Modi in London

Narendra Modi triggered multiple word associations on his recent trip to London, all of them sinister. The GUARDIAN took one look at the vis...

Narendra Modi triggered multiple word associations on his recent trip to London, all of them sinister. The GUARDIAN took one look at the visitor and thought Pinochet. His enemies, it noted, liken him to Hitler, Milosevic, Pol Pot. The paper remembered Mike Tyson, Louis Farrakhan, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Al Sharpton 8212; all four were in difficulties with their visas to Britain. Farrakhan was barred for 17 years from entering the UK by successive home secretaries for reasons of public order. Why was Modi allowed into Britain?

And does Modi8217;s touchdown in Britain suggest a launch onto the 8216;8216;national Indian stage, with some pundits tipping him as a future prime minister8217;8217;? The GUARDIAN was certain: 8216;8216;If he ever makes it, then India8217;s tradition of secular democracy, which has been under threat for some time, will have been replaced by something darker8217;8217;.

On Laloo8217;s trail

THE British and US media listened in while India and Pakistan made small talk. The ECONOMIST8217;s verdict: 8216;8216;the mood music is sweeter; but hostility is just an atrocity away8217;8217;. It was frankly sceptical about Musharraf8217;s appeal for 8216;8216;constructive amnesia8217;8217;: Forget Kargil, bring on a ceasefire. It noted how they loved Laloo in Pakistan and the heartwarming story of Baby Noor. But, amid the flurry of Track Two, it asked: Where8217;s Track One?

The FINANCIAL TIMES also trailed Laloo and the Rest and arrived at the same scepticism: 8216;8216;But the evident goodwill will not necessarily accelerate the formal peace process 8230; which has moved at a painfully slow pace8217;8217;.

Inner tracks

THE good word was 8216;mongrel8217; when TIME invited some of the Asian diaspora8217;s top writers to embark on voyages of return. For each of them, it was to be the classic journey 8216;8216;home8217;8217;. For many, it became a discovery that home was always-already with them. As Pico Iyer marvelled in his introductory essay, home is no more a fixed address. It is a portable, imaginative idea. You can carry it with you. And God forbid, if you actually reach journey8217;s end, you may feel like a stranger.

It can be unsettling, this 8216;8216;rotating sense of home8217;8217;. And, as in the case of a vast majority of the displaced, it8217;s not always a matter of creative choice. But, Iyer wrote, for the fortunate, the chance to choose a home, to pick and choose affiliations, to live in many worlds, is a blessing.

It8217;s terribly tempting, in these times, to accept TIME8217;s invitation. To partake of these writerly journeys to homes on the move. When in Asia, as elsewhere, there is an attempt to hold you down to impermeable, fixed identities. That allow no breathing space. Nor any escape.

Orientalism revised

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IN a magnificent essay in the AL AHRAM WEEKLY, Edward Said recovered his magisterial sweep. He asked the question he first articulated twenty five years ago in his seminal work and discovered it has lost none of its urgency. Orientalism, said Said, once again raises the question of whether modern imperialism ever ended, or whether it has continued in the Orient since Napoleon8217;s entry into Egypt two centuries ago.

Said lamented that the general understanding about the Middle East, the Arabs and Islam in the US has not improved over the years. How can it, he asked, amid the tightening grip of 8216;8216;demeaning generalisation8217;8217;, 8216;8216;triumphalist cliche8217;8217;, 8216;8216;simplistic contempt8217;8217; of dissenters and 8216;8216;others8217;8217;. How can it, amid destruction of Iraq8217;s libraries and museums?

In the US, they speak of changing the map of the Middle East, marvelled Said, 8216;8216;as if ancient societies and myriad peoples can be shaken up like so many peanuts in a jar8217;8217;. Modernity, Enlightenment and Democracy are no simple, uncontested notions that one either does or does not find, 8216;8216;like Easter eggs in the living room8217;8217;.

Said lashed out at the 8216;8216;experts8217;8217; on the Arab and Islamic world who have 8216;8216;hastened and reasoned for8217;8217; Washington8217;s 8216;8216;imperialist war8217;8217;. Like Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, who advise the White House on the 8216;8216;Arab mind8217;8217; and 8216;8216;centuries-old Arab decline8217;8217;. V.S. Naipaul, whose contribution to literature Said dismissed thus: 8216;8216;the victims of empire wail on while their country goes to the dogs8217;8217;.

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For him, the way out lies in 8216;8216;humanism8217;8217;. And the attempt to arrive at a 8216;8216;philological understanding8217;8217;. To sympathetically and subjectively enter into the life of a written text as seen from the perspective of its time and its author. In which the interpreter actively makes space for a foreign Other. Said did not let off Arab societies lightly either. He rued the disappearance of the 8216;8216;extraordinary tradition of Islamic ijtihad8217;8217;, or personal interpretation and individual wrestling with problems of the modern world.

Coke8217;s water theft

IN the GUARDIAN, Liz Stuart visited the Coca Cola factory in Plachimada, Kerala. Locals told her how the plant is sucking up precious ground water in the surrounding area, compelling villagers to walk five miles a day to reach a useable well. Farmers8217; yields in the area have dropped drastically. Some have been forced to abandon their fields and seek labouring work far away.

8216;8216;Coca Cola8217;s Plachimada factory is a perfect argument for why the world needs stricter not laxer rules governing multinational companies8217;8217;, she argued. Multinationals must face the same rules, 8216;8216;no matter where they set up shop8217;8217;.