Dheeraj Kalgutkar

Rivers, Forests, Women: How The Hindu Society Often Defiles And Destroys What It Claims to Love And Revere

2026-07-03T11:08:54.158-07:00

There are always a dozen ways to look at things. Some of those ways lead to change that is beneficial to larger people and some to inaction and continued benefit of few. The ongoing project or rather ghastly movement to cut as many trees as possible, to clear as much forest land as possible remains one such thing which is being looked at and discussed in very many ways. But from most discussions, one key angle and detail is getting missed out or perhaps overlooked by the very people who surely have a stake in status quo. The political movement that most loudly claims Hindu reverence for nature has itself overseen or defended many of these projects.

Hasdeo Arand is one of India’s largest contiguous forest regions, where the Narendra Modi government has marked 95,000 plus trees for chopping. Many have already been chopped along with 800 hectares of forest being diverted for mining activities that will benefit his friend and donor Gautam Adani, in whose plane Mr Modi campaigned for various elections in his early years before he became India’s Prime Minister. This close relationship between Narendra Modi and Gautam Adani is evident in how projects get rewarded to his company or how his rivals just before being takenover from Adani receive notices from government agencies. We are in fact, in the 12th year of his payback time. Gautam Adani was born in a Gujarati Jain family. People who follow Jainism claim that they do not harm any organism, they do not even eat plant products that are grown underground so as not to harm soil organisms. Recently, during Eid, they rescued animals slated for Eid sacrifice. On the contrary, I could not find any major Jain organisation publicly opposing Adani’s Hasdeo projects. He is destroying such a large forest and with it not just killing tiny soil organisms but also large animals as well who will not just lose their home and habitat but also their life as forests get cleared.

In 2023, Chhattisgarh got a new government headed by Narendra Modi’s party, and soon followed a government “decision approving forest clearance for a mining project — that potentially paves the way for the felling of 4.5 lakh trees.” Narendra Modi, RSS and BJP all together claim to represent and protect Hindu interests. There is an overarching belief among Hindus that they respect and, in fact, pray to Mother Nature and trees. And yet the Hindu-Hriday-Samrat, the most loved and greatest Hindu on planet earth right now, is doing everything under his power to destroy the very things his religion claims to revere. And despite these anti-religious activities, he gets re-elected claiming he is their only hope in protecting their religious interests. Which begs the question, what exactly are the Hindu religious interests and how do they align with making money for Adani by hook or crook?

More read: Rajasthan judge who ruled against Adani-led firm transferred the same day

A view of the Hasdeo Arand forest. Photo: Supriya Sharma for scroll.in

Forests of Gadchiroli are largely occupied by Naxalites, or so it was until recently, when the government cleared these forests from their control. Some 80 Naxalites were hunted down by government forces. These forests have been inhabited for ages by tribals and adivasis. Rightfully, it is to them that these jungles belong. But who were these forests land given after the Naxal clearance? I mean, why was the government spending so many resources, money and also bodies of armed forces and police? Why was the government so invested in clearing these forests of Maoists? Was it to bring development to locals? Nope. The government has gifted the forest and mines under it to the Lloyds group owned by the Sharmas. Some one lakh trees are cut from the area to help them mine the resources. If the forest could vote, surely the trees would side with the Naxals and not the Sharmas and Hindus who claim to revere and pray to Mother Nature but are always at the forefront of cutting them down at short notice.

Char Dham Highway Project is more direct and so more absurd in its goal and how that goal is being achieved. It is akin to killing the poor by driving over them to reduce poverty. It will rightfully reduce the number of poor and statistically achieve the goal of reducing poverty. The union government’s ambitious Char Dham road project — that will link the shrine towns of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri through widening and strengthening of Himalayan roads — is leading to the felling of over 56,000 trees in the ecologically fragile mountain ranges. Hindus worship trees, Hindus also worship statues inside a temple and now to reach these temples they need more wider roads because existing roads are inconvenient to them or are getting them to these temples with slight delays and so as to reach sooner they are now killing the living trees who they say they also worship. Make sense of it.

It’s comic how the most trees are cut by Hindus (and a Jain) in India — Modi, Adani, Fadnavis, etc. — who also claim to worship trees, nature and so on. Muslims and Christians who somehow don’t claim to do tree worship end up not featuring on forest-levellers list. Same with rivers — Hindus claim to worship it but also pollute it the most, while the Christian world somehow manages to have clean rivers. This contradiction resembles India’s continuing refusal to criminalise marital rape - an institution that publicly celebrates sacred marriage, a religion that tomtoms its female gods while also legally permitting what many democracies recognise as rape. Rape is exploitation in a way, and in marital rape, you do it to your partner, someone you claim to love, someone you vowed to protect and guard in front of a large crowd in a wedding involving religious invocations. So if you think about it, it is customary in India to abuse or exploit whatever you claim in public to worship or love about.

From Varanasi to Kedarnath to Gangotri, most of the religious sites have had major infrastructure overhauls aimed at attracting more tourists and arranging amenities for these new arriving tourists. We are, in fact, building and building to attract tourists and give rise to tourism at these places. It is expected of governments to do this to raise revenue for the state. It only sees profits like any corporation. But the BJP government was supposed to be a government of the Hindus elected to protect and further Hindu interests. It was understood that these were people who understood religion, respected it and were here to protect the ancient heritage and culture around it. What is the purpose of religious places? What did you hear before 2014 from people who visited or desired to visit Varanasi or Haridwar?

1,700-1,800 trees are proposed for removal in the Tapovan area in preparation for the Nashik Kumbh Mela. Similarly there’s the case of proposed felling of 1,12,722 trees for the proposed 111-km Kanwar Yatra route along the Upper Ganga Canal in Uttar Pradesh. Both are purely Hindu religious events and trees are being cut for what is essentially not a permanent structure. The trees are cut here to make the devotees comfortable when they visit these areas. The idea behind is that the devotees have problem with trees here and they are inconvenienced by presence of trees while performing their religious functions. The religious functions are of course to please the gods and by that logic the inherent understanding is cutting of trees does not displease gods. But Hindus, we are repeatedly told love trees and also worship nature. The fine print here though is that this worship requires killing of those very trees they worship.

If you look closely everything Hindus tomtom about loving and worshiping in fact gets destroyed or damaged the most — think of trees for Kumbh Mela or Chardham yatra or River Ganga or the women when you think about how Hindu India has successively pushed back against criminalising marital rape while Muslim Pakistan criminalised it way back in 2006. So when a Hindu starts to worship anything or anyone, be really worried for their love is evidently lethal and devours the very thing it proclaims to worship.

If Hindu civilisation truly sees rivers, forests and mountains as sacred, then the question is not whether India should develop or not. The question is how are we developing and why development so often begins by destroying precisely those landscapes that Hindu tradition describes as divine. If reverence for nature is central to Hindu identity, should a government claiming to defend that identity not be held to an even higher environmental standard than any other?

And They Called Faiz an Unbeliever, an Atheist, a Communist and All Sorts Of Names

2026-01-14T09:31:00.000-08:00

The title is a comment under Sabhi Kuch Hai Tera Diya Hua Ghazal sung by Iqbal Bano and penned by Faiz Ahmad Faiz.

Iqbal Bano has sung select verses from Faiz’s ghazal. Full ghazal and its English translation are below. The translation is from me and is of course not perfect or anywhere close to poetic brilliance of Faiz but is only offered for those who don’t understand Urdu and can get some idea about what Faiz is trying to say.

सभी कुछ है तेरा दिया हुआ सभी राहतें सभी कुल्फ़तें
कभी सोहबतें कभी फ़ुर्क़तें कभी दूरियाँ कभी क़ुर्बतें

All comforts, all hardships, everything is granted by you
Moments of togetherness, separation, at times distance and intimacy

ये सुख़न जो हम ने रक़म किए ये हैं सब वरक़ तिरी याद के
कोई लम्हा सुब्ह-ए-विसाल का कोई शाम-ए-हिज्र की मुद्दतें

The pages that I have filled are in your memory
Some moments of morning’s union, some of evening’s separation

जो तुम्हारी मान लें नासेहा तो रहेगा दामन-ए-दिल में क्या
न किसी अदू की अदावतें न किसी सनम की मुरव्वतें

What will remain in this heart if I cede your counsel
Not the rage of enemy nor the kindness of love

चलो आओ तुम को दिखाएँ हम जो बचा है मक़्तल-ए-शहर में
ये मज़ार अहल-ए-सफ़ा के हैं ये हैं अहल-ए-सिद्क़ की तुर्बतें

Come lemme show you what remains in the blood soaked city
the shrines of revered saints here, in dirt the truthful people there

मिरी जान आज का ग़म न कर कि न जाने कातिब-ए-वक़्त ने
किसी अपने कल में भी भूल कर कहीं लिख रखी हों मसर्रतें

Don’t cry over today’s agony my love maybe the writer of destinies
By chance in his past has written happiness somewhere

Notice the tenderness of Faiz’s words, his complaints and requests. This is not someone who does not completely believe in god. There is no sarcasm in his tone. There is no snarkiness in the complaint.

Only when you believe in god so much, to an extent that you completely and unabashedly submit yourself, will you end up being disillusioned with his existence or extent of his power. It is in the moments when life pushes you to its extremities, to the limits of your being and to the verge of your strength and sustenance, in the moment when nothing appears to work or comes to your aid, you seek his intervention, you raise your hands in prayer, but no such solace comes. In those moments comes the realisation, the sense of abandonment, the apathy, more than disregard.

To believe a Faiz or Ghalib did not believe in god would be an oversimplification. They did not care enough to bother themselves about that question. Whether god existed or not ceases to matter when you’re at your wits' end and you do not see any help that is on your way. The realisation that you are by yourself in this life, that you only have yourself to blame or rely on, moots that question. For even if so and so exists, to him you do not matter, your struggles do not matter, at least not enough to intervene and help. And so Faiz and Ghalib lived their lives without desiring or inventing the imaginary intervention. They simply did not bother. They instead believed in taking complete control of their life and its means. They relied on themselves and people around them. But still, beyond their means, beyond their ability to sprout change, they hoped for help to come but above and beyond what they could do to the best of their abilities. They did not relax and sit themselves down in prayer and wasted theirself instead they put themselves to use by writing poetry which even today wakes up the tired and sleepy and moves them to action.

And they called him an unbeliever, an atheist, a communist and all sorts of names.

India Is Exploding With Illegal Infiltrators As Per Union Government; How Incompetent Are Indian Armed Forces Really? And Why Are They Allowed To Still Draw Their Salaries?

2025-12-16T08:57:00.000-08:00

As per the Indian government, India is teeming with infiltrators (ghuspaithi). These illegal people have entered across India in Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal, Kerala and so on. And they are in large numbers. They, as per the Home Minister, the Prime Minister and other important people in the Indian government, come from Bangladesh, Pakistan and elsewhere. They are, according to the Indian government again, a threat to India. Most of the problems that India faces today are because of them. I’m using the Indian government here to refer to statements or information shared by Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and other important people part of the Indian Government. After all, if the Prime Minister and Home Minister’s word isn’t a word from the nation itself, then whose word would be said as a word from the nation?

Infiltrators to become majority in Jharkhand in 25–30 years if unchecked: Amit Shah
He also criticised the state government for “vote bank” politics and vowed that if the BJP comes to power, it would chase “each” illegal immigrant out of the state.

‘Will make Bihar ghuspaithiya mukt’: Amit Shah says infiltrators will be deported within 5 years from Seemanchal
Amit Shah questioned whether the infiltrators should be removed from the voters’ list or not, and asserted that they would have to return to their countries and would have no place in Seemanchal.

Amit Shah directs officials to identify 100 ‘infiltrators’ in every State and deport them
The Union Home Minister asked intelligence officials to continue with the targeted crackdown even if the neighbouring countries do not accept the undocumented migrants.

These are just samples. If you dig more, you will find an even larger number of intruders, in thousands and lakhs, roaming in India currently. People in the Indian government know the number; they also know in what states they exist. People in the national media also know about these intruders. All of this makes you wonder, how did these intruders get into India? Who facilitated their entrance? While such a question gets difficult to answer since each intruder might have followed a different path and agent to get in, the other question becomes important. Whose job is to guard our borders? Whose job is to ensure intruders don’t intrude on our borders? It is the job of the Indian Army and the Home Ministry, headed by Amit Shah himself. And these repeated statements from the Home Minister reveal a startling reality. People guarding our borders, that is, the Indian armed forces, are no more following orders from the Home Ministry. They are on their own. It is they who are letting these intruders enter India. I’m not saying this thing. It is said, and inferred by the Indian government via the Prime Minister, Home Minister and even the national media.

So there are two things here. Either intruder after intruder is let in by the Indian army. Or these intruders are smarter than the Indian armed forces. These intruders who are illiterate, living on meagre incomes, going inside India to do daily wage labour are cleverer than the Indian armed forces. Essentially, Amit Shah, Modi and the entire machinery of RSS and BJP are saying that the Indian Army is incompetent. That they have failed India, that the Indian army has let in this huge influx of intruders. Given all these facts, does it make sense to even have these men holding guns at the borders? What are they drawing their salaries for? Why are we paying them if they are such failures at their jobs? What’s there to take pride in these incompetent men who cannot stop poor intruders from entering our borders? And not one or two, but in such large numbers? And it has been more than ten years since the Modi government has had such reliable information about these intruders, but the Indian army has failed to find any of these enemies from other countries. Just how incompetent are our supposedly brave soldiers? I’m not raising these questions. India’s Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are raising these fingers on our armed forces. And so far, at least I’m not aware of any army commander or regiment clarifying anything on these statements. Meaning? These statements by the Indian government are right, and they agree they are losers who cannot protect our borders or, and I fear to suggest this, for these are the men who brought Ram to Ayodhya, they cannot be liars, for the whole Ram’s story is about the truth, Amit Shah and Modi are not lying. Those who follow the message of Ram could never lie. Modi and Shah would never resort to lies. I cannot for once imagine believing such a thing. But then again, years of Congress propaganda have made it harder to disrespect the Indian armed forces. They are a professional force we have been told again and again. It is hard to believe they would let intruders into our borders or even that such a large number could intrude under their watch.

If people who brought Ram to Ayodhya are liars, then how come Maryadapurushottam Ram, whose entire life was a message of adhering to truth, blessed and decided to come to Ayodhya on their request? How did the great seers, learned minds and devotees of Prabhu Ram allow these liars who are so far from the principles of Ram’s teachings to inaugurate his abode? Has the lord Ram corrupted himself over the years? Is lord Ram now one among the supporters and cheerleaders of rape and lying? No? Meaning Modi and Shah are not the liars? I can’t. I respect Prabhu Ram too much to think of Modi and Shah, soldiers who gave us Ram in Ayodhya, to be liars. That spells the other statement, the one that the Shah and Modi have been repeating without any counterclaim from the army. The Indian army is indeed an incompetent pool of men with arms. Utterly shameful that Indians are paying for their upkeep and more using their hard-earned salaries via taxes.

How The Obsessive Greed Of The Wealthy Is Actually Making Homes Unaffordable For Renters And Genuine Buyers

2025-10-25T03:32:00.000-07:00

Billboards promoting investment in rental properties and urban studios, reflecting the growing real estate market amid rising rents.

Notice in the above image how the billboard targets the investors who will buy and rent this property instead of home owners who will buy and stay in it. It promises assured returns more than what banks offer for your savings. The targets are not home-owners and families who would stay in it, but those who would buy and rent it out as an investment; it is sold as an opportunity to make money. This was not always like this.

In past, renting a house was never a business someone was in. You just ended up with extra property by virtue of your moving due to work or other reasons, and so you rented it out to someone in need. Due to this, the prices were always reasonable. The amount was not enough to make you rich, nor did the owner see it as a money-making enterprise. It was just some extra money they received, and someone made use of what was otherwise going to be an unused property. The one who stayed on rent never felt the looming existential crisis that arbitrary rent increases pose, wherein year after year, rents keep on rising, and you easily anticipate how, in just a couple of years, it would become impossible for you to continue paying this way. The path invariably leads to making you homeless. That appears to be the intent of such a system.

The usual year-on-year rent increase for a property today is standard 10 per cent in most Indian cities and towns. That is, the owner of the property wants to make 10 per cent on his rent income per year. Even the best of banks do not offer you such steep interest on your deposits. Even the usual funds in the share market don't. That sort of increase in wealth in the share market is only possible with reckless or, more politely, well-planned investment in select stocks. And as every policy brochure will advise you that such investments come with massive risks. But in the rental business, there is no such risk. The 10 per cent is coded in agreement. Pay or vacate because there's the next person in line who otherwise would. It is not even the case that there is a deficit of housing. Many of the buildings actually are full of empty units. And they remain so because the owners have purely purchased them to rent out, as a shortcut to make money. People are no more buying houses with the intention of staying, but simply because they happen to have extra capital, unlike others, and so they have decided to exploit the needs of so many. It is pure greed that is driving rents, and what we call the housing crisis or shortage is but an orchestrated casualty to increase the wealth of already wealthy people 10 per cent at a time. At a few places, I even saw 20 per cent in agreements. It is outrageous that people are even thinking that they can ask for it.

Those who already have a house and don't need another are continuing to buy an extra house simply because they can; they happen to hold that extra wealth, and so they are making it unaffordable to those who really need the house to live in it.

And so we have people living on the streets, the scourge of homelessness is created by people who buy houses with the intention of renting and making money. It's not different from a war economy, where you create business for yourself by creating the conditions for such business to exist in the first place. If you happen to be around an apartment in the evening, then try to look at it, and you will see many empty units where no one is currently staying. In fact, there are apartments in select areas with such inflated prices that, in the 30-plus floors that each building has, almost all floors are empty. I was once out on dinner with a friend in Kharadi, Pune, where many IT companies are, and while walking post-meal, we saw these towers full of darkness and wondered if electricity had gone away, but no, that wasn't the case. In a conversation at a tea place later, which I confirmed further from a friend familiar with real estate, the flats in that gated society are way expensive than the surrounding buildings and only a few people, comprising foreigners and NRIs, stay there. And so the large number of units close to the entire tower, in some cases, are mostly unoccupied.

I understand how the whole point of luxury is to make anything exclusive to the select few, make it so expensive that it becomes inaccessible to others except the select few that you want to have access to. But many who buy these apartments to rent out and make money refuse to lend for a few thousand less and instead choose to wait forever. Last month, I was chatting with an owner of a flat who had not lent out this unit ever since the building came into existence some five-plus years ago. She is charging a 20 per cent rent increase. The amount of money she has lost for refusing to lend for few thousand less is humongous, but greed is such. She just thought the next inquirer would agree on her steep rent price.

Many might feel this is expected and give the flat-out supply-and-demand argument, but it is as clear as the "aim of capitalism is to get rid of poverty" lie that the wealthy are refusing to cede to demand simply because they can do so owing to the comfortable extra wealth they hold. By not renting out, they are not going to descend a class. They are just holding the homeless and poor by their necks and squeezing as much sweat and blood from them as they can, but also ensuring that just enough life remains in them so that they will appear to work tomorrow and do not miss out on rent payments. Just as Marx had predicted ages ago: "Wages are determined through the antagonistic struggle between capitalist and worker. Victory goes necessarily to the capitalist... The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer... The capitalist can live longer without the worker than can the worker without the capitalist... And this is the economic constitution of our entire modern society: the working class alone produces all values. For value is only another expression for labour... But these values produced by the workers do not belong to the workers. They belong to the owners of the raw materials, machines, tools, and money, which enable them to buy the labour-power of the working class. Hence, the working class gets back only a part of the entire mass of products produced by it. And, as we have just seen, the other portion, which the capitalist class retains, and which it has to share, at most, only with the landlord class, is increasing with every new discovery and invention, while the share which falls to the working class (per capita) rises but little and very slowly, or not at all, and under certain conditions it may even fall."

Scandal Meets Celebration: Why Do We Cheer On Holi What We Criticize Year Round?

2025-03-29T02:17:00.000-07:00

“A 25-year-old Hindu man was allegedly strangled to death in Rajasthan’s Dausa district for trying to stop three men from applying colour on him during Holi celebration”. Every year on Holi, we hear news reports of molestation and non-consensual touches. Year after year these stories have become so widespread and familiar that now we have got subconsciously wired to simply ignore them and move on with our lives. “Holi hai!” (It’s Holi!) is a cry that is shouted, and like clockwork, anyone would come, apply colour to you and proceed further to the next person. Implicit in that cry is, all is well, or all goes on Holi. But in recent years, incidents of communal nature have added themselves to the long list of Holi complaints. Protecting law and order is the job of the police. A murder by a murderer can be stopped in two ways: either you control the situation such that the murderer does not get the opportunity to commit the crime, or you do the murder yourself, leaving the murderer no chance in hell to commit the crime himself. In the first act, the police protect the victim from being murdered and in the second, they protect the murderer. This is not to suggest that police forces are superhumans who can foresee all crimes and prevent them from happening. That is understandable. And precisely why, police are generally not blamed for the crime being committed. They are blamed for what they do once the crime has been committed. And what they do after the crime sets the stage for the next crime. Their actions gesture as to whether such crimes are allowed or not.

The administration in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal covered 10 mosques, including the historic Jama Masjid, with plastic and tarpaulin sheets. Why were they covered? What did the administration fear may happen? And who will make it happen? And why would those who would make it happen feel they can do it and get away from the police?

A group of Hindus celebrating Holi festivities in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, were carrying the tree trunk to the temple as per tradition but decided on a detour, ramming it into the gate of a mosque several times while also raising provocative slogans. There are several videos of the act with identifiable faces. Police have registered an FIR but I’m sure nothing will come out of this. The record of the police does not suggest otherwise. Not because the police force is incompetent and cannot identify people from video. If wanted, police can pick you based on you being part of a Whatsapp group even if you never posted any text in the same. Those are the charges against Umar Khalid — being part of a Whatsapp group — he did not post in those groups, not to suggest posting would have made his incarceration justifiable.

Ask anyone if they are against molestation or non-consensual touching and they will say yes, they are against it. Naturally so as anyone should be. Ask them if they believe Holi as a festival warrants such touching or if touching inappropriately is part of Holi tradition, as in if this is what the festival is about like lighting lamps on Diwali is a tradition. Is molesting and touching inappropriately part of the Holi celebration? They will probably laugh and say no. That some fringe elements do it. The impression is, these are outlaw incidents. People at large do not support these incidents. You want to believe this line of thought. But think about it from a distance. What do we do when someone does something wrong? Say, how do we react when we encounter a molestation video from Metro? Or from a college? How do we react? We seek punishment, we ask for police intervention, right? We do no such thing for Holi molestation. And we do so despite there being so many videos of these crimes, year on year. Does the school, college, workplace or even homes of these men, do you think they are held accountable for their waywardness? Have you heard of any such case where someone was held accountable for inappropriately touching some woman? We don’t. We tolerate it, we accept it. Suggesting what? What do we tolerate? Pouring milk on statues is stupid but we do so, why? Because it is tradition and part of our faith. If someone was pouring fresh milk on say middle of the road, we would call him mad. But inside a temple, it is part of faith. Same for animal sacrifice, pouring alcohol on gods, dropping oil lamps in rivers, and taking dips in poopy water, we know what they are, and we react to them differently in different contexts but we also tolerate them on special days and special places. Same way, molesting, and touching whatever body part of strangers without their consent on Holi is our tradition. It is indeed part of our festival. We have accepted it in past and we continue to accept it by immediately saying, Holi Hai, this is not the regular touch needing a law to take its course but a special Holi touch, outside the purview of law and order. This is an acceptable pouring of milk on rocks. This is part of our faith, and tradition and how it is celebrated every year.

A 48-year-old Muslim man was allegedly assaulted and killed by a Hindu mob while on his way to a mosque in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao on Saturday after he resisted having colours thrown on him during Holi.

So, a group of Hindus want to play Holi with a Muslim man. They want it so badly that they — as is the tradition — force him to play Holi with them, without his consent of course. He resists, they insist, so much so that they end up killing him. Leaving apart the renowned good-intention-but-wrong-implementation, they wanted him to participate in their festival. India is a secular country where for generations most of our festivals have been shared with each other. Holi definitely is one such and these boys were only doing that. They wanted him to participate in their festival. That's not bad, it's sweet.

A Muslim youth was thrashed by members of a saffron outfit in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur town after he “tried to enter” a ‘garba, dandiya’ (dance event organised during the Navratri) event.

Here, a group of Hindus do not want Muslims to participate in their festival. On the other hand, Muslims want to carry on the famed secular traditions of shared festivals here but Hindus do not.

You then have to ask, what do the Hindus want? Why do they in one case, want Muslims to participate and in another don’t? The answer lies in the birth or definition of Hinduism.

Hinduism was born or defined in the backdrop of the British census exercise. Traditionally upper-castes have held power over masses by virtue of their birth in forward castes who derive power from the books written by their forefathers and whose readership was gatekept by their clans. But as the British held provincial elections and masses started to elect Muslims as their representatives, those who enjoyed power until then using caste saw the danger new tides were bringing for them. But they were disadvantaged by numbers. They were not in the majority. The people they oppressed, the lower castes, made up the majority population. And there was bonhomie between this population and Muslims despite there being differences in their practice and faith. Upper castes wanted to create a separate identity for themselves and other people. Which other people? Those who were not Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains etc. So they started identifying themselves and these others as ‘Hindoos’. So anyone who did not identify as Muslim, Christian etc was counted as Hindoo. Initially, many upper caste elites objected to them being clubbed alongside lower castes, they were different people they argued. And they indeed were in many aspects. These people had different gods of their own and many of these gods were exclusive and were not shared. Even today, many Hindus don’t know so many gods that other Hindus pray to. It was even more widespread back then. Many of these gods were meat-eaters, and many partake in alcohol. But slowly, the othering caught on. And so the upper castes successfully created the Hindu majority, out of thin air.

The Hindu religion then is defined not as what it is but as what it is not. What is the Hindu religion? Is it a collection of people that don’t eat beef? No. Those who eat beef? No. That pray to one god? No. Collection of god? No, many don’t even know the existence of very many gods of others. Hinduism is defined the other way. It is defined by way of saying what it is not. It is not Islam, it is not the faith of Christians. And so, it and its gatekeepers, constantly try and create tensions between two sets of people. They constantly create myths and stories and WhatsApp forwards that tell their adherents how bad, terrible, scheming, monster-like people Muslims are. The fear is created to stop Hindus from interacting with Muslims. If they interact, they will start to see similarities that the two share, similar struggles and anxieties they go through; they will see through the lies and appear like a single entity of people. Just like a beef eater and beef haters call themselves and identify as a monolithic Hindu entity without flinching once, Hindus and Muslims with interaction will identify as some shared block. What will this do? Who will this shared identity harm? Whose existence depends on the support of a hostile, feared, bigoted population?

Our Non-Sacred River

2025-02-25T06:59:00.000-08:00

I too live by the river
Our river though is not sacred
It is still clean
Perhaps it's the fate of sacred rivers to be dirty
We too go to our river to swim
We don't take dips, we swim and swim till our lungs and legs can no longer hold
And we run from our river only when our mothers holler our names
There are no flowers floating in our river
No oil lamps float in our river too
We don't even leave our dead in our river
Our river is not sacred like yours
We still love our river though
It feeds us, it nurtures us

Do you think our river misses being sacred?
Do you think your river likes being sacred?

That Beer-Biceps' Joke Did Not Warrant This Rage; What And Why Are We Agitated Then?

2025-02-11T01:09:00.000-08:00

There is uproar on social media right now over the Beer biceps joke at Samay Raina's popular show India's Got Latent. Ranveer asked the guy on stage "If he had to choose between watching his parents have coitus the rest of his life or to join one time and end it, which one would he choose?". The episode of the show is now pulled down by youtube after notice from the I&B ministry of the Indian government.

One, he has said far more objectionable things on his podcast and elsewhere that did not tip the scale for social media patrons to object. I'll revisit this point. Two, why do you think is his latest joke objectionable? And yes, I'll still call it a joke because he meant and thought it was a joke. We can then classify it as a bad joke, obscene joke etc but it is a joke nonetheless. But why was this objectionable? The premise or foundational basis of the joke is a belief that children don't like the idea of their parents having sex. The joke is built upon this belief. But why do children don't like their parents indulging in sex? I remember back in school, must be in class eight when you're introduced to reproduction. During a normal interaction with a close friend in class, I mentioned how we were all products of our parents having sex. This line might seem very innocent and obvious now but back then this was quite provoking. We had all grown up with the belief that children were the product of marriage - childbirth just happened as per god's plan or wants. Humans had no skin in this game. But our Science teacher had just told us how we were living a lie. And our parents were aware of this. My friend took offence at the implied suggestion that his parents had sex. Sex was bad, his parents were good and the idea that his good parents would indulge in awful acts of sex was beyond his imagination. Frankly, it was not a comforting thought to me either but I had made my truce by then to the existence of things I had no authority over. I just had to acclimate to their reality if I wanted to live as well, in peace.

So if you are okay with the idea that your parents also have desires and they might occasionally copulate, it's then just a joke. And the joke Ranveer cracked isn't even his original. This or versions of this joke have been around on the internet and in some standup circles for a long time now. There's a clip floating on the Internet with two people sitting across a table and the female asking this question to the male sitting across her. So Ranveer did think it was funny and so did the audience that laughed over it. But more on that later.

Coming back to the outrage part.

Lately what has happened is people have dumped their thinking faculties. This is of course the result of the constant serving of content via our phones. So much so that we are never left by ourselves where we could come up with a line of thought that's ours. Call it brain rot or paralysis of thinking, this is our reality. And in this reality, we heed like a herd. If someone we follow says something is offensive then we start assembling our thoughts and comments around this supposition. If not someone we follow then it is what is being done by the majority in our group. Who's funny, what's fashionable, including what food tastes good and what food should be avoided is decided by people we follow around on the Internet. If enough people go somewhere and make videos, I have to go there too. By now I have visited so many cafes and joints that serve abominable food albeit with perfectly placed coriander leaf on top and an unnecessary line of chocolate drawn at one end of the plate. There's no hiding from it. Your friends want to go and you do.

If you have seen the clip from Samay's show then you would have noticed how people originally laughed at Ranveer's joke. Meaning? There's an audience out there that thinks he was funny there. It was later on, that someone influential on the Internet thought this was not cool, and then that became the verdict about his joke. What I'm trying to say is, that Ranveer has said far worse in past which has all been digested. And frankly, in a week or two from now, even this will be digested. If anything, this is publicity for him and his show. As he has said in past, he has no ideology or morals, he would do whatever gets eyeballs. And this one abundantly does.

Mr Modi awarded Ranveer Alhabadia the 'Disruptor of the Year Award' at a luxurious gala event. That's not all, under Modi's influencer program, several of his ministers went on his podcast to be interviewed by him. If anything Ranveer should have been booked by authorities long ago for spreading lies, misinformation and superstition. Forget about the alpha-male kind of chauvinism and dangerously veiled subtle bigotry and rape jokes he has cracked in past or the people he platformed and amplified their filth.

All said it is awful to have an FIR filed against someone for a joke. Especially in a country where we have a record of protecting rapist babas and politicians despite rape victims burning themselves in police stations or victims sitting on protests in the national capital. What are we trying to convey? Raping and molesting is fine but a bad joke is where we draw the line?

While His Defeat Was Inevitable; Kejriwal Is Free And More Dangerous For The BJP Now Than He Ever Was

2025-02-08T08:40:00.000-08:00

While AAP lost to BJP, Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia were also defeated in their respective constituencies

Many, especially people in Delhi, saw this coming. In a way, it is good. Or as someone mentioned, it was inevitable. Just like how it was important to defeat UPA at the height of their powers and ego trip in 2014, equally, it had become important and necessary to defeat the politics of Arvind Kejriwal. He was thinking that a mini-version of BJP's politics was the strategy to go by. He repeatedly projected himself as the better version of BJP's divisive politics - as if he could hate Muslims but continue to also provide free public services. At every step of the way in recent times, he projected himself as more religious and narrowminded than the BJP. He even avoided supporting his own Muslim legislator and rallied against admitting children of migrants in schools. Forget about his actions concerning Shaheen Bagh and CAA. And of course, he had grown hubris that he could not be defeated in Delhi and had gotten too comfortable which politicians should never be made to feel for the public's own good.

That said, it is concerning what replaces Kejriwal now and UPA then. But again, it also tells the options the public is provided. How they try to avoid the devil and how they eventually give up and choose an open devil rather than the masked monster who hides its claws.

Silver lining wise, Kejriwal is a shrewd politician, unlike Rahul and others. Despite this defeat, he in past has repeatedly shown he knows how to fight the BJP on their turf by twisting and turning the designs to suit him better. Now that he has lost his fiefdom, he has nothing more to lose or concentrate his focus on. BJP can no longer create problems in the capital and keep him engaged. Add to it, unlike the old Kejriwal, this one will have his men in the assembly and parliament who can speak and tomtom his message. If he is up to it, and in all likelihood he will be, he's going to be a hard and harsh thorn in BJP's path from here on.

Congratulations to all, we are in for good times. Politics in India is going to be a good show from now on.

P.S. It is a good time here to remember how the BJP using all sorts of powers and agencies including the courts, almost paralysed Kejriwal's government from working. At the start of his government, Kejriwal using ACB had initiated corruption investigations against Ambani and other heavyweights. Modi government to stop this, passed a fresh law pulling ACB from the control of the Delhi government. Delhi Police was already under Modi government so he was left with nothing to fight corruption and other misdoings. Later on, a new LG was appointed who would refuse to pass any bills and files Kejriwal signed including transfers of officials. Even door-to-door ration and government services were stopped. Kejriwal still found ways to work around these blockers. Then one by one his closest allies and later himself were arrested and kept behind bars. All the cases against his MLAs eventually fizzled out, and nothing could be proved in court but by the time cases could be finished and clean chit was given, his ministers would have spent years (two, three etc) in prison. While it is always hard to pinpoint why people unseat someone and crown another and many times there are always multiple reasons for how people vote, in Delhi's case, voters might just have gotten frustrated as well from this constant tussle. It's not like they could not see how Modi halted Kejriwal on each step he took.

Why I Support Modi’s Plan Of Downplaying Kumbh And Railway Deaths

2025-01-30T02:32:00.000-08:00

I’m completely in with Modi’s plan of largely discounting 30 deaths in Kumbh or 1000 plus deaths under railway ‘accidents’ in his tenure. Modi knows all too well, more than any of us could ever grasp it, that the population of India is its largest problem. And it needs to be controlled. And since people are not taking care of it by themselves, he has taken it upon himself to prevent it by any and all means. Modi is a pakka Gujarati who knows his economics rather too well. He understands how to maximize capital. Mr Modi comprehends unlike too many of us that marriage and taking care of a wife is not just mentally exhausting but makes little sense economically as well; wife and kids are accountabilities that end up creating large holes in one’s pockets. That is why he stranded his wife before it made him a pauper. He knows how a legal wife leads to mental strain and as PM he cannot be under any extra stress or be emotionally occupied. Some things need to be done, hard decisions ought to be taken. Sacrifices were warranted and he put himself on the line in national interest for all of us.

Mr Modi also knows whose life is more consequential and whose life is not worth too much, whose life contributes to the economy and whose not so much. Unlike leaders of the past, Modi is serious about eradicating poverty but to terminate poverty he first had to recognise the poor. Or more importantly, isolate the rich from the poor so his plans for them could be better targeted. Just like direct cash transfer and linking everything with Aadhaar, Vande Bharat trains were a step in the right direction. Rich now are driven to travel via these special trains on which the poor are not allowed. But he is smart, he didn’t want to hurt their egos and lose their vote. So he did not openly say ‘You are not allowed on these trains’; he simply priced their tickets such that they would never enter his Vande Bharats. And with it, his plan was in action. One by one trains started smashing into each other. There was technology to stop collisions — Kavach was present as Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav mentioned in his now-viral reel. But Vaishnav is aware of when to switch it off to save power and contribute to Modi’s larger goal of population control. Kavach for Vande Bharat trains is not given in the minister’s hands. It is controlled directly via Mr Modi’s able hands. And that is why, except for a minor scratch to the shiny mouth of Vande Bharat, they have never had to face any blow. Efficiency is in his blood. There is nothing that he does that is short of greatness.

Leaders of the past came with their baggage of family and were at best emotional fools. None of them cared about the population explosion leaving briefly the tenure of Indira Gandhi but she was more direct and people saw through her population control measures. Modi has learnt from her mistakes. Mr Modi does not believe in trumpeting his plans or successes. Narendra Modi is a silent doer. He believes more in actions than words. And if you pay attention, you will see what all he has achieved which he rarely talks about. If you are mourning over 30 deaths, know that India’s population is more than 1,458,412,491 as of now. Modi knows best, what needs to be done, when to talk to the press, when not to. Mr Modi sets his own agenda and talks on his own terms.

It’s just that, we are not capable of seeing his designs. Rest assured, we are in great hands.

Truths And Lies About 500 Mahar Soldiers Defeating 28000 Strong Army Of Peshwas

2024-12-23T01:38:00.000-08:00

Vijay Sthamb (victory pillar) - The pillar was erected by the East India Company in memory of those who fought the battle and includes the names of the Mahar soldiers who unknowingly brought an end to the Peshwa rule in 1818.

The battle on January 1, 1818, where the British, with just 834 infantrymen — about 500 of them from the Mahar community — and 12 officers defeated the 28,000-strong army of Peshwa Bajirao II - was one of the last battles of the Third Anglo-Maratha War, which ended the Peshwa domination.

While this would tempt many to suggest Mahars/Dalits always sided with the British - absolutely nothing wrong if they did give the conditions they were forced to live in - in truth, they were before this battle part of the Maratha army. During Shivaji’s reign, especially before Peshwas, many didn’t realise that Peshwas were not a continuation of Marathas under Shivaji but a deviation from it. One would do well here to remember how Brahmins of his dominion refused to conduct the coronation ceremony of Shivaji.

The Brahmins of Shivaji’s court refused to crown Shivaji as a king because that status was reserved for those of the Kshatriya varna (warrior class) in Hindu society. Shivaji was descended from a line of headmen of farming villages, and the Brahmins accordingly categorised him as a Maratha, not a Kshatriya. They noted that Shivaji had never had a sacred thread ceremony, and did not wear the thread, such as a kshatriya would. Shivaji summoned Gaga Bhatt, a pandit of Varanasi, who stated that he had found a genealogy proving that Shivaji was descended from the Sisodias, and thus indeed a Kshatriya, albeit one in need of the ceremonies befitting his rank. To enforce this status, Shivaji was given a sacred thread ceremony and remarried his spouses under the Vedic rites expected of a Kshatriya. However, according to historical evidence, Shivaji’s claim to Rajput, and specifically of Sisodia ancestry, may be seen as being anything from tenuous, at best, to purely inventive. The Brahmins of his dominion did not buy into these claims until Shivaji essentially paid and bought their approval. And these payments happened repeatedly leading up to his coronation. He would pay and then Brahmins would invent new excuses to refuse, and Shivaji would pay them again, all summing up to some million rupees from his treasury.

Relations between the Mahars and the Peshwas, who were Brahmins, grew strained after the death of Baji Rao I in 1740 and reached their nadir during the reign of Bajirao Rao II, who insulted the Mahar community and spurned their offer of service with his army. This caused them to side with the English against the Peshwa’s numerically superior army.

Textbooks not mentioning one or the other events from history are a favourite topic of right-wing groups in India. But notice how, although in school textbooks they mention in detail about Anglo-Maratha wars and even Peshwas, they omit the Bhima-Koregaon battle where a few Mahars defeated a large army of Peshwas ending their tyranny!

To Live Is To Suffer

2024-09-28T04:58:00.000-07:00

Photo by Wonder KIM on Unsplash

Let me explain. If everything were sweet, the word sweet would not have meaning and by all means it would cease to even exist. We create words to describe something that either exists, as in objects that we identify by our senses or for feelings or things that we feel or imagine. Exists or not, these are things that need to be communicated, conveyed and this can only be achieved by there being words for it. Everything that we have a word for or anything that we acknowledge, we do so because the other thing that contrasts the thing in question exists. We acknowledge breathing because not breathing has its significant meaning. Imagine a monochrome world, for instance, think of the whole world and everything in it with the colour orange. Do you then think we would have a name for the colour orange? We won’t because there would be no necessity to refer to this colour since there was no other colour in the imagined monochrome world to differentiate it from. We have the word ‘happy’ because there exists so many in the world that are “not happy”. And so in such a world, and I don’t mean it should or could be any other way for our world can only exist in contrasts, what would be this world without contrasts? Try to imagine such a world. It would be lifeless. A planet of dust? Of lifeless water? Life can only exist when something lifeless also exists around it. We can only live as long as somewhere someone can stop living. The pain is not an anomaly, it is, if you give it a thought, necessary. It is a fool’s quest to run away from it. And really, where will you run away to? To what end? What is a world without pain? Who lives without pain? Or put another way, what do we call someone who has a life of no pain? Dead? Yes, only the dead are without pain. Only the dead could have no pain. The rest of us must have it if we are to live.

Someone in abject pain often says how they wish they would like a day of no pain. I understand the place from where this is coming. But give it a thought. When does the pain end, completely cease to exist, vanish and become zero? When you die! Without death, there is no escape from pain. The only way then is to deal with pain, of all kinds. Find solutions, find why pain exists, and study your pain. Lately, people have gotten into the habit of not discussing pain at all. It’s a fool’s quest to think not talking would somehow make pain go away. Some believe talking about death for instance is akin to inviting it. It bloody is not. Many fear getting into the sea because they fear water and they harbor this fear without ever going to a water body. Those who regularly go into sea for whatever reasons, don’t do so carelessly. Going into the sea often, they have by now understood where to go and where not to dive, what to do and what should be avoided at all costs, what is safe risk and what is fool’s risk. It’s not like these are superhumans or they have no fear of the sea. They do. But because they understand the terrain, because they have dealt with the question of what makes the sea dangerous, they have devised habits that keep them safe from that danger.

If you don’t want to die by drowning then go learn to swim. Death comes to all of us for death is the only certainty in all our lives. No one can escape from it. But there are ways and habits to push it far away, to help ourselves from dying like a fool. Pain or suffering could drive you to death. Our brain cannot function or reason when it is in such pain. Like how it doesn’t function well when you are hungry. Or for that matter horny. And so it is important to think in advance and plan a backup when your brain is functional. It’s like planning for volcanic eruptions or floods or earthquakes when there’s no sign of such a calamity on the horizon. Because you can only buy a first aid kit when the mountain has yet to erupt.

To live then is to suffer. To be successful is not to not suffer at all but to overcome the feeling of suffering.

When Apolitical Friends Start Posting About A Terror Attack In Jammu And Kashmir

2024-06-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

Nine Hindu pilgrims dead in India's Jammu after militant attack, police say
By Reuters

There was a terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir (what is the new name after dividing the state into three parts?).

I can see some of you who don’t otherwise post “political” opinions about it. Honestly, I’m happy to see all of you sticking your neck out. I’m not suggesting I know better but do you know what terrorism or terrorists mean? Forget dictionary meaning or legal definition. In your head, what does it mean? Is it terrorism when a section of people in Manipur are mercilessly killed, their houses are burnt, women approach police and police hand them to a mob from the majority community and later videos of them being paraded go viral; Is that terrorism? There’s murder, burning, rapes and still, it doesn’t sound like terrorism. Why is it? Is it because the media is not calling it so? Or because so many of you are not posting “I condemn terrorists rampaging havoc in Manipur”?

Okay. Okay. Manipur is too much stressful. Probably it’ll harm your mental health if you start knowing about Manipur. Forget it then.

How about that man in uniform on the train taking his service gun and shooting Muslims while chanting religious and political slogans, is that terrorism? Why do we still not refer to him as a terrorist? We went so far as to call him mental! Not terrorist. He killed people, and chanted religious and political slogans but somehow for you and so many others, his wasn’t an act of terror. We know terrorism is bad and terrorists are bad guys. But what exactly is terrorism? And who are terrorists? Should people have to topple a bus to be named terrorists? Should the violence happen in Jammu and Kashmir for it to be termed as terrorism? Like Jats in Haryana or Rajasthan can remove railway tracks while demanding reservations but we don’t refer to them as terrorists but a Kashmiri pelting a pebble at an Indian army gunman is definitely termed a terrorist. Perhaps where violence takes place has to do with the definition in your head. If so…

Have you heard of Kunan Poshspora where Indian armed forces carried out mass rapes? Have you heard of that girl in the northeast who had gun wounds in her private regions and traces of semen? Oh, wait! We don’t refer to men in uniform as terrorists. They have the legal right to kill and maybe rapes are also allowed under AFSPA. I don’t know but I have never heard an armyman tried for it. So who is a terrorist then? My head hurts trying to think about the answer. It appears you all have some clarity on the subject. Unlike me, you don’t post regularly. Perhaps your lives are important, you all have life and you all are busy. Once in a while something happens and it shakes you so much that you leave out your “I’m not political” rule and post political opinion. Maybe Palestine is too far for you to bother about but Jammu and Kashmir is a piece of land that belongs to you. I’m still trying to think about how your brain works. What motivates it and why.

On a separate note, I’ll not force myself to post any such things. Terrorists will do what they do and are known to do, rapists will rape, thieves will steal, robbers will rob and scammers will scam. It’s what they do. It’s the job of the media to inform us when so and so happens. And it is the job of the government, and administration to first, stop such things from happening and second, if in case they happen then to investigate, catch and punish the perpetrators. I believe ordinary citizens and people in positions of influence must speak out when people in power aka govt do not do their job. For example, Kashmir is the world’s most militarised region. What does that mean? It has the highest ratio of citizens to gunmen. Kashmir is also directly ruled by the Modi govt. Modi hasn’t conducted elections there since he divided the state into three regions. Only recently a vehicle full of ammunition was rammed into an army base causing huge damage and embarrassment. How did such a vehicle with such large quantities of arms go past multiple army checkposts? Were army men involved with terrorists to aid them in committing such a heinous crime? We didn’t bother to ask Modi these questions and he didn’t bother to inform us anyway. We don’t know what happened. Then recently some fraud from Gujarat claimed he was close to Modi and was visiting all sensitive army regions. In fact, he was taken around by Indian army officials. What kind of security does the Indian army have? What sort of verification procedures. No one asked, and no one answered. Modi demonetised and created havoc with the Indian economy but told us it broke the backbone of terrorism in Kashmir. There was the abrogation of article 370 defended on the same lines. So how’s it still happening? Who is letting it happen? Is the Indian army incompetent? Or is Modi not letting them function? Do you want Modi to answer these questions or do you want to forget and wait until it repeats?

Here’s a bit of truth. The reason why you post this is because it aligns with your politics. You’re political. No one’s apolitical. Your endgame is demonising a community. You’re not bothered about lives lost. If you did, you would have spoken about Manipur, or about multiple Muslims murdered on Indian streets and video-graphed. A cabinet minister nonetheless went and garlanded convicts of lynching cases. Don’t forget. Or when the rapists of Bilkis Bano were released by the Modi govt just before the Gujarat elections. Hindu organisations welcomed them with garlands and honoured them on a stage. Nice photographs. See. You’re not bothered about rapes and deaths of people. You don’t care who was killed in Jammu and Kashmir. You have a carefully curated politics in your head. You know it’s awful. That’s why you want to pretend apolitical about other matters where posting about it does not align with your politics. But here, you have to post. You don’t want to lose the chance to dehumanise a community. Subtle huh?

I’m not suggesting you should not post. Please do. But also invest some time into thinking why are you bothering to post about it. Are you trying to inform your followers? Why? Is it because the media is not covering it? It actually is. Media didn’t cover Manipur, Brijbhushan, Prajwal Devanna etc., but then you kept quiet. So why are you posting? Are you feeling sad? You are against terrorism and you want to tell it to your followers? What kind of followers do you have that think anyone would be in favour of terrorism? Aren’t we all against violence, rape, child marriages, slavery etc? Are you trying to say yes? But read again, it doesn’t appear like you are against rape and murder, right? That’s what perplexes me.

Marathas Did Not Care About Hindus, Mughals Did Not Care About Muslims - History Is More Nuanced Than These Stupid Binaries

2024-03-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

It took the British around 100 years to fully conquer India. And by India, I mean British India consisting of Myanmar, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and present-day India. And in this, they were helped and aided by all sorts of Indian kingdoms and people. Rajputs and Marathas were major forces that helped the British conquer the most difficult of kingdoms. For instance, Tipu Sultan who defeated the British in two battles was defeated and killed by the British army in the fourth Anglo-Mysore war with the help of Marathas and Nizam of Hyderabad. Otherwise, the British couldn't defeat Tipu who had by then defeated their general who had defeated Napoleon in battle. The last battle was full of ironies, I mean, ironical considering the politics of today. For instance, Maratha Peshwas, in whom today’s Hindutva-nationalists take pride were collaborating with the British, Scindias of Gwalior too supported the British while a Mughal fought against the British.

This is not to say one is nationalist and another anti-national. It’s utter stupidity to pit one historical figure against another on these lines. We must not forget how the consciousness of India being one nation did not exist during this time.

Northern Rajputs kept the Muslim invaders at bay initially and Iltutmish and Allauddin Khilji kept Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes at bay as well. Even the Mughals kept the English at bay. Even the Vijayanagara Empire kept Bahamanis at bay from the south of India.

Everyone was trying to keep the other from their sphere of influence. The other here was not decided by their gods but rather based on how threatening it was perceived to the interests of the state in question. And alliances were formed based on one’s chances of immediate survival.

Alright, but why are the Mughals overglorified in the NCERT textbooks?

One, they aren’t ‘over’ glorified. The current politics portrays it as being so. NCERT textbooks have all kingdoms mentioned in chronology. But the Mughals do have a large influence on Indian life - all spheres of life, from the food we eat to the clothes we wear to the languages we speak. They contributed massively to medieval India. They had the biggest empire in India for the longest time and immensely influenced Indian culture.

Unlike the Brits, they didn’t send the ‘loot’ back home. India was their home. While there should be no whitewashing of early Islamic invaders it’s equally wrong to claim that Mughals are wrongfully talked about at length in textbooks.

NCERT has no hidden agenda in this case. However, thinking there exists an ulterior motive or agenda does indeed help in fuelling the propaganda of the current regime.

While the Mughals ruled for an immense length, it is not the sole reason for their "greatness". The degree to which they influenced Indian culture and society is why they are considered great. Mughal architecture can be found all the way north in Kabul and also all the way down south in Hyderabad. What architectural legacy did the Marathas leave behind outside of their homeland? All this talk about architecture doesn't even touch upon the impact they made on our language, the reason why we have so many Persian loanwords is because of the proliferation of Persian in India due to it being their administrative language.

Peshwa is a Persian word. Hindu is a Persian word too. Chaddar (veil), zameen (land), dil (heart), chehra (face), zaroori (necessary), dewana (passionate), khoob (good), rang (color), narangi (orange), safed (white), hamesha (always), shayad (perhaps), kharab (bad), khali (empty), gae (cow), murghi (hen), charbi (fat) and many many more are all Persian words.

But the Economy was not thriving as much as it was under the Indian Kings.

Source? By the end of Akbar's reign, his empire's population accounted for about 20% of the world's population while contributing to 22% of the world's economy thereby having an outsized impact on the world economy. Before I go further, here I'd like to emphasize that I am no fan of Aurangzeb and I don't support most of his policies, especially towards the treatment of non-Islamic people of India. Near the end of Aurangzeb's reign, his empire was the most populous in the world and had the highest GDP, surpassing the Qing dynasty in China in both metrics.

A lot of nuance is lost by thinking of empires and monarchs as monolithic entities. No empire has a monopoly on virtue. Our discussions about the empires of the past should be a lot more detailed, instead of putting down an empire we dislike to make the one we favour look better, we should talk about both their atrocities and their achievements in the context of their time.

Someone can correct me on this but NCERT books don’t talk about the Maratha invasion of Bengal and the absolute brutality of these attacks.

In the 10 years that they plundered Bengal, their effect was devastating, causing great human hardship as well as economic deprivation. Contemporary Dutch sources believed that the Bargis killed 4 lakh Bengalis and a great many merchants in western Bengal, writes historian PJ Marshal, "were permanently crippled by losses and extractions".

In the Maharashtra Purana, a poem in Bengali written by Gangaram, the poet describes the destruction caused by the raiders in great detail:
This time none escaped,
Brahmanas, and Vaisnavas, Sannyasis, and householders,
all had the same fate, and cows were massacred along with men.
So great was the terror of the Bargi that, in a Gabbar-esque twist, lullabies were composed in which mothers would use the fear of a Maratha raid to get their children to go to sleep. These poems are popular amongst Bengalis even today. One of them went something like this:
Chhele ghumalo, paada judaalo bargi elo deshe
Bulbulite dhaan kheyechhe, khaajnaa debo kishe?
Dhaan phurolo, paan phurolo, khaajnaar opay ki?
Aar kotaa din shobur koro, roshoon boonechhi
A very inelegant translation:

When the children fall asleep, silence sets in, the Bargis come to our country
Birds have eaten the grain, how shall I pay the tax (to the Bargi)?
All our food and drink is over, how shall I pay the tax?
Wait for a few days, I have sown garlic.

The above is from this column in scroll.in which further reads and this is important to remember.

Of course, as Aakar Patel points out in his column, this history of the Marathas is usually never given popular currency. The Marathas are often portrayed as a proto-national force, acting as agents of either India or Hindu nationalism. This is a common tendency and modern nations often construct myths where they extend themselves back into time. Many Pakistanis imagine that its Islamic nationalism existed during the time of Qutb-ud-din Aibak and many Indians think that a Hindu nationalism was furthered by the Marathas looking to set up a – to use Vinayak Savarkar's term – "Hindu Pad Padshahi".

Ironically, the very phrase "Hindu Pad Padshahi" is taken entirely from the Persian language, showing how seamless the transition was from the so-called Muslim Deccan sultanates and the Mughals to the so-called Hindu Marathas. And, of course, such a simplistic view of history must also leave out pillaging bands of Marathas attacking a predominantly "Hindu" West Bengal even as a "Muslim" Nawab struggles to push them out. Today's India is so caught up with the binaries of "Hindu" and "Muslim" that it tends to see the past in those terms as well. But the past is a different country.

Here’s How To Maximize The Benefits Of Ayodhya Ram Temple Akshata

2024-01-20T11:43:00.000-08:00

Or How Hindusim Came Into Being; Brief History Of Hindu Religion For Zoomers-n-Boomers Who Refuse To Pick Books

Ayodhya Temple As Of Today. Courtesy: Newslaundry.com

I was just on a call with my distant neighbour who after the regular round of questions asked me if I had received the Ram-Mandir-Rice (akshata). For those who haven’t and don’t know about what’s going on, people associated with BJP-RSS have been going door-to-door and distributing some posters related to the new temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh along with some colourful uncooked-unbroken-rice in tiny plastic pack (hardly 20 gram).

Akshata basically consists of uncooked un-broken pieces of rice which is mixed with turmeric. It is sometimes used to bless bride and groom during weddings. Akshata is also sprinkled during other auspicious ceremonies. When Akshata is offered to a deity, it is believed to be the finest offering that a devotee can make. Akshata is believed to be equal to offering clothes, jewelry, food, or any other offering. Akshata is usually thrown over the head of the devotees during pujas and during functions like marriage and other auspicious events.

The akshata attract the subtle frequencies of five principal deity namely Shiv, Shakti, Shri Ram, Shri Krishna and Shri Ganesh. Akshata is the central point of puja plate. If the rice grains used for preparing Akshatas are broken then their capacity to attract the principles of higher deities is automatically reduced. When the akshtas are offered to a deity the energy of the deity is transferred in it and favourable vibrations are generated in akshatas.
— Hinduism StackExchange

There is a lot that’s wrong in the above description but since all this is a matter of faith, let’s go ahead with it. Or just ask any Hindu person around you what ‘Akshata’ is. If the above description is right then how come RSS-BJP members have akshata even before the inauguration of the temple?

Returning back to my phone call.

I answered in the affirmative. I was then told to add some more grains to this 20-gram ‘akshata’ and prepare some sweet dish out of this mixture and have it. I was also told to take two to three grains from the 20-gram packet and wrap them in a piece of paper after writing ‘Shri Ram’ thrice over it and to keep this paper in my cupboard/locker.

Where is all this coming from? Who tells them? And even if someone does, how come people believe in this nonsense?

I have seen so many religious celebrations in my life. Never once am I aware of ‘akshata’ being used as this. In fact, unlike what that description claims, ‘akshata’ from the floor is just swept away like any other dirt. Few do collect it separately. At my place, since we have a river in the vicinity, they throw this rice in the water the next morning. I don’t know what people in cities do.

Let’s talk about this new temple now, shall we?

The temple will be inaugurated on Jan 22, 2024. The temple is not complete yet. By most estimates it would take at least two more years for its completion. Why so much hurry then? There’s a general election this year. By all predictions, RSS-BJP is going to sweep that election. Temple inauguration and these foot soldiers going door-to-door is merely to ensure it.

There have been many instances of people close to RSS-BJP profiting from temple construction. For one such example, read this:

It’s a prime property of 890 sq meters, a piece of land where the grand Ram temple complex will soon come up. Until February this year, it belonged to a mahant, Devendra Prasadacharya. On February 20, one Deep Narayan bought the land — gata number 135 — from the mahant for Rs 20 lakh.

Narayan is the nephew of Rishikesh Upadhyaya, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader who is the mayor of Ayodhya. Land records accessed by Newslaundry show that three months later, on May 11, Narayan sold the property to the Ram Janmabhoomi Trust, set up by the Narendra Modi government to oversee the temple’s construction, for Rs 2.5 crore.
— Ayodhya: Whose Land Is It Anyway?

Forget questioning people in power over this loot, none in big media even bothered to report on this. I would be surprised if you wondered why.

I would not mention people, mostly poor, whose houses were demolished to make space for a grand home to lord Ram. By now I have completely understood how there is no value to a poor man’s life and livelihood. For instance, the government of Madhya Pradesh demolished the house of a Muslim person for spitting on a Hindu religious procession. He was jailed too. But in court it was found that no such incident had taken place. Police had made two people (police’s “witnesses” ) sign on blank papers. They denied seeing any such spitting incident in court. But did any of us ask what of that poor man’s demolished house now? No. Again, the media didn’t see it worth covering. It would puncture the popular narrative now, won’t it?

The domed structure was a 464-year-old mosque believed to have been constructed by or at the instruction of the Mughal emperor Babur. Babri Masjid, the lone structure of significance to Muslims in the area, stood surrounded by holy buildings built by Hindus later — Manas Bhawan, Sita Rasoi and Ram Katha Kunj Sagar. The mosque had existed for centuries and Muslims offered namaz there. Soon after independence, in December 1949, Hindus discreetly installed an idol of the deity Ram Lalla under the central dome, persisting with their claim that the plot on which Babri Masjid stood was the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama.

The conundrum had begun. Who should get the land title, Hindus or Muslims? The case travelled for years through the judicial labyrinth until finally, on November 9 this year, the Supreme Court gave away the title to Hindus.

It took the five judges who decided the case to travel back in time to 300 BC to explain why the land “probably” belonged to Hindus. The court categorically said towards the beginning of its 1,045-page judgement: “The court does not decide title on the basis of faith or belief but on the basis of evidence…The law must stand apart from political contestations over history, ideology and religion.’’ Yet, it ended up doing just that. It went on to rule that Hindus had a stronger claim to the title because of their belief.
— Ayodhya verdict: A conundrum of fact, fiction and faith

The idol of Ram was placed inside the mosque in 1949 — which VHP and Sangh claimed had miraculously appeared that night; but it is not this idol that the new temple will have. The Temple trust had arranged a fashion show of probable idols and chose one from the lot (Voting on Lord Ram Lalla’s idol today, temple trust to select best among three designs). Turns out, the new temple trust does not believe in miracles. Some scientific temperament there. Good for them.

Away from all this noise, I keep wondering, what if there was no mosque in Ayodhya, how would they then choose Ram’s place of birth? Before the British started spreading the rumour of the mosque being that place, so many temples to Ram in Ayodhya claimed that theirs was the spot at which their lord was born. In this context, it is a good time to rewind and remember how Hinduism as a religion was born under British rule as a reaction to Islam. What we today refer to as Hinduism was historically called or known as Brahmanvaad/Brahmanism/vedic-brahmanism etc. No one identified as Hindu before the British started holding provincial elections or census. How do you for instance digest the fact that the Vedas, the books that Hindus use to bolster their claim to state how old their religion is, does not mention Ram or for that matter any god that is worshiped today?

While temples are highly regarded today in Hinduism, our own old religious books disrespect them and write of them in poor light. Vishnu Smriti for instance “says that Vedic recitation should not be carried out ‘in a temple, in a cemetery, at a crossroads, or on a road.’ Placing a temple next to a cemetery is telling. Ritual specialists associated with temples were called devalaka. They were despised by the authors of Dharmashastras. The devalaka is listed among those who should not be invited to an ancestral offering (shraddha), Manu listing them between physicians and butchers.”

From my own limited reading, I have understood this much: Before Aryans migrated to what we today refer to as India, there were already people here. Harappans for one example. And they had their own beliefs and gods (don’t know how they viewed them and what they called them). For instance, Nataraja (who we today view as a form of Shiva) is imported from Harappans. Vedas were written by Aryans. These were the books that informed us about Brahman and their importance. Basically, those who wrote these books were Brahmans and they were superior in all kinds, had all rights and could not receive any punishment as per these books. They were, as per these books, mediators between god and people. Which god? The ones mentioned in the books they had written. They tried to enrol indigenous people into their religion but could not find great success. Another point to note here is how all these Vedic rituals involved large-scale offerings to gods which were impossible for common folk to undertake. All rituals required Brahman's help in invoking gods. These gods could not be prayed to on your own like we are familiar today. Side note: Vedas and early books mention meat eating including beef. In fact, brahmans themselves were extreme beef eaters. I’m not saying it, Ambedkar did. He wrote a detailed paper on this bit of history using Vedas and other scriptures. So in essence, it is not even Ambedkar saying Hindus were beef-eaters but Hindu books themselves. But then the question arises, why did we abandon beef-eating? The answer in all likelihood lies in Buddhism. There was a time when Buddhism and Jainism spread far and wide in India. People started enrolling in hordes. Many kingdoms in the north adopted Buddhism and in the south, they embraced Jainism. This left Brahmans staring at an existential crisis. Their whole thesis relied on them being superior to others in the caste pyramid but what would happen when no one remained under the bottom part of the pyramid? And so began the writing of Puranas and the invention of the very many gods. While some were invented from thin air, many were local gods prayed to by non-aryan locals who were given Vedic makeovers. And so gradually vedic gods whom local people refused to adopt were abandoned in favor of Puranic gods. It is these gods that we continue to pray today. People hated large rituals and yagnyaas where mass slaughter of animals used to take place and in reaction were flocking to Buddhism. To counter this, it seems Brahmans themselves abandoned eating beef. And went a step further by creating stories of bovine’s divinity. What was once the food of Brahman was now converted into a divine entity. It was a method employed to survive. And temples which were once decried bad were now embraced wholeheartedly because by now Buddhists had started to build large structures of their own.

This is the only explanation that answers why Hindus have so many gods, how two people who pray to two separate gods and who on varied occasions are even unaware of each other's gods could still claim to be part of a single religious entity.

This is also why caste is always defended in myriad ways since it is at the heart of the Hindu religion’s existence. Only for the sake of caste was this religion created or put more sordidly, to protect the superior position of Brahmans or upper caste over everyone else.

The four shankaracharyas have said that they will not attend the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22.

The shankaracharyas head the four Hindu mathas (monasteries) — in Dwarka (Gujarat), Joshimath (Uttarakhand), Puri (Odisha), and Sringeri (Karnataka) — that are believed to have been founded by the eighth-century religious scholar and philosopher Adi Shankara.

(Adi Shankara is one of the most important figures in Hinduism)

‘Can’t go against our Dharma Shastra’: Shankaracharyas to not attend Ram temple inauguration — ‘We cannot remain silent now and must say that it is a bad idea to inaugurate an incomplete temple and install the idol of the god there’

“The temple belongs to the Ramanand sect, and not to the Sanyasis, not to Shaiva or Shakta.” — Champat Rai, general secretary of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust

So does Ram belong to Hinduism? Does Shankaracharyas belong to Hinduism? Is the answer to both of these questions the same? Then, what is Champat Rai saying above? Why is he hinting that this new temple does not belong to all Hindus? If he is out-of-line (that seems to be the only argument which could keep both Ram and Shankaracharya in Hinduism) then why have Hindus not been outraged, why have they not asked for Champat Rai’s removal? It’s not like Hindus are a tolerant lot — that’s not the image Modi-years have presented. Didn’t the same lot that took down Babri Masjid murder the original pujari of Ramjanmbhoomi Temple who destroyed VHP, RSS, and Advani’s arguments and condemned the Rath Yatra which killed thousands?

Let me repeat myself. It has now become impossible to project Hindus as peaceful lot. Or Hinduism as the religion of peace, harmony or love. Modi years have ensured that much. Modi years have done to Hinduism what ISIS/Taliban did to Islam. Mind you, Muslims could wash off taints of Taliban/ISIS from them but how will Hindus wash off RSS and Modi who are defended and bolstered by ordinary masses day in and day out. Unlike Taliban, RSS-BJP-Modi are not fringes. They are as mainstream as anything could be. Voted twice. The first vote was despite Gujarat 2002 and Babri Masjid demolition or because of these very facts. And so this is our reality now. We have to live with it. There is no running away from this taint anymore.

If you have reached here, do consider reading the below piece.

Shining example: What Golden Temple can teach Hindutva warriors using Ayodhya to whip up hatred: The shrine in Amritsar offers a lesson in how opposing narratives can coexist in harmony.

Food Dishonesty Is Not Okay You Onion-eyed-Flap-Dragon Restaurateurs

2023-06-20T11:42:00.006-07:00

Photo by Rodrigo Curi on Unsplash

There are very few things that send me into a quiet rage as much as food dishonesty. Let me demonstrate.

Before I do that, let’s get a few things out of the way. There are no superhumans here. And superman is a figment of imagination. Likewise, not everyone can be a chef and not all chefs can cook all food items. There are as many cuisines and foodstuffs in the world as there are people. So to expect any one person to know every kind of cuisine/food is absolutely silly. And that is why every restaurant comes up with its own menu, a limited set of food items which they promise to serve their guests. So we now have restaurants declaring a set of dishes they promise to serve in the form of a menu and of their own volition. Naturally, this means they have a chef and/or cooks who know what these foodstuffs on their menu are and how they are made, also they know what goes into these items and obviously, they make sure the ingredients required to make these items are available in their inventory. There might be occasions when one might not get certain ingredients owing to any kind of unforeseen external factor related possibly to the market, weather or just some other arbitrary occasion. In such a case, you might not serve dishes which are listed on your menu but whose ingredients you currently do not possess. All this is expected and I completely understand. Whereas to take an order for an item and not serve it, and in its place, serve a different item but call it the requested food item; that's dishonest and pure evil. Imagine a Calcutta biryani minus the humble potato or a Lucknowi biryani without the fragrance/aroma of kewda water. This isn’t a laughing matter. We go to restaurants and pay a certain amount (many a times significantly large sum than what individual ingredients would cost) expecting to eat precisely what we have ordered. That is the basic-of-basic pact between a customer and a food place. Now let me tell you what happened today.

I have been craving an excellent English breakfast all this week. Many moons ago I had one at Glen’s Bakehouse, Bangalore where I have also had it previously. And the soft yet crisp texture and taste of their bread laced with butter still lingers and entices my taste buds even after a month of having it. But I was in Pune now. And as is the norm, I looked at online restaurants/cafes that served English breakfast. I found Cafe Peter. It was closest to me and also had good reviews. Some reviews even mentioned English Breakfast. Exactly what I needed. And so I decided to pay a visit.

For those who aren’t familiar, English Breakfast is a pretty standardized breakfast spread which in a strict sense includes bacon, eggs, sausage, some pudding, baked beans, grilled tomato, fried bread or toast served with jams and butter, tea/coffee and orange juice. The bacon mentioned is a very specific cut of bacon popularly called British back bacon which is sliced carefully such that the final slice of bacon includes the belly and loin in one beautiful piece of meat to create an irresistible and unforgettable bacon-eating experience. When you eat this marvel, the crispness and fatty bit, this combination of the two different pieces of pork, each with its own characteristics, blends in to create bacon heaven. The best I remember from recent memory was at Holiday Inn on Racecourse Road, Bangalore. The sausage mentioned above is also a special British sausage which is not plain meat but contains herbs and spices spluttering taste buds when you chew it in. Now since we are in India where pork is not commonplace, it is understandable again for cafes/restaurants to not serve bacon and, sausage to be of chicken. But the rest of the ingredients are commonplace. I have seen many places skipping juice which is again, not okay but another adjusting factor. And that’s it. Anymore accommodating and it would terribly fail to be the English Breakfast. Now please serve your combination of breakfast but I beg you to not name it English Breakfast.

At Cafe Peter I was served a sandwich (don’t know why), potato fries (again why), half-fried eggs, chicken sausages minus herbs or spices, leaf lettuce (why) with a line of some sauce thrown over it (why why why). That’s it. No grilled tomato, no beans and hear this out, I asked for coffee and I was told that it would be chargeable! English Breakfast without tea/coffee/juice, really? I ordered coffee separately and made a total bill of Rs. 672! For comparison, at Glen’s Bakehouse in Bangalore, you get a proper English Breakfast including a pudding or cake plus your choice of coffee or tea for half of this price. And mind you, Glen’s is a bigger and more popular brand than Cafe Peter. There is no comparison of Cafe Peter with regards to service, ambience or taste with Glen’s. And I’m not saying this because they served a bad breakfast today. Years ago I had loved some lunch at Cafe Peter and I went there today hoping for a similar experience.

I’m not writing this merely because of one experience today but I’m seeing a pattern of these things in Pune. I have by now eaten in multiple cities and while in many of these other cities, it was mostly on limited visits frequenting their well-known restaurants; in Pune, Bangalore and Mumbai owing to long stays I have regularly been out and eating. And from my experience, limited still it may be, you are more likely to be disappointed or frustrated in Pune by your order than in Bangalore or Mumbai. For instance, my only recent complaint to a friend in Bangalore has been how the Galouti kebabs we had weren’t really melt-in-mouth. And these were still soft and tender just not melt-in-mouth like you get in Lucknow. This grievance isn’t a complaint when you think of it but a typical case of me being a snob.

On the other hand restaurants in Pune are high-quality snobs. There is plenty of pretentiousness. They have fancy menus and delicate walls decorated with such beautiful flowers and designs but the food they serve on most occasions does not match with food they mention on their menus. And god-save-your-brain-cells if you decide to point out their wrongs. I once explained to a restaurant owner how their dosa batter had gone bad which was causing their dosas to smell terrible and how idlis weren’t supposed to be made with such fine flour as theirs since with the finer flour idlis gain rubber-like texture hinders absorption of sambhar. I was told that they have been making dosa and idlis for so and so years and no one until that day had complained. I wanted to ask, so? But then I quietly walked away. Another day I was at a seafood restaurant which claimed they served Goan food. Their menu mentioned tisrya-sukka. Now tisre is a Konkani word for a specific type of clam which is different from khube which is another kind of clam. Tisre is wide, oval in shape with sharp defining lines on their shells; its flesh has an identifiable orange portion at its edges and most importantly, it tastes superior and costs comparably more than Khube which are close to circular in shape with no lines on their shells or any attractive colours on their flesh. And so restaurants always include tisre sukka (a dry dish having an abundance of tisre clams along with onions and scrapped coconut) in their famed fish thalis. When one of these plates reached my table in Pune I discovered I wasn’t served tisre but khube instead. Since the price was on the higher end, I inquired. I was told that what I had on my plate was what they served as tisre here. How do you argue with such people now?

Compare the above to Bangalore now. Once in the city, I was out for dinner with a Bengali friend who knows his cuisine really well including what goes in it and what does not right to their individual proportions. We were at a hotel buffet where they had a biryani labelled Kolkata Mutton biryani. I found the taste fine. It wasn’t great but still far better than what I had at many other places. We were quietly having our food when a waiter arrived to ask if we were enjoying our meals and if there was anything we would like different. My friend very politely suggested that the biryani was not up to the mark. A vague remark. The waiter nodded, apologized and went away. We got back to our meals. After a few minutes came the chef. He asked what did we not like about biryani. My friend paused and offered him specific details about the dish. What ideally a Bengali biryani contains and what it does not and also which ingredient shadows the other ingredient and such. And at this point, Chef apologised and explained to us how this was not a proper or authentic Kolkata biryani but a milder version of it which they cook for their buffet. He said its ingredients were cooked differently and then plainly mixed as per the demand. He also explained his motivations for this way of cooking. And then requested that we visit again tomorrow for lunch or dinner and he would prepare an authentic Kolkata biryani from the ground up. You see what he did here? There are two parts to what he expressed. First, an admission that what was served wasn’t what was claimed and second, this is less important, offering to prepare the accurate dish.

You might be wondering why this matters, why this unpleasant nitpicking?

I had a friend in the Pune office who disliked South Indian food until I took her to a small eatery run by a Tamil couple in Hinjewadi. What she was until then having was a bad kind of dosa and those rubber idlis that seem to be standard at most places in Pune with terrible sambhar and even more awful chutney. I remember my own dislike of Bengali cuisine because the first two times I tasted Bengali food at two distinct establishments that publicised themselves as Bengali places, they served what was a terrible and stereotypical kind of ‘Bengali’ foodstuffs with undesired quantities of mustard. It took a dear friend and umpteen rounds of Bengali places alongwith thorough descriptions of what was served on the table for me to fall in love with Bengali food. The point is, in most cities, and especially in Pune, with a lot of bravadoes, people serve what can easily be referred to as phoney cuisine. Please note that I'm all for food experimentation, after all, that's how we get new things on the menu. But you cannot advertise Nestle's Maggi and serve Patanjali Noodles - that's just being dishonest and disrespectful of your patron. Or as the angry Scots referred to Trump (who when Brexit was announced congratulated Scots for their wise decision to leave the EU - they had in fact, voted to remain in the EU), these restaurants are being polyester-cockwombles, cock-juggling-thundercunts and rotten-orange-fucknuts!

Thank you for reading till the end. It appears you have as much time on hand as I did writing this. Much appreciated.

P.S. While the above rant is based wholly on my experience, you might experience the cities mentioned differently than I have. But the larger point about some restaurants being dishonest and such treacherous conduct being not okay stands.

Covid Is Back But Here's Why We Need Not Scare Ourselves Of The New Variant That's Ravaging China

2022-12-23T21:38:00.002-08:00

Photo by Kate Trifo on Unsplash

Cases in China are skyrocketing and although they have been doing so for months now, scaremongering in India has only begun recently. Let me not go into why that might be and instead stick to the virus and its shenanigans.

Reports from China indicate BF.7 has the strongest infection ability out of the Omicron subvariants in the country, being quicker to transmit than other variants, having a shorter incubation period, and with greater capacity to infect people who have had a previous COVID infection, or been vaccinated, or both.

To put this into context, BF.7 is believed to have an R0, or basic reproduction number, of 10 to 18.6. This means an infected person will transmit the virus to an average of 10 to 18.6 other people. Research has shown Omicron has an average R0 of 5.08.

The high transmission rate of BF.7, taken with the risk of hidden spread due to the many asymptomatic carriers, is understood to be causing significant difficulty in controlling the epidemic in China.

But,

BF.7 has been detected in several other countries around the world including India, the U.S., the UK and several European countries such as Belgium, Germany, France and Denmark.

Despite BF.7’s immune-evasive characteristics, and worrying signs about its growth in China, the variant seems to be remaining fairly steady elsewhere. For example, in the US it was estimated to account for 5.7% of infections up to Dec. 10, down from 6.6% the week prior.

While the UK Health Security Agency identified BF.7 as one of the most concerning variants in terms of both growth and neutralization data in a technical briefing published in October (it accounted for over 7% of cases at that time), the most recent briefing says BF.7 has been de-escalated due to reduced incidence and low growth rates in the UK.

So this mutant variant which is ravaging China is not doing (or not able to do) similar damage elsewhere. Now, why is that?

Now we are venturing into speculation so alert your brain and rational self. Keep your reasoning powers sharp.

We, and by that I mean our bodies, gain immunity to infection by prior knowledge about the same. This knowledge might come from multiple sources but if I have to stick to SARS-CoV-2 then since this is (or was) a novel virus whose information our bodies did not have, the only known ways to get that information was to either get infected in real (a risky option) or be inoculated by a vaccine. Now, most of the world today has gone through one of these (many in fact have gone through a cocktail of both, some multiple times). This is where it gets interesting and the world at large starts to differ from what went in China in comparison. After the first wave of infection China by and large had no infectious waves. It controlled the spread of the pandemic with great success while the world struggled to keep pace with multiple waves and mutated variants. For instance, India, US and UK saw almost all waves of covid variants. What this did to our immune systems is, except in China, most of the people’s bodies in the rest of the world have significantly more knowledge (and updated knowledge) about covid subvariants than those in China. The new variant is more dangerous and lethal than the Omicron variant but since our bodies have knowledge about Omicron they are better placed to fight the new variant than those in China who have basically negligible knowledge (or outdated information about their enemy). That is probably what explains four cases of this new variant in India that were treated at home in July! This is a crucial context that the media is missing from its scaremongering. Politicians are all doing their own bidding but the media should have known and done better alas, it is Indian media, what can one expect from it than the absolute trash it produces every day.

Please note, this is not to say you have nothing to worry about and such. A virus can infect differently to different people. You may be able to handle a certain viral load but a bit extra and maybe your body’s immune system might not be capable of handling it. Then there are old people and those with compromised immune systems. Also, viruses mutate all the time. It is best to avoid them than to provide them Petri dishes to grow into something scarier. So do mask up and follow all the covid appropriate behaviour that we all are very familiar with by now.

What could governments do better?

I seriously do not like or advise arbitrary lockdowns. Why do we enforce lockdowns anyway? To stop the spread of the virus? That’s not reason enough to snatch people’s freedoms. It is the state’s duty to fend for us and protect our well-being without interfering in our day-to-day life. The point and necessity of lockdowns and complete shutdown of economic activity arise when hospitals run out of beds to treat seriously ill patients. This is when risk-benefit analysis rationalises meddling in people’s lives against their discomfort. But all this can be handled better so that the public knows why the government is doing what it is doing. I’m referring to more transparency here. How? By now, after going through multiple covid waves, we have all sorts of information and learnings. We could come up with a metric saying if X number of hospital beds get occupied then the first round of covid measures will be implemented (or mandated) — think of mandatory masking, fines if not masked and such. 2x of bed occupancy and stricter measures like a stop on mass gatherings like movies and concerts. 3x and then ban on travel etc. Please note I’m no expert and I’m not equipped with all the data that government has. What I’m suggesting are mere blueprints of how this can be done and not what exactly needs to be done. Measures could be different and in different sequences but what we need is more transparency. The government needs to publish well in advance their strategy and what they will do and on what basis (for example hospital beds as I suggested which is a good measure of the severity of infection). Also, daily publish hospital bed occupancy numbers, number of active infections, recovery rate etc. This will help the public from speculation and unnecessarily alarming. And also better prepare them for what’s to come. More importantly, they will also act responsibly on their own.

Take Your Headscarf Off, Show Us Your Hair and Get Your Education – Hindus to Hijab-Wearing Muslim Girls

2022-02-20T23:43:00.004-08:00


Image courtesy: The Hindu

From what I know and can remember Muslim girls in school (not all but some of them) have been wearing hijab (or headscarf) for ages now. It was just another piece of clothing that never bothered us, to the point that we never even noticed its existence. I even know of girls and even teachers who would arrive at school in niqab (or burqa, black outer clothing like a rain-or-sun-coat) and then they would remove it before entering a classroom. Again, this wasn’t a point of conversation or of difference. The only time I have been thinking of these clothing choices and the faces of friends that wore them is now. Now when many schools in Karnataka (and even in Madhya Pradesh, another BJP ruled state) have banned young girls (and even teachers) from covering their hair with a cloth also referred to as wearing hijab. It all started with Hindu kids sloganeering and hooting – all of a sudden – as Muslim kids passed before them. Or running to Muslim kids and shouting – Jai Shri Ram – a war cry of Hindus now. The lord Ram (or simply Ram) of Ramayana, if you have ever read, is a soft-spoken and light-mannered hero of the epic. He does everything in a measured and reserved manner. There is this soft tenderness to his actions and his approach to things. In the whole of epic, there is only once that we see Ram agitated and outraged – when the ocean god does not agree to his demand to make way for him and his army to go to Lanka and rescue his wife. It is this image of Ram that the militant Hindu organization Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has adopted on their posters and hate paraphernalia, and it is this Ram you see depicted elsewhere by Hindus that subscribe to RSS’s worldview. The same is the case with Hanuman (there is no instance in the Ramayana of Hanuman displaying aggression but the monkey-god posters you see everywhere now show him in desperate anger and in all-red). The usual picture of Ram that we saw was of him smiling quietly and standing alongside his wife and his brother while Hanuman stood at his feet. The impression was of a feminine soft-spoken hero, not of a military general. And chant at his temples, say at Mathura and Vrindavan or Ayodhya was ‘Siyavar Ramachandra ki Jai’ (Victory to the groom of Sita, Ramachandra). He was not the centre of the chant but his wife was; he was invoked through her. That was the Ram from Ramayana, the one I knew until the mobs of RSS-BJP descended on streets, heckled and lynched to death the many Indians with chants of Jai Shri Ram.

So we have Hindu crowds chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and trying to scare Muslim hijab-wearing girls, then Hindu groups coming with saffron shawls and later the schools starting to object these girls wearing hijab and now courts debating whether the hijab is central to the religion of Muslims or not. Do you see the problem here? We have conspicuously and to our own benefit have forgotten-and-forgiven the majority community of its divisive-and-violent methods and instead, we are now questioning the basics of minority religion.

The school, high school and college I went to or even the offices that I worked at, all of them in their practises and culture never once felt alien to me or my way of living. Yes, they spoke English during events that were alien at my home. The food served at Hostel mess was strictly vegetarian except for the egg served on Wednesday. Now although having a vegetarian meal every day was alien, having vegetarian meals in itself wasn’t alien. At our home, we are required to consume strictly-vegetarian food when there’s any festival – like during Ganesh Chaturthi or Deepavali and even during weddings. A vegetarian meal and those who consume vegetarian meals always enjoy high moral value in the Hindu pantheon. It is strange how we the meat-eaters worship gods that despise our food, the one thing that sustains us and makes us capable of praying to them. Apart from these few non-harmful diversions, everything else was like at home. The school office, staff room, principal’s room, all had pictures of our gods. Every function began with lighting lamps and chanting mantras. At school, the morning physical exercises started with Sanskrit prayer, then school assembly in the morning started with Sanskrit prayer, all meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner were initiated again with Sanskrit prayers. At my home this wasn’t the custom, we never prayed before meals. So essentially I was praying and chanting mantras more at school than at my home. I was also having too many vegetarian meals. If anything I was being converted into a Brahminical specimen of saatvik purush. I don’t remember my parents ever being asked about this. I don’t also think they would’ve objected. For generations now local customs and gods have been sacrificed and replaced with Brahminical rituals, customs and food habits. The many vegetarians in India are not vegetarians of consciousness but their parents have forced this choice on them. Being vegetarian is a religious habit in India. And in comparison vegetarian prayer is considered in high regard versus a prayer from non-vegetarians. So what I was doing at school compared to at my home was practising a higher degree of Hinduism (I would say upper casteism but let’s not go there). We celebrated Ganesh Chaturthi, Saraswati Puja and other festivals at school. On festival days it was welcome to dress in traditional – i.e., Hindu traditional dress. In offices, we not only celebrate festivals but on occasions like Dasara, in many offices, everyone is required to wear particular colour on a particular day. It is mandated. And there’s more. So in essence, at schools and offices, we celebrate the Hindu way of life in and out, and unapologetically. We don’t notice it since there’s nothing abnormal or extraordinary for us to look at. What we do at school and in the office is similar to what we do at home. Might vary in degrees and sequences but at its heart, it is the same. But now imagine the life of a Muslim kid in India. Everything at school is alien to her and him. Posters on the wall of gods to prayers to festivities. Every day they are forced to question their faith. So many Hindus would object if school walls had posters say of a Dargah or of Kaaba 🕋. And yet Muslims have been enduring this infinite assault on their senses without any outrage. And we Hindus dare call Muslims the intolerants and extremists? Would we sing one of their Arabic prayers on one day of the week? If any teacher dared even once, we would inform our parents and they would quickly rush to the Principal’s office to complain. In fact, the teacher would be dragged to a police station or maybe a mob would descend and lynch the poor teacher. And I’m not exaggerating this, we Hindus have lynched Muslims for just existing. “In Jharkhand, on 17 June 2019, a young man called Tabrez Ansari (22 years) was tied to a pole sometime around midnight and beaten by a mob till six in the morning. As he was being battered, Tabrez Ansari was asked to say ‘Jai Shri Ram’. He did. It did not save him. He died four days later,” Ravish Kumar wrote of Tabrez’s murder in his must-read book, The Free Voice: On Democracy, Culture and the Nation. We Hindus have never been accommodating of Muslims or people of other faith. Would we accept a Christian prayer in a government school? No way. But I know of my Christian friends that sang Sanskrit shlokas in school prayers and before meals every day including on Sundays. They did not object. Their parents did not too. They were accommodating and tolerant. Their gods weren’t hurt by it, their faith wasn’t shaken by their kids singing prayers of other faith. Or celebrating festivals of other faith. Most of the plays in schools that we acted in were stories from Hindu epics. We acted in them, we saw them and so did students from other faith including Muslims. I even remember a Muslim friend of mine playing Lord Krishna in one play in which I was playing some Hindu saint. I don’t remember his parents objecting to it. Or even Hindus that saw that play then. In fact, the teacher who cast him was a Hindu upper-caste Brahmin. None of us saw it as problematic then but all hells will break loose now.

And what are the arguments against Hijab from the Hindu right-wing? You hear a lot of patriarchy-patriarchy then uniform-uniform. The first doesn’t cut it since these are the same Hindu bunch that parade their women everywhere including inside their homes with that noose aka mangalsutra around their neck, sindoor and bindi on their forehead; all prime patriarchal symbols. For most Hindus, the unspoken rule is that women who are menstruating are not allowed to enter temples, religious shrines or even prayer rooms. There are even certain temples in India, such as the Sabarimala temple in Kerala, wherein women who are within the age of menstruating are forbidden from entering. Girls who have not matured yet and women who have reached menopause are allowed entry into the temple. In some households, a woman on her period is not allowed to sleep on the bed, eat from daily kitchenware and must wash her clothes separately. In most rural households, they are not even allowed to enter the house. So it can’t be that Hindus who practise such thick patriarchy at home will have a problem with girls merely covering their hair to school on this ground. Is it then the case of imposition of uniform? Hindus want all children to follow the school uniform strictly? Or at least that’s what so many have been shouting about.

Now, why do schools require uniforms? I wouldn’t go into it since it’s a topic with both sides, and they both have their own merits. Also, note that uniforms are not uniform all over the world – we decide what would be our school uniform. Dupatta is part of the uniform in India but not so elsewhere in the world, mini-skirts are part of girls’ uniforms in Japan but not so in India. So there’s nothing stopping us from having a uniform that goes with everyone or better, let there be multiple options in uniform, students can choose whichever they feel comfortable in. Coming back to the site and state of outrage; Karnataka in fact has a rule against uniforms – the Admission Guidelines-2021-22 posted on the Department of Pre-University Education (DPUE) website not just states that the uniform is not mandatory, but also points out that some college principals and managements making uniform mandatory is a violation of rules. Are you able to get your head around this? That’s not all. As Asaduddin Owaisi pointed out – In 2019, Ireland allowed hijab and turban in police uniform. The decision was welcomed by the Modi government, saying it was in the interest of the diaspora. If it was “historic” for Ireland, then why bother with the girls of Karnataka? Why is their dignity being blown away? So we don’t have a problem with the hijab as a uniform too. So the two primary arguments – uniform and patriarchy – don’t stand or are not the real reasons why Hindus are agitating. What is it then? Two of my friends, one on Twitter and another on Instagram were stressing about children and uniforms, like the uniform must be mandatory for children-children-children. And so my every argument would be countered with “but children and uniform”. Yesterday, the schools in Karnataka even made teachers of the school disrobe their hijab and burqa (outer clothing), at the school gate, in front of the whole gathered crowd (An English professor in Karnataka resigned today citing “self-respect” after she was asked to remove her hijab before entering her college). So the hijab ban isn’t about just children, at least not anymore. And in anyways, the primary goal of schools is to get more and more children into them to impart education and not propagate uniformity. If that was so, we would have had a uniform syllabus and a single language being taught to them. But that’s not the case, is it? That might be the aim eventually but right now at least, that’s not the case.

The only argument or reason that remains is the religion of the little girls going to school with hijab – their identity of being Muslims. And forget oppression, these girls, schoolgoing girls, stood out in open against school administration and against such a large mass of hyena-like right-wing forces and asserted their defiance. That’s no small feat. So many of us so easily bow to authority in offices and of course in schools/colleges out of the fear of being reprimanded by higher-ups. To stand up for one’s beliefs takes absolute courage. And that girl who came to school riding a two-wheeler herself, who parked it and then walked out of a mob that surrounded her and shouted ‘Jai Shri Ram’ to instil fear in her psyche – she walked out of that with her head and fist held high towards the sky. That was extraordinary courage on display there. These are oppressed girls? Really? This is your definition of oppression? How many girls from your family are allowed to go to school riding bikes? How many women in your family are allowed to ride bikes? If anything, Hindu parents must learn from these Muslim parents and their girls. Maybe they could start a crash course on youtube that Hindu parents and their children can enrol. That would benefit them and also this nation.

Through almost four months of protest, photos from the streets of Sudan were rare. Aside from avid observers, few had access to visual documentation of the movement trying to force three-decade ruler Omar Bashir from power. All this changed with this photograph of 22-year-old student Alaa Salah.

Muskan who walked out of the Hindu right-wing mob became the fierce face of Hijab ban controversy

The mob does what it does. It terrorises, creates division in societies and alienates the already alienated. As Ravish Kumar pointed out so succinctly – A mob has its own constitution. It has its own country. It drafts its own orders and directives, and identifies its own prey. But you expect the state and court to abide by the constitution that was drafted by the founders of this republic. Especially the court. For instance, the South African Constitutional Court when a similar petition of a Tamil Hindu girl to wear nose-stud in school as a cultural practice came at its door, went about it in a progressive manner that expanded human values, the culture of diversity and nature of tolerance in their nation.

https://twitter.com/manuvichar/status/1493832456566308867

https://twitter.com/manuvichar/status/1493832456566308867?s=20&t=MItVbsCWb2QvfsUL0CWBPQttps://twitter.com/manuvichar/status/1493832456566308867?s=20&t=MItVbsCWb2QvfsUL0CWBPQ

All the common arguments right-wing is giving today in India were struck down by the court there explaining why they think the other way. They decided in favour of the girl, her choice of wearing the nose-stud to school and her belief in her faith. You can find judgement here.

Our courts are debating (or factoring) if hijab is central to Islam as if to say what Indians do in their day-to-day life is derived from the religious books. If that was so, Hindus, all of them would continue to this day to be beef-eaters since the old scriptures and people who wrote them ate beef in plenty. We even have a great sage on record scoffing that he prefers meat of a tender calf!

Washington-based Pew Research Centre’s ‘Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation’ report finds that 89% Indian Muslim women cover their heads outside their home. But so do 86% Sikh women, 59% Hindu women and 21% Christian women. Moreover, 18% Hindus (mostly Brahmins) wear a janeu, while 53% Hindu men wear the tilak; 69% Sikhs wear a turban; and 51% of all people surveyed (including 51% Hindus and 50% Muslims) across religions generally wear “a religious pendant, such as an amulet, cross, image or symbol of god.”
The India Cable

So will court one by one strike all of these and other religious symbols down? At least from schools, colleges, offices and primarily from the parliament where we have MPs wearing saffron robes. Will they? Or is the proving of essential and non-essential practises only applicable to Muslims? Also, this is not the first time when the court has taken this route. Even in Ayodhya judgement court maintained that the masjid was demolished illegally and statues of Ram Lalla were placed illegally but then it went into the argument whether masjid was an essential aspect of Islam and awarded a verdict in the favor of Hindus who were the ones like in hijab case who started the mess, went on a rampage, resorted to violence or disturbed the status quo.


Hindu girls who came with saffron shawls in protest against Hijab – why now?

One of the most striking images from the scenes of Hindus chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ in these videos as Muslim girls in hijab walk by is of a group of Hindu girls supporting the male hooligans by wearing saffron shawls and saffron headgear. Do these girls not know how much it takes for a female child to venture out from home? Are they not aware of cultural policing? To begin with, most girls are not allowed to go to school. Then some who attend school are barred from going to college. And even if they are permitted, a small error like say someone snitching about her sitting or laughing with a boy will invite a ban on her further studies. None of these restrictions applies to boys. In colleges where there are no uniforms, girls still follow a dress code enforced by their homes and society at large. They can’t wear just any dress as they please. And you will find them wearing these dresses that are approved by their parents despite their displeasure. If you ask them they will tell you these are minor giveaways so they could get the larger freedom that education enables them to have. So you find them accepting a certain degree of policing from their parents and society so they could attend colleges like their male counterparts. Hijab too exists and functions in this context. Some ladies even in their adult life continue to wear the traditional dress (they used to wear to colleges) just like some Muslim girls continue to wear hijab into their adulthood. Many even start wearing hijab in their adult life, on their own. Angshuman Choudhury & Suraj Gogoi point exactly this in their scroll piece – the right to wear the hijab (or not) should rest with Muslim women. That choice should solely be their prerogative. This should be the beginning and end of any intellectual discussion on the use of the veil in schools, colleges or any other public space. Ruha Shadab wrote in HT, the immediate issue is not about whether Muslim women in India should be wearing a hijab. The issue is whether anyone should be deciding if they are “allowed” to do so. If people are interested in “liberating” women from wearing a hijab, they must recognise that forcing women to do anything in the name of liberation does not achieve their goal. If the argument is that religious symbols should be banned in India, then stop wearing the janeu, teekas, mangalsutras, and sindoor. What a woman can and cannot wear is a control tactic used to subjugate them. Forcing them to remove their hijab is an example of control tactics, which stokes fear and alienation, but perhaps most importantly, hatred. While the issue and people at its heart are Muslim school-going girls, the attack is solely not about hijab which Choudhary and Gogoi succinctly summarise – The sudden and rapid escalation of a non-issue like the hijab into a matter of national concern, that too by show of force, suggests an insidious and systematic attempt to de-Muslimise Indian Muslims through a mix of violent intimidation and socio-legal morality is underway. So, the anti-hijab argument today is being made in a predominantly sectarian context by a group of people who are avowedly anti-secular and have full sanction from the state. All said and done, it is heartening and utterly sad what we are doing to these girls who merely want to go to school. What’s so wrong and criminal about allowing these girls into schools with headscarves which we have been allowing until recently anyway? We even allow, and rightly so, convicted criminals to finish their education from prisons. By forcing these girls to remove their headscarves in exchange for education we are not helping them in any way instead we are creating more problems for these girls. We are further complicating their already complex life. We will just end up depriving them of education. For some Hindus, this might be a hard pill to swallow. You see, they see the hijab as a symbol of oppression but they don’t see the uniform with dupatta with the same lens. Dupatta to them is a ‘common’ culture but the headscarf is Islamic religious wear (and an oppressive one at that). When does one thing become a ‘common’ culture and until how long must the another remain restricted to just one community despite being worn by so many in the market and elsewhere. Why do Indian families ask girls to drape a dupatta whenever they venture out, even to the house door to collect a parcel? Is that not oppression? Not getting my point? Alright, have a look at the following dress.

Japanese schoolgirls in short mini-skirts. Wikimedia commons.

Would the Indian parents – belonging to any religion – allow this dress as a school uniform? Absolutely not. But why? Japanese schools have this as their uniform. Why would we have a problem? That old rape argument is hogwash. Japan has significantly fewer rape numbers than India. So no, mini-skirts don’t cause rapes. Nor do hijabs stop them. That is, uniforms have nothing to do with rapes. Uniforms are merely pieces of clothes that we (school committees) have decided to be their chosen style of wear. And these school committees can easily include hijab in their guidelines. In fact, the school where this outrage first started and others that followed had hijab as a uniform. Girls used to wear hijab of the uniform colour and came to school for a long time now. You won’t have to scratch your head a minute longer to guess why and who started this outrage now. No doubt it is political and those who started it with the chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ belong to a certain political ideology. Pitting two communities or cultures that have coexisted for long against each other, encouraging people to see how different others are and how both of them don’t belong to the same entity (nation), to aggravate or scale-up minor feuds and differences into big issues, creating differences where none existed is the meat and potatoes of RSS-BJP politics. While in past they targeted adults, they are now straight-up targeting young kids because it’s easier to rile these kids up. This is the militarisation of youth just the way Al-Qaeda and other terror organizations in Pakistan did at one point. And I can bet that parents of these kids watch godi media channels like Zee News or local variants of it. These parents haven’t been told by their newspapers or television channels of sulli-deals and bulli-deals, two apps on which Muslim women were auctioned by Hindu men and women. Vishal Kumar Jha (21), Niraj Bishnoi (20), Shweta Singh (18), Mayank Rawat (21), Aumkareshwar Thakur (26), Neeraj Singh (28) – all Hindus – were arrested over these auctioning rings. Niraj tried to mislead the police by saying that the Sulli Deals app, which auctioned prominent Muslim women, was created by a Muslim man, Javed Alam, an engineering graduate from Uttar Pradesh. Shweta and Mayank, police said, intentionally used Sikh names on Twitter to promote enmity between Muslims and Sikhs. Creating divisions and enmity between two communities – which political entity benefits from this? It appears the open solidarity Muslims showed towards Sikh farmers in recent protests and Sikh solidarity for Muslims during anti-CAA protests hasn’t gone well with the bigoted Hindus. Note also that the arrested men and women are young and educated and hail from different parts of the country. So the hate is no more concentrated in one state or one region and this is very alarming and bother us all. India is a microcosm of the entire world order. Unity in diversity isn’t just a stray line to be taught in school but is the foundation on which this nation stands. If differences are left to grow like this then we will cease to exist in near future. The cost of communal politics played by RSS-BJP is paid now by the parents of these young children and our nation, whose next generation is growing as hateful timebombs waiting to be exploited by the Sangh-Parivar whenever they are in need of new divisions to be created for their electoral windfalls. The nominal Hindus, the ones you and I talk to and interact with, that casually spread this hate via fake news and propaganda material on social media and in their casual conversations don’t realise that the hate that these politicians spew and spread comes with a real cost. And one of its brutal costs is the innocence of these children. The politics of RSS-BJP combine is imbuing the minds of young kids with hate towards their countrymen; many of the people they now hate because of their religion could have become their close friends but thanks to the divisive agenda, we instead now have ticking time bombs waiting to be triggered when next elections get announced. What Ravish Kumar of NDTV said long ago – Communalism turns human beings into bombs – is now happening right before our eyes. But some of us have decided to look the other way.

Donald Trump Shouldn't Have Been Blocked Instead We Should Have Piggybacked On His Accounts And Reached His Audience

2021-01-09T22:02:00.004-08:00

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even Reddit have suspended or banned accounts of or related to Donald Trump. You want to believe in it or not, the sad truth is Donald Trump is President of the United States of America. He is the most powerful man on the earth. And God did not make him this powerful nor did he acquire Aladdin's lamp, scratched it and become President. People, a large number of them, voted him into this office. They chose him to be their president. And by these platforms, he was reaching his audience. And that platform has been snatched from him now. And this snatching was not achieved after thorough parliamentary or congress' dialogue or arguments in court, this pulling away of carpet from underneath his motormouth-empire was decided by few men behind the closed-doors of these platforms in total secrecy. Their decisions are beyond the purview of public scrutiny. There is no set of logic that applies to what went behind these decisions. This is, believe it or not, arbitrary. Trump, to all our delight, was banned from these platforms by platform owners out of their own volition. He cannot reach his audience now because few men decided so. The most powerful man on the planet holding public office was blocked, his means of reaching his audience were shut because some men beyond the scrutiny of the public eye decided so. Was he really the most powerful man on the planet to begin with if he can be shut this way? If he is not powerful then who is? Have these platforms grown so powerful, so to say, that they can now blackout President of the United States of America?

Oh, make no mistake, I wanted that buffoon to be blocked from these platforms long ago. This came rather too late. Almost at a time now when he has become powerless. The havoc he was capable of raising has been raised already. These platforms let him set fire to this world and now when those very fires were reaching their doors, they shut him off. They shut him not because he was evil, which he was no doubt, but because the curtain behind which they shared meals and drinks with the clown was about to come down. But anyways, less talked about that the better. The problem isn't how hand-in-glove tech companies were with Mr Trump or politicians like him but how people come to elect them in the first place. These platforms allow vilest of the vile disinformation and propaganda to spread without any checks. It is these platforms that trap like-minded and disillusioned people into a bubble and serve them more and more of the vile gobbledygook; it is they who make them slip down and down the rabbit hole so much so that they see in a clown-like Donald Trump or in a fascist authoritarian tinpot (like Modi or Erdogan) their messiah. It is they who facilitate or prepare the ground for their crowning. The elections work like clockwork once the ground has been prepared for the same. So by blocking Mr President, these platforms have given the propagandists the very real reason or coloured glasses through which they happen to see this world anyways. This will only help legitimize their faulty victimhood. Fascist conspiracy theories thrive on the precise belief that they're the victims in this world, that their existence is at stake in the new world. And by blocking their demigod we have given them the real meat on their big red plate.

Of course these platforms today enjoy unrestricted power over the public conversations we have in private. These platforms dictate what is accepted and what is controversial, it is they who decide what is cool and what is objectionable. Their false objectivity and obscenity called community guidelines have spilt into our drawing rooms. Our understanding of this world and our surroundings is by virtue of the information we acquire from these platforms. But since these platforms control what we can see and what we cannot (facebook for instance decides we might not be interested in a piece of certain information and so blacks out this information which its algorithms have decided we would not like), the final understanding we have is by design faulty. And naturally the decisions we make from this faulty understanding will be faulty too. So the people we hate, the people we vote, people we admire, everything that we do is tinkered. These platforms can make us believe in unbelievable things and also make us disillusioned. They enjoy sweeping powers in this regard and we need to think about this power and the precedent this ban is setting. But on the other hand, we also need to think about the lost opportunity here. However hard we have tried we would not have been able to acquire similar minded people at one place as Trump had. His supporters rallied alongside him and they waited for his tweets, they read his posts and followed them through. Attack on the Capitol proves that loud and clear. These tech giants shouldn't have banned Trump from their platforms instead delayed publishing his updates and in the interim fact-checked his tweets, labelled and explained how right or wrong his updates were. This was a missed opportunity to reach his audience and explain to them with real data that they were being blinded by these men or his kind. We have lost it now.

By blocking Trump we have played into their conspiracy theories, we have legitimized their victimhood. They had written their playbook and sadly, we ran by those dotted lines, just as they wished. This cannot be undone now.

When I Was Taken To Police Station For Not Wearing Mask While Cycling

2020-11-13T08:58:00.002-08:00

Suhail Naqshbandi

I don’t know where to begin, how or even if I should begin on this at all, but here I’m.

It is 12:24 pm now. The date is 11 November 2020.

Only an hour or so ago I left for the market on my sister’s ladybird bicycle to fetch some fish and a packet of curd for mum. On my way, I noticed the cycle’s tires had less air in them so I stopped at the cycle-repair shop on my way and got both tires filled with air. Paid him and left for the market. On the way I thought I should get the curd first and then fetch fish so I decided to cycle past the fish-market to the curd shop. Between fish market and the shop lies police station and there were two cops opposite to the station with their masks on — I mention this because I have seen them mostly without their masks before — so this needed saying. So I knew that they were on guard for people without masks. And I was one of them. My mask was lying in the cycle basket as is always when I’m cycling. I don’t see any point of wearing a mask while riding a bicycle or while running alone by the beach or just when I’m by myself. But I always make sure I wear a mask when I'm before a shop-front, at market or at any crowded place. My friends no how paranoid I'm about this and they joke about it all the time when I frown about their carelessness. In case of cycling and running it isn’t just the bare-bone logic but also how it is dangerous to wear masks while performing breathing-heavy activities. It can in fact be fatal to wear masks while cycling or running. With such sound reasoning behind me, I calmed myself and kept cycling without bothering about the policeman ahead. It is no mystery by now what must have happened at this point because if it was anything otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this post.

The policeman asked me to stop. He must be in his forties. I noticed he was wearing his mask properly covering both his nose and mouth — another anomaly hard to miss. I stopped. He directed me to the police station. I tried to ask why but he insisted, rather curtly without listening to anything that I had to say, that I walk with my cycle to the station entrance. I sensed trouble but I was still confident that policemen will understand and honour my reasoning. I know, going by the track record of police from across the country that’s a fallacy but still, I wanted to believe otherwise.

A lady inspector was sitting on a chair with a receipt book on a table before her who asked me to pay the fine. I reasoned I was riding a bicycle and that I immediately wore the mask when I was stopped. I wasn’t let to talk any further. Another policeman came and shouted that I have to wear it all the time. I tried to tell him how it is advisable not to wear masks while exercising or cycling, and also that it could prove fatal. Again, before I could finish, the policeman who first directed me to the station entrance called me inside to meet the PSI (Police Superintendent). I followed. We stood outside his room whose door was open. He was on his phone.

Some background here.

I have been to this police station couple of times in past. For my passport verification, I have visited this station some four or so times owing to “sir is out on duty, come another time”. But on two such occasions they made me stay there because I was then studying computer science and could also type in Kannada — I helped them in typing few of their papers. And when sir did arrive, the inspector handling my passport verification papers told me how before being on duty here in Karwar, their sir was in Bhatkal and people would pay him so and so amount for their passport verification. I was in no hurry to get my passport and to make matters worse, was high on idealism so just told him, ‘sir this is Karwar and not Bhatkal, I won’t pay anything to anyone for carrying out their duty.’ I also told reminded him how passport office pays police by each application to carry out this paperwork. So they weren't doing anything out of courtesy rather it was their duty. He said my application might not move smoothly to which I said that’s fine. I can wait. Then the PSI asked us not to travel abroad, serve India and Indian interests — the whole brain drain speech. I received my passport anyway after few weeks. Against all the fears that he had created in my head, I faced no further delays or issues in receiving my passport. But I’m aware of a friend who faced a great number of hurdles to get his passport done because he refused to pay bribe to police officers (not at this station but a different one under Karnataka state itself).

Next, I was at this station over an RTI application I had filed with District Commissioner. I had first visited the police station requesting an FIR to be written against a neighbor for obscenity and nuisance. This individual’s brother was a retired police officer (different station but under Karnataka state). They refused to file an FIR so I filed an RTI query with district commissioner who directed it to the station asking why it wasn’t filed. They did act after this but let the individual off real quickly. Things continued as they were for us.

Then I visited twice recently and once before this very PSI. I have seen him surrounded by people wearing masks while himself wearing none.

So all in all, I’ve been to this place and I’ve stood outside this very door. Not that they will remember any of these instances or me for many like me visit police station on daily basis. And anyway, I’m too poor and unimportant to be remembered by the cops. PSI has already started shouting at me but I’m not able to make out what he’s trying to convey by this shouting. I try to explain him with a calm voice that, sir I was riding a bicycle and it’s pretty hard to cycle wearing a mask. He shouts me down. I tell him that he is raising his voice unnecessarily and that he shouldn’t do so because I haven’t done anything to be talked this way. At no time am I allowed to complete my sentences. Please note that howsoever many times I must have visited this police station, I still get tensed and frightened around police officers or any gunmen for that matter, just like millions of others. Should we be frightened around them? Heck, not. They exist to help and serve us. They exist to make our lives better and worth living but news after news after news they have proved just otherwise. And even in my personal experiences and those of my near ones, they have just acted like cops from the newspapers. They enjoy unchecked and unaccounted power, and act with utmost impunity. How many citizens are in jails today because police have filed cases against them without basis in facts or evidence? And then citizens have to fight it out in courts — none of it comes easy or cheap. Who has such resources at their disposal or time to invest? We know of people who have spent 23 or so years in jails only to be cleared by courts of all charges and pronounce them innocent. They spend their prime years in jail because police frames them. Why? Simply because they can and they easily get away with all this. The PSI reminds me this when I tell him that law doesn’t say I should wear a mask while riding a bicycle. He shouts again — are you teaching me law now? I can show you what law is and can do! And the inspector standing beside him asks me if I want to go to courts. PSI says I have to wear mask whenever I step out of the house. To this, I tell him he can get me a vehicle if he wants me to wear a mask even while on the move. He shouts me down. This shouting and me trying to open my mouth to reason out continues for a while. He asks me to pay the fine and just leave. Inspector takes me outside to the table. I note what the receipt reads. It doesn’t talk about the mask anywhere. The receipt is regarding smoking cigarettes and tobacco-related offences. I ask them I’ll pay the fine if I was given a receipt that said ‘fined for not wearing mask while riding bicycle’. The lady inspector shouts now. I want to ask them why are they all shouting for everything but I don’t. At this point, someone asks the policeman who first directed me to the police station to take my cycle. He goes to it and checks if I had locked it. I quickly run towards it and ask him not to take away my bicycle. The inspector hits my chin with his elbow when I touch my bicycle. I’m guessing this wasn’t intentional but only he would know that. At this point, another inspector, young and if I’m right, from siddhi community comes and takes me back near the table. He signals the lady inspector and she vacates her seat which he occupies now. He points me to the handwritten text on the receipt which reads “Karnataka epidemic disease ordinance-2020". Lady inspector mentions something about googling and I tell her that the ordinance/act doesn’t mention anywhere about wearing masks while cycling. At this point I have seen a Muslim youth being pulled into the station, I assume, for not wearing mask as well. He probably said “kya hai ye faltugiri” (what is this nonsense) to which policeman was telling him that he’ll show him the faltugiri. I’m slowly realizing the danger and threat to my life. How wrong everything could go from here. I just want to leave this place. I want to agree to a crime under “cigarette and tobacco products (ban on advertisements, sale, distribution and production) Act of 2003" which I did not commit. For a fleeting second, I think of Jayaraj and Beniks from Tamilnadu — I’m aware of the saintly treatment I’m receiving in comparison to theirs, I think of many confessions that police retrieve from ‘criminals’ — the entire train of thoughts is unsettling. My legs have started to shake at this point. I don’t want them to see my trembling legs so I try to lean on the pillar but I’m frightened lest they do not like my leaning on a pillar before them. For the last time, I ask them to write on receipt — fined for riding a bicycle without a mask — which they, of course, reject and shout at me again. The young inspector is furious even. No one by their demeanour or language is reassuring or approachable. You don’t want yourself to be at this place. You don’t want to visit this place. This is like walking into a cave filled with hungry hyenas. And so I pay the fine and walk out with receipt. I’m frustrated, angry but also relaxed a bit. My legs are still shaking though. I search for my cycle which I find parked at a different location than where I had left it. I take it and ride away — with the mask on. I can’t breathe easily from inside but I can breathe still. This is better than standing inside that cave of hyenas. I collect the curd packets from a shop and cycle my way back to the market with the mask on but am still looking over from my shoulders. I’m checking if anyone from the station is still following me or if they’re looking at me. I see no one.

I’m surrounded by fisher-women and loads and loads of fish in the market. But I can no more sense myself being here. I’m just going from line to line without looking at the fishes. They’re shouting at me, asking me to buy from them. Different kind of shouting. Their body language is warm and assuring. I still cannot warm up to their calls. I buy something reluctantly because I have come to buy fish. This was the fish I told mum I won’t buy today because we have been having it for many days now. I just want to cycle away from the police station. I’m feared now walking to the parking lot outside the market, worried whether my cycle would still be there. I have seen videos of police from Delhi and UP smashing vehicles of the general public in vengeance. That cycle means so much to me. I’m relaxed to see it still standing where I had parked it.

In a far-away parallel universe if anyone thinks policemen meant well, that they were only doing their duty to safeguard people’s lives and was only trying to contain the spread of virus and such, let me break that castle of lies. Just some weeks ago, on the day of Dussehra, the same police station permitted a Dussehra procession that saw a crowd of more than a thousand in gathering and in procession, all in shoulder-to-shoulder vicinity. All these people were allowed to do so without masks, and I say allowed because there were twenty or so policemen including the PSI with the crowd marching a length of two kilometres. Oh yes, many policemen including the PSI weren’t wearing their mask themselves — sorry, some of them were wearing it on their necks, their faces and noses, unlike today, were exposed. On that day, temple committee members were shouting at anyone who took their phone out to record this glorious procession. You can guess as much who must have directed them to do so. Conspicuously, there was a policeman with a camera recording everyone and everything. He would climb the adjoining walls etc to better capture everyone. Not just this, the temple was open and in full action on nine days of Navratri with daily puja, auction and everything. All these events attracted crowds and a police constable would be present inside the temple while these things were happening. So no, this extraction of fines from common citizens isn’t to stop the spread of the virus. This is to drive fear into our heart, make us submissive to the state and authority, and of course to loot common men’s already meagre resources.

Justice in India is a cruel joke. People spend decades in jails only to be acquitted by courts later on but who can return them their life back? And what happens to policemen who file these false cases? Nothing. They just go on to their next victim. When the state machinery isn’t accountable for their crimes, how can one say the law is equal for all? A Kerala journalist gets arrested by UP police while on his way to report on Hathras incident, people go to Supreme Court on this matter but court tells them to go to lower court but the same court cancels its vacation time to hear Arnab Goswami’s bail plea. Goswami, of course, deserves bail, heck, everyone deserves bail until they are pronounced guilty by courts. Like Arnab Goswami’s lawyer Harish Salve said, the rule is Bail, not Jail. But sadly, tribal rights activists, human rights activists, those that stood against this govt, scores of Muslims and Dalits are spending years and years in jail without even going to trial. Our courts, even the Supreme court shows no urgency for their liberty and life. Father Stan Swamy requested for sipper and straw to drink water as he suffers from Parkinson’s and his hands shake; what did the court do? It gave him the next date. Would heavens had fallen if he was allowed to have a sipper to drink water from? (Harish Salve in defence of Goswami’s bail said in court — Will heavens fall if the man is released on ad interim bail?)

Law enforcement is depressingly bizarre today. Police can pick up a random individual from the street or college and charge him for terrorism or bomb blast and make him spend 23 years in jail. They aren’t accountable for their shoddy, and on most occasions, utterly criminal jobs. Law enforcement should not be this easy. Right now state enjoys the obscene amount of power to charge anyone with anything and run wild with it without a shred of accountability. This obscenity called law is captured beautifully in Cardinal Richelieu’s quote —“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” It shouldn’t be this way. “I actually think that law enforcement should be difficult,” Moxie Marlinspike, founder of Signal and security expert said in an interview. He further added, “And I think it should actually be possible to break the law.” In a sound democracy, citizens should have more and more power over the state. But instead, we have the state accumulating more and more power over its citizens. And as that happens, we start to move away from democracy to autocracy. Each frivolous case by the state against its citizens is a brick in an under-construction castle to a despotic regime. The doom is arriving, it is on its way. And no, it isn’t arriving because I was taken to the police station for not wearing a mask while riding a bicycle but because many see no wrong in the police’s behaviour in these cases. And states derive their power from the silence of their citizens. We give them this power, this abundance of power to destroy and bulldoze our ant holes and lives.

Wear mask now, yes, even while riding bicycles and such. Else you will be shown what law is and what it can do.

This whole incident occurred at Chittakula Police station of Karwar, Karnataka
Above cartoon is Suhail’s last cartoon posted to social media before Kashmir’s internet was shut down.

क्या हम वाक़ई चाहते है कि कोरोना ख़त्म हो?

2020-10-22T11:30:00.002-07:00

आए दिन मैं किसी ना किसी को ये पूछते हुए सुनता हूँ कि 'ये कोरोना आख़िर जा क्यूँ नहीं रहा है' या फ़िर 'आख़िर ये कब जाएगा?' और मैं यही जवाब देता हूँ कि, जब तक हम सतर्क नहीं बनेंगे, जब तक हम अपने तौर-तरीके जो कोरोनावायरस के फैलने के अनुकुल है उन्हें नहीं बदलेंगे तब तक ये ऐसे ही फैलते रहेगा। जब भी मैं मार्केट जाता हूँ तो मैं अनगिनत लोगों को बिना मास्क के देखता हूँ या फ़िर मास्क ऐसे पहने हुए जो ना पहनने के बराबर है। कुछ तो मार्केट तक मास्क पहनकर आते है जो ज़रूरी नहीं है पर मार्केट में जब भी किसी से बात करनी हो तो मास्क उतार देते हैं जब उसे पहनना बेहद जरूरी है। इन सबका कारण जो भी हो, पर ये सब वो चीज़े है जिनसे कोरोना के फैलने का ख़तरा रहता है। जब तक हम अपने तौर-तरीकों में सुधार नहीं लाएँगे तब तक कोरोना यूँही फैलते रहनेवाला है। ग्रीष्म में लगी जंगल के आग के भाँति कोरोना अपने आप तो थमने वाला है नहीं।

तो क्या हम इस भीषण आग को रोकने की कोशिशे कर रहे हैं?

मुंबई में विपक्ष यानी भाजपा माँग कर रही है कि जब बार (bar, मधुशाला) खुले हो सकते है तो मंदिर भी खुलने चाहिए जैसे उन दोनों में कोई अटूट रिश्ता हो। महाराष्ट्र के राज्यपाल महोदय ने मुख्यमंत्री उद्धव ठाकरे जी से पूछा है कि क्या शिवसेना नेता "अचानक से धर्मनिरपेक्ष" हो गए हैं। जैसे कि धर्मनिरपेक्ष होना कोई गुनाह हो। कोई उन्हें बस उस संविधान की जिसकी उन्होंने शपथ ग्रहण की है उसकी याद दिला दे जिसकी प्रस्तावना यानी परिचय में धर्मनिरपेक्ष होने की बात लिखी गई है। ख़ैर, राजनीति महाराष्ट्र से लेकर बिहार और उत्तर-प्रदेश से लेकर कश्मीर तक अपने चरम पर है और आम जनता हाशिये पर - बिल्कुल आत्मनिर्भर -जैसे प्रधान मंत्री ने चाहा था। अस्पताल में कोरोना के इलाज के लिए बिस्तर मुहैया हो या ना हो पर सड़क पर मास्क ना पहनने पर हजार रुपयों का जुर्माना ज़रूर मुहैया कर दीया गया है। केंद्र सर्कार राज्यों के अपने पैसे (जीएसटी dues) लौटाने में सक्षम नहीं है पर चाहती है कि लोग सभी नियम-कानूनों का पालन करे वर्ना जुर्माना भरने के लिए तैय्यार रहे -लोगों से तो कोई पूछ भी नहीं रहा कि उनके पास जुर्माने के लिए कोई धनराशि है या नहीं। खैर लोगों की इतनी मज़ाल भी नहीं की वो पुलिस से सवाल-जवाब करे। और अगर कोई पूछने की सोच भी रहा है तो वो एक बार तमिलनाडु के जयराज और बेनीक को याद कर ले। आप को शायद लगे कि मैं ड़र फैला रहा हूँ पर बर्खुरदार, ड़र का महौल तो यहाँ कब से है!

डर की ख़बरों के लिए उत्तर प्रदेश, बिहार या तमिलनाडु बहुत दूर के प्रतीत हो तो मैं अपने ही शहर का ज़िक्र कर लेता हूँ। कुछ महीने पहले जब कोरोना के मामले बढ़ रहे थे तो ज़िला अस्पताल के हाल का किसी व्यक्ती ने फेसबुक पर वीडियो डाला था ये बताते और दिखाते हुए कि कैसे कचरा इधर उधर फेंका गया है, बाथरूम साफ नहीं है, कोई स्त्री जिसकी कोरोना से मृत्यु हो गई थी उसके वस्त्र आदि फ़र्श पर ऐसे ही फेंके गए है, वह यह भी बता रहा था कैसे डॉक्टर पूरे दिन एक बार भी हाल पूछने नहीं आते हैं, कैसे कोई भी आईसीयू में बिना इलाज आ-जा सकता है इत्यादि। हुआ यूँ कि उस व्यक्ती को दूसरे दिन पुलिस ने पीट दिया और उससे सॉरी बुलवा लिया। व्यवस्था में कोई सुधार आया? अगर कोई सुधार चाहता तो उस व्यक्ती की पिटाई नहीं कर्ता ब्लकि शानो-शौकत से उसका शुक्रिया अदा कर रहा होता क्योंकि उसने सिस्टम की खामियों को उजागर किया था। ख़ैर छोड़िए ईन सब बातों को। सत्ता और व्यवस्था के बारे में जितनी कम बातें करे वही अच्छा है।

मैं आप लोगों को कोरोना के मद्देनजर अपने यहाँ का हाल बताता हूँ जिससे आप अंदाजा लगा लीजिए कि कोरोना कब तक जाने वाला है या हम किस हद्द तक चाहते है कि यह बीमारी चली जाए।

वैसे आजकल मैं शहर से काफ़ी दूर हूँ और मेरे दो किलोमीटर के दायरे में अब तक कोरोना का कोई मामला सामने आया है नहीं। अच्छा ही है क्योंकि अगर यहाँ पर मामले बढ़ गए तो उनकों संभालने के लिए यहाँ कोई स्पेशलटी अस्पताल है नहीं। लोग रोज मार्केट जाते है और अपनी-अपनी नौकरियों पर भी। अब तक तो सब ठीक से चल ही रहा है। और मैं चाहूँगा कि आगे भी चले। जैसे कि मैंने इससे पहले ज़िक्र किया सबकुछ अच्छा इसलिए नहीं है क्योंकि हम मास्क पहन रहे है और अपने चेहरे को छूने से पहले साबुन से बार-बार हाथ धो रहे है क्योंकि ज़्यादातर लोगों ने इन्ह सब चीजों से अपनी सोशल डीस्टंसींग यानी सामाजिक दूरी बना ली है। अगर ऐसा है तो जब मुंबई और बैंगलोर में मामले बढ़ रहे है तो यहाँ पर हम सब बच कैसे रहें है? क्या इस चमत्कार का वास्ता यहाँ पर एक दुसरे के सामने खड़े मंदिर और मस्जिद है? कुछ लोग शायद आपको यही जवाब दे। ज़्यादातर घर यहाँ पर समंदर के किनारे है और जब सुनामी आयी थी (कई साल पहले) तो पानी में चढ़ाव यहाँ पर भी हुआ था हालाँकि किसी को कोई नुकसान नहीं हुआ जिसका श्रेय यहाँ के लोगों ने इन्हीं मंदिर-मस्जिद को दे दिया था। यह अलग बात है कि चेन्नई जहां पानी किनारे से बहुत अंदर आ पहुँचा था वह समुद्री तट सुनामी के केंद्र की तरफ वाला है और हमारे यहाँ की ज़मीन उनके मामले काफ़ी ऊपर भी है। खैर, कोरोना भारत में बाहर से आया है। मतलब जब तक कोई कोरोना संक्रमित व्यक्ती भारत नहीं आया था तब तक भारत में कोरोना नाम की बीमारी भी थी नहीं। हमारे यहाँ का हाल ठीक वैसा ही है। शायद। बात जो भी हो, हजार बातों की एक बात ये है कि अब तक कोई संक्रमित नहीं है इसका मतलब ये नहीं कि आगे भी नहीं होगा। हो सकता है और नहीं भी। नहीं हुआ तो बेहद अच्छी बात है पर अगर हो गया तो यह वायरस यूँ फैलेगा कि जीना बेहाल हो जाएगा। वह इसलिए क्योंकि यहाँ पर लोग रोज एक दूसरे से किसी न किसी बहाने मिल लेते है, मार्केट वगैरह छोड़ भी दे तो सुबह और शाम समंदर के किनारे गप्पे-शप्पे बहुत होते है, और सब बिना कोई सावधानी बरते। इसका मतलब ये नहीं कि सब कोरोना की मांग कर रहे हो। किसी को उन्ह चीजों से नहीं गुज़रना है जिनसे मुंबई, गोवा, दिल्ली, पुणे जैसे शहरों में स्थित लोग गुज़रे है।

वैसे सतर्कता तो थी काफ़ी देर तक। काफ़ी लोग तो पहले दूध के पैकेट से लेकर सब्जियों तक को धो-धोकर ईस्तेमाल करते थे। गणेश चतुर्थी भी बहुत दबे दबे अंदाज़ से मनायी गयी थी और उसके बाद यहाँ पे स्थित दरगाह वाले पीर बाबा का उर्स जो सबसे बड़ा, शानदार और लोगों से कचा-कच भरा हुआ हुआ करता था वह भी इस बार (सिर्फ दो हफ्ते पहले) बहुत छोटे स्तर पर बिना कोई भीड़ के मनाया गया था। उर्स के बाद आयी है नवरात्रि और दशहरा। और अचानक से मानों लोगों में बेवजह का जोश भर गया है। इस बार डांडिया नहीं हो रहा जो शुक्र मनाने की बात है पर मंदिर में दिनभर भीड़ जुटी रहती है। दूर दूर से लोगों का आना जाना हो रहा है मानो वक़्त सुहाना हो और कोरोनावायरस एक भ्रामक पंचतंत्र की कहानी। मंदिर में कीर्तन हो रहे है जिसके लिए लोग घंटों बैठे रहते है मतलब एक ही मिली-जूली हवा में साँस लेना और उसके बाद पुजा जिसके लिए आरती के ख़तम होने तक और भी पास आ कर सब खड़े हो जाते हैं, एक कमरे में, एक ही हवा में साँस भरते हुए। और मानों ये सब काफ़ी नहीं था, या लोगों ने ठान लिया हो कि कोरोना को चैलेंज करना है, उसे आँख दिखानी है - तो कीर्तन और आरती के बाद होती है नीलामी (हम यहाँ इसे सवालो कहते हैं)। घंटों तक लोग जो नारियल, केले, अन्य फल, साड़ी, अगरबत्ती, चावल चढ़ावे के लिए लाते हैं उनकी नीलामी होती है। पुजा का प्रसाद नीलामी के बाद ही वितरण किया जाता है ताकि आप नीलामी से पहले घर ना निकल सके। मैं यह नहीं कह रहा हूँ कि इन सब हरकतों से कोरोना फैल जाएगा। मेरी क्या मज़ाल? ज़रूर ही भगवान, यहाँ पर विराजमान माँ दुर्गा, सभी भक्तों की रक्षा करेंगी। तिरुपति में 700 से ज्यादा मंदिर के कर्मचारी संक्रमित हुए है, शिर्डी, और अयोध्या में भी ऐसे ही मंदिर के कर्मचारी संक्रमित होने की ख़बरें है। साउथ कोरिया में शुरुआत के अस्सी प्रतिशत संक्रमित के मामले एक व्यक्ती की वज़ह से थे जिन्होंने चर्च के चक्कर लगाए थे और वहाँ से पूरे देश में संक्रमण फैल गया था। निजामुद्दीन मर्कज़ के बारे में आपने नहीं सुना हो ऐसा तो हो ही नहीं सकता। टीवी और अन्य लोगों ने इस वाक़या को हर किसी तक पहुँचाने में कोई कसर तो छोड़ी है नहीं। अयोध्या के भगवान राम ने, शिर्डी के साई ने, तिरुपति के बालाजी ने, चर्च और मस्जिद में स्थित अपने अपने भगवान ने जो नहीं किया वह यहाँ के भगवान ज़रूर करेंगे। आज तो जिला न्यायाधीश भी मंदिर आए थे। हम सबको एक अज़ीब और अविस्मरणीय भरोसा है कि कोरोना करोड़ों लोगों को क्यों न हुआ हो पर हमको नहीं होगा।

ये कोरोना रोज इतना फैलता कैसे है? क्यों फैलता है?

वैसे भगवान की अपनी सीमा होती है। हम भगवान से जो मांगते हैं, जिन्ह चीज़ों की माँग करते है, उन आकांक्षाओं की अपनी एक सीमा होती है। संत तुकाराम महाराज ने एक बात कही थी कि अगर आप एक जगह से दूसरी जगह जाना चाहते हो तो आपको खुद उठकर अपना सफर तय करना होगा, कोई भी प्रार्थना या गुहार आपकी मदद नहीं करने वाली है। दूसरी बात मैं कर देता हूँ। अगर कोई प्रकांड पंडित भी आग में हाथ डालकर बैठेगा तो उसके हाथ को जलने से कोई प्रार्थना नहीं बचा सकती। बातों का तात्पर्य बस इतना ही है कि आस्था, श्रद्धा, प्रार्थना, ये सब अपनी अपनी जगह है और आप उनका वहन जरूर करे पर ये भी समझे की आस्था और नादानी में फर्क़ होता है। जब हमें मालूम है कि बाहर वायरस है जो लोगों की जाने ले रहा है (भारत में ही सवा लाख से अधिक जाने जा चुकी है), जो एक दूसरे के संपर्क में आने से फैलता है तो बाहर जाना और ठीक वैसे वातावरण को साँझा करना जो वायरस के संक्रमण के लिए अनुकूल हो यह सिर्फ नादानी ही नहीं बल्कि अपराधिक है। मुझे पूरा यकीन है कि भगवान इसकी अनुमति न देता होगा वर्ना तिरूपति मे 700 से अधिक मामले नहीं आते नाही राम जन्मभूमि के भूमि पूजन वाले पंडित संक्रमित होते। इशारों को समझिए। अगर वायरस एक जगह से दूसरी जगह फैल रहा है तो उसकी वज़ह इंसान खुद है।

अगर हम बदलाव चाहते हैं तो हमे खुद बदलना होगा, हमारे तौर-तरीकों को बदलना होगा। हमे और सतर्क होना पड़ेगा।इस बिमारी का एक दिन अंत जरूर होगा यह निश्चित है पर कितनी लाशों के बाद होगा यह अनिश्चित है जिसका निर्णय हमे करना है। यह वायरस कब ख़तम होगा यह हम सब मिलकर तय करेंगे पर उससे पहले हमे एक ज़रूरी सवाल का जवाब ढूँढना है। क्या वाक़ई हम चाहते है कि कोरोनावायरस का दौर खत्म हो? अब तक की तस्वीरों से ऐसा लगता तो नहीं है!

On Love, Illusions and Breaking-Up

2020-10-18T20:48:00.005-07:00

Photo by David Kovalenko on Unsplash

It’s a funny thing to recognise, when you do recognise, that our entire lives, we harbour this illusion of loving someone and then during later times, loving them no more; when in fact we never love them love them. Except on rare occurrences, what we do is, we love ourselves, we fall in love with the way we are being treated, with our feelings, the way we feel in their company, the way we make ourselves feel in their company. And our emotions, the intricate chemical reactions and nerve firings in our brain are our own creation out of our own fancied realities. These realities on most occasions are built upon innocent lies that we create out of our own volition. We create these images of the people we love. We tell ourselves how they are and how they are not; whether they are how we tell ourselves as they are is true or not becomes trivial as long as our illusionary reality sails through this phantasm with slight obliging aberrations. And the world thereby sails smooth. However one day, the actual being, our true self, draws upon us, it arrives knocking on our doors in a way that is no more avoidable, and it smashes our imagined reality. And we say we have fallen out of love, when in fact, it is just the imagined reality that has been disrupted. It isn’t the love that has fallen out of place rather the fancied reality that has been disclosed.

We don’t just construct this lie or imagined reality about others but also about our own self. We all have a very high impression of ourselves. Very few can see through our own hypocrisy, lies and dichotomous lives that we live. While originally, we are cognizant of our lies but as their regularity progresses, you start to believe in them, and eventually you create a version of yourself so removed from your reality that you not just believe but now defend to emulate them. So you tell yourself you love someone, you tell yourself you are happy, you tell yourself so many things and all this works for most of the people most of the times. But for those whom it does not, things come tumbling. For instance, some experience trauma, anxieties and worse, and they dutifully seek help. However, before the therapist they confide in, they end up sitting and talking about their imagined characters and not themselves. A therapist can’t help you unless she knows who you are and what you are going through. You can’t and should not act at a therapist or doctor for that matter. By doing this we end up with our tottering selves where we know we are torn and something isn’t right but we cannot see what it is for we fail to see through the facade that we have created around ourselves, we miss to off the lights and see for once our true bodies. And so, our actions, own deceptions walk us to our graves before we could even realise it.

House Gecko And Its Prey

2020-10-01T22:48:00.003-07:00

Olivier, Flickr

There is this house gecko (or lizard if you may) on the wall some fifty centimetres above our idiot box. And some forty centimetres from the same idiot box is a mosquito sitting on the same wall. But because the gecko is diagonally positioned, the distance between them is little more than ten centimetres.

TLDR; a house lizard and a mosquito are few centimetres away.

Lizard slowly takes its left forelimb forward. And then it stops for a while. Right limb forward and stops again. Right forelimb, stop, left forelimb, stop, right, stop. Movements are so slow and meditative that even if you stared at them without batting your eyelids, you would surely be deceived to think it hasn’t moved a little. But it has now closed down on the mosquito by half a distance. They are both facing each other. Can a tiny mosquito sense the lizard closing in on itself?

It is now four centimetres away. So close to its prey, its food. So close that even I could feel the satisfaction it must be feeling inside. Its relentless pursuit and enduring efforts are about to pay it well. It takes another step. Pauses and stares at its prey. Inconsequential and indifferent stare, as if to say, ‘worry not you little thing; oh look! I’m so far away from you. Worry not.’ A cunning act but nonetheless necessary for its survival. It is only three centimetres away from its prey now. So little a distance. Final few movements and the black tiny mosquito will soon cease to exist outside its digestive tract. It now lifts its foreleg ever so lightly, now cautious more than ever before, it delicately tries to place it down but before it could do so, the mosquito rises up and flies away to the left of the wall. A half-meter away.

Usually, I’m happy when a prey escapes. Last moment escapes are glorious to watch. But this one did not satisfy me. I felt sad, so unsatisfactory. Do you know they all have special legs, mosquitoes and lizards who can endure upon an upward wall defying gravity?

Oh, wait, Oh damn, what did I see!

The lizard. It did not move slow or took no more measured and gentle steps in its second act, the final part. It straight away, from that long a distance, ran like a laser beam and in microseconds took out its tongue and took in its spoil.

What sorcery. What display of skill.

With Highest Positives And Deaths Per 24 Hours In The World, India Needs Urgent Re-thinking Of Its Strategy along-with Pooled Testing

2020-08-04T11:02:00.007-07:00

It is six months since the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 was published by Chinese scientists and was available to the world. What has India done since that January should find no excuse in the otherwise legitimate accusation that China did not inform about the novel virus to the world in time or it kept WHO in dark. It is true that China erred and it is also true that there are reasons to scrutinize WHO. But what have we done since it indeed released the information about the virus? For instance, while some countries like Taiwan, South Korea, Japan had cases of probable infection long before China released the vital information, India registered its first case only in late January, long after China had published genome sequence of the virus and WHO had informed the world about such an outbreak. So unlike those countries, and they have it under control now and cases are breaking new records in India, we cannot blame the outbreak on Chinese malfeasance. Whatever situation we are in today is our own making. While this bit of truth is hard to digest, especially to a large population that has personally attached their egos with the present government, the refusal to acknowledge would move us into the further abyss, further down the rabbit hole. In that regard, everyone must prepare a mental plan of things they would have done when they came to know of a novel virus on the horizon six months ago. Ravish Kumar of NDTV did a detailed show on coronavirus on February 18 where he asked, 'Is India prepared to tackle Coronavirus?'. Kerala already had some plan-of-action in place even before India saw its first case. Given all this, what all things would you have done since January to save your nation and its citizens from this new virus? Would you have for instance organized a massive rally for Trump in February in Ahmedabad? Would you have waited for toppling of a opposition led government in Madhya Pradesh to announce a nationwide lockdown? A day after Shivraj Singh Chouhan government was sworn in, Modi announced a national lockdown on 24 March. Just go and look at the crowded images of politicians from Madhya Pradesh during that time. And just read what has come to happen to that state vis-a-vis coronavirus now. Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh has himself tested positive. Cases in Ahmedabad have skyrocketed with its percentage of death highest in country at one point. And reports are just in about Home Minister Amit Shah testing positive. Karnataka CM BS Yediyurappa has also tested positive along with his daughter. A cabinet minister in UP has succumbed to the virus. But Bhumi-Pujan celebration at Ayodhya in UP would go on as planned with none other than PM Modi as its chief guest. This isn't about politics. The signals these events sent (and will send) still remain. What was (and is) govt saying through these events? That India is warm country and virus won't affect us? It would get killed itself from the sunstroke? That our people do yoga, we use haldi (turmeric) in our foods which will fight the virus? I'm not making up these things. These were some of the things said on our news channels by panelists. Our people heard them over and over again. And they saw their politicians, most powerful people in their nation, hugging and waving hands in the middle of massive crowds - they had every reason to believe the bunkum coming from idiot box. The idiocy was legitimized by political maneuvering. They were then made to believe how mass thali-banging would get the virus killed, how mass diya-lighting would destroy the virus. Oh! that was to boost health and essential workers morale? Then why are we not banging thalis now? By July 13 around 123 healthcare staff including 108 doctors have succumbed to coronavirus. They need morale-boosting more than ever now. Why is the big boss, erm Prime Minister Modi, not announcing such tasks now? Because, my friend, morale-boosting is not the aim of such tasks. The aim was (and is) to create images, get you to do things so as to make you feel something was being done, to calm your nerves and instil in you the idea that your government was doing something. Did that something get doctors and essential workers, their PPE kits and other safety equipment? No. Some did not even receive their salaries. Rajdeep Sardesai for many weeks continued his good fight to get stipends to Davangere junior doctors. In Gujarat, the state government inaugurated fake ventilators which were purchased and the state hospital that used them had its death rate close to (or more than) 50%. Pondicherry cancelled its order for the ventilators after news broke out. This did not stop Narendra Modi govt from procuring 5,000 ventilators from this Rajkot-based firm despite Ahmedabad’s largest COVID-19 hospital doctors, where initial batch of 'ventilators' was installed, saying that they were not up to the mark. You wonder why such blatant negligence from Modi govt in risking people's lives. The reason lies in the close connection of this firm's current and former promoters being close to BJP, leading up to that controversial gift of an expensive suit to Prime Minister Modi. Gujarat government, in fact, acted on and isolated the journalists that broke this news. In whose interest was the news and in whose interest was govt action? Not much hard to guess, isn't it? Then our central government went on a 'made in India' march. This was again a distraction scheme. We need 'made in India', no doubt about it. But it won't happen in a day or month or even a year. It takes a thorough long-term plan. And 'made in India' does not translate into sub-standard goods. For instance, in Mumbai, the made-in-India ventilators turned out to be 'fake'. PMCARES ventilator maker too built fake ventilators - they fudged their software to hide poor performance. So we are buying coffins from people's donations. Take all offence you want, this is no time to sugarcoat words. Amit Shah or Yediyurappa's life won't be put on risk by these sub-standard ventilators, their life won't be endangered this way, it is only the poor, aam-junta that will face the brunt of this murderous system.

Too much gloomy news. Is there anything we can do now?

It is quite late now. Today, while India stands third in the total number of corona cases, the number of positives and deaths in 24 hours are highest in India. Six crucial months have just gone by and we still don't have a promising system in place through which we can see a timeline when we would be out of this danger like many countries have. According to official figures, 39,000 have already lost their life due to coronavirus in India. But there still remains a large population which is still breathing and until that is the case, there would still be room for improvement and hope.

There are some things that we can still do to be in better shape next month than we would be with our current approach and pace. But first, we need to understand when the virus infects a person and when they test positive. Both of these events do not occur on the same day. You don't start coughing and feeling breathless on day one of your infection. In fact, a lot of those who get infected don't even show symptoms of infection. So you might right now be sitting with someone who is not coughing but might still have coronavirus in their system. Or you might yourself be infected and yet look healthy from outside. Then there's the question of proportion of viral material. I might have viral material inside of me but my test might still turn negative. According to one report, it takes nearly five days since getting infected to accumulate enough viral material for one's test to come positive. But during these five days, the said person is capable of infecting others; which means two things. First, the testing numbers we get every day are not today's. They don't show who was infected today or even yesterday. Those numbers are of people infected at least five days ago. Second, and this is important to be understood, those who were found positive today have been spreading infection since at least last five days. Also, we are assuming here that we test individuals as soon as their viral material reaches required levels for their tests to be effective which is far far away from the reality. All of this means one thing and one thing only, it is most important to identify the infected as soon as possible, isolate them and treat them. A day later and we risk infecting more people. If you assume one person can infect a minimum five people a day then that's not just five infected people. These five people will, in turn, infect others before enough viral material accumulates inside of them for effectively getting tested. That is assuming they will get tested positive on day five. In India, unlike say South Korea or the US, we don't have voluntary testing booths where you can walk in and get yourself tested. Our testing is still centrally managed - a govt body decides who should be tested and who should not. This needs to change, to begin with. And then we have to test more and more. Currently, India doesn't even appear in the top ten countries in terms of tests per million. And no, this is not because of resource crunch because we are testing far less than our own daily capacity. In essence, we are letting infected persons roam and spread the disease until it becomes impossible to ignore and be forced to test and isolate them, and when we start doing it, the numbers in the area would already be swelled so much that nearest COVID hospital would run out of its capacity. This isn't pulp fiction but our reality. And this is continuing because we aren't asking better from our representatives.

How can we change this and change it fast?

I get the "We cannot test everyone because India has such a large population" excuse. Yes, it is excuse now because it has been six months since the virus arrived on our shores. And our population has been this large like forever. It is not something that happened while we were under lockdown. Anyways, all said and done, what can we do now? First, there is absolutely no need to test everyone. You have to test a certain minimum percentage of the population in each pocket. Each village, each society, chawl, each by-lane - take your pick. Pick random persons in the market and test them on a random day, of course, with their informed consent. Otherwise, do what Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray suggested - test one person each in every household. What would happen with this information is, we would get a real picture of where the virus is and where it has not yet reached. This will help us with better monitoring. The current, red zone - green zone strategy is (and was) completely flawed. Not just because it is done at district level which Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan rightly criticized but many were declared green zone where not a single person was tested positive. For example, when my district was declared a green zone (meaning there existed not a single person infected with coronavirus), not a single person in my city was tested. If zero tests were done in India until today, whole of India would be a green zone. That doesn't mean the non-existence of the virus but abundance of collective stupidity. So, we need to take testing to all parts of India. This strategy should be combined with pooled testing. Now, what is pooled testing?

The gold standard for diagnosing infection is a sample obtained by a nasopharyngeal swab followed by the identification of viral RNA through a polymerase chain reaction (or P.C.R.) test. The swab is uncomfortable, the test is slow, and the supplies to perform it are in short supply. In pooled testing, laboratories combine samples taken from several people and test the multiple specimens together for the presence of genetic material from the novel coronavirus. If a batch tests negative for COVID-19, all those patients are cleared. If a batch tests positive, the specimens must be retested individually or in smaller groups. Such tests could be used to quickly clear groups of people who are not likely carriers, such as students returning to school, or individuals in areas with relatively low active COVID-19 infection levels. This can hugely improvise our testing rates. Until the vaccine arrives, testing, tracing and isolating remains the master strategy to deal with the pandemic. In case we decide to adopt pool testing we also need to be cautious of its limits. If the disease is prevalent in a community - more than around 10 percent, according to the AACC - pooled testing stops being useful because so many follow-up tests are likely to be required. Pooled tests may also result in an increase in false negatives because combined samples are diluted, making it more difficult to pick up the virus material, according to the FDA. Quest, however, says that in clinical data it presented to regulators for its method of pooled testing, it would not have found a false negative in more than 3,000 total specimens. So all in all, pooled testing would help us identify infected faster and with lesser resources.

Pooled testing isn't the only way forward. Some companies are even making rapid antigen tests that can easily be done outside a lab. These tests look for certain proteins in the virus instead of genetic material. The problem is that they can miss more infections than a P.C.R. test. But they take only about 15 minutes to get a result, and if you run them in batch mode, you could most likely do more than 50 an hour. It’s not hard to imagine settings, like schools or sports teams, where such tests might be incredibly useful.

That's not all.

This is not war and healthcare workers are not front-line soldiers. Their deaths shouldn't go unnoticed like deaths in wars go. All of this was avoidable. In six months we should have gathered so much information that by now we should have been able to predict the pockets where cases could come and where they were highly unlikely. This would have helped us better and would have made lockdowns unnecessary thereby saving huge economical wealth that is lost now. But we don't have that crucial information. In fact, if we don't test aggressively, we would never reach that point of intelligence. So far, we are following the virus. We wait until it infects someone and that someone infects some others. We are not proactive enough. Our strategies are ad-hoc. We don't have any long-term plan of action. There is no collaboration with centre and states or states to states. States are fighting battles alone and their resources are drying up. Forget releasing funds, central govt has refused to dispatch the GST dues it owes to the states. All this information should reach the general public. They should know what is happening. In the battle of perceptions, Modi has so far managed his upper hand thanks to the disposal of TV media at his command. He can any day decide to address the public and TV will make sure his message is amplified. Will he ever tell you he has not released the money he owes to the state governments? Never. So how can you make an informed decision in such a scenario? You can't until you put efforts to equip yourself with more diverse information. And that is required. What would you do when hospitals refuse your infected kin, what would you do when the hospital refuses to discharge the dead body of your relative because you can't pay Rs. 5 lakh (treatment cost)? These things have happened in Delhi, in the national capital. Do you know that according to a serological survey, one in four persons in Delhi is infected by the virus? No, they did not make it to the statistics of 19 lakh which is current COVID count in India. They never will. If that's the number for Delhi, what do you think is that number for entire India? We would never know in the absence of testing.

You know there is one easy solution to keeping our numbers below 25 lakh. Stop testing anyone right away. We will anyhow get the test results of people tested so far and that will get us close to 25-25 but not above that mark. How good is that solution? Let everyone infect everyone. Let's control the count. That's what is more important right? That is what we have been doing so far.

This is a fight between two races. It's anyone's evolutionary instinct to replicate and infect as many as it could. Coronavirus is no exception to the rule. And in this race to survival, we need to equip ourselves with more and more information so as to know and fight better. India needs to study countries like Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Norway etc who have found success in controlling and containing the virus on how to not just fight the virus but also about how to support its economy and the most vulnerable population. All this should have happened long ago but better late than never.

That's all for now.

All said and done, we all still need to rely on social distancing, hand washing and ubiquitous masking. With testing, just as with masks, more is sometimes better than perfect.

2020 India Failed To Call Out Thali-banging For What It Was Called In 1992 Maharashtra - Propagation Of Superstition And Murder of Scientific Temper

2020-06-09T03:50:00.000-07:00

Monsoons evaded Maharashtra in 1992. In a country where even today agriculture is largely dependent on rains, this naturally made people distraught then. In this helplessness, blankness, in this void came Maharashtra governor’s appeal other rather a dictate. On a particular day at 11 am, people were to collectively pray. Authorities jumped in to enforce the governor’s appeal. Directions were announced left, right and centre. And pray people did. Newspapers were awash with pictures of people praying for relief from imminent danger, ordinary people to district collectors to workers. Everyone obliged. If WhatsApp University existed then, I’m sure it’s double degree holders would churn out theories of how collective prayer would kindle the kundalini and force gods of rain to bring showers upon them. And we will all be sharing these forwards because why not?!

Fast forward to 2020 and coronavirus. Modi came on national television, and like the big boss from that horrible show, gave task after task to his subjects and his subjects duly complied. First, they came into the balcony and beat their thalis at 11 am, then they came out to light days at 9 pm, all the while generating theories after theories of how these actions will beat corona black and blue. None of those has of course born fruit, they never were meant to be anyway. India stands with the top five worst affected countries as of today.

In both cases, there were discussions about why this was wrong. But in 2020, nobody invoked the constitution or shouted superstition like it was done in 1992. Sadly, Narendra Dabholkar who spearheaded opposition against such a dictate by then governor is no more with us; he was murdered by right-wing for speaking against superstition while on his morning walk. In 1992, the reason for drought was not the absence of rains alone. Maharashtra uses its water with zero planning and in extremely unscientific ways. Do I need to mention multiple sugar mills and water-guzzling sugarcane crop that’s grown everywhere even today in Maharashtra? The disaster was not natural but man-made. So solutions were to be man-made too. But of course, praying at 11 am and thereby giving an impression of something was done was far easy and way convenient than exploring and implementing real solutions. 2020 is no different. Our government failed to prepare itself when it had examples of successful and failed countries to follow by. India was not the first country to be affected by a coronavirus. At every step of the way, we had countries which had faced worse and also those that recovered from it. We deliberately choose to look away and not learn. And when the time was up and the storm was at the door, the emperor suggested, for his subjects to turn to superstition. And we did. Not for a moment did we pause and asked why? Or how was this going to help in any way? We did not question the first and so we were given the next task. This sequence of events did not start with thali-banging though. The dice of subservience was thrown way back in 2016. Demonetisation was the pilot for many of these things. The way we embraced and defended demonetisation had signalled to the highest offices what kind of brains their subjects had.

One of the fundamental duties listed by the Indian Constitution includes the exhortation to cultivate a scientific temper. The Constitution upholds scientific temper as a guiding principle for society and the new education policy calls for the inculcation of scientific thinking. Was there any scientific or rational reasoning behind 11 am praying in 1992? Or now with thali and diya? You bet not. Then why does the state, people in government, who are all required to uphold scientific temper, discarded it and asked its citizens to embrace unscientific garbage? The answer isn’t too hard if one used their rational brains. Because it is easier to ask citizens to pray, bang thalis or light diyas. What are the alternatives? In 1992, then the state was required to institute an expert committee to study water usage patterns, suggest changes and implement those changes. We have so many committee reports now. And successive govt bodies have failed to implement them. Of course, in Maharashtra, there is all-powerful sugar-mills lobby and dealing with it requires an amount of political will. Then to get farmers on-board, make them stop what they are growing and help them switch to different crops requires thorough planning and grit as well. But those are the required solutions. No amount of praying, no god will help Maharashtra save itself from becoming a desert if it did not act on the ground. Less said about coronavirus and how thali-banging has helped to contain the virus the better. Our graph is only climbing up. There is no flattening of the curve happening soon except if we start fudging the data which we have already started doing here and there.

Governments won’t change by themselves. It is easy for them to control a population that is god-fearing and superstitious. It is us that need to change and cultivate scientific temper and rationality. That is the only way which will enable us to question our governments, their nonsense, and thereby progress this strange democracy further. Right now, sadly, we are sliding into an abyss with no bottom.

P. S. Thali-banging and diya-lighting apart from being superstitious had political capital riding on them too. They were also aimed at strengthening the unquestioning relationship between the leader and the governed.

Why Is Karwar Opposing Admission Of New Coronavirus Patients Despite Treating 11 Successfully

2020-05-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

Misinformation and our inability to think a level down the surface are going to kill us before the virus does. Karwar which recently treated 11 coronavirus patients and discharged them successfully is about to see it manifest before its eyes. Misplaced fear and paranoia spread through news channels and Whatsapp University are consuming us. Would they devour us completely before we wake up remains an open-ended question. Karwar has zero Covid-19 positives. The 11 patients it treated were not from Karwar but many km away from it. If that makes you applause Karwar for its altruism then you must hold your hands some meters apart.

Uttara Kannada district in total, by the time of writing this, has recorded 39 cases of COVID-19 positives of which 11 were earlier treated and discharged from INHS Patanjali Hospital in Karwar which is an Indian Navy hospital meant for its staff. It admitted this initial batch of positives on request of Uttara Kannada District Commissioner Dr K Harish Kumar. The rest 28 were tested positive in the last four days and are now being treated at District Hospital situated in Karwar itself. The Patanjali hospital allegedly refused to admit this new batch of patients resulting into their being admitted into the civilian hospital of Karwar. But why Karwar? Uttara Kannada district is made up of twelve talukas (or units); of which Karwar and Bhatkal are but just two units. All the 39 cases mentioned above are from Bhatkal alone which is situated 139 km away from Karwar. This might make you think of Karwar as some special place in the district which is both true and false. There is one particular reason why patients are being ferried to Karwar from far-away Bhatkal. A reason which section of people from Karwar and surrounding area seems to forget, and instead are now gearing up to resist the movement of COVID-19 positives from Bhatkal to Karwar, which along with other units (talukas) have registered zero positives of their own. They fear that this movement of patients would result in the spread of disease to other parts of the district.

Three Goa’s would fit into one Uttar Kannada. It’s no small district by its size and Karwar which shares its boundary with Goa is Uttara Kannada district’s administrative centre that houses many important government offices including district commissioner’s office, Zilla panchayat office, Indian Navy and the district hospital which has special equipment, labs and also special surgeons unlike any other public hospital in the district. The upside of this is, most in Karwar for even their minor ailments get to visit this hospital and get their medication for free or on very low prices. Most have got their surgeries done free-of-cost too. Although there is catch there — most of the surgeons (and other doctors) from the civil hospital (the name by which it is mostly known here) also have their private practices in Karwar. Some even have very specialized and big hospitals of their own which all charge high prices. Those who have these private hospitals happen to prescribe special tests for their patients when they visit them in the civil hospital with explicit instructions on where those tests are to be conducted. The coordinates of which always seem to lead to their private centre. And in case you get operated, the surgery that should have been free gets charged albeit you are asked to pay, a proportion of the price of the same operation if it was done in a private hospital, by visiting their private centre. Otherwise, they don’t write the discharge date due to which everyone ends up paying them the charges (hello corruption). Doctors are courteous though. They charge different prices based upon your economic condition. But despite all these small ills, having a district hospital in Karwar has been a boon for local people of Karwar. Many don’t realize how much money they are saving by not visiting private hospitals which just for consultation alone charge around Rs. 500 (200 if it’s a small clinic) — it’s free for BPL families in the district hospital and Rs. 5 for others (was Rs. 2 before). X-rays, blood tests, etc are done free-of-cost in district hospital too — all of whose cost would push someone into a level down in poverty ladder if done from a private one.

Location wise INHS Patanjali is situated in the outskirts of city limits while the civil hospital is at the centre of the city surrounded by all the crowded places including residential complexes. On top of it, people who work in the district hospital come (and go) from all parts of Karwar. Some even travel into nearby talukas of Ankola and Kumta. Two of the cleaning staff from the civil hospital, for instance, travel to and fro on the road before my house. At least once in a day, I greet them. My mum probably greets both of them every day. And this seems to have rattled people. They were initially agitated with Patanjali admitting patients from far-away Bhatkal but they made peace with it when it dawned on them that staff and doctors of Patanjali mostly stayed inside the compound of Indian Navy. A relative of mine, an old lady whose husband worked in Navy, a pensioner who gets ration and medicine at subsidised prices at Navy stalls have stopped visiting the same since they admitted Covid-19 patients. Same must have been the attitude of others.

If district administration had isolated district hospital and its staff like Patanjali, perhaps by housing its staff, doctors, nurses and other support workers in lodges and hotels, then people would have had fewer reasons to fear. It is the sight of seeing two women walking by, before your own eyes in hospital dress that agitates and animates them. I hear everyday people saying “these women must be stopped” just after they walk by. Both women are dropped to the hospital in the morning by their sons. One of them used to go on a local boat here. Other seafarers objected to his presence and so from yesterday, he has been stopped from going on the boat. Whatever he used to earn from that source is stopped now. People whenever pushed to the wall, here they are thanks to misinformation and paranoia from news channels and Whatsapp, try to find easy targets. People do not like inaction when they face danger. Doing nothing in dire situations rattle people. They want to do something. It doesn’t matter if what they are doing is adding to the misery or cutting from it. They simply want to do something, anything. So I hear, some want to gather before district commissioner’s office to protest. I’m a huge fan of citizen’s protests but I cannot approve of this nonsense now.

The most successful and important deterrent to spreading of the virus is social distancing (rather physical distancing is the apt-term) and frequent hand-washing. These protests would only violate the first weapon we have against the virus’s evolutionary goal. And why are they planning to protest? To not have patients from Bhatkal in District Hospital situated in Karwar. Because this increases their chance of catching the virus. But do they realize by protesting (arranging such a social gathering) they are only increasing their chances of getting the virus? Probability of their catching virus in a protest is higher than their catching same from safe indoors of their houses even when district hospital continues to treat Covid-19 patients from Bhatkal. Ever since the lockdown restrictions have been lifted partially, people have started to crowd markets. Some are even travelling with their small kids with them. In these times every one of us has a responsibility to reduce unwanted movements. Are kids required to be brought to market? Some are travelling to their sister’s places and they’re in turn coming to their houses. I see this every now and then. All these movements are dangerous and can aid into spreading of the virus.

Why does this happen? This paranoia, fear and irresponsible behaviour, are all caused by mass-scale misinformation spread by the news channels and Whatsapp University clubbed with the absence of credible information and easily available resources from the government that would explain the virus, how it spreads, how it does not and what happens when you catch the virus. I have written in past here and here about these topics so I won’t dwell on them any further. There are two things I would suggest to the District Commissioner. One, to make it public knowledge the steps taken inside District Hospital to avert any tragedy of spreading the infection. What steps doctors, nurses and other staff (cleaning and likes) are taking in protecting themselves and their family members. I would suggest if this is not already being done, that hospital staff who are treating the Covid-19 patients be isolated and work in batches like Victoria Hospital in Bangalore does — which is Karnataka’s largest public hospital and also the main hospital set up to treat Covid-19 infected in Karnataka. They work in batches. The batch that treats Covid-19 stays and sleeps in the hospital itself for a week and then they are isolated for 14 days in specific hotels. Karwar can follow this method or come up with a better solution. Indian Railways had converted their train coaches into COVID-19 treating wards with seats turned into isolation wards with ventilators and other medical equipment. Bhatkal and Karwar are both connected via train route. Can we not have these patients treated on a train? It is possible if administration so desires. To sum, the first step is to release more information along-with making sure that doctors and staff are isolated from the general public. The second suggestion to district commissioner is conditional in case protests are to happen or a delegation comes seeking a ban on bringing patients from Bhatkal. Explain to them why patients from Bhatkal are being brought here. They are not brought here to Karwar but to District Hospital in particular which incidentally for good or bad happens to be situated in Karwar. By saying no to patients from Bhatkal, which happens to be part of the Uttara Kannada district, protesters are saying no to the district hospital in Karwar. Ask them if they do not want district hospital in Karwar. Would they like it to be situated in, say Sirsi, which is anyhow the demand of Kageri and Anant Kumar Hegde, two popular politicians hailing from Sirsi. In that case, patients from Bhatkal would have been taken to Sirsi and not Karwar.

District Commissioner with surgeon (in pink) of District Hopsital

Indian Railways coach converted into Covid-19 isolation ward

Deccan Herald on March 28 had said — Uttara Kannada Deputy Commissioner Dr K Harish Kumar announced on Saturday that a COVID-19 unit would come up at a cost of Rs 1 crore on the premises of the Karwar Institute of Medical Sciences within a week (before April 3). The 150-bed unit would have an isolation centre and an oxygen supply facility. There will be 50 quarantine beds and 25 isolation beds. The ICU will be a 10-bed facility, the DC said.

If this has indeed been done then DC must release a bird’s eyeview of the new structure showing the separation if any of the old and new one.

Images as above where DC is standing beside the doctor, both without any gloves or other safety kit along with some curious bystanders on left does not imbibe confidence. This is exactly what needs to be addressed and acted upon on immediate footing. We can’t afford carelessness and laziness at this moment. District Commissioner and other administrative units must think about all the pieces of this corona puzzle including repercussions of the steps they take. If he and others think District Hospital cannot handle COVID-19 patients efficiently if they think the staff cannot ensure safety and precaution so as not to spread the virus where it does not exist then he must request Indian Railways to send their special train that can treat these patients away from the crowded city centre that is District Hospital.

In the end, we need more and more information that is real and factual which will evade fears, paranoia and fight misinformation. The only way to stop rumours spread from WhatsApp University is to provide credible and frequent information from official channels which will shorten the spread and kill the rumours.