Youtube

Iqbal Bano has sung select verses from Faiz's ghazal. Full ghazal and its English translation are below. The translation is from me and is, of course not perfect or anywhere close to the poetic brilliance of Faiz, but is only offered for those who don't understand Urdu and can get some idea about what Faiz is trying to say.

सभी कुछ है तेरा दिया हुआ सभी राहतें सभी कुल्फ़तें कभी सोहबतें कभी फ़ुर्क़तें कभी दूरियाँ कभी क़ुर्बतें All comforts, all hardships, everything is granted by you Moments of togetherness, separation, at times distance and intimacy

ये सुख़न जो हम ने रक़म किए ये हैं सब वरक़ तिरी याद के कोई लम्हा सुब्ह-ए-विसाल का कोई शाम-ए-हिज्र की मुद्दतें The pages that I have filled are in your memory Some moments of morning's union, some of evening's separation

जो तुम्हारी मान लें नासेहा तो रहेगा दामन-ए-दिल में क्या न किसी अदू की अदावतें न किसी सनम की मुरव्वतें What will remain in this heart if I cede your counsel Not the rage of enemy nor the kindness of love

चलो आओ तुम को दिखाएँ हम जो बचा है मक़्तल-ए-शहर में ये मज़ार अहल-ए-सफ़ा के हैं ये हैं अहल-ए-सिद्क़ की तुर्बतें Come lemme show you what remains in the blood soaked city the shrines of revered saints here, in dirt the truthful people there

मिरी जान आज का ग़म न कर कि न जाने कातिब-ए-वक़्त ने किसी अपने कल में भी भूल कर कहीं लिख रखी हों मसर्रतें Don't cry over today's agony my love maybe the writer of destinies By chance in his past has written happiness somewhere

Notice the tenderness of Faiz's words, his complaints and requests. This is not someone who does not completely believe in god. There is no sarcasm in his tone. There is no snarkiness in the complaint. Only when you believe in god so much, to an extent that you completely and unabashedly submit yourself, will you end up being disillusioned with his existence or extent of his power. It is in the moments when life pushes you to its extremities, to the limits of your being and to the verge of your strength and sustenance, in the moment when nothing appears to work or comes to your aid, you seek his intervention, you raise your hands in prayer, but no such solace comes. In those moments comes the realisation, the sense of abandonment, the apathy, more than disregard.

To believe a Faiz or Ghalib did not believe in god would be an oversimplification. They did not care enough to bother themselves about that question. Whether god existed or not ceases to matter when you're at your wits' end and you do not see any help that is on your way. The realisation that you are by yourself in this life, that you only have yourself to blame or rely on, moots that question. For even if so and so exists, to him you do not matter, your struggles do not matter, at least not enough to intervene and help. And so Faiz and Ghalib lived their lives without desiring or inventing the imaginary intervention. They simply did not bother. They instead believed in taking complete control of their life and its means. They relied on themselves and the people around them. But still, beyond their means, beyond their ability to sprout change, they hoped for help to come, but above and beyond what they could do to the best of their abilities. They did not relax and sit themselves down in prayer and wasted theirself instead; they put themselves to use by writing poetry which even today wakes up the tired and sleepy and moves them to action.

And they called him an unbeliever, an atheist, a communist and all sorts of names.

#Ghazal #Urdu #FaizAhmadFaiz #IqbalBano #Atheism #God #Pakistan #India

As per the Indian government, India is teeming with infiltrators (ghuspaithi). These illegal people have entered across India in Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal, Kerala and so on. And they are in large numbers. They, as per the Home Minister, the Prime Minister and other important people in the Indian government, come from Bangladesh, Pakistan and elsewhere. They are, according to the Indian government again, a threat to India. Most of the problems that India faces today are because of them. I'm using the Indian government here to refer to statements or information shared by Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and other important people part of the Indian Government. After all, if the Prime Minister and Home Minister's word isn't a word from the nation itself, then whose word would be said as a word from the nation?

Infiltrators to become majority in Jharkhand in 25–30 years if unchecked: Amit Shah He also criticised the state government for “vote bank” politics and vowed that if the BJP comes to power, it would chase “each” illegal immigrant out of the state.

'Will make Bihar ghuspaithiya mukt': Amit Shah says infiltrators will be deported within 5 years from Seemanchal Amit Shah questioned whether the infiltrators should be removed from the voters' list or not, and asserted that they would have to return to their countries and would have no place in Seemanchal.

Amit Shah directs officials to identify 100 'infiltrators' in every State and deport them The Union Home Minister asked intelligence officials to continue with the targeted crackdown even if the neighbouring countries do not accept the undocumented migrants.

These are just samples. If you dig more, you will find an even larger number of intruders, in thousands and lakhs, roaming in India currently. People in the Indian government know the number; they also know in what states they exist. People in the national media also know about these intruders. All of this makes you wonder, how did these intruders get into India? Who facilitated their entrance? While such a question gets difficult to answer since each intruder might have followed a different path and agent to get in, the other question becomes important. Whose job is to guard our borders? Whose job is to ensure intruders don't intrude on our borders? It is the job of the Indian Army and the Home Ministry, headed by Amit Shah himself. And these repeated statements from the Home Minister reveal a startling reality. People guarding our borders, that is, the Indian armed forces, are no more following orders from the Home Ministry. They are on their own. It is they who are letting these intruders enter India. I'm not saying this thing. It is said, and inferred by the Indian government via the Prime Minister, Home Minister and even the national media.

So there are two things here. Either intruder after intruder is let in by the Indian army. Or these intruders are smarter than the Indian armed forces. These intruders who are illiterate, living on meagre incomes, going inside India to do daily wage labour are cleverer than the Indian armed forces. Essentially, Amit Shah, Modi and the entire machinery of RSS and BJP are saying that the Indian Army is incompetent. That they have failed India, that the Indian army has let in this huge influx of intruders. Given all these facts, does it make sense to even have these men holding guns at the borders? What are they drawing their salaries for? Why are we paying them if they are such failures at their jobs? What's there to take pride in these incompetent men who cannot stop poor intruders from entering our borders? And not one or two, but in such large numbers? And it has been more than ten years since the Modi government has had such reliable information about these intruders, but the Indian army has failed to find any of these enemies from other countries. Just how incompetent are our supposedly brave soldiers? I'm not raising these questions. India's Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are raising these fingers on our armed forces. And so far, at least I'm not aware of any army commander or regiment clarifying anything on these statements. Meaning? These statements by the Indian government are right, and they agree they are losers who cannot protect our borders or, and I fear to suggest this, for these are the men who brought Ram to Ayodhya, they cannot be liars, for the whole Ram's story is about the truth, Amit Shah and Modi are not lying. Those who follow the message of Ram could never lie. Modi and Shah would never resort to lies. I cannot for once imagine believing such a thing. But then again, years of Congress propaganda have made it harder to disrespect the Indian armed forces. They are a professional force we have been told again and again. It is hard to believe they would let intruders into our borders or even that such a large number could intrude under their watch.

If people who brought Ram to Ayodhya are liars, then how come Maryadapurushottam Ram, whose entire life was a message of adhering to truth, blessed and decided to come to Ayodhya on their request? How did the great seers, learned minds and devotees of Prabhu Ram allow these liars who are so far from the principles of Ram's teachings to inaugurate his abode? Has the lord Ram corrupted himself over the years? Is lord Ram now one among the supporters and cheerleaders of rape and lying? No? Meaning Modi and Shah are not the liars? I can't. I respect Prabhu Ram too much to think of Modi and Shah, soldiers who gave us Ram in Ayodhya, to be liars. That spells the other statement, the one that the Shah and Modi have been repeating without any counterclaim from the army. The Indian army is indeed an incompetent pool of men with arms. Utterly shameful that Indians are paying for their upkeep and more using their hard-earned salaries via taxes.

#NarendraModi #RSS #BJP #Aliens #migrants #refugees #India #Army #hate #propaganda

“A 25-year-old Hindu man was allegedly strangled to death in Rajasthan’s Dausa district for trying to stop three men from applying colour on him during Holi celebration”. Every year on Holi, we hear news reports of molestation and non-consensual touches. Year after year these stories have become so widespread and familiar that now we have got subconsciously wired to simply ignore them and move on with our lives. “Holi hai!” (It’s Holi!) is a cry that is shouted, and like clockwork, anyone would come, apply colour to you and proceed further to the next person. Implicit in that cry is, all is well, or all goes on Holi. But in recent years, incidents of communal nature have added themselves to the long list of Holi complaints. Protecting law and order is the job of the police. A murder by a murderer can be stopped in two ways: either you control the situation such that the murderer does not get the opportunity to commit the crime, or you do the murder yourself, leaving the murderer no chance in hell to commit the crime himself. In the first act, the police protect the victim from being murdered and in the second, they protect the murderer. This is not to suggest that police forces are superhumans who can foresee all crimes and prevent them from happening. That is understandable. And precisely why, police are generally not blamed for the crime being committed. They are blamed for what they do once the crime has been committed. And what they do after the crime sets the stage for the next crime. Their actions gesture as to whether such crimes are allowed or not. 

The administration in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal covered 10 mosques, including the historic Jama Masjid, with plastic and tarpaulin sheets. Why were they covered? What did the administration fear may happen? And who will make it happen? And why would those who would make it happen feel they can do it and get away from the police?

A group of Hindus celebrating Holi festivities in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, were carrying the tree trunk to the temple as per tradition but decided on a detour, ramming it into the gate of a mosque several times while also raising provocative slogans. There are several videos of the act with identifiable faces. Police have registered an FIR but I’m sure nothing will come out of this. The record of the police does not suggest otherwise. Not because the police force is incompetent and cannot identify people from video. If wanted, police can pick you based on you being part of a Whatsapp group even if you never posted any text in the same. Those are the charges against Umar Khalid — being part of a WhatsApp group  — he did not post in those groups, not to suggest posting would have made his incarceration justifiable.

Ask anyone if they are against molestation or non-consensual touching and they will say yes, they are against it. Naturally so as anyone should be. Ask them if they believe Holi as a festival warrants such touching or if touching inappropriately is part of Holi tradition, as in if this is what the festival is about like lighting lamps on Diwali is a tradition. Is molesting and touching inappropriately part of the Holi celebration? They will probably laugh and say no. That some fringe elements do it. The impression is, these are outlaw incidents. People at large do not support these incidents. You want to believe this line of thought. But think about it from a distance. What do we do when someone does something wrong? Say, how do we react when we encounter a molestation video from Metro? Or from a college? How do we react? We seek punishment, we ask for police intervention, right? We do no such thing for Holi molestation. And we do so despite there being so many videos of these crimes, year on year. Does the school, college, workplace or even homes of these men, do you think they are held accountable for their waywardness? Have you heard of any such case where someone was held accountable for inappropriately touching some woman? We don’t. We tolerate it, we accept it. Suggesting what? What do we tolerate? Pouring milk on statues is stupid but we do so, why? Because it is tradition and part of our faith. If someone was pouring fresh milk on say middle of the road, we would call him mad. But inside a temple, it is part of faith. Same for animal sacrifice, pouring alcohol on gods, dropping oil lamps in rivers, and taking dips in poopy water, we know what they are, and we react to them differently in different contexts but we also tolerate them on special days and special places. Same way, molesting, and touching whatever body part of strangers without their consent on Holi is our tradition. It is indeed part of our festival. We have accepted it in past and we continue to accept it by immediately saying, Holi Hai, this is not the regular touch needing a law to take its course but a special Holi touch, outside the purview of law and order. This is an acceptable pouring of milk on rocks. This is part of our faith, and tradition and how it is celebrated every year.

A 48-year-old Muslim man was allegedly assaulted and killed by a Hindu mob while on his way to a mosque in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao on Saturday after he resisted having colours thrown on him during Holi.

So, a group of Hindus want to play Holi with a Muslim man. They want it so badly that they — as is the tradition — force him to play Holi with them, without his consent of course. He resists, they insist, so much so that they end up killing him. Leaving apart the renowned good-intention-but-wrong-implementation, they wanted him to participate in their festival. India is a secular country where for generations most of our festivals have been shared with each other. Holi definitely is one such and these boys were only doing that. They wanted him to participate in their festival. That's not bad, it's sweet.

A Muslim youth was thrashed by members of a saffron outfit in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur town after he “tried to enter” a ‘garba, dandiya’ (dance event organised during the Navratri) event.

Here, a group of Hindus do not want Muslims to participate in their festival. On the other hand, Muslims want to carry on the famed secular traditions of shared festivals here but Hindus do not.

You then have to ask, what do the Hindus want? Why do they in one case, want Muslims to participate and in another don’t? The answer lies in the birth or definition of Hinduism.

Hinduism was born or defined in the backdrop of the British census exercise. Traditionally upper-castes have held power over masses by virtue of their birth in forward castes who derive power from the books written by their forefathers and whose readership was gatekept by their clans. But as the British held provincial elections and masses started to elect Muslims as their representatives, those who enjoyed power until then using caste saw the danger new tides were bringing for them. But they were disadvantaged by numbers. They were not in the majority. The people they oppressed, the lower castes, made up the majority population. And there was bonhomie between this population and Muslims despite there being differences in their practice and faith. Upper castes wanted to create a separate identity for themselves and other people. Which other people? Those who were not Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains etc. So they started identifying themselves and these others as ‘Hindoos’. So anyone who did not identify as Muslim, Christian etc was counted as Hindoo. Initially, many upper caste elites objected to them being clubbed alongside lower castes, they were different people they argued. And they indeed were in many aspects. These people had different gods of their own and many of these gods were exclusive and were not shared. Even today, many Hindus don’t know so many gods that other Hindus pray to. It was even more widespread back then. Many of these gods were meat-eaters, and many partake in alcohol. But slowly, the othering caught on. And so the upper castes successfully created the Hindu majority, out of thin air.

The Hindu religion then is defined not as what it is but as what it is not. What is the Hindu religion? Is it a collection of people that don’t eat beef? No. Those who eat beef? No. That pray to one god? No. Collection of god? No, many don’t even know the existence of very many gods of others. Hinduism is defined the other way. It is defined by way of saying what it is not. It is not Islam, it is not the faith of Christians. And so, it and its gatekeepers, constantly try and create tensions between two sets of people. They constantly create myths and stories and WhatsApp forwards that tell their adherents how bad, terrible, scheming, monster-like people Muslims are. The fear is created to stop Hindus from interacting with Muslims. If they interact, they will start to see similarities that the two share, similar struggles and anxieties they go through; they will see through the lies and appear like a single entity of people. Just like a beef eater and beef haters call themselves and identify as a monolithic Hindu entity without flinching once, Hindus and Muslims with interaction will identify as some shared block. What will this do? Who will this shared identity harm? Whose existence depends on the support of a hostile, feared, bigoted population?

#Holi #festival #Hinduism #tradition #culture #hatecrime #women #molestation #Muslims #uttarpradesh #India

I too live by the river Our river though is not sacred It is still clean Perhaps it's the fate of sacred rivers to be dirty We too go to our river to swim We don't take dips, we swim and swim till our lungs and legs can no longer hold And we run from our river only when our mothers holler our names There are no flowers floating in our river No oil lamps float in our river too We don't even leave our dead in our river Our river is not sacred like yours We still love our river though It feeds us, it nurtures us

Do you think our river misses being sacred? Do you think your river likes being sacred?

#river #poem #poetry #sacred #ganga #mahakumbh #india

Ayodhya Temple As Of Today. Courtesy: Newslaundry.com

I was just on a call with my distant neighbour who after the regular round of questions asked me if I had received the Ram-Mandir-Rice (akshata). For those who haven’t and don’t know about what’s going on, people associated with BJP-RSS have been going door-to-door and distributing some posters related to the new temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh along with some colourful uncooked-unbroken-rice in tiny plastic pack (hardly 20 gram).

Akshata basically consists of uncooked un-broken pieces of rice which is mixed with turmeric. It is sometimes used to bless bride and groom during weddings. Akshata is also sprinkled during other auspicious ceremonies. When Akshata is offered to a deity, it is believed to be the finest offering that a devotee can make. Akshata is believed to be equal to offering clothes, jewelry, food, or any other offering. Akshata is usually thrown over the head of the devotees during pujas and during functions like marriage and other auspicious events. 

The akshata attract the subtle frequencies of five principal deity namely Shiv, Shakti, Shri Ram, Shri Krishna and Shri Ganesh. Akshata is the central point of puja plate. If the rice grains used for preparing Akshatas are broken then their capacity to attract the principles of higher deities is automatically reduced. When the akshtas are offered to a deity the energy of the deity is transferred in it and favourable vibrations are generated in akshatas.  — Hinduism StackExchange

There is a lot that’s wrong in the above description but since all this is a matter of faith, let’s go ahead with it. Or just ask any Hindu person around you what ‘Akshata’ is. If the above description is right then how come RSS-BJP members have akshata even before the inauguration of the temple?

Returning back to my phone call.

I answered in the affirmative. I was then told to add some more grains to this 20-gram ‘akshata’ and prepare some sweet dish out of this mixture and have it. I was also told to take two to three grains from the 20-gram packet and wrap them in a piece of paper after writing ‘Shri Ram’ thrice over it and to keep this paper in my cupboard/locker.

Where is all this coming from? Who tells them? And even if someone does, how come people believe in this nonsense?

I have seen so many religious celebrations in my life. Never once am I aware of ‘akshata’ being used as this. In fact, unlike what that description claims, ‘akshata’ from the floor is just swept away like any other dirt. Few do collect it separately. At my place, since we have a river in the vicinity, they throw this rice in the water the next morning. I don’t know what people in cities do.

***

Let’s talk about this new temple now, shall we?

The temple will be inaugurated on Jan 22, 2024. The temple is not complete yet. By most estimates it would take at least two more years for its completion. Why so much hurry then? There’s a general election this year. By all predictions, RSS-BJP is going to sweep that election. Temple inauguration and these foot soldiers going door-to-door is merely to ensure it.

There have been many instances of people close to RSS-BJP profiting from temple construction. For one such example, read this:

It’s a prime property of 890 sq meters, a piece of land where the grand Ram temple complex will soon come up. Until February this year, it belonged to a mahant, Devendra Prasadacharya. On February 20, one Deep Narayan bought the land — gata number 135 — from the mahant for Rs 20 lakh.

Narayan is the nephew of Rishikesh Upadhyaya, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader who is the mayor of Ayodhya. Land records accessed by Newslaundry show that three months later, on May 11, Narayan sold the property to the Ram Janmabhoomi Trust, set up by the Narendra Modi government to oversee the temple’s construction, for Rs 2.5 crore.   — Ayodhya: Whose Land Is It Anyway?

Forget questioning people in power over this loot, none in big media even bothered to report on this. I would be surprised if you wondered why.

I would not mention people, mostly poor, whose houses were demolished to make space for a grand home to lord Ram. By now I have completely understood how there is no value to a poor man’s life and livelihood. For instance, the government of Madhya Pradesh demolished the house of a Muslim person for spitting on a Hindu religious procession. He was jailed too. But in court it was found that no such incident had taken place. Police had made two people (police’s “witnesses” ) sign on blank papers. They denied seeing any such spitting incident in court. But did any of us ask what of that poor man’s demolished house now? No. Again, the media didn’t see it worth covering. It would puncture the popular narrative now, won’t it?

The domed structure was a 464-year-old mosque believed to have been constructed by or at the instruction of the Mughal emperor Babur. Babri Masjid, the lone structure of significance to Muslims in the area, stood surrounded by holy buildings built by Hindus later — Manas Bhawan, Sita Rasoi and Ram Katha Kunj Sagar. The mosque had existed for centuries and Muslims offered namaz there. Soon after independence, in December 1949, Hindus discreetly installed an idol of the deity Ram Lalla under the central dome, persisting with their claim that the plot on which Babri Masjid stood was the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama.

The conundrum had begun. Who should get the land title, Hindus or Muslims? The case travelled for years through the judicial labyrinth until finally, on November 9 this year, the Supreme Court gave away the title to Hindus.

It took the five judges who decided the case to travel back in time to 300 BC to explain why the land “probably” belonged to Hindus. The court categorically said towards the beginning of its 1,045-page judgement: “The court does not decide title on the basis of faith or belief but on the basis of evidence…The law must stand apart from political contestations over history, ideology and religion.’’ Yet, it ended up doing just that. It went on to rule that Hindus had a stronger claim to the title because of their belief.  — Ayodhya verdict: A conundrum of fact, fiction and faith

The idol of Ram was placed inside the mosque in 1949 — which VHP and Sangh claimed had miraculously appeared that night; but it is not this idol that the new temple will have. The Temple trust had arranged a fashion show of probable idols and chose one from the lot (Voting on Lord Ram Lalla’s idol today, temple trust to select best among three designs). Turns out, the new temple trust does not believe in miracles. Some scientific temperament there. Good for them.

Away from all this noise, I keep wondering, what if there was no mosque in Ayodhya, how would they then choose Ram’s place of birth? Before the British started spreading the rumour of the mosque being that place, so many temples to Ram in Ayodhya claimed that theirs was the spot at which their lord was born. In this context, it is a good time to rewind and remember how Hinduism as a religion was born under British rule as a reaction to Islam. What we today refer to as Hinduism was historically called or known as Brahmanvaad/Brahmanism/vedic-brahmanism etc. No one identified as Hindu before the British started holding provincial elections or census. How do you for instance digest the fact that the Vedas, the books that Hindus use to bolster their claim to state how old their religion is, does not mention Ram or for that matter any god that is worshiped today?

While temples are highly regarded today in Hinduism, our own old religious books disrespect them and write of them in poor light. Vishnu Smriti for instance “says that Vedic recitation should not be carried out ‘in a temple, in a cemetery, at a crossroads, or on a road.’ Placing a temple next to a cemetery is telling. Ritual specialists associated with temples were called devalaka. They were despised by the authors of Dharmashastras. The devalaka is listed among those who should not be invited to an ancestral offering (shraddha), Manu listing them between physicians and butchers.”

From my own limited reading, I have understood this much: Before Aryans migrated to what we today refer to as India, there were already people here. Harappans for one example. And they had their own beliefs and gods (don’t know how they viewed them and what they called them). For instance, Nataraja (who we today view as a form of Shiva) is imported from Harappans. Vedas were written by Aryans. These were the books that informed us about Brahman and their importance. Basically, those who wrote these books were Brahmans and they were superior in all kinds, had all rights and could not receive any punishment as per these books. They were, as per these books, mediators between god and people. Which god? The ones mentioned in the books they had written. They tried to enrol indigenous people into their religion but could not find great success. Another point to note here is how all these Vedic rituals involved large-scale offerings to gods which were impossible for common folk to undertake. All rituals required Brahman's help in invoking gods. These gods could not be prayed to on your own like we are familiar today. Side note: Vedas and early books mention meat eating including beef. In fact, brahmans themselves were extreme beef eaters. I’m not saying it, Ambedkar did. He wrote a detailed paper on this bit of history using Vedas and other scriptures. So in essence, it is not even Ambedkar saying Hindus were beef-eaters but Hindu books themselves. But then the question arises, why did we abandon beef-eating? The answer in all likelihood lies in Buddhism. There was a time when Buddhism and Jainism spread far and wide in India. People started enrolling in hordes. Many kingdoms in the north adopted Buddhism and in the south, they embraced Jainism. This left Brahmans staring at an existential crisis. Their whole thesis relied on them being superior to others in the caste pyramid but what would happen when no one remained under the bottom part of the pyramid? And so began the writing of Puranas and the invention of the very many gods. While some were invented from thin air, many were local gods prayed to by non-aryan locals who were given Vedic makeovers. And so gradually vedic gods whom local people refused to adopt were abandoned in favor of Puranic gods. It is these gods that we continue to pray today. People hated large rituals and yagnyaas where mass slaughter of animals used to take place and in reaction were flocking to Buddhism. To counter this, it seems Brahmans themselves abandoned eating beef. And went a step further by creating stories of bovine’s divinity. What was once the food of Brahman was now converted into a divine entity. It was a method employed to survive. And temples which were once decried bad were now embraced wholeheartedly because by now Buddhists had started to build large structures of their own.

This is the only explanation that answers why Hindus have so many gods, how two people who pray to two separate gods and who on varied occasions are even unaware of each other's gods could still claim to be part of a single religious entity.

This is also why caste is always defended in myriad ways since it is at the heart of the Hindu religion’s existence. Only for the sake of caste was this religion created or put more sordidly, to protect the superior position of Brahmans or upper caste over everyone else.

***

The four shankaracharyas have said that they will not attend the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22.

The shankaracharyas head the four Hindu mathas (monasteries) — in Dwarka (Gujarat), Joshimath (Uttarakhand), Puri (Odisha), and Sringeri (Karnataka) — that are believed to have been founded by the eighth-century religious scholar and philosopher Adi Shankara.

(Adi Shankara is one of the most important figures in Hinduism)

‘Can’t go against our Dharma Shastra’: Shankaracharyas to not attend Ram temple inauguration — ‘We cannot remain silent now and must say that it is a bad idea to inaugurate an incomplete temple and install the idol of the god there’

“The temple belongs to the Ramanand sect, and not to the Sanyasis, not to Shaiva or Shakta.” —  Champat Rai, general secretary of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust

So does Ram belong to Hinduism? Does Shankaracharyas belong to Hinduism? Is the answer to both of these questions the same? Then, what is Champat Rai saying above? Why is he hinting that this new temple does not belong to all Hindus? If he is out-of-line (that seems to be the only argument which could keep both Ram and Shankaracharya in Hinduism) then why have Hindus not been outraged, why have they not asked for Champat Rai’s removal? It’s not like Hindus are a tolerant lot — that’s not the image Modi-years have presented. Didn’t the same lot that took down Babri Masjid murder the original pujari of Ramjanmbhoomi Temple who destroyed VHP, RSS, and Advani’s arguments and condemned the Rath Yatra which killed thousands?

Let me repeat myself. It has now become impossible to project Hindus as peaceful lot. Or Hinduism as the religion of peace, harmony or love. Modi years have ensured that much. Modi years have done to Hinduism what ISIS/Taliban did to Islam. Mind you, Muslims could wash off taints of Taliban/ISIS from them but how will Hindus wash off RSS and Modi who are defended and bolstered by ordinary masses day in and day out. Unlike Taliban, RSS-BJP-Modi are not fringes. They are as mainstream as anything could be. Voted twice. The first vote was despite Gujarat 2002 and Babri Masjid demolition or because of these very facts. And so this is our reality now. We have to live with it. There is no running away from this taint anymore.

***

If you have reached here, do consider reading the below piece.

Shining example: What Golden Temple can teach Hindutva warriors using Ayodhya to whip up hatred: The shrine in Amritsar offers a lesson in how opposing narratives can coexist in harmony.

#Politics #Religion #Hinduism #NarendraModi #India

There are very few things that send me into a quiet rage as much as food dishonesty. Let me demonstrate.

Before I do that, let’s get a few things out of the way. There are no superhumans here. And superman is a figment of imagination. Likewise, not everyone can be a chef and not all chefs can cook all food items. There are as many cuisines and foodstuffs in the world as there are people. So to expect any one person to know every kind of cuisine/food is absolutely silly. And that is why every restaurant comes up with its own menu, a limited set of food items which they promise to serve their guests. So we now have restaurants declaring a set of dishes they promise to serve in the form of a menu and of their own volition. Naturally, this means they have a chef and/or cooks who know what these foodstuffs on their menu are and how they are made, also they know what goes into these items and obviously, they make sure the ingredients required to make these items are available in their inventory. There might be occasions when one might not get certain ingredients owing to any kind of unforeseen external factor related possibly to the market, weather or just some other arbitrary occasion. In such a case, you might not serve dishes which are listed on your menu but whose ingredients you currently do not possess. All this is expected and I completely understand. Whereas to take an order for an item and not serve it, and in its place, serve a different item but call it the requested food item; that's dishonest and pure evil. Imagine a Calcutta biryani minus the humble potato or a Lucknowi biryani without the fragrance/aroma of kewda water. This isn’t a laughing matter. We go to restaurants and pay a certain amount (many a times significantly large sum than what individual ingredients would cost) expecting to eat precisely what we have ordered. That is the basic-of-basic pact between a customer and a food place. Now let me tell you what happened today.

I have been craving an excellent English breakfast all this week. Many moons ago I had one at Glen’s Bakehouse, Bangalore where I have also had it previously. And the soft yet crisp texture and taste of their bread laced with butter still lingers and entices my taste buds even after a month of having it. But I was in Pune now. And as is the norm, I looked at online restaurants/cafes that served English breakfast. I found Cafe Peter. It was closest to me and also had good reviews. Some reviews even mentioned English Breakfast. Exactly what I needed. And so I decided to pay a visit.

For those who aren’t familiar, English Breakfast is a pretty standardized breakfast spread which in a strict sense includes bacon, eggs, sausage, some pudding, baked beans, grilled tomato, fried bread or toast served with jams and butter, tea/coffee and orange juice. The bacon mentioned is a very specific cut of bacon popularly called British back bacon which is sliced carefully such that the final slice of bacon includes the belly and loin in one beautiful piece of meat to create an irresistible and unforgettable bacon-eating experience. When you eat this marvel, the crispness and fatty bit, this combination of the two different pieces of pork, each with its own characteristics, blends in to create bacon heaven. The best I remember from recent memory was at Holiday Inn on Racecourse Road, Bangalore. The sausage mentioned above is also a special British sausage which is not plain meat but contains herbs and spices spluttering taste buds when you chew it in. Now since we are in India where pork is not commonplace, it is understandable again for cafes/restaurants to not serve bacon and, sausage to be of chicken. But the rest of the ingredients are commonplace. I have seen many places skipping juice which is again, not okay but another adjusting factor. And that’s it. Anymore accommodating and it would terribly fail to be the English Breakfast. Now please serve your combination of breakfast but I beg you to not name it English Breakfast.

At Cafe Peter I was served a sandwich (don’t know why), potato fries (again why), half-fried eggs, chicken sausages minus herbs or spices, leaf lettuce (why) with a line of some sauce thrown over it (why why why). That’s it. No grilled tomato, no beans and hear this out, I asked for coffee and I was told that it would be chargeable! English Breakfast without tea/coffee/juice, really? I ordered coffee separately and made a total bill of Rs. 672! For comparison, at Glen’s Bakehouse in Bangalore, you get a proper English Breakfast including a pudding or cake plus your choice of coffee or tea for half of this price. And mind you, Glen’s is a bigger and more popular brand than Cafe Peter. There is no comparison of Cafe Peter with regards to service, ambience or taste with Glen’s. And I’m not saying this because they served a bad breakfast today. Years ago I had loved some lunch at Cafe Peter and I went there today hoping for a similar experience.

I’m not writing this merely because of one experience today but I’m seeing a pattern of these things in Pune. I have by now eaten in multiple cities and while in many of these other cities, it was mostly on limited visits frequenting their well-known restaurants; in Pune, Bangalore and Mumbai owing to long stays I have regularly been out and eating. And from my experience, limited still it may be, you are more likely to be disappointed or frustrated in Pune by your order than in Bangalore or Mumbai. For instance, my only recent complaint to a friend in Bangalore has been how the Galouti kebabs we had weren’t really melt-in-mouth. And these were still soft and tender just not melt-in-mouth like you get in Lucknow. This grievance isn’t a complaint when you think of it but a typical case of me being a snob.

On the other hand restaurants in Pune are high-quality snobs. There is plenty of pretentiousness. They have fancy menus and delicate walls decorated with beautiful flowers and designs but the food they serve on most occasions does not match with food they mention on their menus. And god-save-your-brain-cells if you decide to point out their wrongs. I once explained to a restaurant owner how their dosa batter had gone bad which was causing their dosas to smell terrible and how idlis weren’t supposed to be made with such fine flour as theirs since with the finer flour idlis gain rubber-like texture hinders absorption of sambhar. I was told that they have been making dosa and idlis for so and so years and no one until that day had complained. I wanted to ask, so? But then I quietly walked away. Another day I was at a seafood restaurant which claimed they served Goan food. Their menu mentioned tisrya-sukka. Now tisre is a Konkani word for a specific type of clam which is different from khube which is another kind of clam. Tisre is wide, oval in shape with sharp defining lines on their shells; its flesh has an identifiable orange portion at its edges and most importantly, it tastes superior and costs comparably more than Khube which are close to circular in shape with no lines on their shells or any attractive colours on their flesh. And so restaurants always include tisre sukka (a dry dish having an abundance of tisre clams along with onions and scrapped coconut) in their famed fish thalis. When one of these plates reached my table in Pune I discovered I wasn’t served tisre but khube instead. Since the price was on the higher end, I inquired. I was told that what I had on my plate was what they served as tisre here. How do you argue with such people now?

Compare the above to Bangalore now. Once in the city, I was out for dinner with a Bengali friend who knows his cuisine really well including what goes in it and what does not right to their individual proportions. We were at a hotel buffet where they had a biryani labelled Kolkata Mutton biryani. I found the taste fine. It wasn’t great but still far better than what I had at many other places. We were quietly having our food when a waiter arrived to ask if we were enjoying our meals and if there was anything we would like different. My friend very politely suggested that the biryani was not up to the mark. A vague remark. The waiter nodded, apologized and went away. We got back to our meals. After a few minutes came the chef. He asked what did we not like about biryani. My friend paused and offered him specific details about the dish. What ideally a Bengali biryani contain and what it does not and also which ingredient shadows the other ingredient and such. And at this point, Chef apologised and explained to us how this was not a proper or authentic Kolkata biryani but a milder version of it which they cook for their buffet. He said its ingredients were cooked differently and then plainly mixed as per the demand. He also explained his motivations for this way of cooking. And then requested that we visit again tomorrow for lunch or dinner and he would prepare an authentic Kolkata biryani from the ground up. Do you see what he did here? There are two parts to what he expressed. First, an admission that what was served wasn’t what was claimed and second, this is less important, offering to prepare the accurate dish.

You might be wondering why this matters, why this unpleasant nitpicking?

I had a friend in the Pune office who disliked South Indian food until I took her to a small eatery run by a Tamil couple in Hinjewadi. What she was until then having was a bad kind of dosa and those rubber idlis that seem to be standard at most places in Pune with terrible sambhar and even more awful chutney. I remember my own dislike of Bengali cuisine because the first two times I tasted Bengali food at two distinct establishments that publicised themselves as Bengali places, they served what was a terrible and stereotypical kind of ‘Bengali’ foodstuffs with undesired quantities of mustard. It took a dear friend and umpteen rounds of Bengali places along with thorough descriptions of what was served on the table for me to fall in love with Bengali food. The point is, in most cities, and especially in Pune, with a lot of bravadoes, people serve what can easily be referred to as phoney cuisine. Please note that I'm all for food experimentation, after all, that's how we get new things on the menu. But you cannot advertise Nestle's Maggi and serve Patanjali Noodles – that's just being dishonest and disrespectful of your patron. Or as the angry Scots referred to Trump (who when Brexit was announced congratulated Scots for their wise decision to leave the EU – they had in fact, voted to remain in the EU), these restaurants are being polyester-cockwombles, cock-juggling-thundercunts and rotten-orange-fucknuts!

Thank you for reading till the end. It appears you have as much time on hand as I did writing this. Much appreciated.

P.S. While the above rant is based wholly on my experience, you might experience the cities mentioned differently than I have. But the larger point about some restaurants being dishonest and such treacherous conduct being not okay stands.

#food #dishonesty #restaurants #review #India #Pune #Bangalore

From what I know and can remember Muslim girls in school (not all but some of them) have been wearing hijab (or headscarf) for ages now. It was just another piece of clothing that never bothered us, to the point that we never even noticed its existence. I even know of girls and even teachers who would arrive at school in niqab (or burqa, black outer clothing like a rain-or-sun-coat) and then they would remove it before entering a classroom. Again, this wasn't a point of conversation or of difference. The only time I have been thinking of these clothing choices and the faces of friends that wore them is now. Now when many schools in Karnataka (and even in Madhya Pradesh, another BJP ruled state) have banned young girls (and even teachers) from covering their hair with a cloth also referred to as 'wearing hijab'. It all started with Hindu kids sloganeering and hooting – all of a sudden – as Muslim kids passed before them. Or running to Muslim kids and shouting – Jai Shri Ram – a war cry of Hindus now. The lord Ram (or simply Ram) of Ramayana, if you have ever read, is a soft-spoken and light-mannered hero of the epic. He does everything in a measured and reserved manner. There is this soft tenderness to his actions and his approach to things. In the whole of epic, there is only once that we see Ram agitated and outraged – when the ocean god does not agree to his demand to make way for him and his army to go to Lanka and rescue his wife. It is this image of Ram that the militant Hindu organization Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has adopted on their posters and hate paraphernalia, and it is this Ram you see depicted elsewhere by Hindus that subscribe to RSS's worldview. The same is the case with Hanuman (there is no instance in the Ramayana of Hanuman displaying aggression but the monkey-god posters you see everywhere now show him in desperate anger and in all-red). The usual picture of Ram that we saw was of him smiling quietly and standing alongside his wife and his brother while Hanuman stood at his feet. The impression was of a feminine soft-spoken hero, not of a military general. And chant at his temples, say at Mathura and Vrindavan or Ayodhya was 'Siyavar Ramachandra ki Jai' (Victory to the groom of Sita, Ramachandra). He was not the centre of the chant but his wife was; he was invoked through her. That was the Ram from Ramayana, the one I knew until the mobs of RSS-BJP descended on streets, heckled and lynched to death the many Indians with chants of 'Jai Shri Ram'.

So we have Hindu crowds chanting 'Jai Shri Ram' and trying to scare Muslim hijab-wearing girls, then Hindu groups coming with saffron shawls and later the schools starting to object these girls wearing hijab and now courts debating whether the hijab is central to the religion of Muslims or not. Do you see the problem here? We have conspicuously and to our own benefit have forgotten-and-forgiven the majority community of its divisive-and-violent methods and instead, we are now questioning the basics of minority religion.

The school, high school and college I went to or even the offices that I worked at, all of them in their practises and culture never once felt alien to me or my way of living. Yes, they spoke English during events that were alien at my home. The food served at Hostel mess was strictly vegetarian except for the egg served on Wednesday. Now although having a vegetarian meal every day was alien, having vegetarian meals in itself wasn't alien. At our home, we are required to consume strictly-vegetarian food when there's any festival – like during Ganesh Chaturthi or Deepavali and even during weddings. A vegetarian meal and those who consume vegetarian meals always enjoy high moral value in the Hindu pantheon. It is strange how we the meat-eaters worship gods that despise our food, the one thing that sustains us and makes us capable of praying to them. Apart from these few non-harmful diversions, everything else was like at home. The school office, staff room, principal's room, all had pictures of our gods. Every function began with lighting lamps and chanting mantras. At school, the morning physical exercises started with Sanskrit prayer, then school assembly in the morning started with Sanskrit prayer, all meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner were initiated again with Sanskrit prayers. At my home this wasn't the custom, we never prayed before meals. So essentially I was praying and chanting mantras more at school than at my home. I was also having too many vegetarian meals. If anything I was being converted into a Brahminical specimen of saatvik purush. I don't remember my parents ever being asked about this. I don't also think they would've objected. For generations now local customs and gods have been sacrificed and replaced with Brahminical rituals, customs and food habits. The many vegetarians in India are not vegetarians of consciousness but their parents have forced this choice on them. Being vegetarian is a religious habit in India. And in comparison vegetarian prayer is considered in high regard versus a prayer from non-vegetarians. So what I was doing at school compared to at my home was practising a higher degree of Hinduism (I would say upper casteism but let's not go there). We celebrated Ganesh Chaturthi, Saraswati Puja and other festivals at school. On festival days it was welcome to dress in traditional – i.e., Hindu traditional dress. In offices, we not only celebrate festivals but on occasions like Dasara, in many offices, everyone is required to wear particular colour on a particular day. It is mandated. And there's more. So in essence, at schools and offices, we celebrate the Hindu way of life in and out, and unapologetically. We don't notice it since there's nothing abnormal or extraordinary for us to look at. What we do at school and in the office is similar to what we do at home. Might vary in degrees and sequences but at its heart, it is the same. But now imagine the life of a Muslim kid in India. Everything at school is alien to her and him. Posters on the wall of gods to prayers to festivities. Every day they are forced to question their faith. So many Hindus would object if school walls had posters say of a Dargah or of Kaaba 🕋. And yet Muslims have been enduring this infinite assault on their senses without any outrage. And we Hindus dare call Muslims the intolerants and extremists? Would we sing one of their Arabic prayers on one day of the week? If any teacher dared even once, we would inform our parents and they would quickly rush to the Principal's office to complain. In fact, the teacher would be dragged to a police station or maybe a mob would descend and lynch the poor teacher. And I'm not exaggerating this, we Hindus have lynched Muslims for just existing. “In Jharkhand, on 17 June 2019, a young man called Tabrez Ansari (22 years) was tied to a pole sometime around midnight and beaten by a mob till six in the morning. As he was being battered, Tabrez Ansari was asked to say 'Jai Shri Ram'. He did. It did not save him. He died four days later,” Ravish Kumar wrote of Tabrez's murder in his must-read book, The Free Voice: On Democracy, Culture and the Nation. We Hindus have never been accommodating of Muslims or people of other faith. Would we accept a Christian prayer in a government school? No way. But I know of my Christian friends that sang Sanskrit shlokas in school prayers and before meals every day including on Sundays. They did not object. Their parents did not too. They were accommodating and tolerant. Their gods weren't hurt by it, their faith wasn't shaken by their kids singing prayers of other faith. Or celebrating festivals of other faith. Most of the plays in schools that we acted in were stories from Hindu epics. We acted in them, we saw them and so did students from other faith including Muslims. I even remember a Muslim friend of mine playing Lord Krishna in one play in which I was playing some Hindu saint. I don't remember his parents objecting to it. Or even Hindus that saw that play then. In fact, the teacher who cast him was a Hindu upper-caste Brahmin. None of us saw it as problematic then but all hells will break loose now.

And what are the arguments against Hijab from the Hindu right-wing? You hear a lot of patriarchy-patriarchy then uniform-uniform. The first doesn’t cut it since these are the same Hindu bunch that parade their women everywhere including inside their homes with that noose aka mangalsutra around their neck, sindoor and bindi on their forehead; all prime patriarchal symbols. For most Hindus, the unspoken rule is that women who are menstruating are not allowed to enter temples, religious shrines or even prayer rooms. There are even certain temples in India, such as the Sabarimala temple in Kerala, wherein women who are within the age of menstruating are forbidden from entering. Girls who have not matured yet and women who have reached menopause are allowed entry into the temple. In some households, a woman on her period is not allowed to sleep on the bed, eat from daily kitchenware and must wash her clothes separately. In most rural households, they are not even allowed to enter the house. So it can’t be that Hindus who practise such thick patriarchy at home will have a problem with girls merely covering their hair to school on this ground. Is it then the case of imposition of uniform? Hindus want all children to follow the school uniform strictly? Or at least that’s what so many have been shouting about.

Now, why do schools require uniforms? I wouldn’t go into it since it’s a topic with both sides, and they both have their own merits. Also, note that uniforms are not uniform all over the world – we decide what would be our school uniform. Dupatta is part of the uniform in India but not so elsewhere in the world, mini-skirts are part of girls' uniforms in Japan but not so in India. So there's nothing stopping us from having a uniform that goes with everyone or better, let there be multiple options in uniform, students can choose whichever they feel comfortable in. Coming back to the site and state of outrage; Karnataka in fact has a rule against uniforms – the Admission Guidelines-2021-22 posted on the Department of Pre-University Education (DPUE) website not just states that the uniform is not mandatory, but also points out that some college principals and managements making uniform mandatory is a violation of rules. Are you able to get your head around this? That's not all. As Asaduddin Owaisi pointed out – In 2019, Ireland allowed hijab and turban in police uniform. The decision was welcomed by the Modi government, saying it was in the interest of the diaspora. If it was “historic” for Ireland, then why bother with the girls of Karnataka? Why is their dignity being blown away? So we don’t have a problem with the hijab as a uniform too. So the two primary arguments – uniform and patriarchy – don’t stand or are not the real reasons why Hindus are agitating. What is it then? Two of my friends, one on Twitter and another on Instagram were stressing about children and uniforms, like the uniform must be mandatory for children-children-children. And so my every argument would be countered with “but children and uniform”. Yesterday, the schools in Karnataka even made teachers of the school disrobe their hijab and burqa (outer clothing), at the school gate, in front of the whole gathered crowd (An English professor in Karnataka resigned today citing “self-respect” after she was asked to remove her hijab before entering her college). So the hijab ban isn’t about just children, at least not anymore. And in anyways, the primary goal of schools is to get more and more children into them to impart education and not propagate uniformity. If that was so, we would have had a uniform syllabus and a single language being taught to them. But that’s not the case, is it? That might be the aim eventually but right now at least, that’s not the case.

The only argument or reason that remains is the religion of the little girls going to school with hijab – their identity of being Muslims. And forget oppression, these girls, schoolgoing girls, stood out in open against school administration and against such a large mass of hyena-like right-wing forces and asserted their defiance. That’s no small feat. So many of us so easily bow to authority in offices and of course in schools/colleges out of the fear of being reprimanded by higher-ups. To stand up for one’s beliefs takes absolute courage. And that girl who came to school riding a two-wheeler herself, who parked it and then walked out of a mob that surrounded her and shouted ‘Jai Shri Ram’ to instil fear in her psyche – she walked out of that with her head and fist held high towards the sky. That was extraordinary courage on display there. These are oppressed girls? Really? This is your definition of oppression? How many girls from your family are allowed to go to school riding bikes? How many women in your family are allowed to ride bikes? If anything, Hindu parents must learn from these Muslim parents and their girls. Maybe they could start a crash course on youtube that Hindu parents and their children can enrol. That would benefit them and also this nation.

Through almost four months of protest, photos from the streets of Sudan were rare. Aside from avid observers, few had access to visual documentation of the movement trying to force three-decade ruler Omar Bashir from power. All this changed with this photograph of 22-year-old student Alaa Salah.

Muskan who walked out of the Hindu right-wing mob became the fierce face of Hijab ban controversy

The mob does what it does. It terrorises, creates division in societies and alienates the already alienated. As Ravish Kumar pointed out so succinctly – A mob has its own constitution. It has its own country. It drafts its own orders and directives, and identifies its own prey. But you expect the state and court to abide by the constitution that was drafted by the founders of this republic. Especially the court. For instance, the South African Constitutional Court when a similar petition of a Tamil Hindu girl to wear nose-stud in school as a cultural practice came at its door, went about it in a progressive manner that expanded human values, the culture of diversity and nature of tolerance in their nation.

All the common arguments right-wing is giving today in India were struck down by the court there explaining why they think the other way. They decided in favour of the girl, her choice of wearing the nose-stud to school and her belief in her faith. You can find judgement here.

Our courts are debating (or factoring) if hijab is central to Islam as if to say what Indians do in their day-to-day life is derived from the religious books. If that was so, Hindus, all of them would continue to this day to be beef-eaters since the old scriptures and people who wrote them ate beef in plenty. We even have a great sage on record scoffing that he prefers meat of a tender calf!

Washington-based Pew Research Centre’s ‘Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation’ report finds that 89% Indian Muslim women cover their heads outside their home. But so do 86% Sikh women, 59% Hindu women and 21% Christian women. Moreover, 18% Hindus (mostly Brahmins) wear a janeu, while 53% Hindu men wear the tilak; 69% Sikhs wear a turban; and 51% of all people surveyed (including 51% Hindus and 50% Muslims) across religions generally wear “a religious pendant, such as an amulet, cross, image or symbol of god.” – The India Cable

So will court one by one strike all of these and other religious symbols down? At least from schools, colleges, offices and primarily from the parliament where we have MPs wearing saffron robes. Will they? Or is the proving of essential and non-essential practises only applicable to Muslims? Also, this is not the first time when the court has taken this route. Even in Ayodhya judgement court maintained that the masjid was demolished illegally and statues of Ram Lalla were placed illegally but then it went into the argument whether masjid was an essential aspect of Islam and awarded a verdict in the favor of Hindus who were the ones like in hijab case who started the mess, went on a rampage, resorted to violence or disturbed the status quo.

Hindu girls who came with saffron shawls in protest against Hijab – why now?

One of the most striking images from the scenes of Hindus chanting 'Jai Shri Ram' in these videos as Muslim girls in hijab walk by is of a group of Hindu girls supporting the male hooligans by wearing saffron shawls and saffron headgear. Do these girls not know how much it takes for a female child to venture out from home? Are they not aware of cultural policing? To begin with, most girls are not allowed to go to school. Then some who attend school are barred from going to college. And even if they are permitted, a small error like say someone snitching about her sitting or laughing with a boy will invite a ban on her further studies. None of these restrictions applies to boys. In colleges where there are no uniforms, girls still follow a dress code enforced by their homes and society at large. They can't wear just any dress as they please. And you will find them wearing these dresses that are approved by their parents despite their displeasure. If you ask them they will tell you these are minor giveaways so they could get the larger freedom that education enables them to have. So you find them accepting a certain degree of policing from their parents and society so they could attend colleges like their male counterparts. Hijab too exists and functions in this context. Some ladies even in their adult life continue to wear the traditional dress (they used to wear to colleges) just like some Muslim girls continue to wear hijab into their adulthood. Many even start wearing hijab in their adult life, on their own. Angshuman Choudhury  & Suraj Gogoi point exactly this in their scroll piece – the right to wear the hijab (or not) should rest with Muslim women. That choice should solely be their prerogative. This should be the beginning and end of any intellectual discussion on the use of the veil in schools, colleges or any other public space. Ruha Shadab wrote in HT, the immediate issue is not about whether Muslim women in India should be wearing a hijab. The issue is whether anyone should be deciding if they are “allowed” to do so. If people are interested in “liberating” women from wearing a hijab, they must recognise that forcing women to do anything in the name of liberation does not achieve their goal. If the argument is that religious symbols should be banned in India, then stop wearing the janeu, teekas, mangalsutras, and sindoor. What a woman can and cannot wear is a control tactic used to subjugate them. Forcing them to remove their hijab is an example of control tactics, which stokes fear and alienation, but perhaps most importantly, hatred. While the issue and people at its heart are Muslim school-going girls, the attack is solely not about hijab which Choudhary and Gogoi succinctly summarise -The sudden and rapid escalation of a non-issue like the hijab into a matter of national concern, that too by show of force, suggests an insidious and systematic attempt to de-Muslimise Indian Muslims through a mix of violent intimidation and socio-legal morality is underway. So, the anti-hijab argument today is being made in a predominantly sectarian context by a group of people who are avowedly anti-secular and have full sanction from the state. All said and done, it is heartening and utterly sad what we are doing to these girls who merely want to go to school. What's so wrong and criminal about allowing these girls into schools with headscarves which we have been allowing until recently anyway? We even allow, and rightly so, convicted criminals to finish their education from prisons. By forcing these girls to remove their headscarves in exchange for education we are not helping them in any way instead we are creating more problems for these girls. We are further complicating their already complex life. We will just end up depriving them of education. For some Hindus, this might be a hard pill to swallow. You see, they see the hijab as a symbol of oppression but they don't see the uniform with dupatta with the same lens. Dupatta to them is a 'common' culture but the headscarf is Islamic religious wear (and an oppressive one at that). When does one thing become a 'common' culture and until how long must the another remain restricted to just one community despite being worn by so many in the market and elsewhere. Why do Indian families ask girls to drape a dupatta whenever they venture out, even to the house door to collect a parcel? Is that not oppression? Not getting my point? Alright, have a look at the following dress.

Japanese schoolgirls in short mini-skirts. Wikimedia commons.

Would the Indian parents – belonging to any religion – allow this dress as a school uniform? Absolutely not. But why? Japanese schools have this as their uniform. Why would we have a problem? That old rape argument is hogwash. Japan has significantly fewer rape numbers than India. So no, mini-skirts don't cause rapes. Nor do hijabs stop them. That is, uniforms have nothing to do with rapes. Uniforms are merely pieces of clothes that we (school committees) have decided to be their chosen style of wear. And these school committees can easily include hijab in their guidelines. In fact, the school where this outrage first started and others that followed had hijab as a uniform. Girls used to wear hijab of the uniform colour and came to school for a long time now. You won't have to scratch your head a minute longer to guess why and who started this outrage now. No doubt it is political and those who started it with the chants of 'Jai Shri Ram' belong to a certain political ideology. Pitting two communities or cultures that have coexisted for long against each other, encouraging people to see how different others are and how both of them don't belong to the same entity (nation), to aggravate or scale-up minor feuds and differences into big issues, creating differences where none existed is the meat and potatoes of RSS-BJP politics. While in past they targeted adults, they are now straight-up targeting young kids because it's easier to rile these kids up. This is the militarisation of youth just the way Al-Qaeda and other terror organizations in Pakistan did at one point. And I can bet that parents of these kids watch godi media channels like Zee News or local variants of it. These parents haven't been told by their newspapers or television channels of sulli-deals and bulli-deals, two apps on which Muslim women were auctioned by Hindu men and women. Vishal Kumar Jha (21), Niraj Bishnoi (20), Shweta Singh (18), Mayank Rawat (21), Aumkareshwar Thakur (26), Neeraj Singh (28) – all Hindus – were arrested over these auctioning rings. Niraj tried to mislead the police by saying that the Sulli Deals app, which auctioned prominent Muslim women, was created by a Muslim man, Javed Alam, an engineering graduate from Uttar Pradesh. Shweta and Mayank, police said, intentionally used Sikh names on Twitter to promote enmity between Muslims and Sikhs. Creating divisions and enmity between two communities – which political entity benefits from this? It appears the open solidarity Muslims showed towards Sikh farmers in recent protests and Sikh solidarity for Muslims during anti-CAA protests hasn't gone well with the bigoted Hindus. Note also that the arrested men and women are young and educated and hail from different parts of the country. So the hate is no more concentrated in one state or one region and this is very alarming and bother us all. India is a microcosm of the entire world order. Unity in diversity isn't just a stray line to be taught in school but is the foundation on which this nation stands. If differences are left to grow like this then we will cease to exist in near future. The cost of communal politics played by RSS-BJP is paid now by the parents of these young children and our nation, whose next generation is growing as hateful timebombs waiting to be exploited by the Sangh-Parivar whenever they are in need of new divisions to be created for their electoral windfalls. The nominal Hindus, the ones you and I talk to and interact with, that casually spread this hate via fake news and propaganda material on social media and in their casual conversations don't realise that the hate that these politicians spew and spread comes with a real cost. And one of its brutal costs is the innocence of these children. The politics of RSS-BJP combine is imbuing the minds of young kids with hate towards their countrymen; many of the people they now hate because of their religion could have become their close friends but thanks to the divisive agenda, we instead now have ticking time bombs waiting to be triggered when next elections get announced. What Ravish Kumar of NDTV said long ago – Communalism turns human beings into bombs – is now happening right before our eyes. But some of us have decided to look the other way.

#communalism #bigotry #India #hijab #womensrights #feminism #choise #BJP #RSS #Hinduism

You have to read stories from Kashmir. We are every day sold this lie by our media and govt that Kashmir is peaceful, its people are happy but not once do we let them speak on camera and voice their opinions. We recently snatched their statehood from them, we divided their state into three parts, we jailed their political leaders and their journalists for no particular crime of theirs. We jailed them simply on the assumption that they might commit crimes. This was imperialism, the kind we fought against when the British were the imperialist forces. And I say we because we voted this govt to power, it's we who find exalted meaning in a piece of cloth, more meaning than lives of thousands of humans we are going to affect, we find collective meaning in a piece of land than people living on it for generations, even long before this piece of land got its present name and form.

We have never let these people speak out and inform us of what they want. Each time they sneak somehow and find a way to speak out, we rush with our pellet guns, army tanks, gunmen and barbed wires to silence them. Then our media overwhelms us with boys throwing stones. But they don't show who they are throwing stones at. It is at gunmen who they see as aliens on their lands. Would you not object to gunmen if they were to invite themselves into your house and order their wills on you? Occasionally, also violate the bodies of people you know and love? Or make them disappear. I guess you will object to these excesses and violence. I guess you will want no such gunmen in your house. I will then call you a separatist because you're not playing along with my whims. That's what we are doing with Kashmiris. We think we are cultured, more sophisticated and they are savages who need to be cultured just like the British did with their colonies. But the truth of the matter is, Kashmiris are better than us. They fare better on most human indexes, even better than the national average and our most well to do states (or thought to be well to do's). Jammu and Kashmir ranked third out of 22 States in terms of life expectancy. Kerala is at the top and UP at the bottom. It is eighth in terms of poverty rate, 10th in terms of infant mortality rate. The Human Development Index is a collective index of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators. Jammu and Kashmir’s Human Development Index stands at 0.68, higher than even States like Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Indians are sold this lie that Kashmir is so bad and underdeveloped that its people need saving by New Delhi which is pure deceit to morph and cover the colonist thought and Hindu Nationalist bigotry. Moreover, if Indians looked at Kashmir and probably learnt few things, and emulated them in their states, maybe their lives will turn better.

Some history from New York Times

At the time of the partition, the British agreed to divide their former colony into two countries: Pakistan, with a Muslim majority, and India, with a Hindu majority. Both nations covet Kashmir, which is Muslim majority, and occupy portions of it with military forces. For decades, an uneasy stalemate has prevailed, broken by occasional military incursions, terrorist attacks and police crackdowns. But on Monday, the Indian government decided to permanently incorporate the territory it controls into the rest of India. The administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked Article 370 of the Indian constitution, a 70-year-old provision that had given autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which includes the Hindu-majority area of Jammu and the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. The government also introduced a bill to strip the region of statehood and divide it into two parts, both under direct control of the central government. Article 370 was added to the Indian constitution shortly after the partition of British India to give autonomy to the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Article 370 says that it can only be abrogated with the consent of the legislative body that drafted the state constitution. That body dissolved itself in 1957, and India's Supreme Court ruled last year that Article 370 is therefore a permanent part of the constitution.

Meaning, Indian government not just walked over a constitutional promise but also went against the wisdom of the highest court of the land. How is that not imperialistic?

Reuters image

Sedition cases were filed against most of our freedom fighters by the then govt of Great Britain since our freedom fighters wanted to overthrow the empire's hold over the subcontinent. All of them were separatists in their own right since they wanted to cut and declare themselves independent from the British crown. They were all dissenters who did not agree with the version of state and boundary of what was then the British empire. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who died on September 1st, was our separatist leader. He was Kashmir's tallest pro-freedom leader. He did not agree with New Delhi's version of the truth. He did not believe in our idea of a nation. And he dissented. For many years, he even participated in our democracy. He was elected as an MLA for three terms by Kashmiris which means there were enough Indian citizens who believed in his version of the truth. SAS Geelani ‘was elected again in the 1987 assembly election in Kashmir, which the Indian government was accused of rigging and which triggered an armed militancy in the region. As the militancy grew, Geelani resigned his seat, in 1989. He became opposed to any participation in Indian democracy, believing it to be a sham—a stand he maintained until his death.’ Geelani was 18 when the partition took place. In the early days of the republic, he was an admirer of the secular Indian republic. His views changed drastically over the years to writing 'India Go Back' on his wall in recent years. It isn't just Geelani who revolted against New Delhi's version, it is so many Indian citizens who stood by him that disagreed with the ways and beliefs of New Delhi. He was right or wrong, we can have our opinions but in the end, it was his version of the truth and he fought as long as he lived for his truth, and so many Kashmiris rallied behind him. And what did he desire? Geelani all his life advocated for the Kashmiri peoples’ right to self-determination; his personal choice being Pakistan in whose flag his body was wrapped as per his last wishes. “My wish would be to merge with Pakistan but if people Kashmir choose Independent Kashmir, I would be happy. But if people choose India, I would prefer to leave Kashmir,” Shahid Tantray wrote in Caravan. SAS Geelani snubbed leaders of both nations when it came to his stance for Kashmiri self-determination. He never compromised on that. He did not once take arms but for more than a decade now, we kept him confined to his house, we converted his house into a prison, we confined him to sparse movements and interactions using arms, army tanks, gunmen and barbed wires. On the night of his death, 'seven hundred personnel had been deployed to only 500 square meters in Hyderpora, around Geelani’s home.' His relatives weren't allowed to his house, to see him one last time, to pay their respects, journalists were not allowed to cover the sham that was his forced burial by New Delhi's gunmen. These relatives and journalists did not have guns on them, they were unarmed in contrast to the gunmen on New Delhi's payroll. “Meanwhile, angered at having been kept from Geelani’s funeral and with the imposed restrictions, protestors gathered in various areas in the city, such as in downtown Srinagar in the Nawa Bazaar area in old Srinagar. Some pelted stones. The security forces fired teargas shells and pellet guns at the protesting civilians. On the evening of 3 September, a teenager sustained pellet injuries across his face and body after security forces opened fire at protestors in downtown Srinagar.” Stones against teargas and pellet guns. And why are they picking stones? After what? Who is making them pick stones? What sort of desperation and frustration must it be that they pick stones knowing fully well that they are picking stones against a group of men with arms, arms they know they will fire, men with pellet guns they know have blinded their people in the past, guns that might now blind and mutilate them? Just pause and think.

A little after midnight on the intervening night of 1 and 2 September, security forces gathered locals at a graveyard in Hyderpora, a few minutes from Geelani’s home, to dig a grave for him. Geelani’s son Naseem said that the police forcefully buried Geelani here, against his final wishes. He said the police broke down the door of Geelani’s home and forced the family to hand over the body. The police later denied forcibly burying him. Image and caption courtesy of Caravan Magazine

We were least interested in dialogue, talks and democratic means. When and where it mattered most, we abandoned democratic means for colonist muscle and firepower. Omar Abdullah, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and his father and former Union Minister Farooq Abdullah have consistently blamed Geelani for bloodshed and militancy in Kashmir, these two leaders have been voices of New Delhi in Jammu & Kashmir and yet recently when the time came, Indian govt even arrested those that supported New Delhi in thick and thin including these two leaders. This is true not just of Kashmir but also of Manipur and the north-east and red regions of India wherever people have disagreed with New Delhi's version of the truth, we have sent gunmen and modern firepower to deal with dissenters. No dialogue. Irom Sharmila was on fast for sixteen years. Did we engage with her? No. And what was she asking? For removal of gunmen from her homeland, removal of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 that applies to just the seven states and grants security forces the power to search properties without a warrant, and to arrest people, and to use deadly force if there is “reasonable suspicion” that a person is acting against the state. A similar law exists in J&K too. And when did she start protesting? After the 2 November 2000 Malom Massacre in which ten civilians were shot and killed while waiting at a bus stop by gunmen on New Delhi's payroll. The victims included Leisangbam Ibetombi, a 62-year-old woman, and 18-year-old Sinam Chandramani, a 1998 National Bravery Award winner. We just don't engage with dissenters. Look at how we are dealing with protesting farmers who are not even an hour's distance from Prime Minister's residence. Forget Prime Minister, not even his cabinet minister has gone and spoken with farmers so far. And they have been in Delhi since September last year. That is New Delhi's commitment to democracy and engagement with its citizens who disagree with its version of the truth. And most of us do not care because so far our beliefs have always been in sync with New Delhi. We dilly-dally sometimes and spank New Delhi with our comments but when it matters, we cover ourselves in the glorified piece of cloth called tricolour and start parroting the words that are certain to please the bosses in New Delhi.

Many misunderstand democracy as the government of all the people it governs, it isn't; democracy is a rule by the majority that derives its legitimacy and is tested on the basis of how it treats its minority. And that test, we are increasingly failing each passing day.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani being disallowed from moving out of his home in Srinagar. Photograph by Umer Asif from Kashmir Walla

Read More:

The night that Kashmir’s Syed Ali Shah Geelani died

Final moments of Geelani: a broken door, resisting family, and chaos

2010 profile of SAS Geelani – The Man Who Says No To New Delhi

#Kashmir #India #Independence #Death #loss #Freedom #NarendraModi #politics

I don’t know where to begin, how or even if I should begin on this at all, but here I’m.

It is 12:24 pm now. The date is 11 November 2020.

Only an hour or so ago I left for the market on my sister’s ladybird bicycle to fetch some fish and a packet of curd for mum. On my way, I noticed the cycle’s tires had less air in them so I stopped at the cycle-repair shop on my way and got both tires filled with air. Paid him and left for the market. On the way I thought I should get the curd first and then fetch fish so I decided to cycle past the fish-market to the curd shop. Between fish market and the shop lies police station and there were two cops opposite to the station with their masks on — I mention this because I have seen them mostly without their masks before — so this needed saying. So I knew that they were on guard for people without masks. And I was one of them. My mask was lying in the cycle basket as is always when I’m cycling. I don’t see any point of wearing a mask while riding a bicycle or while running alone by the beach or just when I’m by myself. But I always make sure I wear a mask when I'm before a shop-front, at market or at any crowded place. My friends no how paranoid I'm about this and they joke about it all the time when I frown about their carelessness. In case of cycling and running it isn’t just the bare-bone logic but also how it is dangerous to wear masks while performing breathing-heavy activities. It can in fact be fatal to wear masks while cycling or running. With such sound reasoning behind me, I calmed myself and kept cycling without bothering about the policeman ahead. It is no mystery by now what must have happened at this point because if it was anything otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this post.

The policeman asked me to stop. He must be in his forties. I noticed he was wearing his mask properly covering both his nose and mouth — another anomaly hard to miss. I stopped. He directed me to the police station. I tried to ask why but he insisted, rather curtly without listening to anything that I had to say, that I walk with my cycle to the station entrance. I sensed trouble but I was still confident that policemen will understand and honour my reasoning. I know, going by the track record of police from across the country that’s a fallacy but still, I wanted to believe otherwise.

A lady inspector was sitting on a chair with a receipt book on a table before her who asked me to pay the fine. I reasoned I was riding a bicycle and that I immediately wore the mask when I was stopped. I wasn’t let to talk any further. Another policeman came and shouted that I have to wear it all the time. I tried to tell him how it is advisable not to wear masks while exercising or cycling, and also that it could prove fatal. Again, before I could finish, the policeman who first directed me to the station entrance called me inside to meet the PSI (Police Superintendent). I followed. We stood outside his room whose door was open. He was on his phone.

Some background here.

I have been to this police station couple of times in past. For my passport verification, I have visited this station some four or so times owing to “sir is out on duty, come another time”. But on two such occasions they made me stay there because I was then studying computer science and could also type in Kannada — I helped them in typing few of their papers. And when sir did arrive, the inspector handling my passport verification papers told me how before being on duty here in Karwar, their sir was in Bhatkal and people would pay him so and so amount for their passport verification. I was in no hurry to get my passport and to make matters worse, was high on idealism so just told him, ‘sir this is Karwar and not Bhatkal, I won’t pay anything to anyone for carrying out their duty.’ I also told reminded him how passport office pays police by each application to carry out this paperwork. So they weren't doing anything out of courtesy rather it was their duty. He said my application might not move smoothly to which I said that’s fine. I can wait. Then the PSI asked us not to travel abroad, serve India and Indian interests — the whole brain drain speech. I received my passport anyway after few weeks. Against all the fears that he had created in my head, I faced no further delays or issues in receiving my passport. But I’m aware of a friend who faced a great number of hurdles to get his passport done because he refused to pay bribe to police officers (not at this station but a different one under Karnataka state itself).

Next, I was at this station over an RTI application I had filed with District Commissioner. I had first visited the police station requesting an FIR to be written against a neighbor for obscenity and nuisance. This individual’s brother was a retired police officer (different station but under Karnataka state). They refused to file an FIR so I filed an RTI query with district commissioner who directed it to the station asking why it wasn’t filed. They did act after this but let the individual off real quickly. Things continued as they were for us.

Then I visited twice recently and once before this very PSI. I have seen him surrounded by people wearing masks while himself wearing none.

So all in all, I’ve been to this place and I’ve stood outside this very door. Not that they will remember any of these instances or me for many like me visit police station on daily basis. And anyway, I’m too poor and unimportant to be remembered by the cops. PSI has already started shouting at me but I’m not able to make out what he’s trying to convey by this shouting. I try to explain him with a calm voice that, sir I was riding a bicycle and it’s pretty hard to cycle wearing a mask. He shouts me down. I tell him that he is raising his voice unnecessarily and that he shouldn’t do so because I haven’t done anything to be talked this way. At no time am I allowed to complete my sentences. Please note that howsoever many times I must have visited this police station, I still get tensed and frightened around police officers or any gunmen for that matter, just like millions of others. Should we be frightened around them? Heck, not. They exist to help and serve us. They exist to make our lives better and worth living but news after news after news they have proved just otherwise. And even in my personal experiences and those of my near ones, they have just acted like cops from the newspapers. They enjoy unchecked and unaccounted power, and act with utmost impunity. How many citizens are in jails today because police have filed cases against them without basis in facts or evidence? And then citizens have to fight it out in courts — none of it comes easy or cheap. Who has such resources at their disposal or time to invest? We know of people who have spent 23 or so years in jails only to be cleared by courts of all charges and pronounce them innocent. They spend their prime years in jail because police frames them. Why? Simply because they can and they easily get away with all this. The PSI reminds me this when I tell him that law doesn’t say I should wear a mask while riding a bicycle. He shouts again — are you teaching me law now? I can show you what law is and can do! And the inspector standing beside him asks me if I want to go to courts. PSI says I have to wear mask whenever I step out of the house. To this, I tell him he can get me a vehicle if he wants me to wear a mask even while on the move. He shouts me down. This shouting and me trying to open my mouth to reason out continues for a while. He asks me to pay the fine and just leave. Inspector takes me outside to the table. I note what the receipt reads. It doesn’t talk about the mask anywhere. The receipt is regarding smoking cigarettes and tobacco-related offences. I ask them I’ll pay the fine if I was given a receipt that said ‘fined for not wearing mask while riding bicycle’. The lady inspector shouts now. I want to ask them why are they all shouting for everything but I don’t. At this point, someone asks the policeman who first directed me to the police station to take my cycle. He goes to it and checks if I had locked it. I quickly run towards it and ask him not to take away my bicycle. The inspector hits my chin with his elbow when I touch my bicycle. I’m guessing this wasn’t intentional but only he would know that. At this point, another inspector, young and if I’m right, from siddhi community comes and takes me back near the table. He signals the lady inspector and she vacates her seat which he occupies now. He points me to the handwritten text on the receipt which reads “Karnataka epidemic disease ordinance-2020”. Lady inspector mentions something about googling and I tell her that the ordinance/act doesn’t mention anywhere about wearing masks while cycling. At this point I have seen a Muslim youth being pulled into the station, I assume, for not wearing mask as well. He probably said “kya hai ye faltugiri” (what is this nonsense) to which policeman was telling him that he’ll show him the faltugiri. I’m slowly realizing the danger and threat to my life. How wrong everything could go from here. I just want to leave this place. I want to agree to a crime under “cigarette and tobacco products (ban on advertisements, sale, distribution and production) Act of 2003” which I did not commit. For a fleeting second, I think of Jayaraj and Beniks from Tamilnadu — I’m aware of the saintly treatment I’m receiving in comparison to theirs, I think of many confessions that police retrieve from ‘criminals’ — the entire train of thoughts is unsettling. My legs have started to shake at this point. I don’t want them to see my trembling legs so I try to lean on the pillar but I’m frightened lest they do not like my leaning on a pillar before them. For the last time, I ask them to write on receipt — fined for riding a bicycle without a mask — which they, of course, reject and shout at me again. The young inspector is furious even. No one by their demeanour or language is reassuring or approachable. You don’t want yourself to be at this place. You don’t want to visit this place. This is like walking into a cave filled with hungry hyenas. And so I pay the fine and walk out with receipt. I’m frustrated, angry but also relaxed a bit. My legs are still shaking though. I search for my cycle which I find parked at a different location than where I had left it. I take it and ride away — with the mask on. I can’t breathe easily from inside but I can breathe still. This is better than standing inside that cave of hyenas. I collect the curd packets from a shop and cycle my way back to the market with the mask on but am still looking over from my shoulders. I’m checking if anyone from the station is still following me or if they’re looking at me. I see no one.

I’m surrounded by fisher-women and loads and loads of fish in the market. But I can no more sense myself being here. I’m just going from line to line without looking at the fishes. They’re shouting at me, asking me to buy from them. Different kind of shouting. Their body language is warm and assuring. I still cannot warm up to their calls. I buy something reluctantly because I have come to buy fish. This was the fish I told mum I won’t buy today because we have been having it for many days now. I just want to cycle away from the police station. I’m feared now walking to the parking lot outside the market, worried whether my cycle would still be there. I have seen videos of police from Delhi and UP smashing vehicles of the general public in vengeance. That cycle means so much to me. I’m relaxed to see it still standing where I had parked it.

In a far-away parallel universe if anyone thinks policemen meant well, that they were only doing their duty to safeguard people’s lives and was only trying to contain the spread of virus and such, let me break that castle of lies. Just some weeks ago, on the day of Dussehra, the same police station permitted a Dussehra procession that saw a crowd of more than a thousand in gathering and in procession, all in shoulder-to-shoulder vicinity. All these people were allowed to do so without masks, and I say allowed because there were twenty or so policemen including the PSI with the crowd marching a length of two kilometres. Oh yes, many policemen including the PSI weren’t wearing their mask themselves — sorry, some of them were wearing it on their necks, their faces and noses, unlike today, were exposed. On that day, temple committee members were shouting at anyone who took their phone out to record this glorious procession. You can guess as much who must have directed them to do so. Conspicuously, there was a policeman with a camera recording everyone and everything. He would climb the adjoining walls etc to better capture everyone. Not just this, the temple was open and in full action on nine days of Navratri with daily puja, auction and everything. All these events attracted crowds and a police constable would be present inside the temple while these things were happening. So no, this extraction of fines from common citizens isn’t to stop the spread of the virus. This is to drive fear into our heart, make us submissive to the state and authority, and of course to loot common men’s already meagre resources.

Justice in India is a cruel joke. People spend decades in jails only to be acquitted by courts later on but who can return them their life back? And what happens to policemen who file these false cases? Nothing. They just go on to their next victim. When the state machinery isn’t accountable for their crimes, how can one say the law is equal for all? A Kerala journalist gets arrested by UP police while on his way to report on Hathras incident, people go to Supreme Court on this matter but court tells them to go to lower court but the same court cancels its vacation time to hear Arnab Goswami’s bail plea. Goswami, of course, deserves bail, heck, everyone deserves bail until they are pronounced guilty by courts. Like Arnab Goswami’s lawyer Harish Salve said, the rule is Bail, not Jail. But sadly, tribal rights activists, human rights activists, those that stood against this govt, scores of Muslims and Dalits are spending years and years in jail without even going to trial. Our courts, even the Supreme court shows no urgency for their liberty and life. Father Stan Swamy requested for sipper and straw to drink water as he suffers from Parkinson’s and his hands shake; what did the court do? It gave him the next date. Would heavens had fallen if he was allowed to have a sipper to drink water from? (Harish Salve in defence of Goswami’s bail said in court — Will heavens fall if the man is released on ad interim bail?)

Law enforcement is depressingly bizarre today. Police can pick up a random individual from the street or college and charge him for terrorism or bomb blast and make him spend 23 years in jail. They aren’t accountable for their shoddy, and on most occasions, utterly criminal jobs. Law enforcement should not be this easy. Right now state enjoys the obscene amount of power to charge anyone with anything and run wild with it without a shred of accountability. This obscenity called law is captured beautifully in Cardinal Richelieu’s quote —“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” It shouldn’t be this way. “I actually think that law enforcement should be difficult,” Moxie Marlinspike, founder of Signal and security expert said in an interview. He further added, “And I think it should actually be possible to break the law.” In a sound democracy, citizens should have more and more power over the state. But instead, we have the state accumulating more and more power over its citizens. And as that happens, we start to move away from democracy to autocracy. Each frivolous case by the state against its citizens is a brick in an under-construction castle to a despotic regime. The doom is arriving, it is on its way. And no, it isn’t arriving because I was taken to the police station for not wearing a mask while riding a bicycle but because many see no wrong in the police’s behaviour in these cases. And states derive their power from the silence of their citizens. We give them this power, this abundance of power to destroy and bulldoze our ant holes and lives.

Wear mask now, yes, even while riding bicycles and such. Else you will be shown what law is and what it can do.

This whole incident occurred at Chittakula Police station of Karwar, Karnataka Above cartoon is Suhail’s last cartoon posted to social media before Kashmir’s internet was shut down.

#politics #police #injustice #brutality #masks #coronavirus #pandemic #karnataka #India

It is six months since the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 was published by Chinese scientists and was available to the world. What has India done since that January should find no excuse in the otherwise legitimate accusation that China did not inform about the novel virus to the world in time or it kept WHO in dark. It is true that China erred and it is also true that there are reasons to scrutinize WHO. But what have we done since it indeed released the information about the virus? For instance, while some countries like Taiwan, South Korea, Japan had cases of probable infection long before China released the vital information, India registered its first case only in late January, long after China had published genome sequence of the virus and WHO had informed the world about such an outbreak. So unlike those countries, and they have it under control now and cases are breaking new records in India, we cannot blame the outbreak on Chinese malfeasance. Whatever situation we are in today is our own making. While this bit of truth is hard to digest, especially to a large population that has personally attached their egos with the present government, the refusal to acknowledge would move us into a further abyss, further down the rabbit hole. In that regard, everyone must prepare a mental plan of things they would have done when they came to know of a novel virus on the horizon six months ago. Ravish Kumar of NDTV did a detailed show on coronavirus on February 18 where he asked, 'Is India prepared to tackle Coronavirus?'. Kerala already had some plan-of-action in place even before India saw its first case. Given all this, what all things would you have done since January to save your nation and its citizens from this new virus? Would you have for instance organized a massive rally for Trump in February in Ahmedabad? Would you have waited for toppling of a opposition led government in Madhya Pradesh to announce a nationwide lockdown? A day after Shivraj Singh Chouhan government was sworn in, Modi announced a national lockdown on 24 March. Just go and look at the crowded images of politicians from Madhya Pradesh during that time. And just read what has come to happen to that state vis-a-vis coronavirus now. Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh has himself tested positive. Cases in Ahmedabad have skyrocketed with its percentage of death highest in the country at one point. And reports are just in about Home Minister Amit Shah testing positive. Karnataka CM BS Yediyurappa has also tested positive along with his daughter. A cabinet minister in UP has succumbed to the virus. But Bhumi-Pujan celebration at Ayodhya in UP would go on as planned with none other than PM Modi as its chief guest. This isn't about politics. The signals these events sent (and will send) still remain. What was (and is) govt saying through these events? That India is a warm country and virus won't affect us? It would get killed itself from the sunstroke? That our people do yoga, we use haldi (turmeric) in our foods which will fight the virus? I'm not making up these things. These were some of the things said on our news channels by panellists. Our people heard them over and over again. And they saw their politicians, most powerful people in their nation, hugging and waving hands in the middle of massive crowds – they had every reason to believe the bunkum coming from the idiot box. The idiocy was legitimized by political manoeuvring. They were then made to believe how mass thali-banging would get the virus killed, how mass diya-lighting would destroy the virus. Oh! that was to boost health and essential workers morale? Then why are we not banging thalis now? By July 13 around 123 healthcare staff including 108 doctors have succumbed to coronavirus. They need morale-boosting more than ever now. Why is the big boss, erm Prime Minister Modi, not announcing such tasks now? Because, my friend, morale-boosting is not the aim of such tasks. The aim was (and is) to create images, get you to do things so as to make you feel something was being done, to calm your nerves and instil in you the idea that your government was doing something. Did that something get doctors and essential workers, their PPE kits and other safety equipment? No. Some did not even receive their salaries. Rajdeep Sardesai for many weeks continued his good fight to get stipends to Davangere junior doctors. In Gujarat, the state government inaugurated fake ventilators which were purchased and the state hospital that used them had its death rate close to (or more than) 50%. Pondicherry cancelled its order for the ventilators after news broke out. This did not stop Narendra Modi govt from procuring 5,000 ventilators from this Rajkot-based firm despite Ahmedabad’s largest COVID-19 hospital doctors, where an initial batch of 'ventilators' was installed, saying that they were not up to the mark. You wonder why such blatant negligence from Modi govt in risking people's lives. The reason lies in the close connection of this firm's current and former promoters being close to BJP, leading up to that controversial gift of an expensive suit to Prime Minister Modi. Gujarat government, in fact, acted on and isolated the journalists that broke this news. In whose interest was the news and in whose interest was govt action? Not much hard to guess, isn't it? Then our central government went on a 'made in India' march. This was again a distraction scheme. We need 'made in India', no doubt about it. But it won't happen in a day or month or even a year. It takes a thorough long-term plan. And 'made in India' does not translate into sub-standard goods. For instance, in Mumbai, the made-in-India ventilators turned out to be 'fake'. PMCARES ventilator maker too built fake ventilators – they fudged their software to hide poor performance. So we are buying coffins from people's donations. Take all offence you want, this is no time to sugarcoat words. Amit Shah or Yediyurappa's life won't be put on risk by these sub-standard ventilators, their life won't be endangered this way, it is only the poor, aam-junta that will face the brunt of this murderous system.

Too much gloomy news. Is there anything we can do now?

It is quite late now. Today, while India stands third in the total number of corona cases, the number of positives and deaths in 24 hours are highest in India. Six crucial months have just gone by and we still don't have a promising system in place through which we can see a timeline when we would be out of this danger like many countries have. According to official figures, 39,000 have already lost their life due to coronavirus in India. But there still remains a large population which is still breathing and until that is the case, there would still be room for improvement and hope.

There are some things that we can still do to be in better shape next month than we would be with our current approach and pace. But first, we need to understand when the virus infects a person and when they test positive. Both of these events do not occur on the same day. You don't start coughing and feeling breathless on day one of your infection. In fact, a lot of those who get infected don't even show symptoms of infection. So you might right now be sitting with someone who is not coughing but might still have coronavirus in their system. Or you might yourself be infected and yet look healthy from outside. Then there's the question of proportion of viral material. I might have viral material inside of me but my test might still turn negative. According to one report, it takes nearly five days since getting infected to accumulate enough viral material for one's test to come positive. But during these five days, the said person is capable of infecting others; which means two things. First, the testing numbers we get every day are not today's. They don't show who was infected today or even yesterday. Those numbers are of people infected at least five days ago. Second, and this is important to be understood, those who were found positive today have been spreading infection since at least last five days. Also, we are assuming here that we test individuals as soon as their viral material reaches required levels for their tests to be effective which is far far away from reality. All of this means one thing and one thing only, it is most important to identify the infected as soon as possible, isolate them and treat them. A day later and we risk infecting more people. If you assume one person can infect a minimum five people a day then that's not just five infected people. These five people will, in turn, infect others before enough viral material accumulates inside of them for effectively getting tested. That is assuming they will get tested positive on day five. In India, unlike say South Korea or the US, we don't have voluntary testing booths where you can walk in and get yourself tested. Our testing is still centrally managed – a govt body decides who should be tested and who should not. This needs to change, to begin with. And then we have to test more and more. Currently, India doesn't even appear in the top ten countries in terms of tests per million. And no, this is not because of resource crunch because we are testing far less than our own daily capacity. In essence, we are letting infected persons roam and spread the disease until it becomes impossible to ignore and be forced to test and isolate them, and when we start doing it, the numbers in the area would already be swelled so much that nearest COVID hospital would run out of its capacity. This isn't pulp fiction but our reality. And this is continuing because we aren't asking better from our representatives.

How can we change this and change it fast?

I get the “We cannot test everyone because India has such a large population” excuse. Yes, it is excuse now because it has been six months since the virus arrived on our shores. And our population has been this large like forever. It is not something that happened while we were under lockdown. Anyways, all said and done, what can we do now? First, there is absolutely no need to test everyone. You have to test a certain minimum percentage of the population in each pocket. Each village, each society, chawl, each by-lane – take your pick. Pick random persons in the market and test them on a random day, of course, with their informed consent. Otherwise, do what Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray suggested – test one person each in every household. What would happen with this information is, we would get a real picture of where the virus is and where it has not yet reached. This will help us with better monitoring. The current, red zone – green zone strategy is (and was) completely flawed. Not just because it is done at district level which Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan rightly criticized but many were declared green zone where not a single person was tested positive. For example, when my district was declared a green zone (meaning there existed not a single person infected with coronavirus), not a single person in my city was tested. If zero tests were done in India until today, whole of India would be a green zone. That doesn't mean the non-existence of the virus but abundance of collective stupidity. So, we need to take testing to all parts of India. This strategy should be combined with pooled testing. Now, what is pooled testing?

The gold standard for diagnosing infection is a sample obtained by a nasopharyngeal swab followed by the identification of viral RNA through a polymerase chain reaction (or P.C.R.) test. The swab is uncomfortable, the test is slow, and the supplies to perform it are in short supply. In pooled testing, laboratories combine samples taken from several people and test the multiple specimens together for the presence of genetic material from the novel coronavirus. If a batch tests negative for COVID-19, all those patients are cleared. If a batch tests positive, the specimens must be retested individually or in smaller groups. Such tests could be used to quickly clear groups of people who are not likely carriers, such as students returning to school, or individuals in areas with relatively low active COVID-19 infection levels. This can hugely improvise our testing rates. Until the vaccine arrives, testing, tracing and isolating remains the master strategy to deal with the pandemic. In case we decide to adopt pool testing we also need to be cautious of its limits. If the disease is prevalent in a community – more than around 10 per cent, according to the AACC – pooled testing stops being useful because so many follow-up tests are likely to be required. Pooled tests may also result in an increase in false negatives because combined samples are diluted, making it more difficult to pick up the virus material, according to the FDA. Quest, however, says that in clinical data it presented to regulators for its method of pooled testing, it would not have found a false negative in more than 3,000 total specimens. So all in all, pooled testing would help us identify infected faster and with lesser resources.

Pooled testing isn't the only way forward. Some companies are even making rapid antigen tests that can easily be done outside a lab. These tests look for certain proteins in the virus instead of genetic material. The problem is that they can miss more infections than a P.C.R. test. But they take only about 15 minutes to get a result, and if you run them in batch mode, you could most likely do more than 50 an hour. It’s not hard to imagine settings, like schools or sports teams, where such tests might be incredibly useful.

That's not all.

This is not war and healthcare workers are not front-line soldiers. Their deaths shouldn't go unnoticed like deaths in wars go. All of this was avoidable. In six months we should have gathered so much information that by now we should have been able to predict the pockets where cases could come and where they were highly unlikely. This would have helped us better and would have made lockdowns unnecessary thereby saving huge economical wealth that is lost now. But we don't have that crucial information. In fact, if we don't test aggressively, we would never reach that point of intelligence. So far, we are following the virus. We wait until it infects someone and that someone infects some others. We are not proactive enough. Our strategies are ad-hoc. We don't have any long-term plan of action. There is no collaboration with centre and states or states to states. States are fighting battles alone and their resources are drying up. Forget releasing funds, central govt has refused to dispatch the GST dues it owes to the states. All this information should reach the general public. They should know what is happening. In the battle of perceptions, Modi has so far managed his upper hand thanks to the disposal of TV media at his command. He can any day decide to address the public and TV will make sure his message is amplified. Will he ever tell you he has not released the money he owes to the state governments? Never. So how can you make an informed decision in such a scenario? You can't until you put efforts to equip yourself with more diverse information. And that is required. What would you do when hospitals refuse your infected kin, what would you do when the hospital refuses to discharge the dead body of your relative because you can't pay Rs. 5 lakh (treatment cost)? These things have happened in Delhi, in the national capital. Do you know that according to a serological survey, one in four persons in Delhi is infected by the virus? No, they did not make it to the statistics of 19 lakh which is current COVID count in India. They never will. If that's the number for Delhi, what do you think is that number for entire India? We would never know in the absence of testing.

You know there is one easy solution to keeping our numbers below 25 lakh. Stop testing anyone right away. We will anyhow get the test results of people tested so far and that will get us close to 25-25 but not above that mark. How good is that solution? Let everyone infect everyone. Let's control the count. That's what is more important right? That is what we have been doing so far.

This is a fight between two races. It's anyone's evolutionary instinct to replicate and infect as many as it could. Coronavirus is no exception to the rule. And in this race to survival, we need to equip ourselves with more and more information so as to know and fight better. India needs to study countries like Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Norway etc who have found success in controlling and containing the virus on how to not just fight the virus but also about how to support its economy and the most vulnerable population. All this should have happened long ago but better late than never.

That's all for now.

All said and done, we all still need to rely on social distancing, hand washing and ubiquitous masking. With testing, just as with masks, more is sometimes better than perfect.

#coronavirus #covid19 #India #vaccine #testing #pooledtesting #NarendraModi #Kerala #Mumbai #DonaldTrump