Fighting dogmas with zeal

"Can't we talk about this?'', Theo van Gogh asked his killer. The Moroccan, Muhammad Bouyeri, was not there for talking. He shot the Dutch film-maker who was cycling down a road in Amsterdam on November 2, 2004. The killer took out his knife and slit the Dutch man's throat and then used another knife to stab a note onto the chest of his victim. The note was addressed to Ayan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the script of a 10-minute documentary they made together in which a Muslim woman in a transparent veil addresses Allah highlighting her plight as a Muslim woman. Now living in the U.S. , she has been under tight security ever since the murder of Theo van Gogh as the murderer's note warned her to be prepared for her own death.

"Cultures are not equal, but human beings are," says Ayan Hirsi Ali in a recent interview, suggesting that all bets are off if cultural relativism advocated by votaries of multi-culturalism in Western countries continues to be treated as sacred. It is an original idea that demolishes the concept of equality of all cultures regardless of whether one culture treats its women badly or another culture upholds gender equality as a universal value. Her book Infidel: My Life (The Free Press, London, 2007) is breathtakingly authentic and questions some of the basic tenets of the religion she belonged. The book is a personal narration of her courageous journey to cross the chasm that divides the world of Islam and that of the West which she describes as the world of freedom. "I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason - from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of sexual emancipation'' (p. 348)Born in Somalia as daughter of an opposition political activist, brought up in Mecca and Nairobi before she settled in Holland as a refugee after escaping an arranged marriage, 39-year old Ayan Hirsi Ali, who later became Liberal Party MP in Dutch Parliament, vividly tells her story of her deep crisis of faith that she underwent during her sojourn marred by her personal tension between her faith in Islam and her quest for freedom. Her escape to Holland opens her eyes to an alternative moral system. "I didn't for one instant imagine that a moral framework for humanity could exist that wasn't religious.'' (p.230). She writes about her mindset before she reached Holland where she worked as a translator and studied political science at the prestigious Leiden University.Ms. Ali's saga of constant personal struggles against her own sense of submission she has inherited from her faith in Islam and loyalty to her clan brings out the intensity of religious upbringing that makes it easy for a believer to think that his/her religion and holy book are absolute and difficult for him/her to accept that there are people who think differently. Her central concern as she enunciates in the book is that women in Islam are oppressed. "When people say that the values of Islam are compassion, tolerance, and freedom, I look at reality, at real cultures and governments, and I see that it simply isn't so. People in the West swallow this sort of thing because they have learned not to examine the religions or cultures of minorities too critically, for fear of being called racist." (p.349)The author looks at this issue in the backdrop of her experience as a refugee and then a citizen in Holland, the world's most liberal and open society where nothing is sacred and everything sacrosanct is held upto ridicule. The tolerant Dutch society finds itslef in turmoil when immigrant Muslims fail to integrate with that society. Muslim women from Islamic societies continued to be treated badly by their menfolk in Holland and multiculturalism the Dutch are so proud of prevented them from seeing the problem with seriousness it deserved. Her `doubts and defiance' gather strength when she reads Spinoza, Freud and other philosophers after she enrolled at Leiden for graduation. Her experience as an interpreter for the immigration centre allows her to focus on the sharp contrast between the Enlightenment values and Islam that doesn't encourage people to ask questions and stimulate creativity, observes Ms. Ali in her book. Islam, in her view, has "never gone through a process of Enlightenment that would lead people to question its rigid approach to individual freedom.'' (p. 266-267)Ms. Ali's complete break with Islam happened after the 9/11 attacks. "The Little shutter at the back of mind, where I pushed all my dissonant thoughts, snapped open after the 9/11 attacks, and it refused to close again.'' (p 272)She wanted to hold dogmas upto the light and when she started doing it, all hell broke out. She started facing real threats when she wanted to `become the female answer to Bin Laden'. The Muslim outrage against her reached its pinnacle after the making of the film Submission. By that time, she was elected to the Dutch Parliament as a Liberal Party nominee. Her traumatic experiences of being shifted by the Dutch security personnel from one location to another after the killing of Theo van Gogh could not have been narrated more touchingly. On a complaint from her neighbour in The Hague, a Dutch court ordered her to leave her safe-house on the ground that her neighbours had the right to safety. By that time she had already decided to move to the U.S. where she is now working with a think tank.

Infidel is the first book I read this year. It is one of the best books I have read in recent years. Its authentic voice and persuasive style and its upholding of the human spirit makes it a great read.

Cosmic irrelevance

In the infinite expanse of our cosmos littered with 100 billion-odd galaxies, each consisting of roughly 100 billion stars and interstellar matter, is a speck called Milky Way, our galaxy, where our planet does not even qualify to be called a dot. There is a small province called Kerala in the land mass of the Earth and in this province people still discuss the relevance of Marxism which has been thrown to the dustbin of history (forgive the cliche) in other much bigger areas in other parts of the land mass. Some people say that this place called Kerala, which is in a country called India (there are several countries on the surface of our planet differentiated by, among other things, the colour and design of their respective flags), will be the place where Marxism will be preserved as a museum piece for people from other parts of the world to see it before it is extinct even in this petite region which is also known as `god's own country', much to the chagrin of atheists.
The party that still claims to preserve the Marxist ideology is the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a national party though its presence is largely confined to Kerala and West Bengal. Recently there was a storm in the tea cup when a veteran leader of that party said something in defence of capitalism (or so it appeared to the mainstream media that are in grand alliance with pro-U.S. imperialist forces to wipe out this party that was leading resistance against the said imperialist monster).
Recently, a prominent leader of the party, explained at a public meeting that Marxism was still relevant because it espoused scientific socialism. His argument is as follows: nature works as per laws of nature and human societies function as per laws of social changes. He has used the metaphor of a flower plant to hammer the audience into believing what he says. You cannot plant the sapling with its roots up because that is against the laws of nature, he tells re-iterating that social changes are governed by laws of social changes. In the Marxian scheme of things, society evolves from one phase of change into another, that is, from feudalism to capitalism to socialism to the final phase called communism when the state will wither away and people will live a jolly life.
But he is apparently too clever by half and his metaphor collapses when he says that the aim of his party is to establish socialism. If a society evolves as per the laws of social changes, why should there be a party to establish socialism? Then he goes on saying that Marxism is a social science that continuously reforms itself and argues that this scientific socialism failed in erstwhile Soviet Union and other eastern European countries because of mistakes in their application of Marxism and lack of steps to correct them. Again his argument fails: why should there be conscious efforts to correct the mistakes when the party (that is Marxism) is always on auto-correct mode? What the poor chap was trying to do was to sweeten what cannot be sweetened. Communism in its essence is totalitarianism which will by no means allow the laws of social changes to say goodbye to the state and declare that the state has withered away. That has not happened in the Soviet Union, nor is it happening in North Korea, Cuba and China.
Dear Reader, if you feel exhausted reading this, just look at the sky and try to imagine the infinite expanse of the cosmos and try to locate where our tiny planet is and then make an attempt to figure out the funny side of people who still live in their own fantasy worlds full of fantasy ideologies and arguments.

Homeopathy a crazy system?

The other day I met a relative of mine in a hospital and expectedly our talk plunged into the topic of health care. He told me that homeopathy was doing wonders in some cases where modern medicine had failed. One example he mentioned was that of a relative of his who was suffering from brain tumor. Her only chance of survival on undergoing surgery was 15 per cent and so her husband decided against it and brought her to a famous homeopath in town, he said. He emphasised the point that the patient was no longer bed-ridden as she had been till she began homeopathy treatment. At least, she talks to the people who went to meet her, he said with a glint of faith in his eyes, knowing that the person he was talking to was not a zombie.
I am not an admirer of alternative medical systems including homeopathy. But what puzzles me is that all those who have faith in homeopathy are not as wacky as my relative who sought to engage me in a debate on the virtues of this crazy system of medicine. There are celebrities including Prince Charles who will openly defend it.
Its central principles are treated as a puzzle by scientists. It foundational principle is `like cures like', that is, a disease can be cured by small part of a substance that causes similar symptoms. The second principle is that the more your dilute a solution that can offer remedy the more effective it becomes and that the shaking of the dilution gives healing power to water in which it is diluted. I recently watched the Horizon programme on the BBC which debunks the scientific basis of homeopathy. The Horizon team assigns investigators and researchers to study the scientific basis of homeopathy.
If a homeopathic mixture is diluted 100 times, the result is 1 C solution. The 1 C solution is added to 99 parts of water. At 2 C, the medicine is one part in 10,000. At 6 C, the medicine is diluted a million times (one drop in 20 swimming pools); at 12 C it is one drop in an Ocean. But homeopathic dilution does not end there. A typical homeopathic dilution is 30 c! One has to be very naive to believe that this solution can cure a patient. Then, how homeopathy works in some patients? Scientists say that it can be placebo effect. Placebo is a drug containing no active ingredients. It is administered to patients participating in clinical trials for assessing potential of a new drug. Sometimes doctors prescribe placebo pills to patients that can give a feeling of relief that in turn reduce stress and anxiety experienced by patients. This reduction of stress and anxiety may improve their health.
The Horizon programme gathered scientists from leading scientific institutions in England to examine whether homeopathic solutions have any medicinal power. The researchers filled 5 test tubes with water diluted in water and five with histamine diluted in water. Each of the tube is diluted again all the way to 5 C. A professor of engineering was asked to randomly re-label each of the 10 tubes. Only this professor had the code to know which tube contained histamine dilution and which contained water. Now these solutions were diluted to true homeopathic levels upto 18 C. There were now 40 tubes. The researchers took a drop from each of the tubes and added a sample of living human cell.
Then a medical researcher was assigned to examine whether human cell in each of the tube had any effect. To be precise, a second scientist was also asked to do the same test independently. The statistical analysis of the tubes that seem or not seem to have an effect on the cells confirmed that homeopathic water had no special effect.
I didn't tell all these things to my relative who is a homeopathy believer. Because I have no problem if somebody who gets relief from a system of medicine which has no scientific basis. Real danger comes when people who advocate alternative medicine seek to rubbish modern medicine.

Happiness

Whenever I feel sad, I have no difficulty in pinpointing sources of my sadness. It could be domestic dissonance or work-related issues or boredom or empty pocket. But I feel completely lost when I try to locate sources of my happiness. I feel happy because I am happy. There are times when I feel an inner sense of calm and delight even when I know that I have no reason to be happy about. So happiness, in my opinion, has an aura of enigma about it. I wish I were able to unravel the secret of happiness that gives me freedom, allows me to face challenges when the odds are against them and persuades me to de-clutter my mind. For me, happiness may also bring anxiety, a feeling that the state of being happy may be shortlived. Happiness is no big empire that extends to distant frontiners beyond which is despair. It is in fact a cabin that shields you from being unhappy.
I would not have dared to reason about happines, but for the thoughts that crossed my mind while I was watching the movie `Pursuit of Happyness' (yes Happyness) directed by Gabriele Muccino in which Will Smith plays the lead role of a salesman (Chris Gardner) struggling to cope with his crumbling marriage and his dream to be a stock broker. There are touching moments when Chris along with his child Christopher (Jaden Smith, Will Smith's own son) is forced to leave his house by his landlord, and struggles with homelessness and a night in jail. He undergoes stressfull and non-paying internship to be the stock broker. At the end of the film, his pursuit of happiness leads him to success as he has been selected for the lucratic career. The movie is a typical Holleywood box office film and it highlights the idea of American Dream. What has attracted me is the film's repeated reference to the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson, who was the principal author of the declaration. A key sentence of the declaration is: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” It gives a sense that happiness is worth pursuing, though there is no guarantee that what you are chasing after will not keep on evading you. Could it be that happiness is not a destination but the journey itself? A journey in which we burrow our ways into thick walls of despair to reach the ephemeral destination?

Media in digital age

Can the print media survive in the present digital era? Are participation, sharing and networking in the New Media (blogs, YouTube, Orkut et al) just part of a digital Utopia that we have started conjuring up? Well, it is too early to say yes or no on these questions. Figures show that circulation of printed copies of newspapers has come down in north America and major European countries, where more and more people are reading online editions of papers they choose to read. The greatest achievement of the digital age is the removal of a central Authority who controls and regulates Information. We cannot today imagine a Soviet Union where the people have no choice but to swallow, though with a pinch of salt, whatever its propaganda machine churns out by way of Information. The mainstream media across the world is gradually realising the potential of the New Media which demolishes any kind of monopoly on Information.

India is often described as a media wonderland because of the huge growth of the media industry in the country. As a media person, I often encounter questions relating to the objectivity of the media when it is becoming a big industry. I tell them that the objectivity of the media cannot be equated with the objectivity of science. The media objectivity has to be seen in relation to a process of selections involved in media activity. You have to choose words (I am talking about print media) from pools of other alternative words, headlines, newsworthiness of events and importance an event should be given (whether it should be on front page or middle page etc.). There are Chomskite media critics in the country who say Indian media identifies with the neo-liberal global agenda (read U.S. hegemony). They say that general support of the mainstream media in India to the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal displayed this bias favouring the U.S. global agenda. This is a criticism that is too ideological to be explained without provoking those who say this. First you have to assume that there is a clearly defined neo-liberal global agenda. Then everything fits in. You can then easily believe that the media coverage of the deal reflects the media's support to the U.S. hegemony and that the media is engaged in propaganda.

The problem with this `propaganda model' of the media is that everything can be treated as propaganda depending on from which position you look at things. When the mainstream media brought out the true menacing dimension of the post-Godhra violence in Gujarat, the Sangh Parivar's response was to take recourse to conspiracy theory. The CPI(M)'s reaction to media disclosures of atrocities in Nandigram in West Bengal was a throwback to the Sangh Parivar respose. CPI(M) politburo member Sitaram Yechuri envisions a `grand alliance' of forces including the media against the CPI(M). We are lucky that people like Yechuri, who will prefer the Stalinist model of propaganda to the media multiplicity and free market of opinions and views, have not gained control over the destiny of India. As a journalist and citizen in a democratic country I am still inspired by what Thomas Jefferson, third president of the U.S. said about newspapers in his letter to Edward Carrington in 1787. "...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

Greeting 2008

I have no habit of making new year resolutions. New year celebrations always make me brutally aware of the passage of time at a greater speed. I would rather have Time passing slower and slower. But as things are as they are and not as they ought to be as per your wishes, let me greet 2008 with a sceptical optimism that things will definitely improve. I have already been derided by my friend for being obsessed with the fear of the unknown. She is right to a certain extent. I hope I can change this obsession. I also hope that the causes of my fear will vanish in the course of time.