[Reader-list] Is painting a currency note which can not be forged unless you act illegally?

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Inder,

Thank you for your response.

Let me quote you first and carry on from there...

>  See, it is only now that we see it like that, because the complexities of
times were not as heavy on their heads as they are now.

To a large extent I agree with this position but at the same time I also
feel that for every age this position must have been true. For instance, I
would like to believe that in Aristotle's time his thought or general
discussions around the nature of knowledge, aesthetics, rhetoric, governance
etc would have been most advanced form of thinking precisely because no
other arguments were present which could have counter argued, or build upon
Aristotle's thought or that of his peers with as much of poignancy as
perhaps people from other ages were able to do. Having said that, I also
believe that coupling of time under a generic category of 'age' is not
precise, it is always negotiated. One can never say it with precision that
at such and such date Renaissance ends or Enlightenment begins.

> I believe, European Wars necessitated the need for a photograph to
> represent an individual, which gave shape to a formal pass port with a
> regular photograph in it.

On the contrary, it seems European Wars were an opportunity for the nation
states to condense the debate around passports. Hence, crystallization of
the notion of passport could be seen as an attempt to make the idea of a
nation state more unarguable.

Passports have a longer history, from whatever little I know, passports were
called, 'Safe conducts' till 15th Century in England. 'Safe conduct' was
basically a note, signed by the King or Queen requesting authorities of
other lands to not to harm the person of the carrier of the note. What was
interesting in this practice was, the King or the Queen could issue this
note to anyone. There was no distinction or discrimination on the basis of
nationality, so a fake citizen or an original alien could apply for and get
a passport. Hence there has been quite a  change, in the last say, six
hundred years; as, now passports have become a virtual marker of one's
nationality. And normatively speaking today, it seems, only an original
citizen but no fake alien or no fake citizen and no original alien would get
a passport.

(You may follow this url for a detailed time line on the evolution of
passports in England, if you're interested-
http://www.ips.gov.uk/passport/about-history-overview.asp)

The anecdote about Australian artist is excellent, because it, in a sense,
questions a State's position about how are we to appear as our 'formal
selves'. I think we need to probe further into the 'history-of-pose' to
arrive at preliminary answers as to how and why are we asked to pose in a
particular manner. Who are these people and what is their intellectual
lineage which guides them to make us pose in a particular manner. This has
also got to do with the idea that how 'official'/'formal' narratives of
poses are constructed and manufactured.

At times one wonders who needs who more, for in a way, the originals need
fakes to be distinguished as originals and the other way round too. I think
as a thought experiment it would be an adventure to think of a world where
the imagination of fake does not exist. I think you were not entirely wrong
to suggest in an earlier mail in this thread, that, 'the difference between
original and fake is just a temporary one.'

Historically too, we find narratives of fake and original being negotiated
again and again. There is a non-permanence regarding original/fake in
history too as you imply. Take the history of modern Indian policing for
instance. Here too one finds ample evidence of a nervous and neurotic state
power first appearing as 'illegitimate' then after a passage of time as
'legitimate' trying desperately to fracture in practices which we now see in
the form of 'brands', of 'identification drives', of this market induced
enthusiasm which might also be read as -frenzy- to inhumanly assign numbers
to people, to regularize, to legitimize, to record, to verify and to
classify. I referred the exercise to assign numbers to human beings as
inhuman because we are still, in many ways are emerging from the un-sayable
violence which practices introduced by Hitler, for instance wrought by
marking Jews with numbers in concentration camps. If we ask any Jew who had
been to Auschwitz, whether she liked that beautiful number on her forearm, I
think, in her reply, we can perhaps know a lot more about this much valued
relationship between a number and a human being. I wonder what is the moral
argument for the Government of India to assign numbers to every Indian.

Anyways, let us for a moment look at an instance in the history of modern
Indian Policing with respect to this debate around original/fake or
copy/original.

One of the first move to systematize police procedures in India, was
initiated by William Henry Sleeman later Sir Sleeman, during his campaign to
eradicate, 'thugs' of India between 1829 and 1847. In 1947-a hundred years
later, as we all know, India became a post colonial state.

But Sleeman, as not many of us know, was born in 1788 in a little known
Cornish village, his father Phillip was a supervisor of Excise who was given
the responsibility of catching Smugglers/pirates. Sleeman's first home was
Stratton which was a smuggling country and by many accounts, Sleeman's
ancestors were involved this trade.

Sleeman's bête noire was Feringeea who was born in 1800, he was a Brahmin, a
twice born Brahmin at that. A Dvija. Feringea's father  Purusram was
considered as a great thug leader of Chambal valley.

Before Sleeman, it seems there were no systematic police archives which
contained any personal information on 'thugs', like before MNIC there does
not exist any systematic archives which contain personal information on
citizens of India.

Sleeman assigned an officer on every case and all the raw data was entered
into a register which contained the names of every 'Thug' who was
identified, just as the government of India has kindly proposed to make a
National Register of Citizenship and a National Register of population which
will contain the name and other information classified in sixteen different
categories to be contained in these registers.

Every 'Thug' was assigned a unique number, just as, all of us are soon going
have our own National Identity Numbers. Against this number, Sleeman
recorded information pertaining to his name, his location, details of his
associates and the crimes for which his was accused,like, for all of us in
India, we will soon have an interlinked database, wherein any official
having our NIN number can have access to sensitive personal and financial
information, of course for official purposes only. And I would argue that
after having entrusted our information to the Indian Government, we must not
offer 'surprise' as a reaction, in case this database containing our
information find its way to a thrift shop on MP3, like it did, in case of
data belonging to US army personnel recently. Because may be this is how
things are meant to be.

(Man 'finds US troop data' on MP3
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7853213.stm)

While things were not meant to be in Sleeman's case, because there was no
precedent, to begin with. He had to use his own intelligence to separate
wheat from chaff, identify the original from the fake or its copy. He had
all the legitimizing arguments working for him because he was dealing with
criminals and murderers, like Hitler had all the legitimizing arguments
working for him because he was dealing with 'Jews'. I wonder what is the
ethical basis for the Government of India to argue that assigning numbers to
every Indian is in the good of the nation. Sleeman's department after his
campaign evolved into an all India police force, who were given the
responsibility to gather information on Indian Nationalist groups and other
potential 'rebel' leaders, but of course the department was officially
called the Central Intelligence Office, its popular name was, however, the
'Thugi Dufter'.

Thugs caught by Sleeman's gang were branded on the forehead or on the back
with word 'Thug' marked by the process of Godna which is essentially
tattooing through a needle in Hindi or in Persian characters.

I think what we are witnessing in the process of MNIC is perhaps an act of
'closing-in' by a state of an experiment which was started by Sleeman to
first garner information on a fringe population of criminals. Later this
fringe population included nationalist leaders and 'rebels' and now it seems
it is everyone.

There is one more strand of thought, which emerges from this narrative which
of course, pertains to the idea of Fake and Original OR Copy and Original.
Sleeman's forefathers were Pirates i.e. they did not pay tax to the state
while transacting goods. Sleeman,on the other hand, started his career as an
enforcer of State's diktat, so one could argue that while his forefathers
were engaged in illegitimate read 'fake' practices, he was in a legitiamate
read 'original' practice. Sleeman found his greatest calling as a ruthless
administrator while in pursuit of a man,who was an Indian but called himself
Feringeea (meaning alien, or a Gora, a White, a non-native) and who was a
Dvija or a twice born (so we can always debate, which birth of his was
original and which fake). Sleeman was able to put a full stop to this debate
by inserting a number which identified Feringeea as Feringeea forever or
maybe not, for like Munch's Scream, as you point out, we do not know which
one is the one or whether the one is really the one because, we are organic
and we change slowly and subtly and consistently over time.

I think, your examples from the pharmaceutical industry, from the art world,
and from history point to a hesitation, a lack of belief or a conviction
with which the larger social world around us views identity. I wonder what
gives the Government of India so much confidence in the magic of a number,
perfected by toils of colonial enforcers like Sleeman and by people like
Hitler, which will  help crystallize identity of us Indians as Indians.

Warm regards

Taha