Swami Nithyananda or Spycam Journalism

Sunday, 7. March 2010 - 11:30 PM | 64 comments »

Since day before yesterday, the media and large sections of the public is having a gala time over Swami Nithyananda’s bedroom antics with a Tamil actress. Everybody is outraged. “Shocked,” “devastated,” “how can he do this?” “betrayal of trust,” “Fake Gurus,” is the typical reaction from what we call the “layman.” But here’s the thing: he’ll probably be back and he’ll thrive even better in Round 2. However, for now, what was intended has been accomplished very well: manufacturing mob outrage using sleaze tactics.

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Blood Over Burqa

Tuesday, 2. March 2010 - 6:19 PM | 52 comments »

An Introduction of Sorts

Question: What’s common between Nicolas Sarkozy, Taslima Nasrin, free speech, and the Indian media?
Answer: The Burqa, the veil, the headscarf, the chador, the purdah, which is regarded by various people variously as “dignified,” “protective,” “secure,” and “comfortable.”

Those who hold any view that opposes these positive connotations are given a taste of what our media paints as “peaceful protest.” As one newspaper, an entire district and parts of another district tragically discovered.

Communal violence erupted in Shimoga and Hassan, in the Malnad region of Karnataka on Monday, resulting in the death of two persons in police firing.

Riotous incidents across the two cities were sparked off by protests by the minority community against a controversial article, by Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, published in a Kannada daily in its Sunday edition. Scores of people were injured in incidents of stabbing and large scale stone-throwing.

Most of us give 99% discount when we read words like “protest by members of a certain community,” “people of a certain community were upset and took out a march,” “clashes between two communities erupted,” “mobsters pelted stones,” “protesters commmitted arson,” “hooligans burnt tyres and public vehicles…” You can make up variations of this.  A couple of really brave media houses deign to use “minority community” but that’s usually veiled.

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Misplaced Prescriptions for the BJP

Monday, 1. March 2010 - 6:10 PM | 18 comments »

Swapan Dasgupta, a writer I’ve admired for long writes in the Wall Street Journal about the BJP’s chance of making a fresh start under Nitin Gadkari. It’s really an OK piece compared to Swapan’s more incisive articles. No new insight or food for thought and not quite blog-worthy except for this.

Since it lost power in 2004, the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s principal opposition party, has lost its earlier appeal among the middle classes and the youth. This erosion of support was a consequence of a tired leadership, internal feuding, the pursuit of a policy of blind obstruction to all government initiatives and a failure to check sectarian hotheads identified with its Hindu nationalist ideology. From being a party of conservative Middle India, the BJP ceded its centrist space to the Congress Party. In recent months, it has been paralysed by a failure to counter the appeal of Rahul Gandhi, the Congress heir-apparent.

As he says, the BJP’s multipronged problems today surely stem from a mix of these factors but to say that BJP ceded its “centrist space” is to miss the mark really hugely. And this is also why we urgently need to define and fix certain terminologies in public debate. For starters, there is no such thing as a “center” or “right” in India as I’ve argued several times in this blog.

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Of Wisdom & Scholars

Thursday, 25. February 2010 - 3:11 PM | 5 comments »

Stumbled upon this gem of a verse from Bhartruhari’s Nitishataka yesterday. Very compelling and relevant for all times. Rough translation is mine.

Boddharo matsaragrastaah prabhavaah smayadooshitaah|
Abodhaapahataschaanye jeernamange subhashitam||

Consumed with jealousy are the teachers and scholars, repositories of knowledge and wisdom,
Polluted by arrogance are the rulers, enforcers of justice, character, and conduct,
Beaten by their own ignorance are the ignorant who remain ignorant–
Thus are the wise words digested by us, remain hidden within us.

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Pune Before and After and Ever After

Monday, 15. February 2010 - 3:04 AM | 56 comments »

Pune is just the name of another city where the blasts occurred. A welcome gift on the eve of Valentines Day to reassure our hearts pining for terror-love that we were so used to during UPA Ver 1.0. And the difference between Shivraj Patil and Chidambaram is probably nothing more than name, education, and taste in fashion.

Pune is just the name of another city because we’ve had a history of one attack in every six weeks: does it really matter where it happened and where it’ll happen next?

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The Charioteer is Krishna (Devaraya) Himself

Sunday, 14. February 2010 - 4:08 AM | 35 comments »

Writing about the recently-concluded Hampi festival, the SpIndian Express boldly asks:

Who’s the Charioteer?

The Hampi festival is an annual cultural extravaganza that began 15 years ago with the Hampi Ustav in 1995. This year’s festival holds a special significance because it marks the 500th year of Sri Krishnadevaraya’s coronation in 1509-10. But the festival per se is not what prompted this Indian Express piece. Among others, the real reason is that it is the BJP government that organized, oversaw, and ensured that it was a huge success. And it was a huge success no matter what the media wants you to believe. Thankfully, we’ve not yet reached a stage where we’re completely ashamed to even take pride in local traditions, heroes, and accomplishments to the extent that we disown them. Every tiny hamlet, village, boulder, hill, and cave in the remotest corner of India has what you call a sthala purana or local legend/tale/story. If you are the scholarly type, you typically dig into the authenticity, truth, historicity or otherwise of that sthala purana. But to the inhabitants of that hamlet, it is a living truth–it provides them the heroes they need, and gives them the values and ideals that guide their lives. To that extent, these legends, heroes, and artifacts are worship-worthy. You might with the might of your scholarship, prove that it is legend/tale/fiction but you can’t negate the real experience that’s wedded to the lives of these inhabitants. On the negative side, if your scholarship has ideological/political backing coupled with lung power, you’ll succeed not just in showing how amazing your scholarship is but, tragically, in destroying a generations-old value system that made people better people. It’s a different matter that your scholarship doesn’t provide an equivalent alternative.

Which is exactly what the Indian Express article sets out to do.

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Tackling Corruption: the Dharmic Way

Friday, 12. February 2010 - 9:05 PM | 9 comments »

What do we do today when we want to counter and/or curb corruption? We pass laws and hope that somebody “clean” will enforce them. But we know how that goes. And for all our pompous breast-beating about the hoary Indian culture, it remains a fact that today we’re one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Equally, the fact also remains that it represents a great fall from a time when India was respected and sought after because it was the thought leader of the world–I use the word “thought” in an all-encompassing sense. One important reason for this fall is the destruction of Hindu values. To understand why I emphasized values, it’s important to recall that M. Hiriyanna called Indian Philosophy as a treatise on values.

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Rediscovery of India

Tuesday, 2. February 2010 - 12:30 PM | 73 comments »

It’s been about 10 years since I started this blog and this post is a personal stock-taking of sorts. This blog started as a space for personal rants/ruminations that made sense perhaps only to me. At a level, it still remains that way. But I’ll spare you those details. The point is it did take a definitive turn at some point for a reason I’m still trying to locate. However, a lot of folks continue to return to this space for whatever reasons and I’m both grateful and overwhelmed for that.

This freaky prelude was necessary as we shall see.

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Queasy Disquiet in the Media or a FAQ for Vir Sanghvi

Thursday, 28. January 2010 - 9:34 PM | 29 comments »

Two fine posts, the first, a well-crafted crafted response to Vir Sanghvi’s mention of a mysterious Blogging Elite and the other, a gentle but firm rap on the media’s superiority complex represented again by Vir Sanghvi and Sagarika Ghose (whose choice of words in her tweet is quite heartwarming).

So here’s an FAQ of sorts that (hopefully) addresses Vir Sanghvi’s concerns. But before that, it helps to keep Offstumped’s words as a backgrounder.

There is a perceptible disquiet amongst the Delhi based media elite who have for long exercised a monopoly on opinion in the public debate. With their attempts at editorialising news with a psuedo-progressive slant now under severe challenge, they have taken to the good old leftist game of slander by label if not by libel.

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The Professor Who Preaches Child Love

Thursday, 28. January 2010 - 2:48 AM | 48 comments »

So when I read this email exchange between a certain Professor Ashley Tellis and Nitin earlier this evening, I merely smiled. I attributed the Professor’s venomous tirade to either of these: uncontrollable blood pressure that blasted through his keyboard, or a naive assumption that Nitin is his student. And such venom on a really trivial issue: publishing a photograph.

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