Saket Suryesh's Blog, page 11

On Charlotte Bronte

We live in a cause-heavy world. We have too many causes hounding for attention in public space. So many, that we have stopped taking them seriously. Furthermore, the elite, rich and English-educated in India, who consider themselves as the inheritors of what is called a “White-Man’s burden” have further made the masses cynical towards the causes they endorse on account of great hypocrisy that they have come to represent. So they will write editorials about empowering women and downtrodden, but then we find them tweeting about their maids not having bank accounts or citizen-identification to enable them to move to digital economy; you will find them tweeting about how their hearts are shattered at cruelty against dogs, but the next tweet, five minutes later, you will find them salivating over cow meat. Real causes have become a casualty here.
          Amid all this frivolous noises, old classic literature, thinkers from the past offer a rare hope. This is evident not only in their writings and their work, their lives represent that. It is hard for people today to understand and appreciate the world these heroes from the past lived. In terms of Feminism and women empowerment, there are some voices which have be truest and surprisingly, by today’s environment, much-less shrill, much more concerned, much more true. One looks at those thinkers and writers with great respect. They did not adopt the causes because they were fashionable (in their times, they were not), rather because there sensitive souls could bear silences no more. The honesty of their thoughts is evident in their work.
          Jane Austen, Charlotte, Emily Bronte, Virginia Woolf were those trail-blazing thinkers who defined the space for struggle for gender equality at a time when the term itself was faintly forming. Ms. Woolf, who wrote so beautifully on gender equality, openly in A Room of Her Own, where she talks about how best of the libraries were locked for women, or obtusely, clandestinely, subtly in her other fiction like Orlando, came a century after Bronte Sisters. But they created rare summits in human evolution where one should stand to get a perspective when one studies the journey of Women empowerment and equality in human history, before it gets frittered away by today’s shrill feminists.
Charlotte Bronte was eldest of the three Bronte sisters, Born on 21st of April, 1816, a century from now, in West Yorkshire, England. In a very short life of 38 years, before she died on 31stof March, 1855, supposedly due to Tuberculosis, she produced Five full length novels, Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Emma and The Professor. The last of her novel was published after her death for the want of publisher. This was in addition to a continuous and prolific writing career which included stories and poems. Jane Eyre is one book which I would always recommend to any girl struggling to find her place in the world around her. She is a proud woman, sure of her moorings, but not for once, hateful of the other gender. She stands on her own, with her independent mind and loving heart, but she is open to love. She is not bitter towards the world. This is what differentiates the writings of these great women writers from what would later become an independent category called feminist writers. One would be amused as to how many writers use this term in their profile which adds no value to their writing, but only pigeonholes them. Maybe they are trying too hard to find adversaries in their privileged lives, something which one did not need to ever invent for a Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf or even an Amrita Pritam, much closer to our times.
          Jane Eyre, which made Charlotte a literary star, even in her times, still tells the story and challenges of her times. She had to publish the book under the pseudonym of Curer Bell. Once the secret that Curer Bell was a woman named Charlotte Bronte, criticism flew in. But her work found resonance in the voice of millions of voiceless women who did not even have a vote at that time. Her work is said to morose and melancholy. What makes her work outstanding is that her work is honest and brave. She did not strive to make her stories sad. She took it from her life.
The family with five little girls and a boy, moved to a nondescript village when Maria the eldest was seven and Charlotte was the youngest. The kids of a strict disciplinarian father, though much concerned about intellectual growth of his daughters quickly adapted to the parenting they had. An acquaintance who later became nurse to Charlotte says- “Maria, seven years old, would shut herself up in children’s study, with a newspaper, and be able to tell one everything once she came out- debates in parliament, and I don’t know what all.”  The kids grew up in the weather of indifference. Father ate alone, and kids ate their potatoes in silence and wandered hand in hand to spend hours in moors, when not reading about political debates in parliaments. The invalid mother died when Charlotte was five and elder daughters were sent to Boarding schools, where uncared for, they died, soon after Charlotte and Emily went on to join them. This sordid incident became a part of Jane Eyre, where in Lowood School Jane witnesses the traumatic death of her friend, Helen Burns.           There as a deep longing for love in Charlotte, such sensitivity of soul that leaves little room for the bitterness to flow. Her life was a yearning, a search for love. She, devoid of love, by a very dry and distant parenting wrote in Jane Eyre- “Human beings must love something.”  Her longings, and the emptiness of her soul found salvation in work. Amid all the gloominess of growing up, there was a very brave mind developing in the sisters which refuses to be cowed down by negativity and criticism. When she reached out to Poet Laureate Southey for advice, she gets a totally discouraging one, telling her to desist from literary life which is ‘unbecoming’ of a lady. Charlotte writes that while the response was disappointing, not for once did the Poet Laureate mention that the poems weren’t worthy.
The collection of poems by sisters were put forth but weren’t received well. And the brave writer writes in a jest- we have decided on distributing as presents a few copies of what we cannot sell. “The Professor” was rejected because the publishers felt there was lack of startling incident and thrilling event. Not one to be discouraged, then Charlotte set about penning the novel which would redeem her as a writer and place her on the high pedestal of literature for all times to come. Her resolution resounds in her words, she wrote as she sets about writing “Jane Eyre”. She writes, “I will show you a heroine as plain and small as myself, who shall be as interesting as any of yours.
          Jane Eyre became a darling of the readers and critics alike. George Eliot, then Twenty-four appreciated and empathized with the writer much, And once it was clearer the Curer Bell was no man, but a thin, little lady called Charlotte Bronte, she became quite a celebrity. She was quickly accepted in the hallowed circle of literary celebrities like Dickens, Eliot and Thackeray. Her hard work comes out clearly in the absolutely enchanting detailing which Jane Eyre is full of. Thackeray wrote after meeting her- “I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great hones eyes. As one thinks of that life, so noble, so lovely,..of that passion for truth, …of those nights of eager studies, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation and prayer;”
          For many writers today who find comfort in the declaration of their own writing as feminist writing, thereby reducing the field of competition and hopefully, getting some comfort and support from the sisterhood, from the media, would find it interesting to read what this great writer who wrote about the trials and tribulation of women like no other before her, wrote to G H Lewes in a letter. Ms. Bronte writes, “..I wish you did not think of me as a woman. I wish all reviewers believed Currer Bell to be a man; they would be more just to him. You will, I know, keep measuring me by some standard of what you deem becoming to my sex; where I am not what you consider graceful, you will condemn me…Come what will, I cannot, when I write, think always of myself and of what is elegant and charming in femininity.  It is not on those terms or with such ideas I ever took pen in hand; and if it is only on such terms my writing will be tolerated, I shall pass away from public and trouble no more. Out of obscurity I came, to obscurity I can easily return.”  Never for once she surrenders her soul, and never for once she is bitter.
 On this Virginia Woolf too agrees. Charlotte was a part of her novels. She found a vent in her characters. She wrote as a man would. But where Virginia disagree is that while in person, Charlotte was calm, aloof and devoid of bitterness, her anger was released through her character, which Ms. Woolf says, leaves much unsaid as compared to Jane Austen, even with a greater talent. She quotes from Jane Eyre, where Jane says- “Anybody may blame me who likes. And who Jane longed for  a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen:” . Essentially, Jane longs to be Eleanor of Ms. Woolf’s The Years, and in Jane, it is the longings of Charlotte weaved in. She says that “anger was tempering with the integrity of Charlotte Bronte the Novelist” in A Room of One’s Own. Ms. Bronte is longing but is hopeful. Ms. Woolf faults this unshakable faith of Mr. Bronte in the possibility of love. She writes-
“The drawbacks of being Jane Eyre are not far to seek. Always to be a governess and always to be in love is a serious limitation in a world which is full, after all, of people who are neither one nor the other.”
But then I consider this as a strength of Charlotte Bronte. She is a romantic, unlike Ms. Woolf, who is an experimental realist. Charlotte’s stories are told to tell something. Virginia Woolf’s stories are told. It is to the credit of the immensity of Charlotte Bronte’s writing that Woolf, her critic acquiesces and declares-
“It is the red and fitful glow of heart’s fire which illumines her pages. ..We do not read Charlotte Bronte for exquisite observation of character- her characters are vigorous and elementary; not for comedy- hers is grim and crude; not for a philosophic view of life- hers is that of a country parson’s daughter; but for her poetry. …She has an overpowering personality, so that, they have only to open the door to make themselves felt. There is in them (people like Charlotte) some untamed ferocity perpetually at war with the accepted order of things which makes them desire to create instantly rather than to observer patiently.”
Virginia, to somewhat of my dismay looks down at Charlotte’s writing, her being a parson’s daughter, but even she, being a great writer that she is, cannot ignore the great genius of Charlotte Bronte, which is always fighting the existing order and striving to create something new. She cannot ignore the importance of being Charlotte.
          We know well that great artists are great artists because they are great human beings. They are not meant for the smallness of things and their grief and their resolutions must arise from the inside of their souls. A very witty quote from her writing, I chanced upon, on the need to cultivate happiness, the two-minutes, self-help syndrome which we find much graver today than two centuries back. Charlotte writes- No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does that advice mean? Happiness is not a potato to be planted and tilled. Happiness is a glory, shining far down upon us from heaven.”
Such philosophical marvel tells us, it is absolutely appropriate that Miss Martineaue wrote on Charlotte- “In her vocation she had, in addition to deep intuitions of a gifted woman, the strength of a man, the patience of a hero, and the conscientiousness of a saint.”She is a soul always on rebound, she is always rising, soaring upwards, however cruel the winds might be. She lived in the days when for a woman who wanted to make her own living, the options were fairly limited. She did not know music, so all she could do was to be a Governess. She hated the job and became a writer in a world which did not feel literature was a job for women. She was discouraged but she kept at it. This is what makes Charlotte different. And she was always appropriate and magnanimous, which indicates not only to the strength of character also to a great education.
 Once she receives the first printed copies of Jane Eyre, she writes to the Publishers- You have given the work every advantage which good paper, clear type and a seemly outside can supply. If it fails, the fault will lie with the author. You are exempt. In a world where everyone is looking for scapegoats, isn’t this quite refreshing. A difficult yet magnificent life, which finds echo in the life of every thinking girl even today, a testimony to Virginia Woolf’s words in The Guardian, published in 1904 (Haworth, November, 1904)- for however harsh the struggle, Emily and Charlotte, above all, fought to victory.  
Further Reading:My Review of Virginia Woolf's The Years: Click HereMy Review of A Room of Her Own: Click HEREOn Jane Austen: Click HERE

The Years - By Virginia Woolf- Book Review

Life is brutal and boring most of the times. What makes it still bearable are some sudden moments of sensations which stir the soul and sets the spirit soaring. Such moments are far and few and fickle and feeble. The moment which in the middle of the excruciating pain of longing of immense loneliness suddenly transforms into a tranquil sense of solitude give a rather engaging turn to a boring life limping under inevitable ordinariness. The moments when pain and ennui, without any notice to us, turn into magical and mysterious, funny and forgiving are rare and accidental. It is therefore very difficult to write about life as it is and still sustain the interest of the reader long enough for the magical to emerge from the mundane, for truth to arise from travesty. One does not find such writing often. Call it experimental writing, call it new-age writing, call it whatever, it is the art of telling the plain truths of uneventful life in such an eventful manner that continues to keep you engaged. Such stories grow very slowly upon your soul and when they are there, the signs of life get more pronounced on you with each word you read in the book. Once feels alive by reading these works of literature. "The Year" by Virginia Woolf is one such book, which while you read is little difficult to read, but once you finish it and close it, for a long time you keep running your fingers on the cover pages and you almost miss having finished it.
“The Years” was published in the year 1931 and is almost written as if it were a journal or memoir written to encapsulate the journey of a British family across the years. In a sense, this is much closer to “The Waves” (My Review Here) . The story doesn’t intend to judge, shock or surprise you. It flows in a lucid, poetic flow which keeps us levitating on the surface, without drowning or overwhelming us. The water is clean and transparent and we are able to look through it. The description is much denser, the design, more delicate, the messages more meaningful, than The Waves here. The story is simple, yet layered. The weaving Ms. Woolf began with The Waves, reaches its highest notes with The Years. Virginia Woolf writes like a master here. We have writers who let their writings flow in such a lovely language, flaunting the floral beauty of their prose as it balances itself on the edge of the line dividing prose from poetry. Then some are blunt and straight, relying the twists and turns of the story to keep you engaged. Ms. Woolf, a masterful writer that she is, moves between the two styles with the swiftness of a writer whose pen seems to have melted and merged into her fingers and ink mixed in her blood. Her writing is an extension of her being and is therefore, as representative of Woolf- the writer and is as effortless as Ms. Woolf- the person, a breathing, feeling human being. It is therefore timeless and still intrigues and interests readers after almost a century. The very honest humaneness of the writing renders it a rare universality.
The story of three generations of Pargiter’s family is rich with emotions and symbolism. Her symbolism is not of course, Kafka’s symbolism. It is more cunning, craftier and carefully hidden in the layers and the wisdom is much more subtle. It is the story of times, if one could be irreverently call it a ‘story’ for a minute. But then so was Middlemarch. But no, there were characters in Middlemarch, which stood in the middle of a backdrop created by the writer, while in this case, the characters somewhere melt and mix into the world in which they exist, so that we don’t really know whether their environment represent the characters, or the characters are the reflection of the world so elaborately built around them. The story plays at the lower labyrinths of human psychology and only fleetingly touches the world around them. The characters who inhabit the story are not untouched by the events around them, but still, the story is more about how we view the world around us than how the world is. Ms. Woolf moves so fluidly between dry prose and juicy poetry that as a writer one would just want to pick the book up and touch it to the forehead!
This is a simple story of the family of Col. Abel Pargiter. The story begins in 1880 and then goes on till 1913, and covers three generations of Pargiters. The story starts from Col. Pargiter and his life with an invalid wife and a mistress. For the most part, this story of an upper-middle class family is looked at from the point of view of Colonel’s eldest daughter, Eleanor, who is the chief protagonist. There are curious bits of symbolism which reflects the society then, but it, at the same time, also reflects the society at this time as to how small, often unnoticed symbols become the pivot about which the families and relationships evolve. It tells us the story of the times when fathers were distant, remote figures, with a sense of mystery wrapped around them, as their habits, their coming and goings would arrange and re-arrange the flow of life in a family around them. Col. Pargiter’s tea is one such thing, as kids, Milly, Eleanor, Martin, Morris, Rose and Delia would have their lives revolve around this little ritual. Even Col. Partiger himself detests tea, but continue to sip, from his special cup, as his father used to do in his time. Stuck to his own role and posturing, Col. Pargiter wants to write to eldest son, Edward who is at Oxford, but he would rather ask his daughter to write to him. Sir Digby is Col. Pargiter’s brother and father to Maggie and Sara.
The story moves along, as the world around changes, as the people in the story change. The characters grow up, grow old as the story moves. Then these changes as if by some conspiracy of nature are accompanied with the change of seasons. The environment illustrates the emotions, expands them, for the reader. There are the moments where prose rises above poetry. For instance, the moment when Col. Pargiter comes out of his brother, Sir Digby’s house, and contemplates how time was passing him by-  
“He paused at the doorstep and looked out into the street. It was quite dark; the lamps were lit; the autumn was drawing in; and as he marched up the dark windy street, now spotted with raindrops, a puff of smoke blew full in his face, and leaves were falling.”
The book is full of such enchanting and insightful prose and such sensitive symbolism. One just has to stop resisting and let oneself flow with it.
This story is about passage of time, and this agony of watching time pass by is such a timeless thing. Virginia Woolf writes so elegantly about it, about passing of time and about us being left behind. She is still not hopeless, she is always an optimist. Life would end and life would begin again. 
Crosby, their domestic help, relieved after forty years in service, takes the dog, Rover with her. The way Rover’s death is explained and the way the life re-emerges out of sadness is extraordinary. Woolf writes,
“Indeed, the poor old dog looked very miserable. But Crosby shook her head. He had wagged his tail; his eyes were open. He was alive. There was a gleam of what she had long considered a smile on his face. He depended on her, she felt. She was not going to hand him over to strangers…She fed him with a teaspoon on Brand’s Essence; but at last he refused to open his lips; his body grew stiffer and stiffer; a fly walked across his nose without its twitching. This was in the early morning with the sparrows twittering on the trees outside.”
For every dead dog, there is a sparrow twittering. A perfect cycle of life is created in such simple words.
Eleanor grows into an independent woman, contemplative of life- her own and of those around her. She has her moments of self-doubts which Virginia Woolf mentions so delicately. When Eleanor was about fifty and single, she, Woolf writes, gave one glance at the woman who had been for fifty-five years so familiar that she no longer saw her- Eleanor Pargiter.
She looks at herself as if in a shock, at her face now showing initial ravages of time passing by, and tries to recollect her own good points as often middle-aged people do.
“And what was my good point? She asked herself, running the comb once more through her hair. My eyes? Her eyes laughed back at her as she looked at them. My eyes, yes, she thought. Somebody had once praised her eyes. (It was William Whatney, she had forgotten who had but she continues thinking)..Round each eye were several little white strokes, where she had crinkled them up to avoid the glare on the Acropolis, at Naples, at Granada and Toledo. But that’s over, she thought, people praising my eyes..”
She remembers later that it was William Whatney who had praised her eyes. She almost laments passing her prime as she thinks-  
“She wanted to see owls before it got too dark. She was becoming more and more interested in birds. It was a sign of old age, she supposed, as she went into her bedroom. An old maid who washes and watches birds…”
But then she quickly gathers herself. She is a woman who is at ease with herself, who is not struggling too hard to stay young. She is a modern, independent woman, who affectionately remembers her past, but still comfortable in her present. She thinks..
“There were her eyes- they still seemed to her rather bright, in spite of lines around them…But now I am labelled, she thought- an old maid who washes and watches birds. That’s what they think I am. But I’m not- I’m not in the least like that, she said….(She thinks of the new worlds she had seen and she is satisfied) ..But where were her glasses? Put away in some drawer? She turned to look for them.
The heartbreaks of growing old are there in the story, written so delicately, but then there are moments of resurrection like the one above, or the observation made by Peggy. Old age is a struggle for relevance. The less the struggle, easier it is to find relevance. This is a story true in all ages. But it leaves one with hope, like the sparrows twittering. And how this story ends, this story with no beginning and no end, the ceaseless cycle of life. She writes, with hope, that resounds in the hearts of many like us, Believers, as Peggy would call-
The sun had risen, and the sky above the houses wore an air of extraordinary beauty, simplicity and peace.
Centuries have passed, and with each generation the ability to hope, dream, ability to believe, we fritter away. How hopeful were those before us? Cynicism is a disease brought about by modernity. Peggy, Eleanor’s Niece and now a Doctor (Morris’ daughter), looks at Eleanor who towards the end, is in her seventies, a spinster, satisfied with her life of adventure and independence, and bemused, thinks to herself-
“It was the force that she had put into the words that impressed her, not the words. It was as if she still believed with passion- she, old Eleanor- in the things that man had destroyed. A wonderful generation, she thought, Believers..as they drove off.”
This book restores the faith of every middle-aged and aging individual and also puts into perspective how life would mean getting into the flow. 
This is the longest of Virginia Woolf’s work. But take it from me, every word of it that you miss is not only a loss for your literary life, it is a loss for your real life. In the earliest reviews, NY Times reviewer, Peter Monroe Jack wrote that in The Years, Virginia Woolf’s art reaches its fullest development to date. And he was absolutely correct. Do read if you are a student of literature, if you are a serious reader and if, well, if you are alive.
Book: The YearsAuthor: Virginia WoolfPublished: 1936Style: Modernist- Romantic, FictionRating: 5 * and A FlowerAmazon Link: Click Here

Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar- A Man Ahead of His Times

“Once you label me, you negate me.” – Soren Kierkegaard
Today is the birth Anniversary of Dr. Bhimrav Ambedkar. Whole of Indian landscape is dotted with statues of Dr. BR Ambedkar, while it is very rare to find anyone who has read him. The father of Indian constitution has been pigeonholed into “Dalit” thinker and leader. This disservice to his memories and this grave injustice to a great scholar, philosopher and sociologist has been done by none other than people who themselves go with the label of “dalit” writer and thinker. As a writer, I have always found such labels as absurd as I find them insulting to the profession of writing, in general. Since when your birth began flowing through your pen- is what I always want to tell those people. Most writers who proudly tag themselves such have largely done so to pass off their shrill, poorly-researched work as literature, succeeding in captive market, separated from the large open literary space. They thrive on ghettoizing and Dr. Ambedkar has been their greatest victim since the time Dalits became vote bank and was appropriated by forces which depended on the further deepening of social divide. It so came about that Dalits read Ambedkar, communists exploited Ambedkar, Congress erected mostly strangely unaesthetic statues of Ambedkar and mediocre minds like Mayawati claimed his legacy to hide greed and corruption.
I have not read Ambedkar much. Whatever I have read of him has been a revelation of sorts. We Indians, today take pride in being so far ahead, liberal and democratic nation, while protecting our identity all the time, when compared to nations that came into existence with our freedom. Our constitution which wonderfully stood all the tests of time is the biggest reason as to why we are where we are in terms of our maturity as a nation. Every time I get into a debate with a Pakistani national on Twitter, I am confident of winning every argument, knowing that I have Ambedkar's constitution on my side. It is important that we learn about Ambedkar and his thoughts, so that he is take out of the narrow confines of Dalit politics and is placed on the high pedestal of national greats. The fact that he was turned into a vote-grabbing idol who was brought out, dusted and shined every five years during election and then placed back into the cobweb-infected shelves, damp and neglected in public apathy is evident from the fact that he was given Bharat Ratna , the highest citizen award in the year 1990, much after Mother Teresa and Actor-turned politician, MG Ramachandran.
Borne on 14th of April 1891, to a father in Army, Ramji Maloji Sakpal, in Mhow, in the then Central Province (now MP), moved to Satara after his father’s death. His teacher Mahadev Ambedkar, a Deshashtha Brahmin who grew to be very fond of his sharp student, Bhimrav, gave him his surname, Ambedkar, with which he was known all across. His academic records turned out to exemplary. He passed his matriculation exam in 1907 and completed his graduation in Economics and Political Science from Bombay University in 1912. In 1913, with a scholarship from Baroda Royals, he moved to the US to do is Post-graduation from Columbia University. He completed MA in economics in 1915 and moved to London School of Economics for his PhD. He then went on to become Bar-at-Law in London, did his LLD in 1952, D. Litt from Usmania University and MSc from London. The profundity of his mind is visible in the fact that weather it is discussion on GSTN or it be on any other current issue, mostly we find answers in Ambedkar. Dr. Subramaniam Swamy, very appropriately said in a speech that on all our political luminaries, one person who deserved the name of Panditji (the learned teacher), it was Dr. Ambedkar. It is very unfortunate that not only his political career was messed up, his thoughts were appropriated by those who valued him little, and turned into political slogans. Ambedkar suffered much due to much prevalent caste-ism in his days, but strangely his story is also representative of the benevolence of many from what is called as upper-caste of the society who stood behind the making of this extraordinary man- the Brahmin teacher who taught and gave him his surname, his patron, the Gaikwar king of Baroda who gave him scholarship to travel to the US for higher education, the King of Kolhapur who supported him with his weekly Mooknayak and eventually the Kayasth who brought him into the making of the constitution, bringing him back into parliament after he lost the seat to Partition. Ambedkar, a victim of his times, did have many complains towards the religion he was born into and in which he remained till six months before his death (he converted to Budhism in October 1956, having evaluated Islam, Christianity and Sikhism).
When a man grows intellectually, his thoughts become bigger than him. It would be injustice to measure such a great man as a man, a mere mortal; instead he should be considered a man- the  pure thought. The brilliance of this illuminated mind was such that his could rise above himself, above his circumstances with a rare objectivity of idea and infinite spread of wisdom. I would not want to get into the circumstances in which Ambedkar sought separate electorate for Dalits, granted by the British in 1932, possibly under there much known “Divide and Rule” policy, just as at the beginning of century, Lala Lajpat Rai spoke of separate Hindu nation and was still respected figure for atheist Bhagat Singh. Those times were different and men from those times cannot be judged by today’s narrow benchmarks.  Ambedkar decided to give away that demand with Poona Pact with Mahatma Gandhi. Poona Pact was signed on Ambedkar (representing the depressed classes) and Mahamana Malviya (representing others) which agreed on reserved seats instead of separate electorates for the depressed classes, on 25th of September, 1932, within unified electorate. Ambedkar formed Independent Labour Party in 1936 and contested Mumbai election in 1937. His party later transformed into Scheduled Caste Federation and fared badly in 1946 elections. It would be a great fun to hit out at Congress, since Congress of today which is nothing of INC of pre-independence claims all the glory of then congress. The fact remains, unlike the corrupt dwarfs of today, the leaders were of much greater stature. They could see beyond their immediate interest and personal rivalry. This is pretty much evident in the mechanization which went into the making of the Constituent Assembly with Dr. Rajendra Prasad writing to Mr. Malvankar of Congress to withdraw in favor of non-congress, Dr. Ambedkar, because he was needed by the nation to frame the constitution.
296 legislatures were elected from across the country for Constituent assembly out of the election of 1946, before independence. Ambedkar was one of the member of the assembly, and was one of only 14 elected under the banner of Scheduled caste federation (out of 148 reserved seats). Ambedkar was elected from Bengal. However by the time India became independent as fate would have it, his constituency went into Pakistan. The leaders rose above party lines and decided that Ambedkar’s talent was much needed for the constitution of the newly formed nation and that he needed to be re-elected. He was then re-elected to the Constituent Assembly on Congress ticket from Bombay and designated as the head of Drafting Committee. His political positions notwithstanding, what places him head over shoulders above most men is his intellectual capability and his ability to look beyond prejudices, even his own. The attempt to limit Ambedkar to politician is as foolish as to measure the RSS or BJP today basis what it did do or did not do before independence, ignoring latter’s role during Emergency which had all the potential to make India into a bigger Pakistan. In fact, Ambedkar was quite pronouncedly pro-British and anti-congress for most his life, primarily because he believed politically, British rule brought more benefits and hope to his political constituency. But we must not judge the men of past with yardstick of today. His words on may matters answer the questions of today and tomorrow. Though I would say, we must desist from deification of men who lived before us, however great they may be, because no one can be right in his positions, not at all the times. We must not forget at such times that he lived in times different from ours; that he lived as an individual intellectually superior than many his times; and that his political ambitions found no space in a world where Congress with upper-caste Hindus occupied the complete political narrative. So he needed his own space and needed to create his own conflicts and construct his constituency. It is confounding in political context that the man who later on claimed the politics of caste and creed as biggest danger for democracy built his political career with Scheduled Caste Federation. It is also equally baffling that a man with immense clarity of mind waited till the last six months of his life before finally leaving Hinduism, while he kept on saying all his life forewarning that he will not die as a Hindu. Let us leave his realities there buried in the past, let us allow our future shine in his vision. Let us look at some of his thought. It is important to know them because those who invoke his name so very often are the ones who trample over his thoughts most unhesitatingly. His thoughts are more important because a man is captive of his circumstances, his ideas are the testimony of his spirit. Let us look at some of his thoughts, he spoke and wrote about- 
Ambedkar on Nationalism – On Individual choices and Freedom and collective nationalistic duties:
“Whenever there has been a conflict between my personal interests of the country as a whole, I have always placed the claims of the country above my personal claims.”
Ambedkar on Factionalism in Society – On religious and caste Identity:
“…in addition to old enemies in the forms of castes and creeds we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing creeds. Will Indians place country over their creed, or will they place creed over the country? I do not know. But this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and will probably be lost forever. This eventuality we must all resolutely guard against. We must be determined to defend our independence with the last drop of our blood.”
Ambedkar on Rebellion against the state- Compare this with communist diatribe legitimizing even armed struggle against a democratic state, all the time rattling Ambedkar’s name:
“..Hold fast to constitutional method of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and Satyagraha…Where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification of unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the grammar of anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.
Ambedkar on the dangers of Hero-worship in Democracy- Show it to those who consider a surname beyond reproach, who consider even Ambedkar beyond debate. The Emergency of 1976 shows we did not heed to him.
“..Not to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with a power which enables him to subvert their institutions.” He admonishes, “In politics, hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”
Ambedkar on Kashmir- How it erodes the argument of JNU-ites communists, who claim to be standing on the side of Ambedkar merely in order to obtain foot-soldiers from Dalit community exploiting the Goodwill Ambedkar continues to have, years after his demise. He told Shaikh Abdullah on the matter of drafting Article 370 on special status of Kashmir,
"Mr. Abdullah, you want that India should defend Kashmir, India should develop Kashmir and Kashmiris should have equal rights as the citizens of India, but you don’t want India and any citizen of India to have any rights in Kashmir. I am the law minister of India. I cannot betray the country.”
Dalits who get fooled by the Dalit-Muslim unity as the corner-stone of Kashmiri Jihadist must remember what Ambedkar said. Nehru maintained that Kashmir wasn’t ripe for integration with India in 1947 and therefore must be given time, unlike any other state. Ambedkar in his resignation speech said:
"In my view, the right solution is to partition Kashmir. Give the Hindu and Buddhist part to India and the Muslim part to Pakistan as we did in case of India. We are really not concerned with the Muslim part of Kashmir. It is a matter between Muslims of Kashmir and Pakistan. Or if you like, divide into three parts- the valley, Jammu and Ladakh region and have a plebiscite only in the valley. What I am afraid in the proposed plebiscite, the Hindus and Buddhists of Kashmir are likely to be dragged into Pakistan against their wishes."
Ambedkar on Hindu Polarization: It is a matter of big debate today. Ambedkar wrote on the matter:“The muslims are howling against the Hindu Mahasabha and its slogan of Hindu Raj and Hindudom. But who is responsible for that? The Hindu Mahasabha and Hindu Raj are the inescapable nemesis which the Mussalmans have brought  upon themselves by having a Muslim league. Ambedkar on appeasement and silent support of “Liberal Muslims” to fundamentalism- In his book “Pakistan or Partition of India” he writes:
“It is notorious fact that many prominent Hindus who had offended the Muslim susceptibilities of the Muslims either by their writings or their part in the Shuddhi movement have been murdered by some fanatic Musalmans…But Mr. Gandhi has never protested against such murders. Not only have the Musalmans not condemned these outrages but even Mr. Gandhi has never called upon the leading Muslims to condemn them.”
He further writes at another place-
“The muslims have no interest in politics as such. Their predominant interest is in religion. ..Muslim politics is essentially clerical and recognizes only one difference, namely that existing between Hindus and Muslims. None of the secular categories of life have any place in the politics of Muslim community… ..The Hindus have their social evils..and a few of them are actively agitating for their removal. The muslims on the other hand, do not realise they are evils and consequently do not agitate for their removal. Indeed, they oppose any change in existing practices.”“…The determining question with Muslims is how it will affect the Muslims vis-à-vis the Hindus…The dominating consideration is how democracy with majority rule will affect Muslims in their struggle against Hindus. Will it strengthen them or will it weaken them? If democracy weakens them, they will not have democracy."
Ambedkar on Inclusion of word Socialism in Constituent Assembly: When the motion was moved by Mr. KT Shah of Bihar seeking induction of the words Socialist and Secular in the preamble of the Constitution, Ambedkar maintained that Constitution merely marks the boundary guidelines for the state, and does not intend to define how the state should be run. He replied then,"If you state in the constitution that the social organisation of the state shall take a particular form, you are, in my judgement taking away the liberty of the people to decide what should be the social organization in which they wish to live. 
(It would be pertinent to note that the term socialist and secular was introduced by 42nd Amendment by Mrs. Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, giving further strength to Ambedkar contention of - Taking away the liberty. Sadly it stays even when it is against the united spirit of the constituent assembly)

He was a man of great vision and often self-damaging intellectual honesty. He had his faults, but truth was his biggest fault, which made him a political failure amid a world full for successful, fashionable, conniving pigmy politicians. In fact, one would find that his political thoughts closest resemblance to his most open political opponent, Sardar Patel, a great of equal stature and equally caught up in the middle of men with large egos and smaller intellect, resulting in almost similar political failure. Let us read more of Ambedkar and free him from the shackles of Dalit intellectuals. He is no Kancha Illaiah or Laloo Yadav that today's so-called JNU scholars worship and embrace. He was a towering mind, he was an extraordinary oracle. Let us silence the sloganeering and listen to the man that was Pandit Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar.   Wisdom often descends in whispers, like midnight dew and vanishes with the first sunlight. Listen in carefully. Nations are defined in such moments. 

Vande Mataram

Vande Mataram is the outrage of the day. Unfortunately, this happens on the day which marks the death anniversary of great writer and revolutionist, Shri Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya. We have come to a decisive state in the life of our nation. A nation which gained independence in 1947, and struggled to get on its feet for seventy odd years, scraping through periods of emergency, has come on its own. There comes a time in the life of its nation, where it stands up on its feet and asserts itself. A nation is not a piece of land, nor is it about its building. Nation is an idea, always an idea. Secure minds create an idea of nation which is unapologetic, independent, guiltless, proud and assertive. Such an idea is always open and stands above the ideology. Insecure minds imprison that Idea. Then they try to tell you as a nation how you should behave. That is my problem with forty second amendment to the Constitution, which was sneaked in by Congress leader and then Prime Minister of India, Mrs Indira Gandhi. Socialism is an ideology and when you include it in the definition of a nation, you are compromising on the idea of the nation. But then that is how politics has been in India. This was done when the same idea was absolutely rejected by Dr. BR Ambedkar at the time of framing of the constitution. It is absolutely interesting that the Congress which trampled over the spirit of constitution (when pushed to include socialism in constitution by Mr. KT Shah, Ambedkar termed it- destroying democracy altogether;  not surprising, 42nd amendment came in the middle of Emergency) keeps going back to Constitution all the time.
The intellectual elite feeling overwhelmed by the native, Hindi speaking Indian negating all their advises in UP do not even understand when they stop opposing Modi and start opposing a nation. What could be sorrier than the fact that the Death anniversary of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay is celebrated not with twitter hashtag #VandeMataram, rather media channels are celebrating it with #VandeMataramRow. 
The out-of-power Congress opposes the imposition of Vande Mataram and make confusing noises, somehow equating it with the idea of Hindu Rashtra which belongs more to RSS than to BJP, and call it Anti-Muslim. Let us look at the journey of this song.
Vande Mataram was a song which first appeared in the novel of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Anandmath which was based on Sanyasi movement. It is believed that he wrote the song in 1870, but it became popular with AnandMath in the year 1880. While the song was originally written as a prayer to Goddess Durga, the words came about to define Mother India and soon became the rallying cry for the freedom-fighters across India. The words Vande Mataram literally mean “I bow to thee, O Mother.”
It was first sung in Congress Convention in 1896 by Rabindra Nath Tagore. Both, Anandmath, the book and the Song were banned by the British, but many went to jail singing Vande Mataram. It would be amusing if it were not be so saddening that today not singing the same song which illustrates the glory of motherland becomes a symbol of emancipation. While the later paragraphs of the song did mention Goddess Durga, the first two paragraphs, in spirit and meaning both spelt nation. Let us look at the words- 
वन्दे मातरम्

सुजलां सुफलाम्

मलयजशीतलाम्

सस्यशामलाम्

मातरम्।

शुभ्रज्योत्स्नापुलकितयामिनीम्

फुल्लकुसुमितद्रुमदलशोभिनीम्

सुहासिनीं सुमधुर भाषिणीम्

सुखदां वरदां मातरम्।। १।। वन्दे मातरम्।

(Translation by Sri Aurobindo Ghosh Mother, I bow to thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
bright with orchard gleams,
Cool with thy winds of delight,
Dark fields waving Mother of might,
Mother free.
Glory of moonlight dreams,
Over thy branches and lordly streams,
Clad in thy blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of ease
Laughing low and sweet!
Mother I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, to thee I bow.  
The words and description clearly bring home the point that the poet refers to the land as the mother. When one talks about the riches of nature, one definitively talks of the land, the motherland. The references to Durga in subsequent verses can be traced to the story of Anandmath wherein the nation is mentioned in three forms, Jagaddhatri – the benevolent, all-giving mother (which it was), Kali  - The incarnation of death, the taker of lives (Which it has become) and Durga- the warrior Goddess, which it must become to escape the dark age of colonial history. The poet is not a priest, as we see, and has not written it as a religious tome. For him, Goddesses are stages in the life of the nation. Still, in consideration of the hyper-sensitive feelings of bigoted Muslims, Constituent assembly decided to take initial two verses which had no reference to Durga as a National Song.
Little they could see the future India wherein the fanaticism will reach its peak and appeasement will reach the lowest point of national morality. There are attempts being made to prove that Vande Mataram as national song is some way subservient to the National Anthem Jan Gan Man. We must however remember what was said in the Constituent assembly on 24th of January, 1950, when the two songs of our freedom struggle were dedicated to the nation. Here is how the two songs were given to the freshly formed nation-The composition consisting of the words and music known Jana Gana Mana is the national anthem, subject to such alteration in the words as the Government may authorize as the occasion arises; the song Vande Mataram, which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian Freedom, shall be honored equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status. It is therefore unfair on the part of the people and the liberal elites to try to belittle the song as any other song. SP spokesperson on the TV debate mentioned that Tagore was opposed to the song, which I have mentioned as incorrect, since he was first to sing the song in Congress convention in 1896. It was later sung in subsequent congress sessions in 1901 and 1905. I also dispute his contention of terming it as any other song, equating it with “Sare Jahaan se Achha” adding that he is son of an IAF personnel and has sung that song only in schools. I dispute it as the son of IAF personnel (though it has nothing to do with nationalism or patriotism of an individual, but since he said it, I too shall say it), since Vande Mataram is always sung at end of events in Kendriya Vidyalaya where most defense personnel’s wards study. His attempt to colour  Vande Mataram as any other song is wrong and does not stand to the statement made by the first President of India as above excerpt from the Constituent assembly debate shows, which places it at an equal importance as National Anthem.Lala Lajpat Rai ran a nationalistic Newspaper by the name of Vande Mataram and many freedom-fighters bore the atrocities of the British and gave their lives with this song on their lips. It was only in the aftermath of Emergency and the later times around end of 90s and 21stcenturies that the religious issues with respect to Vande Mataram came into being. Whether this resulted from the global rise in fanaticism or by carefully cultivation of half-read dissent by those who were in power but found it slipping through their fingers is a matter of serious introspection for us as a nation. As a matter of record, Gandhiji wrote in his article in Harijan in 1939, “ No matter what its source was and how it was composed, it had become a most powerful battle cry among Hindus and Musalmans of Bengal during the partition days (Partition of Bengal). It was an anti-imperialistic cry…I associated the purest national spirit with it. It never occurred to me that it was a Hindu song or meant only for Hindus .”
Nehru also said in 1948 in constituent Assembly debate: It is unfortunate that some kind of argument has arisen as between Vande Mataram and Jana Gana Man. Vande Mataram is obviously and indisputably the premier national song of India, with great historical tradition, and intimately connected with our struggle for freedom. That position is bound to retain and no other song can displace it.
In 1946 speech in Assam, Gandhiji even advised that Jai Hind should not displace Vande Mataram. He feared that if we started on that path, where would we stop? 
All these historic perspective leaves us with only one point, can the song be forced on people? Now this is a question which is more legal in nature than philosophical. It should be the courts which must answer it. After all it was Supreme Court of India which sneaked in National Anthem into the private entertainment space of the citizens. It is really sad that SC in its other decision had to use the words- Constitution has no concept of National Song. It was a sad thing to note given the statement of President of India in Constituent assembly. If it is missing in the Constitution then it should be brought in as amendment in line with the spirit of the CA. When 42nd amendment can be done (and it stays) which being categorically refused by the CA, how come Vande Mataram is still not in the constitution? 
Leaving alone the private and public spaces, when it comes to Government bodies, events and spaces, they are well within their right and owe the obligation to numerous freedom fighters who fought for a free nation, which they have come about to rule and govern, to make National song mandatory. It is absolutely hollow to render it the color of human emancipation or link it the freedom of citizens. Why should the citizen stand upright at the time of national anthem? And I put forth the same fear which Gandhiji expressed, " Where will we stop?" 
 A nation is bound by rules, and stands on it. Rules will apply equally on strongest of its people and thus offer structure and security to the weakest of its people. Vande Mataram should not be forced, but the important counter-question to it is – why should there be a necessity for it to be forced? Some go even as far as to claim that Islam does not allow bending before another anyone except God. I would only advise them to go through the court practices of Mughal. Muslim courtiers happily followed the customs of Kornish and Taslim. Akbar even introduced Sajda, which was later discontinued in Diwan-e-Aam (the common audience) but continued in Diwaan-e-Khas. No one had problem bending in front of mere mortal, while here it is motherland we speak about, which is nothing but the nature as the poet elaborates in his words, which in turn is nothing but manifestation of God. As a nation, if we do not stand for anything, we will fall for everything. This we stand for, defines our character as a nation. This national character and national pride is necessary for the well-being of a nation. We cannot forgo it. 
Vande Mataram!!

Ram - A Matter of Faith

The discussion of supposed fight for supremacy of Hindu majority, has once again taken center-stage with the Hindu religious guru and political leader, Yogi Adityanath winning the election in the most populous state in India, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The media, in its own wisdom and driven by its own self-interest, shocked, surprised and saddened by a definitive win by right-wing ideology, as the intellectuals, prodigies of carefully crafted communist ecosystem calls it, went into overdrive to denounce the results. The usual trend of nitpicking began. Some were smartly obtuse about it, with fake stories, mistaken identity and stuff like that; others, too shocked to hold on to the pretense of neutrality declared war, claiming to take the role abandoned by a week, wily opposition. The sight of a man clad in saffron was enough to make these self-proclaimed guardians of collective national intellect melt down like sudden shame. A decision by the Apex court in this backdrop asking the concerned parties to look for out of the court settlement for the Ram Temple was the last straw for an already despondent priesthood of leftist ideologues. 

I call them leftist only because that is what they pretend to be, although the lines have been thoroughly messed up; and it would seem not only in India. We live in a world where George Orwell’s 1984, which criticizes the absolutist communist state of Russia in the days of Iron Curtain has been proclaimed and annexed as literature opposing Right Wing, the lines are all muddled. The unscientific, orthodox right-wing  implements demonetization to promote cashless business, and the supposedly logical and modern left-wing pushes for old-fashioned cash-based commerce; those in power, want political accountability and transparency, Anti-corruption crusaders threaten riots; Those in power and by implication, corrupt, and better placed to manipulate the primitive system, want modern Electronic Voting Machines, which cannot be tempered; those who are supposedly weaker as challengers, who can use the safeguard offered by automated, technologically advanced system, want primitive ballot papers as mode of election, known in the history for darkest dangers faced by democracy, loots and fraud in election; the liberal, animal-lovers advocate killing animals for taste and as a mark of liberalism, and the traditionalists want to preserve the environment. We hardly can know which is which.
          Let us know get back to the matter of Ram Temple. It is a disputed site in Ayodhya. I mean, to be fair, it is a matter of argument between two parties. To be more accurate, one party, the majority Hindus have faith that the place under question was birthplace of Lord Ram, and there was a temple to commemorate. Lord Ram, is for the matter of records, as per Hindu faith, a God, and being God is a step above any man who represents God or is a messenger of God. So one party has faith that the site is of highest religions importance to it, another disputes it. The party disputing it, the Muslims of India, disputes the contention of the Hindus. On their own, they have no claim to make. So if we consider it a plain property dispute, as Muslim leader Asaduddin Owais claims (I call him Muslim leader, since that is how the name of his party translate, irrespective of his clever attempts to position himself as guardian of secularism, his party’s name, All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen literally translates to All India Council of the Union of Muslims); the dispute is about one party occupying a property, another party wants the occupying party to abdicate their claim. Now, the occupying party, Muslims who had the mosque there, wants the claimant, the Hindus to justify their claim, substantiate it with scientific evidence. Thus essentially, this is an unequal claim. The one who occupies has no evidence to present justifying his occupation of the property as there is no historic glory or religious sensitivity attached to the Mosque. This is irrespective of the fact that political parties interested in using it to consolidate Muslim votes might be wanting to present the going down of the Mosque as a huge damage to Muslim identity and Muslim self-respect. Many have even used it to justify Jihadi terror in the country, without any justification, given that world’s worse such attack on Muslims happened in Meccca itself and of late, with Blasts at Prophet’s erstwhile house. It was sad that the Mosque was forcibly brought down, no denying that. But it is even sadder that the Mosque had to be brought down.
The contention of the Hindu majority is that the structure which was a mosque earlier stands on what was a temple once. The mosque was made by Mughal emperor Babar. Babar was the founder of Mughal Empire in India. The fact remains that out of all the later emperors, Babar was the one who never came about to love India. India was never more than a source of illegally won riches for him, and he always longed for Samarkand. Whether he was a devout Muslim or used religion as a unifying force to draw the fanatics together, we can never know. From such a distance, History is often not what was, rather it is what has been written. Most of the time, the writers of ancient world were interested party and even the historians of modern world were interested parties.

          So this Mosque was put up by one over-zealous lieutenant of Babar, named after the emperor, probably in an effort to please him. The argument of the location of temple being the site of Birth of Ram goes back to about a century or so. Freshly political Congress PM, Rajiv Gandhi did the inauguration of the temple and rekindled the hope of thousands of Indians. Matter went into litigation and then in 1992, as the simmering resentment of majority Hindu population culminated into the final act where the 16th century mosque was brought down, the tension reached its zenith. I was in engineering college at that time and felt much disturbed with the event. I was disturbed not only by the fact that the mosque came down by force, rather also by the fact that it had to come down by force.

 I have had my own time of liberal ideas like why not make the controversial area into a school or a hospital, as a secular structure. But then I grew up. I read, I watched the world. It was a world which did not respect the goodness of an innocent human soul, rather it sought to manipulate it. It was a world where structure was set and the order was unchangeable. The opinions were made to ensure the continuance of pre-established order of power. Politics thrived on Muslim insecurity. Jinnah was probably the first to use it successfully for political purpose, but unfortunately, he was not the last.
         I am always confounded by this logic of eternal sense of victim-hood among the Muslims. Muslims, today are around 18 Percent of population in India, with Hindus being around 80 percent. It must have been scary to rule over a nation where the majority was people of different faith, a faith which ran contrary to the basic tenets of middle-eastern Islam. This could also explain the extreme cruelty with which Mughals crushed any rebellion which had even slightly religious flavor. It was a matter of existence, whether it was the case of skinning of Shivaji’s son or killing of the sons of Sikh Guru who refused to embrace Islam.

          That deep-rooted fear, consciously cultivated by those whose business rests on continued Ghettoization of Muslims now is evident in the way most Muslims have responded to the courts directive on out-of-court settlement of the Ram Temple matter. I would however, have preferred if the courts had decided. Still, the way Muslim organizations ruled out settlement was odd. What was further interesting was that they claimed there was no scientific evidence that there was earlier a Ram temple there and they could forego their claim if some factual proof could be presented. A religion which stands on a book of revelations, made in 7th century in a world and an environment totally foreign to India, seeks proof to justify the claim of another religion.

          In seventies, there were excavations done on court order. While the communist historians ganged up making claim under oath, in the courts that no evidence has been found of a temple beneath the Babri mosque, facts spoke otherwise, and while those who made testimonies in the sensitive matter countering the claim of Hindus, told the court that they went by news reports; KK Muhammad claimed that remains of the temple were found in the excavation, and blamed the cabal of communist historians for messing up the matter.

          While his book and his contention of fourteen columns of a temple makes a strong case of Hindu temple at the place, my argument is not that at all. As a Hindu, I might not believe in the revelations of Prophet Mohammad, and I would quote Thomas Paine. Thomas Paine writes in his treatise, The Age of Reason , on revelations claimed to be made by God

“.. The thing so revealed (if anything ever was revealed, and which bye the bye, it is impossible to prove) is revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to another person is not revelation rather hearsay.”
He goes further on the matter, though he doesn’t refer to any one religion in particular, and writes – 

“When it is revealed to me, I believe it to be a revelation; but it is not, and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be a revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of a man as the word of God, and put that man in place of God.”

But then this is what Thomas Paine says. It might not apply to a man of faith. A man of faith may believe the revelation to be true, consider the medium as source. We cannot object to it. We must not object to it, particularly if the person in question is our friend. Sometimes faith is all that keeps the world, for some, from falling apart. We cannot adopt that faith, but we must respect it nevertheless. But in any society, in any human exchange, that is always reciprocal. I should respect your faith even when I do not believe in it, but when it comes to my faith, you will respect it only if the foundation of my faith is factual. This is the beginning of unfair and unequal relationship. When I do not believe what a friend tells me, and seek evidence, even when I know that my friend’s belief in the world around him, belief in his own existence, depends on his faith; I am valuing my doubts more than my love for him. And if I demand all proof and evidence from my friend, knowing well that all he has is faith; I am further destroying the delicate balance of the relationship, which will eventually snap, often with violence. If I were to demand respect for my faith, unquestioned, I must offer the same in return. In the context of societies, such breaks will always be violent, and if the wronged party is larger in number, the impact of such falling out will always be disproportionate to the reason.

          So we have pillars which have been found. What if there was no pillar to be found because Babar’s officer had decided to crush the structure into raw building material, removing any art which was present and build a mosque. Worse still, what if there was no temple. Will that impact the faith? Or would it mean that the faith of a segment of people means nothing because they are a majority which was always ruled for centuries in past, for so long a time that what they believed in or didn’t believe in made no difference to the power that be.

          I could understand the dilemma of Muslims in this matter, if this Mosque were in middle-east and had some connection to the history of Islam. There is no soft issue attached to the Mosque from religious perspective of Muslims, except maybe an age-old fear of having been a ruler in the middle of overwhelming majority with an new faith which ran counter to those you ruled over; a fear that comes with the knowledge that now the power is no longer there. It is also based in the false feeling that it was Mughal power and later British power that kept Muslims safe amid overwhelmingly huge Hindu population. The logic of riding over a tiger which one fears getting off for the worry of getting eaten up by the same tiger. Only those who understand Hinduism know that it was not brutal domination that kept Muslims safe, rather the basic Hindu philosophy which accepted multiple contrarian views, which kept them safe and will continue to do so.

This is a mosque like any other hundreds and thousands of mosques spread across the nation. Ram, on the other hand, for Hindus, even for near-atheist ones, and by extension, even a larger mass of Muslims of India, represents the possibility of goodness that every person should strive for. He is an anti-casteist at the height of casteism; He is a committed one-woman man in a world of Polygamy (Dashrath had three wives); He is the Dharma, He is the Hope. Allama Iqbal’s verse demonstrates what Ram meant for India, not today, but always:

हैराम के वज़ूद पे हिन्दोस्ताँ को नाज़ Hai Ram ke Vazood pe Hindostaan ko naazअहलेनज़र समझते हैं इसको ईमाम ए हिन्दAhlen azar samajhte hain isko imam-e-Hind
(Ram is a matter of pride for India,And for men of vision, Ram is the first among the men)
When you are of a religion for which idols and fixed religious structures are antithesis of your religion, this insistence to stick to the Mosque, which is a dead structure for you, in Ayodhya, is nothing but a matter of ego. From the perspective of a majority, who has long been ruled by the minority, defeating the principle of numerical superiority, it is merely an attempt to establish the old order again.  The unwillingness to accommodate the faith of those around you, your refusal to abdicate the place whose only worth for you is as a testimony to the imperialistic and somewhat colonial glory, to leave space for the faith of Hindus, is nothing but an ego, a vanity and a challenge to your own sense of goodness. It hardly matters if the pillars of Hindu temple were in the foundation or not. What matters is that you want Hindus to explain why you should vacate, while you have neither substance nor intent to justify why you should not?
If one looks at this, the same logic applies to the cow politics. There is a vast Hindu majority. If your taste offends those around you, why insist on it? Why insist on beef and why insist on a mosque, when it is not a matter of faith for you, and it is for the other person. Atheist liberals will always come out with the idea of Hospital in place of the temple, but then if you are an atheist, you are not a part of discussion. There is another brilliant idea of re-building a Mosque on the other side of Saryu river. There is a basic flaw in it. If this question of Ram Mandir is to be treated as a property dispute and if it is to be decided through the courts, the question of compensation does not arise. If facts and not Goodwill is the basis of decision allowing construction of Ram Temple, it will only prove illegal occupation. Why should centuries of illegality be responded with compensation and not with penalty? If courts were to decide, then the bodies opposing the construction of temple should be penalized to contribute towards construction, instead of the courts doing monkey-balancing.

Let the man of faith have his piece of faith in his own country. The nation belongs to him as much as it does to you. He has been silent for long, don’t tire his silence out. This temple does not impact your faith (or lack of it) or your livelihood or your existence. Let the temple be. Societies are not perfect. Life is not always bearable. Lord Ram represents the possibility of a society that is perfect and of a life that is bearable. A least for those who believe in him. His worshipers do not insist that you offer evidences to revelations to accommodate them in Indian environment, Muslims also owe it to their Hindu brothers to respect their faith as a friend and co-nationalist. It is faith that holds people together, that keeps societies together if it is respected by those who believe in contrary things. I need to respect your faith even when I do not believe in it and you must do the same. That is how mature societies prosper, that is how the magical grows out of the mundane. Even Immanuel Kent said,

 “ I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.” 

It is not a fight to win, it is a fight to be loved, to be believed in. You cannot do it by insisting on being a better lawyer and demanding evidences. A Muslim who works everyday with his Hindu brothers will not be worried. Truth is often easier for those to understand who aren’t corrupted by education. This is a matter where faith is the only truth. It is too important to be left to ballistic Brahmins and starched sherwanis. It is a matter of faith and in words of Khalil Gibran-

“Faith is an oasis in heart which will never be reached by a caravan of thinking.”

 Faith is about feeling, it is never about thinking. Faith is the bulwark on which national culture rests. Religion therefore, is a part of faith, but faith in its complete glory expands beyond religion and defines national cultural ethos which not only defines national spirit, it also binds the people together. As the Muslims of India, egged by the politicians began finding their identity with Turkish version of Islam, they began disowning Ram bit by bit. Ram is not only a Hindu God, Ram is a national icon. Only political minds will not like the idea of an ideal man, the common man on the ground, not yet corrupted by intelligent sounding people with their stupid idea of Muslim identity, engulfing the natural Indian identity, finds no problem in accepting Ram, if not as a God, as an idea worth pursuing. Ram is both the end and the mean, the path and the goal. Not as a God, not as a deity, rather as an idea. Ram is a necessity in our cynical times and we as a nation are fortunate to have a heritage which is wrapped around spiritual sense of Ram. 

He is not antagonistic to the majority religion around him, and would not want to impose a culture from which he himself is ten centuries and thousands of miles apart, on his Hindu brethren with whom and among whom he lives and dies. When a culture dies, it is very painful. The culture of a nation is not defined in illegally run slaughterhouse run as an insult to majority sensitivity. The culture of a nation is defined in 7000 years of history of India, which still finds resonance in larger Indian spirit and which we find in bleak reflections in South and Far-East Asia. It is this history which gives us a hope for the future in darkest of our days, it gives us a hope for Ram-Rajya. A culture neglected dies a slow death. It is very fashionable for an intellectual cynic to mock his own roots. But one does not know how the roots die away for the want of affection. Slowly and slowly, it dies down and melts into dust like dead leaves of the autumn. You look around and you find the world collapsing into an unfeeling uniformity- Afghanistan, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia. This does not happen suddenly. This is happening when you sit laughing and mocking your faithfuls. The world as you know it slowly corrodes and collapses into itself. If one cannot join someone's faith, one can at least respect it and not laugh it off. Let us be on the watch and not laugh it off, since the world does not end with a bang, it never does. It always ends with a whimper. 

Ram Temple- A Matter of Faith

The discussion of supposed fight for supremacy of Hindu majority, has once again taken center-stage with the Hindu religious guru and political leader, Yogi Adityanath winning the election in the most populous state in India, under the stewardship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The media, in its own wisdom and driven by its own self-interest, shocked, surprised and saddened by a definitive win by right-wing ideology, as the intellectuals, prodigies of carefully crafted communist ecosystem calls it, went into overdrive. Some were smartly obtuse about it, with fake stories, mistaken identity and stuff like that; others, too shocked to hold on to the pretense of neutrality declared war, claiming to take the role abandoned by a week and wily opposition. The sight of a man clad in saffron was enough to make these self-proclaimed guardians of collective national intellect melt down. A decision by the Apex court in this backdrop asking the concerned parties to look for out of the court settlement for the Ram Temple was the last straw for an already despondent priesthood of leftist ideologues.
I call them leftist only because that is what they pretend to be, although the lines have been thoroughly messed up; and it would seem not only in India. We live in a world where George Orwell’s 1984, which criticizes the absolutist communist state of Russia in the days of Iron Curtain has been proclaimed and annexed as literature opposing Right Wing, the lines are all muddled. The unscientific, orthodox right-wing  implements demonetization to promote cashless business, and the supposedly logical and modern left-wing pushes for old-fashioned cash-based commerce; those in power, want political accountability and transparency, Anti-corruption crusaders threaten riots; Those in power and by implication, corrupt, and better placed to manipulate the primitive system, want modern Electronic Voting Machines, which cannot be tempered, those who are weaker challengers, want primitive ballot papers as mode of election, known in the history for darkest dangers faced by democracy, loots and fraud in election; the liberal, animal-lovers advocate killing animals for taste and the traditionalists want to preserve the environment. We hardly can know which is which.
          Let us know get back to the matter of Ram Temple. It is a disputed site in Ayodhya. I mean, to be fair, it is a matter of argument between two parties. So for one of the party, it is a matter of faith, for another it is a matter of debate. The contention of the Hindu majority is that the structure which was a mosque earlier stands on what was a temple once. The mosque was made by Mughal emperor Babar. Babar was the founder of Mughal Empire in India. The fact remains that out of all the later emperors, Babar was the one who never came about to love India. India was never more than a source of illegally won riches for him, and he always longed for Samarkand. Whether he was a devout Muslim or used religion as a unifying force to draw the fanatics together, we can never know. From such a distance, History is often not what was, rather it is what has been written. Most of the time, the writers of ancient world were interested party and even the historians of modern world were interested parties.
          So this Mosque was put up by one over-zealous lieutenant of Babar, named after the emperor, probably in an effort to please him. The argument of the location of temple being the site of Birth of Ram goes back to about a century or so. Freshly political Congress PM, Rajiv Gandhi did the inauguration of the temple and rekindled the hope of thousands of Indians. Matter went into litigation and then in 1992, as the simmering resentment of majority Hindu population culminated into the final act where the 16th century mosque was brought down, the tension reached its zenith. I was in engineering college at that time and felt much disturbed with the event. I was disturbed not only by the fact that the mosque came down by force, rather also by the fact that it had to come down by force.
I have had my own time of liberal ideas like why not make the controversial area into a school or a hospital, as a secular structure. But then I grew up. I read, I watched the world. It was a world which did not respect the goodness of an innocent human soul, rather it sought to manipulate it. It was a world where structure was set and the order was unchangeable. The opinions were made to ensure the continuance of pre-established order of power. Politics thrived on Muslim insecurity. Jinnah was probably the first to use it successfully for political purpose, but unfortunately, he was not the last.
          I am always confounded by this logic of eternal sense of victimhood among the Muslims. Muslims, today are around 18 Percent of population in India, with Hindus being around 80 percent. It must have been scary to rule over a nation where the majority was people of different faith, a faith which ran contrary to the basic tenets of middle-eastern Islam. This could also explain the extreme cruelty with which Mughals crushed any rebellion which had even slightly religious flavor. It was a matter of existence, whether it was the case of skinning of Shivaji’s son or killing of the sons of Sikh Guru who refused to embrace Islam.           That deep-rooted fear now is evident in the way most Muslims have responded to the courts asking for out-of-court settlement of the Ram Temple matter. I would however, have preferred if the courts had decided. Still, the way Muslim organizations ruled out settlement was odd. What was further interesting was that they claimed there was no scientific evidence that there was earlier a Ram temple there and they could forego their claim if some factual proof could be presented. A religion which stands on a book of revelations, made in 7th century in a world and an environment totally foreign to India, seeks proof to justify the claim of another religion.
          In seventies, there were excavations done on court order. While the communist historians ganged up making claim under oath, in the courts that no evidence has been found of a temple beneath the Babri mosque, facts spoke otherwise, and while those who made testimonies in the sensitive matter countering the claim of Hindus, told the court that they went by news reports; KK Muhammad claimed that remains of the temple were found in the excavation, and blamed the cabal of communist historians for messing up the matter.
          While his book and his contention of fourteen columns of a temple makes a strong case of Hindu temple at the place, my argument is not that at all. As a Hindu, I might not believe in the revelations of Prophet Mohammad, and I would quote Thomas Paine. Thomas Paine writes in his treatise, The Age of Reason, on revelations claimed to be made by God
“.. The thing so revealed (if anything ever was revealed, and which bye the bye, it is impossible to prove) is revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to another person is not revelation rather hearsay. ”
He goes further scathing on the matter, though he doesn’t refer to any one religion in particular. Still his basic premise remains – “ When it is revealed to me, I believe it to be a revelation; but it is not, and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be a revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of a man as the word of God, and put that man in place of God. ”
But then, this is what Thomas Paine says. It might not apply to a man of faith. A man of faith may believe the revelation to be true, consider the medium as source. We cannot object to it. We must not object to it, particularly if the person in question is our friend. Sometimes faith is all that keeps the world, for some, from falling apart. We cannot adopt that faith, but we must respect it nevertheless. 
But in any society, in any human exchange, that is always reciprocal. I should respect your faith even when I do not believe in it, but when it comes to my faith, you will respect it only if the foundation of my faith is factual. This is the beginning of unfair and unequal relationship. When I do not believe what a friend tells me, and seek evidence, even when I know that my friend’s belief in the world around him, belief in his own existence depends on his faith; I am valuing my doubts more than my love for him. And if I demand all these things from my friend, I am further destroying the delicate balance the relationship, which will eventually result in strain and break, often with violence. In the context of societies, such breaks will always be violent, and if the wronged party is larger in number, the impact of such falling out will always be disproportionate to the reason.
         So we have pillars which have been found. What if there was no pillar to be found because Babar’s officer had decided to crush the structure into raw building material, removing any art which was present and build a mosque. Worse still, what if, for a moment, assume there was no temple. Will that impact the faith? Or would it mean that the faith of a segment of people means nothing because they are a majority which was always ruled by minorites for centuries in past, for so long a time that what they believed in or didn’t believe in made no difference to the power that be. Would it mean that now when they are free, their faith means nothing and can be trampled over because it is not backed by facts admissible in Court of law?
          I could have understood the dilemma of Muslims in this matter, if this Mosque were in middle-east and had some connection to the history of Islam. There is no soft issue attached to the Mosque from religious perspective of Muslims, except maybe an age-old fear of having been a ruler in the middle of overwhelming majority with an new faith which ran counter to those you ruled over; a fear that comes with the knowledge that now the power is no longer there to protect a small set of people ruling over a larger number of people of varying faith. It is also based in the false feeling that it was Mughal power and later British power that kept Muslims safe amid overwhelmingly huge Hindu population. The logic of riding over a tiger which one fears getting off for the worry of getting eaten up by the same tiger is flawed with respect to Hindu majority. One, riding over this tiger is no longer possible, technically, and secondly those who understand Hinduism know that it was not brutal domination that kept Muslims safe, rather the basic Hindu philosophy which accepted multiple contrarian views, the tolerance which is deeply ingrained in Hinduism, which kept them safe and will continue to do so.
This is a mosque like any other hundreds of mosques. Ram for Hindus, even for near-atheist ones represents the possibility of goodness that every person should strive for. He is a anti-casteist at the height of casteism; He is a committed one-woman man in a world of Polygamy (Dashrath had three wives); He is Dharma, a constant in an ever-changing world. When you are of a religion for which idols and fixed religious structures are antithesis of the spirit your religion, this insistence to stick to the Mosque in Ayodhya is nothing but a matter of ego. The unwillingness to accommodate the faith of those around you, to abdicate the place whose only worth for you is as a testimony to the imperialistic and somewhat colonial glory, for the faith of Hindus is nothing but an ego, a vanity and a challenge to your own sense of goodness. It hardly matters if the pillars of Hindu temple were in the foundation or not.
If one looks at this, the same logic applies to the cow politics. There is a vast Hindu majority. If your taste offends those around you, why insist on it? Why insist on beef and why insist on one particular mosque, when it is not a matter of faith for you, and it is for the other person. Atheist liberals will always come out with the idea of Hospital in place of the temple, but then if you are an atheist, you are not a part of discussion. Let the man who has faith, have his piece of faith in his own country. The nation belongs to him as much as it does to you. He has been silent for long, don’t tire his silence out. This temple does not impact your faith (or lack of it) or your livelihood or your existence. Let the temple be. Societies are not perfect. Life is not always bearable. Lord Ram represents the possibility of a society that is perfect and of a life that is bearable. A least for those who believe in him. His worshipers do not owe it to you to prove it to you, You owe it to them to respect their faith as a friend and co-nationalist. It is faith that holds people together, that keeps societies together if it is respected by those who believe in contrary idiologies. I need to respect your faith even when I do not believe in it and you must do the same. That is how mature societies prosper, that is how the magical grows out of the mundane. Even Immanuel Kent said, 
“ I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.”  
It is not a fight to win, it is a fight to be loved, to be believed in. You cannot do it by insisting on being a better lawyer and demanding evidences. A Muslim who works everyday with his Hindu brothers will not be worried. Truth is often easier for those to understand who aren’t corrupted by education. This is a matter where faith is the only truth. It is too important to be left to brilliant Brahmins and starched sherwanis. It is a matter of faith and in words of Khalil Gibran-
“ Faith is an oasis in heart which will never be reached by a caravan of thinking. ” 
Faith is about feeling, it is never about thinking. It is not a moment for confrontation, it is a moment for magnanimity. It is not about evidence and arguments, it is about love and trust. People have made palaces out of stories. It is for common people to decide not to given them stories. 

On Poetry

Truth is not easy. Truth is harsh, uncaring and brutal, even when it is most life-giving and most beautiful. Sometimes we have to lie even to tell the truth. There are moments when we stay silent hoping that the truth which tugs at our soul will some how fade away. We ignore the constant banging of the door and cover our ears with our palms. But this persistent animal stays adamant at our door, persistent and pleading. It stays sobbing besides our doors, sobbing, and one can not step out without trampling over it. At such moments we need poetry. 
Poetry is a beautifully and cunningly crafted lie which allows us to embrace the truth when we can no longer avoid it. Poet makes up the things. Poie`sis means making. When truth is inescapable, poetry becomes necessary. When truth rains on us with all its acidic waters, poetry mellows it down and ensures that our souls are saved of the blisters. 
Poems remain timeless and stay hovering over generations like small clouds floating in the skies and will rain on the souls today, tomorrow and centuries down the line, whenever a soul is ready. The line between prose and poetry is not very definitive, but one key difference that comes to my mind is this. Prose is definitive, while poetry is abstract. 
Prose wants to go somewhere, poetry does not want to reach anywhere. Poetry doesn't need to be verbose, it need not many sentences, one sentence with the shiny whiteness of its truth can make it a poem, or even a word, a word like the one which Poe write -  But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only that one word, as if his soul, in that one word, he did outpour                                                       (The Raven- By Edgar Allen Poe)
It is happy in being there and is not in rush to reach somewhere. In prose, poetry happens, when prose takes a pause and is not rushing towards one object or other. Paul Celan says - 
" Poems are..underway. They are making towards something."
This captures the essence of poetry. It is always unsure of itself and is content in existing. Not that it does not try. It goes there, reaches almost there, nearly there, but never exactly there. It flourishes in that sacred space between commerce and art. 
Poetry never pushes, never goads. At the best of its persuasive forms, it gently nudges. Anything more, and it becomes a slogan, an abuse. 
Poetry like aphorisms are layered wisdom. Just as Nietzsche writes that aphorisms are long legs one needs to cross deep valleys. Poetry uses metaphors for the purpose. One needs to sit down on the knees and peel the layers to reach the pearl. Poets are forced by something larger than them- a cause, a need, a pain, a joy to write, but they do not want to write. They write it because they have no choice but to write. 

Therefore, a poet write with a pronounced sense of defeat and a definite sense of shyness, with an embarrassed modesty. Poets therefore, invariably depend on the sense of reader for the poem to complete there sense of being. 
He writes and leaves his poems, like hopeful orphans waiting for someone benevolent to come along and adopt them, understand them. Poems are the jewels of truth waiting in darkness for the reader to discover them. Edward Hirsch in his wonderful book How to Read a Poem writes 
"Reading is a point of departure, an inaugural, an initiation."
Poetry in a one-sided contract signed by the poet in anticipation of a reader who would some day come along and sign on the blank space, completing the contract. Poetry truly succeeds when the reader finds it. Hirsch therefore calls poetry an act of reciprocity. Yeats writes 
"I made it out of a mouthful of air"
and then leaves it to his reader to make or remake the poem. Octavio Paz calls the poet and his reader two moments of a single reality. That is intersection from where poetry soars flapping its angelic, white wings.  
Poets are helpless creatures, hassled by their insurmountable sense of commitment to their truth. Poems write themselves and poets merely offer them a medium to flow through. Shelley writes in his  essay In Defense of Poetry-
"Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according the determination of the will. A man cannot say,"I will compose poetry." The greatest poet cannot say it for the mind in creation is as a fading coal which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness." 
There is something bigger than the mere mortal in the being of a poet is at play here, there is something divine. It hardly matters if I write and you read. It succeeds when I write as if you had written it. Poems represent universality of emotions. As Borges contends - 
" We are all one; our inconsequential minds are much alike, and circumstances so influence us that it is something of an accident that you are the reader and I the writer- the unsure, ardent writer - of my verses."
On this International Poetry Day, let us remember those poets who converted their sufferings into poems so that our sufferings become bearable. Let us remember those giants of intellect and soul about who was so well described by Soren Kierkegaard when he writes-
What is a poet?An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and the cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music..and people flock around the poet and say:'Sing again soon' that is , may new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for that cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful."

The Meaning and Implication of Modi Win

Image Courtesy: GettyImages“ Have you noticed how continually in history democracy becomes despotism? People call it the decay of democracy. It is simply its fulfillment. ” – Wrote GK Chesterton in his acclaimed political satire, “The Napoleon of Notting Hill”. This is a truth of such great wisdom told in such a simplistic manner.  It doesn’t matter if he wrote it in 1905 (about a world of 1984). Democracy is a great idea but its strength lies in the constant change. You stop the churn and staleness of status quo seeps in, the water gets muddier, the stench rises and toads will croak. A monarchy derives its power from status quo, the lack of change, the permanence of structure. Democracy on the other hand, thrives on chaos, change and transient nature of the political structure.
Democracy will throw surprises. It will bring people who are watching from the margins, will name the nameless, and raise them to a point where they start resembling aristocratic monarchs, complete with the small coteries as custodians of power, basis their proximity to the source of power. That is the nature of democracy. It moves from democracy to mobocracy to absolute dictatorship. Unless a society maintains a constant vigil, it suffers slipping into the despondent decadence with which every despotic power is known.
We don’t have to look far to understand that. We just need to go back around five years, as the dynasty which ruled India for most of its independent history went into its second term as UPA-2. Corruption was at its peak, dictatorial tendencies where blatant and the society was in a state of absolute despair.  There, to my memory, has been one instance of splendid hope in the history of independent India, when the total dictatorship imposed by Mrs. Indira Gandhi lost election, lost power and a replacement happen. But that was pretty short-lived. An era of absolute absurdity gave way to an era of complete chaos. The new power-people, who rode to the capital on the promise of safeguarding democratic values, turned out to be as despotic, as power-hungry, and as greedy as their predecessors. The custodians of public morality on whose call the masses rose against unprecedented dictatorship were quickly side-lined and unscrupulous people, closer in the matters of mind and morality to those who were displaced, grabbed power. While Indira had a fantastical notion of evil greatness about her, these people were base and greedy. Their greed, their disdain for democracy, their clinical and pathological understanding of the citizen’s greed was to hound Indian polity for long as we say in Mandal commission and then on with the emergence of casteist and communal parties like RJD and SP.
INC proved that while it was merely evil, the opposition was both inept as well as evil. The stranglehold of Congress over power continued unabated. With Sonia Gandhi, a naturalized Indian (who opted for Indian citizenship after years of deliberation) taking charge, the total lack of interest in the national spirit, causes and ambition was complete. She looked at the natives as greedy people waiting for crumbs to be thrown at them. The only opposition she had was an opposition which was nothing but a milder kind of congress. The leaders of opposition tried best to be good-mannered poor kid who was just granted access into the elite circles of power. The ecosystem, the ground of which was being prepared during emergency of 1977 was now well entrenched. The media, crushed during emergency, aligned itself to the powers that be. The preamble of constitution was amended, and those who had no idea of what was happening in China and Russia, happily aligned hoping that communism was the best thing to happen for the poor, with Welfare state, literally throwing crumbs at people and the power elite getting richer by day and hours. The subjugation of the public will was complete. College campuses, except the technical and professional ones, were proliferated with leftist scholars to the extent of having absolute monarchy over young intellectual minds. Their services were compensated with appearances of power provided by awards and plush assignments. As Congress was on unhindered, unchallenged ascendancy, the common man frantically fell into the depths of unending despondency.
Gloom and helplessness was the general sentiment. Brief interludes of agitation against power was no solace and gave little confidence. India Against Corruption began as a movement against blatant, unashamed corruption at high places under the supervision and support of Congress leadership. Initial version was quickly crushed by violent police action at midnight over unsuspecting, peacefully protesting people by the then Home Minister who is now found talking about humane aspects of policing in terror prone areas on compliant Television channels. With one old lady dead as a result of police action, the movement against corruption, at least version 1 of it was quickly crushed. Whatever was left of it, was smoothly hijacked by the ruling congress dispensation and leftist think-tanks by hijacking it through members of NAC, which was de-facto government under the blessings of Congress chief, Sonia Gandhi.
The sullen silences of the people is the worst thing in democracy and that silence, that stillness was the hallmark of India which congress created. Nothing describes it better than a quote by Chesterton of a mythical London of 1984. I am sharing it here and those who have seen the dying of anti-corruption movement with the arrival of Arvind Kejriwal, the complete connivance of media in Nira Radia and Cash-for-votes scam and the perfunctory murmurs (never more than murmurs) by the then opposition on unending string of corruption, a policy of alienation of the majority religion, of appeasement of minority religion, will agree with the general sense of gloom which fell over the nation in the last days of UPA-2. Arvind Kejriwal had by then proven himself to be bigger crook than the scamsters of 77, forming government in 2013 with those he claimed to be the most corrupt and vowed to fight against.Chesterton writes:  “Terribly quiet; that is in two words the spirit of this age, as I have felt from my cradle. I sometimes wondered how many other people felt the oppression of this union between quietude and terror… It goes on day after day, day after day, and nothing happens; but to me it is like a dream from which I might wake screaming. To me the straightness of our life is the straightness of a thin cord stretched tight. Its stillness is terrible. It might snap with a noise like thunder.”
It is easy to forget the past, when we are over it. But we must not. It was not so far back.  We would sit quietly like dead people over the death of hundreds of citizens in Mumbai. There was no way out. Then somewhere towards the end of 2013, Narendra Modi was chosen as the PM candidate of BJP. Narendra Modi was an outsider to the established regime, who was supported by BJP cadres hugely internally, and later by the nation for he was the wild card entry, the man not yet corrupted by the capital. His history gave hope to people with no immediate family, and his relatives living their modest lives in spite of three terms of Narendra Modi as the CM of Gujarat. So very unlike the leaders we knew on national scene, from Sonia to Devegoda, to Laloo to Mulayam. Stories of sudden riches were not around Modi.
Modi happened in 2014. Democracy, rather the democracy, which had already reached its fulfilment of despotism hit back with vengeance. His win, his appointment as leader of the sovereign was considered an aberration, a fluke, which could be rectified, a mistake which could be amended if concerted efforts were made. The ecosystem rose in unison. It was not only a dislike of the outsider which prompted this. It was also an instinct of self-preservation. It was very fortunate for Modi that his ascent was accompanied by democratization of dissent. For long many, the silent majority, the common man, the middle-class had no space, no podium, no microphone available to him. The protest and dissent was, like everything else, held in control of few hands- the darbari intellectuals. Those who remained silent during emergency, found new voice, with undoubtedly promise and assurance of support of the old royals- the congress. A university which saw suicide of ten students during UPA regime, suddenly went on the boil about the eleventh suicide. It must have been quite intimidating for Narendra Modi. The good thing is that the venom from the past was so deep from Congress for him, when they had written to the US to not give him visa, even as an elected CM of an Indian State, that, thankfully, he never wasted time trying to fit in. That was a blessing for the nation. He began on a blank slate.
The erstwhile royals and courtier did not like this commoner a bit. First there was award-wapsi. Then the media people, those people who acted as a conduit in arranging portfolios, who wrote editorials for consideration to manufacture opinion suddenly discovered their softer side. Those who remained unfazed when their fellow journalists were shot in daylight, or burnt alive; shook with terror and fury in their posh south Delhi bungalows when they were as much as jostled during a protest. Hashtag wars like #intolerance, #FeelsLikeEmergency had just begun. Modi went about his work without baggage of past and with the zeal of a fanatics. Then demonetization happened. The cash collected through corrupt means by old and new entrants in politics was rendered useless at one swift stroke.  They had long since lost the habit of listening to the people. Now people did not need a platform. Technology gave the meek voice strong enough to reach their elite hearings. They had long since forgotten that as writers and artists they were creating a produce and common-folks were their consumer. They could not bear them talking back and in the process alienate them. They still felt this was a bad dream and will be over soon. They gave voice to the fake fear of the poor during demonetization. In UP election, it was fear of polarization. While Narendra Modi spoke about development without appeasement, these journalists and intellectuals took it upon themselves. Instead of staying limited to their defined role as reporter of the opinions of people who were voting, they reported their own view.
Their views were strong, partisan and open. The gloves were off, the pretense was gone. Somewhere in between they would keep insisting their neutral credential, much like Winnie –The-Pooh floating with a balloon and pretending to be a cloud by singing the cloud song. So lost they were in their hope of ending this nightmare called Modi that they could not even read the disgust of the consumer of the reports they presented, they did not note when the hand that fed them twitched to slap them for their deception. They did not notice that when they interviewed the head of political party, whose candidate went into hiding, after FIR was registered on his (only post the intervention of the Supreme Court) and ended up asking favorite vacation place (London, said the socialist leader of the poorest state in the country), how the viewer cringed and held his daughter protectively. Narendra Modi, literally, came, saw and conquered. The untiring warrior ended his tally with 4/5 in this five state elections. These reporters would come back smug saying how those who thought demonetization will result in rejection of Modi in an election had egg on their face as Modi won the election in most populous state with population adding up to more than the population of UK, France and Germany put together with a clean sweep. It never occurred to them that they themselves were the people with egg on the face that they were talking about.
They complained polarization of majority community. No one explained it better than Arif Mohammad Khan who left congress protesting their Muslim appeasement policy. He said in a TV interview that it was not Hindus who voted for two nation in 1947, but when Muslims voted for it, Hindus were left with India. They had no say in it. Similarly, in a state like UP, where you are polarizing Muslims, with Mayawati, shouting from rooftop, urging Muslims to vote for her, stroking their fears, which both SC and ECI ignored; it was but natural for Hindus to polarize in the only direction which was available to them. Suddenly the guilt associated with being Hindu was gone even for the educated Hindus. They suddenly had a plausible option. And don’t get me wrong. Hinduism is an inherently secular religion. It doesn’t work on the principle of everyone following Hinduism, it is not expansionist religion. It only wants to exist in peace. Hindus did not turn to BJP for a Sadhvi or a Maharaj. Hindus did not want to vote, irrespective of what media might say, to ensure that all resources be taken away from Muslims and given to Hindus. Hindus went with Modi, because unlike a Mayawati or Akhilesh who promised that all will be given to Muslims and Dalits only in case of former and to Muslims and Yadavs, in the case of latter, leaving Hindus out of the equations; Modi promised that development will be brought to Hindus and Muslims alike.
These elections have changed many equations. Pundits are down in the dust from their high pulpits. Some journalists, even now have taken the task of acting like some sort of political opposition to Modi, since the real opposition is decimated. Nothing wrong in journalists joining politics, per se. But don't do proxy politics. The nation is watching. Audio-Visual medium makes you public persona, and you must learn to handle severe public scrutiny. We can only hope that they realize that Narendra Modi is there to stay. Media as a proxy to political opposition does disservice to both media as well as to the politics of the nation. Narendra Modi is not an event in arbitrariness, He is writ firmly on the fate of this nation waking up to the possibility of its greatness. This message goes to the opposition and Narendra Modi alike. Media also must wake up to the new scheme of things with democratization of the space for debate. They have long spoken and listened to themselves. Irom Sharmila's pathetic loss in Manipur and Arvind Kejriwal's shameful defeat in the two states AAP contested is living testimony to that. Both must not treat it as a fluke, and both need to rise to the occasion. This is to important an occasion to be squandered. Change is happening, dreams are taking shape. We hope entire cabinet of the PM is listening the hope of the people who were denied voice for so long. Silence is snapping and it is snapping like thunder.

Movie Review: BadriNath Ki Dulhaniya

Badrinath Ki Dulhania

Cast: Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Sahil Vaid, Shweta Basu Prasad, Sukhmani Lamba, Rituraj Singh

Script and Direction: Shashank Khaitan

Recommendable: One time watch if Someone else pays for ticket


I do not usually review movies. Movie review is tiresome and useless. If my memory serves right, the other movie I had reviewed was Pan Singh Tomar (Read the review here). I am a movie buff and continue searching for new releases to fill my weekend with. Of late, I mostly enjoy children movies, not only for the fun of watching it with daughter, rather for the strength of content. For instance, the animation movie Zootopia had the strongest political satire, most creatively crafted in the recent time that I had seen. I have been contemplating reviewing movies. It might not be as good as the book review which I have been regularly doing, but forgive the slips as it is a start.
Pan Singh Tomar was a movie which I loved much, It struck the right chord, hit the perfect note, it was a movie which one would want to sit in silence with on a forlorn road. That movies was a friend. This is my second movie review, a movie which I did not love and almost hated.
Badrinath Ki Dulhaniya is a lazily made movie. It begins in earnest, a bit like the low-budget and much appreciated Dum Lagaa ke Haisha- a movie on incompatible couples resulting out of arranged marriage, in similar small town backdrop, made with a lot of affection, every shot a proof a great attention to detail. Another movie one similar subject which comes to my mind, had come long time back, the Rajpal Yadav one, Main Meri Patni Aur Woh. This movie begins with a strain of honesty, the dialect, the contextualization, the whole small-city sweetness. But right about the time it begins to nudge at the right places in your heart, Karan Johar happens to the movie. 
As is his wont, he wraps the movie in such absurdity that one can only feel sorry about the story which slips into the zone where the gap between stupidity and fantasy ends. The beauty of a story well-told is that it opens itself at its own pace, neither too slow, nor too fast. Whatever slight signs that Shashank Khaitan might have left on the story are quickly wiped off by the ready-made righteousness of Karan Johar, a modern celebrity syndrome, always in the constant search of a cause. The laziness, the lack of research is too stupendous to ignore, unless someone has paid you to review the movie, and paid you too well to ignore the flaws. The chief villain, Varun Dhawan's Badri's father, an orthodox, women-hating, casteist Amarnath Bansal; let's call him Manuwadi, beating whom with the stick of fake reform will make the movie suit the shallow sensibilities of current, hindu-bashing generation even more; represents regressive forces of Indian society, which still, as per Mr. Johar, flourishes in Tier-2 cities. Badri is younger son of Amarnath Bansal, a car dealer and some sort of money-lender in Jhansi and Alia Bhatt as younger daughter of a lower-middle class family, Vaidehi is from Kota in Rajasthan, who meet at a wedding and it is love at first sight, even if one-sided. 
Only Karan or Shashank can explain as to the wrong choice of surname they pick for Badrinath. Amarnath Bansal turns out to be as Bansal, a Vaishya, the business community, and for some strange reason, the elder daughter-in-law of the family turns a Brahmin. No one bothers to explain that how the deeply orthodox patriarch came around to not only except a Brahmin daughter-in-law, when it comes to choosing the daughter-in-law, he again settles for a Brahmin girl in Vaidehi for Badri. But than social contexts are not important for Karan as his focus is on feminism, which is the flavor of the season. Half of the movie is Alia, an ambitious small-town girl ditching Badri, in her quest to establish her career. We do not discover the intellectual side of the independent woman, but merely find her surfing the websites of Air-hostess training companies. She moves to Mumbai and then quickly to Singapore, probably to satiate Mr. Johar's plush and posh creative hunger for foreign locale. Badrinath remains a good-for-nothing, who stalks Vaidehi in Singapore. Vaidehi, absurdly falls in love with the stupid stalking by a non-graduate young man, and an unsuspecting audience is left groping in dark, throwing arms in air helplessly, and throwing the question heavenwards- why, Vaidehi, why? One would have thought that leaving college education apart, writer could have made some effort to establish the goodness in some other aspect of the character of Badri which would explain Vaidehi falling in love. But no such effort is made and the audience is left to invent his or her own reason for this love which stands on thin air. Only plausible explanation seems to be guilt. It is not easy to appreciate love as a means to absolve oneself of guilt.
The second half of the movie revolves, to my mind, around Vaidehi's attempt of assuage her guilt-ridden conscience, having abandoned Badri at the wedding, which probably ends with her falling in love with Badri, as if compensating Badri for his public humiliation. The resolution is as lame as the climax when Vaidehi leaves her job and comes back to Jhansi to establish her own Air-hostess training institute, and Badri continues to remain a good-for-nothing, good-looking young man. Amarnath Bansal discovers his liberal self. It only takes one righteous speech by his useless son to make a liberal out of the hopeless tyrant. Both Varun and Aalia have done well adopting to the tinge of local dialect, though to those who have not grown up in South Delhi or South Mumbai, the accent is closer to Eastern UP and Bihar, than to Kota or Jhansi. But then contextual reality is the weakest part of the movie as I had mentioned earlier where a businessman is made to appear like an old Rajput Warrior. The movie moves in jerks and ends suddenly. There are usual Karan Johar traps where Alia's innocent soul finds voice only in the moments when she ends getting drunk. One feels almost thankful. The movie, I understand, is commercial success, perfect timing for release, Holi weekend, no other strong competing movie. The movies is not stimulating to the mind, but, at the same time, is also not inspiring to the heart. It thus falls short on both the purposes of art. It is a movie that fails on account of the lack of sincerity on the part of its makers. 

The Jeera Packer: By Prashant Yadav- Book Review

Book: The Jeera Packer
Author: Prashant Yadav
Publisher: Fingerprint Publishing
Pages: 295
Genre: Crime, Politics, Thriller, Fiction
Amazon Page: Click Here
Reviewer's verdict: Thoroughly enjoyable, captivating story. Recommended.

Disclosure 1: I had received this book as review copy.
Disclosure 2: I have rarely picked a new author's book for review and finished it.


ReviewI have my own apprehension in picking up contemporary writing. Being a writer, for me reading needs to either add to my missing education in literature or needs to have an exceptionally witty plot with serious efforts and respect for written words. Most contemporary work is either chic-lit, which leaves me fuming and with frustration, where the stature of the writer is totally erected on strength of a massive media and marketing campaign. My problem is when the content does not match to the huge build up created, leaves a serious reader, looking for some great content, some good story well-told, largely disappointed. On the other hand there are books which claim to be scathing, true story with macabre pictures of guns and dead bodies. Most such books, I have found, are weak on stories and strong on the message and propaganda. 
The brief description of the book worried me. It is a story of an ex-assassin. It is a story rising out of bad, bloody land of UP, India's most populous state with almost the weakest policing and most morally deprived politics in the nation. It had everything that would worry me. It even had a gun on the cover. But then I picked the book and thank god I did. What a marvelous story it is and so well told! As luck would have it, I picked this book as elections were ongoing in the state. The story plays in the cris-cross of Politics, Crime and some bit of policing. This is the story of a man, a sharp shooter, two decades out of his prime, living the life of a married man, raising a son, running a grocery store with his wife, Jaya. 
"The mass of men lead the life of quiet desperation." - Thoreau wrote in Walden. This is so true about most man, hit by middle age, struck in the conundrum of their non-nonsensical and inconsequential lives. You don't need to be a gifted sharpshooter, the protege of a local don to understand it. The monotony of middle age is something which will find echo in most men's life in today's world. Abdul, his friend from the earlier days, now happy being a mechanic with the promise of half a kilogram of meat for the family, nurses the dream of building the best bike, and driving all the way to Jamshedpur. A modest man with a small dream. To appreciate the significance of wind on the face while driving a bike, built on his own, is something that only men can understand. It is almost like parrot color dupatta for women which men can neither understand nor appreciate. A chance encounter with Lal Mani , his friend or rather lackey from the earlier times rubs in the unending ennui which the uneventful life of our hero has become, a has-been, who spends time packing Jeera, the condiment, in a one-of-the-many godowns in the city and wakes him up to the rude reality of time which had passed him by without making him any part in it, large or small. The existential search for the meaning of life sets him to plan for one last hit, big enough to be his masterpiece. I would not spoil it for the reader disclosing how he plans to do his big kills and whether he is able to successfully execute his last big project, his TajMahal. That is not important, the process of his waking up, the process of his search for the aim is important. 
They say half of our life is about the search of legitimacy, the other half is about the search of legacy. The life which begins in blood has no hope or trace of legitimacy, legacy is what our hero is looking for here. The writer bases his story in UP and quite openly picks characters from the political world of UP. Krantikari Party, obtusely referring to family politics, under the garb of socialism, Dada, with his friend Chouhan, much like Amar Singh latter with great connects with moneybags are very easy for anyone to recognize if one follows UP politics. Then there is a Thakur don, with his alleged pond of crocodiles, housed in a Jail. The characters closely resembling real life political people, described too closely to miss the resemblance, makes the read even more enjoyable with believable characters. There is even a lady political opponent to Dada, and in the context of UP, we know who we are talking about. 
The badlands of UP and Bihar, apart from the lawlessness, are also known for quirky metaphors. Nowhere else one would find such abundance of such brilliant metaphors as one would find in UP. While they are so attractive in the local language with the taste of the sand from the banks of Ganga as one plays with them in the mouth; it is very difficult to make them stand to their inherent brilliance any other language. The words, sharp and incisive, quickly turn insipid and uninspiring once translated. This goes to the credit of Prashant Yadav that he preserves the charm, the acerbic, yet attractive tinge of the language as he tells this story abundantly sprinkled with metaphors. You have the story flowing on the waves of such feisty quotes like "The whole point of becoming somebody is to change your brands." when our protagonist notices the cigarette brand of unworthy (as per him) Lalmani, now rich and powerful minister. Or at another place, he describes the mental state of the Hero, where he writes "My mind spins like camphor in a bowl of water."  Words and rustic smell of local lingo does not obstruct the story, rather it propels. The writing is smart at some places, witty and satirical at most places (for instance when Ventilator Baba (let the name sink in) advises the CM to sacrifice a goat, since latter cannot do a Hindu ceremony given the elections which were near or references to vote bank and special schemes for vote bank) and holds your attention all the way long. My only quarrel with the writer would be two sexually explicit scenes in the story which to me seem to add less or nothing to story and stand like sore thumb. I feel they are there because they fit in the formula of contemporary writing, and attracts the young (possibly). That apart this is a thoroughly enjoyable read and considering that this was probably first book by the writer, having read this, one would look for future writings of Prashant Yadav.