The challenge for Manjhi was formidable — a 300-feet-high hill stood between his village and development. With no faith in the government, he chose to go it alone. He sold his goats to buy chisel, hammer and rope. Hammered constantly at the rock-face for 22 years, to create a 16-feet-wide passage. 

Gahlor Ghati (Gaya): Over four decades ago, a frail, landless farmer got hold of a chisel and a hammer and decided to change the face of his village nestled in the rocky hills of Gaya. Dashrath Manjhi tore open a 300-feet-high hill to create a one-km passage. 

    Manjhi knew it would he easier to move a mountain than an apathetic government. He knew writing to the powers-that-be would only leave the hill tied in red tape. Instead, Manjhi, then in his early 20s, took up a chisel and hammered at the rocks for 22 years. 

    This feat, part of local folklore now, stemmed from Manjhi’s love for his wife. For, when she slipped off the rocks while getting food for him as he worked in a field beyond the hill and broke her ankle, it became a burning passion to tame the formidable hills that virtually cut his village off from civilisation. 

    And he completed the Herculean task — creating a short-cut which reduced a long and arduous journey from his village Gahlor Ghati to Wazirganj to a walkable distance. 

    Manjhi hasn’t forgotten the public ridicule when he began hammering at the hill. “They called me a pagal but that steeled my resolve,” he says. 

    Even his wife and parents were against this “adventure,” especially when he sold his goats to buy a chisel, a hammer and rope. But, by then, Manjhi was a man possessed. He shifted his hut close to the hill so he could work all day and night, chipping away, little by little. “I did not even bother to eat,” he says. 

    With most of the cultivable land and shops across the hill, villagers had to cross it many times a day, braving dangers. 

    It was after 10 years that people began to notice a change in the shape of the hill. Instead of a defiant rockface, the hill seemed to have a depression in the middle. Climbing it became a little easier. “All those who had called me mad began to quietly watch me work. Some even chipped in,” he recollects. 

    In 1982, twenty-two years after he had started out, Manjhi walked through a clear flat passage — about 16-feet wide — to the other side of the hill. But his victory was tinged with sadness. His wife, who inspired him to take on this task, was not by his side. “She died of illness. We could not take her to a hospital on time,” says Manjhi. 

    But, the villagers were there. They got him sweets, fruits and all that they could afford. Says Ram Avatar Yadav of Bhitra village: “We grew up hearing stories of the man who wants to move a mountain. Today, it’s a reality and a boon for me.” 

    But, his family members are sore. “He hasn’t done anything for us. We are still struggling to make ends meet,” says his daughter Laongi Devi. But, Manjhi wouldn’t agree. “My hard work should benefit thousands,” he says. 

    This hand-carved passage through the hill remains the only sustainable change the village has ever chanced upon. Tubewells were installed, but they ran dry. Electric poles were put up, but the cables never came. And a five-acre plot given by former CM Lalu Prasad to Manjhi for a hospital still lies barren. 

    Septuagenarian Manjhi hasn’t given up. “I met CM Nitish Kumar recently. He has promised to develop the passage so that even a car can pass and will connect my village to Gaya. And, he told me that I will lay the foundation stone,” he says. 

When Prakash Amte and Mandakini Amte arrived in their midst thirty-four years ago, the region had no modern services. Government officials considered it wild and served there only reluctantly. By contrast, the Amtes, both of them medical doctors, came by choice. 

Prakash Amte grew up in Anandwan, an ashram and rehabilitation center for leprosy patients in Maharashtra founded by his father, the renowned Gandhian humanitarian Murlidhar Devidas Amte, or Baba Amte. Prakash was busy with postgraduate surgical studies in Nagpur when, in 1974, he volunteered to take over a new project begun by Baba Amte among the Madia Gonds. He and his wife Mandakini abandoned their urban practices and, in a leap of faith, moved to remote Hemalkasa. 

The young couple settled in a doorless hut without a telephone or electricity or privacy. They practiced medicine beside the road and warmed themselves by a wood fire at night. The Madia Gonds, shy people and suspicious of outsiders, spurned their help at first. Prakash and Mandakini learned their language and patiently gained their trust. The miraculous cures of an epileptic boy with terrible burns and a man near death from cerebral malaria turned the tide. “Once a patient is cured,” says Prakash, “he comes back and brings four new patients.” 

Beginning in 1975, Swissaid provided funds to build and equip a small hospital in Hemalkasa. There Prakash and Mandakini performed surgery and treated malaria, tuberculosis, and dysentery, burns and animal bites. To conform to tribal sensibilities, they placed most of the hospital’s facilities out of doors, beneath the trees. They charged nothing. 

Illiteracy had made the Madia Gonds easy prey for corrupt forest officers and other greedy outsiders. The Amtes helped them assert their rights and intervened to mediate disputes and rid the area of abusive officials. In 1976, they opened a school. The Madia Gonds were reluctant to send their children but, in time, the school prospered and became a center for both academic and vocational education. Prakash and Mandakini’s own children were educated there. 

The Amtes have used the school at Hemalkasa to introduce the Madia Gonds to settled agriculture-growing vegetables, fruits, and irrigated grains organically-and to encourage them to conserve forest resources. This includes wild animals, a tribal dietary staple. The Amtes’ popular animal orphanage at Hemalkasa promotes the survival of animals as part of nature’s balance. 

Simplicity and respect guide the Amtes’ work with the Madia Gonds. Prakash wears only a singlet and white shorts as he goes about his work, so as not to identify himself with “well-dressed” outsiders. Where applicable, the couple incorporates tribal cures in their medical practice. In school, children perform tribal songs and dances. 

Today, the Amtes’ hospital has fifty beds, a staff of four doctors, and treats forty thousand patients a year free of charge. It is a regional center for mother-child welfare and health education. Its “barefoot doctors” bring first aid to outlying villages. The Amtes’ school, meanwhile, has grown to six hundred students and is comprehensive. Among its graduates are the Madia Gonds’ first doctors and lawyers and teachers as well as officials, office workers, and police. 

“More than 90 percent of the students have come back to serve in the community, including my sons,” says Prakash, reflecting on his and Mandakini’s legacy. “Maybe it’s the way we have led our lives.”

In electing Prakash Amte and Mandakini Amte to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes their enhancing the capacity of the Madia Gonds to adapt positively in today’s India, through healing and teaching and other compassionate interventions. 

So-called lifestyle diseases are estimated to have wiped $9bn off the country’s national income in 2005, but the cost could reach more than £100bn over the next 10 years if corrective action is not taken soon, the report claims.

The study by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations says that although India’s boom has brought spiralling corporate profits and higher incomes for employees, it has also led to a surge in workplace stress and lifestyle diseases. The health minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, said his biggest concern was the IT industry, which has grown rapidly on the boom in international outsourcing in recent years.

“It’s the fastest-growing industry in our country, but it is most vulnerable to lifestyle diseases,” Mr Ramadoss said. “Its future growth could be stunted if we don’t address the problem now.”

Long working hours, night shifts and a sedentary lifestyle make people employed at such companies prone to heart disease and diabetes, the report said. There have also been growing reports of depression and family breakdown in the industry.

————————————————————————

Despite an impressive economic growth trajectory and a trillion-dollar economy, India still has reasons to worry about the future health of its economy. 

According to a joint report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) report released for last week’s World Health Assembly in Geneva, India will lose a staggering US$237 billion by 2015 due to the impact of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, strokes and cancer and because of its unhealthy workplaces. 

The report “Preventing Communicable Diseases in the Workplace through Diet and Physical Activity” states that the financial loss to the Indian exchequer due to lifestyle ailments will surge from $8.7 billion in 2005 to $54 billion in 2015. The report – based on data collected from the WHO’s 193 member nations – had set 73 health parameters in countries around the world. It concluded that chronic diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and respiratory infections – all ailments of long duration and slow progression – will severely impact people’s earnings in the future. 

———————————————————————–

India would have the maximum number of cardiac patients by 2020 if indians do not resolve to change their lifestyle at the earliest. The above warning has been issued by leading Cardiologists in the country. 

Stress, bad eating habits and the growing number of diabetic patients are contributing to the increasing incidence of heart ailments. About eight percent of india’s population now suffers from heart diseases. 

‘Since heart disease is primarily a lifestyle ailment, there is a need to change habits and patterns,’ said Praveen Chandra, director (cardiology) at the Max Heart and Vascular Institute. 

‘In urban areas people are stressed out in trying to achieve something extra. Youngsters are working overtime, literally burning the midnight oil to do better in academics and their work sphere. Increasingly, it is the younger generation which is becoming vulnerable to the disease,’ Chandra told IANS on the sidelines of a workshop on cardiovascular disease for doctors. 

The disease earlier affected people in the post retirement age group. But in recent times people in younger age groups were also becoming victims. Youngsters in their early 20s have begun to die due to cardiac problems. 

—————————————————————————

The iAlive story – How a group of young selfless Indians are trying to bring about a health revolution in the country. 

It all started with a few young working professionals enjoying their Friday evenings with “good food” in Mumbai. Topics ranged from girls to drinks to food to India. These were the same people who were in college a year back. Nishant, the founder of iAlive, was one of them. Since childhood, he has been an active sports person, and topped most exams in his life. Tasting success in all aspects of his life, he aspired to reach higher goals. Given his wide interests, he was involved with many activities in college and school. The resulting busy schedule forced him to eat junk food outside. Although he predominantly ate at home and was a sports person, he had started developing bad habits of eating out regularly. With his credentials, he got a well paying job after his education. But, exercising reduced, eating junk food increased, health silently worsened. But, everything seemed fine, until…

One fine day at the age of 23, Nishant was not feeling well. He felt a slight pain in his left arm and leg. On further reading up, he thought he might be suffering from some heart disease. He did tell his family and people around him. But, people mocked him, because people think young people cannot get a heart attack. Moreover, he wasn’t obese and the way we Indians look at heart diseases, he got the usual “you aren’t obese, you don’t have to worry about your health”. But, Nishant knew something was wrong. So, he went up to the local health care center and got a full body health check up done.

The results stunned everyone. On seeing a cholesterol level reading of 260, the doctor exclaimed that Nishant was lucky to even be alive. The trauma of his father passing away at an early age due to the same ailment came back to haunt them. His aspirations to do something great in life suffered a fatal blow. He could have been depressed and taken it as a huge setback in his life. The exercising habits he had developed in his childhood, a strict diet and a strong determination helped him reduce his cholesterol soon. He ran miles to reduceanother 10 kgs.

His zest for life and optimistic outlook helped him find a solution for his problem. More importantly, it made him realize that he can help several others too with his vision and skills. He and his friends realized the grave danger lifestyle diseases pose to people’s lives. They each vowed to do his bit for this cause. They did not want any family to go through the sorrow of losing a family member through lifestyle diseases, which it was obvious can easily be prevented!

Team iAlive looked around. India was changing. The days of their childhood weren’t mired with the plethora of burger and pizza places, fast food joints, bars and farsan shops like today. The progressive vibes of the Indian economy had brought in a sea of foreign investment. India, led by highly skilled and hardworking work force, was marching towards being a developed nation. But, the stress levels of the common man were increasing. The newly found Indian consumerism led to a huge change in people’s eating and living habits. Their lifestyle was changing, but their body was not quite able to adapt to these changes. The health of the people was being negatively affected. Indians were already very susceptible to lifestyle diseases. But now there were regular stories of youngsters in early 20s dying of heart attacks. Team iAlive was appalled by the state of affairs and the ignorance of the people around them. People were consuming junk food without any regard to the consequences. Ignorant people mock at others’ healthy living habits. They still do. People do not realize the severity of the situation until it strikes them.

We couldn’t bear to see what was going on around us. So we went about trying to find out how we could help improve the current situation. After analyzing some of the current health initiatives in India, we found that these initiatives were largely ineffective in reaching out to the UNINITIATED. We felt it was our moral duty to form iAlive. The following analysis shows how the foundations for iAlive’s movement were laid.

Firstly, there is a valid focus on providing expensive medical treatment to current patients, suffering from lifestyle diseases. However, these diseases and costs can be prevented by simple tweaks in lifestyle. Hence, iAlive is focused on prevention rather than cure.

Secondly, current means of health awareness do not reach out to the uninitiated. NGOs conduct lectures at third party locations, which are attended mostly by people who are already afflicted. There are many websites/blogs which educate people about healthy living. But, these solutions have been largely ineffective in reaching out to the UNINITIATED population, especially young guys. Lifestyle diseases are a culmination of how a person has been living since birth. So these living habits need to be inculcated in a person since childhood. To uproot the cause at the grass-root level, iAlive reaches out to uninitiated people through their seminars at educational institutions and work places. They have built a platform wherein they can manage and educate thousands of volunteers, who can then conduct seminars on their own.

Furthermore, people are averse to change, especially in lifestyle. Current health initiatives educate people in an amiable way. To help people change habits, a striking campaign is needed. Hence, iAlive aims to awaken people by showing them the grave impact of lifestyle diseases on themselves, their loved ones and their country.

Lastly, the uninitiated are bombarded with an avalanche of garbled information! People hear random unverified health tips from neighbouring aunties, friends and colleagues. Overwhelmed, the common man ends up rudderless to start leading a healthy life. To help people get started, iAlive has made a pragmatic one page Health manual, after consultations with nutritionists and doctors. This health manual acts as a starting guide to help people change their unhealthy habits and start leading a healthy life.

With the above initial analysis in hand, Team iAlive went about charting out the movement’s plan. We had worked together during college festivals and were capable enough to start this movement. But, none of us were medical professionals. So, we approached health organizations to help them make the health manual. We found our support in Health Education Library for People and Manipal Cure and Care. We worked out an effective plan to spread the iAlive message. We launched a website, conducted seminars, and built a mass education platform. iAlive team members were finding it difficult to manage iAlive with their full time jobs. To take iAlive to another scale, we inspired students. These highly motivated students helped take iAlive to another level. iAlive encourages youngsters in every corner of this nation to come forward and help save a few lives, using the health manual.

http://www.ialive.org

The skew and the riches:

The unlettered Indian innovator is fortunately, not a breed ready to go extinct because he has been neglected by the system. He is busy tackling his daily problems, improvising with what he has, innovating according to the circumstances and even sharing his inventions freely. He is also the keeper of India’s ancient knowledge not because of sentimentality — as frequently presumed–, but because that knowledge delivers. We shall soon see living examples of these, but the point to remember is that the simpleton you see in the countryside is a shrewed observer and a very practical person.

In the forties even as India became free, the organised economy was not open to him. But ironically, when India went into the protectionist phase, the small town mechanic exploded with what is now called ‘reverse engineering’ skills delivering products no longer allowed as imports. Rajkot, Ludhiana, Kolkota, Coimbatore and Delhi were turning out sewing machines, diesel engines, farm pumps, bicycles and small machine tools. All produced by self-taught mechanics and entrepreneurs.

Formalism pays:

In the decades since, many products and skills that were the preserves of the big business have gravitated to the world of the small manufacturer: refrigeration, plastics, chemicals, tissue culture, auto spares etc being some examples. The ancient Indian enthusiasm to experiment and innovate had modernised itself.

Dr.Gupta in the late eighties, was struck by the disconnect between this informal world and the world of management. He began the Honey Bee network as a means of gathering the scattered information. Gupta was then in his thirties, a rather surprising age in India to be turning to issues concerning the poor. Perhaps his growing up in Haryana –away from the metros– helped. Also his conviction, that “a key resource is the knowledge of the poor”. If management graduates were unaware of this resource, would they not be impoverished themselves? Gupta’s courses at the elite IIM-A have always required his students to get involved with the ways poor people carry on their lives. He hoped that this interaction would always keep graduates rooted in the community.

The resource with the poor, it would appear is a rich vein indeed. The Honey Bee database is galloping. In the twelve years since it began there are 12,000 entries,including several from Mongolia, Vietnam, Uganda, Kenya, Colombia, Ecuador and North America. Its a mixed bag of heirloom knowledge, folklore, ideas, techniques and product innovations. The Honey Bee newsletter is today published in six Indian languages plus English and Spanish. It is received in 75 countries. The database is online.[Here are some tips on browsing it.]

From that initiative have come the three corner stones of the effort to put some formalism into India’s problem solving exuberance. GIAN [Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network] founded in 1997 seeks to bring notable inventions to the attention of venture capitalists and financiers. NIF [National Innovation Foundation] in association with CSIR [Council for Scientific and Industrial Research] seeks to evaluate and prioritise worthwhile ideas and SRISTI [Society for Research & Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies & Institutions] is the umbrella organisation that co-ordinates all these activities.

A quick tour:

The first country wide competition for awards by NIF in 2000, brought nearly a thousand entries from Gujarat, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Karnataka. There were five categories and prizes ranged from Rs.25,000 to Rs.100,000 in each. Gupta had in the meanwhile got CII [Confederation of Indian Industries] involved in his efforts.

A close look at a few of the winners and a few random entries from the Honey Bee database leads us to a rare layer of India. Most inventors have had little education. Sebastian Joseph who won the Rs.100,000 prize in the plant variety category dropped out of school after class four. In Kerala’s spice district,Idukki the high yield cardomom variety developed by him and his son Regimon is planted in over 80% of farms. They are now selectively breeding a variety fit for the plains. Amruthbhai Agrawat of Junagadh, Gujarat is a priest and a serial inventor. He has a wheat planting box, a multi-purpose tool bar and a peanut digger to his credit. Then he invented and put in public domain a pulley with a ratchet for village wells: children can now haul water without fear of a filled pail racing back into the well and women can stop midway during a haul for a chat or a breather. But Amruthbhai is famous throughout Gujarat for his bullock-cart with a tilting bed, just as in the big tipper trucks.

Annasaheb Udagavi in Belgaum, Karnataka has spent many years developing a watering gun that doesn’t clog even when it sends biogas slurry as a spray. It also clears all leaf borne pests. Usha Shankar Bhattacharya in Kolkata has developed a kerosene stove that saves 50% on fuel. He is struggling to find a financier and marketer. Ram Naresh Yadav is a high school graduate and has developed a pump that can be driven by conventional prime movers as well as by human power. The IIT at Kanpur helped him along with its development.

Many innovative products have been developed by mechanics who have their own small workshops. Mansukhbhai Jagani [studied up to class five] has worked around the Bullet motorcycle,–so common in the countryside– to develop a complete machine system for a small holding at a cost of Rs.20,000 – he has various attachments for tilling, weeding and sowing. There is also a trailer that can hook on to the bike. De husking arecanut [betel nut] has always been a messy job but with Narasimha Bhandari’s patent automatic machine you can process 20 kg an hour. He is a matriculate and so is Kalpesh Gujjar of Gujarat whose oil expeller can crush many seeds including the doughty cotton seed. The machine has a novel gear box designed by him. It is small in size and low on power consumption. Arvindbhai Patel’s natural water cooler uses no power but the sun’s evaporative process. And then there is the delightful Dodhi Pathak of Assam who first looks to bamboo for all solutions. He has made –and uses– bamboo dentures. He has also devised a water pump made entirely of bamboo. But his wackiest creation is a whole bicycle made of bamboo save the tyres and tubes!

Payoffs and dilemmas:

Efforts of Anil K Gupta are beginning to pay off. Arvindbhai’s water cooler has a licensee who has paid Rs.350,000 for the idea. GIAN has helped Gujjar land a grant for improvements to his expeller. M-Cam [M-cam.com] a technology marketing firm in the USA has successfully sold a license to a Virginia, USA based company for the manufacture of a foot operated spray pump developed in Gujarat. GIAN also helped Mansukhbhai Patel get a loan to perfect his cotton stripper machine [- and he has paid it back with interest]. More significantly, Gupta’s students graduate with an awareness of the Indian reality. A few of them got together to set up a $1 million micro-credit fund for village entrepreneurs.

Finally, however this sad dilemma would remain: the educated classes know how to work the invention-reward system. Anil Gupta may one day lead many more small timers to the innards of that system. But India’s ancient inventors and the living keepers of their knowledge are beyond all rewards bar our salutes.

How really does one reward these selfless keepers of knowledge. Often they are the most in need of material support. One may fight pirates scouring the land but how to reward the keepers? Problem is, the knowledge keepers themselves are unconscious that they merit rewards. It’s the deeply ingrained Indian principle: “do your thing and let the reward take care of itself”. How else do you explain people like Puriben Suva and Rehmat Khan Solanki. She has a way of preserving lentils using a mixture of chilli powder and mud. He is a veterinary doctor who has tens of native cures for most of livestock’s ills. He serves free. Then there is the 70 year old lady Baby Amma, in a village near Chennai who has the magic herbal bullet for jaundice but won’t dream of charging for the service as it is a gift from her ancestors.

India is strewn with such gifts. Here is but one from the Honey Bee database in the beautiful words of P R Pisharoty: “A plant called ‘garmala’ in Gujarati and ‘karmikaram’ in Sanskrit is a useful indicator of rains. It bears bunches of golden yellow flowers in abundance, about 45 days before the onset of rains, whether it be Kerala, Gujarat, or western U.P. In Kerala, it flowers by 10th or 12th April. The farmers plan their planting by it. The Indian Meteorology Department even now gives no forecast of the onset of rains in Kerala by that time. The normal date of onset of the monsoon, over Kerala is around 1st June. If the plant does not flower by 14th April, farmers in Kerala do not go ahead with the preliminary work for sowing paddy. Kalidasa had associated the flowering of ‘karmikaram’ with the onset of summer [end of spring] and eventually the rains.”

Surely it’s hard to discover “the true and sole inventor” of this technique. But how about someone conceptualising a fund to reward devout practitioners of these ancient techniques. [Is there an answer here?] Something that is the equivalent of purses to scholars of ancient texts. We would then begin to move towards a just system of rewards.

India currently has over 5.1 million AIDS patients and truckers are possibly one of the largest groups carrying the disease.. There are over six million truckers crisscrossing the length and breadth of the country.

“The findings are certainly alarming. One in every three truckers visits commercial sex workers. The shocking part is that only 18 percent of them use condoms,” said Alok Srivastava, the chief project manager for the study. 

According to the survey, conducted by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), though many truckers have heard about HIV and AIDS, only two percent of them know the difference between the two.

The study collected data from hundreds of truck drivers ferrying on national highways linking Mumbai and New Delhi, New Delhi-Kolkata, Kolkata-Chennai and Chennai-Mumbai. 

Among the truckers surveyed, 95 percent were in the age group of 18 to 45 years and 80 percent were married. Around 75 percent were in the profession for more than five years. 

More than illiteracy, ignorance and being away from home for long stretches were the main reasons behind the spread of the disease among the truckers’ community, Srivastava told IANS. 

The survey revealed that at least a third of the truckers had never been contacted by government health workers or an NGO though AIDS awareness campaigns on television and radio have helped to spread knowledge.

“The National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) must pay more attention towards this community,” Srivastava said. 

To bring about the desired behavioral change, the survey suggests there must be concerted efforts for one-to-one interaction between truckers on the one hand and private and public health workers on the other.
“Interpersonal communication is the most effective medium to convey any message. When a health worker interacts with atrucker, there is a greater possibility of realizing the importance of safe sex.

“Besides, they must be educated on the use of condoms. They should also be motivated to seek early and complete treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. Communicating messages through peer educators comprising sex workers and fellow drivers needs to be taken up on a large scale,” Srivastava said.

Sustainable growth, even distribution of opportunities and inclusive development are the viable options to curb rural urban migration.
Then the physical appearance of our urban landscapes would not get any worse.

Amid the daily roar of gunfire and grenades, there’s something new in Kashmiri villages these days: music classes.
A dozen teenagers, cradling ancient Kashmiri string instruments and notebooks listen in rapt attention to teacher Mohammad Yaqoob speak about Sufyana Mosaqi, Kashmir’s classical music.
‘It is a Himalayan task to revive Sufyana Mosaqi, but when I listen to these young girls and boys singing haunting melodies, I see a ray of hope,’ says 45-year-old Yaqoob. ‘In this kind of a situation, it is very difficult to motivate youngsters to learn this music. But I will keep trying.’

The strains of the 500-year-old musical form, drawn from the rituals and teachings of the Sufis or Muslim mystics, have been drowned in the 16-year separatist conflict in one of the world’s most beautiful regions claimed by both India and Pakistan. Teachers fled the region because of the violence and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism which sought to restrict Kashmiris from pursuing art and replace its gentle Sufi traditions. But a few Kashmiri musicologists are now trying to revive the tradition as they hold classes under the shadow of the gun, look for surviving artists in far flung villages and try to recover lost pieces of music.

Experts say that Sufyana Mosaqi, a style of choral music performed by five to ten musicians, has already lost 130 out of the 180 ‘ragas’ or melodies referred to in ancient scripts. A Kashmiri musicologist, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, has preserved 42 melodies by notating them over the past 15 years in a four-volume monumental book ‘Kashur Sargam’ or Kashmiri music. The fourth volume is under publication. ‘The tradition of verbally passing down ragas from generation to generation also contributed to the disaster besides the ongoing militancy,’ said 75-year-old Aziz, the only contemporary theorist of Kashmiri music. ‘I am weak now. I can’t go looking for more ragas and the situation is not good.’ Aziz, lying in bed in his house in Srinagar, the summer capital of the bloodied Himalayan region, said he traveled to remote villages and towns of Kashmir, met old musicians, music lovers and collected Sufyana ragas for his project.

Also lost is the once-celebrated Hafiza dance associated with the Sufyana Mosaqi. A solo female dance, the Hafiza expresses the meaning of poems sung by musicians through delicate postures and gliding steps similar to the Kathak dance tradition in northern India. The popular Hafiza dance was performed by Kashmiri women to the accompaniment of Sufyana Kalam or spiritual poetry, but musicians say Hafizas or female dancers disappeared from the scene in the 1940s after some were linked with prostitution.

Sufism is a gentle Muslim way of life preached by Sufi saints in Kashmir, which was known for its scenic beauty, Sufi poets and religious tolerance before the rebellion broke out in late 1989 in which more than 45,000 people have died. Sufi music and its mystic dance were brought to the idyllic Himalayan valley from Central Asia in the 15th century. Many musicians still sing Persian poems. Some instruments also face extinction. The dhokra, an antique Kashmiri drum, has been replaced by the Indian tabla instrument. Very few players are left to string the Saz-e-Kashmir, a violin-like instrument. The other instruments used for performing Sufyana are the stringed santoor and Kashmiri sitar. ‘The recent build-up of social and political tensions has created an environment acutely dangerous to such already vulnerable traditions as Sufyana,’ wrote American music researcher, Jozef M. Pacholczyk in his book, ‘The Classical Music of Kashmir.’

Ironically while Sufi music is struggling for survival in Kashmir, its popularity is growing in elsewhere in India. A popular Punjabi singer, Rabbi Shergill’s album with a distinctive Sufi touch has been one of the biggest sellers in recent weeks and Sufi music festivals with international singers from Pakistan and Iran are big draws. Some Kashmiris say the Indian government has deliberately sought to snuff out their culture. ‘Music and arts of other Indian states received help from New Delhi while Kashmir’s music and art was deliberately ignored since 1947,’ said Imtiyaz Ahmad Shah, a music lover. ‘They pushed this precious art to a shambles.’
At the end of British rule in 1947, Indian rulers took over the Himalayan region, when a Hindu king of then independent Jammu and Kashmir state acceded to India in return for military aid. But government officials said they were committed to preserving Kashmir’s rich cultural traditions, the country’s only Muslim-majority state. ‘We are trying our best to save this great art. We are frequently holding Sufyana concerts to woo people for learning, I am sure we will not let it die down,’ said Ramesh Mehta, secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art and Culture.

from Reuters

————————————————————————-

The presence of Caucasian models in Indian advertisements has grown in the past three years, industry analysts say. The trend reflects deep cultural preferences for fair skin in this predominantly brown-skinned nation of more than 1 billion people. But analysts say the fondness for “fair” is also fueled by a globalized economy that has drawn ever more models from Europe to cities such as Mumbai, India’s cultural capital.

“The Indian mind-set prefers light skin. My pictures are routinely Photoshopped to make me look a bit lighter — a lot lighter, actually,”Riya Ray, 23, a dark-skinned Indian model, said with a laugh. “But when I work in Britain and France, my color is praised as exotic. It is a two-way trend: Indian models are going abroad, and foreign models are coming here.”

White models, who usually visit India on three-month work visas, earn $500 to $1,500 for a single shoot, a rate that is relatively low, largely because the models tend to come from developing European countries and are new to the international scene.

From Sunday’s Washington Post

———————————————————–

excerpt from Little India

Is this fair?

Shah Rukh Khan, the undisputed Bollywood King and role model for millions in India, is touting Fair and Handsome, a whitening cream from Emami for men in commercials that hit the market this month. King Khan, whose charisma could sell just about anything to anyone, is telling hordes of young people in India and the Diaspora, most of them dark skinned, that fairness is somehow crucial to success. 

Well, at least one can say that racial stereotypes are now genderless, an equal opportunity offender! 

For decades South Asian women have been drilled with the message that fairness equates to beauty and that a whiter complexion is key to getting ahead in life, in marriage and at work. Since 1978, Hindustan Unilever’s Fair & Lovely has sold its magic potion to millions of women, monopolizing a majority share of the skin whitening market in India, which is growing at a steady clip of 10-15 per cent per year. Several cosmetic companies have jumped on the bandwagon, including Emami, Nivea,  Ponds, Garnier, the Body Shop, Jolen, Avon, L’Oreal, Lancome, Yves Saint-Laurent, Clinique, Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, and Revlon. A recent article in The New York Times noted, “Skin-lightening products are by far the most popular product in India’s fast-growing skin care market, so manufacturers say they ignore them at their peril.” 

Shah Rukh Khan, seen here with Priyanka Chopra at the premier of Don, is hawking Fair and Handsome, a whitening cream from Emami for men in commercials that hit the market recently.

Euromonitor International, a research firm, estimates the $318 million India market for skin care has grown by 43 percent since 2001. Didier Villanueva, country manager for L’Oreal India, told the Times that half of this market is fairness creams, with 60-65 percent of Indian women using these products daily. 

“I think the color bias among Indians is mostly a sexist issue,” says Aneel Karnani, associate professor of strategy at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and the author of a business study on Fair & Lovely. “It is true that even men feel they need to be ‘whiter’ and Unilever does market some products targeted at men. This is probably due to racist biases from colonial times, but the bigger issue is the sexist bias. There is much greater pressure on women to be fairer, because this is society’s and men’s notion of beauty.” 

Does one have to be fair to be successful or loved? The ads for the cream always depict a dark, unhappy and self-conscious woman, shut off from opportunities. The moment she starts applying the cream, she turns several shades lighter, gets the plum job and supreme self-confidence.

So where did this fairness-fetish come from? It has most frequently been blamed on the British Raj and identification with the colonizers, but historians also trace the prejudice to Vedic times, when the ideals of feminine beauty included a fair skin. 

Miniature paintings have a rainbow of complexions, but the darker skins are of attendants and servers, while the royalty and privileged class are fair. In India’s bazaar art the mighty Gods and Goddesses, except Krishna, who is the blue-skinned, are rosy pink. Poems and shayari across the ages celebrates sangemarmar sa badan (marble-like body) and chand sa mukhda (moon-faced). 

“Indian culture is deeply marked by two experiences: caste and colonialism,” says Vijay Prashad, professor of South Asian Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and author of several books including The Karma of Brown Folk. “The former, as a system, pushed down certain communities, either through untouchability or else the idea of hierarchy itself, so that even those who were not untouchables had to reckon with being seen as inferior to others.” 

He adds: “Race-thinking and racism came to India via colonialism, and they marked the reformulation of caste. In other words, when race-thinking came to India, the worst elements of caste were re-cast, as it were, on racial lines. The meaning of varna, for instance, was seen as a hreference to skin color rather than to feudal standards. European racism entered India through the hierarchy of caste; European racism ‘modernized’ the worst aspects of the caste system.”

Historians, anthropologists and psychologists may well argue over the reasons, but there is no dispute that the preference for white is entrenched in the India mindset. Gori (white) is a compliment and Kalia (black) is a put down. 

But what is something as archaic as Fair & Lovely doing in America, land of the free, home of the liberated woman? Surely, women of South Asian origin aren’t still hooked to the mantra of white skin to solve all of life’s problems? Every Indian store Little India called all over the country stocked Fair & Lovely and some also offered a range of ayurvedic skin whitening creams as well, such as Shahnaz Husain’s Shafair and Fair One Cream, all promising a fairer skin in weeks. 

Indian men are now being lured with the same color motivations. The men’s fairness market is booming in India, with Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and Emami battling it out with products like Fair & Lovely’s Menz Activ and Fair and Handsome respectively.

Writes Gopalkrishna Seshan in Business Standard: “When Emami was studying the market for ways to break HUL’s stranglehold on the fairness products market – HUL’s Fair & Lovely has been the undisputed market leader since its launch in the 1970s – it experienced an epiphany: over a third of Fair & Lovely’s customers were men.” It is to capitalize on this large hidden market that Emami has come up with Fair and Handsome, a $10 million brand, which is reputed to be growing at 25 percent a year. 

“Films are a hreflection of society. So Bollywood, like much of Indian soeciety, did believe that fair is beautiful.” 

So now the Indian man is being held to the standards of the color code: not only is he expected to be brainy and bright – a surgeon, engineer or a call center worker at the very least – but now he has to be fair too! On its website, Fair and Handsome asks, “Why there is need for fair skin?” The answer, it says, “To look attractive, else not good looking, people will not want to talk, it affects our confidence.”

Khubsoorti hai shakti (Beauty is strength) is the slogan of many of these whitening creams, but of course, beauty is code for a fair skin. The men’s product tagline is Badal do apni kahani (change your story) and here too it’s a whitening agent that helps transform destiny. The ads are a bit over the top, as darkish stuntmen become star heroes once they use the cream and simple, cowering women transform into self-confident divas astride jets as the paparazzi go wild with their cameras. 

Given the surging demand, scores of imitators of Fair & Lovely have cropped up in India: Fair & Natural, Fair & Sweet, Famous & Beauty, Famous & Lovely, Face and Lovely, Fure & Beauty, Fair & Care, Fairy & Lovely, Fain & Lovely, Fresh Look, Fine Love. Hindustan Lever even offers Fair & Lovely Body Fairness Milk, which takes care of the entire body and “its gentle formulation gives fairness all year round.” No point in having a fair face if the rest of your body is dark.

The color preference seems to cut across the country’s geography. Even South Indians, who are darker than North Indians, show a distinct bias toward fairness. Most of the top heroines in Southern cinema, Hema Malini, Vijayantimala and Sridevi, are fair. All the great heroes, MGR, NTR as well as the current hot favorite Rajnikant, are fairer than their audience. 

Roksana Badruddoja Rahman of Rutgers University, who studied skin color and marriage choices among Indian women in New Jersey, concluded that “feelings related to beauty and attractiveness and marriage marketability are partially determined by the lightness of their skin.” Another researcher, Zareen Grewal of the University of Michigan, similarly found that South Asian immigrants covet whiteness: “Particular physical qualities are always fetishized in constructions of beauty. However, in these communities, the stigma attached to dark color intersects with broader racial discourses in the U.S. That’s why a Desi mother of three daughters in their twenties, explicitly hrefers to dark coloring as a physical abnormality and deficiency.’

Atleast one such “dark and ugly” bride became a cause celebre in the U.S. media last year. Vijai Pandey of Belchertown, Mass., who traveled to India to meet a prospective bride, judged her too ugly and dark for his handsome and light-skinned son. He sued her U.S. relative for fraud and conspiracy for misleading him about her looks and complexion! 

In the Indian media you’ll be hard-pressed to find a dark face, be it in an ad for cell phones, bridal fashions or insurance. Everyone is fair or pleasantly “wheatish.” In Indian television serials, so hugely popular in India and now a staple in the U.S., everyone from daughters-in-law to mothers-in-law, not to mention children and male family members, is extremely fair. They all must be using Fair & Lovely. 

Bollywood has long been obsessed with the fairness mystique. Says Anupama Chopra, a noted film journalist: “Films are a hreflection of society. So Bollywood, like much of Indian society, did believe that fair is beautiful. The heroines especially were expected to be fair, have big eyes and long hair. I recall one particularly nasty film in which Rishi Kapoor had a very dark wife. The wife actually encouraged and understood his affair with the much fairer girlfriend, because she felt she was too ugly to merit his love.” This characteristic carries over to recent films, like the hugely successful Vivah, in which the fairer girl, Amrita Rao, gets the rich, city boy, but her dark skinned cousin isn’t as fortunate. 

Indian youth seem far less prejudiced: “The new generation has been accepting of people of different colors and races, because we have been more in touch with people outside of our own color and race and I think people have started to realize that it’s more than just what’s on the outside and now that we have more interaction between male and female, it’s been understood that it’s more about the personality than what you see on the outside that defines the person, not your color.” 

Babber doesn’t have a problem with whitening creams, but quibbles with the motivations of some people who apply them: “I think if people are using them, because society wants them to or their family wants them to, then it’s an issue. If they as individuals feel they want to be lighter, it gives them more self-confidence, if that’s something they personally want, then it’s a healthy choice to make for themselves. Otherwise it’s an unhealthy choice, because they are struggling with somebody else’s view of how they should be, a change from the outside being foisted on them.”

Of course, Indians are not alone in their color biases. Creams like Fair & Lovely are doing a rip-roaring business in countries as diverse as Mexico, Malaysia, China, Brazil and Korea. Even in America, many African Americans use whitening creams, peddled euphemistically as treatments for blotchy skin and hyper-pigmentation. It’s as if the whole world has enrolled in a white seminary or madrassa to chant the virtues of fairness. Color may be just a matter of pigmentation, but cultures everywhere seem to attach a special cachet to whiteness, an almost unconscious belief in its magical power to open doors, to make life better.

It will likely take generations to undo the brainwashing.

Years of travel have made me long for exotic spots, places at the edge of the wilderness, where one might find a few creature comforts along with a chance to discover something new about human nature. Can such longings ever be satisfied? I found the answer recently, on a trip to the Nilgiri Mountains of southern India.

I went there with only the vaguest of expectations — glorious days hiking in verdant meadows at above 8,000 feet, and long nights by the fireplace, Kingfisher beer at hand, falling asleep over books of ancient travels that would wend their way into my dreams. It did not quite turn out as planned. An encounter with a tribal people resulted in one of the most memorable trips in recent years.

I arrived in Ooty in early January, fresh from a foray in Sri Lanka. Ooty, the British contraction for Udhagamandalam, is a hill-station set on a high plateau amid spectacular mountain ranges. To get there, I took a bus from the city of Mysore, a ‘Deluxe Coach’ that teetered to one side as it bumped along through the dry jungle of the Bandipur and Mudumalai game sanctuaries. The trip was not without its rewards; at one point, as the driver stopped to pay toll, a young Nilgiri Langur (Trachypithecus johnii) leaped onto the steering wheel, its dark eyes alert and shining, its spiky white mane giving it a strangely punk look. People feverishly snapped pictures, but then the driver swatted at it with a film magazine, and the disappointed creature bounded out of the window into the forest.

As the bus began its climb up into the Western Ghats, wheezing and bumping up along the hairpin bends, the forest gave way to grand escarpments rising out of the shimmering plain, their sides clothed in a mantle of evergreen forests. The furrowed slopes of tea-estates started to appear, and then close-ups of women plucking tea, and small vegetable farms with men standing in the fading sunlight tending their carrot patches. In the tiny villages perched on the edge of the terraced hillsides, barefoot children ran alongside the bus, waving their cricket bats at us. We passed young women walking carefully in flashy slippers, baskets of produce perched delicately on their heads, and young men holding hands and waving.

From the Ooty bus-stand, an auto-rickshaw took me across a rather tentative road to my hotel, the Regency Villas. The hotel sits on Fern Hill, the estate of the Summer Palace of the Maharaja of Mysore. The cottages, all painted in pink, are refurbished hunting lodges from the days of the Raj. The walls come adorned with faded photographs of Mysore royalty gathering on the premises in Victorian times, posing next to slain lions and Englishmen in solar topees. I fell asleep wondering which visitor had slept in my creaky cot a hundred or more years earlier.

The Nilgiris, I knew, were home to a number of hill tribes, including the Todas, who, I had been informed, practiced polyandry, and also the Kurumbas, who were sorcerers. To find out more, I caught a bus to the Tribal Research Center, on the road to Mount Palada.

At the Center, I found a number of model huts, sparse but carefully maintained, along with a few tawdry stuffed birds, spears, and hundreds of botanical specimens in small labeled bottles, presumably the sorcerer’s materia medica. The Director, Dr. Jakka Parthasarthy, apologized for the poor condition of his museum, a result of a lack of government funding. He told me that polyandry among the Toda was rare these days, and that their practice of infanticide and the ritual deflowering of maidens were long extinct.

“If you’re interested in the Todas, you really should visit Vasamalli,” he said. “You’ll find her in Kash mund.”

Kash mund was a mund, a little Toda hamlet of huts and one-room houses, along with a well and a tethered long-horned buffalo. It sat quietly, this ancient hamlet, behind the forbidding wall of the vacation home of Vinod Mallya, the plutocrat responsible for Kingfisher Beer and now Kingfisher Airlines.

Mrs. Vasamalli, a middle-aged lady in a white sari, was lighting little clay lamps outside her tiny residence as a gesture of farewell to the sun.

She explained that the word “Toda” was derived from the word “Tud” in the Toda language, meaning “sacred tree”.

“Our culture is based on a reverence for nature,” she said. “No hunting, no internecine warfare. We are a pastoral people, who have traditionally survived by dairy farming, thanks to the buffalo.”

“How many Todas are left?”

“About fourteen hundred. Maybe a few hundred in five years. Unless you count the ones who are inter-marrying.” She shook her head. “But those ones don’t follow the clan customs.”

A young man walked in. He was tall, with a smooth, angular face, and a look of refinement and quiet dignity.

“This is my eldest son Ponnian,” she said.

As they spoke to each other in Toda, I heard a variety of wet sibilant sounds and tongue-twisting ‘r’s, spoken with an almost recitative formality.

“He’s sweaty because he’s come straight from the golf course,” she said, ruffling his hair.

She explained that Ponnian had started out as a caddy several years earlier at the Ooty Golf Club at Wenlock Downs. He was now a scratch golfer, given free clubs and access to a trainer, and was now by far the best player in the southern region.

Ponnian had recently graduated from college. He told me he was hoping his degree, golfing skills and other athletic achievements (he was also a marathoner) would help him get a job in the Army.

“Would you like to come with us for a festival tomorrow?” Mrs. Vasamalli asked. “It’s the salt-water ceremony, for the buffalos.”

We set out around eight in the morning, driving in a Mahindra Jeep towards Emerald. The road circled lazily around a tea-estate, swung through valleys speckled with yellow gorse, and then climbed up through a region of dense eucalyptus groves.

“This is just great!” I said, inhaling the delicious scent of eucalyptus through the open window.

“The eucalyptus trees are a menace,” Ponnian said. “Australian imports, first brought by the British. Everyone, the Forest Department as well as the estate owners, has been planting them like crazy ever since. They drain the subsoil, and have made most of our sacred streams run dry.”

“Our dairy temples have to be built near streams,” Mrs. Vasamalli explained, as the jeep stopped for us to don the brilliantly-patterned, hand-woven shawls that were required for the ceremony. “It’s only if we perform our rituals properly that we can go to Amunawdr.”

“Where is that?” I asked.

“Further west, do you see it?” Ponnian said. “It is a sin for a Toda to point to any of our sacred peaks.”

I spotted a massive peak, tinged with blue shadows, with two smaller siblings nestling on each side. Between them, valleys shimmered into the distance.

“The souls of the buffalo go into one valley, those of humans into the other,” Mrs. Vasamalli said quietly.

“We don’t have the right to visit most of our sacred places,” Ponnian said.

The road ended at the bottom of a hill, and we had to trek up the last mile, climbing a steep and grassy slope. At the top was a mand consisting of a row of eight tiny brick houses, built above a brook. I could see an ancient barrel-vaulted dairy temple below, made of bamboo and mountain grass. It was an extremely modest structure, but Ponnian had told me how, to keep them in good repair, he and his mates had walked fifty miles to find the increasingly rare variety of mountain grass.

A long line of Todas could be seen descending the slope towards a pond below, followed by two herds of buffalos guided by young Todas. Ponnian explained that the Todas had come from far and wide for the ceremony. Though it was a working day, there were nearly a hundred of them in their shawls, lean and tall, striding purposefully towards the pond.

The buffalos drank rather greedily. After they were done, each of the Todas cupped his hand in the water, and poured it into his mouth.

Outside the mand, a crowd of small children came running out in their Sunday best, followed by a crowd of rather striking Toda women, all with striking looks and long tresses. One of them sat down to get her hair braided.

“Wait, he’s taking your picture,” Mrs. Vasamalli giggled. “In your nightdress!”

The men meanwhile gathered by the dairy temple, in front of a bare-chested priest. After a short ceremony, they drank freshly churned buffalo buttermilk, served by the priest in small leaf cups. One of the men brought it over. It tasted pretty good, but then I am fond of buttermilk.

The men began dancing, a slow rotation with much banging of staves and cries of the sacred syllable “Ho”. As they danced, a pair of gorgeous flycatchers flitting above them, the Todas seemed to be part of an ancient pattern, one with the trees and mountains and the eternal sky. Meanwhile, the women had started their own dance, with Mrs. Vasamalli leading the way, singing a playful song that invited a dear but reluctant buffalo to come and drink. I tapped my feet but did not join in, for I was guzzling on wild honey, fresh off the comb. Before shoving a slab of the sticky mess into my mouth, I was instructed to place a dollop of honey on my forehead, as a mark of respect to the bee.

The dancing went on for several hours, and was followed by a lavish vegetarian feast, served to me inside one of the houses, which, I noticed, was spotlessly clean. I ate heartily, grateful to the women who, I knew, had to fetch water all the way from a stream.

After the meal, the men sat under the trees, smoking and conversing of tribal matters, while the women stayed inside and caught up on family gossip. A child came up to me and taught me the basics of counting in Toda.

There are many other enjoyable things to do in Ooty, including visiting the Botanical Gardens, which even in winter boasts a marvelous collection of hundreds of rare orchids. Outside the Botanical Gardens, I ran into another threatened culture at the Tibetan market, run by refugees from the giant settlement of Kushalnagar, in the Indian state of Karnataka. I had a wonderful time drinking tea with them and talking about the Dalai Lama, who had honored Kushalnagar with a visit a few weeks earlier. Other activities I recommend include trekking, visiting the old British graveyard in St. Stephen’s Church, browsing the Victorian fiction in the cavernous Nilgiri Library, and dining on fine Indian and international cuisine at the Savoy Hotel and the Holiday Inn. And if you happen to go there, like I did, in the winter, to hike in verdant meadows and to read a tale of faraway travel by the fireplace, a Kingfisher or warm brandy in hand, please do give a thought to the Todas, who have been trying ever so hard to preserve their natural way of life amid the hubbub of modern India.

Although the comics and the magazines found a following among Indian children, the books authored by Indians took longer to find acceptance. Most children were by then so totally hooked on the wonderfully limited world of Enid Blyton that it was impossible to wean them away. And so we continued to pay homage at the altar of the Western authors. We graduated, gradually and reluctantly, from Blyton to Agatha Christie, PG Wodehouse and Georgette Heyer. The boys disdained to read such namby-pamby books and instead became avid fans of the Western sagas of JT Edson and Luis L’amour. And in the meanwhile the world of publishing in India continued to grow. And we continued to remain oblivious of it, deliberately turning our backs on it. 

And in the meanwhile another quiet revolution had been brewing, boiling up in the mind of one man, a genius far ahead of his times. This man was Anant Pai, better known today in India as ‘Uncle Pai’. Pai had worked for various publications when he was struck by the idea that what the Indian child needed was a comic book that would educate him/her about the wonderful history and impart a sense of the culture of the country. And this was how Amar Chitra Katha was launched in 1967.

Amar Chitra Katha, literally ‘Immortal Pictorial Tales’, started with the tale of Krishna, the most loved God in the pantheon of gods in India. What Pai achieved in these comics was amazing – the story was retold in a simplified form, encapsulated to interest the child reader. The colourful illustrations ensured that children would be attracted and want to read the story. Success was slow in coming, but once it did there was no stopping either the series or the man behind it. As the popularity of the comic book spread, Pai introduced various stories. He selected tales from the history of India, introducing individual books on great leaders, illustrious rulers and religious heads. He also introduced children to the many stories about the various gods of India, stressing the importance of festival and religious practices.

Today Amar Chitra Katha has over 500 titles and is a venerated institution. It came at a time when the Indian child, pressurized by the need to master English, had no time to pay attention to the vast storehouse of stories in the culture of his country. Amar Chitra Katha has introduced several generations of Indian children to the stories that make up the fabric of their lives. The success of this series prompted the intrepid Pai into launching Tinkle, a magazine for children with stories narrated through the comic book format.

The amazing story of Amar Chitra Katha started in 1967-68 when an attempt to translate the myriad tales from Indian history and culture into comics was made to cover a wide spectrum of titles . It was the creative genius and foresight of the legendary editor, Anant Pai and the entrepreneurial zeal and courage of the publisher G.L. Mirchandani, Chairman of India Book House that give birth to a brand which delighted generations of children( and their parents) since then.

It is said that one day as he was watching a quiz programme on television; Anant Pai saw that the participating children from English-medium schools were well versed with the lore of Tarzan and the exploits of Greek gods but could not answer simple questions about the Ramayana. That is when he decided to use the popular medium of comics to acquaint Indian children with their rich cultural heritage. And god bless that decision! I passed many history exams in my childhood thanks to Amar Chitra Katha. I still remember that as a student of class 3, I was the only one who could give the entire list of Mughal dynasty in a school quiz. That was easy, for I had read about all those emperors in Amar Chitra Katha and my disciplined sisters used to keep the comics on historical characters in the strict order of history.

Through the medium of comics, Amar Chitra Katha brought to life the colourful mythologies and legends of India. The Route to your Roots was the catch phrase coined to describe the efforts of Amar Chitra Katha to tell tales of heroes and heroines from Indian mythology, history and folklore.

These comics enriched my storehouse of stories manifold. I still feel that my knowledge of folk tales, tales from Buddhist Jatakas, Jainism, Panchtantra, classics of various Indian languages and Hindu myths is much more than most others. All thanks to Amar Chitra Katha which made me associate each story with beautiful illustrations and well chosen dialogues. Later in life when I read the original stories/books , the images from comics were still in my mind. Best part about these comics was their factual correctness.

According to the strict editorial policy, each detail had to be culled from a reputed reference and had to be available for any query, because Amar Chitra Katha, by the 1980s was taken as an authentic secondary source of information. I feel sad that Anant Pai’s contribution in heralding this cultural information revolution still lacks proper acknowledgement in terms of civilian honours like Padma Bhushan .

What next? I am inspired!

Anyone ready to fund my Yoga Comics idea —- riding on the global yoga wave?