यदा यदा ही धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत, अभ्युथानम् अधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् |

परित्राणाय साधुनाम विनाशाय च: दुष्कृताम, धर्मं संस्थापनार्थाय सम्भावामी युगे युगे ||

Approximate translation:

Whenever there is decline of Dharma (righteousness)..and rise of Adharma (unrighteousness);

To protect the virtuous..to destroy the wicked and to re-establish Dharma,

I manifest myself, through the ages.

|| Shubh Shri Krishna JanmAshtami ||

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Related Posts: Reading the Bhagavad Gita…

A Search for the Historical Krishna

Post from: || Satyameva Jayate ||

YadA YadA hi Dharmasya…

The devastation brought about by the flash floods, basically flood of wet mud, in Leh has resulted in untold misery for its residents. Almost an entire section of the old town seems to have been flattened with the river of mud wiping off everything in its way.

Now, Leh, among the highest inhabited town in the world, never boasted a civil infrastructure that would do justice to a district headquarter anywhere else, but the exceedingly peaceful and spiritual residents of the city have hardly complained. It could be for two reasons. One is that so used are they to the harshness of nature that they are prepared for anything, and two, and this seems more plausible, is that they know most of their appeals and prayers would fall on deaf ears as far as administrators and politicians are concerned…

My expectations soared, however, when Dr Manmohan Singh visited Leh on Tuesday to check for himself the devastation

Image courtesy: Leh District Council

But he let us all down…Everyone knows reconstruction is a huge task, involving man, machinery and loads of funds. The effort, and cost, doubles, even quadruples if it is in the hills, especially in the remote areas such as Leh with extremely limited, and seasonal, road connectivity. For the prime minister to then announce a piffling Rs 125 crore for rehabilitation of a devastated city is not even a joke, it is absurd.

Come on Sir! Your ministry of urban development spent Rs 1000 crore on renovating a single stadium in Delhi. Can you see the comparison sir? A thousand crore to renovate a single stadium and Rs 125 crore to reconstruct a devastated remote town!

I honestly expected better from the prime minister who loses sleep when certain sections of our population are in trouble…

…but then Rajesh forgets that the “Games” are a matter of “national prestige“. As for Leh…Leh? What’s that?

Related Post: The forgotten “J” in J&K

Post from: || Satyameva Jayate ||

The forgotten “L” in “J&K”

Email from Nilesh:

I know, you might be very busy, but I was not able to stop myself from (asking this)…

…You are back in India after leaving your job in London and I am thinking about to leave this country somehow.

It’s not like that I don’t love our motherland, but I can’t see it dying everyday. We are powerless (and) We need hell lot of money to fight, otherwise it will be easy…to eliminate each patriotic Indian.

I really would like to know from you .. what brings you back to India?

My response (slightly revised):

To come to your question: “…what brings you back to India?” The answer is: “The belief that we can make a difference”...this is more complex than possible to explain in a short email…and I understand your dilemma too…

My simple advice/suggestion to you is: Before you do anything (in the field of political activism and/or active politics), please make sure that your (family) responsibilities are taken care of AND that they are fully behind you in this effort. This is going to be a long and hard battle. You will need to prepare well and the support of your loved ones will be CRUCIAL.
If going abroad will help you progress in your career/profession and helps you fulfil your responsibilities better, by all means do it…just ensure that you do not get disconnected from Bharat (well knowing you, I am sure that will not happen)…

So there you are..

The “What made you leave?” is a long and complicated story…suffice to say that a series of unfortunate happenings starting mid-1996 and culminating in 1997 led to the the realisation – and the decision – that it was time for me to start looking elsewhere, outside of the Foreign Service.

The realisation was not a shock to me (my mother remembers me telling her the day I received my appointment letter in1991 that I will probably last no more than 10 years in the service) but the decision was not an easy one to follow through. For one, I had spent almost all my working life until then (1997) in a highly specialised role – and although I had picked up some useful skills along the way (e.g. Japanese), I was not entirely sure how transferable they were to a job in the private sector. It was clear to me that I needed to learn the “tools of the trade” – so an MBA was a no-brainer – but the cost (and my prior work experience) seemed to be hard barriers to surmount.

In the end, I got lucky (once more). I left for London in August 1998 to pursue a full-time MBA at London Business School on a full-tuition scholarship graciously offered by the Chevening Trust and supported by the London Business School. That was the second turning point in my life.

Related Posts:

Coming Out of the Closet – Who is B Shantanu?

Eight little known facts about me

* Pl do share your thoughts/feedback on whether you would like to see more or less of such posts. Depending on your feedback, I may decide to write less/more about these things – although I need to write at least one more to keep my promise to Sukhvinder!

Post from: || Satyameva Jayate ||

What brings you back and other questions…

About 10 hours ago, late afternoon yesterday, Times of India published an article headlined, “Incest: Haryana’s shameful social heritage” by Sukhbir Siwach.

Most of you probably missed it…I did too…until I was alerted to it by centerofright. The article talked about disturbing incidents and reports of incest in Haryana and appeared to suggest that this practice was widespread in rural Haryana:

These are not isolated incidents: incest is reportedly a real part of life in rural Haryana

It had comments and quotes from about half-a-dozen different people – ranging from students and social activists to Khap leaders and bureaucrats highlighting the problem. If true, this is very worrying and the incidents and the reports need to be seriously probed…I wish the National Commission of Women takes cognizance of some of these reports to initiate an inquiry and take appropriate action.

But it is not incest I wish to discuss in this post…What had caught centerofright (and others) attention was this last paragraph in the report:

..and no it was not just the fact that it was a needless insertion…More surprisingly, it was lifted straight from a Pakistani forum:

I suspect most of you are pretty upset and angry at this point…But rage and anger will not get us very far.  We need to react – but in a coordinated, organised and civil way – i.e. by writing a complaint to the Editor of  Times of India – and making others aware of this.

So my humble request to everyone who has been offended by this piece is: Pl share this article amongst your friends and acquaintances and – MORE IMPORTANTLY – please ask them to send in a complaint to the Editor.

I intend to follow-up on my complaint with the Press Council if there is no response. I suggest all of you do the same. Below is the text of my complaint to the Editor:

Dear Sir/Madam, I am appalled by the gratuitous reference to “details of incest, (in) our own epics and mythological texts” in your article titled “Incest: Haryana’s shameful social heritage” by Sukhbir Siwach, published Aug 28 ‘10, 0205pm IST.

Not only are the references grossly offensive, misleading and inaccurate, they also seem to have been copied and pasted from an online anti-India discussion forum.

I would be grateful if you could issue an erratum and an apology for needlessly hurting your readers sentiments and beliefs. Thank you.

Please feel free to modify/alter the above text to share your own anguish with the folks at ToI. At some point soon, I hope to draft a proper response to the references in the last paragraph…In the meantime, please do read Sandeep’s excellent commentary on “Symbolism and Literalism” that talks about Brahma and Saraswathi (briefly referred to here as well).

Thanks to Panchjanya for documenting this incident and bringing this to our attention.

P.S. The procedure for making a complaint to the Press Council is documented here. It clearly mentions that:

It is a requirement of the Inquiry Regulations that the complainant should initially write to the editor of the newspaper drawing his attention to what the complainant considers to be a breach of journalistic ethics or an offence against public taste.

So please do write to the Editor at Times of India first – and please share any replies/response you receive on this thread. Thank you.

Post from: || Satyameva Jayate ||

Egregious Hindu Bashing or Genuine Mistake?

Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the center, its (the Ground Zero Mosque’s) defenders have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance. It would be nice if this were true.

But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything “offensive” to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter .

…This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be “phobic.” A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.

Continued below…

Image courtesy: Wikipedia

From my window, I can see the beautiful minaret of the Washington, D.C., mosque on Massachusetts Avenue. It is situated at the heart of the capital city’s diplomatic quarter, and it is where President Bush went immediately after 9/11 to make his gesture toward the “religion of peace.” A short while ago, the wife of a new ambassador told me that she had been taking her dog for a walk when a bearded man accosted her and brusquely warned her not to take the animal so close to the sacred precincts.Muslim cabdrivers in other American cities have already refused to take passengers with “unclean” canines.

…At the United Nations, the voting bloc of the Organization of the Islamic Conference nations is already proposing a resolution that would circumscribe any criticism of religion in general and of Islam in particular. So, before he is used by our State Department on any more goodwill missions overseas, I would like to see Imam Rauf asked a few searching questions about his support for clerical dictatorship in, just for now, Iran. Let us by all means make the “Ground Zero” debate a test of tolerance. But this will be a one-way street unless it is to be a test of Muslim tolerance as well.

Also read:

Sir V S Naipaul’s views on Islamism and Tolerance

and also MF Husain on why he did not paint on Islamic themes

Post from: || Satyameva Jayate ||

Can the Ground Zero Mosque be a test of Muslim tolerance?