Tidbits of the region’s media
According to more US diplomatic cables, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kumari Mayawati is a 'paranoid … egomaniac' obsessed with becoming prime minister, and with a very particular brand of sandals. Evidently, she once sent her private jet – empty – to fetch her favourite brand from Mumbai. Seizing the moment, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi condemned Mayawati as corrupt and dishonest. Duly incensed, the chief minister went on the attack: not against the cables or the US diplomats who wrote them, but against the founder of the Wikileaks whistleblower organisation Julian Assange, as well as Naqvi – both of whom, she alleged, must have been on the same 'special plane'.
From there sprung a round-robin of amusing quips and cheeky back-and-forth. The 'owner of WikiLeaks' needs to be in a mental asylum, Mayawati said, offering to take the Australian to an Agra institution. Asylum sounds great, but a political one, responded Assange, who is fighting extradition from the UK to Sweden where he faces rape charges. If Mayawati were to grant him asylum, Assange even promised to send her the finest British footwear! Thus far, Mayawati has remained quiet on this offer – undoubtedly a smart move, given the trajectory of this particular bout of wordsmithing.
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Is Bhutan really turning against its phalluses? Apparently, modern Bhutanese, especially those in Thimphu, do not want three-foot-high penises painted on their doors, nor equally high wooden ones installed in their compounds to ward off evil – a ritual still in practice in villages all over Bhutan. According to folklore, a saint called Drukpa Kunley, the 'Divine Madman', used to use his sex organ to seduce women, a fairly prosaic use compared to what else he could do with his member: spew fire (!), fly (!!) and burn demonesses to death (!!!). Little wonder, then, that symbolic penii have proliferated for centuries as good-luck charms. Because the Bhutanese government considers preserving culture instrumental in achieving the goals of Gross National Happiness, authorities are worried about a growing trend in Thimphu that shuns these symbols. A researcher at the Centre for Bhutan Studies laments the influence of Western culture and warns that people only realise what they have lost once it has been lost. He also noted, somehow, that phallic symbology reminds people of the 'unnecessary domination of affairs by men' and the 'commonplace existence of sexual activity'. Anyway, if you want to see the divine staffs before they disappear, don't wait too long. In ten years time, some suggest, they will be gone.
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With visions of Anna Hazare dancing in its head, Beijing recently moved to ban some 6600 websites for at least a month. The decision came after Chinese netizens began openly calling for a similar anti-corruption movement in China and wondering when the country would get its own Hazare. But if one is to go by Sunetra Choudhury's recent article on the role of media in the Hazare movement, the Chinese state need not fear the birth of a Chinese Hazare – just yet. In an article entitled 'All the inside juice from Anna's reality show', Choudhury discussed the long-suspected truth about the immense support that Hazare enjoyed from TV, newspaper and other media professionals to make the anti-corruption movement a major initiative. And let us not forget the talk-athon post-fast when Hazare gave 17 TV interviews in 11 hours! Meanwhile, given that Chinese media houses are still under the firm control of the state, a lone Chinese Hazare is likely to achieve very little. Instead, the communist government could learn from Team Anna's magnanimity and keep media personnel happy by feeding them tea and biscuits.
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In Burma, the websites of long-banned news organisations – such as the exile-run Democratic Voice of Burma and the video portal YouTube – will no longer display this message: 'This website is blocked by the MPT [Myanmar Post and Telecommunications].' In another trickle-and-tease reform move, the government has also lifted bans on prominent news websites – others include Reuters, the BBC and the Bangkok Post, to name a few – just a day after a US special envoy completed a visit to the country, in mid-September. The blocks on the sites were first enforced during the 2007 monk-led street protests, which saw the then-military regime cracking down heavily on any criticism of the state.
Does this mean that it is open season again for bashing the government? Although last year power was ostensibly handed over to a civilian government post-election, the generals still maintain overwhelming influence in the affairs of the state. Further, more than 2000 political prisoners are yet to be released, and media moves remain strictly monitored. Only a week earlier, a Burmese weekly journal, The Messenger, was punished for publishing a benign interview with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi without prior permission from the censorship board. Subsequently, the supplementary news in a Sunday issue was banned. Lifting bans on a couple of websites on the UN's International Day of Democracy is certainly a welcome gesture, but the celebration needs to be year-long.
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In a new move, Nepal's newest prime minister, Baburam Bhattarai, of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), has made his e-mail address public so that he can connect with the people, or at least the wired among them, anyway. Reportedly, one of the first 45 e-mails informed the prime minister that the southern city of Biratnagar was without its deputy superintendent of police, after the DSP was called back to the capital for the PM's own security. In reply, Prime Minister Bhattarai, in an Anil-Kapoor-starrer-Nayak-esque move, immediately ordered the Home Ministry to dispatch a substitute to the DSP-deprived city. Social-networking sites such as Facebook are already abuzz with questions for the prime minister, ranging from one on the difference between 'Maoist thought' and 'thought process', to CP's personal favourite: 'Are you still under 40, because I heard that someone who is a communist at the age of 40 is without brains?' (There's been no public response to that one, though.) Anyhow, jokes aside, CP has also learned that Prime Minister Bhattarai will not simply be sitting at his desk checking his e-mail all day long – phew! – but is instead having his aides do so for him. If anyone wants, his e-mail address is bhattaraibaburam@gmail.com (not exactly a hair jerker, is it?). No pranks, now – the man's got enough jokers to deal with on a daily basis.
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Speaking of pretty pitiful pranks, a 14-year-old named Sunny Shukla was recently arrested for sending e-mails claiming that the Indian Mujahideen was behind the New Delhi High Court explosion that killed 11 people in early September. A day earlier, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), a Pakistani-based extremist group, had claimed responsibility for the attack. In the e-mails that the teenager sent to the National Investigation Agency of India and media houses, Shukla posed as a terrorist named Chotoo and threatened to blast more public places, challenging the authorities to stop him if they could. Well, the bored teenager did get what he wanted – excitement and 'nationwide noise', but also a cold stint in a juvenile jail. Juvenile, indeed.
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In Pakistan, various websites, particularly Facebook, have come under the renewed ire of the Lahore High Court for allegedly 'spreading religious hatred' (no, not for wasting valuable time). A Pakistani lawyer had filed a petition seeking a permanent ban on Facebook in Pakistan after groups again announced a caricature-drawing contest of the Prophet Mohammad. (Announcements for a similar contest in May 2010 were subsequently called off after the organisers were evidently caught off guard by the angry response.) Subsequently, in late September the High Court ordered – just as it did in 2010, albeit with a different judge – the authorities at the Information Technology Ministry to deny Pakistanis access to Facebook and other such sites. While CP believes in religious solidarity, respect and tolerance, lawyers need to remember – in this, they can learn from the 2010 saga – that banning sites will never help to achieve these goals. Besides, the number of supporters of another Facebook group condemning the contest are already far higher than those in support. As in politics, so on the Internet: trust in your democratic impulses.
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After the Roger Moore-starrer Octopussy (1983), another James Bond movie (2012) is now going to be filmed in India. And the new one will also involve – drum roll – a gripping action sequence on a train! What exactly he should do on that train, however, has become mired in some official editing. As written, during the train scene the British spy leaps from a motorbike onto the crowded roof of a moving train; evidently, this has had to be amended after complaints poured in from the authorities at the Railways Ministry. Although in reality, of course, people do travel on top of trains to avoid travel fares, Railways Minister Dinesh Trivedi does not consider it wise to showcase this in the context of a popular movie franchise – it might encourage more such behaviour! If Trivedi gets his way, the mighty spy might even have to slur seductively, 'Indian Railways is as strong as James Bond.' Ha!