Table of contents for November 2021 in The Caravan

The day was about to end. The last rays of the setting sun glimmered through a partly cloudy sky. My guide, who had been showing me since the morning around the village of Isko—famous for its prehistoric rock art—parked his motorbike near the Punkri Barwadih megalithic site near Barkagaon, twenty-five kilometres from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand. The light was adequate for me to quickly capture a few photos of the two stunning menhirs. Later that evening, I met Subhashis Das, an independent researcher who has spent over two decades studying the megaliths of Jharkhand, which have been erected for millennia by the tribal communities of the region. He explained that a megalith is a living entity and that the Punkri Barwadih site is on the brink of obliteration. In Hazaribagh, where…

“My grandfather was a bandit,” 67-year-old Bhom Singh boomed from his elevated position on an unmade matrimonial bed fashioned from plywood, while his courtiers and clients sat on the rough floor of his kotri, a room in which guests—male guests—are received. The kotri, in the village of Sanawara in Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer district, was a windowless cell, but morning light streamed through the open door, exposing empty beer and bootleg-liquor bottles in the corner. An ornate ensemble of bed, sofa and easy chair, carved out of desert teak, completed the furniture. Singh’s grandfather was locked away in a jail in Bahawalpur—now a border town in Pakistan—for twelve years. “On his way back, he traded a male riding camel for two female camels. One of the females got lost, but the other…

From the very start, the Hindu nationalist movement has been borne by the upper castes due to the social conservatism it promotes. Indeed, while in theory it aims to abolish the “nation-dividing” caste system, such an ambition does not rule out a strong adherence to Brahminical values and the Hindu traditional social order. Deendayal Upadhyaya, the most prominent post-Independence Hindu nationalist ideologue, claimed that the original caste system, known as the varna vyavastha, needed to be restored in its pristine form. In his book Integral Humanism, published in 1965, he argues that “society is ‘self-born’” and forms an “organic unity” inherited from a caste-based antiquarian arrangement that should not be disturbed: In our concept of four castes, they are thought of as an analogous to the different limbs of Virat-Purusha.…

The Narendra Modi government released the preliminary results of the 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census in 2015. Its findings were grim: more than nine of every ten rural households had a monthly income below ten thousand rupees; almost two in five were landless and depended on manual labour for sustenance; fewer than one in twenty qualified to pay income tax. Even these numbers likely downplayed reality. Several economists and demographers criticised the SECC for undercounting the poor, leaving millions of deprived people ineligible for targeted welfare schemes. But this was only part of the problem. The SECC had fulfilled only part of its mandate—the caste data it collected was never released. This September, the government insisted in an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court that it would neither release…

RELIGION As King Dasharatha’s dear son Lama desired,He had married the lotus-honeyed Sita.But one day the ruler of Lanka, ten-nosed KingLavana,Shamelessly intoned of Sita, that jewel of womanhood,“You pearl of damsels, since we brought you toLanka,So many days have passed, my pearl, my radiantflower garland!By my two eyes, I swear to you, my golden one,That I have had such desire to see you and tellyou what I should …But when such a woman should have enteredthe bower of bliss with me—Why, Allah! Why did you come with that pigLama? THESE LINES, translated from Malayalam, are part of what is known as the Mappila Ramayana. As countless other places and communities have done, the Mappilas—Muslims who live in the Malabar region of Kerala—have adapted the story of Ram and Ravan, whom…

In the days before the COVID-19 pandemic, any trip to the heart of Bengaluru’s Brigade Road and Church Street would involve wading through a sea of young people thronging pubs, cafes and stores. With curated street art, rental bikes, concrete footpaths and a metro connection over the ever-jammed but well-lit street, this neighbourhood seemed to have one foot in the future. But, beyond this facade of an urban global fantasy, the heart of Brigade Road continued to be in flux. Then came the pandemic. Down came the shutters, and Bengaluru’s migrants—both rich and poor—retreated as the city came screeching to a halt. Traffic eased up, parking became easier to find, even though you could not really go anywhere, and the glass storefronts of high-end retail stores started resembling museum displays…

On 16 September, via his social-media accounts followed by millions, Virat Kohli announced that he will be quitting the captaincy of the Indian men’s Twenty20 cricket team, ostensibly to manage his “immense workload.” Three days later, Kohli revealed that he would also step down as captain of the Royal Challengers Bangalore at the conclusion of this year’s Indian Premier League season. RCB were eliminated in the tournament playoffs in mid October, leaving Kohli without an IPL title in his eight years as captain of a franchise with a raucous, devoted fanbase and a roster regularly featuring some of the format’s biggest stars. As the game slipped away from RCB and his frustration mounted, Kohli initiated an unseemly confrontation with umpire Virender Sharma, apparently inflamed by the official’s calls. It was…

RELIGION MY FIRST MEMORY OF THE RAMAYANA seems to be from before memory begins. I can only recall a slow sedimentation into consciousness of sounds and images: raucous laughter as Surpanakha, holding a bleeding nose, runs off the makeshift stage of the local Ramlila; tinselly bows and arrows being sold outside the Durga Puja pandal; and the larger than life, ten-headed Ravana being set on fire in the colony park on Dussehra. No, the embedded violence in the cut nose, the toy weapons or the burning effigy did not shock or frighten. Perhaps it had already been domesticated by the fabulous stories of rakshasas and monkey brigades who roamed the exciting terrains of forests, mountains and oceans. The blue-bodied man at the centre of these adventures was no stranger either,…

RELIGION BEFORE THE ARYANS arrived, according to Gond folklore, this land was ruled by many great kings. Beginning with Andiperiyol and Sukmaperi, there were 88 samboo—those who ruled the earth—a lineage that includes Banasur, Kaliyanag, Jatasur, Raven, Ahiraven, Mahiraven and Vishravya, as well as princesses such as Maula, Girija, Gaura, Mandodari, Tadaka, Surpanakha and Trijata. In the religious texts of the Aryans, you will only find malicious and vile representations of Adivasis and Ravan, who belonged to the divine lineage of the samboo. They stoop very low to portray him as evil, despicable, unworthy, arrogant and proud—as not human at all but a demon. He is portrayed as if he did not have a shred of human kindness, love, estrangement, thought, wisdom or goodwill. In fact, he was just as…

BEASTLY TALES FROM HERE AND THERE Vikram Seth Speaking Tiger presents a collectors’ edition of Vikram Seth’s well-known animal fables in verse, which were originally published in 1992. The fables in this collection come from China, India, Greece, Ukraine and elsewhere. SPEAKING TIGER, £399, 112 PAGES TWO AND A HALF RIVERS Anirudh Kala Through its main characters, including a depressive doctor and a girl who dreams of becoming a dancer, Anirudh Kala’s novel about militancy in Punjab and caste oppression examines themes including political tension, religious war, oppression and violence. OLIVE TURTLE, NIYOGI BOOKS, £395, 236 PAGES I HAVE NOT SEEN MANDU A FRACTURED SOULMEMOIR Swadesh Deepak Translated by Jerry Pinto This is a new translation of the Hindi playwright and academic Swadesh Deepak’s autobiographical account of his long-drawn battle…

“Wular chu laachaar gomut”—Wular has become helpless—Mohammad Ashraf told me. Wular Lake, in Kashmir’s Bandipora district, is the largest freshwater lake in Asia. However, in the last few decades, it has shrunk drastically and lost some of its wetland functions. For fishermen like Ashraf, a flourishing Wular is now a distant memory. The lake has suffered due to illegal mining and improper waste management. This has had an impact on the fishing community, spread over more than seventy neighbouring villages, that has relied on the lake for generations. The unfortunate state of the market, an unregulated system of credit and the militarisation of the region have made the fisherfolk even more tangled in a web of poverty. As we started our journey through the lake, one evening in late June,…

Since the Narendra Modi government passed the three farm laws, for well over a year, the opposition to them has been one of the most visible and sustained protest movements in contemporary India. The protests, with their sweep and persistence, have come to carry the hopes of various groups, each with its own expectations. Many of these expectations have to do with issues that were never part of the movement’s mandate. The government’s vast propaganda machinery, which includes almost all of the mainstream media, has fed these expectations and, by exaggerating every misstep, worked to widen rifts between the movement and such groups. This has subjected the protests to standards that are impossible to live up to in practice. The lynching of Lakhbir Singh at the Singhu protest site has…

This April, France’s embassy in Delhi hosted the country’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian. Prakash Javadekar, India’s environment minister at the time, was in attendance, and in no mood to make friends. “The world is suffering,” he said. “India is suffering because of the actions of others. We cannot just forget it and we will not allow anybody to forget it.” Javadekar was talking about climate change, and how India—like the rest of the developing world—has contributed very little to a crisis that is almost entirely of the developed world’s making. The immediate cause of his diatribe was a growing crescendo in the West that India commit to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by mid century—something that would have dramatic implications for the country’s economic growth. Javadekar’s position…

RELIGION ALTHOUGH THE IDEA of the avatar does not appear in Vedic literature, there is a belief within Hinduism that there are ten incarnations of Vishnu. The first nine of these have appeared and Kalki, the final avatar, is expected at the end of Kaliyuga. The Ram and Krishna avatars of Vishnu are the most prominent because of the popularity of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The Ramayana is the story of the legendary prince of Kosala and expounds Ram’s exile and his march towards Kishkinda to capture vanars, and later towards Lanka to seize Ravan. Eventually, Ram is coronated as king of Ayodhya to inaugurate the ideal form of state: Ram Rajya. The Mahabharata is the story of a war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, two groups of cousins,…

ESSAY / CRIME IT WAS THE MOST REVOLTING SIGHT I ever saw, and I have seen nothing like it since. One of my colleagues, Dipankar De Sarkar, bolted out of the Delhi Police mortuary in Subzi Mandi and threw up. It was 1 November 1984, over twenty-four hours after Indira Gandhi had been shot dead by two Sikh bodyguards. Innocent Sikhs were being targeted in an orgy of senseless violence. It was medieval-era justice at its worst. That morning, Sarkar, Rajiv Pande—another colleague—and I were on two scooters trying to map out the mayhem. We saw a young Sikh man lying dead, his body still partly burning, near the tracks just outside the Delhi Cantonment railway station. Bystanders said that the man, apparently a train passenger who had gotten off…