The existential crisis of caste and other variables...

Am not a political pundit but there is one thing that I found heartening about the state elections just concluded.


The electorate are now repeatedly reminding the politicians that they are unimpressed by histrionics and are immune to the divisive politics of communalism and caste politics. And there is the Anna effect - corruption is now big factor. Starting with UPA-II and Nitish Kumar's triumphal re-election, the voters around the country are awakening the indian polity to the fact that all the mathematical equations of combinations that they had learnt regarding caste and creed, which before had assured someone like Lalu Prasad Yadav to uninterrupted rule, has fallen by the wayside.


Nitish Kumar seems to be here for the long haul because he continues to do what he was elected for. UPA-II is headed for a rout because they have forgotten.


No more will a politician thrive on top solely on caste alliances. If they cant build roads and cant provide real improvement in the life of the people, they will be booted out. And they will keep getting booted out until they learn.


And a lesson to politicians like Mayawati and Rahul Gandhi - two spectrum of the erstwhile feudal class. One playing the victim card of three millennium in order to hoard diamonds, believing that Dalits will vote for her just because she is a Dalit in power. The other, strutting around like a maharajas of old, deigning to dine with the outcast, expecting swooning crowds to vote for him, blinded by a aristocratic lineage and a dimpled charm.


The fact is that the people voted for those who advocated development. And the parties which had their ear on the ground won. A party like Samajwadi Party led by Akhilesh Yadav realized people are in no mood for the rule of old. They snubbed the people who had tainted past and claimed to be a party who is shedding its lawless image. And they won in a landslide.


Of course, all politics is local and all is fair in politics, so it for posterity to see how the elected behave. But one thing is for sure, the people are speaking up. It is for the the elected to listen...

Fallen mighties and ash-risen Phoenix - tale of two sports in a day

In the Sporting universe, yesterday was a day of extremes in a nation usually given to mono-sports mania.

Its funny how sometimes, events in a day seems so full of meaning...almost as if the gods are making an emphatic point, almost to the point of a thrusting a finger on our forehead...

Cricket in India has been in decline for some time, a decline it brought upon itself by being so popular. Which is why it attracted obscene amount of money,which like a Newtonian law attracts the wrong kind of gentlemen to this gentleman's game. So you had Sharad Pawar, who is politely called a land mafia in Pune, becoming the head of BCCI. So what did Sharad Pawar bring to the table, one may ask, to warrant being the head of the cricketing association? Nobody knows...nobody asks too openly either...

But the last few months have been downright horrible for the cricket fan in the country. Getting whitewashed in series after series is one thing, being casual about it is criminal. And the much vaunted cricket team seems to be leaning heavily towards being criminal. When the captain says that he rather not play Test and concentrate on ODI and T20, you know that the ephemeral thing called "Pride for playing for country" has been hopelessly compromised. When players refuse to play India games citing injuries but come hobbling for T20 matches, you know that they are playing a scam on you.

Things reached a nadir yesterday. After the Test humiliation, The Indian team had proclaimed "Wait for the ODI...watch us play then". Well, we watched them play...and we watched them surrender. And then we saw them complaining like  school children about umpiring decisions. Riddled with internal strife, the team is imploding. And sadly, we are seeing the cancer right there on the most gifted cricketer India has produced - Sachin Tendulkar. His walk back to the pavilion yesterday, head down, oblivious to the standing ovation, in what maybe his last match on the ground, was a sad sad spectacle. Almost as if he was ashamed of the whole damn business...

A complete contrast was to be seen at the National Stadium or Major Dhyan Chand Stadium. Under floodlights, the Indian hockey team exorcized the ghosts past - especially the humiliation of not qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Cheered on by a 15000 crowd, many of whom came to watch Hockey for the first time, the Indian Team trounced France 8-1!!!. The crowd bellowed lustily each team the team went forward, went wild each time the ball found the net. And the Hockey Team played completely outside themselves. Used to playing in front of empty stands, finding themselves in front of full throated crowd waving tricolours must have supercharged the adrenaline....Giving the best performance of the qualifier, France was made to look mediocre!! I know - I was there!!!

It takes guts and balls of steel to get here. Just a couple of months ago, the Hockey team was humiliated when a sum of Rs 25,000 was 'awarded' after they won the Asian Championships. This was about the same time that IPL auctions were buying single players for crores.

Hockey goes to the Olympics - to try and get glory for India after 1980 (the last time they won Gold)

Cricket comes back home - eager to earn money playing in the private teams of rich men and women.

The contrast could not have been starker...

And all in a day's work!!

And you could see in the faces of the people leaving the National Stadium yesterday - They have started giving their heart to Hockey....I count myself among them...

 

Technorati Tags: india,hockey,cricket,winning,country,olympics,IPL

The story of two virals – Kolaveri Di and Aalu Anday

Here is a story of two virals.

Separated by a border, two very different videos went viral in the last two months of 2011. Both shared so much in common and were oh so different

Probably what goes viral depends on the current cultural temper of that country. What it considers as an echo of its voice, however subconscious or sublimal

One viral goes on to become a case study in IIMs and goes into the handbook of aspiring social media managers. Sung along by people who didn't care what the lyrics meant. Catapults the singer to national stardom, gains him a lunch with the prime minister….

The other one. One of the most courageous (some would say suicidal) acts in modern times taken in a stand for the freedom to speak the mind. Created and uploaded secretly on YouTube to avoid official censure and blackout. A song that openly mocked holy cows in a country where a state governor is assassinated by his bodyguard for speaking his views.

A song that ended with the words - “If you want a bullet in my head, like this video”.

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IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH – Learn this by heart or else Save internet

There is a lot of gloom and doom on every channel these days. From each continent tales and images of discontent and protests and resistance.

A world economy that since 1970’s has been built on a whiff of air and a bit of hash is going down the drain. An indebted world is printing cash to try to save itself. Like pouring oil on fire to quench it. And Greece is already having visions of slipping hundreds of years back into feudalism.

And how do we find out about all this so easily? Where do we get the videos and views and opinions of people, all of which mainstream media will not touch with a pole? From something that the Americans built to preserve communication during a nuclear holocaust – the internet.

Like a pygmalion and a hundred headed hydra, the web is something that the anarchists always dreamt of – existing outside any government control and used and maintained by people without any fixed ideology or lobby. Growing and changing faster than anything that can be built to control it.

Controlled by none, used by all according to need and want, becoming a way of life, giving vent to fantasy and reality of the pervert and the revolutionary alike. And since all of us are a bit of both, it works for us.

Rapidly it has become a weapon that has toppled governments – From Tahrir Square and spawned civil protests – From Occupy movements to Anna Hazare at Ramlila.

 

That is when it caught the attention of all even more – not since Gutenberg sparked the end of the Dark Ages by democratizing knowledge has a more potent weapon come in the hands of the comman people

Which is why it will be fought now. The Bastille versus the Monarchy, all over again…

And so the fundamental fight has begin – to save the internet and to save the light. A war declared by the same people who purport to understand the economy and how people’s lives work. Fought by the anonymous multitude, as hackers, as ordinary bloggers, in conversations…

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Sacred Hindu vs. voluptuous TOI

Many of us would have been highly amused at the recent and on-going war of ads between the two newspapers – the venerable “The Hindu” and the king of media - “Times of India”.

Times of India has been trying to penetrate the bastion of “The Hindu” in Tamil Nadu. The marketing and brand manager would have done his 4P exercises and realized that Hindu has an image of being somewhat cerebral and therefore deemed dense by the segment eyed by TOI. This is when they came up with this ad

TOI has been getting a lot of flak on social media for this ad for being tasteless. I am not a fan of TOI but I think that this is a smart ad. TOI is not targeting the reader who wants to read an analysis of the Syrian situation or how Chavez is transforming Venezuela. The typical TOI reader is the type of reader who would read a typical tabloid in London. This is the reader who wants a twitter style news. TOI gives it to them and these readers would give attention to this ad

Coming to “The Hindu”, I have loved their response to this. If TOI had mocked the brains behind the editorials of Hindu, those same brains have come out with an aggressive ad response that completely turns around the logic of the TOI ad. These were the ads…Hilarious!!!

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Inshallah Kashmir - Why this needed was to be banned and why you need to see this…

Banned in India by the ever faithful Big Brother of a censor board, the director took the unprecedented step of releasing this online (apparently there is no law against releasing something online…yet). Ashvin actually opened it up for download for one day – on 26th January, the Republic Day. That’s quite a symbolic gesture!!

And once you see this you know why…

Which is why you need to see it

It has been the practice of all governments to try and dictate what we must see and hear and there us always an effort by all governments to make the public buy into their version of current and historical events.

And there has been an increasing virulence of intolerance by self-appointed patriots whose sense of injustice bleed too easily. Look at what happened to Symbiosis university’s Kashmir seminar “Voices of Kashmir”, which was cancelled due to the ‘fatwa’ by the right wing fringe.

And Kashmir is one topic which will always invoke strong reactions. And this is one topic which will always see an effort to give the ‘official’ version of the story

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The case of the Old Warrior and his price…

So this truly is the end of Sourav Ganguly as we know him best – the bat in his hand, pads on feet and the classic charge down the pitch for the lofted six – stuff now to be seen only on YouTube videos, never live again…

Emotions are running high now and will remain on boil for some time to come – especially among the easily excitable Bengalis who see this as a personal snub…how dare some movie stars and corporates not see fit to take on Ganguly, they ask. How can they measure his worth in money, they ask then. Which is where I need to ask some questions as well…

In the midst of so many conflicting emotions (the twitter updates on Ganguly have really spiked in the last couple of hours), it is often   difficult to find a neutral position. And especially when I have been and will always be a avid fan of Ganguly – for me, not only of the best cricketer but also the most complete leader of men that cricket has produced in this country.

But life goes on, has to go on and Ganguly of all people, should have realized by now that there is a time to take a last stand and a time to slide gracefully into the sunset. There is a time for brave stubbornness and a time for pragmatism. The gunslinger past his prime will be eventually shot down by the younger one. Fact of life.

Before we start berating the rich smug corporate czars and the movie stars for demeaning a legend, let us ask ourselves an  uncomfortable question – was Ganguly a willing participant or was he not?

In fact, he increased his base price before the bidding began, (which may have actually been the last nail in his coffin), which may or may not be a last attempt to rake in the money before the end of a career.

Lets face it – he, along with everybody, was in this for money. Period.

So lets not keep shouting that this money fest is demeaning to cricketers and to cricket. For better or for worse, every sport is eventually about money. That's what gives us the spectacle that cricket enthusiasts have been lapping up for the last three years.

Its quite simple – if you don't like, don't watch it, don't give the advertisers your money or the event your attention. If it goes for us, it goes for Ganguly. But then, he wanted to be a part of it.

And when you are a part of it, you play by the rules.

And the rules of this particular game is this – This is a young man’s game, this is a game that calls not for class or even talent but for brutal quickie power, this is a game not played for pride or glory or even for sportsmanship or country – its played for money

It is not – a place where legends will be feted and celebrated for their own sake – if you haven't played for some time, you cant hit em out of the ground from the first ball, a place where huge egos can be pampered

Which then brings us to the next question that is being asked – How dare they they think Ganguly was not good enough? After all, he was one of the big scorers in IPL3.

Well, he may be good enough or maybe not. After all, he has not played cricket in a long time – long, short or the Blitz versions. So let me play the classical trick of turning the tables and putting your money on it. If it was your $4m and you had a choice of Ganguly with his legend or two players with $2m each but who are battle ready, and you stand to gain if your team won and lose if your team loses, which way would you go? At such times, the head easily wins non? So lets not blame easily…

So yes, it is a disappointing way to hang up your cricket bat but hey it was a war out there and Ganguly lost fair and square (though conspiracy theorists will undoubtedly see one in this one as well – we all have ways to deal with disappointments!!).

I do not believe that this is a disgrace. We, Ganguly’s fans should be confident of the one we admire. Ganguly’s accomplishments are enough to wipe out this distressful day. The man who turned around Indian cricket cannot be disgraced by an event, which in the final analysis, is not much more than a extravagant gully cricket tournament.

Long after the cheerleaders have packed up and gone, long after the after-match parties (which will still be more important than the match itself) have faded into the dawn, long after the fixers have gone home with their booties and long after people will stop giving a damn about the advertisement fuelled match adrenaline, the vision of Ganguly’s waving of his shirt above his head will still define the spirit of Indian cricket…

My Captain, my Captain…Adieu…

Technorati Tags: Sourav Ganguly,Ganguly,cricket,India,sports,IPL,IPL 4,auction,KKR,Bengalis

Sedition of the good doctor

Binayak Sen was convicted today for ‘sedition’ by the ‘justice’ system of this country. People around the world are appalled that such a thing can happen in the largest ‘democracy’ in the world…

It would almost be abnormal today, in this seemingly ethically ambiguous world, to not feel a sense of hilarity when such heavy words are used with such seriousness. You feel like laughing out loud and then bang your head on the wall…Mr Assagne, you of course understand, dont you?

Dont you know, Mr Sen, that it is sedition to protest against what one considers injustice and it is sedition to care for the people who have been forgotten even by the democratic vote-seekers. It is also traitorous to speak up publicly. All this makes you an enemy of the state…dangerous anti-social…they called you a terrorist too, didnt they?

The justice of this country…they needed to make an example of you. Just like they are making an example of people who have stashed away millions nay billions from sports events or from telecom spectrum or even from onions. You see what I am getting at my good doctor?

There is a saying – Kill a man, you are a murderer. Kill millions, you become a general. Maybe you never heard of it…

If you had, you would not have been in a filthy jail for so many years…nah…you would have had merely a parlamentary committee set up against you (that too after many protests!!) and you would have been busy preparing bytes for our 24 hours news channel, between their reality show updates of course.

Maybe your mistake was in being upfront about it all. Maybe you believed in the balderbash about the essential goodness of it all – you know, humanity, justice, fairness…fraternity, equality and liberty and all that and you know how that one ended up!!!

No Mr Sen, its all your fault. They are right, spot on. People like you just keep cropping up and you just dont learn. You should have really taken up arms against the state or done something really traitorous. Then you would have had politicians lining up at your door so you can help them win elections. Like you were right now, you were of no use to anyone, dont you see that?

And what the world has no use for, it punishes. Ah well, justice meted out wont you say, my good doctor?

Mr Sen, you are already old news…Ah well, time to turn to the sports page…

 

Technorati Tags: Binayak sen,Binayak,Sen,justice,India,prisoner,Maoist,doctor,tribal,jail,chattisgarh,convicted

The flag waving popcorn slayer…

I have been meaning to write on this subject for some time now, ever since I left Bombay…

The subject is of the practice of having the national anthem played before the start of a movie…

Of course, mob mentality and pre-consciousness societal teaching being what it is, we all stand up and sing along with our gazes upturned to a digital flag waving a few feet from our faces…

We feel patriotic and dutiful and yes comfortably conventional…even if we sit down to watch ‘Striptease’ after that…

So what is it that gets my goat?

Is it the faux patriotism? or is it the truism of the Churchill statement that patriotism is the last refuge of the fool? A bit of both, i admit…I sat resolutely at the last movie I saw, to the staring eyes from those around me…but here are the reasons why I had had enough…

Its a godamn trap…I felt like i was a part of the novel 1984, where you are watched and you have to show patriotism and obedience or else! You are boxed in and everyone stands up because, well, your mom taught you to…I don't like being forced into situations which demand a certain behaviour from me without asking my choice…If I don't have a choice, I would rather be a stubborn child than a lawful coward

What is the whole freaking point anyway? To make fine upstanding gentry of us (or the unknown citizen, as Auden would have put it)? To ensure that we don't become terrorists? To trust the government and believe them to be the good guys because they put the flag on the screen? so that we don't forget the words of the anthem?

I may not go literally with Lennons utopian – imagine there's no country. But I believe in the essence…we draw borders and imagine the enclosure to be home…in essence, we are just glorified mobile wielding primitives dancing to the chieftains tune, which is the national anthem…(plus I am a little comfortable with the fact that the anthem was written in all probability as a commemoration for the King of England, but that is besides the point)

So, no, I don't believe in patriotism. I know this is something very controversial that I am putting out, but I believe that it is an over-rated concept. Its an opportunistic feeling that we cultivate – to be brought out when its convenient and bottled up when personal needs are paramount. Bring it out during times of collective danger like Kargil war and bottle up when the neighbouring state needs water…

Put Satyendra Dubey and Manjunath’s photo there (remember them?) and appeal to us not to forget them – that would be patriotic, something tangible, something actionable. Flag waving is easy when you can sit down to popcorn after a few minutes…

Anyway, the whole point of the above rant is that its a damn silly concept and its time the people who defied the Sena to watch an atrociously bad movie give a thumbs down to this tyranny as well, a tyranny, which when compared to the Sena is much more subtle and hence much more dangerous…

del.icio.us Tags: patriotism,india,national anthem,mumbai,bombay,movies,rant,political,social

Ek revolutionary ki mauth…

I took some time to write about Kanu Sanyal, one of the fathers of what is arguably the only genuine revolutionary insurrection in post-independence India. I took some time to write about his death not only because it was a suicide but also because writing about the death of a revolutionary means bringing in his life as well…

Kanu Sanyal was found hanging in his house, at the same place that saw the break of the Spring Thunder in 1967. The end seemed almost poetic, but then you need a Neruda for to make poetry. All that the old warrior had was a few columns in newspapers, one of whom actually described it his death as the “death of a top Naxal leader”, as if he was still in the neo-Naxalite movement…

In the end, all he had become was a blurry myth and a sad present, repudiated by those who carry his legacy and casually ignored by those who once feared him…the fate of all great men who did not die in the blaze of glory and whom history passed by in search of fresher and more photogenic heroes…

His death came a few days before the Naxalites massacred 76 CRPF jawans in an ambush, the biggest attack by them to date. The government and the Naxals have declared open war, in which for now, the government seems to be on the backfoot.

So, at a time that the Naxalites have become, officially, the biggest threat that this country has ever faced (J&K terrorism pales by comparison), with them having a presence in a quarter of the country, with their tentacles reaching out into urban centres as well, you would expect the symbol of the Naxalite movement to be satisfied. At least, the last thing you would expect him to do is to go hang himself…

But then you got to ask yourself – was he a Naxalite anymore? Maybe in his last moments he would have muttered to himself paraphrasing Marx who once famously said “If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist”…maybe he was aware that no matter what he did, the media and the society would fail to spot the difference between what he believed in and what the Naxalites today believe in.

The Naxalism that arose from the simple need to fight for dignity slowly became a movement in which violence, not justice (which is an abstract term anyway) became the priority for maintaining momentum. It became a movement in which poor must remain poor in order for having a raison d'etre for the movement.

If an insurrection goes on for too long, it begins to look like what it intends to supplant. Maybe that's what Kanu Sanyal saw and realized.

When Naxals make pacts with dodgy politicians and when they start to blow up schools, when Naxals become the tipping factors in elections by way of fear, when they begin to claim glorious victory by killing CRPF men who have been pushed to be cannon fodder, maybe he realized that it was a war for its own means – a never ending war in which the people to be killed will be the ones whom he wanted to give a different life all those years ago…

Maybe the end came for him much before the noose tightened. Maybe at the end he had had enough of the power that flows out of the barrel of the gun…

Maybe its time to mourn him as we mourn those great visionaries who dreamt big and tried to live upto that dream, no matter how much the rug was pulled under them.

That takes courage…so does preparing a rope for yourself…

RIP Kanuda…

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India sold for 500,000…

I remember a childhood story that i remember affected me profoundly. The story was of the Koh-i-noor diamond and how we lost it to the Britishers. The Brits were the ‘bad guys’ who looted the best things that this country had to offer and how they obscenely display the Koh-i-noor, something that they stole from us.

It was a story told with much pain, a pain which I could articulate later as born out of impotent helplessness. At that time, I could just sense the injustice of it all. I could sense the wound. The pride of India, stolen and displayed openly by the thief. If only we were powerful and could force the Brits give it up, how wonderful that would be, i used to fantasize. I used to fantasize, Hollywood style (or rather Mossad style) of a crack team of commandoes who would steal back the diamond.

I guess i retained a bit of that boyhood fantasy till very late. If some part of it still lived somewhere inside, the following news pretty much would have killed it off…

Tipu Sultan’s sword sold off

The implicit belief of my boyhood fantasy was that no Indian, if given a chance would let a part of his history and legacy be sold off like a cheap trinket. By Indian, I mean us as a collective. The government of the people, as a custodian of the country’s pride…

In spite of having ‘grown up’ i.e. resigned myself to the ‘practical world’ of adulthood, a part of me that never let go of the boyhood fantasy has collapsed with dismay over the almost non-importance of the event for the public, let alone the mandarins in the parliament. It merited a single column in most newspapers. IPL’s cheerleaders get more space.

A part of our glorious history – that of resistance agaisnt the Britishers (Tipu was the last king to defeat the Britishers), a legacy of the perhaps the greatest threat against British rule (before 1857), a symbol of what we have learnt to be proud of (remember the serial ‘The sword of Tipu Sultan’?), is sold off to the highest bidder at an auction house in London and we do nothing!!! and worse, we are still happily doing nothing. And even worse, we have already moved on…

Tipu’s sword was taken (stolen by the ‘bad guys’ remember?) from his dead body when his capital was overrun in the Third Mysore war. The captured sword was taken a symbol of triumph to London and 150 years later, we get a chance to get it back to where it belongs. But we let it go into the private collection of somebody rich enough to display it among his/her other trinkets.

A government that sits back and watches millions of rupees being spent on as useful as their own statues (sometimes complete with handbags) is not able to spend a few million on getting back what is rightfully ours?

In 2000, Vijay Mallya bought another of Tipu’s sword amidst much fanfare, as if he was doing a service to the country by keeping it in his house. Why not make it public property? Why was it not demanded? (I would not be surprised if this is the same sword that Mallya bought, which it is, according to some reports)

Which is all a collective failure, a failure of our pride to galvanize us in demanding the restoration of dignity of our past. We just don't care enough. Perhaps we don't seem to feel that it is important enough. Our so called present ascent to a world superpower (superpower of outsourced work, mostly) gives us more pride, not a supposed colonized past.

The only question to be asked here – would China (with similar history and the supposed competition to our ascent) have sat back and let their legacy be sold off? Of Mao or of Sun-yat-Sen? How many of us would say yes to that, I wonder? Something to ponder on there…

I guess Tipu fought for the wrong country…

 

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End of an era – Viva Chetak

Ah well…all good things must come to an end, especially if you don't want to own the good thing anymore!!!

Bajaj will, from now on, manufacture only motorcycles, finally bowing to market tastes. With that decision, a product that signified India for decades will pass easily into history pages – the “Hamara Bajaj”, the Chetak.

The scooter that was the beast of burden for the common man carrying whole families on its seats, the acquisition of which (after sometimes years of waiting) truly became a neighbours envy – owner’s pride. The scooter which with its Italian inspired design ruled the Indian roads long before auto majors discovered the market in the country. A scooter which when your father let you drive was when you became a man of the world, a world suddenly free…

That's the nations nostalgia, a collective nostalgia as it were. Anyone above the age of 23 or so will have a special personal memory of the scooter that looks impossibly frail and might I say cute in front of the hulking bikes of today.

We also owned a Bajaj scooter, some 20 odd years ago. One of my earliest memories was the extreme thrill I felt of standing in the front, just behind the handles, my little hands on the dials, my hair buffeted by the wind against which my eyes squinted to see ahead, safe in the knowledge that my father was the captain and my mother the navigator. It was the most perfect Titanic moment (the hands outstretched moment that is – not the crash!!!) I ever had. I used to actually feel that I was flying without making any effort, tagged along by the Gods. Nothing I have done since has come close to that experience…

However I believe that it was time it gets consigned to our nostalgia. The Chetak was not made for the madly commercial world of today. It belonged to the world of movies like “Chashme Baddoor”. It belongs to a world when you actually loved what you owned because you literally bought it – EMI was not yet invented by financial whizkids, a world where cosmetics to make men fairer was not advertised on the TV, a world of sometimes impossibly grotesque fashion but also of rebellion. A world of limited but meaningful TV, not the infinite variety of trash today…

Ironically, It belonged to a world where streets were emptier and you could have done with more power in the engines, instead of in a world where you have all the powers in the world but no streets to drive them on!!!

Of course, scooters have been reinvented – the Activa for instance. But for us Indians, it will never be the same.

The song of Chetak remains humming on in our mind, if only as a dirge. An elegy, even, to a world vanished forever…

Viva Chetak!!!

 

del.icio.us Tags: Bajaj,scooter,India,marketing,product,nostalgia,Chetak,current issue

Some men are like that only…

 

Like almost a ghost, Kobad Ghandy has risen out of the past. As a reminder. A reminder of a time and an ethos that prompted men of all backgrounds (in his case an exceedingly advantageous one) to give up everything for the sake of something that they believed in. It is true that the revolutionary bug bit many of Ghandy’s contemporaries but only a handful remained faithful to what they believed in as a hot blooded teenager. Mark Twain had once remarked that “If you are not a revolutionary by the time you are twenty, you don’t have a heart; if you remain one when you are thirty, you don’t have a mind”. In cases of men like Ghandy, Twain would have accepted the exception.

A man coming from a rich family, studying in Doon school, higher studies in London, coming back to India to fight for the upliftment of the oppressed masses, marrying a like minded woman and deciding not to have children so as not to get distracted from the cause – his life story reads like that of a revolutionary romance and would find echoes in many places and many times, most however in the past.

His life story also reads as a reminder of how some lives are (and can be) led and how some men (and women) strive to live for something higher than themselves. Compared to most of our ambitions today (including mine), their life-force and motives for life seem impossibly inaccessible and almost an object of awe. We stand in awe mainly because we can never even begin to think of replicating their way of life – firmly ensconced as we are in our single minded devotion to climbing the ladder of corporate life, in search of the best paycheck to buy our peace of mind.

That is why men like Ghandy, men like Che seem like men out of a past – a past where rebellion was not only in rock ballads but on the streets, not only in books but in the mind directing the arm. A past that retains its romance today, when we look back with rose tinted glasses; a past, however, that has lost its relevance for most of us today – mainly I feel because we, (starting with our fathers) compromised, choosing safety and conventionality over fighting in the name of some nebulous ideal. We compromised when we told ourselves that watching TV in an AC cooled room was more rewarding than living in the jungles in the danger of sudden death.

But let us blame nobody. We choose our destinies and the way we would like to lead our lives. But man is essentially an animal and finds solace in herds. It’s the renegade then, who, commands our respect and awe even though we know that they are an enemy to the way we lead our lives.

I am no ideologue of the Naxalite variety. I find their basic demands appealing but not the way they look at implementing it. In answer to the negatives of today, they proclaim a state that would tilt the scale in the exact opposite direction without taking into account the positives gained under the present system. I do not believe that should they ever gain supreme power, the government would get any better. It would be corruption and oppression by another name. It’s the Marxists worldwide who have killed Marx.

But that should not detract ourselves from the man himself. He stands for the best ideals of the Naxalite movement and has stayed true to it. It is of course a given that except a handful of us, we would wilt away in face of so much demands made on us when there is no clear ‘advantage’ accruing to us for all the hardships.

Maybe that’s where our tragedy lies. Our sense of cost benefit analysis has been honed to such an extent in the world we inhabit today, we cannot see beyond a few years without counting the costs and the benefits we hope to get. Everything we interact with simply reinforces that this is the only way to live and the best option to survive in todays increasingly smaller, yet lonelier world.

That is why men like Ghandy rise like a dinosaur. We can only pick at his surface and wonder at him. The ability to truly understand how he lived or thought is lost to us.

 

del.icio.us Tags: revolutionary,indian,marxist,naxalite,ideology

Hanging the branches..same old, same old…

They don’t really learn from the past do they?

Gujarat government is prosecuting Hooch sellers who are allegedly behind the deaths of more 150 people recently. They are obviously taking a high moral ground when they do this, claiming to punish those people who are ‘corrupting’ a ‘morally pure’ society.

It is strange and ironic to see how past echoes itself again and again in different guises and forms in different places. The same attitude was taken by the authorities when they imposed prohibition in the United States in the early part of the century. Now, we all know how that ended. Not only did people find ways out –often dangerous ones, this period also saw the rise of the mafia like never before. It was only after a decade or so that the government realized what the Modi government refuses to understand – prohibition does not work.

Ask anyone who works in Gujarat. They all have a tale to tell as to how they manage to get liquor. Most of it is dangerous because, well, its illegal. And therein lies the crux of the problem – people want liquor, they always have. And people, as resourceful as they are, will always find a way to get it. And people will find a way to sell it as well – illegal things are as a rule, hugely profitable. The question to be asked is – which of the devil do we rather fight?

Do we become like medieval moral guardians imposing our sensibilities on people, no matter how removed it is from reality – in the process, endangering people’s lives and health? Or do we become pragmatists and realize that morality is not absolute and certainly not what our religious texts claim, and so devising ways to give the citizens the choice to become more responsible? If we believe our citizens to be mature enough to choose their government at 18, I think its obvious we need to trust them to make certain life choices.

In any case, other states have not slipped into anarchy just because there is no prohibition. In fact ironically, the only recent riots that have occurred occurred in Gujarat. I think Modi needs to sit and think what he really intends to accomplish. Hanging a few hooch vendors will certainly not cure the problem, because obviously they are the symptoms…

 

Technorati Tags: prohibition,Gujarat,liquor,current issue

Sic semper tyrannis – “Thus always to tyrants”

Prabhakaran is dead. I chose this photo over his death photo as, I felt it was undignified. No matter what my personal feelings about the man, death must be respected and should be given dignity.

But will Sri Lanka win the battle but lose the war? Time will tell…

The people of Sri-Lanka, both Sinhalese and Tamils, will now turn to the most difficult task of all, rebuilding their lives so that there is peace for coming times…

If the conditions which allowed LTTE to form is not removed, the ghost of LTTE and Prabhakaran will come back to haunt.

Mahinda Rajapaksa’s biggest test starts now. Lets hope he is as adept as an inclusive politician as he is a military strategist.

Let us also hope that atleast one of our neighbour is strife-free!!!

Technorati Tags: Sri Lanka,Prabhakaran,War,Civil war,death,LTTE,terrorism

 

This name is your name…or is it?

Was travelling by metro and was coming back from DU station and coming to CP…and i asked for a ticket to which the guy at the counter said “one ticket for Rajiv Chowk”…and that set me thinking

Connaught Place was renamed Rajiv Chowk some years back. But no one except babudom calls it that. Shops in CP never changed the address on their name boards in defiance and the population in Delhi never called it by another name except what they have used all their lives…In fact I make it a point to call it CP at metro stations where it is officially Rajiv Chowk.

But then again, I have no qualms calling Madras Chennai or Bombay Mumbai or Calcutta Kolkata. But I do have qualms calling Bangalore Bengaluru…So what gives?

Its not just affinity for a particular place. Then I would have minded calling Calcutta Kolkata since I have grown up with that name and has a lot of cultural affinity with it…But I do have a problem with calling CP Rajiv Chowk…and that's not only because the Gandhi family wants to put their name across every damn centimetre of Delhi!!!

One obvious reason is that the name should be something that is in quiloquial use – Calcutta was always called Kolkata by its inhabitants for example, Mumbai was sung as Mumbai in old Hindi songs and so on…

But I think a further determinant and I think a more important one is that it should sound nice!!! Because its not only the inhabitants who will speak it but the rest of the country and if the rest of the people don't catch on, its never going to be popular. Nobody wanted to say Bengaluru, really…it sounded, well..vulgar!!!. Of course, there was a pride in the word Bangalore with the feeling of doing a service of reverse imperialism. Chennai sounded ok and it gradually slipped into use, as did others. Rajiv Chowk could not compete with the glamour of the name of Connaught Place since it was a name that evoked pride for Delhites, being one of the best well planned shopping complex in the country with a heritage value. And RC sounded pedestrian and uncool in front of CP!!!. If Delhi is renamed Dilli, it wont cause too much of a flutter either.

So the trick for netas – make it sound cool. We like to roll over our tongues over nice sounding words!!! Because in this case, rose by by another name is not a rose!!!

Technorati Tags: Delhi,New Delhi,Name Change,Connaught Place,Name change,India

Some rapes are more equal than others…

A piece of news item came in Times of India on 2nd May 2009. Here…

It was about a woman who was gangraped in the wee hours of the previous night. It is uncomfortably similar to cases that have happened before in the city.

I waited for four days to see if any follow up article comes up in terms of any police developments that take place. Nothing yet and there is no reason to believe that there are going to be.

The reason unfortunately is not too far to see. The victim is after all a member of the ‘non-influential’ part of the citizenry as can be seen readily from the article and so we play the same game again.

As usual, the nation and the media wakes up only when a member of their own fall victim. Take any case past or from recent memory. MAMC case and more recently the Noida case. The Dhaula Kuan case is eerily similar to this case but since in that case the victim was a DU student, the police swung into action immediately as it did in every other case. Perhaps more pertinently, the cases evoked a host of responses in the media with everyone decrying the lamentable condition of women in the city. Our homes were concerned.

We were concerned. In this case we are not. The difference lies perhaps in the attitude that since the victim was a slum dweller, she was exposed to the risk anyway. Worse, the feeling probably is that – she is not one of us…so it doesnt matter. The english media wont find interested readers for the case, so why pursue…in any case, some news is always ready to dethrone other stories.

No matter what law we make stating the equality of victims in the face of similar crimes, the problem is that justice is also partial to public opinion. Lets not kid ourseleves - Jessica Lal case got a verdict due to public outcry and all the candle light vigils. Modern School is being persecuted for the same reason. Shanno is already lost, as is this unnamed girl – unfortunate victims in the real sense.

The most ironical aspect of the whole case I found was that even though its an election year, the opposition did not take this case as a stick to beat the government. I do not think the case would have been the same if it was one of those who read english newspapers. The politicians dont care either – even though the english newspaper reading population usually votes the least.

Its the attitude, silly….

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Technorati Tags: rape,delhi,crime,attitude,social

Rags to Riches strategy – sell your Oscar child

After  the storm – the debris…

Slumdog Millionaire was one such storm to hit the Indian storm…we will be picking its debris for some time to come…

An example of this is the sordid drama being played out with Child star Rubina’s father allegedly trying to sell her off…

Denials and counter-denials are going to be thrown back and forth for some time to come till the media attention drifts…but one thing is for sure…there does appear to be more than a kernel of truth in the sting operation by the ‘News of the World’…Rubina’s father taking her daughter to a sheikh and discussing her ‘future’ smacks of something rotten, especially with previous cases involving sheikhs in the country…

So, for a moment let us consider that Rubina’s father did try to sell her off…then, let us try to look at the situation…

That Rafiq Qureshi (Rubina’s father) should be condemned and should be prosecuted is beyond doubt. Selling your children off is an act that is heinous beyond words…

But then, it is easy to condemn a man like him from where we sit…its easy being armchair judges…let us try and put ourselves in his shoes for just sometime and try to think like him before condemning him as the devil…

It is human nature to extract the maximum benefit from an advantageous situation. There is nothing immoral per se from such an attitude…its a fact of how we have evolved…we are capitalists by nature, not socialists…

Look at the one other star from the stable of the successful film – Frieda Pinto. Almost overnight she has been transported from a struggling also-ran to becoming the face of many a brand to even getting a chance to work in a Woody Allen movie. She does not let go of any chance to promote herself, her abilities and her new found connections and nor does the media tire of telling us her changed glamorous lifestyle – even telling us which shoes she now prefers…

Why the difference, we may ask. Boyle and co might be opening up funds to take care of Rubina and her future but nothing has happened as of yet and it may not. Remember ‘Salaam Bombay’, ‘Little Buddha’? There too, promises were made and broken…there are no happy precedences.

Pinto and Rubina. The same film…possibly the same amount of effort (when comparing a child and a trained actor) and the after the flashlights, the future seems absolutely different. One has been put in the stratosphere and the other one given sympathetic glances and told to get on with her life…

Too bad, we may say…life isnt fair, In any  case, Rubina got more than her ‘peers’ will ever get…she should be happy with it. Which is exactly the point…who decides?

Rafiq is smart – in a devious way or otherwise. He does not want to depend on transient sympathy and dubious promises. He just wants to make hay while the spotlight still shines. He knows very well that Rubina’s face will not be chose as the selling point of any brand. He also knows that she does not have a career in films except for some sympathy roles for some time. He cannot be faulted for thinking like that; in fact the way this world works, he has full justification for reasoning like that. Where the problem arises is in the manner he wants to make the hay.

In any case, he will not be the first parent (and not the last for sure)to want to make money out of their child’s success. Some flog their children to death with work and some just siphon off the money. Rafiq just went one step further. He crossed the line so to say.

The fault lies more with the way we and the media treats people caught in the spotlight. As long as they satisfy our needs – glamour, sympathy, success, we raise them on a pedestal and adulate them. The minute something else catches our attention, we simply run off leaving the old heroes cold and feeling abandoned. And this kind of behaviour is increasing in frequency with our nano-second attention span.

It would lead to a host of psychological problems not only for the one directly in the spotlight (especially for someone like Rubina who would feel totally out of depth in this new world that she has been thrust in) but also those on the edges of the light’s arcs. Its not something that people who have not been in that situation can grasp easily.

Which is why it is easy to simplify and condemn.

So condemn Rafiq’s act by all means. He deserves all of it and more. But let us also try to see the other forces at play that are not so easily obvious and then perhaps the inhuman act will start to make some sense.

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Technorati Tags: Slumdog Millionanaire,oscar child,scandal,critique,social,opinion,India

Totalitarianism by any name is still…

Tehelka published a an interview that was taken with a Naxal commander from the forests of Bijapur…

It makes for chilling reading…

With anyone following the developments in Pakistan, the words spoken by the ‘commander’ seem to have a chilling reflection of the words spoken by the Taliban across the border – the same self-serving statements about representing the people and of a fight against a corrupt and immoral system without any scope of looking within themselves; the same confidence of final victory no matter what the cost; no scope of negotiation or compromise; and the constant harping on the ‘people’, as if the ‘people’ are one single homogenous constituent.

What was most fascinating was a lack of understanding of how an economy operates best. The solution for unemployment is not always local self-sufficiency. On the contrary. Either this is deliberate or stems from a lack of awareness, both of which makes them very dangerous…

Also the fact that democracy has no place in their ideology places makes them ideologically and practically Luddites. They still seem to believe in the ‘Dictatorship of the proletariat’. The collapse of communist police states and the transformation of China seems to have passed them by.

Reading through the interview, one gets the feeling that the Naxalite movement has developed a vested interest in keeping people poor and in distress so that the state of constant warfare remains – permanent power will continue to flow through their barrel.

Very Orwellian…but who said that Orwell did not draw from the world as he saw it…

What makes these thoughts of Naxalites very important is that these guerrillas control almost 20% of the country and are spreading their networks across India. For the poor, its a seductive ideology since they are empowered and their anger can be channelled through a gun. Its naturally a socio-economic problem that has been neglected by the political and economic elites all these years.

But as things stand now, even if the government wants to make changes, the Naxals will not allow them. The poor must remain poor in order for them to remain relevant.

Caught in the cross-fire as usual again are the very people these rebels are claiming to fight for. And all they get at the end of the day is a gun and some meaningless slogans…

 

 

 

But one thing is for certain – whether its a religious struggle or a  class struggle, the roads lead to the same thing – dreary totalitarianism, something that our comrade forgot.

 

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Our local Thermopylae…but did you notice?

On 14th April, a news piece came that told about an incident that should be told and retold as an example of why inspite of everything being stacked against us, India’s democracy still pulls through…

The first lines reported in the article, written by an obviously moved reporter, suffices as the best introduction to this soon to be forgotten heroic incident…

“ For 10 hours, a band of 22 CISF jawans battled more than 200 heavily armed Maoists, without backup or reinforcements, and saved the lives of 150 Nalco staff who were held hostage by the guerrillas in Orissa's Damanjodi since Sunday night.”

Read the rest of the article  (or here) here before reading further

A few reflections will bring out why remembering this is so important to us…

We don’t even know who or what CISF are. But then, even if it is replaced by CRPF, our awareness grows a notch but its still not something we can relate to. These men guard some of our most prized assets – infrastructure and their human capital yet they have never been proper security forces in our eyes. They are usually relegated to the status of mere guards. They do not have the dashing that has been marketed as the image of the armed forces.

We reserve all our adulations for the Indian army. They deserve all of it – they are one of the special reasons that this country still stands. But here I believe that this adulation on our part has a large part of self-interest as an ingredient. Because we feel that we are threatened more by what may come across the borders, we tend to put the ones who keep them at bay, on a pedestal.

Naxalism is a malaise that is eating away our innards. The alarm has been raised but we don't have seem to have ingested the danger enough. That is why we don't seem to appreciate the sacrifice made by the  men fighting the enemy inside the gates…

These men showed almost foolish showed bravery when they could have surrendered or run. They instead stayed and saved lives. This, when the insurgents were superior in arms and overwhelmingly so in numbers.

Because we cant relate our safety to the actions of these men, because their heroism seems remote to us – because of all this, we will soon forget what they did for us. Soon, their stories will be drowned in more newsworthy buzz – elections and IPL…(by elections i mean the circus, not the people who have been killed by the Maoists – they are similar unsung heroes)

But for the moment, let us realize that the much vaunted democracy that we boast around the world is not due to the politician on the dais but is due to poorly armed, outnumbered industrial guards defying terrorism in some forgotten corner of the country…

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