Hindu Kahan Jayen ? Hindu Kahan Jayen ?
Last week was the rare occasion, when I have had to travel in the line of work - San Jose to San Diego. At both the airports, I was asked to step aside for an additional, more thorough frisking and pat down session. This additional frisking session is an ordeal, you are asked to step aside and stand with your legs spread apart, and your arms raised to shoulder level while an extremely sensitive metal detector is swayed up, down and almost in your body. If the detector goes off - which it does for things as small as your regular jeans rivets - you are subjected to an additional pat down in the region. After the whole thing was over, I observed the additional frisking queue for about half and hour that I had before boarding my flight. I did'nt see a single white guy in that queue. I suppose a lighter way of putting it would be - "I was profiled". I was prepared to dismiss it as one of those things we swallow for our thirty pieces of silver and all that.
The next morning I read about the Islamist Terrorist Bomb Attacks in Delhi, and if it is possible, I felt more of a homeless person than I normally do. Is there a place in this world where Hindus can live in peace and dignity ? Racially profiled in the west, and attacked on our festivals in our homes - Hindu Kahan Jayen ? Kahan Jaye Hindu ?
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(1) The bombs were timed to go off in the evening, when "pious muslims" would be breaking their day long fasts in their homes. This is similar to the way the attacks were timed in Bombay in 93, when the "pious muslims" would be in mosques for the friday prayers.
(2) Racial profiling for additional screening of passengers was started in the US after 9/11. What it means is, that if you have a skin colour that is darker that the average white guy, you will be subjected to a humiliating body search. http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=15102&c=207
(3) This is the second attack by Islamist Terrorists on India on the sacred occasion of Dhan Teras. However, the last time they were foiled when two terrorists were shot in the parking lot of Ansal Plaza, Delhi. http://203.200.89.68/pti_news.asp?id=94957
(4) The Indian PM refused to condemn the fountain head of terror attacks in this part of the world, Pakistan, and in an extremely wishy washy manner said those time worn cliches - "India will not be defeated by terrorism"... It is a little rude and very politically incorrect to say this, but considering that the puppet is a Sardar, the puppeteer is a Roman Catholic and the figure head is a muslim, would the Indian governments reaction have been different if it was hindus who were in these positions of power ?
(5) Pakistan condemned the terror attacks, so did other world governments. Meanwhile, plans are afoot in the US Congress to supply about 80 F-16, block 52 fighter jets to the military junta of Pakistan.
(6) A fourteen year old orphan boy cries as his parents are cremated.
(7) Funeral pyers of a family killed in the Dhan-Teras Islamist attack.
(8) U.S. President George W. Bush greets Pakistani Dictator, Pervez Musharraf in the Oval Office of the White House.
Cultural Context and Public Spaces
Last weekend, I watched a movie in a theater after a long time. The movie was KungFu hustle and a better spoof is yet to be made. But I digress, this post is not about the delightful movie and the outrageous special effects. I was with a group of Indian grad. students, mostly North Indian types. Their behaviour in the theater was atrocious, talking loudly while the movie was being screened, talking on cell phones *inside* the theater and happily continuing with the conversation in the face of loud hisses, keeping up a relentless barrage of commentary about every thing on the screen and off the screen. Eventually, they pissed off a group of people sitting behind us, so much that they decided to pay my companions back in their own coin - loud never ending laughs, claps at inappropriate moments and so on ! but I dont think my companions got the message. There was a "Sar-chasm" :-) I could'nt help myself from thinking that these people were really rude, with no knowledge or respect for cultures different from their own. They crossed that line beyond which behaviour in a public space becomes public nuisance: an invasion of that tiny bubble which Americans like to call their "personal space", an intrusion that the luckless people in that theater could do nothing to avoid. I am sure, most of you would agree with my gut feeling about this gang.
Meanwhile, there has been a lot of brouhaha, a lot of collective breast beating and a lot of ugly name-calling among Indian bloggers this past week. It all started with the Indian-Express laying bare yet again the villainous nature of Shiv Sena. With self rightous outrage, a whole gang of liberals jumped onto the bandwagon and branded the Shiv Sena and its louts as the Bombay Taleban. One would think that normally sceptical people would be a little hesitant when it comes to passing judgements on Shiv Sena based on opinion pieces published in the Express, its common knowledge that there is no love lost between the Sena and English language newspapers in India. But a whole group of people appears to have outsourced its opinions to the Indian Express editorial desk. Ofcourse most of these people do not understand marathi, so they would not have bothered to *read* what Saamna published. But lets not bother with such itsy bitsy details. For you, my gentle reader, here's a link to a translation of the article as published in the Express http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=69221.
Now I can't say I agree with all that is said in the article. Particularly, the following:
If a man is provoked by such clothes, who can one blame?
And
it is the evil eye of men provoked by the culture of skimpy clothes that is harmful. Why encourage these perverse tendencies?
These two sentences appear to place the blame of an act of sexual violence such as rape on the victim. Having said that, I think comparing Shiv Sena with the Taleban is taking ones disagreement a little too far. Taleban would have stoned the unfortunate girl to death for adultry. On the other hand, Saamna uses the phrase “innocent girl” to describe the victim. Moreover, nowhere does the article say that in this specific instance, the girl was to blame for the rape.
The article does complain about the explosion of porn/almost porn (remixes, movies, low cut clothes) in public spaces these days, but that appears to be a more general complaint about the direction Mumbai society is moving in, something that is to be expected from a conservative editorial desk. Here are the relevant quotes:
"youth have fallen in the page-three trap. In the attempt to provide a ‘free’ atmosphere at home, parents proudly allow girls to wear skimpy clothes and give boys uncontrolled freedom."
"They spoke while facing Page 3 and Zeher posters. The danger of page-three culture is knocking at our doors."
It is a complaint that I find myself at least partially in agreement with. There is a difference in enjoying a sexual union, and being enjoyed in a sexual union. The usual porn/skin flicks in the media do not depict sexually liberated women, but women in various stages of undress, who are subjected to the most base of human instincts. These skin flicks do not advocate true sexual liberation, instead carry a subliminal suggestion that girls wearing skimpy clothes are more "available/loose". So the Sena does have a point when they claim that "page three culture", skin flicks, hot remixes, item dances (choli ke peeche, haraami/nigodi jawani, jumma chumma.. !!) etc. contribute to a greater number of rapes by reducing women to mere objects with which men can satisfy their lust.
Another interesting sentence in that article reads like this:
Those who argue that there is no connection between women and girls wearing skimpy clothes and rape should keep the social structure in mind.
The question posited appearst to be "Since unsually large displays of skin cause sexual arousal, is it *prudent* to display a lot of skin in areas where people are not used to seeing skin ?" Imagine a young lad from Kolhapur who lands up in Mumbai. From remixes/movies/magazines/TV what he has learnt is that girls who display more skin are more “available”, and since he doesnt see skin in Kolhapur, he automatically assumes whatever these media choose to show is true! What are his reactions going to be, say, if he suddenly encounters people who inhabit page 3 (using sena terminology) ?
I also dont see how the statement in particular and the article in general amounts to blaming the victim. The statement, that wearing skimpy clothes will result in an increase in the incidence of crimes like rape, is not the same as saying that the victim is responsible for the crime. To give an analogy, a statement that
leaving money around carelessly in open view shall result in people being tempted to steal it (hence one should be prudent put money in a safe place), is not the same as saying that
money tempts honest people to go bad, (both money and the moneyed are responsible for corrupting otherwise honest people, hence they are evil and should be locked up). I hope you get the distinction.
Like I said at the start of the post, one should appreciate cultural differences, especially in public places. In my opinion, in a sexually repressed and conservative country like India, it is improper to wear clothes that are “excessively” revealing. Consider this naughty picture of some Sofia Haque at the Cannes.
While I respect the right of Sofia Haque to wear whatever she chooses, would such an outfit be "proper/prudent" in India with the prevalent social attitudes ? Would the defenders of falling hemlines and upthrust clevages welcome Sofia attired like that in their homes ? in their housing societies ? Would their wives ? Just as my companions invaded the private space of others in the theater by their loud chatter, would this kind of an attire in a public space (IN INDIA, NOT CANNES) not be an act of cultural insensitivity and rudeness ? And exactly where does one draw the (hem)line ? Is an inch of cleavage ok ? two ? cleavage of the kind displayed by Ms Haque ? The answer ofcourse is subjective, it really depends on where you are and what you are up to.
While I respect the right of women to own their own bodies, the public spaces in the city belong both to those who want to wear skimpy clothes and the more conservative folks. A compromise has to be found, and it shall not materialize by "They are the Taliban, we are from Switzerland" attitudes. It needs sustained work, dialogue and introspection - including by the English Language Newspapers, all of which have pretty strong page 3s.
India today walks a trecherous path. On the one hand there are the obscurantists for whom the world ends and begins with temples/mosques/.. and on the other there are Macaulays progeny. I just wish there was someone who stood for India and Indians, someone who talked to normal people on the streets instead of assuming a position of moral superiority and talking down to us, the ignorant, the taleban and so brown !
Malvika Singh's Lament
Malvika Singh, a reputed journalist from the reputed newspaper Indian Express, laments the presence of the "offensive minds and manners that have engulfed the streets and landscape of the Capital (Delhi)". She is talking about that incident during the last match between India and Pakistan at Firoze Shah Kotla, where the crowd chucked water bottles on to the ground when they realized that their team was going to loose.
Like the prim matron of a genteel institution, she feels a genuine sense of shame and embarrassment from the boorish behaviour of her charges. This comes across in phrases like these -
"A melee, an obnoxious happening, a crude play of anger against the better of the two, a revelation of a crass mindset", "We were shamed.", "fear that the rowdies would shame us all", "..possible vulgar recoil. It was disgusting but predictable, the mentality being no different from that of those hordes who pulled down the Babri Masjid and also those who slaughtered innocent Sikhs in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi."
Now, Delhi is a city that was made by the Punjabi/Jat immigrant. It is a city that is arguably much more cosmopolitan in character than Mumbai. There are no protests against the Bihari bhaiyaa, or Gujju Shah ji, or Sardar jis, or Madrasis. There are politically incorrect jokes, slang and so on, but none of the sullen threat of a refusal to give you directions just because you asked the question in a wrong language. This is remarkable for a city the linguistic character of which changed almost overnight from Urdu to Punjabi, that has been subject to an unending deluge of immigration.
Having said that, throwing water bottles on the ground is hardly a display of what can be described only by that quaint English phrase, "good sportsmanship", and this is one of the grouses that she has. Delhites and by explicit extension, we Indians, who pulled down that disputed structure in Ayodhya and who massacred Sikhs in 84, "shamed us all with their unthinking lunacy" and lack of sportsmanship. Her second grouse is that in a simple Housewife-ish comparison between the Pakistani and the Indian crowd, she conceives her charges to be lacking. She asserts, "Cut to Pakistan. The genuine warmth towards Indians visiting is, from all reports, unprecedented."
Ofcourse she hasn't visited Pakistan, if she had, she would have regaled us with that tale about the generosity of the auto driver who refused payment, but she relies on second hand material anyway and causes herself much heartburn. So her two major grouses appear to be a lack of sportsman spirit, and a perceived lack of "graciousness" of her charges. And ofcourse, like all matrons, she believes that she knows what is best for her charges, and the charges obviously should speak when they are spoken to.
One would be tempted to think that at this juncture, a
journalist would ask the people whom she is reporting to, and about: Why is it that they indulged in something that she found so obviously egregious ? Instead of asking that question, and reporting and analyzing the answers, we are given this blanket assertion that this behaviour arises from the mentality responsible for pulling down that disputed structure and the massacre of Sikhs in 1984.
One can't, but come to the conclusion that either the people Malvika Singh is reporting about are different from the people she is reporting to - so there really is no reporting to do, only a subjective judgment to be passed - or she is just plain arrogant, and all her analyses can be done without any need to get into a dialogue or conversation with the subjects of her journalism.
This is the kind of attitude that has become the bane of Indian English Language media today. Their language, and their sensibilities are English, and they feel a tremendous sense of shame at their nominal and skin deep Indian-ness when confronted with the Indian reality. What place does Sportsman-ship have in an India-Pakistan encounter ? Wasn't Delhi the city which saw an attack on our parliament two years back ? Wasn't Delhi the city which saw more than 100 "transistor/tiffin box bombs" in a span of months ? Wasn't Delhi the city where the Ansal Plaza is ? (alright you ignoramus, that was the mall where two Lashkar-e-Pigga piglets were shot on DhanTeras, the day Hindus go out for their pre-diwali shopping). Why should Delhi as a city be hospitable to the Pakistani team ? But this is a question that the likes of Ms Singh will not, or can not ask - obsessed as they are with appearing English, in their eyes something adequately done by displaying ostensibly English ideas like sportsman-ship.
As for her second grouse about Pakistanis being more hospitable than Indians, having bombs planted in your buses and trains has the effect of reducing ones hospitality. I remember going to school in a bus that warned its passengers to look for unclaimed baggage under their seats, cause it could be a bomb. But lets not talk about irrelevant things like Bombs and the like when we are in pursuit of that unicorn named peace. This is where the inane soap-opera "Housewife-ish-ness" (apologies to housewives who are not inane) of Ms Singh comes across in its full glory. Isn't Pakistan the country that cleansed its population of all Hindus ? Isn't Pakistan the country that cleansed Kashmir of all its Hindus ? Isn't Pakistan the country that cleansed the erstwhile East Pakistan of a substantial portion of its Hindu population ? And Ms Singh wonders why, an auto driver in Delhi, perhaps Hindu, perhaps a son of refugees from Pakistan, would not waive his fares while his counterpart in Pakistan would. She isn't concerned with the *reality* and the *enormity* of what happened in Pakistan, but only the appearance that on face value, Pakistan is more welcoming to Indians than Indians are to Pakistanis.
How arrogantly ignorant, how blissfully self-important, how self-righteous can one be ?
Thank you Ms Singh, but I think Delhi and Kotla did just fine. The fact that the Pakistanis weren't lynched was a tremendous achievement of either self restraint or the security bandobast. I am highly offended by your sense of matronly entitlement, whereby Hindus are considered too mean for you to talk to, and their lives, emotions and psyche considered of no consequence. Next time, before you badmouth the city that gives you your bread, try talking to some of its denizens. Not doing so is just sloppy.
Passed Without Changes
So I am a Master of Computer Science and Engineering now..
Yeah Rite !! :-D
Nutwar u old Goat, u naughty boy !! :-D
Look where Nutwars left hand is,
also look at the expressions of Musharrafi,
and her bootyguards (all those mooch wallah guys in the background.) !! :-D :-D
Musharrafi is smiling so broadly, looks like the muskrat cant get it up any more :-P
We should take them to Ghatkopar Ke Baba Bengali.. B-/
On Not Mourning the Pope
Christopher Hitchens makes the case much better than I can ever hope to. Courtesy www.slate.com.
On Not Mourning the Pope
Thoughts over the grave of John Paul II.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Friday, April 8, 2005, at 9:10 AM PT
Prasied for his apologies.
Praised for his apologies
It seems only a year or so since every talk-show host and pundit in the country was telling us that Ronald Reagan had personally demolished communism in Eastern Europe. Now we come to the end of an entire week when the mass media behaved as if we all lived in a Catholic country and were united in mourning the Dear Leader, in which this historic achievement of freedom was credited to "the Polish Pope." That isn't necessarily a contradiction: The two men might possibly have shared the work. And it's perhaps thinkable, though not apparently mentionable, that the Polish workers and Warsaw's dissident intellectuals might have had some part in the victory. I can even remember visiting one or two of the latter, such as Jacek Kuron and Adam Michnik, who operated in a mainly secular and partly Jewish milieu, and who thought of Cardinal Glemp of Warsaw as one of their main enemies. But I'll have to postpone this reflection to another time, when we are less servile and less saturated with the notion of deliverance from on high.
What strikes one now is the similarity between the predicament of the Vatican and the predicament of the Kremlin about 45 years ago. Between the death of Stalin and the end of Khrushchev, the crucial question was: How much heresy and revisionism and autonomy can be permitted, without endangering the entire ideology of the regime? We know now how that issue was decided in the material world. Is the supposedly spiritual world immune from similar strains?
Without, it seems, quite noticing what they are saying, the partisans of the late pope have been praising him for his many apologies. He apologized to the Jewish people for the Vatican's glacial coldness during the Final Solution, and for historic filiations between the church and anti-Semitism. He apologized to the Eastern Orthodox Christians, and to the Muslims, for the appalling damage done to civilization by papal advocacy of the Crusades, and by forced conversion and massacre in the Balkans during the church's open alliance with fascism during World War II. He apologized to the world of science and reason by admitting that Galileo should not have been condemned by the Inquisition. These are not small climb-downs, and they do not apply just to the past. They are and were admissions that the Roman Catholic Church has been responsible for the retarding of human development on a colossal scale.
Continue Article
However, "be not afraid." The God-given right of the papacy to make and enforce absolute judgments is not at all at stake. Popes may have been wrong on everything, but they were right in general. By the time the church apologizes for saying that condoms are worse than AIDS, or admits that it was complicit at best in the mass murder in Rwanda, another few generations will have died out. This is almost exactly the sort of stuff with which Communists and their fellow travelers once had to content themselves. There had indeed been "spots on Stalin's sun," as one hack so prettily phrased it. But the leading role of the party was still a sure thing.
Sensing, perhaps, that so many admissions and confessions might sow doubt and unease, Pope John Paul threw himself into the sort of reinforcement that unifies and heartens the flock, or the base. The special sign of this was the mass production of saints and the removal of all obstacles to near-instant canonization and beatification. This is especially handy for beefing up the faith in outlying regions, where a local hero is considered good for morale. Alas for those who value consistency, some of those canonized were at odds with the larger purpose served by the famous apologies. Cardinal Stepinac of Croatia, for example, had been a clerical ally of the Nazi puppet regime of Ante Pavelic, and had known full well of the vile treatment of Orthodox Christians and Jews under this dispensation. Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer, the creepy founder of Opus Dei, was celebrated for his closeness to Gen. Franco. To make saints of such riffraff is the most obvious form of opportunism.
Seeking to cloud a difficult situation with even more of the fragrance of obscurantism, the pope also resorted to an almost wholesale appropriation of the cult of the Virgin. He openly announced that the bullet that hit him was prevented from taking his life not because of the skill of his physicians, but because its trajectory had been guided by Our Lady. She let the assassin fire and hit, in other words, and only then took action. (This reminds me of Bertrand Russell's comment on the practice of placing covers on the baths in convents so as to avoid offending the sight of God. The creator can see through the roof of the convent, and down into the bathrooms in the basement, but is hopelessly baffled by a sheet of canvas.) Sites such as Fatima, which had been frowned upon by serious Catholics for some years, became objects of adoration and pilgrimage and hysteria. The veneration of the Virgin, and the endlessly repeated mantra of "Totus Tuus" ("Everything for Thee") seemed to many veteran believers to depose Jesus in favor of a Marian idolatry, and even to violate the commandment against graven images.
Finally, if the pope is to have so much credit for the liberation of Eastern Europe, he ought to accept his responsibility for the enslavement of the Middle East. He not only opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein in 2003, but the use of force to get him out of Kuwait in 1991. I have never read any deployment of Augustinian argument, in the latter case, that would not qualify it as a just war. Moreover, the pope made a visit to Damascus not long ago, and sat quietly outside the Grand Mosque while the Assad regime greeted him as one who understood that Muslims and Catholics had a common enemy—in the Jews who had killed Christ. (That he may already have been senescent at this point is not an answer: It is a problem, though, for those who believe that he was Christ's vicar on earth.)
Unbelievers are more merciful and understanding than believers, as well as more rational. We do not believe that the pope will face judgment or eternal punishment for the millions who will die needlessly from AIDS, or for his excusing and sheltering of those who committed the unpardonable sin of raping and torturing children, or for the countless people whose sex lives have been ruined by guilt and shame and who are taught to respect the body only when it is a lifeless cadaver like that of Terri Schiavo. For us, this day is only the interment of an elderly and querulous celibate, who came too late and who stayed too long, and whose primitive ideology did not permit him the true self-criticism that could have saved him, and others less innocent, from so many errors and crimes.
Related in Slate
Not in my name !!
Pervez the muskrat may have gate crashed the Cricket match at Delhi, and he may be feted by our nincompoop editors, but where ever he goes, and what ever he does, its *NOT IN MY NAME*.
Even if he does come here, heres what we should do.
1) Give him an liason twice as tall as him. (yeah, he is a runt :-D )
2) For those who can (wink, wink, nudge nudge.. for an iPod !! a Laptop !! anything !!) spit in his soup.
3) Where ever he goes, greet him with hindi pakistani bhai bhai.. India and Pakistan are one nation B-) [this apparently well meaning statement pisses off pakistanis no end :-) ]
4) At Firoze Shah Kotla in Delhi, arrange for American style cheerleaders for the Pakistani team. With flashing green panties to boot :-P (Gimme a "P", Gimme an "A"..).. or (Gimme an "M", gimme a "U"..) :-D Then take photos with him in the middle and the cheerleaders doing a high kick ;-)
5) Take him to visit the ex-Afghan president Najibullahs family.. (Najib was jeep dragged by the bearded ones through the streets of Kabul, castrated, hung from a lamp post.. sequence of events unknown.)
6) Make him listen to Altaf Raza songs B-)
7) Gift Laloo Prasad Yadav to him.
8) Gift him a DVD of Sunny Deol's Gadar :-D
9) Have his barber "accidentally" shave off half his mooch :-{)
10) Put him up in Nayi Dilli Railway station retiring room.
11) Have him negotiate Kashmir with Sunny Deol B-D
12) Have Priyanka Gandhis son do shoo-shoo potty in his lap.. This is the least Gandhis or Nehrus or Vaderas.. oh damn.. whoever, can do for the country :-D
13) Repeatedly compare him to the Mogul, Akbar the great.. (Pakistanis think he was an apostate and hate him :-D )
14) Gift him a history of the Iranian revolution (Americans or no Americans, the Shah always falls)
...
any more interesting ideas ? :-D
Too bad Veerappan's dead.. else we cudve asked the big mooch to kidnap the chota mooch and take him into the jungles..
