We think that human beings are the smartest animal on this planet and in our endeavor to prove that we are above The Ultimate we make wasteful expenditures like creating the world’s largest and highest energy particle accelerator in Switzerland. Billions of Euros has been pumped by CERN in the Large Hardon Collider (LCH) project which is a disaster for the environment, in the guise of finding the scenario that happened just after the Big Bang.
We understand a bit of physics which present scientists call history and have put under achieves as classical physics. It is much like the beautiful rock music of the sixties and seventies which is also relegated to Rock classics.
It made sense when we were told that apples can only fall down from a tree because it has no wings to fly up, the same reason why people cannot fly without an airplane. Gravity was understandable but anti gravity involved a lot of mathematics that went beyond our Famous Four of add, subtract, multiply and divide.
Fusion hot or cold was not as cool as fusion music and the names of scientists were as complicated as Max Plank, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Einstein (a singular stone) as their theories were. I always thought that Schrödinger’s Cat was a distant relative of a Siamese cat, but never realized why it would be a statistical problem for a cat to live in a box with a radioactive particle.
Einstein deduced a simple formula E= mc² and said that the only way to retain your beauty is not to go through Botox or not a sip from the Holy Grail but to fly faster than the speed of light. That is the way of life, predict something unachievable and you get a Nobel and even if we do fly faster than the speed of light, Steven Spielberg intimidated us the problems we may land up with a series of “Back to Future” movies.
I am not against modern physics, but when you are stuck in Frankfurt for three days in a row because of a volcano which wake up from sleep after a period much longer than Rip Van Winkle took (it went to sleep in 1817), none of our brightest scientists could even visualize that such a thing would happen. Science is not meant for predicting the past; if it is so then the profession of scientist’s is as much as debated as that of soothsayers. It is to predict what may be the consequences of certain events or occurrence of events.
Scientists are also getting media savvy and using nice jargons – the other day I heard a scientist calling the event a “Black Swan’ event. An event which is likely to happen but it is beyond human predicament.
You can do nothing better that watching all the crap in the television while praying to God when he will again be merciful to us.
People, who are trapped and are atheists, should be given the last chance to fly out, because nature is nothing but a reflection of The Ultimate – whether you believe or not.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
M.F. Hussain - Goodluck & Goodbye
I left Bharat and landed in Dubai,
On a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried.
Clergymen in uniform and Amirs counting gold,
Everyone was there to greet me when I stepped outside.
Newspapermen eating kebabs
Had to be held down by big police.
Someday, everything is gonna be different
When I paint my masterpiece.
My apologies to Bob Dylan for twisting his beautiful lyrics to suit my purpose, but God’s like him are all forgiving.
But things are really “different” for Maqbool Fida Hussain has who has been leaving in self imposed exile for last four years. He exile, albeit self imposed, is more or less for the same reason as Ms. Taslima Nasrin is out of Bangladesh or Salman Rushdie has been collecting girlfriends in his self imposed hiding.
Maqbool Fida Hussain has been conferred the prized Qatari citizenship by Qatar’s powerful first lady, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned, wife of the emirate’s ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and the “masterpiece” is a series of canvasses depicting the history of Arab culture.
Maqbool Fida Hussain has accepted the privilege with honor and has to give up the citizenship of India, the land where he was born.
While Taslima could not conjure so much publicity as she is more obscure because of her regional, gender biased writing and Mr. Rushdie has been a shade of his former self writing subdued novels from the dungeons, people are “fida” about Fida and shakes and stirs at the mention of his name.
Whether it’s New York Times or The Tribune, both local and international media have been crying foul about the “exiled” status of the painter, who has been dubbed as the “Picasso of India”.
Mr. Hussain has a summer residence in London and spends the rest of his time shuttling in Middle East countries.
But the basic question remains why Mr. Hussain is in self imposed exile?
If one has to believe in the reports of the “secularism” obsessed press, the reason is given below. The lines are from Mr. N Ram, editor of “The Hindu”.
“Since 2006, when the Hindutva hate campaign against him escalated, Mr. Husain has been living in Dubai, spending his summers in London. He travels freely except to India, where he faces legal harassment and physical threats, with the system impotent and not committed to enabling his return. Though the Supreme Court has intervened on the right side, it was too little, too late. The Congress-led government, it is clear, has done no better than the preceding BJP-led governments in protecting Mr. Husain’s freedom of creativity and peace of mind.”
Maqbool Fida Hussain was born in pre independent India in 1915 in a village in Maharashtra and went to Sir J.J. School of Art. He started is career (earning money) by painting billboards for Bollywood and then joined the Progressive Artists Group which wanted to break free from the nationalist Bengal School of Art and focused more towards the avant - garde modern redemptions in painting.
Painting, when made commercial, by nature is a bourgeois form of art. It is understood by limited people, adored and appreciated by much lesser population and can be afforded only by the rich and famous.
Even a canvas painting from an outgoing student of Pune School of Art will command a grand. We, the middle class, know more about Hussain’s painting after the auctions at Christies or when bought by a connoisseur by spending an amount which could have eradicated poverty in few small African villages. For the 450 million people living in villages Maqbool Hussain may resonate with the name of a person living in the nearby village.
Painters are creative people, but creativity does not feed you in today’s world. You need to sell and to sell you need to be popular and the easiest way to create popularity is to create a controversy.
Hussain’s paintings started earning him rich dividends mostly after the controversy broke out on pictures which were drawn few decades back.
The controversy started with his Ramayana and Mahabharata series and his depictions of Hindu deities in the nude.
Most of us who would like to discuss Hussain, due to lack of any current topics on making money or cricket, have no credible information about the drawings and all their coffee table dissertations are based on hearsay.
The Hindu belief in God is based on mythology as Hinduism does not have a flesh and blood proponent in the form of a Prophet or Son of God. The belief is older than any man made religion and the scriptures profess equality for all rather than having an expansionist view. That is why we have seen Gautam Buddha choosing a different path and forming his own sect and the same holds true for Jainism. Hindu philosophy is like a huge Banyan tree which shelters other sects and sub sects to grow in peace.
The mythological figures have been in our sub consciousness from the time we are introduced to them and we are given an option to choose our religion and not forced as in case of others. While the same mythology depicts Goddess Kali in the nude, whose form depicts destruction, and through the centuries the idea of that picture is instilled in our head, the same depiction of Lakshmi or Saraswati, Goddess of fortune and knowledge is in their purest form.
It hurts sentiments of people, who are devoid of understanding to that extent, the Indian version of selective freedom of speech, more so in case of abstract art, when such deities are depicted in impure form.
“Indeed, Husain has painted several goddesses from the Hindu pantheon in the nude, including Saraswati, the goddess of learning, Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, and Durga, a martial goddess who slays demons. These are bold works that reshape our thinking about Hindu myths, revealing them in new light; they are not lewd drawings meant to titillate. His nudes delineate the body in sharp lines, elevating it to an abstract realm, suggesting the formlessness of divinity.
This explanation, which is faithful to Hindu philosophy, is too abstract for fundamentalists who have protested against his works, and in some cases, ransacked art galleries in India displaying his art. Some Hindu groups have also used the courts: More than 1,200 cases have been filed against him.” - The New York Times
For common man the above report in the New York Times is pure Esperanto.
We are as we present ourselves to the world and whatever be the form of art, the representation should not be a matter of ridicule.
Maqbool Hussain made a film titled “Meenaxi – Tale of Three Cities” which was pulled out of the theatres after four days of release.
A religious Muslim body found a qawwali number in the film, ‘Noor-un-Ala-Noor’ as blasphemous. The council claimed that the song featuring the film’s main protagonist, contained words directly lifted from the Quran.
The response of Hussain to his withdrawal was succinct,” I have not made the film to make money, nor have I sold it to anyone. Therefore, I need not give any reason for the withdrawal of the screening of the film to public.”
We clearly live in a world of dichotomy and our actions are guided more now by commercial and political motives than by any of our bodily organs.
We can accept the depiction of Sita in nude riding on Hanuman’s tail, claiming it as a form of abstract art or may find it objectionable.
When a greater mass find the painting objectionable then it should be mated with the same fate as that of the Danish Cartoon, Satanic Verses or Meenaxi.
These drawing have been made not for Hussain’s bedroom but for public consumption in the western world. Hussain may have received loads of support from quarters that profit from religious divide in the veil of pseudo secularism, but there had been criticism that supersedes the appeasement.
Satish Gujral has gone on record to ask Husain whether he will be bold enough to treat icons of Islam in the same manner.
According to a senior artist and former President, Bombay Art Society, Gopal Adivrekar, “Nothing is bad in being creative but the artists should not go for such artwork, which may hurt the sentiments of a segment of the society.”
The biggest noise was made by the media, who nowadays play more of a disruptive role rather than the constructive role that they are supposed to play.
Hussain’s acceptance of the Qatari citizenship is a blow to their pseudo secularist role and that’s the reason you see only passing remarks about this issue.
To the pseudo secularists, art lovers or those who pretend to understand art, Maqbool Fida Hussain, may be the Picasso or Paul Gauguin of India but to me, like the majority masses of India, it is just another name and his acceptance of Qatari nationality will mean that we have one less citizen.
Good luck and Goodbye – Maqbool Fida Hussain.
On a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried.
Clergymen in uniform and Amirs counting gold,
Everyone was there to greet me when I stepped outside.
Newspapermen eating kebabs
Had to be held down by big police.
Someday, everything is gonna be different
When I paint my masterpiece.
My apologies to Bob Dylan for twisting his beautiful lyrics to suit my purpose, but God’s like him are all forgiving.
But things are really “different” for Maqbool Fida Hussain has who has been leaving in self imposed exile for last four years. He exile, albeit self imposed, is more or less for the same reason as Ms. Taslima Nasrin is out of Bangladesh or Salman Rushdie has been collecting girlfriends in his self imposed hiding.
Maqbool Fida Hussain has been conferred the prized Qatari citizenship by Qatar’s powerful first lady, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned, wife of the emirate’s ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and the “masterpiece” is a series of canvasses depicting the history of Arab culture.
Maqbool Fida Hussain has accepted the privilege with honor and has to give up the citizenship of India, the land where he was born.
While Taslima could not conjure so much publicity as she is more obscure because of her regional, gender biased writing and Mr. Rushdie has been a shade of his former self writing subdued novels from the dungeons, people are “fida” about Fida and shakes and stirs at the mention of his name.
Whether it’s New York Times or The Tribune, both local and international media have been crying foul about the “exiled” status of the painter, who has been dubbed as the “Picasso of India”.
Mr. Hussain has a summer residence in London and spends the rest of his time shuttling in Middle East countries.
But the basic question remains why Mr. Hussain is in self imposed exile?
If one has to believe in the reports of the “secularism” obsessed press, the reason is given below. The lines are from Mr. N Ram, editor of “The Hindu”.
“Since 2006, when the Hindutva hate campaign against him escalated, Mr. Husain has been living in Dubai, spending his summers in London. He travels freely except to India, where he faces legal harassment and physical threats, with the system impotent and not committed to enabling his return. Though the Supreme Court has intervened on the right side, it was too little, too late. The Congress-led government, it is clear, has done no better than the preceding BJP-led governments in protecting Mr. Husain’s freedom of creativity and peace of mind.”
Maqbool Fida Hussain was born in pre independent India in 1915 in a village in Maharashtra and went to Sir J.J. School of Art. He started is career (earning money) by painting billboards for Bollywood and then joined the Progressive Artists Group which wanted to break free from the nationalist Bengal School of Art and focused more towards the avant - garde modern redemptions in painting.
Painting, when made commercial, by nature is a bourgeois form of art. It is understood by limited people, adored and appreciated by much lesser population and can be afforded only by the rich and famous.
Even a canvas painting from an outgoing student of Pune School of Art will command a grand. We, the middle class, know more about Hussain’s painting after the auctions at Christies or when bought by a connoisseur by spending an amount which could have eradicated poverty in few small African villages. For the 450 million people living in villages Maqbool Hussain may resonate with the name of a person living in the nearby village.
Painters are creative people, but creativity does not feed you in today’s world. You need to sell and to sell you need to be popular and the easiest way to create popularity is to create a controversy.
Hussain’s paintings started earning him rich dividends mostly after the controversy broke out on pictures which were drawn few decades back.
The controversy started with his Ramayana and Mahabharata series and his depictions of Hindu deities in the nude.
Most of us who would like to discuss Hussain, due to lack of any current topics on making money or cricket, have no credible information about the drawings and all their coffee table dissertations are based on hearsay.
The Hindu belief in God is based on mythology as Hinduism does not have a flesh and blood proponent in the form of a Prophet or Son of God. The belief is older than any man made religion and the scriptures profess equality for all rather than having an expansionist view. That is why we have seen Gautam Buddha choosing a different path and forming his own sect and the same holds true for Jainism. Hindu philosophy is like a huge Banyan tree which shelters other sects and sub sects to grow in peace.
The mythological figures have been in our sub consciousness from the time we are introduced to them and we are given an option to choose our religion and not forced as in case of others. While the same mythology depicts Goddess Kali in the nude, whose form depicts destruction, and through the centuries the idea of that picture is instilled in our head, the same depiction of Lakshmi or Saraswati, Goddess of fortune and knowledge is in their purest form.
It hurts sentiments of people, who are devoid of understanding to that extent, the Indian version of selective freedom of speech, more so in case of abstract art, when such deities are depicted in impure form.
“Indeed, Husain has painted several goddesses from the Hindu pantheon in the nude, including Saraswati, the goddess of learning, Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, and Durga, a martial goddess who slays demons. These are bold works that reshape our thinking about Hindu myths, revealing them in new light; they are not lewd drawings meant to titillate. His nudes delineate the body in sharp lines, elevating it to an abstract realm, suggesting the formlessness of divinity.
This explanation, which is faithful to Hindu philosophy, is too abstract for fundamentalists who have protested against his works, and in some cases, ransacked art galleries in India displaying his art. Some Hindu groups have also used the courts: More than 1,200 cases have been filed against him.” - The New York Times
For common man the above report in the New York Times is pure Esperanto.
We are as we present ourselves to the world and whatever be the form of art, the representation should not be a matter of ridicule.
Maqbool Hussain made a film titled “Meenaxi – Tale of Three Cities” which was pulled out of the theatres after four days of release.
A religious Muslim body found a qawwali number in the film, ‘Noor-un-Ala-Noor’ as blasphemous. The council claimed that the song featuring the film’s main protagonist, contained words directly lifted from the Quran.
The response of Hussain to his withdrawal was succinct,” I have not made the film to make money, nor have I sold it to anyone. Therefore, I need not give any reason for the withdrawal of the screening of the film to public.”
We clearly live in a world of dichotomy and our actions are guided more now by commercial and political motives than by any of our bodily organs.
We can accept the depiction of Sita in nude riding on Hanuman’s tail, claiming it as a form of abstract art or may find it objectionable.
When a greater mass find the painting objectionable then it should be mated with the same fate as that of the Danish Cartoon, Satanic Verses or Meenaxi.
These drawing have been made not for Hussain’s bedroom but for public consumption in the western world. Hussain may have received loads of support from quarters that profit from religious divide in the veil of pseudo secularism, but there had been criticism that supersedes the appeasement.
Satish Gujral has gone on record to ask Husain whether he will be bold enough to treat icons of Islam in the same manner.
According to a senior artist and former President, Bombay Art Society, Gopal Adivrekar, “Nothing is bad in being creative but the artists should not go for such artwork, which may hurt the sentiments of a segment of the society.”
The biggest noise was made by the media, who nowadays play more of a disruptive role rather than the constructive role that they are supposed to play.
Hussain’s acceptance of the Qatari citizenship is a blow to their pseudo secularist role and that’s the reason you see only passing remarks about this issue.
To the pseudo secularists, art lovers or those who pretend to understand art, Maqbool Fida Hussain, may be the Picasso or Paul Gauguin of India but to me, like the majority masses of India, it is just another name and his acceptance of Qatari nationality will mean that we have one less citizen.
Good luck and Goodbye – Maqbool Fida Hussain.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Future is Bright, so We Think
The natural resources to support the world population of more than five billion is depleting faster than a piece of camphor left in the open and so is the resilience of the society.
The Amazon rain forest is vanishing faster than the speed of night and along with them the indigenous tribe of the region. The forest of Amazon, known as Amazonia is called the 'lungs of the earth' as it produces twenty percent of the total oxygen in the world. It is the largest ecosystem on earth.
The constant fight between survival of mankind and its environment is pushing them to extremes. The ever increasing population needs more space, grow more food or build infrastructure so that they can support their livelihood. Illegal mining for the benefit of the money mongers and corrupt politicians is taking a toll on the forests across the globe.
The animals are also not spared. The ecological balance is being destroyed for innate fancies of human beings. The population of tigers in China is a miniscule twenty. Tigers are being raised in Chinese tiger farms to be slaughtered for their pelt, meat and bones. The bones find use in traditional Chinese medicines and aphrodisiacs. Despite a ban by the Chinese government the trade is flourishing and now with the year of the Tiger ushered, the poaching has shifted to Indian forests where there are hardly fourteen hundred tigers left (the figure is again disputed).
The global warming due to excess of carbon emissions is resulting not only in higher temperature but also rising sea level. Based on the projected increases, the IPCC TAR WG II report notes that current and future climate change would be expected to have a number of impacts, particularly on coastal systems. Such impacts may include increased coastal erosion, higher storm-surge flooding, inhibition of primary production processes, more extensive coastal inundation, changes in surface water quality and groundwater characteristics, increased loss of property and coastal habitats, increased flood risk and potential loss of life, loss of nonmonetary cultural resources and values, impacts on agriculture and aquaculture through decline in soil and water quality, and loss of tourism, recreation, and transportation functions.
We are busy fighting to whom Mumbai belongs, but we do not care for the fact that in few hundred years Mumbai, which is an island, would seize to exist. We are fighting for a lost cause and for vested political interests.
The deep sea water fishing (bottom trawling) brings up a whooping 20 million tons of fish from the bottom of the ocean every day. This destroys the entire ecosystem of the ocean. The fishes are not getting enough time to breed and there is depletion in the fish population. Almost quarter of the haul perishes before it reaches the market. The fancy of the Japanese for whale meat has driven the species to near extinction.
The biggest problem that affects us directly is the depletion of the ground water level. This affects not only sustenance of life but also for agriculture. To suck up water from the ground one needs to dig deeper or needs to use more powerful pump, which in turn needs more energy. There is a huge scarcity of potable water. In Sub African countries more than sixty percent of the population does not have access to potable water. Even a modern city like Mumbai has to depend on rain God and on the artificial lakes for their daily source of water. When the rain God plays truant, the taps run dry and the shortage of power is imminent.
In a strategy of sort countries have started buying tracts of farm land and water bodies in Africa or in countries like Brazil. Most of the Middle East countries and China have bought around five to ten percent of farms lands in the African countries like Ethiopia, Niger, Kenya and Mozambique. War is being promoted to reign in instability and for profiteering of some advanced countries.
The facts are known to all of us and we can do nothing but be mere spectators and watch in delusion the slow destruction of the mankind. These are collective follies of our race as we try to outsmart nature, of whose powers we do not have any credible information.
We bring up the next generation by imparting them the best of education or vocational skills but do we have the moral fiber to tell them that they have to go for days without having a bath, or they have to go to a museum to see a stuffed tiger or to an aquarium to see a common Tuna or Sardine or be prepared for the dark days ahead as there will be so much scarcity that only might may prevail over knowledge.
All I wish for is a careful introspection of our consumption pattern. We earn to live a good life but the good life is not restricted to us, our next generation also deserves a bit of that if not the whole.
The Amazon rain forest is vanishing faster than the speed of night and along with them the indigenous tribe of the region. The forest of Amazon, known as Amazonia is called the 'lungs of the earth' as it produces twenty percent of the total oxygen in the world. It is the largest ecosystem on earth.
The constant fight between survival of mankind and its environment is pushing them to extremes. The ever increasing population needs more space, grow more food or build infrastructure so that they can support their livelihood. Illegal mining for the benefit of the money mongers and corrupt politicians is taking a toll on the forests across the globe.
The animals are also not spared. The ecological balance is being destroyed for innate fancies of human beings. The population of tigers in China is a miniscule twenty. Tigers are being raised in Chinese tiger farms to be slaughtered for their pelt, meat and bones. The bones find use in traditional Chinese medicines and aphrodisiacs. Despite a ban by the Chinese government the trade is flourishing and now with the year of the Tiger ushered, the poaching has shifted to Indian forests where there are hardly fourteen hundred tigers left (the figure is again disputed).
The global warming due to excess of carbon emissions is resulting not only in higher temperature but also rising sea level. Based on the projected increases, the IPCC TAR WG II report notes that current and future climate change would be expected to have a number of impacts, particularly on coastal systems. Such impacts may include increased coastal erosion, higher storm-surge flooding, inhibition of primary production processes, more extensive coastal inundation, changes in surface water quality and groundwater characteristics, increased loss of property and coastal habitats, increased flood risk and potential loss of life, loss of nonmonetary cultural resources and values, impacts on agriculture and aquaculture through decline in soil and water quality, and loss of tourism, recreation, and transportation functions.
We are busy fighting to whom Mumbai belongs, but we do not care for the fact that in few hundred years Mumbai, which is an island, would seize to exist. We are fighting for a lost cause and for vested political interests.
The deep sea water fishing (bottom trawling) brings up a whooping 20 million tons of fish from the bottom of the ocean every day. This destroys the entire ecosystem of the ocean. The fishes are not getting enough time to breed and there is depletion in the fish population. Almost quarter of the haul perishes before it reaches the market. The fancy of the Japanese for whale meat has driven the species to near extinction.
The biggest problem that affects us directly is the depletion of the ground water level. This affects not only sustenance of life but also for agriculture. To suck up water from the ground one needs to dig deeper or needs to use more powerful pump, which in turn needs more energy. There is a huge scarcity of potable water. In Sub African countries more than sixty percent of the population does not have access to potable water. Even a modern city like Mumbai has to depend on rain God and on the artificial lakes for their daily source of water. When the rain God plays truant, the taps run dry and the shortage of power is imminent.
In a strategy of sort countries have started buying tracts of farm land and water bodies in Africa or in countries like Brazil. Most of the Middle East countries and China have bought around five to ten percent of farms lands in the African countries like Ethiopia, Niger, Kenya and Mozambique. War is being promoted to reign in instability and for profiteering of some advanced countries.
The facts are known to all of us and we can do nothing but be mere spectators and watch in delusion the slow destruction of the mankind. These are collective follies of our race as we try to outsmart nature, of whose powers we do not have any credible information.
We bring up the next generation by imparting them the best of education or vocational skills but do we have the moral fiber to tell them that they have to go for days without having a bath, or they have to go to a museum to see a stuffed tiger or to an aquarium to see a common Tuna or Sardine or be prepared for the dark days ahead as there will be so much scarcity that only might may prevail over knowledge.
All I wish for is a careful introspection of our consumption pattern. We earn to live a good life but the good life is not restricted to us, our next generation also deserves a bit of that if not the whole.
Monday, January 4, 2010
WHITE LIES
The war is on, although in a muted fashion till date. The recent pogroms in
It has moved away from continents and has narrowed down to religions. It is a fight between Christianity and Islam for the throne to rule the world.
While Christianity is facing a decreasing population and also a decimation of global dominance due to emerging power of
By definition of the constitution of the country we, Indians, are secular. But the grave question that surrounds us today is the fact how long we can remain secular. Another 50 years at the maximum? Once the parity in the population mix is destroyed can we maintain our secular credentials?
Noted journalist Mr. M.J.Akbar stated that “minorities” is independent of the state. Simply put, during the Moughal Empire the minorities were not Hindus, but the ruling classes themselves. Similarly in spite of ruling
The Muslims who are considered to be the biggest minority in this country as per the 2001 census (2) constitute around 13.4% of the population and are growing at one and half times faster than the rate of growth of the Hindus. Between
Of the 48 fastest growing countries by population today, 28 are majority Muslim or have Muslim minorities of 33% or more. (3)
Between 1961 and 2001, in absolute numbers, the Hindu population has grown from 366 million to 827 million - a growth of 126% while the Muslim population in the same period grew from 47 million to 138 million - a growth of 193%. The Muslim population growth was consistent at about 50% higher than the Hindu population. What is more alarming is that Hindu population growth rate has declined from 25% in the previous decades to about 20% in the decade preceding the Census while the Muslim population growth, if not increased, as the initial data had indicated, it has almost remained constant, and if declined, only marginally so. It is still a high of around 30%.
Secularists argue that margilisation of the Muslims and lack of education has caused insecurity leading to the growth, but they conveniently forget that the same does not hold true for other minorities like Christians, Jains etc.
Sustenance of such a huge population (
Europe and
In 1905 the French government passed a law stipulating "the separation of churches and the state," thus enshrining secularism as a national principle (laïcité). The law, which barred the state from officially recognizing, funding or endorsing religious groups, represented a major shift in church-state relations in
We are afraid to face the imminent truth or shy away from our own religion or in a show of embracing modernity we put up a brave face of “secularism” to subvert the truth. But facts cannot be shoved under the carpet for a long time.
“High Muslim population growth is in fact a part of a greater global plan to make Islam the dominant religion in the world by sheer demographics. In all fairness to Muslims, their religious leaders and the rank and file are quite open about why the Muslims want to increase their population at a faster rate. As many Muslim leaders have pointed out they are not interested in "quality of life" -- they are interested in "the quantity of the Muslim population". (6)
The North African countries are a stark pointer to this fact. Even after centuries of being a colony to either France or Dutch they have shunned all forms of modernity and embraced the Islamic way of life.”
We have started seeing the effects of the Muslim growth in some parts of
Who will get a visa to visit the country is not decided by the GOI but by religious organisations (the Salman Rushdie issue). (7)
We can shed as much of crocodile tears for our Muslim brethren, take out candle light processions when they are “oppressed” but it needs to be seen when the table turns after 50 years what treatment are the majorities of today mated with?
The ball is in the court of the pseudo secularists and the so called secular columnists of the
Source:
- (1) CNN-IBN
- (2) Census of
- (3) Times of
- (4) & (5)The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
- (6) The
- (7) The Times of
- An Independent Social Magazine
- Wikipedia – general information
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Is the Press failing us?
The columnists of Times of India have an uncanny penchant for picking up topics which has very little or no journalistic value. All that these articles do is to flare the passion of religiousness in the minds of the dogmatic or take the so called middle class, pseudo secularists for a ride.
Few days back there was an article on TOI by Jug Suraiya based on an article,” Religious freedom experts put India on 'watch list'” published by Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Without going through the fact what the original article states, the article in TOI devoted half the space in lambasting the Hindu zealots and shading tears for the Muslim and Christian brethren.
It gravely stated that we as a nation (read Hindus) are becoming intolerant and are being incited at the flimsiest of reasons. It went on to detail the exploits of Hindu extremists (read BJP & Shiv Sena, RSS etc. with an emphasis on Narendra Modi) and the inconceivable pains undergone by the minorities (read Muslims), who already have the legacy of being oppressed for since independence. Then it went on to state about how a secular democratically elected government should tackle such issues and ended with a big moral question,” Are we playing in the hands of the zealots?”
Any reader of Hindu origin (please exclude the secularists – they form an alternate religion by themselves) who has gone through that article is bound to feel a bit restrained and embarrassed. After all it does not speak well about the oldest religion in the world, and which, if truth to be told is not a religion but a way of life.
The article was a clear subterfuge for bashing Narendra Modi, digging up the 2002 Gujarat riots. That is the sadistic pleasure the columnist derived and we helpless readers have to bear through his more than 200 words article. And sometimes we also tend to believe in these articles, the very reason why we subscribe to newspapers to get to know about the happenings of the world and to get expert viewpoint on current socio, economic and political affairs.
If we were to search and dig out information on our own it would be a difficult exercise and in that case newspapers will come to an early exit than predicted.
Pew Forum is a research foundation based in U.S.A (mostly supported by government and religious bodies of that country) and publishes research on a myriad of issues relating to the affect of religion on politics, law, world affairs and domestic policy.
The article on Pew forum was based on a rating given by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
Has anyone ever heard of such an organisation let alone paying heed to their ratings?
But if your main aim is to instigate or to take a sardonic view on someone you detest, you have to burn the midnight oil to find your source, however obscure it may be.
The link to the article is given, go through the same and find out how vulnerable we are in hands of such national newspapers. They twist facts, events and make us believe in things that have never happed and they do it without checks and balances.
From the day Thomas Carlyle coined the term “Fourth Estate” in 1841 to represent the press, we have had our firm belief in them.
But it seems what Oscar Wilde said few decades back holds good even today.
“In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.”
The original article in the Pew forum can be found here:
http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=18553
Note: The Government of India has refused to grant visa to USCIRF for doing any study; much to the annoyance of Mr. Jug Suraiya (the fact he conveniently forgot to mention in his article)
Few days back there was an article on TOI by Jug Suraiya based on an article,” Religious freedom experts put India on 'watch list'” published by Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Without going through the fact what the original article states, the article in TOI devoted half the space in lambasting the Hindu zealots and shading tears for the Muslim and Christian brethren.
It gravely stated that we as a nation (read Hindus) are becoming intolerant and are being incited at the flimsiest of reasons. It went on to detail the exploits of Hindu extremists (read BJP & Shiv Sena, RSS etc. with an emphasis on Narendra Modi) and the inconceivable pains undergone by the minorities (read Muslims), who already have the legacy of being oppressed for since independence. Then it went on to state about how a secular democratically elected government should tackle such issues and ended with a big moral question,” Are we playing in the hands of the zealots?”
Any reader of Hindu origin (please exclude the secularists – they form an alternate religion by themselves) who has gone through that article is bound to feel a bit restrained and embarrassed. After all it does not speak well about the oldest religion in the world, and which, if truth to be told is not a religion but a way of life.
The article was a clear subterfuge for bashing Narendra Modi, digging up the 2002 Gujarat riots. That is the sadistic pleasure the columnist derived and we helpless readers have to bear through his more than 200 words article. And sometimes we also tend to believe in these articles, the very reason why we subscribe to newspapers to get to know about the happenings of the world and to get expert viewpoint on current socio, economic and political affairs.
If we were to search and dig out information on our own it would be a difficult exercise and in that case newspapers will come to an early exit than predicted.
Pew Forum is a research foundation based in U.S.A (mostly supported by government and religious bodies of that country) and publishes research on a myriad of issues relating to the affect of religion on politics, law, world affairs and domestic policy.
The article on Pew forum was based on a rating given by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
Has anyone ever heard of such an organisation let alone paying heed to their ratings?
But if your main aim is to instigate or to take a sardonic view on someone you detest, you have to burn the midnight oil to find your source, however obscure it may be.
The link to the article is given, go through the same and find out how vulnerable we are in hands of such national newspapers. They twist facts, events and make us believe in things that have never happed and they do it without checks and balances.
From the day Thomas Carlyle coined the term “Fourth Estate” in 1841 to represent the press, we have had our firm belief in them.
But it seems what Oscar Wilde said few decades back holds good even today.
“In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.”
The original article in the Pew forum can be found here:
http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=18553
Note: The Government of India has refused to grant visa to USCIRF for doing any study; much to the annoyance of Mr. Jug Suraiya (the fact he conveniently forgot to mention in his article)
Friday, January 1, 2010
A HAPPY NEW YEAR
The starting of 2010 was quite interesting with the “idiotic” producer telling the errant press and media to “shut up”. Mr. Bhagat has written a long blog (if it ran a few more lines, it could well be his fourth novel called “License Fee”) accusing the “idiotic” group of cheating him. He wanted to be the named as the first “idiot” who created the “3 Idiots”.
I feel the timing is not on your side, Mr. Bhagat. You only realized what you are missing after the “3 Idiots” became quite a rave. You were very apprehensive like your last installment of “Hello” which you strongly denied has got anything to do with “A night at call centre”.
You misjudged on the capability of Mr. Amir Khan, who may not be an IIT, IIM alumni but knows a thing or two about his business, which is unfortunately filmmaking. To meddle with a veteran of twenty years on his own ground needs a lot of strength and more than lateral thinking.
There has been a contract between you and the movie makers – you never told us what was about it? It is pure monetary hue and cry or a try for a quick shot to fame.
What is a sure shot recipe for higher TRP? A powerful person (it is a prime time catch if the person is a politician) misusing the law and getting merrily away with it. The Ruchika Girhotra fits the bill to the word R, when the person in question was himself the upholder of justice.
Just today I got an invitation to sign an online petition for justice for Ruchika. I did not sign, not that I do not want the molester to be tried, but I do not want to carry the feeling of guilt with me.
In Bangalore last week, a working couple poured hot oil on a sixteen year old housemaid. She came all the way from the poorest part of West Bengal for a livelihood. She did not want to play tennis; she never dreamed of studying in an English medium school, all she wanted was to work hard for two square meals a day and some clothes to cover her shame. What she got in return was exploitation, harassment, sexual abuse and hot oil spilled over.
News for one week and there goes in oblivion another “common man”.
The sun has already set on the maid who was raped by the small time movie star. He is away in Delhi on a bail and within a year will resurface in a movie, maybe depicting the same real life experience. Who else could play the role better than the maniac?
Such cases are aplenty, but we bury our head like an ostrich and are only selective when we see a potential blockbuster. Burning candles adds a bit to the economy so I do not condemn it, but sorry, I cannot join the bandwagon, because my conscience hurts.
The Nithary killings, the molestation of the orderly’s wife by a Rajasthan Police officer and dozens of such cases needs to be ‘candle lighted’ first, signatures to be taken for them and then only we can move forward. Last In First Out seems to work only in India.
We should not take sadistic pleasure in bringing only the mighty and powerful to justice, justice is for all and more so if we call India as a democratic system.
I feel the timing is not on your side, Mr. Bhagat. You only realized what you are missing after the “3 Idiots” became quite a rave. You were very apprehensive like your last installment of “Hello” which you strongly denied has got anything to do with “A night at call centre”.
You misjudged on the capability of Mr. Amir Khan, who may not be an IIT, IIM alumni but knows a thing or two about his business, which is unfortunately filmmaking. To meddle with a veteran of twenty years on his own ground needs a lot of strength and more than lateral thinking.
There has been a contract between you and the movie makers – you never told us what was about it? It is pure monetary hue and cry or a try for a quick shot to fame.
What is a sure shot recipe for higher TRP? A powerful person (it is a prime time catch if the person is a politician) misusing the law and getting merrily away with it. The Ruchika Girhotra fits the bill to the word R, when the person in question was himself the upholder of justice.
Just today I got an invitation to sign an online petition for justice for Ruchika. I did not sign, not that I do not want the molester to be tried, but I do not want to carry the feeling of guilt with me.
In Bangalore last week, a working couple poured hot oil on a sixteen year old housemaid. She came all the way from the poorest part of West Bengal for a livelihood. She did not want to play tennis; she never dreamed of studying in an English medium school, all she wanted was to work hard for two square meals a day and some clothes to cover her shame. What she got in return was exploitation, harassment, sexual abuse and hot oil spilled over.
News for one week and there goes in oblivion another “common man”.
The sun has already set on the maid who was raped by the small time movie star. He is away in Delhi on a bail and within a year will resurface in a movie, maybe depicting the same real life experience. Who else could play the role better than the maniac?
Such cases are aplenty, but we bury our head like an ostrich and are only selective when we see a potential blockbuster. Burning candles adds a bit to the economy so I do not condemn it, but sorry, I cannot join the bandwagon, because my conscience hurts.
The Nithary killings, the molestation of the orderly’s wife by a Rajasthan Police officer and dozens of such cases needs to be ‘candle lighted’ first, signatures to be taken for them and then only we can move forward. Last In First Out seems to work only in India.
We should not take sadistic pleasure in bringing only the mighty and powerful to justice, justice is for all and more so if we call India as a democratic system.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
NIGHT RAMBLINGS
The Times of India’s Crest Edition on Saturday promised to deliver a lot – in-depth articles about the current socio political situation, articles that stimulates your mind, articles that provides questions and provokes answers. It would be so exclusive that if you do not book it you may risk the chance of missing it.
The daily edition of Times of India has become no more than an entertainment daily. It has got less and less of news (even if there is news they are all politically biased) and more of who’s wedding whom and how many times. I firmly believe the breed of investigating journalism, like in the movie,” The State of Play” is extinct. The featured articles on Sundays were also in a state of apathy till M J Akbar saved the day for them and Mr. Swaminathan Iyer returned sane from the lunatic asylum (you should read his articles two years back).
The Crest edition was not only a disappointment, but it showed how TOI lacks perspective. Or on the second count it may be that their research has found that today’s metro centric people want such articles.
I still miss “The Statesman” of the eighties (Mr. Sunanda K Dutta Roy – please come back, all is forgiven) and the promising start of “The Telegraph”.
Commercialism or pure lure for money has destroyed great institutions like “Indian Express”, “Jugantar” to name a few. The Hindu is struggling to keep its head up. While most newspapers struggle to get one full page advertisement, today’s TOI has six four color full page advertisements. One of my friend’s wife jokingly said that TOI is a great monthly earner – she earns more by selling the newspapers than she buys them for.
To commemorate the tragic events of 26/11/2008 there were lot of support shows/functions/rallies.
As usual there was a candle light walk to the Gate Way of India (which caused a lot of disturbance to the new inhabitants of the old monument – jawans from the Indian Army), release of a book by Mrs. Karkare (no offence, but if the book was released before hand then I think we could have shown some sensitivity to the issue at hand – I squarely blame the greedy, sympathy seeking publishers), chat shows on all television channels (TRP ratings were based on the decibel level).
Photograph of one such rally by a group of school going children was posted on Facebook. All boys were within twelve years, dressed in a specially made outfit of blue T shirt with red sleeves and a matching red shorts. They skated on the old Mumbai Pune highway. The parents, organizing committee followed them on bikes, cars etc.
The best part was the comments on the photographs complimenting how good the kids were onto skating and should be properly trained etc. (I cannot publish the photograph, maybe it will be against privacy policy.)
I think that I have the right to be cynical with this hypocritical, metro based selfish middle class society.
I always wonder why people living in the Gulf countries wish “Eid Mubarak” on the Facebook. Are they more secular than us or is it a feeling of insecurity? Whatever it is, hope they had a Happy Eid.
The daily edition of Times of India has become no more than an entertainment daily. It has got less and less of news (even if there is news they are all politically biased) and more of who’s wedding whom and how many times. I firmly believe the breed of investigating journalism, like in the movie,” The State of Play” is extinct. The featured articles on Sundays were also in a state of apathy till M J Akbar saved the day for them and Mr. Swaminathan Iyer returned sane from the lunatic asylum (you should read his articles two years back).
The Crest edition was not only a disappointment, but it showed how TOI lacks perspective. Or on the second count it may be that their research has found that today’s metro centric people want such articles.
I still miss “The Statesman” of the eighties (Mr. Sunanda K Dutta Roy – please come back, all is forgiven) and the promising start of “The Telegraph”.
Commercialism or pure lure for money has destroyed great institutions like “Indian Express”, “Jugantar” to name a few. The Hindu is struggling to keep its head up. While most newspapers struggle to get one full page advertisement, today’s TOI has six four color full page advertisements. One of my friend’s wife jokingly said that TOI is a great monthly earner – she earns more by selling the newspapers than she buys them for.
To commemorate the tragic events of 26/11/2008 there were lot of support shows/functions/rallies.
As usual there was a candle light walk to the Gate Way of India (which caused a lot of disturbance to the new inhabitants of the old monument – jawans from the Indian Army), release of a book by Mrs. Karkare (no offence, but if the book was released before hand then I think we could have shown some sensitivity to the issue at hand – I squarely blame the greedy, sympathy seeking publishers), chat shows on all television channels (TRP ratings were based on the decibel level).
Photograph of one such rally by a group of school going children was posted on Facebook. All boys were within twelve years, dressed in a specially made outfit of blue T shirt with red sleeves and a matching red shorts. They skated on the old Mumbai Pune highway. The parents, organizing committee followed them on bikes, cars etc.
The best part was the comments on the photographs complimenting how good the kids were onto skating and should be properly trained etc. (I cannot publish the photograph, maybe it will be against privacy policy.)
I think that I have the right to be cynical with this hypocritical, metro based selfish middle class society.
I always wonder why people living in the Gulf countries wish “Eid Mubarak” on the Facebook. Are they more secular than us or is it a feeling of insecurity? Whatever it is, hope they had a Happy Eid.
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