A devious trap

The problems of India is uniquely Indian and it is difficult for an outsider to understand unless they are sensitive and spent some time to travel and know this vast land. Immensely diverse country where the language, tradition and environment changes quite dramatically, it is full of surprises and shocks, but is sure to overwhelm the senses. It is backpackers dream come true place. There is always some kind of excitement and is rarely disappointing. But there is also one factor that is constant: it is the practice of caste. It gets acute in its sinister presence in small towns and villages while in cities it tends to hide and morph as class concerns, blatant rudeness in public spaces and patronizing value systems that comes from sense of entitlement and ordained place in universe. In intellectual ivory tower it shows its tentacles as uniqueness of trickle down policies and complete lack of sensitivity or need for basic awareness (our great public intellectual liberal posing Amartya Sen, who counts friends among Presidents and PMs –and doesn’t forget to mention it in every conceivable occasions, expresses ignorance and is surprised by its severity.  Clearly bookish knowledge and eking a living in sanitised surroundings, and then playing spokesperson of India’s problems has its limitations). Also castetva forces morphed these as law and order issue for working narration of amazing diversity and ever dripping non violence. In narration controlling market media it is a no show, while they celebrate it as diversity of culture. You go to any place in India, it may look charming, people may be amiable, but it is when you try to understand and know better it is then that the crudeness of the society comes into open. The stench is horrible. From simple discourteous behaviour to degrading segregations to violence, this primitive society seems to be tangled in its own mess. How can such society ever have framework for innovations or refreshing ideas when people are fatalist and insecure. Indian civilization has thrived on mediocrity. Ofcourse there are pockets of excellence but these are taken care by the myth makers as miracle (you can trace the culprits to temple squatters and hang arounds to usurp narration). It is a network that not only perpetuates misery to people but also demean their existence. Despite the diversity of the land this is one overwhelming factors that has cut across the regional, linguistic and even barriers of religions. Some elitist intellectuals see it is a binding factor, as coalesce for collective emancipation and social mobility. A uniquely Indian sign of vibrant democracy, we are told. This intellectual narration gives credence to policy makers assured worldview and subsequent arrogance. It reduces people to blatancy of vote bank and so cheap sops, demeaning the misery further. Sadly under these overwhelming factors the marginalised either gives up or learn to make compromises, haggle for sops or other quick fixes. It may seem caste consciousness for the elitizens, and so they smirk, but the reality is: what is the use of a consciousness where the system has pushed a huge section to the lowest rug for centuries, it is lack of options that leads to cynicism and acceptance as vote bank.     

The only minority in India are the Dalits and the Tribes. This may shock many intellectuals and their posers but the fact remains the most marginalised, I mention marginalised in its all imaginable acute meaning, are the Dalits and the Tribes. I also use Dalit in context of discrimination and exploitation and definitely not as an identity -a devious construct to trap. Dalits arise as a reaction from obnoxiously crude squatter interpretation of Hinduism cut across all barriers of religions. It pervades all egalitarian intention to infect as Christian Dalits, the Muslim Dalits, Sikh Dalits so on. In cities it's class avatar, Dalits are the lower sections –the have not, the underbellies of the society, the outsiders, the unorganised…the caste framework mutate into regressive attitude. Thus the self-congratulatory assertion of being not concerned about caste but nevertheless reflected in the attitude, treatment of servants is just an example.  Right from primary educations to primary health centres there is lack of concern, while mediocre engineering colleges and specialty clinics sprout in every nook and corner. Mediocre here include IITs, the much hyped institution is nowhere in the list of world's best institutes. Even 'toughest entrance' embarrassingly unsuited. So the common people suffer due to apathy. Take for instance the cycle rickshaw, it’s been in big cities for so many decades. Did anyone thought about better design? It’s only a decade back efficient changes were introduced. It needs sensitivity and empathy for these kind of attitude, as also skills to incorporate the needy and connectedness to the sorrounding. I was listening to Anil Gupta (who runs Honeybee as also involved in Innovation Council), a rickshaw puller's daughter introduced innovative changes in the design, it included an option for the passenger to peddle from his seat, so as to help (here Prof Gupta speaking at IHC delhi). To think this way needs a strong sense of empathy and vibrant mind. That is where innovation happens. For this very reason Indian society doesn’t have the capacity for innovation, they are good at universe level speculations and other big intention talk. The other day a young IIT professor was arguing with me about benefits of ‘not eating onions’, he doesn’t even touch onions. While small nation like Taiwan is way ahead in patenting, here people are stuck up with onions!! It need also be pointed out that many poor people can afford to eat only onion with roti, therefore this arrogance and buffoonish thinking should be put in this context. Being an ISCKON member the fellow was also showing how ahead he was compared to mere mortals. I would like to know the Infosys sponsored AkshyaPatra that is run by ISCKON, whether they avoid onion? If yes, why? In that case they should be asked to stop their service; it is creating prejudices among the children. Indeed egg should be part of the diet.  

            There is a sinister attempt at defining minority from the context of religion, which means protecting minorities’ is about protecting Muslims and therefore secular, and thus accruing benefits at the expense of the needy. The elite Muslims who rarely face any discrimination play victims, and therefore opportunist elitizens have saviours and victims among themselves. What a nice setup! The reality is even if they are Muslims, Sikhs, Christians or belonging to any region or speaking any language, the minorities are the Dalits and the Tribes, and they are the one who are discriminated. The communal riots whenever it happens targets this section, the elites rarely face big problems. If you take the statistics of people who get killed during riots, those who lose their belongings, those who had to migrate…it is always the lowest section (mostly the Dalit) within the religion. Changing religion has not changed their conditions. The attacks on Christians are targeted against poorest who are having nothing in common with the wealthy and traditional elite, indeed Christian community is one of the richest in Kerala and rarely face any problems but tend to play the minority card at the expense of real minorities. The attack on Sikhs in 1984 was most vicious in poorer sections like Trilokpuri and Nangloi (though Greater Kailash has substantial Sikhs I don’t think anybody was in danger. Now, who stays in GK and who stays in Trilokpuri?), the reason for apathy while so much vociferous reaction on Gujarat riot is because some elite got killed, one of the rare happening in riots. The reason why the secular brigades are up in arms, meanwhile Sikh pogrom is brushed aside. Dalits get humiliated and killed all the time, throughout the history. If there was no rule of law this would almost be declared as culture. The prominent cases like Khairlanji or Lakshmanpur-bathe case comes to mind, in the latter case the honourable judge found that nobody killed 58 people (which include 27 women and 10 children). It must be aliens! Imagine this happening in South Delhi or to temple squatters in any temple, let’s say Tirupati, you cannot even think this is possible but when it comes to Dalit it is not only plausible but happens almost on daily basis. 

The elitizens are creating the narrations, whether social, historical or cultural, this has become part of our collective conscience. They have created and defined minorities according to their convenience and needs. When I was studying in school, there was popular quiz program that was suddenly taken off the air. The question that invited the ire was “Who is the showboy of the Congress?”, the participant gave the answer Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, which was judged right! During those tightly controlled days of DD these were refreshing insights. Elite Muslims have always been the showcase of secularism - rightly being called pseudo secularist. In the meanwhile real minorities and needy suffered in this stampede of symbolism. The Congress party is the clear culprit here, the symbolism that worked well during freedom struggle as it got the benefits of feudal nature of society, was sought to be extended. The feudal lords became rallying point for freedom, and so they also became freedom fighters. That they still can garner votes shows primitiveness of the society. Therefore, the anachronisms of Salman Khurshids and others of the ilk, who absolutely have nothing in common with Dalit muslims. In the meanwhile they also blatantly promoted caste cannibals who quite easily took the role of secularist in this framework (obnoxious Mani Shankar Iyer quite understandably calls himself secular fundamentalist). Their national narration of minorities is also adjusted in a manner that it matches and is easily correlates to international, or alteast western narration, this has huge benefits. The consolidation is such that it even caught likes of Amartya Sen off-guard, are we surprised. 

The discrimination of Dalits (and also Tribes) is the discrimination of minority, a cultural and historical minority. All other issues in this context is nothing but vulgar exaggeration. Elitizens have control over the national narration, accordingly they latch on to western narration and try to position and accrue benefits. So the issues of LGBT, gender, AIDS so on though important becomes subservient and almost insignificant to the blatant discrimination and crude dealings of Dalits and caste violence herein. The matter becomes critical because of intentional neglect by the market media (as it doesn’t cater to their audience) as also the powerful people who control the narration. In the overall context of Indian society the issue of LGBT or gender concerns are the expression of the elitizen's hint at discrimination to their ilk which they find disturbing. If discrimination was a concern then caste wouldn’t be there at all!

Small towns or villages are not about romanticised versions of innocence, the reason why Ambedkar had such serious differences with cunning Gandhi on role of village as model for development. A village in India is a cesspool of discriminative culture that attempts sophistication in cities. One wonders whether devious Gandhi would have got such an acceptance as national leader if he was a Dalit? No point speculating, the answer is a resounding no. So caste was a significant contributor in creation of Gandhi as mahatma, and ofcourse Nehru as pandit. It also explains the late resurgence of Ambedkar. There is also romanticisation of small town people when they do well in big cities as if it reflects the egalitarian nature of Indian society, far from it one has go into what social milieu they come from. I was reading Subodh Gupta, the latest Indian artist from small town of Bihar who has made it big using compelling motives that reflects village life. To one question he mentions that the challenge he faced was ‘feeding brahmins’, trying to elaborate his culinary skills. This is our little scoundrel from small town I was referring to.

Recently in a shocking verdict, which was understandably ignored by market media, Supreme Court of India gave Dikshitars (the temple squatters) the right to manage the historic Nataraja temple at Chidambaram. SC points out that the Dikshitars were a religious denomination as per the Article 26 of the Constitution “which guarantees right to establish and maintain institutions for religious purposes.” It’s amazing, who gave the squatters this right? Further on what basis this right is traditional. If it is traditional, that means it is hereditary, this surely is discrimination based on birth against other people. This is a blatant violation of fundamental rights. This blogger would also like to know as to what is the contribution of these temple squatters to the temple, except maybe fleecing hapless devotees. What is the rights of those who constructed the temple, the artisans and other talented people? Further which section of society has been cleaning the drainage of this temple and around for centuries? On what basis fleecing the devotees got precedence over cleaning the drainage (which incidentally the learned judges should know is quite critical). By this logic Dalits should have control to manage the temple. Also talking of richest temple in India, who are the people who control Tirupati temple, and who decided these occupations. I would call this temple, the temple of debauch, they have such insatiable greed for money. Only the corrupt give these kinds of huge donations, crude people who lack empathy and think god would multiply their money in return as favor. What kind of sickness is this? 

If the SC thinks occupation of temple squatters is based on birth then it is also suggesting that doing menial work like cleaning should be assigned to Dalits because that is how job is being assigned. This is undoubtedly violation of human rights, most importantly they even lack basic decency to even suggest this. It is a different matter that all temple squatter belong to particular section while all sweepers belong to another section, all hereditarily assigned. Is that a coincidence? Isn’t this caste discrimination? Is this not violation of minority rights? 

Those who are playing big time seculars should be closely scrutinised, the elitizens have created the narration and having a ball it seems. Take for instance Mani Iyer, what does this surname indicate? Clearly it is reference to his temple squatter tradition status. What did this tradition do to minority (read Dalits)?  They were subjected to heinous discrimination for centuries, and still facing serious problems and discriminations despite affirmative action. What has the framework created by temple squatters done to Indian society? They severely degraded the society and created amazingly self-serving mediocre people. Nazis atrocities against Jews lasted less than a decade but temple squatters atrocities against Indian society lasted for more than 2000years. If Nazi symbols are seen as symbols of fascism and genocide how is caste cannibal symbols signs of culture? I find it baffling. They could easily change their surname to remove caste reference but they will not. This is called ingrained discrimination, even the good intention can be nothing but patronising that nobody needs. This nonsense has gone unchecked for so long because these powerful people have been controlling the national narration and occupying significant positions. Quite amusingly the international community too seem to have been taken in by this narration. This will have to be severely dealt. (picture taken from Anant Patwardhan's Jai Bheem Comrade, that i happen see some time back).

This blogger appeals the international community to declare caste as discrimination. In a uniquely Indian culture understanding caste cannibalism is nothing but crude form of racism. UN should declare this as severe violations of human rights and minority rights.

AAP looses credibility at an alarming rate

Like most Indians I am quite saddened , more than saddened maybe angered. AAP had such spectacular possibility. They wouldn’t have been the third front as some in media were exaggerating but yes a significant presence, a presence that is essential, particularly, in places where the two party system has become entrenched at the cost of common people. Two party system is a joke, taken too far it severely threatens and polarizes society that is ready for violence. The incompetence and arrogance of entrenched interests and political class sought a voice against and AAP emerged as a delightful option. It seems the ‘leaders’ of AAP have got carried away and have messed it big time. Perception has become quite important in the age of 24x7 media and has a detrimental impact in the making of middle class world view. However even the sleightest of conjurer has to have some credibility, perceptions is difficult to be sustained over the long period if the credibility is lost. Clearly the issue on which AAP is out on the street lacks credibility, it seems made up for media worst there are egos coming into picture. The visceral rant and chaos is an invitation to trouble makers, this could easily spin out of hand. This blogger agrees that State government should have control over Police, and Union may have some part of it in its control, indeed a new force could be created. It is rather trite to argue Delhi police should be under control of Union government for national security reason. The crime in the state has serious ramification on the society and elected leaders of the state have a role to play in finding solution. Though the irony of a party fighting for autonomy to control of the police force is not lost.  

Once you are in a responsible position there is a way of dealing with issues, I am not suggesting these are sacrosanct (there is ofcourse anger and cynicism against the political class). Anarchy is not bad but should be the last resort that too when other options are exhausted. When the CM of a state claims to be an anarchist then it is a question mark on the whole political system and the feasibility of the institutions. People have elected their leaders to solve these very problems. Anarchy is the end of system, it is denying the mandate. It is quite a dangerous situation and puts in a very bad precedence.

It seems AAP is quite in a hurry (they need to understand that they have done exceptionally well and this unnecessary urgency without any ground work doesn’t augur well) and fixers in the national party see it as a threat and are waiting for to attack and discredit, indeed the entrenched political and cultural elites (mostly some very mediocre people high on corruption and nepotism, the reason why this society suffers) are extremely good at this. The Indian crab mentality is part of the folklore. Unfortunately AAP has fallen into the trap. The question of decency in discourse is seen as a major asset, it is a different matter that they have been sucking on people and cause of immense misery, AAP has tripped on that one too. They have made classic outsider’s mistake!! Even this would have been forgiven if the credibility was intact….

AAP has channelized chaos and energized the system and gave new hope to millions of people tired of selfish and corrupt elite section. Now it is their responsibility as leaders to fulfill these aspirations. It is becoming increasingly clear that they are not upto to it. We will have some self congratulating smiling fixers in the scene claiming ‘didn’t we tell you so’ or ‘we know better’. O yes they should know better they have been ruling and now they pass it on to the progenies; of course they should know the tricks of administration. In the meanwhile Indians languish at the bottom of the pile. Worst than sub Saharan countries, you say. Really?

Something about street food…

I am not a big fan of street foods in india, since in most cases there are two overwhelming factor that goes against it. One, invariably most street food are greasy and the oil used is of low quality that they keep reusing till its sooty black. Second, the hygiene standards are quite low. Over the years you develop some instincts on these matters, but the above two factors remains the decider. Consequently street foods are not a pleasant experience. But I must add despite these hiccups I too go all the way out for Sabudani vada whenever I am deccan region, early morning Pune streets have variety of options. Not many are aware that Pune is quite high on street breakfast. Poha is suggested anytime. Then there are Dokhlas. Hot idlis in most south Indian roadsides can be given a try, you can also go for puttu /ada/ kallu appam while in small towns of kerala. Steamed rice items in Shilling are also on my list. Hot Rajma chawal of CP (delhi) is an all-time favourite, as also kulcha-chole at Karol Bagh.  Spicy puffed rice laced with carrot and green chutney, also boiled or sprouted grams can be given a shot, try it from the guy who is in demand, but it remains a risky proposition. Grilled or smoked kebabs can be relished in a place where there are too many non-veg street stalls like Lucknow (I must add though that I had severe stomach issue after I tried Kakori kebab in this city) or Purani dilli.  Tandoori chicken is always a safe bet, so is hot fish curry rice. Indeed Tandoori chicken is much better option than cholesterol clogging vegetarian fair while traveling in North. Unfortunately, baked or steamed fish is quite a rarity and you end up staring at repulsive deep fried fishes on beaches. litti is another of amazing street food that deserve to be as popular as Tibetan momo.  During winter another delectable rarity makes its presence: coal baked sweet potatoes with dash of lip smacking fresh lime. The other day I was in Chawdi Bazar (in purani dilli) and came across what could top all the street food. It goes by the name Kulle chat or Kuliya chat. The plate has four options: an orange, baked potato, cucumber and a tomato that are carved and filled in with pomegranate seeds, boiled grams and other delectable assortments (the picture herein).          

Good food is about taste and health (hygiene, low grease and pesticide free), factors of food mile makes it wholesome. Anything less is not good food.  There is a need for policy makers to train the street food hawkers on these matters and also street cuisine from across the world that could be included in Indian conditions, indeed private companies can include this as part of CSR. There are many talented street food cooks who need to be appreciated through initiatives. The other day I saw this fellow in street corner making precise Rotis without belen. It was amazing to watch, quite an art.     

The whole concept of vegetarianism doesn’t seem to be about health concerns nor compassion for living being. Food is appallingly low on health apprehensions, hygiene issues are limited to the bizarre idea of purity which in turn is about hierarchy exhibitions and strange pecking order. It is a sickness that has become culture. Compassion arising from vegetarianism seems to have rarely percolated. Nor has it led to biodiversity concerns or inquisitiveness about other species. Human being as superior creation arrogance is very much evident. Someone said in jest the other day at Bharatpur when queried about a bird species “gai hamari matha hai iske aage hamme kuch nahi atha hai!!”.  Fortunately it is limited to patronizing and much carelessness unlike hunting (mass scale killings) that was a culture of west which wiped away and endangered many species and played havoc on ecosystem.