Salutes to the iron lady and her fight

Irom Sharmila represents certain values that are humane. Protect her

She hasn't tasted a drop of water for the last one decade, let alone food. But a ruthless state has been forcefeeding her through her nose, ridiculing her very fight for dignity for her people.

Irom Sharmila's valiant fight against the Indian state has reached ten years this month. Since November 2000, poet-activist Sharmila has been on a fast-unto-death, demanding the repeal of of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 (AFSPA) which gives the army the licence to kill or arrest anyone on 'suspicious grounds' without warrant and escape legal action.

She has inured to the mysteries and is ready to die for her cause. But the state responds to her protest in the most ludicrous way possible: arrests her on charge of attempting to suicide every year and releases and re-arrests, for attempt of suicide entails only one year imprisonment.

Her unfailing determination to fight for justice for her people lies at the heart of a wider debate over the repeal of this draconian law in Manipur. Introduced in 1958, the AFSPA grants the Indian army special powers throughout North-East India to arrest anyone and enter their property without warrant; shoot and kill anyone on mere ‘suspicion’.

Under the cover of the Act, the army in Manipur does armed forces anywhere in the world are best known for: killing, torturing and raping people under the cover of nationhood.

Two government-appointed commissions - Veerappa Moily Administrative Reforms Committee and Justice Jeevan Reddy Commission - have demanded the repeal of the draconian law that had led to gross violations of human rights. The Reddy Commission had noted that "the Act has become a symbol of oppression, an object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and high-handedness." The UN Committee on Racial Discrimination also urged India to repeal the law.

In fact the failure to provide justice to the victims of human rights violations by the armed forces further fuels insurgency, the alibi for deployment of AFSPA. According to a Human Rights Watch report, armed groups have carried out torture, killings, indiscriminately used bombs and land mines, engaged in forced recruitment, and conducted widespread extortion.

The 37-year old poet's resilience and Gandhian way of non-violent fight is unparallel in our living memory. But the Indian state is adamant, refusing to pay heed to calls from various corners for repealing this anti-human law. Sky won't tumble or sea engulf the whole planet if this draconian Act is repealed for a week or month or so and see it can be revoked once and for all.

It appears even though Sharmila pays with her life, Manmohan Singh and Madam Sonia Gandhi won't wake from their deep slumber. Dear Manmohanji, we respect your scholarly pedigree and foreign degrees; your economic sense is good, but it'd have been little more better if you have a basic sense for human beings too.

Photo: Manipurfreedom.org

Fatwas or cattle fodder?

Fossilized, regressive Islamists and right-wing fanatics are at each other's throat on Vande Mataram

You know something? Jamait-e-Ulema Hind is a bunch of highly educated, progressive scholars who after several years of hair-splitting, back-breaking analysis found the most pressing problem Indian Muslims face: Vande Mataram!

Come on all ye those regressive mullahs; we are tired of your ridiculous fatwas. Let me ask this simple question: Is your faith so shaky singing an anthem will ruin your faith? There are several burning issues you can address before wasting time on trivial issues. Are you telling us that Indian Muslim wakes up every morning and worry about the horror of singing Vande Mataram? He's rather worried about other simple things in life like food, job, education, etc.

Nobody is forcing you; if you don't wanna sing it, you don't need to.

Are these mullahs aware that there once lived one Sayed Alavi Thangal, alias Mamburam Thangal, a few centuries back in the Malabar region of Kerala whose anti-British fatwas infuriated the British authorities to the point of deporting him back to his home country Yemen? In fact, much before Gandhiji's swaraj boycott call, the Thangal's lengthy fatwa had called for the boycott of British goods.

But today these good-for-nothing, gutless fatwas have come to mean ridiculous edicts from equally ridiculous mean guys.

On a different level, it appears to me, these mullahs are hand-in-glove with the Sangh Parivar. They emit such fatwas whenever the Sangh Parivar fellas are in real danger; sagging prospects with a serious dearth of issues.

Both the mullahs and the saffron brigade need some urgent therapy so that this country is saved.

Now, these right wing fanatics can go on beating Muslims with this Vande Mataram stick for some time and remain in the limelight. Now, they can profess for a while to Muslims about the virtues of being a patriot. The proverbial chastity speech of a whore.

Instead of pondering over Vande Mataram's Islamic traits, the mullahs should instead be talking about real un-Islamic practices like Haj subsidy. If you are baffled by this sudden disconnect between Vande Mataram and Haj, let me get an answer whether you have been told to perform Haj on state money. Never. I heard only wealthy people are supposed to perform Haj. It is not meant to be a state-sponsored jaunt.

Jukebox as means of torture!

Demented souls rape a great gift possessed by human beings

Come and sing a simple song of freedom
Sing it like you've never sung before
Let it fill the air
Tell the people everywhere
We, the people here, don't want a war...........

No doubt some folks enjoy doing battle
Like presidents, Prime ministers and kings
So let's all build them shelves
So they can fight among themselves
And leave the people be who love to sing

(Simple Song of Freedom - Bobby Darin)

Let me restrain myself from indulging in a diabolic diatribe. But I'm sure a normal human being would call this outrageous and in bad taste. As if all the torture methods in the world were worn out, high-decibel songs were blasted since 2002 at the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, for hours and even days, on end, as a method of punishment.

Now a coalition of musicians and bands, which include my favorite alternative US rock band R.E.M. has asked the US government to release the names of all the songs that were used to torture the detainees. The coalition, including Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne, protest band Rage Against Machine, has joined the National Campaign to Close Guantanamo.

"At Guantanamo, the U.S. government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture," said Thomas Blanton of National Security Archive in Washington, which has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking classified records that detail the use of music for torture.

According to a Washington Post report, in one case, music was played to "stress" Mohamedou Ould Slahi, from Mauritania, who has been at Guantanamo for more than seven years, "because he believed music is forbidden."

Jayne Huckerby, research director at New York University's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, says loud music was played at CIA-run clandestine prisons in the past. Music was not used as a "benign security tool," but as a way "to humiliate, terrify, punish, disorient and deprive detainees of sleep, in violation of international law."

The songs included that of Rage Against The Machine, AC/DC, Britney Spears, The Bee Gees, etc. It is really ironic and a travesty that the songs of Rage Against The Machine, known for its strong, revolutionary political views and opposition to the US policies, were used to torture people!

To use music as a means of torture is an affront not just to the musicians themselves but to their millions of fans across the globe. Their annoyance is perfectly justified, for when they sing songs they are never meant to be used as means to torture human beings; even in their hyperbolic fantasies, they wouldn't figure out that demented souls will use their songs along with electric shocks and sleep deprivation!

When they sing they do it from their hearts; the lyrics, music, the rendition itself is done with a sense of spiritualism, with the blissful and sublime feeling that they will be listened to and enjoyed by people all over the world, cutting across all man-made (or God-made if you may) boundaries.

Love, not war

Through their lyrics, singers raise their voice against injustices and wars. We have the great John Lennon whose ultimate awe-inspiring peace anthem Imagine continues to fuel all those anti-war activities and activists all over the world.

And there are many many more. We had George Harrison whose 1971 charity show along with Indian sitar sensation Pandit Ravi Shankar to raise funds for Bangladesh cyclone victims set a noble precedent of charity shows. Such shows are occasions where their words mesh with real action for noble causes.

Western music isn't just meaningless, drug-induced lyrics being played to the accompaniment of thunderous, deafening instruments. There's always a human face to it. And songs as a means of torture is an emphatic no-no.

Photo: Giacomo Ritucci /Wikimedia Commons

V-sign is in the air!

Thumbs up to Twitter and all those people who thwarted Trafigura's dirty games

It was a V-Day not just for media freedom, but micro-blogging sensation Twitter as well. When British oil trading company Trafigura tried to gag London-based Guardian newspaper from publishing Parliamentary proceedings in relation to its dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast capital Abidjan, Twitter helped the flow of the very information it tried to block.

Trafigura obtained an unprecedented secret order that sought to prevent media from reporting anything related to its dumping of hundreds of tonnes of highly toxic oil waste in 11 habitat areas in Abidjan under cover of darkness on August 19, 2006, sickening tens of thousands of people and killing 15.

A classic case of third world countries being used by companies as waste dumping yards, it was one of the worst pollution incidents the world has ever seen after the gas leak in Union Carbide factory in Bhopal in 1984.

In the British Parliament Labour MP Paul Farrelly sought to know the kind of measures taken to protect press freedom following the injunction obtained by Trafigura's law firm Carter Ruck. However, the Guardian was prevented from identifying the "MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found",

But it appeared Trafigura and Ruck underestimated the power of Twitter, or Internet for that matter. Minutes after the Guardian published the story about the gag order, Twitterati made public details about Farrelly's question. Two more blogs and magazine Private Eye published the full text.

In fact, the response in twitter was overwhelming, with the three most popular search items on the site being "outrageous gagging order trafigura dumping scandal", "ruck" and "guardian".

Interestingly, the gag attempt was ludicrous, because, as pointed out by Observer media editor James Robinson, Farrelly's question was freely available on British Parliament's website and was printed on the House of Commons order paper! Then it becomes very much clear that Trafigura was throwing its weight around, flexing its arrogance and intolerance towards papers like the Guardian which attempted to unravel its criminal act of dumping poisonous waste on a poor people in a poor country.

Here, the traditional media has been helped by activists through the new-age means of blogging. In fact we could see the thin line between traditional and modern means of media is getting blurred here, for a common cause. And it indeed is a good sign especially at a time when corporate media eagerly absolves the crimes of corporates all over the world.

As rightly pointed out by Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, this was a "combination of old media – the Guardian – and new – Twitter – turned attempted obscurity into mass notoriety."

It was not just Guardian which was threatened by Trafigura. It threatened anyone who refused to buy its version. BBC Newsnight and journalists in the Netherlands and Norway were threatened with legal consequences because they refused to buy its version.

Lesson for Indian media?

Another positive aspect of the Trafigura episode is the exemplary co-operation and coordination exhibited by various media outlets for a common cause. The Guardian got hold of internal emails between the executives of Trafigura which clearly showed that the oil company was well aware about the consequences of dumping toxi oil waste in Abidjan. The emails showed that the oil firm dumped the toxic waste in the poor African country in utter disregard for the health of the people there.

Guardian journalists gathered the emails from various countries. The emails were shared between a group of journalists from Norway, the Netherlands and Estonia, and Meirion Jones from BBC2's Newsnight.

As pointed out by the Guardian, getting investigative journalists to co-operate "is notoriously as difficult as herding cats." But it was agreed among the Guardian and journalists in BBC and those in the Netherlands and Norway that the right time to publish and make use of the sensational emails was when the UN published a report on the Abidjan toxic disaster. Though Trafigura tried to derail the timetable with a PR exercise - announcement of compensation to the toxic waste victims numbering 31,000 - the Guardian immediately put the story online, followed by Newsnight.

In the world of journalism marked by crass competition and petty (unprofessional) jealousy between journalists and media outlets of various hues, this indeed is worthy of emulation and there appear to be some lessons for the Indian media as well. Indian journalism seriously lack a sense of broadmindedness and professionalism in its real sense.

Indian media has this intrinsic problem of playing down investigative reports/exclusives by their peers, whatever be the gravity of issue or the explosive nature of the story so brought out, purely because of a skewed view about journalism and its cardinal purpose. What dominates its collective conscience is a sense of parochialism. And it is this insular view that prevents it from coming together and do something for the common cause of the humanity.

Lest we forget

Those guilty of Sabra and Shatila may never be punished. But history shouldn't be repeated


September 16 passed without any furore. There was no remembrance. No candle light vigilance. Nothing. It was on this date 25 years ago, September 16, 1982, that Sabra and Shatila happened.

The two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon witnessed one of the most horrific slaughters mankind has ever witnessed. Horrific not because of the number of people killed (Total death count is still unclear with figures running between 800 to 2,000) but because of the way men, women and infants were slaughtered by rightwing Israel-assisted Lebanese Phalangist militiamen.

Gruesome accounts by eyewitnesses and journalists testify to the macabre scene at the two camps which witnessed a staged slaughter: bodies were charred, decapitated and indecently violated.

People done to death with the electric wires still tied around their bodies; corpses with eyes gouged out; women raped repeatedly; infants dynamited alive, families shot...The eyewitness account of one survivar would be suffice to sum up the horrendous crimes committed at the scene. "I was carrying my one year-old baby sister and she was yelling "Mama! Mama!" then suddenly nothing. I looked at her and her brain had fallen out of her head and down my arm. I looked at the man who shot us. I’ll never forget his face. Then I felt two bullets pierce my shoulder and finger. I fell. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I pretended to be dead."

"There were women lying in houses with their skirts torn torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall," Robert Fisk, who had been one of the first on the scene, said.

The slaughter lasted 43 hours, from 6 pm on September 16 to 18.

Dr Ang Swee Chai, an eye witness who worked with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society on the dying and the wounded amongst the dead, later wrote in her book, From Beirut To Jerusalem: "The slaughter of unarmed children, women, the aged and the infirm was shocking. For me, I was doubly outraged that I had to discover the truth about a brave and generous people only through their deaths. Until then, I never knew Palestinian refugees existed. As a fundamentalist Christian, I had been a supporter of Israel, hated Arabs and saw the Palestinian Liberation Organisation as terrorists to be loathed and feared."

Years later, Robert Fisk said: "Had Palestinians massacred 2,000 Israelis 15 years ago, would anyone doubt that the world’s press and television would be remembering so terrible a deed this morning? Yet this week, not a single newspaper in the United States – or Britain for that matter – has even mentioned the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila."

Twenty seven years on, the guilty remain unpunished. Nobody gives a damn because the western media isn't talking about it. Nobody gives a damn because the western media has to do the Israel's bidding. So the world accepts that Phalangist militiamen were on a benign mission to save the world from "2000 terrorists" holed up in Sabra and Shatila. Damn Palestine people, their very fight for survival and their efforts to win back a scrap of their self-respect.

India adds insult to Endosulfan injury

New Delhi's shamelss act at Stockholm Convention angers enraged victims who seek court help

The Anti-Endosulfan Committee in Kerala's Kasargod district is all set to take on the Indian government over its stand at the Stockholm Convention and Rotterdam Convention, which seek to regulate the use of hazardous chemicals and pesticides.

The committee is planning national-level agitations in addition to moving the Supreme Court in protest against what they call is an 'affront' to hundreds of victims who continue to bear the brunt of 20 years of aerial spraying of endosulfan on cashew nut plantations in Kasargod.

The spraying caused unusually high incidence of central nervous system disorders like cerebral palsy, congenital neurological disorders, cancers, body deformations, reproductive disorders and miscarriages in seven villages in Kasargod district.

Years of protests and sufferings of the people in Kasargod hogged international attention about this deadly pesticide and prompted the state government to ban endosulfan in Kerala in 2002. But it is another matter that even after the ban, it continues to be smuggled from neighbouring state Tamil Nadu to be used in Palakkad and Idukki districts.

Now the Anti-Endosulfan Committee has been taken aback by India's efforts to prevent inclusion of endosulfan to the Rotterdam Convention despite the gripping example of Kasargod.

"Even an MNC like Bayer has stopped producing endosulfan; but the Indian government continues to manufacture this, in utter disregard for the victims of this pesticide. Worse, the government tried to block the international conventions in Rome that sought to ban endosulfan. It was also highly unbecoming of the Indian delegate, Dr Pandey, at the Rotterdam Convention to declare that no one has suffered from endosulfan in India," said B C Kumaran, a committee member.

It should be noted here that Bayer's decision follows an innovative action in 16 countries, led by a coalition of partners including Pesticide Action Network and Fairtrade Alliance Kerala.

"Our effort will be to senstise New Delhi into seeing the ground realities. We are planning agitations at the national level seeking more compensations and humanly treatment of the victims," said M A Rahman, an anti-endosulfan activist who has taken a film on the adverse effects of this pesticide.

India's stand

In March this year, India tried to block progress at the Stockholm Convention’s POPS Review Committee with a very shameful exhibition that caused the Chair of the POPS Review Committee to threaten to report the delegate to the Indian government. However a vote was taken and India’s efforts were in vain.

According to Dr Meriel Watts, co-ordinator, Pesticide Action Network Aotearoa New Zealand, voting is permitted at the Committee stages but not at the ‘Conference of the Parties’ stage where consensus must be achieved. So endosulfan is still going through the Stockholm Convention assessment process, now at stage two, with the next meeting of the POPS Review Committee scheduled for October this year in Geneva.

The international community is continuing to work with the Conventions using good science and trying to persuade India to see reason to halt the production of this pesticide in the larger interest of humanity, the environment and other nations who get affected by India’s use, and the integrity of international conventions.

"We can only hope that by then the Indian government will have come to realise the enormous embarrassment to it, that is being caused by its delegate, and by its conflict of Interest: the Indian government owns Hindustan Insecticides Ltd (HIL), one of the manufacturers of endosulfan. This type of conflict of interest is unheard of in international conventions, and India's behaviour is threatening to wreck both the conventions," said Watts.

In 2008 too, India blocked the Rotterdam Convention ‘Conference of the Parties’, but endosulfan has been nominated again by nine West African countries, victims of this poisonous pesticide. India is again trying to block this at the committee stages, but I think other delegates are not prepared to let India wreck it again.

Deadly pesticide

Endosulfan belongs to the group of highly toxic chemicals called persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and has already been banned in 55 countries including in Sri Lanka. Various agencies have documented its deadly effects. In 2008 November, 43 students of a state-run school in Jharkhand were hospitalised after drinking milk that had Endosulfan residues. Five of them died.

Boys exposed to the pesticide endosulfan showed delayed sexual maturity, according to a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP).
India is by far the largest manufacturer of endosulfan, with the state-owned HIL and two private companies producting the pesticide. China manufactures small amounts, and Israel also manufacturers an unknown amount. In fact an Israeli company, Makhteshim Agan, has just started manufacturing pesticides in Andra Pradesh; it is not yet known whether they produce endosulfan or not.

Aren't there any other alternatives for endosulfan or is the love for this pesticide driven by profits? There are plenty of effective alternatives, it is simply that the companies are making very nice profits and they care more about that than anything else.

http://www.earthwitness.net/2009/08/india-adds-insult-to-endosulfan-injury.html

Ayyo rama racism

Before terming the attacks on Indians in Australia as 'racist', the Indian media should look at its own backyard

It is really funny to see Indian media calling the recent attacks on Indians in Australia as `racist'.

No doubt, such attacks are highly deplorable and should be contained, whatever justifications (such as recession) are raised as their provocation. The attacks may or may not have racial overtones.

But it is simple double standard when the media cry about racism while it has never cared a damn about the untouchability prevailing in a society and the discriminaton and cruelties meted out to a large section of people just because they are born into a particular section of the society: the so-called 'untouchables' or Dalits numbering around 165 million.

There's something terribly amiss in terming the Australian attacks 'racists' when we have wonderful people like Giriraj Kishore who says the life of a cow is more precious than that of a human being! The mainstream media, just like the collective society, have accustomed to accept the strange and inhuman caste heirarcy and oppression of a large section of people as a social order; conveniently accepting a system in which Dalit-bashing is ingrained inextricably; in which you can kill any 'untouchables' and get away with it; in which 'untouchable' women are paraded naked and raped for defying the 'social order'.

Madhany-haters and human lovers!

The pro-Sangh apostles of democracy can’t tolerate a moderate Madhany

There is a hue and cry over Abdul Nasar Madhany’s entry into the mainstream politics in Kerala. Both the Sangh Parivar and the Congress-led opposition parties are peeved at Madhany’s bonhomie with the CPM-led Left front in the state.

Hardcore Hindutva extremists and ‘liberal’ and ‘secular’ Congress are clamouring about Madhany’s terror links. For the Congress party it is simply a case of sour grapes, for it had no problems when PDP extended its support to the party in previous elections. The dynasty party didn’t find any ‘extremism’ in the PDP then. Now with the PDP deciding to support the Left, Congress simply can’t stomach it.

The past...

Of course, Madhany was not a saint. His avatar as an alternative to rightwing nationalist Hindutva forces in the 1990's had posed a great threat to Kerala's secular fabric in as much as the Sangh Parivar had done to the state.

He in fact is the product of Muslim insecurity in Kerala post-Babari, by trying to emerge as the savior of Muslims by exploiting this feeling. The decadence of Muslim League, the party of elite Biriyani-gobblers, coupled with the emergence and strengthening of rightwing Hindutva extremists, provided a fertile ground for Madhany. ISS, the outfit he floated and got banned later along with the RSS post-Babari, was his answer to the RSS. To be precise a 'Muslim RSS'!

His fiery speeches antagonised not only the Sangh Parivar but also the Muslim League, for whom Madhany posed a formidable threat, for, here was a man for the first time attacking the League’s shenanigan and elitist ways. In his speeches, he showed the temerity to attack League's supreme God Shihab Thangal.

In one of his speeches Madhany had said: “It is halaal (good practice) to visit chronically ill patients. I just visited one such patient: the Muslim League!”

All those fiery speeches and his appearances (he used to be accompanied by body guards) earned him notoriety. After ISS was banned along with RSS post-Babari he floated PDP.

Soon came his arrest. The timing of his arrest is still intriguing. Madhany along with ex-Naxal leaders K. Ajitha and K. Kunhikannan, decided to initiate a state-wide agitation on the Kozhikode ice-cream sex scandal case in which Muslim League leader Kunhalikutty was an accused. On the very third day (31st March, 1998) Madhany was picked up by Kozhikode Kasaba police on a charge of making provocative speech that took place five years ago. None asked why Madhany was not arrested during those five years after the arrest warrant was issued in the case of making the provocative speech.

Soon after arresting Madhany on charges of making provocative speech, he was transferred to the Tamil Nadu police in connection with the Coimbatore bomb blast case.

The Tamil Nadu police wanted to grill Madhany as they found that Basha, the key accused in the Coimbatore bomb blast case, had a one-and-half minute’s conversation with someone in the office of Muslim Review, a magazine ran by Madhany at that time. In the very next issue of Muslim Review an interview with Basha was published. In fact, the phone call was made from the magazine’s Kochi office to Basha for arranging the interview.

The rest is history. After almost nine years of illegal detention he was freed because the prosecution couldn’t find a shred of evidence linking him to the Coimbatore blast case.

And the present...

Those who are now whining about Madhany’s terror links want him to be behind the bars till eternity, no matter whether he has terror links or not. In their minds he still is the face of terror, no matter his attempts to shake that image off.

He has admitted many a time to his erroneous ways in his ISS-PDP avatars pre-jail days and has challenged the accusers to prove his terror links. The fact that he has an unsavoury past doesn’t mean he has no rights to lead a political life. If Madhany still has terror links/suspicious links no doubt the law of the land should take its course.

All these Madhany-haters have no problems with the Sangh Parivar’s killer machines and its hate politics. Madhany hasn’t caused the death of people, unlike those Modis and Thackareys, indicted for mass murders. When all those hate-mongers remain scot-free, it is unjust and unethical to single out and attack Madhany.

In his hey days with ISS and PDP, he was no greater threat than rightwing Hindutva leaders. But while the Sangh Parivar hate-mongers gained acceptance in the state's mainstream political parlance, Madhany assumed the aura of a hardcore militant.

The tendency to bay for Madhany's blood and keep a prejudiced view on him has to do with the general anti-Muslim feelings in our society and the Sangh-parroted all-Muslim-are-terrorists hogwash that runs deep in our psyche.

The crotchety has-been is at it again

A desperate Varun Gandhi seems to have burned his fingers

When all those me-too-is-a-Gandhi histrionics failed miserably, poor Varun Gandhi seemed to have been advised by none other than his mother Maneka, the messiah of animal rights (remember: her clinic is not for treating human beings!), to deliver a sermon that will fetch him all "Hindu votes" in the communally sensitive Pilibhit, in north west Uttar Pradesh.

But the sermon didn’t blow the socks off the Hindutva camp. On the other it has posed a tough competition for all those Togadis and Modis. This poor fellow’s anti-Muslim hate speech shouldn’t surprise anyone. In fact they shouldn’t seem dim-witted either.

His dad, Sanjay Gandhi, ruled like a dictator minus any official power during the infamous Emergency. Now, is his son readying himself to enjoy the fruits of power because he believes having been born in the Gandhi dynasty gives him the hallowed duty of ruling the country?

But the poor chap was robbed off that chance at the age of three when he and his mother Maneka were mercilessly thrown out of her house by Indira Gandhi just after the death of Sanjay Gandhi in 1980. The mother queen got furious when Maneka claimed ownership of all moveable properties worth Rs 4.73 lakh.

Maneka didn't have the mettle or material to mount a palace coup against the Empress Indira Gandhi. Since Gandhi wasn’t a patented name, the Empress couldn’t file a suit claiming its ownership either. So an estranged Maneka found solace in the more creative field of animal rights. And the Gandhi tag was so tempting for the BJP the Saffron party embraced the Madame wholeheartedly.

Now, mostly from a realisation that there ain’t a sliver of hope that might redeem her moribund past, Maneka wanted her son to test his luck. But didn’t anybody tell Varun that he should have inherited all those ‘Gandhi’ traits to hoodwink the Indian asses (sorry masses)?

The Amul Baby was in fool’s paradise to think that some Hindutva-spouting will win him votes. He was desperate and has burned his fingers big time.


Photo: Nitant8899/Wikimedia Commons

The inimitable Fab Four

Who can beat Beatles? The four lads from Liverpool is now a subject of study

Liverpool Hope University in the UK has launched a Master of Arts degree in The Beatles. And there is no other apt place than Liverpool for a course like this as this is where all the band members were born and raised.

A senior lecturer at the university has said that though there are over 8,000 books about the Beatles there have never been serious academic studies on the band.

Perhaps this is the first time that a band has become the material for academic studies. And coming after forty years since the band’s break-up, this shows the relevance of the band at a time the music world is flooded with various genres.

This, no doubt, is a tribute to one of the greatest bands on earth as it has redrawn the many dynamics of the music, with its unique style and the kind of music. The Beatles music still flows, transcending generations and genres.

It is simply difficult to attribute the band's success to a particular member. The Police means Stings; The Rolling Stones means Mick Jagger. But in the case of Beatles, all the four were unique in their own right. It wasn’t just John Lennon and Paul McCartney alone. There’s Ringo Star (Remember his wonderfuly-rendered ‘Don’t pass me by’) and of course the inimitable George Harrison whose Indian connection and association with sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar produced genre-defying numbers like ‘within you without you’.

It is impossible to confine the Beatles’ music into a particular genre like pop or rock. We have a number of songs that just cannot be bracketed into any particular style. Remember ‘Come together’, ‘Cry baby cry’ or ‘Revolution.’ The band wasn’t averse to experimenting.

So the ruling is: Bealtes still rocks!

A hyped film and loony ambassadors

Was Slumdog hyped beyond its worth?

It may be a belated review of a film which gained jingoistic reviews. I watched Slumdog Millionaire the other day and I felt it was hyped much beyond its worth. In the first place, the story seemed to me illogical; a guy getting all his answers right in the Indian version of Who Wants to be Millionaire purely from his life’s experiences. So much for a rag-to-riches fairytale.

The first half of the film was pretty okay with the travails and hardships of the lead character Jamal. The background music in most of the places put me off and they seemed out of the place, qualifying it to be tagged as just another Bollywood flick. I'm not juxtaposing the movies’ immense popularity to its winning eight Oscars, for Oscar is not the ultimate word in the film world.

After watching this I was reminded of City of Gods. The Brazilian movie also uses real life characters from a Brazil slum. But the comparison, I feel, just ends there. Slumdog doesn’t reach anywhere near this Brazilian movie, be it in craft or treatment.

I also found some similarities between a grown-up Salim, Jamal’s brother, and Rocket, the main character in City of Gods: from the way he holds the gun to his gait. But I am not sure whether this is pure coincidence or not.

One positive thing about the film as said by my dear friend Abis is that at least “some slum kids got to act in a movie, got admitted in school, had the chance to see "good things", felt important....” And it’s heartening that all the proceeds from the film will go for the benefits of the slum kids. I wish this movie will act as a catalyst for initiating a movement that will lead to eradication of the squalid underbelly of a “growing superpower”.

Where’s the poverty?

What baffled me most is why the ambassadors of India-shining campaign went ballistic with the selling-India-abroad whine. Because the film has only a very few passing shots of the slums, inevitable for the movie’s main story about a slum kid.

There's nothing in the film that suggests that it glorifies poverty in India. Now I think all those Bachchans and the like went to town with their pseudo-nationalism even before watching the film. They seemed to have jumped the gun just on hearing that word slum.

Talking about Bachchan he is hypocrisy personified. There is little reason to think that the yester-year superstar was so much concerned about India’s name abroad or the poor people here. He is the one who unabashedly acted as the brand ambassador of Eveready, a product once loathed and boycotted by many because it came from a company responsible for one of world’s greatest ever industrial disasters: Bhopal tragedy. Did he ever give a damn for the victims for whom justice is still a mirage?

These pseudo patriots were peeved because this film 'discredited' India's name in the international arena. This is patriotism minus responsibility and politics! These guys never had a problem when India's name was tarnished internationally when a state-sponsored genocide killed thousands many rendered refugees in Gujarat.

Stop going ga ga after him

There is nothing historical about Obama except his complexion

The world seemed to have gone overboard over Barack Obama. But is the man really worth celebrating? Does he have the much-needed progressive values and political courage to extricate the world’s superpower from the current mess?

So far, he hasn’t shown any signs which suggested a tectonic shift in US foreign policy. On the other hand what he has been churning out are platitudes and rhetorics. He was simply playing to the gallery, without making any radical statements that would alter the status quo and lead to a major shift in the US policy abroad.

He has never condemned the US invasion of Iraq. In fact during the campaign he didn’t term the war immoral and illegal or a crime against humanity that qualifies it to be tried in an international court of justice.

If he really wished for a ‘change’, a key word during his election campaign, he would have been condemning the US misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His close association with the likes of Colin Powell, Robert Gates, Janet Napolitano and former NATO commander General James Jones, all warmongers during the Bush era, speaks about the kind of orientation he would take as a President. James Jones had backed John McCain as his national security adviser.

And when Israel’s war machine went on killing a few hundred infants and other hapless people in Gaza he kept mum.

Anyone with a basic understanding of American politics will tell you that as a shrewd politician with his eyes set on the White House, Obama has to support the gory acts of Israel and refrain from making any other “politically incorrect” statements that would poke any hole in the jingoistic status quo.

This jingoism means that it is always the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas who are to blame for all hostilities and their consequences with Israel. And the real victims, the Palestine people whose expulsion from their homeland over the 60 years remains as one of the greatest injustices in modern history, are the troublemakers.

This jingoism further means that it is in the best interest of America’s security and safety that the country went on ‘war’ against Afghanistan and Iraq.

As a shrewd candidate Obama has to respond to this jingoism.

Obama marketed himself as a purveyor of change. And there was his black colour to boot. And by change, does he mean a change in the complexion of the president?

And it is really funny to watch the world and the media going ga ga after his black complexion. There have been Black people like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rize who sat over so many cruelties perpetrated by the Uncle Sam.

So having a black at the helm doesn’t mean a change just because he or she represents the clan long oppressed by the whites.

The point is there is nothing ‘historic’ in Obama’s presidency. He simply is just another candidate who played his cards well.

As rightly pointed out by Noam Chomsky, the election of an indigenous person (Evo Morales) in Bolivia and a progressive person (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) in Haiti were more historic than the election of Obama.

And keep in mind that as a US Senate candidate in 2004 he threatened missile strikes against Iran. And he's been threatening Iran ever since. So what differentiates him from other hawkish elements during the Bush era?

US journalist William Blum tells us that Obama is likely to remain a centrist; he’ll probably continue to play it safe.

At this moment I am reminded of Ralph Nadar, who has been campaigning for presidency. He puts forward an alternative to everything the successive US governments have been doing over the years: exporting uncertainties, wars and conflicts world over in its unending thirst for oil. If he wins the US presidency, it surely is historic. Not Obama’s.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons