Some more ideas for movies
# Epic based on battle of the ten kings
# Comics based on Ashwathama titled Immortals. Guest appearance by Bhagwan Hanuman.
# Historical fiction based on the only Yadava warrior to survive destruction of Dwarka, who fights in Trojan War.
Yes, I have nothing to write about.
Spoilers
Having watched Watchmen some time ago, the review I criticized in an earlier post seems even more misplaced now than it seemed at that time. Anyway I don't like the movie, which means less than nothing considering I didn't like Godfather or 2001: A Space Odyssey for that matter. I have some standard to maintain after all. Now it has something to do with the fact that I haven't read Watchmen the graphic novel by Alan Moore, which is held by many comics aficionados to be a ground breaking work of its genre.However it is generally understood that any adaptation has to strike a balance between appealing to the following of original work by staying true to it and bringing in audience not introduced with the work. While Zack Snyder is faithfully to the novel he fails to hold the attention of larger audience, which in my view irrevocably dooms this thinking man's superhero movie.
First of movie's short coming is Snyder slavish adherence to the text while failing to capture of the essence of the novel. Reminiscent of his earlier adaptation of Frank Miller's 300, he copies almost the novel panel by panel. However in doing that he fails to effectively capture the dystopian theme of the novel, the story of watchmen being secondary and in effect enforcing this narrative. Instead the movie is slow and feels dragging on forever. Even the visuals disappoint, failing to impart a gritty, noirish feel, done admirably in dark knight for instance.
However for me the main shortcoming is the novel itself. The novel written during the tense period of cold war is itself outdated having US as the clear winner. This is however least of its problems.
The novel for most part is nothing but a parade of American liberal cliches and bogeymen. The novels depicts Nixon as President having abrogated the term limits, and it is implied, subverted the institutions, effectively dictator of US.
Now it is not my case that Nixon was a honorable man, for he was not, but as cynical as it may sound, his greatest crime was not Watergate but hostility to media, resulting from fear psychosis. Watergate while not exactly something which will commend Nixon to posterity, was hardly a deviation as far as political skulduggery is concerned, similar practices being regularly employed from Johnson administration going as far as back to FDR.
Similarly Nixon didn't harbor any ambition of abrogating term limits and anointed Caesar, that dishonor ironically belongs to liberal Messiah predating the current Messiah, FDR, ironically it was only due to his breaking the convention of two terms that term limits were introduced.
To add to this, it is implied that JFK's assassination was a government's conspiracy, the right wing elements within the government being the perpeterators. Of course the inconvenient truth is that JFK was felled, as Jackie Kennedy frustratingly remarked, by a silly little communist.
Most infuriating however is the moral ambivalence. US for all its flaws has been a force for good in contrast to Communist regimes which have perpetrated immeasurable misery and death. It is clear for all its self righteousness, left uses liberty in much the same sense as it uses fascism.
Minor update at the end.
While writing the post on partition, I forgot to include some relevant info which I am including in this post.
But first I will like to summarize the post, as I think it is very much likely that the length of the post might have obscured the theme, which is the conventional view of moderate Muslims as Pro-India and fundamentalist Muslims as pro-Partition is not necessarily borne out by the historical facts.
One such inconvenient fact is the role, respectively of Barelvis and Deobandis with respect to partition. Deobandis are usually considered to be orthodox Islamic school with emphasis on Islamic jurisprudence such as Shariah and Hadith. In contrast Barelvis are considered relatively unorthodox with a significant incorporation of Islamic experience in India, specifically Sufi traditions. Historically Deobandis have been considered more of conservative/traditionalist and Barelvis reformist/modernists. Yet their role during partition were diametrically opposite to what conventional view would dictate, while Deobandis sided with Congress and opposed partition, Barelvis were in general agreement with Muslim League *
Then there is something I want to address. Rohit, in one of our conversations, remarked that my hypothesis can not explain the fact why Muslims in such a large number chose to stay behind in India. Actually I think one need not even my hypothesis to explain the fact.
Simply put, for League leaders demand for Pakistan was just a bargaining chip to extract maximum concession from Congress. They had hoped, that by raising by communal passion for Pakistan, they could corner Congress leaders into conceding their demands for an ill conceived arrangement superficially resembling federalism. This gambit backfired, and Muslim League ended up with what Jinnah termed as a moth eaten Pakistan. For most of the League leaders Pakistan should have included Hyderabad, Lucknow and Delhi, traditional centers of Indo-Islamic culture and power. However for most of the Muslims residing in what is currently Republic of India, leaving their home for Pakistan was never a real option.
That said, it should be noted making sense of Identity is always perplexing with different intrepreations according to different vantage points. Specifically and reiterating what I wrote in the previous posts, different individuals have diverse influences on the identity. A plebeian unless he is in sync with others of same class has minimal effect on identity, whereas a social elite, either because of his wealth or because of his intellect, has disproportionately larger influence over the identity. Why is that? Maslow's hierarchy of needs is the answer.
For elites not concerned with fulfillment of basic are naturally more inclined towards identity. Which is why "common man doesn't care about X", although superficially appealing is nonsensical as far as human psychology is concerned.
"But wait", Some might say, "If common man is not concerned with identity, then your point doesn't stand". This is a misreading of what I am trying to convey. Common man doesn't influence the identity to a great extent, but he is influenced by the identity which he shares with the elite.
This is what happened in case of Partition. For a common Muslim, identity was not a major issue, but for an elite a united India meant sub-ordination of Islamic identity to Hindu identity which was a reversal from history where Islamic identity ruled over Hindu identity and thus a matter of distress and insecurity.
This is why the movement for Partition started not in Muslim majority provinces but Gangetic Plains including Bengal, over which Muslims, even though in minority, had ruled for so many centuries.
Initially Muslim League had limited success with masses, even though Khilafat movement was preparing ground for eventual communal polarization. One dirty secret of Congress, in order to undercut Jinnah who was Shia, it actively fueled Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict, foreshadowing Sikh terrorism. Also it is interesting to note that Maulana Azad was much more orthodox in his religious outlook than Jinnah. This explains the drubbing Muslim League received in 1937. However within a decade the situation was reversed, much of it due to the Ulema.
After this, only the matter of Mahatma Gandhi's politics remains, which I will touch in another post.
Update: In fact I am confident that this hypothesis can be applied to global Islamic terrorism as well.
