The weblog of Atin Bhattacharya

Arundhati Roy and India's Uncomfortable Truths

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 21:39:00 +0000

Arundhati Roy's statements on India's left extremist insurgency and Kashmiri separatism have been enraging affluent India for a few years now. This anger seems to have crossed a certain threshold after her appearance with Syed Shah Geelani and Varavara Rao at seminars in Delhi and Srinagar. The causes of this anger have been laid bare by Shoma Chaudhury in her recent article. Unfortunately, discourse on the issues Arundhati Roy has been writing and speaking on for the last twelve years has been stalled due to affluent India's recent and continuing emotional outbursts. The following paragraphs contain an assessment of Arundhati Roy, my positions on some issues on which she has been very vocal, and my criticism of how affluent India sees itself.

First, let's count instances where Arundhati has been wrong. She has been wrong in characterizing the movement for a Temple at Ayodhya as nothing more than communal and anti-minority. She has ignored India's need for a symbolic victory over Islamic iconoclasm, the functional utility of religious structures as a place where people in a religious society converge to discuss culture and politics, and the extent to which religious buildings contribute to the people's identity. These issues have been important within and without the Ram Mandir movement, but she chose to ignore them.

Arundhati Roy has held that the Chattisinghpora massacre was carried out by the Indian state, while it has long been known that the LeT and the Hizbul Mujahideen planned and carried out the terrorist attack. Even David Headley has confirmed that the Indian state was not responsible for the attack. I do not think she has rescinded her comments on the massacre or apologized for the same.

She has also opposed India's nuclear arsenal with pacifist rhetoric. This is immature given our legitimate security concerns. China, a country we have been at war with, had nuclear weapons long before we did.

But what about the state of the debate in India on other issues such as the exploitation of tribals by the rest of society, the condition of Harijans and the plight of people living under the gun in the Kashmir valley, Manipur, Nagaland, Meghalaya and multiple districts of Assam? Surely, affluent India's lack of concern for these crucial issues deserves more anger than what it affords Arundhati Roy? Versus our abandonment of these crises, she has grappled with them and tried to create change with the rationale that in these times being ineffective is futile.

Think about the ordeals the Indian state puts people through as they are removed from the land which gave them livelihood to make way for dams, mines and industries. Think about the Indian state's hare brained response to multiple armed insurgencies, which kills more civilians, soldiers and security personnel than necessary. Think about the abysmal human rights record of the state within and without the context of counterinsurgency. Honestly consider the state's use of counter insurgents in Kashmir, Chattisgarh and Manipur. Have balanced reports by sections of our media on these crises not failed to make an impact on affluent India? Hasn't the rest of the media unflinchingly toed the government's line and swept aside chances to discuss the causes of these crises? Have we not failed to protect people in our tribal heartland from their upper caste tormentors, from the corporations which have taken away their land and from the dubious promises of the left extremist insurgents? Have we not jailed intellectuals and activists who worked for the rights of the tribals? Is the situation in parts of our tribal heartland not desperate enough for people to take up arms against the state and for some intellectuals to cross over to their version of the truth? These are the compelling reasons which probably persuaded Arundhati Roy to cross the fence, to not equate the violence of the state and the violence of the insurgent. We must ask ourselves why we have reached a stage where some may start contending that the violence of the insurgent is partially caused by the violence of the state rather than the other way around.

Affluent India has failed to honestly debate the issues Arundhati Roy has raised time and again. Instead, it has decided that the means of economic growth are not subject to debate, even if tribals are illegally evicted from their homelands to make way for mines. It has decided that the government was right to confront stone pelting Kashmiri Sunni youth with guns when the armed insurgency had already been defeated, when moderate separatists had become disillusioned with plans of merger with Pakistan and had focused on trying to restore the autonomy J&K had pre-1953, when the death of scores of Kashmiri Sunni youth at the hands of Indian security forces did not compel them to reject the option of pelting stones and pick up guns instead. It has decided that there will be no conversation on the nature of the relationship people from the North East have with the rest of India or acknowledgment of the historic disconnect between the Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Burman cultures. Why? Because that might become the basis for granting Indian citizens in the North-East the kind of political autonomy which will give them the space to create a peaceful and sustainable society?

Of course Arundhati Roy is wrong in calling the Maoists Gandhians with guns. She is also wrong when she gives moral support to Kashmiri separatists and Maoists, because the Indian State remains more capable at delivering a peaceful future to the people in these lands torn by conflict compared to what the separatists and insurgents have to offer. She is also wrong in hoping that the Kashmiri Sunni separatists might succeed in establishing a nation where Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Kashmiri Shias will have equal opportunities and equal rights. But does this justify the hysterical calls for arresting, silencing or boycotting her coming from India's influential corporate media houses? Can her moral support to the separatists and insurgents be considered seditious when she has not been responsible for creating or giving new breath to any anti state movement and when the state itself employs violence in good measure? Where is the outcry against the Bajrang Dal's plans to drive her out of the country? Has affluent India, after having lost the courage to file FIRs, also lost respect for the freedom of expression?

Nation states have always had two extreme approaches to crises which threaten their writ. One is waging war with the acceptance of violence and coercion as tested and legitimate weapons which have been utilized by every tribe, kingdom, civilization and empire which has ever existed. The other is the path of negotiation, dialogue and compromise. If the Indian state fails to address separatism and insurgency with the right mix of the two it will never win these conflicts without killing too many people and without torturing its conscience.

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Links:
Escaping the ASI's Final Conclusions - Koenraad Elst
Shoma Chaudhury interviews Arundhati Roy [2007]
Listen to the Stones - Shoma Chaudhury
Arundhati Roy vs. The State - B. Raman
Pity the Nation that has to Silence its Writers - Arundhati Roy
The Shape of the Beast - Shoma Chaudhury
Bajrang Dal's warning to Arundhati Roy
Shoma Chaudhury interviews Arundhati Roy [2010]

Confession: I'll forever be in love with The God of Small Things.

Caveats: Affluence is relative. And the idea that the nation state has a conscience is probably acceptable only in contexts where the state is personified.

What follows this?

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 01:54:00 +0000

We like to be miniature terracotta prophets in our miniature terracotta world, don't we? We like watching characters betray their fears, anxieties, motivations and vulnerabilities. And we like predicting what is going to happen, tasting the emotion in another's eyes, forming in our minds their view of reality. We like to point out what is broken, we like to give another the confidence that we can heal what cannot be mended, only to disappoint them later, but informing them that at least we tried.

We like doing all of this, we are little hate machines. And yet, there is this cry coming out of the heart of every person, this justification for ritual, religion and superstition, this belief in the other worldly, or even the extraterrestrial. Some of us try to reach out into the unknown and grab it with our hands, the others call our methods fake. And I choose to report what has occurred, so that it is there for everyone to grasp and comprehend.

The following may not be about substances which relieve the pain of existence, or the inexplicable suchness of my moments. This may not be about the wearing out of my being, the sores on my feet, or of not knowing how much this body will climb up, up from the bottom and hopefully into the bliss of indifferent existence. I am here to tell you that things have changed around here, that the physicist has slipped into a dream within a dream, that I have never felt so much at peace with not understanding the song of another person, singing of finding happiness outside this place, this uninspired routine.

I can see myself walking towards where I am now, and this part of the journey is not about indigo children or the communication (or disorganised effusion) of thoughts through the ether of unconsciousness, even though there was an instance where I was pretending that the phenomenon I wanted to witness had occurred twice in a period of one hour.

Maybe I've reached the place where I am no longer interested in how my song shapes yours or your song shapes mine, or what we are singing about. I find myself more interested in being the singer, in being the producer rather than a worshipper of my product.

And this is where I have found myself, writing these words to chronicle the facts of my existence but finding that this process invariably changes the truth of my experiences. Writing anything is a lie.

I now know that every single time I have decided to stop talking but have found myself unable to discontinue making my point, being impatient about my inability to control my song is effortless yet unhelpful. I now know that the silence always comes later, it is a deferred silence.

Atin Can Haz Meme?

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:06:00 +0000

Xenophobia and other stories.

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:58:00 +0000

Ah, the 2006 BITSian batch. Our capacity for scandal knows no bounds. A wise man once said, "Pilani has always been the ******* of the universe. But the 2006 batch looked beyond all this, it peered out of the ******* and out into the wide world around it and saw a nation infested by engineering colleges where dogs are used for warmth and multiplication. And they responded, with gratutious violence, violent sex, and sexual frustration."

But that is the junta's story. What about my story? How did I end up not becoming Prime Minister of India? More importantly, apart from the disintegration of the Soviet Union (which happened before I develop the oratory skills to prevent it from happening), what other regional and international events have pissed me off? Is this relevant? Does relevance matter? Is Darshit Mehta going bald? Why did people not share my excitement when ISRO put a probe on a moon, a probe with the tiranga painted on its sides? The next paragraph should answer some questions but don't blame me if it doesn't.

Barack Obama becoming El Presidente of Yanqui U.X.O. was certainly pissing off. More so because he won without a social revolution and has not created one since. Also, he is half-black and half-white, in my estimation. Yes, I know melanin content is genetic and that race is a false construct, but it would have been a hundred times more awesome if RZA had become El Presidente of Yanqui U.X.O.

The other event which pissed me off was when in our own Jhunjhunu zila, a dravid daityaputra transcended (with amazing impunity) the holy boundaries of caste and made himself a false brahmin of our small yet beloved realm and started deciding our fates and destinies. Why do I say this? Because he is a naxalite, and a naxalite always harbours a vicious lower caste mentality regardless of what caste he was born into. With the full weight of my brahmanical authority, I contend that a naxalite's son is born a naxalite, that naxalites are an untouchable caste. How can an untouchable then become a brahmin? How could he pronounce that Deepika Padukone is not hot? Even if all BITSian men were intensely homosexual and in active sexual relations with other homosexual BITSian men, they would still know how hot Deepika Padukone is. They would not disapprove if Deepika Padukone had a muslim boyfriend, because love is unstoppable. Of this I am sure. Secular Bharat Zindabad!

And if we are still talking about the long and vibrant history of witch hunts in BITS Pilani, mustn't we mention the terrible mistakes of burning non-witches at the stake? Was that not a waste of energy, wood and kerosene? Shouldn't the Marathis apologize for voting for the Shiv Sena in the Bhiwandi East bypolls and for other dissimilar debacles in Jhunjhunu? Shouldn't I apologize for screaming balkankrieg every time B-Man smacks my enviable paunch? Is it my paunch simply because it is neither my tushy nor my face? Does he need a tip drill? Can the tip drill be donated to a poor handyman who has the will to drill but not the resources to drill? Can NSS do something about this?

You might remember a time when this blog was called 'The Mad Guy Speaks'. And I might remember how I had to resolutely defend my decision to change this blog's address while also calling you a retard for being a Sikh. You might also remember how in 3-1 the run up to the last fortnight before the comprehensive exams was not quite the proverbial camel ride. And I might remember a time when I used to write posts with that rare and delicious intensely warm and fuzzy early morning optimism. And you might remember when you and a labrador retreiver were in ANC, making love by the coals. And I might remember all the times I have chucked more interesting discourse in favour of all those little inconseqential things which seem to bother and confuse the junta here in Jhunjhunu. And this is precisely the reason I want you to remember me as a positive force for society. I am Mishra 2.0, what have you?

CRY: Cultural Revitalism and You

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:03:00 +0000

Unity in diversity. According to Stephen Cohen, unity in diversity works well for India because the existence of a rainbow spectrum of identities results in lesser availability of radicals itching to stir up revolution. And according to me, this is so because radicalism and extremism spread faster within identity group boundaries than they do across them. But that is not important right now. What is important is my delusion that telling you that I have not been able to hear properly for the last six hours will somehow cure me. But in this moment of extreme vulnerability, I am still better than the rest of you. Why? Because I am Bong.

I am now hoping that you understand that the above as an example of how one's identity is one's refuge from mediocrity. I hope I will not have to tell you how the Indian & Bangladeshi national anthems were written by the same Bong. I hope that you already know that Bongs were - after the above act of anthem writing - given the responsibility to shock and amaze the nation with our capability and capacity for depressing poetry, poetic violence, violent revolution, revolutionary art & artistic failure.

By virtue of being Bong, I am both character and chapter in a novel chronicling the new and old tragedies of South Asian history. Because I am Bong, I am an authority on the Bengal Famine, on the genocide of Hindus in East Bengal, on the 1971 war, on the complex politics of the Indian North-East & on the decaying and overpopulated towns of the Presidency on both sides of the Indo-Bangladeshi border. It does not matter whether I know anything about the above, for people who are not Bong I am their weary shaman from the east. And even amongst Bongs, I refuse to let my ego disintegrate; I quarrel to win and argue to bleed.

Perhaps to no end, I must confess that I do wish to see a future where the waves of cultural revivalism and cultural revitalism have crashed on the shores of secular Bharat, where the poison of intolerance has seeped deep into the Indian psyche, where one can truly find peace through obscenity, after all they did find it on the 6th of December, 1992. I was too little to have indulged in that proud moment, I probably need one of my own.

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I first started to write the above on 19/07/2009. I take particular pleasure in not being able to understand myself. I sometimes blame the existence of this merry state of mind on the extremely fluid nature of the wrestling match between secularism and Hindu chauvinism on the akhada of the Indian heart.

Do I have no shame?

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 09:31:00 +0000

I'm the ring master, and Shiva is my lion. In this circus, we do the good work of revealing subtext, between rounds of almost unending applause. If you cannot open your third eye, step right in. You will have a good trip. Guaranteed. If you can open your third eye, you will still have a good trip. Guaranteed.

Remember a time when you were in uniform and had itchy calf muscles. They told you, through mass produced journals and cards, filled with italicised text written with gel pens, that life was a journey. That made sense then, but was still something believed in by almost everyone else, making it both socially relevant and repugnant to you. The optimistic world of diaspora literature also made sense to you. But now you believe that life is a trip. And this makes sense now. So does Billy Corgan. Does the fact that is has been a good trip comfort you, or does the fact that it is more probable that most of the trip is yet to be experienced burn the edges of those unending pages filled with the unread produce of your life?

I, the ring master, manipulate the trip to your benefit, and I have been hoping that I would learn by teaching, that helping you journey better would help me journey better. I must confess that I pretend that I am teaching myself when I am teaching you, and I must continue teaching, because the ones who taught me have left, or will leave with me, but the knowledge must remain, in this place, for ever.

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January is my favourite month. Just three more sunsets and I will be able to legally wed my own lokie wife. Off season prices are apparently shamefully low. Or maybe I'll travel to Delhi and try some of those women who have been illegally trafficked from Bangladesh. After all, I must own everything I have, mustn't I?

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And yes, I support the creation of Gondwana, Vidarbha, Bhojpur, Paschimanchal and Bundelkhand, and transferring Purulia to Jharkhand, but I'm against the creation of Telangana, Saurashtra, Maru Pradesh, Purvanchal, Gorkhaland, Bodoland, a Karbi Anglong state, a Chachar Hills state, a Coorg state, and separate states of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. I'm sorry if I've failed to express my views on others I might have forgotten. What views have you?

Occupying Kashmir: The Indian Empire At Work & How It Might Succeed

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:53:00 +0000

I saw Sanjay Kak's 'Jashn-e-Azadi' yesterday. Centred on the experiences of Muslim separatists in Kashmir, this curious documentary is surprisingly biased towards the Muslim separatists and thoroughly marginalises the experiences of Hindus and Buddhists in that state. And being filmed entirely in Indian Controlled Kashmir, it lacks stories from Pakistani Controlled Kashmir.

But there are many benefits to watching the documentary. It helped me understand that the identity of these separatists in ICK as Muslims goes a long way in creating and reinforcing their beliefs that they must resist the Indian State through the violence of Jihad, that they have a birthright over the territory which is spiritually far superior to what Yasin Malik helps them identify as 'Brahmanical Imperialism'. Yasin Malik also talks about a figure of 100,000 Muslim Kashmiris 'martyred' by this imperialism. While I can't estimate how many of them were males, this probably implies a few million virgin females were dispatched in Islamic heaven to reward these 'martyrs'; according to the rule of 72 per male martyr.

While it was not surprising to see that these separatist Muslims were not able to raise their discourse from their imagined birthrights, it was somewhat shocking to come closer to the gruesome consequences this irrational separatism forces on both the Muslim separatists and the Indian security forces. Also, while in my opinion the Indian presence in Kashmir must unambiguously classify India as an Empire-State, I was also able to see efforts by the Indian Army towards integrating the Muslim separatists into the Indian mainstream, though Sanjay Kak has heaped no small measure of irony in his depictions of these efforts.

The imagined birthrights of the separatists are deeply associated with the Muslim peasantry's ownership of land; land which Sanjay Kak notes was given to them by the Indian government because of its consistent anti-feudal stance. Manipulating ownership of land has to be - in my opinion - at the focus of any effort towards integration of the Muslim Kashmiri separatists into India. A possible direction may be massive subsidised industrialisation of the valley by the State which will create the economic forces which will convert the Muslim peasantry into industrial labour and also generate a disinclination towards farming and animal husbandry, at which point the state can buy the countryside from the ex-peasants and sell it to settlers from the rest of India - preferably at subsidised rates - creating a more cosmopolitan Kashmir. Working in industry will also make the Kashmiri Muslim more prosperous and hence less likely to rebel against the Indian Empire.

In the short term, a small step I would like the see the Indian Empire take would be to stop sending the bodies of dead militants to their villages. They should be disposed of in crematoriums. Sending bodies of terrorists to their villages helps the Muslim separatists claim them as martyrs and raise slogans against the Indian Empire and in praise of terrorist organisations. Many instances of this have been brilliantly captured in Kak's documentary.

In conclusion, while 'Jashn-e-Azadi' is mired in foolish accomodation of imagined birthrights and irrational respect for Islam, it is also very informative and thought provoking if you are able to not get excited by all the blind rhetoric and the separatists' childish sense of entitlement.

Reblogger. Rehater. Rebigot.

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:17:00 +0000

It's BOSM time. Outstees lookin' hot and shakin' them thangs. But what does BOSM hold for a guy who is already taken? Not much, really. But please consider the following:

A male outstee is a curious creature. He:

lives in a ghetto not very far away from normal male accomodation at BITS Pilani;
wears distinctive uniformed clothing which is simultaneously gross and also an identity marker;
competes with regular BITSian males for food and sanitation facilities; &

is as wary of socialising with us as we are of doing the same with them.

In other words, the outstee is uncannily similar to the semi-urban Muslim male many hate and loathe (Straight outta Saharanpur, crazy raghead named Atif), though not nearly as obnoxious. Which is deliciously fortutious, because by experiencing BOSM, I can simulate how it was to live in pre-partition India, with so many unwanted people roaming around our streets, commiting crimes and harassing our womenfolk (and not flushing after using our facilities). And by doing this I can understand why partition was so necessary. I'm sure you can too.

Now that you're done reading this post, why don't you:

go listen to 'Gold Guns Girls' by Metric?
search the LAN for the key 'Saharanpur'?
wonder how much prasad Mishraji is going to pay me for putting the Oasis header and button on this blog?
go write 'Oasis 2K9 Flipside Orgy Oye!' in blood on a scrap of paper and mail it to me?

Fight the Cholera!

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:09:00 +0000

Here's how I look at religion in India today: 85% of us are suffering from various strains of the common cold. The majority will always suffer from common cold, as it is incurable. Hence the Adi Dharma will always remain the numerically dominant religion. Unfortunately, 15% of all Indians are suffering from Cholera, which spreads quicker and is much more deadly. But Cholera is curable. If India is a welfare state we must all try and help our less fortunate brethren to fight off their Cholera and at the same time take precautions that we don't contract the Cholera.

The Cholera isn't native to India. The Cholera came to India from outside. I think one reason why people do not hate the common cold as much as they despise Cholera is that the common cold does not severely restrict your freedoms like Cholera. Also, the common cold is available in various strains and so if you are the sick kind of person (pun intended) who deliberately wants to suffer from the common cold you can choose the kind of cold which feels just right. Moreover, the common cold does not ask your wife and daughter to go around covered in a black bed sheet, nor does it ask you to pay obeisance to a stone in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia five times a day. The common cold does not ask you to spread itself by forcing others to contract it from you. If you so desire, you can very easily stop your common cold to jump on to your friend's body.

But Cholera is intrinsically a disease which does not rest without spreading from one unsuspecting host to another. Cholera frowns upon you when you think of yourself as more of an Indian and less of a Cholera patient. There is no love in the time of Cholera, because women do not have the right to enjoy intercourse if they are Cholera patients. It is also difficult to marry a Cholera patient without catching Cholera from your partner's relatives and acquaintances. In fact, the tyranny of Cholera is so debilitating for the patient that during the 1940s a bunch of Cholera patients actually decided to form a separate country on the basis that they were all Cholera patients. This can also be attributed to the susceptibility of Cholera patients to bouts of delusion.

Another frightening trend is that an appreciable number of Cholera patients in the Cholera countries are willing to fight for Cholera till the bitter end with unfailing loyalty to the cause for establishing a world where everyone has Cholera.

If you want to fight the spread of Cholera in our country then please consider voting for the BJP in the coming general elections. Jai Shri Ram!

[Hey, does this mean I have the common cold now?]

Status Message Redux (Part Five)

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:35:00 +0000

[Rajat Bhai apne balls le lo aake] [cannabis night has begun in earnest] [hell hath no fury greater than a Jharkhandi in love.] [presently high as a helicopter]

[Whither, Lakhimpur-Sarai?] [Sharing people has become a problem. Is there a breaking point?] [Project BITSgina]

i do what i'm told. inside my heart its black and hollow and cold. yes. i write this to please myself. i want negro slaves

[They call him Shriekant the Banshee ... and he gives great head!] [Cannabis Night: Part Deux] [Oye Suicide! Oye Crucified!] [Coming soon: The Goat Skin EP]

[Btw, Facebook is blocked. Fuck you, IPC. Try www.new.facebook.com to screw IPC's plans.] [Logged On. Bogged Down. MF Doom.]

[I've been through it all, the fails the falls. I'm like Niagara, but I got right back up like Viagra. I. Am. Agriculture.] [Oh, Maiden]

[I function better when I'm sick. At least, I like living better when I'm sick.] [Ladies, Darshit Mehta has been swimming, flaunting his insanely cute ass.]

[Turn up the love. Turn down the hate] [These colours don't run, from cold bloody war]

[Bitchass Niggafaggot Penisacid Ultravulture Bottlefucking Sexfiend!]

I'm an unforgivable ass. You are my sweet sunshine.| Pata hai woh baith gayi? Haan sach mein. Last semester. Lol.

The Wicker Man makes a reference to the first Pink Floyd album | can't wait for the bhaang!

My sins are many, my guilt is too heavy | insomnia kills | did not lose any clothes this Holi. Yay. | more food? monchaka chewbacca! Nigga what, nigga who?
| Lance-Naik Anirudh Mandhana's last words: "Abe dono ko le liya". Posthumously made Naik-Subedar. I don't know of that's a promotion or a demotion.

I'm a listless ass. You're a procrastinating bitch! | Oye sad fuck, oye oye fat fuck. Uh, Oye.

How does R.E.M. have a song called Bang and Blame? | My Pidgin doesn't go to idle sometimes. Please try to appreciate the implications of the same.

ABVP, Vidyarthi Bhavan, AVM Campus, Janata Colony, JAIPUR - 302001 | If you want to corner the Pakistanis who are reportedly coming to Pilani later this month, send me an email indicating your support. I will try and persuade my contacts in the Bajrang Dal and the ABVP to help us.

Jai Shri Ram! | Fellow BITSians, please don't kill your daughters. | Achtung Jaaten! Habba the Jutt is coming to town! | And now I find a Maiden song reminiscent of Gybe! | Test today. | War today too. Rapprochement? | Sucks to be dumb, doesn't it?

My balls hurt. | Stat Mech was an unmitigated disaster. | Not much to smile about. .... except .... [NIN|JA] is such a great concept. | I need another desk! | Latest LUMS-enthu comment: "all are bitches and dogies…."

Kill Krishna's sweeper ... kill the dalits ... kill the shudroids .... kill the dravidians! | Tourette's happens. Please don't take offence. | Back to Demonbaby worshipping! | Kyun nahin dude? Kuh-kuh-kyun nahin? Hain? Hain Muthafucka? Hain Dude? [Habba the Jutt is coming]

[NIN|JA] is way too far away. Sadness. Morbidity. Death. Pillage. Fluffy bunnies. [Might be asleep. Might be at desk. Probability is fascinating] Weird anorexic charms. Hmm. And pitch black roads. Hmm. And Maoists. Hmm. And Salwa Judum. Hmm.

Beatallica! | The fever has subsided. I feel alive again. | If light were slower, I would have a really good excuse to be late all the time.
When I say "no one's iller than me", please take it literally. I'm sweating buckets and missing components. Is this the end of Atin Bhattacharya? Such a vainglorious end? | Broken. Bruised. For the greater good of your God.

Indisposed. Sorry. | Perfect. I fall sick and all my instructors decide to hold components. And now I have to read Herman Hesse for a component. His bullcrap is amazing. | I concede. Iron Maiden is not overrated. In fact, its underrated.

Relapse is good. Relapse is fun. Relapse is amazing. And I'm not talking about the Eminem album. | The extent of my sin! | I've got two desks in my room now. All I need is a consenting female.

Down on your knees, don't be left behind. This is the beginning. | depressed_bong_saha_2008 as Bhagvata. 19:45 hrs. Audi. Lolfest imminent! | Step over the dead, remember what you said you know about life. That isn't how it seems right now.

I'm ill. And sick. Literally. Hip hop has made communication difficult. | Out of the silent planet! | Asses of fire has acquired an entirely new meaning. | Rolling in the ocean, trying to catch her eye. | Just like you imagined. Sharp. Very sharp. Makes your abdomen convulse.

What if all the worlds inside of your head are just creations of your own, the devils and your gods, all the living and the dead, and you're really all alone?

Feeling the same way all over again, singing the same lines all over again. Hmm. The only problem is that it's a Iron Maiden song. Lol. | Overcast sky in Pilani today. Nice. | I have people on my IM list I don't know or don't remember any more. Have I been smoking up too much? | So how about dinner in Cnot tonight?

I'M IN UR FILELIST, DWNLOADIN UR P0RN! | Turns out Rhythmbox's shuffle feature really likes R.E.M. | Gulaal disappointed with a pointless ending. | Probably not here. I'm Schrodinger's Bong. Pun intended.

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All of the above were generated this semester. One look at the list and I realized I'm totally hooked to NIN and Iron Maiden these days. Also, I've posted this even though I promised that I would stop reposting my status messages as tweets before another redux. I'm sorry.

Let's dissect some fresh religion!

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:50:00 +0000

I'm proud of the fact that religions native to India have had a better track record of tolerating and nurturing debate and free speech than religions from other parts of the world. Of course, this is foolish pride, because religion is the single greatest obstacle to rational thinking. The fact that religion still may make way for some rationality and a little debating did seem fascinating to me earlier but now I understand that your co-religionists will only accept difference of opinion on matters of faith and scripture within only a certain radius of where they are anchored. What's worse, depending on the specific religion and its particular sect your friends are trapped in (Wahhabi Islam anyone?), you may be variously persecuted if you step outside of the radius. This could be a radius of interpretation of scripture or this could be the radius which defines the faith. In the latter, stepping outside means either being atheist or adopting another religions.

What's even worse is the rotting hypocrisy in the middle of it all. Why do believers in general allow a co-religionist to have some differences of opinion? That's because religion needs a certain level of corruption to survive. It's not easy to make humans subscribe to a strict set of rules and so they allow differences in interpretation of the very scriptures they insist are the precise word of god. The hypocrisy here is appalling, but its existence is to me not more shocking than other widespread prejudices and what we in India have been taught to call social evils (things like female foeticide and sati). The religions which do allow more fluidity of interpretation of scripture do seem to have more peace among sects, which of course should help individual sects to acheive better effective homogenization of the flock. For instance, as of today, the overwhelming number of Shaiv and Vaishnav Hindus do not harbour hatred towards each other and so there is no need for having sectarian radicals and their statistical absence means that the Shaiv and Vaishnav groups have a great deal of internal homogeny. Christianity, Judaism and Islam on the other hand do not allow a large radius of difference in interpretation, and that has been the reason that their constituent sects clash so violently with each other, the violence is of course best illustrated in Islam.

But the native religions of India are still prey to yet another artifact of irrationality: the yearning to achieve the samyaka state or the desire to reach and experience for ever the inner essential truths or the need to attain samadhi and perfect consonance with god(which is very different from western conceptions of salvation, but that's another story). The problem here is that even though no evidence exists of the existence of these states and even though the desire to attain these states is (ironically) to free oneself of desire, the traditional potrayal of the path to such 'salvation' (multiple puns intended) is one of rational thought and as an endeavour which requires great intellectual effort. Seeing westerners worship the same is particularly irritating.

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I observe that my approach towards dissecting religion in this post here is focussed on the larger, macroscopic picture than on the plight of the individual believer.

Switching Sides

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:55:00 +0000

India should vote for the BJP in the coming general elections. I know saying this marks a big shift in thinking for me, especially in view of this earlier post. And before you all start judging me and calling me a vacillating oaf, sit back and enjoy the paragraphs which follow, because I think I may have something cute and shiny up my sleeve.

After 3-1 ended, I stepped up the rate at which I digest news and eat through the Indian subcontinent's spectacularly voluminous modern history. I also raised myself to a higher level of objectivity. The first definite conclusion this has led me to make is that within the Indian context an ideology is only a semi-efficient means of keeping the cadre of your party together. The leaders within these parties are the ones who are least bound by ideology and prominent leaders from all significant political groups have made innovative changes in their policy and in the ideologies which run their parties during the course of their political career. The most 'glaring' example of the same is from American history: the Democrats which first made Barack Obama their Presidential candidate and then campaigned successfully for him belong to the same party which split on the question of slavery before the US civil war and ruled the American South during the years 1876-1920 - a period marked by a return to slavery through ingenious methods of convicting black people and making them work in prison camps. How did the Democrats turn themselves from the slave owners to the campaigners for a black president? It happened because leaders have driven ideology to fall in line with their political contingencies through all these years. And from this perspective, its easy to appreciate how it could have been the other way around: with the Republicans pushing for a black President and the Democrats holding the redneck votes. Ideologies have always been pliable.

One can see all that has happened in India before and after Independence from this lens and point out how Jinnah left the INC after a change of ideology and joined the Muslim League, how the Awami League in East Pakistan changed its ideology over two decades from a socialist party to a radical nationalist party to an autocratic party which did not tolerate the existence of an opposition and then to a socialist moderate party. I can now understand how the INC happened to usher in economic reform after decades of irrational socialism. I'm can see now how the moderates have become pre-eminent within the BJP. I can also understand why my father laughs at me when I talk of politics and politicians in terms of ideologies. India has truly made a mockery of the very word. More than any other country.

In view of this shift of sands it would be foolish for me to stick to any particular party, expecting it to deliver to me the India of my dreams. I must be pragmatic about these choices and see who is likely to do India more good if given a mandate. I'll now proceed to record how exactly I reached the tipping point. Of course it's all clearer in retrospect. Foreign policy happens to be a big factor as the NDA doesn't do better than the UPA in building infrastructure and employment. Similarly, I'm not going to accuse one party of failing at something if the other shows no hope of doing better in that sphere than the former.

First, the INC could not translate the peace in Kashmir into significant improvement in the state's economy. Neither did it use the peace to start resettling the Kashmiri Pandits in their homeland. It's a slap in the face of the 400,000 people who have been displaced out of Kashmir. The INC participated in two successive governments with two opposing parties - which is a really bad precedent. Does this reflect way too much ideological innovation?

Second, the UPA government has achieved nothing on the many problems we face with Bangladesh: border disputes, growing Islamism, the unstemmed and constant flow of illegal immigrants, the killing of Hindus in Bangladesh. Nothing concrete has been established on that front.

Third, the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks was not managed to the satisfaction of the nation. In view of the growth of the Taliban within Pakistan, I surely wouldn't like a government which isn't adequately aggressive against terrorism. Nothing is being done about the increase of Jihadi culture in Purvanchal. When will Azamgarh be brought back into India? How is the nation supposed to tolerate the INC's decision to ally (alliance now broken?) with the SP when an SP leader's son is arrested for being a member of the Indian Mujahideen?

These failures overshadow this government's achievements in stabilizing the North-East and winning a bunch of state elections riding piggyback on the NREGA and the central government's infrastructure initiatives. Plus I'm not going to forgive or forget how unbelievably corrupt the last government in Jharkhand was.

Thus ends the story of how I decided to switch sides. You can now laugh at the fact that I won't be voting because I'll be far from home preparing for and taking tests during the general elections. And we can all laugh at the fact that even though the educated people in India have a good understanding of the issues at hand, they are too small a votebank to matter during elections. Our role gets limited to goading and pushing the government which does get elected, and nothing gets this done better than PILs and RTI applications.

Aazan on Mount Emo.

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:05:00 +0000

Coochie Coo tells me this blog is getting 'inconsistent'. Okay, he said this a long time ago. In fact, we have been discussing something else today and that something is vastly more interesting than anything this post may develop into, though it does have to do a lot with my act of typing these words. Okay now, the problem here is that, apparently, the intensity of the humour here is oscillating violently about the average. And you know what, it makes me mad. Madder than Hugh Laurie asserting he's mad because he believes he is St. Peter. Madder than your average dude exhaling cigarette smoke from a hanging jaw thinking he is cooler than Jay-Z. See, here's the thing: To be Bobby then you have to be Bobby now. Or something similarly deflective.

Anyway, what I wanted to say was that hell hath no fury greater than a Jharkhandi in love with a bronze goddess who in turn is courting another who subscribes to an ancient cult steeped in hirsuteness, stupidity and an screwed up sense of honour. And on an unrelated note, it was surprising and reassuring to find women who will tell how and why intercourse pwns masturbation. A belated Happy Women's Day to all you women out there.

How did I not realize that gossip was so important for society? I was stupid, incredibly stupid. Yes, I was young but I should have realized that even though society cannot offer anything truly valuable, it sure can entertain and titillate you. And in the end, we are all diseased. Then why be ashamed of yours?

Go forth into the sun, for it indeed does shine to illuminate your trivialities.

[Paragraphs should get smaller as your piece progresses]

Whither, Lakhimpur-Sarai?

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:03:00 +0000

Let's wither away and never live again to see another day. Let's draw ourselves closer to the great many-fingered entity in the sky, with chests splitting with pain and minds absolved of guilt. Let's dumb down everyone by mixing something in the water, because the normal order of things isn't interesting enough anymore. Let's kill every person whose musical tastes converge substantially with yours so that no one makes the wrong conclusions and feels the wrong things when listening to your favourite songs. Let's revisit the receding past where things were not so certain, let's return to the visible promises of myth. Let's fly above Purvanchal and guard its many towns from the great Plague coming from the east. Let's push boundaries and understand what everyone is feeling. Let's sympathize with the insane and thus deserve the attendant consequences. Let's tell everyone how much we love them and how much we hate them. Let's ban underwear. Let's ban emergency lighting. Let's make zombies in the university bio labs. Let's wither away and never live again to see another day.

Meander

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:55:00 +0000

Most of our beliefs are convictions, or decisions to subscribe to viewpoints, or semiconscious attempts to join a team and feel excited about it or mechanisms to protect ourselves from a general lack of meaning and the debilitating absence of any God. Ironically, all this is only a problem for those who realize (or half realize) that this is a problem. There is reason to believe that the uneducated and the unenlightened are leading more fulfilling lives than the perceptive intellectuals.

But there is no real competition here. I'm not really bothered if you claim that you're living life better than I am. I don't care if you find life happy, fulfilling and in general warm-&-fuzzy-making. There is no purpose to what you are doing and none to what I'm doing either. Inheritances and legacies are not part of what we are. We are results of purposeful accidents. We are conscious and sentient, but not of our own accord. And we can lose both those things if we want to. You didn't choose what you were born into or born as, and neither did I. And there are no conclusions to be made here, no inferences to be drawn. There is no profundity at the end of this road. Besides, profundity lies only inside our own minds, it isn't an entity which exists outside our common/personal experience. And thus profundity is overrated.

There is more darkness than we are led to believe. Because we can only observe and perceive. You and me simultaneously seeing something does not mean that what we see indeed exists. I don't know if you actually exist in the same way I think I exist. What if me and another friend are seeing you, simultaneously? That won't prove that you exist. Sophomoric but true.

Of course, there are things which are arguably more interesting and yet more trivial than existential semicathartic typing. There is an organic and hormonal component to what I am. And we can try and not think about the modularity of it all. You cannot guarantee that you will feel all the human emotions within any given time interval, no matter how long. Here's a personal instance: Until sometime yesterday, I hadn't thought about tears or crying for a long time, arguably, for years. We all laugh, cry, fight and forgive, but not as often as those who want to look at life as some kind of journey would like us to believe. I think I'll end up arguing on the lack of the profound, the divine and the rational act of submission again. I'm not heartless. I can understand how you feel, but none of what you feel matters, does it? If you look closely enough, isn't the music we create a consequence of our contingent grappling with the profound or the spiritual or lack thereof, in a significantly large number of instances?

Research in philosophy is only as justified as research in any other discipline. Because neither can significantly alter the human condition. Not to my satisfaction. There can only be better sense organs and calmer minds in the distant future. There can only be better ways of getting high. Nothing better than that. I don't think anything else is possible.

Minar-e-Pakistan

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:14:00 +0000

23 March 1940. In its Lahore session on that exact date the Muslim League passed a resolution which set the tempo for its demand for Pakistan. In 1960, Pakistan started building a minaret in Lahore to commemorate the resolution. It was completed in 1968.

Nice piece of architecture. Just happens to look like a hoohoodilly.

The long day is over ...

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:35:00 +0000

... and may God bless Norah Jones.

So Facebook has been blocked by the powers that be at BITS Pilani. As of this moment it can still be accessed this way but unfortunately even dense people learn from their mistakes. And who the hell is Shyam?

See, I'm typing out what I'm thinking right now. I'm primarily thinking that it would probably not be such a good idea to start another minitradition of sorts by labeling this post Khabar BITS Ki (S1E02). Not because I'm bad at these things. It's just that my other efforts haven't really taken off. Hybrid Professor didn't catch on. Neither did Belsatre. Habba the Jutt died a premature death. Coochie Coo remains a phenomenon only in the minds of less than five people. So I'll meekly stop generating more of these. I've learnt my lesson sir. Can I please have my pants back now? Really, I didn't know that when my friends told me that the commitee will f*** me up that they were being literal. No sir, this doesn't make you gentlemen homosexual. I'm the homosexual one here. Not you. All this had nothing to do with how satisfied you gentlemen are with your relationship with your respective wives.

What else ... batch snaps have been keeping people happy and busy for the last two weeks. Pandey Bhai was back on campus for his snaps. Kya baat hai. Also the guy has been the first to blog about the whole snap session phenomenon and yet not blog about.

And I've been reading my own older posts. Narcissistic but true. Surprisingly I no longer feel strongly about any need for improvement or the lack of tightness in what I write like I used to when I reread something I wrote back in school. Its not a temporal thing. I'm talking about when you read something a few months after you wrote it. Maybe I'm just getting used to myself and have stopped expecting better from myself.

Ah, this place is becoming a dump for really random thoughts. Now that is an example a statement of the "I see that my blog has acquired the characterisitc X" variety. Still, classification doesn't prove anything, despite the way B5 is being taught Particle Physics. Aditya says Velvet Revolver should make Snoop Dogg their lead vocalist. Mull over that.

I feel compelled to Ctrl+V the rap verse I love most right now here.

With the same sword they knight you, they gon' good night you with
Shit, that's only half if they like you
That ain't even the half what they might do
Don't believe me, aks Michael
See Martin, see Malcolm
See Biggie, see Pac, see success and its outcome
See Jesus, see Judas
See Caesar, see Brutus, see success is like suicide
Suicide, it's a suicide
If you succeed, prepare to be crucified
Media meddles, niggaz sue you, you settle
Every step you take, they remind you you're ghetto
So it's tough being Bobby Brown
To be Bobby then, you have to be Bobby now
And the question is, "Is to have had and lost
Better than not having at all?"

[Excessive linking and self love are diseases]

[Coldplay's 'Rainy Day' is a cute song. Try it.]

[According to some BITSian alternate histories, I was in love for most of the last two weeks and am now heartbroken. *sob*.]

Preying On & Laughing Sadistically At the Weak & the Uncool with Atin Bhattacharya

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:10:00 +0000

Hello and welcome to yet another episode of Preying On & Laughing Sadistically At the Weak & the Uncool with Atin Bhattacharya. You can find previous episodes here and here. I'm Atin Bhattacharya, your host and brother-in-law. Yeah mofo. I'm turning the clock back and making a re-return to our collective teen rage years. And I've got quite a spread for you in this review of BITS Pilani's ugliest and most inelegant. Munch Munch.

So my Bhawan's HRep has decided to add me on Facebook. No I don't hang out on Facebook all the time, GMail informed me. Now this HRep bugger is the same guy who came up with the most awesome (dense people should try and see the sarcasm around here and think whether the sarcasm is dry enough or is pliable and moist, like your sister's, eh, handkerchief) and efficient way of applying for internships last semester. Simply put, what he has done is that he has put up a resume and a generic internship enthu letter on his blog. Go clicky clicky here and here for the juicy details.

Item number two on Khabar BITS Ki tonight is this candid tale of love from a 2006B1A1 dude. It's just so heartfelt and uncompromisingly screwed up at the same time that you are obliged to relate this elevated prose to every other random guy walking past your wing. No more spoilers. Catch the laugh of the week here.

[Update: The 2006B1A1 guy (he prefers calling himself "Vyom Sharma 007") is trying to deprive us all of his unintended humour. He has moved his blog here.]

[Yet another update: Our James Bond (Captain Vyom?) has deleted his blog. Muhaha. He still posts poems here though. Quoting from that blog's header: "hi.. I used to read a lot of shaeyri when i was in 10th, but at that time it was used to be comedy or funny kind of. Shaeyri is not always about your feelings or what is going on with you, it may be what you observe or what you think. Now on this blog you will mostly find serious shaeyri but this time the difference is that its written by me. Hope you all will like it. And yes ,please do leave comments, it will make me feel good."]

Our next piece of news is a follow up on the Emokiller story I covered earlier, back in the day when no one believed she existed. It turns out that Depeche Mode knew that Rajat Tibrewal (yes, the same guy who used to mob me with a borrowed camera every time I came back to the wing after a day of not attending classes) would become an emoboy even before he & Emokiller came to BITS Pilani. The lyrics to the song Lillian (or is it Lilian?) from Mode's 2005 album Playing the Angel are a perfect echo of the poor guy's state of mind today. I have shamelessly pasted some of it right here.

Oh, Lillian
Look what you've done
You've stripped my heart
Ripped it apart
In the name of fun

And now for the piece you have been saving your snidely salivating oral orifices for. That's right, BITS Pilani's Music Club covered RHCP's 'Can't Stop' last weekend and now perfectly decent RHCP loving folk (like myself) run the risk of people thinking that they have no taste in music. This is substantially irritating, because Music Club is taking away our right to play good rock music. You cannot play Bulls on Parade anymore without someone shouting "Bulls on Palade!" (get it?) at you and telling you that you are a n00b.

A final word of caution. Never mix Depeche Mode and Nana Kitade. Even though both make songs which are vividly descriptive of Rajat Tibrewal's adolescent (and pre-adolescent) rampages of lesbicious lust and the resultant Kanashimi no Kizu.

Yes We Can!

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:10:00 +0000

We can always pretend that we Indians live in an equal society. It's very convenient to dismiss the fact that even in our nation's premier universities Gults are forced to live isolated lives, separated from everyone else in the mess halls, in the hostels, in the workshops, in the computer labs, in the library. But is this what our forefathers wanted for this nation? Is this how we are going to seek salvation for the masses of this ancient land? For too long our darker brothers have lived lives of apologetic conformism and crippling isolation. And it is my dream to one day awake in a truly free country.

And that is why I must wear this mark. I must never forget.

Viva la Revolucion! Gults of the world unite! Stop Gult Apartheid!

PS: Here's a related post by a person with weird hair.

Emancipation?

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:40:00 +0000

Am I still tough enough?
Feels like I’m wearing down
Is my viciousness
Losing ground?
Am I taking too much
Did I cross a line?
I need my role in this
Very clearly defined
I need your discipline
I need your help
I need your discipline
You know once I start I cannot help myself

Those who realize that there really is no purpose to human existence sometimes have a hard time keeping the wheels turning. Okay, that's probably not what the above stanza is all about. And I'm not going to bother about that because this is not one of those posts where the blogger pretends that a certain song he/she has just heard is surely an instance of profound poetry and then proceeds to dissect it. To prove my intent, I'll end this digression here and assert (in consonance with the first sentence of this paragraph) that a person who knows life has no real purpose is more susceptible to getting depressed than the average individual and that he/she is more likely to have suicidal feelings and tendencies than the 'unenlightened'. And I know I'm not immune. Not at all. By the end of last semester, I found myself in the middle of yet another crisis of motivation. After a sufficiently tiring train ride I arrived home scruffy, unkempt, unshaved, shaken. But slowly and surely, I made things work out, with a rereading of a few stories from Interpreter of Maladies and a bunch of Bengali art film watching sessions with family. This whole process of renewal was lubricated by good food, and I tried to forget that crises of motivation really emerge only when you're not doing or feeling too good. Anyway, I'd taken three pairs of jeans back home. One of them no longer fits. Still, somehow I've never felt more confident being plus sized.

And then something weird happened this winter. I began to find an immense tranquility in the act of performing household chores. If you're a person coming back home after four and a half months of pseudotribal, uncultured existence then you begin to appreciate the finer aspects of modern civilized living. And wonder of wonders, I ended up finding time for family, relatives and friends, something I couldn't quite manage on earlier occasions. Somehow, no one seemed to have grown up or grown old much. I spent the evenings taking the dog around to help him mark his territory. Wielding the same old stick, I joined him in terrorizing the strays. Just like old times. Gradually, I felt the lack of motivation turning into unvigilant and unperturbed self satisfaction. So before it could turn into complacent inflexible doucheness I injected new goals and ideals inside my receptive mind, perhaps for the first time with the realization that my goals are all that separate me from a downward spiral terminating at death, since I do not have the protection of religion or false morality.

Accident averted, so what will be my ethos this semester? Reneging on my earlier promise of not raising song to the citadel of poetry (scroll up if you have Guy Pearce Syndrome) I must put forward the following as an indication.

When everybody else refrained
My uncle Johnny did cocaine
He's convinced himself right in his brain
That it helps to take away the pain

A sympathetic look at Indian Religions

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:50:00 +0000

Letting people, events and circumstances affect you is always an open choice. It does not require any special faculty to make yourself exercise this choice. Doing the opposite may be worthwhile (I'm still not sure) but surely won't demand anything extraordinary. Does the social individual have a more intellectually satisfying life? I guess so. A social person has the opportunity to impress and overawe the less intelligent and be delighted by the occasional surprises apparently partially irrational individuals may throw at him/her. There are some benefits to stepping outside and finding out society's varied opinions and perspectives on whatever gets you excited, but these benefits should not be overestimated.

Still, consider this. I never really cared about religion or god, except in moments of extraordinary fear and distress where the digression to an irrational, hurried prayer would calm me for a while. I did not appreciate that because humanity has been tethered to religion and associated irrationality for thousands of years and since the incarceration was much stricter in the deep past, historically important rational departures could only have existed within the religious framework. I did not know about it, more accurately I was in denial of the existence of such departures, until my father showed me that it existed, and now that I know about them I no longer feel that being an atheist means being a loner. My father's situation is quite rare too, being an atheist with an optimistic view of the merits of rational departures within established religion. I think that opening myself to this 'ancient atheism' may make me more like him. And he is surely more comfortable with his identity as an atheist.

The Mahayana Buddhists worship Gautama Buddha, and always have. But they have always supported significant rational departures and preserved ancient atheistic and agnostic arguments for posterity. After all, the Buddha did say that there is no god. Elements of atheism had to remain. And fortunately, much more than that survived.

It is easy to see how Zen, Jainism and Sikhism have made similar contributions. With knowledge of violent struggle between Hinduism and Buddhism in the first millennium BC and the final displacement of Buddhism from its dominant position, the sectarian violence of the pre-Buddhist era and the historic ruthlessness of the caste system, it may be easy to see Hinduism as arrogant and rigid pantheism. But even a little serious acquaintance with a collection of Hindu scriptures adequately representative of the diversity, dissonance and uncertainty in Hindu belief and thought is enough to convince oneself that there are a lot of rational (and I daresay atheistic) arguments in the the whole body of scripture. For instance, a particular flavour of the Hindu creation myth involves the world being created from a pure thought of a god described as impersonal, invisible, inactive, impartial, indivisible and uninvolved. Another fascinating thing about religions of Indian origin is that we find that in some schools of religious practice the association of meditation is not with communing with god but with the individual's intent to understand the great unknowns on his/her own, without being influenced by what anyone else prescribes as the spiritual ultimate.

A closer look at Indian religions showed that there is hope for the believer. After all, in today's Hinduism, the political character of ancient rituals are absent, only the economic character remains, that too significantly diminished. The origins of Hinduism as a somewhat democratic and certainly collective expression of the fears, desires and human frustrations of an ancient society rather than as dictates from a radical group of individuals has helped. Since we created Hinduism, we have the freedom to move forward as a society, discarding old superstitions and meaningless rituals and secular laws when we see them for what they really are. And the rituals that still remain are conveniently separated from more meaningful religious activity.

Contrastingly, practicing Muslims, Jews and Christians are still suffering from their inability to sufficiently separate the pedophilia, incest, polygamy, misogyny and violence in their religious texts from the better tenets of their religions. They are terrorized by books from the past simply because they have been for too long declared to be of divine origin or divine inspiration. And Jews and Muslims still remain bound by ancient secular laws. While the Jewish secular laws just make the Jews seem silly, many Islamic secular laws are simply barbaric. And while so many Hindus, Jews and Christians across the world have severed themselves from the ritual and the absurd and know which parts of their religious books belong to the bronze age and which don't, similar widespread awareness is unfortunately missing among Muslims and thus they (with the exception of the Muslims of Turkey) have been unable to adequately separate religion from state or contain the spread of Islamism and the consequent violence.

Whenever people let themselves led by a newly emergent 'divine' elite, they are really wagering their lives betting that the unsympathetic segment of the population will not be too angered and outraged by their new beliefs. And more often than not, when an idea whose time has not come is recklessly left out in the open it will be hijacked and probably cause a lot of people a lot of misery.

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I'm sufficiently pleased that I could generate some original thought over the holidays. The next time I'm home I'll probably pick up my father's copy of 'Tipitak Mein Samyak Sambudh' in preference to the paperback version of The Silmarillion (which I've started reading many times but never gone past the first few pages). Even though the latter begins with the creation myth of Tolkien's world and may be hence be a good compromise decision while not being one at all.

PS: Here's a related post I wrote in July last year.

Oh, India!

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:56:00 +0000

On a personal level the saddest part about the fresh wave of terror attacks in Mumbai is the realisation that I no longer have as much time for national and international events as substantial as this compared to how much I used to when I was younger. I'm almost twenty. I've grown up a lot over the last five years. But besides this insanely firm grip of the obvious, I also know that I've grown older to become more self involved every passing day. And to say that I've gotten disillusioned with so many things, to say that I'm much less of an idealist than ever before, to say that I've lost some faith in the ability of ordinary Indians to further a nondenominational spirit, to say anything like this seems too much cliche.

The majority of terrorism in India is of course Pakistan's doing. And this fresh wave is surely also part of their plan. But when every tenth or twentieth Islamist terrorist who has perpetrated terror in India turns out to be an Indian citizen not trained in Pakistan we must realise afresh that fighting terrorism is one thing, addressing the root issues at home is another. Only fools can now deny that there is something rotten somewhere inside our collective being. What is it? What is the primary challenge to Indian unity?

I used to say that the challenge is keeping the flock together, that no one could have ever and no one would have ever seen any insurgency or internal terrorism in India if we had paid more attention to our own internal seething discontents. I know now that my answer was partly recursive. I know now that the primary challenge to Indian unity is a certain lack of substantial commonality in the right places. And more than that, immense distrust between Hindus and Muslims.

The question I should now be asking is where did we go wrong? Were any critical mistakes committed when this country was established? If Indian independence movement is an epic story of mass salvation, it is also a story of heartbreaking tragedy. Tragedy, which was wrought out of the cultivation of early Indian dissent in the minds of young elite gentlemen studying in Oxford and Cambridge, caused by the impingement of their intellects into the rut of traditional European views on nationhood. Those young minds should have know that India could never be made into a country in the European sense in the immediate aftermath of the freedom they intended to lead India towards, given our incredible size and diversity.

Their not realising this led to their not paying attention to the need for fostering mutual respect among Hindus and Muslims. Perhaps too much attention was paid to addressing the evils of the caste system and not enough to develop symbiotic awareness among the two largest denominations people in pre-independence India subscribed to. Surely, they didn't pay enough attention to the losing of Muslim feudal pride in the face of Hindu progress through the economy and bureaucracy of the Raj and the historic violent injustice to Hindus under hundreds of years of Islamic empire. Surely, because otherwise a substantial fraction of Muslims wouldn't have chosen Pakistan.

Maybe we were too busy envisioning utopia when the levers to reach towards it were absent. The Indian problem remains the same today. There is not enough commonality between Hindus and Muslims in India to prevent the seducing of the majority to butcher the minority (Gujarat massacre) or the indifference to development in Muslim minority areas in the municipalities of hundreds of towns and cities in the country. We can harvest the benefits of a secular and socialist constitution only when there is enough commonality between Hindus and Muslims to prevent the formation of any more separatist coteries in the Muslim community or any further drafts into the RSS brigades.

No political party in India today is really playing the politics of commonality. The kind of radical secularism which makes French politics so progressive is only a long run possibility in India. There is a general election in May next year. I won't be able to vote, because I'll be far from where I'm registered. If I could, I would vote for the Congress, even though I have lost all feudal respect for Sonia Gandhi, since it is closest to the politics of commonality I hope for, though it's not close enough.

PS: 'The Hindu' is carrying a quarter page election advertisement from the BJP addressing the terror strikes on the front page. I so hate those guys. Also on the front page: 'Political India responds unitedly'. Haha. So not true. Also VP Singh is dead. Accha hua.

[Update 11-03-2009: Things have changed. I now roll with the BJP. At least for now.]

Status Message Redux (Part Four)

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:03:00 +0000

You know you are in serious danger of turning gay when you start liking 'Wish Upon A Dog Star'. I call it Fag Rock.

Timmy Timmy Timmy. Sega Dreamcast. Forgot about timmy!

Full green enthu. I love the environment. I hate bushes though.

I major. Full Kanye West Enthu. I need a nymphetamine fix. Full Liv Kristine Enthu.

Fate fell short this time, and your smile fades in the summer. Place your hand in mine, and I’ll leave when I want to.

"Koi bhai bandhu cs ip denge?" Now that's polite.

OBC enthu. The MCI is full of assholes. La La get on your dancing shoes.... you sexy little swine... La La La.

draft.blogger is tits!

[Don't worry Mr. Reznor. The devil doesn't want to fuck you in the back of his car] [Obscene emotion on Rajat's blog] [Unaccustomed Earth ..... must remember to buy]

[Que Pasa .... Que Pasa Contigo][Senior. Senor. Se noir. Bad one. Haha!] [And here is gay TShirt idea #44: 'Got Frag?']

... but stay awhile and maybe then you'll see a different sodomy. Rob Thomas is gay!

[I gay. You gay. He He] [ One down. Five to go. ]

[Ah. Vacation. Super Phun Thyme. Can I put my hoohoodilly in your chacha? Okay, can I manipulate my hoohoodilly while you and your roomie rub your chachas against each other? You know, while you scissor?]

... more sugar trails, more white lady laid.

Rock Out With Your Cock Out! Faaaayeayeayead my aaaaayees. Jeeeeeyeayeayeasus Chriiiiist. Layne Staley was hot!

PS: If I ever stop using my Pidgin status messages as a redux (pushing the boundaries of context here, nay, its clearly outside) of my twitter updates, I may return with more reduxed crap.

Status Message Redux (Part Three)

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:47:00 +0000

... just another funeral and just another girl left in tears. I kill myself in small amounts.

The things I want to say to you get lost before they come. The only thing that's worse than one is none. And I cannot explain it to you in anything I say or do or plan. I hope the actions speak the words they can.

I'm gay for Rob Bourdon!

A pig grows and stands up. A man rides a horse. A boy cries tears of blood after breaking off his habit. Misery and brooding regret are captured in a seventeen second long scream.

Madder than thou. Insaner than thou. Greener than thou.

This dude is in a happy place right now. You may say he's high. You may say his state of mind is a bit altered right now. And he may tell you that mild hallucinations are awesome!

You cannot fight what's in you. It's going to be denied.

No one was looking. I was thinking of you. I had an erection. I was all by myself.

Sin deep, my wicked angel. Sin callously, until we know it's unsafe. Sin forever, put holes in my happiness. And when the consumption is over, I'll paint over the evidence and seal you with virgin stitch.

Seen On Apogee Day One: Rapid Fluctuations In Enthu. The guy with the freaky face is a goofy fundu!

Seen On Apogee Day Two: A motor makes a fundu genius unhappy. A prof sees visual C++ APIs where most people see 3D Smart Art. The judges make me miss my cryptography workshop. The fish network is amazingly error prone. And Linux. Because you need to masturbate you geekpenis.'

Also Seen On Apogee Day Two: Yes, most superprofs work alone & sidekickless. But only one dares to wage war against the bloody buggers of the world. The oh-not-so-lovable SKY dog conquers insti lawns. "Main tere ko wahin pe bajane waala tha". Sleep 1 : 0 Mithali.

More From Apogee Day Two: The CEERI prof thinks Hadrian is godlevel. Hadrian has lunch with the pretty girl in red but nothing develops. Sux. Valero isn't all that secular. But still, n1. And n1 for Hadrian.

I don't know how I feel right now but I know I'm stupid.

Themes for the searing summer in Pilani: Dissatisfaction. Grievance. Insurgency. Death.

... wracked with your charm, I'm circled like prey.

Da Da Dida Dum Da. There ain't no motive for this crime.

Q. What do you become when you stop living life and start celebrating it? A. The greatest fag in the galaxy.

What did I see this Holi in Pilani? Sex starved boys jump into the mud pit and across to the queer side. Happy Holi? Yes. Happy Holi. We sure had a gay old time. Correction. Into the mud pit and out of the closet. Haha. That's much better. Maybe I'll add the word 'possibly' in parantheses in a one or two places here. Da Dum Da. Dum Dum Da. It's official. I have ruined this status message. Anyway, what kind of musical ensemble calls itself the 'Backyard Bangers'?

Check on the rep, second to none!

Holi theeeee!! Yes indeed. The beard is the fountain of great wisdom.

Wuh-wah-wu-wu-wah-huh-huh-uh-uh-huh-thuh walking dead!

Who pushed my backie's plate off the table? I'm going to get that motherfucker!

What is a God? How does one know if something is godlevel? If it is a sexy Vietnamese prostitute going around the fair grounds shouting "Sucky sucky, five dolla" then it's a god. If it has fragged all your wingies last night, it is godlevel.

You miss 100% of the people you don't stab.

[respect biodic]

AI hate whitewashing. AI love maths.

Fags everywhere. Anc hating, CS playing fags. Fags which let a wingie go hungry.

You know you aren't all straight when you take a liking to a Harry Belafonte song.

PS: In the true spirit of 'redux' and the continuing hatred Biharis at Pilani have for people who bug people who bug, here are two easter eggs. (.) & (.). Those aren't breasts, you sick ****!

Status Message Redux (Part Two)

noreply@blogger.com (Atin Bhattacharya) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:35:00 +0000

Anirudh Mandhana, Room 212. Room pe nahin hai toh main kya janoon. Woh hai sex ka pujari. Woh hai gay bramhachari. Noob hai toh kya hua, apna bhai hai saalon.

There is one universal force which ties us all together like pearls on a string. It is the reason we are born. It sustains us throughout our lives. It is also the reason why men kill each other. Many wise prophets have called it by the same holy name. It is called "the sex drive".

Show me what it's like to be the last one standing. Teach me wrong from right, and I'll show you what I can be.

Hell! Junta is bicurious! Btw, I'm available. I'm even chatty tonight. But it'll take a innocent buzz from you. Biatch, you hearing me? [If you see a spelling mistake here, nigger studies isn't the thing for you.]

Unrequited love is love that is not reciprocated, even though reciprocation is usually deeply desired. The beloved may not even be aware of this person's deep feelings for them. This can lead to feelings such as depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, and rapid mood swings between depression and euphoria. In extreme cases it may even lead to suicide. Haha Rajat.

You want to feel my bones, on your bones? It's only natural.

My last status message was a 'cute status message'. Twisted thinking will send you to hell, that's God's guarantee. Also, if I was thinking like you, I would have typed 'between your bones'.

Biatch!

Biyatch! [Note the change in inflection]

This is the twilight winter. It was minus two celsius last night. Let us see what this night brings.

[this is an innocent and completely random buzz from a bored person]

God has punished us with the coldest winter ever (minus two degrees!) because we have lost faith in Nu Metal. Mend your ways and he will bless us with sunshine. Thoda sa Limp Bizkit sun hi lo yaar!

Troubled by your lack of sophistication? Feeling worthless? Watch a lokey movie. You'll feel much better.

[G.L.O.R.I.A.] [Full Patti Smith Enthu!]

I'm not growing up, I'm just burning out and I've stepped in line to walk amongst the dead!

You have eyes that lead me on, and a body that shows me death. I know I'm not the only moment you're made of but now that you've sucked out all my breath, now that I've tasted your legs, knuckles and knees, I've realised you were made for something else. I know it's unsafe but you're so sudden and sweet that all I can promise is that when this is over I'll paint over the evidence.

Someone's blank stare deemed it warfare. Someone's mouth said paint them all red. Someone liberated the dead. Can you feel their haunting presence?

Now that I've let it all out, can you see the brightness of my likeness blinding everyone, while my soul is caged in a frame of steel? Does my screaming when you're dreaming tell you I've played my part? Close your eyes.

Full Bihar Enthu! ...and I love Rishabh Raj! ...and I'm out to raid, wreck, loot & pillage!

All hail the Green Spider!

This isn't improvement, this is a paradigm shift!

I look like a Russian gangster? Thanks for the compliment! And baby, I'm always here, nearby.

I have become ...... comfortably dumb!

49161 is my port! Fuck off cocksuckers! IT'S MY PORT! SO YOU BETTER BUTT OUT!

Dhruv, will you please beat up Sanjiban for me? Spit a full clip from your glock into his brains. Btw, my backie is a musical genius. He's an incarnation of Nat King Cole. The boy's got soul, I'm telling you.

I'm taking hallucinogenic drugs. I hope it helps Project Sassafras Roots. And guys, you need to take it away for a minute just to tease him/her, and then give it back a little bit deeper. Btw, I think I'm in love with Coochie Coo!

Okay, I'm not in love with Coochie Coo. And I'm not bicurious. I'm just getting emotionally overdependent on my male friends. It's still a sticky situation.

If you think Google vs. Microsoft is a Good vs. Evil war, you are immensely stupid. All of us owe a lot to Microsoft, and a hundred years from now Microsoft's contributions will be taught in schools.

I don't like the drugs but the drugs like me!

Ch-Check Ch-Ch-Check Ch-Check-ah-ah Check-ah Check out my melody!

Btw, what if the fog gets so thick that I can't see my ES2 answer sheet?

What if I say I'm not like the others? What if I say I will never surrender?

Dave Grohl is hot! He's one guy to turn gay for. And people, don't say 'cool'. Say 'tits'. Like, tits is way more tits than cool.

It's a baby girl! There is always room for another cousin!

Pinups come full circle. Lindsay Lohan tries to do a Marilyn Monroe.

I've got amber coloured pills. Amber coloured pills of joy! And they are all mine. Not yours. Mine.

Ah, these twists and turns of fate! Ih, these bitches keep pulling on my ****! Ow, It hurts!

[Soch ..... Think]