Rumi Nations

India is a nation of meaningless rituals. Indians tend to their risible rituals with the utmost devotion so as to avoid the difficult task of having to think. Indians like to celebrate various yearly rituals ... of both happy as well as sad occasions. One such recent anniversary was that of the Bhopal gas tragedy. Not long before that, there was the anniversary of Indira Gandhi's assassination. Then, people also remembered the Babri Masjid demolition. A more recent tragedy from Mumbai a year ago was also piously observed. Even Sachin's playing for 20 years occasioned an outpouring of admiration and adulation. Sadly, I think people don't have any sense of proportion at all. Otherwise, we would not have seen the absurd eulogizing of Sachin. Public outrage about the death of a model fortunatly led to the incarceration of a playboy-turned-murderer. Similar outrage is unfortunately completely absent when the dead happen to be the ordinary people of India. This dichotomy is deepl...

The recent arrest of Kobad Ghandi was the first time I came to learn about this remarkable life. I say this is a remarkable life because it's definitely an unusual life: this was a person born with a silver spoon in his mouth who chose to forego pursuing all the opportunities that naturally open up if you have the privilege of education as he had. I remember Robert Kennedy talking about this and the natural desire to live a life of personal ambtion and financial success: that's what most of us aspire to do. It's good to see in this atmosphere of overwhelming conformity as exists in Indian society that there are still individuals who are willing to live life on their own terms. The benefits or otherwise of the naxal movement are of course open to debate. What's important is that there should be people with different points of view: such as an Arundhati Roy. People claim that she's an useless armchair intellectual taking up fashionable causes. People complain about hu...

The metropolitan magistrate's report which describes the cold-blooded murder of Ishrat Jahan needs to be an eye-opener for all those who care about democracy in this country called India. When the entire heavy apparatus of the State moves in orchestrated fashion against a lone individual, it becomes very difficult for the individual to fight back ... or, for that matter, for that individual's family to fight for justice. In India, the judicial system still seems to be working, at least on the surface. The press also sometimes seems to perform its role as a watchdog that will try to catch public servants from performing misdeeds. However, these vital pillars of a functioning democracy are semi-functional at best. Therein lies the danger that if we don't stay vigilant enough and don't care enough about democracy, the edifice of democracy itself might well collapse. The core question of course is how truly democracy-minded the people of India are. I think the answer is — n...