This is a weekly column summarizing the 5 best questions from the quiz held by the Quizzing Society of Ashoka University on 3rd of October.
Queston 1
Q 1. In 1973, a 22-year-old featured in a DCM Towels campaign. The tag line said, “Towels so good you want to wear them”.
The ads were hurriedly withdrawn. Who was the model, and subsequent Member of Parliament?
Q 2. The Jharkhand Vidhan Sabha has a peculiar problem. This problem was exacerbated in the year 2004 when Madhu Koda (an independent candidate) became Chief Minister indirectly taking advantage of this problem.
What could this problem be?
Q 3. In 1960, when X came to NYC for the UNGA, tensions were riding high. X had originally checked into the famous Shelbourne Hotel. However, he was asked to leave because of X’s “uncouth primitives” who had supposedly “killed, plucked, and cooked chickens in their rooms at the Shelburne and extinguished cigars on expensive carpets”.
X considered sleeping in hammocks in Central Park and threatened to march to the UN and set up camp on the grounds. But Y and other civil rights leaders arranged for X to stay at the rundown Hotel Theresa in predominantly black Harlem which subsequently became famous because X was visited there by Kruschev, Nasser and Nehru.
Identify X and Y.
Question 4
Q 4. The October 1973 Yom Kippur War, known in the Arab World as the Ramadan War, showed the risks to Israel of underestimating dangers to national security, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem.
It is the classic intelligence failure in Israeli history and it happened because the military establishment was captivated and captured by what they called The Concept of Arab Intentions — a preset world view that did not contemplate the possibility of an all-out assault.
This failure ultimately to the creation of a certain rule in Israeli intelligence. Which rule is this?
Q 5. On 22 April 1994, X died. On 16 June 1994 Hunter Thompson, a journalist, published his obituary titled ‘He Was A Crook’ for X in The Rolling Stone. The following is an excerpt from the article:
“If the right people had been in charge of [X’s] funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. [X] was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal….His body should have been burned in a trash bin.” Identify X.
Q 6. In 1969 X had issued a decree to expel all Italians from his country. But in 2002, he bought 6.4 million shares in the Italian football club Juventus. X has also delivered a two-hour long speech at UN during which he expressed support for Somali pirates, called Obama his “son”, and claimed that Israel was responsible for JFK’s assasination. Who is X?
Q 7. Identify the person who printed this advertisement in the first page of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe in 1987.
Picture edited for Q. 7.
Q 8. In 1979 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to X. In her speech she said: “Today, abortion is the worst evil, and the greatest enemy of peace”.
She has previously taken the side of the Duvalier regime of Haiti, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Union Carbide following the 1984 Bhopal disaster, and visited Nicaragua to side with the CIA-backed Contras against the Sandinistas. Identify X.
Q 9. Put Funda:
What is the Ambassador pointing at?
Q 10. In 1967, X artist had asked his producer to come up with album art which depicted his Indian American heritage (Native American). The producer spent $5000 and come up with the image on the left. To this, X said, “You got it wrong…I’m not that kind of Indian”.
Identify X.
Answers:
Maneka Gandhi;
2. Assembly has 81 seats. Odd numbered Houses create a problem of numbers. BJP got 40 seats. Congress got 40 seats. Madhu Koda was an Independent Candidate who became CM.
3. X- Fidel Castro; Y- Malcolm X
4. The ‘Tenth Man’ rule. The Tenth Man is a devil’s advocate. If there are 10 people in a room and nine agree, the role of the tenth is to disagree and point out flaws in whatever decision the group has reached.
5. Richard Nixon;
6. Muhammad Gaddafi;
7. Donald J. Trump;
8. Mother Teresa;
9. The Thing, also known as the Great Seal bug, was one of the first covert listening devices (or “bugs”) to use passive techniques to transmit an audio signal. It was concealed inside a gift given by the Soviet Union to W. Averell Harriman, the United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union, on August 4, 1945.
10. Jimi Hendrix.
The Geopolitics and IR quiz is an annual quiz hosted by Sparsh Agarwal and Zainab Firdausi, courtesy the Quizzing Society at Ashoka.
As we drove up the winding roads towards the Sardar Sarovar dam, I began to feel excited despite myself. It was the largest dam project in the country, designed and built to irrigate entire regions of Kutch and Saurashtra, generate electricity for three states and provide domestic and industrial water for 30 million people. The project was shrouded in controversy, I knew, but right then I could only think about it as a feat of engineering, and in Nehru’s words, as a temple of modern India. I had heard so much about it, yet nothing could have prepared me for when the trees cleared and I saw the dam with my own eyes.
Narmada Dam (Picture Credits — Down To Earth)
The Sardar Sarovar Dam is massive. It radiates vastness and power. From the side we were on, I could not see anything beyond the enormous wall. Only a trickle of water seeped through one small opening in the dam, flowing onwards as though it was a ghost of the mighty river that had now been forcefully stopped in its course. Later we went to the other side of the dam on boats, and my awe increased as I struggled to register that only on the other side of this ginormous wall there was empty space for about 121 metres below, and the slow, deliberate trickle we had seen earlier.
We sailed forth on the boat and around us the Satpura hills bordered the reservoir in an unnatural, almost utopian beauty. As I watched a flight of cormorants take off from the water in unison, I almost missed the boatman tell the others that we were now rowing over submerged villages. The lands had been inundated due to overflow from the dam, forcing the people to move to higher elevations. Here and there we caught sight of dead branches sticking out from the water, ruins of what once had been land, forest, home.
Our boat dropped us off at a Jeevanshala, one of a set of small schools set up for the children from the submerged villages. There were nearly a hundred children, all wearing identical blue clothes. They jabbered away in rapid Marathi as we made desperate attempts to communicate with them in our fragmented Hindi. While playing with them, and while working around them, it was so easy to forget the circumstances under which they had come to live there. Were they not children like any others? They sang in the morning assembly, they listened to stories, and they went for classes. But one walk down to the river to swim or fill water was enough to remind me of how and why they were there.
Jeevanshala (Picture Credits — Rukmini Vasanth)
The Narmada Bachao Andolan supported these schools so that the children would have a chance to build their lives on their own terms, away from the conflict if necessary. This Jeevanshala, under constant threat of inundation, was an attempt to allow the children of the displaced families to take control of their own lives. One of the teachers there had in fact been schooled at another Jeevanshala, and after going on to study further, he had returned home in the capacity of a teacher. Yes, he said, the children sang songs about the Andolan, and they listened to stories about the struggle of their people, but they learn English and Science in the classroom. For them, these are tools to build a new life.
It was finally this that brought it home to me: the young teacher who calmly told me that this place that they had built, and the work they were doing, would be drowned when the dam is raised a further 17 meters. The construction for this, as we had seen, had already begun. The fact that the place I was in, the ground that I stood on, would not exist a few short years from now was a tragedy that I could finally comprehend. Villagers had been forced to leave behind the livelihood that they had practiced for thousands of years. Farmers had suddenly been expected to live off the infertile land in Baroda, which was the only compensation they received from the government. Adivasis had watched their trees, their homes, submerge.
As we left the Valley and drove back towards the city we passed by the dam once again. There I caught sight of a group of about fifty children who were visiting the dam on a school picnic. On their faces, I saw the same awe that I had felt when I had seen the dam for the first time. They saw what I had seen: the promise of a hope, the dream of power, of water, of development. I wondered how many of them got to see the other side of the story.
The common defense for the dam is that the ratio of beneficiaries to affected persons is sufficiently large, the value of which is up for debate. In fact, I am not even sure if the calculation of such a ratio is a simple task. How does one quantify, for example, the loss of ever seeing a wide, full, flowing river? Or the history, the traditions, and livelihoods, that have been cultivated in the region for thousands of years? A significant proportion of the water that is supposed to irrigate Kutch and Saurashtra will find its way to industries that are now coming up in the Special Economic Zones of western Gujarat. Is this “greater good” worth it?
This article was originally published on edict.in in September 2015.
This is a weekly column summarizing the 5 best questions from the quiz held by the Quizzing Society of Ashoka University on 26th of September.
Logo of the Quizzing Society of Ashoka
Following are the top five questions from Harry Potter quiz hosted by Aanchal Manuka, as part of the Ashoka Quizzing League-
Sensing opportunity, Joe asked his brother if they could finally cash in on that Harry Potter idea. In the span of a couple hours they wrote their first songs, had their first practice, and played their first show to six people. They christened themselves X, the first ever fan-fiction rock band. Two brothers dressed in traditional Gryffindor garb and sang about Snape, Ginny Weasley, and Voldemort. It was a gimmick, a daydream, and a beautiful geeky power-fantasy all wrapped in one. As inauspicious as it was, this the beginning of a movement. “Wizard rock,” Joe and Paul’s accidental creation . ID X.
2. In the wizarding world, muggle is a polite word for someone who has no magical capabilities, as well as no known wizard blood. Someone with wizard blood and no gifts in the realm of magic is called a Squib.
Since at least the 1930s, “Mr. Muggles” has been used to refer to something else in the world, an abundance of which can be found inside as well as near Ashoka . What is this something?
3. In the 13th century, Arithmancer Bridget Wenlock came up with a fascinating new theorem which exposed the magical properties of X. “The significance of X” is something very widely recognised in the Potter universe. In fact, all the occurrences of X and Xth in the books add up to give a massive 159. ID X.
Harry Potter through the ages.
4. This particular illness, as opposed to simply feeling a little sad sometimes, can feel like a monster straight out of a movie. J.K. Rowling has occasionally spoken about her own encounter with the same. own bouts with it. A serious illness, when left untreated, it leads to a mortality rate of about 15%.
This illness has found manifestation in her books as well as the movies in form of what might be described is a terrifying creation/creature. ID the illness and the creation
5. Who should you date as per the picture below?
Question 5
Answer: 1. Harry and the Potters; 2. Marijuana; 3. The number 7; 4. Depression and Dementors; 5. Kreacher, the house elf.
Answer to Qn 1.
The Harry Potter quiz was hosted by Aanchal Manuja, who is currently enrolled in the Young India Fellowship program, with the class of 2019.
Following the events of the Vice-Chancellor’s Townhall, which inter alia announced the night curfew, an article was published in the columns of this newspaper, on 2nd October, titled “The Consequence of Our Convenience,” authored by Vaibhav Parik, someone I know as a batchmate, colleague, and friend. The suggestion to write this article came from one of my conversations with him. The intended purpose is to register my disagreement with some of the views he expressed, to make a defense, if I may, of the stance taken by the Student Government, and in the process, to offer an alternative take on the matter that he raised in his article. I would like it to be known that the views expressed in this article are neither limited to, nor by virtue of, my capacity as an elected Representative.
At the very onset, allow me to voice my resounding affirmation for some of the views that Vaibhav expressed: the apparent discomfort we have with broaching discourses that challenge our convenience and entitlement; the justification of our irresponsible behaviour in the name of freedom and social justice; the lack of initiative aimed towards issues that face us as a community; and, the suggestion to constructively engage with this through organised conversation. However, I wish to note that there is one slight inconsistency in his article that must be reconciled before I proceed to put forth my arguments — the characterisation of our University. In the very first paragraph, Ashoka is referred to as “a certain established product,” but in the seventh one, it is (more aptly, in my view) described as “merely a five-year old institution that is not perfect and may not have all the right systems in place.” I think we can agree that the latter is a more acceptable way to think about Ashoka, and I would take this as my starting point.
When the Vice-Chancellor was posed with the final question at the townhall about whether he deems us worthy of consultation, he concluded with a joke, and the punchline went along the lines of: “You are a product of this University.” Not only is this an assertion that dismantles all pre-existing notions that we have about the relationship between the administration and the students of this University, it is also one that I find frightening. By comfortably joking about this at such a platform as the townhall, the Vice-Chancellor is breaking the promise of Ashoka: that in its formative stages, the students play a role in shaping its legacy. Unlike already established universities like Oxford, which attract students with their experience, and excellence, Ashoka offers us this promise. A promise that is made to us from the moment the Founders call it an Ivy League in the making, to the time that the Vice-Chancellor himself addresses the incoming students and parents on the first day of the Orientation Week, saying that “[this] is what distinguishes an education at Ashoka from every other institution.” His remarks at the townhall, then, come as nothing short of a betrayal of the administration’s word.
This brings us to the second point in Vaibhav’s article that I would like to respond to. He suggests that the students “hastily generalise and blame [the administration] for the slightest of flaws,” which only propagates more hate towards them; that “we want to make this an us-against-them matter.” I beg to differ here — particularly in reference to the stance taken by the SG. I refuse to concede that it is a conscious effort by, or in the best interests of, any of us to otherize the administration. In fact, everything that the SG must do to affect long term change can only happen with the authorisation of the administration. Our budget is subject to their approval; our concerns are subject to their perusal; our ideas are subject to their consideration; even our meetings are in a way subject to the availability of rooms. We might tend to take for granted their cooperation on all these matters, but what must not be forgotten is that they may chose to withdraw their support any second they deem fit, significantly impeding our work, albeit not halting it altogether. Why is it, then, that we are still charged with antagonising the administration? Because there is one very significant development in recent times, that we cannot stay silent about without betraying our duties and our conscience — the increasingly paternalistic approach of the administration. The night curfew is just the latest in line of several recent decisions that not only disregard what the student body has widely expressed, but altogether overlook the consultative step of the process: the survey for cross-residence access, the case of the CCTV cameras, and the policy on porn and cross-batch emails. This is not to say, that there is no way to call out this problematic pattern without necessarily alienating the administration, and the attempt has been to continue employing such means. However, with this backdrop, I feel that if this trade-off is considered inevitable, we should nonetheless demand our rightful say in the decision-making process. We do not owe a cordial and cooperative attitude to a party, if they simply refuse to acknowledge our stake in the conversation.
Finally, the concluding argument of Vaibhav’s article was that the night curfew is “a collective repercussion of the lack of an inclusive discourse about the culture of substance abuse;” our inaction “is definitely the biggest contributing factor of this fallout.” I would argue that it is fallacious to think of the night curfew as a fallout that befell us because of something that we as a community took a fall for (or in this case, failed to do). It does not take a very close look to notice the whataboutery in pointing out our inaction, which, albeit deplorable and worthy of attention, in no way exonerates the administration of its own shortcomings. The insufficient communication, and lack of transparency, is in stark contrast with what students learn within the classrooms of this university. Afterall, if a university’s administration is not consistent with its own value system, where are the students to look for inspiration? Moreover, as for the lack of discourse, or the delay in creating it, why is it exclusive to demanding our seat at the negotiation table? Is it not for us to introspect as a community why we are repulsed from any discourse that compels us to think of ourselves as anything more than atomised individuals? Can it have something to do with the prevalent sentiment of disdain for anything that serves as a reminder of our existence as a collective, and responsibilities thereof, such as our cultural fest Banjaara or even the Student Government for that matter? These are all pressing questions, but none that preclude us from asserting our right to being consulted. If anything, this discourse and the process of consultation are complementary and mutually reinforcing.
A simple thought experiment can help elucidate this point. First, note that despite the night curfew not having been implemented yet, there is already an exponential decline in the number of students who can be seen outside campus on Thursday nights, owing in part also to the advisories. Now, imagine the same townhall with the Vice-Chancellor, except he does not announce the curfew at the end as something they have decided to impose on us but mentions it as an option that is being considered. They then give us a week to 10 days to have discussions among and within ourselves, and in that time, the SG is asked to collate all the feedback and inputs from the students. It can reasonably be foreseen that these discussions would have been of a nature similar to the ones that we had this time around. At the end of the stipulated time period, the SG would present this collated feedback to them, and seeing how many students welcomed the decision even when it was imposed, it can be said that had the process been consultative, the proportion of students in agreement would have at least stayed the same, if not been higher. Even if it had been lower, what matters is that that is what the student body conveyed to the administration, and that the administration considers us “[its] colleagues and [its] peers,” not products that are passively subjected to its decisions.
On a parting note, students might be relieved to know that our endeavours in the aftermath of the townhall have borne some fruit. Our condemnation of the imposition of the night curfew, the subsequent email, the open House meetings, and the counter-proposal that we unanimously stood by, have certainly had some impact. The Residence Life Team invited us to meet on 4th October, as well as 11th October (both befittingly happen to be Thursday evenings), to discuss the policy draft, and some of the concerns that we raised at that meeting seem to have resonated with them strongly. The policy is still being drafted, we have been told that they would run the draft by us before it comes into force, and hopefully, the resultant policy will be more carefully thought out and encompassing of all our demands. Simultaneously, we must ensure that the impending discourse around substance abuse is initiated and the various accompanying nuances are explored. This is our chance to shape the legacy that we leave for future batches. This is our chance to learn from our past errors, and grow as a community. This is our chance to meet up to our end of the promise that Ashoka holds.
Deep Vakil is a Politics and Society major and IR minor, from the Undergraduate Class of 2020. He is also a member of the Fourth House of Representatives, and occupies the seat of the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs in the Cabinet.
On 20th July 2018, Ashoka University submitted two reports to the UGC, listing the number of cases filed at the University’s Committee Against Sexual Harassment (CASH) and the action taken by the committee on those cases in the past two years.
Among other things, the reports reveal that only seven cases of sexual harassment were filed with the Committee last year, as well as the year before that.
“The greatest challenge that faces us is underreporting”
In the recent CASH town hall, Professor Nayanjot Lahiri, the newly appointed Chair of Ashoka’s CASH, was quoted as saying, “In the Internal Complaints Committee, the greatest challenge that faces us is underreporting of cases. I do think in Ashoka University, there are a lot of cases which do not get reported.”
The issue of under-reporting renders this whole process futile. There could be a number of reasons behind this: fear of backlash or repercussion, of negative publicity, lack of knowledge on how to report and to whom and sometimes even dissatisfaction with the method of redressal. Professor Lahiri also suggested that at times, victims did not think that the harassment that they had gone through amounted to something serious enough to be reported to a higher authority.
#WhyIDidntReport
In a bid to tackle this problem, the Feminist Collective has come up with a novel initiative named #WhyIDidn’tReport. As a part of this, they have put up boxes around the campus, encouraging people to share the reasons they didn’t report their harassment to authorities. The aim, according to the Collective, is to ‘foster a conversation around the larger #MeToo movement.’
The collective also organised a small get together ‘for people to share, vent, and discuss experiences and reactions surrounding #MeToo in India and Ashoka.’ These initiatives are in tandem with Professor Lahiri’s call to the student body to help build conversation around sexual harassment and to ‘build up trust’.
Kanika Singh, Director Centre for Writing & Communication in conversation with Vandita Bajaj, Class of 2020
Ditch the regular trip to GTB Nagar when you get out from Vishwavidyalaya Metro Station this mid-semester break. Instead, take a walk and explore the historical sites in the area.
Dr. Kanika Singh is the Director of the Centre for Writing and Communication. She is also the co-founder of Delhi Heritage Walks, an organisation that curates and conducts walks in the city. With a background in History and a love for old buildings, she truly celebrates and embraces all that Delhi has to offer.
She recommends a visit to the following:-
Flagstaff Tower | Credits: Delhi Heritage Walks
1. FLAGSTAFF TOWER
When the rebels entered the city, the British were taken by surprise. They fled North and stayed a night in the Flagstaff Tower. In many British accounts, we find mentions of how terrifying it was to stay in the tower since they could be attacked anytime. The tower itself isn’t meant for staying and is nothing but a swirling staircase.
2. DELHI UNIVERSITY, VICE CHANCELLOR’S OFFICE
It briefly served as the Vice Regal Lodge. Rumour has it that Lord Mountbatten proposed to Edwina Mountbatten in the Registrar’s office here!
It is not open to the public and can only be viewed from the outside.
Khooni Jheel | Credits: Delhi Heritage Walks
3. KHOONI JHEEL (Bloody Lake)
The bodies of the British, and later the rebels were dumped here, thereby giving it the name Bloody Lake. It is located on the ridge and is a nice track to explore.
Pir Ghaib | Credits: Delhi Heritage Walks
4. PIR GHAIB
Located right behind Hindu Rao Hospital. It is a 14th-century observatory and part of it is a hunting lodge built by Feroze Shah Tughlaq. The name is a recent one though, apparently, a pir miraculously disappeared from here, so the locals coined the name.
5. ASHOKA PILLAR
It is one of the two Ashokan Pillars in Delhi!
Mutiny Memorial | Credits: Delhi Heritage Walks
6. MUTINY MEMORIAL
The most spectacular of the sites! It is a tower built by the British to honour the heroes who died in the rebellion of 1857.
The former President’s family will donate all his papers to the Ashoka Archives of Contemporary India.
Surabhi Sanghi, Class of 2020
Ashoka University recently acquired the prestigious papers of Dr. S Radhakrishnan, in its archive — Ashoka Archives of Contemporary India. The donation includes Dr. Radhakrishnan’s books, manuscripts, lecture notes and correspondence, philosophy journals he subscribed to and more.
Photograph of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan presented to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1962
The archives of Dr. Radhakrishnan have had a history of their own. About 15 years ago, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), one of the best known archives in India approached the former Presidents family to acquire the various documents and papers of Dr. Radhakrishnan. These set of documents are extremely important as they provide insights into Indian history and political scenario of Dr. Radhakrishnan’s times.
At that time, the family did not part with the archives. Even when Sahitya Academy approached them, the papers were not moved from the family house back in Chennai. But, it was getting tougher for the family to preserve the papers.
Indira Gopal, Radhakrishnan’s daughter-in-law and custodian of the papers with the Radhakrishnan Trust started looking at ways of preservation and decided to make this significant donation to Ashoka University. This was not a choice that was made arbitrarily but had reason behind it. For starters, there was a personal, intellectual bond shared by Dr. Radhakrishnan’s family and Ashoka University. The chancellor, Prof. Rudrangshu Mukherjee had been a student of S. Gopal, son of Dr. Radhakrishnan.
“There is obviously immense historical significance to the works and papers associated with a former President and Vice President. He lived a rich public life and these papers reflect that. The archive has just started and we have started acquiring papers from several individuals,” Chancellor Rudrangshu Mukherjee told The Economic Times.
The documents have already made way to the University in several trenches. The last few parts of the documents are in the process of being shifted from Mylapore in Chennai to Sonepat.
“We only had two concerns: one, they should be protected and preserved for posterity in the best possible manner and that they should be used for reference purposes by scholars, not as library material. Ashoka agreed to both and hence the decision to donate to the new but rather impressive university in terms of scholarship,” said Keshav Desiraju, a former civil servant and grandson of Radhakrishnan.
edict backup 