On Husain we don’t need to be left or right or centrist, we just need to be “right”

by Amrit on 7th March 2010

Ah, it’s after a long time I’m writing here. There’s no particular reason why I haven’t been writing here (sorry to my regular readers), but it also doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned this blog.

Coming to the topic. The “famous” artist MF Husain recently gave up his Indian citizenship and accepted Qatar’s offer to become its citizen. There’s been lots of breast-beating in the country — in fact I just read Barkha Dutt’s column in the HT on Husain becoming Qatar’s citizen — and they’re saying it’s perhaps one of the greatest cultural losses India has faced in the recent times.

He’s been hounded out of India, both by “religious fanatics” and the judiciary for depicting the famous Hindu gods and goddesses naked (some say he’s out only for monetary reasons because he can earn a lot more by not living in India, and it has got nothing to do with the security scenario). In his paintings he has disrobed all major divinities like Saraswati, Durga, Parvati, Sita, Mother India, etc. In one of the paintings goddess Durga is copulating with her tiger, for example.

Before proceeding further I must mention that being an Indian citizen, no matter how vulgar or outrageous depictions he created, he deserved all the security guaranteed by our constitution. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right of every Indian citizen. Even if a major section of our society finds his paintings revolting, our constitution has provisions to express disagreement too. While operating under legal parameters, his paintings could have been barred from public viewings. So ransacking his studios and threatening him physically should have been dealt with severely. In fact it’s the people who threatened him who should have been on the run, not Husain.

Hasain has never been my type of painter (I like Raja Ravi Verma, Shobha Singh, etc.) — I find his paintings quite trite and immature (overhyped), but that’s another issue. Artistic freedom, sure, I’m all for it. If Husain wants to paint naked Hindu gods and goddesses and wants to create the Kamasutra comic with Ram and Sita in lead characters, in the ideal world, nobody should have a problem. In fact I’d suggest to him — seeing his love for Hindu gods — he should have first converted to Hinduism and then painted.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world replete with blatant double standards.

Many who support Husain’s freedom of expression say that Hindus should be the last ones to protest as they have all sorts of gods and goddesses depicted performing various carnal feats in many temples and caves. That’s true, but I wonder if those gods and goddesses can be named. I haven’t visited these places, but can someone point, OK, look, here’s goddess Saraswati in the nude, and here’s Sita in close naked proximity with Ram or Hanuman? I don’t think so. None of those figures have prominent temples and classics written around them. They are all unknown yakshas and mohinis indulging in sex. So equating them with major worshiped folks like Saraswati, Sita, Hanuman, etc. is totally stupid and diversionary, to put it mildly.

In every major religion there are gods that enjoy a level of sanctity. Ram and Sita are highly revered, so are Saraswati, Durga, Kali, Hanuman and Laxmi — you cannot just go on painting them nude in the name of artistic expression, even if they’re mythological (many think they are not — but they have every right to think that way, just as those who don’t think that way). Religion has been here for thousands of years and it’s going to stay for at least a couple of centuries more (even scientology is a new religion), people are often ready to kill and die for it. People quietly accept hunger and backwardness but mess with their religious sentiments and they’ll cut you in half if they can. I’m not saying this is right, but this is a reality. It needs to be changed, it is changing, but it’ll take some time.

Freedom of expression comes with sensitivity. You don’t paint Muhammad sexually cavorting with one of his wives or camels, you don’t show Guru Gobind Singh intimate with Mata Sundri: the so-called Hindu fanatics just ransacked and threatened, Muslims and Sikhs will surely decapitate you, whether someone likes it or not, and you won’t even be able to run to another country, Qatar and all. This is a reality and hopefully such reactions will mallow down (we cannot accept them to go) with time. So no matter how “evolved” a painter you are, and no matter how tolerant and civilized religion you are dealing with, on your own, you should have enough dignity to draw a line.

I don’t really care where Husain lives and paints (may he be blessed with hundred more years), but if he wanted to live in India, even if it took the entire military, he should have been made to feel save. It’s a loss that he left, but it’s not a cultural loss, it’s an indictment of our inability to evolve as a truly democratic and civilized country.

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Making the world greener with every new marriage

by Amrit on 13th December 2009

The day before yesterday Alka brought to my attention a very interesting piece of news that proves that when it comes to finding solutions, the only thing that manifests a result is the desire to get the result.

There is a person in Uttarakhan (a hilly state in Northern India) who has succeeded in single-handedly increasing the forest cover of the entire state. Whereas big organizations and governments are bickering at the UN Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen with no real intention of protecting the forests and clearing up the air, Mr. Kalyan Singh Rawat has practically triggered a major ecological revolution, according to this link in The Pioneer. Instead of trying to make people aware of the importance of protecting the existing trees and planting new trees (this would have meant banging his head in the wall) he associated the act of planting a tree sapling to the marriage ceremony. Planting a tree just after tying the nuptial knot became an auspicious act.

Religion can create hurdles and given the right direction it can also usher great positive upheavals and that’s what Mr. Rawat has achieved with an ingenious idea. How did he achieve this?

A nuptial couple plants a sapling in the maternal village of the bride to be nurtured by her family: The cost — negligible. This practice spreads and becomes a tradition at every wedding solemnised: The return — a quantum leap in the forest cover of the area. This is the Maiti movement, meaning mother’s home, the vision of Kalyan Singh Rawat, an unassuming common man with an uncommon urge to protect the environment. Then a teacher in the Government Inter College, Rawat brought a humble but determined start to the movement in 1995 in Gwaldam hamlet in Chamoli district of Garhwal.

After the tree has been planted it becomes the responsibility of the girl’s family to make sure that it remains green and grows into a full tree. Since it is associated with the girl’s prosperity and fertility, a tree dies in the rarest of the rare situations and the survival rate is almost 100%.

This has significantly increased the forest cover and people of even adjacent states are quickly embracing the practice. It has taken him 15 years and almost no money, and now 6,000 villages in 18 states are following this practice.

This news reminded me of Mahatma Gandhi. He also used (at least I think so) a weakness into strength. He knew that it was not physically possible for the Indians to throw the British out (at that time perhaps). But they had a great tolerance for violence. So no matter how much violence the British inflicted upon them, they kept their movement peaceful.

Mr. Rawat has achieved the same thing. He realized that people in India follow religion and tradition like a herd and once the planting of the tree caught on, it would be very difficult to deter them from doing it. Great thinkers and philosophers like Raja Ram Mohan Rai also used religion to re-awaken people’s pride and rid the society of cruel and demeaning rituals. What if somehow we’re able to associate religion with keeping our cities clean, eradicating corruption, illiteracy and poverty and loving fellow citizens?

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Vedic thoughts on sacrificial slaughtering of animals

by Amrit on 25th November 2009

Recently a link was posted on Facebook condemning the scheduled sacrificial slaughtering of 20,000 buffaloes by Nepalese Hindus. It is as it is tragic that we slaughter animals for daily consumption and it becomes more grotesque when they’re tortured and killed in the name of god. In some religions, Islam and Christianity for instance, the more the animals suffer, the better it is, because the blood needs to be drawn out drop-by-drop. In Islam since every animal slaughtered is in the name of god, every single animal goes through an agonizing death: gives you goose pimples when you sit quietly and think about the practice that has been going on centuries.

I’m glad in Sikhism no animal sacrifices are encouraged or tolerated and there are no ambiguities.

Then someone posted this nice link that explains what different Vedas say about animal sacrifice. For example,

The Rig Veda, the most ancient book of the Hindus, says ‘One who partakes of human flesh, the flesh of a horse or another animal and deprives others of milk by slaughtering cows, O King, if such a fiend does not desist by other means, then you should not hesitate to cut off his head (Rig Veda, X. 87. 16).’

Contemporary Hindu ritual is based on the Manusmruti and it is interesting to see that Manu lashed out against all forms of sacrifice and meat-eating. The Manu Samhita (5.48-52) recommends that since ‘meat can never be obtained without injury to living creatures, and injury to sentient beings is detrimental to the attainment of heavenly bliss, let him therefore shun the use of meat. Having well considered the disgusting origin of flesh and the cruelty of fettering and slaying corporeal beings, let him entirely abstain from eating flesh.’

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Kaisa lagta hoga – a poem

by Amrit on 29th October 2009

kaisa-lagta-hoga

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Arun Shourie’s thoughts on M.F. Hussein

by Amrit on 15th October 2009

One of my favorite writers is Arun Shourie and in one of his books he praised M.F. Hussein (the über painter who had to flee India and settle in the UAE for painting some major Hindu goddesses naked) instead of criticizing him (Arun Shourie is the so-called right-wing, anti-Muslim intellectual — I don’t believe that). He said that by merely becoming a painter he has taken on the repressive tenets of Islam that forbid its followers from pursuing any form of art. Therefore, since he is already a pariah in his own community, there is no need for Hindus to chastise him.

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Zindagi bhar nahi bulegi – great song, great acting

by Amrit on 13th October 2009

After doing my riyaaz (singing practice) while having breakfast I was listening to this song – zindagi bhar nahi bhulegi wo barsat ki raat (I’m never going to forget that rainy night) as my effort to understand Raag Yaman (or Kalyan) better. While playing the song on YouTube repeatedly, I gradually began to notice how well Bharat Bhushan has acted in this song. I noticed because if you see the same sequence in some contemporary movie or music album the contrast is striking. The moment the song starts the singer goes into this maniacal trance and in the ensuing fit he or she almost swallows the mike and vomits all over. All hell breaks loose as if some inter-planetary war is going on and soon you’re not sure whether you are watching a singing performance or being witness to an angry speech by one of the wrestlers of the World Wrestling Entertainment. Of course some say it’s like unleashing the inner you, but seriously, are you singing, or are you being tortured by the Taliban?

If the embedded video doesn’t play you can watch it here

Then compare this song. Bharat Bhushan sings in front of a mike in a radio station recording studio. All the expressions are so subtle. He looks a bit conscious, a bit reminiscent, slightly romantic and he also seems to be putting in an effort to sing properly. Notice how when he says dil mein tufaan uthate huae jazbaat ki raat he comes forward and grabs the mike with both hands as a natural reaction to reaching higher notes (I too have this tendency to grab something – sounds crude, though – when I’m singing higher notes). This is how you sing.

Of course I’m not saying this is the only way of singing. I’m just talking about enacting this particular sequence. The director has so dexterously captured the contours of the character.

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Big Boss 3 to include one of the viewers – what about accessibility?

by Amrit on 5th October 2009

Yesterday both my wife and I were watching the opening episode of Big Boss 3 on Colors and in the end when Amitabh Bachchan announced that someone among the viewers may be invited to live in the house among the 13 present guests, my wife suggested that I should try. “The sort of guru ghantaal you are, you might even win.” The prize this time is 10 crore. “They’ll have to make the entire house disabled friendly,” I replied and we both laughed. “Then if they refuse you can sue them for Rs. 100 crores,” she said.

Got me thinking. When they announced, did they even in their wildest dreams think that a visually, hearing or physically challenged person may take part in the contest and win? Why leave mentally challenged? Well, I didn’t include this category because some of the contestants already seemed…

In a totally inclusive society that would be taken care of. I’ll welcome feedback from my friends living in the first world countries where disability laws are quite inclusive and stringent but what about such reality programs there? Would they include a disabled person if such a case scenario arises, and can they be persecuted if they are unable to make provisions?

When it comes to accessibility and inclusiveness my opinion is that it’s more about minority and majority than disability. A majority community is always, traditionally, insensitive towards the problems faced by the minority community. Among thousands of people, you come across just one or two persons who require assistive adjustments on the staircases, bathrooms and shopping counters. That’s why they’re “adjustments” and not a part of the architecture, the way it should be. It took a Stephen Hawking to visit India and sensitize the government about making Taj Mahal wheelchair accessible, although of late some NGOs have been doing stellar job at making other tourist places accessible, including Qutub Minar.

Coming back to Big Boss 3, I think such shows can revolutionize the concept of inclusive society if by default they keep the format of the program in such a manner that anybody can participate, irrespective of his or her abilities and disabilities.

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Should there be a holiday on Gandhi Jayanti?

by Amrit on 4th October 2009

This was a valid, and a little less schismatic this time, question raised by Shashi Tharoor (again, on Twitter). Personally, I have no problem with national holidays and if I’m not wrong we just have 3 national holidays. Before we can answer whether we should have a holiday on the birthday of a person who worshipped work, we have to decide why in the first place we take a holiday on this day?

Ideally, this type of holiday should be taken so that we can sit aside for a day and think about the great soul. People should get together, whether online and offline, and talk about Mahatma Gandhi: his life, his philosophy, how he supposedly got us independence, his non-violent (and controversial) ways, and what he thought about the world in general (and about sex, according to this Tweet from Pritish Nandy). There should be neighborhood gatherings (do we still have those?) of kids and adults and hold discussions on Mahatma Gandhi. Do we do that? Hardly.

For instance, this time it was nothing but an extended weekend. People pack up their bags and go to visit places they can visit and come back by late Sunday evening. Or they simply laze around. You hear or read things about Gandhi only while casually browsing through TV news channels, Twitter streams and blogs. Music and entertainment channels start broadcasting Valentines-related or festival-related programs days in advance (so that people don’t absentmindedly forget about spending their money on greeting cards, expensive gifts and themed dinners). They don’t even show themed songs the way they, occasionally, do on Republic and Independence Days. So it just becomes a holiday. So should we have it?

This holiday should be scrapped. But instead of working or studying, people should do some brainstorming on how we can improve our country? When was the last time you constructively talked about making your country a better place to live? We all criticize and crib as regularly as we shit, but how many times we actually think about solutions and how to implement them? If the guys at BlogActionDay can organize blog action days year after year and motivate bloggers all over the world to write on relevant topics, why cannot we organize such days on Gandhi Jayanti? Senior managers and school/college principals should organize cleanliness drives where they visit neighboring places and clean them up. You may think what can be achieved by doing such things once a year? Not much. But do you think our country is so hopeless that if hundreds of thousands of people participate in this annual event, not even a few hundred will carry on the work for a few more days and in the process motivate more people?

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Did Karan Johar do the right thing by apologizing to Raj Thakery?

by Amrit on 2nd October 2009

Many theaters in Pune and Bombay (Mumbai) had to take down the recently released Karan Johar produced film Wake up, Sid when some MSN (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena) stopped its screening for using Bombay instead of Mumbai. Bombay was changed to Mumbai back in 1996. Before the British the city was called Mumbai.

Before proceeding further, please give your opinion on this issue using the poll given below.

Many, including Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, has said that Karan Johar shouldn’t have apologized to Raj Thakery and given in to his gundaraj. I feel he did the right thing. So much is at stake when you make and release a film. The problem in our country is that you will find people a-dime-a-dozen who will tell you what you should do and shouldn’t, but when it actually comes to standing by your side and taking on the onslaught they conveniently disappear.

The thing is, you can either be a crusader or an entrepreneur. For Johar, they can shove the name up their asses as long as they let him run his movie. It’s like being mugged in a dark alley (actually our entire country is becoming like a dark alley); you don’t confront the gang of muggers or try to talk sense into them. You simply hand over to them whatever you have and move in with life. Losing your life over small things is not worth it. People like Raj Thakery and his goons are like those muggers. If they are happy with a paltry apology, big deal, you shouldn’t lose your sleep over it. Give it to them and move on. People won’t even remember this after a few days.

But then, you may ask, doesn’t it encourage them to commit further mischief? Yes. Too bad. We ourselves have made our society like this by continuously choosing wrong governments election after election. Raj Thakery and such are socio-legal problems and they have to be dealt at the police and political level. You cannot expect (and shouldn’t) Karan Johar to leave everything and start a campaign against Raj Thakery just to prove a point. All he wants to do is make films and earn profits, which is quite a legitimate aspiration. Instead of urging him to stand up to Raj Thakery and his goons, people themselves should organize a campaign and show Raj Thakery his true place.

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Use what you manage or administer

by Amrit on 29th September 2009

These days I’m providing social media and Internet consulting service to an organization that supports rickshaw wallas and encourages people to use rickshaws instead of automobiles for shorter distances. On Saturday evening Nalin Sinha — the person who is strenuously working for the rickshaw wallas who are victimized both by the people and the state — came to my place to talk about the project.

After going through the details of the website I’m designing for them and the near-future social media strategy we started talking about the socio-political scene of the country. While talking Nalin gave a very interesting suggestion that he had also presented in the New Delhi municipality and administrative meeting around a year ago, and was laughed at. It’s about improving efficiency levels among bureaucrats and politicians.

He says whenever you are managing a civic service or a constituency you should be made to bear what other people have to go through. For instance, if certain government hospitals are under your administration, then you and your family can only get treated in those hospitals and nowhere else, and if you go to another hospital you should provide a valid reason. If you are in charge of a relocation drive then you should be ready to live in the newly settled colony and use the same amenities available to its residents. If some schools are under you then your kids have to study in those schools.

The gist is, whatever you manage, use it. This way you’ll make sure that things work properly. You’ll make sure the hospitals under you are hygienic (you can actually fall sick if you visit the general wards of AIIMS and Safdardjang Hospital) and the doctors come on time and are humane (right now they are nothing less then barbaric, not all of course), etc. You will want the schools to work properly. You will make sure amenities like electricity, water, roads, street lights are functional and the security of the air is actually present.

Wondering if such a thing can happen.

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