Sunday Posts

My previous post, o n whether Hinduism is the only thing to unite India , to which my answer was negative, was based on the idea that Indian culture is quite distinct from 'Hinduism'. It is this point that needs further elaboration, as the apologists of the Hindu India, both the traditionalists and the new liberal kinds, claim that they are one and the same. I was brought up in a Brahmin family, and read Sanskrit - primarily as my grandmother was a 'Pandit' and a Sanskrit teacher - and read the epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. For a year of my life, after I went through the 'Upanayana', I performed a puja three times a day. Later in life, I read Upanishad and Gita out of intellectual curiousity. And, yet, this still does not cover the core texts of Hinduism - most critically, the various commentaries by later Holy men, which, for many Hindus, represent the revealed religion.  But this is perhaps the key point: That someone may grow up in a Hindu milieu...

Is it important to have an independent Indian imagination? The question may be too obvious and too jarring at the same time. Too obvious, because the imagination of the Indian Republic was derived from the colonial imagination of India, and the new Republic did not just inherit the colonial laws, polity, ceremonies and buildings, but also its language, geography, ideas and conceptions of itself. But too jarring at the same time, because it is obvious that independence is good and dependence is bad, and the question is attempting to open a debate that is already settled in most people's minds. But independence of imagination is not like independence as a nation state, decoupling the bureaucracies and changing the personnel. It is also different from shifting the power structure, replacing one elite by another. An independent imagination may involve a reinvention of knowledge, questioning what is valuable and how should one look at the world. This is disruptive, but also, in ...

Islamic Terrorism has made news and focused minds in the recent weeks. It did not help that a section of the Turkish Military tried a coup against its Government - perhaps in the Secular cause against the Islamic politics of Mr Erdoğan - and it counted as another instance of Islam being violent. The Egyptian government is intent on putting to death more than a hundred Muslim Brotherhood leaders and members - the Government is tacitly backed by the Americans - but it also is counted as Islam being violent. As someone told me recently, "All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims", as if that proves Islam is a violent religion. I did tell him, after the religious scholar Reza Aslan, that taking one example and generalising it to a whole community is indeed bigotry, but this is unlikely to stop him in the future. Using a term which is now very popular in India, he called me 'psuedo-liberal'. I am fascinated by this term, not least because I g...

1. What religion are you, I was once asked at a dinner table. I am an atheist, I said. The conversation stopped. After the pause, someone asked me whether I am a militant and whether I go around challenging and changing other people's beliefs. I do not do this, and hence, he said, I should say I am agnostic, rather than an atheist. I have, ever since, pondered over the distinction. 2. It was very different even a few years ago. I was brought up a Hindu. I started the usual - caste conscious, full of superstition about auspicious days (I still sometimes feel good about starting things on Tuesdays), and believed that the goddess in the family temple can grant me a thing or two. I also believed in astrology, and had a detailed chart telling me what will happen in my life, as did everyone else I knew. 3.  I am not sure if there was a precise moment Scepticism caught up with me. But I remember some awkward moments. There was someone very elderly and ...

I look forward to read Karen Armstrong's Fields of Blood , which is waiting for me at one of the stops of my inevitable work tours. Ms Armstrong's point, as I picked up from the reviews, that religion can not be held directly responsible for violence, intrigued me, because that is precisely what I believe. I, therefore, look forward to engage with her argument and understand the other point-of-view. I am indeed not dismissive before I managed to read the book, but hoping that she has something to offer more than the assertion, oft-repeated, that no religious doctrine is actually founded on violence. It must be noted, at this point, that while this is a common defense (that no religion encourages violence), it is, by no means, the common understanding. A large number of people in the world believe Islam directly encourages violence, given the acts of Islamic terrorists in the recent years. Indeed, a previous generation, having experienced worldwide bloodshed incited by imp...

India, after sixty years of committed secularism, has turned a corner. The founding assumptions of India was that in order to survive, it must become a secular country. Indeed, such thinking was shaped by the then recent battles with two-nation theory, which the Indian nationalists lost and the country was divided, and the persistent British argument that India couldn't be a viable country because of its diversity. It was all but natural to make diversity a central theme of the constitution that was drafted - it was avowedly secular and non-sectarian and allowed the Indian states to retain many powers - and the subsequent efforts of the nation's leaders were to commit to an 'idea of India' free of any religious or cultural definition. We are now entering the second stage of the process, when the partition, and all the doubts about viability of India, are distant memories. A new confidence has now replaced the insecurities and doubts that shaped the responses o...

Knock on the door on a busy day and I am forced to discuss whether things will get better. This time, it is preachers from Jehovah's Witnesses.  My normal answer that things will surely get better does not end the discussion: I have to justify my statement pointing to our infinitesimal capacity to solve problems which appeared unsolvable at different points in history. Next moment, I was read from the Bible about God's promise to wipe every tear. Despite my best intentions, I disagree, as politely as possible, saying that Man may have to solve its own problems.  Thereby, I start a debate which I knew is without outcome. So, if man can solve its problems all by itself, why do we have wars, terrorism, corruption now that we are at the peak of our civilisation? My answer: We thought we were at the peak of our civilisation at all times by some people, yet we always had problems. Come to think of it, there were always people telling us that we can't solve our p...

It does not take long to undo civilization. An insightful urban myth, as told in India, involves a High Level Japanese delegation and the then Chief Minister of Bihar , one of India's poorest and most lawless (at least then) state. The Japanese, for whom the Buddhist shrine in Sarnath (allegedly Buddha's mausoleum) is one of the holiest places on earth, were dejected looking at the state of Bihar and offered to help: Give us Bihar for seven years and we shall turn Bihar into Japan, they said. The Chief Minister, famous in India for his quips, reportedly answered: Oh, give us Japan for seven minutes and we shall turn it into Bihar . But my context for today's post is not Bihar , nor economic development, but Egypt. Watching the television in the comfort of the Christmas break should be a pleasurable thing, but it is not. The stories of violence keep monopolizing the headlines. Today's news tells me the bombings in an Egyptian church which killed a score of praying Co...

I usually step aside debates with no end, and the question of existence of God is one such thing. However, this is one debate very difficult to run away from, particularly in today's world where God is making a comeback. In every debate he keeps springing up, everyday news and big debates of the day centre on him and he definitely has the full support of almost all governments in the world. So, if I am asked whether I believe in the existence of God, it is very difficult not to have an answer. The answer could be quite straightforward. Most people who know me will know that I am quite a 'practising' Hindu, reading up some of the ancient texts and sprinkling my conversations with references from what I learnt in my childhood. I am not the temple-going kind, neither do I pray much publicly; but then there is a temple I go to if I am feeling restless and downbeat. This inevitably makes me believe in the existence of God, surely. However, like everything else with me, I am afr...

Four separate incidents in the last few weeks, and suddenly, Samuel Huntingdon's Clash of Civilization thesis looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy: First, a pastor in an obscure church in Florida decides to burn Koran on the 11 th September, apparently in retaliation of the perfectly legal plan to open an Islamic community centre at a site near Ground Zero. The event ended in a farce, the Pastor finally agreeing to cancel the event after worldwide condemnation, though not before making a face-saving claim that the community centre in New York will be moved, which the Imam in New York flatly denied. Next, France's legislators outlaw wearing Burkha in public places. This comes after their completely illegal and racially motivated expulsion of Roma gypsies from the country, another desperately xenophobic stance by the deeply unpopular President, the neo -Napoleon Sarkozy . If the French Muslims took a leaf out of Gandhi and turned this into a non-violent civil disobedience, ...

My initial guilt about using the word Divinity is now gone. Initially, this was word play, I meant religiosity, but to keep up with my 5 Ds , chose this word, which is actually quite different in meaning. But more I dwelt on India, the word sounded more and more appropriate. Sorry Kerala , India seemed to be the God's own land. That was flippant, indeed. But, more flippant will be not to believe in God, if you happen to be in India. A British friend told me that she came to believe in God when she saw the traffic in Mumbai . I am now used to the signature British sarcasm, but there are more reasons than just chaos which brings you close to God in India. God is omnipresent in India. You will always find a shrine, small or big, beautifully maintained or just makeshift, in India. You will watch thousands of people touching their head and muttering a silent prayer as they pass by even a roadside stone which, by chance, looks like an idol. Most Indians, 80% of them, are Hindus, and Hind...

The Christmas Day is now over. My tenth Christmas away from home, of which the last six were in London. One always feels a bit sad to be away from everyone else on Christmas Day, particularly because, all shops are closed, there are no trains or buses and everyone else is busy with family. So, I spent time catching up on some reading and watching the tele , something I usually never manage to do. The news was boring too - not too much happens in Christmas anyway - but the most interesting thing was to contrast the four Christmas Day messages from five different sources. Here is my summary: The Queen : Her principal message revolved around Afghanistan. She said how deeply she feels about the families which lost their loved ones in the war. She talked about the commonwealth soldiers too, and their sacrifices. She spoke with dignity and grace, as usual. It is her dignity which is currently sustaining the British monarchy, which is possibly in a terminal decline [despite King Faruque's...

This advert, put out on billboards by St Matthew-in-the-City Church in Auckland, is causing a bit of a debate. Many residents are angry, they think the advert shows disrespect. The church wanted to do this to, yes to draw attention, and to spark a debate on Jesus' birth. But, what a timing? But, then, I guess fundamentalists are everywhere and they always miss the point. And, the irony, indeed.