The muslim in Hindu Rashtra

 

The muslim in  ‘Hindu Rashtra’(Part I)

My parting thoughts (in two instalments) on Hindu Rashtra . 

Earlier, I  wrote that the symphony of Hindu Rashtra is a PlayPause, playing to a crescendo when elections are around ,and  breathers in between.  As polls are mostly around,  the span of pauses, the diminuendos, are getting shorter. I also noted that if the call for Hindu Rashtra is not about vote bank politics it is equally not about making better Hindus. Or about empowering Hindus as they already hold all levers of power. What else may account for the zealot’s  infatuation with it ? 

But first, who is a ‘Hindu’ and what meaning is given to the term ‘Rashtra’ ? The broadest interpretation of ‘Hindu’ by partisans  is of one believing in any indic God or not believing in any God at all,  an atheist . ‘Rashtra’ is an association of people. So a Hindu Rashtra is peopled by believers in Gods born, conceived and worshipped in India. The God may be Brahminic, Arya Samaji , Basava, tribal, caste specific, Buddhist, Jain, or Sikh, it doesn’t matter so long as He ‘dwelled’ in ‘Bharat’ or the starry dome enveloping it. 

So, where is the elephant in the room ? It is in the clubbing of disparate, at points antithetical, indic traditions, under one generic term Hinduism.  Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Lingayats, Kabirpanthis, Tantrics and like differ widely in their traditions inasmuch as they worship differently, have different conceptions of divinity, of living existence ,and of  human salvation. Though there is a semblance of affinity manifest in a common outlook on life and certain social beliefs, cultural traditions show much diversity as well.  Shoveling them into the same cart blurs the line between religion and culture, a process further facilitated by an innate propensity of Hindus to subscribe to multiple traditions. For example, I do offer prayers at prominent  dargahs, gurdwaras, Buddhist monasteries and Jaina shrines whenever the occasion arises. 

The next step for its proponents comes easy. Reductionism. Having ‘forged’ a ‘unity’ through an assumed  ‘common way of life’ the elephant in the room is now extruded.  This cultural substrate  is a priori invested in all - an extrapolation wholly presumptuous. Then the ‘immemorial past’ in the nebulous time-space falling between history and pre-history is selectively recalled to posit, ‘rashtra existed from vedic times based on a view of life shared by all people living in Bharat evolving a unique way of life.’ Forgotten in the process is the bewildering array of ways of life then prevailing among the vast majority of inhabitants – Aryans,  tribes, aborigines, Dravidians, Harappans, the ethnically distinct North-Eastern tribes. There never was one way of social life in the length and breadth of the realm, only, invoking the metaphor of a pizza, an evolving  similitude in the top dressing provided by Brahminism, to be more precise Sanatana Dharma,  on bases of different sizes and shapes. The cultural differences even today are  stark. But it goes to the credit of Brahminism that the  extension of its footprints deep into the hinterland was accompanied by assimilation of local deities into the vedic pantheon and local traditions as ‘folk Hinduism’. 

We are a proud, ancient civilization that has held together for millenia. Only, because of unity in diversity, only because that unity came from  a unique composition in a cultural crucible into which poured very many different ways of life,   not from a unity in uniformity. It is incomprehensible why later non indic religious traditions aren’t supposed to flow into that very same potpourri . 

Because the ideological bases of Hindu Rashtra 'others' minorities it emboldens zealots to  spew exhortations  like, minorities must end “their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Rashtra ,claiming nothing ,deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment -not even citizen’s rights” . Another writes much the same prescription, “either merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture ,or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race”. 

Shyama Prasad Mukherjee made no bones of his avowed mission-to ‘nationalise’ all non Hindus : KS Sudarshan lamented ,’we need to Indianise their faith’:  Bala saheb Deoras, ‘one nation one culture’: Manmohan Vaidya says, ‘There are many religions in India but only one dharma as there is only one way of life.’ And with that all conventional wisdom about secularism goes for a toss. And emerges a new form-Political Hinduism. 

Wherefrom springs such deep- seated animus, particularly towards Muslims? More baffling now that they no longer lay claim to political, social ,religious supremacy that could disturb the equipoise of the majority.

To the partisans of Hindu Rashtra I commend these words of caution from a very ‘right’ leaning statesman, Rajaji ,

“the monotypist is a fool to believe his creed of uniformity will make for happiness”

The Hindu in 'Hindu Rashtra'

   

In a post puranic work, ‘Pandava Gita’ (The song of Pandavas), an anthology of devotional hymns drawn from Mahabharata, Bhagvata and Visnu Purana Duryodhana chants , 

 “Janami dharmam na cha me pravrttih,

 Janamy adharmam na cha me nivrttih;"

 I know what is dharma, yet I cannot get myself to follow it ! I know what is not dharma, but I am unable to keep away from it ! Verse 56 

 Much the same moral conundrum confronts propagandists of Hindu Rashtra. Knowing fully well its patent unconstitutionality, impracticality and its adharmic exegesis, yet to them its allure is irresistible. Hindu nationhood as such is conceptually incontestable, what is malefic is its fashioning into statehood- a double seduction. It lets minority ‘Otherness’ to be demonized to foster Hindu ‘Oneness’. In the process power and pelf become exclusive Hindu prerogatives . Besides, it numbs any guilt feel arising from stark iniquities in Hindu society. 

 A Hindu Rashtra should, ideally speaking, aim at integrating diverse Hindu streams and castes into a unity, and mould Hindu character in the cast of Hindu spiritual values. That is what Islamic states do- order communal life in accordance with sharia. For close to a century RSS has been actively, aggressively and expansively engaged in ‘character building’ for a Hindu Rashtra. And it has had little competition from other Hindu religious organizations, missions, maths, peeths, and ashrams. All of them now lurk in its shadows. So it is legitimate to ask, is RSS doing a good job of making good Hindus in preparation for a Hindu Rashtra ? 

 First and foremost, Caste. Eliminating existing social stratification of Hindu society into distinct endogamous castes is too distant a goal ,but abating caste iniquities is achievable. Reality check isn’t very edifying. A survey of 1589 Gujarat villages conducted by Kennedy Centre in 2009 found 99 forms of untouchability still being practiced in villages. For example , in 67% of the surveyed villages Dalit Panchayat members were served tea, if at all, in separate cups called Dalit cups. The unsavoury happenings involving cow vigilantes in UNA ,Gujarat, and its aftermath only confirms that not much water has flowed down the Sabarmati since then. 

 Sacchar Committee found that 90% of those designated as sweepers were Dalits. Even now, Centre admits, manual scavenging is prevalent. We are still far adrift from Rabidas’s dream of a Be-Ghum-Pura , Kabir’s Premnagar, Tukaram’s Pandharpur or Ambedkar’s Prabuddha Bharat. But 

Is RSS even making an attempt ? Its ideologue DD Upadhyay extolled the chaturvarna ordering of society in Purusha Sukta hymn as conducive to social solidarity and functional division of labour. He posited harmony (samrasta ) among castes, not its annihilation, as RSS’s goal.That explains why RSS is ambivalent, if not hypocritical ,in espousing reform of Hindu society. It may also partly explain the preponderance of Dalits and OBCs in the 1577 Hindus arrested for Gujarat 2002 riots. Is it a fortuity that RSS’s stormtroopers and defenders of injured faith, seem to be drawn mostly from the lower castes ? 

 We continue to respond differently based on caste considerations. The protest against brutal rape of Nirbhaya became a landmark civil movement but in the same year 1504 Dalit women were raped. No one coughed. While the Hyderabad rape of a Vet elicited deafening outcries to lynch the rapists, Hathras rape of a dalit caught bureaucracy and politicians blinking. Still, there is no gainsaying that there has been noteworthy improvement in loosening of caste disabilities. Almost all of it has come about from the ebbing influence of time aided by urbanization and modernization, little from the ‘character building’ missions in its daily sakhas and catechism in schools under the aegis of Vidya Bharati. RSS remains firmly status quoist. And its members hit the headlines more often for the wrong reasons- militant and often murderous vigilantism and needless violence. 

 So we are back to square one. What for the Hindu Rashtra, to prioritize building of temples at disputed sites ? Does it deserve primacy over bread and butter issues? God is ever on the mind when stomach is empty, don’t we Hindus fast for spiritual salvation? Perpetual hunger is another matter. It needs speedy address. Is a Hindu Rashtra inherently more competent than a secular one in tackling our monstrous economic ills ? The jury is out on that.

What is indisputable is that a Hindu Rashtra is a moral hazard. If it comes about it would lead to convergence of political and cultural streams into a single institution, the hydra headed Sangh Parivar with tentacles reaching deep into society, politics and economy. We yearn for the unity of a Hindu nationhood, at the same time must dread a single party ruled fascist ‘Hindu Pakistan’. That’s the moral hazard a Hindu Rashtra under the umbrella and ideological framework of RSS presents. Even Nepal, once a Hindu Rashtra, baulked at preserving it in its new republican constitution . 

 If the demand for a Hindu Rashtra is not motivated by a sectarian reforming zeal, or the mundane business of temple building, or economic considerations, and ignoring its obvious electoral appeal for the moment , what else impels it ? 

 More in the final concluding part. Till then ruminate on this shloka from Gita 

पृथक्त्वेन तु यज्ज्ञानं नानाभावान्पृथग्विधान्। 

वेत्ति सर्वेषु भूतेषु तज्ज्ञानं विद्धि राजसम्।।18.21।। 

That knowledge which apprehends all beings as a multiplicity with mutual distinctions and in their separateness only, without anyl apprehension of an underlying unity -know that knowledge to be born of Rajas.

Abracadabra of a Hindu Rashtra

 

As pinpricks of early morning wintry chills get increasingly felt, the smog laden air of North India will carry, additionally, a suffocating overload of chilling political rhetoric. Political temperature will take quantum leaps as leaders criss cross the five election bound states. Expectedly, North India will be in the throes of an intense political ferment, galis and mohallas will echo polemics, abstruse punditry in caste and creed dynamics, and partisan prognostications : social media will be awash with rancor, fake news and doctored videos : TV channels will reverberate with opinion polls invested with the aura of infallibility, sanctified as baptismal Truths. TV anchors will pronounce doomsday for one , glory for another. 

 The grammar and structure of poll campaigns will remain as before, too familiar for comfort - idioms ,however, will change. Abbajaan and chachajaan will replace, Ramzade and Haramzade : a census of kabristan and shamshan will get underway : Ayodhya being a done deal will give way to Mathura, Krishna not Ram will be the toast of the season. A Balakot maybe found to spice up electoral prospects. Lesser known temples will become political spaces with VIP darshans. Leaders will vie with one another to crash-land on scenes of crime and police atrocities, and homesteads of families of victims will become places of political pilgrimage to offer condolences and commiseration. 

 Previous narratives will take a 180° turn. Inflation, once a डायन, will now become फाइन, an essential ingredient of vikas’s वाइन. Agitating farmers demonized as khalistanis, terrorists, anarchists, anti nationals will regain their 'value and identity’ as annadatas. More importantly, they will provide yet one more occasion to plaster the walls and hoardings with the inscription ‘ Thank you Modiji’. The non-negotiable will magically turn eminently negotiable, like the farm laws and MSP. 

 CMs of poll bound states will cotton onto Modiji’s coattails, rather plough the electoral fields with his immense oratorical skills and capacity to spin attention grabbing catchwords and phrases to ford the Baitarani river of polls. Some will even walk in the shadow of his car to inauguration sites. Welfare schemes and project announcements, sins of opponents and virtues of rulers will get highlighted. 

 One thing is certain, this winter will be warmed by the seething cauldron of politics. The resplendent flamegold tree in full bloom overlooking my balcony will stand as a stark reminder of the fireworks in offing. 

 And the springboard for all of this feverish activity will be the two antithetical ideological strains- composite and territorial nationalism versus overt profession of secularism, covert evangelism of a Hindu Nation or Rashtra . 

 Leaving aside considerations of legality, constitutional legitimacy, social solidarity and harmony, relevancy in a globalizing world, issues beyond my mental faculties, I pose a very commonsensical question- how much more Hindu our Rashtra is to become and how morally commensurable is a Hindu Rashtra ? It’s time we confronted this issue and lifted the veil off subterranean motives that impel this demand. 

 In this information age data is gospel truth. Let’s roll out some. 

 All panoply of power are monopolized by Hindus, even the one muslim state, J&K ,has now a Hindu head. There isn’t a single elected muslim central cabinet minister and of the 543 elected LS members only 27 are Muslims, almost half of them from just the two states of UP and Bengal. Central investigative agencies are Hindu held. Except for a couple in North East all CMs are Hindus. In the central bureaucracy all levers of power are held by Hindus and in the country as a whole Muslims hold less than 4% posts in government services, that too mostly in the lowly third or fourth grades, a figure disproportionately low compared to their 15% population. In the Supreme Court the galaxy of honourable judges, CJI and 32 puisne, has but one Muslim , the 24 High Courts only 26 out of 601sitting judges. In the entire country there isn’t a single Muslim DGP heading the state police, not even in the Muslim majority state/UT of JK and Lakshadweep. More data to labour the point would make for dull, nauseous reading. Unarguably, the Rashtra couldn’t get more Hindu than it is now.

 Yet, the once muted now increasingly expressed, oftener in shrill, strident notes, the cry for Hindu Rashtra finds elevated traction with a not too inconsiderable section of Hindus and Hindu intelligentsia. Obviously, it cannot just be for pelf and power, Hindus have always had ample scope for it in a free India. Also proven is the efficacy of an appeal to Hindu Rashtra in religious polarization for electoral gains, and to shepherd Hindus into the supremacist embrace of Nagpur and impliedly into the BJP fold. 

 But there is more to it than meets the eye. 

 In the concluding part to follow I will delve into it. For now, I sign off with this delectable Persian poem, 

 What you and I hear are different

 You hear the sound of closing doors 

 But I of doors that open.

The Right Man

Within the 'Situations Vacant' page of 'Hinduania International' daily, first, I came across this ad. 

 Applications invited for one position of senior sevak with following qualifications: 1.Age : max 75 yrs 

 2.Gender: Male 

3.Colour of skin: black, brown, wheatish, fair, yellow but not white. 

4.Language: 

a.RWS --Hindi 

 b.- -S --Gujarati 

5.Domicile: Preferably Gujarat 

6.Edu: Sophist icate 

 7.Headgear : Hat ,not skullcap

 8. Body measurements: height- 52", chest- 56" 

 9. Desirable: 

 a. Ability to identify citizens deportable to Pakistan. 

 b. Professing secularism, propagating Hinduania

 c. Ablility to intone and scream, in private in public, 'Bharat Mata ki Jay', and to end all conversations and written texts with the invocation 'Jai Shri Ram'

 d. Applicant must have sublimated his individuality into love for Hinduania to the exclusion of every thing else -hunger, family, ego... included. 

 e. Familiarity with the software, Pegasus

 f. Proficiency in 'factswitching'- overlaying 'good' news over 'bad' news to quell the stench 

 JOB Description 

 a. Drawing up a schedule of activities deemed seditious.

 b. To make history mutable through 'the present controlling the past and control of the past according control of the future.' The applicants need to be aware that 'Congress did not win India's freedom from the British, rather Nehru obtained it on a 99-year lease.' Hinduania needs to scrape history's palimpest clean to re-inscribe absolute freedom into history. 

 c. Write afresh the history of Hinduania and annihilate its 'dark' ages prior to 2014; the opportunity presented by the resultant historical vacuum to be availed to gradually push back the history of Hinduania further into the past. The ultimate goal is have 'Reality Control' ,and to shove Congressania down the memory hole. 'Forgotten' and 'unwilling' heroes are then to come to the fore of freedom movement.

 d. Drawing up a unitary constitution for adoption by the legislature.

 e. Propagating Hinduspeak as the lingua franca. For the information of applicants who may not be conversant with the term Hinduspeak, it means 'to simultaneously hold two opinions which cancel each other out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them' , like, in the past high fuel prices were bad for economy, but now a bonanza. Or take another example, pitch for double engine governments everywhere and believe in federalism.

 f. Identifying 'pseudo-Hindus' ( the ones who don't wear a saffron robe) for 're-education' in the Savarkar Cell at Cellular Jail. Even torture them to re-live the pain Savarkar suffered in his '50' Yr Kalapani while writing his 'iconic' Hindutva manuscript.

 g. To unearth unverifiable 'facts' to 'unperson' past heroes and 'doubleplusperson' 'forgotten' ones from the 'dark' ages.

 h. To conceptualize a scheme whereby all fully unemployed, or in disguised unemployment, or in occasional employment to take to pakoda selling and export. Even drawing up legislation to make pakodas a compulsory snack at all official meetings, more such innovations to boost sales to be thought of.

 i. To conjure strategies to abide by the motto 'minority hate is normal peace'. 

 j. To devise a SOP for breaking up protests that may include human shields and driving through protestors. 

 Later, a fortnight later, the advertiser again put in a notice in the same paper, this time a Thanksgiving note advising that 600 cr applications had been received. 

India ,a nation gone astray

India, a nation gone astray   

A nation adrift is liable to be  caught unawares in the undertow , the drag that sucks it in , robs it of its vital life force, and impairs its sense of destiny. Are we alive to such counter-currents criss-crossing our body politic ? In  public and in private , online and offline, we appear to behave irrationally, to spew needless vitriol, to react in a herd-like, brainwashed manner to any stimuli relating to minorities , in short, to revel in simply being unpleasant. We look a society on tenterhooks. The symptoms of this sinister derangement are everywhere ,starkly visible ; it’s high time that we ‘sight’ it. 

We inherited a rich tradition of eclecticism, an inbred ethos of cultural plurality manifest in the motto,  ‘ sarva dharma sama bhava ‘, a historic legacy  of federal republicanism in the  gana sanghas of Lichchavi clan under Vajji mahajanapada of Vaishali, and spiritual leadership of the world established by Swami Vivekananda through his memorable Chicago address. All of it is being frittered away, if not debunked. The evidence is overwhelming. 

Durga Puja processions attacked, temples ransacked in Bangladesh become occasions for reprisal on hapless muslims in India. A loss to Pakistan in a cricket match becomes a sledging match between political parties on TV channels and the deep-seated Hindu-Muslim antipathies explode. A nation that swears by Gandhi mocks him ,belittles him in myriad subtle , not so subtle, ways. On the birth anniversary of this universal apostle of peace and ‘sadbhava’, with the nation immersed in piety and swooning to chants of, ‘वैष्णव जन तो तेने कहिये, जे पीड परायी जाणे रे ।…’ Jagatguru Paramahans of Ayodhya serves an ultimatum to declare a Hindu Rashtra and to strip Muslims and Christians of their citizenship to save the constitution. Yes, you read it right, to save the secular constitution. Else, he would take a jal samadhi in Saryu river. Thankfully, the last I heard, neither happened. The learned, intelligentsia maintained a stoic deafening silence , while, true to form, a section of the social media erupted in malicious glee. No censure , No rebuke, Anywhere ! 

The RSS supremo, Mohan Bhagwat, in his latest Vijayadashmi address asserted, without  reference to verifiable facts, there is an unnatural growth in Muslim and Christian population. Immediately Hindutva shadow armies or stormtroopers, whichever term you like, are out on the streets protesting, at places vandalising ,torching churches. Karnataka CM rolls out a scheme to survey all churches in the state. Swami Parmanand at an anti-conversion rally in Surguja, Chattisgarh, directs his flunkies to talk to christian converts politely, then ‘ first Roko, phir Toko, phir Thoko’ . Suddenly, UP govt unearths  a big conspiracy by muslim clerics to convert Hindus. Pramod Muthalik of Sri Ram Sena, a suspect in the murder of rationalists, proclaims , ‘we will now demolish Jama Masjid to build a temple there.’ And he makes a request to the government to honour those who kill cow smugglers. All of this presumably for BJP to have a leg up on competition in the impending state elections. In the process minorities are given short shrift, rather they serve as cannon fodder for loony Hindutva fringes. 

Mistake not these for sporadic incidents. There is a pattern to this madness, this minority phobia, with the tacit consent of a wide swathe of Hindu populace in NEW INDIA. Are we harking back to the gloom of Mahabharata epoch that abounded in avarice, pomposity and  arrogance of power : An age with the stink of bloated egos ; promiscuity ; scheming, conspiring, vengeful, fratricidal polity : An age glorifying and sanctifying rank chicanery, subterfuge, fraud, expediency, and more  as dharma : An age of indescribable death and destruction : An age where there were no victors only victims, including the Lord himself : Above all, an age in gloaming ,not sunshine, one that self destructed. 

Hosabole declaims, RSS is neither Left ,nor Right ,implying it positions Integral Humanism at the centre. Sounds more like —not white ,not black, only grey. If I have decoded Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay correctly, Integral Humanism identifies the state with Dharma Rajya — that dharma which has its philosophical bases only in Hindu scriptures —and that entitles him to declare, “ Dharma Rajya does not mean a theocratic state”. This sophistry of not Hindu Rajya, only Dharma Rajya is the grey Hosabole’s semantics of neither Left nor Right conceals. The Hindu faith is not canonical ,therefore, dharma is amenable to multiple interpretations, the different shades of grey, for the same situation. One shade of grey interprets Holi and Deepawali, for instance, as national festivals hence dharmic for citizens of all faiths  to celebrate, implying minorities must follow suit. This isn’t the place to expatiate further on the subject. I will only add that between Golwalkar’s formulation of requiring minorities to adopt the cultural symbolism of Hindus, and Deen Dayal’s vision of Dharma Rajya the difference is as ‘wide’ as between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. 

The launch of a new biography on Savarkar a fortnight ago presented an opportunity to have greater clarity on the subject. TV channels, however, got bogged down in flogging a dead horse-- whether Savarkar was a craven petitioner to the Raj for clemency, or a ‘veer’ ,  a ‘viru’, or a learned scholar and historian - a futile and sterile issue. Savarkar’s ideation stretched across a wide spectrum of socio political issues, more particularly, Hindu Nationalism, Hindudom and Hindutva, ideas that inspired RSS founders, Dr Hedgewar, Golwalkar as also revolutionaries like Dhingra and assassins like Godse. Sadly, his ideas were not even tangentially touched upon. 

Much of his ideological stances draws sustenance from a dim, distant past with non-existent contemporaneous historical records. That afforded him ample leeway to fill the gaps with a preconceived script. A presumed sense of our civilizational greatness and the imperative of inculcating Hindu nationalism and pride, he deemed sufficient  raison d^ etre to propagate an erroneous faith in an imagined Golden Vedic Age and to posit that from times immemorial India in its length and breadth had a unitary Hindu religion and culture. Through endless reiteration in vernacular literature, sakhas and schools of RSS these notions have now acquired a compelling  emotive appeal. ‘Othering’ of minorities is a natural corollary of this unnatural ideation. ‘Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava’ is now reduced to a text without the sentiment to go with it. 

Lost too in the haystacks of sour, venomous, hate-filled  politics of today is the exhilarating fragrance of patriotism of the Gadr revolutionary , Kartar Singh. His was not an exclusionary ‘Hindu’ , but an inclusive ‘Hindi’ chant on way to the gallows . 

Yahi paoge mahsher mein 

Zabaan meri,bayaan mera

Mai bandaa Hind waalon ka hoon

Hai Hindostan meraa

Mai Hindi ,theth Hindi 

Khoon Hindi, jaat Hindi

Hai yehi mazhab, Yehi farqa

Yehi hai khandaan mera 

At this juncture the nation needs not the divisive battle cry of Hindu Rashtra masquerading as Integral Humanism, Hindutva , or ‘Bhartiyata’, but ceaseless reverberations of this inspiring song of incandescent love for the ‘Hindi’ watan.

Cribbing Tax , Just Relax - Petrol price hikes

Social media is enlightenment, gratis. The other day, I came across a you-tube video showing a young, swashbuckling fellow at the steering wheel of a swanky car, upholstery gleaming with abundant elegance and luxury, truly a neighbour’s envy, owner's pride. He was animatedly speaking into an invisible mic to an invisible person ; or was it a soliloquy feeding an invisible Bluetooth gadget relaying Socratic wisdom to the world at large, I couldn’t exactly make out.  Gazing ,awestruck, through the windscreen at the captivating vista of a newly built multi-lane Delhi-Meerat Highway unfolding before him, he gloated with infectious exuberance, 

‘ look how speedily my car is gliding along ! India now has world class marvellous Highways. Smooth, decongested, no bumps , bumper time savers ! Tires won’t wear out ,  maintenance costs will be lower, and the car will last longer. If all these benefits come from higher fuel prices why should anyone mind paying for it ? And the poor don’t travel in cars ,so they aren’t affected by petrol prices. Why then all the brouhaha over rising fuel prices ? Besides, the fuel taxes I pay finances government . That’s patriotic, isn’t it ?  I find nothing to crib about.”

Scene II - A person, looking young, is being interviewed on one of the scores of non-descript ‘exclusive’ news channels that abound on social media. He opines, cooking gas price touching the 1000 ₹ mark  is no worry, ‘just cut some personal expenses and a bit of expendable( ‘phaltu’) expenses , that’s all. It’s of no consequence.’ 

Economic liberalisation and the concomitant phenomenal growth in the service sector have spawned a new generation of highly talented, aspirational, outgoing, upwardly mobile yet a wee bit restless job hoppers ,many among them DICs(double income couples) , and all of them invariably with surplus money to splurge around.  This neo-rich class is hedonistically consumerist, wanting the very best the world has to offer ; the  high living not insignificantly fuelled by easy availability of credit. They are distinct from the archetypal laid back rich found in the annals of Indian history - the nawabs, bhadraloks. They are hard working achievers , not inheritors of wealth. Unfortunately, it is a generation that is not empathetic towards the lower classes that mothered the parents of  many of them. It is too self centred and pathetically indifferent to the impact of state actions on the meek, the lesser endowed. And that is what brings forth responses like these from some of them. 

What about politicians, the men who supposedly have their antennas tuned to the masses ? We have a state minister advising those who find petrol unaffordable to ride three to a bike instead of grumbling. And a central one advises that for free vaccines one must pay for it through higher taxes on oil and gas. So, after all the vaccines did not come free. Under the sole of Bharat Mata, in Sri Lanka, citizen get free vaccines without having to pay additional taxes on petrol. But then they are the scriptural demons, and we the ordained devas.  

The FM, that embodiment of arrogance and nonchalance, has an understandably more erudite  and ,characteristically, more ludicrous response  - oil bonds issued by the UPA regime are the villain. Having to shell out ₹9990 cr annually on that score is a severely debilitating budgetary constraint. In FY21 the incremental accrual from Central excise on fuel alone was 88% ; for the calendar year 2021 thus far ₹3.35 lac crs have already flowed into Centre’s coffers. Indeed, servicing ₹9990 crs out of it is stressful ,to put it mildly. More is spent directly, indirectly on the personal publicity of PM alone. 

 Fuel price hikes have a cascading effect on prices all around, not the least on daily consumables. A financially weak person may not own a car but he uses public transport and that is not insulated from fuel  price hikes. Even buses on brand new ‘miraging’ highways hike their fares in tandem with fuel price rises. The transporter benefits and the passenger loses out. To the young man glistening highways represent savings and conveniences  to be paid for with higher fuel prices and in the bargain to sate patriotic urges. But to the poor the equivalent of 60% tax on pump prices is crippling. For instance, not a little of the leap  in cooking oil prices from ₹100 to ₹200 per litre is attributable to fuel price hike. An  indirect tax is inherently regressive. A well to do person easily absorbs it as it forms a smaller proportion of his large income. For the poor it entails a disproportionately higher outlay. 

Lest I sound like a sermonising armchair crusader let me narrate a real life, ‘witnessed’ incident. My part time maid works in three households  (all within my locality ) earning ₹5000 a month.  Before the Corona pandemic,  a shared one-way auto ride from her home to my house costed  ₹3, that amounted to a monthly transport bill of little less than 4% of her monthly wage. Now that the fare is ₹10 the bill has shot up to 12% of wage. That is how regressive an indirect tax can be. We had to partly compensate her by hiking her wage by ₹100. All the savings, except for time, that the young man waxed eloquent about go to him, while the hole in the pocket of the bus rider only gets bigger. And about time, the poor have all the time in the world, more so when quite a number of them are jobless. 

I don’t want to belittle any viewpoint, only to bare, firstly, the ‘mirchi’ in the sauce served ,with not a little insouciance, in media, on public platforms, rationalising the unabated fuel and cooking gas price hikes ( ECI can help by preponing the announcement of election dates;  elections, somehow, have a sobering impact on fuel prices). Secondly, to plead for a greater exhibition of public sensitivity towards the 90 cr economically weaker ‘Deshwasis’ whose standards of living must surely be deteriorating due to the snowballing effect of fuel price hikes on articles of their daily consumption.  

Global Hunger Index :

2020 : India ranked 94

2021 : India ranks 101

Behind Bangladesh , Pakistan & Nepal

Arrogance, Pride,Vanity- its naked exhibition

Within bounds, pride and vanity are potent motivational forces, enhancing self esteem, self-belief and confidence. Drawing the boundary line is the real complexity. 

 In domestic life, happier is the male who sheds his vanities once the lady with the vanity case steps into his den. (In rare cases some have the boldness to shed the lady instead ). She has the uncanny knack of seeing right through him and to counter his vanities with her own. Putting vanities in her vanity case is the key to a lifelong marital accord . ‘Vanity well fed is benevolent, vanity hungry is spiteful.’ 

 It is in the public domain that one finds exhibition of vanities especially galling. The other day while driving down Patna's central thoroughfare , Bailey Road, I noticed posse of cops, looking formidable and intimidating, posted all along this stretch of the road. No surprise, VVIP movement for sure! The traffic being hurried along moved smoothly, the laggards egged on by cops’ menacing glares, stentorian growls. Nor was I taken aback when I found myself at an inopportune moment at the very front when cops decided to pull everyone off the road. Quite naturally, I was rudely diverted to a side lane. My business lay just a few metres ahead, so I decided to cool my heels instead of taking a detour . I sat twiddling my thumbs, tweedledum tweedledee… occasionally staring back at what now was a deserted lane. A few pedestrians, some with bicycles, stood frozen on the footpath, looking resigned and bemused, sweat dripping from their brow under the hot, humid cloudless sky. Time ticked by slowly , wait stretching the minutes . I locked my car and joined the frozen bystanders staring intently up the empty lane. On the reverse lane the jam-packed traffic crawled. Out of nowhere the pilot car zoomed past with cops on the back seats wildly flailing their arms, pointing to curious onlookers to disappear. After an interval followed the cavalcade buzzing past at precise intervals, one, two, three.. .twenty six ,cars of all makes. PHEW. Suddenly the cops melted, horns of cars stuck on the reverse lane blared in unison. It took a while for the harried traffic police to restore order, rather, for the traffic to sort itself out. 

 Sorry, I have taken a lot of space to conflate something that routinely happens everywhere, everyday - the inconveniences VVIP movements cause. Not too long ago the dismantling of beacon lights atop VIP cars was trumpeted as a landmark event- abandonment of VIP culture. True to intent , this convoy had no beacon lights. But do VVIPs need to be nested in a convoy of 26 plus pilot cars on empty roads to convey them safely to places of their engagement ? If so, it is a damning testimony of a debased security environment. More likely, it is a continuing exhibition of appurtenances of power- VIP culture sans beacon lights. That’s why I earlier sermonized ‘shameless lies that are true’. 

Vanity was on naked display, for Bihar remains at the bottom of all parameters of vikas, and nurture of social capital, little to be proud of. 

 The political class at the centre is no exception. A brand new commodious aircraft with exquisite décor and latest sophisticated gadgetry for the exclusive use of PM, re-commissioning of the special Presidential train ( decommissioned in 2008 ) have little to do with security threats but all with vanities of power. Does the nation have the socio-economic, military might to legitimize such display of hubris ? 

 First, take military might. Our armed forces have yet to acquire the fire power that deters neighbours from border misadventures. More soldiers than at any other time since 1962 got martyred in 2020 in the longest incursions at the Indo-China border , in parts still continuing. We may console ourselves stating that borders are undefined ; but the lines behind which Chinese forces withdrew in 1962 were largely respected till the April 2020 incursion. The longest incursion till then had occurred in the Doklam sector in 2013 when the Chinese retreated to post ante positions after seventy odd days. The 2020 incursion continues even after a year in some sectors. Would then the ostentations and publicity blitzerkreig accompanying the arrival of a few Rafale planes change world's perception of India’s firepower much ? In the past ,we were good to counter Pak and still are. Beyond that there isn’t much to boast about. 

 And we are a poor nation, like it or not. India has the largest number of destitute people in the world ; the largest number of unemployed and still counting, leaving the PM with no alternatives other than to exhort them to take up pakoda selling ; the gap between the rich and the poor keeps ever widening. Indisputably, we rank lowly on the global economic ladder with GDP per capita (in constant 2010 US dollars) at just $1961 in 2020 , lower than even Sri Lanka, and many times lower than the lowest among BRICS- SA $6748. The average for lower middle income and middle income countries is $2283 and $5075 respectively. As per IMF, in nominal GDP per capita (current dollars) India ranks 144 among 194 economies in 2020-21. Even among the Asian countries it ranks a lowly 33rd. Between 2014 and 2020, GDP per capita in 2010 dollars grew at a measly , at a rate as Hindu as in the 60’s. 

While we have sufficient reasons to showcase our soft capital, the world is surely not bamboozled by our economic muscle. Our leaders globetrotting in exclusive luxury or inviting world leaders to the architectural marvel of a grandiose new parliament set in elegantly planned surroundings can only come across as affectation, unworthy exhibition of vanity. 

The larger economies pamper us because we have the head counts they need for their goods, creating a maya of economic muscle that lacks tendons. Didn't I say Lucifer was on the prowl trading souls for vanities ? 

 Yogis, Babas, Sadhavis…on the path of other worldliness and a destiny in pursuit of knowledge requiring abjuration of vanity and ego as a prerequisite now seek and relish political power. Instead of losing ‘aham’ ,cultivate it. Many holy men acquire Y,Z security. Have they lost faith in Rama as their protector? I put my coin on pandering to vanities rather than any threat perception. Public representatives have some security detailed to them (in Bengal all BJP MLAs enjoy central security), its size a status symbol. In a country with 80% of its population in the 'poor' income bracket such display of vanity is truly baffling. 

 The politicians assure us of the sanctity of right to protest but when it comes to the crux political leaders would rather have their meeting grounds and travel routes sterilized from black flag waving or other form of protesters. Did one hear of the bizarre incidence of entry to the meeting ground of PM being barred to anyone wearing anything black even black shoes or black dupatta ? The supreme representative of 125 cr Indians does not speak to protesting farmers to find common grounds for resolution, as 'my way or the highway' is his abiding mantra. Arrogance of power and personal vanities are patently manifest in our current avatar of political life. Maya casting its spell within the world of maya ! 

 We must be proud as Indians for a different reason. A rich heritage of cultural tapestry woven from diverse faiths, ethnicity and social mores , burnished by a philosophical bent of mind , and an adaptive, accommodative national character is our distinctive impress on the global map- a good cause for national pride. Every Indian’s chest should swell at that not just that of PM. Though poor, the nation need not carry poverty on its sleeves, but it requires of us to comport with due humility, not arrogance, pride and vanity. 

 We have miles to go before the dark woods of poverty are cleared, enabling us to stride across the globe with legitimate pride. 

 It has been a long piece of applesauce. I will end with a quote from a philosopher I much admire - Arthur Schopenhauer “Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”

Enriching Rich to Enrich Poor :

 Narada muni, the wily, peripatetic wayfarer of the fourteen lokas, once on a visit to Vaikuntha found the Lord in deep confabulations with Kuber, Daridranarayana and Swami Vivekananda. 

 The Lord asked pleasantly, “ nice to see you. But what brings you here ?’

 ‘Narayana, swayambhu, I only came to pay my respects to you’ 

‘Narada, you have an uncanny sense of being at the right place at the right time. I need your counsel to settle a claim on that hen there. It lays golden eggs. Kuber claims it as the custodian of treasure. Swami ji wants it to be given to Daridranarayana.’ 

 Swami ji pleaded, ‘Daridranarayana needs it more for it assures him of a regular income. He has little to survive on’. 

‘That is precisely why the hen can’t be entrusted to him. He will eat it up and all of us will eventually end up poorer’ ,Kuber countered. 

 ‘There you have it, Narada . What should I do ?’ 

 Narada thought for a while then said, ‘Narayana, the answer lies on the Prithvi loka, particularly, in Jambudvipa.’

 ‘ Then do go and find out’. 

 Narada transported himself to the historic triumphal arch-monument commemorating the landing of King George V and Queen Mary at Mumbai in 1911. As he stood before the central dome resting on four turrets, he noticed a freshly scrawled line above the original inscription- ‘Gateway to New India’. 

 Oomph…he intoned. 

 He toured the length and breadth of Jambudvipa and other Deshas. Enlightened, he thus reported to the Lord.

 The Kubers of Jambudvipa are accumulating wealth at astronomical rates compared to the poor. For instance, 73% of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1%. The greatest irony is that Jambudvipa has the largest number of billionaires and largest number of Daridranarayanas on Prithvi loka. With 17.5 % of the prithvi’s population it has a disproportionately higher, 20.17% of its people, Daridras; that is, 139 million manavas not able to scrounge two meals a day. 

 Like in the case of wealth, the summit of the corporate hill is getting steeper and the base broader. Aggregate corporate profits for Q1FY22 of the 7500 listed companies shows the top 100 accounting for 90%, many of those owned by a few families. This trend has only accentuated over the years. 

 Further, every catastrophe only makes the rich richer and Daridras poorer. During the 2020 pandemic, billionaires increased their wealth by 35% while an estimated 122 million lost their jobs. On the entire Prithvi loka, of the number of people who slid into poverty due to the pandemic, 60%, that is 75million, were from Jambudvipa. 

 The king of Jambudvipa, along with many other kings on prithvi loka believe that enabling the rich will elevate productivity and investment and bloat the economic pie so that all get bigger slices of it. The operative mantra is- Rising tide lifts all boats. So handing over airlines, railways , banks , airports ,defence production etc, etc, etc to the rich is the most efficient economic management. The government, it is presumed, has no business to be in business. 

While the economic pie has indeed become bigger, little has trickled down to the masses at bottom of the economic pool. Rather, pro rich policies have resulted in an upward, not downward, distribution of incomes. The living standards of the lower class, a strong, 90 crs, is stagnating. 

 This is evident if we juxtapose the two contrasting economic periods - the 9 years from 2005-06 to 2013-14, when welfarism was on the ascent with MGNREGA , Right to Education, Right to food, gas and oil subsidies, more rights and entitlements ,which many derisively dubbed as povertarian, with the seven years of push towards free market capitalism from 2014-15 to 2020-21. Per capita GDP, at constant 2011-12 prices, grew at an average 5.02 % p.a. in the former against 3.62% p.a. in the latter. Enriching the rich has enriched the Daridras less, rich more.

 In the Nordic region, I found Swedish bus drivers are paid 50 times more than Jambudvipa drivers, whereas the latter are far more skilful, having to plough through a bewildering array of humans, animals, mechanical and manual contraptions of all varieties in various paces of motion. Yet the per capita income of Sweden is twenty times that of Jambudvipa. Obviously, the rich in Jambudvipa are far less productive than the rich in rich Sweden to account for this income disparity. Therefore, the rich are not the solution of Jambudvipa’s economic ills, the rich are the problem. 

 Narada concluded- Manavas on Jambudvipa have become a ‘coconut society’ ; an overwhelming mass of soft, fibrous, protective shield nurturing a pulpy, white core growing on the inside of a small round carapace, and fed and sweetened by a watery fluid within, like an embryo nourished in the womb. As the coconut ripens, its outer mass creases, shrivels, desiccates, sucked dry to fatten the white pulp. While the pulp thus accrues value in maturity, the outer mass is reduced to husk, good only for low value coco peat, twine or footmats. Likewise, all value in manava samaj is embedded in a little core from which little leaches out to benefit the soft husk. 

 That is why daridranarayanas need your benevolence !

Applesauce of a Saucy Bohemian : Arrogance, Pride, Vanity- the futility of it. 

 I am a bohemian. So, all of the true things I will write about are shameless lies. Contrarily, the orthodox, the cerebral, the ‘right-minded’ have all along been ‘writing shameless lies that are true’. I can see the brick-bats coming. Balderdash, ‘bakwas’, gibberish, senseless rantings of a trifling mind…But do bear with me, what have you to lose ? After all, the bleat of a maverick is several decibels lower, softer than that of a traditionalist, wee bit of a cacophony in a pervasive roar all around. 

Let me assure you, it's not entirely casuistry, sophistry, tautology, whatever ; what one intuits as true in common parlance is an esoteric subjective feeling, bereft of universality. For, all appearances are, in essence, maya - a veil that hides the truth, says Adi Shankaracharya. 

 ‘It all seems real but as it is constantly changing, it is not real ‘ -Gita. Impermanence is the only abiding reality. 

So, Truth, by implication, is hopelessly deceptive. Where ignoramus see white light, the ‘enlightened’ see seven colors of rainbow. The lump of iron looks solid but scientists think of it as a stitching of ‘hollows’. The intellectual ponders an expanding universe, wrestles with the question, ‘will it keep expanding forever or tire out ,and begin collapsing on itself ?’ Dark matter may hold the key but as of now they remain in dark about matter dark. The popular mind is more earthy. It sees an immovable earth, a rising and setting sun determining its existential rhythm. We can’t hear all sounds, can ‘see’ only a small range of the broad spectrum of light. Conclusively, our sensory perceptions are woefully inadequate to grasp the truth. 

 On a spiritual plane, we are mere puppets performing to a script, unknown and unknowable to performers, a cosmic play, ‘lila’, enacted by the Great Puppeteer, God. Plato is spot on with his ‘Allegory of the Cave’. What appears real are mere shadows of reality, which itself remains unseen, unfathomable. Reality is the reflected image in a mirror, never the 'object' reflected. If such be the case who can claim a copyright on things true ? And how justifiable is any display of arrogance, pride and vanity, as individuals, as a collective ? 

 Though the words Arrogance , Pride , Vanity are used interchangeably, they are subtly different. Pride accrues from achieving something or being part of an illustrious collective. Vanity is ‘what we would have others think of us’. Pride ,thus, has a substantive base on which an opinion of self is built, but vanity is empty, a pretense, an affectation . In fact, the old meaning of vanity was futility. ‘Nothing deceives its possessor like vanity.’ Vanity seeks the attention of others on slender, unjustifiable grounds for pride. 

 Arthur Schopenhauer makes this distinction stark, elegantly explicit. ‘Pride is an established conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some particular respect; while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at appreciation indirectly from without.’ Vanity is reveling in a self created world of megalomania. 

 Arrogance is what an overflowing pride and vanity results in, a detestable behavioral manifestation. It scorns, mocks ,ridicules the worth of others ,is blind to other points of view, is deaf to dissenting voices, is presumptuous of its own infallibility.

It behoves people’s representatives in particular, to be conscious of these distinctions in their public affairs and in their deportment. They epitomize two collectives concomitantly- the political class and the nation. They should be all the more beware the magical phantasmagoria, maya, that incubates a false sense of permanence, and fosters human frailties. It is a Lucifer out to trade souls for vanities. 

 That brings me back to my starting block. What then is true ? The only worldly truth is, “ you came here empty handed and you will leave empty handed . What is yours today belonged to someone else yesterday. And will belong to someone else tomorrow “, Lord Krishna. Rest are all ‘lies’. 

 I see Lucifer doing the rounds in our socio-political life.

 

Book Review : The Structure of Scientific Revolution by Kuhn

 ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ 

by Thomas S Kuhn

“ History,if viewed, as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology ,could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed” 

This opening sentence of the book says it all. A seminal treatise on historiography of science,   ‘The Structure’  ranks for its sheer intellectual brilliance, perceptiveness and transformative influence with Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’ , Karl Marx’s ‘Das Capital’ , Sigmund Freud’s  ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ , to name a few. 

Published in 1962 at the height of the Cold War, the horrendous  ‘mushroom’ cloud images of atomic explosion over Hiroshima and Nagasaki still fresh in public memory, and the world perilously close to a nuclear war following the Cuban missile crisis,  it ,in the following 25 years, became one of the most cited books, selling 6,50,000 copies. By the time  its  50th anniversary  edition went to print in 2012, this number had  swelled to over 1.5 million. For a non-textbook scientific disquisition that figure is phenomenal. Obviously, its readership crossed the boundaries of academia by many a mile to catch the popular fancy. 

Some words and phrases from popular books end up as buzzwords within their subject discipline- Adam Smith’s ‘ the invisible hand’ , Marx’s ‘dialectical materialism’ ,Schumpeter’s ‘creative destruction- a few manage to enter popular parlance, and still fewer become so current that the originator’s name is lost to public memory. Who associates Dickens with the phrase,’devil-may-care’, or Chris Lewis with ,’chortle’, or Capek with ‘robot’? ‘Paradigm shift’ is one among them. I often hear the plaintive that 2014 marks a paradigm shift in Indian polity, now I know where it came from. 

Kuhn , baptised in theoretical physics, got  associated with a history of science project as a graduate student. Somewhat disillusioned with its methodological approaches, he was drawn to re-examining the philosophical moorings of science upon which it is practiced. From this churn of theory  , history and philosophy floated   ‘The Structure’  - an introspective, Eureka moment for the practitioners of science. 

By Kuhn’s exegesis, at any given time there is a ‘constellation’  populated by scientific beliefs, values, theories to which scientists in a subject discipline stand firmly committed- the prevailing scientific  ‘paradigm’, a shared view. Ongoing scientific activity-‘Normal Science’-engages in its articulation, widening the scope of its applicability, tackling puzzling questions arising from its application, and clearing up grey areas in the theory and phenomenological observations -in short, ‘puzzle-solving’ acts, paradigm dictated.  At some point, some outcomes fail to match the paradigm derived expectations-‘anomalies’. Competing conceptual formulations that supposedly cohere with these anomalies are then vigorously espoused. Uncertainty, turmoil, and a state of flux ensues-‘crisis’. Finally, a brainwave, a sudden flash of brilliance, and lo ! behold , there is a conception and its exposition that ties up all loose ends and makes the anomalous the expected. Slowly it wins substantial converts and assumes the mantle of reigning paradigm, others pass into oblivion . 

 A scientific Revolution is ,therefore, a ‘paradigm shift’. It takes place only after the epitaph on its predecessor has been inscribed. It has a sequential structure- normal science, puzzle- solving, anomaly, crisis, new paradigm. It is as if the world has transformed. Words change their meanings. Where Aristotle saw a swinging stone ,Galileo a pendulum; Ptolemy believed a geocentric universe, Copernicus a heliocentric one. To Newton a simultaneous event remains so whatever the observer’s state of motion but to Einstein simultaneity was relative to the state of motion. With many more familiar examples Kuhn amply demonstrates that transformative advancement in science  is not only episodic and Darwinian, but also a substantive  change in world view. The book ,thus, broke  its umbilical cord with tradition which  viewed scientific progress as essentially linear. Noviciates in science get a misleading impression from textbooks they read, namely, that the fortress of science has been built brick by brick, each of its heroes contributing his bit. Where Kuhn saw graveyards, traditionalists saw brick kilns. No wonder, the book had many detractors and carping critics. So many that he was forced to attach a long post script clarifying points raised and answering his critics.

 Kuhn’s iconoclasm extends in another direction. With admirable panache historiographers of science had curated, chiselled an image of science  since antiquity that showed it progressing towards some hitherto undiscovered ‘universal truth and order in nature’.  Kuhn, somewhat, sullied that image by asserting that progress in science is only, ‘a progression towards less adequate conception and validation with the world’.

Will there be another ‘Kuhnian’ paradigm shift in fundamental physics? Today, Biotechnology ,Biochemistry, Informatics are the new darlings: while fundamental physics is saddled with two intrinsically ‘incommensurate’  paradigms;  gravity, a weltanschauun (world view) of nature’s mystique in sight ,aided or unaided ; and quantum mechanics, sub-atomic entities inferable only from traces left behind in bubble chambers or the like. But the community is hopeful. Soon the stage will be set up for an Einstein or Planck to create a paradigm shift in which gravity and quanta will assume different meanings in a radically different conceptual framework ; for example, space to Newton was three dimensional and isotropic , in Einstein’s world space is multi-dimensional and curved near Black Holes. What worldview of nature will this new paradigm bring in its tow ? Let’s keep our fingers crossed. 

I was wonderstruck at Kuhn’s stupendously perceptive understanding of the subject; and his facility in encapsulating a broad sweep of turning points in science’s conceptual formulations since antiquity, splicing it with the philosophical bases in plain words, shorn of abstract scientific rigmarole, all of it just within 170 pages. Rarely have I read a book page by page, with deliberative pauses for fathoming, masticating, and ingesting the drift and logic of its disquisitions .  At the end of it - Bodhi Enlightenment  !  A paradigm shift in my upper chamber. 

For  the serious, inquisitive reader, a  must-read in lifetime. In the introductory reappraisal  (standing in for a foreword),  Ian Hacking, after a good deal of hemming and hawing  is forced to concede that the book,  “really did change the image of science by which we are now possessed “.   FOREVER, he reasserts  . 

Rightly so ! 

Book Review : 'The Guest List' by Lucy Foley

 

 My first foray into Foley ! 

 An engaging murder mystery. 

 A two-day celebrity wedding extravaganza is to take place on a tiny, uninhabited, windy island off the windswept west coast of Ireland. The last surviving islanders had moved to the mainland long, long ago. Abandoned, soulless, buffeted harshly by the elements of nature, the land is mostly dark hilly crags, rocky cliffs with caves, rifts, and woods in its entire two-mile length, from end to end. The flatlands are largely marshy with suppurating bogs fed by the sea, an overpowering stench of rotting vegetation hovers menacingly over it ; to add to its sinister isolation a choppy, treacherous sea separates it from the shores of mainland. The spooky desolation is further exacerbated by its evil reputation. Legend has it that the original inhabitants were brutally killed by invaders and the bodies either swallowed up by the bogs or thrown into caves. Their ghosts now haunt the island. All of it makes for an irresistible backdrop for a thrilling, chilling murder mystery. 

On an upland in this island lies an ancient castle in ruins, Folly, with dilapidated outhouses. Aoife and her husband, Freddy, had bought the property and after due renovation now run it as an exotic resort. A heavy discount , bride’s Irish ancestry and the free publicity accruing from a bold, unconventional glamorous wedding venue tipped the scales for Folly. Guests will stay there and the festivities held in specially erected massive marquee on the Folly grounds. 

 A privileged few , mostly groom's school buddies and intimate friends and step-sister of the bride, arrive on the penultimate day for an early start to the wedding carousal. All goes to plan except that a storm brews up on the wedding night bringing in its train a sweeping, whistling gale that shakes the very foundations of the marquee while festivities are in full swing.  

The lights flicker ,go out ,and come back again. It's midway in the narrative. Then murder happens. The reader is left free to figure out to the very end ‘whodunnit’ and to ‘whom’. That’s a truly creative twist. It, however, ‘uncooks’ the meat of suspense and sinister drama somewhat, I feel. 

 The story format is non-linear. Each chapter is a time bubble of one of the six main characters capturing snatches of their living moments in their forty eight hours stay on the island. And the bubbles froth randomly over time and character. So the narrative sways to and fro, both in time and the character within the bubble. That causes some strain on the reader to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s. Thankfully, the chapters are short. That each doles out tantalising hints of a grieving personal past seemingly unconnected to the ongoing event keeps readers' interest alive. What for are these details keeps ringing in the reader’s mind. 

 What I particularly liked was the author’s build up of a loom of doom and gloom and presentiment of mis-happening. The narrative superlatively creates this foreboding atmosphere, an imminence of tragedy foretold by ominous portents , an anonymous note warning the bride to desist from going through with the wedding, and characters nursing undisclosed secrets, intense jealousies, hate - all sufficient causes to impel any of them to murder . But murder who?

 The writing is attractive and fluent. Makes for ease of reading, but for the unusual narrative format. There are some improbable coincidences and some situations seem contrived or at least a bit stretched. That costs the book some literary merit. 

 Nevertheless, an entertaining thriller, a good time pass especially when thrills beyond the confines of the home are severely limited. Overall, I found it a good read but one that fails to climb to the pinnacles of suspense, mystery, and drama of a Christie.

The Tandav of a Virus

T'was a spring that didn't ring true ! 

 Skies were clear, azure blue

Forests wore a flaming crown of Palaash vermilion 

Daffodils were in golden trumpeted bloom

But the vernal air a deathly taint-  a killer virus in its womb

That in waves after waves wrought gloom and doom 

T'was a spring with no zing, only a deathly sting !

Sucking out breath ;kins gasping, grieving, ceaselessly lamenting 

Frantically seeking  oxygen anywhere, everywhere 

In hospitals, black markets, under the peepal tree 

Many would get it within the doors of Heaven, free 

A tragedy to up all tragedies one hopes never to see. 

Twas a spring when dead were summarily disposed  ! 

Upstream, the mela sullied Ganga, the river most revered

Downstream, defiled by hundreds of floating  corpses

Thousands the  sandy bosoms of its flanks  concealed .  

Bodies with souls trishanku, unliberated

An indefinite wait for funeral rites to be completed. 

T'was a spring India focused on Bengal !

Netas criss-crossed, volubly orated, freely fulminated to  hold crowds in thrall 

For a hundred days India was Bengal 

The political choir played, replayed 'Dee Dee O Dee' 

The virus left scot free to enact its deathly tandav spree

Bengal voted but in the final analysis t'was a VIRUS victory !

 

 T'was a spring with no spring ! 

Bureaucracy too stodgy and wooden 

Its strides frozen and arms in sling,

There was only hope to cling.

Netas too 'mamta' possessed to think

Beyond the vote swing.  

Twas a spring unfit to dwell upon !

Think 'positivity unlimited' from here on 

Bad times pass and life moves on, the 'wise' counselled 

Positivity ? He who was living is now dead 

We who were living are as good as dead

Said those, who lost kins for lack of oxygen, hospital bed.

Twas a spring sans threat of a Hazare fast !

Many he issued for causes noble in the past 

Did he think the virus too ignoble

Not deserving of a token verbal blast ?

T'was a spring when being mute was safe !

Desperate cries for help deemed offense

And exposing malfunction a sedition invite  

The virus chuckled, deeper went its bite

Pray country folk

Time doesn't yoke

An evil spring  

With breathly choke 

Irrelevance of PM's 'Maan Ki Baat'

 

Heard the latest edition of 'Mann ki Baat' yesterday, a huge a let down; as irrelevant was it as a doctor waxing eloquent on the sport of angling before a patient dying from fish poisoning. 

True, covid warriors are indefatigably battling the pandemic at great personal risks and demanding of immense sacrifices from their immediate family ; all virtuous, praiseworthy and deserving of our gratitude. And they have been at it for over a year now. However, what torments and agonises the masses today are issues beyond them. Yet the 'Mann ki Baat' floodlighted covid warriors and tribulations of the masses  remained in the shadows- untouched . If feel good was the intent of the PM it fell flat on me.

The PM repeatedly emphasized having extensive consultations with domain experts and CMs of states. Shouldn't the nation been told from the highest pedestal what in concrete terms- shorn of  the subterfuge of empathy, mists of generalies and salve  of good intents- crystallized into action plans  to tide over the almost universal shortage of all  covid related things from oxygen to the most elemental of drugs used for mild cases.  Not one word was spoken. As opaque as ever ! 

With the invocation of Disaster Recovery Act, the onus of  leadership, co-ordination among state, and making timely strategic interventions to control and ultimately 'defeat' this scourge, lies with the Centre and concomitantly with the PM.Therefore the nation looks to him. 

And let none be deluded,  the shortages are real. I have two patients with mild covid in the family. The largest pharmacist in the locality has no stock of some of the drugs  pprescribed for them  ; Meftal forte; Vapocap ; any brand of Steamer or Nbulizer; Ascoril, Immugard C, Lumia, Gencal. After much coaxing and cajoling one lab agreed for home collect of swabs for RC-PPT at double the charge. So with blood tests, paid double the normal rates for both tests and charges for home collection. Next, when I called the same lab for PPT test, the reply was "sorry, we have temporarily closed shop to tide over a 10 day backlog of reports." 

If test reports take so long to come and patients admitted to covid care centres only after testing positive, what happens to the most seriously affected of them ? The condition of many would deteriorated beyond redemption. Even with best medicare and gallons of oxygen life would slowly but surely ebb out of them. I would have liked the PM to have reassured us against this ghoulish possibility of a leaky loss of life- to add to the many asphyxiated due to lack of oxygen cylinders- from gross inadequacy of testing facilities in relation to the enormity of the cases on hand. 

Other more serious scarcities are being daily highlighted, ad nauseum, in media. I would have liked these issues to have echoed in 'Mann ki Baat' and the nation advised of specific measures being taken to address it and when things would finally be set right. Not an echo was heard. 

PM rightly stressed on the urgent need for all to get vaccinated. Till date less than 10% of the population have become immune as defined by the vaccinators. Well, hypothetically speaking, even if the rest 90% all get vaccinated today, they become immune only after three months. Vaccination, therefore,  is not going to reduce the crippling current demand for things in short supply in the short term. Even of those vaccinated  40% would still be vulnerable to the disease. So in the long term term too the present heightened levels of demand will persist.  The state has to actively and urgently engage in a permanent enhancement of capacities including testing facilities in every mohalla, oxygen production and bottling, drugs manufacture,  and not the least more  Corona care centres that are fully equipped and adequately manned. 

Adhocism that has been the hallmark of pandemic management so far and  complacency through self-congratulatory pronouncement of premature  victory and self donning the robe of exemplars, (  a la Napoleon snatching the crown of the non-existent Holy Roman Emperor from the Pope and donning it crowning himself) has had a deleterious impact on covid management, one partly responsible for blinding us to the fast incubating Corona virus till it became uncontrollable.   

Again, it is fashionable in centres of power to bask in glories like having the world's biggest vaccine manufacturer, being the largest producer of generic drugs. Being the most populous country could one expect anything less ? No big deal. On the contrary such a tendency  instills a misplaced sense of complacency, counter- productive in the long run

One interviewee in the 'Maan ki Baat' counseled that any patient denied oxygen due to unavailability should lie on his tummy for He to keep him  oxygenated till hospital oxygen becomes available. It sends a chill down my spine to even think of  what  would happen if it doesn't become available timely. 

For a nation already prostrated, the interviewee unwittingly pitched it right- it is only logical for its  citizen to lie on their tummies ! 

The Dawn

 The Dawn

As the greying years unwind 

Darker gets the night, 

Deeper the earthly quiet 

When dawn arrives 

Leaving sunlight farther behind. 

So has it been with me. 

The dawn coming closer,

Hours of night shorter,

More moments to spend

Carefree, as I feel free.

Modi’s ‘Feel Good’ politics

  Modi's  ‘Feel Good’ Politics

In common parlance it is stupidity to count chickens before they are hatched, or to leap before looking, or to jump the gun. Not in politics. More likely, such foolhardiness would be invested with the honorific- ‘strategy’; or in the obsequious eloquence of a doting media- a ‘masterstroke’; or, in the very least, a ‘feel good’ bonanza. 

While the count was still on with more of the newly counted votes going against him, Donald Trump  screamed, “Frankly, we did win this election.” History, we now know, took a different turn, dashing enroute PM, Mr Modi's prognosis, ‘Abki Baar Trump Sarkar.’ Again, after the Corona pandemic had  spread uncontrollably and experts foretold of  recurrent waves of it sweeping worldwide, Mr Modi  boldly affirmed a year ago, “ महाभारत का युद्ध 18 दिन में जीता गया, करोना का युद्ध 21 दिन में जीतेंगे।‘. Today, a marauding, vicious  second wave of a  virulently infectious Corona swoops down on a terribly  unprepared nation with its pants down. 

Are politicians that naïve or stupid ? Is it their vanity or ego that prompts them to patently Quixotic asservations ? Pause and Ponder. In political rhetoric, not the actual words but their silhouette reveal  import. Trump's still-born V signal wasn’t meant to thwart the electoral process. It sought to push backstage his failure to scrape the ‘rust’ off the ‘rust bowls', and  still any echoes of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan, ‘It’s the economy, stupid’, that did George W Bush in. Just a year ago Bush basked in the sunshine of a 90% approval rating crowning  his eminently successful leadership of the Gulf War. Success is a fickle  maiden.

Likewise, Modi's Mahabharat reference sought to kill two birds with one stone. It offered light at the end of a very short tunnel. A nation with a historical sub-conciousness of centuries of unrelieved  suffering from alternate bouts of drought and flood , salvation after a mere 21 days was no ache, rather  an opportunity to  make pancake for some and they did. Moreover, the association with Mahabharata turned the total lockdown, one that rest of the world shied from, into a phantasmagoria of a holy war, a crusade, at the end of which lay moksha. The ‘feel good’ was further reinforced by the surreal- exhortations to families to clap , beat thalis, ring bells, blow conch shells, light diyas and candles at homes on pre-assigned dates, for stated durations at assigned hours. At places , the feel good exuberance spilled out onto the streets with bursting of crackers. The spirit of  Deewali evoked for propitiation of Corona, or a boosting of the morale of Covid warriors, or just ‘feel good’ for being alive. Indians were free to pick or add to the choices. 

It hit the bull's eye. Voices of outrage at glaring lack of preparedness , manifest initially in non availability of face masks, PPE kits for frontline medical personnel and Testing Kits were trashed as irresponsible rumouring  or scaremongering. Meanwhile, the pandemic swiftly spread its tentacles and gripped the whole nation. Not only did India become  the worst affected, next only to US, but also earned the dubious distinction of having the worst death rate per million in Australasia. Acute shortages exposed the shallowness of our medical infrastructure and support system. Demands for medically supervised  quarantine centres, hospital beds for the seriously infected, and ventilators just couldn’t be met. Even a settled protocol for Covid treatment was wanting. But Modi's Mahabharata rhetoric ensured these inadequacies were pooh-poohed. Modi's tryst with ‘feel good’ held steadfast. The nation quietly reconciled to Covid as a visitation of karmic trauma. 

Early on in January, with daily new cases dropping down to 15000 or thereabouts and daily deaths in three digits, Mr Modi  blew the bugle of victory over Corona and gifted  the nation one more ‘feel good’ Utsav . “India’s resolute battle to emerge victorious out of the pandemic.....will be cherished for long".And when new daily cases climbed to 55000  with the nation still saddled with the highest death rate,  JPNadda, the ruling party Prez,  gushed on 25th  March,“India has proved under the leadership of Prime Minister, Mr Modi , to be the leader in Covid-19 management. It is an example for the world.’ 

At that point of time rest of the world was in the throes of the second or third Corona wave. Somehow we deemed ourselves immune despite overwhelming pointers to the contrary. Nevertheless, when showcased as exemplars countrymen stand morally obligated to feel good even about things they may not truly feel too good about.  But given the recent surge in cases, these statements need some paraphrasing , say, ‘Outside of the exponential surge in  CORONA ,India  has the most envious world record in Covid19  management.’  Quirky, but safely in the ‘demilitarised' zone between fact and fiction  to avoid official censure.

Those now brooding over daily new cases count flirting with the figure of 3 lacs, or bemoaning the  populace slipping into teary, unrelieved melancholia, or those wondering how the vanquished virus rose from ashes with such ferocity are needlessly souring the ‘feel good’ Mr Modi generated in Jan. So are those alleging an almost universal shortage of oxygen in hospitals, lack of burial and cremation grounds, crematoriums - Mr Modi’s call to  build Shamshan along with Kabristan during the UP elections now seems so prescient - short supply of covid drugs, the lackadaisical manner of going about the stupendous task of vaccinating scores of crores ( just 7% of the population have received the mandated two dozes of the vaccine). All these carping folks are malicious spoilers doing dirty politics. Why can’t they sit back and keep count of Covid tolls instead of breaking the spell of  ‘feel good’?  Just one spanner in the wheels though, those who are mourning  the preventable loss of their kith and kin aren’t feeling good at all. 

Mr Modi’s ascent to power was coeval with plummeting crude prices, a fortuity that  afforded him the leeway to cut domestic oil prices. On this occasion his triumphant hurrah found an astral resonance : मेरे विरोधी कहते हैं मोदी नसीबवाला है, इसलिए ऐसा हुआ. मान लीजिए अगर मेरे नसीब से दाम कम होते हैं तो किसी बदनसीब को लाने की जरूरत क्या है. आप बताएं कि नसीबवाला चाहिए या बदनसीब.' Spoken words whose silhouette said, countrymen feel good and obligated that a naseebwala is at the helm. While Mr Modi's naseeb held, that of his countrymen did not. Domestic oil prices doubled. And while unemployment rose to historic highs and economic growth slowed compelling unemployed youth to consider pakoda selling as gainful employment, Mr Modi rode back to power. Then Covid struck. Obviously, naseeb of his countrymen and his own follow different trajectories.

And that’s because Mr Modi conjures up well timed, highly effective ‘feel good’ scenarios out of thin air with the consummate ease of an skilled practitioner. The post-URI surgical strike just before the UP elections, or the  Balakot air strike preceding LS elections left his opponents flailing for breath and on the horns of a  Hamletonian dilemma. The mass ‘feel good ‘ was too intense to shake off :  the realism of such strikes having little impact on ground realities had no takers and consequently no votes. With media as Mr Modi’s handmaiden realism stood no chance. 

People vote to power politicians they feel doing the things they want done. Tokenism, symbolism, platitudes, enthralling oratory may generate short term impulses of feel good. Ultimately, some of the rhetoric must translate into visible  ground realities. At this juncture our covid management seems far from exemplary, little to cherish or cheer. Callous neglect, shortages of almost all Covid protocol drugs, bewailing attendants of oxygen starved patients paint a grim picture. 

Did the ‘feel good’ generated by the Jan declaration of victory over Covid divert focus totally towards rejuvenating a shrunk economy and tackling the farmers' agitation ? But there’s time enough for post-mortems.  With campaigning for assembly elections ended and kumbh mela drawing to a close, hope has risen that state and central governments will get their acts together and step down to the brass tacks to tame this surging demon. The pandemic is at a stage where sheer rhetoric will only yield salty crystals of disillusionment, not the sugar cubes of ‘feel good.' 

Oo ! DeeDee

 Oo ! DeeDee

Oo! DeeDee, Oo! DeeDee 

Bawl many a yogi.

One so named,

Another self-proclaimed. 

"Look, look ! 

The steaming  summer cauldron,

With its hot dusty 'loo' 

streaming saffron preview .

A leg broken  

Eyes sunken

An implacable foe

How far can you go ? 

Many a loyalist

Became realist.

Took the unspoken bait.

To be our mate.

Oo! DeeDee 

Now's , your turn to be matey ! "

Eyes screwed,scowl on

DeeDee, barks 'we will see' 

'Jora Ghas Phul' 

Eyes the Bull.

Arora spews ire

Amit Shah gunfire

So much heat

For the flower to wilt.

Heat, Ire, and Thunder

Make me wonder,

Where truly lies, 

That gnawing ache,

The butterflies?

I know  only that in yogis

Ache of the butterflies

Leave no time to spare 

For Covid care. 

Now the 'Act of God' yogis declared-

Covid- its fangs are  bared

Break its sway

Butterflies will itself go away.