What's in a Surname?

I read a book review of 'The Indians' By Sudhir Kakar & Katharina Kakar in the blog of my freind Abdusalaam al-Hindi. I will quote a paragraph of the book as it shows about Indians particularly deep rooted in Hindus.

The inner experience of caste : The preoccupation of the caste system with high and low has been associated with suffering and humiliation for several millions through the centuries. As the Marathi poet Govindraj puts it, Hindu society is made up of men 'who bow their heads to the kicks from above and who simultaneously give a kick below, never thinking to resist the one or refrain from the other.' The hierarchy is so fine tuned that even a low caste will always find another caste that is inferior to it, thus mitigating some of the narcissistic injury suffered by it at being seen as inferior. Thus for instance, 'among those lowest scavenging sections which remove night soil there is still a distinction: those who serve in private houses consider themselves higher than those who clean public latrines.' [pp 27, 28]

Few trends happening in our society are shocking and need immediate attention : Khap Panchayat rulings and rape cases against lower caste women. These are two sensitive news stories traced by me on these issue.

Doomed by Caste Damned by Gender: Rape continues to be a weapon of oppression against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh, despite the state having a Chief Minister who is herself a woman and a Dalit. Tracked by Shobhita Naithani of Tehelka.

A Taliban Of Our Very Own: Murder, rape and exile are routine punishments for these parallel Parliaments. Neha Dixit of Tehelka tracks Khap panchayats across north India and covers this burning issue.

There is the bulk of crime happening in the name of honour and caste. Even if the coverage amounts to drive-by journalism generates a ton of anecdote and graphic details about individual case but not a pinch of leavening context to help frame and explain crime and mentality behind it. Let me quote of Dr. Ambedkar in this scenario:

“It is usual to hear all those who feel moved by the deplorable condition of the Untouchables unburden themselves by uttering the cry “We must do something for the Untouchables”. One seldom hears any of the persons interested in the problem saying ‘Let us do something to change the Touchable Hindu.’ ”

When the elite practices social and castiest discrimination in the daily lives, the social order below will follow that only. Bottom up civil consciousness on caste or gender discrimination is absent in our country. Our society is clashing with the struggle between doing the right thing and doing the honorable thing. There should be absolutely no place for traditions that deny another human being dignity.

Mistakes are understandable in this fight. Surrendering isn’t. Whether who will prevail is another matter, there is a limit beyond which law cannot be further broken and conscience further outraged. I have asked a question in the title of the post: What's in a Surname? Its answer is : In A Casteist Society, Everything !

Interview With Jere Van Dyk

It is the most illuminating interview I have yet heard/read on the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Jere Van Dyk is a journalist and author who has focused much of his writing on Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the early 1980s, working as a correspondent for The New York Times, Van Dyk lived with the mujahideen in Afghanistan as they fought against the Soviet Army, an experience that was recapped in his Pulitzer Prize-nominated articles. 20 years later, he returned to Afghanistan to report on the U.S.-led war, only to be captured and held by the Taliban for 45 days in 2008. This harrowing experience, as well as his insights into this "pointless" war, are detailed in his new book "Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban." He is currently a consultant on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and al-Qaeda for CBS News.

I stop for while

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.

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. :)

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.