Nemonia

Some Ramblings on CAA-NRC

I think most people are just hyperventilating over CAA.I understand the fear over the CAA+NRC combination,but CAA alone is a very fine law.

I myself have conflicting views over NRC, it’s scope and usage due to many reasons including the alienation and possible persecution of the Indian muslim community.

Hence,I stand by CAA very firmly and I don’t think I would argue over it with anybody,while I simultaneous do agree that it can lead to dangerous usage.

My request to protestors would be wait out CAA.
Protest against NRC when government plans to roll it out,and a lot of us may join in.

Even a rightwinger and classical conservative Hindu like me may contemplate joining the protests.

I am not decided upon NRC,but I am very skeptical over government using it to weed out muslims,and not Bangladeshis.

I would now tackle some common arguments against CAA and sometimes but lesser so,NRC. I have taken these arguments from some common infographics circulated on Instagram and WhatsApp stories.

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• CAA violates the Indian Constitution through Article 14(Right to Equality),Article 14(Right to Equality: non-discrimination) and Article 21(Right to Life).

Clarification:

Firstly,CAA doesn’t violate Article 21 at all. It doesn’t stop anybody from living their life and doesn’t take away Right to Life. While CAA would give citizenship to non-muslims from Afghanistan/Pakistan/Bangladesh who entered before 2014,it would have no impact on muslim refugees in India. They will continue as they are. Nobody will take their lives away. They will still be residents of the country,but not citizens. It means they won’t get government subsidies,but they still have the Right to Life.

Article 14 & Article 15 are somewhat contentious with CAA,but they can still accodomate CAA. Indian Constitution allows discrimination based on “intellegible differentia”.
Do Special minority schemes like Haj subsidies or immunity from government intervention on minority institutions violate Article 14 or article 15? Does SC/ST reservations violate them? No, because Constitution allows limited discrimination on valid grounds.

Constitution dissallows discrimination between two equal groups,but not between two unequal groups like religious minorities of Pakistan and religious majority of Pakistan.

For more: Watch Harish Salve on NDTV with Srinivasan Jain,or Ashish Dhar’s Clear-cut with J Sai Deepak Upword( both available on YouTube).

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• Government of India, henceforth GoI, shouldn’t care about religious minorities of Pakistan/Bangladesh/Afghanistan as it makes India Hindu Rashtra.

Clarification:

The religious minorities of Pak/Afgh/Bangladesh aren’t only Hindus but also Parsees, Christians,Sikhs,Jains etc who will be given citizenship if they entered before 2014. It concerns mostly Pakistan and Bangladesh because there are negligible minorities left in Afghanistan after advent of Mujahids and it’s just a general amnesty to the few hundreds left.

So,why to religious minorities of Pakistan and Bangladesh? Those countries for carved out of secular India on religious lines .
In 1947,India was one big country. Suddenly,for no fault of theirs, non-muslims of Pakistan(then there was no Bangladesh) found themselves, non-muslims of 1947 suddenly ceased to be “Indians” overnight and citizens of a secular country and became “Pakistani” citizens of an Islamic country. While the muslims voted for Muslim League in West Punjab and East Bengal for an Islamic country and got it,non-muslims ceased to be Indian citizens,and it is hence the duty of the Indian state to take these non-muslims of erstwhile India.

There was political consensus that minorities of Pakistan can come to India when they want. Read books like “Creating a New Medina” by Venkat Dhulipala or “Freedom by Midnight” by Lapierre and Collins and you will realise how common this consensus was. In fact,Jinnah had in some speech suggested that muslims in India will be Pakistani citizens but would continue to live in India.

CAA just legalises this political consensus that had existed at time of partition. One doesn’t need to look hard for it when it comes to me. I have lived my life in South Kolkata among Bengali Hindu friends whose family emigrated to India from varying time periods like 1947 to some as recently as 1990s.

A lot who didn’t migrated yet are Dalits or poor who didn’t have the money to hire a cart or for a train ticket to India. One can’t just deny them this when this political consensus existed in 1947 but never legalised till now.

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• GoI’s argument for not including muslims is that they are not persecuted in Pakistan,but some minorities like Shias,Hazaras,Ahmadiyas & Baluchis are. Also, they should have included Myanmar,Sri Lanka too.

Clarification:

This is a policy argument,and not a Constitutional one and there is no end to it. There is no real answer for this. One can explain why certain minorities from certain countries were chosen,but not why other minorities from other countries werr not taken Yet I would try.
Yes,they may indeed be persecuted there but the Indian government has no historical burden to take them in like it had for non-muslim minorities as can be seen through the political consensus.

GoI has chosen religious persecution of only Afghanistan/Pakistan/Bangladesh because these are the only nations in India’s neighborhood with state religion. Sri Lanka & Myanmar are Secular states(Myanmar is a bit controversial as Military junta was Budhhist,but the democratic set-up has not declared any Religion).
While the “intelligeble differentia” is religious persecution,Shias,Ahmadiyas etc face sectarian persecution.

Shias,Ahmadiyas had supported partition before 1947,and if they feel persecuted again they should partition out again with Pakistan. Jinnah was a Shia muslim,for example. So,GoI has no Civilizational and historical burden to grant them amnesty as they actively participated in the creation of Pakistan/Bangladesh. Same argument not with other minorities.

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• Due to CAA, many Indian muslims may lose their right to have rights.Many people will be inhumanly excluded due to being Muslims,Transgender, atheists, adivasis, dalits, women, landless and/or without documents. They could be jailed, deported or placed in camps.

Clarification:

This one is funny. Tweeted by Farhan Akhtar. This contains lots of misinformation. Firstly,CAA isn’t about exclusion,but only inclusion. Nobody will lose any rights or will he deported,jailed or placed in camps. Taking away rights from illegal immigrants (not muslims,dalits etc) will be done by NRC if it ever happens and not CAA. Nobody is being excluded from Indian citizenship now.

Anyways, that dalit,adivasis,women etc part was extremely funny. Most who will benefit from CAA will be dalits and adivasis as mostly they are poor enough in Bangladesh or Pakistan to have not left the land already. The person who made it must be paying tribute to their intersectional feminism side of political bias,by spreading propaganda.

Nobody loses any rights through CAA anyways. I am expressed my reservations against NRC already ,but any such thing against CAA is propanda. No need to read CAA & NRC together. NRC is a different issue for most people except in Bengal & Assam.

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• All Non-muslims, especially Hindus, without documents or if excluded through NRC, will automatically get citizenship through CAA.

Clarification:

GoI has not made the procedure for it clear,but most probably not true. CAA gives non-muslims only from Bangladesh/Pakistan/Afghanistan and only if they entered India before 31 December 2014.

So,in order to get Indian citizenship every Hindu or any other non-muslim minority in India,if they are without documents, must thereby prove that
(a) they migrated to India from Afghanistan/Pakistan/Bangladesh,
(b)They did that before 31 December 2014.
Now,yes it is communal in the sense that Non-muslim refugees will get citizenship if they prove that but not muslim refugees. Unfortunately for them, their forefathers voted out to form the Islamic nation, unlike for the non-muslim refugees.

Except for that,it is very secular. Now if a Bihari Hindu doesn’t have the required document and if he can’t meet the aforementioned standards of migrating out of Afgh/Pak/Bang, he would be rendered without citizenship.
Now how would they prove that?

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• Why NRC at all? Wouldn’t it cost a lot? Will people will put into detention centres?

Clarification:

No. It wouldn’t cost a lot. It will most probably be done alongside Census which is due in 2021. So, it’s cost will be minimal as Census was to he done anyways.

And no, people won’t be put into detention centres. In Assam, 1.9 million people were found to be illegals but but only a thousand were put to detention centres(which by the way was commisioned by Congress).

Finally,why NRC? Scientists expect 17% of Bdesh to submerge to water by 2050. Where will those displaced people go? They will come to Bengal, Bihar & North-East India. Now, if we make a National Register of Citizens now, future citizenship tests will be easy as you will be asked to prove your allegiance by documents to the NRC 2021. This won’t be tough as India digitalises.

NRC is not the counter to present illegals. Most of them will get citizenship,while others who won’t,their children will. So,it is more about identifying future illegals more than present ones.

Summarising,
1)NRC is a conflicting procedure for me,but I stay strong by CAA.

2) CAA doesn’t give citizenship to all Hindus without documents. You have to prove you are a Refugee from Afgh/Pak/Bang before 2014(Assumption of Protestors saying wrong).

3)In Assam,only pre-1971 documents were valid. By that rule,my own Hindu father may lose citizenship if NRC comes.

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My Criticism of CAA-

1) Unnecessarily provocative bill. Government could have done all the same by covert executive power or more politically correct language in the bill.

2) May cause Bengalis in North-East problems with anti-Bengali sentiments.

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My Criticism of NRC:

1)I am a votary of limited state. I want Government out of business and want it out of all spheres of lives it shouldn’t be at. NRC isn’t congruent with my vision of a limited storng state.

2) I don’t think Indian state machinery is efficient enough for it. It will lead to unnecessary corruption and harassment of people. Due to India’s inefficient beaurocracy a lot of people may face harassment.

3) What will you do with the illegals?

Uncategorized

ISI’s Attempt to Influence General Elections in India?

Enough has been said and written about the recent Indo-Pak Crisis. But one possible dimension of the Pulwama attack stands ignored.

That is,the attack in Pulwama was clearly engineered by the ISI- both in it’s scale and timing- to influence the General elections in India. Foreign influences in elections of different countries have been acknowledged all over the world through history. Russia’s alleged involvement in USA’s polls is just one recent example. Although ISI’s attempt to influence has been pretty implicit,compared to that of other events in history,it can,at no cost, be ignored by historians and psephologists alike.

A couple of month left for the elections,and the outcome seeming pretty uncertain with the rise of the opposition in the 3 states of the Hindi(cow) belt, there was a large-scale blast in South Kashmir- a very intricately planned attack killing 40 men of a Central Armed Police Forces unit.

With the Kashmir and internal security being pretty high-value issues of the 2014 General elections, Modi’s reaction, or the lack of it, would have surely affected polls.

Then,the attack splintered- being the deadliest of it on Kashmiri soil in no less than 4 decades. This couldn’t have (and as per NIA Investigations, hasn’t) been done without heavy support of the Pakistani sponsorship.

With these attacks coming at a very decisive juncture of the 2019 General Elections,when all the parties seems very much in a fair competition,
there are contrast Pulwama attack could have sent the elections going.

There is no clarity of what the ISIS had in mind as goal of this influence of the General elections. There are two such possibilities, which one can think of.

The first and more surprising goal could have been throwing the polls into Modi’s lap. First clearing how would that helped Modi? Look how it has,now. After those air-strikes,Modi does stand out as a stronger head of state than UPA. After the fanning of public anger by the air-strikes, people have an image of Modi in their head as someone who fulfilled his promise of a stronger Indian response to terrorism,and UPA as a pussilanimous government or as a complicit part of the ISI strategy.

It may seem startling at first why ISI would want Modi at Delhi, but at closer look the fog does look somewhat thin. No, Modi has no connections with the ISI Top brass . But When a right wing conservative PM is in New Delhi, it gives the dystopian-like rule of the Pakistani Army and the obscene expenditure on it some validation among the general population of Pakistan. The hysteria they can spread among the gullibe Pakistani common man of this Saffron-clad Hindu from India helps them a lot in their backdoor administration of Pakistan.

The other direction this election could have turned,but hasn’t turned out is the ending of Modi’s hope of another term. With the turn of recent events,this seem more likely,from the way terrorists were shifted from PoK to Pakistan Proper,or how hard the Pakistan Army tried to outdo Modi in the Perception game.

With the Pakistani army expecting a response this time, due to having seen the Surgical strike response last time,and the close proximity to elections of the Pulwama attacks, Pakistan army could have easily foiled and thwarted any land-based cross-border/LoC strike massacring many men and would have shown Modi as a big-mouth who knows not more than a penny about military maneuvers and just makes big promises. Remember loss of lives have much more influence than some loose unsubstantiated corruption allegation by some failed politician. Had this happened, Modi would have lost it in the General elections.

Why ISI might have wanted this? It’s not unclear that UPA has been very soft to Pakistan in the diplomatic and military actions, with just sitting hand-upon-hand after the bloodbath of 26/11. Modi ,as a strong leader,would have tried strangling Pakistan and it’s sponsorship of terror,if he got another chance. Pakistani Senate passed a motion last year against Modi and ways of combating his effect in India. That’s how hated he is in Pakistan.

Lastly, we can’t say for sure which way did the ISI wanted it to happen,and if at all, it really wanted it to influence elections. That’s just what I see – as a reader of history,foreign affairs and psephology.

Uncategorized

Playing the Devil’s Advocate

The society is never ashamed. Never. Of the various double standards it pets in the open.

In the midst of a highly misogynist statement by Congress supremo Rahul Gandhi(which the media did well to sweep under the mattress), a flurry of pretentious statements by Hardik Pandya inviting social media’s wrath unto him has shook the internet.

Before going ahead with the defence , some things need to be made clear,that this defence is not under the intoxication of being a fan. If anything, I am certainly not a fan or an admirer.

In the nation,where in a biopic of a criminal, where he brags that he has slept with 308 women and the audience cheering and clapping and later advocating for the criminal in the public space while making the movie a blockbuster becoming the 3rd highest grosser in the history of India cinema, statements like those made by Pandya should not shock us.

Aren’t we the same nation who glorified the romance of “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge” ? The movie in which the male protagonist on his first meet with the heroine flirts with her in an isolated place, continuously despite she being uncomfortable and expressing the discomfort and scene ends with him lying with his head on his on her lap while she is protesting.

Aren’t we the same nation where “Ranjhana” was praised by old and young alike- a movie where the female protagonist accepts her lover’s advances after he had been stalking her everywhere for days,while she as disinterested throughout but later her disinterest faded away and she was “impressed” by his “consistency”?

In the nation where the teenagers are consistently fed with the idea that their culture is prudish and backward,Pandya’s statement shouldn’t be bothering us much. We have teenagers and young people all around behaving in a manner distancing themselves from their cultural upbringing and masquerading themselves as individuals who grew up in a sophisticated family and culture.

Yes-no doubt-there is a fine line between being broad-minded about sex and being a creep,but in India,the line is blurred and variable,being decided by the upper middle-class and middle-class few who vary this whenever and however they want by shaping the public opinion. You can’t,or I should say,you can but you shouldn’t be wearing lens of different colours to judge different people,or scenarios. If “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge” was romance,if “Ranjhana” was romance, what’s wrong with Pandya’s statements?

Some of what Pandya said was,for sure, misogynist and sexist(and some part of it was just blown out of proportion) but can we blame him for it? Certainly not. Being in a society where we have cheered and clapped and rewarded creepy behaviour through movies, through stories and through the advertisement of a (western) culture which is as Liberal and broad-minded as it gets,when it comes to sex.

This isn’t just moral hypocrisy,this is also a tool used by the “educated” and “well-off” few to set themselves apart from the poor. This isn’t just that. This is modern hierarchy in India at work.

You glorify a certain kind of living. Unhindered romance. Hedonism. Promiscuity. Flirting. You tell the lower social status masses, very condescendingly,that their culture,their ways of life,their upbringing is inferior, backward and of no use. You don’t want to be associated with them at any cost.

This kind of attitude from the cream of the society exists everywhere,but more so in India due to its colonial hangover. In colonial times,as an Indian,if you wanted to be a successful and a power-wielding person,you needed to stand apart from the “brown” scum of the society. To collect taxes properly, you needed to be harsh and have no sense of brethren towards your people. The British furthered cemented this idea by following disrespectful practices which treated anybody with Indian ways inferior and hence to be in good sight of their white overlords, the elites were careful to stay away in an sophisticated fashion. The British went away. They left the system,for these elite cream of society,who was brown in skin but white in manners. There was widespread condescension for the native way in the Indian elite circle and this condescension trickled down to the lower classes who looked upto these English – educated elites as more cultured and sophisticated.

Even after the British went away,the system of class-narcissim has stayed,for reasons it is present almost everywhere else in the world – insecurity of these elites that they will be dethroned and replaced by those below. These people read in the newspaper rags-to-riches stories of the uncultured folks replacing those which have been rich by family heritage. Also,making other view you as superior has other benefits in politics too as it leads to slaving the mind.As elaborated by German sociologist Mark Weber ,if you view someone as a social superior, that person will have power over you because you believe that person has a higher status than you do. Hence,to set themselves apart and superior,the cream of the society they launch a smear campaign to demean the ways of the masses.

Deviating a little,before proceeding ahead, a question must be asked: in the modern Indian context of 2018,who are the elites? So the answer is : in the Indian context,where 99.68% of the population live at less than ₹5,50,000(₹5.5 lakhs) per annum,you are an elite if,at home,you use an unsubsidized gas cylinder[the ceiling for subsidy is household with annual income ₹12,00,000(₹12 lakhs).] Even this is a liberal definition since the majority 99% happen to be earning less than half of the floor of the cream I have defined. So, knowing what kind of a reader base I have,more often than not,you are an elite – one of those I am speaking about). Although this is true to a large extent,but a person who was poor before and got rich in recent history is still not counted as an “elite”(old money)but as Nouveau Riche.

But soon,the masses catch up to the cream and start practicing in the same way as them. Then,the well-off go into a mode of condescension again labelling the behaviour with all sorts of innuendos,smearing them,not realising that they were the ones who advertised and practised this behaviour while beating their chest not very long ago.

There was a time only the well-off educated elites used English and English was the cool stuff. If you knew English,you are an intellectual force to reckon. It is still true in some areas,but in urban areas where the number of English speakers increased[who learnt English to get the a higher social status],there was an interesting trend in the higher spectrum of the social hierarchy- they started. This is a fine example of such a system in the society. We all can think of someone learning French.

This is visible in Pandya’s interview with Karan Johar and the nonsensical response it got from the elite and their wannabes. In a sense,Pandya is a wannabe himself behaving in a manner to imitate these elites. By virtue of being a Nouveau Riche, he behaves in such a manner characteristic of the old money ,to get acceptance into their social order. On being asked by Karan Johar,what is his favourite pick-up line, he responds that he likes introducing himself as “Hardick” to girls at bars. Is these indecent and creepy? Maybe,but it depends on the context. Pick-up lines are,by various definitions in the Urban dictionary(Using Urban Dictionary for a very specific reason) is is a conversation opener with the intent of engaging an unfamiliar person for sex, romance, or dating.
s a conversation or a

opener with the intent of engaging an unfamiliar person for sex, romance, or dating,or simply a line you use to get women.

These pick-up lines are generally humourous and if used at a social setting like a bar(same place where Ed Sheeran wanders to find a lover and where his lover asks him to “grab on my waist and put that body on me“),this isn’t indecent or creepy.

When the elites use pick-up lines,its progressive but when the Nouveau Riche or the poor and uncultured masses do it, it is being a creep.

Hardik Pandya talks in his interview how he watches girls move. This is creepy. For sure. But as a nation we have set the mark exactly that way. Stalking girls is romance. Be it the Indian movies which we cheered at,or,the heroes we have glorified. These ideals were romanticised. Everyone wanted to flirt,like they see in movies. They were the goals a hormonal teenager watching them would set?

An interesting example will be the modern Masterclass of Hindi cinema,”Masan”. This didn’t find a room with the masses ,but hit a chord which saw it as a metaphor of life and a very romantic tale in the ancient city of Benares. It is very good. As good as it gets. One of my favourite movies. But,it still didn’t stop me from noticng a somewhat creepy being romanticised. Deepak Kumar,the protagonist,played by the impeccable Vicky Kaushal, prints down the facebook page of the girl(Shalu,played by Shweta Tripathi). No,not even the pictures. He takes colour prints of her Facebook page. It doesn’t stop there. He follows her and her friends on a bike. A girl being trailed,or we can say stalked, seems right out of some crime based movie,but the movie shows that the boy is behind the girl’s rickshaw in a very non-threatening manner and the girl is getting flattered. Imagine what impression a boy will get ? Stalking or trailing a girl is romantic. So,as a nation,if you romanticise scenes like these from “DDLJ”,”Ranjhana”,”Masan”, how much of a right we have to say that what Pandya thinks as romantic is creepy? We are part of the problem.

Finally,yes,I reiterate some part of what Pandya said and does is creepy. Ignorance of law is no excuse. But,does he deserve the fury he has been recieving for speaking what does when the bubble around us and him as presented it as absolutely normal? And this argument is true for everything controversial he said. From his promiscuity to his loose outlook of sex.

While some part of what he said is part of the normal milenial culture and has been blown out of proportion for no reason.

And the 2-match ban is absolutely unnecessary. His sins were not that big to warrant a 2-match suspension. Not at all. Funny because the BCCI CoA who banned him is an ex-IAS and CAG of 2-G,where all the accused went scot free after years of investigation.

English, fiction, Humour, satire

Great Expectations [Fiction] [Self-deprecating Humour]

When I was 9 years old, I picturised a 17-year old boy as someone who knows what he is doing,someone who is the master of his own motherfucking show,someone who got his shit sorted. He seldom hides things from his parents and isn’t scared of them,talks to his younger sibling in a blend of authority,care and direction. He gets out of home when he wants to, watches a movie when he wants to,returns home when he wants to and not return if he doesn’t. He is neat,clean,and always geared up for an interaction with anybody-talking in a cool interactive tone.He was nothing short of a mythological Norse God to me.

In the September of 2019, I will be turning 17. Yes,S-E-V-E-N-T-E-EN. And to put it mildly I am as far flung from the expectations I had of a 17- year old boy as I possibly could have been.

Do I have even a semblance of idea what I am doing? Usually,No. Except when I am trying to look at some beautiful girl while trying to not look sleazy and creepy. I always know what I am doing then.So I would take this opportunity to tell the beautiful girls who are reading this- If you ever find me looking around you in a somewhat funny way, you have more reasons to believe that I am looking at you than you have to believe that you are beautiful.

The other times I have an idea about what I doing is after I dismount the metro every weekend when I run off to the exit in a race to be the first one among a couple of hundreds to exit the metro station from that metro. And contrary to what the dumbwit,who is reading this, probably is thinking- this isn’t imbecile. Far from it. It’s not a child’s play. Nada. You need the balls of a motherfucking Greek alpha male to win this. I proudly state that I have won it many times. Not easy. Not at all. Walking briskly,almost running,with a backpack clinging to your shoulders,trying to snugle ahead of men,women, girls (sometimes beautiful) to be the man of the fucking metro.

This race takes the tests real test of a person,testing perseverence, determination, physical fitness,mental fitness, intellectualism fertility,and lastly of course potency. I will even go as far as to say that this small test should be incorporated into the academy for the Nation’s elite Special forces,the Para Commandos. I will also make one another controversial claim – if we abandon current system of electing Parliamenterians through polling in a constituency and replace with it with this contest, it will produce more competent results.( With the quality of Parliamenterians in the country, anything new will always be an upgrade on the older system. Anything).

Am I the master of my own my show? But firstly, do I even have a fucking show? The only thing close to a shoe I have is a circus. And I am the clown in it. The elephant too. The dancer too. The President of Congress party too. If you think that my description of a circus is getting wayward, it is because I have never been to a circus. Seen a Congress Press Conference on TV though,many times. And watching it gives me hope. The master of the circus? Me? Possible. If that half-witted buffoons can be a leader of a circus, I for the heck of it sure can.

But what discourages me is the daily happenings of my life. Everyday after bathing when I come out of the room wearing my clothes,my mother invariably objects to them and hands me some other piece of fabric? Her objection? It’s friday,so you should be wearing banana shaped pants. It is mosquito season, you should be wearing mosquito repellent clothes. If I am not the master of my wardrobe,mastery over the show(or circus for that matter) ? That’s makes sense as much as Modi’s Kashmir policy.

He isn’t scared of his parents and doesn’t hide things from them. Absolutely. I am not scared of anybody and from my parents?Not a whisker. Right now in my room,I have hidden only a packet of condom,a packet of cigarettes,a lighter,a couple of paintings gifted to me by a special girl,101 tonnes of Uranium-236,a couple of ISIS modules,enough supply of marijuana from Mexico to last a couple of lifetimes,and a latina Victoria Secret model. Who’s scared of his parents? Not me. Absolutely not me. They do know everything about me. Except about some of my test scores,friends, or What I do and whom I meet during those extra classes,or except what I do on my mobile or watch on my PC.

He talks with his sibling… Firstly I don’t. Secondly even when I do it is monosyllabic sentences shamelessly commanding my brother to do some of my mundane chores(which he usually turns down and I have to get my ass off to work). Authority,care, direction what? The only emotions with which I talk with my brother is impatience and “When-will-he-shutt-up-and-leave-my-room”. My brother respects me as much the nation respects the traffic laws of the road.

I do get out of my home without asking my mother. Without justification. For long duration of times like 43 seconds. I need not elaborate more on this, on how big a rebel I am. I listen to nobody. No fucking body. I have had stayed outside home without my mother’s consent for very longer durations of time than your feeble mind can even conceive to think on-as long as 53 seconds.

Continuing the point,yes,I return when I want to but it’s also a fact that my want mostly coincides(or is made to coincide) with the want of my mother. And if I get late while returning home by even a femtosecond(one quadrillionth of a second, that is), my phone is attacked with the all the artillery of the virtual arsenal of my mother – texts,calls, SOS, BHIM App( We are Upper caste Rajputs- we don’t use the BHIM APP for duck’s sake).

My ideal seventeen-year,when I was nine, old is neat. He is clean. 7 years hence, I have forgotten a lot what K have learnt and am not ashamed to say so,but Ma’am or sir what does neat or clean mean? Haven’t been either of them for more than a millenium now.

Always geared up for a conversation. I am nearing the seventeen mark,but I don’t myself being ready for a conversation with anybody at anytime ever. It is not rare for me to take up the staircase and leave the elevator if I am to share the lift with somebody- especially Of the opposite sex. The only good experience I have with an elevator and a girl is when a girl in hurry collided with my chest while she was hurrying for school. Old experience. The girl is in University now. Has a boyfriend too. I was born a bit too late for the script of a Romcom to dominate my life starting with that collision.

Being a Norse God? The only Norse thing about me right now is the body hair. Abundant and everywhere. I may soon audition for the role of King Kong in it’s upcoming sequel. One thing about having hair on your body is that in summer sometimes the hair starts to itch and you start rubbing yourself like a chimp. And these moments are that of brilliance,speaking from an evolutionary point of view . A young Homo sapien rubbing his chest imitating his cousins,from a different species.

economics, farming, history, india, indian politics, politics, Uncategorized

Dharti Kahe Pukar ke: A Study of India’s History of Romanticiscing Agriculture

In auteur Bimal Roy’s 1953 magnum opus,”Do Bigha Zameen” set in times when the nation was ravaged by serious drought and agricultural crisis, the protagonist Shambu Mahto,played by the legendry Balraj Sahni,owns two bighas(or 2/3rd of an acre) of land in between a large plot of land owned by the local Zamindar who plans to collaborate with a city businessman to set up a mill on his plot,for which he needs the two bighas of the protagonist for that. The zamindar asks Shambu to sell his land in exchange for some money,a job in the mill and waiving away of the debt,he was in, to the zamindar due to a drought for years. Shambu rejects the offer rhetorically asking the Zamindar how can he sell his mother. The zamindar asks him to pay off the debt or face the auction of his land,and the plot thickens with Shambu taking a leaf of faith to Calcutta to earn the money to pay off the debt.

The movie was an absolute masterclass and had many parallels with Vittorio De Sica’s incredibly popular “Bicycle Theives”(1948).

Although the movie also exposed the many malpractices of the local zamindars like forging records to increase the debt and will be remembered forever for showing the plight of the poor in both villages and ities,it also showcased an interesting cultural trend in the Indian rural scene that romanticises agriculture. Shambu could have sold his land which due to drought didn’t use to produce much yield anyways and had just pushed him into debt,and cleared up his debt,got some amount of money and a permanent job at the planned mill which would bring a regular flow of income to feed the family. But he didn’t because for him, agriculture was divine and sacred and the land his mother.

Belonging to a country,where multiple Prime Ministers boast and roar of agricultural past(God knows why) and “Jai Jawan ,jai Kishan”(Coined by once-PM Lal Bahadur Shastri), Indians have romanticised the idea of farming a lot,and this has hindered India’s growth in more ways than one can think. How often you hear someone saying that they will start farming after retirement, or mourning that the farmlands of the cities had to give way for industries and residential areas.

On the eve of Independence,around 85% of the populace was in the agricultural sector workforce,and this has decreased to 30.1% in 2016. With globalisation and the failure of agriculture to feed all mouths of the family,lots of young men from rural India shifted to industries and services.

Years after the tectonic shift started taking place, there are still widespread romantic notions surrounding agriculture. The bourgeois middle class which shapes the opinion of a nation by being vocal worships the farmers and farming in their opinions and consider it as some sort of a divine occupation, at least when it comes to basing their political believes,and hence the situation of farmers in the country become a very important factor to the voters.

Ask yourself? Which Developed nation has 30% of its population pulling the plough and milking the calf? None,and what is needed is a less percentage of people taking agriculture under their command and producing just the right quantity of food grains we can use and also export. After the Green Revolution in Punjab,Haryana and some other states, every year we see tonnes and Quintals of foodgrains going waste as there is moderate demand,but an enormous supply and the prices hitting bottom of the pit.

In recent times,this has led to a rat race with various political parties in the reins of the various states to appease the farmers by waiving off loans adding to crores and crores of money.

The farmers take agricultural loans,sometimes not even for agricultural purposes like for a wedding ceremony,from government banks and after their inability to pay back,they mobilize widespread protests for waiving off of their loans,in which they eventually succeed because they command a massive votebank which no political party can afford to ignore. This wastes lots and lots of tax money which could have been used in a lot more beneficial ways.

Some farmers,in areas with massive flood-relief grants due to being prone to flood, take undue benefits of the policy by cashing on the grant even when the land is not flooded,by proving it flooded on paper by unfair means.

Manu Joseph,in a tweet recently pointed out that in winter,in India,we should change the epithet of the farmers from the “hands who feed us” to the “hands who choke us”,because their stubble-burnng tactic being one of the major causes of incredibly high levels of air pollution in the National Capital Region. Why shouldn’t the government take actions against these? Because they are farmers who are the “annadata” or the “Food-giver”.

A lot of protests plague the nation everytime a government introduces a land acquisition bill in the Assembly when it has farmers facing the axe though they are compensated in both monetary and other ways.

There is no argument that the majority of farmers are poor,but is it not the case that romantiscising agriculture,appeasing the farmers by making short term changes like a loan waiver,and dwelling in old times not trying to change the sectoral composition of population in agriculture.

We are no longer in the ’60s when the food was scarce,and we had to cut away forests and so for arable land. We are progressing,and so must are ways.

Instead of waiving off loans, can’t the government eliminate the middleman from the system which eats a lot of profit? Despite a lot of talk,none of it has been done successfully in most cases. Instead of pandering to populist and unrealistic demands of the farmers, can’t the government thrive for a change?

The society must also try to decrease romantiscising agriculture. No,the farmers shoudn’t get repetetive loan waivers. It isn’t as if the money is godsend,it has serious implications on the fiscal policy of the government. That money could have been used for a canal which could have turned the drought-hit areas of Vidarbha fertile. It could have been used for hospitals,schools and skill development training centres,so that the unemployed youth can get skills that can make him employable and bring a large-scale reform in India bringing crores of young able men to the production process.

Finally ,a post scriptum::No,this isn’t an attempt trying to antagonise farmers. Despite know it to be bad defence, but as a person from Bihar, a state heavily dependent on the agricultural sector,I would put forward that a lot of my family members are farmers and landholders. I have seen and heard about their toil from close quarters. The farmer of India is in legit bad condition,with droughts and other problems, but short-term appeasement goals and romanticiscing agriculture must go.

fiction

Once I had a Girl (Fiction)

That night the moon shone as if it was never going to shine again. In the moonlight, things gained a divine silvery tinge in their appearance. The trees,the fences,the Huts seemed to be right out of a mythological tale.

The moonlight had an aura which had thrown us into a fit of lunacy and we had set off for Gandak’ s Ghat at midnight without our parents having the slightest clue of it.

I could hear Parkash- my companion in this little adventure and my cousin brother – panting from the sprint we had made a couple of minutes ago to save ourselves from the police patrol jeep searching the town for young men to put them into jail for nor reason. It is as much as the truth as it is funny—police catching young men for no reason.

2 years ago,in 1976,after megalomania and authoritarianism took over our Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, making her declare a National emergency,things are not the same anymore. Chaos has become the norm and our ears are slowly getting. Used to the cacophony. Abuse of power is on an all-time high with the police becoming the local warlords,and the local warlords have become the rulers.

After escaping from the police patrol by taking a rushed detour, we briskly dragged ourself to the Ghat.

Hajipur is a small but ancient town on the confluence of the Gandak and the Ganga in North Bihar. Sharing much with the general history of Bihar,it enjoyed glory with Gautam Buddha immortalissing the land, with the Lichhavis practising pro-democracy,with the golden age of the Mauryas and the Guptas ,but today it lays in ruins of misrule,hunger,poverty,casteism,sexism,crime,lies and deceit.

After reaching the Ghat, we sat down on the steps leading to the river and sat down looking amazed at everything and nothing. The beauty of moonlight multiplied manifold by meeting the tributary of Ganga, and took us into a hypnotic state of mind.

Contrary to our usual demeanour together, I and Parkash were not joking around making funny jokes and planning risky escapades. At that moment, we wanted to have to ourselves as much as the never-ending serenity of the place as possible.

Near the river, the air was misty and a tinge of coolness told us to brace ourselves for winter.The moon flashed and formed a beautiful reflection on the Peaceful river water. “A Thing of Beauty is a joy forever”,I hushed in delight not quoting a cliché but recalling Keats’s magnum opus,”Endymion” containing these lines written about a beautiful young boy who was loved and visited by the moon every night as he slept,bathing him in her silvery light.

Admiring the scene,I slowly lost myself in a trance-like absent-mindedness thinking about this girl who has taken my heart under siege for sometime. When I am thinking about her ,I am thinking about her but When I am not thinking about her I am longing to think about her.

I have been seeing her regularly near the Playground talking with her girlfriends .Today, I saw her again. With the excuse of having tea at the nearby stall,I went and stood near her and tried to get visual treats from the corner of my eye. She was wearing a red choli,and was looking older than she usually looked. Her slim midriff made her look taller than she was. She wore a choker necklace,and talked flailing her hands in a very innocent yet expressive manner.

While I was busy thinking about fantastical ways to talk to her, the owner of the tea stall rudely shooed away the girls and with a face of justification said,” Beta,Never fall in the trap of these lecherous girls..nay.. Prostitutes.. They…” and he continued on his trip of condescension,but his last word made me drop off from his talk and I blurted out inadvertently,”Was she a prostitute?”. The shop-owner shook in affirmation and my heart drowned and I could feel it getting heavy.

While sipping the tea,I tried hard to come to the newfound realisation but the heart is a rebel organ-it never listens to you. The girls had shifted a few metres away from the shop and were still talking among themselves. I decided to approach them and make an acquaintance. I took a step,and two, and with every subsequent step I found it getting difficult to do walk. What will my friends say if I befriend prostitute? Won’t they laugh at me? How will I look eye-to-eye at the tea stall owner whom I meet everyday when I come here to play. What will the talk in the neighborhood be? “No,I am not going to talk to her,at least not now”,I thought and changed my route.

That night, sitting on the banks of the Gandak,I thought should I have talked with her? Let the friends laugh and the shopkeeper scorn at me. The neighbors can have any talk that floats their boat. But I found my contemplations broken by a shrill and muffled cries of feminine throats. I looked at Parkash in a questioning face and we both gave our heads a revolution to search for the source of the cry.

Our eyes found a group of young girls carrying something on their shoulders,and it took no time to guess it was a dead body. They saw us and panicked about,but Parkash approached them in a reassuring way and asked one of the girls about why they are their at such an odd hour with a dead body? “It is odd indeed. Women are forbidden to cremation grounds and no cremation happens after the sunset. Moreover,this was not the cremation ground at all. That is on the other side of the river “,I thought, as they talked in whispers.

After their hushed talker was over,Parkash signalled to me to prepare for the cremation but I asked him the obvious questions. He stayed silent but his eyes told me that the answer was not coming anytime soon and I better not reiterate my question without preparing for the cremation.

I got the wood from the nearby boat port,and placed them in a systematic packing which reminded me of how crystalline solids pack in a tetrahedral void. I could still hear the girls cry and after taking short looks at them,asked myself,”Who are these girls with a dead body? Where are the men of their house? Has the Indian culture come to such a dire strait that women have started entering cremation grounds?”

After placing the the woods for the cremation,I helped Parkash lay the dead body on the wood and then placed few other thin blocks of wood on it.

Then,I lit a torch and looked at Parth asking him who was going to light the funeral pyre. Girls are not allowed to so,and it is generally done by male relatives and of girls the size of the girl whose body was there to be lit,it was done by their husbands. Parkash,for his all height and muscular body, is a sensitive soul and I knew he was going to ask me to light the funeral pyre and he did.

I took the torch,and with a cup of Ganga jal on my head made seven rounds of the pyre and stood in front of it and gave fire to it.

One of the most interesting parts of Hinduism is its rituals and cremation too had a fair number of them – one of them being to break the skull of the burning body on the pyre by hitting it thrice with a bamboo stick. This is called the “kapal kriya”.

I stood near the burning pyre with a bamboo in my hand and took three blows at the skull of the dead body cracking it with unbearable sound coming off it . To this moment ,I had little sympathies for this dead girl,but now had developed it. A thought was echoing and gnawing my brain,”After performing the funeral rights of the girl,am I not her husband now?” In my fantasy arose the urge to see the face of the girl who was my “wife” ,which was till now covered by a white satin cloth.

In the passion of the moment,I lifted the white cloth of the corpse. Since then,I regret that moment of passion every day.

From the hairline of the pale face dripped blood- the reddest blood I had seen in my life,the lifeless eyes still had the kohl,and they looked into the void above them. She was wearing a red saree-like the ones worn by the bride on the wedding day. In the flame of the burning pyre, the face glowed and nerves were visible through the fair skinand I tried to check twice,thrice what I was seeing.

The dead body,which lay here burning like a moth burning from a lamp, was of the girl who had snatched away my heart from me and who had conquered the kingdom of my thoughts like some Mughal prince. I had performed the funeral rights of the girl whom I was in love with but had never talked. By religion, I had perforemded the rights her husband was supposed to perform. the irony of it all made my vision blurry. For a moment,I felt it was a movie and although I could see the first rays of the sun illuminating the earth, I felt darkness wrapping upon me. Kneeling down on this very land of Bihar which had englufed Mother Sita when she had called for it to do so,in another outcaste woman’s tale, I called for the land to swallow me with all my remorse,but it cared little to pay any heed to this poor boy’s mournful dilemma.

bangla, Etymology, history, india, language, niramish

“Aami Niramish Khabo”:How a culture speaks through its words

Amidst a non-Vegetarian Durga Puja feast in my locality in South Kolkata , I found a religious lady telling the organizers of the feast that she would eat vegetarian, “niramish” being the Bangla word for “vegetarian”. A couple of meters away, the linguist in me started tossing up the word in his mind,while munching on the cushy mutton meat.

A minute into the dissection of the word,I found an interesting and unique character of the Bangla word,” niramish ” ,parallel to the culture to which the word belongs. “niramish“, is a word formed by affixing the prefix “nir” to the word “amish“Which means non-vegetarian. So,the root is “amish” and ” niramish” is the affixated form. The principal noun here is “amish” or non-vegetarian and the affixation is “niramish” or vegetarian. This is a unique character of the Bangla language as most other Indian languages having affixated terms for meat-eater and non-meat eater have the word for non-meat eater as the principal noun, and the word-for meat-eater being the conjugate. For example,the word for vegetarian in Tamil is “caiva” and for non-vegetarian is “allata caiva“. the Malayalam word for vegetarian is “vejirreriyam” and for non-vegetarian is “nean-vejirreriyam” . This is also found in Indian English where “non-vegetarian” is a affixation of the principal noun “vegetarian”. Note that Non-vegetarian is a word of the Indian dialect of English and is relatively unheard in native-English countries.

After seeing this Linguistic Uniqueness of Bangla, let the Picture be zoomed out and observe the scene in the larger context. West Bengal,the homeland of Bangla, is primarily a state with culture where Non-vegetarianism isn’t ostracized a and is accepted with the 2nd largest number of Meat-eating percentage in any state of India . With the local Cultural values accepting meat-eating and no bar on eating meat even in Festivals like Navratri when most of North India practices Abstinence from meat, the Bangla counterpart for “Non-vegetarian” has earned a principal status in the Bangla Vocabulary pushing “vegetarian” counterpart to less importance.

Herein, due to large scale acceptance “amish” or non-vegetarian is the principal word and “niramish” the affixation. This is in the line of how most people in the State are non-vegetarians ,which makes the usage of “amish” or non-vegetarian very natural,it being a meat-eating culture.

This is how words serve only as transluscent windows to the culture of some place. If one goes by the logic of “non-vegetarian” and “Vegetarian“, one might end up mistaking Kerala for a Vegetarianism-based state,which it is not by any parameter . This is because words tell not the culture of present,but of the past when they were conceived. When the Malayalam was being conceived in ancient times, Malayali culture was prominently vegetarian,with Malayali festivals still ostracizing non-vegetarian food in their festive cuisine.

Languages and words are interesting ways to study culture and history,but are a slopy incline and hence must be handled with care. Chaos sets when,in the study, a lot of oversimplifications are made one over the another. The Infamous “Aryan Invasion Theory” finds its foundation in etymology and the connection of Sanskrit with familial languages like Latin of the west. Modern genetic studies and carbon dating are slowly eroding the theory away exposing fault lines in the lens of Language to study history.