Hi Newslaundry team,

It is my third mail to you and I have been listening to your podcast since its inception. I remember that Hafta was started something like lunchtime office gossips, where colleagues sit together and discuss random topics, it was more like musings than discussion.

I remember Mr. Sekhri mentioned that Hafta was just an extra exercise in revealing/projecting NL team’s personal biases. It was not supposed to be a mainstream content, which were Clothesline, Can you take it, Dhobi Ghat etc, then.

Now that other projects have almost died and Hafta has become the star of Newslaundry to such an extent that you have to put it behind a paywall. How do you see this evolution of Hafta? At what point did you begin to take it seriously? Or have you planned it to be like that? How different is today’s Hafta from the initial Haftas? Is it still some psychoanalytical exercise?

Regards,

Prateek Sachan

Hi Manisha and Hafta team,

After reading your piece on the case and then listening to the discussion in Hafta, was wondering what your take is on a couple of points.

There are three issues in this:

• Whether court /state can interfere in a personal choice? If so, in what conditions can it do so?

• Is the personal choice correct or wrong? Who gets to decide on it and what should be done about it?

• When is a marriage considered valid, when is it void?

What should/ shouldn’t state or judiciary do about this case? Here, I agree with you that the court’s role is to protect the individual rights of the person and not to interfere in it. Such interferences, however, “well-intentioned” they may end up opening up a Pandora’s box.

But the other two points need to be probed further in the public space and media and I would like to hear your take on that.

I consider myself to be a liberal and if this person was my sister/ daughter/ friend, i would have gone to any end to stop her from going down the path she is going. That is I am assuming there isn’t any major issue within her family itself that made her do it. I would do the same and highlight the same if i am a public intellectual or a media person. Why? Because if what I want for my daughter/ sister/ friend and what I want for some other person is different, then it is pure hypocrisy.

Well, isn’t that Islamophobia/ invading someone’s private space? No. Consider this. An 18-year-old who is an only daughter and had a sheltered life, goes out of state for studying , living without her parents for the first time. She gets exposed to what life is and returns after four years with a more liberal outlook and says she doesn’t pray any more. Then she talks about furthering her career options and wants no marriage for the time being or is already in a relationship. If the argument is that this change and the other change -where she comes back in a cloth bag arguing fervently for slapping her blue black if another man sees her and is curious about goat farming – are the same, then my argument stops now.

If they are not the same, then should  public opinion be making this person a symbol of women’s empowerment or a great liberal achievement ? One can see clearly that it needs some extreme acts of mental gymnastics to label a decision to submit oneself wilfully to the most regressive misogynistic ways of life as case of women’s empowerment. If a boy had gone to college and returned a venom-spewing Hindu/Islamic  right-wing zealot, he too shouldn’t  be asked by court or state to change his opinions. They only step in if he/ she is proven to be involved in an illegal act or violence. But that shouldn’t stop people from voicing concern about what he is doing/ talking and even protesting against his actions in public forums. Where are the public intellectuals voicing the concern about this woman’s decision ?  The argument is that as a woman it should bother her only if she was asked by someone else to be in a cloth bag and if she herself decided for it, she is fine with it and then society needn’t bother. These arguments have to weighed against the fact that there’s a reason why society and state decides to step in when a woman wilfully decides to jump into the pyre of her dead husband. Women who declare themselves to be impure during menstruation and hence willfully abstain from ceremonies need to be made aware that though they are perfectly entitled to have their opinions that entitlement doesn’t extend to the quality of their opinion.

Now, to the third part, which is marriage. Unfortunately, marriage, which should be a civil union between two individuals, is now a three-member agreement in which the state is the third party. In other words, what the state does think matters? The question that’s heard most is if a man during his final year at medicine converted to Islam and later married a Muslim girl, would his father have gone to court for his custody ? Would the court even think of putting a 24-year-old man in “custody”/ guardianship of his father? What this question eclipses is the fact that the woman herself said to the court that she wanted her husband, and not her father, “to care” for her. It’s the court that proposed that the state can take care of her expenses till she finishes her training. The other fact that’s not been highlighted is that there’s is a possibility that the marriage itself was made to make this very argument – selection of husband as guardian over father- legally valid. So by ensuring that the “guardianship” continues the decision she made is at best neutral as far as individual freedom is concerned and, at worst, a poor personal judgement . As with the second argument while celebrating the individual freedom of the person, the qualitative aspect of the decision is completely forgotten. Again it’s not for the state or judiciary to interfere with the qualitative aspect of the decision but what about so-called public intellectuals and media?

Isn’t there some irony in the fact that some of the great voices of women’s empowerment would be most happy if another woman is completely shut off to an illiberal way of life under guardianship of her husband because that’s what she wants?

Bimal

Hi NL Team,

I am so glad you had the discussion on the god-forsaken banks. Meghnad’s article on bail-ins was simply brilliant. Guys, there is a big story in it which needs to be covered. I mean the way all of you were asking Meghnad questions on it, don’t we need a NL Sena project on it.

As far as ideas and why I listen to Hafta and like it :-

1) I get a weekly round-up of relevant news which are at most times “factual”. Pun intended considering the hammering you get for the South India news coverage.

2) F**k or no f**ks , the truth is that 9/10 Haftas are engaging the viewer into thinking. I mean I am sure your subscribers have their “Je baat”, or even “You know nothing Mr Sekhri” moment, which is like a proper family discussion.

3) I am paying for NL subscription for “quality” and mostly non-aligned political views.

Ideas for Hafta. Had given this idea during one of the NL chats, here I go again.

Since I believe Hafta is kind of a brand on its own. You could have a shorter 30 minutes podcasts, say once a month of different topics. Hafta Economics Week 1, Hafta Legal Week 2, Hafta Science Week 3 and Hafta Wanderlust Week 4. Ab iskeliye paisa kitna lagega wo aap jaano , hum toh sirf subscriber hai bhai.

Inspired by Meghnad’s piece and Abhinandan’s constant rant on “too big to fail”, I have written something on banks and industrialists from my experience. Do let me know if you carry it. If not, I think there is a lot of industry-bashing but people need to know why there is a big difference between reality and what you get to see. Now even I can say, “I have written a piece on this.” Keep up the good work.

Dhiraj