Re: [Goanet] [Goanet-News] August 15, 14.... patriotism and music....

[veena patwardhan]

Fred, neither the soundcloud link here nor the one on the scroll.in website 
seem to work. In fact, when you click on the Jana Gana Mana link on that 
webpage, you get to listen to some Spanish-sounding song!Veena 

Veena PatwardhanTel: 8108996599
http://www.veenapatwardhan.com


To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. 
   - Henry David Thoreau - 
   
 

On Saturday, August 15, 2020, 02:43:04 AM GMT+5:30, Frederick Noronha 
 wrote:  
 
 [1] Listen to Nigel Britto, a journalist in Goa, render the Jana-Gana-Mana
(guess which language that's in?) in an unusual way:
https://soundcloud.com/nigel-britto/jana-gana-mana

[2]  This was written about in the media, some time ago: A gentle Jana Gana
Mana from Goa
https://scroll.in/article/654792/a-gentle-jana-gana-mana-from-goa

[3] Going beyond nationalism, and staying with music, not many might know
that a Goan  -- Tolentino "Uncle Tolly" Fonseca -- is claimed to have also
authored the music of even the rousing Pakistani national anthem. Here it's
instrumental version here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8ZxRKcRJgw This
has been mentioned in some reports, though the credit seems to have gone
elsewhere. See for instance, one report here:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/55213561.cms

[4] Even the much-heard (in India at least) Sare Jahan se Accha (also known
as "*Tarānah-e-Hindi*", or the Anthem of the People of Hind)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sare_Jahan_se_Accha written by the famed Md.
Iqbal during his nationalist days, was set as a marching tune by Antsher
Lobo. While this is hardly remembered in the Goa of today, I've seen
credits to A Lobo by the Navy band.

As I said, this is about music... Please share any other links you might
have. Thanks! FN
-- 
FN* फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا‎ +91-9822122436
AUDIO: https://archive.org/details/goa1556

TEXT: http://bit.ly/2SBx41G PIX: http://bit.ly/2Rs1xhl  

Re: [Goanet] A South Asian in the West Wing? (Dhaka Tribune, 13/8/2020)

[veena patwardhan]

Hi Vivek,You nailed it with the very first line - History in the making in 
American politics, indeed. Thanks for yet another interesting piece.Best 
wishes,Veena
Veena PatwardhanTel: 8108996599
http://www.veenapatwardhan.com


To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. 
   - Henry David Thoreau - 
   
 

On Thursday, August 13, 2020, 09:08:02 PM GMT+5:30, V M  
wrote:  
 
 
https://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/op-ed/2020/08/13/op-ed-a-south-asian-in-the-west-wing
History in the making in American politics, as Joe Biden – the Democrat 
favoured to win this year’s Presidential election – selected Kamala Harris as 
his running mate.

Their combination sparks instant electricity and drew an immediate global 
spotlight, quite like what Biden experienced as Vice President under Barack 
Obama. One reason is sheer stakes: the world knows it cannot afford another 
four devastatingly incompetent years of Donald Trump.

But it’s also Harris, who she is and what she stands for. The daughter of 
immigrants from Jamaica and India, she maintains (and proudly communicates) 
strong ties to both countries of her parents. Also, via the USA’s unscientific 
and infuriating, yet inescapable, “racial” calculus, she’s the first “woman of 
colour” major party candidate for that country’s highest offices.

All this assumes huge significance because Biden is 77, and has reportedly 
already told his aides he will only serve one term.

That means, in the way American politics lines itself up, a part-Hindu, 
part-Christian (she’s married to a Jewish man), “Black” Jamaican-Caribbean 
Tamilian Brahmin Californian-American woman now has the inside track to the 
“most powerful office in the world.”

Wild? Not when you consider that Harris comes from two of the most successful 
immigrant communities in American - and indeed world - history.

There are 3 million Jamaicans in Jamaica, but almost the equivalent number 
lives in diaspora (over a million in the US alone). Sons and daughters of the 
island have always been in the vanguard of the civil rights movement, from 
Marcus Garvey to Harry Belafonte. It’s important to remember that, just two 
decades ago, Colin Powell was the most popular political figure in America, 
though he declined to run for President (his wife feared he’d be assassinated).

Donald Harris, the father of Kamala and her younger sister Maya, was divorced 
from Shyamala Gopalan when their daughters were young. Yet, this Stanford 
economic professor (he is a rare Marxist in the highest levels of US academe) 
often took his daughters to visit his family, he writes, to “memba whe yu cum 
fram."

In an essay entitled Reflections of a Jamaican Father, Harris writes, “my 
message to them, from the lessons I had learned along the way, was that the sky 
is the limit on what one can achieve with effort and determination and that, in 
this process, it is important not to lose sight of those who get left behind by 
social neglect or abuse and lack of access to resources or ‘privilege’; also 
not to get ‘swell-headed’ and that it is important to ‘give back’ with service 
to some greater cause than oneself.”

Those “home truths” were considerably reinforced by Kamala and her sister’s 
evidently remarkable mother Shyamalan Gopalan, and her family.

Since the nomination of Harris earlier this week, some reactions have revelled 
in vulgar triumphalism because her mother was an Iyer Tamilian Brahmin (a set 
of sub-castes short-handed as Tam-Brahms). And it is a fact this relatively 
minuscule community has accumulated vastly disproportionate achievements, 
including three Nobel Prize winners and a World Chess Champion.

But the actions of the Gopalans embody the rejection of caste orthodoxy. 
Shyamalan Gopalan was unquestioningly supported when she chose to study in 
California, to marry (and then divorce) a Jamaican man of African-Caribbean 
heritage, and raise her daughters amidst the onerous strictures of “Black” 
America. Her sisters and brother (he married a Mexican) also blazed their own 
trails, to an extent unusual even today.

South Asians are going to have to grapple and come to terms with these 
complexities, and hopefully learn from them.

The poet and cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote aptly referenced Satyajit Ray’s 
1984 classic movie, when he commented on Twitter this week, “What saddens me is 
the playing up, in India, of her Tamil Brahmin connections - with no mention of 
her Afro-Caribbean heritage, which involves histories of a very different kind. 
Some people who feel threatened by marvellous transcultural hybridity at home 
seem to celebrate it when it happens overseas. Ghare Baire!”

It’s already clear that citizens of the subcontinent will now spend months – 
and, fingers crossed – years obsessively parsing everything that Kamala Harris 
says and does. Actually, if the early days after her nomination are any 
indication

[Goanet] Social revolution needed for checking crime against women

[veena patwardhan]

Hi Fred,
As suggested by you, here's my opinion piece.

The following article appeared in the Hindustan Times dated 13 January, 2013

Social revolutions can begin only at home
The savage gangrape of a 23-year-old Delhi woman last month sparked public 
outrage and shamed us as a nation. Now, adding to our disgust are the 
insensitive remarks of leaders who should know better. For instance, Gujarat 
godman Asaram sanctimoniously declared that the victim was equally to blame 
because she had not addressed the rapists as ‘brother’ and pleaded with them to 
let her go. Abu Azmi advised women to observe a dress code and stay at home 
after dark.
In the recent past we had other shocking crimes, and similar biased comments 
and decisions. Within days of a teenage girl being molested by an unruly group 
of men outside a bar last year in Guwahati, the male-dominated council of a 
village in Uttar Pradesh banned young women from using cell phones or appearing 
in public with uncovered heads so that they wouldn’t acquire loose morals.
Some months ago, when a young legal professional was murdered in her flat in 
Mumbai for resisting a rape attempt by her building’s security guard, there 
were murmurs about how women should dress conservatively to prevent men from 
lusting after them.
Such responses not only unjustly blame female victims instead of keeping the 
focus on condemning the perpetrators of the crime, but also point to the 
deep-rooted patriarchal biases in our society. In almost every instance of 
violence against women, it is their freedom that is questioned, and this is 
what forms the crux of all discussions on such crimes.
Eye-opening statistics
Leaders like Mohan Bhagwat assert that rape is a phenomenon occurring only in 
urbanised India where people are influenced by western culture.
The truth is, rapes are on the rise in rural Bharat as well, though most of 
these go unreported because of the more conservative social mores there.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 2,28,650 incidents 
of crime against women in 2011, of which 24,000 were rapes. And these are just 
the official figures.
Gender equality in the home is the key
The National Human Rights Commission’s consultation on violence against women, 
held this week in Delhi, threw up a host of suggestions including judicial 
reforms, police reforms and the role of the media. The way I see it, the root 
cause of the problem is gender inequality. And the shift towards equality 
between the sexes must spring from our homes
and families.
All discussions about empowering women or checking male violence against them 
would be in vain if we don’t openly address the reality of double standards in 
homes. Even today, when India is nurturing visions of becoming a future 
superpower, many men feel it is their prerogative to enjoy unquestioned 
authority and are disconcerted by even the thought of women’s rights and 
freedom.
How many children see their mothers treated as equals by their fathers? The 
lessons of showing respect to women and looking at them as human beings in 
their own right must begin at home.
Rape is a way of asserting domination over women. Boys who are taught to 
respect the principle of gender equality are less likely to abuse women when 
they grow up.
At this stage I am reminded of Rabindranath Tagore’s acclaimed poem, Where the 
mind is without fear. It ends with the line “Into that heaven of freedom, let 
my country awake”. I think the great poet was not just espousing political 
freedom here, but an India where all citizens are free to fearlessly enjoy 
social and gender equality.

Veena Gomes-Patwardhan is a Mumbai-based freelance writer and science 
journalist. She blogs on the senior years and about Goa at 
www.veenapatwardhan.com 

Regards,
Veena


Tel: 8108996599

http://www.veenapatwardhan.com

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. 
   - Henry David Thoreau -