Utopias and totalitarianism

Any ideology that invokes a romantic and utopian system of governance is a perfect prescription for totalitarianism. Communism and the National Socialism of Hitler proved beyond doubt that utopias are ideology-driven dictatorships where dissent will be treated as a psychic disorder or as a crime. The dissenting individual in these utopias is either sent to the mental asylum or jail or handed over to the death squad.
I recently read Jihad in Islam, English translation of Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi's Jihad fi Sabilillah. Late Islamic scholar who founded Jamat-e-Islami (JeI) says in the book that "Islam wishes to do away with all states and governments which are opposed to the ideology and programe of Islam...Islam requires the earth - not just a portion, but the entire planet...because the whole of mankind should benefit from Islam, and its ideology and welfare programmes." In another part of the book, Mawdudi chalks out a way of establishing his idea of an ideal Islamic state in the world: "...if the Muslim Party commands enough resources, it will eliminate un-Islamic governments and establish the power of the Islamic government in their place.'' Before I finished the book, I checked the definition of `imperialism' in the Online Ecycopaedia Britannica. It is defined thus: "The policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas.''
Mawdudi is not only envisioning a glorious utopian Islamic rule, he is also prescribing an imperialist Islam. What will be the fate of Jews, Christians, Hindus, Baha'is, atheists and others in such a state? I have to ask a JeI leader if I can manage to ask the question.

Assassins

The assassination of former Premier of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto today in a suicide attack has some similiarities with that of our former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a suicide bomber. Both assassinations took place during their election campaigns. In both attacks several people were killed. India survived such dastardly killings mainly because the democratic mechanism in the country has been strong enough to set in motion a collective process to stabilise dangerous situations. In the case of Pakistan, it remains to be seen if it can survive the turmoil in the aftermath of the assassination of Ms. Bhutto. I hope that all democratic minded people in Muslim communities across the world should stick their necks out in condemning the nihilistic death cult growing rapidly out of jihadi ideology that has gained acceptance among some segments of Muslims. It may be too early to jump into conclusions about the killing of Ms. Bhutto. But the primary suspect is al Qaeda. Her closeness to the U.S. may be the motive behind the attack.
I am yet to understand the working of the inner psychology of a person who decides to be a suicide killer. It is true, the LTTE used suicide bombers in its terror mission. Palestinian fighters also sent suicide bombers to kill Israeliss. Though both the LTTE and the Palestinian fighters have justified these acts as part of their political struggle, the sucide attacks have only strengthened the resolve of those they are fighting against. Jihadi-based suicide cult is different in the sense that it does not espouse an articulated political cause led by a leadership that their `enemies' can talk to for negotiating a cease fire and find a solution.
Tawfik Hamid, an Egyptian doctor and former member of a jihadi outfit started by Ayman al-Zawahiri, lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, shows certain methods used by terrorist outfits to indoctrinate a new member. A newly initiated convert is first asked to stop critical thinking (al-fiqr kufr) and is filled with fear of hell fire, he says adding that Jihadi bodies then invokes the imagery of an eternal paradise where beautiful women are waiting for you to make love with for eternal sexual pleasure. This is especially attractive for sex-deprived youth, he tells us. Narrating from first hand experience, Tawfik Hamid sheds some light on the psychology of suicide killers.

Modi magic?

Political pundits and commentators say that the re-election of Narendra Modi in Gujarat will have serious implications on political scenario in the country. Being neither a pundit nor a commentator, I can satisfy myself saying that they may be true or utterly wrong. Time alone can decide. What future holds for the country exists only in the realms of imaginations of the people, the pundits and commentator included. For the time being, I am concerned about facts: The BJP has swept the election though with 10 seats less than what it got last time; the Congress has been trounced but it was handed an ambience of illusion of improvement: it has managed to secure two seats more that what it could get last time.
I am not an admirer of the Congress party. In fact, the party's dynastic streak sometimes creates a sense of revulsion in me. But shouldn't we make qualitative distinctions when we take positions on matters that call on us to take positions? Can we compare George Bush with Bin Laden and wrap up our argument by saying that both are equally crazy? I think no. So I would have been happy if the Congress had won the election even with a thin margin. I have no problem with Modi the `governing and vibrant' leader of Gujarat. But the images of Gujarat violence that are still fresh in my mind have chilling effect on me. When some of my friends appear to ardently admire the Modi magic of using communal hatred to harvest electoral crops, I have been left with introspective questions about my own (pathological) fears about fascism of any kind. Maybe Modi is a good man who brings development and prosperity to the people of Gujarat. Carnival of violence in which nearly 2000 Muslims were killed was only an aberration? Slobodan Milosevic could have been equally good and he would have brought prosperity to Serbia if he had not been jailed for war crimes by the International Court of Justice for the trial of war crimes during the Balkan war. He subsequently died in jail. Couldn't have Adolf Hitler made Germany a superpower, an Nazi empire, if the Allies had not bombed that country to defeat?
I still wonder how intelligent people, my friends included, can admire people who spew hatred in the name their religion, community or their set of crazy beliefs. Hatred, I believe, is a device that can divide peoples who live peacefully and harmoniously minding their own business. It can easily turn one set of people against the other. Its tools are deep-rooted prejudices and skills to stoke imaginary (sometimes genuine) fears.
Let us hope that the Modi victory is unlikely to have predicted implications on the country's political scene.

Joan Baez...my favourite singer

I was walking past a music shop in Kozhikode one evening in July 1986 when I heard an enchanting female voice singing a song. I entered the shop and asked the shop assistant who the singer was. It was Joan Baez, he said. I requested him to replay the song once more. He did it for me. It was `Diamonds and Rust'. I bought the cassette which is still with me though I recently got a CD of Baez collection in Bangalore. Joan Baez is my all-time favourite singer.

Srebrenica

Srebrenica is a landscape of death and desolation. Mountains of sorrow surround it, overlooking mass graves of memories of the dead being dug out by the living. Broken skulls and bones buried under heaps of savagery that the war-ravaged scenery cannot hide. The living desperately trying to exhume their memories somebody snatched away from them to be trucked, blindfolded and shot. Trying to create their little landscape of peace and consolation. Someone took away their memories, their sons, their husbands and their brothers. Srebrenica at last is a safe area for them to mourn their haunting memories. No longer their home. It is a place that gunfires macabre images of men and boys being bussed to death, of people fleeing from death’s jaw. Saliha Osmanovic parting from her husband and her son Nermin who she would never see. Zumra Sehomerovic still feeling the trembling of her husband’s hand when he touched her left shoulder before he was separated from her. A mother still searching for her son Samir in vein. Samir waving his hand to her saying goodbye, big tears rolling down his face as they took him away. Hassan Nuhanovic, who lost his parents and brother, trying to make sense of the dimension of hate that took away his memories.
It was a summer of anguish and terror. After the fall of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995. A miniature Holocaust. It was a summer when life withered in that town. Will Srebrenica be the last incident of genocide? Weren’t we told that Holocaust would be the last one? Hope Srebrenica is the last one.

For universal rights...

Having vehemently argued in favour of freedoms, I cannot sit back and pretend that I am completely oblivious to the plight of ethnic Indian community (predominantly Hindus) in Malaysia which has hogged the limelight after a recent massive protests by the community in Kuala Lumpur against discrimination. So I have decided to cut short my rest and jump at yet another subject that calls for a stand upholding, yes, freedoms.
I am not equipped with all the details of the racial fabric of that country except what I have read in newspapers after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi condemned the treatment of ethnic Tamil population in Malayasia much to the discomfiture of the Government of India and the subsequent statement by the Central government expressing its `concern' over the plight of the ethnic Indians.
Malaysia is often projected as a moderate and tolerant Islamic society. But the protest staged by the ethnic Indians exposed that thin veil of moderation and tolerance. The Indians who settled there during the Raj have now started to feel the pinch as Islamisation has been on the mend there over the last few years. Several temples have already been demolished on the ground that they are illegal constructions. A group of British MPs has expressed concern in Parliament over `the stated intention of the government of Malaysia to demolish 79 Hindu temples'. If this kind of discrimination against ethnic minorities who include the Chinese happens in a county, it is a serious matter and cannot be dismissed by resorting to the excuse of national sovereignty. Discriminations and human rights violations should not be allowed to evade from questioning under the cover of national sovereignty. Human rights are universal. We cannot allow Christian rights, Muslim rights, Jewish rights or Hindu rights. National and religious boundaries should vanish when it comes to addressing violation of basic human rights.

Need some respite from anger

I was busy last week getting myself worked up by my seething anger at the way Taslima Nasreen was treated for what she wrote. And by my arguments defending free speech. Now I feel I need some respite from polemics. I need a little fresh air that can perhaps dissipate my anger and anguish so that I can rejuvenate myself for unbundling my personal feelings against future instances of injustice. Perhaps I can afford the luxury of brief period of relaxation before we are all bombarded with stories of more serious attatcks on human dignity, freedom of expression and the right to be irreverent. May be we are still safeguarded against barbarians of all hues trying to break the gates of our cosy little castles of freedom. But when I pause and hearken, I think I can distinguish furtive voices preparing to knock down the walls that we once thought were very strong. May be it is my imagination. May be everything is as beautiful as I want it to be. May be it is a nightmare that just disturbs my sleep. How strongly I wish it is just a case of sleep disorder. So I need some relaxation to get over the problem. Goodbye. Till the urge comes to air my thoughts and feelings.

Democracy sans liberalism

It has now appeared that India has miles to go to claim that it is a liberal democratic country. What better example of the country's liberalism-deficiency can there be than External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's statement in Parliament yesterday that author Taslima Nasreen will be given shelter in India provided the latter refrains from hurting sentiments of people in the country. Stupidity of the statement is self-evident. Taslima is not here in search of a shelter. She had been safely living in Sweden for many years after she went into exile in the face of violent wrath of fundamentalist sections of Muslims in her country, Bangladesh, for writing books critical of Islamic extremism. A Bengali writer, she wants to be closer home and stay in Kolkata. That is just the reason why she has come to India. The rider attached to the minister's assurance, alas, is a threat couched as a piece of nice advice: you will be shown the door unless you behave. Politicians of the Left, the Right and the Centre in India are all identical when it comes to appeasement of violent mobs venting their ire at individual writers, artists and film makers. How unlucky we are that we have allowed the political class to be the sole arbiter to define matters relating to our freedoms! No I am not talking about the freedoms enjoyed by a bunch of thugs led by a legislator to hurl chairs and flower pots at an unarmed author at the Press Club in Hyderabad, a group of goons who attacked art students in the Baroda University or people who virtually hounded out a painter by using weapons of litigation. I wish the country upheld what French writer Voltaire said most succinctly: "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." That is liberalism and India is still far away from being in a position to accept this basic principle of democracy. Democracy is not merely about holding periodical elections. It is also about building institutions and strengthening civil society to ensure individual's rights. Three cheers for our democracy!

Solidarity with Taslima Nasreen

Country-wide outrage against the assault on The Hindu by Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalithaa on November 7, 2003 when TN Assembly ordered the arrest of its senior journalists for breach of privilege was a genuine outburst against the willful attempt of a ruler to gag the media and freedom of speech. There were street protests across the country by writers, intellectuals and journalists, among others. Jayalalithaa was forced to backtrack under enormous public pressure. I wish Taslima Nasreen's plight of being forced to flee from Kolkata as the CPI(M)-led government of West Bengal has chosen to surrender before the demands of fanatic elements of Muslims has triggered protests that atleast remotely match the national condemnation against Jayalalithaa's attempt to muffle the media.
The central issue in both cases is free speech. Today it is Taslima, tomorrow the fanatics will go for the jugular of some other writer or artist. India cannot claim to be a true liberal democratic country if it shows even slightest signs of accommodating demands of illiberal and undemocratic bunch of people who can resort to their version of freedom of expression - violence. Remember, Britain defended and protected Salman Rushdie when Khomeini issued fatwa to kill him. Could Britain have bought peace if it had sent Rushdie packing after the fatwa? No. The fanatics would instead be emboldened to demand more. Free speech is a basic principle in a democratic polity. Democracy ceases to be so when its foundational basic principles are compromised. Fanaticism of any kind cannot be doused by accommodations in the name of crazy notions of multi-culturalism and respect for sentiments of different communities. Attacks on M.F. Hussain by Hindutva brigades and on Taslima by their Muslim counterparts should be taken for what they are: collective paranoia and psychopathic behaviour. We should not succumb to the demands of people who think that only they have the right to dictate what is right and what is wrong. It is good to see Taslima getting huge support from the media and commentators. But that is not enough. There should be large visible protests and audible condemnations. We should show that we value the freedom of speech of an individual as strongly as we defend that of an institution.

Of books and authors

The book release function that we had all been eagerly waiting to happen was now behind us. A modest function it was and we all enjoyed the event yesterday. Chandini was elegantly graceful as she read out some of her poems in her second collection Voyage Series and Other Poems. The concluding lines of her poem `Virus' refuse to vanish from my mind: "I have been vaccinated/Early in life/Against all manner/And genre of life." WOW. I wish I wrote that. The book release function came off well as did the post-release party. There was hardly anyone who didn't try to give voice to scores of immortal Malayalam and Hindi numbers. The boozy occasion only honed our sense of music. When Bubbles sang `Kanan kothicha neram, kavitha polen arikil vannu...', it touched a nostalgic nerve centre located somewhere in my SELF. I feel that we were all emotionally wounded at some point of time in our lives. Funny thing is we keep on protecting that wound from being healed. Chandini, forgive me my indulgence in metaphorical language. Perhaps my friendship with you rubs off on me.
Despite the memorable event that we all chose not to miss, I was personally aware that the occasion was overshadowed by the spectre of another female author being literally hounded out elsewhere in the country. Taslima Nasreen is on the run after she was betrayed by the self-styled progressive government of West Bengal. As fundamentalist Muslims are braying for her blood, the so-called secular parties and secular individuals, barring a few, are disturbingly silent. There is an attempt to treat Taslima as the vital Muslim problem in India. She is not the Muslim problem. She is now treated as a soft target by fanatics to hurl their anger provoked mostly by imaginary fears. Shall we allow India to be a Barbaria? To surrender the freedoms that our founding fathers have bequeathed to us? It is an irony that the BJP has come out to defend her and protect her. That is politics. But we are concerned with our freedoms.

Again about Nandigram

The CPI(M) brooks no comparison between the post-Godhra pogrom in Gujarat and the recent incidents of bloodshed, rape and looting by CPI(M) militia in Nandigram in West Bengal. For the CPI(M) which always pretends to occupy the high moral ground on all issues, the comparison is nothing less than preposterous. I happened to accost a local CPI(M) apparatchik the other day and as I broached the comparison when our talk predictably touched Nandigram, he was outraged. I presented my arguments: a) both the post-Godhra violence and and the violent recapture of Nandigram were acts of revenge, one by the Saffron Brigade and the other by the Red Brigade; b) in both cases, respective State administrations chose to look the other way when armed men went around killing people, raping women and looting; c) the intelligentsia, including pro-Left writers and artistes, was outspoken in their condemnation of bloodshed in Gujarat and Nandigram. In the case of Nandigram, the CPI(M)'s partners in the goverment RSP and CPI openly criticised the CPI(M)'s highhandedness there.
You can imagine how the guy responded to my argument. He said that the media was giving biased reports about the incidents in Nandigram. I told him that the BJP leadershp's take on the Gujarat violence was no different. Was he saying that I should not believe what the newspapers were saying? That I should listen to what Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri were lecturing on the issue? Of course, the guy did not care to answer my questions. Rather, he was saying something which I could not understand.
I know there is difference between Gujarat and Nandigram. The one was more a carnival of violence, while the other betrays signs of militarisation of political activities. Nandigram is more disturbing because the State administration termed it as a war zone with the West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee defending the Red Brigade's action with his `paid-in-the-same-coin' comment. There is also difference in degree. Phew! I have survived the argument with the comrade. But I did not try to convince him that his belief that his party and its ideology were infallible was but a shortcut to the road to totalitarian systems that have failed elsewhere in the world.

Reign of terror?

The brutal way CPI(M) workers recaptured Nandigram in West Bengal over the last few days betrays the obvious disconnect between democracy and communism. The stories in the media of the plight of the `vanquished' farmers of Nandigram have exposed the contradictions of the CPI(M) as a party engaged in the political process of the country and and as a communist political group that will go to any extent to enforce its control even if it means use of arms and muscle power to coerce people. The Nandigram incidents have also shown that the CPI(M) has not learnt to behave as a party of government in West Bengal despite its successive rule there for the last three decades. The government led by the party allowed the entire law enforcement machinery in the State to be paralysed for two days just to let red brigades to invade the villages which were holding out against the CPI(M) since March 14 when 14 villagers were killed in firing by police and CPI(M) brigades. The invasion of Nandigram villages by armed party workers and victory marches organised by them will certainly have a chilling effect in areas where the CPI(M) has dominance. What is more disturbing is the silence of Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the Nandigram developments. Perhaps, they are hoping to use Nandigram as a quid pro quo to buy the Left support for the Indo-US nuclear deal. On the other hand, Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani's description of Nandigram incidents as `shocking, beyond words' sounds hollow after the latest disclosure of Tehelka that Gujarat CM Narendra Modi himself endorsed the post-Godhra anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002. There is hardly any difference between the Right and the Left. If there is, it is only in degree and not in intention to brutalise people.

Mimicking nature?

Watching how lotus leaves remain free from contaminants without using soaps or detergents so that we can develop self-cleaning materials from it? Observing how a spider manufactures its web that can teach us how to make fibres without toxins?
If you feel that these questions sound funny, you are not alone. I was one of those who would treat the questions as crazy till recently. A small article that I read in a recent issue of Time magazine influenced me a lot. It is about a new discipline named biomimicry.
Biomimicry tells us that nature is endowed with collective wisdom of what is good for survival and what is not. Nature is a tutorial because 3.8 billion years of evolution (yes boy, evolution, and not intelligent design handed out by an intelligent designer) has bestowed that wisdom on nature. This wisdom is key to our survival strategy. We can imitate nature’s ideas and designs to solve human problems.
We may get a design or a blueprint of a technology or an idea from watching how mussels are glued to rocks with an under-water adhesive. Or how gecko adheres to our walls and roofs without any glue. That is wonderful. You are seeking ideas and designs from nature and not extracting things from it.
Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, has been among the heroes of environment honoured by Time. She also founded Biomimicry Institute.

Freedom of choice

Why is religion invariably somthing you inherit by birth and not a matter of your choice? Should somebody born of parents belonging to a particular religion automatically owe his/her allegience to it regardless of his/her conscience?
When I raise these questions, I know that they do have personal ring about them. I would have been in a different religion if my parents had not belonged to the religion they were born into. So are most of the people. If religion is a set of ideas, my allegience or lack of it should be based on my acceptance or non-acceptance of those ideas. One becomes a Marxist by his or her choice. We don't tend to treat the child of Marxist parents as Marxist by birth. A parent having neo-liberal or neo-conservative ideas are not privileged to have neo-liberal or neo-conservative children.
Then, why should we give this privilege to religion alone? When we go back to the foundational period of every institutionalised religion, we see a rupture from the dominant religon existing at that time. Early members of Christianity and Islam broke away from the prevailing religion of the time and joined the new religion. It was their choice and not their inheritance. Birth in a family or clan loyal to the existing religion was no obstacle for them to leave it to join the new religion.
Has institutionalisation of major religions over the centuries allowed them to usurp people's conscience? Aren't children born into a religion programmed to absorb the ideas of that religion as absolute and final? My proposal is that we have to go back to the spirit of the foundational moment of the religions when people with conscience joined them. Thus one should have the freedom to follow a faith of his/her choice or not to follow any faith at all. That is real freedom.

(Photo: A kindergarten school in Hirsau, South Germany)

Prejudices & counter-prejudices...

`Return of the Muslim Other', an article by Soumaya Ghannoushi, director of research at IslamExpo, published in The Guardian online edition on October 24 draws heavily on writers like Edward Said whose critique of the discourse of `orientalism' made him an intellectual cult figure among the Leftish sections as wells as Islamists. Deep prejudices that marked the West's discourse of the Orient cannot be treated as rubbish. True to the tradition of post-colonial intellectuals, the author also hinges the central argument of the article on the West's obsession with the `Muslim Other' and its sense of superiority over other cultures. I agree with the author's observation that the idea of Europe being Islamised is the far-right's `figment of imagination'. However, if Europe has deep prejudices against Islam, Islam is also not free from its own set of prejudices against the West. The author accuses Europe of `unwillingness to extned the norm of tolerance to newcomers from the Muslim world'. A person from the West can make the same accusation against Islamic countries more forcefully and convincingly.

Voices of certitudes

We often meet or listen to people who speak with absolute certitude on any issues under the sky. They invariably invoke their party or religious ideology to impose upon others what they think is the correct way to understand the world. A radical commie was heard the other day on a TV channel during a debate on Chinese Communist Party's changed attitude to religion that religion was spiritual version of capitalism. I still fail to understand what that really means. But that chap was speaking in a voice that did not betray even an iota of doubt about what he was speaking about. There is no better example of unquestionable faith in what one thinks as absolutely right than the anti-Americanism of the Indian Left. The Left has developed it into a kind of religion. It is admirable that the Left sticks to what it believes is right even at the risk of facing serious political setbacks. But the voice of certitude in what it says leaves a sense of intellectual emptiness.

Phobia about `Islamophobia'?

Is there some thing called moderate Islam? The answer to this question depends on which way you look at the question and there are presumably different ways of looking at it. Some Muslims are moderate to the extent that they do not pursue an extreme and radical view of Islam. But both moderate and non-moderate Muslims share a concept of Islam that is absolutist as a belief and as a way of life. Any absolutist concept is intrinsically dangerous and Islam is no exception in that sense.
Some secular writers living in the West are saying that Islamophobia is on the rise in the West after 9/11, London serial blast and Madrid bombing. The spectre of Islamophobia, they say, is posing danger to multi-cultural societies such as England. Personally, I wish I can agree with them. And it is politically correct to do so. But I encounter problem when I find that even highly educated Muslim youths are willing to be propelled to be human bombs and kill innocent people in the name of their religion. And the so-called moderate Muslims are not as visible as they should be in condemning this menace that seeks to harm modernity (in the sense in which most of us understand the term).
Perhaps the problem lies in what I understand as central to Islam's view of the world. It divides the world into two entities: dar-ul-Islam (land of peace) and dar-ul-harb (land of war). The division might have been relevant during the early days of Islam when it was waging a battle for survival. This division of the world cannot be more absurd in this age of democracy, freedoms, gender equality, liberal values etc. Unless the so-called moderate Muslims come out to debate these issues honestly and critically, those raising serious concerns about rising intolerance among Muslims as a community cannot be debunked as completely wrong.

Shameful surrender

Credibility of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has undergone erosion with the u-turn that he as well as Congress president Sonia Gandhi has made on the the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal. The PM and the entire Congress leadership had been saying till yesterday that the deal was favourable to India and even had suggested that those who were opposed to it (read the Left) were enemies of the country's development. An independent-minded person tended to believe what Dr. Singh said about the deal. A decent, honourable and erudite man that he was, Dr. Singh's views on the issue were seen as honest and true. The authority of the PM's post also lent it public credence. I fail to understand what made the PM and Ms. Gandhi to change their stance on the issue and say that the Left's concerns were not fully unjustified. At last, the Congress has capitulated before the ideological posturings of the Left. For politicians, it may be compulsions of coalition politics that have led to the surrender. For an ordinary citizen, this somersault has dealt a terrible blow on the authority of the institution called Prime Minister of India.

`I am going to be a writer'

Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul is a wonderful memoir that unravels his evolution as a writer with the melancholic legacy of the once glorious Istanbul casting its shadow on his life and writing. Pamuk identifies his melancholy (`huzun' in Arabic) and his transformation as a writer with the ancient city full of marks of past glory and present defeat and irrelevance. He at last finds another `Orhan' who, he thought when he was young, was living somewhere in Istanbul. He has found that Orhan when he says `I am going to be a writer'. One cannot but feel rejuvenated after reading Istanbul that is replete with insights on failed relationships, use of power and violence and conflict between tradition and modernity.

My metamorphosis into a non-appeaser...

Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion is among the books that I will cherish as breathtakingly direct. I am a terribly honest man after I finished reading it. The book has equipped me to announce, whenever I get an opportunity, that I am a non-believer. A world without religions is a good option to be pursued. Employing the arsenal of Darwinian natural selection, Dawkins devastates the idea that the universe is inttelligently designed. I had been an appeaser all these years. Not any more. You can't after you read Dawkins. I thought sky will fall when I said what I wanted to say about religions. Not any more.

Blow on political parties that cannot care less

Legal luminaries may debate on complex legal issues involved in the Supreme Court of India's outrage against the Tamil Nadu Government over the government-sponsored bandh/hartal/general strike called by ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhakam. Some are accusing the court of encroaching on what is not its territory. Forgotten in this excercise in hairsplitting is the fundamental right of citizens as opposed to the right of political parties. Who will remedy the physical and mental torture suffered by those who are stranded due to bandhs etc. and huge financial loss caused by strikes that paralyse normal life? The fundamental rights of citizens should not be allowed to be bulldozed by the rights of political parties to call for strikes that disrupt public order. The court's intervention is just an expression of the pubilic ire against such strikes. I firmly believe that the court upholds the constitutional rights of citizens to free movement. I hail the court order.

Burma...an anachronism

Burma seems to be an anachronism in this era of openness. The bunker mindset of the military junta ruling the country is out of place today. An entire nation has been held hostage by the military generals who should have been held accountable for their crimes had the international community (whatever that means) been serious in tackling their paranoia and isolation. We can only hope that the democratic countries of the world will not abandon the Burmese people this time. Pro-democracy struggle of the people led to the killing of hundreds of people in 1998. The generals should not be allowed to go scot-free this time.

Personally, I am deeply concerned about the developments in that country. My maternal grand uncle was among the hundreds of people from Malabar (northern parts of Kerala, India) who went to Burma, maybe in the 1930 s, when that country was part of the British-ruled Indian administration. He settled in Rangoon, married there, had children and made contacts with his elder sister (my grandma) until mid-1970s. We have not heard anything from him and his children since then. I think I have to make an attempt to trace them. But that is a personal journey of a different kind that I have to make. A sort of quest for lost connections.

A book I enjoyed...

Very few novels I have read in recent months have created a deep sense of immense tragedy and unfathomable happiness. The Kite Runner by Afghan novelist Khaled Hosseini is one of them. The story unfolds the archetypal theme of the cycle of betrayal, guilt and final atonement/redemption. The story is narrated as a flashback of events beginning from the winter of 1975 and ending in March 2002. The backdrop of tumultous developments in Afghanistan beginning with the Soviet invasion followed by the war against the invaders by the Mujahideen, subsequent civil war and the Taliban rule gives poignancy to the story of Amir, his Baba (dad), his childhood friend Hassan, who is son of his father's household servant and who, as Amir discovers later, is illegitimate son of his Baba.

Baba betrays his Hazara servant Ali by denying him the honour that every Afghan upholds, and Hassan and Amir by denying their right to know the truth (that Hassan is his son). His redemption comes when he leaves for the U.S. and stays in San Fransisco for his son. He abandons for his son's well being his tradition, his friends and everything he values back home.

Amir betryas his friend Hassan by not admitting him as a true friend. For a Pashtun like Amir, Hassan is always an illiterate servant who can be fooled and ridiculed. Amir's redemption begins when he starts a journey back to his childhood and to Afghanistan that is by then under the Taliban control. He faces the risk to rescue Sohrab, son of Hassan who has been killed by the Taliban, and brings him to the U.S.

At a larger level, the novel is an allegory of the collective guilt of Afghanistan as a nation (watan) for the tragedy it has experienced since the Soviet invasion. The novel ends with the reassurance that `there is a way to be good again'.

I immensely enjoyed the novel which is also about relationship between father and son.

About

This blog is an attempt to explore horizons of ideas that are not coloured by ideologies of all brands. It is always possible to cross barriers and find new horizons of ideas. This blog is part of my personal journey to look at the world with an open mind and rubbish run-of-the-mill views and opinions.