Facist face of India!
Hindu right of India is getting more and more attention therefore receiving lots of sympathy, support, loathing, and detest. But, They are all the time in news. Thanks to SABASE TEZ news channels .
Recently, they attacked S.A.R Geelani by spatting on his face. The professor of Delhi University who was accused for parliament attacks and acquitted by the supreme court. He has been attempted to be assassinated.
Mystery of Spoon
According to European standards, there are 3 kinds of spoon which you will find in the kitchen: Table spoon, Tea spoon, and Coffee spoon. Table Spoon can carry 15ml. Tea Spoon can carry 5 ml. Coffee spoon can carry 2-3 ml(I guess).
In my childhood when I used to read cooking guides or watch cooking TV program, I used to notice mention of 2 kinds of spoon – Table spoon and Tea spoon. In my home, I always saw only one kind of spoon that was just spoon. I couldn’t really understand what do they mean by ‘table’ or ‘tea’ spoon.
When I came to Switzerland, I saw 2 kinds of spoon. Bigger one using which you eat or drink soup and a smaller one using which you add sugar in your coffee. I observed that the bigger spoon was bigger than the one we used in India and the coffee spoon was smaller. Well, different cultures different size of spoons fair enough!!
Now! I am in UK. Here I am renting a room in a fully furnished old 1950 house. When I was going through the utensils of the house, I found spoons which are exactly of the size we used to use in India. Wait a sec! British use the same size of spoon as Indians use? I also found the bigger spoons which are the same size of Swiss spoons. Something is going on here!!
The spoon Indians use all the time is tea spoon in British sense. Because, Swiss people don’t drink tea same way as British do so they don’t have tea spoon. Most probably British brought British tea drinking in India and along with tea spoon.
May be, Indians might have thought why to have two different size of spoon so let us pick the one which is smaller and cheap. So, Tea spoon become simply spoon in India.**
**This conclusion is just based on my personal observation. My observation can be wildly wrong.
Laila-Majanu
Laila-Majnu is a legendary love story of arabs. It is quite famous in india. In the movie “aaja nachle”, they enacted this story as a play for 15 mins. Movie wasn’t that great but this enactment was beautiful. Indian version of this story is quite indianized.
In original story of arabs, majanu departed from laila in teenage. He met her only once after her marriage to another guy. After departing from her, He wondered around in dessert and recited poems in her memory. She died after few years of her marriage and majanu died next to her grave within few months after her death. There was not much of drama in their story but more deeper symbolism.
In indian version, it is much more dramatic. Watch aaja nachle to see the drama. 
This story was one of the inspirational tales of sufi tradition. Sufi tradition can be called a form of mystical Islam. In sufism, devotee is in love with God. He becomes one with God. His actions can’t be understood by real world people. In the laila-majanu story, Laila symbolize God. Majanu is devotee. Her husband is organized religion. He does weird actions which can only be understood by a true devotee. For example, he once get a chance to meet her alone after her marriage. Majanu could have touched her and be with her for a while but ,all of sudden, he runs away in dessert. Story doesn’t explain why he did so. Mystical tradition of sufism says that this can only be understood by a true devotee.
Isn’t it great that you need lots of historical background to understand these kind of stories, which on the surface makes little sense.
Why are they planting bombs?
There is a wave of terrorist bombings in India. Police can’t find them. They are arresting people, here and there. Terrorists keep bombing different cities. It seems police is not hunting behind the right people.
This time they bombed delhi. As I hearded the news, I immediately called a friend and a relative. One of them did’t pick my call first time. For a movement, I felt a sense of something which I never felt before. It gave me a sense of terror and how it works. A feeling of randomly loosing someone is extreamly terrifiying to human mind. It is a tactic which can only be won by another tactic. Catching the bomber of this bombing will not solve the problem altogether.
Root of the problem ought to be recognized and addressed.
Kashmir: A dead lock
Ideal solution: India back-off… Pakistan back-off….. Referendum under UN control ……
Only Kashmiri people can like this solution. India will never accept this.
It is clear that demand of succession in Kashmir is real. I have been there in Kashmir around 2 years back. There was a solider standing in every corner of Srinagar. India has deployed the the size of army in Kashmir more than the size of pak army. It is a military occupation on its own land. It is Kashmiri’s life which has become unbearable. It is their economy which is destroyed. Poverty is rampant. Most of srinagar smells like Kanpur. If I will not charge Indian government for brutality then I will charge it for extreme incompetence. May be the succession demand was not real 20 years back but after military rule of 20 years It has now become real.
There is nothing extraordinary if Indian government respond brutally to this succession demand. It is something where arguments over right or wrong doesn’t work. A nation state is not a natural but an artificial entity. There is no fundamental law of nature for existence of nation states. This concept is just only 2 centuries old. A nation state survives by following a set of tenants. It is by definition self-preserving. It can’t accept any kind of succession until it has something bigger on stake. It will never like the challenge on its own right to exist. It will be brutal against all those forces which challenges its structure and existence. For example, communist movement in India, democratic movement in China, or demand of freedom of Kashmir.
If Kashmiri want good life for themselves then they have to understand who is their enemy. They have to recognize this self-preserving desire of Indian government. They should keep doing these peaceful demonstrations and better not to burn Indian flags which will send completely opposite massage then they would wish. They should try to gain the sympathy of people of India. This is something which I think is missing in their strategy in quest of better life(I will not use word freedom).
I would rather not suggest any solution from my side. There are already plenty of solutions on the table. They have to just accept a solution which is agreeable for all.
Mixing of languages in Indian songs
Recently, There are many songs coming with a sentence or phrase in English. Some people like my parents are hating these songs and feeling more adulteration of our culture. Indian songs were always adulterated with foreign languages and phrases. Arabic, Urdu, and persian are commonly used in Indian song. It is very hard to find a song which has no Urdu word. Panjabi is some times used to make songs look more cool.
Use of European languages is kind a new dimension opening in writing songs and making music.
Mistrust
Once I was hanging out in a party. We were two guys talking in a corner of the party. Other guy was Indian Hindu. Few feets away a Pakistani Muslim was standing and eating something. He was not involved in our conversations but he might be overhearing our conversation. In that party, Another Indian Muslim guy X and his wife were also there and they were hanging out somewhere in the party. I noticed them and turned our conversation, “Hey, Have you seen X’s wife, she is damm hot.”
Indian Hindu guy looked around and said with little anger, “You are a complete idiot. Before saying things like this, you should check around that who can be listening”
I said carelessly, “Man! we are in a corner and only this Pakistani Muslim can hear us and I know him well. He wouldn’t mind”.
Indian Hindu guy was surprised with my naive thinking and whispered, “You don’t know them(Muslim). They collude beyond your imagination. Certainly, your friend will tell X about what you were saying.”
My jaw fell and only thing i could say, “What!”
—————
In India, checking out married woman is considered very rude but you can safely speak about an unmarried woman among your friends without raising eyebrows. I wouldn’t have surprised if he would have asked me not to say such thing for that woman. But, He objected on very specific situation. He told me not to trust a Pakistani friend. He may tell another Indian Muslim that I was checking out Indian Muslim’s wife. Just because both are Muslim. This was something which was beyond my imagination. I have seen same Indian Hindu guy hanging out with Pakistanis. He is so friendly to them such that I couldn’t believe his mistrust on Muslims.
This is something which I have observed in all kinds of people. No matter how friendly relationship people have.* There exist an underline mistrust or a distance between people just because of difference of race, country or religion. Many argue that it is natural human behavior. I have hard time to accept this argument. I am still searching for a solid counter argument to defeat it.
*Certainly, there are exceptions
One reason to have united India
Indians have many reasons of keeping India united. Most widely argued reason is that India may look diverse but internal structure of culture is quite similar across all over the country. I was never moved by this argument. This argument can easily be extended to world level. One can further argue that world may look diverse but internal structure of each society of the world based on same values so world should be one country. I don´t think there are many who will accept this extended argument. In my opinion, the fundamental reason of existence of a country is practicality. If people of a piece of land can organize themselves with reasonable amount of effort and peacefully develop their society then they can be in one country. The amount of effort, which goes in keeping a country organized, depends on the cultural diversity, historical animosities, availability of technology, and international politics. Here, I want to point at the factor of international politics which gives an indirect but significant reason to have India united.
India came into being when people started calling this peninsula as India. It was popularized when Europeans started calling us Indians during the era of Imperialism. Mugals and British played an important role to create and intensify the feeling of India. Against Mugal, Hindus were united only at the level of identity but there was no organized unity. Against British, Hindu and Muslims achieved a certain level of brotherhood. This course of history may not have created a perfect concept of one nation but it injected the feeling of nationhood. Indians attempted an impulsive and violent freedom struggle in 1857 which was terribly failed. After that, along side of the rise of karl marx and socialism, Indians created their own version of socialist and sluggish freedom movement.
British let us achieve our freedom in 1947 with a partition. It can’t be called strictly a partition. There was no free country before British occupation. If an external occupying force (British) call a region with a same name (India) then it doesn’t imply the region is one nation. Although i disagree with the reasons given for justification of creation of Pakistan but I strongly think that existence of Pakistan is as legitimate as existence of India. (Need better wordings)
India was liberated in the background of two mutually hostile world powers. By the time of 1960, world was in a really hot ‘cold war’. Both the parties of the cold war wanted as many countries in their camp. It was a significant political dynamics. There were so many poor countries with desperate need of help. All kinds of dirty games were played to influence the alignment of these countries in cold war. South America, Africa, Middle East, and South east Asia (approximately whole world) were the play grounds of these games. US used series of covert or direct military interventions in internal politics of many countries. Main objective of these operations were to keep governments of these poor countries aligned to US. In the same way, Soviets were directly using military forces to make countries communist. These interventions destroyed political structure of many countries. Due to these political turmoils, dictators easily grabbed power in many countries and they were able to rule by harsh repression of their population. People were forced to be poor and in ever lasting need for help.
India was lacking behind in technology, economic structure, and many basic resources. It needed external help. This made India very susceptible to similar kind of interventions (by US or Soviet) in the name of help. India wanted to avoid to join any side of cold war. India started non-alignment movement. Indian politician played very careful game to seek as much help as possible from these powers. Sometimes US and Soviet succeeded in influencing fate of India but failed to intercept in Indian government at large scale. India was consolidated as a significantly large union. This gave a kind of immunity from external manipulation. Socialism was deeply rooted in early Indian leadership. There were greedy Indian politicians but they mostly tried to work in a socialist framework. This lead to a complicated system of politics in which it is very difficult for an external force to manipulate.
India and Middle East can be compared for ‘American or western influence in the internal politics’. Historically Middle east and India share a quite similar history. Both had a history of quarreling kings which were taken over by an organized power. India was taken over by British for approx 250 years and liberated after second world war. Middle East and North Africa were ruled by Ottoman empire for 500 year.
In first world war, Europeans took over Middle East from Ottoman empire and distributed territory among themselves. By the end of second world war, Middle east was freed and divided into many countries. Most of the them were taken over by feudal rulers who inherit their royal kingdom which were lost to Ottoman empire or to Europeans. These rulers were hand picked by Europeans such that European interest is continued to be protected.
Things happened in India in a different way. Failure of freedom struggle of 1857 played a significant role in rest of freedom fighting politics. This failure destroyed many significant royal families in North India. In result, There was a political void to represent Indians which used to be filled by hereditary kings. This political void gave way for socialist leaders to take over. These new wave of leaders believed in relatively advance form of government. They recognized that Indian nationalism has to be solidify to gain political strength. At the time of freedom, There were no strong kings who were able to make claim for independent countries.
During the last 60 years, Middle East has been victim of mutual animosities which are actively exploited by US. If India is divided like Middle East countries then there would have been such massive intervention by US. Rajsthan might have been attacking UP with the help of US arms. Or Goa would have been occupied by Maharashtra and US would be attacking Maharastra for the crime of international aggression. My opinion is that unification of India has saved hundreds of year of learning curve of mutual peace and brotherhood.
India is not a perfect country. There are many forces which still wants to split it in parts. I hope they will soon learn why it is good to live together and solve the problems peacefully.
What is it like to be a ‘Manglik’?*
Every society has a mechanism to tag people to make sure only a small set of them can become chosen few. Indians used most simplistic way. You get whole bunch of tags at your birth which restricts your fate right away. For example, every person is tagged with a caste and you are allowed to marry a girl only from your own caste. There is another relatively complicated thing which is called ‘Astrology’. It refines tagging system more systematically.
Let me give you a small introduction of Indian Astrology.** Indians thought earth is at the center of universe and all the stars are moving around earth in a strict discipline. All the stars revolve around the earth in 23h56m from east to west. They also observed that 9 objects in the visible sky don’t follow this strict rule. They started calling them planets. These objects were Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Rahu, and Ketu. Rahu and ketu are imaginary planets. (Indians are very good in imagining mythical things.) Two main things they observed about planets. First, They all move in same circle which is called Ecliptic.*** Second, they also revolve around the earth from east to west same as stars but with a slower speed. For example, sun revolves around earth in 24h.
So, Indian view of sky was that stars create a fixed backdrop scene and planets are skidding along the ecliptic with a slow speed over this backdrop. Indians divided this ecliptic in 12 parts. So, planets move slowly from one part to another. These parts are called zodiac. For example, sun is 4 minute slower than stars. So, sun takes an year to make full round over the backdrop of stars. Sun crosses 12 Zodiacs in a whole year. A zodiac every month which you might have noticed when you read your daily horoscope in news paper.
Each time instant can be characterized by location of these 9 planets in Zodiacs. It is like a clock with 9 hands. You have to say location of all the 9 planets to be able to say time according to this ‘planetary clock’.
Now, the astrology kicks in. Indian scholars thought that there must be a divine plan. They imagined that God does things according to this planetary clock. If God gives you birth at certain time according to the planetary clock, then he will use some unknown (to us) formula to decide what you are going to face in the life. So, they developed a field of study Astrology-”To decipher God’s plan!”. They started studying people and listing the events of their life with planetary clock time. They tried to observe if there is a correlation between people’s life and planetary clock time. They came up with thousand of correlation results. For example, If You are born in a time when Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter are exactly 4 zodiacs away from each other then you are born in ‘Raj Yog’. ‘Raj Yog’ means a luck of ruling power. These are the rules of astrology. To become a good astrologer, you need to learn many such rules and develop an ability to detect these patterns.
I don’t have eloquence to describe the folly of this wishful thinking of deciphering God’s plan. Once I saw comedian Bill Maher acting like a Religious dude and saying, “Hey, even I can understand how this world works.” It is not bad that once some one created astrology. Can’t we now say that it is a failed hypothesis after advancing to today’s knowledge base?
These predictions play with peoples mind. It is like telling someone at ones face that he/she is ugly/beautiful. They boost or kill peoples moral. If your prediction says you will do well in rice business and you believe the prediction then you may end up doing rice business. This prediction system helps to keep society in order. People know their prediction before hand and follow the society obediently.
One of the rules of Astrology is ‘Manglik’. Literally means ‘cursed by mars’. There are certain configurations of planetary clock. If you are born at the time of those configurations then you are cursed by Mars. So, You can be born with a tag called Manglik. You will not notice this tag until you will reach to the age of marriage. You are cursed. If you marry a person who is not cursed then he/she will die within 7 years. [For non Indians: This is not a joke.] People take it very seriously. It is very hard to find someone who is also cursed and fits with your expectations. Parents of cursed child have to hunt the world end to end to find a cursed match. It must be traumatic for someone who believes that most important person of ones life can die within 7 years because of the curse.
I am not a Manglik. I don’t know what it is like to be a ‘Manglik’.
*Inspired by: “What is it like to be a BAT?”. I barely passed cognitive philosophy course in my bachelors but the title of this paper is cool enough to be used here.
**I am trying to present it in a way which helps you to understand Indian Astrology but facts may not be historically accurate. Please comment if you think i have written something wrong.
***Because whole solar system is approximately flat in 3D space.
Conspiracy of Sari
Indian society has been known for not giving much freedom to women. My observation is that there are not many direct ways to subjugate women in Indian society but there are subtle ways to devoice women. I think sari is one of those means.
First of all, it is simply few meters long straight piece of cloth. Properly warping sari around on “not so simple” human body can be a difficult task. Its simplicity makes it complicated to wear. It takes 10s of minutes to get it right. Once she gets it right then she have to strictly keep it right. Sari is not zipped or buttoned but just warped around her body. It may possible after a while some parts of sari get loose. So in every few minutes, she needs to actively check that every thing is still fine with sari or not. It consumes a lot of processing time of her brain. She can’t run wearing a sari. It restricts not only physical movement but also mental movement.
It is a bad design. It is against practicality. So, How Indians reached to this design of clothing? Sari is considered a beautiful dressing. It represents woman’s modesty. Woman in sari gives immediate impression of submissive and shy character. Women are expected to start wearing sari after marriage. Somehow, Frequency at which a daughter-in-law wear sari represents her devotion to her husband’s family. You can see design of sari serves its purpose in society.
I have argued with some girls with this viewpoint. Invariably, their first response is, “Sari is so beautiful,how can you think like this?”. They adore sari. Some times you get answer, “Even if you put that woman in jeans and t-shirt, she will not run and she will not think any thing other than herself.”
This is not as Muslim Burka which can be easily identified as means of subjugation. It is so subtle such that most of you readers must be thinking this post is funny or overly argumentative. A means of subjugation becomes really powerful when it is hard to identify and convince its effects.
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