They aren’t called men of letters for nothing. Their missives have said much on our pages, in argument, counter-argument and everything in between (mostly in good humour, of course, though occasionally not). Often the ball has landed in our court, and we’ve sportingly volleyed it right back. In other slanging matches, we’ve happily played linesman.
The Words, They Clashed On These Pages
They aren’t called men of letters for nothing: argument, counter-argument and everything in between
| 1996/97 Ebrahim Alkazi - F.N. Souza When Ebrahim Alkazi called F.N. Souza’s art twisted, and his persona uncouth and vulgar, a stung Souza pronounced “three jeers” for his “hubris-puffed friend”, who ironically had once penned an article titled ‘Tribute to Souza’ and sold several of his paintings from his gallery. “Hypocrisy is vulgar,” sputtered Souza. All of it, a bit...artless. |
| 2001 Sohail Hashmi - Pavan Varma If something got lost in this translation, Sohail Hashmi didn’t overlook it. Reviewing Pavan Varma’s Selected Poems: Kaifi Azmi as an “inglorious failure”, an acerbic Hashmi offered corrections: jugnu = firefly (not glow worm) and kafan = shroud (not coffin). Varma, bristling at the “incestuous circle of those who claim to be the custodians of Urdu… poetry and legacy”, pleaded the printer’s devil. Hashmi shot back: ‘shroud’ could be typeset as ‘proud’, or even ‘loud’. But coffin? | |
2000 Prem Shankar Jha - Pankaj Mishra |
Ramachandra Guha did not take kindly to Boria Majumdar’s “diligence” in following his Palwankar Baloo story “idea for idea” in an article Majumdar wrote (Hulla Baloo in the Poona Gym). A distressed Majumdar refuted Guha’s “baseless allegations”, citing his reference—The Indian Social Reformer—which he had also used for a paper he read months before Guha’s article.
When Khushwant Singh’s malice to one and all extended to Times of India in his review of India Down The Pages: The Times Group Since 1838, its editor, Bachi Karkaria, slammed it as the “ultimate dumbed-up” review. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of provoking righteous indignation—“not because I work for the target of his barb in Outlook, but because I worked with him first. A cheli must never disappoint her guru.”
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Outlook’s powerlist of the country’s top 14 couturiers was hautely debated for featuring only three designers from outside Delhi. Bombay-based designer Pallavi Jaikishen hit back: “Delhi doesn’t have Bollywood stars, so the designers have become stars themselves.”
An End to Suffering became the beginning of a war of words when William Dalrymple commended the book’s author Pankaj Mishra for knowing the real India, unlike those “who lecture…about South Asia from the sanitised safety of an East Coast campus” (read Sunil Khilnani, who had credited Dalrymple with inventing “Bollywood history”). Ramachandra Guha begged to differ, pointing out that Dalrymple, the “India expert”, didn’t even know about B.R. Ambedkar. Rajeev K. Kinra from the University of Chicago threw a punch of his own, aimed at Guha’s “dyspeptic distemper”.
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Irfan Habib’s lengthy response to William Dalrymple’s criticism of Indian historians for their “apparent lethargy and obscurantism” found a deferential Dalrymple clarifying his stand. Dalrymple also sent a copy of The Last Mughal to Habib, hoping he could extract from it “even a fraction of the enjoyment that I have received from his remarkable body of work”.
Smarting from Edward Luce’s review that “savaged” his book, Daniel Lak returned the favour with Luce’s In Spite of the Gods, The Strange Rise of Modern India. “It reads like a report from the World Bank.…” he said, also detecting “howlers of fact”. He did, however, offer Luce the “sweet revenge” of reviewing his next book. Luce’s subtle rapier thrust: he hoped to judge Lak’s book on its merit.
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| 2007 Amitabh Bachchan When Outlook got Mrinal Sen, Kiran Nagarkar and others to decry the Bachchan parivar’s big-banner spiritualism before Abhishek and Aishwarya got hitched, Big B chose not to write back but indulge in some Gandhigiri instead. His office called our correspondent for the addresses of everyone quoted in the story. Each of them got a box of chocolates and, hold on, a copy of the magazine! [And, also almost identical letters -- 1, 2&3, 4&5, 6&7, 8 -- which he reproduced on his blog -- Web Ed] |
| 2007 Mihir Bose - Amitava Kumar The “fixed look of irritation” with which Amitava Kumar began Mihir Bose’s Bollywood: A History changed little by the end of it. An irritated Bose called it the most malicious review ever encountered in his 30 years as a writer. “I’ve never met him and have done him no personal harm,” he wondered. | |
| 2008 Arundhati Roy - Ramachandra Guha Arundhati Roy took on an old sparring partner when she wrote, “Ramachandra Guha…advises us…that the Gujarat government is not really fascist, and the genocide was an aberration that has corrected itself”. Livid at the insinuation that he’s an “apologist for Hindutva”, Guha signed off his missive praying that at least “other statements in Ms Roy’s article bear a closer resemblance to truth”. |
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After an excerpt from Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, a letter from a reader, V. Natarajan, washed ashore. Natarajan claimed Ghazipur “never actually manufactured opium". Ghosh produced a sombre response, quoting historical accounts of opium production at Ghazipur. See, Sea of Poppies was no opium-induced Kubla Khan.
When B.G. Verghese wagged a finger at Arundhati Roy for her “preposterous” mention of tribal “genocide” and rued how she was “callous to glorify destitution as beautiful”, Maoist spokesman Cherukuri Azad Rajkumar was appalled. By Verghese’s “abysmal poverty of thought and colonial mindset”. We published it posthumously.
| 2010 Suhel Seth After Outlook splashed Suhel Seth's photograph on the cover along with other “deal makers”, a peeved Seth said we had failed to distinguish between PR, lobbying and brand marketing. Brand consultant? Yes. But deal maker? Nope. “I have never carried bags or suitcases full of wads of money with shady brokers,” he wrote |
By Debarshi Dasgupta and Arpita Basu
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