It is time for Diwali, the favourite Hindu festival, time for celebrations and time for joy. But when in the last thousand years has this curse that hit India with Bin Qasem's stinking swarms left Hindus to live their life and enjoy their festivals in peace and happiness?
More than 60 people murdured again in Delhi. But who cares beyond those customary 'we condemn'? Who cared when a thousand years of relentless persecution and intolerance was imposed upon them? Who cares when every single day Hindus die in Bangladesh and Kashmir?
It'll all be forgotten soon. Just like the Hindu family which was killed brutally just on the day of that earthquake by Islamic terrorists. Just like the Mau violence few weeks back. Just like the attack on Ayodhya few months back. Just like the Marad massacre has been forgotten. Just like Akshardham has been forgotten, Godhra has been forgotten. Just like the 6 soldiers who were tortured and killed in Kargil were forgotten, just like Ripun Katyal has been forgotten. Just like Coimbatore blasts have been forgotten. Just like Bombay blasts have been forgotten.
Some lives are simply expendable.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Friday, October 28, 2005
Humanity comes first...
We humans are a special breed indeed. We raise ideas and ideologies to uphold supposedly noble things and then carry the heavy burden of these ideologies on our heads to ridiculous extents. Some quaint fellow in long past times thought up a few slogans. And the vast majority of semi literate men cling to these ideas as if ideas are for all time or that an idea that is good in one context is good for all contexts or that the more fashionable an idea is, the nearer to truth it is.
The Nazis were all taught kindness to animals but they couldnt be kind to fellow human beings. And the great irony that is, Hitler was a vegetarian. Love for all creation is the real virtue and not mere tendency to feed on grass. Its not being a vegetarian that makes a man great, but development and possession of a sensitive heart, that can feel suffering and respond to it.
And add to all such corpses from past that men put in holy coffins and carry on their heads, the idea of 'secularism'. Either in its etiologically pristine European form as sepration of Church from State or in its vulagrly distorted Indian form as equidistance of the State from all religions, it is simply unsuitable to modern times. Separation of Church and State assumed implicitly that both stood for the same values, and it was temporal power that was being snatched away from the former. But times have changed, modern society no more subscribes to the narrow bigoted views held by the Church or its draconian order or even its totalitarian God. Modern man does not hold that justice means different things to the faithful and the infidel, nor does he consider it natural that men must be persecuted just because they hold 'heathen' views. Reason, freedom and dignity are now recognised as universal values, that must be granted equally to all men and women.
And equally with the Indian distortion: equidistance from all religions is only possible so long as all religions are equally capable of being distant from the polity and equally recognize universal human values. But how can religions that have historically been at loggerheads with such values be allowed to carry on with their work at the expense of fundamental human values? Does the state stand for human values or for artificial ideas that have become modern crosses it must carry just to please some 'liberals' who are but a bunch who think their ideas are great just because there are some in Europe or in China who appreciate them?
Ideas are not great just because some smug intellectuals think so or because somebody pats us on our back for holding them. Ideas are to be judged only on the basis on how fair they and how true they are. Weighed on this scale, secularism fails, wilts. It is time for us to assure in Humanism as our guiding policy and uphold values such as will be conducive for human growth and enrichment.
The Nazis were all taught kindness to animals but they couldnt be kind to fellow human beings. And the great irony that is, Hitler was a vegetarian. Love for all creation is the real virtue and not mere tendency to feed on grass. Its not being a vegetarian that makes a man great, but development and possession of a sensitive heart, that can feel suffering and respond to it.
And add to all such corpses from past that men put in holy coffins and carry on their heads, the idea of 'secularism'. Either in its etiologically pristine European form as sepration of Church from State or in its vulagrly distorted Indian form as equidistance of the State from all religions, it is simply unsuitable to modern times. Separation of Church and State assumed implicitly that both stood for the same values, and it was temporal power that was being snatched away from the former. But times have changed, modern society no more subscribes to the narrow bigoted views held by the Church or its draconian order or even its totalitarian God. Modern man does not hold that justice means different things to the faithful and the infidel, nor does he consider it natural that men must be persecuted just because they hold 'heathen' views. Reason, freedom and dignity are now recognised as universal values, that must be granted equally to all men and women.
And equally with the Indian distortion: equidistance from all religions is only possible so long as all religions are equally capable of being distant from the polity and equally recognize universal human values. But how can religions that have historically been at loggerheads with such values be allowed to carry on with their work at the expense of fundamental human values? Does the state stand for human values or for artificial ideas that have become modern crosses it must carry just to please some 'liberals' who are but a bunch who think their ideas are great just because there are some in Europe or in China who appreciate them?
Ideas are not great just because some smug intellectuals think so or because somebody pats us on our back for holding them. Ideas are to be judged only on the basis on how fair they and how true they are. Weighed on this scale, secularism fails, wilts. It is time for us to assure in Humanism as our guiding policy and uphold values such as will be conducive for human growth and enrichment.
Monday, October 24, 2005
This is called pure unadulterated bullshit.
excerpts:
How do you look at the earthquake?
The earthquake is the result of the rulers' sinful policies. They wanted the women to abandon hijab; run with men nude in bikinis; and learn dance and music. They were not afraid of Allah but (US President George) Bush. At his (Bush's) behest, they wanted to purge our schoolbooks from verses on jihad; befriend India and recognise Israel. They banned all the jihadi outfits and abandoned jihad. They made jihad an abusive term. They wanted all the Pakistanis to adopt the 'get-up' of Bush. They blatantly ridiculed the commandments of Allah. Thus they invited the wrath of God in the form of the earthquake.
yeah thats why Allah didnt strike Punjab but struck NWFP and AJK.
But the earthquake didn't kill the rulers?
Allah knows better why He didn't kill the rulers. He has warned the rulers by killing a section of the population. He wants the rulers to learn a lesson from the quake and become pious Muslims. There is also a lesson for common folk like us. We too are sinful. We too should seek Allah's forgiveness and adopt the right path. Otherwise, a bigger devastation will completely ruin us.
secretly he must be telling himself..'thats coz Allah knows I'm one of the connivers with the rulers , how can He strike us!!'
excerpts:
How do you look at the earthquake?
The earthquake is the result of the rulers' sinful policies. They wanted the women to abandon hijab; run with men nude in bikinis; and learn dance and music. They were not afraid of Allah but (US President George) Bush. At his (Bush's) behest, they wanted to purge our schoolbooks from verses on jihad; befriend India and recognise Israel. They banned all the jihadi outfits and abandoned jihad. They made jihad an abusive term. They wanted all the Pakistanis to adopt the 'get-up' of Bush. They blatantly ridiculed the commandments of Allah. Thus they invited the wrath of God in the form of the earthquake.
yeah thats why Allah didnt strike Punjab but struck NWFP and AJK.
But the earthquake didn't kill the rulers?
Allah knows better why He didn't kill the rulers. He has warned the rulers by killing a section of the population. He wants the rulers to learn a lesson from the quake and become pious Muslims. There is also a lesson for common folk like us. We too are sinful. We too should seek Allah's forgiveness and adopt the right path. Otherwise, a bigger devastation will completely ruin us.
secretly he must be telling himself..'thats coz Allah knows I'm one of the connivers with the rulers , how can He strike us!!'
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
The quake and the wounded civilization
Naipaul's words have been famously quoted now so often: India is a wounded civilization. The internal factors that allowed that wound to be scored have not yest ceased to be and nor has the external hand that thrust the dagger right into India's heart has not been amputated yet. The wound is still suppurating.
The world does not understand when it puts China and India on the same platform. What strides India has made are a hundredfold more prodound that what China has. China did not have to contend with a thousand years of colonization and the hundreds of years of pillaging and marauding and plundering which accompoanied it in varying extents through time. China did not have its land and people and minds partitioned, I will not bluff like many people do, 'on the basis of religion': India was partitioned not because of 'religion' but because of Islam and the colonialism it represents. A spade is a spade, a dagger is a dagger. And many people, even the so-called 'nationalists' dont recognize this, when they gloat over 'the serious imbalance that exists in China's political system'. If not rolled back and repelled permanently, this dagger will cut through India's heart as if through butter, the day that external hand wakes up from sleep and connectes back to its chest, the Ummah.
And the only way to roll it back is to face the questions posed by it without wincing. Islam was thrust upon large parts of India at swordpoint, with daggers drawn to chest, through terror and through force. Centuries later, the converted populace, the brainwashed future generations of an enervated society, rationalised the conversion citing social reasons. But India accepts the faults of Her social system. Her whole national energy in a thousand years has been directed to correcting these faults, and we can see what stupendous progress has been achieved even in the paltry 50 past years after 'independence'. India accepts the ageing and the fallibility of the Smriti and proposes to rewrite it for every age. So there is no social reason to continue acceptance of an alien ideology on Indian soil and there is no basis for continued existence of a 'Pakistan'.
And the spiritual reasons? When was the last time the proponents of Islam could take on rationally the advanced spiritual views of the native Indian traditions? Individually or collectively, the Vedic-Shramanic or Hindu viewpoints present questions which the Mullahs sweep convenietly under their prayer carpets. What are the criteria for your acceptance of a man as a 'Prophet'? What is a 'Prophet' anyway? How can there be a 'one last Prophet' when we know that that last Prophet lived more than a thousand years ago and the world is not going to end in any near future? How does 'God' arbitrarily choose one man as his 'Prophet' as opposed to other men and women? Which brings to the most important question around which all this myhtology is built: what is 'God' anyway? Is this true, that there is a 'God' who interferes in the affairs of mankind like an impatient school kid?
And all facts that we can use to reason argue to the contrary, that there is no such 'God'. This earth is a cooled down collection of volcanoes and life is part of Earth's chemistry. This is what we can come to conclude. If more proof is required, please go to Muzaffarabad today and verify for yourself. Then, either you can continue to delude yourself on the mercy of a loving 'God' whose mercy is mysteriously concealed through disasters which 'He' sends to test man or, shake your head and reach for your senses: there is no such 'God'. The 'God' upon which Islam bases so much of its causistry is a humbug. The pious Jihadis who gave up everything in their life to fight the infidels on the mountains around Muzaffarabad found it the hard way when the shelters they were holed in during their pious endeavours fell upon their heads. The one solid argument which could be used like a crowbar to lunge this dagger out from India's chest was revealed from the depths of Earth's bosom last week. some 50,000 dead must be enough to convince reasonable men.
The world does not understand when it puts China and India on the same platform. What strides India has made are a hundredfold more prodound that what China has. China did not have to contend with a thousand years of colonization and the hundreds of years of pillaging and marauding and plundering which accompoanied it in varying extents through time. China did not have its land and people and minds partitioned, I will not bluff like many people do, 'on the basis of religion': India was partitioned not because of 'religion' but because of Islam and the colonialism it represents. A spade is a spade, a dagger is a dagger. And many people, even the so-called 'nationalists' dont recognize this, when they gloat over 'the serious imbalance that exists in China's political system'. If not rolled back and repelled permanently, this dagger will cut through India's heart as if through butter, the day that external hand wakes up from sleep and connectes back to its chest, the Ummah.
And the only way to roll it back is to face the questions posed by it without wincing. Islam was thrust upon large parts of India at swordpoint, with daggers drawn to chest, through terror and through force. Centuries later, the converted populace, the brainwashed future generations of an enervated society, rationalised the conversion citing social reasons. But India accepts the faults of Her social system. Her whole national energy in a thousand years has been directed to correcting these faults, and we can see what stupendous progress has been achieved even in the paltry 50 past years after 'independence'. India accepts the ageing and the fallibility of the Smriti and proposes to rewrite it for every age. So there is no social reason to continue acceptance of an alien ideology on Indian soil and there is no basis for continued existence of a 'Pakistan'.
And the spiritual reasons? When was the last time the proponents of Islam could take on rationally the advanced spiritual views of the native Indian traditions? Individually or collectively, the Vedic-Shramanic or Hindu viewpoints present questions which the Mullahs sweep convenietly under their prayer carpets. What are the criteria for your acceptance of a man as a 'Prophet'? What is a 'Prophet' anyway? How can there be a 'one last Prophet' when we know that that last Prophet lived more than a thousand years ago and the world is not going to end in any near future? How does 'God' arbitrarily choose one man as his 'Prophet' as opposed to other men and women? Which brings to the most important question around which all this myhtology is built: what is 'God' anyway? Is this true, that there is a 'God' who interferes in the affairs of mankind like an impatient school kid?
And all facts that we can use to reason argue to the contrary, that there is no such 'God'. This earth is a cooled down collection of volcanoes and life is part of Earth's chemistry. This is what we can come to conclude. If more proof is required, please go to Muzaffarabad today and verify for yourself. Then, either you can continue to delude yourself on the mercy of a loving 'God' whose mercy is mysteriously concealed through disasters which 'He' sends to test man or, shake your head and reach for your senses: there is no such 'God'. The 'God' upon which Islam bases so much of its causistry is a humbug. The pious Jihadis who gave up everything in their life to fight the infidels on the mountains around Muzaffarabad found it the hard way when the shelters they were holed in during their pious endeavours fell upon their heads. The one solid argument which could be used like a crowbar to lunge this dagger out from India's chest was revealed from the depths of Earth's bosom last week. some 50,000 dead must be enough to convince reasonable men.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Where silence is so intense, only thoughts seem louder, where Sun's rays struggle but barely reach the earth; wind susurrates through the leaves to charm the heart; a gleaming stream looks like a blue necklace wrapped around the woods. To that remote jungle I want now to be transported. In that undisturbed joy, the mountains painted against the distant sky, will seem like a pointer. The distance is still undone, Truth yet unknown, and the peak yet unscaled. In that atmosphere I will lose myself in my self.
Existence of 'God'?
For quite sometime now I had completely abandoned the idea of a creator 'God', someone who sat as arbitrator on the events of the world. If at all there was someone, that someone is well beyond human reason, this is what I held. To those who propound a merciful God of the world, I had only few questions to ask: forget the endless number of natural disasters which seem sent to swallow men by the thousands, the Tsunami and Katrina being the latest, even the small timeline of a few thousand years of our memory is crowded with events of guesome cruetly of man to fellow man.
If Islamic armies committed macabre raids on India and the rest of the world upto just a few hundred years ago, the holocaust is not far from our view, 'Lajja' must bring me closer home and the latest Iraq war is still festering. A thousand people die in Iraq every week, their lives reduced to figures in the politcal battles in western capitals. How can a loving God, God of mankind permit such things? If even we accept that these are 'temporary' events in 'Cosmic' vision, every suffering man can know how intense the pangs of individual misery is. Unless ofcourse that God is among the sufferers. And that God is also evil as much as is good, and the veil as much as She or He is light.
This is Navaratri and Kaali is the answer. She generates life as much as She grants death. Nothing is excluded from Her. I for long, accepted 'Being' as the ultimate and dismissed a possible divine 'Will'. But what if that 'Will' is all play and that play is not simple? The answers to the most profound questions in life are paradoxes. 'Being-Will' seems to be the answer. A new joy has come over my life, I'm not a lost twig being whirled around by this current of life. There is an anchor and a direction.
If Islamic armies committed macabre raids on India and the rest of the world upto just a few hundred years ago, the holocaust is not far from our view, 'Lajja' must bring me closer home and the latest Iraq war is still festering. A thousand people die in Iraq every week, their lives reduced to figures in the politcal battles in western capitals. How can a loving God, God of mankind permit such things? If even we accept that these are 'temporary' events in 'Cosmic' vision, every suffering man can know how intense the pangs of individual misery is. Unless ofcourse that God is among the sufferers. And that God is also evil as much as is good, and the veil as much as She or He is light.
This is Navaratri and Kaali is the answer. She generates life as much as She grants death. Nothing is excluded from Her. I for long, accepted 'Being' as the ultimate and dismissed a possible divine 'Will'. But what if that 'Will' is all play and that play is not simple? The answers to the most profound questions in life are paradoxes. 'Being-Will' seems to be the answer. A new joy has come over my life, I'm not a lost twig being whirled around by this current of life. There is an anchor and a direction.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Something has changed. Summer's now gone for weeks, autumn too will soon recede before menacing winter, like hyena before a lion. But there is warmth like in spring. There is anticipation, hope, a lightness of heart. Is this to say I'm being emotionally vagarious?. Far from. Its about the inner values. When I cannot live upto the values I hold dear, I feel low, unconfident, crestfallen and broken. When I have fallen back to being what I believe is the right way, the way that appeals to my heart, I feel on top, I feel special. The days are drawing markedly smaller, and sun sets earlier and earlier, but for now, cheer's the word and not drear.
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