Provoking Perspective

How much religion do we need?

2008-08-31T19:45:00.000-07:00

“This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, ‘THE RIGHT TO LEAVE’.”

- John Howard, the Australian Prime minister to his country’s Muslims.

Firstly, this is the approach that should have been taken up by all democracies long time ago against religious fundamentalists of every ilk. Then we wouldn’t have been in this situation. Of all the Western countries, U.K. has been the dumbest. It failed to do even one thing right, and their idiotic policy of providing sanctuary to the “politically and religiously persecuted” meant, it provided refuge to the very people who hate its liberal values. This is not tolerance. This is self-flagellation.

Secondly, the situation has deteriorated so badly, because of all the negligence in the past, these measures are only a start and by no means enough. We also need to weed out a sizable number of “holy warriors,” who have already been brainwashed. Let’s give them their opportunity to obtain their martyrdom, since they so badly want it anyway.The swifter it’s done, the better it is for everybody. We are not talking about a law and order problem here. We are talking about a clash of civilizations. May be a World War IV ( the cold war being the unannounced third world war).

Thirdly, there should be a clear, very clear, separation of religion and government. This goes for every religion, not just Islam. Nobody should be able to say openly, “My religion is better than yours,” and get away with it. (Tune to all those evangelical channels on the TV and you will be clearly informed all non-Christians are going to hell in a hand basket.) Hinduism and Buddhism have not taken to this route yet, but if they do, they must be stopped too.

Fourthly, there should be freedom to choose a religion, but not freedom to actively convert “heathens” to the “only right religion.” You got your churches and temples and mosques and synagogues and you got your literature to urge people why they should consider taking up Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism. That’s enough. If somebody wants to convert, they can do it out of their own accord without coercion or the lure of money.

The freedom to “spread” your own religion is the most diabolical privilege that’s been offered to practicing religionists. A good thing will catch on, like science did. Nobody needs convincing to buy a light bulb or an i-pod. There are no missionaries preaching for that. On the religious side, Hindus never proselytized. Yet, they are still around after 5,500 years or so.

Fifthly, it should be understood, that one can be moral without being religious. One can be spiritual without being religious. And one can reap the benefits of yoga, meditation, helping others and all that good stuff without being religious. No need to be afraid that if we are not religious, then there will be anarchy all around. Some of most moral people I know are staunch atheists. So, get rid of that mindset. Morality has always been a human construct and we humans are perfectly capable of practicing a set of common morals without a God (or Gods) breathing down our neck.

Sixthly, individualism must be encouraged above anything else. All groups are cults and thereby insular, be they are race or religion or language or whatever. Feeling proud about one’s culture/religion/language is different from being jingoistic about it. This has to be understood in the real sense of the term.

Today, it’s Islam we are pitted against. Tomorrow it could be another cult/religion. Islam has been a run-away train in the history of mankind that has been allowed it’s free run, because, its intolerance and intransigence were treated with kid gloves by the rest of the world.

Every time, the world did this, it paid for the mistake. Many times over. Remember fascism, Nazism, and communism? Whenever we bend over backwards to please zealots and bigots, they try harder to break our back. How many times should we fail to learn this lesson? Appeasement is not the same as tolerance.

Your freedom is not a right, not even in a first world country. You have to earn it. Meaning, you have to invest some time and effort. If you want a peaceful world, you can’t achieve it with an ostrich like attitude. What’s happening in the world *will* affect you, even though you might not be interested in “stupid politics.” There is a genuine possibility you will wake up among the likes of Taliban one day, and suddenly you will get very interested in the “politics” of it. By then, it would be a wee bit late.

I am actually afraid that time has already run out. There will be a clash like something that’s never been seen before. Something like Saddam Hussein’s “Mother of all battles.” Only then, we might learn our lessons and make the required amends. For the sake of humanity though, I hope I will be proved wrong.

We are always alone

2008-07-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

No matter how many friends we have, how many organizations we are involved with, how many loved ones we have around us, we are always alone.

Cynicism? Nah! It's a good thing to be aware about. It's actually an essential thing to be aware about. A lot of people these days seem to suffer from shortage of love, whatever that means. And the sooner they realize that finding love won't end their angst, the better they are.

Let me elaborate. I keep coming across people, who say they have everything, but not a person who truly loves them. They are miserable, despite all the blessings they have. A lot of them enter into bad relationships because they feel they can't live alone. Then, they suffer more precisely because of that relationship.

A couple of bitter truths. Very few people find true love. Very few. There is a theory out there that everybody has a soulmate somewhere around. It might very well be true. But the physical limitations of time and space prevent us from meeting everybody and finding out if they are truly for us.

So, eventually, a minority of us find that "soulmate." Others compromise with what they get. Some can stay happy that way. Some can't. The point remains that most of us don't get what we want or even become what we want to become.

An advice to the miserable lot. A bad relationship is worse than not having any relationship. Also, one can lead a contented life without having a "soulmate." I am not saying that the search should stop. Do keep your eyes open, but don't stay sad and depressed until you find him or her. You are not doing good to anybody, especially yourself.

If you think this is easier said than done, remember the time when you were a child. Getting up every morning was exciting. You couldn't wait to go out and explore the world. You probably never even knew you needed a "soul mate" to be happy. There weren't any preconditions for you to be happy then. There are none even now.

Restoring Law and Order to India

2008-06-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

A democratic and capitalist country (still the ideal form of government after so many experiments), needs six things mainly to survive. A strong army (we have that), a sound judiciary (we have that, at least, at the supreme court level), a robust lassez-faire economy (we are getting there), a free press (we have one but it reports on largely irrelevant things and is biased to the core), an effective foreign policy (the less said about it the better), and Law & Order (which is the topic of this essay).

You might loudly protest I have left out the political system, but that was deliberate. A political system is nothing but the sum of these six things and need not be mentioned specifically.

Let's see what Professor David H. Balyey has to say about our police:

"In India today, a dual system of criminal justice has grown up, the one of the law and the other of politics. With respect at least to the police, decisions made by the police officials, about the application of law, are frequently subject to partisan review or direction by the elected representatives. The autonomy of the police officials, in specific and routine application of law, has been severally curtailed..."

Ah! Couldn't have been said better -- even by an Indian. But, you might say, "We have had police officers like Vyas and Umesh Chandra!" Very true. But they came to be, in spite of the system, not because of it. Swimming against the tide of adversity, knowing fully well they would be stopped sooner than later, they still floated to the top, defying every emotion known to normal humans. (Vyas's son was brutally murdered by the Naxals as a "warning." Vyas, as a response, cracked down on them even more.)

We can't expect a Vyas or an Umesh Chandra to happen on a regular basis. What we need is a system that makes it easier to produce more such sincere officers. Currently, the police system we have, the infrastructure we inherited from our beloved British masters, the one that persists even after we got our Independence, is rigged to make bad things happen to good people.

The British never wanted to raise a humane police force. They only wanted an efficiently ruthless system to keep the rebels (read freedom-fighters) under check. Unfortunately instead of disbanding this unholy organization, after we got the independence, and starting off afresh, we continued with it as if it was a good thing. We inherited the questionable methods the police employed when they dealt with Kranthikaris, lock stock and barrel. That was the first problem with the Indian police.

And after that, things started improving a bit as a lot of ideal young men joined the force, genuinely trying to do something to their country, But they soon found out they are not really the servants of the public, but of their political masters instead. Most recruits' enthusiasm evaporated. They became cynical and found ways to keep the politicians happy by abiding to their wishes and by trying not to step on their toes. This political interference was the second problem.

The sincere members of the police department are in a quandary now. They don't know if they should carry out their responsibilities the correct way, because the danger of getting transferred or getting suspended is very real. A few well-timed transfers can disrupt a police official's family life and bring him down to his knees. The police are so stifled, they can't even go on a strike like employees belonging to other government departments could. There is no just way to deal with their grievances. It's a choking power structure where your immediate superior decides your fate. And, of course, the most superior officer is accountable to his political boss.

Just because somebody is elected to a public office through elections, it doesn't give them carte blanche to ride roughshod over the police force. Because we don't have direct elections, where people can elect a home minister or a chief minister or a prime minister directly, how much democratic this whole thing is, is also doubtful. If we had direct elections, the people would at least know who they are handing over the power to, and such a representative can be at least thought to have the people's mandate. But we have indirect elections, where people select a bunch of MLAs and they in turn elect the ministers and because of the coalition politics we have today, any random guy can end up being the home minister and abuse the office to his advantage.

So, to correct this, control should be completely taken away from the politicians and vested in a tribunal that consists of former judges (unless we accept direct elections as a means of transferring political power, like we have it in the United States). Former judges are a good choice, because if we trusted them to be our final arbiters in matters of law, we can also trust them to do a decent job as far as managing the police force is concerned.

For those of you who think this is far fetched, consider our army. The defence ministry provides only administrative and operational help while the army, by and large, has its own command structure. The state home ministries can be toned down the same way too. However, since the police deal with the general public everyday and because a different kind of discipline is needed for them, the final authority at the top has to be civilian, and hence the need for a tribunal of former judges.

By the time these former judges serve on this panel, they would have already had a public record and a keen knowledge of everything legal. The process that elects them can be similar to the process now employed in selection and promotion of judges in the higher courts of India. So, only the very best will be chosen. And they would serve until death. No politician should ever be allowed to remove them from office.

Secondly, the miserable conditions that come with a job in the police should be removed, thereby re-vamping the image of the police department itself in a positive way.

For one thing, the police are paid low salaries that inevitably push them towards taking bribes. An assistant police inspector gets paid anywhere around 10,000 rupees per month. A joint commissioner of police gets paid around 30,000 rupees per month. One can imagine what the foot soldiers, the ordinary constables must be getting paid. Does the government seriously expect them not to be tempted by bribes? The police should be paid salaries that are proportionate to the amount of risk involved in their jobs. This will ensure the well-educated youth would take up police related jobs and thus bring respectability to the whole profession.

Also, there are no decent working hours for police. They are supposed to be on duty all the time, more or less. An overworked policeman is more apt to take out his frustrations on a criminal in his charge, whether it is right or not.

And finally, the whole police infrastructure is in urgent need of better vehicles, better guns and a well-connected computer network. We need to give our law-enforcers the best possible technology they can have.

All this costs money, but it is important that it need be spent. It's the government that needs to make this a priority and it's the people who should push it to do so through political activism and mass movements. (More on that in the forthcoming essays.)

Any political party that doesn't include this in their agenda as a primary goal is not being true to the ideals of democracy. Any government that doesn't make this its top priority will never be effective. As long as people like the Noida killers can roam around freely, not captured by the inefficient and corrupt police, we haven't really had progress.

Only when we strike the fear of law into thugs and politicians alike, do we see other aspects of the society improving. Remember, when the law and order fail, all the money we make is not even worth the paper it's printed on.

Why Rama sent Sita to the forests?

2008-06-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

This has been a subject of hot contention for a long time. Feminists have always portrayed this one event as the clinching evidence that Rama was not such an ideal man, after all. They claim this shows Rama as a person not to be emulated, because he didn't treat his wife right. And they have succeeded in inculcating this opinion into our heads. There are a lot of people these days who ask the same question: "If Rama was such a nice guy, how could he banish his pregnant wife to the forests?"

Of course, our feminists conveniently forget, it was Rama who started the tradition of monogamy or eka patni vratham. Before, that everybody practiced polygamy. Even his father was married to three wives. They also forget the fact that Rama didn't remarry once Sita left his life. He preferred to suffer it alone, because he never suspected Sita in the first place, and she always remained a wife to him.

So why did he send her to the forests? Understanding what kind of a person Rama is, certainly helps in unraveling this question.

There are two kinds of ethics: absolute and situational. Absolute ethics are those that won't change according to your convenience. That is, there are no double standards. If I consider something as wrong, it's wrong whether you do it or I do it. There are no special treatments. Situational ethics are very hazy. What's wrong or right is determined according to how it affects us. Quite a few people change their ethics when they think, by following what they believed earlier was right, they would cause problems to themselves.

Rama practiced absolute ethics. He followed his code of honor even if it caused him the utmost pain. For him, there were various priorities in life in the following order: obeying his parents' commands - father's first and then the mother's, being a just king (since he was born to rule), protecting and caring for his wife, helping his friends, punishing evil-doers and so on.

Rama never changed this order. He followed it come what may, whether it was for his betterment or detriment. When Dasaratha ordered him to leave to the forests for fourteen years, that came before anything else and he obeyed his father without hesitation.

Rama didn't care about riches or power. After conquering Lanka, which was full of immeasurable treasures, he left it without second thoughts. For him, the mission was accomplished when he freed Sita and punished Ravana for his evil deed.

He could have returned to Ayodhya after his father's death, when everybody including Kaikeyi, who was primarily responsible for the banishing of Rama, requested him to do so. But he didn't. He was bound by the word given to his father and the fact his father was dead, didn't change anything.

In fact, the only time Rama lost his composure was when he discovered Sita had been abducted. He even contemplated suicide. For Rama, there is nothing more precious than Sita.

Again, we come back to the original question. Why did he leave her when he loved her so much?

Rama had only two choices before him, when his spies informed him that a drunken man has refused to take his wayward wife back, by saying he wasn't foolish like Rama who adopted Sita after she has been with Ravana for many days.

The first was to abdicate his throne and and leave Ayodhya with Sita. This was his preferred choice. But nobody agreed to take his place, despite his numerous requests. And he couldn't abandon his responsibility and walk away from his Dharma.

The second was to banish Sita from Ayodhya so he can rule as a king with the full mandate of the people. With no alternatives left, he exercised this choice. And by doing so, he took the entire blame on himself for generations to come and absolved Sita at the same time.

Whether Rama is a concept or a God, there is much to learn from his life, especially in today's world of spiritual depravity and moral relativism.

Is India a Superpower?

2008-05-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

– John Stuart Mill

“India is the next super power.” This is the sentiment echoed not just by jubilant Indians who see their nation making rapid strides economically, but also by a growing crowd of foreigners who believe India has finally found its place under the sun.

What’s a superpower, anyway? What are the parameters that define it? Is it wealth or is it muscle or is it the sheer size? India meets all the three criteria then: We are the twelfth wealthiest nation, ahead of even Russia; we have the fourth largest army in the world, 1.2 million to be precise; and we have a population of more than a billion. All the ingredients, in fact…

Still, India is not a superpower because, to be a superpower you need the political will, and the guts to do the thing you believe is right. Put another way, India cannot be a superpower until it continues to be a soft state. Soft on terrorism, that is.

Every time a terrorist incident happens, all our government has to offer is “strong condemnation” against such tactics. Why such a pussilanimous response? Who's India trying to please with this cowardice?

The international community? In 2006, when Israel went hammer and tongs on Beirut because the terrorist organization based there, Hezbollah, kidnapped two of their soldiers, the international community nodded their heads in silent approval. Mr. Bush even said, “Israel has every right to protect its borders and its citizens.” Even the Arab countries have been guarded in their reaction.

Okay, so are we trying to appease our Muslim brethren? But why would they be happy when they know very well that they might be the victims too directly, and they might be accused by non-Muslims of involvement in these crimes, indirectly? When riots happen, as mobs decide to dole out justice on their own, we know how inefficient our government has been in protecting the innocent.

Are the people in power safe at least? Terrorism kills without discrimination, and as the attack on parliament in 2002 proved, it tries to kill without any regard to position or power also. Even the most corrupt of the politicians should realize that to be corrupt, he/she has to be alive first. (I am not condoning corruption here, but saying how it doesn’t make sense even for an evil person to let the threat of terrorism grow amidst us.)

So, why is it that we are twiddling our thumbs and waiting? This problem is not going to go away, if we hide our heads in the sand like an ostrich and pretend things are not as bad as they seem to be. This needs firm resolve and persistence to stay the course till the very end.

India from the ancient times always chose butter over guns. That is, economic prosperity over security. But without guns, the butter is bound to be taken away from forcibly by the marauders who always consider indecisiveness as a sign of weakness and fear.

Each terrorist incident is like a nightmare that repeats ad nauseam. And there seems to be no way out. That’s exactly the goal of terrorists - to numb a nation into inaction. And, in case of India, they seem to be winning handsomely.

A deep malaise affects our nation. We might be well on the way to becoming the eighth most prosperous nation in a few years, but it would be an empty victory, because we have lost our souls already.

The spirituality that was India’s forte seems to be eroding rapidly. By spirituality, I don’t mean mindless rituals or buying the forgiveness of God by making a few timely donations or performing festivals with pomp and splendor.

Our spirituality has always been our ethos, our core values. The discretion to know there are things more important than wealth or material well-being. The calm courage to face bitter truths and administer equally bitter solutions.

Our spirituality was never about meaningless offerings of peace and cowardly surrender to those who are hurting us. On the other hand, our spirituality was always about wise men providing guidance to able warriors on how to protect our Sanatana Dharma. It was about Krishna goading Arjuna to his line of duty, of convincing him why sometimes war needs to be made to secure peace.

Unfortunately, there is neither a Krishna nor an Arjuna around today. There are only Sakunis in the form of our vile politicians who would not mind doing anything for the sake of a few votes. We have leaders fighting for their castes, their religions, and their languages. We don’t have statesmen.

It doesn’t matter which organization is behind these various terrorist acts. They are all jihadis and they are hell bent on either destroying us or make us join them out of fear. They don’t really care about the physical reality as we know it, and they plan to celebrate their victories in a fictitious heaven. They are stupid but they are single mindedly destructive and that’s a very dangerous combination indeed.

Let’s get our priorities straight. Peace first before anything else. Even Krishna Deva Raya, one of the greatest emperors the world has ever seen, secured his borders first, and vanquished his enemies before he turned to writing poetry.

In due time, we can all go back to our entertainment, our money matters and other material pursuits. But right now, it’s time to take the bull by its horns.

Blame it on the British

2006-12-02T20:18:00.000-08:00

No, this isn't a rant about the colonization of India (though understanding that subject is crucial to anybody who wants to make a sense of present India). This is instead about how they once ruled a large part of the world and made a fine mess of it, before they left. The nineteenth century was called the British century, and why not! The Union Jack flew triumphantly in several lands and the British military power was unmatched.

But like all "good things," the British domination of the world had to end, and at no time was this in more evidence than after the second world war. Battered and bruised by six years of war that left them emaciated, the British were finding it difficult to maintain their colonies flung over all parts of the globe. And boy, did they make an unceremonious exit or what! Totally anti-character to the pride they displayed when they claimed, "The sun never set on the British Empire," the English literally fled with the tail between their legs.

As they ran for their dear lives, they left chaos behind everywhere they ruled. India was probably a little better, in the sense, there was a semblance of transfer of power. But other parts like the middle East fared worse. At places like Palestine, the British simply disappeared overnight, leaving the Jews and the Arabs to settle the question of Israel/Palestine. And they have been "settling" it for the last 56 years.

Of course, it wouldn't be very British if they only made that one blunder. They committed several others, the most notorious among them being the division of the countries they ruled, along arbitrary lines. The division of the Indian sub-continent was assigned to one Cyril Radcliffe who was barely aware of the country he was performing the vivisection on. In fact, he was so afraid he didn't do his job right, he left hurriedly to

England, a few days after he submitted his award, to escape possible attempts on his life. The result is what we all can see: a festering wound in the form of Kashmir and several other minor disputed areas.

The Mcmahon line that draws a border between India and China is accepted by the Indians as an international boundary but not by the Chinese. I am not talking about the communist China either, which generally doesn't believe in silly things like border demarcations (their brutal occupation of Tibet comes to mind immediately). The Mcmahon line was made official through the publication of the "Survey of India" in 1937. That was well before the communists. And even before that, negotiations have been going on for decades without a successful closure. Till today, China lays claim on "South Tibet" what we know as Arunachal Pradesh.

Coming to Israel, the British first rejected the concept of Israel (in 1897), then accepted it vaguely (in 1917 at the Balfour declaration), then flip-flopped on their stand again during the second world war and finally washed their hands off by handing over the issue to the newly formed United Nations in 1947. The United nations came up with a proposal that endorsed both Jewish and Palestinian states existing side by side and left it to the British to oversee the transfer. (Actually, the British never let the UN Palestine commission to enter Palestine.)

As I already mentioned, the British oversaw the whole thing by promptly disappearing at mid-night on May 14, 1948, leaving behind the Jews and the Arabs to sort it out. But, most importantly, even before this, the British had already performed the first partition of Palestine by gifting away a portion of it, to Mr. Abdullah, what we know today as Jordan. That the present day Palestinians never lay claim to Jordan being theirs is a different story altogether.

Iraq never existed in its current form before the twentieth century. After the British and the French brought down the Ottoman empire, they carved up the three provinces that comprised it among themselves. The area comprising the present day Iraq, Jordan and Israel/Palestine went to Britain, and the area what makes up today's Lebanon and Syria went to France. Iraq's composition is especially messy: 25% Sunnis, 20% Kurds, 55% Shias. Talk about a non-homogeneous bunch! The United states today is fighting not just the insurgents today, but also history itself. What happens in the next few years is any-one's guess.

Finally, as an icing on the cake, the Durand line was drawn in 1893 separating the then British India and Afghanistan, following a treaty between Sir Henry Mortimer Durand and the king of Afghanistan. Today, it serves as the boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Afghans say the above said treaty is valid only for 100 years and a portion of Pakistan should be returned to them now. Pakistan is against this. Today, Pakhtun tribes straddle both sides of the border, making it one of the most porous boundaries. Again, the British could have resolved this before they left in 1947, but didn't feel the need for it.

Take a moment to sink in the four major goof-ups (some of them deliberate) made by the British: Kashmir, Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan - four of the worlds' biggest flash points and you will begin to fathom the legacy they left behind.

Despite such legacy, England, even today, butts into every possible international wrangle. Worse, there are people who want England to mediate on their behalf after all this. May the sky fall upon their heads and knock some sense into them...

Do we need a movie on Bhagat Singh?

2002-06-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

Four films have been released almost simultaneously on this icon. There have been expected reactions regarding this trend. Some columnists have even questioned the need for a movie on Bhagat Singh in the current environment. Is it a valid concern?

For starters, Bollywood churns out the same kind of junk over and over with the same kind of themes: revenge, love, triangles, etc. and etc. Our audience, even the most ‘filmi’ kind, have been numbed into submission, and probably have given up any hopes that our film industry would act any differently.

Why then, this hue and cry about Bhagat Singh? It’s true that four seems to be a ludicrous number. But then, compared to the unadulterated crap the Tinsel Town comes up with repeatedly, this is a small number.

I see no wrong in offering a fresh perspective on Bhagat Singh. The Congress has long ruled India, after her independence, and they have made sure that nobody apart from

Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Nehru have got the recognition due to them. Apart from the usual number of unsung heroes, even the ones who were adored by the masses have been slowly and deliberately deleted from the public memory. The Congress politicians, who by the virtue of the official powers they wielded through various organizations, made sure of that.

Apart from the movie ‘Shaheed’, a Manoj Kumar offering, I can’t remember any thing in the mainstream cinema on this most beloved son of India. In the west, it’s a common thing to make multiple moves based on the same classical work or an important historical event. Why not in India?

Bhagat Singh was a true patriot; a nationalist par excellence. He was not today’s version of the extremist who kills innocent people in the name of God or a political cause. The care he took in making sure no lives were lost, when he exploded a bomb in the British parliament, bears testimony to this.

His disillusion with Mr. Gandhi’s methods is well known. He had good reasons to be disappointed with the Mahatma. I personally believe that Mr. Gandhi, in his zeal to spiritualize the freedom movement, made many tactical mistakes. His biggest blunder was when he called off the Non-Cooperation Movement. We can never know for sure, but in all probability it would have gotten us independence sooner and even prevented the partition.

Bhagat Singh rose in stature from one event to the other. He started out as a hot-blooded youth, but evolved into a thinking ‘kranthikari’. He was attracted towards the socialist model like most of the people during his time. He dreamed of an India that is not only independent but also fair, just and egalitarian. He probably would have changed his mind had he seen the mess that socialism got India into, but then again, we would never know. He died when he was just 23 and long before India became a free nation.

If Mr. Gandhi was the all-too-well-accepted side of the freedom movement, Bhagat Singh was the other side of it. He was no less patriotic than the Mahatma, but languished from the lack of recognition for his cause. He hated being branded as a hotheaded youth at best and a terrorist at worst. This image he got initially, was thrust upon him more by the Congress, than the British themselves. With the notable exception of Mr. Bose, a majority of Congress Wallahs, being the usual cronies they were, and still are, took the cue from the Mahatma, and tried to make him appear as irrelevant as possible. At first, they succeeded too.

Then came the imprisonment. Bhagat Singh showed the entire nation he was not just all anger, exuberance and impetuousness. With his strong silent moral courage, he convinced everybody, that when the occasion came, he would rise for it; and rise he did.

His hunger strike in the prison to get better conditions for the prisoners is one of the most memorable events in the history of Indian freedom struggle. I believe, even the most ardent Congress Wallah bowed to him inside his heart of hearts, when Bhagat Singh went through his Satyagraha. After all, he was practicing what they were preaching all along.

Then again, a Congress Wallah is a loyal crony and this trait is epitomized in the croniest of them all, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru - the biggest blunder ever to happen to India. We are still suffering from his ‘nation building. But that’s the theme for a whole new essay – may be even a tome.

While Congress grew stubborn and more stubborn as the day when Bhagat Singh would be hanged approached, the rest of the nation began to love him more and more. The Satyagraha made him a household name, a hero who cared for his motherland unabashedly without seeking his own fame. Even the current generation recognizes Bhagat Singh. They might not actually know what all he did, but they do know he was somebody who mattered. This is despite all the efforts made by the Congress, after India’s independence, to ignore him.

That’s why it was so benumbing to the nation, when Bhagat Singh died. Most possibly, he could have been saved with an effort by the Congress in general, and the Mahatma in particular. But that was not supposed to be.

The only movie I have watched among the four that got released is, ‘The legend of Bhagat Singh’. I found it pretty realistic. The last hour was especially good. Bhagat Singh, portrayed by Ajay Devgan, comes forth as an entirely believable character. He doesn’t get to bash up multiple Britishers. He is very human. He gets angry at the injustice being perpetrated to his countrymen. He is confused and helpless at times. And, he accepts his mistakes vulnerably. I strongly recommend this movie to the viewers. (I don’t know how the Deols’ version of Bhagat Singh is, but I am going to find out.) The only thing I don’t like about the Ajay Devagan’s movie is, the way Mr. Gandhi was projected - as a weak and indecisive human being. (Both of which, he wasn’t.)

Bhagat Singh is our nation’s pride. It would do good to the current MTV generation to watch a movie about a man, who lived by his ideals till he breathed his last. There can be one and only one Bhagat Singh. Indeed.

Worshipping False Heroes

2002-05-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

This is a world that worships false heroes. So much so, it's tough to convince it otherwise.

I use the term not with a gender bias, but strictly to emphasize somebody whom we wrongly adore, respect, worship and idolize. A false hero could be as much a brawny wrestler fighting in your average WWF fight to the latest empty beautiful woman on the block. It could be a demagogue like Adolph Hitler to a screen icon whose make-up laden skin you can't see underneath. It could be the most default of your heroes: your parents.

For too long, physical appearance and prowess have been used to associate with a hero.

For too long, it has been inculcated into us, that outward appearance rules over inner self. For too long, we have been made guilty of not trying to emulate these false heroes.

The premise of this article rests on this one single sentence. A hero is not born, he becomes one.

In the initial stages of our life, we look upon our parents as our heroes. Whether you agree or not, acceptance by our parents matters a great deal to us, when we are young.

There is nothing inherently wrong in this, nor can this be avoided, as it's our natural inclination to do so. But, some people find out as they grow up, that their parents necessarily do not fit the bill of a hero. So they move on, and they yearn and search for new heroes.

Most of the time, they find false heroes to worship. This is not surprising, because there is tremendous pressure on us to confirm. A rock star, a movie hero, a college beauty, a living sports legend are handy because it's so easy to fall in line with the rest of your peer group.

The main reason for this is our insecurity: the need for a prop, however flimsy it might be. From an unseen God to a movie icon whose films we need to watch on the first day, from an ice maiden who has nothing but scorn for us, to the mafia don who rules over people by terror, false heroes come in different sizes and shapes. And we cling on to them desperately

On the outside, everybody seems to broadly agree, that it's not the color of the skin, the visual appeal or the muscle tone that should be automatically seen as the hallmark of a hero. But do we really believe that internally? Don't appearances matter truly to us?

The answer is a resounding no. We treat beautiful people better than we treat the ugly ducklings. We feel the handsome hunk is infinitely more 'cool' than the bespectacled nerd. We think automatically that somebody who is rich deserves to be respected.

It's okay to judge people with an initial bias. After all, our reflex action is to trust our gut. But, it's definitely not okay to persist with that behavior. It's definitely not okay to refuse to consider the possibility, that our stereotypes might be wrong..

So what constitutes a hero? In a word, it's his integrity. Integrity is the sum of your convictions and how hard you try to live by them. Of course, a correct conviction has to abide by some fundamental laws of nature, like others' right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

So, the next time you choose a hero, find out what he stands for. And more importantly, find out whether he really believes in it or not. Even more so, if he does something you don't like, don't try to push it under the proverbial carpet. There is no hero without holes. And if there are too many of those holes to your liking, you should walk right through them and away.

Your hero should not be cruel, manipulative and blackmail you through his position of power. Your hero should not be a bigot, a closed minded person and disrespectful. Your hero should not be a liar and a cheat.

Your hero needn't be cool, but he should be just.

The good news is despite all the roadblocks that gang against them, heroes keep emerging. Fortunately, the real heroes are tougher than what the world seem to believe they are capable of. They know how to steer past some obstacles, jump over some more, and decimate some others as they race towards their own definition of success.

In fact, every non-conventional hero works many times harder than the conventional one, and is much more deserving of an accolade.

A true hero is not infallible. He makes mistakes. He falters. He stops some times, but he never gives up. Just like a phoenix.

Where we Indians got it wrong…

2001-11-03T22:00:00.000-08:00

“Papa, don’t preach!” cooed Madonna in her hit album. In her case, the angst she carried against her father, came out in the form of a song. Not everybody might be able to convert their feelings to a popular song, when they are preached to. More often than not, they end up with a pretty negative feeling towards the person who does it to them.

You might be wondering what all this has to do with the title of the subject. Plenty! By far, Indians as an ethnic group preach the most. This is one quality that separates us from the rest of the world.

Indians in the U.S. of A. are in the top three affluent ethnic groups. There is every reason to feel proud about our success. We impact the IT world in a major way, and we have established our presence in other not so glamorous areas too. Indians are seen as the most law-abiding group by the local law enforcement authorities. A stand-up comedian once proclaimed, “Man! I have seen everybody in a jail except an Indian. Now, what’s that all about?”

Yet, the mainstream doesn’t seem to like us from an ‘easy to get along with’ point of view. Indian presence is acknowledged, but we are far away from being accepted as a congenial group.

Because, we preach! We preach at the first opportunity available to us.

What exactly is preaching? Preaching is almost always done from a morally superior position. Like, “My ethics are better than yours.” Or, “My culture is more glorious than yours.” The guy who preaches keeps himself on a pedestal and looks down at the listener with a little disdain. And Indians do it with ease, sometimes without even realizing it.

All an American needs to do is ask an innocuous question about India, and we go off into raptures extolling the virtues of our Motherland. We explain to the hapless listener how great our culture is, how we respect our elders, how we discipline our children, and so on and so forth.

While we feel superior about most of the things our culture has to offer, the way the marriage system works in the West and the way sex is perceived here, is our most favorite topic.

We gush how the marriage system is a success in India, unlike in the U.S.A. where the divorce rate is steep 50+ percent. We shower contempt at the way pre-marital sex is prevalent here.

This is true, even of the most silent Indian on the block. He might not offer his opinion on a lot of other issues, but when somebody raises the ‘India’ topic, the tiger in him is unleashed.

I attended an Indian wedding performed in Florida once upon a time. A lot of Americans were present and watching the proceedings with some interest. There was an Indian guy who was explaining why certain things are being done the way they are. When the time for ‘Kanyaadanam’ came – the event where the father gives away his daughter to his son-in-law – he declared, “This is the event where the father gives away his ‘virgin’ daughter to the groom.” (Quotes around virgin are mine. Kanya in Sanskrit means virgin.) There were some uncomfortable looks and a few sniggers, but Americans being who they are, they kept their poker faces intact.

India, as a nation too, has preached to other nations. Pre cold war days, we claimed we were non-aligned. Everybody knew though about the pro-Soviet tilt we displayed in all international matters. We preached to every nation about what’s right and what’s wrong. Not that we were listened to with great respect. But, that never stopped India.

In the recently released Nixon tapes, there is a juicy exchange between Nixon and Kissinger about the sanctimonious and holier-than-thou attitude of India, which gives you an idea what kind of perception all that preaching has lead to.

What makes Indians preach?

May be it’s our hoary past.

The ancient civilization we boast of, the various rich art forms we have developed, the vast literature spread over numerous native languages, the spiritual wealth we have generated. Make no mistake; India led from the front in the ancient world.

But what do we have today?

A nation that lost its course.

What we have today are rituals. Not spiritualism.

What we have today is an empty rhetoric of patriotism which reaches a crescendo come August 15^th or the Republic day. Not a healthy national self-esteem.

What we have today is soul-less moralizing. Not ethics.

What we have today is a hypocritical nation; where everybody says one thing and means the other and does another.

Think about it yourselves. Corruption is a way of life in India. Every single one of us has experienced that at some level or the other. How many times did you have to bribe a cop in the U.S. to get a ticket revoked? The answer would be a big zero.

The ancient culture that we are so proud of has been replaced by a pop-culture, which looks like a bad experiment gone worse.

Even the much touted sexual chastity, we seem to be so proud of, is practiced more in its breach than its implementation.

Multiple independent surveys conducted by magazines like India Today, have revealed that our young have no qualms about having pre-marital sex. Even conservative cities like Madras, have plenty of people who indulge in extra-marital affairs. And of late, there have been reports of couples that have started swinging too.

In reality, all the talk about sexual chastity in India is just that, a talk. Indians are still more worried about preserving their caste system through marriage than any thing else.

And that’s why the need to control their young from going ‘astray’.

Most of the parents don’t care what’s happening inside a marriage as long as it stays intact. A failed marriage is preferred to an honest divorce where both partners admit that they can’t carry on any further.

I will go one step further. There are many parents in India who don’t really care what their children do, as long as they do it in stealth, and as long as they marry whomever they want them to marry.

Repression leads to duplicity on the part of the perpetrators and thereby leads to a society where lying is no more the horrible thing it’s supposed to be. One young person casually explained to me, “I am doing my parents a good turn by keeping them ignorant of my activities, since they would really be shattered if they come to know what all I am up to.”

There is only one commandment in today’s India. “Thou can do any thing that will further thy cause as long as thou shall not get caught.”

So, by no means, do we have any higher moral authority to preach to the world. But, that’s not even the point here. The point is different societies have different cultures and those different cultures in turn, have different strengths and weaknesses. Even assuming we fare better than a society in a certain respect, we still should not be preaching.

Indians need to understand that the general curiosity Americans express about an unknown culture, should not be mistaken with a carte blanche to pour their hearts away.

It’s better to answer a specific question with a specific answer and play it by the ear.

If somebody is genuinely interested, they will ask you the next leading question any way.

Also, India, as a nation and as a society, is such a complex entity, there are very few Indians who can claim to know about her well enough to answer somebody’s questions.

Plus, never make the mistake of thinking that you know every thing about America, simply because you have watched a few television shows or a few Hollywood movies or interacted with a few Americans at work. Indians live outside the range of America’s mainstream activities and are acutely ignorant of a lot of ground realities.

What if one day, an American turns around, breaks from his usual mode of politeness, and asks, “Is it true your is one of the most corrupt nations? Is it true you kill your girl children at birth, so you don’t have to pay dowry to get them married? Is it true, women are not respected in your country as you say, but vilified, abused, and harassed throughout their lives?”

What would you do then? Can you deny him with a straight face?

Judge not, lest you shall be judged, says the Bible. There is plenty of truth in it for the Indians to mull over.

We have made America our second home. True, we are a hard working lot and an asset to the U.S. economy. But, that’s not enough. Since, we are probably going to live here for a long time, probably raise our kids here, we need to learn to appreciate the finer aspects of other cultures, especially the American culture, and teach the same to our children. We can never be truly happy, if we keep yearning for Indian values in America. That’s simply not possible.

An open mind then, not a feeling of moral superiority.

Or else, it might very well be us Madonna would be singing about next….