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Does Marriage Still Define the Life of Indian Women?

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“What does young India want? At the launch of his sixth book, on just this subject, the popular author Chetan Bhagat offered an inadvertently revealing comment: ‘Naukri aur chokri' - jobs and girls,” Nilanjana S. Roy wrote in The International Herald Tribune.

“In a country where more than 65 percent of the population is under the age of 35, most girls and women are still defined by one major life event - marriage,” Ms. Roy wrote.

Popular television soaps in India “demonstrate this to the point of exhaustion,” she wrote. “Pavitra Rishta” (A Sacred Relationship) on Zee, one of the biggest TV networks, “is about a mother's search for the perfect husband for her daughter,” she wrote. While “Balika Vadhu” (Child Bride) on Colors TV, a popular entertainment channel, follows the life of a young girl, married at the age of 8, trying to find an identity for herself as an adult.

Ira Trivedi, a best-selling author who both holds an M.B.A. and was a contestant in the Miss India beauty pageant, has some perspective to offer. “Marriage still remains of prime importance, family is still the central unit,” she said of her generation of young urban women. “Bollywood and TV - mass media in general - really shape their mores, especially when it comes to marriage and relationships.”

There is, Ms. Trivedi said, a lack of role models for young Indian women, especially those in their 20s. “They can't look to their mothers, who had arranged marriages instead of the love marriages they want,” she said. “And they don't have too many role models beyond Bollywood, or a few media figures, perhaps successful professionals like Chanda Kocchar,” the chief executive of ICICI Bank, the largest private bank in India.

Some statistics reinforce Ms. Trivedi's point. The starkest figure comes from the Indian government's National Family Health Survey, the largest survey of its kind. In 2009, it found that 47 percent of Indian women were married by the age of 18. Many of these women have entered the paid work force, especially in urban India, but tend to look for jobs that will not interfere with family life.

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How Bollywood\'s Views on Pakistan Evolved

August 16, 2012, 12:49 am
By RAKSHA KUMAR

If one looks at India's national trajectory through the lens of the Hindi film industry, in hundred years of its existence, there will be one major gap: India's troubled relationship with Pakistan was conveniently ignored by the industry for decades.

The Hindi film industry, usually a proactive observer of social issues, chose to keep mum about the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and, interestingly, made no references to Pakistan in any of the films in the initial years of India's independence. “Partition was a personal embarrassment for various people in the industry,” said Professor Nirmal Kumar, co-author of “Filming the Line of Control.” “Therefore, one never saw any films that refer red to Pakistan, even diagonally, in the initial years of India's formation.”

Over the next few decades, though, the need for patriotic films arose as the newly formed nation was looking for a reason to remain united. Pakistan became a convenient excuse. As India's national identity began to strengthen in the 1960s, jingoistic films began to emerge.

Manoj Kumar's 1967 classic, “Upkar,” for instance, had covert references to Pakistan, but never named the country outright. The protagonist in the film is suggestively called Bharat (Hindi for India), who takes a moral high ground when his younger brother asks for the family property to be divided between them.

The younger brother (Pakistan is metaphorically called the younger brother of India) is the evil one, who exploits the older one's tolerance. “Such family metaphors were used by the industry until much, much later,” said Namrata Joshi, associate editor of Outlook mag azine.

Professor Kumar said it wasn't until 1973, in Chetan Anand's “Hindustan Ki Kasam,” which was based on the 1971 war between the two countries, that a movie made unambiguous references to Pakistan. “But Pakistan still remained an unnamed malevolent power on Indian screens,” he said.

A decade earlier, Mr. Anand had directed a groundbreaking war film, “Haqeeqat,” based on the Sino-Indian war of 1962, where the Chinese were shown as being brutal and insensitive. “With China, you could be blatant,” Professor Kumar said. “Pakistan is perceived as a brother that used to be. You can't be blatant where emotions are involved.”

Subtle but antagonistic positioning against Pakistan continued in Bollywood until the 1980s, when India was characterized by internal turmoil. Early in the decade, the Khalistan secessionist movement picked up pace in Punjab, and Pakistan's alleged clandestine support for such a movement became a common subject in Indi an media.

The decade progressed with tensions increasing in Kashmir and reaching its peak, with Pakistan's involvement in supporting the secessionist movement becoming common knowledge.

“Added to it was the fact that the Hindi film industry had a new set of filmmakers who did not directly connect with Partition,” Professor Kumar said. This gave a further impetus for filmmakers to make films where Pakistan was clearly the villain.

“In such a scenario, Raj Kapoor's ‘Henna' was an exception,” said Shubhra Gupta, columnist at The Indian Express. “Henna,” a 1991 release, was a love story between an Indian man and a Pakistani woman, which did well despite the markedly anti-Pakistan mood in India.

The 1990s saw a sudden spurt in Hindi films talking about the tensions with Pakistan. “The problem was that Indian filmmakers chose to see Pakistan in only military terms. No one tried to portray or even find out what Pakistani society looked like,â € Professor Kumar said. “They began to equate Pakistan to its ‘evil' military.”

Films like “Border,” based on the 1971 war with Pakistan, were released, where patriotism took on a new definition. “You loved India only if you hated Pakistan,” said Ms. Joshi of Outlook.

A typical modern-day Hindi film on the tension between the two countries would have morally upright Indians and sinful Pakistanis. “However, they always distinguished Indian Muslims and Pakistani Muslims. The former were always the good guys,” said the journalist and film critic Aseem Chhabra.

The cross-border tensions on screens portrayed a rather subtle gender politics as well. “I don't remember a film where the girl is from India and the boy from Pakistan,” said Ms. Joshi. “India had to have an upper hand sexually as well.”

The Hindi film industry witnessed some high-octane nationalism in the early 2000s with films like “Gadar” and “Maa Tujhe Salaam” having blatant Pakistan-bashing scenes. Pakistan was the evil enemy, much like what the former Soviet Union was to the United States during the Cold War.

Ms. Joshi said that it was an embarrassing phase in Hindi cinema but that the audience accepted these films and made them huge successes as the mood of the nation was clearly anti-Pakistan after the 1999 Kargil conflict. And the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament by the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

In 2004, a series of confidence-building measures began between the two countries, which included the demilitarizing of the Siachen Glacier and the demarcation of the international boundary in the Sir Creek area. Against such a backdrop, films like “Main Hoon Na,” which centered on a peace plan between India and Pakistan, did very well in both countries.

Now, for the first time in 100 years of its existence, the Hindi film industry's outlook toward Indian-Pakistani tensions might be significantly chang ing. Ms. Joshi said that post-9/11, when the popular Western media was portraying Muslims in a negative light, Bollywood was sensitive to their problems with films like “My Name Is Khan.” “This brought India and Pakistan together,” she added.

The way the Hindi film industry has looked at Pakistan has always been dependent on the mood of the nation and government policies. “But now, filmmakers keep in mind the mood of the market as well,” Professor Kumar said, “because Pakistan is emerging as a huge market for Bollywood films.” As Pakistani diaspora increases in number, this market would further expand.

Another big development is the rebirth of the Pakistani film industry. After the “Islamization” phase of the Pakistani society, when the film industry perished, only now are there are small attempts to revive Pakistani-made movies. “This enables India to see the developments in the Pakistani society as opposed to seeing just the military aspec t of it,” Professor Kumar said. “This gives the human angle of the ‘enemy.' ”

A small-budget but significant release in recent times was “Harud,” an Indian film that doesn't mince words while talking about the militancy in Kashmir. A decade ago, a commercial release for such a film would have been unthinkable.

Despite these changes in sentiment, films featuring cross-border espionage like “Agent Vinod” and Salman Khan's “Ek Tha Tiger,” which released Wednesday, still face problems with the censors on both sides of the borders.

“With Indo-Pak films, as with Indo-Pak relations, it is always one step forward and two steps back,” said Professor Kumar.



Volunteers Rescue Livestock From Raging Wildfire in Washington State

August 15, 2012, 10:14 pm
By JENNIFER PRESTON

The Kittitas County Fairgrounds in central Washington State was being prepared for the arrival of hundreds of horses for the annual 4-H Horse Show this weekend when it suddenly became a crisis center for livestock caught in a wildfire that has consumed more than 28,000 acres since Monday.

Hundreds of goats, horses, cows, sheep and other livestock have been brought to the fairgrounds. At least 70 homes have been destroyed in the area and more than 500 people have been evacuated from what is being called the Taylor Bridge Fire. The fire is burning near the city of Cle Elum in Kittitas County, about 80 miles southeast of Seattle, and is one of more than 50 wildfires now burning across the Western United S tates.

The Washington Department of Natural Resources posted a photo on Twitter showing an aerial view of the fire, which was only 10 percent contained on Wednesday.

There have been no reported injuries but authorities are concerned that livestock and wild animals may have died in the fire, despite efforts by volunteers who brought horse trailers and trucks on rural roads to rescue stray animals. The rescued animals were brought to the fairground, where more volunteers had arrived to help care for them. Smaller animals were brought to nearby veterinarians.

Meg Coyle, a reporter/anchor with King/5 News in Seattle, reported from the fairgrounds on Wednesday and shared multiple photos of animals on her Twitter stream.

To help owners of the livestock find their animals, a Facebook group called the Taylor Bridge Fire Animal Recovery page has been started.

The Seattle Times is reporting that 800 firefighters are now on the ground battling the fire, which was only 10 percent contained on Wednesday. Officials believe the fire originated on Monday afternoon at a construction site by the Taylor Bridge near Cle Elum.



U.N. Panel Blames Syrian Army and Militia for Houla Massacre

By RICK GLADSTONE

An independent panel appointed by the United Nations to investigate rights abuses in Syria said Wednesday that the government's armed forces and loyalist militias were responsible for the worst known atrocity in the conflict, a massacre of 108 villagers, nearly half of them women and children, in the western village of Houla on May 25.

The Houla finding was contained in a highly incriminating 102-page report from the panel, created by the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, that was based on testimony from hundreds of witnesses and survivors who had fled Syria, as well as medical evidence, satellite images and photographs, all of which contradicted the government's assertion that insurgents had carried out the massacre.

The Syria panel's report also recited a litany of murders, extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, crimes against children, sexual violence, pillaging and destruction that it sai d had been committed “pursuant to State policy” by the armed forces and thuggish militia members working with them, known as shahiba. The report asserted that the complexity and scale of these violations “indicate the involvement at the highest levels of the armed and security forces and the Government.”

The complete text of the panel's report was made available online by the council. (Click at the lower right of the document viewer for an enlarged view.)

A-HRC-21-50

The Houla finding was particularly significant, because responsibility for that atrocity became immersed in conflicting claims that have come to define the maelstrom of misinformation presented by antagonists in the nearly 18-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

The government and the insurgents reported diametrically opposite accounts of what happened in Houla, as they have in many other instances of mass killings in Syria.

Mr . Assad said in an interview on German television last month that his armed opponents, whom he calls terrorists, had dressed up in Syrian army uniforms and carried out the Houla killings in order to vilify him and his government. Reports in the German press had also questioned whether Mr. Assad's critics had prematurely concluded the Houla killers were really supporters of Mr. Assad.

The Syria panel's report also said it had found “reasonable grounds” to believe that war crimes, including murder and torture, had been carried out by anti-Assad groups, but that their abuses “did not reach the gravity, frequene and scale of those committed by the Government forces and the shahiba.”

Despite repeated requests by the Syria panel's chairman, Sergio Pinheiro, a veteran human rights investigator, Mr. Assad refused to grant the panel permission to enter Syria, which meant that all of its firsthand accounts were based on depositions from people who had left the coun try.

Established in September 2011, Mr. Pinheiro's panel is to present its final report on Syria at the Human Rights Council session on Sept. 17.

As The Lede noted last week, a reporter for the German magazine Der Spiegel visited Houla last month and returned with videotaped testimony from a number of witnesses who blamed shabiha militants for the killings.



Tunisian Women March to Defend Equality

By ROBERT MACKEY

As Reuters reported, thousands of Tunisian women marched in the capital, Tunis, Monday night, to protest a provision in the new Islamist government's draft constitution describing women as “complementary to men.” The 6,000 protesters pledged to defend the equality under the law they have enjoyed since Tunisia adopted its Code of Personal Status on Aug. 13,1956.

Video of the march posted on YouTube by the Tunisian blog Nawaat showed protesters chanting for “freedom and feminist dignity,” and carrying banners and placards calling for “equality with men” and “preserving the gains of women.” One marcher held a sign noting that when police officers beat demonstrators, they do so “with no differentiation between man and woman.”

The Tunisian blog Nawaat's video report on a march for women's rights in Tunis on Monday night.

In an essay published by Nawaat on Wednesday, Farhat Othman argued that pressure from Muslim fundamentalists on the moderate Islamist government to remove protections for women are “a rearguard battle by minority communities seeking to impose by whatever means purely sexist and biased” laws unrelated to Islam's founding principles.



Australia Restricts Company Logos on Cigarette Packs

By CHRISTINE HAUSER

ABC News of Australia coverage included an ad about children reacting to cigarette packs

Australia's highest court upheld a law on Wednesday that prohibits tobacco companies from using their logos on cigarette packets, a decision that means smokers could see more of the graphic images associated with their habit: blistered, cancer-stricken mouths; children sick from secondhand smoke, and gangrenous limbs.

In a brief statement, the High Court of Australia rejected a challenge by tobacco companies to the country's Tobacco Plain Packaging Act, adding that it would publish its reasons at a later date. But the decision curtails tobacco companies' use of their logos and brand names.

As my colleague Matt Siegel wrote , British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and Philip Morris Australia had argued that the new ban on brand logos would infringe on t heir intellectual property rights. The court rejected that argument.

The outcome of the case had potential global ramifications because it could set a precedent for other countries seeking to introduce harsher labeling requirements for tobacco products, he wrote.

The decision was both cheered and criticized in social media circles and on Web sites.


Tobacco companies said the plain-packaging regulations would make it easier for smuggling or counterfeit trade in cigarettes and said the legislation's sponsors offered no evidence that the rules would he lp people quit. Imperial Tobacco said in a statement on its Web site:

“The illegal tobacco trade is a significant problem in Australia and we expect the situation to worsen considerably as a result of this legislation, placing further pressures on retailers and government tax revenues.

“Tobacco packaging has never been identified as a reason why people start, or continue, to smoke, and there is no credible evidence to support the notion that plain packs will reduce smoking levels.

In Australia, cigarette packs already come with graphic depictions of the effects of smoking-related diseases, but the new rules go further. Brand logos and colorful designs will be banned, with only a small space remaining where the brand name and variant of the cigarette can be printed, Mr. Siegel wrote. Packages will be required to be a uniform shade of olive green.

Australia's minister of health, Tanya Plibersek, said on her Twitter account and in a joint statement with Nicola Roxon, the attorney general, that it was a victory for anyone who had lost someone to a smoking-related illness.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation posted video from a news conference given by Ms. Plibersek and Ms. Roxon at which they played an advertisement produced in the United Kingdom and featuring children responding to brightly colored cigarette packets. One little girl delighted in the pretty pink ones.

While Australia has the widest ranging laws in the world on tobacco packaging, other countries have joined efforts to curtail the company brands and emphasize photographs aimed at discouraging people from smoking. In Dubai this month, graphic images on cigarette packs and on packages of loose tob acco used for water pipes appeared in stores, the Dubai-based newspaper, Gulf News, reported.

Critics questioned whether the Australian court's decision would mean that other countries would follow, and some rallied in defense of the habit, posting on #plainpacks and #handsoffourpacks on Twitter.

The group called Hands Off Our Packs said last week it had accumulated hundreds of thousands of signatures of smokers on a petition opposing “excessive regulation” and “nanny state” moves of the government in working for plain packaging of cigarette brands.

In the United States, efforts to regulate the cigarette packages and advertising have also gone through the courts. A provision to a 2009 act directed the Food and Drug Administration to require larger, graphic warning labe ls covering the top half of the front and back of cigarette packs by Sept. 22, 2012, as well as 20 percent of print advertising for cigarettes.

The photos the F.D.A. selected for the labels, such as a man breathing smoke out of a tracheotomy hole in his neck, are similar to some on cigarette packaging in Canada, my colleague, Stephanie Strom, wrote in February. But a federal judge later declared the requirement unconstitutional.



Actress Writes to Putin to Demand Vegan Meals for Jailed Punk Protesters

By ROBERT MACKEY

While the prosecution of three members of the Russian protest band Pussy Riot has raised concerns about freedom of speech and the growing influence of the Orthodox Church in Vladimir Putin's Russia, the American actress Alicia Silverstone has identified another “urgent matter” exposed in news reports about the case: Russian prisons do not serve vegan meals.

In a letter to the Russian president posted online by the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Ms. Silverstone noted that a vegan member of the band, jailed with two colleagues for performing a “a punk prayer service” inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior - singing an obscene anthem punctuated with cries of, “Holy Mother, send Putin packing!” - collapsed in court this month.

The actress, who previously starred in a Peta ad promoting vegetarianism, wrote:

Dear President Putin, I have been following t he trial involving three members of the band Pussy Riot. As a vegan myself, I was deeply concerned to learn that one of the women, Maria Alekhina, who is a vegan, reportedly collapsed from hunger during a court session. I respectfully request you to ensure that vegan meals are available to Ms. Alekhina and all prisoners.

Regardless of the trial and its outcome, I'm sure you can agree that everyone has the right to show compassion and refrain from harming animals by being vegan. May I please have your assurance that Ms. Alekhina will have access to vegan foods? Thank you for your time and attention to this urgent matter.

A spokeswoman for Peta confirmed to The Lede on Wednesday that the letter is genuine, and provided a link to a .pdf copy of the original text, signed by Ms. Silverstone.

Alicia Silverstone Letter to President Putin

As my colleagues Michael Schwirtz and David Herszenhorn have reported, the cas e of the jailed riot grrls has become a cause célèbre among musicians, with everyone from Franz Ferdinand to Madonna calling on Mr. Putin to ensure their freedom.

Last week, the Icelandic singer Björk released “a statement in defense of Pussy Riot” and dedicated a song to the band during a performance in Finland.

Video posted on Facebook by the singer Björk shows her tribute to the jailed protest band Pussy Riot last week in Helsinki.

As The Guardian reported last month, after the women appeared in court to defend themselves, the father of one of the jailed protesters said that he expected his daughter to face the maximum penalty of seven years in prison.



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