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India’s Valentines

India’s ruling party, Narendra Modi’s own party, wants Indians to celebrate Valentine’s Day as Cow Hugging Day . Valentine is a Western concept, they inform us. India has a superior sexual morality. Like what you see in the classical temples of Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh, the Sun Temples of Odisha and Gujarat, Virupaksa of Hampi in Karnataka, the Jain temples of Rajasthan, the Sathyamurthy Perumal Temple of Tamil Nadu, and the Lingaraj Temple of Odisha. If I post pictures of the sculptures from those temples, Google may block my post as obscene because Google is Western and India is the West’s Guru now. But let me try anyway to put a representative pic or two here, just to give you an idea of what ancient Indian civilisation was offering to its temple devotees.  Just Google for Indian temple erotica for a lot, lot more India is a country that gave Kamasutra to the world. Kamasutra is not just a sex manual though any average man and some women too will love it as that. It describes

Enemies

  I was planning to take a holiday from my #WriteAPageADay commitment today when a friend’s message on WhatsApp woke me up this morning with the blow of a sledgehammer. The message was sent last night. As I am an early sleeper, it got my attention only this morning. And I decided that the message demanded more than a personal response, because I’m being bombarded with similar views from many sources these days. The crux of the message is this: As times change, politics need change too. Congress has lost itself. Marxism is redundant now. The right-wing politics of BJP is the ideal option for today’s India. “ If the majority Muslim countries can be declared Islamist, India (Bharat) can also declare herself Hindu Rashtra .” The message was written and sent by a Christian who is the principal of a Christian school in Bengaluru. He is a knowledgeable person with a doctorate in English literature, the morality of Thomas Hardy’s fatalism being his specialisation. I read his message l

The Turbulence of the Ganga

About twenty years ago, I made my first trek in the Garhwal Himalayas. Hemkunt, at an elevation of 15,000 feet above sea level was our destination. The principal of my school in Delhi at that time was a passionate mountaineer and it was he who arranged this, and later a few more, trek for the senior students and their teachers. I was not quite enthusiastic initially because I doubted my stamina to make the climbs. But I was happy that I went on those treks. I am happier now, looking back. They were quite unique and rare experiences. The first time in my life that I stood on the side of the highway and looked at the queer phenomenon of the Alaknanda and the Bhagirathi Rivers merging into one to become the Ganga at Devprayag was during that Hemkunt trip. It was queer because the Alaknanda is a crystal-clear river while the Bhagirathi is always turbulent. Their sources make the difference. The source is important. When I saw a picture of Devprayag in a Malayalam journal this morni

Digging up the past

Republic Day gave me a holiday after a long time. I used it for cleaning up my personal library. One of the tragic fates of books is they don’t stay with you for long. I lost most of my books because of the changes of my job-places. When I left Shillong in 2001, I left most of my books behind; I sold them to a college library. It wasn’t easy to transport things from the Northeast in those days. Moreover, my psychological condition was worse than my economic condition at that time and I sold whatever I could in order to get away from a place that had become a veritable hell for me. A few books were carried, however, to Delhi, my new place. I was going to Delhi without any hope. Nobody had offered me any job there. Maggie’s brother was there and he said, “Come if you wish.” He was more than kind. Magnanimous. Probably, he was concerned about his sister. I couldn’t obviously carry too many things to my brother-in-law’s flat in Delhi. That’s the major reason I got rid of my books. Bu

Is Modi India’s Guarantee?

Modi was in Kerala the other day. His speech was distressingly interspersed with the ominous phrase “Modi’s guarantee”. For example, he would say: “Every Indian will have a toilet, this is Modi’s guarantee” or “India will be a $5 trillion economy, this is Modi’s guarantee.” This morning, the latest edition of a Malayalam weekly, Sathyadeepam , reached me along with other subscribed publications. I was impressed by its editorial. Please allow me translate it and bring it to you because I think it deserves to be read by many more people than the limited subscribers of Sathyadeepam . Those who wish to read it in the original Malayalam can do so here . The translation is not literal, I have taken the liberty to edit it for the sake of better clarity to a non-Keralite reader. I hope the Sathyadeepam editor will forgive my transgressions. M odi is not the guarantee, the country's constitution is . Since the prime minister has the constitutional obligation to ensure development and se

Decline of Democracy and Rise of Strong Leader

Half of the world’s population will go to the polls this year. Forty countries will be voting for a new government in 2024. That will be 3.2 billion people exercising their democratic privilege of choosing who will govern them. If we add the local body elections and county/state elections, then the number of countries going to the polls will rise to 76. Open Society Foundations of the USA conducted a survey a few months back to study the health of democracy in various countries. The survey covered 36,000 adults each (18 years and above) from 30 countries including India. That is a mammoth survey. Some of the findings may be a little disturbing for those who love democracy.  A large number of youngsters seem to be losing faith in democracy, according to the survey results. While among the people in the age group of 56 and above, 26% preferred a strong leader to democracy, the percentage of youngsters (18-35 years) who made the same choice was 35. Nearly half of this latter group

Aryans

  Book Review Title: Aryans: The Search for a People, a Place and a Myth Author: Charles Allen Publisher: Hatchette India, 2023 Pages: 387 This is a book that has the potential to enrage the Right wing of India. It subverts the entire attempt of Modi Inc to arrogate the roots of Aryan racehood to India. The Aryans did not originate in India, this book asserts with sufficient scientific proofs. They came to India across the Himalayas in a very natural process of migration. All migrations were not invasions necessarily. But all successful mass migrations do affect the native population adversely one way or the other. The Harappan and Mohenjo-Daro civilisations had nothing to do with Aryans unless we consider the possibility of their being driven to extinction by the Aryans. This the 26 th and the last book of Charles Allen, a traveller, historian and scholar on India. Allen – who says that his very name comes from the word ‘Aryan’ – died in 2020 without completing this bo

Callousness

One of those old wells in Kerala [Pic from Mathrubhumi weekly, 7 Jan 2024] The Bombay Samachar dated 19 Dec 1936 reported a tragic event from Kalady [birthplace of Adi Sankara], Kerala. The report was about the child of a young mother that fell into a well. The hapless mother cried for help but no one rendered any assistance. Wells were not very common in those days especially because Kerala had a large number of natural water bodies such as rivers and lakes. The few wells that did exist were not accessible to everyone. Most of the wells belonged to the high caste people. The low caste people were not even allowed to go anywhere near the wells, even the public ones. If they did, the water would become polluted. Then there would be a whole lot of rituals to cleanse the well. The Bombay Samachar reported that a stranger happened to pass by and he readily got down into the well and saved the child. The man was appreciated and congratulated for his goodness and courage. But soon his

Identity Crisis

I suffer from identity crisis quite frequently these days. Every year in November, I face the most acute crisis because I have to prove to my government that I am alive. Otherwise the princely monthly sum of Rs 1812 (about 21USD) that I get from my most magnanimous government [“Modi’s guarantee,” as Modiji himself shouts from the rooftop these days ] as pension for having been a teacher for four decades will be terminated. ‘Life Certificate,’ the government calls it. It states that I am not dead yet as on the date when I go to any of those government machineries and give my thumb impression to prove that I am not dead so that I will get my pension . We don’t expect governments to be sensitive, of course. In fact, toilet seats are more sensitive than any government. [Prove me wrong, if you are part of any government. My personal conviction is that government is the biggest looter in any country.] Oh, ah, that sounds seditious. In my country, it can even mean my arrest. I live in the

India Today’s own Narendra Modi

India Today to Narendra Modi : What about creation of jobs? Narendra Modi : As for creation of jobs, it has been the topmost priority of my government. All our efforts have been geared to this task. The above question-answer is from India Today ’s latest edition, which is an out and out eulogy to Narendra Modi who is given the Newsmaker of the Year Award by the weekly. Now let’s look at a news item from India Today ’s website: A Romanian flight carrying 276 Indian passengers landed in Mumbai early on Tuesday after being grounded in France four days ago over suspected human trafficking . It was not human trafficking. It was a whole airplane of people leaving India illegally but voluntarily to find jobs in the USA or Canada or any country better than Modi’s India. Ironically, most of these ‘illegal’ jobseekers are from Modi’s own Gujarat which he claims in the India Today interview as the state made ideal by him. “When I became chief minister of Gujarat in 2001, the size of i

Face of the Faceless

“When you choose to fight for truth and justice, you will have to face serious threats.” Sister Rani Maria, the protagonist of the movie, is counselled by her mother in a letter. Face of the Faceless is a movie that shows how serious those threats are. This movie is a biopic. It shows us the life of a Catholic nun who dedicated her life to serve some Adivasis of Madhya Pradesh [MP] and ended up as a martyr. If it were not a real story, this movie would have been an absolute flop. Since it is the real story of not only a nun but also the impoverished and terribly exploited Adivasis in a particular village of MP, it keeps you engrossed. It is a sad movie, right from the beginning to the end. It is a story of the good versus evil, the powerless versus the powerful, the heroic versus the villainous, the divine versus the diabolic. Having said that, I must hasten to add one conspicuous fact: the movie does not ever present Christianity or its religious practices as the only right way

Kochi's bomb and India's love

The explosions that shook Kochi yesterday morning brought a lot of messages and phone calls to me. Many of them were from friends of yesteryears, people who hadn’t contacted me for a long time. Their concern did touch me; it made me realise how much goodness there still is in our world. One such call was from Shillong, the place where I worked from 1986 to 2001. The person who called was my colleague for just one year, my first year in Shillong. His call yesterday evening struck me particularly because his concern was immensely palpable. It brought back a flood of memories – my walks with him through the narrow concrete paths of Shillong’s entrails. He knew all the shortcuts in the town and hills have plenty of time-saving shortcuts. He was my first guide in Shillong. Now, retired from government service, he is an active pastor. His concern reached out beyond me as an individual to whole communities as he discussed Kerala's demographics and the intricate relationships between commu

North vs South

Dr Shashi Tharoor delivered the keynote address at Dakshin Dialogues 2023 in Bengaluru recently. An edited version of the speech is given in the Open magazine of 30 Oct 2023. I would like to draw the attention of the readers to the salient points raised by Tharoor. India rewards the brute demographic advantages of the north to the detriment of the south. The south is exploited brutally by the Modi government whose policies are all meant for transmuting India into some bizarre entity envisaged as Hindi-Hindutva-Hindustan. A very obvious illustration of this exploitation is the reduction of funds for the southern states year after year. For every rupee of the tax paid by UP, they receive Rs 1.79 from the centre, and Karnataka receives Re 0.47. Tharoor points out bluntly, “The irony is that historically, the South has been subsidising the North.” Karnataka meets 72% of its expenses from the state’s own taxes while Bihar is able to meet a mere 23% of its expenses by itself. UP, Biha