Observing History

Vinaas Kaale Vipareeta Buddhi: Bal Thackeray has pushed himself and Shivsena downward by commenting on Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin's recent comment that “Mumbai belongs to India. I am a Maharashtrian and proud to be a Maharashtrian, but I am also an Indian,” It is necessary for heroes like Sachin to take a stand openly on grave issues like this as an Indian. It is not any celebrity tantrum but comes from the mouth of two stalwarts of Marathi manoos.The Sena supremo signed off with 'a friendly advice, in your own interest' to keep off politics, I hope our people will now keep Bal Thackery on the brinks of politics. All Indians are welcome to visit, live, stay and become Mumbaikars, but big question remains, how long it take for the city to own you?

In Brief about History: Once that was future, now is the past. I like it because, it makes me humble and give feeling my littleness and mortality. History is my favourite subject in reading for pass time from childhood. I read 10th history book at the tender age of 8 just for fun. Primarily, history is like story book interlinked with each other. Great, good and evil all are intermingled with each other with a huge background canvas. I am now trying to read history more as an inquiry of the past. History unlike maths offer personalized conclusion to the same events, that is indeed the beauty of it.

I have now come to half baked conclusion that history is full of wars, genocide and often power games. Migrants (even refugee) are the worst affected in first phase of war but most prosperous after war times. They impact the tradition, trade and even politics in a strong way. History is always written by the conquering forces. Oppressed has more sense of justice than oppressor, hence history should be studied always from the victim point of view to stand on the neutral point of view. History is like flowing in the waves of time. It gives you insight that it is better to die as unknown than to be lived by vanity driven ego. Someday, I hope to learn in the field of anthropology evolution and big bang. For me, they are more historical archives than human history. I read few days ago, a though provoking quote : The world began without the human race and will certainly end without it.—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1955

Warning from the Past: On 25 November 1949, Dr Ambedkar made speech in constituent Assembly of India. He speak out three warnings for the future [Source]:

1- The first concerned the place of popular protest in a democracy.

"It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and Satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us."

2- The second warning concerned the unthinking submission to charismatic authority. He quoted John Stuart Mill who cautioned citizens not 'to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with power which enable him to subvert their institutions. There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered life-long services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness. '

"This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country. For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship."

3- Ambedkar's final warning was to urge Indians 'not to be content with mere political democracy and make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. Indian Society is full of inequalities and hierarchy.

"On the social plane, India a society based on the principle of graded inequality which we have a society in which there are some who have immense wealth as against many who live in abject poverty. On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril."