Museums may stock art, but what they sell is cultural pretensions, cultured erudition, a dollop of snobbery - to be served with tart to lesser beings, and entire abstruse vocabularies to share what you never felt and understood but readily imbibed from the digitized voice of the audio guide with opposite sex for sex, sometimes friends and coworkers for distinction.

And best of it is that you don’t even have to struggle – waste time with art no one ‘gets’ – to earn your rights, now that museums have woken up to the need of expanding their market, and as they accelerate their transformation into the vital cogs of higher end popular culture. So next time you go to a museum, you can rest your eyes on things you can understand, or think you can – well there is always the audio guide for reassurance, like photos, the great modern epigram of reality, and decorative glass sculptures, and art by celebrities like Frida Kahlo. If those things don’t interest you – you can always walk out with a museum tote bags, or come back during a weekend evening snacks and drinks sessions.

Museums are the epitome of the late capitalist bloomage – because they sell nothing, except insignia of privilege, culture – the hard to measure. And now they are making their fairy dust available to more people than ever before. In a way it is meager pleasure for culture is increasingly going out of business, as marker of money and class. Money is the marker of money. It is surely there for the many from the middle, who having lost the moral edge in a culture which doesn’t value the narrowly defined moral rectitude, are now looking for new definitions to make respectability respectable.
While all of this is going on, there is something else that ails. The trouble is that there are real limits to selling culture. First you have to teach the people how to appreciate this ‘amazing thing’. And to do that you must reduce the steps to appreciate the object into some comprehensible formula, but do it in a way that the product is always tinged with veneration. Well at the heart of it you want to teach people how to distinguish the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’. But ‘good’ should be something irreproducible or something specific to a brand.
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Kenneth Baker, art critic for the San Francisco Chronice, demolishes the Chihuly exhibit at the DeYoung in rather spectacular fashion.

“Perhaps in today’s arts funding environment, every museum must work a potboiler or two into its exhibition calendar. But Chihuly has come to personify everything meretricious in contemporary art. The most exciting thing about his work: Its status as art stands in question.
….
Chihuly’s presentation at the de Young consists of ensembles of works in blown glass, so theatrically lighted that they make a visitor feel like a walk-on performer in some costly, unnamed spectacle. That spectacle is Chihuly’s career.
…
A fair-minded critic must ask why Chihuly’s work cannot be taken seriously as sculpture. Sculptors of acknowledged importance have at times made good use of glass: Robert Smithson (1938-1973), Christopher Wilmarth (1943-1987), Barry Le Va, Kiki Smith. But all of them shunned Chihuly’s forte: decoration.
…
The skeptical visitor to “Chihuly at the de Young,” starting in the second of its 11 rooms, gets the queasy sense that here the gift shop inevitably barnacled to such exhibitions has finally engulfed its host.
Educated viewers cannot look for long at Chihuly’s work without wishing there were something to think about. So they think about something else. The capacity to hold our attention, in the moment or in reflection later, is a mark of significant art in an era when mass media work hard to abbreviate attention spans so as to cut costs and decapitate questions.”

Biographical

You were born and raised in Lahore. Can you tell us a little more about how it was growing up there? Did you ever visit the BRB canal?

While I was born in the city, my parents moved to the suburbs right after my birth. I grew up in Allama Iqbal town, which is a south-western suburb of Lahore.

After my birth, my father built a house in Allama Iqbal town - he always wanted to live away from the city life. Our house was one of the first in the town. My early memories of living in that new town include seeing fields all around our house.

My parents still live in that house though the town itself is much more crowded now.

And yes, I have visited BRB Canal plenty of times; my father loved to take us there on picnics.

Is your family originally from Lahore or they moved there during partition?

My maternal grand parents were from Lahore while my paternal grand parents were from Pasrur, a small village near Sialkot (near the Indian border).

Many of my family members originally lived in Qadian, a small village in Gurdaspur in Indian Punjab as Ahmadis have long had very strong ties with Qadian.

Can you tell me a little more about your childhood and your parents?

We were raised in a protected environment. Our weekends were spent at my father’s village of Pasrur. Our father always wanted us to have a first hand knowledge of village life because he wanted us to experience how people live in extreme poverty. We were also taught swimming, horse riding, fishing, climbing on trees, and many other activities of village life.

Abu

My father is an engineer. In 1984 my father started a factory for manufacturing capital goods in Lahore. He ran a factory to manufacture control panels and switch gears. ‘Power Electronics’, my dad’s company, was the first Pakistani company that made Switch-gears. Before that, Pakistan had to import these products from Western countries at an enormous cost. It was in fact that realization which prompted him to start manufacturing capital goods.

My father disliked the idea of emigrating to other countries. He believed that we have to make things better in our own country. He thought things would get better after Zia’s regime and that our Caliph, Mirza Tahir Ahmad, would come back. He thought that Pakistan would be on the road of peace and prosperity soon after Zia left but my father was mistaken in his optimism.

Anyhow, while the 1980s were the worst in Pakistan history in terms of freedom of speech and religious freedom, 1990s were the worst in terms of political chaos and corruption in the country. My father had to struggle hard and faced numerous obstacles due to the constant flip flop of democratically elected governments of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, and because these governments brought a lot of corruption in the country. The common man in Pakistan had thought that democratic governments would bring peace and prosperity in the country but things got much worse.

Ami

She is a very sensitive person.

My mother had a very tough childhood. My Nana Jaan died when she was two years old and she had to live in extreme poverty.

Although my Nana Jaan, a close friend of Mirza Gulam Ahmad (founder of the Ahmadi sect), was a very rich businessman, with interests in Lahore and Bombay, before partition, and left huge property for his four kids and two widows, those four kids and two widows didn’t get even a single penny from that property because my mother’s two Chachas (uncles) were very much against my naana jaan’s conversion to Ahmadiyya faith and his second marriage at the age of 60 to my nani jaan (a young Kashmiri Ahmadi school teacher from a very poor family). His first wife was a rich lady from a nawab family who lived most of her life with my nana jaan. She had converted to Ahmadiyya faith along with nana jaan but couldn’t have kids so she, along with second caliph Mirza Basir-ud-deen Mahmud and his wife, made my nana jaan do a second marriage with my nani jaan. The first wife died soon after my nana jaan death, and both chachas distributed the wealth among their children. My nani jaan, who got widowed at the age of 25 with four young kids, moved to Rabwa from Lahore where the second caliph was living, who supported nani just like his own daughter and grand kids and there she started teaching at local school. My nani also died when my ami was 16 yrs old and my mamoo (ami’s elder brother) who was himself just 21 yrs old became the guardian of three younger siblings.

Can you tell us a little more about the impact of growing up as an Ahmadi in Pakistan?

Ahmadis have faced antagonism since the beginning. Ulemas of all the major seventy-two sects of Islam declared them Kafirs in 1891.

In 1974, Prime Minister Zulifqar Ali Bhutto declared Ahmadis non-Muslims. The constitution of Pakistan was amended to outlaw Ahmadis from calling themselves Muslims. Following the legislation, anti-Ahmadiyya riots broke out in the entire country. Thousands of Ahmadis died in the riots. Their properties were looted and their homes burnt.

My ami (mother) always tells us this story that in 1974 when she was pregnant (with me) and alone in the house with her three year old daughter (my elder sister), the mullahs led a call during the Friday sermon for every Ahmadi house to be burnt in order to secure Islam from Ahmadiyyat. A huge mob went on a rampage. As the word got around people, including our next door neighbors left their houses to try to save themselves. When the mob, which included some of our own Sunni relatives, was marching toward our house, my abu (father) went to the police to ask for help. The police refused point blank saying that they could not go against the mullahs.

Just when the mob was about to reach our house, there was a sudden severe sandstorm. My ami always says that it was a miracle. (I don’t know about Indian Punjab but in Pakistani Punjab we have a lot of sand storms especially in early summer and they come so unexpectedly that one doesn’t get the opportunity to close the windows and doors of the house. The storms leave your house covered in dust and the whole city turns into a desert; one can’t even see beyond a foot). The mob couldn’t do anything except break a few windows. My Ami tells us that after the storm there were only shoes and turbans found on the street.

So at a fairly early age we came to know that we had a religious identity which was unacceptable to the mainstream Muslims. We were nurtured in the basic teachings of Ahmadi faith in house, and sent to Convent of Jesus and Mary school because my father didn’t want us to face any discrimination because of our faith.

The discrimination against us has also been endorsed on our passports. If we call ourselves Ahmadis we have to enroll as a non-Muslim which deprives us of all our basic rights as Muslims. For example, Ahmadis cannot cast votes as Muslim and in order to vote, we have to enroll as non-Muslims.

During Zia-ul Huq oppressive regime, our Fourth Caliph (spiritual leader) Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad was compelled to migrate to England. Since then many Ahmadis in Pakistan have emigrated to European countries. Most of my relatives moved to USA and Canada.

Zia’s oppressive regime left a long lasting legacy of turmoil in the country and religious extremism. There were many incidents of animosity that I witnessed, and now living in US I realize how much we were denied of our basic religious rights. Ahmadis were not allowed to practice their faith in public places or build their mosques. So my father volunteered our house for congregational prayers in Ramazan and other Ahmadis meetings. When Mullahs of local mosque got this news my father had to face huge threats and warnings that we were using our residential area for un-Islamic activities. It is against the constitution of Pakistan to build Ahmadiyya mosque or use a building as Ahmadiyya mosque and activities. My father was sued by the local mullahs but my father took the fine in his stride and paid the penalty.

I find it ironic that the only country where I am a non-Muslim is my own. In the past I have never commented on these issues in my work. And although I was very willing to address such controversial issues, the general air of intolerance in my society always discouraged me from doing so.

When did you first realize that you were interested in art? Was it a Eureka moment for you or a slow eventual realization? South Asian societies generally see art as a hobby. From art as a hobby to choosing it as a profession, this transition is especially difficult in Asian societies. Were your parents supportive of your decision? If you feel comfortable, please tell us a little more about your parent’s professions and their impact on you.

From the earliest that I can remember, I have always been very fond of drawing. Every wall, cupboard and door was covered with silly figurative drawings and portraits of family members, relatives, and who ever visited our house. I watched the visitors secretly and drew their appearance on the wall and when they were gone I showed it to my parents and said, “Look, I made the picture of Baba Chokidari, motti Chachi, and Apa ji - don’t they look like this?”

In the beginning my parents were amused by the drawings, my parents said, ‘look how creative and clever she is’, they laughed at those silly drawing on every wall of the house, and then they realized that every wall was covered with scribbling and drawings, and it gave them a very untidy appearance. So I was given blackboard and white chalks to draw on and instructed to draw on the blackboard only. The blackboard had two sides, one for me and one for my elder sister. We were told to do anything on our given area of Blackboard. My sister’s side was always covered with homework and my side was always covered by drawings. It is funny that now my sister is a Doctor (a general physician in Missouri), and I am still doing those silly drawings.

Let me share one another interesting story with you, my mother was also interested in art and always wanted to be a professional painter. Unfortunately, being a woman, she was not allowed by her family to paint or to pursue a professional carrier. When she was young, art was considered un-Islamic, and a waste of time. She used to make miniature paintings on fabric, newspapers and vases, from scratch and without any guidance or training. At that time, parents decided what careers the children would pursue and with whom they would marry. My widowed grandmother, who was a teacher and vice principal at a local school, decided that my mother should become a doctor. However my grandmother died untimely and the male guardians of my mother disallowed her from continuing her education. So, with her hidden passion for the arts and her mother’s unfulfilled dream for her to be a doctor, she was married away.

Since early childhood my mother has been mentally and academically preparing my sister and me to eventually become doctors. My sister fulfilled my mother’s dream and became a doctor. But when it came my turn to choose a career, I disappointed her. She always said “I didn’t get permission to be an artist by my mother, so how can I allow you?”

At the time my progress in school was getting very weak and she had to face complaints from my school teachers that they had caught me drawing in the class.
So whenever my mother caught me drawing or painting, she would destroy whatever artwork I had created. The only safe time I had was in the middle of night. I used to wake up in the middle of night when everybody was asleep, switched on a torch, covered myself with a big blanket, and pursued my art underneath it. Now I feel funny sharing all this but I was still caught, and received a good beating from Ami. My mother had a special beating stick for me. If I ever said I wanted to be an artist my sister immediately fetched that stick and put it in front of Ami.

My mother was not an anti-art person but she feared that her daughter wouldn’t have respectable place in the society and that pursuing art would kill my professional abilities. As you know in South Asian society artists are deemed to be mere craftsmen.

My ‘secret’ decision of being an artist was totally opposite to what my mom had decided for me. What I was painting was an even graver threat to Ami and Abu because starting 8th grade, I started painting compositions on ‘human suffering’ ‘persecution on minorities and women issues’.

Eventually, after years of persistence, my parents realized the intensity of my devotion to being an artist and I was granted permission to go to an art school. My Abu was a very big support from the very beginning - he always supported me in whatever I did or chose except we were supposed to be good in studies and elite in our fields. Like, “Kasbeh Kamal khon khe Aziz-e-Jhan Shohri’’ Iqbal

My Ami had her own very strong principles and believes, she always taught us it was a rigid patriarchal society (secondly we were a religious minority) where there was much discrimination against women and minorities and so women must pursue a career of utmost prestige and which would be considered safe and money making too.

Another reason for these strong anti-art sentiments in the 80’s was Zia-ul-Haq’s dictatorship. Every sort of art except for calligraphy was condemned; figurative art was considered un-Islamic. In fact, engaging in any form of art was considered a great sin.

I was careful to never show my work to my family till it was exhibited or published because if they saw the content and imagery of my work, they would never allow me to continue making such paintings or display them. So, belonging to a family from a controversial religious minority, and one that didn’t support the arts, I grew more politically conscious by the day.

On Art, why did you choose miniature art? What specific affordances does miniature art provide for your overtly political work?

Even today, Pakistani audiences perceive miniature painting as decorative, a form of art that reflects and glorifies their rich traditional heritage. Miniatures, for me, however, have a a more transcendental role; it is a vocabulary for the artist to engage in a sociopolitical dialogue with viewers towards a more humane society.

Of late, the miniature has drawn attention from foreign curators, museums, and art institutions. Yet, in Pakistan, my work was accepted by just one gallery––Rhotas2, the only serious gallery in Lahore–the others being reluctant to display anything controversial.

Moving to Chicago in 2003, I gained the artistic and religious freedom that was somewhat precarious in my own homeland. I began responding to my new environment. The post 9/11 climate of fear, scrutiny and surveillance of Muslims in the West thus shaped my current works. Global politics has become a consistent theme. Western societies in general - and the United States in particular - tend to be less aware of other societies in the world, particularly about Islam and Muslim culture. This is an era of cross-cultural misunderstandings; misperceptions created by a Western media that is mostly hostile to Muslim societies and Islam. Much of this misperception is attributable to the Western media, which often presents a distorted version of reality and only one side of the global debate. My new works unmask the injustices and hypocrisy of both Eastern and Western worlds.

My work has journeyed through several boundaries, from employing the centuries-old miniature format to a contemporary stage where a human drama unfolds every day, to cross-cultural forays and political interventions. And the inspirational sources have been many –– the courtly propaganda of the Mughals, the grandeur of baroque opera, the fun and enjoyment of circus performances, icons of pop culture, and the glamor of South-Asian cinema.

With Mughal allegorical symbolism, we miniaturists have created our own visual semiotics and metaphors. For example, the extremist mullahs who have hijacked Islam for their own political agendas and manipulate Muslim youth in the name of Jihad are allegorized by Greek-satyrs; Muslim leaders are depicted as string puppets in the hands of President Bush; Pakistani army generals wearing Hawaiian sandals indicate the irony that this nation is the world’s seventh nuclear state and is spending on a defence budget of over $3.5 billion a year in spite of a national debt of over $40 billion; the Shia-Sunni clash in Iraq is a bull-fight and the bogeyman media is a monkey with a camera.

Although they provide comic relief, they are critical of ignorance and prejudice, manipulation of governments and religious heads. The ironies and paradoxes of a post 9/11 world permeate my tragi-comic paintings. Mine is a plea for social justice.

**Note: The interview was conducted about an year ago in 2007. The interview has been edited for style, and on occasion for content, but due care has been taken to keep the overall emphasis and context intact.***

The Raj era building, built between 1928 and 1934 – though formally opened in 1931, was based on the designs of World War I veteran Robert Tor Russell, Chief architect to the Public Works Department. Russell had worked in India before the War as an assistant to the famous John Begg, who along with George Wittet is generally credited for developing the Indo-Sarcenic style. Thankfully, due to exigency or choice, none of the Begg’s influence invaded Russell’s design aesthetic, which was dominated by the understated yet stately stucco neo-classical style popularized by Sir Edwin Lutyens. Russell’s aesthetic however did carry distinct echoes of Italian architecture- The opulent gracefully executed Tuscan loggias on both on both levels (the upper level structures have been increasingly converted into offices) being the defining features of Connaught Place.

Growing up in the eighties, Connaught Place, with its massive arcaded colonnades, circular columnar geometry which was never oppressive, upscale if slightly dowdy shops (as opposed to ‘upscale’ shops now which have interior designs that are almost always preternaturally youthful) with humming air conditioners (when air conditioners were a rarity) – was a constant source of wonder and awe. It was also the only place where one saw foreigners in Delhi – they, almost always in their sunglasses and shorts, walking unhurriedly yet purposefully.

Going to Connaught Place meant going through India Gate and parts of Lutyens Delhi. As we neared India gate, the temperature dropped a few degrees as bus gathered pace and air shed its molten edge in the leafy embrace of trees, and over the grassy expanse of the maidans. Suddenly the furrowed brow of the bus passengers relaxed as we entered the non-gridlocked, beautiful, stately, tree lined Delhi, and a near bonhomie was restored.

Getting down at Barakhamba Road, I remember always taking a few seconds to take in the faint yet pleasant excitement of being in this glorious commercial hub, feeling happy, and almost dreamily becoming aware of the pleasant rush of traffic and how the car horns sounded different – more sonorous, here. However, the two things that I remember most about going to Connaught Place are the shoe shops and Nirula’s. If mom wanted a sandal, it had to be from the Liberty shop in Connaught Place, and the Bata shop there was considered absolutely irreplaceable for men’s shoes. The air-conditioned Nirula’s with its exotic pizzas, which never tasted good but were ravenously consumed, and burgers, and ice-creams was heaven, albeit a heaven in which the feet and heart were as timorous as excitement complete.

On the way back home at night, happy with the day, the relatively empty bus with its dull yellow light seemed positively romantic. As we passed the ice-cream wallahs with their fluorescent lights covered in colored cellophane, and the strolling families, near India gate, the adventure was complete.

Frida Kahlo was born to a wealthy German father and a Spanish-American mother in 1907. (It is hence unsurprising that Salma Hayek, a rich dilettante of mixed ancestry with little trace of native blood – Hayek is the daughter of a rich Lebanese father and Spanish mother - played her in a popular movie biopic.) The point about non-native bourgeoisie ancestry is important because Kahlo so self-consciously and unceasingly peddled the native roots in her dress, and her art.

For years rumors swirled (no doubt sustained by her) that her father was Jewish. Carl Wilhelm Kahlo, instead, was a born in 1871 in Pforzheim, Germany to Lutheran parents, whose similarly Lutheran antecedents have been traced back to the 16th century by Gaby Franger and Rainer Huhle in their book, Fridas Vater: Der Fotograf Guillermo Kahlo. (Reviewing the book for JPost, Meir Ronnen, wrote – ‘Frida’s favorite subject was herself (she made a trademark of her eyebrows).’ Never perhaps has a simpler formulation of Frida been offered – the childish self-regard, and the commercialism.)

Biography

Kahlo grew up in a gorgeous colonial house, one she returned to during the last years of her life, with access to all the contemporary amenities, the only dark stain being her contracting polio at the age of five. Polio however didn’t leave her handicapped, or her legs as grotesquely disfigured as it does for countless other poorer people.

Coursing through her solidly bourgeoisie life, at 15, Kahlo entered the premedical program at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. At 18, she had a catastrophic street car accident suffering multiple fractures including damage to the spine, a damaged uterus, and a punctured pelvis. Kahlo never really recovered from the horrific injuries even after going through as many as 35 operations, and continued to live in pain.

Three years after her accident, during which she had started to paint, she met Diego Riviera, the celebrated muralist, and soon after started a romance with the 42 year old artist. A year later, the two were married. The major (and minor) events of the dramatic relationship between Kahlo and Riviera with its numerous infidelities - including Diego’s affair with Frida’s sister Christina, and Frida’s relationship with Trotsky - are well known and well documented. Riviera had a significant impact on her art and politics and politics in art. The crisp outlines to her figures are much in the style of Diego Rivera. Similarly, the way she colors some her paintings echoes the flat coloring in Rivera murals.

The other significant aspect of her life was the political environment that she grew up in. Kahlo grew up at a time when Mexico was in turmoil. Mexican Revolution had begun in 1910 and continued to fester far after 1920. Influenced partly by the politically charged communist learning environment and her association with Riviera, a painter of ‘heroic’ murals with folk art echoes, her paintings incorporated techniques from native Mexican art, and used it to offer none particularly incisive political commentary.

Echoes of Kahlo

“Frida Kahlo has been the right artist at the right time,” said Gregorio Luke, director of the Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) in California in his 2002 interview with Stephanie Mencimer of the Washington Monthly.

For an era so dearly in search of unimpeachable arty exotic celebrity ‘progressive’ symbols, Kahlo is indeed perfect. Her bisexuality makes her ‘progressive’, her clothes, jewelry and her ‘looks’ make her lusciously ‘exotic, her connections and flirtations with communism and communists make her more appealing still, and her being an artist does nearly everything else.

Kahlo excels as the embodiment of symbolically political hippy chic enmeshed with the exotic romanticism of a Mediterranean country. The fact that her art is transparent is an additional perk. What is left for denouement and understanding, then, is the artist herself, and there the store is rich and endless. But that is saying things somewhat incorrectly- it isn’t due to absence of complexity that people yearn for biography, people yearn for biography when faced with images of celebrity. Her recognizable self-portraits with the repeated motifs of conjoined brow, hair over the lip, the native dress, the hairstyle, and traditional jewelry, work well in an era of celebrity.

After disappearing from the mainstream art world, Kahlo was rediscovered by the feminists in the late 1970s. Soon after, Kahlo got a more popular audience through Hayden Herrera’s famous 1983 biography. Since then, an explosion of Kahlo-inspired films, plays, clothing, and jewelry have transformed the artist into a ‘veritable cult figure’. (National Museum of Women in the Arts)

Exhibitions of her art, including one at SF MoMA, continue to propagate the part celebrity, part artist understanding of hers by blurring lines blurring lines between her personal life and her art. They do so by simultaneously exhibiting family photos, and details of her life. This all means that Kahlo today is more of a (pop) cultural statement than an artistic one.

Kahlo’s Art

Kahlo is a reasonably good painter. That is if you accept that her paintings will always carry marks of self-absorption, plaintiff psychological overtones, melodrama, and celebrity. In fact, her paintings are seen best with those afflictions. She is best when she captures the pathos and melodrama like she does in ‘The suicide of Dorothy Hale’. The painting, drawn on commission from the dead girl’s dad, shows the girl falling from the building but always looking at the viewer, accusing. It is only occasionally that Kahlo is capable of moving beyond that limited oeuvre as she does with ‘Portrait of Dona Rosita Morillo’ where she presents an old matriarch with solemn respectability though with a strangely distracted expression. Perhaps the answer to the distracted expression lies with some psychologist, as it does for many other things that pertain to Kahlo and her art. I for one have only limited interest.

Among the people of these ‘subaltern’ groups, the ones who haven’t been cleansed by the washcloth of high culture, there is a feeling of inadequacy if not disgust with oneself. They must acknowledge the impossibility of ever joining the erudite, English speaking, trim, Westernized, ever progressing and ever progressive, posh group. The chasm only seems to grow wider every day. Sometimes that impossibility takes the form of anger – who are these people feeling so uppity about their new found pretensions? Their beginnings were probably as vulgar than mine. (Caste and class – the last refuge of the bastards. ) It is as if caught in their pretensions – they have executed a double exile – alienating themselves from their roots, and sending us prematurely to our cultural exiles. But then ‘culture’ was largely lost – if not in migration then in constant contortions needed to feed the ‘family’ since then – so what is left now is an idea of culture, and this hunger - this vast orifice that wants to go on consuming. There is no escaping from it. Perhaps these kids are right, we have nothing to offer. So if they find pretensions of West and find home in it, then so be it. If only, they didn’t humiliate us. How dare they?

Among the manicured words crafted by high intellect, a philistine is ever so precisely caught in a pincer like grip, stripped, and exposed for who he is for who he is – a rat, a cheat, a miser, someone who is ugly, fat, debased, lustful, probably impotent, unblinking and stupid. There is nowhere to run.
We have all seen likes of him for the one thing about philistines is that they all look alike. In the oily paunchy sunburned carcass, there is no vestige of culture, no literacy in the “in” books, and no appreciation of the finer aspects of life. I can sympathize with the poor. They may be romanticized for their ‘simplicity’ and their poverty. They at least don’t invade. But how can one live with people with such overreach, such humdrum mediocrity, such precocious grabbing lust, such vulgarity, such hunger? Where does one go to soothe his cultivated sensibilities?

A philistine is like a ‘ghee’ stain on a Dostoevsky. It defines my connection to all that is vile and deformed, all that I want to escape for the safety of harmonic refinement. When did these people become so vile? How did I not notice before how they had encroached on culture and the air itself, and carved up their names on it like low class Romeos. (Accusations of caste and class fly back.) They are like cockroaches on the bathroom drain cover - too filthy to be squished, too filthy to be tolerated, forever to be despised.

Will they find me out? I torture over whether there exists the possibility of being good enough, whether one so completely learn all the parlor tricks that it iron outs the ugly wrinkles of low breeding, whether I can stand any scrutiny and be affirmed of higher birth, higher learning, one of them. There is always that wracking doubt that somehow the occasional word in the wrong accent, the inability to use chop sticks, will conspire and give away the years of low existence and expose you for the philistine you are. There is always that threat, if one grows up and takes up the pretensions. It is one thing if you grow up with it. Otherwise you grow up anxious and eager to stamp every little echo of your own vile history, eager to disassociate with all that is debased in your own bloodline. That is all you can do.

One day, they catch themselves staring at the mirror, and find a tired sunburned unhealthy face, the distorting paunch, their brow wrinkles when they think about the constant demands of family and friends caught in their own vicious cycles, and realize the absolute impossibility of doing better. To be branded a philistine is much like being accused of the original sin – however much you may try, you cannot rinse it off. You must acknowledge the impossibility of transcending it.

It is infinitely easy to be casually vicious, and generally feted if done with faux consideration. But writing hence pursued is a failed enterprise. It then becomes nothing more than carrying class pretensions. The mark of good writing may not be redeeming humans, whom the dominant cultural script has left warped, but bringing to light the lived emotional and social experience of people, and the historio-socio-cultural contexts remains the key to it. This ability - to write well- continues to rest upon both ones’ ability to look into oneself, and into others, and ability to look from other person’s perspective.

Funding for education however suffers deeply, especially in South Asia. What the politicians haven’t accomplished in deed, they have accomplished in words. For example, in 2002, India enacted a constitutional amendment making education a fundamental right for all children between 6 and 14. Pakistani leaders have been no less ambitious and nor has the lack of commitment of resources needed to make those policies a success, any less mocking.

Given that Education is an extremely broad area, I have split the analysis into three non-exclusive parts – funding for education, literacy, and primary education.

For my analysis, I rely upon three data sources - Statistics Division of Government of Pakistan (Federal Bureau of Statistics); Ministry of Economic Affairs and Statistics, Government of Pakistan; and Institute of Statistics at UNESCO (World Bank, UNDP use its data). Data from the sources is sometimes conflicting, and in a small majority of cases wildly irreconcilable.

Funding for Education

While the exact figures differ (details below), all data show that Pakistan between 1999 and 2006 spent on average spends less than 2.5% of its GDP on education as compared to 3.6% average expenditure by countries in South Asia, and a combined average of 3.4% of other “low income countries”.

Education expenditure under Musharraf rose – though only eventually – from the low of 1.84% of GDP in 2000 to a still low but higher figure of 2.25% in 2005, rising to 2.59% in 2006. Expenditure on education (as percentage of GDP) under Musharraf compares poorly not only cross-nationally but also historically. The average expenditure in education stood at 2.7% plus under Bhutto’s second term between 1993 and 1996. Musharraf‘s regime however did do better than Sharif’s regime during which expenditure had plummeted to below 2% of GDP. Cross-nationally, Pakistan compared poorly to its South Asian neighbors (about a percentage below India, and generally below Bangladesh during the Musharraf era), and lagged significantly behind countries as varied as Iran, and United States.

Education expenditure measured as percentage of government expenditure rose appreciably between 2004 and 2005 from about 6.4% to nearly 10.5%. However in 2006, when the expenditure rose again to 12.5%, it was about 6 percentage points behind Iranian expenditure, a narrower gap than the 12 point wide chasm in 2005. Musharraf government’s spending on education averaged 4% behind Bangladesh’s expenditure, which remained steady between 14 and 15% points from 1999 to 2005.

Education expenditure is by no means uniform across the country and aggregate statistics hide much of the regional and within-region variation. Expenditure in education in Pakistan is the prerogative of the provincial government. Punjab government which swam in money during the Sharif era and allocated up to 31% of its budget on education, spent a declining proportion on education under Musharraf. Reflecting American money and priorities, investment in education by Balochistan’s provincial government went up post 9/11. Most budgetary allocation to education was spent on furnishing recurring expenses, and only a small proportion (less than 8%) on development. (Husain etc., 2003)

Adult Literacy Rate

Increases in literacy have been a major success of the Musharraf era. The overall literacy rate (10 years & above) was 54 percent in 2005-06, an increase of 9.0 percentage points over five years. (The more conventionally reported 15+ year literacy rate is slightly lower at around 50%. Increase in that statistic is unknown.)

The literacy rate for non-poor went up from 51 percent in 2001 to 59 percent in 2005 whereas for poor it improved from 30 percent to 40 percent in the same period. Gender gap however remained significant and persistent – the 26 percent gap between male and female literacy rates at 2001-2002 was only marginally higher than the 23 percent gap in 2005-2006. As always, regional literacy rates varied widely. Female literacy rate in Balochistan was a shocking 15% in 2001-2002 and only rose to 20% by the end of 2005-2006. NWFP fared slightly better with an increase from 10 percent from the abysmal 20% rate in 2001-2002. The literacy rates compare quite badly with countries like Iran where the corresponding figure are 82% for men, and 76% for women. India’s literacy rates were at least 10% higher, and the growth in literacy rates (after accounting for differential starting points) more impressive. The Musharraf era growth in literacy rates however compares favorably historically within Pakistan.

Primary Education

Only 60% primary age children in Pakistan attend school, a much lower rate compared to neighboring countries. Moreover, the gender gap is large. There are only 56 girls to every 100 boys enrolled in primary education.

Average new enrollment in primary schools was about 3.42 million in 2000 and 5.04 million in 2005-2006. Growth in primary education enrollment, after accounting for population growth, stands at about 1.4 times. However, the situation still remains stark. Out of the 20 million children between five and nine years of age only about half of them are currently enrolled in primary school. And girls make up much less than half of that number, according to the figures.

Nearly 80% of the students who enroll in primary school ever reach Middle School and only about half of the students who reach Middle School go to the High School. This attrition rate has remained about constant under Musharraf.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n10/sand01_.html

Kevin Rudd, leader of the Australian Labor Party, was elected to the Prime Minister’s office about five months ago, on 3rd December, 2007. His first ‘official act’ on taking office was to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and mandate Australia – the largest per capita polluter in the world – to deal with the biggest crisis in the world today. With that signature, Rudd not only wiped clean the Howard era moral bankruptcy, but also put Australia firmly on the path of enacting a progressive climate policy. A few days later, Rudd de facto scrapped “Pacific Solution”, the ignominious Howard era policy that sent all asylum seekers arriving by boat to remote islands for ‘assessment’. Rudd’s policy agenda has been far more ambitious than merely rolling back the perverse policies of Howard regime. Rudd committed his government to tackling homelessness, a growing and salient problem in Australia. In February, Rudd offered a short but unambiguously worded apology on behalf of the government and the Australian parliament for the shameful the treatment of the aborigines.
[Read more at BBC News]

Zapatero’s achievements as head of Spain may have been slower in coming than Rudd’s whirlwind pace, but they have been no less momentous. In his four years at the helm, he “legalized gay marriage, brought in fast-track divorces and laws to promote gender equality and tackle domestic violence. He also introduced an amnesty for undocumented workers.” (BBC. He has introduced “targeted measures to raise the female employment rate (which is still comparatively low in Spain)”, “established the legal right to paternity leave”. Under Zapatero’s capable finance minister, Pedro Solbes, Spain “declared a budget surplus for a third consecutive year, topping 2 per cent of gross domestic product for 2007.” Policy Network

The impact of electing someone like Obama would be similarly momentous for the US, and the penalties for electing McCain (running for the third term of Bush), or Clinton (who is planning to “obliterate” Iran) severe.

Kevin Rudd - White paper on first 100 days (pdf)

The unique status of the veterans and the military in the modern American consciousness can be traced to the revolutionary origins of the United States. The military success in the “War of Independence”, and the “Second War of Independence” (War of 1812), and the heroism of the ‘founders’, is an essential part of America’s collective memory, along with being an essential part of the school history curricula. Tony Judt, in his superb column for The New York Review of Books, writes that one of the reasons militarism continues to persist in US is because -

“Americans, perhaps alone in the world, experienced the twentieth century in a far more positive light. The US was not invaded. It did not lose vast numbers of citizens, or huge swathes of territory, as a result of occupation or dismemberment. Although humiliated in distant neocolonial wars (in Vietnam and now in Iraq), the US has never suffered the full consequences of defeat. [Judt makes a reference here to South's defeat in the Civil War and subsequent reaction as exception that proves the rule] Despite their ambivalence toward its recent undertakings, most Americans still feel that the wars their country has fought were mostly “good wars.” The US was greatly enriched by its role in the two world wars and by their outcome, in which respect it has nothing in common with Britain, the only other major country to emerge unambiguously victorious from those struggles but at the cost of near bankruptcy and the loss of empire. And compared with other major twentieth-century combatants, the US lost relatively few soldiers in battle and suffered hardly any civilian casualties.”

Vinay, a regular contributor here, adds to the above argument, articulating that the other possible reason for this continued ‘heroification’ of military and veterans is because as a country of immigrants, people in US have often found it hard to find things (like common history) to rally around. In absence of those themes, people have opted to rally behind things that exclude no one. That latent tendency has been buttressed by generations of strategic political actors, and mass culture producers.

The other unique fact that brings the above arguments in sharp relief is the disproportionately (as compared to other countries – excepting ones with mandatory military training) large number of veterans in the US. According to the Statistical Abstract of United States for 2004-2005, the country had 24.9 million veterans. The large veteran population is a result of two things – having one of the largest standing armies in the world, and the preponderance of personnel who serve the army only for a few years (generally as a way to have their college tuitions paid.)

Given the factors outlined above, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the American residency has been dominated by men with prior military experience. However the sheer number is still surprising – for 137 of the 219 years the country since its independence, the country has had a veteran as a president. Associatedly 29 of its 43 presidents have been veterans. There are at least three caveats about the numbers provided above– Eight years of George W Bush’s ’service’ in the National Guard have been excluded; the five years of Lincoln presidency have been included (Lincoln participated very briefly in the Black Hawk War of 1832), and Millard Fillmore’s tenure isn’t included as his experience in the military was after he had left his presidency. One can raise questions about inclusion of some other presidents including Madison (whose service was brief again), however, as one can see, such tinkering is unlikely to impact the numbers much.

The longest time American’s went without electing a veteran was the 32 year period starting with Taft in 1913, and ending with Roosevelt’s death in 1945. Incredibly, during this time, the country took part in the two World Wars.

Perhaps the subsequent question we may want to ask is what impact has election of presidents with prior military experience had on the country. The lessons there remain less clear.

US President mil experience summary table[1] - Get more documents

The proponents of lobbying argue that any law curtailing it impinges on two core First Amendment clauses - that Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”, or curtailing “freedom of speech”. In return, states have argued that they have substantial interests in preventing actual corruption, and perception of corruption, and given lobbyist’s common perception of being dishonest, and a vast array of empirical evidence as to the actual incidence of corruption, they have interests in placing restrictions on lobbying.

Courts have for long upheld citizen’s rights to petition the government taking note that the idea of democratic government implies in part a right of the citizen to petition. (Capps, 2005) The “right to petition”, as numerous legal scholars have noted, predates the Bill of Rights and hence is sacrosanct. Furthermore, Courts have also for long upheld the idea that lobbying, in essence, is a way of petitioning one’s representatives. In Liberty Lobby, Inc. v. Pearson (390 F.2d 489, 491, 492 (D.C. Cir. 1967)) [For details on case citation], the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that peopleinvolved in trying to effect congressional action by engaging in lobbying activities were exercising their right to petition.

However the courts have long also recognized that while the right to petition is an essential one, it is also a limited one. (Capps, 2005) Hence, the courts have ruled that there is no absolute right of a citizen to speak in person with public officials. In absence of absolute rights, and citing countervailing interests like state’s interest in preventing corruption given the likelihood that lobbying will “promote the temptation to use improper means to gain success”, and maintaining confidence in the public decision making process, the courts have sided with the government in a host of cases to restrict contingency fee arrangements, impose registration and disclosure requirements on lobbyists, prohibit lobbyists from making political contributions when legislature is in session (N.C. Right to Life, Inc. v. Bartlett, 168 F.3d 705, 717-18 (4th Cir. 1999)), among others. Courts, while ruling in these decisions, have noted that barring such practices do not substantively curtain the right to petition as they don’t impose a significant (or merely unsubstantiated) burden on the petitioning process, and should a law do so, it may be grounds for it being invalid. For example, in the Oregon Supreme Court decision cited above in the definition of lobbying, the Court found that the biennial registration fee imposed by the state on the lobbyists to be in excess of costs of registration itself, and hence invalid.

The underlying strain in these cases has been the need to balance the needs of the citizenry to openly petition its representatives in line with the basic tenets of a representative government, and the needs of the executive and legislative branch to safeguard the system itself from threats of corruption. While deciding on these cases, the courts have always been keenly cognizant that in line with the constitution’s dictum of three equal and separate branches of the government, they have limited rights in imposing the standards of operation within each branch of governance, for as long as they do not violate the freedoms and rights guaranteed in the constitution. Simultaneously, the court has recognized in the past the merit of not only reducing the actual occurrence of corruption, but also reducing the perception of corruption. In both Buckley v. Valeo (424 U.S. 1 (1976)), and McConnell v. FEC (540 U.S. 93 (2003) - brought after the enactment of McCain-Feingold or BCRA/Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act) the Court has recognized the need to mitigate perceptions of corruption and actual incidence of corruption, and congressional authority to pursue legislation towards that purpose. The Court’s arguments, offered on maintaining the sanctity of the election process of legislators, should theoretically apply to the legislative process as well.

The “freedom of speech” arguments for lobbying stand on less firmer grounds. The right to “freedom of speech” is not and should not be seen as a law guaranteeing the “right to be heard”. Similarly, there is no law protecting the right of a citizen to have a private hearing with the legislator, or more broadly speaking, private speech.

The Courts have sided with the government in a significant number of cases where the state has shown a plausible case for restricting lobbying based on corruption concerns, and wherever they have found that the restrictions don’t disadvantage some content over other. However there are legitimate important rationales that undergird the right to lobby (petition) and courts have been cognizant to not support legislation that is overly broad. The law however doesn’t provide guidance on voluntary disavowal of money from lobbyists for campaigning (without the “magic words” that breach express advertising standard), and nor does it restrict lawmakers from running on a platform that upfront states that the said candidate will not accept ‘favors’ (legal ones) from lobbyists, or will not join a lobbying firm if his or her reelection bid fails (close the “revolving door”). Congress and the Executive - both have significant leeway in enacting significant ethics reforms that will likely sharply curtail the power of “special interests”, and a myriad options (including the one chosen by Edwards and Obama) remain open remain for lawmakers to not ‘choose’ to be influenced by ‘lobbyists’. Combating the influence of special interest would however require more widespread measures – especially as public opinion polls become the key determinants of candidate policy positions and as lobbyists’ influence in manipulating opinion through media or ‘astroturfing’ increases. Fewer options exist to combat that except perhaps a more active citizenry.

Last thoughts - “Democratic Senator Max Baucus, the new chair of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, is offering special interests a chance to go skiing and snowmobiling with him - $2,000-dollars a head, or $5,000-dollars from a political action committee.” reports ABC 7. (pdf)

Citation -

“Gouging the Government”: Why a Federal Contingency Fee Lobbying Prohibition is Consistent With First Amendment Freedoms”. 58 Vanderbilt Law Review 1885. Meredith A. Capps. (2005)