The Bugle - Aditi’s Intro to India

Episode Date: September 29, 2018

Andy is joined by Aditi Mittal, in India. India is big, and has a lot going on, this includes ID cards, corruption and the legacy of the Brits and the caste system.With@HelloBuglers@@awryaditi@ProducerChrisMore episodes and info on our website: http://thebuglepodcast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dancelaguard fans, you will be thrilled to know a book is coming out if you fund it via Unbound. We are publishing the Dancelaguard Reader by Alice Fraser and Dancelaguard, a glorious insight into the world of Dancelaguard, self-published romance maven, and online bestseller. If you would like to find out how to support it, go to thebugelpodcast.com. If we get enough support, we will publish the book. That's a real thing that's going to happen. Thebugelpodcast.com to support the Danciler Guard Reader. The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello, Bugleers, and welcome to Bugle Issue 4,081 and a half.

I'm currently in Kolkata, India, the city from where the British Empire used to run a large wardrobe of this planet through our unique British trademark cannecommodation of charm, violence, big buildings, big sticks and paperwork. So much paperwork. Did you know that all the paperwork generated by the British Empire now makes up 35.8% of the mass of this planet? No, of course you didn't because obviously it's a false fact but in this day and age, let's just run with it, it's basically true. More on this in the forthcoming two-part BBC Radio 4 series I'm doing with Anuvaab Pal coming to a radio or virtual radio near you in October. So I could not record a full bugle this week, a shame in such an exciting week for American

Patriarchical Bullying and with Jeremy Corbyn, choose one of the following three options to finish the sentence, depending on your political preference. Speaking to the Labour Party conference, Strogh, dressing up as Lenin and singing, I'm going to knock you out in Russian. Strogh, saving the entire future of the singing, I'm going to knock you out in Russian. Stoke. Saving the entire future of the world, like the returning, and now understandably greybearded Jesus, he so obviously is. Instead, whilst I was in Mumbai, I met up with Indian comedian Aditi Mital, who you will

remember from one of the Buebel live shows in Melbourne earlier this year, to talk about the big stories in India this week, and there have been some big stories, it's a big country and full of big stories and unending fascinations. Here's me talking to a DT in Mumbai this week. Returning to the bugle after a spectacular debut at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, it's great to see you again. Buh-buh-buh-buh! In more familiar surroundings surroundings might I add, welcome to my sweaty, humid, oligogapitalistic democracy. Welcome, I'm you. It's great to be back to my first

visit to India for I think four years. Still not quite finished is it as a place? Oh not yet. We're getting there though. We're getting there. What do you say has become more chaotic in the last four years or is it reached the kind of plateauing point? You know, I sometimes worry that India is existing in a permanent state of chaos. Like the discussions that we sit down and have right now, I imagine the pretty similar discussions were being had in the 70s where everyone was like, oh my god, this country is going to collapse. This country is going to die. It will all go and end then 20 years later, the next generation is like, oh my god, this country is going to collapse. It's all going to die. So I don't know.

So that's just the basic state of existence. Because I mean, I think every time I come to India, I'm struck not by how chaotic it is, but the fact that anything works at all, given the number of people here, the lack of infrastructure that we very generously left as a parting gift. It's extraordinary. I've been following on the bugle, particularly the last couple of years, that some of the spectacular ruling of some of the Indian Supreme Courts, we've had Anubab on quite a bit and he's a big fan of the language of these. He's a was like, he's a fan of the Supreme Court. So, Vanuva, you know, it was more just the language of it.

Well, there's a couple of recent rulings that we'll talk about now. Now, explain this, a rumor that came today on, was it, on my pronunciation of words, is terrible. Keep me until I write all my Indian friends. No, it was just a challenge, it'll be funny. Adha. That's right. Right, there we go.

See? So yeah, today was a pretty big day at the Supreme Court because there was a ruling about Adhaar. And now Adhaar means base in English. And the idea was that Adhaar is supposed to be a 12-digit, unique identification number, corresponding with which you would give in your biometric information, your eyes and your fingerprints. And it would be sort of the base of every Indian citizen,

to be able to sort of get into the digital revolution as it were. And you know that data is the new oil. Yes, absolutely. That was, by the way, I looked this up. It was a phrase coined by Mr. Clive Humbee, a UK mathematician and architect of Tesco's Club Guard. What? Just I think the sort of ininity of that fact,

it's quite mind boggling. Yes. So I mean, it is, it's the world's largest biometric ID program. And that is a challenge that's been laid out. I imagine as we speak, do by, have heard this and have worked on it, how to make an even bigger biometric ID program with all living creatures backed by the world's largest ID cards. Each card, 20 meter high, 50 meters wide, for no reason,

just for the fact that it has to break pointless record. It's got to be as big as they come. So, but basically in summary it seems really so this it's voluntary but you can't do anything without it. Which is alright. Yeah, and so another initial intention of Adar was to be able to plug the leaks in welfare distribution from the state to the people. Having said that in the process and so of course activists went after it when it started becoming very, very sort of mandatory in random places and activists went after this and said this is one unconstitutional and

two, it violates fundamental right to privacy. The court responded to that by saying, do you even have the court responded to that by saying, do you even have a right to privacy? La la la la la. And so for two years, they were deciding whether the Indian citizen had the fundamental right to privacy. And in those two years, everything from our biscuits to our laxatives had to be linked by Adhar.

Like they would not give you a death certificate if you didn't have an Adhar card. I was like, Amar Patan left forever. This is exhausting. Like I keep imagining, you know, I mean, the Hindu mythology believes in rebirth. Yeah. And I'm pretty sure that it reached that point where they were like,

you will not be reborn if you don't come to heaven with an adharkard. And at the same time, this was being sort of pushed by banks, by telecom companies, by literally anything, for you to give it as your one point identification. And I mean, of course, activists were concerned. This is sort of putting all your data in one place. And what happens if someone steals your biometric data? Do you go get new eyes?

Do you get new thumbs? No, but he knows. And that's an interesting new commercial market, isn't it? Hey, organ trade, just some more. What do you think it gets to celebrate the eyes? I mean, there's a very huge market for that. Yeah, by Sharu Khan's eyes. Oh my God, that would be amazing yeah this

because I just there's a lot of bodywood heroes whose eyes I do not want to steal right because I don't know what all they have seen and somehow I don't want to live that right but so yeah and so the decision made by the Supreme Court today was whether Abhar was unconstitutional or not and they have unfortunately, unfortunately upheld Abhar as the sort of as a system that will continue to function as something that plugs leakages in the welfare system but has sort of taken off the pressure of you know connecting your bank account and connecting your various telecom everything

to it. And of course, may I say this? I mean, this is just totally a conspiracy theory, nothing to do with anything that has happened in the past or whatever. But like this giant collection of data of the giantest collection of people, number of people in the world is open, going to be open to a lot of misuse. Yes, well I mean I just look through history, have governments and big business ever misused this kind of infrastructure? I do believe so, I do believe so.

It's a democracy you can trust. And my personal opinion is this, right, if they're going to have all my data and they're going to use it to sell me stuff. Why should somebody else be making money off of my data? Like I want some like I want in on this wherever you're selling it to whatever you're doing with it I wanted because actually I was sally enough you know I mean one of the most sort of terrifying memories of 2002 people had was that on 1984 and 2002 which were sort of two very prominent programs in Indian history or in recent Indian history. You know they were talking about how people went from house to house because they had election lists in their hands. So they knew where every person of a particular community lived and were able to do more directed and targeted murdering.

Right. Which is not something the state would ever do. No, you're certainly not your current leader. He does not have a track record for selectivity. And so now that that information was introduced in India in 2005 and at that point in time it was quite robust and quite a lot of sort of good things came out of it. But now the new proposed amendments state that information that is likely to do harm and that harm out to is public interest means that you know your RTI can be rejected on the

basis of that and that basically weakens the right to information act. And how the two are connected is actually quite interesting. It's because the government has been giving, like has been sort of just talking out of its governmental posterior, you know, giving facts about, giving statistics about how Abhaar has helped people. But whenever you file an RTI to get that information whether it's true or not, you're sort of hitting these roadblocks. And so I reckon that it's about the citizens right to privacy from the government and the government's right to hide information from the citizens.

The government's right to privacy as well. There you go. There was a couple of interesting things that I was struck me about. One was that these numbers, the R-DR numbers are only 12 digits. Now that's assuming that the population of India is not going to reach one trillion. Now on a current rate it's about 1.3 billion and it's doubled in 40 years. So assuming it carries on at the same rate, we're looking at exactly and I haven't made up the math yet. 376 years until this system becomes obsolete from having too many people in. That's long enough for us to build up a mythology around it. Like trust me in 376 years,

I'm hoping that we're not going to be looking back and calling these the good old days. all in these the good old days. Amen. There's been a few glitches as well. Some agencies apparently were marketing the cards as smart cards. Despite the fact that they have no official validity and no chip, isn't it? You know what I'm so I'll tell you, which is amazing because welcome to Indian colonialism, right? Smart card is any card that is laminated.

That's what, like if you go out onto the street right now, you will see Bonseng, we will convert your bank card into a smart card. We'll convert your other card into a smart card. It's just a smart card because you won't smudge it. That's what I'm talking about. I guess it's smarter. All things big relic.

Yeah. And not so smart for the people who are getting in time for their guns. So part of the Supreme Court judgment, it was these words, Ardard gives dignity to the marginalized, dignity to the marginalized outweighs privacy. Well, this is a kind of scissors paper stone type game, isn't it? I think privacy outweighs corporate power and wealth, corporate power and wealth outweighs dignity to the murder. There's no winner in this. That's exactly it.

That's like either way someone's going to get hurt real bad. Yes, and also this was a direct quote I saw on an online newspaper report about it that from the Supreme Court documents one cannot throw the baby out with the bath water. That's the kind of language you're getting a lot of Supreme Court judgments. And also, I mean it is true that throwing babies out with bath waters has become logistically more difficult since the invention of the plug being smaller than the baby. Whereas you just chucked the whole thing out. It was so much easier to get rid of babies in those days. When you were just, yeah, I mean, and now, now, I mean, we're living

in a time when throwing babies is frowned upon. It is, yeah, very much so. That sort of colloquialism is a little dated. Yes, my giant. Another Supreme Court ruling this week has ruled that election candidates, after filing their nominations for election, should have to make public declarations in print and electronic media about their criminal records and impending criminal cases. I mean, I mean, they're going to be so absolutely f***ing enormous newspapers in India. There's become people picking up their modern newspapers saying, God, the politics section

is 291 pages long. What's happening, I was going to say, elections. I mean, you know, I think that's a very sort of strangely optimistic thing to say, considering how much honor are you expecting among these? If you are going to expect them to come up and be like, hey, did all this still vote for me? And in fact, I think 2019 we're heading towards very interesting time because Shambhu Rehkan who was the accused of murdering a Muslim labourer on camera, the video went viral. He actually decided to run for election on the basis of his murder video. So I mean does he need to declare or did his declaration come first and then the public office running? Who knows? And so

yeah it's I don't know if they expect people to come out directly and say it. And if they do, I really want to see, like make it interesting. You know what I'm saying? I want to see a couple of songs. Right. I want you to see you sort of like acted out in your favorite genre of film. Right. You know, a sort of like a musical version of the time that you, you know, did an on a

killing of your daughter. Right. That kind of thing. Good liven up politics. Yeah, I mean, and I would vote for you. I would vote for you. Well, there may have been a trial scheme run in fact in the 2016 US election when Donald Trump laid out exactly what a

horrific family is. They're people responding to that honesty and they vote for them. And work tried for Donald Trump. So why wouldn't it work for a petty criminal here? The idea of sort of telling people what crime you've committed while you're running for office might inform them as to whether the crime you committed was in an attempt to be with the people Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, and it's struck because I think I think personally the Supreme Court could have said something to the damn political parties that are feeling these damn candidates, but I mean what do I know?

What do I know like political parties shouldn't be feeling models. I think we can agree on that. Yeah. Because we can agree on that. Across the world, but not so similar. So basically, only someone who had that idea, I don't know, two and a half thousand years ago, but it was politics around the world,

it would be very different. So there's an election next next May 2019. So Nurendra Modi is he likely to stay in power then and if so what will that mean for? Because he is a leader who I think it's fair to say splits opinion in quite average yes with an extremely divisive acts. What's your prediction? I think 2019 is going to be actually a big year. I don't know the way the elections are going to go because as I was telling you, there was of course, there have been several floating conspiracy theories about EVMs being rigged and lots of sort of, I mean, I don't know about Indian elections ever because your vote can be bought

for like a plate of biryani. And so, I don't know how I'm going to vote as a country, I have no idea. And the only hope of course course, is that we've been sort of, now that we sort of went to the high of 2014 when there were all these promises, and there was all this show, and the sort of PR was slick and tight and amazing, to the general gradual unraveling of these promises of development and all the development is such a catch-all

terrible term right now it's embarrassing and so you know I think it remains to be seen as to what tactics both parties will employ closer to elections will there be riots will there be so the right would be that's an electoral tactic is it oh yeah right yeah pick up on this in Britain, I think. No! Totally please don't. Please don't. Please don't.

Yes, I don't know. 2019 could be a doozy. Who knows? Right. That's a good prediction. Could be a doozy. Hello! A court in Kerala is southern state of India.

Has ruled in favour of a lesbian couple who want to to live together and earlier this month the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality essentially. They struck down section 377 of India's penal code which was a colonial era law decriminalised homosexuality. Thank you. You're welcome. This was a further detail. Section 377 was, at past 1861, it was a British law, based on another British law, from 1533, which we'd written and repealed in 1828. So that was all.

That was a good idea. It was just one we no longer need. You just passed down your address. Thank you. Thank you for that, I guess. You're all very, very well. So, yeah. I mean, the Supreme Court did get major props.

You know, during that time, everyone was all like, like, deweyied for the Supreme Court because 377 decriminalized homosexuality, which means it was just one less charge to sort of put on young couples or you know people who are just roaming around in public life. It was one less charge to bring the table when they were taken in by the police. And so it was sort of a huge landmark thing and it had we had sort of the Supreme Court had considered it in 2013 and then put it aside for your consideration in 2018 and which is when it finally managed

to get passed and what is actually happening now is going to be very interesting because it intersects with a lot of things right it intersects with the right to self-determination because these two women in Kerala, they were sort of the specifics of this case are that it's a 24-year-old and a 40-year-old and the 24-year-old is parents, went to the police, said she's missing, took her, so when the police found her, took her back home and they put on a mental asylum. And then, you know, I mean, so they went in for this case and everything and the Kerala High Court came in and said, no, you know what, this is allowed. And this is going to change a lot. Like, this is going to pause, just this one sort of change in not even the act itself. It's just that one law is going

to change a lot of rulings for the years to come. So it's, I think this is just the beginning in that sense. I don't know, I didn't say anything funny regarding that. I just thought I'd say I didn't think. It's in the, as India modernizes as a country, clearly there's all kinds of competing forces at play. They do simply these landmarks along the way, but also forces of tugging back towards traditionalism. And I mean, in Britain we're an illegalized gay marriage,

I think the five or six years ago. How comfortable is India with this progress to a more open-minded society? So you know, I believe that for any change, especially for any social change in India right now, what's going to happen is there are two kinds of processes that we have to take place. One is of course, the legal process and the other one is the overarching cultural process.

It's going to definitely be a longer term process, but when you have the constitution or the Supreme Court on your side, it just makes it easier to sort of call upon when you're being, you know, dragged for it, I guess. You know, we've had a series of in the past two weeks, we've had a series of honor killings, which are caste-based honor killings. And I love that we call it honor killings because on her feelings because it sounds like a really cute thing. I guess. Oh no. Like, oh. Yes. It's a bizarre euphemism. The world is full of weird euphemisms. I think my favorite euphemism is EFTeezing,

which is like harassment, like sexually harassing a woman on the road is called EFTeezing, which sounds like something a puppy would do under a f***ing rainbow, right? Nobody is eve teasing me when you're like screaming at me from behind the road, but that's what it's called. And so the language around these things as well, honor killings, for example, has been sort of, and it's always been cited with the person who's doing the murdering, right? So the purpose for these last three ones that sort of have, and they really didn't get much play in mainstream media was because you know they were basically women from upper castes who ran away and eloped with men from lower castes and the fathers and the families of these women came and hacked these men to death, like hacked them to death. And I don't

know like I feel like sometimes the brutality of it doesn't hit us anymore. Like just like when you're walking down the street and you see a car hurtling it, you on a bombay road, you don't feel anything anymore. But hacking, you know, someone to death and these are just consenting adults as we discussed in the lesbian story, they are lesbian story. As we discussed in the lesbian story they are lesbian story as we discussed in the other Kerala story. You know these are consenting adults but the imposition of oneness is so strong and so crazy that people are willing to murder for it and I found it sort of do you know the caste system and by the way? Well, only superficially, I think. Yes, so I don't know, the intricacies of how it practically works.

You know, so the caste system, mythologically, the sort of origin story is that there was a certain God and he was sort of giving birth to the different kinds of people. And so he gave birth to the Brahmins from the hen, which is why they are the ones that hold knowledge. He gave birth to the Shatriyas, which is the warrior class from their shoulders, which is why they like really buff, I guess. And then the Vesyas from the stomach, which is the trader class, so they do trading for like money. And then the feet, which was the Shudras, which was the you know the Shadyukas, the Dalits, the OBCs, the Tribal, and they are sort of in charge of cleaning up society.

And so... And that science generally disagrees with that theory of human evolution now. Is that the truth? You know, I would say, because the thing is I've tried this, I've looked at, looked out for people giving birth through their legs. And I have not seen a single recorded this thing of it. Well I've seen two births and definitely neither was through a leg. Neither isn't. No you're not even saying like a really generous thigh. Definitely. Okay. And so there's four types and the lower classes have experienced brutal oppression.

And it's one of those things that actually nobody in India talks about. Even I've personally started learning about it. They don't talk about it in school, they talk about it like it's a thing at the past and this doesn't happen anymore. And the kinds of things that you'll see, recently a Dalit man got murdered because he kept a moustache and the upper caste men in his village didn't like it and so they murdered him. Now the guy rode a horse at his wedding and they were like no this is an upper caste activity and so they

murdered him and it made me realize honor is anything that pisses men off. Late tomorrow I could be eating an ice cream and if a man doesn't like, he'd be like that's against my honor and kill me. And I think that it's sort of it's a it's one of the most unspoken and un like even the way our media covers it is very upper class is very it doesn't acknowledge and I'm like this is 50% of the population of this country we are talking about right now. But the way media is structured the sorry I'm saying nothing funny, I'm so sorry. This is nice. The way media is structured, the way our storytelling, paradigms are structured, the voices and the stories only belong to the apocast. They only, I mean that's why I am, I keep thinking of myself as wow on this unique

fucking butterfly, woman, comedy, English, all this stuff. But the truth is that there are millions, I mean like it really doesn't, it's not on merit because there are millions who just have not had access to the opportunities that I have and it's just a function of birth like this country crazy, it's all about where you were born that determines what your life is going to be like and so these murderers have been taking place rampantly and I think they sort of tie into the same thing that I was telling you about Sathi earlier is that where they, it's all about endogamy. It's all about maintaining this purity of the bloodline that the uterus is, uterine

of women, you know, shall only be seated by the men of higher caste and, you know, warriors and bram know, warriors and Brahmin, whatever, right? And so it sort of ties into that and that's why they would literally murder the wife after the husband was gone because they were like, we don't want you, you to die, to be available to anybody else. It has to remain within the community and which is why this backlash of just murdering husbands in broad daylight. She was a pregnant woman and they hacked her husband to death in front of her At all because he belonged to a lower caste and all because it was just, you know I am there. They call it an honor killing. They call it an honor killing

I'm like this is like someone stabbing me to death and think this is a knife incident. No, I'm dead. So yeah, I think I'm you know, I think we see I'm dead, big. So yeah, I think, you know, it's a- But I think with a round of world, there's this clash at the moment between space age technology and medieval politics, religion, tradition. Yeah.

There's no, there's no easy resolution to it. I mean, are you optimistic for what Indie will be like in 30 years' time compared with what it was like say 30 years ago and looking at it now. That's what I'm telling you, I don't think so. I think we're all going to be at the precipice of breakdown every day. I mean we're not going to know if we're going to mean I don't know. That's why I say 2019 isn't dosing. Well, tuning in, we to pick this up. There you go, Buglerus. That is all. Do not forget to come to all the forthcoming Bugler

live show, Sulfide on the 7th of October, Dublin on the 8th of October, London on the 14th of November. And also there's my one off stand-up show in Toronto on the 20th of October. If you hear this in time, I'm also doing a show in Mumbai on the 2nd of October. Plus there's the third installment of my certifiable history at Soho Theatre from the 18th of December to the 6th of January. We'll be back next week to pick over the bounds of whatever is left of the American Judiciary. Until then, from Kolkata, goodbye. catcher. Goodbye.