screenwriters-from-india

"Rice shouldn’t be such a luxury, should it? It shouldn’t even be something to ask for…But how do I…?"

"Does anyone remember who the chief minister of Maharashtra was during Mumbai riots, which were no less deadly than the Gujarat riots of 2002? Does anyone recall the name of the chief minister of UP during the Malliana and Meerut riots or who the Bihar CM was when the Bhagalpur or Jamshedpur riots under Congress regimes took place? Do we hear the names of earlier chief ministers of Gujarat under whose charge hundreds of riots took place in post-Independence India? Some of these riots were far more deadly than the 2002 outburst. The state used to explode into violence every second month. Does anyone remember who was in-charge of Delhi’s security when the 1984 massacre of Sikhs took place in the capital of India? How come Narendra Modi has been singled out as the devil incarnate, as if he personally carried out all the killings during the riots of 2002?"

"I now invite to address you, “The Merchant of Death.” The “merchant of death” to terrorism, the “merchant of death” to corruption, the “merchant of death” to nepotism, the “merchant of death” to official inefficiency, the “merchant of death” to bureaucratic negligence, the “merchant of death” to poverty and ignorance, the “merchant of death” to darkness and despair."

"In recent times, media trials have become more important than trials in courts. Our objectivity has given way to systematic undermining of facts. It took us about five thousand years to create diverse and deeply profound versions of the Mahabharat and the Ramayana, but in our present era, dubious versions of each contemporary tragedy, or farce, are ready within minutes. Truth, at various levels, has been the first casualty of the media. Infact, reality gets distorted so rapidly that it becomes unrecognizable. ... However, in recent years, our politics and public life have become so polarised that people are not allowed to hear diverse voices. This is especially true with regard to Narendra Modi–who has emerged as one of the most controversial figures of our times."

"So much has changed in terms of the market; the audience has so many options, and you’re reaching for all kinds of attention when you’re making a film. I suppose when it’s really regressive sort of messaging, and it makes hundreds of crores, it hurts. Because you had the opportunity to push the needle in some direction and you didn’t. Those are the things that sometimes bother me. Having said that, every filmmaker has their goals."

"It is a great influence on one's thoughts to be always on the outside, not belonging."

"I definitely had a feeling, writing In Custody and Baumgartner's Bombay, of opening the door and stepping out into the street, walking, seeing, experiencing other places, other lives. If I'd lived my whole life in Old Delhi, I would feel so much frustration and anger that my world should be so limited by my very narrow experience. I wouldn't have wanted it otherwise. Was it wonderful? That is a different question. It was both wonderful and difficult."

"So often one's writing is prophetic. When you write, you are in touch with another force, not the everyday force you employ, you retreat so deep into yourself, you don't suspect those feelings had been there."

"Anita Desai is one of the most brilliant and subtle writers ever to have described the meeting of eastern and western culture."

"Although she had fled the blood-spattered scene and fled the collected crowd of identical individuals — one-legged, nosepicking, vigilant-eyed — and hurried down the street at a speed uncommon for her, a speed no one would have thought possible on those high red heels that were no longer firm but wobbled drunkenly under the weight of her thick, purpleveined legs, Lotte slowed as she neared her door. Her body seemed to thicken and clot, her actions slowed till she was nearly at a standstill. She opened the door with fumbling, ineffective movements as though she had forgotten its grammat, her fingers numb, tongue-tied as it were. Entering the room, she shut the door behind her heavily, taking great care with the locks and bolts and chains, afraid the crowd might follow her, may even now be approaching her room, preparing to shoulder its way into it. When every lock was in place, she leant against the door in the theatrical manner that came naturally to her — pressing a packet of letters to her breast as years ago she had pressed a flower against a bosom still plump and warm, flounced with white lace and spotted with red spots, singing all the while to the stage-lights, her mouth open, a tunnel of red from which might issue either a trill or a howl. Pressing the bits of paper to her now shrunken and flabby bosom, she breathed long harsh breaths that rasped her throat."

"...why am I constantly writing about the past? Well, I probably couldn't approach the present directly, because I was carrying all of this past with me."

"I do not recognise India of the present time where, under the banner of 'Hindutva,' intimidation and bigotry seek to silence writers, scholars and all who believe in secular and rational thought. (2015)"

"(Would you get very angry if someone said you were the Virginia Woolf of India and you "mothered" the psychological novel in India?) Desai: No, I would be denying something which is fairly obvious. One is the influence of Virginia Woolf upon my own work, and the other is that there weren't very many women writers in India at that time writing psychological novels. (Interviews with Writers of the Post-Colonial World, 1992)"

"A lament, a protest, a statement. Those have to be made. I suppose that is what we write for. The human animal certainly has a need to make his statement, to retrieve something from the wreck of time. (The Massachusetts Review, 1988)"

"Her first day in Bombay wilted her. If she stepped out of the air-conditioned hotel room, she drooped, her head hung, her eyes glazed, she felt faint. Once she was back in it, she fell across her bed as though she had been struck by calamity, was extinguished, and could barely bring herself to believe that she had, after all, survived. Sweating, it seemed to her that life, energy, hope were all seeping out of her, flowing down a drain, gurgling ironically."

"I don’t know of any writer who has responded so ardently — mystically — to that magical scenery and then got it down with such poetic exactitude."

"She makes the apparently exotic . . . seem as universal, as vital and familiar, as the food on our plates."

"Anita Desai and Jean Rhys, who over the years became favorite, influential writers."

"It is astonishing that now a whole generation has grown up reading Indian literature in English. Nothing was being read when I was a student. We read no Indian writers at all."

"That was the way life was: it lay so quiet, so still that you put your fingers out to touch it, to stroke it. Then it leapt up and struck you full in the face so that you spun about and spun about, gasping. The flames leapt up all around, rising by inches every minute, rising in rings. (II, p78)"

"I still like to read poetry before starting my work. Rilke, Cavafy, Mandelstam, Brodsky...Poets go directly to what they want to get across – they don't amble around, they cut to it with a tremendous immediacy that affects one."

"Anita Desai packs worlds into pages, but keeps her eye close to the private, painful, funny humanity of her characters."

"India is a curious place that still preserves the past, religions, and its history. No matter how modern India becomes, it is still very much an old country. (Baruch College Class Interview, 2003)"

""Isn't it strange how life won't flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood? There are these long still stretches - nothing happens - each day is exactly like the other - plodding, uneventful - and then suddenly there is a crash - mighty deeds take place - momentous events - even if one doesn’t know it at the time - and then life subsides again into the backwaters till the next push, the next flood? That summer was certainly one of them - the summer of '47-"(I, p.42)"

"She was the tree that grew in the centre of their lives and in whose shade they lived. (III, p110)"

"...the moon that hung over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with grey shadowy ridges as only a very great beauty can risk being. (IV, p.159)"

"I aim to tell the truth about any subject, not a romance or fantasy, not avoid the truth. (Baruch College Class Interview, 2003)"

"My style of writing is to allow the story to unfold on its own. I try not to structure my work too rigidly. (Baruch College Class Interview, 2003)"

"When Salman Rushdie published Midnight's Children, it seemed to set tongues free in India in an odd way. Suddenly, younger writers realized that they didn't need to write correct and perfect English in the English tradition, but they could use Indian English and use it for any purpose whatsoever - for writing comic books, satiric books, or even for writing serious books. (Interviews with Writers of the Post-Colonial World, 1992)"

"I think everything one reads tends to linger on in one's writing, even after one's forgotten the book one's read. (The Massachusetts Review, 1988)"

"(KD Do you find a pattern in your work when you look at it all together?) AD …Perhaps that line by Emily Dickinson sums everything up: "Memory is a strange bell – jubilee and knell." I suppose that's been ringing away in my head all these years. That is why I feel so alienated from the India of today, because it has so separated itself from the India of the past. (KD With deliberate effort?) AD Tearing itself, to destroy the past, to be rid of it."

"Forget Indian cinema, especially Bollywood cinema, which sells titillating products. It is no different with those who write Lavanis. But why do those who write serious literature indulge in titillation of a different kind? Why aren’t they faithful to historical truths? Why don’t they escape from the clutches of historians committed to their ideology and use their independent critical faculties to study and understand historical evidence? S. Shettar (past Chairman of the ICHR) who justifies Girish Karnad says, “In his play about Tipu, Girish Karnad has kept only the play in view and has tried to explore the good qualities of Tipu. Historians, playwrights, and creative artists each have their own ideals.” What are the differences between ideology and ideal here? The litterateur can somehow escape using the parachute of convenience called ideal. However, if a historian too tries to use this convenience, what will be the fate of historical truths? Marxist historians just don’t seem to understand the importance and subtlety of this question. The less said about the litterateurs who are in their clutches the better."

"The voice is not his, he is not the singer. The Raag has chosen his throat to reveal itself in its purest element. Seated in that pose with his eyes closed, he has completely surrendered himself to the Raag. He has no role in the singing. The man sitting before me is a Rishi of Swara… The absolute command he exercised over all the octaves, the ease with which he traversed from the lowest octave to the highest without a frisson in the Swara reminded me of the Matsya-Avatar. It elicited the picture of the Cosmic Fish, the very embodiment of Bhagavan. It could effortlessly leap from the oceanic depths to the earth’s surface and beyond, touching any point in the journey as if it had placed a target. But all this was just a sport for the Fish."

"When the Leftists began to occupy the Government’s Education department, the History department, and the departments of history, sociology and literature, the media adopted a studied ignorance. When Murli Manohar Joshi, the NDA’s HRD Minister began to introduce changes that emphasized Indianness in our education, these Leftists raised a shrill cry. His changes included things like teaching the contribution of ancient India to science, and beginning classes with the Saraswati Vandana. The media projected this as a major calamity. Congress party workers and social-equality champions took out rallies and raised slogans predicting doomsday for India. Now, when the UPA Government’s Arjun Singh has embarked on a project of severely re-Marxifying education, none of these worthies have raised a word of protest. The media, especially the English media, has been highly supportive of this. The Congress party, whose only aim is to remain in power, has completely lost even the semblance of intellectualism. It remains in blissful slumber content and secure in the knowledge that it can borrow intellectualism from the Left if and when required. However, it has followed the policy of economic liberalization because of its realization that its past experiment with socialism brought India to the brink of bankruptcy. However, the Communists who have accepted this have been unable to break away from Marxism from which they derive their very identity."

"Mohammad Karim Chagla was born, raised, and educated in Bombay. He became famous as a lawyer and earned goodwill and respect as a man of integrity. He went on to become the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court and retired from the position. He recounts in his autobiography, Roses in December that he was desirous of contesting the Lok Sabha elections. He wrote to Nehru requesting him to give a ticket from a constituency in Bombay. The Congress High Command acceded to his request. In its reply, it said that he would be given a ticket to contest from the Aurangabad constituency. In turn, he replied with, “I was born, raised, and I have served the public in Bombay. People know me well here. Why have you given me a ticket in faraway Aurangabad where I know nobody and about which I know nothing?” Nehru’s High Command retorted, “Aurangabad has a large Muslim population. Because you are a Muslim, you contest from there.”"

"The tactics of Marxists to capture power in all spheres and at all levels is no different from that of caste politics, which has proved to be a curse upon India. They appoint people sympathetic to their ideology in universities, infiltrate print and television media with their fellow travelers, write glowing reviews of books written by authors loyal to their ideology, sideline authors who hold opposing or alternate views, organize ideologically-motivated seminars and camps to attract young minds to their side, exert influence on the Government to give out awards to people who follow their ideology…they have done this in a systematic manner. Critiquing a literary work by using ideology as the yardstick is the method of literary criticism that Marxists introduced in India. By doing this, they feel they have destroyed traditional measures and conceptions of literary criticism such as Rasa (Feeling or Emotion), Dhwani (Suggestion), and Auchitya (Appropriateness)."

"Western historians who began to write India’s history by following the European historical method have paved us a good path. But their scholarship was fuelled by an ulterior motive. They had already developed the following narrative: Indian culture is the Vedic culture. The creators of this culture were Aryans, who came into India from abroad. They destroyed the native culture and established themselves here. Thus, everybody who came thereafter were alien invaders. At one stage the Muslims came. Now, the British have come. Therefore, if somebody argued that the British weren’t native to India, they had a readymade response: neither are you. This was institutionalized in universities, and the media. English-educated young men and women carried this perception, too. This narrative also informed that the Rg Veda, held sacred by the Aryans was composed by them when they were outside India. This narrative severed the spiritual bond that connected Indians with India. The result was that over hundred years, Englisheducated Indians suffered a sense of alienation. This narrative also germinated and escalated the discord among some Indians who saw themselves as the native Dravidians whom the invading Aryans subjugated. Those who understand human nature well know that it is easy to beget enmity and that when it is proved that the enmity is based on false reasons, it is still difficult to let go of ill-feeling."

"The Muslims in the Malabar speak, read and write Malayalam even today. The same applies to Muslims in Tamil Nadu. However, Muslims in Karnataka speak only Urdu and have remained distant from mainstream Kannada. This is the direct result of Tipu’s imposition of Farsi and Urdu as the only permitted mediums of instruction."

"Tipu actually wrote to the Afghan king Jaman Shah and the Caliph of Turkey to invade India and establish the rule of Islam. In his infamous sack of the Mysore palace in 1796, he rounded up the entire palace library containing invaluable ancient Hindu palm-leaf manuscripts, inscriptions, papers, and books, and ordered them to be burnt as fuel to boil gram, which was then used to feed horses."

"The purpose of my essay is not to support Shankaramurthy. Neither is it to condemn historical Muslim personalities. All Muslims in India are our brothers. Our nationalism must grow stronger on the edifice of precisely this brotherhood. However, we cannot strengthen nationalism on the foundation of a false history. Almost a century has passed since we have fearlessly written about and discussed the drawbacks of Hindu society, and initiated reforms accordingly. A society becomes stronger by such candid and honest criticism and analysis. Writing the truth about the history of Muslim rule in India doesn’t mean we are insulting Muslims. All of us need to learn lessons from history. If we are afraid to write the facts of history because it might offend people, if we bury the truth thus and build a false narrative of history, we cannot construct a strong building on such a false foundation."

"Two NCERT textbooks serve as good examples to expose the design of this Marxist group to assault the minds of growing and impressionable children. Both were written by Marxist historians and prescribed as Class XI textbooks. The first is Ancient India by R.S. Sharma, and the other is Medieval India by Satish Chandra. According to them, Ashoka’s policy of religious toleration included extending respect even to Brahmins. Because Ashoka had prohibited the slaughter of animals and birds, the livelihood of Brahmins, which depended on the dakshina they received for conducting Homas and Havans, was threatened. After Ashoka, Brahmins ruled over several parts of the splintered Mauryan Empire. This immature reasoning extends even to the temples that were destroyed by Muslim invaders. The reasoning given is that temples were destroyed because the Muslim invaders wanted to loot the enormous wealth they contained! In other cases, it says that temple destructions occurred because of the Sharia law. However, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in the Decline and Fall of Buddhism (Writings and Speeches, Volume III, Government of Maharashtra, 1987 PP229-38) narrates how Muslim raiders razed to the ground the great Buddhist universities of Nalanda, Vikramashila, Jagaddala, Odantapuri, etc, and committed the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks. Those who managed to escape this mass murder fled to Nepal and Tibet. Dr. Ambedkar then remarks, “The axe fell upon the roots of Buddhism. By killing the priestly class of the Buddhists, Islam killed Buddhism itself. This is the most brutal calamity visited upon Buddhism in India.” When it suits their Hindu-baiting purposes, these Marxists selectively quote Dr. Ambedkar. However, they actively suppress the same Ambedkar—who fought against the Hindu Varna system and became a Buddhist towards the end of his life—who says that Muslims were responsible for the brutal destruction of Buddhism in India."

"R.S. Sharma, in Ancient India, New Delhi, 1992 Pg 11 writes: “The enormous wealth of the Buddhist viharas attracted the Turkish raiders. They were special targets for the greed of these raiders. The Turks killed numerous Buddhist monks. Despite this, several of them escaped to Nepal and Tibet.” The clever Marxists have tried to suppress a crucial fact here. By calling them Turks (a tribal name), they have tried to conceal the fact that these raiders were Muslims and that they destroyed the viharas motivated by their religion’s strictures. However, they also write that Buddhism in Ashoka’s time was destroyed by Brahmins who coveted dakshina. We do need to appreciate the shrewdness of these worthies who suppress the truth and create falsehood at the same time."

"The National Book Trust put out a proposal to translate these 11 volumes into all Indian languages. The proposal was forwarded to the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) because it pertained to history. The ICHR formed a Committee to examine the proposal. The Committee was headed by S.Gopal and included Tapan Roy Choudhury, Satish Chandra and Romila Thapar. By then, the ICHR was completely under the control of Marxists. Expectedly, they recommended that the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan volumes were unsuitable for translation into Indian languages and that the proposal should not be carried forward. And it didn’t stop at just that. It suggested an alternative works that had potential for such a translation. These alternative works were authored by the selfsame Committee members and their other Marxist comrades. Five books authored by the Chairman of ICHR, R. S.Sharma, three books by S. Gopal (son of the renowned scholar and philosopher, S.Radhakrishnan), three by Romila Thapar, two by Bipan Chandra, two by Irfan Habib, two by his father Mohammad Habib, one by Satish Chandra, works of the Communist Party of India’s leading light, E.M.S Namboodiripad, and one book by Rajni Palme Dutt, who was guiding and controlling the Indian Communists in the 1940s. Not a single book by Lokamanya Tilak, Jadunath Sarkar or R.C. Majumdar! (In this connection, it is worth reading Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud, ASA 1998. Arun Shourie is hated by different groups for different reasons. A defining characteristic of Arun Shourie’s writing is the fact that it delves into the deepest roots of the issue it discusses. Eminent Historians provides the complete list of the remuneration that each person took for the aforementioned translation project.)"

"Towards the end of his life, Gandhiji’s ideas and influence had waned within the Congress party. Nehru was never a follower of Gandhiji’s ideas. Although Nehru had great admiration for the British system of democracy, his heart really lay with Russia’s Communism. After he became Prime Minister, he slowly sidelined most leaders within the Congress. Patel’s death became a boon to Nehru. As President, Rajendra Prasad was reduced to the status of a respectable token. Although leaders like Rajagopalachari and Kriplani quit the Congress party and formed their own outfits, their influence was insignificant. Nehru, who was influenced by a hardcore Marxist like Krishna Menon wasn’t naïve. Although he earned some goodwill in the international community as the leader of the Non-aligned Movement, he had to face opposition from America because the NAM was essentially sympathetic to Communist Russia. The result was India’s loss. However, India’s loss wasn’t Nehru’s loss. Nehru’s worshipful love for the Communist ideology had reached such proportions that his Government and the Indian media routinely chanted the HindiChini bhai bhai (India-China brothers) slogan until India was kicked out of its own territory by China. By then Marxists had occupied the intellectual space in India. For his political survival, Nehru practiced the policy of pitting Hindus against themselves and simultaneously, of appeasing Muslims. This was the tactic the British had instituted for maintaining their colonial hold over India, which Nehru continued. The word “casteism” became a term of abuse reserved only to be used against Hindus. Further, he also spread the perception that secularism was something that only Hindus needed to practice towards Muslims and Christians because being minorities, they were incapable of casteism."

"I was a small boy when the country achieved freedom and held its initial general elections. However, I’ve witnessed Congress leaders discussing the relative strengths and reach of castes in a particular constituency, and caste-based leaders who needed to be nominated for elections."

"Indira Gandhi, whose sole aim was to retain and remain in power, required the help of the Communists against her opponents that included the fast-growing Jana Sangh, and the ex-Congress combine of Morarji Desai, Nijalingappa, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, Kamaraj and others. On their part, the Communists realized that they didn’t have enough strength to capture power on their own. They reasoned that putting their ideology in positions of power was a good alternative. Indira Gandhi thus helped the Communists infiltrate key institutions like the ICHR, NCERT, universities and the media. Additionally, Communist Russia exerted external pressure to make this happen. Nehru and his daughter had by then stooped to a position of weakness, which prevented them from taking a strong stance against Russia even in key domestic matters. Once the Communists were firmly entrenched in the nation’s key intellectual nerve centres, they began to shape the direction of these institutions following the model already laid down by Communist dictatorships like Russia and China. Now, Sonia Gandhi’s UPA Government is anyway dependent on the life support given by the Communists (Note: this article was written in 2008, during the first innings of the UPA Government. Communist parties supported the Government from outside.)."

"The Aryan Invasion Theory was disproved eventually by several researches, which showed plenty of evidence against the occurrence of such an invasion. However, nobody had written a comprehensive work on Indian history from the Indian perspective. In this backdrop, the freedom fighter, Gandhian, distinguished lawyer, member of the Constituent Assembly, eminent scholar, and founder of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Kanhaiyalal Munshi conceived of a project to write a comprehensive history of India. He invited the towering History scholar and researcher, R.C. Majumdar to become the editor. The two entered into an agreement. It was Munshi’s responsibility to provide equipment and money that Majumdar asked for. Additionally, Munshi would have no say in the selection of scholars (who would be invited to write on specific areas of history) and other editorial tasks. Munshi honoured this agreement. Thus came to be written the History and Culture of the Indian People in 11 volumes written by scholars who were specialists in various themes and sub-themes of history. No other work in comparable scope or depth or fidelity to truth has been attempted either singly or jointly in the last fifty years. I had read all the volumes. If one reads a specific section or period as it is classified in these volumes, it provides the complete and up-to-date research done on it including references to primary sources. All that remains is adding contemporary research—if any—and republishing a new edition. My personal collection contains all these 11 volumes."

"Truth for the Communists is the position the Party takes. This holds true for values like art and ethics. We don’t need to explain this to people who have read books published by Communist Russia on these topics and sold at dirt cheap prices."

"According to Abu Nassir Aissi, Sultan Muhammad Bin Tughlaq planted the flag of Islam in corners that had never been conquered before, and had the verses of the Quran recited in places that had never heard them recited before. He put an end to the fireworshipping verses and replaced them with the verses of the Azaan (S.A.A Rizvi, India in Tughlaq’s Time, Aligarh, 1956, Vol I, pg 325). What basis does the playwright have to depict this Sultan as tolerant, other than that of the Marxist propaganda?"

"Sultan Muhammad Bin Tughlaq’s exploits in slave-taking was infamous even in faraway lands. Shihabuddin Ahamad Abbas notes the Sultan’s enthusiasm in this regard as follows: “the Sultan’s ardour in waging war against Kashmir was unabated. The number of prisoners that he took was so staggering that everyday, thousands of slaves were sold at abysmal prices (Masalik-ulabisar fi Mumalik-ul-amsar. Translated in E.D. 111 Pg 580, S.A.A Rizvi, India in Tughlaq’s Time). And it was not just in war. Tughlaq had a fancy for buying and collecting a huge number of foreign and Indian slaves. In every war or an expedition to put down rebels, the number of Kafir female-slaves that the Sultan rounded up was so huge that, as Ibn Battuta writes, “on occasion, a large number of female prisoners were rounded up in Delhi. The Nazir sent me ten of them. Of them, I returned one to the person who brought them to me. But he was not satisfied. My companion took three small girls. I don’t know what happened to the rest of them (Ibn Batutta, ibid)."