Reviw of Shobha De's Superstar India

 After having read her “politically incorrect” essays on cricket and football in the Sunday Times of India, I decided to never buy Mrs. De. However, I always try to keep a track of the content of her writings and its appreciation/criticism by the masses as well as by critics. So it was with Spouse. Now that her latest book, Superstar India has hit the market I read many opinions on the internet. The reviews have not been good, they have been scathing. In the review published by Outlook magazine, the reviewer deep into the review only gives us background info about Mrs. De in a sarcastic tone; how she changed husbands, how she could have done well being a heroine, and other juicy tit-bits. He tells us that he too is a Penguin writer but since Mrs. De is the Queen Bee of Penguin India, so she is given differential treatment. He says that Mrs. De’s photo donning the front-cover of a book which is about India is indicative of the fact that it is the sexy-at-sixty Mrs. De that Penguin India wants to sell, not the sixty year old India. BTW, part of Mrs. De’s PR campaign has been recounting how she and India are of the same age. When this Outlook reviewer finally got down to talking of the book, he criticized her writing saying that she employs phrases like "pretty confused", "pretty sinister" and "pretty spooked". He denounces the book saying, “Superstar India is quite mediocre, written in a style De fine-tuned as a film journalist” as do most others I read. The opinion I believe is “pretty unequivocal”. One blogger wrote that her tradition of writing on superstars is long; she started with writing on superstar Amitabh Bachchan and Superstar Shah Rukh Khan. This blogger and one another noted that the book is more like a collection of blogs, loosely linked with one another, that there is nothing that we haven’t heard or read before, over and over again – problems concerning India: the growing divide between the rich and the poor, and more along those lines. That there was insufficient research and the book was probably completed in a few months is also opined. Miraculously then, Mrs. De also manages to package the idea that “our time has come”.

Broadly speaking then, Mrs. De’s writing encompass but popular opinions in wide circulation on the internet. There is no critical analysis or review or a proper address of any problem, leave alone a new point of view. She did present some new and interesting points of view (at least I hadn’t read them before) when criticizing cricket in her ‘politically incorrect’ columns; but then criticizing state policy, macroeconomics and the state and giving your own views on the same is not the same as criticizing cricket and cricketers.

Arundhati Roy's criticism

On the other hand, I have been reading essays by the doe-eyed dusky beauty from Kerala, Arundhati Roy. These essays, almost all of which are sized at XXXXXL, are critical of the Indian Government and its policies, the foreign policy of the US, globalization, the terror unleashed in the name of ‘war on terror’, and other related issues like the tension in Gaza and Kashmir.

Speaking of the latter two, I came to read about Gaza and the Israel-Palestine conflict only recently and I understood the problem for its logic. Once reading on this issue, I read one line spoken by an activist protesting against state hegemony and oppression, ‘what is happening in Gaza, in Kashmir…’ When I googled for it, I did not find any article that put Kashmir and Gaza, Israel and India, Kashmiris and Palestinians, in the same bracket. However, after having read of Arundhati’s stance in her essays, I did some more probing and did stumble on articles. I am yet not clear as to what exactly it is that is happening in Kashmir yet a few things are quite apparent. The Indian Govt. has maintained a military occupation of the place since ever. The situation is indeed like in Gaza. The role of Pakistan is to add fuel to the fire viz. train the tortured and distraught youth in Islamic fundamentalism and provide them with arms. I have yet to read about the issue and understand it for myself but here’s Arundhati’s POV from her essay criticizing American imperialism in particular and state hegemony in general, viz. Not Again:

“On September 11, 1922, ignoring Arab outrage, the British government proclaimed a mandate in Palestine, a follow-up to the 1917 Balfour declaration, which imperial Britain issued, with its army massed outside the gates of the city of Gaza.  The Balfour declaration promised European zionists a national home for Jewish people.  Two years after the declaration, Lord Balfour, the British foreign secretary said: 'In Palestine we do not propose to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.  Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires or prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit this ancient land'.

How carelessly imperial power decreed whose needs were profound and whose were not.  How carelessly it vivisected ancient civilizations.  Palestine and Kashmir are imperial Britain's festering, blood-drenched gifts to the modern world.  Both are fault-lines in the raging international conflicts of today.”

She also accuses the Govt. of perpetrating state terrorism in Kashmir. I doubt that given widely known state-sponsored genocides of 1984 (Sikhs) and 2002 (Muslims in Gujarat) this should baffle you if you thought all along that it was Pak alone unleashing terror in Kashmir. At another place, she writes that “US has Iraq, Israel has Gaza, while India has Kashmir”.

‘U.S. and Israel are our “natural allies.”’

Israel is a society torn by constant bombings by suicide bombers. These are Palestinians that somehow gain entry to Israel. The Israeli society is shocked and incensed, like it rightly should, by the bombings. An average Israeli opposes these activities vehemently as he rightly must. The average Israeli does not know what is happening in Gaza because of the fabrication by media. And even otherwise, suicide bombers must be opposed and not encouraged.

Could it be the same in India? Have we been systematically lied to all these years by our Govt. and has the truth been hidden by the media? Could Kashmir be India’s Gaza and Kashmiris, India’s Palestinians who bomb our cities with or without Pak aid? Palestinians have Iran to supply them arms, while Kashmiris have Pakistan; of course, religion comes in handy. While all we do is say, ‘tut! tut!’ and mull when will people stop killing in the name of religion, much like Israeli society. Please note that these are more questions to you than mere rhetoric.

In the light of this, in the aftermath of the Jaipur blasts, and given the oppression of the people in Kashmir since forever, recalling POTA would give even more power to the Govt. to police the people. Under the Indian Penal Code, one cannot be arrested unless guilty, while under POTA, anyone that the police finds suspicious can be arrested and one must prove his innocence to be set free. The BJP is leading the tirade calling for POTA to return. Given BJP’s history with Muslims, there will inevitably be more Geelanis in states that come under BJP. Quite comparable to how America played on the fears of its terrified public to pick people at random and put them in prisons outside in Guantanamo Bay and other places. (The term for this is “rendition”.)

Issues never raised; questions never asked

What is not asked is: what were the events preceding 9-11? What drives Palestinians to bomb their bodies in Israeli streets? What drives Muslims to become terrorists and bomb Indian cities? (To be fair, it has been said and agreed that OBL and associates have little concern of Muslims in the Middle East; before 9-11, they unleashed violence and terror in Egypt, Algeria, because the people would not accept Sharia in the state and would not shun western-styled living. But 9-11 obviously must have satiated the revenge of billions in the Third World oppressed by the US (in covert operations carried out by CIA) ever since the end of WW II, and if given an opportunity and arms, they would carry out 9-11 on their own as they would have if they had had the opportunity.)

9-11 not only gave America the excuse to pick people from anywhere in the world and put them in prisons without trial – a practice which has been highly condemned worldwide, which has been showcased in the movie Rendition – it also furthered Israeli oppression of Palestinians in that within days of 9-11, Israelis entered Gaza and plundered the land; it very similarly furthered the oppression of innocent Geelanis in India. All three governments conveniently played and play on the fear of the people, promising us to protect us from terrorists. This gives new meaning and dimension to, and well explains, what the Govt. famously said: ‘U.S. and Israel are our “natural allies.”’