Letter to Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning

6:07 PM (1 minute ago)

to megha.majumdar.author@gmail.com, 

cc: TodayStories@nbcuni.com

Dear Ms. Majumdar,

I have finished reading A Burning - thanks to Knopf for making it available through NetGalley.

You have received many accolades, through the New York Times, Time, and the New Yorker.  A Burning was selected as the #ReadWithJenna pick of the month for June 2020 on the Today Show  (I have copied Today on this message).  From the web page Jenna Bush Hager announces June 2020 book club pick, https://www.today.com/shop/jenna-bush-hager-june-2020-book-club-pick-t182874:

I started writing from a place of alarm and anger," Majumdar told TODAY about her inspiration for the book. "India has been changing in frightening ways and growing more intolerant of minority communities, more extremist. I definitely hope that readers will see resonances in the U.S. as well.

Indeed, the only victims in your book were Muslim: Jivan, the girl who was falsely accused of torching the train, and the Muslim family that was slaughtered on the suspicion that they slaughtered a cow.

Your Jana Kalyan Party is plainly modeled after the BJP, yet you know that the BJP has next to no influence in Bengal - never mind that its predecessor Bharatiya Jana Sangh was founded by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, and the BJP honors Mukherjee as its founder! 

It was also strange that the Muslim girl was named Jivan.  Jivan, or Jeevan, is a boy's name and moreover, a Hindu name.

I am convinced that the train burning was inspired by the 2002 burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, in which 59 people, including 27 women and 10 children, were burnt to death, and 48 others were injured, at the rail station in Godhra, Gujarat.  Unlike poor Jivan, none of the perpetrators received a death sentence.

Do BJP rallies necessarily end with slaughter of Muslims?  I don't think so.  A friend told me that in UP, lynchings for cow slaughter might have more to do with cattle rustling, rather than Hindu-on-Muslim violence (really, the reverse doesn't happen?).

In A Burning, you said that textbooks were being rewritten to serve the Jana Kalyan Party's agenda.  Yet IRL textbooks serve other parties' agenda.  I see rewriting textbooks in India similar to rewriting textbooks in the United States to include discussion of atrocities toward blacks and Native Americans.

Lastly, I invite you to use the hashtag #HinduUnitedAgainstTerror to protest the murder of Ajay Pandita in Anantnag, J&K.  You have over 8600 followers on Twitter.  By calling for justice for Ajay Pandita and including the hashtag #HinduUnitedAgainstTerror, you can create a lot of visibility for this cause.

Yours sincerely,

Places to visit in India

It's been over five years since my husband and I last visited India. I'm anxious to reconnect with family and friends.

Here's a video that I created in Google Earth Pro.



This is the list of places where I'd like to visit:

city	state
Delhi	DL
Kolkata	WB
Bankura	WB
Bardhman	WB
Bengaluru	KA
Kozhikode	KL
Aldona	GA
Mumbai	MH
Vadodara	GJ

Simon Winchester's Calcutta

Simon Winchester's Calcutta by Simon Winchester
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first part of Simon Winchester's Calcutta includes a history of Calcutta (Kolkata) written by Simon Winchester. Some readers might be turned off by Winchester's characterization of freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose as "buffoonish" and "one of the great villains." However, his assessment of Mother Theresa, which draws upon the work of Aroup Chatterjee and the late Christopher Hitchens, is spot on.

The second part of the book features excerpts about Calcutta from the works of a diverse group of writers that include N.C. Chaudhuri, William Dalrymple, Gunther Grass, V.S. Naipaul, Paul Theroux, Vikram Seth, Tagore, and Mark Twain. The different perspectives from these writers make this book worth reading.

View all my reviews

The last Jews of Calcutta

Beth-el synagogue in Kolkata

From the Associated Press via the International Herald Tribune, a poignant story about the dwindling Jewish population of Calcutta, as many Jews die or move away for better opportunities.

What the article doesn't mention, however, is India's acceptance of religious refugees. The story of the Parsis, Zoroastrians from Iran, is well-known. Calcutta (or Kolkata, as it's currently known) itself has absorbed Armenians as well as Jews - to say nothing about the Hindu refugees from Partition and the Bangladeshi war of 1971.

Poor Calcutta - A commentary on Mother Theresa in the New York Times

Mother Teresa

During the same discussion in which one of the participants opined that had Gandhi lived during Jesus's time, he would have been regarded with the same reverence as Jesus, my husband voiced his criticism of Mother Theresa and the shame that she brought on Calcutta, where he grew up. One person said that all great people are criticized, while another person didn't see anything wrong with Mother Teresa's promoting Roman Catholic orthodoxy. This commentary from the New York Times echoes my husband's criticisms.

Poor Calcutta - New York Times
By CHITRITA BANERJI
Ten years and one beatification later, the tunnel vision of the news media continues to equate Calcutta with the destitution and succor publicized by Mother Teresa.

The author rightly notes the massive influx of refugees into Calcutta after Partition and after the Bangladesh war of independence. Many of my friends are surprised to learn that Calcutta has also provided a home for Jewish and Armenian refugees, among others.