Lebanon - Israel's quagmire and lessons for India

The war that Israel started in Lebanon has entered it's second week. Hezbollah is proving to be much tougher than the collective Arab states were when they started the 6-day war. So much tough that Israel had to withdraw from a Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon. It's clear that both Israel and Hezbollah had overplayed their hands in the current imbroglio. That being said, what are the implications of this crisis to India.

Time and again Indians look to Israel as their role model and wish India's Govt. dealt with militants and terrorists much the same way. If Israel inspite of being tacitly supported by US cannot dislodge Hezbollah, which is being supported by Iran and Syria, can India afford to conduct hot pursuits in PoK ?

For India to contain terrorism, the best approach would be to enlarge the economic pie and increase it's influence in Indian Ocean. While Israel is confronted by religious fanatics, India's fanatics are because of it's bad economic policy that has driven poor people in to the arms of Maoists, Naxals and Islamic fanatics.

Punjab was much the same way throughout the 80s and early 90s. Economic revival in that state combined with tough internal security measures turned it around. External aggression will never achieve the goal that an introvertive plan could. Simply because the enemies of India have the whole world to train their mercenaries. Can we afford to do hot pursuit everywhere ? If it's not PoK, it will be Nepal or Bangladesh or Bhutan.

The point is to make India an ally to all these countries. And the best way to do it is promote a form of governance that is seen legitimate in the eyes of the population of these countries. India almost lost Nepalese confidence in the way it dealt with the internal unrest recently. Mr.Karan Singh, who was sent as an emissary failed miserably to convince the King. India was seen in Nepal as helping out the King against the wishes of the people. A kind of hypocrisy where it crowned itself as the world's largest democracy but doesn't want democracy in it's neighborhood. Much the same as USA's policy in middle east. India must avoid such an image.

India's strategy in dealing with terrorism has to be purely strategic and diplomatic. Enemies can be defeated thru military battles but our goal should be to win over them. The strategy should be

1. Isolate Pakistan.
2. Help neighboring countries and increase it's ability to influence policies in these countries.
3. Enlarge the economic pie internally.
4. Strengthen internal security by empowering police.
5. Above all, political parties must put forward persons who are seen as nationalists and have a clean record in governance. This alone will go a long way in enhancing our pride which inturn will make our population vigilant.

Self proclaimed Tamil culture protectors

So "vaigai-puyal" Vadivelu has joined the army of so-called tamil culture protectors. His recent bashing of the movie "Uyir" at movie "Thambi"'s 100 day celebration as reported by Kumudam is what I'm referring to.

I watched Uyir and I liked it. May be because as a male I'm attracted to such strong-willed females (J plese note). In that movie the "anni" character asks a pointed a question on why a man can marry his wife's sister after wife passes away but a female cannot do the same.

I guess questioning status-quo is against tamil culture.

The other incident involves S.V.Sekhar whose maiden speech in Tamilnadu legislature questioned the 95Lakhs granted to the maker of the movie on Periyar. In his speech he wondered if such royal benevolence be bestowed upon movie makers making movies about Rajaji et all. I find nothing wrong in this observation but apparently the suya-mariyadhai fellas got irked.

Leading the pack as usual are Ki.Veeramani and actor Sathyaraj. Instead of answering S.Ve.S's question all these fellas can do is to attack Rajaji. Infact one of the joker even pointed out that Periyar cried uncontrollably on Rajaji's death. Doesn't it make it much more worthwhile to fund a movie on Rajaji then. But again I'm talking logic to whom ?

I find this Dalitistan folks really hillarious. Every now and then they'll take up the position they are all sons and daughters of night-soil removers who were forced in to the profession because of their caste and the entire brahmin community alone was responsible for it. The night-soil removers were never there for thousands of years. It was a profession "invented" in the early 20th century as cities developed and people started having toilets inside their house. It doesn't exist anymore atleast in TN. While the profession is abhorable, the society as a whole agreed to the existence of it not that the brahmins imposed it on the society. So why blame a particular community. Oh well I'm talking logic to whom ??

Time and again I ask my Dalit friends proof of instances where the brahmin community met and decided to subjugate them. They will immidiately go back to Mahabharata and site the example of Eklavya and Drona. In the same breath they'll dismiss Mahabharata as some fictional story. So a fictional story is the source of their belief. But again I'm talking logic to whom ?

Another important observation is how these same folks support Kannagi, the quintessential mother of all tamils. When being pointed out the whole story of kannagi was subjugation of women etc, they'll conveniently hide the story in the realm of time. The usual excuse is that you cannot judge the happenings of that age with the societal rules of today. Well agreed.... How come such rules don't apply when it comes to casteism ? And the funniest thing is when this lady burnt Madurai, she made sure that Brahmins were not included in her vengeance list. One has to wonder why ? But again I'm talking logic to whom ?

Casteism was practised for thousands of years and apparently everybody were happy. Now we find such an arrangement abhorable and why can we not work amicably in going about dismantling it. Is blaming a particular community going to be the answer. But again I'm talking logic to whom ?

WTF is an

item number ? I hear this all the time nowadays. Any etymology on this one ?

AIIMS events

I guess Dr.Anbumani Ramadoss has been given a bloody nose by GoI which withdrew the removal notification against Dr. Venugopal. Looks like Anbumani is hell bent on proving that Jayalalitha's views on him are true.

While Dr.Anbumani can project this as only a temporary hurdle, it is still a nosecut for him as GoI has accepted that proper rules and procedures were not followed with regards to dismissing Dr.Venugopal. I would rather see Mr.Anbumani kicked out of the office for failing to follow his own ministry's procedures.

His allegation against Dr.Venugopal that he supported the strike against reservation on the basis of providing the striking students with shamiana and fans are ridiculous. As the head of AIIMS, Dr.Venugopal is responsible for the well being of the students. Just because the students have a view that differs from the management doesn't mean that the management can deprive them of their rights to express themselves. Nor can the management deny them use of AIIMS facilities.

If Anubumani's line of thinking is extended then one would have to protest against TN govt. outside Tamilnadu and if you want to protest Indian Govt. action then one has to go outside India. Geez what kind of jokers are these ministers.

Dr.Anubumani might do well to turn the pages of history back on the vanniyar porattam and how it wa

Global warming ?

Weather of late has been kind of topsy-turvy. Colleagues here tell me that Portland, Or has never witnessed such high temperatures. California is recording 118 F in some places. Brazil is experiencing such a drought that a world famous falls has been reduced to a trickle. Is this Global warming and is human kind responsible for it ?

As much as I love nature, I find it quite difficult to side with the environmentalists who say that human species is responsible for Global warming. Industrial revolution started in the Mid-19th century and we've been burning fossil fuels at a dangerous rate in the past 100 years. But Ma Earth came out ice-age 12000 years ago.

I believe that Earth has it's own cycles. It's just that we are unable to record the events for ever and pass it on to our future generations and so we don't know about these cycles. While not destroying nature is a good thought, isn't man's curiosity, the very cause of nature's destruction, a work of nature ?

Also the notion that by controlling our habits, we can control nature aka Global warming appears kind of snobbish to me. As if we are the only ones who do any activity on this planet. It's kinda hinting that we control nature. BS. Don't ask for scientific proof but IMHO man's activities are just too insignificant in the overall scheme of things.

This planet has it's own way of balancing. When the mantle becomes very hot it makes the volcanoes erupt, the ashes of which block the sun which results in the surface cool down. The currents in the ocean also play a big part in distributing the heat and when they are disturbed the resultant reaction will make sure that balance is restored.

So let's stop talking about this Global warming and how humans are so powerful in causing it and let's switch on the AC and relax by reading from dead Amazonian parchments.

Creamy layer defined ????

Deccan Herald reports here that GoI has defined the creamy layer for OBCs. Remember the creamy layer should be excluded from the 27% reservations implemented as part of Mandal commission. Whether this layer will be excluded from the current reservation proposal for institutions of higher learning is yet to be seen.

The list seems to be quite over arching covering almost all categories of wealthy OBCs. I hope that this creamy layer section doesn't indulge in fraud to wiggle out of the exclusion (will definitely happen in India). But this is definitely a step in the right direction.

You're Fired

Close on the heels of blog-blocking in India, here's another story of a secretary getting fired because she blogs....

Blog Block update

Times of India reports about the blog block here

Here's an interesting piece from the above article for those who don't want to click and read.

" By Tuesday, it became clear that the government had in fact asked for all of Blogspot to be blocked. As things turned out, it was an obscure blog on the Blogspot network that government was targeting as part of its regular drive at censoring unpleasant voices.

Internet Service Providers who received the directive, though, simply banned the entire network. Fortunately, technology can circumvent censorship....."

Pissed at Indian bloggers

So now there's this huge brouhaha about how blogger.com is banned in India. Even established bloggers are writing about it without realizing that it's just a temporary blackout and not a blanket ban.

Let us just consider some statistics.
What's the population of India - 1.25 Billion
How many from India access blogspot.com - Probably less the number of people who have died so far due to terrorist attacks in Kashmir and it's offshoots. Let us say about 10000 people may be.

So the population affected by blocking blogspot.com is infinitelysmall. So which is more important, a Govt action to trace certain blogspot users who are considered terrorists accused of killing 100s of people or the ability to access blogspot 24 x 7 to these other bloggers ?

These same bloggers will then write about how Indian govt. is fucking sleeping when terrorists are exploding bombs right and left. Unfortunately they are India's face on the web. They are the ones who will quote Bharathi's "Thani oruvanukku unavillaiyanil jagathinai azhithuduvom" everytime a terrorist strikes India. Won't u think they would think twice before they slam the Govt. Alas no. Bloggers have failed India.

Just because they can write and they have an avenue for writing they think they can write anything and everything. Comparisons to Taliban and China are totally unwarranted but have been made. The same people who rile against sensationalism in CNN-IBN, TOI and IE are now sensationalising a trivial issue. Everyone thinks that the ability to say, write anything is a God given right. Even fundamental rights can be denied when there's enough cause. The blocking/temporary banning of blogger.com is a trivial issue except for these thousands of people.

Now you know why India can never be an Israel. An average Israeli welcomes missile attacks from Hezbollah. An average Indian cannot even understand the compulsions behind banning a website. Sometimes it pains to be an Indian. Birthplace of philosophy my foot.

I follow news items in US and India. Let me tell u something. Indian Intelligence officials always seem to have stuff years before American intelligence. Right after 9/11 samachar.com had news items where in an Indian Intelligence official said that terrorists were running camps in Oregon (I was quite curious because I live Portland, Or and so I remember this very well). About 6 months or so after that there was another news item quoting intelligence sources that talked about Islamic terrorists communicating using Jpeg images.

Fast forward 3 years, a radical islamic is arrested and charged with trying to setup terrorist training ground south of Portland, Or. American Intelligence officials also confirmed the use of images by terrorists to communicate. Indian Intelligence, believe me, is one of the best. Yes it's going to the dogs but still is a dog of a high pedigree.

With the advent of cellphones the terrorists thought they could communicate easily uisng throw-away sims and such. But Indian police and intelligence were still able to track them down. And so the only reliable mode of communication between those inside India with the planners outside India is thru satellite phones or thru internet. The cheapest being Internet.

According to mutiny Govt. has instructed ISPs to control access to blogspot.com. If the ISPs execute this policy incorrectly why should the Govt. take the blame. All the bloggers are crying as if the Govt. has taken their daily food away and are starving them to death.

Give our Govt. a slack. All these guys have talked to only their ISPs for whom blocking a blog has no personal repercussions. Heck the guys wouldn't even know what a blog is. He would have just put *.blogspot.com in their filtering software.

One approach would be to use the Freedom to Information act that was recently passed to see the GOs. Ofcourse be prepared to face a rejection on the grounds of national security and one has to understand it. Govt. wouldn't want to publicly disclose which blogspots were in the list for obvious reasons.

I appeal to the Indian blogging community to trust the Govt., to find out the truth about the GO and then comment on it.

We are doing a great disservice to the nation by comparing ourselves to China and giving fodder to the Anti-India propaganda machine all over the world.

Now u see the real danger of allowing everyone to express themselves. Half truths and untruths will be taken as a bible because it's published on the web.....

Chidambara Rahasiyam

Another controversy that's slowly assuming big proportions is the refusal of Chidambaram Dikshitars to allow recital of Thiruvasagam by a group of Tamil scholars at Natrajar temple.

Personally, I don't have much respect for the Dikshitars. If you read tamizh thatha U.Ve.Sa's suya sarithai (autobiography) you might have known that the Dikshitars destroyed so many tamizh manuscripts by burning them. That's just totally barbaric. Why did they do this and what's their agenda is something that I'm not clear about ?

Anyway coming back to the problem at hand, apparently a district judge had agreed with the dikshitars and passed an order prohibiting the recital. Being in USA, I am not able to ascertain the details behind this controversy. Due to the non-involvement of actors like Jayamala, this is not getting the kind of press real estate as the Sabarimala controversy is generating.

Just like how I hate Tamilnadu Govt. interfering with Hindu temples and on the language of worship, I also hate when people like the Dikshitars disallow people from worshipping in their language of choice. As with everything in Indian society, there's always more to them than that meets the eye. I doubt if the group wanting to sing Thiruvasagam have some political ambitions other than just singing Thiruvasagam.

Temples like Chidambaram are quite wealthy temples and controlling them gives you enormous clout and wealth. May be that's one of the reasons for the Dikshitar's refusal to allow this group inside. Waiting and hoping for good tidings here....

Casteism in India

For a long time I wanted to pen down my thoughts on this topic. Many people will tell you that casteism is the cancer of Indian society. I differ slightly. Casteism is not the cancer, it's the way it is used to stifle people's thought and it's unrewarding nature that's the cancer.

Let us be practical and take any nation on the face of earth and see if they are really class and caste free. In USA and UK, the most cited xamples of egalitarianism there does exists class lines. You can especially see it in east coast. Japan, China and the Koreas have their own version of caste system and untouchables. A cursory search in google will yield u tons of information on how those societies mirror somewhat similar to Indian society.

Let us look at the history of caste in India. The word caste itself is from Portugese. Portugese, as you may remember, were the first of the europeans to land in India for trade in spices. At that time the vedic form of Hinduism was entrenched in India. There's a reason why I deliberately say vedic form of Hinduism. Allow me to dwell on that reason for a bit.

Even though the predominant religion in India is Hinduism, the word itself is not found in any of the vedas or upanishads or even the Gita. India was a polytheistic society where Vedic practioners and their offshoots were living in harmony (or so) with other practioners including Tantriks, tribals etc. Outsiders clubbed all of them together and called them Sindhus (those who live west of Indus) and from that word was derived Hindu.

The first sociological problem that the residents of the land had was when the term that was used to refer to them based on the land they lived was transformed in toa religion. A religion typically should have a central God and central scripture. But Hinduism defies these rules. We have many Gods and Godesses and even though majority accept Gita as a central scripture it really is not. We cannot point out any scripture as our Bible or Quran.

The transformation of the word Hindu from a geo-political entity to a religious entity screwed up the varna system of the vedic practioners. Now they have to accomodate others who really don't believe in Vedas in to their structure. Now let us look at the varna structure in little detail. As we know there are 4 varnas.

Brahmanas - Priestly class, supposedly learned. They should concentrate only on learning vedas. They were not WEALTHY nor did they wield any POWER.
Kshatriyas - Warrior class and rulers of the land. They were not really wealthy but the wielded lot of POWER.
Vaishyas - Businessmen and traders. They held the WEALTH in the society.
Shudras - As opposed to the derogatary meaning this term takes today, Shudra really means formula. A shudra is one who knows the formula for creating day to day essentials. This included farming, blacksmith, iron smith, jewellers etc etc. They had the skills.

The key to note is that in order to maintain a balance each of the group is deprived of some qualities. The Brahmins were deprived of wealth, power and skill, the kshatriyas of wealth, knowledge and skill, vaishyas of Power, knowledge and skill and shudras of knowledge, power and wealth.

Note the difference between skill and knowledge. It's the same difference between a researcher and an implementor in today's societies. Brahmins were supposed to study astronomy and other sciences that could predict the climate, weather and such things. Shudras take this knowledge and decide when to sow the seed etc.

This societal structure was based on division of labor and not on any basis of discrimination. The real problem was how to accomodate the non-vedic society in to this varna system.

We'll see about this in a later post....

Sense and Sensibilities

No I'm not talking about that movie but about movies in general. Yesterday I watched KingKong for the first time. Yeah yeah I am quite slow to catch up on these things. So in the first hour of the move when the movie crew lands in the island you see all the natives who are barbarians. Nothing wrong here. But all the people are colored black. Now this triggers my thinking. Why is that in any hollywood movie, such barbarians are associated with black/brown color ?

Have the caucasians never been barbaric ? Who were the vikings and Huns ? Heck how about the Spanish Inquisitors who tricked and massacred millions of Mayans and other natives of latin america.

On the same note some time back I watched a PBS program on Jesus Christ. Precisely on how he might have looked. We all know that Jesus is portrayed as this caucasian dude with a flowing blonde hair and clean shaven face. In actuality, it appears from research, that he was brown, with not so well defined features and stubbled face.

Such potrayals may appear to be really minor in general but they have a sub-conscious effect on the looker. Barbarians are usually black/brown, Caucasians are the all forgiving messiah etc etc are indirectly and incorrectly conveyed by such potrayals.

On the contrary, the natives of India had the foresight to amalgamate all the population appearances in their pantheon. Vishnu and his Krishna avatar are said to be dark colored. While Kartikeya/Skanda/Muruga is supposed to be fair. Now if only we can cut across caste lines and allow everyone to take part in festivities of temples we would be a great nation.

Aatha Naan Paasayitten

Melpadipukku inga poga poren.....

More Rumbles in Sabarimala

Apparently actor Jayamala and the guy who did the Prasnm know each other. As much as I want to believe in the powers of Prasnms etc, it's just a bit too much of coincidence when such a Prasnm detects "dirty" acts and someone immidiately raises their hand as guilty. Do I smell politics here ???

Threat from passive terrorism, More real and dangerous

While the term passive terrorism could be an oxymoron, I use it to refer to various ways of betrayal a country, community could face. While terrorists have openly taken arms and are quite easily visible as them, enemies, the people involved in various acts of betrayal are generally our own, neighbors, office clerks and such who would make us not believe if we are told that they are agents of another country. But it is true.

Reading the history of India, one can time and again see that a major reason for the fall of armies defending the country is treason/betrayal by commanders guarding crucial points of the forts. This has been our history right from the time Somnath temple was sacked.

The recent events including the Navy war room leaks, escape of RAW officer to USA thru Nepal, greatly underlines the effectiveness of foreign agencies in infiltrating India's National security apparatus. That such an infiltration could take place in just 8 years either speaks volume of CIA's honey traps or our own fraility. Remember CIA failed to predict our Nuke tests back in 1998 and were in a state of disbelief and denial that we could conduct such a test with so much secrecy.

How come that wall of secrecy was breached so quickly ? In case of terrorist acts like what we witnessed in Mumbai, the Govt. can only be reactionary. Occasionally we do have success like the way the attack on RSS headquarters was foiled. Our effectiveness is measured by the reaction to such attacks.

But breaches in national security groups like IB/RAW are totally preventable had the Govt. paid attention to what is happening. Here reaction is bolting the door after the horse has left the stable, that too with all the secrets. I can only hope that the central govt. wakes up and establishes stringent security measures to make sure such breach doesn't happen in the future.

As they say, the enemy is always with in....

T

Salaam Mumbai !!!!

Will Reader's Digest please go and survey Mumbai's humanness again !!!! Salaam Mumbai. You scored where you have to. The reports that appear about Mumbaikars resilience, helpfulness and resourcefulness makes me more confident about our country.

Maavadu alias Vadu Maangai aka tender mangoes

My wife bought the Priya tender mangoes from the stores yesterday. But what we saw inside cannot be termed as vadu maangai. They were really full mangais.

Creating tasty maavadu is a big process. My mom will buy vadu maangais by the padi (an ancient India way of measuring stuff). These are tender mangoes that fell due to wind (see we manage to use anything and everything). Then these maangais will be washed and immersed in brine with appropriate chilli powder in jaadis. Every day she will open the peengon jaadis and mix it religiously so the contents are exposed to the ingredients uniformly. This process will happen for atleast 2 or 3 weeks and only after that the maavadu will be released for consumption. But what a yummy taste.

Contrast that with this Priya maavadu. It's just so hot(too much chilli powder), the mangoes are big. But I guess being in USA, it's the next best thing available.

Happy maavaduing.....

Microsoft iPod

News : Microsoft to challenge Apple IPOD with it's own player. We have inside view of Microsoft's design process....

Business Intelligence Tech lead

Soon I'll be transitioning from being a Senior Analyst to Tech lead for the Business Intelligence (oxymoron) team. Will have to deal with Informatica, Cognos blah blah. Sounds interesting. We'll see what's in store.

ImmigrationVoice

The topic of Immigration has been discussed ad nauseum in this country of late. Much of the discussion and law making efforts have mainly centered around the undocumented/illegal immigrants. No one gives a damn about hundreds of thousands of skilled immigrants and their spouses in this country who are waiting for their permanent residency process for the past 5 or 6 years.

I came to this country in 1996 and applied for my GC only in Nov. 2001 and I haven't gotten it yet. Many of us work in well established companies that does everything by law, with the result our processing is doubly delayed. If u are one of those 80/20 consultants or 90/10 consultants you can probably get labor substitution and get ur GC fast.

Anyone who wants to immigrate to this country through employment-based categories should familiarize themselves with all the processes and the time it takes to complete the same. Simply put there are 3 stages

1. Labor clearance
2. Petition to Immigrate
3. Adjustment of status

I'm not going to go in to details here but it appears that 1 and 2 have been speeded up for new applicants. But for applicants in 2001/2002/2003/2004 even step 1 has not been completed (the famous backlog elimination centers (BECs)).

Anyway, there's a grass roots organization in USA made of such legal immigrants. The group is called ImmigrationVoice. The group is mainly composed of Indian skilled workers but there are lot of members belonging to other nationalities also. I would like fellow bloggers to spread the word about this organization and galvanize the immigrant community for a fair and speedy process.

Ciao till next...

Mad Money

No I am not talking about Jim Cramer's program on CNBC. You will see what I'm talking about after a few paras. In this day and age where one has to have the latest car, TV in their house, all paid with over stretched credit cards, it is a delight to meet people who manage to live within their means. While extravagant spenders fill up one extreme end of the spectrum the penny pinchers of sorts fill up the other extreme. These are the people who drive 10 miles to save 2c on a gallon of gas. But I never really had any idea about how extreme this extreme end of the spectrum is until I met him.

He will put any of those penny pinching, coupon clipping, their own hair-cutting stingers to shame. He fits the definition of pushing things to the extreme. He defines the human nature. This fellow recently joined the place where I work as a contractor. I met him during lunch and he happened to be a perfect desi. A desi conversation usually has the following questions
1. How long have u been in states ?
2. Do you have a green card or where in the process are u in ?
3. How many cities in US have u visited ?
4. How one hates any city other than Bay area etc etc....

A desi
will be nosey
else he is a
pardesi....

Anyway so the talk turned towards marriage and I'm narrating the conversation.
Me: So are u married.
He: No I got engaged in January.
Me: So u must be preparing to go to India for ur marriage now.
He: Oh no the marriage is only in December.
Me: Man that's quite a break between engagement and marriage. Is she still studying or what ?
He: No man. The girl's parents were ready to conduct the marriage in June - July. But I asked them to conduct it in December.
Me: (with puzzled look) why man ??
He: Arey yaar. If I get married in December and bring her here, I am not spending anything on her but can take advantage of her by filing taxes as married filing jointly. Otherwise one has to spend on food, cosmetics blah blah....
Me: (totally shocked) !!!!

Welcome to Gen-Z....

R(ea)(u)der's Digest ??

So Reader's Digest comes out with their rudeness Index and not surprisingly our biggest Metro, Mumbai, comes first (remember it's rudeness Index). And all hell breaks loose in the blogworld, newspapers and letters to the editors. Anyone who has an avenue to express themselves have decried the digest's methodology, recounted their own tales of helpful mumbaikars and so on.

This is all amusing to me. I am curious to see if other countries will react the same way if they were judged last in such made-to-loose contests/surveys etc. We seem to be afflicted with this disease called Foreigners-have-to-praise-me Syndrome. We also seem to be afflicted with another disease called It's-All-About-Me syndrome.

I, for one, cannot find one reason why we should even bother with RD's survey. I mean it's not going to stop any commercial activity, it's not going to stop any future investment in the country. Why are we so self-centered that it doesn't take much to light our short fuse ? Our nostrils flare and eyes redden in an effort to justify and defend our nation from the foreign onslaught.

I accept India is the rudest place of all to those people who expect doors to be opened for them in establishments.
I accept India is the rudest place of all to those people who expect a thank-you for giving someone business.
I accept India is the rudest place of all to those people who expect others to pick up books/papers that they dropped on the road.

So be it. I don't have to defend our ways. I don't have to find an excuse for our ways. Our ways are our ways and I'm proud of it. If we want to change we will. We have changed before (hell how do u think we've survived for 3000 years) and we will in the future out of our own volition.

But let us stop pandering to these silly surveys and so called notions of rudeness. We can be rude but just let us not lose our humaness. For to be rude is also part of being humane. Will someone rate the cities on humaneness index please?

No more Archana ???

Archana seems to have disappeared out of Sun TV's comedy time. Any reason ? Is she expecting a child or was she asking for more moolah ?? Let the rumor mills start churning....

BTW the new one is just so-so. Sorry Sujatha(that's her name) but I have to be honest...

My ramblings about Hinduism

Prabu Karthik has a nice post about Hinduism here. He has nicely noted all that's lacking in current day's religion. Prabu and I share a lot of the same thoughts (or so I think). I have thought about the current state of Hinduism a lot myself but everytime I start a clean stream of thought it gets entangled in the deep history of the country. While Christianity can be seperated from our history, Hinduism is woven deeply in to everyday lives of the people living in this nation for God-Knows-How-Long.

But here are my thoughts.

Define Hinduism : The first problem we have is how do we define our own religion. What is Hinduism ? None of our religious texts talk about Hindu religion as a whole. What does this point to ?

The fact that Hinduism is not referred to in any religious text should tell us the word Hindu had no religious connotation. It had a nationalistic idealogy behind it. Everyone who lived west of Indus were called by Hindus (by some vagabond writer from Rome/Greek or wherever...)

But since then it has metamorphosed in to a religious identity. When it was first coined Hindus included people who practised Vedic religion and scores of other regionalistic practiioners of other Gods and Godesses. This regionalistic practioners included Tantric practioners and those who worshipped karuppuswamy, karuppannasamy etc etc.

But with one word they were all lumped and grouped together. This was the first start of caste problems that is tearing our society apart now. Since Vedic pracitioners never mingled with these non-vedic people (for they did not believe in vedas) they were treated as untouchables (Harijans as Gandhi called them). I digress but this will make for an interesting post by itself.

But the current Hindu religion has successfully imbibed many practises, religious functions from other religion. Even the most famous religious function of them all, Deepavali, is supposed to have non-vedic origins (Jainism is supposed to be the originator of Deepavali).

Islam and Christianity arrived much later and hence escaped the lumping and grouping. As a true Hindu who believes that there are many paths to the ultimate reality, my question is why shouldn't we call the practioners of Islam and Christianity in this land as Hindus. Why cannot we revert the meaning of the term Hindus from it's current religious identity to a Pan-National identity ? If u look upon Hinduism as a pan national identity then Prabu's points will only apply to one facet of that identity, namely, Vedic Hinduism.

Ciao till next