Desicritics Author: die7nadal

Opportunistic 'Theist'

die7nadal — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 00:20:44 EST

I know a guy who was agnostic towards God for a long time. He tried really hard to join one of the Big B-Schools in India. He failed the first time but then he didn't lose heart and tried harder and cracked it on his second attempt. But after joining the B-School he became an extreme believer in God. This tells us a couple of important points about this behaviour.

He has lost faith in his ability to control his destiny.
However hard he may toil from now on, he will not have complete faith in his capabilities, rather he will be tempted to put some of his 'burden' in God. That would definitely reduce his abilities as an individual but it would not have been the case if he were a non-believer as he was previously. Because as a non-believer he knew he was all by himself and therefore he would have used all his maximum mortal ability to shape his destiny.

If he undergoes failure continuously, he will shop around for a God.

If he's not able to deliver the things that were expected of him or if he has a chronic or terminal illness, he will definitely turn to God. So if his God doesn't help him out of his misfortune he will not hesitate to try his hand at another God because all he needs is 'to get out of his misery' no matter how. The majority of religious conversion (other than the Dalits) happens only because of this flimsy reason. So even if his illness or difficulty was cured by a doctor or naturally, he'll blindly start to believe that it's because of his new found God.

He believes God is his Personal Genie.

Since he wants God to do whatever he wants, however whimsical his wishes may be, he treats God like a Butler. Or, in short, he uses God only to achieve his means. In a way he desecrates or blasphemes the real meaning of God. He does not even care what God wants him to be or what God's real teachings are. Almost all religions preach attaining enlightenment or 'moksha' in some form or the other, but he believes in God only if he gets to be an IIM MBA.

Is Bribing God the Path to Salvation?

die7nadal — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 00:19:58 EST

There has been a custom right from the early days of supporting priests financially when you visit the temple, which was fine. This later on evolved into a compulsion to donate money to the temple every time you visited one. At this juncture it implies that people with money alone can get His blessings and those without it cannot be blessed. But should the priest who is supposed to serve God, differentiate between the rich and poor?

This reminds me of Gandhi, of the time he visited a temple and offered just a pie on the darshan plate of the priest. The priest got angry and threw the pie and acted as if it was the pilgrim's duty to pay a minimum price for the worship. Gandhi, unabashed, said that it was all he could offer at that time and if the priest did not take the offer he would gladly take the pie and thus proceeded forward. The priest was so greedy that he would not even let go of the pie and accepted it.

That being said, the annual income of Tirupathi Tirumala Temple is estimated to be around six million Rupees. It is said to be the richest temple next only to Vatican City Church. No wonder there is always a Photo of Lord Venkateshwara near the cashier box in many shops in most parts of South India, atleast as far as I have seen. There is a belief among the pilgrims that Lord Venkateshwara would grant anything that they asked for.

Already imbibed with the belief that we should offer money whenever we pay a visit to a holy place, people stand in claustrophobic queues for three hours in Tirupathi and pour in thousands of crores of rupees as darshan, so that their wish of becoming rich or absolving their sins would be taken care off. In simple terms people started to bribe Him to take care of their petty wishes. Probably they even thought of it as a better form of investment than Shares, Stocks and Mutual funds.

What people don't understand is that no amount of money can bring them any kind of richness or wash them from their sins. To be absolutely absolved from a sin one should understand and accept that he has committed a sin and vow not to repeat ever again in his life time. Instead of draining our money into the giant piggy banks of the Tirumala temple, if we help the poor and needy there would be atleast one soul which would seek our well being, which would ultimately bring goodness to us.

Boycotting Coke: A Rather Late New Year's Resolution

die7nadal — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 00:06:32 EST

I had been fond of C right from the time my cousin introduced C to me some time in the summer of 1994. And I have been loyal to C since then. At times I would have C six or seven times a day. C would quench my thirst for freshness in a way that none could. I felt that I was on a high each time I had C.

My decade old affair with C came to a screeching halt, however, when I saw the news of the University of Michigan suspending its contracts with Coca-Cola because of its unethical practices in India and Columbia.

In 2003, Coke was accused of robbing the livelihoods of poor villagers in India, where farmers depend upon the underground water for their irrigation, by drawing on that water resource for its plant and by releasing toxic effluents into the water this spoiling the farmers' arable land. The most pitiable part was that there was "no law regulating the ground water extraction for such purpose". In a December 16, 2003 Kerala High Court ruling, Coke was told to seek alternative water resources because extracting huge quantities of water from an agricultural area is "illegal".

Since there was no other way in which water could be mined easily in such enormous amount without any massive investment, Coke decided to appeal the High Court ruling. Surprisingly for the people of Plachimada (a village in Kerala), in 2005, the same Kerala High Court favored the indiscriminate abuse of water, and stated that Coke could extract 500,000 liters of water per day, if the area experienced a regular rainy season.

Unable to bear the sight of a rapidly decreasing water table in their wells, the people of Plachimada began guarding the plant 24/7 to compel Coke not to reopen the plant. The plant has remained shut from then on. Since then, they have conducted a number of campaigns to stop the water mining and the pollution of their agricultural land and have been lathicharged, arrested and forced to face innumerable hardships for the sole reason of fighting for their livelihood.

Some times it's a wonder what a determined group of tribal villagers and adivasis could do a transcontinental giant like Coca-Cola. Even though Coca-Cola did not permanently shut down the plant, the villagers have already won their first battle. Long live their UNITY and determination.

Apart from Kerala, this David-Goliath struggle is also taking place in Kala Dera, Rajasthan and in Mehdiganj, Uttar Pradesh.

While R. Ajayan, Plachimada Solidarity Committee (India) is responsible for organising the campaigns in Kerala, Amit Srivastava, India Resource Center (US) is busy awakening the world to the stark reality of Coke's behaviour in India. Amit took this fight to US, the very land of Coke. As a rude awakening to Coke, many North American Colleges and even some European Colleges have failed to extend the contract with Coke. In addition to Ajayan and Srivastava, there are innumerable people responsible for the success of this campaign.

On the other hand Coke is trying to shy away from all the allegations and pumps in money to hire consultants from Perfect Relations, a public relations firm to erase the bad image that it has created.

For more information about this campaign, visit India Resource.

In Colombia, people are continuing to protest the torture and killings, taking place since 1989, of various union leaders who objected to the inhuman work conditions enforced in the Coca-cola plant. All these perpetrated by Coke, even after raking in billions in profit.

For more information, visit Killer Coke.

Way back in the 1960's, Coke was considered to be anti-Semitic because it refused to do business with Israel. That would mean angering the Arab League of nations. Coke did not want to anger a much larger market of Arab league and decided to ignore Israel and the reason given to the world was that Israel was too small to support a franchisee. But only in 1966 did its motive came into the picture - if Cyprus, a country having just one tenth population of Israel, could have a franchisee, why not Israel? Obviously that question could not be answered.

As many people began to question Coke's sincerity, the administrators of Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan boycotted Coke and others followed suit and Coke literally was facing a total Jewish boycott in America. For the fear of losing a major chunk of its US market, Coke finally decided to open a plant in Israel's capital.

Such is the power of consumers' protest upon a bottling giant, who has been in business for over a century.

So I have started my first protest against Coke by renouncing all of its 400 products - Coke, Diet Coke, Minute Maid, Powerade to name a few.

Coke India's website claims that the "Coca-Cola company exists to benefit and refresh everyone it touches", but this surely seems far from reality.

This is an old entry from my blog, but when it comes to spreading the word, it's better late than never.

Pseudo-Democracy - The Jessica Lal Case

die7nadal — Fri, 3 Mar 2006 00:13:42 EST

The Jessica Lal case - the same old story; a crime is committed in a bar in New Delhi in front of lots of witnesses, but when the case comes to court all the witnesses turn hostile. If you have been following Indian news for a while, this should not have surprised you. The Bofors trial, Laloo's Fodder Scam, the Tehelka Case, the Babri masjid trial, the Godhra incident - the list is endless. Incidents like these, time and again, remind us that we Indians live in the biggest pseudo-democratic nation, where the word 'democracy' merely finds its place in the Constitution of India.

Democracy cannot be implanted in a society just like a heart transplant or a kidney transplant - stinging examples are Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a conscious state of mind, where people are free to express their opinions without fear. It is a belief like religion and a feeling like love. Only when we are emancipated from the shackles of religion, province, social stature we would be free to express our thoughts fearlessly and then and only then we would be free to govern ourselves, other wise we would be dominated or governed only by people with power and money.

It's funny to read the response evoked by readers of the Jessica Lal trial on CNN-IBN, where a person alleges that the police and Judge accepted bribes,

"Definitely, the Delhi police must have taken heavy bribe and quite possibe that the judge too must have taken bribe in this case!"

What would the Police and the Judge do if the Witnesses don't appear in the court? The accused were acquitted only for want of a witness. Even the witness cannot be blamed because they are pressured by people in powerful positions. Awkwardly it's we, who gave the power to these people. Also there is no solid law to save the Witnesses or the Whistle blowers in this country. Quite often people who are entrusted with guarding the law turn predator upon the victims.

Another reader suggested a trial in the fundamentalist style,

"Trial like Mid-East. I mean, display the criminal (Manu Sharma here) in a four lane busy meeting place, and people should throw stones and hot water at him for the crime he has committed that he would never even think of showing his gun to anyone else!!"

If a person is punished in front of the others, do you honestly think that people would never dare to commit the same crime? If that was the case then there would not be any criminal in today's world.

Here's a funny one:

"I pray to the GOD to give us freedom and justice from this sleeping authorities and corrupt politics."

What would poor God do, come and provide the never-ending Saree of 'justice' like the one given to Draupadi? God helps those who helps themselves, it is as simple as that. Sadly, it is not the authorities who are sleeping, it's we, the people who are sleeping even after fifty years of Independence.

If we were never oriented to favour our caste, religion, province and favoured a person based only on his abilities to deliver the best for the country, we would not have such dogmatic people to govern us. Until then we will have to live with these scandals, scams and prejudices.