On Terrorism and History's Lessons

A few days ago a series of bomb blasts rocked Connaught Place, the largest business district in India's capital city. That evening as I sat watching the Indian presses reaction to the blast, I was reminded of some passages that I had just read inIndian historian William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal.

Metcalfe's police in Delhi came increasingly to suspectthat the mujahadin network had begun to revive. Acting on a tip-off, they conducted a dawn raid on the premises of various known extremists and found evidence for what they believed was 'a Wahhabi conspiracy' in Delhi itself, seizing the correspondence of the fanatics [who were] preaching a crusade 'against the British'...

If the missionaries reinforced Muslim fears, increasing opposition to British rule, driving the orthodox towards greater orthodoxy, and creating a constituency for the jihadis, so the existence od 'Wahhabi conspirancies' strengthened the conversion of Jennings and his supporters that 'a strong attack' was needed to take take on such deeply embedded 'Muslim fanatics'. [Dalrymple 84]

This passage references a series of events in September 1852. It goes far in showing how these types of events have always been a part of the histories of Delhi and India. O the same page, Dalrymple provides a pointed analysis of the situation bringing their meaning full circle to the present day.

The histories of Islamic fundamentalism and European imperialism have very often been closely, and dangerously, intertwined. In a curious but very concrete way the fundamentalists of bothfaiths have needed each other to reinforce each other's prejudices and hatreds. The venom of one provides the lifeblood of the other. [Dalrymple 84]

These words came flowing back into my mind on Saturday night. The act was awful, but these awful acts are not unprecedented. Authorities and leaders should aim to learn from them and put them in context rather than sometimes acting ignorant as if the lessons of history do not exist.

Bollywood Escapism

Since coming to India, I have become quite the Bollywood fan.

The other day I saw one of the most recent celluloid products out of Mumbai, Bachna ae Haseeno (Beware Pretty Women). The story is rather simple - boy leaves girl, boy leaves girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl leaves boy, boy apologizes to girls, boy and girl live happily ever after.

Okay, perhaps not as simple a story, but how simple could it be with over three hours to fill up. The cinematography was absolutely spectacular with musical numbers that I haven’t seen in any American film since West Side Story.

We watched two other older Bollywood films on DVD as well, and the combination of all of them made me think deeply about their popularity and what this popularity says about India and indeed all of Asia where they are more popular than their Hollywood counterparts.

Most Bollywood films have a few common traits. All are full of colorful and expertly choreographed musical numbers, seemingly coming out of nowhere in the story line. Despite a great deal of sexual suggestiveness, sex scenes are forbidden, and screen kisses are usually quick and passionless. Violence is also rare, and even in a thriller about an international thief with multiple gun fights, Dhoom 2, the gratuitous blood loss and explosions that define most American films in this category, simply don’t factor in.

For a film connoisseur like me, who usually trend towards the serious, the deeply analytical. I found my booming enthusiasm and foot tapping extraordinary, yet most welcome. I suddenly didn’t care about deep meanings and movies that taught me something -- and best of all it felt great!!

My first two weeks in India had been challenging. The country is growing so fast and the rapid increase in the number of cars is overwhelming to any newcomer. New infrastructure projects abound in any city, but many are not keeping up with their project deadlines causing muddy messes along major roadways in most cities. Though I haven’t been to China, Vietnam, the UAE, or other Asian economic hot spots, I can imagine many of the same growing pains must exist in those countries as well.

This goes a long way in explaining Bollywood’s popularity. This escapism is not new, it was a huge factor in the original popularity of the Hollywood musical in the United States in the 1930s as the U.S. and most of the industrialized world was in the grips of the Great Depression. Check out this clip from the 1930s musical, Gold Diggers of 1933. Could Hollywood have been any more blatantly escapist?

Perhaps Hollywood could learn from Bollywood and adopt some of its lighter, non-violent, and excitable tendencies. As I sat watching the latest news out of my country (McCain/Palin Surging, More Home Foreclosures, 33K Jobs Lost in August), I felt like stringing up my arm and getting yet another Bollywood fix.

Delhi Metrosurfing

Metros have this strange power over me. I grew up in a very suburban setting, in a city with very limited public transportation. My first metro experience was with the world’s best and largest - the London Underground when I was fifteen. The multitude of lines going in every which direction called out to me like a giant bowl of spaghetti encouraging me to take in each of its many lines. I can remember heading all the way out to Wimbledon for no other reason than the fact that the place name was familiar and that it was situated at the end of a line. During that ten-day trip I probably spent more time beneath London than above.

Since then I have been on many high-speed rail systems - I have used them as a commuter, a student, and in many cases again as an avid tourist. I have fallen asleep on the DC Metro and ended up in Shady Grove just as the entire system shut down, witnessed two assault and batteries on the New York Subway, been absolutely crushed on many occasions on the St. Petersburg Metro, and been chastised simply for being an American on the Paris Metro.

Indeed each system has its quirks. Some are only one stairway below the street - like New York’s, other’s like Washington’s and St. Petersburg’s require you to descend leagues beneath the Earth’s surface. Some, like the socialist realist Moscow Metro, are very ornate with beautiful ceramic tiles and even chandeliers, while others like my home city’s BART are relatively drab looking dark cylinders.

In each instance, however, these systems have become channels of a city’s lifeblood - they have channeled urbanization and daily city life in ways that no bus or streetcar line could ever do. As time moves on they come to represent a time of growth and hopefulness for the large cities and expanding national economies that they serve. After all London built its system in the mid 19th Century, when few would challenge the fact that the city’s economic prominence was quickly reaching its apex globally. By the turn of the century as several train companies simultaneously built the lines that now make up New York City’s MTA Subway, it was clear that there was a new kid on the block challenging London as the economic center of the world. Stalin’s development of the opulent Moscow Metro as the common man’s palace in the 1920s and 1930s was clearly an attempt to showcase a challenge to the capitalist world order.

So it is with this historical perspective that I took my first look at the brand new Delhi Metro. On the flight to Delhi, I watched a Discovery Channel program about the system. There are currently only three lines, but considering that construction started only a few years ago, I count that as quite an accomplishment. Once the system is completed, it will be the second-largest on Earth. The London Underground will remain the largest.

Perhaps, it is the extreme congestion and chaos of street-level Delhi that makes the system all the more special and inviting. From the muggy heat and bleaching sun that typifies a summer afternoon in the Indian capital, one is suddenly transported to an air conditioned, well-lit, and spacious underground oasis.

I entered at the Rajiv Chowk (Connaught Place) Station and went two stops to Central Secretariat Station. The cars are structured similar to the NY Subway cars, but with absolutely no seats facing forwards or backwards. All passengers face each other with many bars and hanging handles ensure that there is adequate space for all standing passengers to ride comfortably. The short ride south between the city’s commercial center and its political heart was perhaps the most comfortable.

Most people get on at our stop since Connought Place is the city’s largest business district. Still, when you compare it to getting on a train at 34th and Broadway or even DC’s Metro Center Station, the passenger numbers aren’t quite there yet. This is a challenge for all new public transportation systems. When does a new way of getting from Point A to Point B become the norm? When will the novelty die out? Then I realized the passengers aren’t there because the city the planners want is right now in a constant state of flux, and it is the planners who want a hand in charting that development, not the other way around.

As I stood looking at a massive map detailing the location of all the future lines and stations, I thought about all of the real estate speculators are buying every centimeter of land within 2 square kilometers of these existing and planned stations. Unlike in developed countries, where planners must hold meetings to determine environmental, traffic, and cost of living ramifications for any tiny change to their daily grind, planners in developing countries are the protagonists, they are the actors. Their business is not merely reaction to the world the way it is, they are able to chart a new course and form a wholly new city. This is what happened in the London of the 1890s, the New York of the 1910s, and it is happening in Delhi today. Riding this beautiful new system was a way to get a premature glimpse of the new capital city that is to come.