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

Who has taken the bait, Tharoor or Congress?

When Prime Minister Modi invited Shashi Tharoor for his dream project Swatch Bharath Abhiyan, many guessed it as bait. When Tharoor accepted the challenge, observers commented that he has taken the bait. The Sunanda Pushkar episode has put him in a great difficulty, and now BJP in power, he has to be extra careful. Even if he is so innocent in the incident, the ruling party with its control over CBI can do a lot of damage to Tharoor’s political career. So, it is quite normal for anybody to assume that Tharoor was trapped by Modi. However, it is clear that Modi is not just aiming Tharoor alone, but the whole Congress itself; see how Congress leadership, especially the KPCC reacted against Tharoor’s praise of Modi. Their image is declined and was criticized for being narrow minded. When the prime minister is taking an initiative to improve the country, why the ‘opposition’ is trying to find only negatives? In other words, by taking disciplinary action against Tharoor, it is the Congress Party which has taken the bait. I would say, even Tharoor scored well in the challenge with his good response.

The Political One-Man Show and Diplomatic Successes

If one tries to judge just a few months old government, it would be erroneous. In the same way, glorifying someone in such a short time also can be considered immature. These two are the observations one can find in newspapers and TV channels regarding the Modi India. However, one thing alone can be said of Modi’s approach: he is doing things in an unprecedented way, beyond the conventional logic and thinking. He has rewritten the concepts concerning foreign policy and administrative method. The way he interacted with students in Japan, the public gathering he organized at New York. We have seen presidents or heads of the states visiting schools and places of popular praises. And they used to meet important business groups, pressure groups and so on. However, it is not so common to meet the common man, a public gathering in a foreign land. It is all good and just OK. There is no denying that the common man was impressed, they got a new deity, a new role model. With his ‘swatch bharath abhiyan’, he again received loud applause.

The one and only difference of opinion I have with both Modi fans and critics is that when we analyze a policy, we should judge not based on popular impressions and media coverage, rather it should be based on the results. Of course, we have got a good response from Japan. But the question is, was that an unprecedented gesture from Japanese side. Didn’t we receive good response and business investments? When a head of a state with a good majority in the parliament visits other countries, they will get a warm welcome. Other than this usual help, can we say Modi’s visit to Japan met all its purposes? Similar is the case with his visit to US. Nothing more happened other than some false promises and some meaningless gestures. In the case with Pakistan, it remains where it started, a deadlock.

The Modi era, if we can call the period in such a way, can do great things to the country if only if we stop the blabbermouth, and concentrate more on action.

(Image courtesy: google.com)

You should know how i feel- An offering of love!

Anu Lal is an emerging Indian English short story writer who made his debut by publishing the short story collection Wall of Colours and Other Stories. With this single work of fiction itself, he has proved himself as a foremost short story writer of the sub-continent. We, readers, have a problem all over the world: we can’t understand anything without categorizing the writing or the writer. We will identify the writings as Indian English, American, Black or Hispanic, and after that we will formulate theories and movements. Thus, we have post-colonial, black aesthetics, and so on. The proponents of this would say that there is nothing as ‘universal human art/ literature’. In other words, the readers can grasp the writing only through classification and categorization. However, here is a writer who discards all such categorizations, any attempt to limit the creative craft. Thus, the stories in the collection Wall of Colours can be consider as ‘universal’.

Anu Lal now comes up with a new collection titled You should know how i feel with another promising writer Dhanya Krishna. After reading it, I pondered over one question: Is Love Universal? The answer depends on how we define ‘love.’ The unique feeling one feels towards someone special is undoubtedly universal, but the situations and circumstances that one encounters while realizing it affect many socio-cultural and psychological conditions. As I mentioned above, Anu Lal’s writings in a way escape most of the theoretical categorizations, but here, if one wants to understand the particular work along such lines, we can have them, because the socio-cultural and psychological levels of the characters and situations can be grasped more fully if we know the cultural scenario of Kerala, especially, the story titled Rukhsana’s Husband. Being a multi-cultural society with many religious groups and religions, the conflicts and confusions between those very groups and the successful resolving are a common thing in Kerala. Here, the conflicts are because of the inter-religious marriage between the lovers, Rukhsana and Peter. In the story Like an Arabian Tale, the political situations can be seen, and political violence is so common in the Malabar Coast of Kerala. In the story I Am You, we can see the cultural conflicts, in which the consent of the family is of great importance in the relationship between the hero and the heroine. The story My World is Called You is about love-after-marriage. Here also, the cultural notions about family playing a crucial role.

The above observations are not for showing that the particular piece of work can be read as a typical Indian English writing; on the contrary, what I want to convey is that, for those who can read a work of fiction only through the socio-cultural scenario, they can read it in the same way, but on the whole, this is nothing but an offering of love, pure love. Analysing the underlying feature of the book, i.e., this offering of love, would kill the beauty of it, so I am not trying that. Read, enjoy, and live the fictional world of love yourself.