March to Ghalib's haveli for keeping flame burning, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

March to Ghalib's haveli for keeping flame burning

TNN 27 December 2009,

New Delhi: Days after Mirza Ghalib's haveli made headlines for being used as a venue to host marriage parties, admirers of the poet organized a candlelight vigil to commemorate his 212th birthday.

The venue was again his haveli and the occasion was marked by the presence of lyricist Gulzar, director Vishal Bharadwaj and his wife and singer Rekha Bharadwaj.

The candlelight walk is organized every year by the Ghalib Memorial Movement spearheaded by Kathak dancer Uma Sharma.

Talking about the misuse of Ghalib's haveli as a marriage venue, Gulzar said: "We should not blame the government for everything. We need to create awareness among people to conserve and protect monuments and this candlelight walk is a step forward in that direction. To keep the great poet's memory alive, a people's movement should be started to convert the haveli into a museum. We do not need money from people, but only their support. It is important to conserve our monuments in order to preserve our tradition and history."

As reported by TOI on December 22, a marriage function was held inside the haveli. Thereafter, the caretaker of the haveli was suspended and an FIR was lodged by the state department of archaeology.

Vishal Bharadwaj called the walk from Ghanta Ghar to Ghalib's haveli a nostalgic experience. Said Bharadwaj: "Through this walk we have retraced Ghalib's journey." His wife recited Ghalib's ghazals thereafter.

Sharma said she had decided to start the movement to save Ghalib's haveli and his memory after she visited the place during the shoot of a show and found it in a bad state. Said Sharma: "I have been dancing to Ghalib's ghazals for years now. I visited the haveli during the filming of a show and found it in a bad shape. We started the Ghalib Memorial Movement to keep his memory alive and got the government to preserve the haveli. I heard about a marriage party taking place in the haveli a few days back. The entire episode is very sad and shows that no one is looking after the monument. We have now decided to hold cultural events on his death anniversary also."

http://newageislam.com/march-to-ghalib-s-haveli-for-keeping-flame-burning/islamic-world-news/d/2290

India’s 26/11 was not America’s 9/11, Current affairs, NewAgeIslam.com

Current affairs

India’s 26/11 was not America’s 9/11

The vanished moment

By-Mihir S. Sharma

Nov 27, 2009

9/11 permeated every experience for that first year because, for the US, it was completely, shockingly, harrowingly unprecedented. Nobody — not trusted anchors, not politicians, not comedians — had any instincts that could help: each was accustomed to dealing with tragedy from a distance. And the average American was even more unprepared for the sudden shock of vulnerability, the thought that their country, so distant from anywhere problematic, could no longer rely on that physical remoteness. Which is why parts of the US where politicians can win elections by denouncing big cities nevertheless responded so strongly to the attacks on New York and DC: the geographical isolation was shared, the freshly-felt insecurity too. They hadn’t realised that they were targets; they were trying to figure out why.

Indians knew terrorism. The attacks horrified, but we knew what about them horrified: the scale, the targets, the cold-bloodedness. It was not as if we discovered for the first time a year ago that there was an outside world, in which many people disliked us enough to try to kill as many of us as spectacularly as possible. That explains both the loudest initial reaction — anger instead of shock, and not at the perpetrators but at the government and at “politicians” — as also how, over the year that followed, people began to shout themselves hoarse about the mysterious disappearance of expressions of that anger.

But shouting won’t help. India just doesn’t feel the same way that America did about 9/11, and no number of borrowed phrases — “Lest We Forget”, anyone? — will change that. And we should be glad of that. Because the feverish atmosphere that American public life had that year was in no way a good thing. Individuals made misjudgements then that they have since regretted; and so, far worse, did the organs of government, rushing panicked into policies since repudiated — such as “waterboarding” of detainees — and which have now been blamed by officials on the paranoia that seemed everywhere those months.

http://newageislam.com/india%E2%80%99s-26/11-was-not-america%E2%80%99s-9/11/current-affairs/d/2153