Session on the Growing Racial, Ethnic and Nationalistic Intolerance

Katherine Kressman Taylor (1903-1996)

Open Space held a session on the growing racial, ethnic and nationalistic intolerance on Wednesday, 3rd February at the Academy of Mass Communication, during which Katherine Kressman Taylor's story Address Unknown (1938) was read out. The reading was followed by a discussion around it and on the theme of the session.

When it first appeared in Story magazine in 1938, Address Unknown became an immediate social phenomenon and literary sensation. Published in book form a year later and banned in Nazi Germany, it garnered high praise in the United States and much of Europe.

A series of fictional letters between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco and his former business partner, who has returned to Germany, Address Unknown is a haunting tale of enormous power and enduring impact.

As Published Weekly rightly reviewed, "Address Unknown serves not only as a reminder of Nazi horrors but as a cautionary tale in light of current racial, ethnic, and nationalistic intolerance."

The story's review that appeared in Time on 30th September, 2002 can be read over here.

A Week of Stories from Nazi Concentration Camps

Tadeusz Borowski (1922-1951)

Yogendra Krishna

Open Space
organised
"A Week of Stories from Nazi Concentration Camps"
from 7th to 12th December, 2009
at
Open Space - Lucknow Office,
during which
Yogendra Krishna's Hindi translations of
Tadeusz Borowski's Polish stories
from his collection
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
(गैस चेंबर के लिए कृप्या इस तरफ़)
were read out.

Remembering Gujarat 2002

Photo: Arko Datta, Reuters

Robin David

Open Space
presents
"Remembering Gujarat 2002"
Reading of excerpts from the Indian Jewish writer and journalist Robin David's account of the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, City of Fear,
and the
Screening of Nooh Nizami & Akanksha Joshi directed documentary-film Passengers: A Video Journey in Gujarat

Sunday, 1st November, 2009
at
Open Space - Lucknow Office


The event also commemorated the publication of the first Hebrew daily newspaper, Hadoar, which began publication on 1st November, 1921.

An Assistant Editor with the Times of India and a member of the tiny Bene Israel Jewish community, Robin David's memoir of the anti-Muslim pogrom in the western Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 is City of Fear, Penguin, 2007, shortlisted in the top five of the Vodafone Crossword Book Awards in the Non-Fiction Category.

Passengers: A Video Journey in Gujarat (52 minutes): The genocide in Gujarat is documented through the lives of a Hindu and a Muslim family. Filmed over a year and a half, it follows the echoes of violence, intense pain and betrayal. The politics of division is experienced through the two families that form the micro unit of the Indian society.

The Rural-Urban Divide in India

Untitled

I drew a plan of the city -
tall housing
quarters,
narrow offices,
roads for two-wheelers, four-wheelers,
footpaths,
space allocated for trees to stand,
gardens,
statues.

I marked them all in the city,
not knowing how
to make space for me.

Carefully I created the city,
leaving myself out.

(Poem by A. Vennila, Translated by C. S. Lakshmi and Arundhati Subramaniam, Taken from the Open Space pamphlet titled, Coming to the City)

A Picture of an Indian Metropolitan

A Picture of an Indian Village

Indian Urban Women

Indian Rural Women

Indian Urban Women

Indian Rural Women

Padmashri Prof. Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004)

Urban

The hills are always far away.
He knows the broken roads, and moves
In circles tracked within his head.
Before he wakes and has his say,
The river which he claims he loves
Is dry, and all the winds lie dead.

At dawn he never sees the skies
Which, silently, are born again.
Nor feels the shadows of the night
Recline their fingers on his eyes.
He welcomes neither sun nor rain.
His landscape has no depth or height.

The city like a passion burns.
He dreams of morning walks, alone,
And floating on a wave of sand.
But still his mind its traffic turns
Away from beach and tree and stone
To kindred clamour close at hand.

- Nissim Ezekiel

• Inequalities in income, lack of employment opportunities, lack of infrastructure and civic amenities, inadequate access to education, healthcare and other basic services are some of the major areas where rural areas lag behind.
• Over 70% of the population resides in rural areas, and agriculture which is its main occupation now, accounts for only a quarter of the country's GDP.
• Rural India encompasses a little less than three-fourths of the country's poulation and is characterised by low income levels, poor quality of life and a weak base of human development.
• The agriculture sector has been growing at less than half the pace of the other sectors. During the Seventh Plan, agriculture and allied sectors grew at a rate of 3.4 per cent, while the national economy grew at 6 per cent. In 1997-98, there was negative growth of 2 per cent in the agricultural sector, although the national economy grew by 5 per cent.
• Agricultural investments account for 10 per cent of the total investments in the country.
• According to one estimate, the average income of an urban dweller is four times higher than that of a rural dweller. Rural deprivation becomes crystal clear if we look at the data on rural India's contribution to the GDP and what the rural areas get back. Rural contribution is 27% but the return is 5%.
• The gap between the average for urban and rural areas widened by over 8% between 1987-88 and 2000-01.
• In 2001, the urban literacy rate was 80.6% but the rural literacy rate was 59.21%.
• Of the illiterate people who are 15 years and above but not beyond 60 years, rural areas have 55.8% and the urban areas 25.1%.
• Of the school-going children in the age group of 5-14 years, 82.4 per cent live in urban areas.
• Data collected from the sample registration show that life expectancy at birth in rural areas is 58 years, in the case of urban India it is 64.9 years.
• 84.4% of rural households are devoid of toilet facilities, in the case of urban areas it is 23%.
• The all-India average monthly per capita consumer expenditure (MPCE) was Rs. 495 in rural areas and Rs. 914 in the urban ones.

Sources:

• S. Rajagopalan, "The Rural-Urban Divide in India", ICFAI Journal of Urban Policy, Vol. 2, No. 1, April 2007
• Prabhat Datta, "The Great Indian Divide", Frontline, Vol. 21, Issue 14, July 3 -16, 2004
• Dileep Rangachari, "The Wide Rural-Urban Divide", The Times of India, March 24, 2003

Open Space organised a discussion on the Rural-Urban Divide in India on Sunday, 14th June, 2009, at its premises in Lucknow. On the occasion a few of Nissim Ezekiel's poems were also recited. The great Indian Jewish poet Prof. Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004), who was decorated with India's fourth highest civilian honour, the Padmashri, is widely known as an Urban Poet.

A Message of Communal Harmony and a Muslim's Search for his Jewish Mother

Soz Malihabadi, a devout Muslim, with his Jewish aunts, Katty alias Khatoon (left) and Ghazala (right) in 1995

From the left in the front row: Maqbool Ahmad Khan, Mahfooz Ahmad Khan 'Soz Malihabadi', Rehana (nee Rahama), Manzoor Ahmad Khan (Soz's elder brother), Katty alias Khatoon and Ghazala

On Friday, 17th April, 2009, Open Space organised a poetry session dedicated to communal harmony, particulary peace between Jews and Muslims, with the Urdu poet Soz Malihabadi , who has been in search of his Jewish mother for fifteen years, at the Academy of Mass Communication, Lucknow. At the session Soz Malihabadi recited his poems and narrated the story of his unceasing search for his Jewish mother, a story that connects three continents (Asia, Europe and North America), five countries (India, Israel, Canada, the United Kingdom and Pakistan) and the two communities that are sadly seen as natural adversaries today, viz., Jews and Muslims.

Urdu poet and Hafiz-e-Qur'an (one who has memorised the entire Qur'an), Mahfooz Ahmad Khan 'Soz Malihabadi' was absolutely ignorant of his Jewish maternal side until he received a letter from his London-based Jewish aunt one day at his modest dwelling in Kakori in Lucknow district. Soz had grown up hearing that his mother passed away when he was very small. The next letter from his aunt proved to be the catalyst that set him on the the search for his mother, Rehana (nee Rahmah), about whom he discovered from the letter that she was still alive and lived in the neighbouring country Pakistan.

Born in a Baghdadi Jewish family resident in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Rehana (nee Rahmah) married a young handsome Pathan, Maqbool Ahmad Khan, in 1947. In 1950, their second child, Mahfooz Ahmad Khan, who later came to be known as Soz Malihabadi, was born to the couple. Soon Maqbool's thriving business failed, reducing him to penny pinching and souring his relations with his wife, who aspired to be a film actor. In 1955 they got divorced and Rehana married a Pakistani Airforce officer and moved to Pakistan, leaving behind her two little sons and two orphan young sisters in her former husband Maqbool's custody. In 1956 Soz Malihabadi's young orphan aunts, Khatoon and Ghazala reached Israel under the Zionist programme of Youth Aliyah (emigration to Israel aimed at the ingathering of Jewish exiles from around the world), while Soz with his father moved to his ancestral village, midway betwen Malihabad and Kakori in Lucknow district.

When Soz met his aunts in Mumbai after an epoch of forty years, he enquired about his mother's whereabouts, but strangely enough they refused to divulge it to him. Not losing hope, Soz made a trip to Karachi, Pakistan, in search of his mother, but to no avail. The posture taken by his aunts absolutely disillusioned him, and he severed all ties with them. The Muslim son is still in search of his Jewish mother.

Religious Harmony

University of Lucknow

University of Lucknow

University of Lucknow

University of Lucknow

University of Lucknow

American Institute of Indian Studies, Lucknow

American Institute of Indian Studies, Lucknow

American Institute of Indian Studies, Lucknow

American Institute of Indian Studies, Lucknow

American Institute of Indian Studies, Lucknow

American Institute of Indian Studies, Lucknow

American Institute of Indian Studies, Lucknow

American Institute of Indian Studies, Lucknow

Open Space
organised a couple of presentations dedicated to
Religious Harmony,
at which
the New York-based Documentary Filmmaker and Writer
Sadia Shepard
read out from her book,
The Girl from Foreign (Penguin 2008),
which is an account of her childhood spent with an American Christian father, Pakistani Muslim mother and Indian Jewish maternal grandmother, and of her quest for her Indian Jewish roots.
She also screened her documentary film based on these experiences of hers,
In Search of the Bene Israel, and spoke about Religious Harmony.
The American Cinematographer and Film-Editor Andreas Burgess was the Chief Guest at the presentations.

Monday, 30th March, 2009
American Institute of Indian Studies,
46/3 Wazir Hasan Road, Lucknow


Tuesday, 31st March, 2009
Department of Ancient Indian History and Archaeology,
University of Lucknow

The 4th Session of Open Space Book Tasting Club: The Tragic Loss of Life Due to Human Misdeeds

Open Space

organised

the fourth session of its

Book Tasting Club

on the theme

"The Tragic Loss of Life due to Human Misdeeds"

at which Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi read out his

Hindi/Urdu translation of the young Israeli writer

Etgar Keret's Hebrew short story

"Surprise Egg"

taken from his collection

The Nimrod Flip-Out

on

Thursday, 23rd October,
at
the Academy of Mass Communication,

Lucknow