti  and  nyaya. Niti relates to organizational propriety and behavioral correctness while nyaya is concerned with what emerges and how, and in particular the lives that people are actually able to lead. He also uses a term ‘Global Justice’ to refer to the non-regionality of these codes (xv).

Though in one sense we cannot refuse the significance of Aijaz Ahmad and Partha Chatterjee’s arguments about the role of middle class and English language in East Asian writing to day, on the other hand it is really well that the middleclass has used its intellectual and political space to search for justice.  Wherever they are located they return to their roots and try to observe, document, examine and comment on the reality of their birthplace as they perceive its historical narration and materialism from their own personal history. Mohammad Hanif’s Shigris – the father and the son – represent values like commitment to work, perfectionism, integrity and accountability. When these values are debased and desecrated, the knot of the story is created, tightening step by step by acts that dishonor personal space and violate private spheres of peace. The story chooses a mythical framework of curse and punishment as facts are not transparent for analysis and crimes cannot be reported to any public agency standing for impartial judgment.  As it happens, when there is no niti, that is no system for remedial measures, then there is no nyaya in society, that is no sense of right in the  actual lives of people. The novel insists on the need to establish systems in societies that are objective and rational to weigh actual history and regulate people’s lives.  When such agencies fail to exist, then providence takes over to correct the faulty mechanism where the curse of the humble and innocent brings down the mighty monarch. Whether it is the agency of Indian caste system or the Pakistani military system, if these systems do not have niti then they will encourage individual not to practice nyaya.  

Amartya Sen questions the role of reason in the practice of justice from a post structuralized perspective though his thinking draws its main argument from Kant’s analysis of reason. Whether reason can completely stay away from unreason is the challenge faced while we try theorizing justice only as the product of reason. The difficulty is to find systems of social justice that define its reasoning aiming at a higher objectivity, as one cannot devise any method without the use of reason. But one has to know “what reasoning would demand for the pursuit of justice” and should allow “for the possibility that there may exist several different reasonable positions” (xix).

Mohammad Hanif too creates a scheme for common impartiality by punishing the human being responsible for Colonel Shigri’s father’s murder who by burning twenty five million dollars stopped powerful people becoming rich with government money. The meaning of the word ‘justice’ expands into equality too in the modern usage.
“Equality was not only among the foremost revolutionary demands in Eighteenth-century Europe and America, there has also been an extraordinary consensus on its importance in the post-Enlightenment world” (Amartya Sen 291). Every theory of justice seems to have demanded equality of something Sen argues. Political philosophers like John Rawls, James Meade, Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Nagel or Thomas Scanlon have all emphasized on the need for equality. “James Buchanan, the pioneering founder of ‘public choice theory’ who appears to be skeptical of the claims of equality  does in fact, builds equal legal and political treatment of people into his view of a good society” (Amartya Sen 292). The behavioural demand  in the current world society  is the practice of equality in society and Hanif suggests in his novel  that if it is not institutionalized by the government, then the people should introduce the system of the law of causality or meting out individual punishment and rectify the loopholes in systems or remove the inequalities and discrimination and create an egalitarian formula.  Though different theories have come up in egalitarianism, Sen argues there is a similar vein in them: each theory argues for equality in “some space” while refusing the other (295).

In practice too people demand for more space while refusing the other as Hanif argues in A Case of Exploding Mangoes. For example, in the hierarchic Asian societies, especially in the sub-continent of India, the media that claims to uphold the values of equality, justice and other democratic values does not practice these values. Robin Jeffrey in an article in The Hindu  “Missing from the Indian Newsroom” describes this  as “the media’s failure to recruit Dalits is a betrayal of the constitutional guarantees of equality and fraternity” referring to the deficient ‘equality’ from the Fourth Estate.   Hence  the “stories from the lives of close to 25 per cent of Indians (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) are unlikely to be known – much less broadcast or written about” says Jeffrey who is the visiting Research Professor, Institute of South Asian Studies and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. The article is based on the Rajendra Mathur Memorial Lecture delivered in New Delhi on 31 March, 2012.

Further, top Indian Higher Educational institutions have been responsible for the loss of 19 yound lives mistreated by autocratic attitudes of the Faculty and fellow students says S.Anand in his column “opinion” in the magazine Outlook, the weekly news magazine published from New Delhi. “Dalit students still face oppressing times in our educational institutions” he analyses the social discrimination and says “Reservation in India is actually a battle for the reclamation of human personality – something that is still casually denied to millions of Indians” (14).  Though the system of niti has been established in the constitution, the people of India do not practice nyaya and even the westernized Indian middle class that has questioned British imperialism in the academia through post colonial theories using the African and Australian model, has not seriously questioned Indian Colonization of the tribes into physical and spiritual slaves as they too have accepted this convenient slavery. Return home novels of India have not vehemently opposed the Dalit issues. Reading Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes reassures one’s faith in human justice and fairness.

Social justice becomes an empty ideal in a society where “the guilty commit the crime, the innocent are punished” as Colonel Shigri says in the beginning of A Case of Exploding Mangoes summing up his story as “punishment before a crime” (5).  Fate comes to his help in the form of a crow to assist him in his revenge scheme and where history fails to record details myths are born about reality and Hanif weaves a mythical tale of revenge and punishment drawing on the curse of an innocent blind girl whose anger is understood by nature and who in turn helps her curse being fulfilled.  

“We want guaranteed access to basic services such as telecommunica­tions, energy, health and water. Moreover, we want to live in a world without war, with social justice, with equity, where men don’t domi­nate women, where children don’t have to work in cane fields or in factories, where children don’t roam the streets without hope.” (Reyes cited by Chandra Talpade Mohanty and  Sarah Miraglia).  Mohanty and  Miraglia  further say “Erasto Reyes reminds us of a vision for social and economic justice that fuels continuing struggles for liberation in the 21st century”(2012, 99).  Gender ideologies and representations are hierarchic and these scholars are recommending changes in established governance structures within institutional settings, and they argue for the development of strategies to eliminate subordination that they say leads to impoverishment of women  (99-100).  Mohanty says:

Treating the community as a homogeneous entity has serious conse­quences for the structure of a community-based group and the distribution of benefits. Without a nuanced approach to the community, privileged com­munity members are more likely to become the primary contacts (referred to as “elite capture”) for participatory projects (van Koppen 1998, Sultana 2009), perpetuating and/or exacerbating “naturalised” inequalities (Res­urreccion et al., 2004, Boelens and Zwarteveen 2005, Karim 2006) (Chandra Talpade Mohanty and  Sarah Miraglia, 108).

Writers and thinkers in Asian societies have begun to question Asian leadership styles. An interesting book would be Diplomacy: Indian Style written by K.P. Fabian where the author takes about famous Indian leaders who refused to listen to their sub-ordinates that led to human warfare and loss of lives and continual pain and suffering. Hanif’s claim is also on a similar vein that argues for seasoned, impartial democratic leadership. If such a leadership is not given it would impact the concerned person in some way or the other, the novel hints, warning  social systems to practice justice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

Adiga, Arvind. The White Tiger. New Delhi: Haper Collins Publishers India, 2008.  

Ahmad,  Aijaz.   In theory: classes, nations, literatures. London: Verso, 2000.

Anand, S. “The Killing of Shambukas.” Opinion. Outlook. The Weekly News Magazine. Volume LII, 15. April 16, 2012.

Chatterjee, Partha. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. London: Zed Books Ltd., 1993. Print.

Chatterjee, Partha. Nationalist Thought and the Cultural World. United Nations  University. London, 1986. 1993. Print.

Darapuri, Shura. “Why have we banished our own brethren?” Open Page. The Hindu. March 25, 2012. Page 16.

Fabian, K.P. Diplomacy: Indian Style. New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 2012.

Ghosh, Amitav.  In an Antique Land.  Penguin India,  2009.

Hanif, Mohammed.  A Case of Exploding Mangoes. India: Random House, 2009.

Jeffrey, Robin.  “Missing from the Indian Newsroom.”  The Hindu. Monday. April 9, 2012.   

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade and  Sarah Miraglia. “Gendering justice, building alternative futures”. Alternatives to Privatization: Public options for Essentials in the Global South. Ed. David A. McDonald and Greg Ruiters. New York: Routeldge / Taylor and Francis, 2012.

Norman, Marsha. ‘Night Mother.  New York: St. Martin Paperbacks, 1983.

O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journey into Night. London: Nick Hern Books, 2011.

Pirsig, M. Robert. Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance.  England: Corgi Books, 1974.

Sen, Amartya. The Idea of Justice. England: Penguin, 2009.

Sen, Krishna. “Post colonialism, Globalism, Nativism: Reinventing English in a Post-Colonial Space.”  Identity in Crossroad Civilisations: Ethnicity, Nationalism and Globalism in Asia.  Ed. Erich Kolig, Vivienne S. M. Angeles, Sam Wong.  Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009.

Takle, Niranjan. “Senseless Sentences” Cover Story. The Week. April 1, 2012. Pages 32- 37.

Entertainment to Power

After holding the position of entertaining men, perhaps from time immemorial or millenniums ago, women have begun to take the role of authority.

The earlier structure towards power was through the ideology of bewitching men to rule them. The men got very alert about this deviation in social structure, that they defined it and gave it a name 'Maya.'  A man who is caught in 'Maya' would have to lose his power, the puranas explained in detail. The enchanting women living in Deiva Lokams bewitched powerful men and brought disaster.  The conflict between the male search for permanent authority and the female search to   rule these males has been a continuous process.

The family system also has this inner structure where the Mother used her biological power over her sons to rule over the system itself. The men recognised this 'real' power and created the concept of 'great motherhood' and appeased the female search for power. The mother became a recognised symbol of authority that the men were not publicly ashamed to bend their will to the will of the mother. It was termed as 'obedience and nobility.'

From this arrives the concept of  respecting only the mother and not the wife. The male ideologies created a framework of shame for any one who dared to respect his wife. The construction of 'Dasan' was based on this mental norm. If a man shows  affection to his wife, he was termed as Dasan or servant. The Tamil term is 'Penndati Dasan - the servant of his wife. 

This is the platform for the Mother - in-Law to dominate the Daughter -in - Law. The male saw the two attitudes search for power. It was an ideal situation for him to escape from the female's contention with him for power. He dropped hints and encouraged this war between women in the family system. For an ambitious young female such a system is very frustrating and she uses the female weapons of 'charm, tears, narration, drama and cooking' to bring the male under her control. Families become war fields where each species fights for survival.

All these structures are colliding now. 

The women have found other avenues for power. Educated women working in formal systems have platforms to exhibit their talents. Society has opened up doors where the female search for power is fulfilled.  How will this affect the family system? Can the family system tackle the equal distribution of power in the male and female? What will be the new model?

These are contemporary questions.

In search of an impartial God

Our deep beliefs and core values are on a self-protecting mode.  The 'self' has to be defended against imaginary attacks. It constructs the outside world as a space of enmity, and hence spends ample time building structures of protection.

To bring in the concept of the society's welfare as a core value, we have to rebuild our foundation ideologies.

The Gods have to tell us to take care of the world at large - the streets, the roads, the bridges, schools, hospitals and governments.

The attempt at the purification of the soul has to be extended to the purification of the concrete world as well.

Sartre's 'lie' in the centre - amidst honesty- has to be addressed. Our capability for a high level of self-delusion has to be studied. The collide of self protection and social welfare has to be analysed. 

Teaching today

Today the leaders in the class rooms are not teachers. The real leaders are android cell phones, latest laps, and 'attitude.' 

There is a big generation gap between the students and senior teachers. They come from a generation that knew getting a good job was difficult. The students belong to a world that has generated jobs every where. 

There is not much difference between the young teachers and students. Both belong to the world of visual culture. They are away from books and closer to the latest technology. They know assignments can be given to students and students need not be 'taught.'

This is the city scene.

The rural students are still dependent on the teacher. But the young teachers know about internet and give 'assignments.' Teachers do not want to teach. 

The Sixth Pay Commission has created a complacency among the College teachers that 'going to the class room' is not a big deal any more. The teacher has become  'rich'. Money wants more money. 

The class room has students from mixed backgrounds and the teacher has two reactions: either he is scared of the students or he detests the students. 

Where are the teachers who could command the love and respect of teachers? When did teachers begin to move away from books - either in print or in electronic format? What happened to the hero-worshipping students? Where is education taking the teacher and the student?

When we recruit teachers who worship 'power' instead of the 'class room' these issues become solidified. When teachers love 'money' more than 'books' the solidified issues freeze for ever.

Teaching now attracts people who come for the money. They laugh at knowledge. 

A leading aided College took the students for an educational tour. All the male teachers who accompanied them were 'drunk.' Half the class consisted of girls. More interestingly, the teachers encouraged some boys also to get 'drunk'.

Should we introduce codes for teachers? Can we equate teachers with other professionals?

Great teachers are 'only' great teachers. They 'lack' other motives like 'power, money and status.'

Their true status is in the superb classes they handle in the class room. Their true merit is in the welfare of the students. If a teacher can guide his students on the right path his purpose of life is fulfilled. Society has to identify such teachers and put them in the class rooms.