prasannascolumn

Loving and Hating the Police

2026-10-20T04:18:45.003-07:00

Violence, Authority and the Paradox of Order

Oct 20, 2026 · @Prasanna

If there is space for violence, the answer has always been yes, however in any discussion of social and political progress, one hard truth is usually brushed aside: violence has always shaped the world. Nations are born out of conflict. The great leaps toward freedom and rights have rarely happened through pure pacifism. Even in a democracy, where we rightly champion the rule of law and peaceful debate, violence does not disappear. It is institutionalised. (Except perhaps feminist movement)

An army holds that violence for use against external enemies across clear borders. Inside the nation, the same burden falls on the police, and there it is far more difficult and ambiguous. What is the police for: to protect law and order, to prevent crime, or to keep society stable? If it is all of these, what powers should it have, how much of it do we need, and whom is it really protecting?

This essay argues that the police sit at the sharpest point of a wider crisis of authority. Modern societies have shifted moral legitimacy away from those who hold power and toward those who resist it, while still expecting a uniformed few to hold back chaos. Until we understand that contradiction, we will keep asking the impossible of our police and excusing too much in ourselves.

I. Police Versus Military: When the Enemy Is a Citizen

An army faces a clear enemy across a geopolitical line. Its task may be terrible, but it is not confused. The police operate inside the very population they serve. Their opponent is never a foreign invader. It is a citizen who holds constitutional rights, a vote and a presumption of innocence, and who may be a neighbour tomorrow.

This creates a friction the soldier rarely faces. The lines of engagement are always blurred. The same person may be victim in one call and offender in the next. An officer is expected to enforce laws that are often applied selectively, in a landscape where political pressure, public sentiment and legal duty collide in every hard decision.

The soldier is judged by whether he wins. The officer is judged by whether he used exactly the right amount of force, against the right person, for the right reason, in a few seconds, under the eyes of a public that will later judge him with all the time in the world.

II. Institutional Pressure, Panic and Closed Ranks

Look at police violence across history and a pattern appears. Individual officers rarely use force out of personal malice or private vendetta. Whether they are facing a rioting crowd or a death in custody, the roots are usually systemic: political pressure, accidents, chaos, panic, the stress of an unpredictable situation, or direct orders from above.

This does not excuse the outcome. But it changes where we should look. If we treat every act of police violence as the crime of a bad individual, we punish the person and leave untouched the pressures that will produce the next incident.

There is one important exception. Something closer to real vengeance tends to appear when a member of the force is injured or killed. Then officers close ranks in a tribal reflex of self-preservation. In a job where your life may depend on the person beside you, that solidarity is psychologically understandable. Yet it is also how misconduct gets shielded, and how public trust breaks. The same loyalty that keeps officers alive on the street can turn the force into a closed tribe set against the public it serves.

III. The Migration of Legitimate Force

For millennia, the right to use force was tied to the responsibility to protect and provide. The father, the teacher, the king and the state held authority over physical coercion because they were cast as the burden-bearers of the social order. Punishment in the home, the cane in the school and the sovereign's penalties were seen not as abuse but as the painful work of shaping civilised people out of raw chaos.

Modern politics and psychology have reversed this lens.

The inversion of suspicion. Institutional authority is now presumed oppressive. The figure at the top is seen less as a protector and more as a likely abuser of power.
The sympathy shift. Sympathy now flows downward, to the child, the student, the citizen and the marginalised. Force used by those above is increasingly criminalised or shamed, while aggression from those below is often explained as a justified reaction to oppression.

The moral right to use or excuse force has migrated from the top of the hierarchy to the bottom. Much of this change corrected real cruelty; the old authorities were not always the benevolent providers they claimed to be. But the migration left one institution stranded: the police. The father has largely given up the rod, and the teacher the cane. The officer has not been allowed to give up force, because society still needs someone to stop the riot at midnight. He is the last authority still required to use violence, in an age that has decided violence from authority is presumptively wrong.

IV. Sympathy, Subordination and the Rule of Law

Why do citizens, even those critical of state power, still feel sympathy for a police officer? That sympathy rests on three pillars.

No personal agenda. The officer acts not on private whim but as an agent of the state.
Risk absorbed for others. He steps voluntarily into riots, domestic violence and danger to protect strangers.
Restraint within the law. Respect peaks when an officer, under intense provocation, holds back and stays strictly within legal limits, even when those laws are imperfect.

Yet the officer's position is strained from above. Police answer to the political executive. An officer has the legal right to refuse a manifestly unlawful order, but in practice refusal can destroy a career. The public sees the baton; it rarely sees the phone call that ordered it raised.

The officer is also strained from below. The police work in the domain of law, not sentiment. Public outrage and moral panic demand immediate, emotional retribution. A democratic police force is bound by due process. When an officer bows to public sentiment, justice is compromised. When he rigidly enforces an unpopular law, he loses public legitimacy. Either way, he pays.

V. The Wages of Authority

Authority is not only violent; it also takes responsibility, works and provides. A father's discipline came with the grinding duty of feeding and housing a family. A teacher's strictness came with the labour of turning an untrained mind into a capable one. A state's police power carries the burden of keeping chaos at bay so that commerce, art and daily life can exist at all. Modern critiques often see the coercion and forget the burden.

In a sense, people enjoy authority and power, and that enjoyment is the price they receive for providing and sacrificing. Take it away and the question is unavoidable: what replaces it? Why should a teacher teach with passion if she has no control over her class? Why should a father provide if his children feel no duty to help or obey? Why should an officer walk into a riot if his authority is mocked by the crowd and disowned by his superiors? A society that enforces only rights will slowly run out of people willing to carry duties.

Part of what authority receives is respect, and respect is above all behaviour: listening, accepting correction, following instructions without demanding a justification each time. It comes partly from the position itself. In Japan, a teacher is respected before proving she is a good teacher, because society lends that respect in advance: parents back her and the culture honours the role.

A disordered classroom shows what happens when that loan is withdrawn. If students riot and no one works, a teacher cannot plead her way back to order. Respect is restored through consequences, not physical but real and certain, delivered calmly and backed by the school. Without that backing, she is weaker every time she tries.

The police face the same problem on a far larger scale. An officer's authority is also a loan from society. When politicians disown him, when the public treats every use of force as abuse, and when the institution does not stand behind lawful action, he is left with only two choices: excessive force, or none at all. Both erode order. Respect for the uniform is not a gift to the police; it is one of the conditions that makes restrained policing possible.

VI. Can a Force Be Both Firm and Empathetic?

This brings us to the central paradox of police reform. Can a force be firm, even feared, and yet deeply empathetic?

Policing has traditionally swung between two failures. One is the authoritarian model of fear and total compliance, which breeds terror and alienation. The other is a pure community-relations model, which often collapses when it meets real volatility: organised crime, mobs and violent riots.

An individual officer cannot wear both masks at once without cracking under the weight. Asking him to be a gentle counsellor one second and a wall against violent chaos the next is asking for the superhuman.

The answer is not to choose one mask, but to order them. Firmness is accepted when it is predictable, lawful and impersonal: the rule applying itself, not an officer's temper. Empathy becomes possible once order is secured, as it does for the teacher whose class is finally calm. Where the roles are too far apart, they should be separated: crisis responders for mental-health calls, trained units for riots, and patient community officers for everything between. What breeds hatred of the police is rarely firmness. It is arbitrariness.

VII. Anger Without a Self

If legitimacy has migrated toward those who resist authority, we must ask what their resistance can achieve. The rebellion of the marginalised can tear down structures, shatter taboos and expose unjust hierarchies. But protest alone cannot build a society. What separates rebellion that builds from rebellion that only destroys?

The answer is whether the angry person locates himself within his anger.

This is not a demand for guilt. Locating oneself in one's anger is not an indictment or a self-accusation, not a confession that "I too am to blame." It means the anger carries something of the person himself, something he owns and is answerable for:

Desire. A positive wanting of something better, not only hatred of what exists. Not just "down with this," but "I want that."
The ability to take on responsibility. A willingness and capacity to carry the burden that authority has carried: to provide, to organise, to answer for consequences. If the old structure falls, he is ready to help hold up what replaces it.
Vision. An idea of what can actually happen next: the institutions, practices and ways of living that would make things better.

Anger with these three is the seed of a new authority. The rebel stops being merely against power and becomes a candidate to share in it, because he offers to carry its burden. India's own freedom movement shows this. Gandhi paired non-cooperation with a constructive programme of khadi, village work and sanitation, and he called off the movement in 1922 when it turned violent at Chauri Chaura. Protest was meant to be joined to responsibility and to a picture of the society to come.

Anger without a self points only outward. Everything wrong belongs to someone else, and nothing is asked of oneself: no desire beyond destruction, no burden accepted, no vision offered. Such anger does not remain politics for long. It becomes:

a venting of violence for its own sake;
an escape from the mundane routine of ordinary life;
an opportunity to loot;
a vicarious feeling of taking part in the fight against "injustice", without bearing its cost or responsibility.

This kind of anger needs authority, because authority is its only target. It has nothing to put in its place.

And this is the crowd the police are sent to face. Their task is impossible in a precise sense: there is no demand they can meet, and no one in the crowd who will take responsibility for what follows. All they can do is hold the line.

VIII. The Demand for Order

And people want the line held. Order is among the most basic human demands, often stronger than the demand for freedom. One reason sections of Indian society accepted the British Raj, especially after 1857, was its firm police and predictable administration. Today, too, governments in some states win real public support for tough, effective policing.

But the Raj also marks the limit of firmness. It was tolerated while it seemed predictable and impersonal. When it became arbitrary and brutal, as at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919, it lost the legitimacy that order had bought it. People will accept, even welcome, firm authority, but not arbitrary authority, and not authority that serves only itself.

IX. The Public's Border

We usually analyse policing as a one-way street, where the state acts on the people. That framing quietly absolves the public of its own responsibility. Order is not delivered by the police; it is co-produced by the police and the people together.

When communities stop cultivating their own cohesion, their own ways of resolving conflict and their own sense of civic duty, they place an unbearable load on a small uniformed force. The same applies when families stop teaching discipline and schools lose the means to enforce it: every failure upstream arrives, eventually, at the police station.

Conclusion

Violence has not left the world; it has been gathered into institutions, and the police are where it lives closest to us. We have rightly stripped much of the old authority of its cruelty. But we have also stripped it of its wages: the respect, the backing and the power that made the burden worth carrying. We then left the police as the last authority still required to use force, judged by a public that sympathises with almost anyone except the one who holds the line.

The way out is neither a return to fear nor a surrender to disorder. It is authority that is firm because it is predictable and lawful, answerable to the law rather than to politicians or moods, and backed by a society that lends it respect. It is also a citizenry that co-produces order, and an anger that takes responsibility for what it wants to build.

Until we stop expecting the police to resolve structural, political and social failures through sheer force, and until we decide clearly what we want this institution to be, we will keep trapping both the police and ourselves in an impossible paradox. Rights need duties to stand on, and freedom needs order to exist at all.

The Envy, we deny, we are shamed.

2026-08-11T05:24:30.932-07:00

The Hidden Cost of Denying Competition in the Social Sector

In the social sector, we are conditioned to view competition as a dirty word. The prevailing ethos suggests that competing is inherently selfish and entirely counter-intuitive to the nature of social work.

After all, a social worker’s primary duty is to keep the beneficiary’s best interests at heart. A beneficiary is not a customer to be won, but a vulnerable individual or community to be served. Because our mission is noble, we assume our operating environment must be entirely selfless.

But this ideal creates a dangerous blind spot. It doesn't erase human nature—it merely forces it underground.

The Mutation of Denied Competition

Competitiveness is a fundamental human trait. The problem in the NGO and social sector isn't that competition exists; the problem is the steadfast denial of it.

When we refuse to acknowledge our competitive instincts, they do not simply disappear. Instead, they mutate into destructive unconscious patterns that quietly eat away at individuals and organizations:

Passive Aggression: Because open ambition is frowned upon, rivalries are played out through subtle slights, withholding information, or a deliberate lack of cooperation.
Organizational Jealousy: Resentment over which NGO gets the most funding, the best media coverage, or the ear of policymakers.
A Culture of Envy & Insecurity: A quiet, persistent feeling of unfairness—the belief that "I deserve better than them" because "my cause is more righteous."

The Silent Killer of Coalitions

This unspoken rivalry is exactly why broad networks often fail and why true joint action is notoriously difficult to sustain.

When organizations sit down at a table to collaborate, they are expected to check their egos at the door. But because no one is allowed to speak openly about their need for credit, funding, or survival, collaborations are often built on fragile, dishonest foundations. The insecurity and distaste for sharing the spotlight eventually cause these networks to fracture. We cannot solve a problem we refuse to name.

The Beneficiary Trap: The Disappointment of Success

Perhaps most alarmingly, this unacknowledged competition isn't just directed at other NGOs—it bleeds into our relationship with the beneficiaries themselves.

In a healthy system, the ultimate goal of any social intervention is obsolescence. An NGO should aim to solve the problem and leave. Yet, in practice, a true "exit strategy" rarely happens. Organizations seldom wind up their operations, even when the community no longer requires their initial level of intervention.

Why? Because when our organizational identity, funding, and competitive edge are entirely tied to serving a specific community, we subconsciously resist letting them go.

In a tragic irony, we become disappointed by our own success. To maintain our relevance in a crowded sector, we sometimes keep beneficiaries dependent on our services. We compete to keep our "cause" alive, forgetting that true victory in the social sector means no longer being needed.

Not sure how to deal with it, but acknowledging it is the first step.

DELIMITATION, THE BJP, AND THE LONG GAME The Southern Pillar: Why the BJP Cannot afford to Betray the South

2026-04-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

DELIMITATION, THE BJP, AND THE LONG GAME

The Southern Pillar

Why the BJP Cannot, afford to, Betray the South

The 2026 delimitation debate is consumed by one fear — that the BJP will use redrawn boundaries to reduce Southern India to a political footnote. This argument misreads the electoral arithmetic, the RSS’s civilizational DNA, India’s Muslim demography, the tribal frontier, and the succession anxiety that make the South not a choice but a structural necessity for any serious national force.

OPINION · POLITICAL ANALYSIS DELIMITATION · BJP-RSS STRATEGY · HINDU DEMOGRAPHY · TRIBAL POLITICS · INDIAN FEDERALISM

THE COMPLETE ARGUMENT — SIX CONVERGING PILLARS

The North alone cannot deliver a permanent majority

Muslim consolidation breaks Northern arithmetic

Tribal investment opens Southern entry points

RSS DNA demands civilizational completeness

Kashmir proves cost tolerance for unity

Succession fear forces long-term integration

The fear is not unreasonable on its face. India’s southern states — Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana — have governed their populations with greater developmental discipline than much of the North. Fertility rates have fallen. Literacy has risen. And now, as the long freeze on Lok Sabha delimitation finally lifts after 2026, these states face the prospect of watching their proportional weight in Parliament shrink — not because they failed, but precisely because they succeeded. The narrative writes itself: the BJP, dominant in the Hindi heartland, uses a constitutional mechanism to reward its base and marginalise its opponents.

It is a compelling story. And it is, when examined through the full weight of the BJP’s internal logic, strategically incoherent — a move that would simultaneously destroy the party’s electoral insurance, contradict its civilizational identity, undermine its tribal investment, and guarantee its own long-term irrelevance.

To understand why the BJP will not betray the South, one must follow six threads — each compelling on its own, devastating in combination.

I. THE NORTHERN FORTRESS HAS CRACKS

The Hindi Heartland Is Not a Permanent Majority

The BJP’s dominance of the Hindi heartland — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan — is real, but it is not structurally guaranteed. Northern electoral arithmetic is fractured in ways that Southern arithmetic is not, and the fracture lines run deep.

The North is a landscape of volatile caste coalitions. Samajwadi consolidations in UP, Nitish Kumar’s shifting alliances in Bihar, the emergence of new OBC formations — these are not marginal disruptions. They are the structural texture of Northern politics, and they have halted BJP momentum before. Any serious analyst of the 2024 general election results knows that the BJP’s Northern fortress showed cracks (BJP lost close to 50 percent seats in UP) that no amount of triumphalism can fully paper over.

A party that stakes its permanent national authority exclusively on Northern dominance is building on sand. The North can deliver numbers in favourable cycles. It cannot deliver the structural stability that a permanent national force requires.

THE MUSLIM ARITHMETIC RISK

India’s Muslim population — approximately 200 million citizens, concentrated heavily in the North — represents the single most powerful variable in BJP electoral calculations. When Muslim voting consolidates around a single opposition candidate in key constituencies, it does not merely compete with the BJP. It can defeat it comprehensively.

In UP alone, concentrated Muslim voting combined with a coherent SP-led coalition came close to unseating the BJP in 2024. In West Bengal, it has succeeded repeatedly. In Bihar, it remains a persistent structural threat to any BJP-NDA calculation.

The strategic implication is stark: the BJP cannot guarantee that Northern Hindu consolidation will always outweigh Muslim consolidation plus caste fragmentation. It needs an electoral insurance policy. That insurance policy has 130 seats and speaks Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Keralam.

The South’s Hindu populations — high in concentration, relatively less fractured by the specific caste coalitions that define Northern politics, and largely outside the zones of Muslim electoral consolidation — represent exactly the kind of stable reserve that corrects for Northern volatility. Tamil Nadu Hindus may not vote BJP today. But they are, in the RSS’s long-term framing, the civilizational constituency the movement is building toward — a different timescale, a different logic, the same ultimate destination.

II. THE TRIBAL FRONTIER

Delimitation’s Hidden Architecture: Entry Points Into the South

The delimitation debate has been almost entirely consumed by the state-versus-state narrative. It has missed the more granular and strategically consequential dimension: the redrawing of Scheduled Tribe reserved constituencies.

Over the past two decades, India’s tribal populations have grown, migrated, and concentrated in patterns the 2011 census could not capture. A delimitation exercise faithful to the 2026 census will produce a significant increase in ST-reserved seats — and crucially, this increase will not be confined to Central India. The tribal corridors of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Odisha will see new constituencies emerge, constituencies that existing regional party structures have historically taken for granted.

THE ADIVASI INVESTMENT

The BJP has not stumbled into tribal politics. It has invested in it systematically and over a long horizon. The appointment of Droupadi Murmu as India’s first tribal woman President was not merely symbolic — it was a statement of political intent directed at 104 million Adivasi citizens across multiple Southern and Central states.

The PM-JANMAN Mission, with its ₹24,000 crore commitment to the 75 most marginalised tribal communities, extends BJP organisational reach into geographies where it previously had no presence. The Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams, the RSS’s tribal outreach network, have operated in Southern tribal belts for decades — building the social infrastructure that precedes electoral infrastructure.

New ST-reserved constituencies in Southern states are not obstacles for the BJP. They are precisely the entry points — bypassing regional party gatekeepers, building direct relationships with communities whose loyalties are genuinely available — that the party has been investing toward.

III. THE RSS AND ITS SOUTHERN SOUL

This Was Never a Northern Movement

The RSS is, intellectually and philosophically, a movement with deep South Indian roots. Its foundational ideological architecture draws from Adi Shankaracharya’s Advaita Vedanta, from Ramanuja’s Vishishtadvaita, from Madhwacharya’s Dvaita — three of the four major schools of Hindu philosophical thought, each originating in the South. The unbroken thread of Sanskrit scholarship, of living Agamic ritual culture, of Vedic learning maintained across centuries of disruption — these were preserved most completely in the South, and the RSS knows it.

Maharashtrians , Kannadigas and Keralites scholars have been disproportionately represented in RSS ideological and organisational leadership relative to their populations. South Indian Brahmin networks — — have provided the philosophical rigour and administrative precision that drives the movement’s intellectual culture.

THE RSS TIMESCALE

The RSS does not think in five-year electoral cycles. It thinks in generations. Its stated goal is not political dominance but civilizational renewal — and civilizational renewal without the South is, by the movement’s own definitions, structurally incomplete. Temple culture, traditions, philosophical schools are not peripheral to the project. They are its living proof of continuity.

IV. THE KASHMIR PRECEDENT

The BJP Has Proven It Will Pay Any Price for Civilizational Unity

Consider what the BJP was actually willing to risk. Kashmir is not a Hindu-majority territory. The abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 invited sustained international censure, generated significant constitutional controversy, alienated moderate Muslim opinion across the country, and created security complexities that persist to this day. By any narrow electoral calculation, it was an enormous and ongoing cost.

The BJP absorbed every rupee of that cost. Because Kashmir was not primarily an electoral calculation. It was a civilizational statement. An incomplete map was, to the BJP and RSS, a statement of incomplete nationhood — and the cost of completing it was worth paying.

THE KASHMIR ANALOGY

If the BJP willingly absorbed international censure and constitutional controversy to retain a Muslim-majority territory because it viewed that territory as civilizationally necessary — what is the probability that it would casually alienate a Hindu-majority South that is philosophically central to its own self-conception?

The answer is close to zero. Where Kashmir represented territorial incompleteness, a politically alienated South would represent civilizational incompleteness — a BJP that governs the Gangetic plains while the Deccan remains a permanent political opponent. For a movement that staked its credibility on unity, that is not a compromise. It is a categorical failure.

V. THE RSS–BJP TENSION

They Do Not Always Move Together — But Survival Forces Them To

Intellectual honesty requires acknowledging what this argument assumes — and where it faces genuine pressure. The RSS and the BJP are not the same organisation. The RSS operates on civilizational timescales; the BJP operates on electoral ones. Modi’s BJP has at times made choices that prioritised Northern Hindu consolidation in ways the RSS’s longer-term integrative vision would not fully endorse.

THE HONEST TENSION

RSS INSTINCT

Civilizational integration. The South as philosophical foundation and long-term cultural reclamation project. Operates over decades. Will not sacrifice the South for short-term arithmetic.

BJP INSTINCT

Electoral consolidation. In specific moments the party has favoured Northern mobilisation over Southern outreach when the two came into conflict. Responds to five-year election cycles, not generational horizons.

Where they converge: Succession fear forces the BJP's electoral instinct toward the RSS's civilizational one. When the BJP asks what a permanent national force looks like, it has no answer that excludes the South.

VI. THE SUCCESSION IMPERATIVE

The Deepest Fear Is Not Losing an Election

The BJP’s deepest strategic anxiety is not losing in 2029. It is failing to become what the Indian National Congress once seemed: a permanent, foundational force in Indian political life. The Congress at its height was not merely a party — it was the default frame of Indian nationhood. The BJP aspires to that permanence. And it knows the Congress’s fate — how quickly that dominance collapsed once the structural conditions changed.

200M

MUSLIM CITIZENSCONCENTRATED IN NORTH

130+

LOK SABHA SEATSFROM SOUTHERN STATES

104M

TRIBAL CITIZENSUNDERSERVED ELECTORALLY

543→816

PRO-RATA EXPANSIONNO SOUTH SEAT LOST

A BJP that alienates the South guarantees its own eventual irrelevance. The arithmetic is clear: a unified Southern coalition, combined with a fractured North — Muslim consolidation plus caste fragmentation plus regional opposition — can unseat any Northern-dominant party. Without Southern integration, the BJP remains permanently vulnerable: powerful in favourable cycles, destabilised in adverse ones.

This convergence of ideological aspiration and cold self-interest is the most durable argument in this entire essay. It does not require the BJP to be principled. It only requires it to be rational. And on the question of long-term survival, the BJP has demonstrated — repeatedly, in its tribal investments, its cultural bridges with Southern traditions, its willingness to absorb the cost of Kashmir — that it thinks in longer horizons than its critics typically allow.

“

The BJP does not need to be altruistic about the South. It only needs to be rational — and rationality, here, demands integration. Self-preservation and civilizational ambition point in the same direction.

— THE CORE CONVERGENCE

THE SIX ARGUMENTS — SYNTHESISED

Northern Fragility

Muslim consolidation plus caste fragmentation makes a North-only majority permanently precarious. The South is electoral insurance.

Tribal Entry Points

New ST-reserved seats in Southern states, backed by a decade of Adivasi investment, give the BJP its bypass route past regional party gatekeepers.

RSS Philosophical Roots

Shankaracharya, Ramanuja, Madhwa — the intellectual foundation of the Hindu nationalist project is Southern. Diminishing the South is ideological self-harm.

Kashmir Precedent

The BJP absorbed enormous cost to retain a Muslim-majority territory for civilizational completeness. The same logic forbids alienating a Hindu-majority South.

RSS–BJP Tension Resolved

They don’t always agree, but succession fear forces convergence. A permanent national force cannot be built on half a subcontinent.

Succession Fear

The BJP’s deepest anxiety is the Congress’s fate. That fear alone compels Southern integration — not as charity, but as structural necessity.

CONCLUSION

The “BJP will cheat the South” narrative is powerful because it contains a partial truth: delimitation will shift the centre of political gravity northward, and Southern states will feel the proportional weight of that shift. But there is a critical difference between structural change and deliberate betrayal.

Deliberate betrayal would require the BJP to simultaneously abandon its electoral insurance against Northern Muslim consolidation, surrender the tribal entry points it has spent a decade building in Southern states, contradict the civilizational logic that gives the RSS its philosophical identity, ignore the lesson of Kashmir about the costs worth paying for unity, and guarantee its own long-term irrelevance by repeating the Congress’s fatal mistake of mistaking regional dominance for national permanence.

No rational political force does all of those things at once. Not even one that sometimes lets electoral arithmetic override civilizational principle — because on this particular question, electoral arithmetic and civilizational principle point in exactly the same direction.

The North gives the BJP its numbers for today. The South — through its Hindu reserve, its tribal frontier, its philosophical inheritance, and its irreplaceable role in any serious claim to national unity — gives the party the only thing that matters for tomorrow: a reason to last.

கேட்டுக் கொண்டே இருக்கிறது

2026-04-19T06:33:03.843-07:00

தூரத்தில் கேட்டுக் கொண்டே இருக்கிறது

மனமோ, நினைவுகளில் ஓடும்

கனவுகளின் எச்சமோ...

தொலைந்த நினைவுகளோ? அல்லது

காத்திருந்து துடிக்கும் எண்ணங்களோ?

இதில் தான் காலம் கழிகிறது,

அந்தச் சத்தத்தைக் கேட்டுக்கொண்டே...

சாத்தியங்கள் இசையாக மாறும்

தருணத்தை எதிர்பார்த்து!

மீண்டும் தொலைந்து

2026-04-19T06:31:30.810-07:00

தொலைந்து போவதே ஒரு வழக்கம்

அன்பில், அழகில் ஒழுக்கத்தில்,

சேவையில், வேலையில்

தொலைந்து கொண்டே இருக்கிறோம்.

மீட்பவரின் கை நீண்டிருந்தாலும்,

அந்தப் பிடிக்குள்ளேயே

தொலைந்து போகவே விரும்புகிறோம்.

நினைவிலிருந்து அகலும் கணமே,

முன்னால் வந்து "நான் தொலைகிறேன்" என்று

அறிவித்துவிட்டு, மறுபடியும் தொலைந்து விடுகிறோம்.

மற்றவர்களின் நினைவிலிருந்து

மறைந்து விடக் கூடாது என்பதற்காகவே,

இப்படித் தொடர்ந்து

தொலைத்துக் கொள்கிறோம்.

2026-04-19T06:30:57.557-07:00

உலகளந்தவனின் பெருங்கைகளை கால்களையும் போல் அவன் மனமும் பெரிதாக இருக்குமோ.

அவனின் தலையில் இருந்தும் தோள்களிலிருந்தும் கால்களிலிருந்தும் தொடையில் இருந்தும் பிறந்தார்கள்.

அவன் மனதில் இருந்து பிறந்தவர் யார்

இருப்பின் பதட்டம்

2026-04-19T06:27:39.763-07:00

ஒவ்வொரு இறப்பும்

நினைவூட்டிச் செல்கிறது -

யாராலும் வெல்ல முடியாத காலத்தை

முற்றுப் பெறாத உரையாடல்கள்,

மூழ்கிப் போன மௌனங்கள்,

தொடர்ந்து கொண்டிருந்த சண்டைகள்,

சொல்லி முடிக்காத நன்றிகள் என -

நினைவுபடுத்துகிறது ஓர் இறப்பு!

இன்னொரு இறப்பு வருவதற்குள்

சொல்லிவிட வேண்டும்...

பேசிவிட வேண்டும்...

அணைத்துக் கொள்ள வேண்டும்...

"இனி நேரமில்லை" எனும் உறுதி -

மறுபடியும் மற்றொரு இறப்பில்தான்

ஞாபகம் வருகிறது!

மானம் பெரிது.கோழையாய் வாழ்வதை விட பெரிது;உயிரைச் விட்டிடலாம்."போரை நிறுத்து, உயிரைக் காப்பாற்று" எனச்சொல்பவர்கள் சொல்லிக்கொண்டே இருக்கட்டும்.சிரிப்பவர்கள் இருக்கும்வரைகோவணத்தைக் கழற்றி முகத்தை மூடி கொள்ள முடியாது!"புறம் காட்டா வீரத்தில்,கொல்வதிலிருந்தும் சாவதிலிருந்தும் எவராலும் மீள முடியாது.வாழ்வைப் போற்றத் தெரியாத வரை,கோழைகள் துப்பாக்கியோடு "வீர மரணத்தை" முத்தமிட்டுகொண்டேதான் இருப்பார்கள்!

2026-04-19T06:26:45.533-07:00

மானம் பெரிது.

கோழையாய் வாழ்வதை விட பெரிது;

உயிரைச் விட்டிடலாம்.

"போரை நிறுத்து, உயிரைக் காப்பாற்று" எனச்

சொல்பவர்கள் சொல்லிக்கொண்டே இருக்கட்டும்.

சிரிப்பவர்கள் இருக்கும்வரை

கோவணத்தைக் கழற்றி முகத்தை மூடி கொள்ள முடியாது!

"புறம் காட்டா வீரத்தில்,

கொல்வதிலிருந்தும் சாவதிலிருந்தும் எவராலும் மீள முடியாது.

வாழ்வைப் போற்றத் தெரியாத வரை,

கோழைகள் துப்பாக்கியோடு "வீர மரணத்தை" முத்தமிட்டு

கொண்டேதான் இருப்பார்கள்!.

கோழையாய் வாழ்வதை விட பெரிது;

உயிரைச் விட்டிடலாம்.

"போரை நிறுத்து, உயிரைக் காப்பாற்று" எனச்

சொல்பவர்கள் சொல்லிக்கொண்டே இருக்கட்டும்.

சிரிப்பவர்கள் இருக்கும்வரை

கோவணத்தைக் கழற்றி முகத்தை மூடி கொள்ள முடியாது!

"புறம் காட்டா வீரத்தில்,

கொல்வதிலிருந்தும் சாவதிலிருந்தும் எவராலும் மீள முடியாது.

வாழ்வைப் போற்றத் தெரியாத வரை,

கோழைகள் துப்பாக்கியோடு "வீர மரணத்தை" முத்தமிட்டு

கொண்டேதான் இருப்பார்கள்!

Reflection: On Death and Dependency

2026-04-19T06:26:05.332-07:00

The Lessons of Loss

Irvin Yalom suggested that we deal with the fear of death by ignoring it or by trying to find meaning through work. Recently, I’ve had to stop ignoring it. Losing friends every year brings a different kind of closure each time, and it has made me weigh my own life differently.

I think of three friends in particular:

* One saw death as a celebration, a way to end the cycle of *karma*. Ironically, this maharder to save the lives of thousands of children.

* Another died suddenly while running—an active life, deeply concerned with the world, even while struggling with depression.

* A third had a gift for making every person feel like they were his best friend. It was pleasurethat wights heavy to read the obituaries. It is not of greatness, it is gentleness and care that stoodout

All three had one thing in common: their relationships were personal and filled with deep affection.

The Fear of Dependency

I used to wish for a death so silent that no one would notice. I wondered if I was working for a "legacy" or just trying to give meaning to my days. But looking at these deaths, I’ve realized that I don't just fear death; I fear **dependency**.

Many of us feel a sense of relief when someone dies without suffering. We call it "merciful," but I wonder if we are really talking about the suffering or the dependency. Dependency takes away the dignity we all crave. We want to be missed and have good things said about us, but we fear the state of being "less than" ourselves before the end.

### Sudden vs. Prepared

There is a strange trade-off in how we go:

* **The Sudden Death:** It is clean and spares us from dependency, but it gives no time to prepare.

* **The Warning (Suffering):** It is hard and undignified, yet it tells you that the end is coming. It gives you the "luxury" of knowing how you lived and allows you to be ready.

I am still weighing what I want for myself. Whether I am wishing for a better life or a legacy, memories I leave in the hearts, or a silent death.

There is urgency of expecting ones and others

நீட்டிய நட்பு

2026-04-19T06:24:31.437-07:00

மனம் கீழ்மையை விசையற்ற பந்து போலச் சரிந்து, வழிந்து, தேங்கிவிடுகிறது.

என்னைவிட சிறந்த நண்பர்கள், உறவினர்கள், துணை உனக்கு இருக்கும்போது மனம் விலகிச் செல்கிறது.

மௌனமும் செயலும் சொல்லப்படாத அக்கறைதான் என்று எப்படிப் புரியவைப்பது? யாருக்குப் புரியவைப்பது?

மனம் கீழ்மையைத் விசையற்ற பந்து போலச் சரிந்து, வழிந்து, தேங்கிவிடுகிறது.

here and now

2026-04-19T06:23:11.026-07:00

Here and Now

When the memory fades,

Ambition retreats.

Here i am, in this moment.

When present is the only truth.

And time never stills.

Here i am in between.

When I see as it is.

I am blind as ever.

Here i am holding it.

When I live moment by moment.

I am no one, now and then.

Here i am dying again.

When the moment is stretched

Heart is wide

Here i am tumbling

The Broken Trust: The Hindu's fear

2026-04-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

The Question Beneath the Question

In contemporary social discourse, "Islamophobia" is often categorized simply as irrational prejudice — a pathology to be condemned and dismissed. But dismissal is not diagnosis. To understand why communal tension persists in India, and why it periodically erupts into violence, we must ask a harder question: **why does trust break?**

Trust between communities doesn't break randomly. It breaks along specific, identifiable fault lines — and in India today, several are operating simultaneously, feeding each other in ways that make the situation feel intractable. At the center of this breakdown is something deceptively simple: **fear that has never been given precise language.**

Unexpressed fear doesn't dissolve. It deforms. It becomes contempt, then caricature, then violence. The architecture of anxiety in India is built not from hatred alone, but from legitimate fears that were never named honestly, expectations that were never stated clearly, and boundaries that were never negotiated — only enforced, or exploded.

Part One: The Spectrum of Fear

Fear is not a monolith. It is a prism of many colours that refracts into different social behaviors. Each find different ways to deal and manifest it.

The Violent Manifestation: For some, fear translates into preemptive aggression — a belief that violence is the only language that can secure their future. This is fear at its most destructive, but it does not emerge from nowhere. This is the anger that is never dealt, and leaks prematuredly.

The Silent Sufferers: A far larger segment of the population lives in quiet withdrawal — harboring deep anxieties about cultural erasure, demographic change, and social displacement, but lacking either the platform or the permission to voice them. This silence is not peace. It is pressure building without release.

The Liberal Appeasement: Paradoxically, excessive appeasement is also rooted in fear — the fear of conflict, the fear of being labeled, the fear that any honest criticism will trigger a volatile reaction. This response, however well-intentioned, forecloses the very conversation that might reduce tension.

All three responses — violence, silence, and appeasement — share a common failure: they bypass the one thing a healthy democracy requires, which is **a stance rooted in honest truth.**

Part Two: Why Trust Breaks — The Fault Lines

The Asymmetry Problem

Trust requires rough reciprocity. When one community perceives — rightly or wrongly — that the rules apply unevenly, the foundation erodes. In India today, many Hindus feel that the state historically bent toward minority appeasement, that their traditions are fair game for criticism while others are shielded, and that violence against them is minimized or explained away. Many Muslims feel that the current state is explicitly hostile to them, that their loyalty is perpetually on trial, and that mob violence occurs with state complicity or indifference.

Both perceptions can be simultaneously true in different domains and different eras. That is precisely what makes repair so difficult — there is no clean ledger, no moment where one side's grievance cancels the other's.

The Memory Problem

India carries Partition in its flesh. Approximately one to two million people died. Fifteen million were displaced. And yet there was no truth and reconciliation process, no shared national narrative about what happened and why, no public ritual of mourning that included all sides. Unprocessed collective trauma does not disappear — it goes underground and resurfaces as threat perception. Every local incident gets interpreted through that unhealed filter. A property dispute becomes an existential confrontation. A personal altercation becomes civilizational war.

The Representative Problem

Trust breaks when fringe behavior gets attributed to the entire group. A mob lynching becomes "what Hindus do." A terror attack becomes "what Muslims are." Neither community controls its most extreme members, but both are held accountable for them. Social media has made this catastrophically worse — the most inflammatory content travels the fastest and lands the hardest.

The Elite Manipulation Problem

Ordinary Hindus and Muslims in villages and neighborhoods across India often have decades of functional coexistence — shared festivals, intertwined economies, genuine friendships. Trust breaks most violently when political actors need conflict to consolidate power. The average person's anxiety is real, but it is also actively cultivated and harvested.

- **Organic fear** — arising from genuine historical experience and lived reality

- **Manufactured fear** — deliberately amplified for political and electoral gain

- **Structural fear** — produced by institutional asymmetries regardless of anyone's intentions

All three are running simultaneously in India today. Most people cannot tell which of their fears belongs to which category. That confusion is itself part of the problem.

Part Three: The Double Bind of Hindu Identity

The average Hindu navigates a unique psychological squeeze that outside observers frequently miss.

On one side is the **internal struggle** — the unfinished project of dismantling caste, addressing Brahminical hegemony, and building a genuinely inclusive Hindu social identity. For the Dalit, the OBC, the woman, Hindu fundamentalism is not an abstraction. It is the lived dread of untouchability and social regression. It is an internal threat to dignity.

On the other side is **external pressure** from proselytizing faiths — a pressure that creates what might be called identity doubt. Hinduism is deeply personal, rooted in local gods, specific customs, and ancestral lands. It is pluralistic, decentralized, and non-missionary by nature. These are its strengths. They are also, in a world of organized ideological competition, its vulnerabilities. The Hindu often feels the psychological squeeze of being asked to reform internally while simultaneously defending externally — with no pause, no safe moment to do either fully.

This is not an excuse for communal aggression. It is a psychological reality that must be named if it is to be addressed.

Part Four: Naming the Fear — What Each Side Carries

This is the conversation India has not had. Not the debate about who is right, but the precise articulation of what each community actually fears when it is being honest with itself.

What Hindus Fear

- Cultural erasure through demographic change over generations

- That liberalism operates as a one-way door — that Hindu society opens itself up while the other side remains closed, creating a structural social deficit over time

- That the caste reform project is being exploited mid-process — when Hindu society is internally weakened and divided but not yet healed or unified

- That secularism in practice means Hindu traditions are subject to critique and reform while minority practices are insulated from the same scrutiny

- That violence against Hindus will be systematically minimized, contextualized away, or met with silence from those who loudly condemn other forms of communal violence

- That their faith itself — not just its political expressions — is considered illegitimate by modernist and Abrahamic frameworks alike

### What Muslims Fear

- Being treated as permanently suspect — as a community whose loyalty to India is perpetually on trial regardless of evidence

- Mob violence with state complicity or deliberate indifference, and the normalization of that violence in public discourse

- Economic and social marginalization — in housing, employment, education — dressed up as security concerns or cultural incompatibility

- That assimilation is demanded endlessly but genuine acceptance is never actually extended

- That their faith itself — not just extremism or fundamentalism — is the real target of hostility

- That they will be held collectively responsible for every act of Islamic extremism anywhere in the world, with no parallel expectation applied to other communities

Part Five: The Expectations Gap

Beyond fear lies something equally corrosive: **unstated expectations** — things each community silently demands of the other that have never been openly negotiated.

**Hindus broadly expect Muslims to:**

- Visibly and consistently condemn extremism without needing to be asked, and without qualification

- Acknowledge the historical violence of Partition and the medieval period without defensiveness or immediate counter-accusation

- Participate in India's plural, composite identity rather than maintaining a parallel, self-enclosed social universe.

- Do not convert overtly or covertly. Do not engage in criticism of their religion.

**Muslims broadly expect Hindus to:**

- Consistently distinguish between Islam and Islamism — in public, in media, and in political discourse

- Acknowledge that Indian Muslims had no meaningful say in Partition, and bear no inherited guilt for it

- Extend the same civilizational respect to Islamic heritage in India — its architecture, its music, its literature, its saints — that Hindus claim for Hindu heritage.

- Acknowledge Islam is different, non acceptance of Hindu god is not intolerance towards it.

There could be many more. Neither set of expectations is being met. And crucially, **neither has ever been explicitly stated in a space where the other side can actually hear it.** Instead, they fester as grievance, emerge as contempt, and eventually ignite as violence.

This is the conversation that has never happened — not as policy debate, not as media argument, but as direct, honest address. Below is an attempt to give it voice.

### The Hindu Voice (Unarticulated)

*"We are not asking you to abandon your faith. We are asking you to share this land as equals — not as a temporary arrangement until something else becomes possible. We need you to say, clearly and repeatedly, that India is home — not contested territory. We need your scholars and leaders to say that our gods, however different from yours, deserve respect — not theological dismissal as idol worship or ignorance. We need you to condemn violence done in your faith's name the way you expect us to condemn violence done in ours — without waiting to be asked, without qualification, without immediately pivoting to other grievances. We need to see that the freedoms we are slowly, painfully extending to our own women are mirrored in your community — that the liberalism we are building is not a one-way door. And we need to know, without ambiguity, that your primary loyalty is to this republic and to your neighbors in it."*

### The Muslim Voice (Unarticulated)

*"We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for equal treatment — which we do not currently receive. We need you to stop demanding that we apologize for history we did not make and violence we did not commit. We were born here. This is our country as much as it is yours — not conditionally, not provisionally, not subject to periodic re-examination. We need you to see our children as Indian children, not as suspects carrying an inherited ideology. We need the same due process, the same protection from mobs, the same access to housing and employment that every citizen is owed. We need you to understand that our faith is not a threat to you — and that your inability or unwillingness to distinguish between a devout Muslim and a jihadist is your failure, not our burden to endlessly correct. We are exhausted by the audition. We need to be accepted, not just tolerated."*

---

## Part Seven: The Social Boundaries Question

Every community maintains boundaries — around marriage, religious practice, food, space, and cultural identity. The question is never whether these boundaries exist. The question is whether they are acknowledged honestly rather than disguised, reciprocally respected rather than asymmetrically enforced, and negotiated socially rather than imposed politically.

The "love jihad" panic is, at its core, a boundary conversation that never happened honestly — and so it exploded politically instead. Beneath the cynical political manipulation of that issue lies a real social anxiety about intermarriage, cultural continuity, and asymmetric openness. If communities could engage that anxiety directly — saying clearly, "intermarriage creates real social tension for us, and here is specifically why" — that conversation, however uncomfortable, is more productive than either criminalizing personal relationships or pretending the tension doesn't exist.

The same applies to religious conversion, to the use of public space for prayer, to dietary practices, to the loudness of festivals. These are not trivial matters. They are the daily texture of coexistence, and they require honest negotiation, not political adjudication.

Part Eight: The Gendered Anxiety

Perhaps the most sensitive fault line in communal relations is the role of women and the tribal instinct for group survival. In many communal narratives, women are understood — consciously or not — as the carriers of community continuity. The anxiety this produces follows a specific logic: if one community moves toward liberal openness while the other maintains strong internal closure, the result over time is a perceived asymmetry — one side's boundaries dissolve while the other's hold.

Whether or not this perception is statistically accurate, it is socially powerful, and it must be named clearly.

And then examined equally clearly. The logic of "protecting our women" has historically been used to justify control, restriction, and violence against women within the very community claiming to protect them. Any honest articulation of this anxiety must simultaneously confront that contradiction. Women are not community property. Their choices are not demographic strategy. A framework that names gendered communal anxiety honestly must also insist on women's full agency — or it simply repackages one form of control as a response to another.

The honest version of this conversation is not "how do we protect our women from them." It is "how do we build a society where every woman — in every community — is free, and where that freedom is not weaponized as a point of communal competition."

Part Nine: Toward a Framework of Honest Coexistence

If the preceding analysis is correct, then the path forward is not more tolerance rhetoric. It is something harder and more specific: **building the conditions in which fear can be named precisely, expectations stated openly, and boundaries negotiated reciprocally.**

A genuine articulation framework requires:

**Safe containers** — spaces, whether in civil society, local governance, interfaith dialogue, or media, where fear can be named without being immediately weaponized by political actors waiting to harvest it.

**Symmetric vulnerability** — both sides must say uncomfortable things about themselves, not just about the other. A conversation where only one community is asked to be self-critical is not dialogue. It is interrogation.

**Separation of grievance from demand** — "this is what I fear" is a different statement from "therefore you must do X." The first opens conversation. The second closes it. Communities must learn to stay in the first register long enough for genuine hearing to happen.

**State neutrality as precondition** — none of this conversation can happen if one community believes the referee is biased. The state must demonstrate, through consistent and visible action, that every citizen is equally protected and equally accountable — regardless of which community's sentiments are currently politically useful.

**From Muslim communities:** A willingness to address, without defensiveness, the genuine anxieties that proselytization, fundamentalism, and communal insularity produce in neighbors — not because those neighbors are always right, but because dismissing their fears without engagement destroys the trust that makes coexistence possible.

**From Hindu communities:** A willingness to address the internal rot of caste, the self-defeating nature of reactive violence, and the critical distinction between legitimate cultural anxiety and manufactured political hysteria — because a community that cannot reform itself cannot credibly ask others to meet it halfway.

**From the State:** A commitment to genuine, visible neutrality — not the performance of secularism that protects some communities while exposing others, but a consistent standard that makes every citizen feel equally protected and equally accountable.

**From public discourse:** The ability to hold complexity — to say simultaneously that Islamophobia causes real harm AND that some fears of Islamic fundamentalism are rational; that Hindu cultural anxiety is real AND that it is being politically exploited; that both communities have legitimate grievances AND that grievance alone cannot be the foundation of a shared future.

---

## Conclusion: The Conversation That Has Not Happened

True peace in India will not come from suppressing fear or declaring it illegitimate. It will come from building spaces — in civil society, in media, in education, in local governance — where fear can be articulated precisely, heard without weaponization, and responded to with both honesty and empathy.

The conversation that has not happened in India is not about who is right. It is about what each community actually needs to feel safe — and what each is genuinely willing to offer the other in return.

That conversation is difficult. It demands symmetric vulnerability. It requires separating grievance from demand. It requires a state that functions as a genuine referee rather than a partisan actor. It requires individuals on both sides willing to say, in public, things that their own communities may punish them for saying.

But it is the only conversation that leads anywhere except further down.

The architecture of anxiety was built over centuries, through violence, displacement, and unhealed memory. It will not be dismantled by rhetoric or by legislation. It will be dismantled, slowly and painstakingly, by the accumulation of honest encounters — between real people, willing to name what they actually fear, and willing to hear the same in return.

That is where trust begins. Not in agreement. Not in forgiveness, which cannot be forced or rushed. But in honest witness — the simple, radical act of allowing the other's fear to be real, even when it implicates you.

That is the foundation. Everything else is built on top of it, or it is built on sand.

---

The Anatomy of Social Friction: Why Commonality Restricts Systemic Violence

2026-01-28T11:35:00.000-08:00

I always wonder Why does social friction in one region lead to a bloodbath, while the same friction in another region leads to a policy debate? We often looks at grievances, but grievance alone is a poor predictor of violence. To understand why societies break or bend, we must analyze the interaction of five variables: History (A), Personal Experience (B), Personal Ambition (C), Commonality (D), and Legitimacy/Leadership (L).

In this framework, Commonality (D) acts as the "Social Brake," while Legitimacy (L) acts as the "Accelerator" that turns hate into a systemic institution.

The Five Drivers of Systemic Violence

A. History: The Narrative Justification History provides the "Long View" of conflict. It is the macro-narrative of ancient wrongs, conquests, or migrations. It answers the question: "Who started this?" In the North, it is often the Partition; in the South, it is the Aryan-Dravidian migration narrative.

B. Personal Experience: The Emotional Fuel History is academic until it is lived. When an individual’s personal stories—of discrimination, job loss, or social exclusion—align with the historical narrative, the conflict gains emotional heat. This is the transition from "what happened to my ancestors" to "what is happening to me."

C. Personal Ambition: The Political Engine Conflict requires architects. Personal ambition—the desire for power, votes, or resources—incentivizes leaders to mobilize the masses. If a leader can gain a seat in parliament by stoking a divide, they have a "Personal Ambition" to ensure the conflict persists.

D. Commonality: The Great Restrictor This is the "Shared Identity" (Language, Food, Cinema, Kinship). It is the most critical variable. Commonality determines the form the conflict takes. When people share a language or a deep daily culture, it becomes difficult to "dehumanize" the opponent—a prerequisite for physical violence.

L. Legitimacy/Leadership: The Institutional Catalyst This is the "Green Light." For individual hate to become Systemic Violence, it must be channalised through institutions. When the state, the media, or religious leadership grants "Legitimacy" to hate, it becomes an organized, institutionalized force.

Comparison: The North Indian vs. Tamil Nadu Contexts

1. North India: The Breakdown of Commonality In the Hindu-Muslim dynamic of North India, the first three criteria (A, B, C) are frequently met. However, over decades, Commonality (D) has been systematically eroded through residential segregation (ghettos) and linguistic divergence. When Legitimacy (L) is provided by political leadership, there is no "Commonality Brake" to stop the descent. Because the neighbor is seen as an "Absolute Other" (different language, different neighborhood, different history), the friction easily converts into Systemic Violence.

2. Tamil Nadu: The "Tamil" BrakeThe Dravidian-Aryan tension in Tamil Nadu meets the criteria of History (A), Experience (B), and Ambition (C) just as intensely as any conflict in the North. Yet, it does not lead to systemic violence. The reason is Commonality (D). The "Aryan" and the "Dravidian" in Tamil Nadu are bound by the Tamil Language. They share the same literary heritage, the same food, and the same social grammar. This shared "D" acts as a structural constraint. You cannot easily burn the shop of a man who speaks your mother tongue.

In Tamil Nadu, because Commonality (D) restricted physical violence, Leadership (L) was forced to channalise that social energy elsewhere. Instead of institutionalizing violence, the state Institutionalized Reform. The energy of the conflict was diverted into the reservation system, the two-language policy, and social justice legislation.

This is also perhaps the reason why Dalits movements have not become violent. This model however doesnt work in violence that of form of oppression such as caste and gender.

Conclusion: The Lesson for Social Architects Systemic violence is not an inevitable result of hate; it is a failure of Commonality and a choice of Leadership. When Commonality (D) is high, the "Legitimacy" of violence is harder to establish. Our goal in social work and nation-building must not just be to "tolerate" the other, but to aggressively build the "Commonality" that makes violence structurally impossible. If we share a language and a livelihood, we share a future.

What to remember

2022-12-16T19:53:00.004-08:00

I always felt my memory is not strong enough. Though i read enough, i dont remember much. During one of the morning meditations, i ruminated about the books i remember and which impacted. Here is the list and interestingly most of it, i read it between 1998 and 2002, when i was in college.

a. Zen and the art of ..... this book hooked me for days. I read and re-read it. i was reading will durant during this time, i felt i understood a little better of Kant reading this. What i remember now is the difference between car and motorbike ride, his discussion with a monk. The one shift was the way i looked at material things. Perhaps this led my buy bullet. Though i am not a great rider

b. Freedom at midnight, Naokhali yatra. This led to read Gandhi's autobiography and more biographies, judith brown, fisher, last 200 days, etc: . I vividly remember reading his autobiography. I was crying, couldnt even cost 60 pages. i have read almost all the biographies i think.

c. Future shock series... how wealth creation and distribution determine culture. This led me a lot more understanding of different cultures and societies. I wrote a long essay after this.

d. Brothers karamzov... i find this the best novel i have ever read. What i remember is dmitri and ivan conversation in the monastery and many more with alexei. Guilt of intelligence without caring for consequences stayed.

e. We the people, this is the first novel i read with strong women protagonist, i probably identified with her i guess.

f. Anna Karinina. Of all, i remember annas stoical husband. the role holder in me gets alive when i read

g. JJ: his meeting with a leper/begger and subsequent passages.

h. Peter drucker: I have loved all his books, he along with porter, kotler are pleasure reading. It has influenced the way i look at business. Post capitalist society remains favourite.

i. God that failed: For this quote, faith is not acquired by reason, we reason it to defend it.

h. Bharatiya chit manas and kaal, this is the collection of essays and speeches by dharampal, though many would remember his beautiful tree, i think his best was this and perhaps understanding gandhi as well. This essay, brought me closer to india, i guess looked at people positively and learned to listen to stories.

i. Siddhartha, of the many, what i remember is the buddhas caution, "beware of your mind"

j. Leela, this was better than zen and the art, "Using morality as power"

k. colombo to almora; This i guess was anyones favourite.

l. Tao of physics and dancing wu li masters.

m. Mahabharata: Udhyoga parvam, for its many dimensions of dharma and conversations around that.

n. Tagore/nehru notes on nationalism.

Essentially my outlook to life remain the same i guess. All other books i read along with these and after didn't shift my space much.

2022-12-16T17:18:00.000-08:00

Yes there will always be a castiest, sexist, racist, linguist, religious angle to a murder. And we all cry for certain type of murder, and for certain kind of people. And we also choose to hear certain type. when i read Y G mahendran post, he may be right, there is a difference between the murder of a dalit and murder of a brahmin. There will be and should be more voice for dalits, because of sheer number of dalits who gets killed. Very rarely do we see a brahmin killed because of his or her identity.

Neither Left nor right

2016-02-19T13:15:00.000-08:00

We are witnessing increasing outrage and drama in the streets everyday, not a day has gone without an incident that threatens to barrage our moral sensibility and delude us into thinking that some catastrophe is upon us and the indian voters are to be blamed for it. People who have voted for Modi is ridiculed and asked to repent for their mistake.

The success of this government is to make every voter, every hindu (good bad and ugly) answerable for the government performance. One doesn't have to hold a party card to be a BJP man.

No other government probably ever mired with controversies after controversies since it assumed office. The street warriors fighting the modi govt have been the left intellectuals. Both the real and exaggerated crimes and mistakes of the present government is used by the left to feel vindicated and call the “31” percent for introspection. One can actually feel a smirk in their face. Infact one gets a feeling that the left actually want the present government to be a facist one, otherwise it will be a disappointment. It was the congress which lost election by numbers, however it was the left intelligentsia which took the victory personally and ever since it is trying to come in term with this.

The war is actually between the right and the left and the people are forced to take sides.

The fight is between two different ideas both have propensity to kill, because both believe in absoluteness of their ideas.

While the right imposes tradition, religion, faith, patriotism on others through violence, the left imposes irreverence, irreligiosity, science, poverty through violence.

Tragic similarities, when the left celebrated Afsal Guru or (sought justice for his sentence), hindu maha sabha celebrated Godse’s birthday. if the fight is against Capital Punishment why not condemn the death penalty of Godse. Both were hanged by the government for their anti national activities, if one murdered “the father” the symbol of modern india, the other waged war against the government. While the left poured their heart against afsal’s hanging (some said they are against death penalty) however they accused of the right of glorifying Godse, didn’t want to learn patriotism from stooges of British and the killers of gandhi. May be “the party” did not agree to some slogans raised during the “cultural event” but certainly they were sympathisers, sharing the anguish of afsal guru and the kashmiri cause. Similarly the RSS, sympathise with Godse, and share the anguish and sentiments of hindu cause, if not have played an active role. Kanaiya, the student leader spoke eloquently on the danger of the right to expression, he remembered Bhagat Singh, Amdetkar, he rejected hindutva, exposed the patriotism of Savarkar. But he didnt mention the role of the left in freedom struggle, their support to the british during quit india movement, he didnt mention Gandhi, except perhaps to expose RSS’s betrayal.

The difference is the left have over a period of time learnt to intellectualise, and build an army of intellectuals to defend and obfuscate in the name of poor. But for them the poor is just an identity, that is the only identity they nurture, they don't go beyond this identity. The tradition, the belief and the values of the poor have no consequence. It doesn't deserve any appreciation, it will be studied and theorised but never owned or identified with. It is brahminical, a classical one.

Left are the new brahmins in disguise, they derive power from intellectual and moral high ground. Debate, which they so fondly desire is just a tactic,, but that is not a prefered option when in power. We dont see a vibrant campus in kerala or kolkatta. And i am not aware of debating culture in the communist countries. It is an old brahminical formula that defeated buddhism, Initially they had contempt for belief and faith: bakthi was assigned to the poor and the socially backward.

The source of power was their intelligence, moral high handedness. One can see that they dismissed Kalam, and anna hazare, gandhi. left ridiculed all of them for their simplicity and they questioned their intelligence and accused them of providing simple solutions. They accused them of preventing revolution.Their hate for gandhi is deeper than the right. The dismissed the man, his life and his ideas. They assumed position where they can pass judgements on every single person and his work based on a framework, just like the priest who used shastras. That is an astonishing similarities, you can't make them accountable because they didn't write a single piece in the anthology of left writing. The god they worship, and gospel they preach are not theirs. Similarly in the world of hindu philosophy, brahmins were not the principal contributor of the philosophy, they were at the best protector,propagandist, they defend it. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the brahmins dominate the communist party.

left thinks that the BJP came to power by sloganeering and raising hindu passion, if this was such a easy thing then communist should have been in power. for a country with billion poor people it should have been easy to get them believe in the common enemy and rally them, but it was not so. For the sangh they had to create the Hindu identity which never existed some 200 years ago. To make a group of people with multiple divisions to bring them in one identity is a huge task. If RSS has succeeded partially in this is because of sheer hard work. It doesn't matter if they are right or wrong good or bad, hard work at the end of the day pays.

Murderers of Gandhi:

You also hear both the left and right talk a lot about Gandhi, what thousand pages of Gandhi couldn't do , a picture of Godse did. Suddenly Gandhi has become a symbol of patriotism and even equated with “India”.

In fact both the right and the left rejected much of what he had to offer. This is the height of hypocrisy that the left who supported British, and rejected Gandhi’s call for Quit India, questions RSS.

RSS want to appropriate Gandhi because they dont want to loose a hindu count. It is as simple as that. That has been their strategy, any Hindu is ok, once i had a conversation with a pracharak, we were discussing about people who were attending shakas, one guy was a well known gonda, i asked him why should you allow such person. His response was “It is ok, we can change him, importantly it is better to have a “Hindu” gonda than to loose him to someone else. For the RSS there can’t be any other identity, or even values. They are for a Hindu Rastra, where only Hindus can be criminal,thugs. They find new and old gods and icons from this interest. Ambedkar, is a friend of Hindu because he didn't add anyone to the enemy camp. Their idea of hindu is not someone who believes in Hinduism or its value, their idea of hindu is someone who identify himself as a hindu or anyone who is not a christian or muslim.

The right has appropriated the voice of the Hindu, it is they who speak about tradition, values, of millions of the people. The speak on scriptures, and interpret them. Such is a situation, a political Hindu to whom it is mere an identity, has appropriated the space. It is a disgusting and dangerous situation where the Hindus have to look up to sangh for reform and protection.

Both are interested only in Ideology, their paradise not in people. They will not hesitate to sacrifice people in the altar of higher goals. You need to fit into their idea of Good and bad

What we need today is someone without any extreme position, someone who can understand our faith, fear, tradition, aspiration. and who can make us feel free

We don't need the right which exploits our faith, and we don't need the left who mocks at our faith.

VHP declares BEEF as integral part of Hindu Life

2015-03-23T21:49:00.001-07:00

In the three day closed conference held by the sangh parivar to decide on hindu practices for the 21^st century India, VHP declared eating cow as integral part of Hindu society. In a statement by Parveen, he said Hindus were eating cow till 11^th century AD, it was during the time of muslim rule that hindus were denied beef.Muslims who came from the land where there were no cows, realized the strength of hindus coming from eating cows, conspired with the Buddhists to stop hindus from eating it. The gullible hindus fell for it. Praveen said, VHP would launch nation wide Gau wapsi programme to encourage Hindus to return to their mother food.

Various Leaders reaction:

Arjunan of Hindu Cow katchi, welcomed the decision, and said hindus have always killed and ate things they loved most after offering it to their god, the cow is the most revered animals for the hindus, and it is natural for them to offer it as a sacrifice and eat it. Ram gopal another leader from the sangh said that this will increase our chances of winning cricket matches against Pakistan and USA. And he thanks Gow shakthi for it.

The sankar mutt, quoted from vedas and Upanishad about the cow significance in Hindu cuisine, and released a mantra which should be uttered while eating it to their devotees.

Kancha Illaya: It is a conspiracy to saffronise dalitism. Just like upper caste hindus took away Ayurveda, karnatic music, bhrathanatyam, they want to take away beef from the dalits. This means, dalits will be denied eating it.

Poolulagin Nanbargal: This shows the utter disregard for the animal rights. The aggressive hindutva forces want to kill cows, because they want to promote chemical farming. There is a clear corporate lobby which is promoting it. We will organize one day VEGAN FOOD festival this month.

Veeramani: This is another conspiracy of the Aryan north Indians to subjugate Dravidians. They are doing it so that Dravidians die of high cholesterol. We all know that Tamils were originally vegetrarians, our original religion was Jainism which abhorred killing of animals. Following thiruvalluvar, we should not fall for this Aryan conspiracy.

VAIKO, said this hurts the tamil sentiments, by forcing tamils to eat will jeopardize the eelam cause.

The VHP spokesperson said, at the end of the conclave, we can expect more such edicts.

Arundathi Roy's lie

2014-06-15T02:14:00.002-07:00

When i was a school kid, there used to be a joke about a student who wrote an essay about coconut tree. In the exam he was asked to write about a Cow, but he knew only about coconut tree so he wrote three full pages about the tree and in the last line he wrote, “we tie our beloved cow in the coconut tree”. This is certainly on a lighter note, i am not suggesting roy doesn’t know about ambedkar, it is just a feeling you get after reading the introduction, you get to know more about Gandhi than about Ambetkar.

From the article Roy has written (Doctor and the Saint), i feel she is fighting an imaginary gandhians whom she feels are betraying Ambetkar’s critical role in the history of India especially in creating modern moral intellectual conscience of the nation. Why is nation obsessed with Gandhi when the future of india lies with Ambetkar seems to me her anguish. And for this she has brooded over writings of Gandhi (From the devils mouth) to prove his undeserved claims. She has read it selectively , as she says, it is humanly impossible to read monstrous amount of material Gandhi has written, with inconsistency, and make a sense of it. Infact one gets the feeling she has not only selectively chose the writing but also selectively read paragraph in a letter as they are so long. This impatience or rather dishonestly is unexpected from a writer who has written volumes herself.

She has used her screenplay skills to slowly build a plot to establish Gandhi as negative hero in the history of Dalits resurgence. IN this process she has, one can say, has fallen prey to the age old hindu tradition of Myth making, she is creating a hero by writing too much about Gandhi than about Ambetkar. Little do we know about Ambetkar from her article.

In her play Gandhi come across as durathma, a liar, a Manuvadi, racist, as conspirator against Ambetkar, and with ambetkar lies the future of india.

This is no reason to argue that Gandhi has done or his ideas are better and improved than of Ambetkar’s, perhaps Ambetkar was right, Gandhi was wrong, perhaps Ambetkar can provide salvation to india’ s problem. For me the case is, for Ambetkar to be prophet of New India, should gandhi be a villain ?, for ambetkar to be established should gandhi be demolished. The last 60 years have proved amply to all, that gandhi is at the best remains tomb devoid of any substance or representation for the followers and the nation. His thoughts and practice is buried and occasional debate goes on his relevance. Yes he is written most and debated but doesn’t mean it is more than a pulp culture.

Some of the conclusion and opinion roy has drawn in the are outrageous. I would like to examine those statements from same sources she has claimed from.

History has been kind to Gandhi, Ambetkar Ignored. Which historian and which history has been unkind to ambedkar, just a para above this statement ,in the article roy talks about many gandhis eco gandhi, androgynous gandhi etc. Perhaps this multi facet persona of gandhi has something for every one. Even in the long article foreword to the ambedkar’s book roy had given more space to gandhi, than ambedkar. Is she then unkind to Ambdekar, does ambedkar has a life beyond Gandhi. Is he like an epic villain.

The Mask of Mahatma the Liar: Roy, gives an impression as though mahatmahood is some kind of caste that he inherited, or status he got as right. She says, it is Mahatmahood gave him licence to be inconsistent, lecture diet, experiment with sex etc and change his truth constantly. Perhaps one may understand it is because of these he was called mahatma. Perhaps he listened to innervoice, he was open, and inconsistent he was called mahatma.

Gandhi Represented only elite indians in SA.

Roy says As spokesman for the Indian community, Gandhi was always careful to distinguish—and distance—passenger Indians from indentured workers and quotes

Whether they are Hindus or Mahommedans, they are absolutely without any moral or religious instruction worthy of the name. They have not learned enough to educate themselves without any outside help. Placed thus, they are apt to yield to the slightest temptation to tell a lie. After some time, lying with them becomes a habit and a disease. They would lie without any reason, without any prospect of bettering themselves materially, indeed, without knowing what they are doing. They reach a stage in life when their moral faculties have completely collapsed owing to neglect.⁴⁸”

The above para is extracted from the open letter (phamlet) written by Gandhi to Legislative Council of SA, the letter runs into more than 15 pages, where he forcefully argues the case of Indian, including Indentured workers, on why the indians and whites can live together equally without any hate and how “40,000 indians living in the country can be of use to the colony” (page 187). As he writes he deals with the following questions in the article.

“ You can educate public opinion in such a way that the hatred will be increased day by day; and you can, if you chose so to do, educate it in such a way that the hatred would begin to subside.

I now propose to discuss the question under the following heads:

1. Are the Indians desirable as citizens in the Colony?

2. What are they?

3. Is their present treatment in accordance with the best British traditions, or with the principles of justice and morality, or with the principles of Christianity?

4. From a purely material and selfish point of view, will an abrupt or gradual withdrawal of them from the Colony result in substantial, lasting benefit to the Colony?

He is making a case for better treatment for indians by addressing the root of hate the colonisers have. In the beginning of the letter he says, if the hatered is because of the colour then the Indians should pack and leave the country for which there is no hope. But if it is based on ignorance, etc then he wish to clarify it. Thus a long letter. He quotes different philosophers, scholars and colonisers opinion on india and the indians. He is answering to the some common objections raised by the British regarding Indians, especially their sanitory habits and untruthfullness. And the in the colony many believed indians to be Untruthful “ Here is the extraction these are from the same para Roy has quoted.

” Everyone I have met with in the Colony has dwelt upon the untruthfulness of the Indians. To a limited extent I

admit the charge. It will be very small satisfaction for me to show, in reply to the objection, that other classes do not fare much better in this respect, especially if and when they are placed in the position of the unfortunate Indians. And yet, I am afraid, I shall have to fall back upon argument of that sort. Much as I would wish them to be otherwise, I confess my utter inability to prove that they are more than human. They come to Natal on starvation wages (I mean here the indentured Indians). They find themselves placed in a strange position and amid uncongenial surroundings..........

Are these men, then, more to be despised than pitied? Are they to be treated as scoundrels, deserving no mercy, or are they to be treated as helpless creatures, badly in need of sympathy? Is there any class of people who would not do as they are doing under similar circumstances?. He asks.

What kind of conclusion one would arrive if one believes only the roy’s quotation. Roy asks us read a book by Ashwin Desai to know the plight of Indian Labourers in SA. Gandhi in the same phamplet talks about it. It just show how determined is Roy to prove her point. Sad what else one can say.

He is the Saint of the Status Quo.

Status quo huh??. Gandhi challenged many status quo almost in all the spheres he worked. He constantly re interpreted the world, especially religion to conform to his world view. In the same article roy quotes “that neither ambedkar nor gandhi allow us to pin[i]”. How can a person who does not fit into any image be a representative of status quo. His auto biography is called “Experiment” . Roy calls Gandhi Stotus Quo Saint.. aaaa

Gandhi Believed in Varnasharama Dharma: Yes gandhi did, he had his own inte

Is Gandhi a castiest, now what do we understand by this term, did he believe in caste, did he believe in discrimination, did he believe in natural stratification of society based on birth etc.

Gandhi was not a Brahmin, he was third in hierarchy (if there is one) just above sudhra. Why would a vaishya, support varna if he himself suffers from it. Perhaps he is also affected in “infection of Imitation” as ambedkar calls and in way emphasise with the rigid caste discrimination among the dalits.

One doesn’t need a translation of the gurajati text as Roy says to know the real intention of Gandhi on Caste. Gandhi in 1920, in Young India under title “The Caste: talks and also gives reasons for this thinking. Endorsement of Caste system as he sees is not new. He believed in natural division of people depending upon their skills. One can also see the difference in this article Gandhi uses castes for Varna.

But can conclude he practiced caste discrimination in his life. His beliefs and understanding of Varna, Caste is different from the Sanathanis who cried for his life. As Ashish nandi quotes, in his essay assins of Gandhi, Gandhi was murdered not just because he supported muslim cause, he had ruffled feathers of Sanathatni, when he called for opening of Temples and declared untouchability is against hindu dharma. Poona pact was infact the first declaration where Hindus publically declared Untouhcability is against Hinduism. Gandhi was architect to it.

In his ashrams he always tried to built universal society, his famous browl with his wife in south Africa was because she refused to clean dalit’s toilet who was resident. There are numerous instance where many ashramites have left because it had common kitchen where the food was cooked and shared by all. Gandhi and Santhanis, book by A marx records the reaction to Gandhi’s reforms. Gandhi used hiindu symbols and icons but interpreted in his own way, His Ram Rajya is not the same as that of BJP, he is not sanatani of hindu poojaries, though he called him self one.

From 1932, ashram has supported only intercaste marriage. To understand Gandhis stand on Dalits, one should go beyond the phrases he used and see the meaning he has used the life he has lived. Roy knows that Gandhi’s Santana is not the same as that of Sankarachariya, or his rama is not that of BJPs.

Gandhi cant represent Dalits:

Who has the right to represent Dalits, or even emphathise with them is the fundamental quarrel. Did Gandhi do anything at to the cause of Dalits, Can the upper caste Gandhi truly represent Dalits.

If one looks at Dalits as one block then yes only Dalits can. But as roy quotes “Infection of Imitation” where the line between suppresser and oppressed are thin then every one in the Hindu Graded System can to an extent talk about discrimination and oppression by the higher caste. Gandhi’s experience in SA where he was denied food, logding, and hair cut by the white, gave him experience of what it meant to be a Dalit, in fact he bore all this without hatered because he saw, the same treatment meted to the dalits in india. Gandhi knew what it meant to be social outcaste. His community outcasted him, SA gave him much relief to escape the tyranny of caste.

Gandhi when he say he understood he talks from his own experience, not from some borrowed thoughts. Roy herself has been a victim of this line of arguments. She is vilified by the Dalits for writing a introduction to this book. She is asked the same question, by trying to write about Ambedkar, she is taking away the diety who is exclusive to Dalits. If she can find a same cause with Dalits, why not Gandhi,.

Dalits have all rights to reject Gandhi, but it doesn’t take away what gandhi did or tried to do. He suspended independence movement for a decade because he undertook Harijan seva work. He thought that to be important,. Gandhi wanted india to gain independence and lead the world under moral authority, he knew this cant be built when a large section of the society remain untouchable. His audience are not Dalits, his are Caste Hindus, he had to talk to their heart and find change there. Just like he spoke to the Christian hearts of the English men.

Gandhi the Racist:

Roy has quoted from the article Gandhi has written in 1909, A year later, the sixteenth of the 20 years he spent in South Africa, he wrote “My Second Experience in Gaol” in the Indian Opinion (16 January 1909):

I was given a bed in a cell where there were mostly Kaffir prisoners who had been lying ill. I spent the night in this cell in great misery and fear… I read the Bhagvad Gita which I had carried with me. I read the verses which had a bearing on my situation and meditating on them, managed to compose myself. The reason why I felt so uneasy was that the Kaffir and Chinese prisoners appeared to be wild, murderous and given to immoral ways… He [the Chinese] appeared to be worse. He came near the bed and looked closely at me. I kept still. Then he went to a Kaffir lying in bed. The two exchanged obscene jokes, uncovering each other’s genitals… I have resolved in my mind on an agitation to ensure that Indian prisoners are not lodged with Kaffirs or others. We cannot ignore the fact that there is no common ground between them and us. Moreover those who wish to sleep in the same room as them have ulterior motives for doing so.⁶⁷

From inside jail Gandhi began to petition the White authorities for separate wards in prisons. He led battles demanding segregation on many counts: he wanted separate blankets because he worried that “a blanket that has been used by the dirtiest of Kaffirs may later fall to an Indian’s lot.”⁶⁸ He wanted prison meals specially suited to Indians—rice served with ghee⁶⁹—and refused to eat the “mealie pap” that the “Kaffirs” seemed to relish. He also agitated for separate lavatories for Indian prisoners.⁷⁰

The actual article explains in details his experience in the jail. In the same letter he writes.

“ I did not have the slightest trouble from the warder during the journey. I had resolved [while in Volksrust Gaol] that, unless openly allowed by the warder, I would not take any food other than what I was allowed in gaol. Hence I had carried on with the gaol diet all these days. But they had given me no food packet for the journey. (he was moved from one goal to another)The warder [accompanying me] allowed me to buy whatever food I wanted. The station master offered me some money. He was also very much upset [to observe my condition]. I thanked him, [but] declined his offer of money. I borrowed 10 s from Mr. Kazi, who was present at the station, and spent something from it to buy food for myself and for the warder on the train.”

Gandhi was clearly not asking for rice with Ghee. About the “Separate Blankets” for indians, Gandhi writes in letter his general observation about the Jail,

Prisons are generally kept very clean. If this were not so, there would be epidemics before long. But there is also lack of cleanliness in some respects. Blankets are constantly interchanged. A blanket that has been used by the dirtiest of Kaffirs may later fall to an Indian’s lot. Frequently, the blankets are found to be full of lice. They have a nasty smell. Under the rules, they must be exposed to sunlight for half an hour every day, if the sky is clear. But this is rarely done. The difficulty about blankets is not a trivial matter to a man of clean habits. The same thing often happens about dress. The uniform worn by a prisoner is not always washed after he is released, but is given to another prisoner to wear in the same dirty condition. This is a disturbing state of affairs.

He wanted a separate lavatory for the Indians because he was beaten up by prisoners, the same letter has the detailed account of this.

Though one may question why he thinks Kaffirs to be the dirtiest why not indians, But he is certainly not refusing the blanket because it is used by the Kaffir, and he has in the same series of article admonished indians for laziness, uncleanliness etc.

This article is infected with factual errors, misrepresentation with sole aim to tarnish the image of gandhi, one may wonder why??, why would anyone sling mud on someone who is anyway boxed in the prints of nasik. Gandhi is not seeking space in the pantheons of Dalit deities, but can they find a better friend outside their caste, is there any suvarna who has worked and talked so much like gandhi. If Abraham Lincoln can be celebrated by African Americans for his contribution for their liberation, Dalits and their leaders need not celebrate him if they feel it will diminish the stature of their god, can give him the role of squirrel or Hanuman to Ambedkar.

It is not the admirers but the rivals who keep gandhi alive, for him they are many. Let Gandhi be die his own pace, man who tried to be closer to truth deserves silent burial.

[i]

The cross we can never shed

2014-05-24T21:21:00.004-07:00

Brahmin! Who???

TM krishna, i don’t know him much, since i am not into carnatic music, but his recent article in Hindu and his interview, made me notice him for the kind of response he has kindered especially in the social media. Frankly i am not impressed by his article, the importance is more due to his caste and occupation than for his insights. He is not the first Brahmin and not the last to criticise his own brethren. It offers no fresh thoughts or insight to the working of Brahmin mind. It is a rehash of what is there in the pop culture of the collective mind. His reasons why Brahmins support Modi is layman reasons, some of the reasons are ludicrous, especially the Fair skin reason. Seriously?? Brahmin think Modi as one of them because he is fairer???. Now that entire nation has voted for Modi, what explanation one can offer.

If TMK can offer theory based on his narrow experience i can also venture into offering my theory. when i say Brahmins i mean tamil Brahmins, just like TM.

Every person, caste and community seeks power there is no exception to this. How is a Brahmin different from others and what do they protect. It is commonly believed that Brahmins by monopolising education and knowledge protected their power centre and have suppressed others through this. I beg to differ my theory is bit different. It by theorising moral and ethical standards and be “seemingly” practicing they have veiled power. This moral superiority comes from religion, philosophy, culture, and personal conduct. I see Brahmins characters as one who uses moral as power over others, Intellectualise and abstractise morality, and Adapt.

Knowledge of Brahmins were not sought after, it is not of much use to many. Knowledge of Rituals, Vedas and Sanskrit is of no use. Even today not many aspire to learn those. Many of the injunctions and rituals were hard on Brahmins than on other communities. They were willing to go through this pain and suffering to guard the moral “religious” power over people. What these knowledge do is intellectualise ethics and the personal conduct. Seemingly simple life, discipline, personal hygiene (including food), religiousness and intelligence were the foundation of their power. In fact i would put knowledge as a last factor. Even today you can see that. Idiot Brahmin is accepted, it will not raise eyebrows, but Brahmin (visualise with the Brahmin identities_ eating non-veg, alchohol will be a scandal. Krishna, will not loose his popularity because he has spoken against Brahmins. But the day he smokes in the shabha, or sings drunkard, no matter how great his concert was he will loose his popularity. You can see that through out history. Brahmins won Buddhism not just by usurping maya from them, but also vegetarianism and ascetism from them. This is what has become an integral part of their life not Maya Vadha or infinity. Because this gave them the moral edge over others. One can see this is bakthi movement as well. Though many bhakthas were non Brahmins, the intellectualisation of bhakthi, and internalising bhakthi in the personal conduct of every day life, Brahmin held the moral authority again. This was also the period Brahmins moved from Vedic rituals to songs, bhajans, kirtanas, because this gave the moral authority. You can see this change after british, british challenge to the Brahmins were not an intellectual challenge, it was not the science and industry that posed challenge, it was moral high ground of European civilisation that posed the challenge. Brahmins responded to these challenges by reforming their religion and practice. One can see the most conservative Brahmin will not defend caste prejudice in public s/he doesn’t want to seen as immoral (it is different issue whether they practice because for them moral is power to use not an end in itself) TM Krishna is part of that lineage which is resurrecting Brahmin power by reforming belief systems. With this prelude, is Modi a poster boy of Brahmins???, let us ask another question, is Jayalalitha poster girl of Brahmins. No she is not, Brahmins may vote for her, because of TINA factor, but they can never be proud of her. Similarly Modi is not a Brahmin, he doesn’t have any brahminical character to associate, his language, metaphors, intelligence are not. He doesn’t give them the moral superiority. One can understand this by RSS BJP relationship. Brahmin is naturally inclined towards RSS, swayam sevaks have tolerant contempt for BJP workers. RSS lends BJP its karyakarthas not for infusing intelligence in the organisation. BJP listens to them because they believe they are morally superior to them in life style, in personal conduct and self less work. You can hear this in the campaign trail as well, swayam sevaks and BJP workers don’t work together. For RSS BJP is a necessary evil. One would be tempted to say that Brahmins natural ally should be congress, their snobbishness, resentment for physical hard-work, moral arrogance, less aggressive, hypocracy are typical Brahmin character. May be Brahmins support BJP for being exactly opposite to them. TM Krishna may be right in this, they may like Modi because he is unlike them, but he is never one of them. Remember, Brahmins were loyal and worked hard in the past for non Brahmin kings and queens including the british. But none of them are remembered and found place in the house of brahmins. But many non Brahmin religious leaders, saints including in some house Gandhi finds much better place.

My test for a Brahmin if he/she has transcended caste lines are very simple. For all the intellectual, Bhakthi and karma marga Brahmins have treaded, they fail miserably in physical work and unconditional love. Because physical work challenges their intellectual power, Love their moral superiority. There are Brahmins more Buddhist than Buddha in thought and practice, more gandhi than gandhi, we know what happened to them.

Whether krishna transcends this or not i don’t know. But i know one thing for sure it is difficult, for one i experience this every day. If you like or hate some one because of moral and ideological reason, then you are undoubtedly a Brahmin.

Oppression

2013-01-07T20:35:00.003-08:00

Boys and girls should have separate bus

Girls should wear modest dress

They should not talk

It is an urban phenomenon

Hang the rapist

All girls are like sisters

Alcholol should be banned

Prostitution should be legalized.

The conversation and actions lately on the rape is hovering on controlling sexual thoughts. In a sense rape is because men cant control their libido roused by sight of women. There is no question that woman raise sexuality of most of the men (It is vice versa for women as well) the very existence of us is founded on this mutual attraction. But is the sex and attraction towards women lead to rape??. Does the need to have good life lead to murder and theft. Apart from such absurd solution to reduce crime by quarantining women and men, there is no real evidence whether such

Rape/sexual harassment is about power , it is not just about sex. (we can for now ignore the psychopaths). In the history of gang rapes, the major perpetrators are the army and the police. It the power which makes otherwise good people commit this crime. Men in uniform never honoured powerless women. No constable rapes his senior, no soldier has raped generals daughter regardless of whether he is sexually starved for years or he is in inebriated condition.

This is the power that comes with authority, tradition, money , muscle etc. unless this structure is addressed the rape will continue. rape is another form of aggression, men are murdered, boys are molested, women are raped. Free sex, sex education, dry state, Indian culture, burka, male escort cant stop this violence. Society which has less hierarchy ,balanced power can.

Meanwhile

Keep our boys away from the girls!!!!!!!!

Don’t let them out in night.

Never let police man control our lives (it is better to listen to khap panchayat dikkat)

Never ask religious leader their opinion

Don’t listen to Arnab Goswami

Girls always go out in a gang of girls.

Make sure all public transport has less men than women.

Make co education compulsory, but with fewer boys there.

Have item numbers with only male lead.

Celebrate gays.

About Love: Jeyamohan

2012-12-12T22:44:00.000-08:00

அன்புடன் கெளதம்.
பின் குறிப்பு: உங்களுக்கு இது முன்னமே தெரிந்து இருக்கும். உங்களிடம் நூற்றுக் கணக்கானவர்கள் ஒரு உரையாடலில் இருந்துகொண்ட இருக்கிறார்கள் (என்னைப் போல, என் தோழி போல, என் நண்பர்கள் போல). அதனால், இணையத்தில் எழுதுவதைக் குறைப்பதைப் பற்றி மட்டும் நினைக்கவேண்டாம். அது உங்கள் எழுத்துக்கான நேரத்தையும் சச்தியையும் உறிஞ்சும் என்ற உண்மை தெரிந்தும், இந்தக் கோரிக்கையை உரிமையாக வைப்பதில் என்னக்கு எந்த சங்கோசமும் இல்லை.
***
அன்புள்ள கௌதம்,
நீங்கள் குறிப்பிடும் இந்த விஷயத்தை நான் என்னுடைய பதின்பருவத்தில் மிக உக்கிரமாக உணர்ந்திருக்கிறேன். இளமையில் நாம் அறியும் ஓர் வெறுமைக்கான காரணமே இதுதான். நம்மைச்சுற்றி எங்கும் அன்பின் கடல், ஆனால் குடிக்க ஒரு துளிகூட இல்லாமல் வாட்டும் தாகம்.
என்னுடைய அப்பா அளவுக்கு என் மேல் பிரியம் கொண்டிருந்த எவரேனும் இருந்தார்களா என எனக்குத்தெரியவில்லை. ஆனால் என் அப்பாவிடம் நான் ஒட்டுமொத்தமாக இருபது முப்பது சொற்றொடர்களே பேசியிருக்கிறேன். என்னைஅவர் நாலைந்துமுறைக்குமேல் தொட்டதே இல்லை. நான் அவரைப் புரிந்துகொள்ளும்போது அவர் உயிருடனில்லை. இளமையின் அலைக்கழிப்பிலும் கொந்தளிப்பிலும் சிக்கி நான் திசையறியாமல் விழித்த நாட்களில் அந்த அன்பை நான் உணர்ந்திருந்தால் என்னுடைய தவிப்பு பெருமளவு குறைந்திருக்கும்.
கடலலை மேல் தாகத்தால் வெந்து மரணம் வரை சென்று மீண்டபின் தெரிந்தது நான் அலைக்கழிந்த கடல் குடிநீராலானது என்று. அவரது துணையும் பலமும் எனக்குத் தேவையானபோது கிடைக்கவில்லை. அதற்குக் காரணம் அவரே. அவர் எப்போதும் எந்த உணர்ச்சியையும் வெளிக்காட்டிக்கொள்ளக்கூடாது என நினைத்து வாழ்ந்தவர்
எந்த உணர்ச்சியையும் என்று சொன்னேனே அது தவறு. கோபத்தை வெளிக்காட்டுவார். அப்பாவிடம் வெளிப்பட்ட ஒரே உணர்ச்சி அதுதான். சொல்லப்போனால் அவர் கோபம் கொண்டால் மட்டும்தான் பேசுவார். அவர் வீட்டில் இருப்பதை அவரது கோபம் வழியாக மட்டுமே உணரமுடியும். அவர் ஒரு ரகசியவெடிகுண்டுபோல, கோபத்தால் மட்டுமே பற்றவைக்கப்படுவார். மற்றநேரத்தில் குளிர்ந்த கரிய உலோகம்.
பின்னர் எழுத வந்தபோது நான் இந்த ஒரு பிரச்சினையைப்பற்றி மீண்டும் மீண்டும் எழுதியிருக்கிறேன். என்னுடைய மிகப்பெரிய ‘தத்துவப்பிரச்சினைகளில்’ ஒன்றாக என் அப்பா இருந்தார் என்றால் மிகையல்ல. அப்பா எனக்கு என் மரபை, என் சமூக அமைப்பைப் பிரதிநிதித்துவம் செய்தார். அவர் வழியாகவே நான் என் வரலாற்றுடன் உறவுகொண்டேன். அவரைப்போலவே அதுவும் என்னுடன் பேசாததாக, அல்லது தன் கோபம் மூலம் மட்டுமே என்னுடன் பேசக்கூடியதாக இருந்தது.
அதன்பின் நான் சுந்தர ராமசாமியைக் கண்டுகொண்டேன். நான் சுந்தர ராமசாமியில் முக்கியமாக அணியறிந்தது அவரது அப்பாவுடன் அவருக்கிருந்த அதே உறவே எனக்கும் அவருக்குமிடையே இருhந்தது என்பதுதான். சுந்தர ராமசாமியும் அவரது தந்தையின் வடிவில் மரபை அறிந்தவர். தந்தைமீதான எல்லா உணர்ச்சிகளையும் மரபின் மேல் திருப்பிக்கொண்டவர். எண்பதுகளிலிருந்த ஜெயமோகன் அப்படியே ஜே.ஜே.சிலகுறிப்புகளின் சுந்தர ராமசாமி [என்ற பாலு] தான்
நான் ராமசாமியிடம் நேரடியாக இதைப்பற்றி உரையாடியிருக்கிறேன். மானசீகமாக இன்னும் பலமடங்கு தீவிரமாகப் பேசியிருக்கிறேன். ராமசாமிக்கு சுந்தரம் அய்யர் பேசமறுக்கும் கோயில் சிலை, திருவிழா நெரிசலில் விட்டுச்சென்ற கை. அந்தக் கோபம் பரிதவிப்பு ஏக்கம் எல்லாமே இருந்தது. ஆனால் ஆச்சரியமாக ராமசாமியே ஒரு சுந்தரம் அய்யர் [எஸ்.ஆர்.எஸ்] தான். ராமசாமி ஒருபோதும் பிரியத்தை வெளிக்காட்டக்கூடியவரல்ல. பிரியத்தின்மீது சுயக்கட்டுப்பாட்டின், சுய கண்காணிப்பின் கடிவாளத்தை எப்போதும் போட்டிருந்தவர் அவர்.
அவரது சொற்களிலேயே சொல்லப்போனால் ‘ யானைத்தலையளவுக்கு புனுகை எவரேனும் உருட்டிக் காண்பித்தால் அது புனுகுதானா என்று நான் சந்தேகப்படுவேன்’ . மனிதர்களின் அன்பு என்பது புனுகு போல மிகமிக அரிதாகவே உருவாகக்கூடியது என்று அவர் நம்பினார். அதை ஒருபோதும் அதிகமாக வெளிக்காட்டிவிடக்கூடாது என்றும் அப்படி காட்டினால் அதன் மதிப்பு இல்லாமலாகிவிடும் என்றும் நினைத்தார். அவரது அன்பை நான் ஒருபோதும் உணர்ந்ததே இல்லை என்றால் மிகையல்ல. நான் அவரிடம் உணர்ந்தது அவர் மேல் நான் கொண்டிருந்த அன்பை மட்டுமே.
நெடுங்காலம் கழித்து நான் சுந்தர ராமசாமியின் குழந்தைகள் ஆண்கள் பெண்கள் நாவலை படிக்கையில் ஆச்சரியமாக ஒன்றைக் கண்டுகொண்டேன். சுந்தர ராமசாமி அதில் அவரது தந்தையைத் தனக்குச் சாதகமானவராக மாற்றிக்கொண்டிருந்தார். தன்னைப்போன்ற ஒருவராக அவரை சுந்தர ராமசாமி கட்டமைப்பதை அந்நாவலில் காணலாம். தன் தந்தை பற்றி சுந்தர ராமசாமி நிறையவே சொல்லியிருக்கிறார். அறிவார்ந்த தேடல்களோ ரசனைகளோ இல்லாத வணிகர் அவர். சுய உழைப்பால் தன்னை உருவாக்கிக்கொண்டவர். அந்த பெருமிதம் கொண்டவர். அதேசமயம் புற உலகு பற்றிய நீங்காத பதற்றம் கொண்டவர். ஆகவே தன் சொந்த குட்டி சாம்ராஜ்யத்தில் சர்வாதிகாரி.
அந்த எஸ்.ஆர்.எஸ்சை ஷெல்லி வாசிக்கக்கூடிய சுதந்திரப்போராட்ட ஈடுபாடுள்ள ஒருவராக சித்தரித்துக்கொள்கிறார் ராமசாமி. அப்பா மேல் அவருக்கிருந்த கசப்புகளையும் ஆங்காரத்தையும் அப்படித்தான் அவரால் செரிக்க முடிந்தது. அப்பாவின் விராடரூபமாக அவர் கண்ட இந்தியமரபையும் கடைசிக்காலத்தில் அப்படி சுருக்கி திரித்துக்கொள்ள கொஞ்சம் முயன்றார் என்று படுகிறது.
ஆற்றூர் ரவிவர்மாவுடனான என் உறவும் அந்த இடைவெளியுடன் மட்டுமே இருக்கிறது. அவரது பெரும் பிரியத்தை பத்து கண்ணாடிகளில் மீண்டும் மீண்டும் பிரதிபலித்து என்னிடம் வந்த பிம்பமாகவே நான் உணர்கிறேன். எனக்கு உடல்நலமில்லாதிருந்த காலகட்டங்களில் அவரது ஆழ்ந்த அன்பை உணரும் வரம் எனக்குக் கிடைத்தது. இன்று முதுமையில் கனிந்திருக்கும்போது இன்னும் அவரிடம் என்னால் நெருங்கமுடிகிறது.
பின்னர் நித்ய சைதன்ய யதியைக் கண்டுகொண்டேன். நித்யா இருமுனை கொண்டவர். அவர் பிரியம், கருணை போன்றவற்றுக்கு அப்பால் இருப்பதாகத் தோன்றியபடியே இருக்கும். ஆனால் அவர் நமக்கு மிகமிக அருகே இருப்பார். என்மீது தடையின்றிக் கொட்டிய பிரியம் என்றால் அது நித்யாவுடையதுதான். ‘உனக்காகக் காத்திருந்தேன்’ என்று என்னிடம் சொல்ல ‘அவனுக்காகக் காத்திருக்கிறேன்’ என்று அத்தனைபேரிடமும் காட்ட ‘நீ எனக்குப் பிரியமானவன்’ என்று என்னிடம் சொல்ல, உணர்ச்சிகரத்துடன் என்னை மார்போடு தழுவிக்கொள்ள, என் கைகளை இறுகப்பற்றிக்கொள்ள, தன் கால்களை என்னை நோக்கி நீட்டி எனக்குப் பணிவிடைசெய் என ஆணையிட அவருக்கு எந்தத் தடையும் இல்லை.
நித்யா ஒரேசமயம் வைரம்போல இறுகிய வெண்பனிபோல இளகிய மனிதர். ஒருவரைப் பிரியும்போது கண்ணீர்மல்கியபடி அவர் கைகளைப்பற்றிக்கொள்வார். ஒவ்வொரு முறை நான் கிளம்பும்போது ‘எப்போது மீண்டும் வருவாய்?’ என்று அவர் கேட்பார். முதல்பார்வையிலேயே உரக்கச்சிரித்து ‘வா வா’ என்று மகிழ்வார். அன்பை முழுக்கமுழுக்க வெளிப்படுத்தக்கூடியவராகவே இருந்தார். .எனக்கு அவர் கற்பித்த அனைத்தும் அன்பினூடாகவே.
‘நம்மவர் பாவத்துக்குக் கூச்சப்படுவதில்லை, அன்புக்குக் கூச்சப்படுகிறார்கள்’ என்று நித்யா ஒருமுறை சொன்னார். ஒருமுறை ‘நான் உன்னைச் சந்திக்க ஏங்குகிறேன். உன்னைப்பற்றிய நினைப்பால் முழுக்கமுழுக்க தித்திக்கிறேன்…’ என அவரது பிரியத்துக்குரிய இளம் மாணவர் பீட்ட்ர் ஓபன்ஹைமருக்கு அவர் கடிதம் சொல்லி எழுதவைக்கும்போது நான் அருகே இருந்தேன்..சட்டென்று என் கண்கள் ஈரமாகிவிட்டன. எத்தனை அபூர்வமாகிவிட்டன அன்பின் சொற்கள் என எண்ணிக்கொண்டேன் பின்பு.
அந்த நாளில், அந்தக்கணத்தில் நான் புரிந்துகொண்டேன். என் அப்பாவின் ,அவரைப்போன்றவர்களின் சிக்கல் என்ன என்று. நித்யா அந்தக் கடிதத்தை ஓர் இளம் ஜெர்மானிய மொழியியலாளருக்கு எழுதிக்கொண்டிருந்தார். அந்தக்கணத்தில் அவர் அவரது கல்வியை, அவரது கவித்துவத்தை, அவரது புகழை, அவரது குருபீடத்தை முழுக்க இழந்து எளிமையான குழந்தையாக அவன் முன் நின்றிருந்தார்.
அப்படி இறங்கி வருபவர்களுக்குரியது அன்பு. அன்பு நம் ஆன்மாவை உடைகளைக் கழற்றும்படி கட்டாயப்படுத்துகிறது. அகங்காரத்தை மட்டுமல்ல அறிவையும் கழற்றாமல் அன்பு செலுத்த முடிவதில்லை. அதற்கு முடியாத நிலையிலேயே அன்பை ஒளித்துவைக்கிறார்கள். அன்பை ஒளித்துவைப்பவர்களை கவனித்திருக்கிறேன். அவர்கள் குழந்தைகளிடமும் மிருகங்களிடமும் அந்த அன்பைத் தடையில்லாமல் கொட்டுவார்கள். ஏனென்றால் அவர் இறங்கிவந்திருப்பதை அவை உணர்வதோ மதிப்ப்பிடுவதோ இல்லை என அவர்கள் நினைக்கிறார்கள்.
அந்த மனநிலையின் வேர் கிடப்பது நம் பண்பாட்டின் மூதாதை வழிபாட்டில். நாம் இறந்தவர்களை தெய்வமாக்குகிறோம். அந்த மனநிலையின் நீட்சியாக மூத்தவர்களை சற்றே குறைந்த தெய்வங்களாக நிறுத்துகிறோம். நம் பல்லாயிரமாண்டுக்காலப் பண்பாடு மூத்தவர்களைத் தங்கள் இளையவர்களின் உலகில் இருந்து பிரிக்கிறது. மரியாதையான ஒரு தொலைவில் அவர்களை நிறுத்துகிறது. நாம் நம் மூத்தவர்களுக்கு மதிப்பை மட்டுமே வழங்குகிறோம். அன்பைக்கூட மரியாதையாக நாணயமாற்றம் செய்துதான் கொடுக்கிறோம்.
நம் மூத்தவர்கள் அந்த மரியாதைக்குப் பழகிவிட்டிருக்கிறார்கள். அதையே தங்களுக்குச் சமூகம் அளிக்கும் அங்கீகாரமாக, இடமாக நினைக்கிறார்கள். அந்த மரியாதை சற்று குறைவதைக்கூட அவர்கள் தாங்கிக்கொள்வதில்லை. அவர்கள் உக்கிரமாகக் கோபம் கொள்ளுமிடம் எல்லாமே மரியாதை குறைகிறதோ என தோன்றுமிடங்கள்தான். அவர்கள் முன்கோபத்தையும் விரைப்பையும் கைக்கொள்வதே மரியாதையை இழக்காமலிருக்கத்தான். அவர்கள் மண்ணில் மூதாதைதெய்வங்களின் வடிவில் வாழ நினைக்கிறார்கள், மனிதர்களாக அல்ல. அக்குளில் அந்தக் கண்ணாடிப்பாத்திரத்துடன் இருக்கையில் எப்படி இயல்பாக அசையமுடியும்?
மேலைநாடுகளில் மூத்தார்வழிபாடு இல்லை. ஆகவேதான் அன்பை வெளிப்படுத்துவதற்கான செயற்கையான தயக்கங்களும் இல்லை என நான் ஊகிக்கிறேன்
அதற்கு இன்னொரு பக்கமும் உள்ளது. நம் சூழலில் தூய அன்பை மதிக்கும் மனநிலை நம்மிடமில்லை. நம் தந்தையரிடமிருந்து மிகமிக மாறுபட்டவர்கள் நம் அன்னையர். அவர்களுக்கு அன்பை அள்ளிக்கொட்ட எந்தத் தயக்கமும் இல்லை. ஒவ்வொரு செயலிலும் அன்பை அவர்கள் நமக்கு தெரிவித்துக்கொண்டே இருக்கிறார்கள். ஆனால் நம் குடும்பங்களில் அவர்களின் அன்பு ஒவ்வொருநாளும் அவமதிக்கப்படுகிறது. அவர்களின் அன்பு என்பது அவர்களை நாம் எப்படி வேண்டுமானாலும் நடத்தலாமென்பதற்கான உரிமைப்பட்டயமாக எண்ணப்படுகிறது.
நம்முடைய கசப்புகளை கொதிப்புகளை எல்லாம் நாம் அம்மாமேல் தான் கொட்டுகிறோம். பல குடும்பங்களில் குழந்தைகள் அம்மாக்களை நடத்தும் விதம் கண்டு கொதிப்படைந்திருக்கிறேன். ரயிலில் அம்மாவிடம் ‘கொஞ்சம் வாய மூடிட்டிருக்கியா? நான்சென்ஸ்’ என்று சீறிய ஒரு இளம்பெண்ணை சென்றவாரம் பார்த்தேன். அம்மா ‘சொன்னாக்கேளுடீ’ என்று மீண்டும் எதையோ சொல்ல ஆரம்பித்தாள். கண்டிப்பாக அது தனக்காக இருக்காது, அந்தப்பெண்ணுக்கு நல்லது என அந்த அம்மா நினைக்கக்கூடிய ஒன்றாகவே இருக்கும்.
தன் அன்பைத் தெரிவிக்கக்கூடிய ஒருவரை தன்னுடைய பலவீனத்தை தன்முன் திறந்துவைக்கக்கூடியவராக நினைத்துக்கொள்ளும் அற்பத்தனம் நிறைந்த சமூகம் நாம். குறிப்பாக நம் படித்த இளைய தலைமுறை இந்த அற்பத்தனத்தில் ஊறி ஊறி வாழ்பவர்கள். குடும்பத்தின் அன்பையும் தியாகத்தையும் கூச்சமில்லாமல் பெற்றுக்கொண்டு அதெல்லாம் தன் சிறப்புத்தகுதிக்கு அளிக்கப்பட்ட காணிக்கைகள் என நினைத்துக்கொள்ளும் அசடுகள் அவர்கள். அவர்கள் முன் அன்பின் வெளிப்பாடு அசட்டுத்தனமாக நிற்க நேரிடலாம்.
ஆனால் அதற்காக அன்பைத் தெரிவிக்காமலிருக்கவேண்டும் என நான் சொல்ல மாட்டேன். ஏனென்றால் அன்பு என்பது நாம் பிறருக்குக் கொடுப்பது அல்ல. நமக்கு நிகழ்வது. அது நம்முடைய சொந்த ஆன்மீக மலர்ச்சிக்கான வழி.
சுந்தர ராமசாமியின் புனுகு உதாரணத்தின் அடிப்படைப்பிசகு என்ன? அன்பு என்பது கொஞ்சமாக மட்டுமே உருவாக முடியும் என்ற நம்பிக்கைதான். அன்பு அப்படித் தன்னிச்சையாக கொஞ்சமாக நம்முள் ஊறக்கூடிய ஒன்று அல்ல. அன்பு என்பது ஒரு நிகழ்வு. நாம் நிகழ்த்திக்கொண்டால்தான் அது நிகழும். நாம் நிறைக்க நிறைக்க அது நிறையும். அன்பை மிகையாகத் தெரிவிப்பது என்பது சாத்தியமே அல்ல. ஒருபோதும் ஒரு செய்கையாலும் உண்மையான அன்பை முழுமையாகத் தெரிவித்துவிடமுடியாது. அன்பை எப்படி மிகையாகத் தெரிவிக்க முயன்றாலும் குறைவாகவே தெரிவித்திருப்போம்.மண்ணில் எந்தச்செயலும் அன்பைத்தெரிவிக்கப் போதுமானவை அல்ல.
நான் அதை என் சொந்த வாழ்க்கையில் கடைப்பிடிக்கிறேன். என் அப்பாவுக்கு நேர்மாறாக. நான் சொல்வது நான் அப்படி செய்து கற்று உணர்ந்ததை மட்டுமே நான் என் மனைவியிடம் குழந்தைகளிடம் நண்பர்களிடம் என் அன்பை முடிந்தவரை தெரிவித்துக்கொண்டே இருப்பவன். என் குழந்தைகளை நண்பர்களைக் கட்டித்தழுவ முடியும்போதெல்லாம் அதைச் செய்வேன். ஒருநாளில் நூற்றுக்கணக்கான முறை நீ என் செல்லம் என்று என் பிள்ளைகளிடம் சொல்வேன். என் நாய்களிடம் சொல்வேன். [முந்தைய நாள் அதைச் சொன்ன அதே நேரத்துக்கு சரியாக டாபர்மான் நாய் வந்து நின்று எட்டு தெரு அதிர குரைத்து நம்மைக் கூப்பிடுவதைப்பார்க்கவேண்டும்!]
ஆம், அப்படி அன்பை சொல்லிக்கொண்டே இருப்பதனால் நான் இழப்பதென்பது என் அப்பாவுக்கு அவரது சூழலில் கிடைத்துவந்த மரியாதையை. என் வீட்டில் நான் வந்தால் எவரும் அமைதியாக எழுந்து நிற்பதில்லை. நான் ஏவினால் என் மனைவியோ குழந்தையோ ஓடிப்போய் அதைச் செய்வதில்லை. எனக்கு எவரும் பணிவிடைகள் செய்வதில்லை. உரையாடல்களில் எப்போதும் சமாமான இடமே எனக்குக் கிடைக்கும். அந்த மரியாதையை எதிர்பார்த்தால் அங்கே அன்பு இருக்க முடியாது.
ஆனால் அவர்களுக்கு நான் நெருக்கமானவனாக இருக்கிறேன். அவர்களின் அப்பாவாக மட்டுமல்லாமல் ஆசிரியனாகவும் இருக்கிறேன். அந்த இடம் முக்கியமானது.
ஜெ

Rethinking MBA

2012-06-09T06:06:00.002-07:00

Just read a book Rethinking MBA by three harvard profs. What challenges MBA institutions face in changing world. I saw three interesting challenges/.

Students, business prefer one year course, but want to learn every thing, do every thing and be every thing. though. Fast food feast course. just a reflection of the society. How can one address issue. this is to stay.

My ideas are;

Select early may be in graduation. Instead of having entrance test, offer some basic courses online when they are in undergraduation. I think instead of preparing for two years to clear entrance test, it is better to take some basic tests in core MBA subjects.

Career based curriculum: today the curriculum is functional or industry based. which require the students to read more subjects which may not be useful directly. One more way of looking for curriculum grading can be career growth based,.for example HR can be graded from entry levels to HR head. ie lessons are based on what would one do in a particular role and integrate as we move to higher roles.

Global perspective: it seems mostly it about acculturation. how do we lead/work with different people. what would be global prespective of India. what will we teach our MBAs. will we teach them how to lead a White man or work with him, will it teach an entreprenuer how to deal with the MNCs and protect your business.

I wonder if any Business school will do a study/teach local business men a strategy to counter say Walmart's competition. I assume we will teach our students how to work in an MNC, for us this is understanding globalisation.

Leadership: difficult i guess,

of the challenges mentioned in the book one puzzled me was unanimous agreement on low level of creativity???? among the MBAs

BUILDING WORLD CLASS INDIAN CONSULTANCY FIRM

2012-03-17T04:14:00.003-07:00

BUILDING WORLD CLASS INDIAN CONSULTANCY FIRM

What do consultants do? Tell truth, its different dimensions, perspectives, degrees and they pursue it to be as close as possible. Ultimate truth always evades the mortals, but those who have succeeded are the one who see it as perception not as absolute truth. For us in india we should know this better, we have chased it long enough to understand its reality and the mirage of it. What will take india to tell the world about the truth of ARTHA. It has been some centuries since we last wrote about how to create wealth with certain panache and deriving from ethos blended in the native soil. Such treatise is not just an intellectual/creative exercise. It has to come from a society which has created wealth, and men who knew how to create wealth. So for us to be the preachers/consultants, (us means india and indianess not indians who can give gyan) we need to create wealth and wealthy men here. Now what it takes to build world class management consultants firm from India.

Strategist not Strategy: In the age of open thoughts and idea, fee for ideas is an anachronism. For country like india, where the bulk of the business is still a family affair, more than idea is required to convince. The key challenge for many is in implementation, many don’t have second line leadership. Consulting is both providing ideas and also interim managers who can implement and also develop second line leadership. It requires different revenue model project cost should be seen as a investment. Charging for time on a concurrent basis should change to time series basis.

Share the risk: Key is can firm stick to the plan we purported and ready to take risk if it fails.

Truth delivers: though cliched it is the foundation on which the entire organisation strategy rest not just as a value but as an offering/solution. Consultants tell truth and prove it with empirical evidence period. But too much reliance on data may not work as well.

a. Data entrophy: In a country where rocket launchers and matrimony are decided by astrologers, we can easily fatigued by data. Our distrust for data is accentuated by meteralogical departments, which use tons of data (complex) to arrive at tom’s whether which has 80% probability. The essence of data is lost the moment you use the data, and that we miss in the entrophy can create complexity (some clever guy calls it butterfly effect). More than data scientist, perhaps data god might work. Simple truth we might learn from them is they never say how they arrive at a solution, they give and let the statistics decide on the success.

Arbitration/Counselors: When we grow and when the pie is small, scrambling for it can create tension, in such era agitation, protests and cynicism consultants should become credible arbitrator. Act as bridge between business (families) and communities.

Sustainable not just for clients but for economy and communities. Good consultant loot at the growth of the organization, by anchoring the value and the cost. Great organization, looks at creating social capital which is inclusive and sustainable. World class organization should look a client as one of the value chains of the economy. Merely serving the need of a client is myopic. Each assignment is a chance to create wealth and knowledge for the society.

Multi discipline:, with strong humanities support.

Who understands the people and their lives better than writers, social workers, activists, anthropologists. They are the harbingers of future, they predict the problems. What market research can’t predict they do. There are many new sciences which can help us getting closer to truth. So have writers, poets in your team.

EGO

2012-03-17T04:12:00.000-07:00

since social workers don't bloat their purses, it gives them default right to bloat their ego. i am yet to find any NGOs or social workers who is not worried about the brand, image and a little appreciation. in fact missing names can break relationship permanently and you will never know the reason.

you know social workers are suppose to work without expectation.

Alternate Business School

2011-12-18T20:06:00.000-08:00

Never in the history of the mankind business and business men were regarded highly by the society. The political, social, economic discourses of couple of centuries are centred around the wealth creation and its distribution and centre of it is the business men. Strong and perceptible cultural and political changes are directly linked to the business and management. Frankenstein monstors are not created by the nerd, introvert scientist but the articulate, sophisticated MBAs who make u feel u need one. But it is possible for a management student to complete his degree without knowing and understanding Marx, Gandhi, plato and venture in to world to sell products naively believing to be immune to culture and political changes it creates in the society, choosing a work is also about choosing lifestyle and culture.

Management is essentially a philosophy, reducing it to mere skill and alluring with money is dangerous. Today we need business school which essentially looks it as a philosophy not merely a processing unit for corporate consumption. Its mandate has to be broader because of the power they hold on its people. It is rather strange that we have so many alternate schools for children but not colleges. Is there is scope and viability for such business schools I believe there is. If we can have MANAGEMENT GURUS, why not sishyas. What can a sishya learn but life from a guru.

Can we built a Management school where community will seek (including corporate) from it not just knowledge and skills but wisdom.

The institution should be focus on three things in this order.
a. Perspective
b. Skills
c. Knowledge

What do we expect from a good teacher, or a fine institution. Knowledge/sophisticated information in todays world is easy get. skills are easier but slightly difficult, you need an environment to practice/do. Perspective is the most difficult one in todays world it requires, seeing,reflecting,doing and reflecting. Seeing, which is increasing the breath of vision, reflection which is structured thinking, needs assistance. this provides a frame of reference.

How can be such a institute built:
a. Philosophy, politics and literature as part of curriculum
b. Focus on management studies than on business studies.
c. Having local connection and relevance
d. Building infrastructure around it
What should be its mandate:
a. Holistic approach in running business/economy
b. Producing responsible community managers than just business managers
c. Management theories based on local and traditional business practices
d. Thought leaders
I do believe with the strong intellectual tradition we can be thought leaders in management theories. But we have failed to do that. I always feel ‘Small is beautiful” by schumaker should have been written by an indian.