Revisiting the Global 1960s

Widely recognized not just as a decade but as a cluster of experiences that stretched over a period of time, the sixties as we now know it drew into its fold, radical politics, Black power, sexual liberation, youthful rebellion, feminism and more. Intellectual currents flowered all across the world alongside a powerful critique of cultural and political authority. The fourteen day strike by students and workers in Paris in the summer of 1968 acquired a mythical after life. The American war in Vietnam triggered a force field of protest and danger all over the world. The spirit of counterculture led to a critique of the family, the creation of alternative lifestyles and drug culture. Latin American experiences of revolutions, military terror and violence; colonialism, anti-colonialism and racial oppression in Africa; the resonance of the Cultural Revolution in China – these reverberated locally and globally. A series of political assassinations rocked the decade. All theories of civilization, race,history, politics, culture and identity were put to test.

It would not be incorrect to suggest that cultural creativity was never quite the same after the sixties. Music, fashion, design, art, architecture, cinema,theatre and performance bear the marks and the traces of this turbulent period of global upheaval. If Minimalism in art practice emerged as a challenge to Pop Art then Conceptual Art posed a critique of formalism. Modernism and the Avant-garde faced a crisis with the rise of Postmodernism while in India, the dominance of the Progressives began to be challenged by an alternative modernism that had a polemical take on indigenism; one aspect of this developed into neo-Tantric abstraction. This decade also saw the first explorations of kitsch and popular culture that later provided the point of rupture with modernism itself. Political theatre acquired a powerful force and Brecht emerged as a new icon for both the West and the post colonial world. Beatlemania and the events of Woodstock transformed the future of rock music as technology reinvented the aesthetics of performance and reception. All Institutions of art faced political criticism even as cinephilia energized a renewed global art cinema movement. Michelangelo Antonioni captured the world of swinging London in Blow-Up, Jean Luc Godard playfully moved the camera to mount his critique of Hollywood, and the release of the first James Bond film gave rise to a new territorial and technological imagination. Latin America gave birth to the Third Cinema Movement and a politically charged Aesthetics of Hunger while in India the New Wave presented a challenge to mainstream film forms and practices.

The 1960s remains an under studied area despite two wars, the crisis of Nehruvian nationalism and modernization programmes, the genocide and traumatic birth of a new nation (Bangladesh) and revolutionary upsurges.

----Adapted from the pamphlet of conference on Revisiting the Global 1960s and its Cultural After life;

Quotation : "The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility." — John Lennon

Blog Post Number 500

The journey of four years of blogging has touch the milestone of 500th post today. What I learned in this journey has brought enormous changes inside me. Unlearning of false traditions has taken lot of time and efforts but it was a worth living experience. The idea of personal solidarity and the idea of societal cooperation are two conflicting concepts that has tormented me as a scholar. It is like dilemma of looking for the independence without becoming alien to one's surroundings.

Education is never over-rated. An institution is meant to broaden your horizon but self learning also makes you more open minded. We might go to an Ivy League/IIT/IIM and come out with nothing or might go to a decent school and come out with a lot. What has started as a hobby in the college has been taken by me as a serious learning portal and it has paid me much in the level of insights of human behavior.

These four years of writing creates the illusion of a linear narrative and gives events the semblance of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Real life is never like that; I had observed the past from a deterministic point of view, where causes lead to effects. While world is more probabilistic in nature here outcomes are driven by invisible or chance events.

To discredit uncertainty in a documenting rules of the process with the acquired knowledge is to deny the element of chaos and chance in planning for future. Predictions can be falsified and uncertainty has an empirical significance. Trial and error is only way to the growth in the world of experience and learning. That I learned on how to see the future.

We tend to fit our perceptions of the world into the model we have constructed in our minds about how the world works. It is easier to accept as valid evidence that fits our model than it is evidence that doesn’t. Some of this filtering is at an unconscious level – our minds are constantly trying to make valid perceptions out of the evidence of the senses.

I am still focused more on those matters in society which we can easily target, rather than those which needs to be self-corrected. The life has new goals as one of them is to empower individuals through education and to promote the kind of diversity which genuinely enriches a culture and democracy. I will present now a brilliant paragraph read today aptly suited on wisdom of life by Rational Fool :

Regimes come and go. So do gods, messiahs, and religions. What endure are ideas, ideas tested by reason and evidence. The ideas of liberty and equality - that all people are free and equal, and no individual or collective may be granted exclusive privileges and immunities in law - these are enduring ideals that have guided humanity along the path of civilization. The rest, however passionately embraced by the populace at a moment in history, are destined to perish in the Darwinian struggle for survival. I never tired of quoting Queen Sheelavati from the film, Anaahat, directed by Amol Palekhar: "Wisdom," she said to her troubled husband and the King of Shravasti, "is knowing the difference between the transient and the eternity".

Ten Issues - 12

1- Why We Have More Sympathy for Baby Jessica Than for Darfur by Dan Ariely. VIDEO
Focusing on the struggles of an individual appeals to our emotions and makes us care. As the numbers of people suffering get bigger, our cognition, calculation, and thoughtfulness are activated—and we care less ; A NGO on this concept is Rangde;

2- The danger of Being good : - The miracle of individual choice may be what is keeping us safe as a society. Some people just choose to be good, no matter what. This is the story of what happens to them

3- Freedom of speech and expression and the law of sedition in India: Text of keynote address delivered by Colin Gonsalves at the inauguration of Persistence Resistance 2011, New Delhi

4- Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talks bluntly about politics and diplomacy, making the case that women's issues deserve a place at the center of foreign policy. Far from being a "soft" issue, she says, women's issues are often the very hardest ones, dealing directly with life and death. A frank and funny Q & A with Pat Mitchell from the Paley Center.

5- Jugalbandi: Hindustani music is our music By Namita Devidayal : Despite the modern claims to lineage, little is known of the Subcontinent’s classical music forms – beyond the centuries of cross-community collaboration that were required.

6-Jugalbandi: Divided scores By Yousuf Saeed : Though there was a general decline in classical music in Pakistan after Partition, there are many uplifting stories of how musical traditions have been kept alive and even enriched.

7- Poetry of Resistance, recited by Sudhanva Deshpande :



8- Indie and the Indian Middle Class by Arjun on PFC.

9- The Opening : If I was ever asked to host a Bollywood Awards night, here is how I would open it - BY Great Bong.

"Some people call this the “Oscar night for India”. I disagree. To quote a great man, we here dare to go beyond the Oscars. Tell me sir, would the Oscars have the Best Actress dancing an item number—-can you imagine Helen Mirren being made to dance if she wants an Oscar? Can you think of Robert De Niro fighting backstage and calling an angry press-conference because Al Pacino won an award? Can you imagine the award being taken away from Hillary Swank and given to Meryl Streep, just because maybe she is the brand ambassador of the event’s sponsors or because Hillary Swank came late to the show?Can you imagine Keanu Reeves winning The Best Actor Award every year? Can you imagine a movie like “Expendables” getting twelve nominations? No."

10- A Big Think Interview With the British author and activist Raj Patel.
Quote of the Day : Any concession to majoritarianism corrodes a democratic order. It creates two classes of citizens: those who belong to the definitive majority become ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ citizens, while those who fall outside this category have to be ‘naturalized’ through tolerance. Not only does constitutional majoritarianism create discontent and disaffection amongst minorities (reduced as they are to second-class citizenship), it allows religious extremists to set the political agenda because they can use the constitution as warrant for their never-ending quest to realize the perfect Buddhist or Islamic or Hindu state. --- Mukul Kesavan

Ten Issues - 11

1- State legitimacy and resistance : State derives its legitimacy from its institutions. Its these institutions that give State credibility and roots to live in the society of hostile crowds.

2-The ‘Viral’ Revolutions of Our Times – Post national Reflections by Aditya Nigam

3- Interview to Devinder Sharma :- On Food Crisis and Corruption. An Interview with One World South Asia: "Corruption has fuelled India's economic growth.

4- Growth and other concerns by Amartya Sen

5- Comments and Responses by the author : Socialism of 21st Century : Author Sunil

6-  An Interview with Guernica Magazine. In the wake of sedition charges by the Indian government, Arundhati Roy describes the stupidest question she gets asked, the cuss-word that made her respect the power of language, and the limits of preaching nonviolence.

7- The multi-individual society By Pratap Bhanu Mehta - An look on liberalism and multiculturalism.

8- Reluctant heroes: International recognition offers a degree of protection to investigative reporters. But, writes Lydia Cacho, being in the limelight presents a new set of dilemmas.

9- Information technology and economic change: The impact of the printing press BY Jeremiah Dittmar.

10- All Religions are not same, but Fundamentalists Are By M J Akbar : The four principles of a modern society, which is a necessary prerequisite of a modern state, are gender equality, political equality, religious equality and economic equity.

Quote of the Day: People do not like to be treated like fools, or backward infants, or extras in some parade. There is a natural and inborn resistance to such tutelage, for the simple-enough reasons that young people want to be regarded as adults, and parents can't bear to be humiliated in front of their children. One of Francis Fukuyama's better observations, drawing on his study of Hegel and Nietzsche, was that history shows people just as prepared to fight for honor and recognition as they are for less abstract concepts like food or territory. --- Christopher Hitchens

Islamic Countries and Revolution

People of the Middle East had been living under the tyranny of secular and corrupt governments, which were all supported by the United States and other Western countries. People have experimented with most other forms of governance. Where these experiments have failed to deliver and simultaneously education has been infused with religion, the attraction of the only untried one has increased. This context left them recourse to only one political alternative: religious fundamentalism.

Arab economy is based on oil and knowledge is not valued term their. That is why there academic does not have cultural inquiry and only revolve around theological discussions. The most educated young Muslims have lost the capacity to question the false Islamic history and ideology dished to them in academics. An Islamic country with ethnic, sectarian and religious diversity becomes a issue to fear within the Mullah and Army. And the worse response for any catastrophe is : ‘If only ...... imposes true Islamic system, we’ll be able to get rid of the hypocrisies committed in its name.

Nationalism can flourish without democracy, but democracy cannot have its existence without nationalism. The West does not really fear the rise of a Muslim Brotherhood as an alternative to dictators, since that is a socio-political movement that can be contained in a crunch. It is worried about an explosion of governments that place the people’s interest above that of sectional regimes at home and their mentors abroad. It was this worry that prevented the West from intervening even when dictators looted their own nations.

Foreigners are often accused of "exploiting" suffering for profit or cheap publicity. It is not new that religious parties consider themselves to be the most competent judges in matters of their own suffering – if not in an artistic sense, than in a moral one. The problem in Islamic case is that , like any other religions, they do not like it when foreigners interfere with "their internal reform". The reluctance to admit that something is wrong with their religion  is completely missing.Same nationalistic dare speak up against the  many gross acts of violence and injustice that take place in its heartland.

How long could Islamic world go on loudly supporting the rising and rhetorical tide of anti-Americanism while at the same time be the first to stand the long queues outside American and European visa offices? It’s a vicious cycle that denies us the patience and logic to reflect upon internal mistakes instead of always being on the look out for ‘corrupt Muslims’, ‘heretics’, foreign agents and media-made punching bags to blame for economic miseries, political chaos and moral confusion on.

1- What can Egypt and Tunisia teach us?: The protests in Tunisia and Egypt have won the first of what will have to be many victories. Mubarak and Ben Ali have fled and dictators have fallen to people’s uprisings – the street and the public square have, at least for the moment, reclaimed their voice from the boulevards and corridors of power.

2- On May 13, 2010 Iranian journalist and dissident Akbar Ganji received the CATO Institute’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. Upon accepting the award, he discussed his ideas about Iranian democracy, liberty, and U.S. policy in the Middle East.

3- The blocked elite- The problem with most middle-class political movements is that they know whom they don’t want, but rarely do they know what they want.

4-Is there a revolution underway in Egypt? by Daniel Little: Is what is going on in Egypt today a "revolution"? What about Tunisia? And how about the Georgian "Rose" Revolution (2003) or the Philippine Yellow Revolution of 1986? Do these social and political conflicts and outcomes add up to a "revolution" in those societies? Are they analogous in any way to other revolutions in the post-World War II period -- e.g. Cuba, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe?

5-Pakistan after the Arab Insurrections By Anjum Altaf : What do the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt portend for Pakistan? The question is on many minds. One approach to attempting an answer might be to try and infer it from below by investigating the morphology of Pakistani society and noting any significant similarities and differences in the process.

People don't propose for the alternative or recognize the diversity within Islam; Deobandi, Barelvi, Ahemdi, Bahia or Shia has different interpretations of Islam. In the end we have to finally accept (on an official level) that we live in a land of manifold ethnicities and multiple interpretations of Islam.  Neuroscientist and best selling author Sam Harris has openly criticized the term Islamophobia in an article stating :

There is no such thing as Islamophobia. Bigotry and racism exist, of course—and they are evils that all well-intentioned people must oppose. And prejudice against Muslims or Arabs, purely because of the accident of their birth, is despicable. But like all religions, Islam is a system of ideas and practices. And it is not a form of bigotry or racism to observe that the specific tenets of the faith pose a special threat to civil society. Nor is it a sign of intolerance to notice when people are simply not being honest about what they and their co-religionists believe.