Chit of a girl and Peter's Principle

Howard was doing great as a manager of a team of young professionals. Looking at his performance, the management decided to promote him to the post of VP. Initially things looked great. After a while, things started crumbling down. He could not function as per the expectations of the higher management; he could not handle the responsibilities. In short, he was incompetent for the new position. The phenomenon which describes this is called as peter’s principle. This is usually paraphrased as "Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence". This was formulated in the book “The peter principle” authored by Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull.

We have our own version of Howard, don’t we? Watch CNN-IBN every night from Monday to Thursday at 22:00. There comes the feminine version of Howard called Sagarika Ghose. The program is titled “Face the nation” after popular American news program by the same name (The name can be shortened as FTN, you can substitute the F with your favorite F-word. The program qualifies for that, I assure you.)

This lady Sagarika was happy with writing on semi-porn stuffs and advocating, urging men that it's their duty to provide orgasms to their women. But alas she came to serious journalism, just like our Howard got promoted as the VP. Journalism once had high standards and required thorough subject knowledge, analyzing skills. If you ever doubted whether the standards have fallen, you just have to look at the purported journos like Sagarika, all your doubts will be removed at once. It becomes amply clear that the standard that journos used to have, has taken a severe beating. It just takes some stammering in English and some amount of glamor to be called a journo these days.

As far as I remember, the first ever article I read of SG was on caste system and how Purusha Sukta supports it. If you’ve taken trouble of reading that article, you’d arrive at this -What is SG’s problem? - Caste system. What’s her solution? Re-write Purusha Sukta. Splendid, isn't it!?. By the by, who is her authority? - Some Dalit writers in general, Kancha Iliah in particular. This is the man who harbors visceral hatred all that is Hindu and is a racist par excellence. This is the man who is frequently invited as an ‘expert’ on Hinduism on her show. Inviting Kancha Iliah to speak about Hinduism as an authority is akin to inviting Hitler to talk about Judaism (In terms of intense hatred they harbor – If you have followed the man, his activities and his writings, I think you would concur with me). Coming to the article – The article is so vacuous, has logical and factual holes so huge that you can drive your car through it. So, the less said about the article, the better it is.

This is the story of just one of her articles that I happen to distinctly remember. She has many such articles and shows in her repertoire that would insult your intelligence and militate against facts and reasoning. This is what made Ram Jethmalani to call her a chit of a girl. The drubbing she got from Jethmalani is an epic and should be a warning for other journos who are ignorant of the facts at hand and thrive on sensationalism. The blunders, willful deceptions and inane utterances of her and her ilk are chronicled and well lampooned in this site (or you can follow her on twitter for your daily dose of comic relief).

SG has passed through the aforementioned stage of Peter’s principle. She has risen to the level of incompetence for a long time now. In any decently run news channels, she would have been sacked long back for her stupid utterances and blunders. But the irony is that she is the deputy editor of a ‘reputed’ channel where her hubby is the editor. Media which is supposed to be one of the watch-dogs of democracy has fallen victim to a thing which severely compromises the principles of democracy – nepotism. The irony just died a million times over.

 

About time we paid heed to the warning of Peter Hammond

Random browsing has sometimes yielded me some wonderful information. Sometimes in fact, I’ve hit the goldmine. In one of those random browsing sessions I came across this man and his book in which he's made a few very interesting and accurate phenomenon resulting from the growth of Islam in any country. In fact in one of my earlier posts, I had mentioned about the propositions he had made.

As we witnessed fresh Islamic violence in many parts of India (again!) last year, I wondered whether the same propositions could be applied to individual states. Interestingly the results matched the proposition. Though it can't be taken as an axiomatic truth, it's very close to it.

So, what happened last year? Last July there were series of riots between the Bodos (large ethnic tribe of Assam) and Muslims in Assam, Azad-Maidan riots in Mumbai (the motive was nothing to do any issues related to India) and tens of riots in Uttar Pradesh, a state ruled by ultra-secular party called Samajwadi Party.

If you followed the usual ‘secular’ media, chances are less you knew the details of them. The UP story was almost blacked out by the entire spectrum of mainstream media. The secular lambs in media choke while reporting anything where the ‘secular’ parties are involved and people from the ‘religion of peace’ are the perpetrators. If not for the social media, we would never have known many crimes and even riots that mainstream media faithfully routinely blacks out.

Mea Culpa! I missed out another ‘secular’ state. Didn’t I? No, I have missed two in fact. We’ll come to the other one a little later. Let me talk about the first one: West Bengal. This February, West Bengal (24 Paraganas) saw a slew of anti-Hindu violence for avenging the alleged murder of an imam of the local mosque. Many were injured, many houses were destroyed. As with all other riots, media turned blind eye on this incident too.

What do these states have in common? – An overwhelming majority of Muslim population. Take a look at these figures:

UP – 17.1%
Kerala – 24.7%
WB – 25.2%
Assam – 30.93%
J & K – 67%

Note:

1) These figures are from 2001 census.

2) Given the immense growth and fertility rate among the Muslims all across the world, there should be considerable increase in these figures as well. Our government was so pusillanimous that it couldn’t disclose the breakdown based on religion in the 2011 census.

3) The figure that is given for J & K is of entire state of J & K. If you consider the Muslim population of only Kashmir valley, it’s more than 98% and it’s close to being a Dar al-Islam.

Alright! Now the obvious question - Can one infer such a thing i.e correlation between communal violence, Jihadi terrorism with the increase of Muslim population by some isolated incidents of violence? May be not! But there is no denying the fact that whenever the Muslim population increases beyond a point i.e. when they become the majority, the rights of the then minority will be in jeopardy.(Also, anti-national activities will rise. Same could be said about Christian-dominated regions like Nagaland or Mizoram but it has many other factors to consider, has a different context and is beyond the scope of this post)

To cut the long story start: Infiltration of Bangladeshis has been a big problem from many decades. It has affected both the states of West Bengal and Assam. Although well-known, the secular parties outrightly denied at worst or tried to play it down at best because the illegal immigrants for them don’t appear as national threats but as potential votes. That’s the level our ‘secular’ politicians have plumbed. This is the primary reason for the Muslim-Bodo clashes that happened last year. That’s the short story of two states. Now coming to the other two states: Uttar Pradesh and Kerala. Current political scenario in both the states is completely dominated by Muslims or those whose hearts selectively bleed only for Muslims. Their hearts bleed to an extent where they get ready to jettison terrorism cases against Muslim youths, who according to them are 'mistaken' as terrorists; to an extent they give hero’s welcome to a convicted terrorist like Madani. All in all, there is a huge competition to prove who is more secular in the lot. This kind of political climate provides a fertile ground for the anti-national activities. As recent intelligence has proved, these have become safe havens and breeding ground for Jihadi forces.

If this rampant minoritysm morphing as secularism goes unchallenged and if the same political climate continues where every issue of national importance is reduced to mindless debate of secularism vs communalism, if hindus continue to be in deep slumber then, consider a strong foundation is being laid towards making India an Islamic Republic.

Book Review - The End of Faith

Introduction:

End of faith is a book by Sam Harris. Going by the title, I had assumed it to be a treatise on atheism like- say- The God Delusion of Richard Dawkins. But to my surprise it didn’t turn out to be one. But instead it was a work which diagnosed the phenomenon called faith (or belief) and its various manifestations from various dimensions and its impact on the world. Having proficiency in neurology and allied sciences, Sam Harris does a good job in it.

Synopsis:

First of all, the concept of belief is examined with all its psychological clutches that hold us.

“A BELIEF is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person's life. Are you a scientist? A liberal? A racist? These are merely species of belief in action. Your beliefs define your vision of the world; they dictate your behavior; they determine your emotional responses to other human beings.”

Then the focus shifts from belief to the next obvious territory: the territory of religion. Sam Harris warns about the religious bigotry and its effects.

“It seems that if our species ever eradicates itself through war, it will not be because it was written in the stars but because it was written in our books”

The primary focus is on the Abrahamic religions which have a common root: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three have many similarities and all have exclusive truth claims. Sam Harris goes to the roots of ‘holy’ scriptures of these religions and examines them. He rebukes the truth monopolies the religions claim to have.

“The idea that any one of our religions represents the infallible word of the One True God requires an encyclopedic ignorance of history, mythology, and art even to be entertained—as the beliefs, rituals, and iconography of each of our religions attests to centuries of cross- pollination among them.”

While examining these original texts (Old Testament, New Testament, Koran, Sunnah etc), he shows how they are inherently intolerant and inspires violence against the non-believers. The episodes of medieval Christianity: the never ending witch-hunts, inquisition, burning heretics at the stake make for a nauseating reading and makes one wonder how much blood have spilled for the sake of belief.

Then his gaze turns towards east. He observes, in the east, non-sectarian spiritual traditions have developed which never developed in the west in a full scale and ponders on the reason. In his own words: 

“If there is an equally arresting image that accounts for why nondualistic, empirical mysticism seems to have arisen only in Asia, I have yet to find it. But I suspect that the culprit has been the Christian, Jewish,and Muslim emphasis on faith itself. Faith is rather like a rhinoceros, in fact: it won't do much in the way of real work for you, and yet at close quarters it will make spectacular claims upon your attention.”

He then dwells on the issue of conscious mind, the functioning and the intricacies and all the exhortations of western philosophers like Descartes, Pascal, and Sartre et al. Then he makes an arresting conclusion:

“ Nevertheless, when the great philosopher mystics of the East are weighed against the patriarchs of the Western philosophical and theological traditions, the difference is unmistakable: Buddha, Shankara, Padmasambhava, Nagarjuna, Longchenpa, and countless others down to the present have no equivalents in the West. In spiritual terms, we appear to have been standing on the shoulders of dwarfs.”

Then the focus is shifted to Buddhism and the long tradition of Buddhists to focus on the mind and its functioning. He posits Buddhism in the high pedestal among religions which is rational and most of the claims can be empirically verified. He mocks the difference in understanding of the universe and its functioning between Eastern and western tradition thus:

“It is no exaggeration to say that meetings between the Dalai Lama and Christian ecclesiastics to mutually honor their religious traditions are like meetings between physicists from Cambridge and the Bushmen of the Kalahari to mutually honor their respective understandings of the physical universe.”

He makes a very important distinction which most miss: The difference between mysticism and religious tradition. To paraphrase him –

“MYSTICISM is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion .The mystic has reasons for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical. The roiling mystery of the world can be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experienced free of concepts (this is mysticism). Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time. It is the denial—at once full of hope and full of fear—of the vastitude of human ignorance.”  

He nails the coffin called faith thus :

“Faith is simply the license they give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail When rational inquiry supports the creed it is championed; when it poses a threat, it is derided; sometimes in the same sentence. Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic, and thus it is faith that keeps the whole terrible edifice of religious certainty still looming dangerously over our world.”

Conclusion:

This is one of the few books written in the spirit of free enquiry. Usually the books which take critical position on religion take the side of atheism, and eventually end up advocating it. But this book is an exception. While looking the faith, religion and the dangers which loom from it, it also looks at the possibility of expansion of human consciousness through non-sectarian spiritual traditions and methods. It’s a strong, scholarly work rooted in reason, science and rationality.