A passages from Indian Philosophy

By Dr. S. Radhakrishnan

1) The political changes brought about by the establishment of the Mohammadan supremacy turned men’s minds into conservative moulds. In an age when individual self-assertion and private judgment threatened at every point to dissolve into anarchy the old social order and all stable conviction, the need for authoritative control was urgently felt. The mohammadan conquest, with its propagandist work and later the Christian missionary movement, attempted to shake the stability of Hindu society and in an age deeply conscious of instability, authority naturally became the rock on which alone it seemed that social safety and ethical order could be reared. The Hindu, in the face of the clash of cultures, fortified himself with conventions and barred all entry to invading ideas. His society, mistrusting reason and weary of argument, flung itself passionately into the arms of an authority which stamped all free questioning as sin. Since then it has failed in loyalty to its mission there were no longer any thinkers, but only scholars who refused to strike new notes, and were content to raise echoes of the old wall.

2) If the leaders of recent generations have been content to be mere echoes of the past and not independent voices, if they have been intellectual middlemen and not original thinkers, this sterility is to no small extent due to the shock of western spirit and the shame of subjection.

My Writing!

It’s not hard to notice that most of my blog is about current affairs. My purpose of maintaining blog is to express my opinions about current issues. I do read lot of current affairs so one may say that it must be easy for me to write all this stuff. But it is not that simple. Increasingly, it is getting difficult for me to write about contemporary topics. I would like to call it as my writer’s block! Not that I am a writer but who said that writers block happens only to writers! Strangely, the problem is not lack of ideas or thoughts but in fact, it is too many of them. Whenever I start writing about certain issue I start to see many new dimensions of it and I fell miserably whenever I try to cover all these dimensions.

For example I was trying to write a short column about whether India will be super power in the year 2020 or not. The issue was simple; in the sense the thesis statement was either yes or no. And the column should proceed with few arguments and facts to support the main thesis. At least that was my initial plan until I got lost in my own thoughts. I started well, but as I progressed I tried to incorporate so many factors like caste politics, regional politics, lack of assertiveness etc that I couldn’t find way to finish it. Though my column had lot of material, it was completely incoherent, confused and befuddled piece of writing.

I think I should stratify my thoughts. (I just learned stratification method in my Survey Sampling class.) Like, this is about Religion; this one is about nation-state and so on and so forth. This will help me in using only relevant data and points, while writing about certain issue.

Hmm! Now I am kind of confused on how to end this column. I guess I will just say see ya!

Aamir Khan and Secularism

I think I grew as a human being, as I grew from being a child to an adult. I realised that there is a lot of poison that can be spread in peoples’ minds. For example, what happened in Gujarat is really appalling. According to me, somebody like Modi is there, I mean there were Indians killed over there, innocent Indians killed over there. It is completely irrelevant whether they were Hindus or Muslims or Christians or Parsis or Sikhs. They were Indians being killed by a leader who was supposedly a leader, and he is responsible. He and his party, he and his people are responsible for the killings and trauma of thousands of Indians. And, in my opinion the person and the people who do this, indulge in this kind of things, are most unpatriotic. It’s a completely anti-Indian thing that has been done.

- Aamir Khan in his recent interview in Indian Express

Mr. Khan, there is nothing new about riots. There were plenty of riots before Gujrat riots. So you had plenty of chances to grow. Do you want list of it? How about 1992 riots of Mumbai, unlike Gujrat riots you were actually present in Mumbai during the riots. How about Bhiwandi riots of 1984? How about Hindu genocide in Kashmir in 1988? How about first Kar-Seva in 1989 when thousands of Hindus were killed for no reason by Mulayam Singh government? The Bhiwandi riots of 1970, Moradabad riots of 1984, Malegaon Jalgaon and Karhad riots the list goes on and on. I am not mentioning any riots before 1970 because Mr. Aamir Khan was born in 1965. Mr. Modi or his BJP were not in power in any of the above mentioned riots.

My point here is that people like Mr. Khan actually lays foundation for next riots. I am not supporting riots but when general populace sees that media, politicians and other major personalities always behave biased then the ‘healing’ never takes place. Mr. Khan has full freedom to express his opinion. But then it would be appreciative, only if he knows the history and express himself without any bias.