The Battle of the Js- Jaswanth Vs Jinnah - A Tryst with Free Speech in Indian Democracy

It is 62 years since India got Independence. India’s political history may be young, but is certainly volatile. Many men and women have played their role in transforming India into a democracy. Surely, an integral part of democracy is free speech, right to an opinion, and that right must not be curtailed by a dogma or ideology.

That is the bases with which a dialogue becomes rich. Ideas and opinions co-exist despite differences in opinion. If this is curbed by one harangue, India will seize to be a democracy. (You merely need to look around the world to see how fascism curtails free speech.)

Different Voices Stand Together

Haven’t we had the sacred constitution of India written by Dr. Babasaheb Ambadkar. A man born into an untouchable family. He lived and died to be a voice against the injustices of discrimination, divisions of cast and creed, and yet such a man wrote our constitution. Here was a man who debated openly on the "Brahmincal" and the "untouchable" reality of India, and had his differences of opinion with Gandhi in public forums. He was opposed to Gandhi calling the daliths "Hari Jan" (men and women of God). They differed, and yet continued to move on constructively. Gandhi disagreed with Dr. Ambadkar on several grounds: Dr Ambadkar wanted separate electoral for the daliths, and Gandhi thought that would further divide the country. They agreed (after much deliberation) for reservation rights for greater representation of the daliths.
India laid the foundation for such diverse views. The country was hardly pulverized by such differences in arguments.

Today, Shasi Taroor, a sitting MP of the Congress, has through his many works been critical of India’s leaders - past and present. His works have often shown that for decades of congress rule, very little was done for the poorest of its people it represented, and, yet, he is welcome to be part of a political party. Should all his writings stand to be suppressed now?

Dr. Amarthya Sen, often mentions that he is still affiliated to the Left. The Left consider it an honor to have a man as learned as the Lobel Lauriate to be part of the party cadre. Should they, like plague, keep him out of their corridors?

Yes, on the other side, you also have caricaturist turned Hindutva leader who wears the saffron kaftan, who vociferously dictates that Chitrapathi Shivaji was a brave heart who fought against Mogul invasion of our land.

Delving into the Past - The Rise Of Jinna

When such is a scenario, I love to see India burning with issues acknowledging a need to re-look history – here the issue of Jinnah. It is beyond doubt that Jinnah was an astute lawyer and was highly gifted in his craft of oratory, tactical understanding, and persuasive thinking. He played a part that history cannot erase of being responsible for (what began in all earnest) India’s independence. He lived at a time when Hitler along with the European dictators like Mussolini had staged the art to hold the attention of people’s minds to convincing propaganda and blind faith. When such was a scenario, Jinna too realized that he could stage the birth of a new country. He did. He died soon after. Seeing that what he had created was after all bloody. It continues to be sadly a reminiscence of the way the land was created –with force, brutal anger, fire of destruction, and tears of its own people’s.

No ONE Man Divides A Country TWO
Jinnna surely was not the only force for the partition of India. There were other leaders too who were Prime Minister candidates seeking to rule a nation where the majority were Hindus. And it is not entirely incorrect about what Jaswanth brings to the table. This argument is in the collective consciousness of the Indian people.


History is Not as Smooth as a Beaten Ham

What is important is that such debates are necessary, despite the threat of being expelled from party leadership. Holding him entirely responsible for masterminding a division of land is preposterous. Just because our beloved neighbor today stands as our sworn enemy, does not mean we do not attempt to break the propaganda and consumerism of a new history. History is never as smooth as a beaten ham.

India needs debates to rise to the sky. A few dare to do it – may be it is a way to unlearn what has been taught to you. In this case, Jaswanth Sing severed long enough in a party that has been making its soul objective to re-claim and re-write history. May be Jaswanth Sing realizes that the ideologies dispensed by the BJP is not entirely true, and therefore an innate urge to state what he thinks otherwise needs to be made known.

At the End of Life, Truth Stares...

Just as Jinna was a saddened man when at his deathbed, to see his country burning, Jaswanth Sing too may be saddened that he served a Hindutva party for over 30 years (spent most of his prime file towards acknowledging the Hindutva ideology), and towards the end of an “active” political life, the past seems different and truth stares hard at you. Speaking out is the only sure way to redeem oneself of all the goblins that lie within.

That India needs. India needs these forked arguments, and counter arguments. Democracy can only thrive when people take a good stab at a given history.

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Dusting Bookshelves

Dusting bookshelves is a dusty business. You dust the thin film of memories that have surfaced over book covers that has laid dormant for months, years, or even a lifetime. As you dust books one after another, with no particular order in mind, you seem to linger on some, for an extra moment. You put down the duster, flip through the pages, and run down memory lane.

That is exactly what happened to me, this morning, when for no apparent reason, I was caught staring at my bookshelf. I slid the glass pane, and thought to myself, “where’s the book that talks about the “cultural politics of sexuality”, I am in a frame of mind to go back to that essay”.
Before long, I was running my hand along each book on the shelf.

No, my books are never neglected – not for long. I feel them ever so once in while. I run my hands, flipping through the journey that the book has made, through geographies, thus chalking my life too.

It is NOSTALGIA.

There are treasures that come out of every book, some stirring moment of the past – each book in my bookshelf chronicles a time, place, event, and moment of when and why a book was picked. There are traces of a life gone by. A moment that could not be captured for more than a breath.

It is strange. If I need to see how far I have traveled, I need to slide open my bookshelf.

I flip through Germane Greer’s The Female Eunuch (just below my signature, the date states: 08.04.99), I am immediately transported to my university days. I recollect borrowing this book from my university professor, reading it cover to cover – then started the microscopic examination of my life, my history, and my identity.

I come to the section that has a collection on M.K Gandhi. In this collection, is Gandhi A Memoir by William L Shirer.
This book, I tell everyone (almost evangelizing) is a must to read, before you die.
I loose my self for the moment. I flip through this book, going immediately to a passage that I have read a zillion times before. The court scene that played out in Ahmadabad on March 1922 before C.N. Broomsfield (District and Sessions Judge) and Sir, J.T Strangman, the Advocate General. The charges the Advocate General argues are of preaching disaffection, bringing or attempting to bring hatred or contempt, or exciting, or attempting to excite disaffection towards His Majesty’s government, established by law in British India. Gandhi pleads guilty of all charges.
However, what draws me most to this passage is that C.N Broomsfield moved by Gandhi’s words, though acting on behalf of the state, sentences M.K Gandhi to six years of ‘simple’ imprisonment.

A strange co-incidence, this. I recall, I was supposed to teach a passage from Gandhi a Memoir that was part of the syllabus of the Major English students. The collage was closed for October vacation, and the lecturers were to help the librarians take an inventory of the books in the library. On a hot October afternoon, standing on a stool, going through hundreds of un-touched old, dusty, grimy books, I accidentally fell upon this masterpiece.
I recollect how I enthused each of my students to reading and appreciating this book and understanding a history that is becoming bleak in our “popular” culture. That said, I wanted to have a personal copy of this book, and realized that it was last “re-published” in 1983, and now was out of print.
My brother came to my rescue and shipped it for me all the way from United Kingdom on Wednesday January 12, 2004.

I realize there is a lot of dusting left. I pick up the books of Elie Wiesel – Night and Dawn. These books chronicle the darkness that surrounded the brutality of the holocaust and the terrors in concentration camps (Auschwitz and Buchenwald). Visiting the Holocaust museum in Washington DC on 27 March 2007 was the closest I could come to realizing that there is more to be done in this world, to redeem ourselves of the sins of hatred that we bear towards our won.

Interestingly, I leave bookmarks in each book. Some bookmarks are gifts from loved one. One bookmark states: “Under the FRIENDSHIP tree, two may take shade and SOLVE the world’s problems” – with love S.



And, then I find this beautiful bookmark, that I picked up from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, when I had gone to view the “Americans in Paris, 1860-1900”. The bookmark is the painting of John Singer Sargent, Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau) 1883-84. Oil on Canvas. This stayed hidden in one of the books that I picked up from the Harvard Book shop, at the Kendal Station, in Cambridge.

I realize through the dusting od books, flashback of memories keeps playing back and forth. Friends have come and gone. I have lost precious books. They never came back. So did the people who took them. You loose a book. You loose a friend.

I have soiled my hands. Arranging and re-arranging books takes a hell lot of time. I find treasures in each book. You never know what piece of truth is slipped and hidden away in these books. Rightly, so, I find this beautiful and funny card, that must have arrived the day I was reading William Styron – Darkness Visible – A Memoir Of Madness (Picked up at the MIT Bookstore July 2006, Cambridge). It’s a card that Shine has sent me on my Birthday (20 May 2008). It says:

Hello DAHHHLiNG
On Your
BiRTHDAY
I propose
tHat We make a PacT
to Let each otHer Know
iF oNe of uS eveR
becomes aN
ECCENTRiC
BiTCH

Shine signs, “With nothing but love”


Dusting book selves…

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~~

Raksha Bandhan

Mothers hold families together
Through traditions.
Oral accounts of grand epics
leave lasting impression on a child’s mind

Mother told me, I remember
That the Bandhan is tied
Through a string of love and care
Of protection and eternal bonding

Mother told me, I remember
When I was little
That sisters are fragile
Brothers come to rescues

Krishna protected
The dusky Draupathi
Through the tender strings of Rakhi
When stripped to nakedness

Scared was I, to enter dark rooms
A child forever
Searching for the retina to spot light
In the corner

No brothers here
To protect from fear
Of darkness, dread and evil
The retina comes to terms with darkness faint

No brothers, no fears
No rakhi here
Just strings of recollection here, mother
The fragile threads that snap through tear and wear.

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

If the Doors of Perception...

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is;
Infinite;
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern

William Blake

Stillness

I toss the pillows
The bed cover creases
Tossing and turning
Side to side

The baby in the womb
Disturbed fetal position
Restless too
Kicks

The baby no longer an embryo
Kicks hard
Fetal movement
Sends ripples through the heart and the soul

The placenta throws a wave
The ebb and tide of life
Struggles of life, birth and miracle
Of pulsating heart and limb

I toss
The creases ease
With the mind swirling
In contraction

Hush. Still. Stillness

The darkness plays its game
The morning light has its own
Different, unique, opposite
The creases of light and night

I dream
Of the womb
Of running
Jolting and pushing

The wave of bushes
Through cacti desert

The stillness of the wind
Like the monumental sand dune
Windy swirl of sand
Creating unique pattern – remain still
The mind in its stillness
Will take a child’s innocence
To hush it to sleep
Hush. Baby. Hush

Learn the rumbles of stillness
It will be long since you will
Remember and forget
The experience of stillness
~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

August 6, 1945 - The World Remembers Hirochima

It was on this day, that man wanted to show his prowess. It was on this day that man wanted to know that he had a bomb in his hand, and he could use it. It was on this that man thought that justice could prevail with a bomb. It was on this day that man felt the deep thrills to experiment with the unknown.

It landed on earth. The earth was engulfed with a ball of fire. The fish in the rivers, turned. No time to flutter. Died. The same happened on earth too. One lack, forty thousand people died. This was just what the ball of fire did. The wind carried the nuclear radiation in its wing. It spread through the thin filter of the environment, surrounded the clean air, and left scars of unheard injuries for generations to come.



Strategies to War
The fundamental principle of war bases itself on the premise – The greatest impact in the shortest time. Hiroshima was not just a word that sounded poetic for the American generals. It was a place that fit the bill most perfectly - a “greatest impact in the shortest time”. A target that was spread over three miles stretch. A target that had a large urban population and above all the Target Committee, Los Alamos, May 10-11, 1945 stated that “…any small and strictly military objective should be located in a much larger area subject to blast damage in order to avoid undue risks of the weapon being lost due to bad placing of the bomb”. It also looked at the other possibilities: “For the Little Boy the detonation heights should correspond to a pressure of 5 psi, a height of the Mach-stem of 100 feet and a magnitude of detonation of either 5,000 or 15,000 tons of H.E. equivalent…and for the Fat Man the detonation heights should correspond to a pressure of 5 psi, a height of the Mach-stem of 100 feet, and a magnitude of explosion of 700, 2,000, or 5,000 tons of H.E. equivalent…” (Minutes of the second meeting of the Target Committee, Los Alamos, May 10-11, 1945)

Psychological Factors in Target Selection

Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama and Kokura Arsenal were the places that were decided as targets. It was like any other war – the psychological impact needed to be the severest. The act of using the nuclear bomb was to proclaim to the world the bravado of the mighty American Army. The main objective to obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and above all making the initial use of the bong “sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity is released.”

What followed was an ocean of death.

The seemingly simple theory of Einstein’s Theory of Relatively was an instant success, because the experiments scored a perfect 10. E=MC2 was the lingo to understand Einstein where energy equals the mass times the speed of light squared!
Einstein had felt the urgency to develop the bomb, to counter the growing threat of Nazi Hitler. It was a bizarre turn of priority that Japan was pulverized as priority, just three months before the surrender of Germany.

August 06 comes every day. Countries spend vast corpuses of wealth on nuclear weaponization, when the same money could guarantee basic amenities to its people like safe drinking water, sanitation and fundamental health care.

The world has learnt little from the greatest nuclear catastrophe. Japan needed a Hiroshima to realize that it could not retaliate tit-for-tat. If the world had to heal from the after effects of such a colossal tragedy, it had to lead the way for a world against nuclear proliferation. Japan today is one of the staunch up-holder of anti nuclearization.


If this could not teach the world a lesson, nothing else can.

Purple Petals

Purple petals flutter
Torn apart with the wind
The purple petals but two
Stubbornly stay

Seeing leaves from branches
Ripped
Ransacked into the dunes
Purple remains

Purple petals ripped
It breathes
Purple
Oozing purple nectar

The dunes turn purple
Parched
Nectar crystals
Dusted, sullied

Purple dust carried in the wind
Purple crystallized nectar
Petals fading purple
Oozing purple blood

Raped
Uprooted
Sand dunes change form
Mock at that sun
Parched

Purple de-colours
Petals fall
Dry
Charred

No two petals
Make a flower
A flower makes no one petal
No colour makes a flower

The dunes soak
The purple
Thirsty
Quenched

Nectar de-thirsted
~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

Aung San Suu Kyi

Portrait by Htein Lin
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“I would rather go down then let them down”
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The sparkles in her eyes are searching. Her resilient smile, comforting. The flowers she wares, unfading. Her language, simple, yet curtailed. She has walked a tough, arduous journey of silent forbearance. She shoulders the legacy of her father, Augn San, who brought independence to Burma against the colonial rule, around the same time that India was negotiating independence from Britain in 1947. He was assassinated soon after, when Suu Kyi was just two. She shoulders the will of her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, who held various offices, and one being ambassador of India in 1960.

Above all, Aung San Suu Kyi shoulders the hope and freedom of the people of Myanmar, who have known nothing except brutal force of subjugation, oppression, and imprisonment through the decades of imperial rule, and now a dictatorial rule that comes from within. There are many analogies, references and dichotomies strung together, in sharp contrast, thus making the entire fresco of Burma/Myanmar intriguing:
One begins with the name Burma that was re-named to Myanmar by the Junta in defiance of the “colonial name-calling”, only to re-colonize it with a new name!
Ragoon (now changed to Yangon), was where George Orwell first took up his position as Police Officer with the Indian Imperial Police, and before long decided to abandon the white man’s burden. The Orwellian world lives on through the subjugation of its people, with Big Brother holding to ransom a country that was (is) known for its natural resources and wealth (today despite the poverty of its people, Big Brother is rich and powerful).


It is a land where Theravada Buddhism is the religion of the many. The essence of Buddhism is lost in such a state. The Buddha’s message of right action, right through, and right mindfulness is not of any importance, and the Junta would do everything it can to subdue the voices of the peaceful monks. However, this is the very religion that gives Aung San Suu Kyi her strength and resolve to fight for her people. She has held on to this, through her 14 years of detention out of the 16 years she has lived in Rangoon. She will hold on to it, through the 5 years of possible imprisonment she is certain will befall her.

Military force, doublespeak, newspeak, and media control are a sure alternative to hold the country at gunpoint, “where all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” (George Orwell, Animal Farm). The world, in spite of superpowers like the UN, the Developed countries, India (the next super power) has done little to convince, or impose sanctions to such a dictatorial state. The revolution in media, networking and communication has fallen shot of generating a world outcry. Aung San Suu Kyi is merely a minute of news-byte. Such news is utterly conspicuous. The world needs to do much more. The world must realize that “in our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia...”, and if there is a truism in what Orwell said, then we must ensure we do everything to support the cause of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Sanctions have done little to stop the Junta, and China ironically is a strong ally of the government of Burma. It is the only country that influences the Junta, thanks to the rich trade agreement with Burma that China stands to gain. The difference in governance is hardly a contrast between the two nations!


Aung San Suu Kyi is a Nobel Laurite. She is also the recipient of the prestigious United State’s Congressional Gold Medal. She is the FIRST to hold these awards when in solitary confinement. Her courage is the result of holding on to the core Gandhian principles of nonviolence – derived also by Buddhism. Her fight is for nothing else but democracy for Burma. It comes from an understanding of the world around her, and of what is best for the country in the long run.


Democracy may not come to Burma in her lifetime, yet she will fight until her end.
“The process of change is slow, and does not realize in ones lifetime, but surely the impact is the greatest for times to come. The nonviolent approach is the most difficult approach in the world, especially nowadays when weaponry is getting more powerful.”


She realizes that only in a democratic country will there be equal rights for every human being on the land. A stop-gap arrangement is not what she will settle for. She must not. Despite the upheavals Burma faces, it needs to follow India’s example of its relentless years of struggle for democracy and independence form hegemonic powers. It is because India is a democracy that clearly the military has kept away (unlike its dual -Pakistan). Burma cannot allow anything less for itself. She states that “there is a vast difference between a man in a gun in his hands, than a man or a woman without a gun… the man with a gun, will use the weapon, but the man or woman without a gun would have the urge to depend more on intellectual consideration, and exercise ones compassion…”


The world needs to act fast. Aung San Suu Kyi is frail in health. The possibility of serving 5 years imprisonment could be fatal. This is the time for the world to come together, to ensure she is able to lead her country to peace and flourish, to justice and human rights, to self-governance and prosperity.


In her house, in confinement, Aung San Suu Kyi plays the piano that is heard by passer-by, who heaves a sign of relief to know that she is around. That there is hope. That change will come one day. The notes from the piano must not stop. The world must not allow the piano to grow silent…

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“Even those in power now in Rangoon, must know that their eventual fate will be that of all totalitarian regimes who seek to impose their authority through fear repression and hatred “- Suu Kyi’s Nobel speech

~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~
In the quiet land of Burma

In the quiet land of Burma...
no one laughs and no one thinks out loud.
you can hear it in the silence of the crowd


In the Quiet Land, no one can say
when the soldiers are coming
to carry them away.
The Chinese want a road; the French want the oil;
the Thais take the timber; and SLORC takes the spoils...


In the Quiet Land....
In the Quiet Land, no one can hear
what is silenced by murder
and covered up with fear.
But, despite what is forced, freedom's a sound
that liars can't fake and no shouting can drown.