Its like a drug
I fall into the abyss
The time ticks on slowly
I fear to be hit by the bottom
Fear grows in me deep
To be hurt at any moment
Dark fathom awaits me
I want to stop for while
A will to survive inside heart
Logic prevails for the death
The beauty has long gone now
Alone awaits ego in the journey
No reason to live now
And I fall into the abyss.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Reforming the Hindus -1
In Indian society one is surrounded by false values right from birth irrespective of religious background. Rare People try to change the notion of modernism and put reforms in this plural democratic nation. Today, the language of secularism and equality is different from ground realities.
Despite faith based flaws of Abhrahmic religion, it considers all humans equal. While Hindu considers and see people in hierarchical manner. Leave this old theoretical aspect of religion and culture aside. Look into Hindu Law (not obsolete and biased Manu Smriti) through insight of an excellent article of Ramchandra Guha :
Those who want to explore the details of these changes are directed to Mulla's massive Principles of Hindu Law (now in its 18th edition), or to the works of the leading authority on the subject, Professor J.D.M. Derrett. For our purposes, it is enough to summarise the major changes as follows; (1) For the first time, the widow and daughter were awarded the same share of property as the son; (2) for the first time, women were allowed to divorce a cruel or negligent husband; (3) for the first time, the husband was prohibited from taking a second wife; (4) for the first time, a man and woman of different castes could be married under Hindu law; (5) for the first time, a Hindu couple could adopt a child of a different caste.
BJP is termed as Brahmin Bania party in public and it has gained popularity with economic reforms and growing Hindu nationalism. It always jumps on proving the role of Hindus as reform supporting and secular. That is indeed true but not because of them for sure. Now, our RSS and BJP supporter guys should be asking for the constructive role of their party in the Hindu law reforms. I will tell that also ( same source as before) :
In the vanguard of the opposition was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In a single year, 1949, the RSS organised as many as 79 meetings in Delhi where effigies of Nehru and Ambedkar were burnt, and where the new Bill was denounced as an attack on Hindu culture and tradition.
A major leader of the movement against the new Bill was a certain Swami Karpatri. In speeches in Delhi and elsewhere, he challenged Ambedkar to a public debate on the new Code. To the Law Minister's claim that the Shastras did not really favour polygamy, Swami Karpatri quoted Yagnavalkya: "If the wife is a habitual drunkard, a confirmed invalid, a cunning, a barren or a spendthrift woman, if she is bitter-tongued, if she has got only daughters and no son, if she hates her husband, (then) the husband can marry a second wife even while the first is living." The Swami supplied the precise citation for this injunction: the third verse of the third chapter of the third section of Yagnavalkya's Smriti on marriage. He did not however tell us whether the injunction also allowed the wife to take another husband if the existing one was a drunkard, bitter-tongued, a spendthrift, etc.
Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B.R. Ambedkar are the reformers who pushed the limits of high caste and class oriented Hindus towards reforms. There was opposition from upper caste leaders of congress but that were brushed aside by charismatic and soft dictatorial nature of Jawaharlal Nehru. Again quoting the same article:
These three great reformers were Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B.R. Ambedkar. Gandhi and Nehru, working together, helped Hindus make their peace with modern ideas of democracy and secularism. Gandhi and Ambedkar, working by contrasting methods and in opposition to one another, made Hindus recognise the evils and horrors of the system of untouchability. Nehru and Ambedkar, working sometimes together, sometimes separately, forced Hindus to grant, in law if not always in practice, equal rights to their women.
I will like to express one more blow on the defenders of new Hindutva forces. Like any other religion, they also shed their brains in the matter of faith (as defenders of Islamic forces shouted on the ban of the veil in France). Around 1987, BJP insisted, that if a widow volunteers to burn herself on her husband’s pyre, her choice should be respected. Look in the Hindu article for details.
It is most difficult to enact resides where our old, entrenched interest have grown deep, stubborn roots. The strength of any culture will always be reason and flexibility, not dogma and posturing. That had helped in past and will guide Hindus in the future also. Hindus don't have to be brilliant to see this but must be committed towards equality of gender and cast, seeing the initiative through. And upcoming this requires massive popular will. The inability to argue out issues without being tagged with labels has allowed a cobweb of ad ideas to persist in our approach to democratic discussion. Don't know what I will be tagged as after this post. :)
Despite faith based flaws of Abhrahmic religion, it considers all humans equal. While Hindu considers and see people in hierarchical manner. Leave this old theoretical aspect of religion and culture aside. Look into Hindu Law (not obsolete and biased Manu Smriti) through insight of an excellent article of Ramchandra Guha :
Those who want to explore the details of these changes are directed to Mulla's massive Principles of Hindu Law (now in its 18th edition), or to the works of the leading authority on the subject, Professor J.D.M. Derrett. For our purposes, it is enough to summarise the major changes as follows; (1) For the first time, the widow and daughter were awarded the same share of property as the son; (2) for the first time, women were allowed to divorce a cruel or negligent husband; (3) for the first time, the husband was prohibited from taking a second wife; (4) for the first time, a man and woman of different castes could be married under Hindu law; (5) for the first time, a Hindu couple could adopt a child of a different caste.
BJP is termed as Brahmin Bania party in public and it has gained popularity with economic reforms and growing Hindu nationalism. It always jumps on proving the role of Hindus as reform supporting and secular. That is indeed true but not because of them for sure. Now, our RSS and BJP supporter guys should be asking for the constructive role of their party in the Hindu law reforms. I will tell that also ( same source as before) :
In the vanguard of the opposition was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In a single year, 1949, the RSS organised as many as 79 meetings in Delhi where effigies of Nehru and Ambedkar were burnt, and where the new Bill was denounced as an attack on Hindu culture and tradition.
A major leader of the movement against the new Bill was a certain Swami Karpatri. In speeches in Delhi and elsewhere, he challenged Ambedkar to a public debate on the new Code. To the Law Minister's claim that the Shastras did not really favour polygamy, Swami Karpatri quoted Yagnavalkya: "If the wife is a habitual drunkard, a confirmed invalid, a cunning, a barren or a spendthrift woman, if she is bitter-tongued, if she has got only daughters and no son, if she hates her husband, (then) the husband can marry a second wife even while the first is living." The Swami supplied the precise citation for this injunction: the third verse of the third chapter of the third section of Yagnavalkya's Smriti on marriage. He did not however tell us whether the injunction also allowed the wife to take another husband if the existing one was a drunkard, bitter-tongued, a spendthrift, etc.
Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B.R. Ambedkar are the reformers who pushed the limits of high caste and class oriented Hindus towards reforms. There was opposition from upper caste leaders of congress but that were brushed aside by charismatic and soft dictatorial nature of Jawaharlal Nehru. Again quoting the same article:
These three great reformers were Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B.R. Ambedkar. Gandhi and Nehru, working together, helped Hindus make their peace with modern ideas of democracy and secularism. Gandhi and Ambedkar, working by contrasting methods and in opposition to one another, made Hindus recognise the evils and horrors of the system of untouchability. Nehru and Ambedkar, working sometimes together, sometimes separately, forced Hindus to grant, in law if not always in practice, equal rights to their women.
I will like to express one more blow on the defenders of new Hindutva forces. Like any other religion, they also shed their brains in the matter of faith (as defenders of Islamic forces shouted on the ban of the veil in France). Around 1987, BJP insisted, that if a widow volunteers to burn herself on her husband’s pyre, her choice should be respected. Look in the Hindu article for details.
It is most difficult to enact resides where our old, entrenched interest have grown deep, stubborn roots. The strength of any culture will always be reason and flexibility, not dogma and posturing. That had helped in past and will guide Hindus in the future also. Hindus don't have to be brilliant to see this but must be committed towards equality of gender and cast, seeing the initiative through. And upcoming this requires massive popular will. The inability to argue out issues without being tagged with labels has allowed a cobweb of ad ideas to persist in our approach to democratic discussion. Don't know what I will be tagged as after this post. :)
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Dictatorship and Democracy -1
It's a great myth that democratic nations support democracy in other parts of the world. China and India are on the same page in the case of maintaining relationship with Burma's dictatorship government. Both of these developing nation will eevntually walk on the same path of USA i.e. supporting puppet dictators for its own development. There is no doubt on the rise of US economy after 2nd world war. Let's have close look on foreign policy of American government in last 60 years.
Pakistan prominent newspaper, Dawn covered a pin pointing editorial on relationship of America and Dictators : Would Pakistan in the 21st century be wracked by militancy and terrorism if the US hadn’t supported Gen Zia and pumped millions into the Afghan ‘jihad’?
The point here is that America has long been hand in glove with military dictators and varied despots, not just in Pakistan but across the globe. In Central and South America it has even engineered coups to oust democratically elected administrations. Bloodbaths followed but that did not deter the US from throwing its full weight behind regimes that were answerable to no one but Washington. US foreign policy inflicted grievous harm on countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile and Nicaragua in the Americas and Indonesia and the Philippines in the east.
Then there was the generous support for the likes of Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran and of course every single Pakistani dictator dating back to Gen Ayub Khan. A lot of this had to do with the exigencies of the Cold War. But the fact remains that the US itself has derailed democracy throughout the world.
I am not asiding the era of cold war in dealing with the issue of American interference. Yet, the moral policing of American government has not stopped post soviet era.
The Southasian Idea commented long back on the backdrop of USA in Iraninan youths protest against forged elections: This is not the first time that an election is being stolen in Iran. Only American citizens remain uninformed of what happened in 1953. [There was a 1953 CIA coup against Iran's democratically elected prime minister.] And that was not an aberration: leave aside Chile (known in Latin America as the first 9/11) and the banana republics of Central America, the US government has even intervened in elections in Greece and Italy during the 1960s. There is need to ask the question: Why? Why has even the American government been so scared of democracy? And why does it desire democracy in Iraq but not in Saudi Arabia?
In the coming blog post, we will discuss that there is huge relation between development and mode of governance in the state. Till now, the readers would have easily guessed the answer of question : Why does USA desire democracy in Iraq but not in Saudi Arabia? Oil.
Pakistan prominent newspaper, Dawn covered a pin pointing editorial on relationship of America and Dictators : Would Pakistan in the 21st century be wracked by militancy and terrorism if the US hadn’t supported Gen Zia and pumped millions into the Afghan ‘jihad’?
The point here is that America has long been hand in glove with military dictators and varied despots, not just in Pakistan but across the globe. In Central and South America it has even engineered coups to oust democratically elected administrations. Bloodbaths followed but that did not deter the US from throwing its full weight behind regimes that were answerable to no one but Washington. US foreign policy inflicted grievous harm on countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile and Nicaragua in the Americas and Indonesia and the Philippines in the east.
Then there was the generous support for the likes of Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran and of course every single Pakistani dictator dating back to Gen Ayub Khan. A lot of this had to do with the exigencies of the Cold War. But the fact remains that the US itself has derailed democracy throughout the world.
I am not asiding the era of cold war in dealing with the issue of American interference. Yet, the moral policing of American government has not stopped post soviet era.
The Southasian Idea commented long back on the backdrop of USA in Iraninan youths protest against forged elections: This is not the first time that an election is being stolen in Iran. Only American citizens remain uninformed of what happened in 1953. [There was a 1953 CIA coup against Iran's democratically elected prime minister.] And that was not an aberration: leave aside Chile (known in Latin America as the first 9/11) and the banana republics of Central America, the US government has even intervened in elections in Greece and Italy during the 1960s. There is need to ask the question: Why? Why has even the American government been so scared of democracy? And why does it desire democracy in Iraq but not in Saudi Arabia?
In the coming blog post, we will discuss that there is huge relation between development and mode of governance in the state. Till now, the readers would have easily guessed the answer of question : Why does USA desire democracy in Iraq but not in Saudi Arabia? Oil.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Ten Issues - 6
1- Transparency and Poverty in India: It is interview of Aruna Roy a prominent leader of the Right to Information movement and and Nikhil Dey.
2- Indian Culture: How does one define “Indian Culture”? And more importantly, why is “Indian Culture” always defined in terms of what women should and should not do?
3-A World Split Apart by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University published June 1978. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a writer and Through his writings he helped to make the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, two of his best-known works.
4- Food security - of APL, BPL and IPL : The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed. The truth is the government seeks ways to spend less and less on the very food security it talks about, writes P Sainath.
5- The Longest Take of Their Lives: This is related to much talked movie Peepli Live making news due to Amir Khan marketing skill. This article is about director Anusha Rizvi and her casting and co-director husband Mahmood Farooqui. Their families wounded each other from opposite sides of the literary wars. Now with their debut film Peepli Live, Anusha Rizvi and Mahmood Farooqui are ready to take the fight to low culture.
6- Central Bureau of Investigation : It is Central Bureau of Investigation in JK, Elsewhere, Congress Bureau of Investigation. Hard question asked by Reporter on the credibility of CBI.
7-For the Children : For a parent, there is a lot to learn too – understanding the underpinnings of Hindu mythology and more importantly how to introduce children to it. Dr. Pattanaik gives a elegant answers to all.
8- India Today: Cultural Intolerance among Fundamentalist Hindus.
9- Why Adding Followers Alone Won’t Build Your Community : Understanding about social media following where the evidence is clear: the quality of the communities you build is much more important than the size of your following.
10- Knowledge is not a shovel: The primary aim of education, however one understands it, must be to nurture the ability to reflect, to develop new ideas, and to implement these collectively, writes Gesine Schwan. Cognitive multilingualism is the only way to prevent the specialization of knowledge narrowing our horizons to an extent that results in structural irresponsibility.
Quote of the Day: Bush's foreign policy was very simple: fuck the world. Obama's is very simple, too: talk pretty and do nothing. -by Evert Cilliers (aka Adam Ash)
2- Indian Culture: How does one define “Indian Culture”? And more importantly, why is “Indian Culture” always defined in terms of what women should and should not do?
3-A World Split Apart by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University published June 1978. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a writer and Through his writings he helped to make the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, two of his best-known works.
4- Food security - of APL, BPL and IPL : The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed. The truth is the government seeks ways to spend less and less on the very food security it talks about, writes P Sainath.
5- The Longest Take of Their Lives: This is related to much talked movie Peepli Live making news due to Amir Khan marketing skill. This article is about director Anusha Rizvi and her casting and co-director husband Mahmood Farooqui. Their families wounded each other from opposite sides of the literary wars. Now with their debut film Peepli Live, Anusha Rizvi and Mahmood Farooqui are ready to take the fight to low culture.
6- Central Bureau of Investigation : It is Central Bureau of Investigation in JK, Elsewhere, Congress Bureau of Investigation. Hard question asked by Reporter on the credibility of CBI.
7-For the Children : For a parent, there is a lot to learn too – understanding the underpinnings of Hindu mythology and more importantly how to introduce children to it. Dr. Pattanaik gives a elegant answers to all.
8- India Today: Cultural Intolerance among Fundamentalist Hindus.
9- Why Adding Followers Alone Won’t Build Your Community : Understanding about social media following where the evidence is clear: the quality of the communities you build is much more important than the size of your following.
10- Knowledge is not a shovel: The primary aim of education, however one understands it, must be to nurture the ability to reflect, to develop new ideas, and to implement these collectively, writes Gesine Schwan. Cognitive multilingualism is the only way to prevent the specialization of knowledge narrowing our horizons to an extent that results in structural irresponsibility.
Quote of the Day: Bush's foreign policy was very simple: fuck the world. Obama's is very simple, too: talk pretty and do nothing. -by Evert Cilliers (aka Adam Ash)
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Why the world needs WikiLeaks !
I often blog about culture but partially global politics. I do care about injustice, but the global scale and systematic nature of it has left me stunned. There is so much attempt to curb our freedom, liberty and public information in the name of secrecy and security. This blog post is compiled in the span of 30 minutes as soon as I became aware of about Wikileak.
Wikileaks is an international organization, based in Sweden. It publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents while preserving the anonymity of sources. It has set a new standard in free information flow across the world. Afghanistan War Logs, Baghdad airstrike video, Guantánamo Bay procedures, 2008 Peru oil scandal and Toxic dumping in Africa: The Minton report are few important leaks of the secret government documents. You can read more about them in encyclopedia.
It is more productive to engage with, rather than censor. There is an intimate and indissoluble link between intellectual and political freedom. There will be no security for dissidents and their families as long as freedom of thought and freedom of political action are guaranteed by the law of the land. Now I will rest my case and will not write anything. Just watch this TED interview of Julian Assange, Editor in chief and spokesperson for Wikileaks.
Why the world needs WikiLeaks ! (MUST WATCH)
Afghanistan War Logs : More than 90,000 secret military records of the US war in Afghanistan were published online Sunday providing new evidence that Americans have been misled for years about the war in Afghanistan. And, The White House and its international partners today sharply condemned the action like all authorities do while undermining the new facts raised by the document. Check 'The Afghan War Diary' for full details.
Baghdad airstrike video: A secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then fired blindly. This footage of July 2007 attack made public as Pentagon identifies website as threat to national security. See yourself full version of this disturbing video.
An article in Guardian describes the video. To quote a few lines: "The lead helicopter, using the moniker Crazyhorse, opens fire. `Hahaha. I hit 'em," shouts one of the American crew. Another responds a little later: "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards." The article goes on to say "The behaviour of the pilots is like a computer game." and that's absolutely true, as you'll see.
But, I am here for something more than that. I am here for Bradley Manning, the person who chooses his consciousness to reveal these secrets to common public. Manning allegedly told journalist and former hacker Adrian Lamo via instant messenging that he had leaked the "Collateral Murder" video (of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike), in addition to a video of the Granai airstrike and around 260,000 diplomatic cables, to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. He is the whistle blower that we should be proud of and take inspiration in fight against injustice. Kudos to Wikileaks also for their endeavours !
In May 2010, a 22-year-old American Army intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning was arrested after telling Adrian Lamo he had leaked the airstrike video, along with a video of another airstrike and around 260 000 diplomatic cables, to Wikileaks. As of June 7, Manning had not yet been formally charged. Manning said that the diplomatic documents expose "almost criminal political back dealings" and that they explain "how the first world exploits the third, in detail". Wikileaks said "allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect". Wikileaks have said that they are unable as yet to confirm whether or not Manning was actually the source of the video, stating "we never collect personal information on our sources", but saying also that "if Brad Manning [is the] whistleblower then, without doubt, he's a national hero" and "we have taken steps to arrange for his protection and legal defence". (citing from wiki)
Julian Assange says that Wikileaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined: That's not something I say as a way of saying how successful we are - rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media. How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined? It's disgraceful. [Source]
Wikileaks is an international organization, based in Sweden. It publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents while preserving the anonymity of sources. It has set a new standard in free information flow across the world. Afghanistan War Logs, Baghdad airstrike video, Guantánamo Bay procedures, 2008 Peru oil scandal and Toxic dumping in Africa: The Minton report are few important leaks of the secret government documents. You can read more about them in encyclopedia.
It is more productive to engage with, rather than censor. There is an intimate and indissoluble link between intellectual and political freedom. There will be no security for dissidents and their families as long as freedom of thought and freedom of political action are guaranteed by the law of the land. Now I will rest my case and will not write anything. Just watch this TED interview of Julian Assange, Editor in chief and spokesperson for Wikileaks.
Why the world needs WikiLeaks ! (MUST WATCH)
Afghanistan War Logs : More than 90,000 secret military records of the US war in Afghanistan were published online Sunday providing new evidence that Americans have been misled for years about the war in Afghanistan. And, The White House and its international partners today sharply condemned the action like all authorities do while undermining the new facts raised by the document. Check 'The Afghan War Diary' for full details.
Baghdad airstrike video: A secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then fired blindly. This footage of July 2007 attack made public as Pentagon identifies website as threat to national security. See yourself full version of this disturbing video.
An article in Guardian describes the video. To quote a few lines: "The lead helicopter, using the moniker Crazyhorse, opens fire. `Hahaha. I hit 'em," shouts one of the American crew. Another responds a little later: "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards." The article goes on to say "The behaviour of the pilots is like a computer game." and that's absolutely true, as you'll see.
But, I am here for something more than that. I am here for Bradley Manning, the person who chooses his consciousness to reveal these secrets to common public. Manning allegedly told journalist and former hacker Adrian Lamo via instant messenging that he had leaked the "Collateral Murder" video (of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike), in addition to a video of the Granai airstrike and around 260,000 diplomatic cables, to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. He is the whistle blower that we should be proud of and take inspiration in fight against injustice. Kudos to Wikileaks also for their endeavours !
In May 2010, a 22-year-old American Army intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning was arrested after telling Adrian Lamo he had leaked the airstrike video, along with a video of another airstrike and around 260 000 diplomatic cables, to Wikileaks. As of June 7, Manning had not yet been formally charged. Manning said that the diplomatic documents expose "almost criminal political back dealings" and that they explain "how the first world exploits the third, in detail". Wikileaks said "allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect". Wikileaks have said that they are unable as yet to confirm whether or not Manning was actually the source of the video, stating "we never collect personal information on our sources", but saying also that "if Brad Manning [is the] whistleblower then, without doubt, he's a national hero" and "we have taken steps to arrange for his protection and legal defence". (citing from wiki)
Julian Assange says that Wikileaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined: That's not something I say as a way of saying how successful we are - rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media. How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined? It's disgraceful. [Source]
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