Goethe,Leibnitz, Kant, Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Fahrenheit, Röntgen, Hertz, Hegel and Hitler
Kant, Hegel, Marx and then Hitler - the “germ” is always there
For anyone out there crouched in their prison cell, who cannot hear the ocean, who thinks “secular” and “progressive” are cliched twentieth century words - Germany is one lesson from history on eternal vigilence. A secular progressive society where every human being has the right to live in the land they were born into, a right to “food, medicine, clean air, pure water, trees and grass, pleasant homes to live in, some hours of work, more hours of leisure” is not a destination, it is a journey - something the society needs to achieve at the end of every day. Any one who strives for it is not a utopian but a realist. Because the ‘germ’ will always be there and every sunrise is another day.
Ha Papa Bear has spoken. What a long wait it was oh Emperor of the Hindu hearts, papa we missed you so.
Thackeray who recently celebrated his 80th birthday, made an emotional appeal to the Marathis saying there was a conspiracy to separate Mumbai from Maharashtra and it would not be "tolerated".
"The city will burn if it is taken away from Maharashtra," Thackeray said.
"Let them even try to separate Mumbai from Maharashtra and we will give them a fitting reply. One hundred and five martyrs, mostly mill workers, had sacrificed their lives for the cause of Maharashtra with Mumbai and we will not let it go to waste," he added.
Asking Hindus to break linguistic barriers and unite, Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray said his dream was to feel a "Hindustan of Hindus" that would bring "Islam in this country down to its knees".
Addressing a massive rally at Shiv Sena stronghold Shivaji Park, Thackeray said "it is my dream that we would create a Hindustan of the Hindus. Maharashtrians or Punjabis alone cannot fight against Islam. That is why, I appeal to all Hindus to break the linguistic wall around them and come together so that we can bring Islam in this country down to its knees."
So Papa Bear, lets get to burning this Mumbai thingy down shoulder to shoulder with all those surviving mill workers *who the stingy-pig eating- Afzal loving- Sickle carrying commies allege you had sold out again and again to mill owners while you were the trade union Sarkar* . Lets drive all those Biharis, Gujjus, Madrasis and coconut selling Malayalis out of Brihanmumbai. Shall we use electoral rolls this time like Modi uncle did ? Let me tell you that is not as comprehensive as the marwadis think, why cant this godforsaken non-marathis circumcise ? Neways, lets drive them out, one by one.
After that Papa Bear, we'll fight the Muslims. We'll throw them into Arabian sea, let them drown or swim to Mecca, Dubai or Madina. Christians we'll ship them back to Italy, along with Maino. HOLD ON !!!! Did you say break the linguistic wall and fight Islam ? What about the first plan then ? Here I'm confused Papa Bear, I wouldn't dare say you are aging. But I'm confused - its like the whole plan is lost in translation.
P.S : Don't worry Papa Bear, all opinion polls say we'll win Brihanmumbai. These morons will vote for us. If they don't we'll burn Mumbai.Either ways,next week they'll again squat near the Gateway and go gua gua gua about the spirit of Bombay.These morons.
"What is you name ?" The Indian journalist covering the Bangladesh war asked the prostitute "Selma" "Tell me the truth, what is your real name" "Gauri" "Then why did you lie" "Aren't you a Hindu , I assumed a Muslim name to give you the turn on of invasion"
It is the printing technology of the West that made us so fond of maps. In schools they made us work overtime to clearly draw the boundaries of India, they punished us for every little curve we missed and while lying to us about Kashmir. But they never told us the difference between the human beings on either side of the line, they just told us the others are our enemies as if it was obvious . Maybe thats what their parents taught them, which becomes our inheritance.
The poison of inheritance runs through each one of us and we, after our day long struggle with our tiny big insecurities, go home to the comfort of those inheritances - of being an upper caste or lower caste Hindu, a Muslim ,a Sikh, a Christian, a Bengali, a Tamilian and a thousand other things. We have deep running prejudices against each other, the Hindus think the Muslims are invaders and terror mongers and the Christians are out there to convert them, the Muslim thinks the Hindus are out there to kill them, the North Indian thinks South India is some other country, Andhraites who can't stand the tamilians and the tamilians who think everyone else want to steal their water and their classical language, Biharis are called illegal aliens in the mountains and in Assam; Nagaland and Manipur does not believe in India and the rest of India does not believe these places exist.
We are prejudiced to the core with our deep rooted inheritances and one fine day they pull one billion of us together and say we are a republic. The deep divisions and conflicts within us that defeats us every single day go by the pet name of "Unity in diversity" ; our teachers force us to write essays on that till our hands pain and our brain fatigues.
We build walls around certain colonial demarcations and live smug faced within those walls entrenched in one thousand riots stretching from Kashmir to Vadodara, from Kaveri to Singur and from Narmada to Garo-Khasi. If we do all this in the name of security and in the name of development, why dont we build walls around Assam,Kashmir,Gujarat,Manipur,Punjab and then around each state,district and finally around each human being who lives here. We call ourselves a republic, one billion people suspicious of each other within artificial boundaries with tickets to a tryst with destiny. Is there a more horrible sight in the world than a republic with borders ? Yes there is, a republic with borders with people in it with no clue why they are there.
Holy left-overs of a colonial past
What makes us build walls with Pakistan and Bangladesh? That same thing makes us suspicious of one another, the same thing makes us build nuclear bombs and the same thing makes the Indian state a miserable failure. At the root of the problem lies the acceptance of the "majority's culture" as the mainstream and the treatment of the minority's culture as an aberration. The hidden grudge against the aberration will wait for a chance and once sparks start flying, the powder house of pent up emotions explode - like Gujarat , like the Anti-Sikh riots of Delhi '84 and more than anything the Partition of India.
We followed the post 1857 colonial idea of division by defining the Indian culture as Hindu culture - which was not true. Then in our textbooks and history books we defined the Manusmrithi and Arthashastra which belonged to a microscopic minority as our mainstream culture - which was not true. Then we placed vegetarianism and cow worship as core ideas of Hindu worship which was not true. Well we did make the British leave,but we inherited their colonial droppings.
The republic's boundary is nothing but a tool of exploitation. The map-bound spirit of extreme nationalism helps nobody but the capitalist bourgeois who actually controls every sphere of this nation. Nationalism is a right-wing rallying point in India, issue after issue, atleast after Nehru. The border-defined-republic is the worst case of usurping land and nature, the height of state sponsored hypocrisy. The "developmental" future of the republic and its dependency on the bourgeois and foreign funds has been so ingrained in our psyche by the border-defined-republic that we are ready to sacrifice lives and livelihood for the republic's "future".Each of us feel the "turn on" of invasion when troops are rallied in our northern borders, and some of us at the height of our xenophobic orgasm cry "nuke the bastards,just nuke them !"The national boundary and the wars over it makes us more intolerant, and at times it makes us ask the Indian Muslim to go back to Pakistan,where he didn't come from.
Its in vogue to criticize Gandhi, but the fact remains that he was one of the few people who understood the importance of a multi-cultural secularist India, who understood what India really stood for in the world and the importance of worshipping Ishwar and Allah together. There was this other person who claimed to have discovered India but ended up discovering a throne for his daughter and grandson.
Our India is a Sufi
Every nation has a destiny, the republic is just another oppressive roadblock in the nations path. If the undying urge for individual freedom is the corner stone of western civilization, for India it is our spirituality. Our spirituality which time and again has refused to inherit lies,inherit hypocrisy and inherit tyranny. It is the denial of inheritance that Krishna talked about in Gita, that is exactly what Buddha did , Kabir and Nanak practiced and Gandhi died for. The partitioned India is our inheritance and it is upon us to deny it or build walls to protect our patriarchal fortune. If India is a mother we should find her.
There is no India without Pakistan and Bangladesh and Nepal and SriLanka. Our destinies and our myths are so entwined. We would, I hope one day define what India really means and discover her in all her glory and her all encompassing Sanathanadharma. We can deny Gandhi and Mohammed, Nanak and Kabir, Krishna and Buddha, but we shouldn't overlook the underlying love in their messages which runs through this nation. Our philosophy doesn't differentiate between plants and animals, then where do we find boundaries in it.
Our Indus is a river which carries the holiness of the Hindu's penance from the Himalaya's along with the sacred chants of the Buddhist Lamas, courses its way through the fertile land of the holy Gurdwaras to enter Islam's promised land of Pakistan and finally flows into the sea of the Arabs. Our India is a Sufi.
Good Night and Good Luck !
Note : Its always a very confusing experience to understand India and I can see my view of it changing every minute I wrote this post. I might be contradicting myself at times but that I believe is the fun of the whole exercise.
I found this touching piece by Alakananda, another collateral damage of building borders.
When this reporter, with his longish beard, walked into an elite government colony in Ahmedabad to meet a senior official, three children suddenly got off their bicycles. One screamed aloud, “Terrorist!” Why? “Because you are a Mussalman,” he responded. So? “All Muslims are terrorists. My father is a judge. He will call you terrorist in court.” Really? “Yes. Now get out of here. This is a Hindu area!” Sauyajya is 12 years old and has not met a single Muslim in his life. No one knows how many Sauyajyas are in the making in Gujarat. - Prashant Jha, columnist
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again - Maya Angelou
A video
A few years back we faced our worst fears as a nation , today we are again a smug faced crowd hiding behind globalised cliches like Islamic terrorism and a global war on terror . This twenty minute video is a gentle reminder to wake up from our collective amnesia and realize the hell we were in and where we could return to.
It is important for every nation to remember . Because races subjected to long term forgetfulness dont get a second chance on this earth.
An old essay
A Catholic nun from erstwhile Yugoslavia was cremated by an Indian man of cloth, in an Indian state known for its volatile Hindu population with full state honors accorded by a Communist government. As my clipping correctly reads, this can happen only in India and nowhere else in the world.
Checking client and peer queries on blue Monday mornings, thousands of miles away from Calcutta, my Inbox has Husseins ,Ramaswamies, Habiburs, Kennedies, Yudins, Lees, Romanowskies and the omnipresent Patels, Iyers and Nairs. Replying matter of fact to them without hurting their cultural sentiments or invading the personal zones do not add to my pains on the super highway where we build bridges for a living, because - I’ve maneuvered through flea infested fish markets with an Afghan foreignness at every corner, high decibel noises from Hindu temples and from atop minarets, born again recruiters hunting for new lambs to spread the great news, highly educated neighbours who have gleeful visions of blowing up temples, destroying mosques and yes, invading Pakistan across the Thar desert. Because, I’ve tasted the spicy Indian curry, Period.
Before we embark on the future of Indian secularism or how Indian secularism should be for what future has in it for India let us brush up our basics, it is a cliché, but the truth element in it rather overshadows its repetitiveness – India was, is and will be secular in its thought, philosophy and way of life. The one principal reason for this is the underlying thread of our existence that has been in the genome of every new idea born in this stretch from Garo-Khasi to the Rann of Kutch and from the Hindukush to Indian Ocean in the past four millennia – the continuing or Sanatana Dharma.
The Pancha Bhoota or nature worshippers who framed the early Vedas had this magnificent vision to build a multi-generational enterprise of thought rather than a one that gave great quarter to quarter results, fresh converts revenue or one that went around with tag lines to kill competition. Collaboration was the key word and the vision was simple; whichever way you perceive the truth, whatever names one call it, it is all the same – one truth. So when Vishnu and other Trimurtis came along they were welcomed with open arms, and then came Indra and his hordes of Devas, even God like people from blockbuster poems of the time entered the pantheon. Buddha, Christ, Mahavir, Mohammed, all the Babas, Gurus, everyone, everyone was invited. By the 2001 census this number reached thirty-four crores - around a third of the country’s population.
India is a philosophic country, it is our birthright to be outright philosophical and as mentioned above - our thought process gives a thumbs-up for that. The problem is with our social framework, which is rigid, in its apparent and hidden forms. The conflicts we have in India between people who worship any of the above thirty-four crore gods is due to the inherent flab accumulated in the Indian social framework through the years of invasion, persecution, mutually exclusive consolidation and in modern India, cowardly, shortsighted vote-bank politics and legislation. As we try to untie these knots in the Indian gnarl, the greatest advantage we have on our side will be the all-encompassing nature of our very basic mentation.
Indian secularism today is more or less about appeasement of interests rather than keeping the state, its manifestations and its actions away from any religious order. When eighty percentage of the population is Hindu, it is quite natural that the greater fight will be to keep the Hindu fundamentalist ideas from percolating into the national psyche and policymaking. This has happened even in the United States which is surely our best bet of what secularism should be, where currency issued by the government carries the “In God We Trust” tag and Southern states airports and bus-stations have welcome boards saying “Jesus Is the Only way” and the war cry of Air force recruits “Rock Sir”- referring to Peter’s Church.
Back to the Indian picture, let us accept the very fact that a lot more needs to be changed, a lot of baggage dumped and a lot of churning needs to be done to bring the Indian society anywhere near what the worlds strongest democracy is today. Why don’t we have a Uniform Civil Code? Why do we need to have different rules for different communities? The founders of our Constitution agreed to personal laws to give various communities time to evolve so that the particular community's social practice comes close to the law of the land. Is it not high time we call a time out? Or do we need to wait for another fifty years of riots and discrimination.
Why should we allow Muslim men to marry four times, thereby letting poor Muslim women to rot and at the same time giving enough venom to Togadias and Ritambaras to hit out at the Indian Muslims and the Indian state. Many modern Muslim nations do not have this practice and by no chance they are a species near extinction. Mohammed had his own correct reasons to propound this based on the historical reality at his time. Times have changed, we better.
Is there any justification to the ban on cow slaughter other than appeasement of the Brahmanical Hindu community, what about hens, lambs and yes, fishes – being the first avatar of Vishnu and small Muslim foetuses and children slaughtered by the banks of Sabarmati.We need a ban on these also. Hindu piety has surely not ensured bovines a good life in India.
Tax exemption to Hindu undivided families is another funny legislation; the question being where is the Hindu undivided family. If the government had taken the rightful stand in Shah Bano, Hindu appeasement with Shilanyas wouldn’t have been needed, there wouldn’t have been any wind to sail the “Rath” from Somnath, there wouldn’t have been riots all the way, consolidation of militant Hindus wouldn’t have occurred, the Masjid would have stayed, Bombay blasts would have been avoided, Godhra wouldn’t have happened and every time we sing the national anthem our voices wouldn’t break or weaken between Sindh and Maratha.
Do we have any justification for subsidizing Haj.In that case we need to subsidize Catholics every time they want to go to Italy or Israel? This practice should stop once and for all. The havoc that Hindu festivals cause in localities around the country is inexplicable. Especially in crowded cities like Bombay and Calcutta. The blaring noises that come out of loudspeakers from wee hours of the morning to very late at night has nothing to do with devotion .The commercial element in it is naked and transparent too. The clogging of bottlenecks in arterial roads in cities by religious processions like Rath yatras during Navratri and Chadurdhi and for the Friday Namaz has less to do with religion and more an overt show of strength to the common man on what their bunch is capable of.
The rigid social framework will not mutate into a form that is good for the nation in course of time, rather the leniency we show towards these Hindus, Muslims and other groups will be exploited as what is happening now and the differential provisions become traits they identify themselves to. External pressure and path breaking legislations is the way, the legislature and the executive need to go hand in hand without cowardice to shake up the idle social matrix. Resistance will be there from bigots like Imam Bukharis and Singhals, personal law boards and the right wing Hindu groups. But there is no resistance that the Indian establishment cannot stand. Even if the considerations are political, they may loose the support of the hardliners but in turn the moderates in all these fundamentalist groups will be strengthened and there is the wishes and support of one sixth of the human race.
Start off with the Uniform civil code, hit them hard and without discrimination towards any particular group – rather hit everyone and let that be the order of the day. We can afford it. I’m not suggesting something new, this has happened many times before when the Hindu society was reformed and path-breaking laws were put in place.
Religion has always been a part of the Indian political discourse; even the Mahatma had used it several times. But when such discourse is filled with poison aimed at other communities and may in short or long term damage the texture of Indian polity, it should be checked. Even if a vicious speech by Balasaheb or Uma Bharti does not lead to riots, still it should be treated and brought to book with the same seriousness as is done in the United States, France and many other western democracies. There should be a check on these people and their activities and they need to be confronted at every chance possible till they get tired of the persecution from the government backed secular militia. This may sound like an extreme choice given the Indian reality. But even in India lessons can be learnt from the way Communist parties treat these religious fascists- both Muslim and Hindu, in Kerala and the climate of harmony resulting out of it. Surely there will be a dent in the vote bank but as Peter Drucker put it “A Cost for the future”.
We have the issues of extremist and at times terrorist Muslim forces in the country, but no threat is as big as the Hindu extremist forces that have spread into every nook and corner of our public space. The other groups can be contained by legislations and executive actions like in case of Sikh extremism in late eighties. But the Hindutva brigade will have to be treated differently. They have to be checked at every walk of life starting from education, media, literature, arts, business, food, clothing, and history. The list will be long.
The extremist forces will be there in Indian polity till religion exists amongst us. It will manifest itself in different political parties like Congress, BJP, Sena and the like. The secular forces will also be there to fight the bad guys. It’s the age-old struggle between good and bad for the basic right to live as equals in this land, the great unending struggle for dharma to win – the game of Mahabharata.
There are no hereditary claims to Indian secularism; it is an everyday struggle where parties may be on either side any given day. And whenever this secular democracy is toppled from her balance, the Indian people have a unique habit of going directly to the polling booth and setting the republic straight. Two summers before was just another instance. We are capable of doing that again by our-selves, to both the extremists and the pseudo-secularists. Perhaps, this is what we celebrate and call Independence.
Let's not speak anymore about capitalism, socialism. Let's just speak of using the incredible wealth of the earth for human beings. Give people what they need: food, medicine, clean air, pure water, trees and grass, pleasant homes to live in, some hours of work, more hours of leisure. Don't ask who deserves it. Every human being deserves it.
