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The age in which Sarkar worked was dominated by nationalism, given Indias struggle against the British Raj. But these words also hold substance in our time of hyper-nationalism, as Indians turn against other Indians with history (or imitations of it) as their preferred weapon. Reading T.C.A. Raghavans History Men, one is, in fact, startled that while the specifics might have changed, the broad dynamics remain the same in many ways. Then, as today, history provided raw material for multiple visions of the past, interpreted in different ways to cement conflicting ideas of the Indian nation. Debates on historiography, method and even historians own biases afflicted the writing of history in Sarkars time, and scholars found themselves in the cross hairs of chauvinism, regional and national sentiment, language and culture wars, and even plain old-fashioned clashes of ego, then as today.

Raghavans book is a splendid examination of these issues through the constructive and warm relationship Sarkar enjoyed with two other historians, G.S. Sardesai and Raghubir Sinh. The three men held each other in high regard, which is not to say that they agreed with each other on everything. Sarkar often found Sardesai too sympathetic to Maratha pride in his approach to Maratha history, for example, while Sardesai felt Sarkar did not give enough value to understanding different sides of the same story, and the purpose these served for each partys identity. Sinh, the youngest of the three, and the most unusual, given his royal heritage, was deferential to his seniors, but did not hesitate in his work to nuance arguments and challenge some of their conclusions and deeply held beliefs. It was, in fact, their own internal debates and mutual criticism that nourished the partnership for decades.

The relationship began, as Raghavan relates, when Sarkar approached Sardesai in 1904 with a proposition: He was an expert on Persian documents and could provide inputs to Sardesai, if the latter helped him with Marathi sources pertaining to the Mughal period. It was the launch of a fascinating coalition, lasting till death, but fraught also with the troubles such an alliance caused in other quarters. Sarkarwho in many ways dominates the book as the grandest of the threewas a celebrity of sorts, publishing as he did in the English language universe. His work on Aurangzeb, particularly his attacks on the emperors orthodoxy, marked him as a communal" historian for secular nationalists, even as his less than reverential take on Shivaji (who appears in his books as simply Shiva") upset proud Hindu elements with opposite political leanings, in another part of the country.

Naturally, Sardesai, who emerged in the 1920s after a long career at the court of the maharaja of Baroda, received flak from fellow Maharashtrian historians (specifically, the Poona School) for his closeness to Sarkar. That Sarkar used his influence with the British (whose police at one point had tried to charge him with sedition) to help Sardesai gain access to coveted but sealed archives further upset doyens of the Poona School who were denied this and refused even to acknowledge Sardesai as a proper historian. Language politics also played a role: Sardesai wrote in Marathi for the most part, but Sarkars support highlighted Sardesais work outside Maharashtra, to the angst of his rivals. Sarkar, of course, dismissed their criticism, putting it down to envy and labelling the Poona School a clique" unable to rise above its own pettiness.

Raghavanhaving mined a rich archive of correspondence between these men as well as Sinhs library in Sitamau, Madhya Pradeshdoes an excellent job in the book, in clear language and at a pace that never slackens, in explaining how much networks mattered, along with determination and the traditional skill sets of a historian. Sinhs princely connections, for instance, were of great value in gaining access to royal archives, even if these came with their own problems. For instance, Sarkar would write a history of Jaipur for that princely state, only to see the manuscript gather dust. The issue, evidently, was that the court was not keen to have Jaipurs time under Maratha domination advertised, and it was only in the 1980s that Sarkars book was posthumously published, thanks to Sinhs efforts. Sardesai too tried to help Sarkars book see the light of day: A mother-in-law of the Jaipur ruler was Sardesais student, and he made an attempt to use this connection to persuade the maharaja to publish the manuscript.

Among the strengths of this charming book is the biographical element it contains. Sinhs love for history saw him renounce claims to his princely seat, while the quest for the tale of his own ancestors led him to produce a superbly original revisionist account of Malwas history. Sarkars life witnessed tragedy, with two daughters widowed, a son murdered, and a grandson killed in an accident. Sardesai had to face the ire not only of the Poona School but also of his former employer, the Baroda maharaja, who, upset with him for retiring from service, slashed his hard-earned pension. We also get a glimpse, on a happier note, of Sardesais marriage in an entertaining diary entry by his wife. My husband," wrote a scandalized Mrs Sardesai once, thinks I should wear my sari according to the new fashion without one end tucked up behind my back." The issue led to a quarrel between the author of the 3,800-page Marathi Riyasat and his sartorially conservative spouse.

What shines ultimately in the bookand this is Raghavans underlying focusis the sheer love for history that united all three men. They worked in a time of slow communications, when India was still forming itself into a single, modern whole. Their work involved plodding through fields, hunting for forgotten monuments, persuading hesitant families to publish their records, fighting court cases and legal threats, not to speak of negotiating a bureaucracy that had its own interests in manufacturing obstacles. Their work was criticized then, and their methods are in many ways outdated now, but these history men" made phenomenal contributions and authored works of striking quality. And while students of history will entirely relate to Sarkars use of the term mouth-watering" in the context of finding new records, Raghavans tribute to the man and his peers is equally delightful, revealing also to the lay reader what investigating the past entails, and the dynamics that shape any mission to understand Indias historya story not just of chronicles but also of the chroniclers.

Manu S. Pillai is the author of The Ivory Throne (2015)and Rebel Sultans (2018).

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.

Link:
The three men who wrote modern Indias history - Livemint

It is less well known that the Spanish flu had already created a sense in the interwar period that proper disease surveillance and free effective treatments were desperately needed. Eugenicists had claimed that the irresponsible poor and immigrants were to blame for succumbing to disease, but it became clear that unhealthy environments and underdeveloped states were the problem.

In Sweden, the pandemic revealed the squalor in which the poor lived. Sick children were found on the floor in homes without beds. The welfare state called folkhemmet, or peoples home was to end such conditions once and for all; it not so much leveled citizens (Swedish capitalists lived very comfortably in the folkhemmet) as enabled a people to protect themselves from collective risks.

Of course, not all crises bring people together. Some divide us, with climate change an obvious example. But the current experience of shared vulnerability is so visceral that political entrepreneurs who usually profit from polarization might have a hard time convincing citizens that this is all hoax, or partisan warfare.

True, competence can always be recoded as just one side in the culture wars, and experts are suspected of being condescending liberal elites; anti-vaxxers and populists have managed to reduce citizens trust in government health advice to dangerously low levels in Italy and the United States.

But things change when your or your grandparents life really does depend directly on the experts, and when you realize that no gated community can keep a virus out. As Jonathan D. Quick, former chair of the Global Health Council, has argued, one is only ever as safe as the least safe place. That sounds like a version of the motto of the Wobblies, the radical trade union, that an injury to one is an injury to all. Nobody can buy immunity, let alone immortality; nobody can wash his hands of conditions that make the United States look more like a failed state than a functioning democracy.

A decade ago, the historian Tony Judt wrote, If social democracy has a future, it will be a social democracy of fear. To be sure, fear can always be turned against foreigners something right-wing populists are busy trying to do now. But it can also motivate us to see through the fog of fake individualism and realize that interdependence requires proper infrastructure: from a public health system to an informational infrastructure where platforms like Facebook are forced to remove falsehoods that cost lives.

A large economic stimulus, as the White House is proposing, is all well and good, but structural change is whats desperately needed; charity is appreciated, but will never make up for a dysfunctional government; and business, which by definition, is in it for profit (and now bailouts), cannot be relied on to take care of us.

Jan-Werner Mller teaches at Princeton and is the author of the forthcoming Democracy Rules.

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Originally posted here:
We Must Help One Another or Die - The New York Times

The cancellation emails started arriving last Wednesday. Openings were called off and galleries announced they would operate on an appointment-only basis, if at all. By Thursday evening, many prominent museums had announced closures, with few offering even tentative reopening dates. Cinemas, theaters, and concert halls went dark. As governors and mayors around the country contemplate shelter-in-place orders for citizens, the cultural sector is already shut down.

Much of what has been lost cant be quantified: poetry readings that will never happen, long-planned performances postponed indefinitely, solo exhibitions the public will never see. Some of this disappointment will be mitigated by the virtual presentations that curators are racing to prepare. The closures could be also short-lived; museums in China are already starting to operate again. The artists and performers affected by an immediate loss of income will benefit from some of the stimulus funds that Congress is likely to release, and some galleries could take advantage of measures designed to protect small businesses of all kinds, including bookstores, restaurants, and bars. Mutual aid funds, like the one set up for cinema workers in New York, have helped furloughed employees through the first week of this crisis.

But these measures are inadequate to address the longer-term economic impact of the pandemic. Things are going to get worse. The art world as it existed as of February 2020 wont come back. Its time to formulate a bailout that can sustain artists and culture workers in the short term while laying plans to rebuild cultural infrastructure for a sustainable future.

The pandemic has revealed weak points across society: in our patchwork healthcare system, in our social safety, and in our federal crisis management capacity. Theres no reason to believe that the system of private philanthropy on which the art world has come to rely will prove more resilient. Cultural funding is contingent on the wealthiest citizens, and were witnessing a potentially vast decimation of wealth.

Many of the institutions that support artistic productionboth for-profit and nonprofitare precarious in the best of times. Short-term closures combined with an extended demand shock could wipe out the small and midsize art galleries that have played a vital role in nurturing emerging artists and accelerate the consolidation of the commercial trade around a small number of large dealers.

Artists, and the institutions that provide them with platforms, are now facing the worst economic circumstances since the Great Depression. This comparison sounds bleak, but it should also offer hope. In the 1930s, artists pushed the government to create support structures robust enough to counter the economic crisis. Rather than aim to keep a collapsing system alive, they sought to create a new and more equitable one.

Perceiving that formerly wealthy people were no longer able or willing to support the arts, the writer and curator Holger Cahill came up with an effective alternative: bolster a government agency that would give cash directly to artists. Cahill led the Federal Art Project, a New Deal initiative that worked in tandem with the Works Progress Administration. Through the FAP, thousands of artists received weekly payments of about $24, equivalent to $460 in todays dollars. In return, they created easel paintings, worked on mural teams, and documented folk art and craft traditions around the country. Related programs catalyzed the creation of new public museums, like the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Cahill perceived the Depression as an opportunity to realign the role of culture within society. He bemoaned the pre-crash understanding of art: We have helped to push art from its honorable place as a vital necessity of everyday life and have made of it a luxury product intended for the casual enjoyment of jaded wealth. And wealth has practically stopped demanding the product. As private demand lagged, his solution was to reimagine art as a public good.

The immediate short-term effect was to keep artists working, but over time it led to a major cultural flourishing. The Whitney Museums exhibition Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 19251945 shows how the FAP laid the foundation for the great postwar rise of art in the United States. The major artists of the New York School all received support from FAP as they took aesthetic influence from their Mexican counterparts.

There are of course plenty of reasons to be wary of broad public support for the arts. Creative efforts often mix poorly with bureaucratic processes. During the Depression, many artists complained about the burdens of meeting FAP requirements. During the culture wars of the 1980s, the National Endowment for the Arts became a political football. But these experiences offer lessons to build on, not templates to replicate exactly. What FAP shows is that robust social support for artists and art centers succeeded within living memory.

As industries across the board line up for bailouts, it is time to assert culture as an essential industry and map out a role for the arts that would have seemed unimaginable weeks ago. A new Federal Art Project probably wouldnt be devoted to mural painting, but it could offer an alternative to a flailing market and channel artworks into public collections. Museums, now supported through tax-deductible donations, could receive more direct public funding in exchange for offering free admission. Private markets and philanthropy will be changed on the other side of this pandemic, so it is time once again to envision what art looks like as a public good.

Continued here:
The Cultural Bailout We Need Has Been a Long Time Coming - ARTnews

The Brexit culture wars are back. On Saturday, the Guardian published an article entitled: 'Brexit means coronavirus vaccine will be slower to reach the UK.' As usual with such pieces, the words 'if' and 'could' do more heavy lifting than Atlas.

The gist of the article's argument is that leaving the European Medicines Agency (EMA) means the UK will no longer be able to benefit from processes that expedite the authorisation of pharmaceuticals for use. This is because manufacturers may decide to meet the approval process for the much larger EU market first before applying to the UK regulator for approval here. That might be true, but only if the UK sets its own regulations in this way. There is an alternative to this approach, which the authors recognise briefly:

'The UK could, in theory, choose to recognise any approval decision made by the EMA to prevent delays, but this seems at odds with the UK governments pledge to take back control.'

And there we have it. Apparently, faced with a raging pandemic, the UK government would refuse to use a vaccine licensed for use elsewhere because it doesnt fit with a slogan.

The obvious point here is that recognising the EMA's decision would not be 'rule-taking'. Rule-taking would be being refused permission by someone else to use a drug that another regulator had approved for use, as is the case in EU member states.

In reality, the government could followSingaporeandrecognise any pharmaceuticals that have been approved by any of the principle regulatory agencies: The US FDA, the Australian TGA, the EMA, Health Canada, or, indeed, the UKs MHRA, following a six-week verification evaluation.

This is the 'mutual recognition' model of global trade, beloved of free-market Brexiteers like Daniel Hannan. It works by recognising that other governments have systems that achieve the same objective, for exampleensuring that medicine is safe for use. Just as people visit the USA and Australia and find the food safe to eat and the medicine safe for use, why shouldnt you simply be able to buy Australian and American food or medicine here without further regulation?

The EU model of trade is different, demanding that other countries comply with their regulations in order to sell products within the single market. As such, any medicine not approved by the EMA cannot be sold there.

And given that research shows that the FDA tends to approve drugs faster than the EMA, it is possible that because of Brexit the UK could get faster access to a vaccine depending on where it is developed and licensed first.

A single line bill in Parliament could ensure instant approval for the vaccine. In fact, if the Government wanted to approve a treatment invented by a chap that Matt Hancock met down the pub then it could.

This is the meaning of 'taking back control': the government can do whatever it wants without seeking permission elsewhere, so long as it can pass a bill through Parliament. And yes, that includes approving a vaccine for Covid-19.

See the rest here:
Brexit won't stop the coronavirus vaccine reaching the UK - Spectator.co.uk

My entertainment options this week were a movie in which liberal elites hunt down and murder deplorables for sport deaths that are ultra gory and played for laughs and a Hulu documentary in which Hillary Clinton explains with a chuckle and a smile why the policies supported by her 2016 opponent, Bernie Sanders policies like universal healthcare and prison reform, which would help countless Americans are just not doable. In other words, essentially the same thing.

The Hunt was supposed to be released last fall, but it was put on hold after some people wondered if a movie about political polarity and divisiveness in contemporary society, in which a bunch of poor people die violently was really going to be a good idea. Released now, the controversy is its main selling point. And since we are in the beginning stages of a pandemic for which the United States is not remotely prepared and in which the uninsured, elderly, and poor are much more likely to die well, lets just say the timing creates a certain tone.

The co-writer and producer Damon Lindelof who recently read the legendary anti-fascist comic Watchmen and thought, huh, okay, but what if instead we made the cops the heroes? has created a world where a group of rich, NPR-listening liberals, who bicker about gendered language and whether black or African-American is the more acceptable term, drug, abduct, and murder Trump voters for sport. One of the Trump voters actually isnt a Trump voter but is brought there by mistake, and not being a redneck hillbilly idiot, she manages to fight back. I think thats a metaphor. For something.

Ultimately the film wants to pretend to be a commentary on cancel culture and our new culture wars. It turns out the whole plan for liberal elites to hunt deplorables becomes a reality because deplorables cant take a joke about liberal elites hunting deplorables. The slapstick deaths are supposed to indicate that hey, were just playing around here, rather than show a callous disregard for human life on the part of the film-makers. And if you dont find it funny to watch a woman impaled on spikes or a man blown up on a landmine or a woman choking to death after shes poisoned, you must be one of those humorless cancel culture freaks who need to learn to take a joke.

But of course if youre from and of the coasts its easy to believe these new culture wars are just about a difference of opinion about gun control or abortion and not about the hopelessness and loss of meaning and instability causing the deaths of despair killing white middle Americans without college degrees through suicide and addiction. Its similar to how one segment of the population will remember the culture wars of the 1990s as a discussion about whether a crucifix of Jesus Christ submerged in urine should be considered art, and not about whether the thousands of gay people, IV drug users, hemophiliacs, and others deemed ultimately disposable by the government and society should have been allowed to die from Aids. Or as a debate about whether children should be exposed to vulgarity in music, and not about whether black people or people in poor neighborhoods should be murdered, brutalized, and harassed by the police forces that claim to protect them.

Its not clear that anyone involved with this film has ever even been to the south. The star, Betty Gilpin, plays a working-class woman named Crystal who spends the entirety of the film holding her jaw as if she is trying not to let any spit from the chewing tobacco dribble out, and yet at no time does she partake in chewing tobacco. Its like she saw a picture of someone once and thought, Oh, that must be how they do it down there, but no one explained to her its not just that all southerners have a severe underbite. But then no one involved in the production thought it might be weird for the action of the film to play out in Croatia, a country still dealing with the aftermath of its own uh, lets call it political polarity and divisiveness, I guess.

Im sure the millionaires who endorsed billionaire Mike Bloomberg in the Democratic primaries will watch this movie on their private jets and have a good chuckle at the depiction of clueless and out-of-touch elites heading to Croatia on their private plane with a cargo full of white trash. Oh my God, thats so us! I also enjoy a little caviar snack while on my way to my private manor in the Balkans. And then theyll go back to deciding which underprivileged group should receive their charity this month instead of just paying their taxes, which could fund an adequate public healthcare system that would keep people from having to beg online to afford chemotherapy.

Cinemas across the US are currently closing because of coronavirus; perhaps only the elites who can afford private screenings of The Hunt in their palatial estates will be able to see it. In the meantime, the rest of us are about to go on quarantine lockdown, forced to sustain ourselves on whatever mediocre bilge Netflix has put out this week. I think thats a metaphor. For something.

Link:
The Hunt depicts elites hunting the poor for sport. The 'satire' feels a little too real - The Guardian