Desicritics Author: Suresh Naig

Sati In Chennai?

Suresh Naig — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:00:11 EST

Recently I had been to Chennai with a history buff and as a part of our arrangement we had visited the museum in Egmore. Though I had visited Chennai many times before, it never occurred to me to visit the museum at Chennai. Visiting a museum with a history buff could be a pleasant experience, which I learned with amusement. Every ancient sculpture, painting and armory had a different meaning, when viewed through the prism of a history buff, whose practical knowledge and explanation carried me through several centuries. We spent considerable time inside the museum savoring on the artistic skills of the generation gone by.

My companion's explanation on every piece was informative and never was it boring. His explanation on a piece of sculpture extolling "Sati" set me thinking, for I could never understand and appreciate the logic behind praising "Satidom" (my own coinage out of martyrdom). This sculpture had a hand of a lady adorned with bangles jutting out from a pyre; top border of the stone had the inscriptions of the Sun and the Moon. My friend explained that it was a visual depiction of long lasting fame for Sati Devi, lasting as long as the Sun and the Moon existed.

It was a common practice with the trading community of Tamil Nadu, while entering into an agreement for rights of a story or concept with a creator, to mention that the rights would be perpetual, as long as the Sun and the Moon lasts. This particular wording was a bone of contention between a Tamil cinema director of yester years and a large movie maker of Chennai. With so many thoughts racing, we came out of the museum for a long drive through Mount road towards Airport. As I was driving through the roads of Chennai, I was pained to see the photograph of Muthu Kumaran, who had immolated himself in front of Tamil Nadu Congress party office, some time back for the cause of Sri Lankan Tamils. I would have seen not less than 100 photographs of the person in different places of Chennai.

He was not the first person who had committed suicide by self immolation in Tamil Nadu. Several youngsters had burnt themselves to death for one or the other reason. Burning as a cult was nurtured and encouraged by the Dravidian parties, stoking the emotions of gullible public. Besides self immolation, hooligans have burnt students in a bus near Dharmapuri, when their leader was convicted by a court. Recently lawyers have set ablaze a Police station inside the High Court complex in Chennai - again for a cause of upholding law and order. Many contemporary politicians and cinema personalities of Tamil Nadu, vociferous in declaring themselves as rationalists, rightly condemning Sati as barbaric, failed to condemn these acts of self immolation and arson as barbaric. On the other hand self immolation is glorified by the leaders commemorating the act as martyrdom, honoring the act by releasing a purse to the immediate kith, mostly the mother of the victim and continuous propaganda extolling the act. All these are happening in a state which has the highest percentage of "rationalists", who are not just rationalists but "intelligent rationalists", with high propensity of cunning to manipulate.

What if the LTTE Had Won The War?

Suresh Naig — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:05:10 EST

If one believes the vociferous proponents of LTTE belonging to sundry political parties of Tamil Nadu, Tamil Eelam on the terms of LTTE would be a paradise on earth. Though we all know it remains as a distant dream, there is nothing wrong in visualising a Tamil Eelam where the LTTE would be the authority and its supremo Velupillai Prabakaran would be the supreme authority.

On forming a separate nation, Tamil Eelam carved out of northern Sri Lanka, LTTE would change its name to PET an acronym for Party of Eelam Tamils, conveying to everyone that PET is the only Tamil political party in the nation. All other political parties in the new nation would be given a choice to amalgamate into PET democratically. No doubt all parties would follow it, for it will not be a choice but a dictum and as usual it would be celebrated by the cronies of Prabakaran in Tamil Nadu.

Prabakaran would reject the demand of his followers to assume the office of President in Eelam, more out of fear of facing the crowd, Press and opposition, which would again be celebrated with much fanfare in Tamil Nadu, comparing him with Mahatma Gandhi. The president of Tamil Eelam with independent powers to say “yes” to Prabakaran would assume office, with his ears stuck to the ground listening for orders from the bunker. The President would be assisted by a council of ministers, with adequate powers divested from them. First Independence Day of Tamil Eelam would be celebrated unfurling the flag of the nation, which would depict the smiling face of Prabakaran in the centre. The flag would be hoisted by Prabakaran, which would be witnessed by huge gathering of people in Jaffna, on a gigantic screen specially erected for the purpose. The flag would be hoisted by Prabakaran in an undisclosed location, followed by a speech. When the Press, presses for a press meet with Prabakaran, it would be arranged after much deliberation and elaborate security arrangements.

All the media persons would be advised to assemble in Jaffna, two days prior to the press meet. Media persons, mostly from Tamil Nadu would willingly subject themselves to the security drill, where every orifice of a person would be thoroughly searched, before clearance. When some media persons with self esteem object to this inhuman security drill, they will be politely shown the door and while exiting they would be booed by the persons, cleared for the press meet.

Before the broadcast of Press meet under strict surveillance of security persons, where every media person would be blindfolded before reaching the “undisclosed” location of the meet, the “Hero” of Tamil Eelam would invite the wrath of all the other media, depicting him as a coward, scared to meet the people and the Press. For most “Heroes”, ego is sacrosanct than principles, Prabakaran will realise that running a nation is too difficult than running a terrorist organisation. Running a nation has unwanted responsibility of accountability, where every dime and every corpse has to be accounted for, unlike a terrorist organisation. He would realise belatedly that a terrorist leader has absolute powers than responsibility, whereas a leader of a nation has curbed powers with more responsibility.

He would also realise that his heroism is still a saleable commodity in Tamil Nadu; he would opt to fill the void left by Veerappan in the vast jungles of Sathyamangalam, to liberate Tamil Nadu from the oppressive Indian Republic. Most of the political parties of Tamil Nadu would extend their support to him, because like Veerappan, it is always advantageous for them when Prabakaran is confined to a Jungle.

Novice Interpretation of Dreams

Suresh Naig — Sat, 7 Feb 2009 05:12:35 EST

Do dreams have meanings? This single question had generated many answers in the past and I am sure many more are in the queue. Many a time a single dream would throw different meanings, and all the meanings might appear right. I started reading many books to understand my dreams, but the more I read the more I was confounded and I solicited the views of many learned pundits to decipher my dreams.

Had it not been for the recurrent dream, I would have stayed happy like all my other friends, singing duets with Hemamalini and Waheeda Rehman, around a tree. My dream was like a cardiologist’s expression of a certain heart condition- "regularly irregular", in haunting me.

For a very long time, I used to get up in the middle of a night, soaked in sweat. I used to dream an elephant chasing me and my feet stuck in ground like an automobile stuck in slush, not in a position to move. By the time the elephant comes menacingly close to me, I used to get up from the bed soaked in sweat. The dream was recurrent for two reasons, primarily because of my fear of the huge animal and secondly, not even once I had allowed the dream to complete, by waking up in the dead of night. Taking pity on me, a wise man in our neighbourhood, who was respected for his divine disposition, advised me to visit a local Ganesha temple regularly for 21 days to rid of my haunting and incomplete dream. Closing his eyes in trance, he pronounced that I had left a vow unfulfilled in my earlier birth to Lord Ganesha, which gets reminded in this birth through the haunting dream.

My visits to the Ganesha temple had to be abandoned in less than two weeks, since the regularity of my elephantine dream increased with my regular visits to the temple. The wise man was very creative like all soothe Sayers, he declared, ‘God wants your previous karma to linger for some more time and that’s why you could not complete your 21 days visit to the temple’, which I believed for a long time, until I came across a well read person with a scientific bent of mind, who believed little in God and very little in previous births.

He narrated the famous dream of Singer, which was instrumental in perfecting the sewing machine. He said, ‘Singer had perfected everything other than the needle for the sewing machine. He was confused as how to mount the needle in sewing machine, which had a hole at its hind portion. One night he dreamt, that he lost his way in a forest and surrounded by aborigines. He suddenly woke up and got an answer for his pressing problem, because he saw all the aborigines were carrying spears, with a hole in the front.’ My session stopped with him as abruptly as it started, from his very first proclamation. He told me with an air of superiority, ‘all your dreams, I am sure would have been only in black and white and never it was colourful.’ He had only reproduced what he had imbibed from many books and had it not been for the timing, he would have succeeded in convincing me.

Only the previous night than his pronouncement, I had dreamt Rakhi attired beautifully in a pink coloured saree confusing me sufficiently, since that saree was the favourite of the most favourite girl in our neighbourhood. As I grew in age my fear transformed to inquisitiveness, to find the climax of my dream which was prolonging like the never ending TV serial, but to no avail. The dream had abruptly stopped, queerly coinciding with my marriage. However I could not muster enough courage to discuss the haunting dream and the timing of its culmination, to my healthy wife who always considered an hour-glass figure as unhealthy.

There was one dream which turned out profitable for me, due to an innocent interpretation by a wealthy aunt of mine. When I narrated a phenomenal dream of mine, of visiting a temple in a wooded area on a river bank, and curiously worshipping the presiding deity carved out of an onion, my aunt became emotional and said that her family deity, “Marthanda Bairava”, who is fond of accepting onion as offering, had blessed me through my dream. That dream was phenomenal, as it bestowed on me a sizable inheritance from her, but the real reason for that dream was due to my unusually high quantity of raw onions ingested during dinner from a Marwari Bhojanalya and going to bed without brushing.

Will the Communist Party of India Be Banned?

Suresh Naig — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:40:10 EST

The Kerala High Court has admitted a petition, arguing that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) be banned for promoting "dictatorship of proletariat" and challenging democracy. The petition filed by a lawyer of the court was admitted and posted it for further hearing on February 16.

The petitioner pointed out from documents submitted by the CPI(M) itself, that the party strived for establishing a proletarian dictatorship based on socialism and communism, which was against the fundamentals of democracy. As per the petitioner Sethunath, the documents were furnished by the party to the Election Commission while registering as a political party.

The Communist Party is full of intellectuals and their intellectual capabilities are unfathomable for ordinary citizens. Their methodology is unique, and what is unattainable for others, is attained with ease by the CPI(M). When the Supreme Court declared Bandhs and strikes by political parties as illegal, they called a nationwide strike to denounce it, and one of the leaders proclaimed "strike" is a fundamental right. At the same time they have also taught a lesson for all, that the right to strike and protest is applicable only in other states, where CPM is not a ruling party, by their deft handling of protesters in Nandigram.

Communists are good at euphemisms. NAM - Non-Aligned Movement had never lived up to its name, but had a leaning towards Soviet Russia, of which India was a prominent member till the disintegration of USSR. Instead of honestly calling the group of nations as AAM - Anti American Movement, it was named NAM. Now CPM wants to uphold democracy in India, by striving to establish a "proletarian dictatorship".

Good as they are in confusing than convincing, I presume they may argue in the court of law, that what has been conveyed in their document is only a wish and not an intention. In plain language it means, "We don't mean, what we say".

I shudder to foresee the preamble to our constitution read as "Socialist, Secular, Sovereign, Proletarian Dictatorship, Democratic Republic. The Kerala High Court has to its credit many far reaching judgements in the past, aimed at removing social evils, such as smoking in trains and strikes by political parties. Can we expect another one?

Terrorism and Its Objectives

Suresh Naig — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:13:47 EST

Irrespective of who the terrorists are, whom they are against, what their operations are, and how they do what they do; they all depend on a group of persons, whose job is to find “why” of it. God alone knows, why these persons go to such pains, to eloquently find “why terror exists”. In crime investigation, usual pitfall is to miss the obvious and hunt for the obscure. When terrorists operate from obscure locations doing the obvious, the job of these obvious personalities is to find obscure reasons for their existence.

The reasons for the existence of terrorism, hypothesized by these persons inebriated with over dose of books, might appear as indisputable as the existence of Yeti and God. No one has seen, yet many would like to believe in its existence. The “why” is an important element in creating heroes, as we have witnessed in many masala movies. A pick-pocket in a movie gains sympathy and turns out to be a hero, when a strong why is emphasized for picking the pockets. It might be to save some hungry children, or with the intention of distributing his booty to have-nots in a slum. However the person, who had lost his wallet in a bus, might have an ailing mother whose medicine depended on the missing wallet, would be obscured from the viewers, skilfully by the script writers. In the absence of reasons, otherwise known as the why of it, any act would turn out to be demonic or villainy. Attributing reasons for any act of terrorism is a subtle justification, glorifying the act.

Though the act of terror has only one purpose, the reasons aimed at its justification are varied and ingenious. Recently we have seen Ram Sena and MNS activists striking terror at Mangalore and Maharashtra. Ram Sena resorted to terrorizing hapless day-time boozers in Mangalore to save Indian culture according to its leader Prasad Attavar, Whereas MNS resorted to terror to save their mother tongue Marathi, according to Raj Thackerey.

We are made to believe that LeT and JUD are resorting to unabated violence for the cause Kashmir, according to their leaders, corroborated by British foreign secretary Miliband, LTTE is resorting to hi-tech violence to save their sisters and mothers getting raped by Sinhalese, according to some hyper active ethnic fanatics, Hamas is launching rockets to save their narrow strip from US supported Israelis, and Al-Qaida had resorted to creative strikes against USA, to save Islam from the infidels. It would be great injustice, if I fail to include Maoists in terrorists list who are out to save socialism from capitalists.

We have also seen enough beating around the “Bush”, for the unwanted terrorism in Iran in search of the elusive WMD (weapons of mass destruction), also several small time terror attacks carried out by “manic minions” belonging to different outfits towards saving something or the other, and we have even witnessed acts of terror in saving one God from the other God, as in Kandamal, Orissa.

Most of the terrorists have not achieved the obscure objectives, but certainly all of them have achieved the obvious objective, of instilling fear into a nation and society. Pakistani terrorists have achieved a rare distinction of instilling fear into two nations simultaneously. Democratically elected government of Pakistan is impotently inept in cracking the whip on these terrorists’ outfits, for the fear of getting toppled by armed coup. All the other nations including India, want to save the impotent democracy in Pakistan, for the fear that its nuclear capabilities would fall into the hands of the terrorists.

Let us accept the obvious reason for the existence of terrorism, which is nothing but instilling fear into the society, than wasting our time in chasing the obscure reasons, concocted by the spin doctors. Once we realise this simple logic, we would refrain from justifying any acts of terrorism, however compelling or lucrative the reasons might be.

Spice, Spouse & Migraine

Suresh Naig — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:15:47 EST

After my graduation, when I was inducted into pharma sales, I started learning enthusiastically little bit of human physiology, anatomy and pharmacology, besides the nuances involved in pharma selling. I was enthusiastic since I misread the title of a book given to me as Anatomy and Physiology of Nurses instead of the original title Anatomy and Physiology for Nurses.

Though my stint in pharma selling was brief, it taught me some valuable lessons in tiding over difficult situations. I don’t know whether to owe it to my acquired knowledge of pharmaceuticals or sales, or a combination of both.

Having conditioned and indoctrinated for long in class-room training, where one training manager would have a field’s day on several new recruits in a classroom; and field training, where a manager would convert the filed into an improvised classroom; I was compelled to learn that my product was the best. As an ideal student, I learned to believe that everything pertaining to me was the best including my health, which obviated the need for me to experiment the medicines I sold, contributing to my sound health in turn.

One of the medicines I promoted to the doctors, to be tried on unsuspecting public was a brand intended to relieve the symptoms associated with Migraine. It had a combination of all possible poisonous substances, major being “ergotamine”, which is derived from the fungus infected “ergot of rye”, which has the capacity to shrink blood vessels, technically known as vasoconstrictors. By constricting the dilated arteries to the head, which had caused that pounding head-ache known as throbbing, this medicine, I was taught to believe has the capacity to alleviate the headache due to migraine. To improve the veracity of sales statements, I was briefed to caution the doctors, that this medicine should not be prescribed during pregnancy and as a standard procedure, not more than four tablets per day and not more than ten tablets in a week should be prescribed for all others.

In the 80s during the first trimester of pregnancy, my wife had severe bouts of migraine one night, demanding me to give the medicine for migraine, which was in my possession as physician’s sample. Her migraine had numbed all her other mental faculties, whereas it had sharpened my bluffing skills, so as to save the foetus growing in her womb from drug induced abnormalities. Without switching on the lights of the bedroom, I stomped to the store room, where I had kept all the physician’s samples. After getting what I was searching for, I walked up to the bedroom and made her swallow two tablets with a cup of water, without switching on the lights of the bedroom. After half an hour she felt the head-ache was tolerable and went back to sleep. What I gave her that night, was not the medicine intended for migraine, but a “placebo”; again a valuable information I picked up during the training programme. Placebo is a blank drug without any therapeutic action, used in double blind trials, to evaluate the true physiological potential of a drug against the false psychological effects. The two tablets I gave to my wife were nothing but B-complex supplements.

Though I could avoid a potential disaster by administering a “placebo” to my wife during her pregnancy, her migraine continued to be a cause for my head-ache. She tried different medicines and therapies, ranging from Ayur Veda, Homeopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Reiki, which made many practitioners richer by knowledge and purse, but she continued to suffer from frequent bouts of migraine.

One doctor with a scientific bent of mind suggested her to keep a tab of food she consumed, so that he could discover the food item which triggered her migraine. My wife picked up abundant knowledge about migraine from him, and she learnt that migraine could be classified into different categories such as, hunger triggered migraine, food triggered migraine, tension triggered migraine and at time certain spices too trigger migraines. His logic was to identify the trigger of migraine, so that it could be avoided to avoid migraine.

Her methodical documentation of food and spices eaten was of little use, since the doctor could not peg a single food or spice to her migraine. After eliminating many food items including spices, as the source for her migraine, the doctor concluded “tension” as the causative factor for her migraine, and my wife concluded “spouse” as the causative factor for tension.

After so much of research, she concluded that migraine could never be cured but could be avoided, and realised the spouse can neither be cured nor avoided. She started believing in the dictum “what cannot be cured should be endured”.

A chance discovery of mine rescued her from the sufferings of migraine. When tried on her, the associated complaints of throbbing headache, nausea, photophobia and spousophobia of migraine dramatically stopped, relieving my head-aches too. One day I told her that migraine afflicts only intelligent people, her face brightened like a thousand watt incandescent bulb. Her joy was twofold, since science declared her to be intelligent and more so because I don’t get bouts of migraine.

Modified Thoughts of the Communist Party of India

Suresh Naig — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 10:16:52 EST

A P Abdullakutty, the MP from Kannur, Kerala state, belonging to CPM is left without friends in the left party, for making the right comment. When the MP from Kerala, showered lavish praises on Narendra Modi and his industrial policies, corporate leaders from Kerala, have rallied behind Abdulla and Marxists considered the young leader loudmouthed. Abdullakutty was subsequently suspended from the primary membership of the Marxist party for one year.

The difference in thinking of the party and its suspended member is obvious. The young MP from Kerala was able to evaluate different policies of a Chief Minister, dispassionately and segregate good from the bad. He felt the industrial policies of Modi is worth emulating for the growth of Kerala and not Modi. Whereas veterans from CPM have failed miserably in differentiating the policies from the personality, and their vision is distorted because of Modi prism. Their distorted vision led them to witch-hunting, resulting in Modi phobia.

Most of the political leaders and thinkers in India have been caught in a vice of their own making, as far as Narendra Modi is concerned and they find it difficult to extricate themselves from it. It all started from post Godhra riots of 2002, and everyone felt advantageous to accuse Modi for the misery.

During the worst Gujarat riots, a picture was painted in the Indian media that, Modi had personally supervised the killings of many Muslims in Gujarat and many were made to assimilate what was fed to them. Having pegged the individual responsibility on Modi, for the worst crime of mass hysteria in independent India, many find it difficult to praise the wonderful industrial achievements of Gujarat. If they can find a way to disassociate the industrial achievements of Gujarat from Modi, many would not shy away from praising it. Modi phobia had reached an unparalleled level in Indian polity, that it almost celebrated the event of US declining Visa to Modi. Even CPM which is known for its acumen in identifying a sinister design in everything emanating from USA, failed to see anything objectionable in this. Refusal of a Visa to one of our Chief Ministers by a country, was a great insult to Gujarat and our country, worth condemning, but many including CPM celebrated it due to Modi phobia.

Suspension of Abdullakutty is one more glaring example for CPM’s Modified thinking due to Modi phobia.

India And Pakistan - Hide and Seek

Suresh Naig — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:43:38 EST

After the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, India claims to have furnished enough evidence to Pakistan, about the perpetrators originating from Pakistan, corroborated by US intelligence. Yet the Pakistan Government continues to be obstinate in denying Pakistani involvement, in the worst ever terror attacks of recent past.

Confused by the cacophony of different voices emanating from official, semi-official, demi-official, dummy-official, and non-official sources, an Indian journalist assumed the onerous responsibility to unearth the facts for the benefit of Indian public. Over the years, the journalist in India gathered enough confidence on fact finding missions, since it used to be an easy task; it takes only one visit to the location of an encounter accompanied by some select politicians, and with ease a journalist could declare it to be a fake encounter. However fake the pronouncement might be, there always existed persons from different political parties, ready to sanctify the verdict. Having gathered confidence than facts, the journalist embarked on a tour to Pakistan.

Only on reaching Pakistan, the journalist could realise the hardships involved in fact-finding in the alien land. She was warned about the consequences involved in snooping around in unwanted territories, especially Faridkot and she was reminded about the fate of Daniel Pearl. Having realised the perils involved in fact-finding, she had restricted her activities to only interviewing select diplomats.

The interview was full of surprises and revelations right from the beginning. She had learnt from her younger days, about the intriguing and queer ways a diplomat would respond. She recalled her senior's lecture about diplomats, "When a diplomat says he will, he means he shall try, when he says he will try, he means no and when he says no he is not a diplomat". Equipped with that knowledge, the very first answer from the Pakistani diplomat confused her and her confusion lingered for many more days after the interview. She had sought the help of a local camera person to record her interview with the diplomat and the interview went on for over an hour.

IJ (Indian Journalist): There are talks in India that the terrorists involved in 26/11 Mumbai attacks were from Pakistan. What is your comment on their perception?

PD (Pakistani Diplomat): No they are not from Pakistan and at best they can be termed as Non-State actors.

For a moment the journalist got confused whether he was a diplomat or intelligence person, since she never expected a firm NO from a diplomat. The interview continued.

IJ: Indian Government claims to have furnished all the evidences pertaining to the identity of the persons killed and also a person caught.

PD: No. They have not given any credible evidence. What they have furnished is a bunch of suspicion and we cannot act on suspicions.

IJ: But sir, the terrorist caught by the Indian police, claims he is from Pakistani.

PD: We checked our records, but his name does not exist in our registry. Had his name existed in our records, we would not have spared them.

Indian journalist was confused, as to who is being referred to as them. The terrorists or the officials in-charge of the registry?

IJ: There is news in Indian media, that a person from Faridkot in Pakistan, claims that the terrorist caught in Mumbai is his son.

PD: You are a journalist. Tell me honestly, How much of the news do you trust?

Now the journalist felt the person she was interviewing is a hard core diplomat. Whichever way she answers him, she would be caught. She had ignored the question and proceeded further.

IJ: Even assuming it only as a doubt, don't you think sir, that you should pursue it relentlessly to fight the war on terror?

PD: You are right. But your Government is not allowing us to do so. We wanted to pursue it, so that we can prove that it was a conspiracy, wherein selected police officers were killed, who were pursuing the Malegaon blasts.

Now the Indian Journalist was once again in a fix.

IJ: Are you not raising a doubt, while brushing aside the evidence submitted as a doubt?

PD: No. Not at all. Are you trying to sweep under the carpet what is being said in your Parliament, by one of your ministers?

IJ: But Sir, he had retracted his statement later.

PD: That's the precise point. He had made the statement in the Parliament and retracted it out side. We infer a whole lot, not only from what is said, but also from where it is said.

IJ: I learnt that USA had furnished enough evidence to you about the handlers of the terrorists, giving instructions from your soil.

PD: We are going through the materials submitted by them. If found true, we will try them on our soil.

Indian journalist was once again confused, as to what the diplomat's "try" means. As a last ditch effort, she posed a question pretending to take him into confidence.

IJ: Sir tell me honestly. Where do you think the terrorists are from, who attacked Mumbai?

PD: I have a strong doubt that these men were from the Moon.

The journalist was shocked, yet continued interviewing him calmly.

IJ: What makes you think so Sir?

PD: A terrorist, who is well trained and motivated, from our experience, can never be caught alive. When a terrorist wielding AK47 is caught alive, he could only be a lunatic. The old English expression for a lunatic is "Man in the Moon", and that's why I say he must have been from the Moon.

With that statement, the Pakistani camera person felt "enough is enough" and switched off the camera.

Is Terrorism a Vice born out of Patriotic Virtues?

Suresh Naig — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:36:20 EST

Patriotism, as per the dictionary, conveys a person’s loyalty, devotion and readiness to defend and guard a country, to which one belongs. From time immemorial patriotism is extolled, as a supreme virtue. Since patriotism is more emotional than rational, the benignity of patriotism could easily be converted into malignant terrorism, by stoking emotions.

A nation or a country has different dimensions, other than its geographical boundaries. It has its economic, social, and cultural dimensions too. A country is united by its cohesive cultural identity, which supersedes every other factor – geographical, economical or political. When this cultural identity is uprooted, mere geographical intact-ness of a country loses its relevance. Or to put it the other way, a country cobbled up on apparent lines of similarity, other than cultural cohesiveness, cannot stay intact in the longer run.

Break-up of USSR into different fragments, could be attributed to different reasons and the major being cultural disconnect. The same cultural bondage saw unification of Germany, on the 3rd of October, 1990. Break-up of USSR into fragments and re-unification of East Germany and West Germany, were almost simultaneous. Communism as a philosophy lacked the cultural cohesiveness in neither uniting nor dividing countries.

In spite of different kingdoms existed in our mother land, due to geographical convenience, economic viability, territorial advantage and individual avarice, Bharat was united culturally. Adi Shankara in 5th Century BC (those of you who want to dispute the period of Adi Shankara to 6th Century AD, pl wait) could not have established his mutts in different directions, North, East, West and South, but for the cultural connectivity existed in our land.

This cultural connectivity of our great nation was beyond religions, for our cultural uniqueness, accepted every religion into its fold, without antagonising any religion or sect. In addition to Hinduism; Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism and Christianity continues to co-exist in our great land, since our culture is basically polytheist in nature. But for the cultural cohesiveness of our land, British would have failed to create a single political entity as India. Without understanding our basic strength, many attribute our sovereignty to English, whereas British were more known for their dividing capabilities than unifying credentials.

Many a time, religion and culture are misunderstood, to be overlapping to each other; experiments in that direction also failed; sterling example is the split of Pakistan into two. Pakistan was born out of apparent similarity of religion, but bereft of cultural cohesiveness and hence it was not able to stay as one political unit. Without proper understanding of this phenomenon, disgruntled elements in Pakistan are seeing a demon in India, which had engineered the split.

Patriotism is apparently misunderstood in Pakistan, by encompassing religion into its patriotic firmament, since the country originated on religious grounds. Because of this confused logic, select few inside Pakistan want to avenge India on religious lines, attributing assumed reasons of religious suppression in Kashmir and for causing the split of Bangladesh. However much diabolic or manic the design might be, because of its sanctification from the religious patriots, the feeble voices of reasonable persons in Pakistan have been dinned by the noises of radicals.

The radicals, however miniscule in number, wield enormous political and religious clout; they have absolute power of destruction. Political power centre in Pakistan had lost its control over these rogue elements since long and hence they continue to deny the presence of terror elements in their land.

Overt operations such as war or economic sanctions would hurt only the section in Pakistan which does not have anything to do with these terror elements and it is better for India to think of covert actions, aimed at hitting these modules beyond recovery.

Iraq - Shoe-ing Away The Question

Suresh Naig — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 08:28:18 EST

Asking a question is very important for development. A society which is discouraged from asking questions, is a society deprived of development. A person is not expected to ask a question in an autocratic state and it may even cost the life of a person, if the question happened to be uncomfortable to the ruler. Even in a democratic country, many people have lost their lives, asking uncomfortable questions. They are known as “whistle blowers”, and in the recent past an engineer from Karnataka, Manjunath had paid with his life in Bihar, for asking uncomfortable questions to road contractors and Highways department Babus.

However we might have been deprived of many useful things for the society, if Issac Newton had not asked that question, ‘why an apple falls down?’ Had Alexander Fleming not asked that vital question, ‘why one mould is interfering with the growth of another mould’, we might have been deprived of anti-biotics – the powerful arsenal in medicine to fight infections.

Had Gandhi not asked that question, ‘why I am not allowed to travel in first class compartment, even after paying for it?’ we would not have experienced a non-violent philosophy “ahimsa”. The whole Bhagavat Geeta is a treatise in the form of questions and answers, and the central theme of Zen philosophy is only questions.

However, certain questions could be embarrassing in diplomatic parlance, even if it happened to be true. Our earlier Prime Minister Morarjee Desai was known for his diplomatic lapses, by his pointed and uncomfortable questions. He reportedly walked straight to one of the aides, who accompanied the Soviet Premier to India and asked, ‘are you from KGB?’ to the embarrassment of MEA personnel. However they were happy, that their Prime Minister, who was a proponent of “auto urine therapy”, did not offer his “favourite drink” to the Russian delegation.

Though we have been benefited by the answers for certain freak questions, we are better off, by not asking one question, which does not have an answer. This question is an expression of our wishful thinking and the question is “what if it’s true?”

Two persons had asked the above question in Bangalore and they were poorer by few lakhs of rupees. One had asked the question on receiving a mail in his mail box, declaring him as the winner of an international lottery. The other asked the question in response to a mail asking him to be a conduit, in retrieving huge funds stashed away in a foreign country. I am sure most of us would have received these mails and we ignored it, because we are not gullible.

At times even many top leaders showed traits of gullibility, by not only asking that question themselves, but also instigating others to ask the same question ‘what if it’s true?, for certain information which is worth shoeing away.

By not shoeing away the information pertaining to WMD (weapons of mass destruction), Bush had asked the question ‘what if it’s true?’ and he got shoe-d away in Iraq.