Rumi Nations

Or, rather why that is an unlikely event. Dreaming of revolutions might appear quite romantic for middle class Indians but when you dig deep, you’ll see that the situation is both better and worse than Egypt of 2011 or America of 1776. The American War of Independence was driven mostly by economic factors and Britain enacting a host of draconian laws to augment His Majesty’s revenue not to mention to offset the losses suffered in misadventures against the French. All of which sound suspiciously familiar to an Indian … the British apparently learnt nothing and went on to repeat the same things in India in the early part of the 20th century. The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 is too recent and the discontents that may have fuelled it are yet to be distilled by historians. The per capita GDP of Egypt however is way higher than India’s. It would appear that people in different nations have different thresholds of tolerance towards what is broadly known as ‘poverty.’ Indians seem to have an ex...

In traditional societies like that of India, old people are accorded a lot of respect. Is this well-deserved or a relic from the past? I believe the 'tradition' of respecting one's elders is a relic from a time in our past when society was essentially agrarian. If you think of how such a society functions, skills are handed from generation to generation — farmers' kids grow up to become farmers and carpenters' kids grow up to become carpenters, and so on . . . In such a society, kids acquire their 'professional' skills from their fathers . . . so, obviously they need to 'respect' their elders as the elders are the ones with the 'knowledge.' In the modern world, kids acquire their life skills in schools and colleges and make of their lives whatever they wish to by learning the necessary skills. As far as the color of the hair goes, scientists can tell you about the technical reasons behind hair turning gray. Black hair is black because of the ...