To whomsoever it may concern,

I am a 20-year-old “Hindu” Indian boy. I would not normally disclose my religion as a part of my primary identity, but these days it is different. Due to the vituperative speech by Varun (I can’t use Gandhi, he doesn’t deserve it) made recently, to merely win an election, this identity has been forced on me. I will always unwillingly be “the other” to millions of Muslims in my own country.

But I feel ashamed to be born as a Hindu today. Just recently I was talking to one of my close friends, Faraz. And he was of the opinion that the Muslims are the most alienated community in this country. I defended the secular credentials of my country passionately. I said that look around India, Sri Lanka has an ethno-centric war going on, in Pakistan the minorities are non-existent and in China you cannot openly practice your faith. It is only in India that the minorities have such rights.

He brought my attention to the Gujarat Genocide (Not Riots), and I said that despite that the civil society and majority of the political class was opposed to it and that it was an aberration. I gave examples of states like Israel and Iran where minorities are given no representation. “But Anshul”, he said, “What is the use of all this when I don’t feel safe “in my own country”?”  I reassured him, that it wasn’t that bad.

But today I cannot face him, as his stand has been vindicated. I can’t imagine how he must have felt when in his own country; people’s representatives were talking of chopping off his hands and forcefully sterilizing him or members of his community just because they happened to be Muslims! (Much like the Nazi rhetoric) I put myself in his shoes and am horrified! Pandit Nehru said that he does not understand concept of Hindu Rashtra, but the Pakistanis would agree with it entirely, as the idea of Pakistan is the one closest to this ideology.

And what is worse is the fact that such an ideology has found legitimization in my country. But Varun should remember as long as there will be RSS and Bajrang Dal there shall be IM and SIMI! What can I possibly say to my friend to make him feel safe? Such invective does not polarize the Hindu vote (rabid communalists will vote for you anyway), it alienates the secular, patriotic Muslim, which has been the single most disastrous effect of the Hindutva Movement in India.

With this diatribe of Varun, Taliban has come a step closer to India. For Hindu Rashtra and Taliban are two-sides of the same coin. Now call me “sickular” or psuedo-secular  it doesn’t matter. All I can say right now is, “Sorry, Faraz Bhai… per hum sab inke jaise nahin hain…”(All of us are not like them)

Just like all Muslims were forced to exhibit their “patriotism” post the Mumbai Attacks by the right wingers, I show off my tolerance and secularism in the face of  an equally devastating attack on the Idea of India…

Please save this land of Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar…

Anshul Trivedi

1) When I was 12, the most incompetent President, in their history had taken over, from a very charming one. As my intellect developed (however little), I have seen this joke for a president, do nothing while his country was attacked, wage large scale wars, causing a massive genocide (consider only Iraq, here) and conjuring a miraculous second-term victory. He is the classical Anti-Forrest Gump (see anti-Christ).

This idiot has had a lot to do with shaping our generations’ political understanding. We deserved better. Since the last eight, very impressionable years, I have seen nothing but USA wage wars and kill and bully the world, making a mockery of the UN and the very Human Rights they so ardently champion.

2) The second reason was, the phenomenon of Barack Hussein Obama (It is strange, MS dictionary recognizes just Hussein, neither Barack nor Obama). His enthralling speeches, his underdog status, his racial (not racist) make-up and his meteoric rise through the ranks compelled me to follow him.

“America, our time has come”…, “We are the ones, we’ve been waiting for…” – Such oratory, in that deep voice and that conviction, made me believe, here was something different. Here’s why USA was at the top … it responded with this delight after the Bush disaster. Barack had gotten me, like million others, under his spell.

Barack Obama – Obama the Campaigner and Obama the President will be poles apart…

I got to know Barack rather well in the last 20 months, his impoverished and estranged brother, his philanthropic mum and his father, his years of struggle after graduation, his struggle to deal with his multiracial identity, the difficulty in coping with the loss of his father. I’ve seen him rise through his working class upbringing and getting in to Harward Law School, giving up a great job after graduating from Harward Law School and work for the poor in Chicago… his dates with Michelle… His entire journey has been shared with me, as part of his campaign. He truly is a remarkable person! Why wouldn’t you love this person! I’d have loved to have a brother, friend, father like Barack. On top of that, he admires, Mahatma Gandhi, even though I don’t give a damn about Thomas Jefferson or George Washington! He says, “Gandhi inspires me, and tells me, what ordinary people can do, when they come together…” I say Hallelujah!

It has been a long time, and Barack finds new ways to amaze me. But the campaign fatigue has got to me. And so has common sense. I’d be lying, if I didn’t admit that I got goose bumps, when he went on stage, in front of 80,000 people at the DNC to accept the presidential nomination… U2 was playing in the background as our Barack fulfilled his destiny! I don’t like these Conventions. They are way too gaudy, ornate and designed to deceive. Let the dust settle and our fairy tale disappears in thin air!

Wait till President Obama takes over. Obama has nothing new to offer, but prolonged, low-intensity war and a continuation of Republican policies in a milder form. President Obama would lose even his own respect, if he pulls troops out of Iraq right now, as he promises. From an American perspective, it would be a suicidal move. They have created a monster they can’t control and he can’t leave it in the open, before it is sedated. They just can’t win the war there and they can’t leave it either.

Here’s something interesting — When asked in Berlin by CNN’s Candy Crowley whether he believed the United States needed to apologise for anything over the past 7 ½ years in terms of foreign policy, candidate Obama responded, “No, I don’t believe in the U.S. apologising. As I said I think the war in Iraq was a mistake….” ^[1]

The world thinks otherwise Mr. Obama. But what can “President” Obama do? He needs the support of the Jewish lobby to win elections, as does any US president.

World affairs analyst for the Frontline, Vijay Prashad notes, quite objectively – IN the last few weeks of the gruelling primary campaign, Senator Barack Obama made two important visits. He spoke to the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)… To the Jewish American lobby in Chicago, Obama affirmed the “special relationship” between Washington and Tel Aviv, supporting Israel’s view of its relationship with its Arab neighbours and of the Occupation and going so far as to say that Jerusalem would remain the undivided capital of Israel. As the Democratic presidential nomination comes his way, Obama tacks right on foreign policy, to the dismay of many of his left-liberal allies. [2]

Not every country condones every action of Israel, India included. the country is unreasonably assertive, and has violated human rights for decades now.

In the meanwhile, market fundamentalists suffered a hard blow with the bankruptcy of Lehmann Bros. and the US financial crisis. The capitalist state is actually bailing out the businesses through tax payers’ money! This is sacrilege, in a market fundamentalist economy, which prides itself on fiscal prudence and constraints on government spending. There will be regulation now or “common sense” regulation, as he calls it. But isn’t Mr. Obama forgetting something?

Vijay Prashad reminds us here — Obama rightly raised the problem of deregulation but his history was truncated. Saying that this is a problem of the George W. Bush administration (the “last eight years”) exculpates his own party’s role over the past several decades in the evisceration of the New Deal. It was during the Bill Clinton administration that the pillars of regulation came down and freed up investment banks to operate with minimal supervision.[3]

There isn’t even the tiniest scope of ideological predilection in his observations. What else, will the Liberal Obama achieve during his tenure? Will he be able to legalize same-sex weddings? No, the Orthodox Christian lobby is too strong. Will he be able to make healthcare affordable beyond doubt, for the retirees, nurse and teachers, whom he always mentions in his speeches? No, market forces and profit motives need to be considered. Will he stop outsourcing, and give those jobs to Americans? He already said that this is an irreversible process of Globalization… Will he conclusively settle the abortion debate? Not if he wants a second term.

Oh, and yes, admiring Gandhi and ratifying “unilateral actions”, which in India we call “Bombing a country without international permission”, is like being a white supremacist and admiring Martin Luther King. We know you want to appease Indians, Mr. Obama, if we were so dumb, outsourcing would not have been an issue!

Maybe, healthcare will improve a tad bit, maybe education will be made more affordable for sometime, but this is not the change, for which thousands of people in Berlin come to hear Mr. Obama or lakhs in India wake up early to catch the live speeches.

Our dear Barack is amazing, everyone loves him, but Senator Obama will be (He hasn’t won as yet) just a run-of-the-mill American President. With many groups to appease, with a billion balancing acts to perform, with a few swing states to win and maintaining US dominance in the world, just or unjust. It’s a shame Barack loses out to Sen. Obama… Barack would have been a great President…

References:

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2518/stories/20080912251805900.htm – Understanding Barack Obama, Mark Herold

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2513/stories/20080704251304300.htm – Swinging states of America, Vijay Prashad

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2521/stories/20081024252105900.htm – Of the same feather, Vijay Prashad

Posted in Politics Tagged: Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Foreign Policy, International Politics, Obama, Politics, United States of America, US Presidential campaign, US Presidential Elections, US Presidential Race, Yes we can ]]> http://anshultrivedi.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/barack-vs-obama/feed/ 7 Anshul Barack http://anshultrivedi.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/free-bhagat-singh-from-media-stereotypes/ http://anshultrivedi.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/free-bhagat-singh-from-media-stereotypes/#comments Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:45:43 +0000 Anshul http://anshultrivedi.wordpress.com/?p=9 ]]> Recently Bhagat Singh was voted the greatest Indian of the 20^th century. It was, of course an opinion poll of a news channel, where mostly the urban youth voted. Ironically, the present generation, who almost worships him as “the quintessential rebel”, stands in complete dissonance with his views. The urban youth represent anything but Bhagat Singh in their lifestyles. He is our Indian version of Che Guevara. Both have been reduced to romantic, consumerist, adrenaline pumping militants, whose merchandise will be worn with aplomb, but their ideals pushed into the attics of their intellect. You will know what I mean as we trace the character of Bhagat Singh through the course of this article.

Bhagat Singh was born in Lahore and belonged to a family of freedom fighters, amongst them Ajit Singh is of some popularity. It was only natural that he had strong political convictions and patriotic sentiments from a very young age. One of the reasons that he is admired is that, he died at a young age of 23 for the love of his nation. While this is, no doubt, a heroic deed, many freedom fighters laid down their lives around this age. Amongst them, Ghadar revolutionary, Kartar Singh Sarabha was a big inspiration for Bhagat, whose picture he always kept in his pocket along with him, till the day of his arrest. Sarabha died at 20, but today, I doubt if anyone except history students know him, let alone admire him. This is no way implies that his sacrifice was unimportant or less in anyway. The question is why is it so? In the answer lies the reason for Bhagat Singh’s immense popularity.

Some distortions in the character of Bhagat Singh need to be dispelled, as painted by the mainstream media today. The first one is that he was a violent revolutionary, a militant. However, this is unfair to him. Prof. K.N. Panikkar observes, in his essay “Celebrating Bhagat Singh” “The popular image of Bhagat Singh is of a terrorist who took to violence in contrast to the pacifist methods adopted by the mainstream liberation movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. Bhagat Singh himself had drawn attention to this: “Let me announce with all the strength at my command that I am not a terrorist and I never was, except perhaps, in the beginning of my revolutionary career. And I am convinced that we cannot gain through those methods.” This oft-repeated self-appraisal points to the evolution of his political ideas and practice. Even if in his last political act he had used the bomb to make the deaf hear, he had long time back given up violence as a part of his political armoury. Such a transformation as a result of deep study and contemplation distinguished him from those who had earlier taken to the cult of the bomb. Such a transformation as a result of deep study and contemplation distinguished him from those who had earlier taken to the cult of the bomb.”

This should put to rest all the fallacious theories of taking to violence, just for the sake of it. It is well known, that as a young lad he had taken part in Gandhi’s non violent, non – cooperation movement, which was withdrawn after Chauri Chaura.

When Bhagat was 10, the Bolshevik Revolution was brought about in Russia, under Lenin. This had a profound impact on his thoughts. He immersed himself in to studying works of Marx, Lenin, Engels and Trotsky. He writes “Study, was the cry that reverberated in the corridors of my mind. My previous faith and convictions underwent a remarkable modification. The romance of violent methods alone which was so prominent amongst our predecessors was replaced by serious ideas… I got ample opportunity to study various ideals of world revolution. I studied Bakunin, the anarchist leader, something of Marx, the father of communism and much of Lenin, Trotsky and others, the men who had successfully carried out a revolution in their country.” It is no wonder that he came up with the slogan “Study and struggle” for the young political workers. Bhagat was a voracious reader, his reading varied from Victor Hugo, James Mill to the likes of Upton Sinclair and Spinoza. Another important and noticeable transformation is the withering away of the “romantic militant revolutionary’ to a man who had meditated upon and studied the socio-political, economical and historical conditions of his country and produced a lucid view of the society he wanted to build and gave an alternative to the Indian people. To this end, he studied Lenin, Marx and Trotsky, as they were the men who had “successfully” brought about a revolution, indicating his pragmatism. In this respect he differed from Gandhi, who said after the Chauri Chaura that we were not ready for independence.

Bhagat Singh

He had declared himself a rationalist and an atheist. The people, especially the Indian right wingers, who say that he read the Bhagwat Geeta, should go and read his pamphlet “Why I am an atheist?” This brings to light, another facet of Bhagat Singh’s personality, his tolerant, progressive and secular views. He abhorred the caste system that is in practice, unfortunately, till even today in India and believed that such an order should be created “where exploitation of man by man, in not possible.” Bipan Chandra, in his book India’s struggle for Independence, observes “More than any other contemporary leader, with the exception of Gandhiji, he understood the danger that communalism posed to Indian society and Indian nationalism. He often warned his comrades and followers that communalism was as big an enemy as colonialism…Religion, said Bhagat Singh, was the private concern of a person, but it had to be fought as an enemy when it intruded into politics and took the form of communalism. Bhagat Singh also believed that people must free themselves from the mental bondage of religion and superstition.”

He was an able organizer and took part in and organized various large-scale, mass rallies, whilst working with the Naujawan Bharat Sabha (NBS) and the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). He was elected the secretary of the NBS. He emphasized the need to work with the masses or the proletariat of India. According to him, the real revolutionaries were the workers and the farmers in the villages, and they needed to be organized if India was to make any strides towards the goal of independence. Another idiotic thing that is propagated by the modern day media about Bhagat is that he had an intrinsic dislike for the Congress leaders, like Gandhi and Nehru. In fact, he wrote a letter, stating that he respected these leaders enormously and appreciated their contribution to the independence struggle. Although he had political disagreements with them, which is perfectly fine. He considered them to be looking after the concerns of the bourgeois and their petty compromises while dealing with the establishment peeved him. He did not discount the role of compromises in Politics altogether, being the pragmatist that he was, on the contrary he thought they were an inevitable part of the process. However, the bone of contention was the “nature of compromises”. A compromise should lead you somewhere or put you in a position where you could move forward, in his opinion, the compromises were meek and almost subservient, to be harsh. Another preposterous assumption is that Gandhi conspired with Erwin to kill Bhagat, or else he could have got a commutation. First of all, it is useless to even consider this point, let alone polemically dismiss it. If Gandhi would have succeeded in getting Bhagat a reprieve, he would have been assaulted with a scathing critique by none other than Bhagat himself, as his father received when he pleaded for clemency. He would have considered it “nothing short of treacherous” had it not been from his father, in his own words.

Today the youth and the media have more or less killed his ideals of “study and struggle”, equitable distribution of wealth and working with the masses. This is reflected in the bankrupt state of youth politics and the anti-intellectual movement that is growing in our country. Parallels are drawn with him, of a man, who killed out of pure spite, in a supposedly landmark political movie “Rang De Basanti’. He is an icon of a consumerist, rebellious teenager, who wants revolution, without even knowing the meaning of the term. What that does is, to give ample scope for the communal forces in our country to portray him as an ultra nationalist, and just use him for political mileage. While he was way above all this, it appalled me to see that RSS had suggested his name for Bharat Ratna. How dare they use him to polarize thought? It is like Hitler recommending Einstein for the Nobel, to galvanize Jewish support! If you really want to know Bhagat, read his thoughts, try to imagine the amount of intellectual prowess that man possessed, that at the age 16 – 17, he was reading historical literature to pave a revolutionary theory! Imagine the superhuman will that man possessed, that made him, triumphantly in the end, withstand heinous and inhuman torture. Imagine the love he had, for his country, for justice, peace and for humanity above all, that he sprinkled the altar of revolution with his blood, for the noblest of causes. I can remember Che Guevara’s words at this point “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that every true revolutionary is guided by the principle of love…” Stop selling or buying a non existent image of Bhagat Singh! Free him from the shackles of shallow commercialism and the profit motive. Try to interpret, I don’t even say emulate, his works and his life. How a very shy, tall Sikh lad, from a village, registered his names forever in the annals of history! Shaheed – e Aazam Bhagat Singh, Inquilaab Zindabad! (Long Live revolution!)

For further reading and finding out my sources for this article you can visit :

www.shaheedbhagatsingh.org

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2421/stories/20071102500100400.htm ( Essay- Celebrating Bhagat Singh)

http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl2421/stories/20071102500100400.htm (Frontline Issue)

www.cpim.org – The Marxist – Bhagat Singh: An Immortal Revolutionary – Ashok Dhawle

There is a very good fable to describe the dilemma that everyone faces. Three blind men were told to hold three separate parts of the elephant and tell the shape of the animal. The person who was holding the trunk said that the elephant was tube-like in shape, the person who held the leg told that it was like a tree trunk and the last one who was holding the tail said that it was probably a reptile. The society is the elephant in this case and I am blindfolded. I will describe it according to the part that I have held.

Why am I blindfolded? My answer to that is, due to the distortions in the information and knowledge provided to me. There are incessant power struggles in any polity, and the interest groups try and incline all literature and intellectual writing towards their agenda. The lobbies are formed, and the thought is perpetuated in an organized way. So any book that I read today is a mere point of view. It is up to me how I analyze and judge the situation. This process of judgement is built over the years and a person’s upbringing has a substantial role to play. A few essentials that might culminate into a good paradigm of judgement according to me or the once that I used are:

• A liberal environment. The audacity to question any and everything with impunity. Society will always taboo questioning to maintain the status quo. But it is of utmost importance that we question and satisfy ourselves before complying with any idea.
• Rationality and reason should be used as tools to counter any doubts and questions that arise. A scientific temper is paramount to avoid the biases in your thought process.
• An aversion of hate in the thought process is important. Hating a point of view is an extreme manifestation of a bias, which has been nurtured through constant indoctrination. While biases, inevitably always exist in a thought process, we must try and fight to keep it restricted to the minimum. Example: A capitalist will hate a communist and vice versa. While everyone is entitled to their own view, why should your dislike for a certain ideology filter to individuals? We are fighting against ideas and not individuals.
• There is no place for cynicism or pessimism in the thought process. While certain phases will arise we must try and fight these, for we are inconsequential in history, but nonetheless, we make it. So action is imperative.
• The support should be lent to ideas and not to individuals, for I have realized that in history, causes are always greater than individuals. Causes make individuals great and not the other way around.

Why Socialism?

If you just analyze the socio-economic conditions of the world today, there is blatant injustice and disparity in the distribution of wealth in the society. I just ask everyone around me; is asking for equity in wealth distribution evil? Is hoping for a change against blatant, imperial injustice, the flashes of which we saw in the Iraq war evil? Moreover, India is a predominantly an agrarian society, where the peasants and workers form the majority of the population, and they are the ones living in utter destitution. Fidel Castro says “More than 820 million people in the world suffer from hunger; and 790 million of them live in the Third World.” He further comments “As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger.” For a supposedly maniacal killer, he is talking quite sensibly. He has lived up to his promise of providing the best social infrastructure to his countrymen, whether it is health or education or even bio-technology for that matter. He accomplished these feats under massive sanctions and widespread slanderous propaganda by the western media. The western media talks of human rights, and the USA have since Fidel has taken over, waged at least three large-scale, unjust wars. I am not even mentioning their covert operations of assassinating popularly elected leaders in Latin America, like Salvador Allende of Chile to name one, which cause chaos in the political and economic life of those countries, making a mockery of the concept of democracy that they pontificate. You don’t even need to pick up a book to realize this fact.

I will write this article in two parts due to lack of time. Just to finish off the first part, I’d like to make it simple. Just think about this.

If we could shrink the earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following.

There would be:

57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 would be Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world’s wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
(ONE)1 would be near death;
(ONE)1 would be near birth;
(ONE)1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education;
(ONE)1 (yes, only 1) would own a computer.
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
And, therefore . . .
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world.

 I shall put my perspective on why we need to take political stands and the urgent need to understand our history, in the next part, and will most probably merge the two articles .

Now coming to my experiences with “the beyond”, yesterday a doctor came to pay us a visit. I was in another room, surfing the net and listening to some music. I went out to take a leak and saw the doctor telling people something about some planets. I immediately figured what was going on. A nice little session of astrology. Now according to the astrologer, I was going to have a good time and get amazing results if I put in a lot of hard work. That was apparently due to the positioning of Saturn in my horoscope. And I was going to get myself a girl in 2008 for sure. He was ready to write it in ink. I didn’t know how to react. So I laughed it off. But my uncle, aunt and my parents were really taking him seriously. Few minutes later I came to know that my aunt was a disbeliever like me but due to a couple of incidents she was a convert. Same with my father, my brother went through an almost fatal health problem when he was in his third grade and it had been written in his horoscope that it would happen. My uncle went through a tough phase and again it was predicted.

I sometimes wonder whether this all has some science behind it. Why do millions all around the world believe in it? Not only in India but in the west too. They have their western astrology with all kind of animals for months. I fall into the category of scorpions. I am intense and revengeful and a passionate person. People who know me will say I am anything but intense!  Now let us look at this as rationally as possible.We all want to know what the future holds. It would be better if we knew what was in store. We would get rid of all the insecurities that we have. All the emotional ups and downs would be over. Then the question arises, do we want that to happen? It might sound strange that I want to go through the hardships that are “supposedly” in store for me. They make me a better person. They make me value what I have. That inspires me to achieve what I want, at all costs. It is a famous saying that “Failure teaches you more than success.” And I am fully aware that writing such things on a blog is easier than facing it, and I am writing all the right and clichéd things. Think again. Why are these things right and clichéd?  Obviously, because they hold a certain amount of truth and substance in them.Taking the western methodology first and briefly. Our traits are signified by certain creatures which are attributed to us according to our birth. Each of these creatures, have traits which are shared by us. To dismiss this in not many lines, I would like to give examples of two great sport stars with whom I share my birthday. Courtney Walsh, the great West Indian fast bowler and Diego Maradona. Both were born on the 30^th October. But while Maradona is passionate and all that, Walsh was the coolest person on the field most of the times.

After their illustrious careers, while Walsh has maintained a low profile, Maradona has been in all sorts of problems. Why, if both were scorpions, make different choices? Then the “free will” jargon is thrown in. It can be easily refuted by arguing that their socio-economic conditions had a lot to do with the choices they made. Hence, there is no divine intervention there.

Firstly, if we are to assume that there is some truth in astrology, it is a pre-condition that we believe that everything is destined. We are just playing out the part that someone wrote for us. Thus far it has not been the worst script. The astrologer that I was chatting with said that I haven’t met a person who has achieved great heights without having a powerful horoscope.

 Secondly we have to presume that someone is up there looking after us. I have had serious “faith fights” with myself in the past. I came to the conclusion that I would rather not “believe” and do the right thing than believe and conform to all the ills of my religion. Hinduism particularly has inherent evil class-caste barriers and information control mechanisms. You will say how this is relevant.

Now let me start dissecting the topic. We must also bear in mind that this is in essence a Hindu “science” (?). The Hindu religion is plagued by the caste system. Where the scope of achievement of individuals is restricted to their birth. A “Kshatriya” will be a warrior and king, “Brahmin” will be a teacher and a priest, “Vaishya” will be a tradesman and craftsman, and “Shudras” will do all the sanitation and other “unwanted jobs”. Furthermore, Shudras are almost abandoned from the society; they do not mix with other castes, not allowed to read the Holy Scriptures (a major knowledge source in those days) and other disciplines, as that privilege is retained only for the higher castes.

This is just my conspiracy theory but let me go ahead with this.  By believing in these methods, even partially, you tend to become fatalists albeit in a little degree. This restricts your scope of achievement. You tend to accept setbacks without much remonstration. Which is good for your spiritual health, but I see another societal control mechanism in this. How easy would it be to rule a bunch of fatalists? Easier than the followers of revolutionaries, I’d say. Krishna himself tells Arjun that you are mere tools for the execution of the divine plan. And what does Arjun do? He kills his “adharmi” brothers and sisters. Now as blasphemous as it may sound, the Islamic terrorists do the same thing for Islam! Bin Laden says that Allah will shower blessings on you and they are ready to kill people and blow themselves up in the process. So such things are in tune with the Vedas and other Scriptures which promulgate acceptance and fatalism. All a conspiracy to maintain a status quo. Imagine, even after killing thousands of people Arjun and his mates all go to heaven while a poor Shudra, if he even reads the scriptures or accidentally kills a cow or something of that sort, he burns in hell for a lot of time and then is reborn as a filthy animal. And I can put my neck on the line for this. Even after working hard for almost an entire life, a poor laborer dies in oblivion. While a useless king, who kills his father to get to the throne has a lavish life and is chronicled in history! All because the planets wanted it to be that way. All because it is written in the stars! I don’t subscribe to this unjust system.

All this doesn’t mean that I am against astrology because it is a by-product of Hinduism. I am against it in any form. We must fight this, although not by ridiculing the believer but by presenting arguments to the contrary. We must fight against conformism and dogmatism. We must fight for the legitimization of liberal dialogue. This change is important towards building a progressive society.

2008 is supposed to be a very good year for me. It will reap me benefits if I put in the effort. Fair enough. If that is the master plan for me, let it be. I don’t want myself to be bothered by it. I want the uncertain to be that way. I will go by the war cry of Che “Until victory, always!” I shall struggle for what I want, until victory. Let the scorpion and Saturn perform its duties. I am doing my work. I shall try and do good things around me, so that this place is better when I leave it.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.”

So declared a certain Jawaharlal Nehru of a certain Indian National Congress on our Independence Day, in his famous speech, the tryst with destiny, in 1947. After years of organized and non-violent struggle, we finally got our independence. Today almost sixty years after that momentous day, in the history of our glorious nation, we somehow have lost the concept of being an Indian. And I speak for the middle class and elites of our society. The fact that modernization is not westernization, how we unknowingly, submitted to the cultural and more importantly intellectual hegemony of the west, never entered our minds. India was and remains as exotic to us as to the west! We saw it, understood and loved it from the view of a foreigner! This is quite evident on the up-market streets of the metros, when heavily accented, pierced boys, flaunt their love for their country, for an MTV opinion poll.

For some reason, post 1991 reforms, India is looked at differently and by its own citizens too. References are abundant. We turned afresh for some reason after we opened the market. The question is not whether opening the market was correct or incorrect, but letting the market take over our identity. We are the same old battered country, which the urban middle class hates. We are the same corrupt people, with the same set of politicians (read scoundrels by the middle class) running our country just with the exception of being a tad bit richer. Loving your country because it is becoming rich is certainly dangerous if not blasphemous! That could be a reason to love it more, though.There are a plethora of indices predicting our country’s economic growth and might by the year 2020. We will be even wealthier! In fact we will do much better than China in many fields. That’s really commendable. But the question that I ask is “Does economic growth, complete our definition of growth and greatness of the Indian society?” Moreover, do we want it to be that way? Has our vision for the development of our country become so myopic? Does merely being a comparatively rich country imply success in the achievement of our ideals? Was this what Gandhi, Bose and Bhagat Singh (Yes it is not 15^th August and still I take their name and reaffirm their relevance and honour their sacrifices.) had in mind when they devoted their lives to the freedom of their motherland?

In this race towards economic development, which is so well chronicled and publicized by the media, have we forgotten the role that society plays in nation building? If this is really the whole truth, then 1991 indeed marked a new freedom. Freedom from the weight of the ideals and visions of our forefathers, who fought for our country, and adoption of western economics as our directive principles.How do we envisage our society and country? We are the world’s biggest democracy, one of the most tolerant, if not the most tolerant nations throughout the world. We are a respected nation, which still has its identity in tact and has not caved under pressures from the superpowers. We are a peaceful but mighty nation that commands respect and admiration at once. We sport diversity with panache; this is something that not many third world countries can do let alone the developed ones! Why do we tend to forget that our nation is younger than most of our grandparents and is competing with long established democracies? And then the normal clichés of India being a kaleidoscope of cultures and people and practices, flora and fauna, the traditions etc. that should be celebrated in their own rights. On the other hand, these cannot mask our shortcomings. The rampant casteism, female feticide, infanticide, dowry deaths, oppression of women, communal divides have arrested the growth of our society. Political outfits still come to power through divisive politics and petty issues. Our health and education indicators, genocides like Godhra and the ’92 communal riots still paint a grim picture of our country. All this even after getting wealthier. A side which is somehow overlooked by the urban elites, while they set out to buy the moon. But with the change of perspective came a change in policies. In this race to economic freedom are we losing our identity?

 Recently the much talked about “123 agreement” was almost signed. While we were celebrating our rise in the ranks of nations, which command the respect of the boss, we expediently overlooked a clause, which asks (orders) us to distance ourselves from Iran. This might be nothing, or this might be the beginning of the scrapping of the Non Aligned Movement. Should we let ourselves stray into complete control of the developed powers for the sake of economic assistance, and end up becoming a satellite of the developed in Asia? A replica of Israel in the Middle East? This is a mere speculation, but the last time we were colonized, it too started with trade.

 We must exercise caution.

In 2020 we might be richer than many and better than China in many aspects, although we must celebrate the fact, we must not forget the whole truth. We must always remember that the success of a nation and society are not only defined through economic indicators or how much FDI it garners or how high its sensex reaches, but through holistic parameters. That nation and society are inseparable and that we had better visionaries than the World Bank and IMF to chalk the path of our country to glory. Most of all we should remember this nation was won back through blood and sweat and not through trade negotiations, and its future and history will be written by the same.

We at once are more heterodox and diverse than the world could ever imagine. We are a miracle of the elements, and our identity is a result of profound thought and great intellect. I would like quoting one of them here, a poem by Rabindranath Tagore:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. 

We are a great nation, and thus it is our responsibility to handle it with utmost care and deliberation… In 2020, we would be the same nation that is respected not because it is wealthy, but because it is a symbol of the most affluent of civilizations, of wonderful people, who deserve more than FDI and balance sheets in the name of development. We are safe keepers to the immense erudition, tradition and history that India possesses…