Bunch of Thoughts

Two things unite a nation as diverse as India - culture and cricket. When any nation takes part in a world tournament and does well very in the initial stages, one would expect the people of that nation to back the team .... Over the past few weeks we had many intellectuals and prominent media houses hoping that India looses the semi finals against Australia ... It started with noted sociologist Ashis Nandy .... According to Nandy, India is suffering from too much national pride and winning the world cup will make it worse... This was followed by a national poll by a leading print magazine Outlook which asked .. "Should India win the World Cup ? "  You can take the survey here Outlook not only echoed Nandy's sentiments but went on to add that "winning the world cup might just make India's macho and hyper masculine nationalism more intense. Over the last few months, there seems to have been an effort to make a pluralistic India into a homogeniz...

Today, I complete a decade of living in Bangalore. When I landed in Bangalore on a Ugadi day in 2005, little I had imagined that I would end up living here for so long. After a bunch of expatriate assignments with Philips, my plans were to move to Singapore. My wife Adi intervened for she would love to live in any part of India than any place abroad..... and so we landed in Bangalore. We had no friends or family ... just the two of us .... 10 years on... there are 3 thing about Bangalore which would make it very difficult for us to leave this city .... 1) People - There are many places in the world (including in India) where you would be made to feel like an outsider if you do not belong to that place or do not understand the language. In the last 10 years I have never made to feel like a immigrant....not for second Swami Vivekananda once said  "Learn everything that is good in others but bring it in ... and in your own away absorb it, do not become others......

For the big part of the last century the the biggest enemy of the liberal left or the #AdarshLiberal was the free market corporate world. Having lost that battle, they now have a new enemy ... the Hindu male. The narrative began with the BBC documentary called 'India's Daughter'.  Using a set of interviews with the rapist and his lawyers a persona is created of a Hindu male as regressive, patriarchal, casteist,  animal like creature who believes that rape and exploitation are his birthright.  Nirbhaya's father and her friend who provide a counter narrative are conveniently ignored in the documentary. The documentary gets such support from the left leaning academia that applications of Hindu male students get rejected by foreign univercities as they have a 'rape problem' and are a threat to the women students. NDTV which is BBC's local partner in India stands by the documentary. Then comes the visit of the IMF chief to India. The IMF chief is as...

Since the accession of J&K to India in 1947, the citizens of J&K have longed for the government which is of the people, by the people and for the people.  Its been 65 years but a state which is a part of the world's largest democracy has always experienced that their votes have been vetoed by the powers to be in Delhi. The story begins with Lion of Kashmir - Sheikh Abdullah, whose great grandfather converted from being a Hindu Brahmin to Islam. He was a close and a trusted friend of Nehru. Unfortunately whenever Sheikh Abdullah was elected, Nehru not only dismissed his government but also put Sheikh under house arrest. A big part of Sheikh life's was spent behind bars. What Nehru did was a murder of democracy and makes a fitting case for human rights violation. Nehru shielded his often illegal actions under the garb of nationalism.  Then comes the son, Farooq Abdullah and the story repeats with Rajiv Gandhi. In the 1980s Farooq was dismissed every time he...

Over the last week, 2 very graphic and disturbing videos were put out for mass consumption. One was a documentary on Nirbhaya and the second on the lynching of an alleged rapist in Nagaland. It is difficult to judge if one was the anti dote to the other but none the less its hard to me to agree with either .. The key issue I have with the Nirbhaya's documentary is the follows The documentary is called as 'India's Daughters' and attempts to make the world aware of the crimes against women. The documentary attempts to generalise that many women in India are often victims due to the attitude of men exemplified by the indicted rapist. Both these generalisations cannot be more wrong. Women in Indian history and society have always occupied a position far superior than in any western country. The feminine god - shakti is far more worshiped across the length and breadth of the country than any male god. We accept the women can be 'Messengers of God' Lets not for...