Aditi’s Intro to India

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to Bugle issue 4081 and a half.

I'm currently in Kolkata, India, the city from where the British Empire used to run a large wadge of this planet through our unique British trademark canny combination 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 Anuvab 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 patriarchal bullying, and with Jeremy Corbyn.

Choose one of the following three options to finish this sentence depending on your political preference.

Speaking to the Labour Party conference, stroke.

Dressing up as Lenin and singing I'm gonna knock you out in Russian stroke saving the entire future of the world like the returning and now understandably grey-bearded Jesus he so obviously is instead whilst I was in Mumbai I met up with Indian comedian Aditi Mittal who you will remember from one of the bugle 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 well big stories and unending fascinations here's me talking to Aditi in Mumbai this week

returning to the bugle after a spectacular debut at the Melbourne Comedy Festival it's great to see you again

in more familiar surroundings might I am welcome to my sweaty humid oligo capitalistic democracy welcome

it's great to be back it's my first visit to India for I think four years

still not quite finished is it as a as a place oh not yet we're getting there though we're getting there we're getting would you say India's become more chaotic in the last four years or does it has it reached a 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 that 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.

We're all going to die.

And then 20 years later, the next generation is like, oh my god, this country is going to collapse.

We're 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, some of the spectacular rulings from the Indian Supreme Court.

Because we've had Anubabon quite a bit, and he's a big fan of the language of these.

Oh, I was like, he's a fan of the Supreme Court.

It's so Anubhabh.

Well, it's more just the language of it.

Well, there's a couple of recent rulings that

we'll talk about now.

And I'd explain this ruling that came today on.

Was it

my pronunciation of words is terrible.

I keep being told by all my Indian friends.

No, it's just attempted.

It'll be funny.

Aadhaar.

That's right.

Right, there we go.

See?

See?

So, yeah,

today was a pretty big day at the Supreme Court because there was a ruling about Aadhaar.

And now, Aadhaar

means base in English.

And the idea was that Aadhaar 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, you know, to be able to sort of like 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 Humbie, a UK mathematician and architect of Tesco's Club Card.

Just, I think the sort of inanity of that fact is quite mind-boggling.

Yes, so I mean it is, it's the world's largest biometric ID programme, and that is a challenge that's been laid down.

I imagine as we speak, Dubai have heard this and they're working out how to make an even bigger biometric ID programme with all living creatures backed by the world's largest ID cards.

Each card 20 meters high, 50 meters wide, for no reason, just the fact that it has to break pointless records.

They've got to be as big as they come.

So, but basically, in summary, it seems to me: so

it's voluntary, but you can't do anything without it.

Which is

yeah, and so now the initial intention of Aadhaar 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 our fundamental right to privacy.

Uh, the court responded to that by saying, Do you even have a right to privacy?

La la la 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 Aadhaar.

Like,

they would not give you a death certificate if you didn't have an Aadhaar card.

I was like, I'm not gonna have to live forever.

This is exhausting.

Like, I keep imagining, you know, I mean, sort of the Hindu mythology believes in rebirth.

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 Aadhaar card.

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 are 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?

Nobody knows.

And that's an interesting new commercial market, isn't it?

Hey, organ trade, just some more.

We could get

celebrity eyes.

I mean, there would be a huge market for that, wouldn't we?

Yeah, buy Shah Rukh Khan's eyes.

Oh my god.

That would be amazing.

Just because there's a lot of Bollywood 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 relive that.

But so yeah, and so the decision made by the Supreme Court today was whether Aadhaar was unconstitutional or not.

And they have unfortunately or fortunately upheld Aadhaar 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, mean, I mean, just look through history.

Have governments and big business ever misused this kind of information?

Surely it's fine.

I believe so.

I don't believe so.

I believe it's a democracy.

You can trust it.

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 want in.

Because actually, sadly 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 pogroms 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 which is not something the state would ever do

certainly Certainly not your current leader, would you?

He does not have a track record for said activities.

And so now the Right to Information Act 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 outweighs public interest

means that your 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 is 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 Aadhaar 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 its citizens.

The government's right to privacy as well.

There you go.

There was a couple of interesting things that

struck me about it.

One was that

these numbers, the Ardar numbers,

they're only 12 digits.

Now, that's assuming that the population of India is not going to reach 1 trillion.

Now, on the current rate, it's about 1.3 billion and it's doubled doubled in 40 years.

So, assuming it carries on at the same rate, we're looking at exactly, and I have made up the maths here, 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.

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 in them.

You know,

I'll tell you, which is amazing, because welcome to Indian colloquialisms, right?

Smart card is any card that is laminated.

That's why, like, if you go out onto the street right now, you will see Board saying, we will convert your pan card into a smart card.

We'll convert your Aadhaar card into a smart card.

It's just a smart card because you won't smudge it.

That's why.

I guess it's smarter, all things being relative.

Yeah.

And not so smart for the people who are getting it done to their cards.

So part of the Supreme Court judgment

was these words.

Aadhaar gives dignity to the marginalised.

Dignity to the marginalised outweighs privacy.

Well, this is a kind of scissors, paper, stone type game, isn't it?

I think privacy outweighs corporate power and wealth, but corporate power and wealth outweighs dignity to the marginalized.

There's no winner in this, is there?

That's exactly it.

That's like either way, someone's going to get hurt real bad.

Yes, real bad.

And also, this was a direct quote I saw in an online newspaper report about it: that from the Supreme Court judgment, one cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater.

That's the kind of language you don't get in 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.

The plug being smaller than the baby, whereas you just

chuck the whole thing out.

It was so much easier to get rid of babies in those days.

Yeah, I mean, and now,

I mean, we're living in a time when throwing babies is frowned upon.

It is, yeah.

So

that sort of colloquialism is a little dated,

might I add?

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.

And I mean, it lead me to think there are going to be some absolutely enormous newspapers in India just because

people pick up their morning newspaper saying, God, the politics section is 281 pages long.

What's happening, old guys, 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 thieves

if you're going to expect them to come up and be like, yay, did all this still vote for me?

And in fact, I think 2019, we're heading towards a very interesting time because Shambhu Reghar, who was accused of murdering a Muslim laborer on camera, the video went viral.

He actually decided to run for election on the basis of his murder video.

Right.

So, I mean,

does he need to declare or did his declaration come first and then the public office running?

Right.

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 honor killing of your daughter.

Right.

That kind of thing.

You could liven up politics.

Yeah, I mean, and I would vote for you.

I would vote for you.

Well, I mean, there has been a trial scheme run.

In fact, in the 2016 US election.

when

Donald Trump laid out exactly what a horrific man he is.

People responded to that honesty and they voted.

It worked right 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.

Oh, right, okay.

That's interesting.

Right?

Yeah.

And it struck me because

I think personally the Supreme Court could have said something to the damn political parties that that are fielding these damn candidates.

But I mean, what do I know?

What do I know?

Like, political parties shouldn't be fielding murderers.

I think we can agree on that.

Across the world, with thoughts so similar.

It's amazing.

Only someone had had that idea, I don't know, two and a half thousand years ago.

The course of politics around the world would have been very different.

So there's an election next

May.

Yeah, in 2019.

So Narendra Modi is...

Is he likely to...

Is he likely to stay in power then?

And if so, what will that mean for India?

Because he is a leader who, I think it's fair to say, splits opinion in

quite avidly.

Yes, with an extremely divisive axe.

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 raped and

you know lots of lots of sort of

I mean I hear actually I don't know I don't know about Indian elections ever because you can your vote can be bought for like a plate of biryani and so

so I don't know how I'm gonna vote as a country I have no idea and

the only hope of course is that you know we've been sort of now that we sort of went through the high of 2014 when there were all these promises and there was all this shosha and the sort of PR was slick and tight and amazing,

you know, 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 riot would be That's an electoral tactic, is it?

Oh, yeah.

Riot, right.

Yay!

We need to pick up on this in Britain, I think.

No.

Please don't.

Please don't.

Please don't.

Yeah, so I don't know.

2019 could be a doozy.

Who knows?

Right.

That's a good prediction.

Could be a doozy.

Hey yo!

A court in Kerala, a southern state of India, has ruled in favour of a lesbian couple who want 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 that criminalised homosexuality.

You're welcome.

This was a further detail.

Section 377 was passed in 1861.

It was a British law based on another British law from 1533,

which

Britain had repealed in 1828.

Here you go, India.

This is one we no longer need.

Yeah, you just pass down your regress.

Thank you.

Thank you for that, I guess.

You're very, very welcome.

So, yeah.

I mean,

the Supreme Court did get major props

during that time.

Everyone was all like

dewy-eyed 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 to 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 reconsideration 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 um

uh the right to self-determination uh because these two uh women in kerala uh you know they were sort of the what the specifics of this case are that it's a 24 year old and a 40 year old and the 24 year old's parents went to the police said she's missing uh took her so when the police found her took her back home and they put her in a mental asylum and uh then you know i mean so they went and fought 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 gonna pos 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 uh rulings for the years to come uh so it's i think this is just the beginning in that sense um i don't know i didn't say anything funny regarding that i just thought i think it's really cool it seems to be as india

modernizes as a country, and clearly there's all kinds of competing forces at play.

There do seem to be these sort of these landmarks along the way but also forces sort of tugging back towards traditionalism

and yeah but it's

I mean clearly in Britain we only legalized gay marriage I think five or six six years ago.

I mean how how comfortable is India with this sort of progress to a more sort of 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 have to take place one is of course the legal process and the the other one is the overarching cultural process it's going to definitely be a longer term process but when you have uh the constitution or the supreme court on your side uh it just makes it easier to sort of call upon uh 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 uh

which are caste-based honor killings and i love that we call it honor killings because it sounds like a really cute thing.

Like, it's honor, like, oh.

It's a bizarre euphemism, isn't it?

And the world is full of weird euphemisms.

Like, I think my favorite euphemism is Eve teasing.

Right.

Which is like harassment, like, like, sexually harassing a woman on the road.

It's called Eve teasing, which sounds like something a puppy would do under a fing rainbow, right?

Nobody's 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 sided with the person who is doing the murdering, right?

So the purpose for these last three months that sort of have and they really didn't get much play in mainstream media was because

you know they um 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

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 that lesbian story, they are lesbian stories.

As we discussed in the other Kerala story, you know, these are consenting adults, but the imposition of honor is so strong and so crazy that people are willing to murder for it and I find it sort of

do you know the caste system Andy by the way well

only superficially I think

yes 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 you know he was sort of giving birth to the different kinds of people and so he gave birth to the brahmins from the head which is why they are the ones that hold knowledge he gave birth to the short kshatriyas which is the warrior class from their shoulders which is why they like

really buff i guess and then the the veshyas uh from the stomach which is the trader class so they do trading for like money and then the feet which was the uh shudras which was the uh you know the

schedule caste the dalits the obc's the tribals uh and they are sort of in charge of cleaning up society.

And science generally disagrees with that theory of human evolution now.

Is that the thing?

You know, I would say, because the thing is, I've tried to, I've 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 of them.

No, you're not even saying like a really generous thigh.

Definitely, no.

Okay.

So, um, and so you know, there's four types, and the sort of the lower classes have experienced brutal oppression.

Uh, and it's one of those things that actually nobody in India talks about.

Even I've personally sort of started learning about it.

They didn't talk about it in school, they talk about it like it's a thing of the past, and this doesn't happen anymore.

And

you know, the kinds of things that you'll see, like 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 like tomorrow i could be eating an ice cream and if a man doesn't like it he'll be like that's against my honor and kill me and i think that's sort of it's a um

it's one of the most unspoken and un

like even the way our media covers it is very upper class it's very it doesn't acknowledge and i'm like this is 50 of the population of this country we are talking about right now uh but the way media is structured the sorry am i saying nothing funny i'm so sorry i'm excited

um the way media is structured the way our uh storytelling paradigms are structured the voices and the stories only belong to the upper caste they only i mean that's why i am i keep thinking of myself as oh wow i'm this unique butterfly whoa woman comedy english all this stuff but the truth is that there are millions uh i mean like it really doesn't it's not our merit because there are millions who just have not had access to the opportunities that I have.

And it is just a function of birth.

Like this country is crazy.

It's all about where you were born.

That determines what your life is going to be like.

And

so these murders have been taking place rampantly.

And I think they sort of tie into the same thing that I was telling about Sati earlier, is that where they,

it's all about endogamy.

It's all about maintaining this purity of the bloodline that the uteruses of uteri of our women you know shall only be seated by the men of higher castes and you know warriors and

brahmins whatever right

um

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 your uteria 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 um

all because he belonged to a lower caste, and all because it was just, you know, and I'm 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 saying, This is a knife incident.

No, I'm dead.

Like,

so yeah, I think I'm, you know, it's I think we see around the world this clash at the moment between space age technology and medieval politics, religion, tradition.

Yeah, there's no

easy resolution to it.

I mean, mean, are you optimistic for what India will be like in 30 years' time compared with what it was like, say, 30 years ago?

I'm looking at it now.

That's what I was telling you at the beginning.

I don't think so.

I think we're all going to be at the precipice of breakdown every day and we're not going to know if we're going to make it.

I don't know.

That's why I say 2019 is on Duesie.

Well, tune in, Tro.

We'll pick this up in the 2048 and see how things have turned out.

There you go, Buglers.

That is all.

Do not forget to come to all the forthcoming Bugle live shows: Salford 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 bones of whatever is left of the American judiciary.

Until then, from Kolkata, goodbye.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please, come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.