THE REAL GURU

Since the drama of Baba Rampal's arrest, people are writing about the Gurus and the farce attached to it. First of all, we should  know that frauds are present in each and every community. Let's now talk about what and where things are going wrong. Are only the babas responsible or are we equally responsible for following them like herds without any reasoning. What does a Guru mean?

The Guru is verily a link between the individual and the Immortal. A guru is one who renounces the world, not recreates a world of 'Maya' for themselves as we are seeing today. Today most of the gurus are into a competition to create a bigger empire, bigger membership of devotees. It has been commercialized to an extent where it has lost its value and became a business.

I met one Baba from Punjab, who was a Pehalwaan, claimed to renounce his Pehalwani completely and took this baba business and was flourishing undoubtedly. He was here on a 3 day program(retreat) and many were attending it.  I was on  a picnic trip when I bumped into them and out of curiosity met him. Spiritual practice has become more or less like a fashion without understanding its core value and meaning.

Let's explore a bit to know the real meaning of a guru. Since I like Ramakrishna's teachings, I will quote his explanations of a real guru. Also want to remind you that we should not fear our Gurus and should not hesitate from asking questions as advised by Swami Vivekanada.

Ramakrishna Paramhansa said, "Anyone and everyone cannot be a guru. It is extremely difficult to teach others.  A man can teach only if God reveals Himself to him and gives the command.  Unless you have a command from God, who will listen to your words? "To teach others, one must have a badge of authority; otherwise teaching becomes a mockery.  A man who is himself ignorant starts out to teach others-like the blind leading the blind! Instead of doing good, such teaching does harm.  After the realization of God one obtains an inner vision.  Only then can one diagnose a person's spiritual malady and give instruction

There are three classes of physicians: superior, mediocre, and inferior. "Like the physicians, there are three types of religious teachers.  The inferior teacher only gives instruction to the disciples but makes no inquiries about their progress.  The mediocre teacher, for the good of the student, makes repeated efforts to bring the instruction home to him, begs him to assimilate it, and shows him love in many other ways.  But there is a type of teacher who goes to the length of using force when he finds the student persistently unyielding; I call him the best teacher."

If a man in the form of a guru awakens spiritual consciousness in you, then know for certain that it is God the Absolute who has assumed that human form for your sake.  The guru is like a companion who leads you by the hand.  After the realization of God, one loses the distinction between the guru and the disciple. .

if the teacher is an 'unripe' one, then both the teacher and the disciple undergo endless suffering.  The disciple cannot get rid either of his ego or of the shackles of the world.  If a disciple falls into the clutches of an incompetent teacher, he doesn't attain liberation."

Mundaka Upanishad declares that in just two words श्रोत्रियं ब्रह्मनिष्ठं Śrotriyaṁ brahma-niṣṭham (MU 1.2.12) "GURU IS THE ONE WHO HAS REALIZED BRHAMAN" . . . Simply stated, the person who has seen God, can only show God to others, no one else can. But in today's tradition the person who can show disciples the "direction" the "right path" to be followed is considered to be a guru.

The Bhagavad Gita says that a Guru is a Self-realised person who has disengaged himself from worldly preoccupations. A Guru is one who without any expectation from anyone thinks not only of his disciple's welfare but also of the whole world.

Who's GURU . . . .Shankara's Vivek Chudamai Verse 33 : "Who is versed in the Vedas, sinless, un-smitten by desire, and a knower of Brahman par excellence who has withdrawn himself into Brahman, calm like fire that has consumed its fuel, who has boundless reservoir of mercy that knows no reason, and a friend of all good people who prostrate themselves before him."

So, A Guru is:

(a) a Self-realized person and (b) one who constantly endeavours for the upliftment of the disciple.

The definition also informs us that apart from the Ultimate Welfare of the disciple, the Self-realized Guru has no other 'purpose' in this world. He has accomplished the Supreme, and therefore has no personal or worldly longing to fulfil. Being beyond all wants, he has no real purpose to serve in the world which he has known for sure is just an appearance without any content. Yet, out of boundless compassion, he takes upon himself, as it were, the endeavour of leading a seeker on the path of liberation. To such an Exalted Guru there is nothing in the three worlds that a disciple can give as return for the guidance received. The only 'dakshina', fee, that the Guru is worthy of being offered is the proper assimilation of the teaching he gives and becoming enlightened.

Today we all want instant remedy and thus look towards the Gurus as our pain reliever or miracle performer. No gyan or spiritual teachings can stop you from facing the inevitable. So please, do your homework before becoming someone's follower. Rely mostly on your gut. Don't go after these gurus , who have acquired big properties. They are mere social workers and that too to cover their nefarious deeds.

Having said that, I believe that good gurus also exist but we need to look for them. It also depends what are you looking for - an instant relief or spiritual salvation.

" The 'Secularist' Value system -By Tathagata Roy

I have often wondered how the ’secularist’ value system came to be so well established in India, so much so that all political parties (except two) swear by it, and almost the entire media works overtime to endorse it?

I had earlier done quite a lot of thinking on this subject, and had put in some of my thinking in my book “A Suppressed Chapter in History : The Exodus of Hindus from East Pakistan and Bangladesh, 1947-2006″, published by ‘Bookwell’ of Delhi. I have my roots in what is now Bangladesh, and the meek acceptance of the exodus by the victims of the exodus has always troubled me. I wrote this book to document the very subject of the book, and to the best of my knowledge, this happens to be the ONLY book on the subject. I should also mention that A.J.Kamra, a Hindu refugee from Quetta, tried to write a book, but unfortunately died halfway through the process. The book was completed by Koenraad Elst, the famous Belgian researcher on Muslim atrocities. I have drawn upon Kamra and Elst’s book while writing my book. The following blog is taken partly from my book.

Somewhere along the way, after independence, the political parties in India discovered a political truth. They found out that even after the creation of Pakistan a very substantial number of Muslims were left in India constituting more than 10% of the population, that they were largely backward, and that these Muslims voted in a bloc, usually at the bidding of their religious leaders. This was quite different from the Hindu voting pattern. Hindus were divided along linguistic and caste lines, and moreover were much more individualistic, and switched their political loyalties frequently. The parties also found out that progressive and liberal Muslims of India, intellectuals like Syed Mujtabaa Ali, Danial Latifi, Sahil Brelvi, Rafiq Zakaria, Asghar Ali Engineer, Hossainur Rahman and others had no influence whatsoever on the Muslim masses, and were moreover a quiet, timid lot, and could safely be ignored. The key to these masses lay with the fire-breathing Jehadi types, like Maulana Abdul Ala Maudoodi (the Pakistani cleric who founded the Jamaaate Islami) the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid, Syed Shahabuddin and his cohorts of the self-styled All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, and the like.

This truism about Muslim voting pattern has been criticised at different points of time, and it has been sought to be established that there is no such thing as the ‘Muslim Vote’, that it is a figment of ‘Hindu communalist’ imagination, that Muslims are just as discerning as Hindus while casting their vote. However the alacrity with which ’secular’ politicians try to woo Muslim votes, and fall over each other in trying ‘to be nice to them’ at election time effectively exposes this myth. The American political scientist Paul R. Brass, in a commendable analysis of the voting patterns in India , has always chosen to take the Muslim vote as a whole, and has shown how it remained with the Congress solidly till 1962, and how it thereafter shifted to Jaiprakash Narain’s Janata Party, then back to the Congress, and so on. The voting pattern of Uttar Pradesh, politically the most important state of India, in the Nineteen-Nineties, had clearly showed that Muslims in the state had voted for that candidate in a given constituency who stood the best chance of defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party. The choice is usually worked out and disseminated to the voting public at the time of the Khutba, temporal advice given by the Imam to the congregation after the Friday afternoon prayers.

It ought to be mentioned that the Muslims of India are hardly a united lot. They are divided first by language, and second by their own great religious divide between Shia and Sunni sects. In regard to language, the Muslims of North India and Hyderabad speak and write Urdu, which is identified as a ‘Muslim language’, while Kashmiri Muslims speak Kashmiri but write Urdu. West Bengal, Assam and Kerala have substantial Muslim minorities, and they speak and write in the language of the state, Bangla, Asomiya and Malayalam respectively. The Shias and the Sunnis very often clash, especially at the time of their religious festival Mohurrum. In fact it may not be an exaggeration to say the number of riots in India between Shias and Sunnis has been no less than those between Hindus and Muslims. Yet all these different sects and language groups exhibit the same political characteristic, that of bloc voting at the bidding of their religious leaders.

This truism about Muslim voting pattern has been criticised at different points of time, and it has been sought to be established that there is no such thing as the ‘Muslim Vote’, that it is a figment of ‘Hindu communalist’ imagination, that Muslims are just as discerning as Hindus while casting their vote. However the alacrity with which ’secular’ politicians try to woo Muslim votes, and fall over each other in trying ‘to be nice to them’ at election time effectively exposes this myth. The American political scientist Paul R. Brass, in a commendable analysis of the voting patterns in India , has always chosen to take the Muslim vote as a whole, and has shown how it remained with the Congress solidly till 1962, and how it thereafter shifted to Jaiprakash Narain’s Janata Party, then back to the Congress, and so on. The voting pattern of Uttar Pradesh, politically the most important state of India, in the Nineteen-Nineties, had clearly showed that Muslims in the state had voted for that candidate in a given constituency who stood the best chance of defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party. The choice is usually worked out and disseminated to the voting public at the time of the Khutba, temporal advice given by the Imam to the congregation after the Friday afternoon prayers.

It ought to be mentioned that the Muslims of India are hardly a united lot. They are divided first by language, and second by their own great religious divide between Shia and Sunni sects. In regard to language, the Muslims of North India and Hyderabad speak and write Urdu, which is identified as a ‘Muslim language’, while Kashmiri Muslims speak Kashmiri but write Urdu. West Bengal, Assam and Kerala have substantial Muslim minorities, and they speak and write in the language of the state, Bangla, Asomiya and Malayalam respectively. The Shias and the Sunnis very often clash, especially at the time of their religious festival Mohurrum. In fact it may not be an exaggeration to say the number of riots in India between Shias and Sunnis has been no less than those between Hindus and Muslims. Yet all these different sects and language groups exhibit the same political characteristic, that of bloc voting at the bidding of their religious leaders.

As any student of Political Science knows, a sizeable group that votes steadfastly as a group is the darling of all political parties. All these parties, with one or two exceptions, therefore set about wooing the Muslims as a group, and their religious leaders, their Mullahs, Ulemas and Imams individually. To do this they decided to give a go-by to all Constitutional provisions that could be taken as abridging Muslim religious rights, notably Article 44 of the Indian Constitution. Article 44 belongs to the Chapter of the Constitution known as ‘Directive Principles of State Policy’ which lay down certain directions that the Government is required to take. Of these principles, Article 44 states that the State shall strive to have a Uniform Civil Code for all its citizens. This required that Muslim practices like a man being allowed to take four wives, and then being allowed to divorce any or all of them at will, be outlawed. Fundamentalist Muslim outfits, like the self-appointed All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, had always been against such an action, decreeing that Muslim Law had been given to them by the Quran, which was given to them by their God, Allah, and the state had no jurisdiction to change them. The Congress, the Communists, and the offshoot Congressmen all supported this demand of the fundamentalists, camouflaging their support by saying that any move for change in Muslim Personal Law must come from the among the Muslims themselves. The fact that abominable Hindu practices, such as those of Sutee (burning of widows) and Human Sacrifice had been earlier outlawed by an alien government, the British, was ignored. Only the Bharatiya Jan Sangh differed.

But the advantage of the fact that Muslims voted in a bloc would be negatived if Hindus, much more numerous than Muslims, also voted in a bloc. Fortunately for the Left-Nehruvian establishment (this term has been explained later), there was little chance of that. Just as Hindus prayed individually and not in a congregation, so also they voted individually. And if at all there was any group behaviour noticeable among them it was on the basis of caste. It is this phenomenon of caste which was used to great advantage by the establishment to keep the Hindu vote split so that it could not offset the effect of the Muslim block vote. In fact the only organisation in the country which has so far seriously tried to erase caste and language differences and unify the Hindus, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has been roundly maligned and condemned by the establishment as brazenly ‘communal’, ‘fascist’, forever trying to obliterate the ‘essential plurality’ of India..

The Nehruvian construction of secularism, and its acceptance by Congressmen and ex-Congressmen as well as by Communists and assorted Leftists was endorsed by a large body of like-minded intellectuals who thrived on patronage from politicos of these parties. These intellectuals were financed by the political leadership by way of lavish research grants, given plum professorships, and generally held up as the ‘top brains of the country’ in the field. The intellectuals, in their turn, supplied the politicians with the appropriate brand of history which was required to preserve what was according to them ‘the secular ethos’ of the country. The relationship was naturally very cosy, and no one was too finicky about how public funds allowed for research were actually spent. The eminent journalist Arun Shourie has written a scathing expose on the subject in his book ‘Eminent Historians’.

The combination of intellectuals and politicos, a very motivated, powerful and cohesive team, emerged as the think-tank of the country in the matter of Hindu-Muslim relationship. This team has been collectively referred to hereafter as the Left-Nehruvian intellectual and political establishment, or simply the ‘establishment’. They worked hard, and gradually a firm political proposition, backed by a powerful propaganda machine supporting that proposition began to emerge. The proposition was, put very simply, ‘A Muslim could do no wrong’. Those who supported the proposition were called ‘Secular’, of course in the Left-Nehruvian sense. Thus a totally fundamentalist or traditionalist Muslim religious leader, or a Hindu political leader who embraced (physically) such a Muslim religious leader in public for the sake of Muslim votes, were ‘Secular’. On the other hand, people who did not accept the proposition or who differed with this view of secularism, came to be known as ‘Communal’. Thus any person who chose to point out that a number of Muslim rulers of India, such as Mohammed Ghauri, Firuz Shah Tughlaq, or Aurangzeb had committed untold atrocities upon non-Muslims, or that a lot of Hindus were converted to Islam upon threat of death, was a ‘Communal’ person. Any person who said that such atrocities, even if committed should not be mentioned for the sake of communal harmony, or that lower-caste Hindus converted to Islam voluntarily because of the egalitarian appeal of the latter (without bothering to explain why so many others of these lower-caste chose to remain within the Hindu fold) was ‘Secular’. Further, by definition, only a Hindu could be ‘Communal’. A Muslim was always considered ’secular’.

A few examples of the hard work done by this establishment quoted in Shourie’s book make very interesting reading. One example relates to the state of West Bengal, the state worst affected by Muslim persecution in East Bengal. Shourie mentions a report in the newsmagazine ‘Outlook’ that the Board of Secondary Education in Marxist-ruled West Bengal had issued a circular in 1989 to the effect that “Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should never be mentioned”. Some concerned teachers from West Bengal brought to Shourie’s notice a circular (no. Syl/89/1 dated 29 April 1989) issued by the same Board which deleted, from Class IX-level text books of history, passages relating to forcible marriage of Hindu women by Muslim invaders, forcible conversion to Islam, Sultan Alauddin Khalji’s lusting after Rana Rattan Singh’s (ruler of the Rajasthani state of Chittor) extraordinarily beautiful wife Padmini, and his subsequent invasion of Chittor, imposition of the poll tax jaziya upon non-Muslims, and so on

The gulf between the so-called ‘Seculars’ and ‘Communals’ thus created by the establishment was made to widen and deepen further, and to take on undertones of respectability or otherwise, thereby giving rise to a clear value system. According to this value system it came to be urbane, civilized, liberal, polite and respectable to be ‘secular’. On the other hand it was boorish, fundamentalist, unrefined to be ‘communal’. Myths, stereotypes started being manufactured and making the rounds. A ‘secular’ person was pictured as gentle, liberal, peace-loving, urbane, cultivated, one whose friendships reached across religious barriers, or as a simple, God-fearing, peaceable villager who was full of love for all mankind ; a ‘communal’ person as a quarrelsome, narrow-minded rumour-monger, an alarmist, a bigot, a half-educated country bumpkin, generally a detestable character. Prominent people, especially politicians, fell upon one another to declare themselves more ‘secular’ than the rest in order to garner the Muslim vote bank. Moreover, ‘Secularism’ became a cure-all for other kinds (such as economic) misdeeds. Thus Laloo Prasad Yadav, Chief Minister of the Indian state of Bihar, who was forced to resign his post upon being named in a criminal proceeding for having an active hand in a scam involving billions of Rupees relating to purchase of animal fodder, was considered ‘all right’, because he wooed the Muslims and was therefore ‘secular’. The Chief Minister himself, when he was out of Jail Custody, termed his prosecution a conspiracy by ‘upper-caste communal forces’.

It ought to be mentioned that there were serious flaws in this secularism. All one had to do was to ask a Hindu ‘secular’ person whether he was prepared to give his daughter in marriage to a Muslim (most marriages in India are still ‘arranged’ by parents, a system in which the bride and the groom do not get to know to each other till the moment of wedding). The questioner would be met with a glare, an uncomfortable silence, perhaps a mumble ‘Don’t get personal’ or something to that effect.

It is this value system that absolved the Muslims of East Bengal of all their guilt in the terrible atrocities that they did upon the Hindus, and caused the Hindus of West Bengal to meekly accept the whitewashing of history by the establishment with a view to hide this dastardly crime from posterity. A mild dislike between the ‘Ghotis’ and the ‘Bangals’, (natives of West and East Bengal respectively) had existed until the nineteen-eighties — in fact there was relatively little intermarriage between the two groups, even within the same caste. This was played upon, and stories were spread — often by Marxist Bangals themselves — that what the refugees were saying about Muslim atrocities were gross exaggerations. Caste had ceased to be a political factor in Bengal after independence, and there was an apprehension among Leftists that hearing about Muslim atrocities in East Bengal might unify the Hindus in West Bengal in the name of Hinduism, and might cause them to stray from the path of Leftism. There was therefore a conscious effort to conceal the history, misinterpret it, dilute it, and use every trick in the book to make sure that it was forgotten.

The hard work of the establishment was rewarded with success. Gradually the value system struck deep roots, and it became taboo, unacceptable, verboten, in polite Bengali society to talk about the atrocities. No one among the Bengali Hindus said, unlike the European Jews, ‘next year in Dacca’, ‘next year in Barisal’ etc. In fact, if questioned why they had left East Bengal, the majority of West Bengali Hindus of East Bengali origin, even if they themselves were among the victims, would stare open-mouthed, as if suddenly leaving one’s home was the most natural thing to do ; or they would squirm in their seats uncomfortably. Some would try smart-alecky answers, euphemisms, and the like. Few, if any, would say that the Muslims drove them out. And among these, most would immediately qualify their answers by saying ‘but there’s a reason, they were wronged too!’ or ‘but that doesn’t mean that I bear the Muslims any ill-will — I don’t ‘, before the questioner had a chance to ask him how he felt about the Muslims.

It is not as if the establishment worked among the Bengalis alone. It is merely that nowhere has the work of this establishment found greater success than in West Bengal, ironically, the state which has been the worst sufferer as a result of the persecution of Hindus in Eastern Bengal. The biggest factor in this success is the mindset of the Bengali Hindu in West Bengal that has been created over the last fifty-odd years, the value system that determines right and wrong among these people. But why are we particularly interested in the Hindu in West Bengal? Because this is where the bulk of the Bengali Hindus live, and without their being conscious of the problem neither will it be possible to ensure their own survival, nor will the Hindus still in Bangladesh (more than a crore in number) be ever secure.

Nowhere else in the world, arguably, has a set of people’s sense of history been made to become so warped through systematic brainwashing, nowhere else do people imagine themselves to be politically conscious and yet live in a virtual world of political make-believe made of a glorious past, frog-in-the-well present, and foreseeably, little future as among the Hindus of West Bengal. This warp manifests itself in a strange pretension to being World Citizens not bound by the mundane bonds of nationalism or religion. The Hindus of West Bengal are more aware of the problems of the Chechens of Chechnya, and the late Che Guevara’s in Bolivia and probably of the penguins of Tasmania than they are of those of their hapless cousins in Bangladesh. This warp has to go if they are to survive.

There are other aspects of the warp too. By way of example, the average West Bengali Hindu also believes, in a vague utopian way, that socialism is the best economic system possible, that poverty is a desirable state, or at any rate, something to be proud of, that industries, generally, ought to be nationalised, that it is quite permissible occasionally to bring the entire state, or parts of it, to a standstill in order to protest against some real or imagined wrong by calling bandhs or putting up roadblocks. It is this mindset that tells him that it is not nice to call oneself a Hindu any more than strictly necessary or that atrocities done by Muslims should not be talked about.. It has been possible to develop such a mindset by feeding over long years on a strange amalgam of Gandhiism and Marxism.

Is such an amalgam possible, what is this amalgam like, and how exactly has it worked? To answer the first question, take the recent tendency of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (the party ruling West Bengal since 1977) of eulogising Gandhi, and trying to identify its arch-rival, the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party with Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse. It is an exercise in total falsehood, because the Communist party of India had called Gandhi (as also other leaders of the Indian freedom movement, especially Subhas Chandra Bose) the foulest names during his ‘Quit India’ movement of 1942, and had exhorted the people to help the British government in its war effort. On the other hand, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or even its forerunner, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, was not even born when Gandhi was assassinated. This amalgam is lately being actively promoted by the Marxists because they have discovered that, after the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the name of Gandhi sells better than those of Marx or Lenin.

The Marxists, it would seem, are terribly scared of any political opinions forming among the people of West Bengal along Hindu-Muslim lines. Strangely enough, the chief opponents of the Marxists, namely the Trinamool Congress of Ms. Mamata Banerjee, and the venerable old Indian National Congress are equally scared of the same thing — which is why these two parties have lent their full support to the Marxists in this effort. The Bharatiya Janata Party, with 5-6% of the vote share in the State , is not a very strong force in West Bengal. Yet it would seem from the earnestness with which the Marxists are pushing their Forget-History programme with their characteristic political efficiency that they have some real fears on this score. It should be remembered that the West Bengal branch of Communist Party of India (Marxist) is perceived by most political observers as a superbly efficient political machine where nothing is left to chance, nothing is decided without due deliberation and nothing is done half-heartedly.

As to the nature of the amalgam, it is a set of amorphous beliefs which are supposed to mark a person as ’secular’, which is desirable, as opposed to ‘communal’, which is loathsome. These beliefs are the product of the value system that has been discussed at length earlier in this chapter.

There is an interesting parallel, however, to this collective forgetfulness of Bengali Hindus. In a very thought-provoking book titled ‘The Holocaust and Collective Memory’, the author Peter Novick has shown how the American Jewry, by far the most powerful section of Jews in the world, had kept practically silent about the Jewish Holocaust until the 1960s, but made up for it in the later years. In trying to analyse the causes of this behaviour Novick has delved deep into the psychology of persecuted masses, something this author is not trained or equipped to do. The only thing that he can observe with regret is that while the American Jews did wake up belatedly, no such tendency is yet discernible among the Hindus of West Bengal.

This author is a Bengali Hindu who has lived for most of his life in West Bengal, and it is not easy for him to say such things about his very own people, yet they must be said. Another very significant factor which caused the Hindus to remain silent about their persecution in East Bengal must be mentioned. It is the large number of incidents of rape and brutalization of Hindu women. Rape, or even molestation for a Hindu woman is a disaster of cosmic proportions for her and her relatives. It is, moreover, a social disaster, not merely a psychological trauma. There was a time when raped women were simply abandoned by their husbands, sometimes even by their parents, on the grounds that they had been ‘defiled’, for fear of social ostracism, with the result that the raped women were driven to suicide or prostitution. Novels in Bangla titled ‘Louhokopat’ (in Bangla meaning ‘The Iron Gate’) written in the 1950’s by a jail official pseudonymed ‘Jorasondho’ and a film titled ‘Adalat o Ekti Meye’ (in Bangla, meaning ‘The Court and a Girl’) in the 1980’s poignantly showed what social opprobrium was heaped on an innocent woman who had suffered the trauma of rape.

It must be said that Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s exhortations to rehabilitate Hindus forcibly converted to Islam in Noakhali (which also included an exhortation to rehabilitate the thousands of Hindu raped women) brought about a sea-change in the attitude of Hindus in this regard. Still, under these circumstances it is not at all unexpected that the near and dear ones of these women would keep silent about the pogroms, because it would bring to the fore the fact that their women were raped.

After the words in the last paragraph appeared in print in the earlier version of this book titled “My People, Uprooted”, a gentleman came to see me to buy extra copies. The gentleman let it be known, in a circumlocutory manner, that his mother had been raped during the Noakhali pogrom. He, however, refused to give his name.

Also, in January 2007, this author had the good fortune to meet Dr. Tapan Raychaudhuri, a famous historian and an Oxford don who was visiting Kolkata. Dr. Raychaudhuri was also the scion of a Zamindar family from Barisal and had been teaching at Oxford for more than twenty years. In political beliefs he is at the opposite pole from this author, but was gracious enough to invite the author to breakfast as soon as he was asked for an appointment. This author asked him of the reason why the Hindu victims of Islamic persecution in Eastern Bengal had chosen to keep it under wraps. Without batting an eyelid, without the slightest prompting, Dr. Raychaudhuri said that no one wants to remember, let alone talk about, the rape of one’s womenfolk.

Now back to the secularist value system. The value system, it must be said, was a subtle device which worked in the minds of West Bengali Hindus to absolve the East Bengali Muslims of all guilt for the persecution of Hindus there. When it was a question of fighting for Indian Muslim votes all these subtleties were forgotten, and the secular politicos resorted to brazen appeals for Muslim block votes. Thus Siddhartha Sankar Ray, a former Chief Minister of West Bengal and an outstanding lawyer, who has been dispossessed of his ancestral village of Hasari in Bikrampur, Dacca, had no hesitation in getting photographed hugging a Mollah on Id day, while he was Chief minister in a secular country ; nor in declaring that he would fight the case of the Babri Masjid Action Committee without any fees.

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BOOK REVIEW - "THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING GOOD" BY GURCHARAN DAS

Finished reading the book" The Difficulty of being good" by Gurcharan Das. What a book!!Highly recommended - if you are interested to understand mythology, politics,history and psychology of human behavior - then, this is the book. I wrote in my last review of his book, 'India Unbound" that he is one author, who believes in extensive research and comparative studies. Even for this one, he not only studied Sanskrit from Chicago University but also researched other texts from different cultures like Greek mythology, psychology and Bible. His idea of learning Sanskrit was to have the first hand knowledge so that he can understand the Mahabharata in its true sense and then give his own interpretation, which is much more humane and logical than godly. He thinks the epic is obsessed with questions of right and wrong and it analyses human failures constantly. He has not touched Gita but the story of the Mahabharata and its characters. , We, the people, have not changed much since the days of the Mahabharata when it comes to greed, anger, Pride, manipulation, hatred, ego, status, politics, power and money. He also has shown how goodness has its own limitations.

The author has tried to understand how the moral ideas playing behind the psyche of the characters in the Mahabharta relates to our lives in both a personal and a broader social and political sense. It is about our incomplete lives, about good people acting badly, about how difficult it is to be good in this world. The author quotes , "nature does not give a man virtue; the process of becoming a good man is an art. " This is an epic which sees a vice behind every virtue, a snake behind every horse, and a doomsday behind every victory, an uncompleted ritual behind every completed sacrifice.

He has dedicated the chapters in the names of all the prime characters of Mahabharta and then analyzed their psyche, which is wonderful, interesting and a great read. This reminded me of another book, called “Mrituyanjay” which i read a long time ago,by Shivaji Sawant. He also had divided the chapters under the names of these characters and gave us the synopsis from each character's point of view. After reading these 2 books, i realized that even today if we put these characters in the same exact situations, i am sure they will act the same. Human psyche is such. It is not the people but the circumstances which is responsible for us to behave or react in a certain way. As I have mentioned before that the author has raised many questions in the book.

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK :

Cheerful throughout the epic, Krishna becomes grave after Duryodhan's death and he gives a sobering message to the victors : Listen Pandavas, the Kauravas were great warriors and you could not have defeated them in a fair fight. So, I had to use deceit, trickery, and magic on your behalf... To defeat Duryodhana fairly was even beyond the messengers of death. So, let's not get carried away by Bhima's heroics. We have succeeded, it is evening now-let us go home and rest. Instead of celebrating his side's triumph, Krishna becomes subdued. 

The Mahabharata is clearly uncomfortable with Krishna's conduct during the war. This explains, in part, why the mood of the epic now swings downward. There may have been good reasons why Krishna had to do what he did to win-----the good had to defeat evil; the world had to be brought to an end before a new age could be ushered in----but the epic does not believe that the ends justify the means. It does not approve of the breaking of the rules of warfare. It does not believe a dharmayuddha, 'just war', can be fought unjustly. It is resigned to the fact that war cannot be abolished; hence, the rules of war are a way to make it tolerable.

he epic is ambivalent about Krishna's pragmatic defense. It refuses to accept the idea that good consequences outweigh evil methods. Ultimately, there seems to be an austere and unforgiving streak of dharma which appears to run through the epic. If good persons are not allowed to win by any means, and if they must fight justly,then one must be prepared to face the fact that they might lose. There is no guarantee that truth and goodness will prevail in human history. The Pandavas must accept this and wait, perhaps, for another day. The important thing is that they fight fairly. Since they did not, they failed in their dharma. Therefore,they have to be judged and punished. Accordingly, the Pandavas are not allowed to 'live happily ever after.'

The Mahabharata understands that war is terrible. Hence, it lays down elaborate rules of fighting. It reminds warriors that fighting should be broken off at sunset; one does not strike the enemy from behind; one does not engage in ambush or surprise attacks. The epic creates limits on the intensity and duration of the combat or the suffering of soldiers. Yet, it is also cynical about these restraints.It doubts if these rules will be observed. It has the same mocking attitude that we have towards the defective Geneva Convention. When the best of men, the Pandavas, break those rules, then what about ordinary persons? It is not easy to be good.

Manmohan Singh - The silent Prime-Minister

Manmohan Singh was never a politician. He was good as a bureaucrat because he was good at carrying out orders, which he still is good at. His personality speaks for himself. He got overrated by the media.

The credit for the 1991 economic reforms should not be given to Dr. Manmohan Singh alone. It was Narasimha Rao instead who took this gigantic step but was scared to come out in the open and take the credit because of the Congress-bashing. Mr. Rao was afraid that the old devout congressmen (Nehru's caucus) could bash him for going against the long rule of the " License Raj". Rather he was more than happy to give the credit to Dr. Manmohan Singh . Even Mr. Chidambaram had a role to this reform. Mr Rao could've used this liberalization for his own advantage but unfortunately he never did.

Manmohan Singh got lucky by staying around and Sonia Gandhi happened to notice him. If you all remember, Gyani Jail Singh, then you know the politics of picking up these guys and keeping them on key positions and thus keeping their chairs safe.

Mr. Singh is a complete failure - it may sound judgmental, but that's how it is. He has made the prime ministerial position a mockery to the world. The sad part is that even media is not fair and they connived with the govt. Only God can save our country and people of India from Congress and Rahul Gandhi.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-09-04/world/35494863_1_complacency-and-intellectual-dishonesty-economic-reforms-coal-minister

A Beautiful talk by Dr. Greenberg

My younger daughter is a constant visitor to the ted talks. In March she got an opportunity to hear Dr. Greenberg (Oncologist in Pediatrics - Sick kids hospital ,Toronto) and after coming she recommended us to listen to this talk. It took a while for Waterloo to upload this video . After listening to it I thought it would be worth sharing . I am also sharing here what she thinks about it in her own words,

"At TedxWaterloo this year in March I had the privilege of watching Dr. Mark Greenberg from Sick Kids Hospital talk about curing versus healing. Many of his points resonated strongly with me. In his talk Dr. Greenberg addressed points that I think are highly relevant to majority of the public. Especially as we become more and more aggressive "consumers" of our healthcare system.

He brings to light the shifting paradigm in healthcare from one of need to one of want, and this will ultimately ruin the objectives of healthcare and its compassionate and giving aspects turning it rather into a booming business full of selfish needs with monetary criteria that will need to be met in order to create profits. He notes that patients will be redefined as clients - shifting the position of power even further. Lives and treatments will be weighed in terms of profits and losses rather than one of compassion and giving.

Doctors should aim to be healers and not just curers. Medicine is a profession that cannot be left at the office door at 5pm, but follows a doctor around after hours, and throughout their lifetime. Conversely, patients should understand the limitations of a doctor while crediting their experience and weigh their professional recommendation heavily.

The subject of curing vs. healing though is a difficult one. Is it possible for a doctor to achieve both always? Are healed families special cases with many contributing factors leading to such a conclusion? Should one fore-go curing to heal instead? Can a system be derived for such a call to be made? Each case will be unique and complex in its own ways, and I think the topic brings up many valid questions and address many relevant current topics, yet its hard to arrive at a conclusion with any amount of certainty. Dr. Mark Greenberg definitely provides a lot of food for thought."

Marriage - A new definiton

Marriage institution in India is at stake and going through a time of redefining itself. Amendments in the divorce law (esp where women get share of husband's property acquired before marriage) has raised many questions regarding marital relationship. "Marriages are made in heaven" does not hold any meaning anymore.

Men feel threatened as women are becoming more and more aggressive in asking for their rights. Sometimes it is even seen as a hidden agenda of a woman to go into a marital relationship and walk out with a chunk of her share, known as ALIMONY. I was surprised to hear Suchitra Krishnamoorthi (Shekhar Kapoor's ex-wife) stating that " she is proud to be an alimony wife". Sometimes I feel "Being Independent" is also an attitude and not necessarily can be associated with "working". It is good to pay alimony if the spouse is disabled and/or has no education to help support herself, especially in rural areas.

More or less society is disintegrating further, our values are changing and the sanctity of marriage is in question. The alarming rise in singles and live-ins are already threatening the institution of marriage. We (men and women) have made this world a battleground by outsmarting each other instead of complimenting each other.

In the West, men are not marrying because of the same fear. If they divorce, one spouse pays alimony for the rest of their life, or until their spouse's demise. Senior citizens, who are receiving a social security check have to pay out a small portion in alimony benefits to their spouse, who may be receiving the same social security check themselves. As a result, many people are opting out of a second marriage as it is proving to be financially too burdening.

I am afraid if the same is going to happen in India though I understand our women do need that assistance in case of divorce. Is there a solution to this problem?

Jiah Khan's Suicide - A retrospection

To arrest Suraj Pancholi, in my opinion, is totally wrong. When one is in a relationship, these things happen. Many girls go into depression or even try to harm themselves when dumped by their boyfriends. The same must be happening to the boys as well. But we never hear their stories.

I feel in Jiah Khan's case, it was not only the relationship that had triggered her to hang herself but also other frustrations related to her career. We don't know about her relationship with her family members. She wanted an easy life. If she would have been successful, she would have done the reverse. I know it is hard for the family to cope with it but it is not fair to put the blame on Suraj Pancholi. This is totally wrong. We should be ready to pay the consequences of our actions or choices that we make.

It is important that families should have a strong bond with their children where they can talk about such things with them more discreetly and they can be of great help to them by giving all kinds of support.

I personally know someone who was in a relationship..marriage was fixed, date was finalized , banquet hall was booked and at the last minute the boy canceled the marriage. So what should the girl do? Should she hang herself or get the boy arrested? Or should she be thankful that this happened before the marriage and not after marriage. I understand the pain that one goes through - the sense of betrayal is painful and traumatic but succumbing to this is no good. It takes time for a person to heal but once you come out a winner, it adds to your experience and helps you becoming better in your judgement.

Time has changed. We women claim to become better, but we still are vulnerable and consider ourselves victims. I agree with Suhel Seth that "Love is an over-rated concept."

While going through various articles and blogs, I found out this one and thought of pasting it along with my thoughts. It is worth a read. I am glad that someone echoed the same sentiment as mine. 


"So this note is likely to piss off many of you, but still. Can someone tell me why exactly Jiah Khan's ex-boyfriend is being blamed for her suicide.

So it's the usual story. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they are happy, then they break up. Then he sees someone else.At which point over-wrought girl decides her life isn't worth living. Seriously - this is a 25-year old who co-starred with Aamir Khan in a hit film and then later thinks her life is value-less without the continuing attention of some unemployed star-kid?! How the heck was she brought up? What kind of foolish adult mind thinks that someone else's attention is so important that her own life pales in comparison? How dare her parents blame her ex for this ridiculous state of mind? Who gave her these values where "death before losing in love" is a virtue?

So she writes a letter saying she had an abortion when she got pregnant, presumably by him - again, no one told her about contraception? And even if they decided to forswear protection - it's his fault she got pregnant? Wasn't she equally part of it?So yes, she had an abortion, she set her mind to have him, but he moved on after they mutually broke up – but she wanted him back, and he said no, so she took her life? Of course we mourn for her. But why would we - and the police - blame the idiot star kid who was her ex-boyfriend? I hear it's on the charge of abetting suicide. Really? You mean if two people are together, and one wants to marry the other, and the other refuses, and then the first one commits suicide, then the other has abetted it? What rot.So now after seeing this news play out, we have a nation of unstable 25-year olds going around forcing their partners into matrimony at the gunpoint of "do it or I'll commit suicide and you'll go to jail like Aditya Pancholi's son"?

What about it being the other way around? Perhaps more like blackmail - "Marry me, or I'll commit suicide?" And would that not be equally valid a crime? So what's a guy to do if he doesn't want to marry a girl? Or vice versa actually. Report to the cops when he's been proposed to? Take anticipatory bail before he says "No, I don't want to marry you"? Call the counselling lines so they make outbound calls to the partner in advance of him saying no? Or in this case,even involve a bigger star, Salman Khan, who oversees their apparently amicable separation? And even then go to jail after all these precautionary measures? Look, there's no escaping the fact that a life lost is a terrible, terrible thing. But blaming the ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend for one's lack of motivation to live when a relationship breaks is not the other's fault. It's your own.No one grows up with a right to be loved. It's a privilege you earn for yourself. It doesn't come naturally. You earn it. And very often, love comes. And love goes. And love comes back. And goes again. And so on.

And, yes, sorry to break it to you but there is no one-man-one-woman-walking-into-the-sunset-together-forever Mills & Boon bullshit that happens either. If your parents or your convent schools or some M&B; you read or a chick flick or a YashRaj or KJo film told you that it is the way and it will happen to you - please understand that those are pretty unreliable sources. For starters, it didn't happen to the authors of such propaganda: the nuns and KJo are still single. The apparent importance of marriage is just propaganda - and you're better off not depending on it. If it happens, cool. And if it doesn't, that should be cool too.

Perhaps the best thing we can do as individuals and parents is tell the kids around that marriage isn't the ultimate goal. It isn't even an intermediate goal. Or even a tiny goal. Screw the TBZ ads and the whitening cream commercials. Ignore Chetan Bhagat and Shaadi.com.Marriage is downright unimportant in the overall course of things.In India, you don't need to be married to have a child legally. Or even to inherit and pass on property.Marriage is just a social custom where a bunch of old people shower rice on your head and believe they're giving you their permission (or direction, in some cases) to sleep with someone. As you can imagine, it has little or no legal necessity or significance.

What is important is planning to live a full life for yourself, and working to make all your dreams come true - regardless of whether you have a partner with you for the course.Sure, it's more fun when you have a lover around. But not having one around isn't a show-stopper. Life is compulsory. Marriage is an optional extra. Let's tell the kids that.Oh, and while we're at it, can we please stop blaming that poor Pancholi kid for Jiah Khan's suicide? Let's stop the witch hunt. Get him out of jail. And let's stop glorifying suicide in the name of unrequited love.