Bad Parenting: Vegetarian Bullying

[This follows Bad Parenting- Insensitivity and Indecency]

Where do we get our prejudices?  How do we form our biases against certain kinds of people?  How does discrimination perpetuate through generations? 

The answer lies in bad parenting.

The parents indoctrinate their kids with habits, ideals, values and most importantly prejudices.   I argue in Indian values are actually habits I and Indian values are actually habits II that Indians equate habits with values.  What this means is that Indians give precedence to dietary habits, like not eating meat or not drinking alcohol over other values such as honesty or integrity, or not taking bribes. 

 

Your vote does not count 2: Internal Party Democracy

[This follows: Your vote does not count.  The related articles are, ‘You did not vote!’, ‘You did not vote!’: Part II]

Republic of India has had valuable experience of nearly sixty years working as a representative parliamentary democracy.  The experiences have shown the strengths of its political system, while clearly exhibiting its weaknesses.  One of the key weaknesses is that Indian political parties do not necessarily follow internal party democracy.  And unless this is legislated and enforced through an external watchdog like Election Commission it can be safely surmised that political parties of India would not implement it voluntarily.  Already a majority of Indians show disenchantment with Indian political system while the faith in the governance is eroding. 

Indian political parties have escaped scrutiny of their inner workings and trappings, thereby undermining Indian democracy.  Indian political parties’ method of selection of candidates and election of its leaders is not transparent, and in fact has all the features of autocratic machinations that are rooted in the very antithesis of a democracy.  These selection methods promote nepotism, sycophancy, promotion of mediocrity, suppression of diverse point of view, unilateralism, apotheosis of certain individuals or families, idolization and veneration of leaders beyond what is considered respectable and reasonable.

The role of political parties in India now stands ambiguous, escaping accountability while getting away with undemocratic methods in choosing the candidates and electing the leaders.  It is generally assumed that ‘primary function of political parties was to link the citizens with the government’ [Sartori].  Yet, a common man in India finds himself disconnected with the government essentially because the political party is acting as the barrier.  Instead of facilitating that link, Indian political parties are monopolizing the access to government denying the common man his participation in the governance of the country.

Your vote does not count

[This follows the previous two articles that I wrote, ‘You did not vote!’, ‘You did not vote!’: Part II]

 

Once again its election time (in Karnataka) and there is a lot of hoopla from Indian media, Election Commission and various outfits, like ‘Volunteer for Better India’, who are urging people to come out and vote in large numbers.  Times of India, 5 May 2013, writes ‘it’s time to get out and vote’, and has started a campaign called ‘Vote Maadi’.  The Election Commission has set itself a target of achieving 75% turnout (from the previous 65%).

 

One Kannada Actress writes in Times of India, 6 May 2013: 

 

Felt like a responsible citizen after casting my vote.  People should vote for better leadership and government, and stop complaining about bad governance.

[Shweta Srivastav, Kannada Actress]

 

And a film director writes: 

People who haven’t voted have no right to complain about the new government.  In fact, they have missed out on a great opportunity to bring about a change in the administration.

[Kavitha Lankesh, Film Director]

 

There is a misconception that is being propagated wildly in India that voting in huge numbers will somehow bring good governance.  And therefore the myth, that to be a responsible citizen one has to vote.  I argued in the first two articles that every citizen has a right to criticize the leadership and the government, and that includes those citizens who have not voted.  In fact, democracy cannot be just about elections that come every five years, but it should be seen as a continuous process where the citizen continues to play a role – not limiting it to voting on the election-day. 

Give me ignorance, it’s my birth right

In India, we have three major types of discrimination- that of caste, that of sex and that of religion, in the order specified.  Humans are discriminatory by nature- it’s in their predisposition to align themselves with a group to treat people of other groups with contempt, derision and fear.  Waging war, committing genocide, being xenophobic can be found in nature, even with some higher order mammals.  And human society is quite capable of justifying such behavior, sometimes glamorizing war against people of other kind, teaching them to be contemptible of other religions and caste, all in the name of fighting for your own kind.  

Either it is Nazism, or slavery in United States or caste system in India, they are all based in promotion of one’s own kind at the cost of other kind.  While it is easy to find fault with human gene for group discrimination, I am not sure if our disposition towards ill treatment of women is also genetic in nature or whether it comes wholly from religion and traditions.  Whether the roots lie in our animal ancestry or in our religion and traditions, it is generally agreed that most of these discriminations get their legitimacy from the way society influences its individuals.

Distorted Article on Facebook about Social Democracy

There is an article circulating on Facebook about an Economics Professor and Social Democracy.  I am not even sure if the story is true, but it looks like it struck a chord with many netizens because its gets shared by so many.   This is how the story goes:

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class.  That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little…

Why I believe India can improve

Today, I went out for tea with two young engineers from my company.  After tea, we took some chewing gum.  One engineer took the wrapper and was about to throw it on the ground.  I stopped him, and pointed out to the nearest garbage can.   He went to the can and dropped it, but since it was windy this morning in Bangalore, the wrapper flew and fell outside the can.  He smiled and said, ‘Well, at least I tried’. 

After that we were crossing the street.  I told him, ‘Let me tell you a story’.   I told him this story which happened many years ago when I was living in US: 

I was at a movie theater and I saw a father tell his son (must be two years old) to throw his trash into the trash can which was about 10 meters away.  The son started walking slowly towards the trash can, reached it and put his trash on the can.  He turned around and walked back towards his father.  But the minute he turned back, the trash fell out onto the ground.  The son didn’t know this.  When the son came back, the father pointed out to his trash on the ground and asked his son to go back and pick it up.  The two year old kid walked back picked up the trash and put it in the right place this time and walked back.  The father lifted his son and hugged him; and they left.

‘You did not vote!’: Part II

[This follows the first part, 'You did not vote!']

In my opinion, the recent hoopla about urging people to vote is a fringe movement that happens to be solely an urban and elite phenomenon. It concerns only the yuppie Indians who have had shown appalling apathy towards Indian politics in the recent past. Over the past few decades there has been a steady decline in the voter turnout amongst educated and elite Indians. However this apathy is more starkly identified and reflected in metros where there is larger section of educated and elite Indians. In towns of India, the elite comprise a smaller section and hence their apathy goes unaddressed.

Most of the poor and rural Indians have consistently voted in large percentages over the last many elections and that has not dramatically decreased in the recent past. There is no clear sign of apathy amongst these sections. If ever, there has been an increase in their turnout, especially the poorest and lowest sections of the society. Dalits have been voting more than upper caste Hindus. The rural Indian has been voting more than the cities. Therefore these campaigns do not make sense to the poor and rural India.

There is no steady decline of voter turnout as these campaigners want you to believe. Here is the graph which shows the voter turnout for each Lok Sabha election.

Since 1962 the turnout has vacillated between 55-65% showing no remarkable trend. According Yogendra Yadav, a senior fellow at CSDS [emphasis mine]:

Now to address the widely held misconception that Indians are indifferent to voting in particular and politics in general. If we examine turnout levels in Lok Sabha elections from a global perspective, India is among the lower middle category. The global average of turnouts among electoral democracies in the post-war period is about 65 per cent. At 57 per cent, India is way behind the established democracies in Western Europe, but substantially ahead of the U.S. and most of South America.

If we assume spurious names (of those dead, migrated or simply non-existent) make up 10 per cent of our electoral rolls, the real turnout figures would be at least five per cent higher. Now that the Election Commission has taken steps to prune the electoral rolls, there should be an improvement in the voter turnout this time, an increase that will put India close to the global average.

Therefore, if we see a higher voter turnout in this year’s Lok Sabha elections, it may not be a result of these campaigns. But that will not stop these campaigners from celebrating (I can imagine what the front page of TOI will be).

It is a myth that voting in large number is somehow going to bring a change in India. We have been addressing the wrong side of the issue where the problem doesn’t even exist. The problem with Indian politics is not that the voting turnout has been low. The problem with Indian politics is that we don’t have good candidates to choose from. Indian politician is not accountable to the people who voted him into power. Indian politician does not pay the price for being dishonest, for lying, for cheating, and for lack of dignity or integrity. Indian voters can easily vote back the most degenerate candidate into power after knowing very well that he is a criminal, a rapist, a murderer, a cheater, and liar. What is the use of a heavy turnout if all candidates are equally bad? Voting in more numbers only increases the vote pool – it doesn’t automatically convert a bad candidate into a good one. Many dictatorships record 99% voter turnout, but that doesn’t change things for the people living there.

India is not showing a decline in voter turnout. So why this hullabaloo?

According to me, voting in more numbers is a feel-good factor that is being imposed on urban yuppie Indians making them feel they are part of the grand design called India, taking some credit for what’s happening in India, and also trying in their inadequate ways, just like talking about garbage but not actually doing anything about it, to wrest control of Indian politics so that their selfish and vested interests are served.

Why a sudden realization and why this urge to vote amongst urban yuppie Indians?

Over the last few decades, the urban yuppie Indians have realized, whether they like it or not, that their lives are intertwined with the rest of India. They cannot escape into their islands of excellence and prosperity so easily. They need to come out of it for all their needs, when trying to get their kids into colleges, when trying to get SEZs for their businesses, trying to wrest sops and tax breaks for their industries, and even when trying to get a chauffer for the car or maid for the home, and so on. Indian yuppies have realized that they cannot do anything without bowing down to the imbecile, uneducated, uncouth and uncivilized politician who they have come to detest. Indian politician does not care for this software engineer, this businessman, this rich and elite Indian, because he gets his power from the masses, those very masses this yuppie Indian has been trying to distance himself from.

Indian politician is more in tune with real India than yuppie Indians. That’s why these yuppie Indians don’t understand why and how reservations-based-on-caste came to be. They don’t understand why and how sops and incentives are given to farmers. While the yuppie Indians are trying hard to carve their islands of excellence and prosperity, Indian politician is the one who mesmerizes the Indian polity, the Indian rural, the Indian small towns, and he continues to benefit from their ignorance, their petty differences, and their prejudices to stay in power. The apathy of yuppie Indians has only made the situation good for the Indian politician. He doesn’t have to come to yuppie Indians to ask them what they want - he doesn’t need to because they don’t vote. He will just concentrate on his poor and rural vote bank. Doling out free coconuts or rice, dishing out free TVs, or giving free liquor, are different mechanisms politicians use to lure an Indian voter. A yuppie Indian can only look at this awful spectacle and not do anything about it.

If you go to a small town in India, all the candidates are equally bad. Indian voters have to choose the candidate, not based on what the candidate can promise or achieve, not based on merit of candidate’s actions or achievements, not based on his stand on issues, but based on the party he represents, which party has doled out more incentives even if they are short term, which party represents their language, religion, caste, region, better. Most Indian voters are not influenced by the candidate’s capabilities or competence.

Yuppie Indians who are used to corporate India, and who delude themselves into thinking that meritocracy is possible, where a ‘deserving’ candidate can be voted into power purely based on his achievements, qualifications, and degrees, do their part by campaigning and urging other yuppie Indians to come out and vote. That does not change anything because candidates are still the same. [Only some metros field candidates like Captain Gopinath. They are an exception].

According to Yogendra Yadav:

The poor vote more than the rich, especially in urban areas. For the last four general elections, Dalits have voted more than upper caste Hindus. Ever since 1977, rural areas have recorded higher turnout than the cities.

The recent attempt to come out and vote in huge numbers is not to change things for India. Not to influence India in a way. It is an attempt by the yuppie Indians to be part of the action so that this imbecile politician concedes that they are a vote block so that he would listen to their vested interests, so that they can finish up their islands of excellence and prosperity that got started few years ago.

The current campaign is an attempt by yuppie Indians to play a role in achieving a modicum of political power which has gone out of their hands long ago. To do this, they do not stand for elections, but only raise voices to vote – which does not make sense. The real problem these campaigns are addressing is not to increase the total turnout, but to increase the turnout of other likeminded yuppie Indians to form a vote block (which is not a bad thing).

Related Topics: 'You did not vote!'

‘You did not vote!’

For the last many weeks TOI (Times of India) has been running Lead India campaign urging people to come out and vote. Also, many citizen groups in various cities have been exhorting people to vote. There is a TV ad from TATA Tea, called Jaagore.com, which urges people to vote, accusing those who do not vote to be ‘sleeping’. During a discussion that ensued on TOI few months ago, many commenters suggested that voting should be made mandatory, and that people who do not vote should even be punished. Some suggested that certain level of education should be a prerequisite condition for voting since the riffraff seem to elect extremely bad leaders.

In many after-dinner discussions held within middle class Indian families, voters show a disdain for people who do not vote. Taking a higher moral ground, they say, ‘You don’t have a right to criticize the government if you have not voted!’ According to them, a person who has not voted has no right to complain if things go wrong.

At the outset, it almost passes as a very logical stand. But then, it is not!

A constitutional democracy is not just about elections though it seems to be the common perception. Though Elections, or adult franchise as we call it, is an essential tool in a democracy by which people exercise their right to form their government, it is not a sufficient condition for making a democracy. Even dictatorships and communist countries conduct elections but they do not make democracies.

A constitutional democracy needs to have many other tools to ensure it is a smooth working system. Rule of law, Freedom to its citizens or Bill of Rights, Independent or semi-independent Judiciary where every man is treated equal and is give due course of law, Legislature where any man can aspire to become an elected leader, fair representation of groups and identities, equal access to opportunity and education, and other institutions created for checks and balances make up a democracy.

One of the important components to make a democracy successful includes the essential pillar called free media. Democracy does not work without self-criticism, free inquiry, and free exchange of information. One of the founding principles of a making a democracy, where people get to rule themselves, iconized by the phrase ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ is to ensure no single person, a single group, a single class, or a single family becomes the wolf ruling over the sheep. In a democracy, sheep get to rule themselves ensuring nobody becomes the wolf; making sure their freedoms are not stripped off, a certain privileged class does not rule over underprivileged, or a certain majority does not suppress a minority.

In such a system, checks are balances form an important function. A person who criticizes the government and its actions exposing the flaws in the system is contributing as much to democracy as any other citizen who has exercise his right for adult franchise. To say that a critic does not contribute to a democracy just because he has not voted is a hollow argument.

If the person who has not voted doesn’t have a right to criticize or demand things from the government, how about a person who has voted for the opposition party? As far as the party in power is concerned, a guy who has not voted is better off than the guy who has voted for the opposition party, isn’t it?

If there is a degree of blame given to voters, what do we make of the guy who actually voted an inept and imbecile politician into power? Should he be blamed for the ineptitude of the government? Should the non-voters blame the voters for the current state of the country?

Voters do not take blame for voting a wrong leader to power and they do not take credit for putting a right leader either. Therefore, no single voter takes credit or blame for putting a leader in power. Instead, we take a collective responsibility where the blame and credit is shared by all including those who voted him, those who voted against him, and those who abstained from voting, and those who are ineligible for voting. Democracy is a system that ensures the above without going into the details of who voted for whom.

Can the elected leader dole out government backed incentives to voters in his constituency based on which party they voted for? Can he give preferential treatment through his government to the people who voted for him and discriminate against those who did not? A democracy should be built in such a way the elected leader works for his constituency irrespective of who voted for whom.

Though it is a prerogative for an adult to vote, it is not a duty that can be legalized or penalized, and not a duty based on which a preferential system can be enforced. A person who did not vote is not in any way less contributing towards a democracy. There are many ways he could be contributing – for example, doing his duty as a good policeman is good enough.

People get into moral discussions on voting – and I usually like to refrain from getting into those discussions. Who is a better citizen, the question is posed, a person who has voted or the one who has not? Not many people understand that voting is not mandatory, it’s a right you wish to use or not use. It cannot be enforced. It is not a matter of legality. It is not equivalent to paying taxes. We cannot treat voters as better citizens exactly because we cannot blame the voters of a certain party for things gone wrong.

This discussion does not mean I discourage people from voting. This discussion does not mean I do not support elections. Voting in large numbers is a good sign of a vibrant democracy. However, there is no clear indication that there is growing apathy amongst Indian voters. India has seen more or less the same voter turnout for Lok Sabha elections since 1962, ranging between 55%-65%.

The pressing problem for most voters in India is that there are no deserving candidates. This happens more often in small towns and villages of India than in metros. When all the candidates are criminals, when each of them is a blatant liar, corrupt and dishonest candidate, who do you vote? If the only reason is fielded by the party is that he belongs to a certain caste, certain religion, or that he has sucked up the best, or that he is easily molded by others, who do you vote? Is it just apathy or is it that indeed there is no genuine choice that can be made?

Wednesday: Movie

Here is a perfect example of what’s going wrong with India and its people. I have serious objections to the kind of message this movie promotes. This is the exact kind of path I DON’T want India to take up. Unfortunately, many young people that I talked to seem to like this movie and the message.

It is the kind of robin hood justice, not very different from how Naxalites operate, imposing their own version of justice onto the people, taking up a gun and shooting a guy without thorough investigation, based on perceptions, hearsays, and whims, and not very different from the kind of justice what Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia dole out in their countries. Take the gun, shoot the guy who you think is the criminal, do away with laborious and painful judicial procedures – that is the message of the movie.

Many young people seem to like that kind of justice. ‘You know he is the terrorist, why not just shoot him?’ they ask.

What India needs is not more of such heroic and robin hood kind of punishments, but more procedural investigation, and more rule of law. What we need is more people stopping at red light and not the other way round where every Indian takes law into his hands to take a decision right then and there whether he should skip the red light or not. What we need is more procedural arrests, not more of fake ‘encounter killings’. We need more accountability into our system, not more of doing away with it.

Some young Indians have justified Naseeruddin Shah’s (the common man) role in the movie. They believe it is OK to kill four alleged terrorists without due course of legal procedures, without providing the evidences, without having to prove them guilty within the legal framework. And why is it so? Just because they all ‘know’ that these four guys are terrorists.

What is missed out is the basic premise on which the entire legal structure, in fact, the very concept of a modern nation is based on – that every citizen has a right to justice, and a person is innocent unless proven guilty.

In the movie, a policeman is blackmailed into killing an alleged terrorist, who is not convicted in any court of law as yet, on the pretext that he is saving many innocents people from a non-existent bomb. The policeman creates a ‘fake encounter’ and disposes off the last alleged terrorist, and this is celebrated and hailed by everyone around him.

I don’t subscribe to such arbitration of justice. We have courts and we have a legal system in place. If people think that the system is really slow and inefficient, they have to fight the system to make it better, not take up the gun to kill the accused before they are even paraded into the courts. What’s the difference between the terrorist and the ordinary man now? (I have the same argument against Rang De Basanti).

We need to understand and believe that even a terrorist has a right to justice, because we do not know if they are criminals unless proven guilty. They are all innocent till they are proven guilty. Every accused person should have access to a lawyer, even the worst criminal, a serial killer, a rapist or a terrorist. Recently there was a hue and cry when someone suggested they are going to provide lawyers to the alleged terrorists who got arrested. We think that providing a legal support to an alleged terrorist is tantamount to condoning terrorism.

During most part of the movie, the audience view Naseeruddin Shah as a villain, who is trying to free four alleged terrorists by blackmailing the police with a bomb threat that could kill hundreds of people. But later on, Naseeruddin Shah kills three of those alleged terrorists with a bomb and the last one by blackmailing the policeman. As a twist to the whole movie, he gleams that he is a common man who is frustrated with the recent turn of events in the country with so many terrorist bombs blowing up everywhere and that he is only out there to seek revenge.

The police officers also feel happy at the turn of the events and they believe in Naseeruddin Shah’s new story completely without verifying it. All those who are working on the case give out a sigh of relief. There is a sudden change in the attitudes and nobody wants to track him down anymore because now they feel Naseeruddin Shah is like one of them, an ordinary citizen, just taking a simple and straight revenge by exactly following the methods the terrorists follow.

The people in the movie and the audience now sympathize with him, condone his actions, accept them and even congratulate him for that. He is allowed to go scot free. Even the police officer in charge of the operations goes to congratulate Naseeruddin Shah without making any investigations. The police is all happy because he made them dispose of those alleged terrorists.

Many people who have seen the movie felt it was OK to kill those terrorists because it was in some way handing out justice – a little faster mechanism without having to go through court-kacheri. They felt that Naseeruddin Shah acted in the best faith and he did nothing wrong. The fact that he has just murdered four innocent people goes unnoticed by the people in the movie and the audience.

The problem is when we mete out justice guided by feelings, perceptions, and impressions. They can be false sometimes. They can be constructed. That’s why we have a court, a legal procedure, and a due course of law to convict people.

I created a small scenario here to extend how fallacious our arguments can be if we were to go by those carefully constructed feelings and perceptions.

I would like to extend the movie only by a minute. As soon as the police officer leaves (after congratulating Naseeruddin Shah for the great deed he did), Naseeruddin Shah picks up a satellite phone from his grocery bag, and calls Abu Basha, a master mind terrorist, who is lounging in a big bungalow, and tells him that ‘kaam ho gaya hai’. Naseeruddin Shah informs Abu Basha that now nobody will be able to trace the bombings to Abu Basha since the four people that would have connected previous bombings to Abu Basha are now all dead.

Abu Basha congratulates Naseeruddin Shah and asks him to be careful next time around and make sure no lead comes to him in the next set of bombings.

I am quite sure that such a twist to the story would once again make the audience change their stance and now they may vilify Naseeruddin Shah for what he had done.

The problem with such stories is that the perceptions can change. That’s why we have a judicial procedure to take care of such problems of perceptions, media reports, and other constructed notions.

No matter what, whether we like it or not, we need to stick to judicial procedure in this country. We need a dose of more rule of law, not less of it. This movie is a bad example coming at a bad time.

‘Rang De Basanti’ in action

What happens when people take law unto their hands? What happens when citizens believe they are better at doling out punishments than the state? What happens when responsible citizens believe they have a right to choose what laws they will abide by and what they will violate?

Why do I think the example set by ‘Rang De Basanti’ is a bad one?

Here’s an incident, in which the infuriated mob take on a thief, punishing him. What’s the next step for India? People taking up a gun and killing a minister because they believe he is corrupt?

Wrong Heroes

First it was Shilpa Shetty and now it is Haneef Mohammed and Sanjay Dutt!

Yes, India desperately needs heroes. Our propped up heroes have failed us consistently. They have gone onto disappoint us all the time. Gandhi, Nehru, et al, of independence time is long gone. We have even punched holes into their personalities to make them more of villains than heroes. So what are we left with? Wrong heroes!

Shilpa Shetty became the upholder of Hindu tradition. Clad in provocative and sexy dresses, she became the icon of Indian Woman’s virtue. She put on a sugary and syrupy smile, flashed her eyes in innocence, and played the victim of racist comments. Britain reeling itself under self-correction from its own strong prejudices, became apologetic quite eagerly and generously. That nation supported and stood by this innocent victim from a third world country against their own homegrown bigotry. They felt sheepish and embarrassed of their own actions. And our lady rode that sympathy wave, signed up few lucrative deals, and raked in massive support of gleeful Indians, by being completely nonchalant to their own prejudices which they happily dole out to foreigners from ‘inferior’ countries.

Haneef Mohammed, for no achievement of his own, other than the fact that he is a cousin of two International Indian terrorists who failed miserably in blowing up an Airport in Britain, is now in the limelight. Our beloved and dear CM even offered him a job. Of course, sadly, Haneef had to go through an ordeal in Australia, being locked up in a foreign nation for certain dubious crimes. India, Indian people, and Indian government took chagrin at this treatment and protested. I ask, what about thousands of Indians who languish in Indian jails with no recourse to any legal system? I wish all these criminals were caught by Australian police so that they all get a hero welcome in India and a job guaranteed by the CM himself.

Sanjay Dutt is another wrong hero. Yes, he acted as a sorta-Gandhian, but that does NOT absolve him of his crimes. Actually, I am happy that people are protesting. But I am sad that they are protesting for wrong motives. The people, that includes the media, the audience, the teenagers, the Indian Cinema Industry, have all protested against his conviction. Some of them want this hero to come out unscathed. I ask, what about so many others who are languishing in jails under POTA, TADA, etc? What about them? I wish these protestors protested against the laws that put innocent people in jail instead of concentrating on selfishly releasing just one of them out!

We in India are blessed with wrong heroes. In a land of no heroes, a wrong hero is good enough, I guess!

India bans ads

Before I tell you what it is, let me make my stand clear. Government should not ban any ads. It should not ban any books. It should not ban any movies. It should set up bodies that monitor these medium of communications – like censor board for movies. If the censor board has deemed it right for the Indian audience, the government has no role to play there. It cannot and should not ban it once it is approved by this board. However, if someone deems that the content (which is already approved by the board) to be distasteful, malignant or harmful to the society, they can take it to the court. And that someone includes the government as well. If the Government of India doesn’t like something, it should take that something to court and fight its battles there. And after that battle is over, only the court’s decision has to followed, not government’s diktat.

We have seen many such incidents in the recent past where the Government of India decided to ban things it didn't like.

1. A book detailing the riots that happened in New Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi where thousands of Sikhs were killed in a single massacre was banned by the Government of India.
2. Government of AP banned Da Vinci Code because it felt its viewers (Christians) would be offended by it.
3. Government of India banned FTV and AXN (TV channels) because they supposedly aired inappropriate content. [I want to know if the same government has ever watched the regional channels where the content is closer to soft pornography- relayed day after day during prime time to everyone, including kids].
4. Now, the Government of India banned two ads, one of which it termed ‘racist’. Though I do agree that this ad may have been racist, I do NOT approve of government's decision.

Distasteful Ad

What was this distasteful ad that Indian government banned? According to Times of India,

The advertisements were found to be “racist” and in poor taste.

The ads showed a man of Caribbean descent being served chillies at an Indian dhaba but being denied drinking water by not just the waiters but also other customers.

Of course it sounds racist. I am against all such ads which show certain races inferior, certain colors inferior, and naturally occurring physical attributes inferior. I think Indians should grow up, as audience, as advertisers, and as movies makers. ‘Fair and Lovely’ ad is one such campaign which undermines confidence level of millions of Indian girls who think they are dark (and therefore inferior). Now, it started to undermine the confidence level of millions of Indian guys too with their new products that targets dark men.

This ad that the government banned, I am quite sure, might be really distasteful, and I am quite sure, most Indians may have not even thought about it. That’s how most of our ads, TV shows and movies work- they inculcate these prejudices against dark people, handicapped people, other ethnicities, all in the name of jest and comedy.

There are many Telugu movies where a handicapped person meets with a misadventure bringing in hilarity, mirth and laughter from the audience. In one movie, a black woman is married to an Indian comedian, and the very appearance of that black woman on the screen is seen as comical and funny- because she represents two inferior things – one, that she is really dark, and second, that she is very fat. Both things are seen as objects of ridicule and this is what this black woman represents in this movie.

Indian audience is really quite immature, and so are the movie makers, the ad makers, and of course the journalists. The list also includes the government leaders, the teachers, the professors and businessmen.

Immaturity is no excuse for deepening the ills of our society.

Supreme Court: Wrong precedents

First it was Mohammed Afzal, where the Supreme Court gave him death penalty only to satisfy the ‘collective conscience of the society’.

Now, it is conviction of a B C Deva for raping a girl even though ‘no medical evidence’ suggested there was a rape, and even though the only witness or testimonial is that of this 16-year old girl. Here is what our esteemed Supreme Court has to say:

‘‘Though the report of the gynaecologist pertaining to medical examination of the victim does not disclose any evidence of sexual intercourse, yet even in the absence of any corroboration of medical evidence, her oral testimony, which is found to be cogent, reliable, convincing and trustworthy, has to be accepted.’’

Hmm… sounds dangerous!

So, all you need is a good actor who is so good at acting that they appear ‘cogent, reliable, convincing and trustworthy’ and that testimonial will be accepted by the Supreme Court of India to convict someone.

Such precedents, ‘capital punishment to satisfy national conscience’ and ‘conviction based on oral testimony of the victim without any forensic evidence’, cast a doom for judicial system in this country.

What is to stop a young girl to take revenge on a man? Or parents with a young daughter to take revenge on another man? All she needs to do is say that she got raped, and then be ‘cogent and convincing’. That’s all. No evidence, no other witness and no medical examination need to prove it. The man is now convicted! Wow! What a shame!

The modern judicial system is based on the idea 'it is better that 1000 guilty men go free than one innocent man be imprisoned'. And what are we doing here?

May be, its time to cut off man's penises when any woman shouts 'Rape!'

Bad Parenting: Creating Terrorists I

International terrorist from India

Suddenly we have seen a terrorist on international arena from India. We always had home-grown terrorists operating at home, but an international terrorist? Yes, it was a surprise. But is it a surprise that he happens to be Muslim? If there was a poll conducted in India a year ago, asking the respondents- ‘If there is an international terrorist involved in suicide bomb attack in London, and if that terrorist is an Indian, which religion would he be from?’ I think, more than 70% would vote for ‘Muslim’. While Hindus would overwhelmingly vote for ‘Muslim’, I think even some Muslims would have voted for ‘Muslim’. It almost goes without saying that if there is an Indian who wants to do something like that in place like Glasgow or London, it has to be a Muslim. (Its like believing that a mugger in a US city is always Black.)

Why is it like that? Is it the religion or is it something else?

Should we blame Islam?

You might have known by now that I don’t like to blame the religious books and its prophets to solve the immediate problems. All religions have its idiosyncrasies, some more than others. To blame one religion for all evils is like acquitting others. The other reason I don’t like to blame the religion itself for such terrorism is because such blaming doesn’t solve the issue of terrorism. Solving religion and its ills is a long-term problem and solving terrorism is a short-term problem.

When you blame the religion such as Islam and say that its sacred texts actually produce suicide killers, then I should see such suicide killers all through the history of Islam, which is not the case. If it is so unique to Islam, how come we had Japanese kamikazes in WWII?

Also, if indeed we were to actually prove using some long-drawn logic that it is Koran that incites people to blow themselves up for a cause, then what is the solution? It is like saying Science creates destruction through creation of atom bombs. Should we eradicate Science then? Should the people of other religion come together to eradicate Islam and its holy text? Or should we force Islam to shun its holy text because we discovered something dangerous in their texts? Would we do the same to our texts if some ‘other’ religion pointed out sinister interpretations in our texts?

All the solutions which include blaming a single religion for terrorism are untenable and unpractical and hence I do not take much fun in blaming the texts. Instead, I try to look for the practical solutions if there are any.

Now how do you explain this International terrorist coming from a well-educated middle class Indian Muslim family?

I was thinking about it since this incident happened in Glasgow where one Indian Muslim blew himself up in an attempt to blow certain section of the airport there. Everyday newspapers devote copious pages of verbiage on this single incident. But the thought in me remains - what’s happening to Indian Muslims, especially those from well-to-do families who send their kids to mainstream schools just like the rest of us? Here, I try to answer some of my own questions.

Religious Training

Many Indian Muslim parents, including those who are holding normal jobs, and have good education, tend to send their kids to some kind of religious training once the kids reach a certain age. This could be out of peer pressure since everyone around them is doing it or because they want to ascertain their identity in a country where they are a minority (usually many minorities go overboard in expressing their cultural and religious identities – like Indian Hindus in US or UK). Whatever may be the reason these parents do send their kids to a nearby school or mosque that imparts Islam into these young minds. Some well-to-do parents bring home a teacher to impart this training. Note that this is very different with Hindu kids who seem to get their learning indirectly from parents and family around them.

The teacher who is entitled with the task of teaching these young Indian Muslim kids is a maulvi or a mullah working in a nearby mosque or madrassa. Most of these mullahs or maulvis are illiterate. Most of them happen to be rejects of the society whose only claim to something glorious is their ability to rote the Koran. This is not very different from sadhus and other godmen of Hinduism who seem to prey on the naïve devotees to get their livelihood. The difference however is that not many Indian Hindu parents would give such men the responsibility to impart religious teachings to their kids. So, what we have here is a maulvi or mullah who has no formal education, that of science or mathematics, and has little experience of traveling or exposure to other cultures, spending hours teaching your precious little kid with his own version of Islam.

While these Indian Muslim parents take extreme care to choose the best schools for their kids for their mainstream education they seem to settle for almost anything when it comes their religious training. Nobody bothers to check the reputation or credentials of such religious teachers. All questions and doubts are shunned when it comes to the matters of religion and its teachings. In fact, this is not unique to Muslims alone; many Hindus, even the educated engineers and professors seem to abandon rational thinking when it comes to matters of religion – they consult an astrologer to start or begin an important event, and refuse to get their son married at an 'inauspicious' time. While such abandonment of reason is usually harmless, there are times when it is quite harmful. I shall deal with those times when it is indeed harmful.

Organized religious training

There is a big problem with any kind of ‘organized’ religious training. An organized religious training starts with suppression of critical thinking, where questioning is discouraged, and blind belief is encouraged. It is done as an organized tool where indoctrination happens without allowing a debate. A kid who goes through such training is bound to set aside all attributes of critical thinking and logical reasoning that he might have been endowed with through genetic inheritance. He becomes a puppet in the hands of interpreters of religion. These kids learn to be selectively credulous and all-believing in matters of religion, while operating with common skepticism and average reasoning in all other spheres of life. They go to normal schools, attend colleges, do well, become professors, engineers, scientists and doctors, but continue to harbor that selective abandoning of reason when it comes to matters of religion. We see such people everywhere. Scientists doing puja before launching of a rocket; top engineer looking for auspicious time to marry off his daughter; businessman waiting for the star alignment to sign up an agreement, etc.

The first step towards indoctrination

This religious teaching of Islam first starts with complete abandonment of logic and reason. It’s like teaching a kid that Santa Claus visits every home on Christmas night to give presents. How a single person can go to so many homes on a single night traveling on a sled is not something that a kid doubts. Even if he doubts, a reason that Santa is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present would clear up all those doubts. The same happens to organized religious teachings. All questions that a sane and rational man would ask are trounced down using the ‘logic’ of faith, where every question is answered using magic, miracles, omnipotence, omniscience, etc. The kids are compelled to abandon reason and just accept the word of God, as it is, verbatim, in literal translation, without raising a doubt. Raising a doubt is equivalent to being a kafir (infidel – non-believer)- that abominable creature whom God has condemned to be fried and burned in Hell forever.

In such organized religious indoctrination, the fairies become real, parting of ocean becomes real, the magic which any ordinary magician can conjure up becomes ‘real’, blotting out sun becomes real, and creation of Universe in seven days becomes real. The human brain gets wired in a way to become selectively credulous towards topics of religion.

Normally, the kids eventually grow up to become adults abandoning the belief in Santa Claus and Tooth Fairy, but the religion has this capacity to make sure these kids never become adults. They remain credulous forever. To achieve this, the puppet masters resort to all kinds of tricks – catching them young and indoctrinating them is a very famous trick- used by all fanatic movements- including Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. The very elements of man - creativity, the ingenuity, the quest for knowledge, the curiosity, which are the hallmarks of human evolution to make him an intelligent being, are all thrown out of the door in few years of such religious training. This process arrests all the mental faculties, stops all critical thinking and now these pupils are ready to believe almost anything without asking questions - when it comes to religion.

Second step

What happens next in these teachings is introduction of a fiery and radical version of Islam. Whether the Indian Muslim parents choose to know about it or not, some of these maulvis or mullahs, armed with a very fiery version of Islam, incite violence and hatred, teach these innocent kids a very radical interpretation of Islam. To the already credulous kid, this goes into his head easy since he is ready to accept any version or any interpretation, as long as it is coming from the same source- the authority who will interpret the word of God for him.

This version of Islam includes selective interpretation of Islam using selected texts of Koran, accompanied by selected stories from human histories, added with contemporary injustices to make a dangerous potion- where jihad is the fight against all kafir (infidel) – and those infidels could be anybody- including those Muslims who do NOT subscribe to your version of Islam, where martyrdom through suicide killing is the biggest achievement giving you a direct ticket to jannat (heaven) wherein you get access to 72 virgins. Hatred is the word to describe this entire teaching- Hatred of others. And those others can be anybody- it could be a Hindu or a Christian, or even other kind of Muslim. That’s why you see the same hatred and ferociousness in the attack between Sunnis and Shias – they hate each other with same zeal and fervor.

Such radical indoctrinations are easy to come if the first step is already accomplished. What is there to stop you from committing a heinous crime if the God has already mandated it? While most rational people tend to bring in personal morality to question the motives of the interpreters (who ask them to become suicide bombers), some of the believers who truly and really believe in the stories as interpreted to them, would go ahead and commit crimes believing that they are doing it in the name of this invisible but revenge-seeking God.

Note

Indian Muslim parents need to know and understand what version of Islam their kids are being taught. Not giving enough attention can sometimes lead to seeing your son in an international event in a less desirable way!

[To be continued...]