Left Jingoism

37

Chauvinism can also be defined as a volatile virtue exploited by the insecure within their ethnic territorial limits. It expresses itself through militancy and occasionally through ugly paper-snatching and distasteful skirmishes in Parliament. There is greater peril, however, with the camouflaged variety of chauvinism. You expect a regional party like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to be jingoistic to the core. You expect the DMK leadership to try out every trick in the book to set up a maritime university in Chennai. What you do not anticipate is the virulent Left response. The cadre is taught to sing terribly out-of-tune internationals at the party's social and political functions. They grow up with a rudimentary knowledge about the growth and spread of the ism from Europe to the rest of the world. In West Bengal, a Left Front government was sworn into governance for an eternity thirty years ago, long....

Shooting Stars

36

You can't have 21st century icons smelling of decadent, putrescent stardom and proudly declaiming that the world revolves only around them. You can't have a really big star ingeniously pushing each of his personal affairs into the public realm and expecting you to sympathize with his million woes. You can't have another star jabbing at his predecessor because he is so full of himself and because he firmly believes he is the best. Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan are oversized dinosaurs. They dominate the Indian mindscape because the idol-starved nation will not let go off the Jurassic Age. The decade of the larger-than-life angry young man was dead and buried in the Eighties. Amitabh Bachchan has since survived with some powerful acting in unconventional roles and a carefully acquired television persona. He is a star in his own right. He has delivered hits with the uncanny regularity of....