I had wanted to talk about this case but somehow it got sidetracked due to many factors. For instance you won’t believe that this actually happened in India (well, you can believe because something similar happened a few years ago in Rajasthan too). I have lost track of the original newspaper link but you can read about the incident at this blog.
A 17-year-old girl was raped by two men and the trial court convicted the culprits. As it normally happens, the culprits appealed to the Allahabad High Court. Manifesting a great travesty of justice the High Court judge stunningly acquitted the culprits on the ground that the girl who was raped, was “promiscuous” and was not a virgin when she was raped. Fortunately the U.P. Government appealed to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled that the HC verdict was bullshit and it should rehear the case.
The logic of the High Court judge was that how can a girl who is used to having sex be believed that somebody had sex with her forcibly? Supreme Court ruled that rape is rape whether the victim is a virgin or not. It took Supreme Court to express such a natural sentiment.
What a shocking judgment it was by the High Court judge. This judge should be immediately removed from his post and should be sent to a mental asylum. Just imagine, so many lives depend on his judgment. What if tomorrow you have to – by any chance – face a trial and this psycho judge is sitting there, about to decide whether you should go to jail or not. Will you trust his judgment if you are in your right mind?
This is a rare case that was backed by a State government and it got some press coverage too. There might be millions of cases being handled by such nutcase judges all over India. Just imagining spending the rest of your life in jail just because your case was heard by such a judge. A precedent should be set; this is not a question of wrong judgment, this was clearly criminal. If this judge can justify a rape then he himself can rape some body, some day. I wonder what stand the Women’s Rights Commission is taking on this, and what other women intellectuals have to say.
The problem with the Indian media is that it is completely lopsided when it reports on Hindu versus minorities issues so I really don’t know what are the ground realities. Just imagine yesterday a news reporter in NDTV India was lamenting the fact that when Kashmiri separatists wave the green Pakistani flag in the valley Hindus protest but when the same Hindu organizations foist a saffron flag atop a church nobody should question them. I’m not saying that forcibly foisting a saffron flag atop a church (after dismantling the church) is a done thing; but you can certainly not compare it to foisting a foreign flag in the Indian territory. Although this is rhetorical I’m just mentioning this fact to demonstrate what a sinister game is being played. And it is not just secular media that plays this sinister game; even the so-called nationalistic and Hindu-oriented newspapers do the same things. Today in The Pioneer instead of reporting what is going on in Orissa their headline reads “Christian bandh shuts down institutions”; they actually have the chutzpah of blaming Christians for protesting the state of rioting going on in Orissa. Man, we are in a real mess when it comes to morality and conscience.
Coming back to the question in the heading: should Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal be banned just the way SIMI is banned? Based on the records of the past SIMI is a terrorist organization that places bombs at public places to cause large-scale destruction. Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal instigate people and organize and orchestrate riots. So yes in their own big and small ways all these three organizations aspire to cause public disorder and destruction. They are certainly not concerned about their communities. If they were responsible for the Gujarat riots and if they are involved in the current ongoing violence in Orissa then they should certainly be banned. Since they are not full-fledged terrorist organizations they should be banned for a few years. The leaders should be arrested and they should be put on trial like any other criminal. Similar logic should be applied to Christian organizations if they are causing disorder with their activities – there might be a few and our mainstream media being what it is, it might never be covering them.
We need to keep in mind that whenever a citizen is attacked whether by terrorist organizations or by religious outfits it should be handled like a normal criminal case and no justification should be entertained (oh, we are perpetually being vicitimized, oh, they are making us Christians).
In my recent posts I have been talking a lot about the Kashmir issue and what a few writers and bloggers have been writing about the recent imbroglio. Sometimes there are comments that are entirely targeted at you and your opinions. Of course if you share your opinions publicly then you should be ready to face counter opinions too and in fact I consider this quite healthy. When people exchange ideas and opinions however much contrary they sound this encourages debate in the society and forces people to think proactively. But when is it the right time to put a stop? Is it worth it that you prove yourself right in front of everybody? I was reading this interesting article on how to deal with difficult people — people who react to you negatively just for the heck of it. In this article there is a very nice quote:
Holding a grudge against someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
This is so very very true. I think sometimes we get in these never-ending loops of arguments and counter-arguments without realizing when the discussion has metamorphosed into a senseless talk where more than the topic the important thing is who is proven wrong and who is proven right and who gets to say the last word.
But it is not always right to keep mum and let the other opinion dominate the environment. For instance right now there is lots of misinformation and vicious propaganda in the mainstream media propagated by the so-called "secularists" and "liberals". In this case lots of harm can be caused if something is not done to counter this propaganda. If a lopsided opinion is thrust upon the masses then lots of social unrest can crop up. All those people who can express themselves should do so in order to maintain a sense of sanity in the country.
Other than that, if there is no national level crisis being caused by your silence and nobody is going to be harmed if you don’t retaliate then it is always better to practice patience whenever somebody — who might already be having some personal problems — attacks you to vent out. Holding a grudge and resenting people for having a different opinion is not worth it. It needlessly saps your energy and produces toxins inside your body.
According to this link you can charge your cellphone when you are running. There is this company that has introduced a charger that gives you a one-hour charge for walking for six hours. This may seem like a lot of effort for a charge of just one hour but it is a great way of charging your cellphone when there is no electricity around and you have to walk a lot. This device can be especially useful in rural India where people have to walk for long miles even to fetch water. But you may ask do such people have cellphones? Maybe not.
The technology will be more beneficial if such energy can be derived from other movements too (no, I knew you would think like that, but I’m not talking about bowel movement), for instance cycling, swings in the park, walking cattle, newsreaders, and all those movements that are prolonged and consistent. With millions of cellphones in circulation just imagine how much electricity can be saved by such motion based charging.
Update (08-25-2008): Just read Arundhati Roy’s article in which she says that Kashmir needs azaadi from India. She’s quite a hateful (I mean, she hates) person as far as this country and Hinduism goes. She is full of spite and it drips through her every sentence. I’m not saying you cannot question the policies of the country you live in and cannot dislike a particular religion (many dislike Islam, and Christianity) and I’m not even saying that people like her should be persecuted, but you can see she doesn’t mean well for Muslims as well as Hindus. Incidentally, I found this text:
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967, amended in 2004-05, says, "Secession of a part of the territory of India from the Union includes the assertion of any claim to determine whether such part will remain a part of the territory of India." The offences listed under this law include any assertion or statement "which is intended, or supports any claim, to bring about, on any ground whatsoever, the cession of a part of the territory of India or the secession of a part of the territory of India from the Union, or which incites any individual or group of individuals to bring about such cession or secession".
A good thing about our country is that you can speak up your mind without scores of fanatics stalking you and vying to decapitate you, and people like Arundhati Roy know it well, and that is why – since they need targets to feel important and relevant – they chose soft targets. Everybody knows what a bloody history the Muslims have had and – I hate to talk like this but the fact smacks at your face with amplified clarity almost everyday – the expression Islam and peaceful co-existence is an oxymoron. Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen took up cudgels against Islam and you have seen what happened to them. Arundhati Roy, on the other hand, couldn’t even spend a single day in jail in order to take a stand. She knows pretty well that Hindu fanatics are not going to come after her throat, and she knows that there are many obfuscated and somnambulantly liberated people in the country, and abroad, who are going to support her views.
I’m not writing this to badmouth about a community – this is the last thing I want to do – but as a religion, you can only progress if you can indulge in self analysis and rectification, and this is anathema in Islam. And people who support Islam blindly and criticize other religions irrationally are in actuality doing it a great harm. In Sikhism there is this great saying (written, interestingly, by Bhagat Kabir Das):
Sura so pahchaniye jo lare deen ke he
The real warrior-champion is that who fights for the oppressed. These days it has become a fashion to side with Muslims and Christians – at least in India – even when they commit the worst human crimes; by dint of no possible logic they can be viewed as oppressed. It has become kind of a peer pressure. The majority has, all of a sudden, turned into the Gestapo and every minority is like the Jews in Germany; which is totally wrong. They are playing a dangerous game and every right-thinking person in the country should actively oppose such subversive activities.
The Indian state as usual is at its pusillanimous best. I’m wondering how dare a Pakistani flag be waved on the Indian territory. Such people should be immediately shot, and I’m not saying it in anger. You take your flag to another territory (disregard the Olympics and other international events) when you have taken over that territory. If they want to hoist Pakistani flags and want to chant slogans like Jeevey Jeevey Pakistan. Long live Pakistan, then they should be either put behind bars or packed off to Pakistan. They should be slapped and told: no Pakistani flag on the India-occupied territory. It sucks? Yes, it does; too bad.
The older post follows:
Reading this article in the New York Times, you’ll feel what a repressive regime the Indian government is, and how an average Kashmiri craves for azaadi, and is ready to die for it.
A few waved Pakistani flags. Some shouted praise for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the banned Pakistan-based militant organization that India blames for a series of terrorist attacks in recent years. “India, your death will come,” they chanted. “Lashkar will come. Lashkar will come.”
Another mass gathering, however, is planned for Friday at the martyrs’ cemetery, where two generations of those killed in the conflict are buried, with all the potential to become yet another flash point of conflict.
“Before the storm, there is always a calm,” a Kashmiri woman, Assabah Khan, 34, declared. “The uprising we see now is the latent anger against the Indian state that has erupted again.”
Mehmeet Syed, who only a few months ago could sing her heart out on stage with her five-piece rock band, remained caged in her home, as her city erupted in a series of fiery protests and strikes. On the road leading to the Syed family home, children guarded a homemade roadblock the other day, clutching stones.
On Monday, on the edges of an open field where tens of thousands had gathered to vent their anger at Indian rule, Abdul Gani Mir, 62, marveled at a young man who had scaled a chinar tree to plant a green Islamic flag.
Mr. Mir said being here filled him with hope. “We succumbed, but I don’t think this generation will,” he said, and then he chuckled. “I wish I were young.”
His niece was among 20 unarmed Kashmiri protesters killed by Indian security forces last week, as they set off on a march to Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
Sheik Yasir Rouf, 27, said he had never before taken part in a demonstration so large, so intense. He was a child in the early 1990s, when the anti-Indian rebellion was at its peak. “This feeling was always there,” he said. “We are fighting for our one right to be free.”
A BBC article on the similar lines (OK, I know someone is going to say that both have been, surprise, surprise, written by Bengali writers).
The paralysed nature of the talks seemed bearable since the insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir since 1990 ebbed during these years.
The valley’s population feels that their homeland is essentially occupied, and harbours a deep sense of oppression over several decades and generations by Indian governments.
This powerful sense of unmitigated grievance was triggered by yet another ’slight’ - the decision to transfer land without any consultation with the valley’s people.
Although the second article is a bit unbiased. I was just wondering, in the international press, why don’t we find articles explaining the Indian side. I use the expression “explaining” because I see this propaganda going on unabated and it is not being cleverly countered.
The immense power of this song lies in these two lines:
Mein man ko mandir kar daloon tu pujan ban jaa
Mandir se puja ka rishta mein na bhoolungi
Translation: “Let me make my heart into a temple, and let you be a prayer; I’ll never forget the kinship between a temple and a prayer.”
Arundhati Roy (had a brobdingnagian crush on her when I was single) apparently set people in a frenzy (either she intends it, or such reactions manifest spontaneously) by declaring India needs azaadi from Kashmir as much as Kashmir needs azaadi (freedom) from India. She’s the favorite intellectual villain, for, even the luminaries like Vir Singhvi and Jag Surya (I think he should stick to humor – he’s damn good at it) expressed similar sentiments but didn’t elicit matching vitriol. Perhaps it was the venue: Arundhati Roy said it in Kashmir, in the thick of the happening action, in front of a crowd that had just marched to the UN office demanding independence from India. The point is not that.
A healthy debate means taking a balanced view. It’s no use fuming and frothing the moment something contrary is expressed. Let’s for once think as a person and not as an Indian; what’s good for India and Kashmir? Is it healthy for India for Kashmir to remain a part of it or we’ll be better off without the valley and its recalcitrant-but-otherwise-peaceful people? It’s not about ego, it’s not about national pride (people get confused between national pride and jingoism), and it’s not about further disintegration. It’s about what’s wrong and what’s right for the greater good. What does India stand to lose if Kashmir goes to Pakistan?
- India’s image as a multi-religion, secular, united, etc., etc., country will be destroyed forever
- A beautiful piece of land – heaven on earth – will go to the arch enemy giving it unparalleled satisfaction and bringing to our people great, long-lasting ignominy
- Other separatist groups will get a moral boost and the country will be pushed upon the brink of balkanization
- Bollywood people won’t be able to shoot there (I guess they haven’t been doing that for decades anyway)
- Lots of non-Kashmiri-non-Muslim people will have to be brought to the remaining Indian territory and rehabilitated
- A few other things I cannot think of (please add them in the comment section)
Will there be gains too? Again, please enlighten me.
So you can see it would be a Herculean task to let Kashmir secede to Pakistan, of all countries. More than economic, it’ll be psychological loss. Right now I wonder how much Kashmir financially contributes, rather, I think it’s a white elephant, with so much expense, both human and financial. Crores of rupees are spent to keep the army there, so many of our soldiers have been needlessly killed trying to protect a hostile territory and so much violence seeps into the main land from the valley.
I think if the Kashmiri’s are so eager to join Pakistan just because it’s a Muslim country and Muslims feel safer there, they should be asked to go to Pakistan. Why is it whenever Muslims want to leave India they want to take a big chunk of land with them (as it happened back in 1947)? Many people will give reference to history and say Kashmir belongs to Kashmiri Muslims. Historically, I mean, really historically, Kashmir was a place where Hindus lived, and in fact, the entire Hindukush region belonged to Hindus, and if not Hindus, then certainly not Muslims (there were Jains, Buddhists and others). Muslims came here, mostly forcibly, and settled here. Now if they want to go, they should simply go, leaving the land behind, and I think India will be more than happy to oblige.
This may seem like an unconventional thought, but it’s not. It’ll be a logical culmination: the righting of a millennium of wrongs.
Communal situations, like what’s happening in Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of the Amarnath trust land allocation controversy, should be handled with a mix of firmness and empathy. No side should be favored, no side should be feared, and no side should be targeted. This gives the government a moral high ground, both nationally and internationally. Elements that instigate people from both the sides should be rounded up and packed off to a secret location, and should be kept there until tempers cool down and a compromise is worked out.
The country should also communicate its consistent policies to the international community. Communication is very important under such circumstances.
The problem of Jammu and Kashmir is quite complicated; it is old, it is communal and it incites passion amidst various national and anti-national groups. I don’t have a firm understanding of the situation, but no country likes to give up territory, whether it’s controversial or clean, even if it becomes a thorn, as it can be seen in many other countries. So what’s the solution? Treat those people as your very own. All the legitimate demands of the Kashmiri people should be met with. Also, people who had to flee the valley, for instance the Kashmiri Pandits, should be rehabilitated back there with full security. Mono-religious areas give rise to countries or ghettos. In order to stop Kashmir from turning into a ghetto and a terrorist hub like Afghanistan, people from other religions should be encouraged to buy property (I think currently it’s not allowed) there and settle down. Of course there will be resistance, even from other countries. But this is how revolutionary steps are taking – not everybody needs to agree.
This article refers to a study that has concluded that married couples who have no kids are happier than those who have kids. Although this is an America-based study, I wonder if it applies to parents from all backgrounds. Having kids surely comes with its attached baggage of troubles but so does not having kids. Having a kid is a life-altering event, and in the cases where the birth is not just an accident of having sex, it is a highly courageous and responsible step.
I agree with the study that it is our social conditioning in most of the cases that pushes us towards having a child. It’s like, everybody around you has children, and you feel the odd one out for not having one.
The study says:
No group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It’s such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they’re not.
Personally I feel it depends on your situation. It’s better not to have kids if all the time you are going to feel miserable and make their lives miserable too. In fact I know some parents who should be arrested for having kids.
Alka and I have a daughter, and it sometimes feel we’ve never had a life of our own for a long time, but the joy she brings to us is also incomparable, and I’m not saying it just for the heck of saying it. When she is sleeping by my side and when I touch her the entire softness of the world fuses into that moment and I feel that life couldn’t be more beautiful and content.
Abhinav Bindra
Okay, I know the heading sounds like a newspaper heading but being not a great sports fan (at least right now), I cannot conjure up some esoteric heading. Having said that, it was great to hear the national anthem while the Tricolor slowly ascended.
This is a true, inspiring individual feat and the nation has tagged along, as it always happens in India. Bring forward at least one individual other than his family and his coach who was instrumental in this feat. True, Abhinav represented India, but how much did “India” actually contribute, to be so happy and gung-ho about his Olympic gold medal? Did the government help him? Did the society encourage him? The sad thing about India is that people want to see success, but they don’t participate in the struggle involved with that success. Alka was just telling me that once he wanted to import a few guns for training and he was not allowed to do that. In Chandigarh there are no proper facilities for the training he required so his affluent family prepared the training facility (of International standards) at home so that he could train. Now since the government is so happy, why didn’t it provide the needed facilities and equipments? Now since we are so happy, why don’t we put pressure on the government when our sportspersons don’t get the facilities they so desperately need? Almost every state government is rewarding him with millions of rupees and many public sector and private companies and organizations are announcing rewards for him. Why cannot the same amount of money be spent on other struggling sportspersons if we are so much in love with getting gold medals. As Indians we very conveniently rejoice and feel proud when an Indian does great in an International competition, but when it comes to contributing while that Indian is training, we quickly look away. I wonder why there is so much inferiority complex and callousness.
I would have certainly felt proud if we collectively had contributed towards Abhinav’s great success. I’m really, really happy for him as an individual, and I’m also happy that Indians are happy and have a reason to feel proud, but it stops there. Good for him, and I hope he inspires present and future generations and I also hope he causes doors of opportunities to open for other struggling sportspersons – they will be the true mark of pride and joy. You can read more about him at Alka’s blog, and here’s Abhinav’s blog.
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