Narendra Modi’s letter to Anna Hazare

A strange letter. It thanks Hazare for daring to praise him, but “him” is equated with Gujarat. ‘And it was yesterday that I got the encouraging news of your expressing kind words for Gujarat and me.”

The letter betrays the desperation of a man who has been smarting for over a decade from the political ostracism he has been subjected to after the post Godhra riot. Modi uses the open letter to Hazare as a tool to rationalise his ideology. It has the endorsement of Anna Hazare, a man who is at the moment a national hero, and who reflects the frustration of the Indian citizens furious at being swindled by politicians who are worse than conmen. Modi’s effort is to project himself as the alternative to the present political dispensation in the Centre by showcasing his Development agenda at the industrial and grass root levels.

Modi is a smart man. The mood in India is one of intense anger at being swindled by the Congress led government for two terms. And the party did this hiding behind the shield of secularism they know that the people of India are fiercely possessive about. But no one can fool the people all the time. We, the people of India, are throwing up our hands in sheer helplessness at the absence of an alternative. Whom do we vote into power? The BJP? Are they any less corrupt? What about Yeddyurappa? Isn’t he going the Congress and Deve Gowda way? What’s the BJP high command doing about it? So when it comes to corruption and power, they too are of the same ilk. Only, they didn’t get as long an innings in power as the Congress to get deeply entrenched in the unspoken ideology of corruption.

So why not BJP? Speaking for myself, I’m afraid of casting my vote for a party which is professedly communal. Congress, without doubt, plays/has played the communal card. No one can deny it. But its official position in anti communal. Does that mean anything – to swear by secularism while cashing in on communal politics for votes? I think it does. A party which has a secular image to maintain will not make fascism (loosely used) the official policy of the state – as Hitler did. This party will not officially adopt an anti-minority policy as Hitler did, making anti-semeticism a national policy.

Will BJP do this once it comes to power? Probably not. The Assange leaks have shown a hardcore and vocal BJP leader confessing that Ram Mandir was only a political launching pad to catapult the party to New Delhi. Most BJP leaders have democratic values and are committed to secularism and pluralism.

But not so Modi. The post Godhra riots showed his true colours. In his letter to Hazare, he never once mentions why people vilify him. Let him categorically state that he had nothing to do with the carnage which followed the horrible torching of the train by a group of Muslims at Godhra. Let him declare that he was totally innocent of what happened, that things went out of his hands. Never once has he said that. All allegations about his government’s complicity in the pogrom have always been met by silence. When Karan Tharpar tied to get him to talk on it, he walked out of the show in a huff.

And he has been consistently making efforts to parochialise the issue by saying that the rest of India is against the people of Gujarat. There is not an element of truth in that statement. It’s Modi that India rejects, and fears. And when Gujarat keeps voting him back to power, democratic, secular India becomes anxious. What if he becomes the Prime Minister, which is not an impossibility. Modi for PM lobby is a powerful one in the BJP camp.

The very thought of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of India is scary.
The Indian democracy is in a precarious position today, and the Congress which has been at the helm of affairs for a long long time has itself to blame for this. Alphonse Kannanthanam, the maverick bureaucrat known for his honest ways has joined BJP. Anna Hazare a Gandhian applauds Modi. True, it’s his development agenda that he lauds, but the message is loud and clear. Ignore his human rights violations. Development at grass roots level, taking care of the villages compensate for crimes against humanity. This is the subtext of Kannanthanam joining BJP,Anna Hazare lauding Modi and the people of Gujarat voting him back again and again.

This is worrisome. Disgusted with corruption, there appears to be a shift in people’s attitude to democratic values. A willingness to compromise on the fundamentals.

This does not augur well for the great Indian democracy.

The Bloodless Coup: My Emotional Take on the Egyptian Revolution

Yes, the title is a preemptive tactic against charges of me being only superficially informed and the subject not being properly researched. I write this before I read all those editorials in hard and soft media, on the quiet and peaceful dignity with which the people of Egypt drove out an autocratic ruler who had the backing of the mighty big brother and the small brother who piggy rides on him. It's an emotional response, i admit. But i would like to have it out before my feelings are tempered by common sense.

“Amazing, isn’t it Sunny, that for 18 long days such a huge movement should remain bloodless, that too after the efforts of pro Mubarak miscreants to trigger off violence?” I told my husband.

“I guess’, he said, “it has something to do with the fact that it is a very ancient civilization. The inherent strength is what we saw these past eighteen days.”

I thought he’d hit the nail on the head. Nonviolence is possible only if you are strong. That applies to an individual and a nation. I thought of how Gandhiji baffled the British, both in India and South Africa, with this weapon. It unnerves the opponent – particularly if the opponent has some redeeming human qualities unlike Hitler. Mubarak knew the game was up, particularly since he failed to incite the crowds into violence, which would have given him a reason for suppression.

Today’s newspapers carried pictures of the peopleof Egypt helping the army to clean the 18 days’ mess on the streets of Cairo!

These are a truly evolved people. Wasn’t Nonalignment Nasser’s idea? Was not Egypt the first Arab country to accept the reality called Israel? Anwar Sadat had the foresight to see that Israel had come to stay, and when you cannot avoid the inevitable, it is best to accept it. That’s the only road to peaceful co existence. He took this policy decision knowing fully well it would endanger his life. And it did. He succumbed to an assassin’s bullet like Gandhiji did. Like many champions of non violence, he too had a violent death, sacrificing his life to the idea of a nonviolent Middle-east of tomorrow.

Just a couple of days back, I had to, out of sheer courtesy, listen nonviolently:-) :-( to an Indian citizen cursing Gandhiji for accepting Muslims like brothers. I could have told her that Gandhi was being pragmatic (like Sadat when he went for a truce with Israel). I could have told her that civilizations once evolved through invasions, the violence which followed them and the eventual merging of races comprising the invader and invaded into composite cultures leading to the happy ending of peaceful coexistence . Owing to a historical phenomenon, lakhs of Muslims have become part of India. Gandhi knew that we cannot and should not wish or will our Muslim brothers away. They have as much right to the subcontinent as anyone else. So the best and the right thing to do was to see them as Indians and human beings. That’s the right way out - to make the best of a difficult situation.

But it takes strength born of an inherited inclusive philosophy to rise to such an occasion and address a crisis situation in a nonviolent way.

What happened in Egypt validates the Gandhian method of resistance. Violence strengthens the opponent. Nonviolence disarms them, in every sense of the word.

Today, India seems to have shelved Gandhi. Hence, it is heartening to see another nation following his footprints. The great man would not have lived and died in vain if the middle east became democratic in bloodless coups.

Nostrodamuses of the world have prophesied that the saviour of modern strife torn civilization would rise in the Middle East. Could this be the beginning? Would the fever for democracy that is spreading in the Middle East now result in dispensations that embrace nonviolence? Will Islamic nations which unfortunately had been stigmatized as the breeding ground for violence become the epicenter of a new political philosophy derived from the Gandhian principles of a spiritualised (not religious, please) politics, where ends do not justify means and truth will not be compromised?

One never knows - - - -

I hope the post Mubarak Egypt will not disappoint.

On Being Secular

I visited a cousin whom I respect much. He’s a level headed, intelligent, generous, soft spoken and honest person - you know the type of person who never intrudes into your space but who’s always around when you are in need.

We were talking in the family room on the first floor when I noticed a beautiful rare picture of Christ. Seeing me looking at it, he gave me its history, and added without my asking. ‘I didn’t put it in the drawing room, though it is worth displaying there. I decided to be secular’.

Well, that was a strange statement to make, for implicit in it was the notion that secularism signified absence of affiliation to any religion.

My cousin – let’s call him Suresh, is a believer. At least he is not a non-believer. He was always wary of questioning the existence of God. He’d rather play it safe. He did all the right things like going to church on Sundays and putting his children through catechism classes and ensuring they received the sacraments at the proper time as prescribed by the Church and society.

Yet he was reluctant to declare to the world that he was a Christian.

I thought hard on that issue.

If he does not want to flaunt his religion, it’s good. But the reluctance to admit that he is a believer for fear it’d would invest him with a non-secular image is, I think, a misreading of the concept of secularism.

Secularism does not demand disaffiliation from religion. Nor does it demand affiliation to any religion. It imperatively demands respect for religions other than yours, and respect for religions even though you do not believe in any.

Elementary, my dear Watson, you might say, but believe me, I find a lot of people who share Suresh’s anxiety about jeopardising their secular image if the world comes to know that they are believers.

An ardent Buddhist/Christian/Jain/Hindu/Muslim is secular if she/he respects other religions and the right of others to follow religions of their choice.

A committed atheist is secular if he respects the right of others to believe in God and recognizes their right to follow the religion of their choice. I think it is more difficult for an atheist to be secular than it is for a believer.

In my foolish younger days, I had a heated discussion with a rationalist cousin who was ridiculing me ‘cos I was a believer.

‘To agree with you that there is a god is like agreeing that the earth is flat and not round’, he roared.

‘It’s proved that the earth is round’, I retorted, equally loud, ‘ but is it proved there is no God?”

“Is it proved there is one?’ he yelled thrusting his forefinger intimidatingly into my face.

‘Is it proved there isn’t one?’ I too yelled, thrusting my forefinger towards the ceiling. His mother who is my aunt was watching this exchange with considerable interest and disapproval.

Ideologically, she was on my side but blood is thicker, and so she wanted to see her college going son outsmart me who had just joined as a lecturer in the local college. Besides, I was a woman who shouldn’t be arguing loudly and gesticulating in an unladylike manner.

IT IS NOT PROVED THERE IS A GOD, he thundered. My aunt quickly stepped in.

‘Both of you have proved your points’, she said. Probably, she realized that I was in no mood to relent and she didn’t want to see her niece disgrace herself with rising decibel levels and body language that is not conventionally associated with a ‘woman’.

I do not know how valid my argument was, but I do know his argument did not convince me. Probably because even as a toddler I had taken that leap of faith which made me so dependent on the God concept for my existence.

But I am a secular person, cos I respect a person’s right to question the existence of God – as long as he doesn’t thrust his convictions on me (like my cousin did) aggressively.

I got very unpopular with close relatives and friends sometime back when I argued that the there could be truth in the story of Ganapathy statues drinking milk. I don’t normally believe such impossible stories unless I see these things happening. But my journalist niece – a hardcore rationalist – told me she saw it happen. She couldn’t offer any explanation for the way milk disappeared from the bowl when it was held to the trunk of the Ganapathy figure. She was an eyewitness to this.

Till someone offers a scientific explanation for that strange phenomenon, I’ll believe that was a supernatural phenomenon – a miracle just as I believe in the miracles claimed by the Christian religion.

I believe God manifests himself in many forms. I believe every religion is a search for God. I am content being a Christian. This religion that I was born into gives me answers to the existential questions. But I don’t claim that this is the only religion that shows the way in the human quest for God.

And I do not believe in judging other religions.

Believe (or don’t believe) and let believe (or let not believe). That’s my idea of being secular.

This live and let live policy is the basis – the only basis – for secularism.

Knocked down with a feather!

The influence of the Bible on the English Language was the topic I wanted to cover that day, as part of a dozen lectures allotted to me on Creative Writing in English. Some misguided soul had suggested my name to the Director of the Press Club, which was offering a short-term course in Journalism and in a weak (or confident) moment, i agreed to do those lectures. (I must confess that I was not called after the first experiment).

A knowledge of what constituted the substance with which the language was made up of would help in using it creatively, I thought. Among the major influences on the English Language in its formative stage were the discovery of the Printing press,the translations of the Bible and the printing of the King James version /Authorised version in early seventeenth century. These two factors happening almost simultaneously had the impact of standardizing the language.

One would be amazed at the huge number of the very very common words that we utter on a daily basis as well as the figurative and metaphorical usages that are drawn from the Bible. For some reason, I thought that it would help a person who is to take writing seriously to know the impact the Bible had on the language.

Thus it was that I took a lot of pains to prepare the lecture in which i highlighted the combined impact on the English language of 1. the translations into English of the Latin Bible and 2. the advent of printing into England.The impact was

1. of standardising the language and establishing the victory of East Midland dialect over others and
2. introduction of an incredibly large number of words and expressions from the Bible.

I wanted to amaze the students with astronomical contribution of Bible to the English vocabulary. I wanted to surprise them with the list of words that come so easily to us, which could be traced back to the Bible. I wanted to demonstrate how a familiarity with the associative and connotative value of words will give a depth to their use, and would also help in the application of such techniques as, say, extended analogy.

I concluded the lecture with the list that I wanted to surprise them with. After reading it out, I looked up with what I’m sure was an expression on my face that reflected the satisfaction of a job well done.

Any comments, questions? I asked.

He was a frontbencher who on the first day had asked me, “Can CREATIVE writing be taught?”

I don’t remember him asking any more questions after that, but I remembered him ‘cos I was grateful to him for that question which gave me a chance to discuss with them the concept of creativity.

I remember he wore glasses. He always had a smile on his face, the nature of which I couldn’t quite decipher.

After my lecture on the Bible, he asked me his second question – second and last.

“What’s this ma’am? Proselytizing?”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ?????????????? :-(

Wonder if he is a professional scribe now!

V P Singh – The Unsung and much hated Hero

I can foresee the type of vitriol that’s going to be spewed on my blog space with the posting of this blog. Nevertheless, I am going ahead with it, braving the venom. For Viswanath Prathap Singh was a politician I admired very much. Also, tomorrow, the 27 of November is his first death anniversary. If he had had his way, India would not have been an easy victim of Islamic terrorism, in the absence of adequate internal support groups which mushroomed alarmingly in the wake of the unfortunate demolition of the Barbri Masjid.

True, some of his reforms may not have been good for the privileged class – the Indian Middle class- to which I belong. But I admired him precisely for that. He himself belonged to the royalty, but he was not obsessed with his survival. His obsession was with the tasks he felt he could perform given the powerful political positioning that he enjoyed for a brief period. He behaved like a man in a hurry to bring about certain changes in the society before he was toppled and relegated to political oblivion. For this, he took the road not taken by any politician of free India, which, sadly, did not take him to the desired destination. The implementation of Mandal Commission was the first of his major reforms. What followed this brave, bold and daring politically suicidal decision from the then Prime Minister V P Singh is history. Every political party which claimed to be socially progressive dumped him, thereby exposing the hypocrisy of its claims.

The arrest of L K Advani progressing towards Ayodhya is the most gutsy thing that any politician has done. It is Prime Ministers and chief ministers of this material that we need in India today to deal with anti social elements like, say, the Thackerays, who are terrorizing Maharashtra. Today, with the Libernam report tabled, I cannot help thinking if Babri Masjid would still have been there if V P Singh had been the Prime Minister of India then. The Hamlet of the Indian politics, Mr.Nnarasimha Rao, about whom it is believed that he had a hidden communal agenda, behaved in an ignorance-is- bliss manner when the mosque was being systematically demolished as per expert plans drawn up by architectural engineers, and executed by trained kar sevaks. This is true, notwithstanding BJP’s laughable explanation about the demolition being a spontaneous action.

The Liberhan report is politically motivated. The timing and the findings are meant to divert attention from the scams that are casting a cloud over the ruling Congress party, and also to get the minority votes in the coming assembly elections. One doesn’t have to be a political pundit to see that. It’s obvious for the world to see. Otherwise how else could he have absolved the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao from all blame? AS the top leader of the nation, allowing Babri masjid demolition to happen by looking the other way was a sin of omission for which the nation cannot forgive him – because this nation has paid/is paying heavily on account of that. It’s no secret that the Bomb terrorism which began with the Mumbai blasts, the permeation of terrorists mentality among a large number Muslims who till then were Indians first and then only Muslims, the communal clashes, the Mumbai Riots, ethnic cleansing post Godhra, the jihad spreading like wild fire, the growth in numbers of hate filled kar sevaks, the willingness of Indian Muslims to become jihadis – all these constitute the chain reactions triggered off by that sad demolition at Ajodhya about which Justice Leberham has submitted a report which exempts the main person on whom accountability should have been pinned – Mr. Narasimha Rao.

The Congress party’s secular credentials are also suspect, though, in this aspect it is the best of the bad lot. When BJP, which was giving external support to the VP Singh government, withdrew that support following VP Singh's couragoeus and patriotic action of issuing orders to arrest Advani who was heading for Ayodhya for the grand finale of the demolition drama (began earlier on a rath in Kanyakumari), V P. Singh’s responded with a move which he knew was bound to be a political harakiri. He put the issue to vote in the parliament, hoping against hope that some members of parliament will respect the dictates of the conscience as lawmakers of a secular democracy, instead of obeying the party whip, which in effect, amounted to supporting the communal agenda of the BJP. He chose this course of action knowing full well he will be defeated. But he wanted to create a new culture in Indian politics where conscientious politicians were given a chance to put the country and its constitution above petty party considerations. He felt the cause for which he was willing to throw away his political career was a fundamental issue. He exhorted the Indian politicians to do a soul searching. If he had succeeded, he would have brought in a political culture which would have made India a different place today – a better one no doubt. But he was defeated on the floor of the house which would not have happened if the Congress under Rajiv Gandhi had not voted against the government. The lie of the secular agenda of the congress party was exposed. But then, how could one expect Rajiv Gandhi to forgive the man who exposed his hands sullied in the Bofors deal, or allow a potential political rival to rise on the wave of clean, principled politics? After all, he was Rajiv Gandhi and not Mahatma Gandhi.

VP Singh was a statesman. He was a patriot. He was not a power monger. He was one who was always willing to admit defeat and resign, as a matter of principle. He was also a politician who tried many permutations and combination to stay in power, but only long enough to be able to bring about the changes he felt had to be made in order to create an order where equity was the rule, secularism was an imperative, and in which corruption had no space. But we failed him. We, Indians failed to see the honest politician in him.

After all, this is a nation which murdered the Mahatma.

Every nation gets the leaders it deserves.

But history will remember Vishwanath Prathap Singh as a valiant son of india whose fatal flaw was that he loved his country above his political career, and as one who went down fighting to correct the systemic flaws in the polity of the nation and as a statesman who sacrificed power and position to take that first unpopular step in providing a level playing field for all citizens, especially those who were crushed by centuries of social oppression.

Sachin Tendulkar’s most daring Ton

'Mumbai belongs to India. I am a Maharashtrian and proud to be a Maharashtrian, but I am an Indian' – That was Sachin Tendulkar

That was the master blaster’s most courageous hit.

Sachin, despite being a person who religiously steers clear of controversies, did not shy away from airing his views in answer to a query from a scribe. It required as much courage to make this statement as to go out there in the middle without a helmet and a visor to face world’s fastest speedster all geared up to draw blood. So inflammable are the fumes released into the Mumbai troposphere by the Shiv Sainks and the MNS. The great sportsman skyrocketed in our esteem by daring, in his characteristic quiet and modest way, to make a statement of this nature in a city where the Shiv Sainiks and MNS workers have effectively terrorised into silence all those big names who'd led the Mumbai- for- all- Indians campaigns.

Sachin may not have expected this reaction from the Shiv Sena supremo. But then, who is Mr. Thackeray to deictate whether Sachin should play cricket or golf or kabadi or talk politics or enter politics? Why this sense of proprietorship over anything Marathi? No Maharashtrians should think anything different from or outside the Bal Thackeray's thinking box?

Thackeray appears to be still smarting from the party’s performance at the recent elections. Hell, I guess, has no fury like the Shiv Sena chief spurned by the electorate.

If Tendulkar will stand by what he said, or recant or hold out the olive branch to Thackeray waits to be seen.

But we most certainly hope that an icon like him would lend a hand to the noble cause of unity in diversity.

Gujarat: A Divided State

On September 8th, Metropolitan Magistrate Tamang’s report is made public. His findings about the encounter which killed Irshat and her friends are that it was a fake encounter. They were shot at short range and then the bodies left on the public road for all to see how Gujarat deals with terrorists (read Muslims?). The action of the police is suspected to be entrenched in a deep desire to please the BJP strongman Narendra Modi, and to boost his image as the defender and protector of the Hindu community.

On September 10th, Gujarat goes to polls and Narendra Modi registers a better show than the Congress.

Now what are we to make out from this? This has happend several times. The worse his record on human rights violations gets, the better Modi's chance of victory at the polls. The only interpretation for this fact is, Modi's brutal acts have the support of the majority of the people of Gujarat

Gujarat is a divided state. The people of Gujarat have lost faith in the concept of secularism as defined in the Constitution of India, which the BJP ridicules as ‘Pseudo secularism”. For the people of Gujarat, secularism as the average Indian understands it is a pseudo notion. The minorities have rights if the majority is generous enough to grant them those rights. The minority communities have right to existence only if the majority community so wills it.

The state of Gujarat is a scale model of what India would become if the BJP with its control strings in the hands of RSS gets a majority at the Centre, and rules India unhindered by coalition partners.

In the responses to my last post (on Rahul Gandhi), there were some views on choosing between fundamental rights and bread for all. Gujarat results makes me think that even a discussion on these lines is dangerous. If we are willing to give up any one of the fundamental rights, why not another at another point in time? And another and another?

In a democratic Nation-State, Fascism can be ‘encountered’ only by a tenacious faith in fundamental rights exercised through the ballot.

The Rahul Gandhi Phenomenon

I get the feeling that Rahul Gandhi will do better than his father. In the past five years, this reserved quiet scion of the Gandhi family who could have easily stepped into any position he liked, kept a low profile. Maybe, he is taking a leaf out of the Mahatma’s book by not plunging into politics till he has had experiential knowledge of what it is about.

And he is proving to be a clever politician. Yes. He is playing the Gandhi-Nehru card wherever and whenever he knows it’ll pay dividends. He seems determined to reclaim the Congress Party’s foothold in the Hindi heartland and in Southern India. He seems to have registered some success in this mission, if we are to go by the recent general elections.

I can well foresee the barrage of accusations that’ll jostle against each other in my blogsphere – accusations of me being an advocate of dynastic rule. Regarding that issue, my position is this. The son should not rise only because he is the father’s son. Or the grandmother’s grandson, or the great grandfather’s great grand son, or the great great grand father’s great great grandson. But if the son can rise because he is clever enough to turn his lineage to his advantage, and consequently to the advantage of his country, give him a chance. After all this is a democracy. We cannot deny an opportunity to a person simply because he is the son, grandson, great grandson and great great grandson of a particular family. And the Indian democracy does not have the history of having given a person with the above credentials a free hand to misuse the dynastic advantage to oppress the people. When these advantaged people overstep democratic limits, or fail to perform, the voter punishes him. That’s the tradition in our democracy.

So if a person is young and seems earnest and sensible , and is making every effort to familiarize himself with the huge complex reality called India, let us accept him. Let’s not cry foul simply because he is somebody’s somebody.

After all every human being has to be somebody’s somebody.

During the elections, the media was tom-tomming about his average academic records. To this I say, where is it written that one has to be an Albert Einstein to become the leader of a nation?

The Rahul Gandhi whom all of us dismissed as ineffective, is coming into his own. He is patient, training himself to perhaps lead the country one day, or just to lead the party. He is starting from where an Indian politician always should. From rural India. He is nurturing the party from the grass root level. The party which had lost its directions and was well on the way of becoming just another political outfit, might (let’s hope), under this person reinstate the ideology and values which it had been happily compromising for political expediency. The process is slow, painful and time and energy consuming - and Rahul Gandhi appears to have a sizeable repertoire of patience and energy. He seems to have that race winning quality of slowness and steadiness.

I do hope I am right when I say, if this son rises, it will not be a case of greatness thrust on him because he is born great – it’ll also be because he has achieved greatness.It could be a rare case of the confluence of all those three phenomena that Shakespeare spoke about.

Ruminating on Blog Responses

It might be only a tiny storm in the teacup brewing in my blogspace (triggered off by my post Burqa War) but to me it was a revelation and a coming to terms with a certain truth which I would not have missed had I read the writings on the wall instead of playing the ostrich.

And the terrible truth is that Young India is divided on the issue of secularism.

One section of educated young men pooh poohing the very idea of secularism the way my peers and I understood and internalized it, is a matter for serious worry. To them, those secular values that shaped the weltanschauung of my peers have become an anachronism.

Wonder how this happened. The post independence generation to which I belong believed that all Indians – Hindus, Musselman, Christian, Jain and Buddhist – are my brothers and sisters who will someday live like a large happy family.

What went wrong?

The constitution? And we grew up thinking India has the most democratic constitution!

Today, no one is happy. Neither the majority nor the minorities.

The secularism we believed in was built on a ‘live and let live’ policy and respect for all religions. The constitution, we believed, would ensure an equal space for all religious groups in the polity of the nation and there would be no state interference in the religious practices so long as there is no violation of fundamental rights.

Also, Minority Rights and other reservation policies were looked upon as an arrangement to give equal opportunity to those who were outnumbered or downtrodden for centuries. It was a way of providing a level playing field for a diverse population in a democratic dispensation.

And we believed all this - we believed in the constitution and the well intentioned reservations. Sacrifices and making space after all is part of nation building. Looking back, I realize that we believed ‘cos those who taught us the history of India and the nature of its post independent dispensation in the high schools, taught us with passion in their voice and pride and stars in their eyes. Not surprising, given that they grew up in an atmosphere charged with patriotism and a faith in the all inclusive model of democracy fathered by the Mahatma.

Unfortunately, the socioeconomic changes post independence reshuffled the century old economic order, and the losers of this change among the majority group had no privileges to resort to. This led to resentment, which in turn put the minorities on the defensive, giving rise to a vicious circle of action and reaction in many parts of the country.

It must be admitted that the minorities seized upon the privileges bestowed on them constitutionally as inalienable rights, became very possessive about them and often stretched the privileges to the point of offending the majority community.

A vast oversimplification, I know, but I was only constructing a rough scenario to show where the Machiavellian politicians stepped in and exploited the communal situation to serve their megalomaniacal ends.

When and how it happened I do not know but all on a sudden we realized that these politicians had invaded the campuses and cast a magical spell on the youth. And thus began the beginning of the end of young India’s faith in the visions of the founding fathers.

And this is not all. Corruption entered and became the order of the day in the Indian polity. The mode of development created many a discontented groups in the margins. The political will to address the terrible economic inequality was conspicuous by its absence. This undesirable atmosphere vitiated by self seeking politicians is what today’s youngsters have inherited. Any wonder that cynicism should prevail with regard to secularism and all those values imbedded in the constitution of our nation? When we dreamed in the early sixties, the world, despite all its problems, lay before us like a land of dreams – ‘cos there were dream merchants selling idyllic visions passionately in schools, in media and in the homes. Today’s young India has the failure of those dreams as their experience of the young democracy, and for mentors, it has hardened criminals/ Machiavellian politicians, ever on the lookout for chelas whom they can exploit and use as pawns in the dirty power game. The youngsters grew up hearing from these anti social elements, stories about the delicious taste of power.

So what if power corrupts, they are not ashamed to ask.

I was surprised to read a comment which protested against the banning of politics in the campuses as it amounted to banning ‘progressive’ activities!!?? This, he argued, gave rise to communalism among the youth! As a teacher from Kerala where the educational institutions are the breeding ground for cantankerous and ruthless politicians, I strongly disagree with this statement. Of course, we have had a few shining stars among politicians who came from the youth wings of parties; but they are exceptions rather than the rule. How campus politics can be termed ‘progressive’ when we have known cases of brilliant students being moulded into hardened criminals and goondas and goonda kingpins by campus politics, I simply fail to understand.

A college in Kerala with a long tradition of having produced many illustrious sons to serve the country in the highest and important positions, has today the dubious honour of having produced a new breed of political goondas who, with their muscle power, assist politicians in their mission to acquire disproportionate assets. These goondas are groomed to break every law in the country, indulge in violence and murder for their political gurus in exchange for protection and asylum.

Islam Bashing.

Another distressing fact that emerges from the blog responses is Islam bashing. A cursory glance at the comments of the blog visitors of my post Burqua War will show what I mean. While I agree that the minorities in India often forget that they are privileged, I cannot fall in line with these Islam bashers. Their strategy is to point to the past. They quote history – selectively and bypass the power politics (clash of civilizations, as it is now finally and honestly christened) dating back from the Crusades continuing through the imperial rhetoric in which Islam was demonized and finally down to the present times when the imperial countries manipulated world affairs with the greatest ease to become the self styled arbitrators of the destiny of oil producing Islamic nations. These are realities that no one can wish or will away. One cannot isolate the origins of Islamic fundamentalism from these truths.

I think we should turn to history to learn how not to make the mistakes of the past. Let’s not turn to history to find sticks to beat any group.

I would say religious leaders of all groups have failed secular India. With each one baying for his pound of flesh I would say “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”. The religion I follow very strictly teaches “Give to Ceaser what is Caesar’s”. It can’t be any different in other religions too.

The Agnostic Angst

And finally there is another category that has become vocal in the blogsphere– the atheists/agnostics. Most of them opt for it out of disgust for the religions that are polarizing the nation. To this category I’d say: Adopt a live and let live policy. Centuries have taught us that humans need God. Having said that, we should do everything in our power to create that felt need among our countrymen to build an India where Humans, Gods and the Godless can live in perfect harmony.

The Burqa War

MANGALORE: The Sri Venkatarama Swamy (SVS) College in Bantwal has restricted a first year BCom student from attending the class till she conforms to the regulations of the college, which is not to display her religious identity, the headscarf. (Times of India)

This is a very sad development indeed. After all, this is not France or Australia or Canada but secular India where the citizens have come to take in their stride the differences in the attire of those belonging to various religious communities.

Don’t students belonging to all communities display symbols of religious identity? What about the Bindi? Or the scapular or the rosary? Why single out the head scarf or the Burqa alone?

There was a time in India when Christians (in Kerala) went to school/college in mundu and chatta, Hindus in their set mundu and Muslims with their headscarf. For these students who came to acquire learning, these differences in the dress were no issue. They represented the plurality that was our pride. How much India has moved away from this situation!

The saddest aspect of this event is that the protests originated from the students, the clearest of indications that the citizens of tomorrow have their minds poisoned by communalism.

The first on the list of priorities of an educational institution in a pluralistic society like India’s is to inculcate secular values – like respect for other religions which includes tolerance and acceptance of religious markers. An institution that tries to throw a wedge between communities is unfit to be in the field of education, where religious tolerance, harmonious existence, respect for other religions and respect for differences should be held up as the highest values of civilization.

It is significant that this is happening in Karnataka, a state ruled by the BJP. Funny, how the party has not learnt its lessons after the drubbing it got at the hustings. The party can start packing up its bags in Karnataka after its shameful sexist and communal track record. The assault on women by lumpen elements of the communal outfits that mushroom and flourish under the BJP umbrella and the unofficial fatwa issued against people from the majority community who interact with the minority, are events which are still green in the minds of the electorate.

It becomes exceedingly difficult to understand this regressive movement in India which facilitated the rise of a communal party, all the way to New Delhi. The anti Muslim posture of the party – is it a political necessity or a genuinely ideological position? Or is it a type of fascism that infects the narrow mind which draws its identity from a narrow cultural and religious context? Or a combination of all these? Academia is replete with attempts to locate the issue in the historical site but speculations have given rise to theories and theories without credible answers.

Or

Is it a reaction to globalization inherent in which is the possibility of eventual loss of identities of religious groups? Like the last convulsions of a dying animal? Can the religious activism across the world- of all religions- be explained in these terms?

Can’t help thinking about John Lenon’s Imagine.

Back to the issue. the brainstorming of the BJP which just concluded in Simla is causing anxious tremors among the peace loving citizens of this country. Fascist voices are drowning those of the moderates in the party. Political strategies are being spelt out to regain power from where the party can position itself to launch assault on differences.

***

Below is given the rest of the news item from TOI.


The student Aysha Asmin, after objections from saffron-leaning students, was told by the college management not to wear the headscarf, which she started wearing after the college had prevented her from wearing the burqa.

Aysha has not been attending the classes from past 12 days. Trouble started after the college elections. She alleged that college president Bharath started heckling her for wearing a scarf saying that they too would come wearing a saffron scarf.

"He was taken aback when I said I don't mind. I don't even mind wearing a saffron scarf", Aysha told TOI. After this, harassment continued, but Aysha was stoic till it reached a flash point when the principal told her not to attend classes.

Aysha's father clarifies that he admitted his daughter to the college only after clarifying that there would be no issue for wearing a burqa in the college with a lecturer.

Catch Them Young and Safeguard Secularism: The Need For A Central Board For Regulating Textbook Contents

http://www.hindu.com/2009/04/15/stories/2009041555871100.htm


I remember, as a school going child, my day at school began with India is my country, all Indians are my brothers and sisters being shouted out in as many pitches as there were students in the general assembly in the quadrangle. The immense beauty of that cacophony!!

That practice, sadly enough, appears to have vanished from schools now.

I do not know if this practice was prevalent in all the states in the country, but as a student in schools in Kerala and Tamilnadu , I remember vying with the students around me to be heard when I proclaimed my Indianness, my fellow feelings for the other Indians and my love for my country. It was a good practice. It had a subliminal effect on me, and had a role in creating a sacrosanct aura around the concept of ALL INDIANS ARE MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS, irrespective of caste and creed.

The site given above, which appeared in Hindu op - ed page a couple of days ago, is indeed distressing. It talks about injecting communalism in the minds of unformed, tender minds of children in Gujarat as a strategy to usher in Ram Rajya. Indoctrinating communalism in young minds can ensure only intolerance and violence in these future citizens. We see it happening with the Taliban and other fanatical religious groups. The world is reaping the harvest of uncontrolled violence sown through ‘religious’ instruction divorced from secular humanitarian values. An irony, ‘cos religion cannot be divorced from these values.

Now, the RSS-run publishing house in Gujarat has taken a leaf out of this practice of catching them young and poisoning their minds. Yes. It is poison. Hatred is poison. Any text that legitimizes and officialises hatred and violence is poison. Detoxification of the collective mind raised on such ‘righteous’ hatred and violence is a near impossibility. The process of communalizing the tender minds of Gujarat is in full swing now, if the article is to be believed. The motive is political – to ensure vote bank in future for a divisive political outfit.

The centre must step in. Not only in Gujarat but in all states and monitor and regulate the text books prescribed for schools, right from the nursery where, in some states, it is reported that pictures are shown demonizing minority groups.

We need a central regulatory board, totally apolitical in nature, comprising intellectuals of renown. The Board should have a set term and should not be dismantled every time the Central Government changes. Political appointments should not be entertained. Regarding the text books, social studies and history text books should have the same content through out the country The state specific chapters and lessons should be designed by the state board which should be governed by the central board. The content and syllabus designed by the State Boards should be prescribed and published only after getting the approval of the Central board. The state boards should be given strict guidelines to conform to ALL- INDIANS- ARE- MY- BROTHERS- AND- SISTERS CONCEPT.

I wonder if this sounds crazy but unless some bold step like this is taken, India’s secular credentials will become history. The process of sabotaging it is already in the works. A generation anchored in lethal communal ideology is emerging in Gujarat while intellectuals and industrialists sing paeans to the Gujarat mode of Development.

I foresee the type of comments this post will throw up. I will be questioned on why I have no problem with Christian indoctrination and Christian nations’ indulgence in violence through history, or the cracking down on the Sikhs after Indira Gandhi’s death, or Islamic terrorism. Why single out Gujarat alone?

My answer is this. I do have a problem with all this. I do have a problem with every religious or political outfit that brainwashes young minds into accepting hatred as a laudable emotion, and violence as a permissible tool for achieving desired ends. No religion justifies violence and murder. True, Christian nations from the middle ages onwards have indulged in the worst form of violence in the form of Crusades, Holy inquisition etc. But these are shameful chapters in the history of civilization which no one should emulate. These dark, cruel and shameful happenings should not be used as justification or precedence for inculcating hatred among people. The attack on the Sikhs or terrorists attack elsewhere in India are no justification for a State government to officially indulge in the type of indoctrination in the name of Hinduism which is a great religion of peace, a religion which does not provide space for violence. The engineering of the text books to create a generation of hate filled Hindus is NOT the way to counter Islamic terrorism. My problem with Gujarat is that communal politics is slowly but surely gaining legitimacy there, and the path is being made clear to make possible a theocratic state within ten years. For within a decade these fledglings who are being systematically indoctrinated through schools will become competent practitioners of communal politics characterized by hatred, violence and exclusionism.

Let’s remember that much quoted saying that an eye for an eye makes the world go blind. Gujarat is heading for this blindness, for seeds of vengeful hatred are being systematically sown in the minds of the children by the official machinery. All that talk about the sensational and successful development agenda of the Gujarat Government is a ruse to deflect attention from this dangerous, long term strategy to destroy the secular fabric of India.

Thank You, Resul Pookutty.

I come from a country and civilisation that gave the world the word that is preceded by silence and is followed by more silence. That word is 'Om'. So I dedicate this award to my country," said Kerala-born sound technician. This is not just a sound award but a piece of history that has been handed over to me.

Thank you, Resul Pookutty. Not just for the Oscar, but for going out there and proclaiming to the whole world, and to India in particular that he is an Indian, he is proud to be an Indian and that the Indian heritage is his too, despite being a Muslim.

He went a step further. He dedicated the Oscar to India as a gift on the day of the great festival of Sivarathri which India was celebrating while the Oscar function was going on.

He represents the true spirit of India , that secular backbone of the Indian psyche which holds this country together despite the concerted efforts of agents with petty political agenda to polarize this great nation on communal lines.

His speech took me back to my college days when we were Indians first.

Thank you Pookutty. May your tribe increase.

One Bindi - My Talisman against Communal Horror

I normally carry a strip of bindis in my toilet kit when I travel-but this time it so happened I forgot to take any. I had only the one I wore on my forehead.

That bindi proved to be more precious than silver and gold to me. It was to contribute to my sense of safety during those few days I spent stuck in a room in a hotel in Vadodhra.

It was 27 February, 2002. I had traveled to Vadodra for a break from work, and to spend a week with my husband who was on official duty there.

I do not know if that date means anything to you at the first glance, but I flinch at the very mention of that date. A type of fear surges through me. I distract myself instantly by forcibly pegging my thoughts on some nearby object that my eyes fall on. With a fair amount of success, I push away the date and its reaction from my thoughts, and stay them from hovering around in my conscious mind; but banish them from my subconscious or the unconscious – no. That’s impossible. Unfortunately, fear and its cause cannot be uprooted and cast away that easily from those inaccessible regions of the mind.

Why do I remember it now? Yesterday, The Rosebowl Channel screened Mr. & Mrs. Iyer. The intended main focus of the film may be human relationships, but for me it is the background - the post-Godhra riot- that appealed to me.

‘It’s so easy to kill a man”, says Meenakshi after she sees, through the camera zoom lens, blood gushing out from the slit throat of a Muslim.
In the course of this conversation Jehangir Choudhary (a Muslim) says, “I’m alive today because you gave me a name – MR. Iyer”

What’s in a name, asked Shakespeare. Everything, I say. When Mr. Jehangir Choudhary was temporarily bestowed the name ‘Mr. Iyer’, his life was spared.

Six decades back, a group of people known as “the Jews” were gas chambered en masse; another known as Pundits were threatened, killed and driven out of their homeland in Kashmir. Charles Darney, though a good man, was condemned to be guillotined, simply because he carried the burden of the name ‘Everemonde’ (A tale of two cities).

In 2002 March, thousands were killed in Gujarat, because they belonged to the category named Muslims.

In this world of ours, nomenclature is all. It can decide whether you have a right to existence or not.

The idea is so powerfully brought out in Mr. & Mrs Iyer. Meenakshi, a South Indian Brahmin, is the very epitome of extreme conservatism. But another dimension of her personality - that of an instinctive humanitarian – emerges when, in a moment of crisis, she temporarily lends the object most revered by a woman of her breeding, namely, the name of her husband, to a man whose religion and cultural habits are so diametrically and irreconcilably opposite hers.

The movie is the surest statement that caste and creed are but cultural truths which a human should be willing to give a secondary position to in the face of a humanitarian crisis. Meenakshi becomes a true Brahmin when she decides to save a life – even at the cost of subversion of cultural values.

It’s not birth which makes one a Brahmin – but deeds.

Now back to the post-Godhra riots. The burning of the train carrying pilgrims to Ayodhya was a terrible, condemnable tragedy. The culprits should have been brought before the law of the land and severely punished by the state machinery. But the state decided to do something else before the culprits were apprehended. It decided to organize a systematic decimation of the tribe of the culprits –men, women, children. And the modus operandi? Kill, burn, loot and rape. All with silent official sanction.

Terrorism is bad. But state engineered terrorism strikes terror in the hearts of the citizens, as it did in mine when we were stranded in Vadodra, waiting for things to normalize.

I thanked God I had at least one bindi. I stuck it on the mirror everyday and took it out and wore it every time I came out of the room. I became anxious when the gum became weak from over use – kept on feeling my forehead to see if the bindi was there in place. I belonged to the minority and was in a state which had officially/unofficially let loose a reign of terror on the non- majority. The centre too played along – it took more than three days for army’s flag march to begin.

Will I become a victim?

At the bottom of my commitment to secularism, there is, I guess, this constant fear of being unsafe in my country to which I belong, and which belongs to me.

So I treasured the bindi - it was my passport and visa to survival. Given the choice, I’d forget those terrible days when we sat in the lobby of the hotel while people like me were killed, assaulted and raped out there; when the smoke of arson clouded the distant skies day and night; when the conversation in the lobby revealed truths best left unsaid.

And there is a picture that continues to haunt me after so many years, a picture which makes me indulge in Modi bashing whenever I can, a picture which made my heart sink into unknown depths of depression when Modi won twice after that. A picture that prevents me from applauding Modi’s huge success with the development agenda.

After the army arrived, my husband and I used to venture out into the roads after sunset, and after the curfew was lifted. I made sure I had my bindi on my forehead. We saw the army trucks plying, with soldiers holding guns and looking grim. That was a pleasant, welcome sight.

But there was another that I cannot get over – not even after so many years.

Groups of Muslims – sometimes a large joint family(once I saw a four generation group), sometimes several families moving in clusters, walking silently through the streets of Vadodra, with cloth bundles in their hands. Apparently, they were fleeing to safer areas unaffected by the riots.

They had death in their eyes.

Beware of Gurumurthyism and Gautierism

Words. More dangerous than bullets and bombs. Terrorists bank on the power of words to expand their cadre. The lone survivor of the Mumbai carnage was inducted into jihadi by a CD he bought from the roadside of Karachi. Decades back, words turned a whole nation’s value system topsy turvy resulting in the worst holocaust in modern times – in Hitler’s Germany. People in positions of influence – be it activists, politicians or journalists- must be held accountable for irresponsible rhetoric that trigger off violence.
Following the Mumbai carnage, Gurumurthy went on the rampage. In this, he had an able(?) lieutenant in Francois Gautier, that French “friend “of India. With his bigoted logic, Gurumurthy churned out a disgusting piece in The New Indian Express titled ISOLATE TERROR, DO NOT SECULARISE IT!(The NIE, Dec. 1, 2008). Here, he rightly points out the knee-jerk reactions of the government of India while the terror was on. If he had stopped there, it would have been OK. But then he forays into his usual anti-secular ravings in his perverted, hate filled but brilliant language throbbing with his customary revulsion for non-Hindu Indians. Referring to the PM’s rather strange invitation(or summons? that’s what it sounded like to me) to the ISI, Gurumurthy says: Did he(Manmohan Singh) think that the ISI has suddenly shed its enmity and turned its admirer under the secular leaders Sonia Gandhi, a Christian, and himself, a Sikh?
His tirade continues. It is the Indian Polity’s inability to say plainly that Islamic terror is a global phenomenon, and it is extending itself into India through global Islamic network. Result, instead of isolating terror, the national political discourse began secularizing it. And then in his usual God-is-love-love-is-blind-therefore-god-is-blind type of logic he goes on and on, hammering the secular forces in India for not coming down heavily in thoughts, words and deeds on Muslims. The article concludes with Terror stands secularized, not isolated in secular discourse! How will India fight terror with this cerebral paralysis?

What on earth does this fanatic want? Charge Indian political discourse with virulent communal sentiments? Posit a communal worldview as the ideal one for India? Does he realize that the demolition of Babri Masjid is the start point of the entry of jihadis in India? Does he want the government to harass Muslims in India, isolate them and start a communal war in the country? Does he want to see normalcy in the country completely destroyed so that predictability on a day to day basis is forever banished from the life of every Indian? Is that his idea of Ramrajya? Why doesn’t he understand the government(be it BJP or Congress) is always skating on thin ice and every patriotic citizen should refrain from making this task more difficult for them? Well, how can he when his brain in infected by communal bigotry leading to cerebral paralysis, which has rendered one portion of his thinking process non-functional?

The day after this article appeared came another one from Francois Gautier titled SONIA’S PRESENCE IN DELHI IS COSTING INDIA DEARLY (The NIE, Dec 2, 2008). Very much in bad taste on account of the very personal attacks on Sonia Gandhi, the atrticle gives the impression that this French man is trying to out herod herod to please this newspaper which has hired him, paying, no doubt, an obscenely fat fee in order to recruit a white man to lend greater credibility to its communal agenda. Gautier indulges in a litany of I accuse Sonia, which despite its mischievous intent, is uproariously comical by its very ridiculous, puerile melodramatic tone. For a sample:
I accuse Sonia of being responsible for the tragedy of Mumbai
I accuse Sonia and her govt.of having made NSG the laughing stock of the world
I accuse Sonia of having her Christian and Western background, in four years, divided India on religious and caste lines in a cynical and methodical manner
I accuse Sonia of weakening India’s spirit of sacrifice and courage - - -
I accuse Sonia of always pointing the finger at Pakistan when terrorism in India is now mostly homegrown.
I accuse Sonia of being an enemy of Hindus - - -
I accuse Sonia of taking advantage of India’s respect for women -
I accuse Sonia for exploiting the Indian Press’ obsession with her
After this hilarious litany fit for high school declamation contests, Gautier goes on to make vitriolic personal attacks on her.

Not that I am fan of Sonia Gandhi, but this is bad journalism. Will some one tell The NIE, that readers are discerning and when an obsession becomes a paranoia with a journalist, the reader only goes tut tutting in pity?

Why is NIE wasting its space on such maniacal assault on secularism while its editorials go tom tomming secular ideals? Why this Janus like position?

If the NIE wants to divide the country along communal lines, it should rope in journalists who know their job better, and do not lower the quality of the paper. Or is it quality at the altar of Hindutva?

Previous posts on Gurumurthyism : http://pareltank.blogspot.com/2006/12/gurumurthyism.html

Religion - Not a Site for Violence

(This is a revised form of my response to a blog. Nothing original is these random reflections, but I still choose to post them, braving charges of mouthing platitudes and tinkering around with truisms. I do this ’cos we live in times when clichés need to be stated, defamiliarised. Familiarity breeds contempt, and when great truths are contemptuously dismissed as clichés, they need to be reinstated. Truth never becomes irrelevant simply because they are hackneyed. So here I go - - )

All religions are expressions of man’s search for the infinite. This search in not done in an ethereal vacuum - but down here, on the earth, on the ground, on the soil of our day to day life.

The first step towards the realization of the infinite is purging the mind of negative emotions and filling it with love - love of mankind.

If we negotiate our way through the peripherals of religions, we will arrive at the great truth that the core values of all religions are the same. There is no space in this core for violence and inequity. They are gross elements that adulterate the magnificent endeavour of mortals to reach out towards eternity. They can never be part of any religion, part of this search for the infinite. The presence of these elements with the label of religion attached to them can be ascribed to flawed interpretation and practice of religion.

A violent Christian should relinquish the label ‘Christian’. So should believers of other religions. The greatest disservice to religious teachers/teachings is to inflict injury on fellow human beings in the name of religion. Christians did it for a long period of time. The leaders have apologized several times for the crimes against humanity in the name of religion.

Indians too proselytized. Buddhism spread in the eastern part of Asia through the agency of Buddhist monks who took upon themselves the task of spreading the great man’s teachings. But how peacefully this religion was disseminated! Not a drop of blood was shed in the process. Buddha’s insistence on ahimsa was adhered to with great passion by his messengers.

Hinduism did not have a history of violence in the name of religion. Our ancestors were the ideal practitioners of religion. Religion was practiced as it truly should be – as a way of life. Hinduism was a way of life.

Alas! Those were glorious days. Hindus achieved long time back what followers of other religions are still striving to achieve. But, sadly, instead of perpetuating the great tradition of being model practitioners of religion, Hindus are now making the mistakes committed by the followers of other religions, mistakes which the rational and enlightened among the other religions are trying to rectify. What an irony!

And what a great disservice to Hinduism and to our proud, glorious tradition.

The New Indian Express for a Theocratic India?

The New Indian Express adopts a very clever strategy - its editorials go that extra mile to project a secular image of itself. At the same time, it gives huge and prominent spaces to anti-minority intellectuals like Gurumurthy and Francois Gautier to propagate the communal agenda and divide the people. What is the purpose of this doublespeak?

God knows what fancy rate the paper gives a cantankerous journalist like Gautier. This Frenchman’s simplistic and shallow readings of Christianity and Hinduism, and his seeming sympathy with the ill treated majority is reminiscent of the age old dirty game played by the imperialists to divide and rule. What surprises me is the way the New Indian Express is playing into the hands of this incurable imperialist. Or is it t hat the paper is using Gautier for a straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth type of an impact to secure its communal agenda? His recent article has let loose a lot of hate responses, both in the daily and on the net.

Wonder what this paper is up to. Why is it indulging in these nefarious divisive games? Is The New Indian Express laying the foundation for a theocratic dispensation for India?

Mischievous Forwards

I got many forwards after the attack on Christians began in Orissa. The immediate forwards emphatically talked about how tolerant and secular Hindu India is, how tolerant India is ‘cos Indian culture is Hindu culture. They pointed out that India has had Muslim Presidents, Christian Defence Ministers, a Muslim on the board of trustees of a Hindu temple, Muslim chief ministers, that post Godhra riots are blown out of proportion while Hindu pundits predicament in J&K is soft pedaled, that subsidy is given to Haj pilgrims while none to Sabarimala pilgrims, that Muezzin calls are permitted, and how 85% of Indians – the majority population- craves for what 15% gets. This and more. Much more. I don’t contest any of these. In fact, I agree with every claim and am proud to belong to a model secular state.

But I did not forward these forwards as requested. I deleted them instantly.

And then another set of forwards started burdening my inbox. This time they listed out the number of Christian Churches destroyed, details of people who lost lives and property in the anti Christian riots; they pointed out that there is no relief organized for xians in refugee camps and that xians organizations are not allowed relief operations while they were most active & effective during the Orissa floods; they highlighted how 15 million students of all castes and creeds pass thru xian educational institution every year-but the percentage of conversion is nil. They talked of how there are laws in place against fraudulent conversion, but no cases of false & fraudulent conversion were filed or proved. This and more. Much more. I don’t contest any of these. In fact, I agree with every claim and am proud to belong to the Christian community.

But I did not forward these forwards as requested.I deleted them instantly

For I believe that the net should not be used to polarize the nation. It amounts to serious misuse.

Speaking the truth but not the whole truth, then interpreting them to inflame passions – that’s mischievous. I do not want to be a party to this virtual propaganda which is doing no good to this beautiful nation that is mine.

Let's use the cyber space in a responsible manner.

Jai Hind.

The Delhi Blasts - On Treating the Disease

I know a group of people whose refrain after each series of bomb blasts is “Narendra Modi - that’s what the country needs”.

I strongly disagree with them. The effectiveness of every action should be judged by its long term results. Did the state engineered post- Godhra riots rid Gujarat of terror attacks? Most certainly not. In fact Gujarat, unfortunately, seems to figure on the hit list of terrorists, if one is to go by the turn of events since Godhra.

There was a time when I seriously thought that if BJP could discard communal politics, it would be a welcome change from the Congress which has grown into an effete political force on account of compulsions of coalition politics and appeasement policies. But after the communal riots in Orissa and now Karnataka (BJP ruled states), BJP at the centre is an absolute no no. The BJP ruled states believe in denying space to non majority groups. That denial, it appears, is to be achieved by elimination in installments. Hardly an ideal situation in a pluralistic democracy like India. One does not cease to be an Indian simply because she/he is a Christian or Muslim.

I suppose, in this context, it is necessary to talk about the code of conduct of minorities in a secular political set up. If conversion by allurements by Christian missionaries is practiced, it should be stopped. Gurumurthy recently wrote a piece in The New Indian Express on the Orissa riots, laying all the blame at the door of Christian missionaries who converted the Panas(an SC community) and turned them against the Kandas ( a Scheduled Tribe community) who did not get converted to Christianity. Now, how much of truth there is in this claim is a matter of dispute, for, Gurumurthy has a remarkable capacity of twisting facts and figures out of shape to rationalize his Hindutva agenda (http://pareltank.blogspot.com/2006/12/gurumurthyism.html) . But if we are to give credence to the proverbial wisdom that there is no smoke without fire, this matter needs to be investigated. If there is some truth in what Gurumurthy says – that conversion is setting tribes against each other – the issue needs to be taken seriously and addressed. And addressed by Christian groups who must take a decision not to indulge in unethical conversions by dangling attractive compensations for conversion. So also the Muslim community. The leaders should do some serious thinking on how Islam could be fitted harmoniously into the Indian cultural setting. But, most importantly, the minority groups should not indulge in anything that offends the sensibilities of the majority group. I think the former owes that much to the latter who have been infinitely tolerant of differences. The Minority Rights should not to exercised in any way that is detrimental to the peace and harmony of a secular society

I look back with nostalgia at the days when one did not have to be apologetic about belonging to a minority religion. I’m not talking of some remote past but a past in Kerala, very much present in my memory. On several occasions, I have been embarrassed by my friends whom I knew as my classmates in the seventies, telling me that I survive in India with no rights denied cause of the goodness of Hindus. I do not question this but there was a time when we took each other for granted, never saw ourselves as Hindus or Christians or Muslims but as friends and Indians.

Is it possible to recapture those days? A disease can be rooted out and cured only if the diagnosis is proper. It is imperative that representatives from all creeds in India sit together, admit mistakes, make earnest promises to change and take a solemn oath that “we are Indians first”.

Or India will be broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.

Pseudo Secularism Again

It was extremely distressing to see the nature of the cyber reaction to the bombing in Bangalore and Ahmedbad. The blame game is on, among the bloggers. If the blog and the comments represent the voice of the educated, privileged sections of India, then we have something to worry about - seriously.

A lot of blogs and a lot more comments blame the government and its pseudo- secularism.

Pseudo-secularism! How I hate the term! A term invented for political expediency, which subsequently gained respectability, and is now creating havoc in the minds of even the enlightened!

The term which provides a protective armour to those who want to launch a violent assault on the sacred value of secularism.

A term which validates the denial of the right to be called Indian to members of certain communities in the nation.

A term which rationalizes the putting back of the clock of history.

I wonder if those leaders who use this term liberally will have the courage to go on record to explicitly define the concept, and then explain how, according to them, it has permeated the Indian polity.

And also change it once/if they come into power with an absolute majority (God forbid)?

Jammu & Kashmir are burning; but, thankfully, India remains calm.

But the virtual world is aflame.

When will we Indians bring down the narrow domestic walls of our minds?

When will we learn to think Indian?

Sethu Samudram Project - Building Bridges

The Centre, the ASI and their legal outfits are fighting to clear the way for the Sethu Samudram Canal Project which proposes to connect India and Sri Lanka with a tunnel. The project has become highly controversial as it involves the destruction of Ram Sethu, an undersea formation, believed to have been made by Rama. This structure is sacred to the Hindus.

The government is being extremely insensitive and foolish – insensitive to the religious sentiments of the majority, already smarting under the appeasement given to the minorities. Surely there cannot be any world-shaking economic gain to warrant the building of the Sethu Samudram that might let loose another Rath Yatra, culminating in another Barbri Masjid and Godhra and post Godhra carnage and bomb blasts? Is the centre out to create issues and test the secular fabric of india? Don’t we have enough already on our hands?

During the trust motion. the PM accused Advani of triggering off terrorism in India by masterminding the demolition of Babri Masjid. Why does he forget that the issue was reopened by Rajiv Gandhi by permitting worship in a long defunct place of worship? Isn’t the Congress once again indulging in the same mischief with Sethu Samudram bridge?

Or, does the congress have a clandestine arrangement with the BJP? Is it a double edged strategy to provide an issue that will land BJP in New Delhi in the 2009 elections, and the Congress too but 5 years hence, by creating a situation where it can cash in on the minorities' sense of insecurity, and play the secularism card? Anything is possible in the present political scenario peopled by self seeking men and criminals, totally divorced from their conscience. We live in days when principles and ideals have only political utility.

And so, coming back to Ramasamudram controversy, it is immaterial whether Rama or Budha or Christ or Mohammed are historical figures or not. Cultures and religions have grown around them and their teachings. All of them are close to our hearts and minds and spirits. Myths, conventions, customs and rituals constitute the stuff that identities are made of. Our consciousness is pervaded by them and what they represent. Our value systems on which theories of social coexistence are based, come from them. In short, they have become inextricable part of our identity. Challenging them amounts to subverting that which gives us our identities, and therefore, our identities per se.

Nothing can be more foolish than using scientific opinions as trump cards to negate the religious sentiments of the the Hindus regarding the Ram Samudra. Faith and belief are not things that can be put under the microscope. By its very definition, faith is something that transcends reason. If something can be proved scientifically, what is the need for faith? And which scientists, or which organization or society can dismiss faith as superstition on the grounds that there is no proven ‘ truth “ in it. What is truth? Scientific truth? Is there no truth other than what is confirmed by science? True, science searches for truth; but can TRUTH be contained within the limits of science? Are there not truths which lie beyond the reach of science, outside its frontiers?

How plain and poor life would be if ‘yes’ was the answer to the last query. How insipid life would be if it is totally demystified. How incomplete life would be without the Scriptures, the myths, the rituals and cunstoms which hold forth truths of their own that science have not succeeded in annihilating. Perhaps, over a period of time, science has been theoretically challenging these truths - but has not driven them out of the hearts and minds of the people. For faith is rooted in the sixth sense which still remains a grey area for science.

The state must be sensitive to the faith of its people. It should not offend their religious sensibilities. The alternative path for Sethu Samudram is the answer, no matter how much more expensive it might prove. If the government can divert some of the mammoth funds it has in its custody that enables the type of horse trading we saw recently, ten bridges, I am sure, can be built across the Palk Straits.