The Cluster-Fu*k Chakra

Inspired by the latest news that the US will fund Saudi Arabia to “train and arm moderate rebels to fight the ISIS.”

 

White-washed Histories

Caveats: I have formed my opinions on the basis of information I could find online about school history syllabi in different countries, which wasn’t much. If I am wrong in what I say please let me know! Also, this post is a non-personal reflection on the attitude of governments and public institutions in the West and has nothing to do with my friends and colleagues in these countries most of whom are well-informed and know better than to trust history textbooks : ).

Six years ago I visited the concentration camp at Auschwitz and one lesson has stayed with me from that trip – that we should not forget past atrocities. Indeed, one of the first things that struck me when I moved to Europe was the very high degree of awareness amongst Europeans – especially Germans, of the terrible evils of Nazism and the Holocaust. At first this seems a trite and self-apparent observation. Who would not be aware of atrocities committed in or by their country in a past that is still so recent? As it turns out, the Germans are the exception in the West (Europe and the U.S.A).

Every German and almost every European and American learns of this dark period in history lessons at school. And that, without question is how it should be. But increasingly I am starting to wonder – why is it that no other western nation teaches their school-going students the history and consequences of their past misdeeds in Asia, Africa and the Americas?

Between 12 and 29 million Indians died in the Madras and Bengal Famines during English rule in India. During both famines the English government not only ignored the plight of the starving millions, they actively ensured that most of the grain and wheat grown was shipped back to England to feed more worthy causes and lives. Just enough grain was retained to feed the rulers and keep their staff alive. In fact some say that during the Bengal Famine crisis in the 1940s Winston Churchill was vocal in his contempt, hatred and disregard for Indians as they starved and what little food they had was snatched away from them. Are these facts taught in school history lessons in the UK? How many students learn of the torture of prisoners in the Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar islands and the wanton massacre of innocent, unarmed protesters at Jallianwala Bhagh in Punjab? And this is just India. The Kenyans recently won a landmark case in a UK court, with the court directing the English government to compensate the families of those killed in the Mau Mau uprising. Do this uprising, the massacres that followed, the concentration camps for the survivors or the death sentences of any suspected rebel find a mention in school history textbooks in the UK? From some preliminary research, the answer seems to be no, not unless the student specialises in history in their A-levels.

The Dutch in Indonesia were no less brutal. Victims of the Rawagade massacre in Indonesia (a much smaller number than killed in the Holocaust or the Indian famines) recently won compensation from the Dutch government for the atrocities they committed. Prior to the judgements however, the Dutch government stated that they thought the “time for persecution” had long expired. A few years ago, a Dutch journalist was taken to court for writing about some of their colonial misdeeds in Indonesia and were accused of “tarnishing the name of Dutch soldiers.” Do schools in the Netherlands teach students about their colonial history in Indonesia beyond a passing mention? Or is it left for the specialists of history to learn?

The Spanish in South America, the French in Algeria and Vietnam, the Belgians in Congo, the U.S.A more recently in Afghanistan and the Middle East – all have committed atrocities that while in absolute number maybe less than the Holocaust are just as shocking in their sheer evilness and utter disregard for human values. The debate in Germany and the rest of Europe on how best to teach pupils about the Holocaust is endless and very public. Why is it there are no similar discussions on how and why colonial atrocities should best be taught in schools? There was one debate in England on this topic – when the government decided to include the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in their Empire Studies curriculum they were accused of having an anti-British bias! The Belgians seem to be somewhat better from this perspective. Schools in Belgium have reportedly evolved from being quiet on the subject of King Leopold to being highly critical of his regime. 

I agree that every country has the right to be a bit self-obsessed and self-serving when teaching history to its children. Yes, by all means highlight your achievements and your positive aspects. And yes, in today’s increasingly online world where Wikipedia and Google know everything some may say such teachings are unnecessary. But the teaching of history in today’s internationalised world – at least in my opinion, should aim to give students a balanced, if basic, view of the world and make them think about the past events that have shaped it. The wealth of the west was built – at best partly and at worst entirely – on the backs of their colonies in Asia, Africa and South America. Just as the families of the victims of Hitler’s mania deserve that their history be taught to every school student don’t the families of colonial era victims deserve a mention in the history textbooks of the countries that perpetrated these horrors?

One counter –argument is that the Holocaust is taught because it was unique as being primarily a genocide motivated by hate, unlike the colonial atrocities which were consequences of wars and suppression of internal unrest. That, in my opinion is a complete cop-out that only seeks to highlight the apparent, continuing disregard in the West for the history of their misdeeds in Asia, Africa and South America. Or is it  the terrible truth that if the Holocaust had happened in a small unheard-of African country it would have been forgotten by the rest of the world?

Paradoxically, even I didn’t learn about the Bengal and Madras famines in school in India and think our history syllabi have a rather pro-British bias but that is a topic for another rant.

Introducing, the world’s largest geronto-pluto-goondacracy

Guess what: India’s newest Parliament - and strongest  in 30 years, is also its oldest,  wealthiest and most criminal. India is not just the world’s largest democracy, but also the world’s largest gerontocracy, plutocracy and goondacracy, as statistics from the National Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reform show.

One-third of our MPs are accused of being criminals. Some of the most goondacratic parties, in terms of percentage of criminal-charge-facing MPs, are the RJD in Bihar, the Shiv Sena and the NCP in Maharashtra. In the ruling party, the BJP, over a fifth of its 282 MPs face criminal charges. But hold on a second – does this mean the Congress is relatively clean? Why is the Congress, equally notorious for the criminal tendencies of its MPs, not even come into the picture here? Well, the answer to that is, fortunately, the Congress got trounced in these elections leaving many of its criminal candidates happily free of the onerous  - and increasingly dangerous - responsibility of sitting in Parliament.

It becomes even more scary when looking at those who could have made it in. Of 8,163 candidates for 543 seats, 27% - or 950 candidates – are millionaires (up from 16% in 2009), and 17% face criminal charges. Here the Congress leads the list for the number of millionaire candidates followed by the BJP. And surprise, surprise, the ‘Common Man’s Party’, the AAP, is not to be left out. The AAP is led by self-professed Gandhian Arvind Kejriwal who, in his campaign, emphasized the selection of candidates who would represent the common man. However, 40% of the AAP candidates in the state of Madhya Pradesh have criminal cases in court. I am sure the common man would resent this implication.  And of all these 8163 representatives of the people, 889 had serious criminal charges against them – i.e. murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, theft and criminal intimidation.

There is another delicious irony here. Dr. Manmohan Singh, India’s out-going PM, was widely seen as being an upright and outstanding individual surrounded by a brazenly corrupt and criminal establishment. A key attraction of the to-be PM Narendra Modi is his image as a clean politician. As it turns out he is going to find himself in a situation very similar to Dr. Singh. It remains to be seen if he will be able/willing to keep the corrupt and the criminal under check.

Oh, I almost forgot - India’s Parliament is steadily getting older, with over 45% of its MPs on the better side of 55. There is, paradoxically, a bright side to this – the majority of these ossified oligarchs, by the very nature of their jobs, will have a limited political shelf-life. Being a criminal takes energy and being an MP demands even more. Doing both at the same time, one could imagine, requires considerable vigour. While the new PM himself is a youthful 63, with a healthy 56-inch chest, the oldest oligarch is well over the 80 mark. Meanwhile, over half the country’s population is under 25. But more worrying than this generation gap – yes, I am afraid there’s more – are the trends. The numbers have been steadily going up on all fronts. India has long been progressing towards an increasingly gerontocratic government. But now, with our political parties becoming truly inclusive and secular towards all forms of -cracies, goondacratic and plutocratic tendencies are also on the rise. Since 2004, when it was made mandatory for candidates to declare criminal charges along with financial assets, these trends have been going up steadily.

Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe the best, at any rate, the most entertaining, thing to do with a criminal millionaire is to put him in a large room filled with other criminal millionaires and handy, loose items of furniture, and let them fight amongst themselves in a televised reality show.

Of course, the only way to prevent these fights from spilling out into the countryside around New Delhi is to place these corrupt criminals under the watch of an exceptionally strong and incorruptible leader. Which is exactly what the electorate has thoughtfully and resoundingly done.

Did someone say, “world’s largest autocracy”?

 

Technorati Tags: India,democracy,2014 Lok Sabha,MPs,criminal

Debate: India, the nation that is not

Prelude

Imagine an empire whose individual kingdoms are not allowed to secede and whose representation in administrative affairs depends on their respective sizes and population. Now imagine further that these kingdoms can have their boundaries redrawn at will by the viceroys of that empire. It is only natural to expect that in such an empire the powers of the military, judiciary, foreign affairs and economic institutions are vested in the central leadership.

While each kingdom may administer its own people, educate them to a degree and even collect taxes on their produce it remains subject to the justice of the empire and if ever a kingdom were to rebel or thwart the authority of the central leadership retribution and a military clamp-down would be certain and justified.

However, one concession is made, that makes all this feel just. Once in five years all the kings of all the kingdoms attempt to renew the mandate of their people for their continued existence and the successful kings of the larger kingdoms eventually gain a say within the central leadership – one of them even becoming its ultimate emperor, hence continuing the cycle.

Substitute ‘nation’ for ‘empire’, ‘state’ for ‘kingdom’ and mandate for ‘democratic elections’ and you have a sovereign democratic republic in today’s world, like India.

The proposition here is that India is not a single, coherent nation.

I will present some arguments against this statement (i.e. that India is a coherent nation) with my counter-arguments for the proposition in italics. I believe that the older we become as a nation, the more we need to think about what unites us, and what we can do to strengthen this identity. I admire the efforts of the European Union in integrating the various nations of Europe and I strongly feel that India can and should learn lessons on strengthening our national identity from the EU.

India, the Nation that is Not: Arguments Against and For

1. The chief argument against the proposition that India is not a coherent nation is that we share a rich legacy of science, religion and philosophy that persisted even up until the end of the Mughal era (e.g. the zero, Chanakya, the Taj Mahal, Hindustani and Carnatic music, architecture, etc). This legacy of a shared cultural heritage and common ancestries is something that has often been invoked in nationalistic movements in India, during pre-Independence and post-Independence periods.

My argument for the proposition is as follows: This is a popular version of our history emphasized by freedom fighters to unite the people as a single nation. Yes, there was a free, constant and considerable economic, spiritual and philosophical trade, and even inter-marriage between different kingdoms in the sub-continent but these were still separate kingdoms even as portrayed in Hindu mythology. No invader until the British - and certainly no home-grown ruler - ever unilaterally ruled what is now known as India. The Mughals did not subjugate the south or the north-east, neither did the Mauryas, and the Chozhas at their greatest never ventured farther west than Telangana. It wasn’t just that India was a collection of different kingdoms, but the people of these kingdoms were inherently different in their culture, ethnicity and the languages they spoke. For instance, Tamil as a language family is recognized as being distinct in its origin from the Sanskrit family.

2. The second argument against my proposition is that it is precisely India’s enduring cohesion while preserving its cultural diversity in the face of several challenges, that defines it as a unique but coherent nation. India is currently an amalgamated mass of several peoples – this is widely recognized and often touted as one of the country’s greatest achievements as a nation – its unity in diversity.

My counter-argument goes thus: For better or worse, India was divided on a linguistic basis to preserve the various regional cultural identities. One result of this division, combined with a centralised federal government has been to entrench these identities and make them susceptible to politicisation by regional interests that highlight the differences and incompatibilities between different states. While movement between states is increasing, people in different regions of the country still possess greater cultural and ethnic affinities to neighbouring countries than to one another. The western provinces of Indian Punjab and the Punjab of Pakistan were a land of similar people not so long ago. The Tamils of south India are more similar to the Tamils of Sri Lanka, than to Bengalis or Rajasthanis, and similarly the Bengalis, in custom and language are closer brethren of the Bangladeshis than they are of the people of Karnataka. Meanwhile, regional un-rest is wide-spread and community-based racism is a part of the larger culture and sometimes even transcends religion (the caricature of a ‘Northie’ or a ‘Madrasi’ remains true irrespective of religious affiliation).

3. This brings me to the third argument against India as a non-nation, namely, religion. The majority of the country is Hindu and Hinduism and the Vedas are increasingly being touted as a unifying theme, recalling the past glory of a Hindustan. Historically, the term Hindustan, literally meaning ‘the land beyond the Indus (river)’ refers chiefly to the Mughal empire in North India.

My counter-argument is that, while Hinduism itself spread across the sub-continent, from Afghanistan to Cambodia, even today, Hindus in the North are very different from Hindus in the South, or the West or the North-east in almost every aspect of their day to day life. The argument for India as a pan-Hindu nation also ignores other considerable and over-riding differences between regions. Further, other religions such as Islam, Buddhism and Sikhism that have historically existed alongside Hinduism in different parts of the country belie the idea of a geographically contiguous Hindu nation.

4. The fourth argument against the notion that India is not a coherent nation, differs from the other arguments in that it recognises that “India” is a new concept. The  argument is that India was made by the British and as a result shares a common legacy, a common aspiration and common goals. Yes, India is a country made by the British and was united in its hatred for the invader and his excesses. This fuelled a nationalism which was focused on the nation-state formed by arbitrary divisions by the British of the country’s borders. The idea of India as a nation was crucial to the economic development and stability of all its regions in the post-colonial years and this was recognized as a considerable challenge by the first prime-ministers. Though there were a few problems during nation-forming, independent kingdoms and protectorates like Hyderabad, Kashmir, and Sikkim were either convinced or forced to join the new “India.”

My counter-argument is thus: India currently faces neither the unifying threat of an invader nor does it enjoy the euphoria of building a new nation. Increasingly, the cracks in a centralised development policy applied to a regionally diverse nation are showing. Almost all states remain highly homogeneous within themselves in their racial and ethnic composition, and as such, distinct from one another. Inequalities in representation at the centre and geographic factors combined with intrinsic differences in the different states are resulting in struggles between states for resources like water. States rebel against other states like European countries reacting to waves of unwanted immigration. Meanwhile divisions within states are now increasingly economic and driven by increasing inequality and the biased availability of resources to one group of people over another. Ironically, this is currently a strong argument against India being simply an amalgamation of different races: the poor are united across the nation in their poverty, and the rich in their isolation from this poverty.

5. The final argument against the proposition that India is not a nation is more a question: other countries exist now as nations that did not before, and with diverse populations – e.g. The US, so why is India any different?

I argue however, that India is different for three main reasons: a) The US was a self-made nation with a long process of secession and union – India as a new nation was made by an invader and left as such; b) The US, at least until recently spoke a language that was its own, after a fashion; and c) The US still remains – at least relative to India, homogenous in terms of its composition. Partly as a result of the linguistic division of India’s states a preservation of cultural differences is being seen that is making India remarkably more diverse than the US, UK or any other comparable nation.

Conclusions

India was created by the British who took away its wealth, gave it nation-hood and democracy among other things and left it to its own devices to survive and prosper as a nation. India was thus forced into an artificial “nation-hood” – a model on which the entire world is now defined. The newly-forged nation, in order to survive in the modern world, had to make use of the resources it had left – the English language, democratic institutions and infrastructure, among other things. In that respect, India has proved herself to be an incredibly resilient given that 66+ years on, she is still, to all appearances a remarkably coherent and cohesive nation and the world’s largest functioning democracy.

But beneath the surface, trouble brews. Regional protests flare up with increasing intensity and frequency; regional politics are increasingly getting tangled with national politics;  and the preservation and scholarly study of local and regional art forms, history and language still struggles to find a foothold amongst the more mainstream, standardised mediums of education modelled on the British format.

India is at best a tenuous nation. It is tempting to draw parallels to the European Union, an amalgam of “common but differentiated” (to borrow a phrase) regions that have come together economically – and increasingly, culturally – as an entity for mutual benefit and convenience. There are several lessons we could learn from the EU’s attempts at European integration, For instance here are my top 3:

1. Sending school-children from TN to Punjab, and vice-versa to learn and teach one another about our different cultures;

2. Actively promoting inter-state economic and cultural exchanges rather than letting this play out as a migration issue and reactively dealing with the consequences

3. Encouraging co-operation and exchange between state research, government and banking institutions (this kind of exchange exists within national institutions and should not be difficult to implement at state level).

As we become ever more disgruntled with our democratic and economic systems, and increasingly try and hold on to our regional heritage while asserting a national identity, it would do well for us to closely observe the model of the European Union and learn from their failures and successes. 

Please do comment and contribute – especially if you feel I have missed out any arguments for or against.

Technorati Tags: India,Nation,EU,Unity

Engineering colleges in India out of reach for many

 

Caste, location, economic status and an English-language education can determine whether a student in India will end up in an engineering college, according to a study by Anirudh Krishna at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague.

Analysing the results of a questionnaire-based survey of 876 students across engineering colleges of varying quality across the country, the author finds that the more rural one is, the lower are his/her chances of gaining admission into an engineering college. The lack of a knowledge of English severely reduces the chance of admission to all but the lowest tier of colleges. A combination of a rural background with a Scheduled Caste (SC) / Scheduled Tribe (ST) handicap virtually eliminated these chances.

India produces more than 600,000 engineering graduates annually. Though the engineering education system itself is faulty with the majority of graduates unemployable, the opportunity for admission to these ‘gateway institutions’ is the key to upward social mobility. The study conducted with the support of Aspiring Minds, a national employment agency, ranks 6 engineering colleges based on various factors such as the educational qualifications of their faculty and the employability of their graduates. These rankings are combined with data on the backgrounds of the individual students to identify the key factors that drive the rural-urban divide in engineering college admissions in the country. The students were asked to provide information on several parameters such as their caste, the degree of ‘rural-ness’ of their upbringing, their medium of education, their parents’ level of education and economic status, and the available sources of information and advice.

The worst possible combination for a child was to be poor and belong to an ST – the surveyed students did not include anyone that was poor and an ST. Affirmative action (reservation of seats) for SC/ STs in public engineering colleges is high but it is clearly not doing enough in this regard. Just as bad, was to be poor and from a rural background with agriculturist parents. An in-depth analysis of these issues also reveals the lack of information and advice on pathways to opportunity as hindering the mobility of the rural poor towards an engineering education. Among those who made it into an engineering college against the odds the chance help of a motivated/ rich relative, teacher or friend was, in almost all cases, the determining factor.

The lack of penetration of English in rural schools – arguably closely related to the often abysmal quality of these schools was another key determining factor. 70 - 80% of the students in the Tier 1 colleges had their secondary education in English while for the Tier 6 colleges this figure was less than 50%. The merits of an English-medium education are a debated topic in India. However the fact remains that the structure of higher ‘gateway’ education in India today necessitates a working knowledge of English.

Yet, it is not all gloomy. The study showed positive trends in social mobility for women and SC’s. Stories of individuals who made it against the odds also offer hope and more importantly, indicators of what sort of action is needed to address this divide. For instance the study describes the case of a poor girl in Delhi who gained admission into an engineering college thanks to directed effort and funding by the Delhi state government towards a high-quality school for the under-privileged.

There are bright minds out there in India’s villages waiting to be educated. Tragically, many of these children may spend their lifetimes completely unaware of the opportunities that exist and how these may be grasped.  Rural and under-privileged families in India need to be provided with an English education, and with information, counselling and role models that encourage and instruct them about the opportunities available to them. Admittedly, this study only looks at engineering colleges and does not consider other disciplines. Also, differences between states on these indicators are not investigated here. Nevertheless, this is an important and revealing facet of the rural-urban divide in the country: it is disheartening for the world’s largest democracy to leave the education of its most deprived to chance. India desperately needs more directed, coordinated efforts to address the pressing issue of social immobility and injustice in higher education.

Frankly Lol’ing

This is entertainment. This is fun. This is the ‘biggest political interview of the year.’ This is ridiculous. Enjoy. (taken totally within context from http://www.timesnow.tv/Frankly-Speaking-with-Rahul-Gandhi/articleshow/4446830.cms)

The Anatomy of a Lovers’ Argument. Act 1: The First Fight

Scene 1 (Rahul puts his foot in it): Oops… I didn’t say that, did I?

Arnab Goswami: How do you say that
Rahul Gandhi: I mean....

Arnab Goswami: What are you saying? Can you explain?

Rahul Gandhi: I am coming to your question

Scene 2 (Arnab is green with jealousy): On something Gandhi and Modi had been up to in 2009…

Arnab Goswami: You did that in 2009?
Rahul Gandhi: No, we didn't
Arnab Goswami: Of course you did?

Scene 3: Honey, I love you, honestly, I do.

Arnab Goswami: You are avoiding the question
Rahul Gandhi: No I am not avoiding the question

Scene 5: Are you being honest with me?

Rahul Gandhi: Of course I am.
Arnab Goswami: You're not opposed to that.
Rahul Gandhi: No I am not opposed to any discussion, ever.
Arnab Goswami: On this specific subject.

Rahul Gandhi: Absolutely.
Arnab Goswami: Mr. Gandhi.

Scene 6: Actually, this reminds me of that thing 10 years ago…

Arnab Goswami: But nothing happened.
Rahul Gandhi: What do you mean nothing happened?

Scene 7: Is this an interview?

Arnab Goswami: You are asking me the question
Rahul Gandhi: Yes, I am asking you a question, it is a conversation

Scene 8: Who’s the boss…

Arnab Goswami: You are the boss.

Rahul Gandhi: Yes

Arnab Goswami: You are confident about that?
Rahul Gandhi: Reasonably confident

Scene 9 (Back on the offensive): You disgust me…

Arnab Goswami: Only 15?

Rahul Gandhi: You have to go into why it is happening.

Arnab Goswami: Then how are you different?

Scene 10: Someone told me about Cambridge…

Rahul Gandhi: Were you in Cambridge
Arnab Goswami: I was at Oxford
Rahul Gandhi: But you spent some time at Cambridge?
Arnab Goswami: I was a visiting fellow at Cambridge for a while.
Rahul Gandhi: So where were you at Cambridge?

Scene 11: Show me what you showed Modi…

Rahul Gandhi: You want me to show you my degree, I can show you my degree
Arnab Goswami: Would you like to show him your degree?

Rahul Gandhi: He has probably seen my degree.

Penultimate Scene: Am I a stranger to you?

Arnab Goswami: You don't have a thick skin, Mr. Rahul Gandhi.
Rahul Gandhi: If I don't have a thick skin right now, it'll get thick

Rahul Gandhi: Maybe you find me strange because.
Arnab Goswami: No, I don't find you strange

Rahul Gandhi: You're going back Arnab
Arnab Goswami: Yes, to specifics
Rahul Gandhi: It's not specifics. It's frankly superficialities
Arnab Goswami: How is it superficial?
Rahul Gandhi: It's completely superficial
Arnab Goswami: This is the most relevant question

Final Scene: Modi walks in, dressed in a blindingly orange kurta…

Arnab Goswami: I think we should have a debate Mr. Modi
Rahul Gandhi: The debate is taking place right now

Arnab Goswami: Are you battle ready?
Rahul Gandhi: Battle ready, of course. We're going to win.

Tiger - A Follow-up

So, here’s another side to the previous post (http://www.aapukuruvi.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/tiger.html). Injured tigers in the wild often turn man-eaters since men are typically easier prey. This brings these tigers into villages. In one such village in south India, a man-eater had killed a woman and was spotted by villagers who promptly called the officials. After a tense chase and some drama, the tiger was hunted down and shot – but not to kill, he was shot with a tranquiliser dart and taken to the local zoo. A stark, stark difference in attitude with the tiger in Cologne. This tiger had killed a woman – not in any attempt to escape – and killing it would therefore have been justified. But the villagers and the officials chose to tranquilise it and send it to a zoo. The headline for this article? “Man-eater tiger of HD Kote caught.” (http://www.deccanherald.com/content/274416/man-eater-tiger-hd-kote.html). It could just as easily have been “Village rid of murdering tiger” but thank goodness it wasn’t!

The other issue here is on my stand with zoos. I have had a lot of discussions with friends (and family!) since the previous post on whether zoos should be abolished. The main arguments for zoos are a)they protect endangered animals that human beings would otherwise kill in the wild and b) they raise awareness amongst the public. I shall answer the second argument first. Raising awareness I think is not as strong an argument nowadays as before – we have excellent cinematic and other visual media that provide us with a wonderful sense of the world these animals live in. In fact, I think it is rather demeaning to see predators being fed, and rather than raising awareness actually diminishes their majesty. This episode presents strong support for the first argument. What happens when a tiger is injured in the wild, by natural causes – is it then alright to ship it to a zoo? In such a case, I accept a zoo can serve as a nursing home – we cannot afford to let an injured tiger die since we have so few of them left, so our only option is to nurse them in a zoo – with a view to releasing them back in the wild if and as soon as possible (this may not be feasible in case of a man-eater since once they taste man-flesh they find that the preferable option!) . Do I still think zoos should be abolished? Yes – as zoos, as tourist attractions that cage healthy animals, they should. Their existence as tourist attractions lets us escape having to make the choice between having animals in the wild and letting them die out. However, I concede they could serve a good purpose as temporary nursing pens - or in this particular case as an old age home, for injured wild animals.

Would love your comments on the fascinating debate this is turning out to be!

Tiger

A tiger recently escaped from Cologne Zoo, in Germany, after killing a keeper, but was shot dead before it could reach the visitor’s enclosure (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10407911). Quick stats from Wiki tell that at a conservative guess there are 4,000 tigers on this planet and 7 point something billion people. That’s 1.75 million people to every tiger on this planet. A kidnapped man’s attempts to escape after shooting his gaolers would be praised as bravery. A man’s fundamental right to freedom. The only situation where this man would have stones flung at him, would be if the rest of the human population were kidnappers. All the headlines for this news article about the tiger read “Tiger escapes, kills keeper.” The headlines could equally have read, “Tiger shot dead while attempting to escape from zoo.” And therein lies my point. Are we a world of kidnappers? Do I have a stand in this? Yes – abolish zoos. The argument that a zoo keeps an animal safe is weak and pathetic. We have laws to keep our animals safe in the wild, we just don’t have the will to do so. Or the guts to say out loud that we don’t need tigers, we don’t need wildlife, we don’t need jungles. In my opinion, humans will survive as a race even if every tree on this planet were cut down. But that is not what I want.

Lines of Defence – The Future of Medicine and Man

Until now natural selection and personal health were key factors in determining the survival of a human being faced with a threat. Diseases would appear, decimate a society or community and move on leaving the survivors to recoup and reproduce with newly evolved methods of fighting a recurrence. While societal living had a role to play in terms of affording protection, this was still secondary to the fitness of the individual. However the increasing complexity of the medicines and societal mechanisms man has been developing for his protection are changing this. We have come to the point where there is a noticeable externalisation of our lines of defence to health threats. Our defences are no longer so much within our bodies as outside. A recent article in the BBC (‘Will we all be tweaking our own genetic code?’, Karen Weintraub, 19 Sep. 11) exemplifies this shift in a discussion of the possibility of genetically targeted medicines that will help prevent diseases at their inception. Such a shift seems a natural and probably inevitable outcome of our technological advance. Indeed parts of western society are already grappling with one direct consequence of this advance –increased, and ageing, population. However there is another, increasingly relevant, aspect that arises from this conundrum of externalisation – the question of access. In all likelihood, this question will in the long-term vanish, as the now-new externalised 'natural' defence system settles down after going through its initial upheavals. However it will be worth considering the question if we wish to mitigate the pains of transition.

The question itself is not new. Though ethics in medicine and testing have undergone radical changes in recent decades, poor and under-privileged parts of the world have long been, and remain, testing grounds for new pharmaceutical drugs. It is a not-irrelevant point that several life-giving drugs have probably emerged much faster than they would have otherwise as a result of this inhumane process. How these costs and benefits may be added up, and whether at all they can/should be added up are questions that remain unanswered. However the development of genetic medicine arguably intensifies, by a great measure, the pertinence of the issue and its societal implications. An assumption I make here is that genetic medicine will need, by its very nature, to be tailored to a specific individual. In practical terms, assuming the availability of manufacturing facilities at reasonable prices, this will mean the access of every individual to a facility (and doctor) that will use his DNA sequence to determine the type of medicine he needs and manufacture it. At one level, this is a very welcome scenario – cheap, automated facilities that will not discriminate and be accessible to all. However, in nation-states where medication is privatised and socialised healthcare not available, where will the poor go for their individually-tailored medicines? For – and this is the root of the questions being asked here, the more we externalise our defence systems, the more we will depend on them for our survival. The poor of the future will be far less internally resilient to the viruses living with us today. It is likely that with individually tailored medication, we will also have individual-specific side-effects. Even in today’s relatively simplistic times, pharmaceutical corporations have been known to suppress unpleasant facts about the drugs they develop when they are put on the market. Will it be possible to come up with a free, fair and transparent way of dealing with the possible side-effects of genetic medicine? Also, there is the other, well-known thorn – the testing of such medicine. Surely genetic medicine will need far more rigorous and extensive testing than present-day drugs. Will we find suitable platforms for such testing? And finally, systems that become tighter, more complex and more dependent on centralised protection become more vulnerable to unforeseen external threats. Will this be what homosapiens, as a society, face in future?

Casting Pearls Before A Swine

Caveat: The subject of this post necessitates sexually explicit references for which I am truly sorry.

A mouldy man in a mouldy chair in a mouldy room. He sits slouched in his lungi, his legs spread apart, his belly overflowing onto his bits, his head thrown back with his mouth agape like that of a temporarily stunned goldfish, his hands stuck deep into his slick, greasy hair. Two feet away a boy of 15 stands alert, holding a pad and a pen poised to write. Music, of an unexpected beauty, plays from an old-fashioned cassette player on the table. A melodious Carnatic raagam in pleasing fusion with a jazz trumpet, that breaks up a peppy song from the Colonial Cousins. This is the twentieth time this interlude has been played, and like it did the last nineteen times, it evokes in the boy a vision of a singer in an ancient temple against a backdrop of lush fields, palm trees and low green hills. Also, like the last nineteen times, as this brief 15 second interlude draws to a close, the boy shudders quietly in fear at the thought of what is to come.

He is jerked out of his reverie by a guttural “Aaaannhh.” from the man in the lungi. “Write!” the man says, in Tamil. Tamil - the language of an ancient people, of poets above par, of kings and priests, language of the Bhakti movement, an outpouring of devotion to the lord of the cosmos. The boy stands ready, a mild expression of pain on his face, the interlude still ringing in his ears. The man dictates (in Tamil):

“On whose lips is the smell of a rose most intense, my lover?

Where on my body are a woman’s erogenous zones, my lover?”

As the boy writes this down, he feels an overwhelming sensation of guilt. A guilt comparable to what he would feel if he were to spray paint a donkey’s arse on a Ravi Verma painting of Goddess Saraswati. He sheds a quiet tear and consoles himself with the thought that he is merely the pen. “How was that? Wonderful, eh?” muses the man in the lungi rhetorically. He doesn’t need to hear the boy’s answer. He knows he is the bard, the poet laureate of Tamil filmdom. He is not so vain as to proclaim himself the King of Poets. Oh no. He has accepted these titles in all humility from his millions of adulating fans. The bard carries on,

“Oh, man who has studied the Kamasutra!

If I show you where, will you take me to Heaven?”

The pen writes, the boy furiously hoping  he could fast forward to the three seconds of a deliciously wordless guitar interlude, before the next deluge of filth. One thing the boy knows for certain. He will not watch the visualisation of this song – there is only so much swine mulch one can dig through when seeking pearls.

Tamil film music composers from the 80s to the present are some of the most unfortunate talents in cinema. Unfortunate to have several of their compositions cast to such lyrics and displayed on screen some unbelievably shady visualisations. Take Ilaiyaraaja, for instance. In no conceivable situation would the music of a supremely talented composer, played by talented Carnatic, western classical and jazz musicians, deserve to be placed as the background to visuals of a lecherous 30 year old man ogling and groping a 16 year old girl, let alone, set to lyrics about “consuming the sweat and heat of a woman in the throes of youthful passion.” This peppy song, for example, is a lovely combination of Carnatic vocal, flute and guitar, interludes with delicious counterpoints that mix elements of jazz and electronic music ; an eclectic mix of multiple genres, tamed into a single song that is classic Ilaiyaraaja, you might say. The song itself which was possibly (hopefully) meant as a song of two lovers celebrating their love for each other is transformed into an unapologetically explicit description of two bodies in heat:

“The growing youthful night, the blissful moment of the pleasurable touch of a finger,

The unparalleled smell of manhood, (repeat),

Oh honey, the honeybee of desire makes your insides churn.”

What makes it truly painful is that a lot of these compositions are grounded in classical music. Close your eyes for a few seconds and imagine a Mozart or Bach symphony being set to such lyrics. And it is not just Ilaiyaraaja. I am a die-hard fan of A.R. Rahman’s diverse, wonderfully foot-tapping music. One of my all-time favourites, a classical tune with a racy beat, punctuated by lovely interludes of piano, string and flute arrangements, that brings to mind the pining of two lovers for one another in a doomed love-story does not deserve this:

“Oh girl! Without waiting on the gentle breeze, you must open your flower.

Without exploring the flower-basket, you must enjoy its honey.”

To be fair, the rest of the lyrics to this song are passable. I also think the visuals to this song were rescued to a large extent by Prabhu Deva and Kajol’s praise-worthy choreography, some relatively refined sensibilities when directing the shoot for the song, and by the sheer absence of 30+ year olds leching at teenage girls. Another racy ARR song is similarly defaced by lyrics that go:

“A gentle embrace, like a gentle breeze that rustles a flower, is chaste.

Grabbing you by your chest, like a storm that tears a flower from its roots, is lustful.

Which one are you girl, or are you a bit of both?”

“But these are few and far between! He has produced several gems!”, one may protest. Unfortunately this is not the case. These examples, though tending towards his more explicit, are just the tip of the mulch-pit of unsubtle sexual euphemisms, repeated memes involving bodily fluids and explicit descriptions of the female body - always the female body. Not to mention the consequent, almost total, ruination of beautiful music for the hapless person that cannot tune the words out and understands just enough of the language to be repelled by them.

“But this is art!” you may say. True, erotic prose and poetry is an entire literary field in itself. I would have no problem if the bard had proclaimed himself an erotic poet, packaged his work as such, and been judged as such. But to piggy-back on another medium, to sell and propagate this as an inseparable but entirely asynchronous part of a musical experience, is nothing short of a crime.

“All this was par for the course!” one may protest. “Why single him out?”. The answer to this is where my biggest issue with him lies: all these lyrics are a living example of the most despicable and insidious form of female objectification that exists in Indian cinema, outside of the porn industry. For instance the exquisite voice of K.J. Yesudas, in another Ilaiyaraaja masterpiece, brings to life this (un)metaphorical lyrical gem from the same pen, urging a bride to perform what’s expected of her:

“The cradle will not rock without the bed being shaken.

Oh maiden! Rid yourself of your shyness.”

The song doesn’t stop with that but is in fact a step-by-step crash course in baby-making . And all of this penned by someone who declares himself a progressive thinker. And making all this worse is the fact that these lyrics are celebrated as an outpouring of creativity and held up as proof of the beauty of the language.

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine!

P.S. Credit to my musically-educated friend for editing the descriptions of the songs and providing help with some of the more esoteric lyrics.