I H S K (I Hate Salman Khan)

‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me’

This saying is so apt when discussing Salman Khans issue. Yesterday I was watching his interview on some desi channel here in US and he was confidently telling the interviewer how he is innocent and how he is framed. He seemed to be catching up with his lost glory. And, I kept wondering whether Indian press is retarded or Indian people are retarded.

We have taped phone conversation of Salman Khan with underworld don but he is still making movies. He killed an endangered specie and convicted for that crime and yet he is making movies. As if killing an animal wasn’t enough for him, for the love of sweet mother of Moses, he rammed his SUV on pavement in inebriated state and killed a pavement dweller. And, not only he making movies, he is doing entertainment shows in US. Holy Cow! He just fooled everyone at least thrice.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice – well, you can’t fool me twice. I am already a fool.

how can he do this? More than that, how can Indian people allow him to do all this shitty stuff ? Either he is smart and have high contacts (like underworld don!) or Indian people are too dumb that they believe when he says that ‘I am innocent’. I think it’s both. He is smart and Indian people are dumb. I wonder whether Amir Khan knows about Salman Khan or he just overlooking him because he is his fellow Muslim brethren.

The reason why Salman is so confident of getting away with anything is because he knows that there are host of other people who got away with their misdeeds. Sanjay Dutta for example, had stockpile of AK-47 and cops have hours of conversation between him and Chhota Shakil. And yet, he got away. We have photographs of Anil Kapoor, Anju Manhendroo, Mahesh Bhatta etc. posing with Dawood Ibrahim. (For those who forgot – Dawood Ibrahim is main culprit behind Bombay Blasts in 1992) Such list goes on and I haven’t even started to talk about our politicians.

To stay within the law is increasingly getting hard in India. To break the law is easy because one, our laws, judiciary system is a joke and our judges are bunch of corrupt jokers. If you have enough money or if you are politician then you can pretty much rape anyone, kill anyone and steal millions of rupees. You will still be as pure as mineral water and as holy as Ganges water.

I don’t see any end to this anarchy. Even if magically we have an elaborate and perfectly working law system then these criminals will still get away because lawmakers and judges are part of the same society that has messed up concepts about what is right and what is wrong . If Salman had killed a person in inebriated then that’s a felony and no one should justify his act. If Sanjay Dutta is in regular contact with people responsible for Mumbai bomb blast then he is a traitor. But for this to happen, society should vehemently ask for justice.

Indian society lacks conviction and more than that it lacks desire to seek justice. Chalata hai attitude can be seen in everything that India does as a nation and hence to expect honest returns is almost impossible. Onus is on Indian society to punish people like Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt. Judiciary is just an arm of society and it is unfair to expect judiciary to work when society itself is in deep mess.

Selected Writings of S. Radhakrishnan

On Christianity -:

When righteousness is practiced, not for its own sake but because it is the will of God, it is practiced with a fervor and a fanaticism that are sometimes ungodly. When the well of God is known, we feel driven to pass it on and think it intolerable that it should be disobeyed. ‘The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?’ While such a belief gives definiteness, conviction and urgency to the ethical message, which no abstract logic could give, it at the same time shuts the door against all change and progress.

The Jew first invented the myth that only one religion could be true. As they, however, conceived themselves to be the ‘Chosen People’, they did not feel a mission to convert the whole world. The Jews gave to Christianity an ethical passion and a sense of superiority; the Greeks gave the vague aspirations and mysteries of the spirit a logical form , a dogmatic setting; the Romans with their practical bent and love of organization helped to institutionalize the religion. Their desire for world dominion transformed the simple faith of Jesus into a fiercely proselytizing creed. After the time of Constantine, authorities , clerical and secular, displayed systematic intolerance towards other forms of religious belief, taking shelter under the words ‘He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me, sacctereth’.

On Self-Discovery –:

The process of self-discovery is not the result of intellectual analysis but of the attainment of a human integrity reached by a complete mastery over nature. The old faith is mere reason that we will act properly if we think rightly is not true. Mere knowledge is of the nature of a decoration, an exhibit with no roots. It does not free the mind. In the Chandogya Upanishad Narada confesses that all his scriptural learning has not taught him the the true nature of the self, and in the same Upanishad, Svetaketu, in spite of his study of the scriptures for the prescribed period, is said to be merely conceited and not well instructed. Spiritual attainment is not the perfection of the intellectual man but an energy pouring into it from beyond it, vivifying it. The Katha Upanishad Says: ‘As the self existent pierced the openings of the senses outward, one looks outward, not within himself. A certain thoughtful person, seeking immortality, turned the eye inward and saw the self. It is seeing with the spiritual eye the pure in heart, who have overcome the passions of greed and envy, hatred and suspicion, that is here insisted on. This is the fulfillment of man’s life, where every aspect of his being is raised to its highest point, where all the senses gather, the whole mind leaps forward and realized in one quivering instant such things as cannot be easily expressed,. Though it is beyond the word of tongue or concept of mind, the longing and love of the soul, its desire and anxiety, its seeking and thinking, are filled with the highest spirit. This state of being or awareness to which man could attain is the meaning of human life. It is religion, and not mere argument about it, that is the ultimate authority for one’s ideas of God and life. God is not an intellectual idea or a moral principle, but the deepest consciousness from whom ideas and rules derive. He is not a logical construction but the perceived reality present in each of us and giving to each of us the reality we posses. We are saved not by creeds but the jnyana (knowledge) or spiritual wisdom. This is the result of the remaking of man. Logical knowledge is comparable to a finger which points to the object and disappears when the object is seen. True knowledge is awareness, a perception of the identity with the supreme, a clear-sighted intuition, a dawning of insight into the which logic infers and scriptures teach. An austere life turns knowledge into wisdom, a pundit into a prophet.

( Eastern Religions & Western Thoughts , published by Oxford India Paperbacks)

The real culprits

Who is responsible for recent criminal overture of Indian government in implementing inane affirmative policy in every facet of Indian social life? Indian government, NO! Sonia Gandhi – No, she is clearly working on Vatican’s instructions. She wants to divide Hindu populace further into pieces and then ‘harvest’ the crop. This may sound like conspiracy theory. But if you closely recently published Vatican doctrine on Asia and statements made by Pope John Paul II then even dumb person can join the dots. Arjun Singh – No, he is Sonia’s dog and he has to lick her feet. The real culprit is India’s voters, specially, young population.

All these protests and hunger strikes – as expected – turned out to be utterly useless. Government still implemented this absurd policy. You can’t beat Vatican, Sonia Gandhi and Indian government at the same time. What we could have done was to vote responsibly. But we didn’t do that. We voted Congress party and for such a wonderful decision, it is time to reap the fruits. I am not saying that people should have voted BJP to the power but thinking rationally, who was better choice between BJP and Congress? Why? Because BJP’s top brass were all non-corrupt and they never did anything that would divide India and jeopardize her future. We replaced them with anti-Indian people like Mani Shankar Aiyar and communist party. We elected blood sucking leeches like Arjun Singh and king of all these bastards – our beloved, Manmohan Singh. We can’t have more inept, more corrupt and morally repulsive bunch of politicians than current Indian government.

The general apathy of young population towards election is simple reason behind this fiasco. If Congress never uttered about these reservation policies in their Election manifesto before last general election then they simply can’t implement these policies. But they still did it, because they know people will continue to vote them irrespective of how much they backtrack India’s growth. India has fastest growing young population in the world. We have more young people than population of Europe and still, government was able to implement a policy that is hugely unpopular in young generation. They did it because they know that they will get away with this and they will be able to form government again as our young population won’t participate enough in coming elections.

Kudos to all the students who battled death in hunger strikes and who battled with cops in morcha’s but such measures were too late to do any good. We have a real chance to show our strength in coming general election. Let’s see how we use the most threatening weapon in democracy – our vote.

India in future

I wonder what British imperialist would think of India today. Will they be sad to see that the country they divided geographically and socially is still standing? Or, Will they be ecstatic to see that their policy of dividing India into tiniest possible pieces is aggressively persuaded by Indian policymakers, lawmakers and politicians in post-independence period? I guess, they will be happy to see current state of India and it won’t be long before they start partying as our ‘democratically’ elected politician finish dividing Indian society thoroughly. I am almost heart broken to write this but the way India is proceeding right now, it is clearly courting disaster and bleak future.

This sad story began with Mr. Gandhi, our numero uno leader of independence movement. The biggest blunder he did is to force Mr. Nehru as our first prime-minister. We have Kashmir problem, a legacy, perhaps, first gift of Mr. Nehru to India. Actually, to his credit he did great job in fostering scientific and industrial growth in initial years and his choice of socialism was certainly one of the best decision. But he made sure that he leaves India with another legacy, heavy defeat in India-China war. Plus, he legendry forced policy of Secularism is creating havoc in modern India by failing to unite India as a nation and destroying India as a civilization. We can’t say that he started Muslim appeasement policies but his weird notion about secularism certainly set up the stage for future congress leaders to stretch secularism to an absurd level. The next in line, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, was extremely ambitious and that increasingly fuelled her quest for the power. She did wonderful job as a political leader in 1971 war with Pakistan but to avenge her good deeds she made sure that she leaves India with institutionalized corruption and reignite the ‘divide and rule’ policy. When India needed gradual shift to liberal economy but Mrs. Gandhi was so busy in keeping her power absolute by making sure no state government in Indian state is ruled by non-Congress government that it was almost improbable for her to pay attention to economy.

During Mrs. Gandhi’s era, Congress party turned into personal fiefdom of Gandhi clan. Rampant corruption in Congress gave stimuli to regional parties and though, we can say that regional parties gave option to the population, the problem with regional parties was that they were myopic and concerned about their home state more than about India. These parties seems to be programmed to cling to the power at all cost and they had no ability to think on larger scale.. And, all though Congress was firmly in power till 1995, the gradual decline of congress and failure of BJP to fill up the shoes increased the power of regional parties. The minority governments that formed in post 1988 (after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated) were more concerned about sticking to the power by all means, even if they had to dived India further on the basis of caste.

With such a roller-coaster past, the future looks more rickety. The recent overture of central government to introduce inane policy of affirmative action in virtually every facet of Indian social life is not a nadir of political ineptness but rather culmination of long process, during which our political class established a sinecure and yet powerful place for themselves. They grew more selfish, with absolutely no regard towards India’s future they became obtuse to the extend of being anti-national. All these problem can be taken care of if India remain democracy. But it is fast becoming a mobocracy i.e. rule of mob not of consensus. The general populace is increasingly oozing lassitude and turning their back at the predatory political class. And obviously, this helps our useless politicians enormously.

The infrastructure is in shambles, judiciary system is a pure joke and a detestable political class, I don’t see any bright dawn on the horizon, but rather long bleak night.

Riots revisited.

Here we are, Back to square one. We have another riot in Vadodara Gujrat. The press is up in arms, the central government is trying to attain political mileage and Mr. Modi- chief minister of Gujrat is probably preparing himself for another crucifixion. Last time I wrote a blog about communal riots I predicted that another set of riots are around the corner. In fact India had quite a few of them but Gujrat stands a special case. Supposedly ‘worst’ case of communal riots took place in Gujrat in 2002 and it was all BJP’s fault, all Mr. Modi’s fault perhaps, all Hindus fault. Right there - these so called secularist and primarily Indian press (which I believe is most phony and useless in the world. Probably, worst than Saudi Arabia! Bunch of retarded, degenerated and malnourished brains covering sensitive issues. For example, Shekhar Gupta, Dilip Padgaokar, Vir Sanghavi and our esteemed Pranoy Roy!) generalize riots in such a way that it makes me wonder whether organ called brain is missing among these journalist.

Let’s try to see riots through different prism. I am ready to accept that Mr. Modi is current Hitler and Gujrat is ‘laboratory’ of NAZI’s. Also, Hindu’s are most fanatic religion in the world bent of destroying peaceful minorities in India. Now let’s move to our beloved Muslim community of India. They are the victims here and they are living under constant threat of Hindu fundamentalism. There was an article published in Indian Express. According to that article (the article was on a survey conducted by Government of India) percentage of Muslim people finishing 12^th grade is lowest among all. This ration slips further when we talk about rural area. The story is same for percentage of Muslim people graduating with a degree. In fact, in completely different sphere, percentage of Muslim farmers using tractors is drastically lower than their Hindu counterpart. Why is it like that? Is it a deep Hindu conspiracy? I doubt that. Because, percentage of Muslim people getting loans from private sector as well as from government extremely low compared to their Hindu counterparts. It is almost impossible for private sector, government sector as well NGO’s to come together and conspire against Muslim community.

May be the reason is that Muslim community don’t want to get involved in mainstream. They have separate civil law. They want separate education system so they could study in Maddarasaas. It is not hard to join these dots and form a picture of current state of Muslim community in India. If India is moving ahead and a community is extremely stubborn to the point of being obstacle then it is easy to understand majority communities’ antipathy towards them. But saying such things is almost taboo in print & news media as well as in political arena. Such issues are never discussed in public sphere. Anyone talking about these issues (for example, problem of family planning in Muslim community) is quickly derogated as right wing Hindu fundamentalist. But even though there is no discussion in public arena, general populace do discuss these issues privately.

If Muslim community wants special treatment then they are getting it in every possible way.

Coming back to the riots - it is not a new phenomenon and it is not confined to Gujrat either. First riots were recorded in 1761. We had worst riots in Mumbai, in Bhivandi etc. The discussion about riots is extremely biased. For example when it comes to discussing riots in Gujrat in 2002, no one discusses the burning of 59 Hindus in Godhra. Press and politician conveniently sweeps that issue aside by blaming few miscreants for such a gruesome act. In fact they go to the length of blaming RSS for burning train and then starting riots. (One theory is that those people locked themselves in and then burnt the bogie from inside!) But Godhra has almost 30% Muslim population and it is perhaps, most riot prone area in Gujrat. It was under curfew for six months during 1947 partition riots. Plus, during 2002 Gujrat riots number of Hindus killed in riots were almost equal to number of Muslim killed. All these facts and circumstances are never mentioned in ‘main-stream’ press. And, even if they are mentioned they go unnoticed.

We need to have unbiased discussion in press about all these issues. What I see is that our press fast turning into American press. They want to cover issues with no discussion or meditation on it. Sadly, such a hypocrisy on Press’s part (I don’t expect anything from Indian politicians) sets the stage for another set of riots. I don’t intend to suggest that riots are good in any way. But we are not trying to solve the real problem here. Post riots - the blame game starts after that and we are back to square one.

The Hindu Matrix

“Fate is merely a device used to exploit the masses by convincing them of the inevitability of their station in life. I spit on fate.” – Karl Marx

I don’t see fate as a conspiracy theory of elite class to exploit masses. But, at the same time, I don’t exactly believe that everything is decided by higher power and we are just mortal pawns. If we don’t believe in fate (not in Marxist way!) then does that mean that we have choice of doing what we want to do? Or, what we perceive as a choice is in fact a pathway that leads us down our destiny- something which is already decided. If we go by Judeo-Christian philosophy - and I don’t intend to make generalizing statement here- then we do not have a choice. All we can do is to trust the ‘God’ and wait for him to come down and save us. But, if we go by Hindu philosophy then we do have choice and to perfect our choice we have rebirths. In short, fate is something we build over the course of numerous births. If we say that we do have choice to decide our future then why do we get this chance to choose? We know that we rarely achieve what we really want to achieve then that basically proves that not everything is in our hand. Suppose, even if we achieve what we intended to then what happens after that?

Another troublesome question that arises if we believe in ‘choice theory’ is that it nullifies the purpose of ‘God’ as a separate entity. If we have chances of perfecting our choice then what is the need of savior? Why do we need savior? It’s a bit confusing.

I believe in rebirths. One, because, it is closely related to the choice concept I am trying discuss. And, second, I do so because I believe accountability is essence of nature. It is almost like Math. If the sum doesn’t add up then you are in trouble. During our lifetime we are responsible for everything we do. There is always cause and its effect. And, if this is so, then, why this primary concept of accountability would change after life? Why someone from upstairs will help us and save us from going to hell. (I don’t believe in heaven or hell either!) We are responsible for our fate and all though, destiny plays some part, that undecided part or destiny is influenced by our own decision in prior births. Right from our birth, till death we have specific time and resources to move up in the ladder. So, at the end of the life if we make good choices then we move a step closer to the ‘God’ or the ultimate energy, as I would like to say.

This topic is very subjective and it becomes murkier once we enter into realm of religion. My beliefs are based on Hindu philosophy. There may be defects in it as this is very amateur attempt to understand concept of Karma. So, comments on this topic are most welcome.