Religion
Randomness…
That’s it! The verdict is out. The National Highways department of India is filled with nut cases. Not the crispy crunchy variety you can eat, but the ones that have escaped mental asylums from God knows where. What else do I call engineers of the Public Works Department who choose to block half a kilometre of highway for road-laying just about half an hour before peak hour? Did they ever stop to consider how people will get from Point A to Point B, given that there are absolutely no alternate routes available? The highway is question is the section of Poonamalee High Road beyond the Koyambedu Circle, which was blocked today, between 4 and 5:30 PM, ostensibly for road repairs. Result: Hundreds of vehicles piled up, honking trucks, intolerable dust, and absolutely no way out of the mess. Sigh! If only I were Urban Development Minister…
And then, there is this article by Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald. Setting aside the cricket part, please focus on the second paragraph.
“Yes, India has its castes and colours. It is imperfect. But it has also had in recent years a Sikh prime minister, a Muslim president and a white, female, Catholic widow leading its main political party.”
Nothing wrong with this one, yes? But, a short while ago, the sentence read thus.
“Yes, India has its castes and colours. It is imperfect. But it has also had in recent years a Sikh president, a Muslim prime minister and a white, female, Catholic divorcee leading its main political party.”
And, left me, and another blogger wondering when Mrs. Gandhi divorced Rajiv. Did he not die before they got to divorce? And, wasn’t Abdul Kalam the President and Manmohan Singh the Prime Minister? Or am I getting my facts wrong? This is symptomatic of what’s ailing the media today. A well-read newspaper does not bother to verify facts, or edit the article before publishing it. And, that should also give us a vague idea about what to expect from the Aussies when we go there. I will be greatly reassured if they don’t mistake me for a Red Indian.
Finally, I recently read this blogpost by Christina. I have disagreed with her on many counts before. But on this one… I really wish lynching was not punishable by law. Different by design? What the hell? I, for one, am convinced you can learn pretty much anything irrespective of your sex. Some people are wired to make cars start by rubbing two wires together; others are not. I am not, but neither are many of my male friends. And, I seriously doubt Anand can fix his motorbike if it refuses to start one day. He will probably wheel it to the nearest garage to see what’s wrong. As if this Mrs. Paine’s self-deprecating lament is not enough, she claims that God meant men and women to do things specifically suited to them. What the hell? Cooking is supposed to be a woman’s job. I personally know men (both within the family and outside) who cook better than most women I know. I also know women who can fix a broken pipe or jump start a car as well as any man. Sure, each one has different competencies. But, that is hardly gender-specific. So, Mrs. Paine, if you ever get to read this, remember one thing. You are free to tell the world you a bloody idiot who can’t tell a light bulb from a switch board, but don’t drag God into the affair. He (or She) created us all equals. It is up to us to make use of what He/She gave us.
PS: Yes. The feminine for God was intentional. After all, the Mother Goddess is supposed to be omnipotent in Hindu mythology…
The Udupi fiasco
If you took a look at the sports section of Google News India today, you would see that the change of guard at the Sri Krishna Temple at Udupi figured prominently. You are probably wondering what the Krishna temple has to do with sports. Nothing. Google classified the news wrongly. But, they have unintentionally demonstrated that the ongoing drama has nothing to do with either religion or dharma. Ok. Let me explain. The Sri Krishna Temple at Udupi, near Mangalore in Karnataka is run by 8 maths or religious institutions, each headed by a seer. Every two years, the control of the Temple shifts from one math to another. This year, controversy erupted over the transfer of control to the Puttige Math, whose seer, Sugunendra Teertha has allegedly violated the Dharmashastra by travelling abroad.
The seer of the Pejavar Math threatened to undertake a three-day fast against the ascension of Sugunendra Teertha because diluting the laws laid down by the sacred texts will result in an apocalypse. One news item in The Mangalorean states that “scholars” are against the ascension of Sugunendran Teertha as the Dharmashastras were “against” foreign travel. This hullabaloo reminds me of the times when a person was excommunicated because of foreign travel.
We pride ourselves on our ability to adjust and adapt to new cultures. We wax eloquent about how a major portion of NASA’s top scientists are of Indian origin. We spare no effort to get our children into the best colleges in the US of A. But, when it comes to religion, we proclaim that foreign travel is against the gospel and oppose the ascension of a seer to a religious position. This attitude reeks of hypocrisy and political gimmickry. Nobody objects when the Pejavar Math Seer undertakes travel all over India. Nobody questions his eligibility to be called a seer when he revels in creature comfort at the houses of political leaders all over the country. Has anyone ever asked why a religious leader finds it necessary to speak out against the Sethusamudram Project by saying that anyone who questions the existence of Rama is an ignorant idiot? Nor has anyone found it unfitting that a seer associate with the worst of religious fanatics (read the Vishwa Hindu Parishad) whose primary occupation is to incite communal hatred and distrust. All because the man is a religious leader? I am sorry to be so harsh. But that man has neither the religious nor the moral right to criticise someone for going abroad. I doubt his criticism has anything to do with religion. Either he is infinitely jealous of the seer due to his own inability to travel abroad, or he is simply after the power and prosperity traditionally associated with running the Sri Krishna Temple at Udupi. Either way, I am personally losing the little respect had for these fake seers and priests.
Some philosophy, some questions…but no answers…
I am back, after a rather long hiatus. The problem is that my grandfather was sick for a week, and passed away on Thursday last. A death in the family normally means a lot of guests, a lot of confusion and a lot of work. So, that was it. It was the first time in 25 years that I visited a crematorium. And quite frankly, the place is not as scary as I was led to believe. It is clean, with paved roads and a cemented place to sit. That brings me to all the philosophical musings of the past week. A visit to a graveyard is quite humbling. For one, you realise how lucky you are to still be alive. And then, you wonder why we chase money when all we are left with ultimately is a pot of ash (or six feet of land as the case may be.) Dad says it’s normal for first-time visitors to get philosophical. This week was my turn.
Once the funeral was over, there began a series of negotiations over the post-death ceremonies (or whatever you call it). First, the shaastrigal claimed that the soul of the deceased had to travel a billion miles, during the course of a year to attain Vaikuntham. In order to facilitate the travel, we, as relatives of the deceased, are expected to provide the soul with slippers, bed, food, clothing, gold (I wonder why!), silver, a piece of land, a cow and some other assorted worldly items. How can the poor soul carry so much? Since we are not millionaires, but simple middle class people, the shaastrigal allowed us to pay a mere 15,000 rupees, instead of a portion of land, and a couple of kilogrammes of gold for the above-mentioned daanam. Very generous, I must admit!
Then comes this business about the soul suffering from sun-burns, hunger, thirst, calloused feet, tired legs and the like as justification for all the donations we are supposed to make. How the soul can suffer so much is beyond me. After all, the Bhagavad Gita, the most widely accepted Hindu religious text describes the soul thus:
“Nainam chhindanti shastraani, nainam dahati paavakaha, na chainam kledha yantyapo, ne shoshayathi maaruthaha.” (Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 23)
Translated, it means,
“Weapons cannot harm the soul, fire cannot burn the soul, water cannot wet and air cannot dry the soul.”
If that is true, then how can the soul suffer hunger, thirst, sunburns or injury. The learned men have no response. Is this then, just a way of guilting people into paying for wholly unnecessary rituals. I only have questions for the moment. Nobody is forthcoming with answers. And asking too many questions makes me a heretic. What has the world come to?
The other drama is one that is related more to social practice than religion and philosophy. Mum tells me that the Brahmins won’t eat food prepared by Tamil Iyer women. Whether it is because the women are Iyer or because they are simply women is beyond me. Apparently, we, as Kannada Maadhwa Brahmins practise a philosophy incompatible with Iyer philosophy and any meeting of the two will have potentially disastrous consequences. So, the choice of caterers is rather limited. To men, who belong to the appropriate Kannada Brahmin subsect. I then asked if we can get someone we know to cook that day. There, we face yet another problem. Apparently widowhood is highly contagious and the said Brahmins will not touch food prepared by a widowed woman.
Makes me wonder if women should not boycott food prepared by, served by, or eaten by any widowed man, just to give them a taste of their own medicine. Refusing to cook for widowed men would do the job equally well. After all, men who believe that seeing a widow is inauspicious belong to a generation that did not know how to cook. That way the problem would be solved. In the absence of anyone to cook for them, they all would die an early death and the world would be relieved of a great burden. But seriously, will this attitude ever change? The one person who is most affected by a death is the spouse of the deceased. How is it fair to treat widowed women as a scourge? How is it fair to blame them for something they have no control over? Why are we still living in the Middle Ages? Can we ever drag ourselves into the 21st Century?
Saudi Arabia and the Rule of Law
The recent decision of a Saudi Arabian court to award a rape victim a sentence of 200 lashes and six months is prison is indeed condemnable. The court not only punished the victim, called the “Qatif Girl” for allegedly violating Islamic law by being present in a car with an unrelated man, but also banned her lawyer from practising and stripped him of his license. This cannot be justified on the grounds of religion and tradition by any stretch of imagination. This is not the first time that a rape victim is treated as a criminal. Nor is Saudi Arabia the only country to criminalise a rape victim. It is easy for us, as Indians, to blame the entire episode on a faulty interpretation of the Sharia, but what happens in India is no better. While the courts in Saudi Arabia have sentenced the girl on the grounds of violation of some ridiculous law, courts, prosecution lawyers and law-enforcement officials in India shame the victim into withdrawing her case and disappearing from public view.
If in Saudi Arabia, the problem lies with the absence of proper laws, in India the problem lies with interpretation of existing laws. The social stigma surrounding a rape victim is such that many incidents go unreported. If ever a woman finds the courage to report what has happened to her, she finds herself under the scanner and is made to answer humiliating and insulting questions about her behaviour. “The Qatif Girl” is just one among millions of women around the world to be suffering persecution because they dared to speak out. Remember the case of Mukhtaran Mai of Pakistan who was raped because her brother was caught talking to a girl from another community? Every culture, every country and every religion has treated women like objects. This sentence by Saudi Arabian courts is just an extension of the attitude. While the rest of the world obsesses with the US elections, bomb blasts, political gimmicks and global warming, millions of such women across the world will continue to suffer in silence.
What are the democratic and liberal countries of the world doing? Where is the self-righteous indignation of the US and the UK? Does Saudi Arabia’s loyal and blind support of the US “War on Terror” push such blatant human rights violations under the carpet? If the same thing were to happen in Iran, would Bush and Co. not have called for boycott, protest or sanction? What is it that makes Saudi Arabia immune to such international pressure? Or is it stupid on my part to expect that the violation of the rights of women be taken up with as much seriousness as the development of a nuclear programme by Iran? I suppose human rights do not really apply to the allies of the US. Noises about human rights records are made at appropriate intervals, while negotiating deals with China and other undemocratic countries. But, Saudi Arabia is obviously not on the human rights radar of the US. The less said about India’s reaction (or lack of it) to the Saudi rape case the better. After all, it is politically incorrect to criticise Islam (or Islamic countries) in this country. I had better shut up now, lest I be accused of hurting minority sentiments (which seems to be increasingly fragile nowadays).
Education, business, Kolkata burning and Ms. Nasreen again!
Yesterday, I read a satirical take on the state of education in today’s world. Humorous though it was, it deserves serious thought and discussion. This Rediff satire on the recent decision of the principal of a well-known Mumbai college to enforce a dress code in the middle of examinations is something worth talking about. Moral policing apart, the satire exposes one simple fact: that some colleges exist solely to make money. As the principal in Vadukut’s story puts it so succinctly,
“Must I tell you every day? What do you think we are? A shady outfit merely run to siphon off funds? A platform for political manipulation? Some sort of ragtag institute run by the principal like his personal property?”
“Sir. Why do you even ask such questions and insult me? Of course we are.”
Well…can one make it any more obvious why such private colleges exist? The truth is that very few colleges today fulfil their duties as educational institutions. They are simply run to siphon off funds, or to whiten the black money made by their owners and patrons in other, equally shady business deals. Some of the private colleges assume the role of the moral police, when those who run the institutions are themselves totally immoral. Will this ever change? Will private colleges and deemed universities and the like actually be held responsible for their actions before a competent tribunal? It’s up to the UGC to take the responsibility. Whether they will actually do it is anyone’s guess.
Moving on, CNN-IBN tells me, on television, that Kolkata is burning. When I first heard the news this afternoon, I assumed that the Nandigram issue had finally reached boiling point. But no, I was apparently mistaken. A rather shady outfit by name of the All India Minority Forum (AIMF) called for a roadblock this morning. Soon, the protest turned violent and the army was called in to maintain law and order. Now, in India, when the army is called in to restore peace, it means something is seriously wrong. Otherwise, the army just stays out of internal affairs. The policy will normally suffice. Only later in the afternoon did I realise that the protests were not just against the Nandigram issue. Apparently, the AIMF, which called for the protests, want eminent Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen to be shipped out of India at the earliest possible instance. Her sin? That she said something, allegedly blasphemous, in her most recent book Shodh.
This kind of behaviour goes against pretty much everything I was taught as a kid. Or am I being naive in wanting to actually practise what I was taught in school? I grew up in a liberal, rest-not-until-you-get-answers background. I was taught that it is Man’s (and woman’s) fundamental right to speak their mind. I was taught that, in a democracy, freedom of expression is paramount. I was also taught that even if you did not have anything to eat, you must have the freedom to say you are starving. What has happened to the India I know? What has happened to that sacrosanct freedom of expression? This censorship of personal opinion began with the banning of Satanic Verses way back in 1988, barely 10 days after its release. It has not stopped until today. The right to free speech is shamelessly curtailed and the press censored in the name of protecting minority sentiments. I do acknowledge that religious minorities in India must be given adequate protection. But, is this not going too far? If the AIMF can bring an entire city to a standstill today, forcing the army to step in to maintain law and order, is there not something seriously wrong with the way things are going?
What irks me even more that the protests, is the fact that nobody seems to be talking about Ms. Nasreen’s right to say what she thinks is right. Nobody is arguing she is right. But even dissent must be within the acceptable framework of democracy. Burning public vehicles and causing infinite inconvenience to common people in the name of a protest march is simply unacceptable. Will someone please talk about it? Will the state government, and the Centre forget their pseudo-secularism for a moment and defend Ms. Nasreen’s right to live where she wants to and say what she wants to?