Author: suniyee

Journalist + Audio Producer

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Mukulika Banerjee.
Mukulika Banerjee. Credit Courtesy of Sonia Paul

Mukulika Banerjee. Courtesy of Sonia Paul“Voting in elections is considered sacrosanct by a large majority of Indians,” Mukulika Banerjee writes in the introduction to her new book, “Why India Votes.” That observation forms the backbone of the anthropology professor’s work, an ethnographic study of 12 sites in India during the 2009 general elections, which explores the motivations and opinions of Indian voters on a range of issues related to the electoral process.

 As part of the Jaipur Literature Festival’s theme “Democracy Dialogues,” Dr. Banerjee, who is the associate professor of social anthropology at the London School of Economics, participated in several discussions on India’s social and political evolution. While conversations and questions during the panels often zeroed in on this year’s political players like Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi and the Aam Aadmi Party, India Ink spoke with Dr. Banerjee about the other factors motivating voter turnout, and why the act of voting is so meaningful for the majority of Indians. 

Q.

Why India votes is a huge political question, but your book is actually an anthropological book and an ethnography. What is it about ethnography that lends itself useful to the study of politics?

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In the days since the United States arrested Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, 39, for allegedly lying on her Indian housekeeper’s visa application, underpaying and forcing her to work longer hours than specified, the case has made a splash in both the US and India, whose media are covering the incident with very different emphases. In India, initial coverage focused on US mistreatment of a senior diplomat, while American media spilled more ink over the allegation that Khobragade was underpaying her maid. Subsequent Indian coverage, though, took up this theme, leading to some soul-searching about inequality in the country, which has an entrenched tradition of low-paid domestic help.

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A view of Awadh Point, a three story building in Old Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, on Nov. 9.
A view of Awadh Point, a three story building in Old Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, on Nov. 9. Credit: Sonia Paul

The raised sign for Avadh Point on Victoria Road in Old Lucknow is missing two letters, the “O” and the “I.” The “D” in Avadh also hangs precariously, as if it is ready to become the third. The three-story building was constructed in 2005, but it stands dilapidated, walls thinning and paint peeling, as if it is as old as the Awadh culture it’s named after.

Since Nov. 6, the start of Muharram, which is the first month of the Islamic calendar and the period of mourning observed mostly by Shia Muslims, several figures are making their presence known at Avadh Point and other areas deemed sensitive in Lucknow for the next two and a half months: police officers.

“All the mess starts from here,” said Zeeshan Ansari, 21, a Sunni Muslim and recent college graduate who lives in the neighborhood. He was sitting on the patio of Avadh Point, gazing at the fruit vendors, shared auto-rickshaws, cycle rickshaws and throngs of people sharing the road in front of him.

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Haunted by insecurity, relief camps for victims of communal riots in Uttar Pradesh witness spate of mass weddings.

Some 300 marriages are said to have taken place in the relief camps in Uttar Pradesh since the deadly riots [Yogesh Tiyagi, September 25]
Some 300 marriages are said to have taken place in the relief camps in Uttar Pradesh since the deadly riots [Yogesh Tiyagi, September 25]
The setting was unusual for marital bliss, but it was no deterrent for the dozen-odd couples who tied the knot last week in a mass wedding at a relief camp for riot victims in Muzaffarnagar.

Having fled communal violence that recently swept parts of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and left scores dead and thousands homeless, the newly married couples of Malakpur relief camp held hands together and vowed to make a fresh beginning.

Mass weddings are not uncommon in India, where community and religious leaders sometimes host them for poorer communities to help ease their financial burden.

But a spurt of mass weddings at relief camps sheltering thousands displaced by the riots is evoking contrasting emotions. Some hail them as efforts to rebuild lives. Local authorities, however, see them as unnecessary distractions.

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Thanks to the efforts of 13,000 volunteers worldwide, Twitter is now available in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu, according to a company blog post. Twitter had been working on translating and localizing these right-to-left languages since January 25.
These languages posed unique challenges for Twitter. To overcome technical barriers, Twitter’s engineering team had to build a new set of special tools to ensure that these tweets, hashtags and numbers would behave as their counterparts in left-to-right languages. Not only that, but some of these languages are spoken — and therefore will be tweeted — in locations where Twitter is officially blocked. Twitter was a recognizable force in the Arab Spring — but given that there wasn’t yet an Arabic interface, most of the users who tweeted from those regions did so in non-native languages.
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In my time in Japan, no event has taught me as much about this country and its people as the crisis that began on March 11, 2011. I work as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) for English at junior high and elementary schools in Shizuoka City, in Shizuoka Prefecture. I was at school when the first big earthquake hit. Immediately after it occurred, I was glued to my iPhone, sending updates to my friends and family through email, Facebook, and Twitter, verifying my safety and any facts I could gather. Simultaneously, I was scanning the news to try to translate what I was watching and hearing on the television screen in the staff room. But most of all, I was observing the people around me.

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Teaching
Researching
Interviewing
Training
Traveling
Discovering…

7 months in Japan. Since coming, I have worked hard to make certain opportunities available. Now, other opportunities that never before seemed possible are suddenly manifesting. I feel lucky. But, even more so than lucky, I feel thankful. I’m glad I did not settle.

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I love receiving letters and emails from my students. Inexplicably, their simple English and their process of articulating it becomes poetry. I don’t just read their words; I read the effort behind their words, their expressions on their faces as they anticipate my reaction upon delivery of the mail, their hesitations before responding to any questions that I have. I know this for the students who are in my presence because I can see them. For the students who email me from home, I see all of this and more. I see how I am in composing my own email back — thoughtful, careful, worried, inspired, hunched over my computer in unanticipated stress — and I know that anything that I am feeling is nothing compared to what is going on in the heads and hearts of my students.

My students. It is still weird for me to say that, yet now, more than ever, I know that it is true. I used to think that I could never be at the same level as the other teachers, and I can’t deny that a part of me still thinks this. After all, I am an Assistant Language Teacher. I can’t spend as much time with the students because I have to switch schools. I could never be a homeroom teacher or a coach for the same reason. And let’s not forget the obvious: I don’t speak Japanese.

Yet in the pauses that are inevitable when people who speak different languages try to communicate — in the pauses that I experience on a daily basis — there’s that poetry again. The silence has a weight that ceases to be a burden because there’s so much sincerity behind it. And that’s when I know that even though I am an Assistant Language Teacher, I am a teacher. To know that students want to speak to me, not necessarily because I speak English but in spite of the fact that I speak English, is to know love.

And students sure know how to romance me, because I’m in love back.