Peshawar Attack- A Lesson to Learn

The attack on little kids and teachers unleashed in Peshawar last day should be a lesson to the nations all over the world. This shows that terrorists, whatever be the aims and objectives they proclaim, are just ‘terrorists’, unleashing terror. Religion, or nation, or freedom struggle are not their concerns. They are just blinded by their beliefs and can’t see the light of truth. Any nation which shows sympathy towards them should understand this basic idea. Pakistan over the years supported these jihadists in many ways to destroy countries like India. Even when it is publicly known that Pakistan is the center of conspiracy against 26/11 attacks, they didn’t do anything to help India. Now, it is their turn. Even now if they are planning to take mild steps against the terrorists, it will ultimately destroy the country.

Indians also should learn a lesson. Though we may have a lot to criticize the founding fathers of the nation and the leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, it is their foresightedness that helped us. India is secular and should remain as a secular nation. Theocratic countries like Pakistan will ultimately the centers of chaos.


Therefore, any attempt to make India a religious state, Rama Rajya (not Gandhian concept, but the Sangh Parivar idea) should be rejected.


Photo courtesy: Hindustan Times

Reinvent the ideology- the only option before Congress

Indian National Congress is the oldest political party in India. During the time of British colonial rule, the party gained control by invoking the nationalist sentiments of the people. The leaders of the party knew that in a multi-cultural society like India, secular ideals would be better to get the support of the people. Thus, by combining the ideals of nationalism and secular concepts, INC became an unquestionable power. Any other economic ideology other than that of socialism would have been inappropriate in a country where the social division of haves and have-nots is a social reality. The Congress party under the leadership of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru adopted socialist policy in order to decrease the gap between rich and the poor. In other words, the ideological positioning of the party “nationalism+ secularism+ socialism” is what helps Nehru remain as an unquestionable power centre in the country.

In short, in order to understand the real depth of the problems of Congress party in the contemporary India, an understanding of history will be useful. There are political observers who say that it is because of the dynastic rule within the party that led to the destruction of the party, whereas some others point out the corruption cases leveled against the leaders of the UPA govt. I would say these are just simplification of the issue.

Nationalist sentiments were something which helped grow the Congress party, but the party failed to instill the same sentiments among the youth in the present era. In the place of Congress, BJP and RSS invoked the same sentiments. They have used the ideas and writings of the earlier national leaders such as Bal Gangadhara Tilak. This helped them gain control.

The Janata Parivar and the Leftist parties became powerful parties as they have concentrated on secularist and socialist ideas. When Congress failed to support the minorities and Dalits, they lost their support base.

In short, the reason behind the failure is because of their lack of ideological stand point. BJP proved to be a better right wing, nationalist political party and the regional parties raise the slogan of secularism louder than the Congress. So, if Congress wants to regain their lost ground, they need to invent some catchy slogans and ideology.

Standing Protest versus Kiss of Love

Kerala is a land of many interesting things: drinking alcohol is not a crime, but coco cola is; having more than one wife is acceptable, but going out with your wife in the park or town will certainly invite questionings from ‘morality police’ and so on. I will tell you one more example which will show this contradictory nature of Kerala society.

As the after effect of the failure of the promises which the Kerala Govt. under A.K. Antony gave to the adivasis of the state during the time of Muthanga riot in 2003, the adivasis in Kerala recently proclaimed ‘standing protest’ in front of Kerala Secretariat in 2014 under Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha. Though the agitation started months ago, none of the main stream political parties, or media persons gave much attention to the issue. They have been standing in front of the Kerala Secretariat or Kerala conscience, but nobody took notice.

At the same time, another public protest has stolen the hearts and minds of the people of Kerala. A group of youngsters in the Facebook have decided to conduct a campaign against moral policing (enforcing a code of conduct through force) in the state. They have decided to conduct ‘Kiss of Love’ protest, kissing in pubic as a reaction. Maybe because of its sexist nature, it got wide coverage. It ultimately attracted public attention and reaction.
Why certain struggles manage to capture the attention of the people whereas some fail? You may say that there are no specific reasons, but simple people support causes which they have to face in their day to day life. But this would be a simplification. The reason for a lack of public interest in the adivasi strike is because Kerala is still under the hegemonic power of the upper caste people. For most of the people in Kerala, tribal people are a threat: merely eating up govt. money without much benefit to the wider community. They feel that undue support is given by the authorities to them, which in other words should have been gone to the public. Whereas the condition of adivasis in Kerala is pathetic. Child death is common (not just in Attappadi), adivasi women are facing sexual harassment from men, and many other atrocities are being faced by them. The general reaction to their problems is that of indifference. In my point of view, they should conduct strikes against this attitude of the people.

‘Kiss of Love’ became a huge success in Kerala not because of public sympathy towards the cause. In order to understand the reasons behind the masses who gathered in the protest venue, we need to understand the nature of Malayalis: they are voyeurs, always stare at women without any decency (that is why in Indian English we have a new word “Eve-teasing”). Those who gathered in the venue were interested in the prospect of watching an ‘event’, which they don’t want to miss. They took photographs, shared it in their FB pages and supported publicly (but didn’t take part in it).

The moral of the story is this (sorry, we need to ban all entries of words beginning with ‘moral’ from the dictionary): we need to conduct a serious social surgery to the society, otherwise the genuine problems of the people will be sidelined.

National Scripture- Bhagavad Gita?

The Foreign Affairs Minister Smt. Sushama Swaraj became a controversial figure by remarking last day that Bhagavad Gita should be declared as the national symbol of India. We don’t have to expect anything better from a BJP leader as Hindutva is their core ideology, however, as Sushama Swaraj is a minister with a cabinet rank, the words cannot be taken lightly. Considering the fact that India is still a secular country as per the constitution, this remark should have been avoided by the minister. You may say that India is culturally a Hindu land, so there is nothing wrong in respecting our culture. But, this argument doesn’t hold as India cannot be considered as a land with a homogenous cultural space, but a land with many religious and cultural viewpoints. Hinduism is a religion developed in India, so are Buddhism and Jainism. Even if we argue that Hinduism is the soul of the country, we must admit that there are a lot of sacred texts in Hinduism, and among them Bhagavad Gita is just one. Comparing Gita with Vedas, Upanishads, or even with other important texts like Ashtavakra Gita is not possible. The BJP think-tanks maybe thinking that declaring Gita may boost the party workers and believers of Hinduism, but in fact, the very act will be doing damage to the religion as considering one single text as an authority of religion would be limiting the real scope of Hindu philosophy.

I am of the opinion that the state should not interfere with religious life of the people; it should be a secular entity, neither endorsing or critiquing any religion. We don’t want any theocracy in India.


"Krishna's Bhagavadgita has been very influential. The first reason is that Krishna's Gita is a synthesis. He is more concerned with synthesis than with truth. The desire for synthesis is so strong, that if necessary Krishna doesn't mind sacrificing the truth a little.

Krishna's Gita is a hodgepodge containing everything; hence it appeals to everyone, because there is something in it for everyone. It is difficult to find any tradition whose voice is not found in the Gita. It is difficult to find anyone who does not take solace from the Gita. But for such people Ashtavakra's Gita will prove very difficult.
People love Krishna's Gita because it is very easy to extract one's own meaning from it. Krishna's Gita is poetic: in it two plus two can equal five, two plus two can also equal three. No such tricks are possible with Ashtavakra. With him two plus two are exactly four. Ashtavakra's statements are statements of pure mathematics. There isn't the least possibility for poetic license here. He says things as they are, without any sort of compromise.
Reading Krishna's Gita, a devotee extracts something of which he can make a belief, because Krishna spoke on bhakti, devotion. The karma yogi extracts his belief because Krishna has spoken on karma yoga, the yoga of action. The believer in knowledge finds what he wants because Krishna has spoken on knowledge as well. Somewhere Krishna calls devotion the ultimate, somewhere else he calls knowledge the ultimate, again elsewhere he calls karma yoga the ultimate.
Krishna's statements are very political. He was a politician, a perfect politician. Just to say he was a politician is not right; he was a shrewd politician, a real diplomat. In his statements he considered and included many things. This is why the Gita suits everyone, why there are thousands of commentaries on the Gita." Osho