An affinity towards negative

A popular law of physics says unlike charges attract each other, like charges repel each other. Applying the law in the realm of mind one can say that many a mind have excessive fetish for the negatives than positives. Negative matters make more and quick impact on us than the positive ones. In all the range of emotions that we are capable of, the intensity is more in negative emotions than positive ones say our anger is more intense than our love. Enemies make more impact than friends.

Try this one: like someone very much and detest someone to the core; I can take a bet that the person whom you detest will be in charge of your mind for most of the time than the person you like. This is the chicanery played by the mind. What a tragic life that would be to be guided by the enemies or the people whom you loathe! This kind of behavior is what Stephen covey called as ‘enemy-centered’ attitude which is a failure right from the start.

The world is actually a beautiful place. Or one can say that the world is neither good nor bad but actually thinking (or perception) makes it so. But the TV or the media in general has made the world look like such a messy place that if one were to believe in it, then one has to conclude the doomsday of the world is not far away. The affinity towards negative obscures the reality. That combined with the shoddy journalism makes the journos to portray the world as a messy place.

There are many beautiful people around the world doing many beautiful things. But the channels seem not to be interested in them at all. Jack the ripper is remembered more than any saintly person. We know the name of psychopaths like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer than people who have impacted the society in some positive way. In fact, in some societies the negatives are celebrated. In the popular culture of the U.S. you are considered cool if you are a gangsta. Even girls like bad boys you know!

So when the focus like this develops, we tend to think the world is a bad place which is getting worse by the day. This will increase the negative outlook towards life and is dangerous for individuals as well as for the society.

Amidst all these I am reminded of Dr. Sudarshan. He is a doctor by profession. He could have had a lucrative career ahead of him. But inspired by the words of Swami Vivekananda, he decided to do service to the downtrodden and backward. He started living with the Soligas (a tribe that lives near B.R hills of Chamarajanagar District). Establishing trust with them, he slowly affected them by educating them. Now after many years of his tireless work, Soligas are not only an improved community, but also there are many graduates amongst them. Unlike many religious groups which in the cloak of serving people do the religious conversion, Dr. Sudarshan did not have any ulterior motives. His motive was service and service alone.

People like Dr.Sudarshan can seldom become the darling of media. There are many people like him who are doing service not for any popularity but purely for the sake of service. They are affecting society positively in their own ways. The scale of their work may be small or large. We need to develop some positive outlook towards life looking people of this kind than fretting over the past or being gloomy about the future just because some garbage news channel showed some non-sense!

The brave new world of social networking

It was in the beginning of the year 2006 when I came to know about the social networking site Orkut. At that time it was not open to all. One needed to have invitation to create an account in Orkut. My friend who’d sent me the invitation, when asked about the site could not explain properly because the term social networking and the concept of it were something new to all. Those were the beginning days of social networking.

Though Orkut and Facebook started in the same year 2004, it was Orkut which had made mark in India in the initial days of social networking. Orkut had its major users from two countries: Brazil and India. Facebook, though was present in India, it was used by very small percentage of population then. But the situation is just reversed altogether now.

The concept of social networking was so new and engaging that we all became addicted to it big time. Even at the time of our computer labs, most people would be online with their orkut account. When teachers got enough of it, they decided to block all social networking sites. Oh come on! After all, ours was an engineering college. We did know how to get them back. It was not a big deal for us to get access to orkut and the likes through proxy-servers. In this way our browsing went unabated despite being in the watchful eyes of our teachers.

After two or three years, Facebook gained prominence obscuring Orkut in India. The kind of users orkut had, no one ever thought orkut would be pushed into oblivion so soon. But that did happen. Nowadays people hardly use orkut. At the same time, microblogging site twitter came into existence (2006) and became extremely popular. It is hard to find a person who doesn’t have an account in any these sites.(There are many other social networking sites like Google+, LinkedIn and many more but I am restricting to some very popular ones) We can’t say whether god is omnipresent or not but surely these sites are.

Any marketer who is serious about his product can not afford to neglect the social networking sites at all. Especially in the country like ours where the online population is growing at great proportions by the day, one can not look down the effects of social networking sites in any time from now. Through the platform created, the stars of cinema, sports, and other celebs interact effectively with their fans.

Strictly speaking though blogging can’t be called social networking, they can be classified under a broader umbrella. The difficulty in creating a blog is nill compared to that of creating a website. In these days, websites can also be created and made functional within a few days but those who don’t need their own websites, can settle for a blog. It is definitely a very effective way of communicating your ideas about many things and interpretation of various other ideas to a larger section of people. There are many good bloggers who write much better than the journalists in prestigious newspapers. Social networking has made all these possible.

In a nutshell I can say that the concept of social networking has definitely empowered people and given voice to their opinions. The biggest example from the world is the Arab revolution that happened in many countries starting from Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya. One of the major people mobilizing powers in these revolutions was the social networking media. It has played an important role in ending some autocratic regimes. The effect of social networking is huge in anti-corruption campaign led by Anna Hazare. 

Some major impacts 

The world was made small by the internet. Social networking made it even smaller. In this kind of environment one has to deal with all meticulously because a small error made, someone would have known somewhere. So it becomes almost impossible to plagiarize, misquote or misinform without being caught by some.

In the arena of media, social networking is doing a great service. While almost all the mainstream media has been purchased by some party or the other, none can purchase the social media because none owns it. That’s the beauty of internet and social media. That’s why there is no bias in social networking; there is equal space for both the parties; which is a very unlikely scenario in the mainstream media. If democracy is living anywhere, it is in the social networking. That’s the precise reason why some dumbass politicos want to curb it.

It is just the beginning of the age of social networking. As India and the rest of the world add more online people with each passing day, the social networking can only get stronger. Social networking is here to stay and more of its effects are yet to be seen. While we continue to adore social networking, it screams in Michael Jackson’s style “Boy! You ain’t seen nothing yet.”!!

Yogi :The most intelligent guy!!

All human pursuits are directed towards one thing and only one thing: happiness. The terms used to explain it might vary but the essential meaning remains the same. Some may term it as happiness, some as joy, some as bliss and some as ecstasy and so on. Ecstasy is just a more heightened state of happiness.

Some might say “not everyone is seeing their own happiness but they are working for others selflessly”. There are no selfless acts at all. All acts are selfish. If you take the self as the central point, for some the circumference might circle around themselves and their family, for some their community and for some, their nation. So the difference between one person and the other person lies in the circumference around the self. But essentially it is springing from or directed towards the self.

People have tried different ways of achieving happiness and the innovation for more methods continues. People have tried drugs; people have tried sex, yearned for success, power; all in the same pursuit. They have achieved it too. Thus achieved success is ephemeral. Else, people should have stopped looking for happiness. They are deprived of it therefore the search is always on. We search for the things which we don’t have.

All are capable of happiness but the problem is in the sustainability of it. People indulge in sex and feel great for some time and after sometime they are back to square one. People in search of happiness indulge in drugs and feel great for sometime (some drugs expands the consciousness) but again when they fall back, they return with a terrible feeling.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev of Isha Foundation articulates it beautifully through a story:

A pheasant and a bull were together in a meadow. The pheasant was on the bull’s back picking ticks as the bull grazed. The pheasant looked at the towering tree in front of him, sighed and said nostalgically,

“When I was young and strong, I could fly to the top of the tree.”

The bull nonchalantly said “You can still do it, just eat my dung for a week. “

The pheasant shrugged and said “what non-sense”.

The bull persisted and said “just try it, the whole humanity is on it”.

The pheasant reluctantly ate some. The very next day, much to his glee, he could fly to the first branch. A week later, as promised he was on the top of the tree. He crowed in delight, a farmer seated on the verandah of his house, saw this fat pheasant crowing, got his gun and shot him to the ground for a meal.

The moral of the story is, “sometimes even bullshit can take you to the top but it never lets you stay there.”!!

Adding to the ephemeral nature of these things, they are not good for the human system too. Indulging in alcohol or drugs can give pleasures for some time, but in a long run they are detrimental to the system (body and mind both). Now contrast this with the attitude of Yogi. A yogi is also in pursuit of happiness but more of a permanent one, the one that he can behold for a long term. The system of yoga that the yogi applies doesn’t hamper mind or body but instead enhances them.

If you look at some yogis, they will be disinterested in the things that interests most of us. There’s nothing wrong with that. They have graduated to finer states of things. As kids we treasured toys but now we never bother for them. They are nothing for us now because we have found they no more hold our interests. In the same way once someone graduates to finer things the base things appear meaningless.

The path of yoga that the yogi follows bypasses many unwanted steps for achieving permanent state of bliss. So it saves enormous amounts of time and effort. When each one of us is traveling in an Ambassador car, the yogi has learnt to use the F1 car. He’s put himself on a fast track. When the stated goal is same for all, when somebody is achieving swiftly than others without damaging others or himself, he should be a very efficient and intelligent person. These things make me to call the yogi the most intelligent person.

Secularism, its Indian version & Saffron terror

There are many corrupted words amidst us. Some of them are god, love, soul etc. People have misused these words so much that they have deviated from their original meaning long long ago. Whenever people use these words you can be assured that they are using them in the wrong sense in most of the cases. We have one more word in India which is more corrupted than any other words and the word is secularism. Even though every party and ‘intellectuals’, journalists talk about it, they don’t have a clue about it whatsoever.

There is an immense need today to define secularism than ever because of its rampant misuse. Just an example: If you see the political parties most of them call themselves secular and almost all unequivocally maintain BJP as a communal party. In fact, there is no party which is absolutely secular in this nation. BJP tries to woo the majority vote bank. The rest of the parties try to woo the minorities eyeing on their vote bank and shamelessly call themselves secular. If BJP is communal then rest of the parties are communal too. But they act on the garb of secularism.

If we observe the appeasement policy of the political parties and the 'secular' media, we clearly can infer they will woo only the majority among the minorities but not the real minorities. That is to say, if there is a conflict between the Sikhs and the Muslims, you can be sure that they take the side of Muslims even though Sikhs are the real minorities compared to the Muslims. The real minorities in India are Parsees, Jains, Buddhists. But the media portrays Muslims and Christians as the only two minorities. Politicians don't have any problems with that because there is where their vote bank lies.

Secularism in the real sense should mean there should not be any kinds of discrimination whatsoever based on caste, religion and sex. But does the situation in India echo this fundamental characteristic of secularism? The answer is no. There is obvious deviation from the real secularist principles. Or to put it in a better way, India was never a secular republic in the real sense like say the U.S. In the U.S, it doesn’t matter what religion, race, or sex the person belongs to, he would have equal opportunity in all the spheres. Competence and ability are the only criteria for ascendance in any fields. Unfortunately, secularism exists just as a word in India. Or to say it in a better way, secularism is just a circumlocution of minorityism. When media claims it has championed secularism, you can be sure that it has championed minorityism.

K.M. Munshi had warned about this over fifty years ago:

"If, however, the misuse of this word 'secularism' continues ... if, every time there is an inter-communal conflict, the majority is blamed regardless of the merits of the question... the springs of traditional tolerance will dry up. While the majority exercises patience and tolerance, the minorities should adjust themselves to the majority. Otherwise the future is uncertain and an explosion cannot be avoided."

If you see the recent trends and happening in the country Munshi’s words appear prophetic. The latest example is the communal violence bill that the government is mooting to pass. According to the bill, when any communal violence occurs, no matter who instigated it, the majority will always be the culprit. If the bill is passed, it will surely have disastrous consequences in the long run. Though, most of the times majority has exercised tolerance, it can’t be expected till perpetuity when their own existence is at stake.

Discrimination is rampant in India based on the religion and caste. Somehow, the appeasement of religious minorities has become official principle of most of the political parties. The trend has reached dangerous levels where people are ready to compromise on national security just to appease some section of society. If the same trend continues, the doomsday for India is not far away. Someone had put it well “In a democratic polity the power rests with the majority with due protection of the minority interests. But in India this principle has been turned on its head by rampant minorityism. The wishes and feelings of majority can be trampled underfoot and ignored with impunity in the secure knowledge that the minority vote banks will deliver power to the ones who most stridently champion their cause. The majority because of division in its ranks can do little but wring its hands in dismay”.

About the caste politics: It is impossible to do politics in India for people who don’t understand caste equations. It has percolated at all levels of governance. The nation clearly discriminates people based on caste. None would have counted the kinds of reservation that exists in this country. India is perhaps the only nation where many group of people wants desperately to remain backward. There is a huge competition to remain backwards. Some expedient politicos like Mayawati and the likes have made caste, religion based reservation their trump cards.

Now nowhere existing saffron terror is imminent

In one of the press conferences the then home minister Chidambaram said that the saffron terror was more dangerous than any forms of terror. There was one incidence then in Malegaon (in which some Hindus were accused of an act of terror) which prompted him to give such ludicrous remark. One can be sure that even thousand such incidences by the Islamist terrorists would not have prompted the ‘secular’ person like him to talk about the green terror which was more global than any kinds of terror.

Rahul Gandhi who is a novice in some fundamentals of administration and has got to the place not by any competence but by pure nepotism was reported voicing the same opinion of that of Chidambaram (Wikileaks reports). If someone asked both these ‘intelligent’ people to explain the statement made, they wouldn’t surely be having any answers. It was obviously done to appease some section of people and also to satiate the hunger of the ‘secular’ media of India which was waiting for this.

When Malegoan blasts happened, when it was said that for the very first time an act of terrorism happened for Hindutva ideology (at least it was reported so), it really made some sections of people extremely happy. It made many pseudo-secular politicians, ‘sickular’ media, ‘intellectuals’ very happy. The reason is simple. Most of the terrorist acts in India happened for two ideologies: Either Islamic or Marxist. So, whenever people talked about the Islamic fundamentalism the ‘great’ media resorted to same old set of rhetoric ‘Terrorism has no religion’, ‘Terrorism has more socio-politico-economic causes than religions ones’ and the likes. But now they’d found a new defense in the form of Hindutva terror (though the case is still in the court). The alacrity that they showed in this case, had they showed for the right causes, they would have brought some awareness among people and done something good for the nation. The same people who said ‘terrorism has no religion’ did not shy away attributing this lone case to ‘saffron’ and thus to Hindutva ideology. This is a clear display of double standards and nothing short of intellectual prostitution. Most of these media are the brothels in which the person who has paid (in some form) gets the chance to screw whatever he wants. The thing that always gets screwed is the truth.

Now Hindus (those who are not deluded by some tacky ideology) are beginning to understand that no leader or political parties can protect their interests. Their great nation, culture are under attack from within and without. Series of (global) conspiracies are in line for them. They are on their own and can rely on none. They are being killed like animals by Islamic religious fanatics or by Marxist ideological fanatics. Their tolerance is being seen as a weakness, not as a virtue. It is plain insanity to clamor for tolerance when their very existence is at stake. The great Sikh guru Gobind Singhji said it rightly “When all means of redressing a wrong have failed, it is both just and righteous to unsheathe the sword”!!

My Books Review: November '11

1) Notes from the underground – This is the work of Russian writer, philosopher Fyodor Dostoevsky. This is like a confession and rationalization made by the person about the past. When a person examines one’s life and if he is honest enough in examination he would find many feelings, deeds considered to be amoral been done. But it requires courage to accept those. Most of the times, we don’t deceive others but we deceive ourselves. This is an evaluation of the past and rationalization of some mistakes. The book is divided into two parts: the first part of the book is completely a monologue; the second part of the book is about his interactions with the society. This novel explores various emotions of humans like love, greed, jealousy, wrath, self-hate etc. It is said that Dostoevsky’s character in this novel is one of the greatest anti-heroes ever to be created and this work is perhaps the earliest work about existentialism. 

2) Quite honestly – This is a short novel written by the British author John Mortimer. It is a story of young girl Lucy Purefoy who has the desire of dong something good to the society. She joins the department which tries to reform and relocate the criminals out of the prison and bring them back to normal life. During such assignments, she befriends a criminal named Terry and after sometime she falls in love with the criminal. When asked why he was involved in crimes, Terry replies that he wanted to have the thrill of burglary rather than the money involved. To share the feeling with her love Terry, She plans to steal a very expensive painting along with two more. But while doing so she gets caught and lands up in prison. What happens next forms the later part of the story. 

This is an ordinary novel with ordinary tale, a few twists here & there and an unexpected ending.

A tryst with war movies

In Hollywood, ‘war movies’ is a genre in itself. Having seen many genres like sci-fi, romance, comedy, thriller etc I felt that I had not seen much of war movies. So I began watching war movies and for sometime that was almost the only genre I watched. Someone told it right ‘there are no war movies; there are only anti-war movies’. Yes, to a large extent the statement is right. Most of the war movies show the brutalities, causalities of war and hence give the message that war is futile. But there are some movies which see war in a dispassionate angle and don’t conclude in anyway. Usually the later kind of movies became great because they were not trying to make any statements and were just showing the war as it is.

The war movies that I have seen fall broadly into these categories:

1) Based on the two world wars
2) Based on Vietnam war
3) Based on wars fought before the world wars
4) Based on some revolutions or hypothetical wars

The events and the time period of the world war gave fodder for some of the finest war movies ever. So did the Vietnam war which was waged by the US against the popular opinion of the people.

I started watching war movies with the 1930 release All Quiet on the Western Front which is perhaps the earliest movies revolving around the world war. Then it was Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory(1957) which depicted the hostility that existed between Germany and France and how soldiers were made to act against their will and fair judgment. Some more from the category: Lawrence of Arabia(1962), The Bridge on the River Kwai(1957), The Best Years of Our Lives(1946) , Judgment at Nuremberg(1961), Letters from Iwo Jima(2006)

Next to the world war movies, the highest number of movies made about an event is on Vietnam war. The significant movies that are made are Apocalypse Now(1979), Platoon(1986), Full Metal Jacket(1987), The Deer Hunter(1978). Platoon is the movie which is directed by Oliver Stone who had first hand experience of Vietnam war as a marine corp. So that fact makes the movie more authentic. The movie Deer Hunter shows the most dangerous game of the world Russian roulette in great detail. Full Metal Jacket is one more masterpiece of Stanley Kubrick.

Among the war movies that were based on the wars before the world war, the movie 300(2006) which depicted the courage and life of Spartans stands out. Apart from that there are some good movies like Gladiator (2000) and Akira Kurusawa’s Ran (1980) which has the story of Shakespeare’s King Lear. I am yet to watch movies like Troy (2004) and Alexander (2004).

The movie The Battle of Algiers (1966) shows the Algerian struggle for independence from the French. The story is told from a neutral point without taking any sides for the portrayal. That makes the movie special. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) is a suspense thriller in which the concept of brainwashing is shown vividly. It also shows the post war trauma that people face. It is perhaps one of the best war thrillers ever made.

Movies with comic touch:

Many movies use comedy to deliver the intended message. The earliest film which used comedy to deliver the ill effects of war was of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) in which Chaplin has parodied Hitler. Don’t know whether Hitler had seen the movie or not! Then a movie about a small & happy Jewish family at the time of world war is Life Is Beautiful (1997). The film has a good mixture of humor and emotional appeal. The movie Full Metal Jacket makes profuse use of comedy. Among all the war comedy movies made, the movie which is considered to be the greatest is Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1962). The movie is considered as a masterpiece of black comedy.

The best I have seen so far:

Schindler's List (1993): This Speilberg’s masterpiece depicts the plight of Jews in the Nazi occupied Poland. The cinematography gives the film a sense of timelessness. This is a classic one. 

Inglourious Basterds(2009): I don’t know how true this story is but it is very interesting. In all the movies the Jews are the victims. For a change, in this movie a small group of Jews called Basterds hunt down Nazis and instill terror in their hearts. This is like paying with the same coin. For that factor, the film becomes dearer. 

Downfall (2004): This German movie depicts the last 10 days of Hitler’s life. The actor who has portrayed Hitler has given complete justice to the role. It is considered as an authenticated account of Hitler’s last days. 

Das Boot (1981) Another German movie which is based on the real event of German submarine which goes to attack the British side. The film gives a brilliant account of navy, wars under the sea. Technically, the film is considered perfect and the best submarine film to ever come. 

Full Metal Jacket (1987): The first part of the movie is full of comedy and is carried superbly by the brilliant acting of R. Lee Ermey. The second half gets serious with war scenes showing the difficulty of fighting in Vietnam, the sniper tactics. The movie is highly engaging and entertaining. 

Saving Private Ryan (1998): One more masterpiece of Spielberg! The depiction of war scenes is so raw and seems real. The first 30 odd minutes of the movie seems like cut and paste from the real war. So realistically it is shot. 

The Pianist (2006): This is one of the movies which doesn’t try to make any statements but gives the account dispassionately. The film is based on real story of Jewish musician Władysław Szpilman . Adrien Broody has acted brilliantly. The movie is directed by Roman Polanski who had had first hand experience of the events. 

The given list of movies is definitely not comprehensive in any way. There are still many good war movies I am yet to watch like black hawk down, good morning Vietnam, born on 4th of July and many more. So, the list goes on becoming long…

Nazism, Communism and Islam – The ideological parallels

All political ideologies aim to create a perfect society. The claims of the people who propound those ideologies are very lofty and promising so that people are lured to embrace them. But after some time, they turn totalitarian and they exert control through iron hand. They then turn tyrannical and instead of being boon to the masses, they become worst nightmares. Millions of people are massacred around the world because of the ideologies. Some ideologies (like Nazism, fascism) have existed in limited geographical areas at limited time but a few ideologies (like communism, Islam) have spread across the globe. 

The commonality in all the political ideologies is that they are totalitarian. In a totalitarian system, democracy won’t have any voice. The basic thing that every human being yearns, freedom will be completely taken away from the people and they are subjugated for the ‘greater’ cause. Some may wonder how a religion like Islam could be classified alongside some totalitarian ideologies like Nazism or communism. But a close study of it reveals the political motivation, ambition the religion has got and also some startling similarities it has with Nazism and communism. 

Communism and Islam:

1) In communism, the state is superior. In case of Islam it replaces the state with its god Allah and the laws of the state with Quran, Sharia’h and hadith.

2) In communism one is expected to surrender to the dictates of the state. In Islam, one should unconditionally surrender to the will of Allah and defined laws that are attributed to Allah.

3) Communists are convinced that their doctrine is superior and would inevitably spread throughout the world. Muslims are convinced that their religion is the greatest and it is to be spread throughout the world until every person has surrendered to Allah. In fact, Islam divides the world into two parts: the World of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the World of War (Dar al-Harb). The parts of the world which is Dar al-Harb, wars should continue until it is converted into Dar al-Islam. Then alone peace prevails.

4) For both ideologies, ends justify the means. Communist countries misrepresent and break the treaties whenever it served their purposes especially with non-communist countries. In Islam, same is followed and called Taqiyya. Taqiyya closely translates into lying. It gives license to Muslims to break treaties (the peace treaty between non-Muslim nations is called hudna) with non-Muslim nations when it served their purpose.

5) In communist countries, the party leaders are considered unerring and their say is final. They have the power to change the rule and execute any person if they perceive him as a threat to the state. In Islam, the Imams are considered infallible and have the power to give judgments interpreting their holy books.

Nazism and Islam:

1) Severe hatred for Jews: Both ideologies abhorred Jews. Hitler said Jews are to be hated because they are Jews. Quran turns Jews into apes and swine.

2) Brainwashing at a very young age: Nazis had young scouts, trained them, brainwashed them. It happens in Islam especially in the Middle Eastern countries where small children are turned militants and they are fed and brainwashed to become suicide bombers. Though this doesn’t happen in all Muslim countries, it exists in a large scale. Any ideology requires constant indoctrination for its survival.

3) Hitler believed his party would win war and rule over the world for thousand years, Muslims believe to this day that world belongs to Allah and his apostles and they have to continue to fight the infidels until the promised land becomes theirs.

4) Nazis did hero worship (Hitler) and believed he was appointed by fate , Muslims do hero worship (Muhammad) and believe he was appointed by Allah

5) Islam or the invaders who followed Islam religiously classified the human into three categories
                I. The Muslims, for whom Allah has promised the whole world
               II. Christians and Jews who could live under Muslim rule but only as third-class citizens
              III. Thirdly, the real pagans who have to be eliminated completely from the world.
    Nazism classified people into
                   I. The Herrenvolk : The people whose race is superior to all
                  II. Slavic Untermenschen: These are inferior people in Hitler’s planned future world order.

6) Nazism divides the world solely on the basis of the race. Islam divides the world on the basis of religion.

Apart from all these striking similarities, there are many qualities that all these ideologies share, like: They are totalitarian, intolerant, xenophobic, aggressive, and self-righteous. There will be no scope for free thinking or freedom of speech. Totalitarian ideologies that are based on religion are more dangerous because they can sustain for a very long period and they achieve a very strong psychological grip over its followers. 

Followers of a totalitarian doctrine with no god attached to it may have some doubt at some point of time but the followers of totalitarian religious doctrines don't face that problem because that void of doubt is readily filled by the 'will of god' or rather the doubt never raises in them. That's why we can see almost all Islamic terrorists are supremely confident about their doctrine and they don't have a shred of remorse in their violence. Totalitarian ideology without religion or god attached to it will die once their leaders are defeated. But those which are based on religion will continue even after the death of the founders and continue to grip the followers through their holy books. 

All ideologies are equally dangerous. Anyone wishing to live in a free world where there is a democratic process and where freedom of speech is celebrated can never support any of the totalitarian doctrines to usurp their societies.

Sources:
"Islam: Arab Imperialism" by Anwar Sheik
"Negationism in India" by Koenraad Elst

Alliance Memoirs - Faculties

With bagful of dreams, a tinge of fear and arrays of expectations I, along with many others entered Alliance Business Academy (only to be disappointed later of course!). Since I intend to write about the faculty members, I restrict to that subject alone.

             In the first interactions with the faculty members, I was pleasantly surprised. Most of them were courteous, receptive to courtesy, friendly with students. Though a few of our faculty members were like that in graduation, the number was very few. So it was a good beginning in Alliance. In the first semester, it was bi-modular approach for us i.e. at any given day, only we needed to listen to the lectures of two faculties. Usually they would finish their quotas for the semester in about 15 days. This method, like any other method had its own advantages as well as disadvantages. This was a novelty for us then. But we got accustomed to it soon. As far as teachers are concerned, most of them had the quality and competence to deliver and some were downright comedians with their own trademark antics. I enjoyed listening to most of them and resented a very few. Some memorable ones…

Nandita chaterjee & Navodita misra: The very beginning of the first semester happened with these two faculties. They knew what they were teaching (This seems like an ordinary statement but if you have seen myriads of teachers and their competence level, you would understand the immensity of it!). They had the standards required for any premiere institutes. They would have been good ambassadors of Alliance if Alliance stood for what it proclaimed.

Kameswaran: I don’t remember listening to his lectures except for the first very few classes and he did not have any complaints about it. He was busy with his business and we were busy with ours. We were more enchanted to his English accent than to his accounts lecture perhaps! He had a bovine kind of character and never scolded anyone.

Smitha: Most of us pitied her because she was given more responsibility than she could ever handle. She was helpful for most of us during our internships or during dissertations. A teacher should exert some control over the class no matter what. Most of us felt she lacked it. Apart from that, she was good

Sivanandam: Took operations research for us. Most of the time went for his earlier experiences in voting machine and BPL rather than for OR. He taught us overheads. Most of the things he taught us were over our heads. Very few people understood what he taught.

Havaldar: A thorough gentleman,an alumni of IIMA. He was a near perfectionist, the only person like him was Dr.Rajesh. He did everything professionally, even when he scolded us. He had a  very good knowledge of what he taught us but i felt the only lacking point was his sense of humor.

Rudramurthy: A quarter of humor, a quarter of arrogance and the rest for knowledge: that’s Rudramurthy. His subject knowledge and his ability to deliver were unquestionable. Very few people who possess knowledge can inspire students to go for a quest for knowledge. This person was capable of that. The way he inspired people in the field of finance especially stock markets was simply amazing. One of the lecturers I truly admired. 

Jatinder: Though seemed very promising at the beginning, he failed to carry that drive. May be all of us failed him. In the end it felt like over promise, under delivery.

Rajesh: A true taskmaster, he knew how to extract work no matter which way it was. He did possess good knowledge and expected a great deal from students which sometimes seemed unrealistic. But he did it with good intentions obviously. One of the few lecturers I really respected and feared! 

All in all though I have my resentment towards Alliance in some issues, in the issues of faculties I have very less complaints.

My Books Review: October '11

Negationism in India – The book starts with the explanation of the term ‘negationism’ in general. Negationism is a denial of historical facts, not the reinterpretation of the known facts. The original usage of the term lies in the denial of the Nazi genocide of the Jews and Gypsies in World War 2. Once the reader gets to know the meaning of negationism, the focus shifts to the Indian version of it which is more wide-spread than the former. 

Continued efforts are made to make the people of India to forget the persecution of Hindus by Muslims over six centuries. An excerpt from the book says “Since about 1920 an effort has been going on in India to rewrite history and to deny the millennium-long attack of Islam on Hinduism. Today, most politicians and English- writing intellectuals in India will go out of their way to condemn any public reference to this long and painful conflict in the strongest terms. They will go to any length to create the illusion of a history of communal amity between Hindus and Muslims.”

Then the author explains how negationism became official policy under congress rule. Great efforts happened to re-write Indian history in a large scale. Then explanation shifts to the distortion of history by Marxist historians and how the academia fell into the hands of Marxists and how they used it to rewrite history according to their ideologies. Many Marxist historians are analysed like: Romila Thapar, Bipin Chandra, Irfan Habib, Gyanendra Pandey etc. Negationism can’t happen without consistent support of the academia and the media. But now, negationists control most part of them. Therefore people seldom get to know the real facts.

In the later part of the book, the ideology of Islam & the character of Mohammed (the founder of Islam) are analyzed. It becomes clear from the argument that Mohammed had political ambitions than spiritual ones. The author demolishes the statement “Islam is good but some Muslims may be bad” but instead proves the opposite and shows how with following Quran and hadith strictly, no Muslim can be at peace with Non-Muslims ever.

This is a milestone book written by the Belgian author Koenraad Elst. Enormous amount of studies of various histories, religion, philosophies, politics, social structure have gone into the making of this book. The author has stayed steadfast to truth and not hesitated in touching a subject which is a ‘taboo’. I’d say this is a very essential book to understand how propaganda is created, how it is sustained for a long period of time by both outside forces and the inside ones and how it destabilizes the country. This is a scholarly work, a highly recommended read.

A fake historian can damage a nation for generations

Tarnish every person, Institution, Period, Confidence...
Ascribe tolerance, magnanimity to the intolerant... 
Portray the inclusive, Open tradition as the one out to swallow others, and the exclusivist, totalitarian ideology as the ideology of broad-mindedness, of peace, tolerance...
Denounce as 'communal' anyone who demands proof... 
Blame victims for the consequence of the ideology of the oppressors...
Suppress the role of comrades in aiding imperial rulers...
Tarnish leaders, reformers who led the nationalist movement...
All the while control institutions, hog patronage, exercise power, and have a good time...wrote Arun Shourie in the introduction to his book Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud. Well, he was absolutely right in his observation about the history writers in India.

History writing in India is very difficult unlike history writing in say Europe. Writing of Indian history in a large scale happened at the time of the British. The Indian history writing is in near absolute control of the writers with Marxist ideology. The underlying tone of Marxist approach towards history can be summed as: ancient societies are primitive, all kinds of social evolutions are class struggle, and India absorbed great things from invaders rather than producing great things on its own. In Marxist version of history, Hindu society is always portrayed as regressive, many Islamic rulers (who were actually religious fanatics) are portrayed as tolerant, a great lie of Aryan-Dravidian division theory is invented to create divide amongst Indians, a great warrior-saint like Guru Tegh Bahadur is called a bandit, freedom fighters are called as terrorists (I clearly remember studying this), great patriots like Aurobindo Ghosh, Swami Vivekananda are touted communal.

Marxists never had scantest respect for the spiritual heritage of India which is actually its core strength. If it did not process that strength, it could never have attracted the greatest minds like Albert Einstein or Mark Twain. Students never study India’s contribution to the world in art, science, metallurgy or various other technologies. Students who receive this kind of education can never know the great heritage of India and they will grow devoid of pride in their country and some of them have contempt for it as well. All the ‘great’ historians that can be listed from the present day India like Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, R.S.Sharma, Bipin Chandra are heavily inclined towards leftist ideologies. Anyone who tries to correct some gross errors is termed ‘communal’. The Marxist historians are doing such a great harm to the country that it can put Macaulay’s dream to shame!

When someone tries to mend these mistakes (as it happened when Murali Manohar Joshi was HRD minister and the attempt was a failure), and present history as it is, then there will be a big hue and cry of ‘saffronization’. When did saffron enter the scene! The lobby of Marxists is very strong that they will make such attempts to fail. They enjoy a strong patronage from the government and support from media as well. This is a hard nexus which may take many decades to break. It may be true that the history writing should not have hold of any ideologies but if an ideology is inevitable, let it be a nationalistic one rather than the putrid communist one.

You may build a magnanimous building. But if it is built on quick sand, the glory is transient. Sooner or later, the building has to fall & will fall. As the old saying goes: truth ultimately triumphs.

If Buddha was born in Saudi Arabia!

Just imagine! A rebel like Buddha having born in Saudi Arabia post 622 A.D! Being a rebel doesn’t mean that one has to go against the establishment through an armed rebellion or though violence. One can go bereft of them as well. Buddha proved to the world it can be done.

At the time when Buddha got enlightened (he never claimed that he was the chosen one as some later sectarian prophets did), the great spiritual truths were not accessible to common public. It was in the besieged castle of the priestly class. The first thing Buddha did was that he made them available for the public. Sanskrit was a priestly language even then. Prakrit was the common language of the people. So, he preached to the people in Prakrit. Buddha never had any intention of starting a religion but later it was nevertheless started in his name. As they say if Christ and Buddha come back now and see what’s being done in their name they will be crying seeing the ignorance of people. 

Buddha was against established believes, dogmas, doctrines of his day. He declared there was no god. That was a big blow for the established religion of the time. He said ‘Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.’ They said everything was ‘atman’ (the soul). Buddha declared all are ‘anatman’ (no-soul). There was no god, no soul. That was a death blow for the religion of his time because most of the doctrines were banked on these two concepts. Still, people did not kill him. They invited him for debates and knowledge was expounded. They worshiped him as god incarnate though he mocked at their customs and belief systems. 

If Buddha was born in some Arab nation and if he was vociferous enough to declare there was no god and if he had mocked at their belief in prophet-hood, we would never have known who the Buddha was because he would have been killed. It requires a great maturity to listen to the critics and counter-argument to the established belief system. Indians always had that maturity. Take Jesus Christ for example. He did not tell any revolutionary truths in the beginning at all. He said some simple truths for common people. But people saw him as a threat to their established religion and they exterminated him. If Jesus had been born in India he would have been worshipped as the god incarnate.

India’s religion was never organized. It had many systems and sub-systems. So, it gave a great freedom like no-where else. One could believe in god, one could believe in no-god, one could believe in nothing and still be a Hindu (though the word ‘Hindu’ was coined much later than the time of Buddha). There were idol worshippers, there were advaitins (who believed in the self and god are the same), there were charvakas (downright materialists who believed in nothing they could not see and for whom sensual enjoyment was everything).There was no action which was considered sacrilegious. In fact, in most of the Indian languages there is no exact word which matches with the meaning of the word sacrilege or blasphemy because the freedom given was such that there was no act which was blasphemous in this nation.

The Indian culture had an incredible assimilation power which was unprecedented. If anyone looks at the ethnicity of Indian population, there is all possible kind of races, religions in this country and all are assimilated so well. Swami Vivekananda while delivering the speech in the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago said “I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation.” That’s the uniqueness and strength of this culture. The very factor that this culture is living despite of various severe assaults from different people starting from Alexander to the Muslim invaders to the British is a testimony to the fact.

There have been many great civilizations but the Indian civilization is the only civilization which has not withered away with time. There should be something immense in this civilization which has made it to stand the test of time. Tolerance to other people and assimilation power are natural traits of Indian culture. So, if anyone comes to me and say Hindus have to learn tolerance, I just throw him a smile and with all contempt possible I’ll say ‘buddy! You don’t know what you are talking about’!!

My Books Review: September '11

     1) Saints and mystics: This book is a brief biography of a few saints and mystics of the world & is published by Ramakrishna Mutt. The saints and mystics that are covered are: Pavhari Baba, Baal Shem Tov, Swami Brahmananda, St. Vincent de Paul, Sri Narayana Guru, St. Teresa of Avila, Kabirdas, Swami Virajananda, Goda Devi, Sri Aurobindo, Gopaler Ma, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Gobind Singh, Akka Mahadevi.
     Though I knew about a few saints in the book, I did not know in detail about the lives like those of Pavhari Baba, St. Teresa or Guru Gobind Singh. It was a good read. 

     2) Many lives, many masters: This book is written by a prominent psychiatrist Dr. Brian Weiss. It starts with a patient with several psychological disorders coming to Dr. Brian for help. In order to cure the patient, the doctor goes for the hypnosis, regression therapy. But after a few sessions, to his amazement the patient in a session instead of going to the early childhood or infancy slips to a past life. The doctor could not believe it because science has not acknowledged the existence of past lives though in some religions the belief exists. But he could not dismiss it as some non-sense because the descriptions given by the patient is so very vivid and accurate and besides the patient had a strict catholic upbringing which doesn’t believe in past life. It was neither hallucination nor delusion because as a trained psychiatrist, he knew the symptoms of those. 

The doctor continues the past life regression therapy and many previous lives of the patient get unfolded. To his surprise, the problems that the patient had began to heal at a very rapid pace than it would in normal type of therapies. This convinced the doctor about the existence of past as well as the future lives. At the end of multiple sessions of therapy, the patient became more than normal, radiating vibrancy. This is a good book in the fields of Para-psychology or ESP.

A letter to women!

     Women! What a wonderful creation you are! All the poetry of the world would not suffice to behold or describe the charm of you. Without you, how barren the world would seem! You bring the color to the otherwise black and white world.

     Just because you were physically weak, how men persecuted you all over the ages! You were seen as a mere object which would satisfy carnal appetite. Shame on the men of the world who did this to you! The idea of men being superior to you was obviously created by the men. Except in physical strength you are no way less than any men. In fact in many others, you are far superior. 

     But thanks to changed global scenario that the situation has began to turn around. You are seen as capable as any other men in the world. But what I feel is that you also fell as a victim to the disease called imitation. Instead of growing in a unique path, you always wanted to tread the path of men. 

     Whenever you imitate any person, you obviously see the person as superior to you and you set the standard accordingly. The person you imitate becomes your yardstick of measurement. You may love or hate the person you imitate but somewhere in the mind, you hold the person higher than yourself. Oppression for many millennia has made a rebel out of a few of you. But when a rebel acts, it is actually a reaction to the existing pattern. So, the rebel can’t think of independent pattern. He/she just modifies the existing pattern.

     You started imitating men from clothing to lifestyle to everything. Though on the outside you claim to be no way inferior, in your psyche you are yet to come out of that. All the feminists who clamor for the equal rights are still keeping men as the reference point. With this kind of thinking we are working well to create a chaotic world where gentleness, love, care are costly commodities. Love, compassion are natural traits of you but have been jeopardized in this mindless imitation. 

     Women of the world! Please heed to these and create your own paths, tread on them fearlessly and thus create a beautiful world in which there is no prejudice based on the gender and both the genders are in harmony with one another.

Awards never give the complete picture

Fame is a perfume of heroic deeds, said Socrates. The way of acknowledging the special deeds of men has been through awards. Surely it is a way of recognition and also as a way of encouraging the talent to achieve something bigger. But, whether the awards are serving their purpose, whether the deserved ones are getting them and whether the awards are deserved by the recipients is always debatable. There have been some serious errors in selection & some serious omissions. For instance, some literary awards are in the stranglehold of some ideologists who stand for particular ideology that any literary work however genuine and genius it may be, if found contrary to the ideology will score some big negatives for the consideration for the award. Many great literary works of many languages have gone to oblivion owing to this factor. It’s not the story of any particular level of award. It happens in all levels: local, national or international. 

The most prestigious award of India ‘Bharat Ratna’ is sometimes given to inept people (like VV Giri, the former president whose only qualification was that he was the president of India once) or given purely out of political reasons (Like when it was given to MGR of Tamil Nadu posthumously). MGR, except being a superstar in the Tamil cine world had no achievements which could entitle him for the prestigious award. For some reasons, Congress wanted the help of the party of MGR. The easiest way congress found to lure the party (AIADMK) was to offer MGR a Bharat Ratna posthumously. What a wicked way! 

Padma Bhushan

Journalist pimps like Burkha Dutt have got the Padma awards, not to forget her cousin brother (not literally of course!!) Rajdeep Sardesai. We all know what kind of a lobby they make and which party they do the lobby for and knowing that we shouldn’t wonder about the awards given to them. I lost my respect for Padma awards when I came to know Teesta Setelvad had got one of those. Teesta Setelvad is a person who has made fame and a living out of Gujarat riots of 2002. Special Investigation Team (SIT) which was set up by the supreme court reported that Teesta Setelvad had cooked up cases and conjured false witnesses in testifying for the Gujarat riots. This was proved beyond doubts. She has been instrumental in demonizing Narendra Modi. When this kind of a person can get the award, anyone can get any award. 

Jnanapeeth

The literary world of India is in the strong hold of some people who have subscribed to some ideologies (mostly leftist). Their number is so huge that the panel which recommends and selects the literary awards most of it will be with leftist ideology. Any works however brilliant they may be, if found conflicting to their ideology, will never get the deserved award. Else how can one explain a literary giant of kannada S L Bhairappa is yet to get Jnanapeth award? Some leftist writers like U R Ananthamurthy or Girish Karnad got the award decades ago. This is not to belittle their literary capabilities. But the way will be paved easy for the one who is a leftist and termed ‘progressive’. 

We might wonder the credibility of the booker prize after seeing downright nonsensical people like Arundati Roy getting awards. There is an allegation that almost all the Indian authors who have bagged the booker prizes till now (with the exception of Kiran Desai perhaps) have portrayed India and Indian life poorly. Because I have neither read Arundati Roy’s ‘God of small things’ nor Arvind Adiga’s ‘white tiger’, I can’t vouch for this.

Oscar is blind :

Oscar eluded many people who deserved it and has many times gone to completely wrong set of people. One of the greatest directors of all time Alfred Hitchcock, some of the finest actors like Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole never got Oscar. So goes the saying: Oscar is blind. 

Oscar

I wondered how a cheap movie like slumdog millionaire got the Oscar! What artistic values had the film got! I could not find any of them. I felt the director was like a rag picker who picks and looks out for crap and as we know whatever one is in pursuit of, he is sure to find it. So the director found all the craps in India and using that he made a film which got an Oscar. The so-called first world still wants to see India as the country of snake charmers. So, the movie made an ideal menu for the first-world appetite for poor portrayal of India and thus got an Oscar. People would have dismissed the movie as garbage and would have forgotten it but some people tried to immortalize it by giving an Oscar.

So, in the midst of all these issues I am forced to think that awards are not the ideal way to judge a person’s worth and perhaps a person’s capability or worth can never be judged!!

A small critique on religions !

Muni Tarun sagar once said that the house should be destroyed after a hundred years of its construction and then should be rebuilt. In the same way, religions should be destroyed after one thousand years. Because of a long duration of time, many junks might have made their way to the religion. So, it would be near impossibility to set all the things right. The actual meaning and intention of the religion would have lost long ago. So, the process of cleaning the unwanted aspects should always be on.



Any religion should be open to criticism. Because that’s the main thing which helps to look deep about certain aspects and clean them if needed and also helps in reaffirming the faith in the good aspects of the religion. But a few religions consider themselves to be perfect and beyond evaluation or criticism. Worse than that, they intimidate the people who criticize it and create a kind of phobia.

Hinduism which is perhaps the oldest religion of the world has faced the same. Owing to the long-presence of it, it picked up junk and some aspects of it became intolerable. Though it had some very beautiful things that no other religions had, the junk had piled up so much that it began to mask the great aspects of the religion. So, the reformers came for the rescue. They could see the problem. Many of them criticized and brought many reforms. But due to its enormity and vastness, still many junks has remained. But, one appreciable fact is that Hinduism is open to criticism. No acts were considered as blasphemous acts even though many acts were nothing less.

Christianity also gives a fair amount of freedom in criticizing the religion and for the reforms. But as Christianity is a highly organized religion, it is not as easy as Hinduism to criticize and evaluate. Organization of religion has its own weaknesses and strength. But, with its limitations, Christianity has come a long way and it has given scope for criticism and evaluation.

But the religion which hasn’t opened up at all is the religion of Islam. The very word Islam means ‘to surrender’. It’s a beautiful thing to surrender to something. Unless you are truly humble, it is impossible to surrender to something completely. But as mentioned before, no religion is perfect. Every religion has its own piece of scrap which has to be cleaned up from time to time. If the scraps are not cleaned, the scraps become more and cover the entire religion and the religion appears as a joke.

Islam has hardly gone through reforms over the years. It is as medieval as it was in the 7th century. There is not much difference between Aurangazeb and Osama Bin Laden. Both might belong to completely different eras but the point to be noted is that both were motivated by the same ideology. Obviously, there should be something wrong in some part of the religion. If someone questions that, instead of brooding over the reasons, the very act of questioning is considered blasphemous and the person who questions it is persecuted or worse, killed. So, none dares to question and all want to be politically correct.

Subramaniam Swamy (President of Janatha Party and former minister) had written an article about Islamic terror and the ways to wipe it. Though there were some extreme points in it, he had raised some valid issues. I had posted the article on my Facebook profile. Irfan, one of my college mates in my post graduation got offended by the article and he began to throw some personal slurs at me and also started his line of defense defending his religion and tried to portray his religion as the religion of peace(had he said piece, I would have readily agreed!). The person was so blind that he was not even ready to acknowledge the well-established fact of the Islamic terror. Then Naveen, one of my college mates in my graduation joined this guy and they continued to defend their argument.

Then the rhetoric began: ‘Terrorism has no religions’, ‘You can’t attribute terrorism to one single religion’, ‘Terrorism has a socio-economic-political cause than religious ones’. It was a typical Indian situation: One guy from the minority, to defend him a pseudo-secular intellectual and one hopeless moron against them. My hope to drive home some points to them remained hope till the end because one person had mortgaged his intelligence to his religion and the other one to some ideology and pseudo-secularism. So, the arguments yielded no results. But, the next morning I was surprised to see that my name was promptly removed from his friend’s list. I was bewildered at the level of narrow-mindedness!!

To do a cover-up job for a problem is not the way to encounter a problem at all. To solve any problem, one has to acknowledge the existence of the problem first. If someone is the denial mode and act as if the problem doesn’t exist, the existence of the problem is undeterred and it can only exacerbate over a period of time.

My Books Review: August '11

1) The Metamorphosis: This short story is written by the German author Frank Kafka. A person when wakes up in the morning is suddenly transformed into a bug. How the members of the family interact with him, his thought process forms the later part of the story. I did not find this book exciting at all though it is one of the famous books of Kafka and this work is a celebrated work of his. 

2) Aavarana: This is one of the famous and controversial novels by the celebrated Kannada novelist S.L. Bhairappa. This is the first ever Kannada novel that I ever finished. One of the main reasons that I am writing the review in English because of the significance of the matters those are discussed in the novel. It surpasses the boundaries of language and perhaps even nation. 

S.L. Bhyrappa

We have novels and many other works of art which have condemned the ill practices of Hinduism. The numbers are really huge. Some have gone to win prestigious awards. But do we see any single major work that criticizes the ill practices of Islam? The answer is an emphatic no. Definitely not in a country like ours which is filled with hypocrites who have mortgaged their lives to ideologies and fame at the cost of nation’s good. A part of this novel is a minor attempt in that direction (though the major part is about the history).

History as we know in India is a completely distorted one where the academia is in the stranglehold of the Marxists who warp history to fit it into their ideology. So an average person unless makes an effort to know the real facts, he/she never gets to know the real history at all in his/her life. This novel is a great attempt to present history as it is. It concentrates mainly on the Mogul rule. The novel is very aptly named as ‘Aavarana’ or ‘the veil’ that comes between the person who wants to know the history and the history. The real veil is historian himself/herself. So, it is a Herculean task to present history as it is without coloring. In that way, the novel is more like a historical book than a novel. 

Aavarana - 'The veil' (Cover Page)

A filmmaker (Lakshmi/Razia) who is a Hindu gets converted to Islam to marry her lover and also as a sign of rebellion against Hinduism much to the displeasure of her father. Prof. Shastri who gives pose as a secularist persuades her to change her religion to Islam. The character of Prof. Shastri is an apotheosis of modern day secularists and historians .The person whom she marries acts as a non-believer and sometime after the marriage uses the methods available in his religion to persecute her. Walls rise between the couples and they stay separately. Lakshmi’s father dies and Lakshmi goes to her native. There she sees a huge collection of historical books and notes made by her father. She decides to stay in the village and devote her time to the study of real history.

The story unfolds after she begins to read the books. Novel-within-novel technique is used in narrating the further story. She begins to write a story which happens in the mogul India. Her life progresses as we see the plight of today’s India. Two stories run in parallel. In the story she writes, through the character of a Rajput prince who then is forcibly converted to Islam (and assumes the name Khwaja Jahan) the history of mogul rule is shown. Their high intolerance towards other religions, seeing women as mere pleasurable objects, slavery, homosexuality, their fanatic behavior, destruction of hundreds of temples and further conversions into mosques, and many other things are shown in a vivid way. There should be something wrong in you if your blood doesn’t boil even once after reading the novel completely. Khwaja Jahan is castrated (made a eunuch called as ‘hijdas’) and used as a sex slave and traded in the market as any other commodity. The reader wonders whether the character symbolizes the modern day India which even though has a huge potential, it acts as if it is emasculated. The character knows what is right and what is wrong but it can’t act because of sheer helplessness. It reflects modern day India.

This book will be hated by intellectuals for sure who in the garb of promoting secularism are distorting the real facts and are doing a great disservice to the nation. They can’t digest this novel which is so raw. One of the main intentions of the novel is to face truth as it is. Truth doesn’t need any decoration. But do our people have the mettle to stomach it? I doubt it. Through this book, Bhairappa has stripped the false historians naked which in itself is a great thing in the present day India.

If someone is questioning the author’s credentials in talking about history, they should know that the author has not written any historical facts without being backed by research or necessary literary works. The huge list of bibliography at the end of the book is the testimony to the fact. The people who oppose this work should engage in a debate with the author regarding specific points which they disagree rather than resorting in character assassination of the author.

3) 7 habits of highly effective people: This is the most famous, celebrated work of leadership expert, an authority on principle-based leadership Stephen Covey. I read the book for the second time. Each time you read, you get a new perspective: that’s a classic. Having read many personality development books, I can say this is not just 'another' book. Among many personality development books around, this books goes deeper than them. As the author says in the beginning of the book “we can achieve quantum improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude & get to work on the root, the paradigms from which our attitudes and behaviors flow”. The book attempts that very honestly. 

The author has presented the ideas of self improvements through 7 habits & has given many tools like the 4 quadrants of time management, functioning through principle centre, importance of personal mission statement, win/win attitude etc. The author has taken pain in the effort to explain all the concepts, tools that he has presented to the minutest details. This book deserves all the accolades that it has got.

4) Nano - The next revolution: This book is written by award winning scientific writer Mohan Sundara Rajan. This books talks about the progress of nano-technology over years and the potential it holds for the future. Though it claims it is for the lay-reader, I thought otherwise. Many concepts were bouncers. The nano-tachnology in the future envelops all our lives because all the major areas of science will be touvhed by it. If all goes well in the R & D in the field of Nano-technology, perhaps we can see the world as we see it in science fiction movies.