Government

There are four ways in which you can spend money.

1. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you're doing, and you try to get the most for your money.

2. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I'm not so careful about the content of the present, but I'm very careful about the cost.

3. Then, I can spend somebody else's money on myself. And if I spend somebody else's money on myself, then I'm sure going to have a good lunch!

4. Finally, I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government.

Jessica Accused Manu Sharma Can Walk Free

You read it right. All Manu Sharma needs to do is organize some street protests in Chandigarh or Punjab through his politician father claiming that any punishment to him in Jessica case would lead to law and order problems in Punjab or even better it would result in return of militancy in Punjab. Some minister can be requested in Punjab to take up his case with congress president or President of India to show mercy in the name of larger good of people of Punjab.

What - You do not agree? Then what is your take on the protests in Kashmir on death sentence to Parliament attack accused Mohammad Afzal Guru? While it is perfectly understandable for his family to request the President for mercy, it is beyond my comprehension how can people take to streets to protect a convict of an attack on highest democratic symbol of the country - Parliament. Is there a rule of law in India or not? What most surprises me is the action of the Chief Minister of the state to take up his cause. If this is how punishment for crimes is to be decided in India, then all cases should first be referred to Chief Ministers of concerned state before taking them to court. And in case of crimes by foreigners the same should be referred to Prime Minister or President of that country. After all, the foreigner may belong to a nuclear country. Why take the risk of nuclear attack by punishing a foreigner.

CRAZY INDIANS awaken; with the fear of what has yet not happened don’t impede justice. Try to help the path of justice rather than destroying it. Think about the victims, sympathize with the right people or even better don’t sympathize with the wrong ones. Support what is right because you can grow only if India as a whole will grow and India will grow only if justice remains “JUSTICE”

Veil Philosophy

Is “the Veil” just a piece of clothing for women? A woman of any culture of any century knows that she will be wrapped in veils of all sorts, some literal and some not so obvious. Veils are prevalent in almost all cultures throughout the centuries. It was pity when I saw a woman wearing very tattered, therefore, revealing clothes, carrying a load of bricks on her head, but still amazingly very conscious of her veil down to her shoulders. Then again it was religious awe, which struck me, looking at veiled women pouring into church. Wondering about it, I decided to take a deeper look at what drove women to hide their faces and along with it, their aspirations & sentiments.

I am a Zoroastrian woman and in my religion, women have to cover their heads during prayers. This is a latest trend, and in actual Zoroastrian Literature the rule is to cover the head all the time. The stringency of this rule in those times was so much so that even a strand of hair falling out of the covering would be considered as shameful and there are stories of women being denied cohabitation with their husbands or denied the right to rear their children for such a mistake. Wow!! I am thankful that such tortures do not exist anymore, at least not, where I live.

In the 1917 Code of Canon Law, it was clearly stated that women must cover their heads. Therefore, when St. Paul decreed that man was created for God and woman was created for man and, umm, somehow the veil comes into the picture. I did not quite get the connection, but it was long time back, 2000 odd years to be precise. So, women have been wearing the veil to show submission to authority, to God and men!

Sanskrit literature is replete with instances where women have to wear veils. It is not surprising to me that under the laws of Manu the status of women is completely dependent on the man. The various religious texts have got a bewildering array of proscriptions and rules for behaviour of women, all for modesty and chastity's sake. Scholars have mentioned how women have to dress, behave and generally conduct themselves in public, which was generally under a veil, figuratively and literally.

With the British rule and then following on with independence, many atrocious practices were eradicated from the “rule book” which slowly died away in real life as well. Although if one walks around in certain parts of the country it still looks like the dark ages to me as far as the status of women goes anyway. The Hindu woman, reasonably emancipated but still a long way to go yet compared to her western counterparts.

What about the Muslim woman? Growing up in Mumbai, I will remiss, if I do not mention the other great religion, Islam. Well, needless to say that is making most of the waves these days. Stories are circulating in the media about photographs of faces not being allowed to be taken for driving licenses in various states. Turkey, which is an Islamic country, has made it compulsory for girls to wear veils in schools. Imagine women getting acid thrown on their faces and threatened in ghastly fashions if they aren't veiled in Pakistan and Bangladesh. What do the scripture say about this?

Sura 24:31 in the Koran is the key to this entire debate.

The literal translation goes as follows: "And say to the believing women that they cast down their looks and guard their private parts and do not display their ornaments except what appears thereof, and let them wear their head-coverings over their bosoms, and not display their ornaments except to their husbands or their fathers... and let them not strike their feet so that what they hide of their ornaments may be known; and turn to Allah all of you, O believers! So that you may be successful."

This is the crux of the matter and reading this translation, its pretty clear that veiling is compulsory and the woman is not to show herself except to her husband or close relatives.

For a non-Muslim like me, the question that comes up is - Why is there such a huge hue and cry about veils when it comes to Muslim women? Lets see.. isn’t modesty and not the veil a requirement for all women. Reading the stories of the women who have freely and voluntarily taken the veil, it seems like their motivations range from a desire to be seen separate from the mass of other women, to portray their faith, to affirm it in a visible manner and in certain cases, to fulfill cultural traditions.

Needless to say, the veil for a Muslim woman is far more prevalent than the others. I am sure somebody will ask and has asked why this is so? Male supremacy? Religious statutes? Cultural traditions? Modesty? Chastity? Better people than me have tried to explain this. Pushing people to wear the “VEIL” is forcing one's religious beliefs down somebody's throat and may well give rise to oppression. This goes for all religions, your relationship with your god (s) is your own, you define it the way you want according to the degree of faith in your heart, but using the name of God to oppress women is cowardly and should be shunned, may your conscience be pricked.

Should the discussion end here on what women wear? Is this the only field where women are covered in veils? How about analyzing other aspects of life where a woman wears veils which are invisible to those who don’t have to wear them? In our society, whether women belong to the majority or the minority group, what is apparent is that there exists a great disparity in the matter of economic resourcefulness between a man and a woman. Our society is “male dominated” both economically and socially and women are assigned, invariably, a dependant role, irrespective of the class of society to which she belongs. A woman on her marriage often gives up her other avocations and entirely devotes herself to the welfare of the family, in particular she shares with her husband, her emotions, sentiments, mind and body. Her investment in the marriage is her entire life, a sacramental sacrifice of her individual self and is far too enormous to be measured in terms of money. This is perfect but this in no sense gives “men” the right to oppress women merely based on their earning capacity.

The history of humanity has been witness to the fact that the religion has been used as a facade to perpetuate violence against women from time perpetual. In my eyes, a nation that does not respect its women cannot be described as a civilised nation at all. Such a nation cannot grow and develop and will ultimately perish due to its own rudimentary and tyrannical dogma. Thus, the national consensus should concentrate on betterment of women by suitably empowering them.

Need of the hour:

This situation of gender discrimination requires an immediate attention of the society since the problem is societal in nature. The mindset of the society needs to be changed by both voluntary and involuntary measures. The law regulates the social interests, arbitrates conflicting claims, demands security of persons and property of the people, and is an essential function of the state.

Law as a corner stone of the edifice of "order" should meet the challenges confronting the society. The social impact of the crime, e.g. where it relates to offences against women involving moral turpitude or moral delinquency which have great impact on social order and public interest, cannot be lost sight of and per se require exemplary treatment. The government should refuse to extend the benefit of the remission to the convicts who have committed hideous crimes against women even while extending it to other convicts. Further, safety of women victims must also be provided so that they can effectively bring before the law the offenders. Thus, in holding trial of child sex abuse or rape, a screen or some arrangements may be made where the victim or witness do not see the body or face of the accused. Recording of evidence by way of video conferencing vis-a-vis Sec. 273 of the Indian Criminal Procedure Code is permissible under the law. These measures must be supplemented with suitable "empowerment measures" like reservations in jobs and educational institutions, financial assistances, etc.

The plight of the women, however, cannot be improved until they are duly represented in the "power structure" of the nation. In a democratic country like ours, the voice of women can be heard only to the extent they are sharing the power structure in the supreme governance of the country.

So may it be a veil of cloth or may it be the veil of precincts, boundaries & restrictions, I don’t date to despise those women who take it up voluntarily. However, I am concerned about a large chunk of women who are taking it up merely on basis of parental or societal pressures without an ounce of credence in their own beliefs and doubting whether they’d ever be lucky enough to liberate themselves of these Veils.

Bush Vs Democracy

When US President George Bush vowed in his second inauguration speech to break the traditional US policy of backing authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world, he may have heralded a new era.

Bush promised to support genuine democratic movements in the Middle East and elsewhere even if it meant dumping America's traditional friends and allies.

Democracy may indeed be the cure for most problems confronting the Muslim world. But the question is can the United States take the bold steps that are needed to give concrete shape to its promises?

Can it allow democracy to take its natural course in the Muslim world, given that across the region, from Lebanon to Egypt, Islamists are emerging as a political force that the West can no longer ignore?

Promotion of democracy in Muslim countries is likely to see the empowerment of those predominant political players who turn to Islam for inspiration and guidance in public life.

If Bush was serious in his commitment to democracy, he would tell his "friends" in the Middle East to allow truly free and fair polls, even if that means Islamists coming to power.

As Islamists move to center stage in many parts of the Arab world, it's time that the United States and the rest of the Western world accepted the idea of dealing with them as legitimate representatives of the people.

In the past century, the West has sided with dictators & tyrants as they victimized the Islamists. In Egypt, grave human rights abuses by successive regimes have been ignored by the West. In Algeria, the military prevented the Islamic Salvation Front from taking office after it swept the 1991 parliamentary elections - with the blessing of the West, which saw the rise of Islamists as a threat to its interests. The consequence was a decade-long civil war.

Democracy is a must:
As democracy has been mocked elsewhere in the Islamic world, the West has consistently looked the other way. No wonder many Muslims blame the West for the suffering inflicted by their dictators. Yet Western leaders appear surprised when Al Qaeda extremists attack Western targets.

If Bush wants to usher in a new era of democracy and peace in the Muslim world, he should be prepared to deal with Muslims' genuine and legitimate representatives. He would do well to recognize the fact that Islamists are emerging as the leading political players in the Middle East and engage them as such.

Thats Me

Brown Is Beautiful

The spectacle on the night of 18th May'05, of all these Congress leaders, many of them intelligent men and women, debating themselves in front of Sonia Gandhi, pleading with her to lead the country, made me feel sick. If Sonia had any dignity, she would have stopped it, but she just listened, with a slightly bored expression, right till the last Congressman and woman had wallowed in dirt before her.

And again I asked myself the question which has baffled me for long: why do Indians have such an attraction towards the white skin? After reading the newspapers on Wednesday morning and seeing how newspapers such as The Times of India still root for Sonia Gandhi, with columnists such as Dileep Padgaonkar saying that her becoming prime minister would be in tune 'with the highest Vedantic ideals,' I wonder: does India, one of the most ancient civilizations on the planet, need a white woman to govern her?

I am sure Sonia has great qualities, but are Indians so dumb, stupid and backward, that they cannot find among themselves someone intelligent enough, non-corrupt enough, to lead them? And what about this craze for Mother Teresa? She may have been a saint, but nobody has harmed India's image in the 20th century so much: when you say India in the West, their eyes light up and they answer: 'Mother Teresa/ Kolkata/ poor people/ dumb people/ starving people/ who do not know how to care after their own underprivileged/ who need a white woman to show them how to pick up the dying from the streets/ to look after orphans'!

Is this the image Indians want today? An image that is harming them, which is stopping Western investors from investing in India? Yet, Mother Teresa is worshiped here, from Kolkata to Chennai, from Delhi to Bangalore, and when she will be made a saint by the Vatican, perpetuating this colonial, superior-minded, Christian symbol of white superiority over the brown/black man, all the Indian media will rejoice in its own mental slavery and the Indian government will probably declare a national holiday!

Why don't Indians understand that brown is beautiful? White people spend hours on the beach and put on a hundred creams to get tanned. And in winter they even artificially lie under infrared lamps in beauty parlors to get brown! Why this obsession for the Indian woman to have white skin?

How come the two most popular actors in India have fair skin and nearly blue eyes? Why this craze for 'fair' brides? If you find the answers to these, you will understand why the fatal attraction for Sonia Gandhi and Mother Teresa.

Obviously, colonisation has frozen the Indian mind in certain patterns and the British made sure, by leaving behind an enduring inferiority complex among Indians, by constantly harping on the flaws of Indian culture and inflating them. That is why today Indian intellectuals repeat like parrots what their masters had said before them: 'Hindus are fundamentalists/Brahmins are exploiters/Gowalkar was a Nazi/Indians are corrupt and no good.'

But that does not explain everything: most colonised countries have aped their masters after having hated them. No, in my mind the greatest factor behind India's love for the white is the absurd theory of Aryan invasion

According to this theory, which was actually devised in the 18th and 19th centuries by British linguists and archaeologists, the first inhabitants of India were good-natured, peaceful, dark-skinned shepherds called the Dravidians, who had founded what is called the Harappan or the Indus Valley civilisation. They were supposedly remarkable builders, witness the city of Mohenjo Daro in Pakistani Sind, but had no culture to speak of, no literature, no proper script even. Then, around 1500 BC, India is said to have been invaded by tribes called the Aryans: white-skinned, nomadic people, who originated somewhere in western Russia and imposed upon the Dravidians the hateful caste system. To Aryans is attributed Sanskrit, the Vedic or Hindu religion, India's greatest spiritual texts, the Vedas, as well as a host of subsequent writings, the Upanishads, the Mahabharat, the Ramayan, etc.

This was indeed a masterstroke on the part of the British: thanks to the Aryan theory, they showed on the one hand that Indian civilisation was not that ancient and that it was posterior to the cultures which influenced the Western world -- Mesopotamia, Sumeria, and Babylon -- and that whatever good things India had developed -- Sanskrit, literature, or even its architecture -- had been influenced by the West.

Thus, Sanskrit, instead of being the mother of all Indo-European languages, became just a branch of their huge family; thus, the religion of Zarathustra is said to have influenced Hinduism, and not vice versa. On the other hand, it divided India and pitted against each other the low caste, dark-skinned Dravidians and the high caste, light-skinned Aryans, a rift which is still enduring. Yet, most recent archaeological and linguistic discoveries point out that there never was an Aryan invasion and many historians, including the malevolent Romila Thapar, are distancing themselves from it. Yet, most Indians still believe in this absurd theory.

Wake up Oh Indians: you are as great, if not greater than the white man. You can do as well, if not better than the white man. Not only did your forefathers devise some of the basic principles of mathematics, astrology, and surgical medicine, not only are your people among the most brilliant in the world today -- half of Silicon Valley is of Indian origin, 30 percent of the United Kingdom's doctors are Indians -- but you still hold within yourselves a unique spiritual knowledge, which once roamed the world but which has now disappeared, replaced by the intolerant creed of the two major monotheistic religions which say: 'if you don't believe in my true God, I will either kill you or convert you'.

Wake up India, brown is beautiful, smart and it is the future. Dr Manmohan Singh, whatever has to be said about the Congress, you have partly redeemed India's pride, and our good wishes are with you.

This Is About The Friend Who is Leaving Me

When people talked about me,
You did not know what to think.
But you saw my tears that day,
You understood my dismay.

You lent a shoulder to me,
When everyone else walked away.
You lent a shoulder to me today,
When no one else was here to stay.

You held me close; no words were said,
You knew I had to cry, and advice could wait.
I told you things and you listened dear,
No phony sympathy, no crocodile tears.

I could not tell you everything about me though,
I wanted to preserve some dignity, so the real me does not show.
Because even though I may have found a friend in you,
My insecurities deep down would make you stumble.

For I am a person broken beyond hope,
And nowadays I am finding that harder to cope.
I want to believe and I want to dream,
But everyone around cannot stop being mean.

Thus began our beautiful friendship that day,
My days were dark but now they are only grey.
I am slowly but beginning to live,
Because you came along and showed me your gift.

I did not dare question where I stood in your heart,
Whether I was special, or was I just mud.
But now I do not have to ask for I know,
You are my friend, pure as gold.

And so our friendship carried on that way,
Even though we both knew you could never stay.
For you had your own roots elsewhere over the hope,
And I was too poor to do anything except to brood.

But we carried on thus,
And did not let that bother us.
For we had so many other things to do together,
And Time was not helping us.

Diversity Kills

India's a stunningly diverse country — a currency note has its value printed on it in 17 different languages. In other multicultural states (Singapore, US) there is nevertheless one language commonly recognised by their institutions — that of merit. In India, however, merit is taken to be an elitist affectation, to be trumped by considerations of caste, kin, community and regional affiliation.

Two things held India together till recently: That it was uniformly poor and lacked connection with the outside world, and that Congress dominated politics across the country. But both of these are changing. One of the effects of liberalisation has been that India's forward states (Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, southern states) have been growing at rates much faster than backward states (UP, Bihar, MP).

But even within forward states, growth is remarkably uneven. If this pattern of development continues, 20 years down the line Delhi will have more in common with London than with Meerut, and Chennai with Singapore than with Patna. This will inevitably lead to demands that, say, revenue generated within Tamil Nadu be invested in Tamil Nadu rather than redistributed to Assam, while Delhi and Mumbai close their doors to migrants coming from UP and Bihar.

In 2004, Punjab unilaterally annulled all the agreements it had for sharing river water with Rajasthan, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. In this case, chief minister Amarinder Singh acted as head of a sovereign state. This is the wrong sort of diversity that unfortunately will be increasingly emulated in the future — making India's present problems in Kashmir look like a picnic.

On modernisation of airports, for example, a small group of airport workers held the entire country to ransom, for no discernible reason other than elections coming up in Kerala and Bengal, and the Left needing to shore up its identity. This is possible because in fragile governing coalitions it is usually the tail that wags the dog. Mustering enough political will to do what is in the country's long-term interest is a Herculean job.

The "idea of India", much feted in 2006, could die a natural death by 2026. Unless Bollywood, or the English language, comes to the rescue.

Attacking Islam

You do not have to be particularly a Muslim to feel deeply hurt or offended by cartoons of Prophet Mohammad that have inflamed the Islamic world. The contention that any depiction of the Prophet is per se unacceptable in Islam is debatable. But some of the controversial 12 cartoons originally published by a Danish paper several months ago, and now being published all over in a rare gesture of media solidarity, are undoubtedly grating on religious sensibilities.

One of them shows the Prophet with a bomb tucked in his headgear. Another shows him entreating his followers, "Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins"! Yet another goes with the legend, "Prophet, deaf and dumb, keeping women under thumb". And another shows him on the go, blinkered, sword in hand, leading two burqa-clad women; all you can see of the women is terror in their eyes. Taken together, what do these cartoons add up to except an image of the Prophet as a bloodthirsty, misogynist tyrant? An original Osama bin Laden, if you please, whose followers today are bent on forcing all Muslim women behind the veil and who show not the least qualm in blowing-up infidel men, women and children to bits, all in pursuit of virgins in the promised paradise.

Enraged Muslims across the globe protesting against such insults to the Prophet fail to recognize that what they are dealing with here is not blasphemy but demonizing. It's in the same league as proclamation of a prominent Bajrang Dal leader some years ago that there can be no peace as long as the Qur'an was around. The same sentiment continues to be reiterated by other prominent members of sangh parivar every now and then. Here as with the Danish cartoons the issue is not blasphemy per se but insidious demonizing of an entire community.

Were the Danish cartoons a depiction of Osama or his ilk, no one could or should have complained. But when terror and enslavement of women are projected as synonymous with Islam, all Muslims stand demonized as a dangerous multitude of bloodthirsty vermin. Faced with such hate propaganda, Muslims have every right to, and they must, protest. But the forms of protest that many Muslims and even governments have chosen — mindless economic boycott of Danish products, snapping diplomatic ties, torching embassies, issuing death sentences against all Danish and Norwegian citizens, raging mobs taking to streets with banners and placards calling for butchery of enemies of Islam — are enormously self-damaging.

Through such misguided deeds, Muslims end up affirming the very image of their community that they are ostensibly outraged about. What do the agitating Muslims want? In an open letter addressed to "Honourable Fellow Citizens of the Muslims World", dated January 30, Carsten Juste, editor-in-chief of the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, has explained that "we are strong proponents of the freedom of religion and because we respect the right of any human being to practice his or her religion, offending anybody on the grounds of their religious beliefs is unthinkable to us. That this happened was, consequently, unintentional". This obviously is not enough for the agitators. Ideally, they would like to see cartoonists, editors and proprietors of the newspaper hanged in public.

At the very least they want an exemplary government crackdown on Jyllands-Posten. Some have reportedly also called for new international legislation making the death sentence obligatory for all blasphemers, blissfully unaware that many western democracies have done away with capital punishment altogether even for the worst crimes imaginable. Fortunately, unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria or Egypt, Denmark is a functioning democracy. Like other democracies, it too does not hold the right to freedom of expression as absolute.

Last August, for example, Danish authorities withdrew the broadcasting license of a Copenhagen radio station for three months because it called for the extermination of Muslims. That, according to the authorities, was clear incitement to violence (against Muslims) and therefore actionable. They may argue with the Danish on where the Lakshman rekha be drawn between freedom of expression and its abuse for incitement to violence But they must also ask themselves why they remain silent when any number of mullahs and assorted jehadis (Fadi Abdullatif, spokesman for Danish branch of the militant Hizb-ul-Tahrir, is one of them), shamefully misuse the hospitality and freedom of western democracies to openly incite Muslims to violence against fellow citizens. And they must be thankful that countries like Denmark don't have laws like Pakistan's notorious blasphemy law that is a curse for religious minorities and the press. Addressing a gathering of faithful during Friday prayers, Qatar-based Shaikh Yusuf Alqarzadi, a highly respected religious leader, condemned the burning down of Danish and Norwegian embassies. Exhorting Muslims to eschew extremism, he appealed to them to express their unhappiness over the offensive cartoons in a "decent" and "civilized" manner. "I cannot condone destruction and arson because they are against basic human decency and the teachings of Islam", he said. May Allah add power to Alqarzadi's voice against targeted groups.

Me