The Undercover Indian

its not a good sign to bring religion into everything especially things like this cricket match which was between two countries and not two religions. thanking god is a good thing but that should have been a personal gesture and not in the middle of a stadium. sports and religion shouldn’t be clubbled. isn’t mixing the religion with _all_ aspects of life one of the biggest problem for the country ?

there are two things in this picture

I am not sure what to make of this picture. I guess if the girls really do want to display their gratitude like this, it is their choice.

A wise man once said that the best form of service to God was not to make a show of it. One could infer that more subtle forms of showing thankfulness are desirous as Allah does not need to actually see us prostrate to accept it. By the way, the wise man’s name is Ali (r.a).

On the other hand, if the girls are saying one of their daily prayers, I guess a mosque or a prayer room is more suited for it than a cricket pitch - unless it was hot inside!

Recently around 140 countries agreed to make October 2 as international day of non violence to respect Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy of non violence. In his own home country though, what we have witnessed last week was not only shameful shameful but also made a mockery of rule of law. Gujjars, who are some sort of caste and tribe in Rajasthan, went on massive protestation throughout the north India to demand them being categorized as Schedule Tribe (ST), so that they could get benefits of reservation in education and jobs meant for other lower castes listed as SC and ST. If we ignore violence which these men resorted to, I find it funny that there are people who so vehemently want to be categorized as lower caste tribe. Talk about upward mobility here! I am always perplexed by staggering number of castes and sub castes we have and how we keep sticking to them instead of making such archaic ideas redundant. I don’t know if Gujjars deserve to be listed as ST and given benefits of reservation or not, but what really stands out from the whole episode is the utmost disregard these men showed to public property and other citizens who had nothing to do with Gujjars getting into ST list. Crowds of these men went on rampage, blocking highways for days, burning, looting and destroying public property at will. Many of high valued machinery used for National Highway project in Rajasthan was destroyed and whole work on highway construction was brought to halt. What were these people trying to say? That they don't need highways and buses! Didn't they know that by doing all this they were only harming other innocent people caught in cross fire and this way they would have lost any goodwill they would have had! Even Capital Delhi was untouched by the violence. In one of the visuals shown on news, a dozen protestors were seen burning buses in full view of camera. After burning the bus, they unabashedly, stared at TV cameras and laughed and smiled as if they had just done a great act of bravery. Anybody who follows news regularly would see a pattern of behavior here. Group of people resort to violence mostly without any provocation, and in their minds protest is equated with burning and looting, and unless highways are blocked, trains are stopped and cities are brought to standstill, protest is not said to be effective. Then they openly peek into TV cameras and celebrate as if they are heroes. You don’t need to be expert to tell that such people who indulge in such activities understand nothing about what they are demanding and are mostly people who are bored in life. It is such a shame that nothing is done to punish these people. The rule of law can not be relaxed because a group of men, a caste felt that they were denied something legitimate and were angry with the system which they think is hijacked by another caste of Meenas. It is not an excuse to cause extensive damage to public property and cause nuisance and inconvenience to others. There are other means of protests and raising your demand, burning building and buses are not any of them. I think, it is high time that an example is set and police should catch all those who were captured in TV burning buses and blocking highways and persecute them. Come on, people, you are not fighting some foreign regime here.

How stupid it all sounds. Gujjars were demanding listing in ST category and Meenas (another one of 10 million castes) who are already in ST bracket started opposing it fearing that thier benefits from reservation would be diluted if Gujjars were also to be listed as ST and we almost had a caste war between Gujjars and Meenas. What will be next! Would it start a race where someone would be trying to prove that they are more backward than the others and others would fight back saying that only they are backward! So utterly ridiculous. A social problem, instead of being socially mended has been hijacked by politicians and lines of divisions are being further accentuated. May be it is not right to blame just the politicians alone as the fact is that we don’t have leaders in this country anymore, we just have men who are doing business of politics, otherwise so called leaders of Gujjars would have known that they can only lead their community into next century by making it aware of education and opportunities beyond few government jobs which they want to get through reservations. But regardless, all those who indulged in senseless violence and destroyed public property should be caught and put in jails.

Ambedkar, the first dalit leader of modern India and author of our constitution realized this fact that caste in India is difficult to escape when he was stopped form entering a temple in Nasik in 1930. So dismayed was he with incident that he proclaimed that though he was born a Hindu he would never die in that discriminating religion and eventually few months before he died, he converted en-mass with his followers to Buddhism. What has been happening in Punjab is also a stark reminder of how deeply rooted castism is in Indian society. Sikh religion was created during a dark period in Hindu religion when it was under threat from Mugul (arab-muslim) invaders and from its own ritualistic distortions and brahmnical corruptions. The main teachings of Sikhism were based on equality and outright rejection of caste. So it is quite ironical that in today's rural Punjab, large number of backwards and dalit Sikhs feels discriminated and left out by mainstream Sikhism which is controlled by a body which is brahmnical equivalent of Sikhism. The Dera phenomenon which has gathered momentum in rural Punjab is a reaction to this very fact. People, who have felt marginalized by high body of Sikhism, flock to deras to get their fix of religion. The recent violence in Punjab between a dera followers and Akali Sikhs can be understood in this light as a power struggle between those who control the religion and those who feel left out and seek other alternatives. As I had mentioned in my post on social groups, it is a classic case of a social group (Sikh) conflict when members of a group desert it to form another group.

The mass conversion of dalits and tribals can perhaps be termed as political stunt by certain dalit politicians of Maharashtra but it is important to see it from another perspective which is that of emergence and assertiveness of dalits as political force in India. The fact that last month a dalit party, BSP, won elections with majority seats in most populous state of India and a dalit is chief minister is indication of this fact. What is unique about this new found political awareness is the fact that instead of being used as a pawn and vote bank in political equations by national parties, BSP has forged its own alliances to seize the power, signaling a shift in political maturity of the party. How interesting is it that BSP a party of dalits and lower caste has forged alliance with higher caste Brahmins and even fielded high caste candidates to seize the power taking most of national parties by complete surprise. What it would do to political landscape in India and how it would change social profile of dalits would make an engaging spectacle.

For first time in 36 years, Mumbai (read south Mumbai) may be subjected to scheduled power cuts. BEST general manager said that BEST would ask all the cinema halls in south Mumbai to cancel their noon shows to beat the power crisis. He said that "it won't make any difference if people don’t watch movies in the afternoon". What an absurd argument. I understand that there is power shortage and some power saving measures is need of the day. But what I find absurd is the way BEST manager is asking consumers to save the power. He doesn't show any concern or remorse that consumers would be affected by shortage in power and is almost insinuating as if watching movies on afternoon is a sort of frivolous activity which can be done without, almost as if watching noon shows is causing power shortage and by discontinuing these shows we can save power. If we have to extend the logic, we might as well say it won’t make any difference if we don’t use our TV sets during the day, stop using air conditioning, just use fans, and open shopping malls only during day. Some one might suggest that this would be good since it would make us free from our dependence on various machines gadgets and devices. It will be in keeping with Indian culture which has always encouraged frugality. BTW, how much power can we save my stopping noon movie shows!! Phenomenal? Or is it mere symbolic! I suggest that everybody voluntarily switch off lights in their house by 10 pm and sleep. After all, it will “not make any difference” .

Just now when we are organizing India tourism road shows in foreign capitals on grand scale and inviting people to visit our country, just when India is seen all around business conferences, just when we are shouting ourselves hoarse about our double digit growth, just when Chinese are perplexed by large number of Indian billionaires in Forbes list, here we are talking about why not to watch afternoon movie shows so that we can save little power here and there, in the financial hub of the country.

One might say I am harping on power cuts in Mumbai when for most of rural Maharashtra, power cuts are way of life and has been like than for a long time. Unlike Mumbai which had power distribution in private sector, rural Maharastra is at mercy of government controlled MSEB and has been reeling under long hours of power cuts for many years now. So it was only inevitable that citizens of Mumbai also face the heat .Untill 1992, Maharashtra was a power surplus state and was selling power to other states. After Enron debacle, the state government lost the plot entirely and power situation since then has been deteriorating. What was government doing and thinking all this while! The problem is not that we are suddenly consuming more power; problem is that we are not producing enough power. Problem is with inadequate planning. When you are growing as fast as 8-10% annually and when you are dreaming of becoming a superpower, you would know that you would need power. Industries need power, cities need power, agriculture needs power, and economy needs power. It can not happen that we suddenly wake up one day and find that there is a shortfall of 4000MW of power. The power deficit has been increasing every year and state Governments hardly did anything other than distributing power free of cost to framers who are anyway finding it hard not to take their own lives. Today state of Maharashtra is being called a failed state (by planning commision) and power cuts in Mumbai are just a stark and "dark" reminder of how bad things have gone. And what are politicians of Maharashtra doing? Those who are in power (pun intended) have no clues about what needs to be done and those who are not , are busy playing their divisive agenda around regional and emotive politics. But then it is not surprising. Politics is a business where voters are the consumers. As long as voters are happy being doled out emotional shit rolled with misplaced pride, politicians will keep serving them that. Who wants proverbial Bijli, Paani and Sadaks! We are happy as long as all the major airports (when they function), all the major roads (when they are built), all the major ports, all the major buildings and everything major is named after one great hero from past.

A Bollywood actress participated in a UK reality show and was called "Indian" and "curry eating" by one of British house mate. The issue turned into a racism row which got escalated to the extent that it almost became an international incident and diplomatic row between 2 governments. One of politicians, Raj Thackeray of Maharashtra recently remarked that he would not hesitate to slap North Indians (read Biharis) if they insulted local Marathi culture. He said that “they would get slap as breakfast, slap as lunch and slap as dinner”. He never bothered to mention how North Indians were insulting local Marathi culture (by not learning Marathi perhaps) and his audience never bothered to ask him. They just clapped happily. Obviously knowing how Indian politics operates, the politician in question, was merely playing to his target vote bank. And it did not matter that his party had taken an inclusive stance during recently concluded elections for BMC. After his party got the drubbing, he had to change his ideology from an inclusive to more excluding and based on parochial and narrow concerns. It is paradoxical that we Indians blame British for enslaving us for 200 years and making us poor through divide and rule, and today we use same fault lines of division and even accentuate them through vote bank politics. This is not limited to Maharashtra and can be see throughout the political landscape in our country. The question of outsiders versus locals has been raised for quite sometime in Mumbai and I fail to understand why it is a big deal for megacity like Mumbai. Cities don’t belong to any community and that’s why they become cities and acquire their typical characters and personalities. Cities are often product of migration of people from villages and hinterland and they become nerve center of economic activity because of large set of economically active migrants. It does not matter whether migrant is from Bihar or from some rural district of Western Ghats of Maharashtra. Bangalore for example is Silicon Valley and attracts qualified IT engineers from across the county. Mumbai has become an economic hub because of contribution from various communities; most of them not are from native Marathi speaking population.

Raj Thackeray is not alone in this kind of divisive politics and he is merely following on footsteps of his mentor, Bal Thackeray who has made a political career by promoting “Maharashtra for Maharashtrians" brand of politics. Shiv Sena first captured power by running a hate campaign against South Indians in Bombay, then they targeted migrants from UP and now it is turn of Biharis who are everybody’s favorite whipping boys as is happening in Assam also where ULFA kills poor Bihari migrants at will. I wonder why Raj Thackeray’s statement against Biharis is not same as what Fascists said about Jews. Does it not amount to racism and hate campaign, of spreading hatred and fear against another set of human beings! Then why is that we made such a big noise about Shilpa Shetty being racially targeted when we are targeting our own people in our own country! But that perhaps is quite understandable since we don’t like others to behave with us the way we behave with our own people. I mean, is caste system not the biggest institutionalized mechanism of discriminating against people anywhere in the world! We accuse white skinned of being racist against dark skinned people like us, even when we would prefer half of our population to be of fair skinned (look at Indian matrimonials). And we know how easy travelers from Africa find their stay in India who are targeted just because they are shade darker than us. What Shiv Sena does in Maharashtra to Biharis, is it a form of racism or merely an instance of social conflict! What is the reason for this social conflict?

I believe that fundamentally all of us are racist. And without exception perhaps. Only degree of basis on which we chose to discriminate varies. Racism is only one form (though more sinister perhaps) of inter social group conflict. Social groups, which could be based on language (as Marathi, German), religion (Hindu, Muslim) , culture (French, British) or territory.

Social Groups and Conflict: To understand genesis of racism better, we have to look closely at inter social group conflicts. One way of looking at these conflicts is to look at them from biological and evolutionary point of view as Desmond Morris had done in his superb book called "The Naked Ape”. We know that, we humans started our civilization as Apes, a kind of animal species. When we evolved from fruit eating apes into flesh eating hunter apes, we suddenly had to fight with other predator animals that were much more advanced in their hunting skills. Only way we human apes could compete with those hunter animals and survive was to stay and hunt in tighter groups. We depended upon the group for safety and food, the two vital things required for survival. We also became territorial because as co-operative social hunters we had to create base or a territory which could mark the group as a separate unit (most of hunter animals are territorial, like lions). We also had to defend the region of fixed base or the territory and because of our co-operative social nature we had to do it on group basis than individually. Also prolonged dependency of our young (children) for survival and rearing, forced us to adopt pair bonded family units within the fixed social group, where a male member of family defends his own individual home within a large home base or social group. So a family became the fundamental unit within a territorial social group. Hence, from biological point of view, it is in our genes to form social groups and defend them (territories). Cultural, political, social and many such changes which have happened after our ancient days of social-cooperative group hunters have not necessarily curbed our inherent instincts of belonging to a social group and defending it. And what have also not changed are the inter-social group conflicts. Hunt now is hunt for resources and jobs, and modern man has various overlapping social group identities. We have not changed that way since our ancient days. We must need to believe in something and we must need to belong to a group which we must defend against other social groups or perceived or real threats. Due to incredible improvements in healthcare and scientific advancemans over last century, a gross over crowding and migration of our species is happening which is leading to social stresses, tensions and inter social group conflicts. From Tribal systems which are still found in some countries like Afghanistan to Nation states, all of these are nothing but a form of this social group mechanism and territories. Nation states as we know them today are relatively much modern concept. Some commentators a argue that Globalization as seen in past couple of decades is bound to threaten notion of nation states, as geographical boundaries which act as physical territory of nation states are becoming redundant because of forces of globalization and technology like internet. An interesting social-group product of globalization is perhaps MNCs. MNC are groups of people who are held together by idea of making money or conducting business irrespective of any affiliation to any nation state. It is said that culture of globalization and technological advancements have shrinked the world to a small place but it has not eliminated fragmented identities and affiliations to social units which an individual carries which ultimately lead to conflicts. A person from Tamilnadu is called "madrasi" in north of India and can be taunted for his strange eating habits. Same Tamil person, if he is an upper cast Brahmin, would not mingle with other Tamil lower caste men. An Indian from Bihar state can be beaten when he gets employment in Mumbai and Americans would threaten to stop migration of Indians (including Marathis) to Silicon valley. The same Social group conflicts exist in many forms and at many levels and one would be tempted to say that it is in very nature of us, humans. Belonging to a herd. What people like Raj Thackeray do is to cash on these potential conflicts and fault lines by making "his group" see a threat from "other group". It does not matter whether that threat may be real or merely perceived. BJP comes to power by making a Hindus see the threat from Muslims. Osama Bin Laden runs his shop by making Muslims see the threat from Christians and western world. May be this is what politics all about.

Nation State, above other social groups: Desmond Morris says that one way of reducing the inter-social group conflict is to "de-patriotize" the group, break the cohesion of a group. But this goes against our genetic need of belonging to a tribe, a group. If relationships are broken in one way, they must be formed somewhere else. In this view, concept of a secular democratic nation state is interesting one. Even more so in Indians context where we have such an amazing array of diversity in terms of languages, religions and customs, not to mention the castes. In a secular democracy like ours, a nation state is thought of as most important social group and all other social group identities which a citizen of nation-state might have are seen as lower and subservient to identity as citizen of nation state. This includes linguistic as well as religious identities. Even though state lets an individual has his/her social affiliations, state practically ignores them when dealing with the individual, at least in principal, as is also enshrined in our constitution. A citizen of Indian nation state has fundamental right to live and work in any part of the country regardless of whether he is from Bihar or from Maharashtra. Our identity as Indian is assumed to be more sacred than any other identity (from a social group) we might carry, and when somebody violates this by appealing to narrower, parochial agendas like Raj Thackeray or anybody else, he/she is hitting at the very foundation of how we have agreed to live in a country (group). This is what makes it a dangerous scenario. There is a distinction bwteen genuine regional interest,culture,language promotion and holiganism. And what Shiva Sena and other such Senaa do is to indulge in holiganism.

Man is not just another Animal: Man as animal. We understand how inter-social group conflict is biologically wired in us. When we see ourselves as just another animal and look at it from evolution point of view, we can understand many things about why we are the way we are today, our customs, our religions, everything. Our society the way it is today has not become like this in a day but is a product of many millions of years of evolutionary cycle and there are various traits which we carry in our genetic makeup which still connect us to our primal life as just another animal on a big planet fighting to survive. This gives us our baser or lower instincts. But we are not just another animal. We have an extremely advanced faculty of reasoning which makes us think and question. We have always tried to understand who we are through our power of intellect and exploration. For example ancient Indian philosophy delved deeper into nature of man and his mission. One of most profound thought which we find in our ancient philosophy and which can perhaps be termed unique to Indian civilization is idea of "Vasudhev Katumkamb" or entire planet is one big family. This thought can only come when we are able to overcome our baser biological nature through use of intellect to see our higher self. Instead of belonging to narrower social groups, man has to see him belonging to one social group whose destiny is interlinked on this planet. Obviously this is so high a thought that even political parties who run their shops on name of our great Indian culture, do not want to see or understand it and they are happy running their business on narrow, parochial and divisive agendas whenevee they suit them. So if one day Shiv Sena appeals to all hindus to unite against a certain community, on another day they don't hesitate to target same hindus who speak a different language.

It is one of those pleasures in life which doesn't cost much. Watching a good movie in near empty cinema hall without being disturbed by noisy college kids or by never ending mobile phone beeps. Added advantage is that you don’t have to jostle at the popcorn counter during interval and you can occupy any seat you want. It feels as if a private screening has been arranaged just for you. When I walked into the hall to watch 1971, I had little expectations and just wanted to kill some time. I was in for a surprise. It turned out to be unusually engaging and well made movie. Movie's plot revolves around attempt of few Indians prisoners of war of 1971 who are lodged in Pakistani jails and are moved to a new camp near the border to avoid their detection by visiting Red Cross. Bollywood has a bad record of making mainstream movies which deal with politics or war and most of such movies end jingoistic, over the top (Border) and sometime unintentionally funny (various) . 1971 is more restraint and except for few cinematic liberties it takes, like in climax scene, it is rather realistically made. For once there are no songs and dances which would have killed the pace of the movie. A good movie is which engages and which makes audience feel the character’s travails. 1971 does it pretty well for most parts. Most of characters are well etched out and acting is also top class. Some of scenes are absolutely fantastic, like the one in which on the run prisoners see Pakistani army marching into the village, the scene where Ravi's character kills himself to let his friends escape and a scene where Manoj Bajpai see the Indian side of border after the day break. Fortunately makers have made sure that characters are not made larger than life like in earlier PoW movie called "Deewar-lets bring our heroes back". The drama behind escape is engaging and creates necessary tension for action to be gripping. Dialogues are sensible and cinematography apt. After the movie I wondered why there was just handful of spectators in theatre to watch such a good movie!! It is far better than many karan Johar movies.

Though the movie has fictional plot, it is based on real facts. During 1971 war, India returned around 90,000 Pakistani PoWs and in return Pakistan also did the same though they had few indians PoWs. After the wat some families of indian soldiers claimed that pakistan had not returned all the soldiers and some of them who were deaclared missing were lodged in pakistani jails. Pakistan denied this (and still does). This was contrary to all kinds of proofs from smuggled letters by Indian PoW which were sent to their relatives and families in India describing their locations and conditions in various Pakistani jails. There were also news in Pakistani newspapers about capturing of Indian soldiers or air-men during the war. Lots of families of these prisoners have fought for many years to bring their sons back from jails and even after co-operation from Pakistani human rights activists and Red Cross nothing has happened for more than 35 years. Victoria Schoffield , BBC reporter in her book on Bhutto, the president of Pakistan who was jailed after the war and imprisoned in Kot Lakhpat jail, quoted Bhutto as saying that he could hardly sleep in his cell due to horrific shrieks and screams at night which were tracked to Indians PoWs who had gone lunatics. Pakistanis are known to speak lies with straight face. For example they never attacked Kargil, Pakistanis killed in Kargil were not their soldiers, and they have nothing to do with Osama Bin laden or even Taliban. For Pakistan hiding 60-70 odd Indians prisoners in Pakistan would not have been tough and they possibly had to do that to avoid any international shame for violating the Geneva Convention. Whatever the politics behind it, it is tragic for those families who do not even know if their sons/brothers are still alive or dead.