religion

There is a great debate happening on "Rare Book Society of India" group on facebook. Some one has come up with a book detailing how western powers are financing identity politics in the garb of humanitarian work for dalits and Dravidian folks in India. All this to undermine India's growing clout using human rights violations and cast / identity issues. Debate goes into conversion etc...

Some things I said on a FB group debate:

I do not believe Indian dalit is a radicalized, strong, united, and of ambiguous identity group. Its not even strong enough to protect its members getting raped, killed, humiliated on a daily basis. Even when in power, say in UP, dalit members of our society have not shown signs of "making them pay of historic injustices" type of behavior or conduct. So by clubbing them with terrorist movements be it Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Isai (i.e. christian) and not to mention Maoists, we are doing more harm then good. It will add another section of our society to our righteous list of enemies.

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This is taken from a post I wrote on Facebook group debate:

Religion is / has been a divisive force. Always was and will forever be. Our founding fore fathers recognized this and tried to keep it out of polity (eg. the constitution). They firmly believed (at least most of them) that religion is a weapon of mass destruction and partition amply showed this. It is again wake up call to all of us who soft peddle religion saying religion is a great but its usage by some is the problem. Na!

Lets wake up and realize / acknowledge ill-effects of religion are not external but deeply internal to it. Its a wake up call for us to make ills of religion a main stream public discourse. Have you noticed how there are no, not even one, main stream platforms to focus on the ills of religion? No government sanctions such studies let alone encourage these discussions! We've left this subject to fringe groups and radicals for too long. This needs to change. Frank public debate will lead to a more congenial environment where we can actually ask people to keep their religion to themselves. Imagine people who are incapable of following unambiguous clearly enunciated traffic rules are expected to practice religion in a non-partisan, moral, honest way, while understanding and avoiding all its ills at the same time. Not gonna happen. Hasn't happened anywhere yet in history (I've been hard at it to find even one instance). read more »

I think I represent a large majority of people when I say - Don't give a fuck!

I hope justice happens. And these self appointed representatives of Hindu faith are shown their place. Going to HyperCity to do some grocery shopping. Media has made sure that the roads are fee of traffic today. :)

One last time - Don't give a fuck!

What I do care about is the outcome of criminal cases lodged against the likes of Advani and gang. Hope that judgement comes soon. Amen.

So the other day i was wondering what is a Hindu? Until recently people of the Indian sub continent were Vaishnavites, Shivaites, Shuktos etc... etc... but not Hindu. Every one had their own religion and we happy enough. The idea of having millions of gods and goddesses was so right back then. 

But some where down the line we clubbed ourselves or were clubbed by some one else into a unified religion call Hinduism. Weather it was done to facilitate census by the British or by the Indian's them selves for political gains, or both is not very clear. What is clear is that this miss-appropriation or usurping of the religions of the past into a unified religion has resulted in a less tolerant and assimilative society. A culture of many religions could have diluted the fanatic zeal with witch we practice (or protect) Hinduism today.  read more »

As George Carlin once said, "we don't have rights, we have privileges'.

So I was reading this: http://www.anhadin.net/article89.html and realized that muslims face the harshest end of the stick which is being inflicted on all of us. None of us have rights anymore. We may delude ourselves that there is god, law, constitution etc. but non of it would protect us if we call Bombay, Mumbai. Or is it the other way round?

And the irony is, extreme ends of the society still manage to enjoy some rights due to insignificance or influence. Its the majority of us who are not part of some mob, religious righteousness mob, cultural mob, political mod, cast mob, etc mob, who are short charged and taken for a ride every day. We are loosing rights every day. Our right to speech is only till the point people don't notice us. Today if, some goonda party comes and beats me up for calling Bombay, Mumbai (or is it the other way round?), I have no where to go and no police or politician will protect me from the goonda's. read more »