Navigating development models: old and new

 

Today in its nationalist revival mode, India does not want to look back at its days of being backward, forever seen as a country of poverty, forever under the developing tag. It wants to match up to the best in other countries, to be not only a global power in terms of geopolitics, but also in its infrastructure, facilities, lifestyles. The ruling intelligentsia no more like to describe the country in terms of social fractures, held back by caste, or rural backwardness. The focus very much is on large scale manufacturing and business and employment generation. Agriculture and industry both are now seen in line with new tech, global supply chains, empowered farmers and factory workers, digital support systems, systems of accountability and all the managerialism that goes with it. In this new vision of the country, there is a strong distancing from older ideas – such as Gandhian views on development and economic life, all the buzzwords of decentralised, participative and smaller scale, local development, or NGO-shaped discourses of backwardness.

Among those who do not subscribe to this changed narrative, there is a great concern about the impact on both the environment and human communities that this is causing. Is this what the story simply is? – one of sensible and sustainable development versus the big business, neoliberal, capitalist push? It seems to me that while these concerns are still quite real the picture is more complex.

To an extent the wider narrative shift is quite understandable. To take an example, the language within NGOs and academia had long painted the 4-5 states in the north of India as BIMARU states, wherein human development indicators such as maternal mortality, infant mortality, feoticide numbers were high, sex ratios poor, education levels low, industrialisation minimal, and much of the population engaged in low-tech, and medium to low scale agriculture, or its allied sectors, and there was a lot of rural casteism too. While development professionals did take action to improve these social indicators, they also tended to entrench the very idea that these are backward states that are unable to come out of their rut. Unwittingly this attitude served the continuous need for development programmes in the region. It however did little to bring the states forward, and develop their own impetus to address their problems. I was pleased to see that it wasn’t just me thinking this way. I read a 2007 article by Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian titled ‘Does Aid Affect Governance’. These are some lines from it:

By expanding a government’s resource envelope, aid reduces its need to explain its actions to citizens, which may reduce its need to govern well (Knack (2001) and Brautigam and Knack (2004)). In particular, poor governance could lead to a deterioration in the quality of institutions necessary for a good business environment, as the government falters in its responsibilities to maintain rule of law, ensure a predictable judiciary and contract enforcement, and limit corruption….

So when the Hindu nationalist intelligentsia and politicians questioned the old narrative, they did have a point. And we did see with the regime change, that states such as Bihar or UP could also create opportunities via industry, manufacturing, support for agriculture, tourism etc. So however neoliberal that may sound, a positive self-image, and a certain industrial ambition, can motivate and drive a people, or a state.

Yet, what the change also brought with it was lots of highways, high rise apartments, smart cities, tunnels in mountains, thousands of trees cut for all this, buying up of agricultural land, continued reduction of common land, and what not. One can of course argue, that even the older infrastructure we had, did come at similar costs. Perhaps it wasn’t so visible, with older media; perhaps its narrative was more muted; perhaps it served the older elite and middle class. Data does tell us that pastoral and tribal communities have had to move due to development action in the past too. Possibly India’s infrastructure is growing much faster now too, in ways comparable to developed nations. (Not that I understand it much, but someone spoke to me about ‘gross fixed capital formation’ – which indicates levels of the nation’s money being put into fundamental infrastructure. India’s levels have been this high only once before, and they indicate high levels of investment is building a longer-term infrastructure base).

This does not mean that sustainability is completely sidelined. In fact even sustainability seems to have gone big! It’s now all about big solar power projects, hydrogen energy. The government itself is invested in organic farming, seed preservation, reviving millets. These are no more radical attempts by some NGOs like Navdanya or Vanastree. The government also wants to prevent the intervention of vested foreign interests in agriculture. Of course they do this too via private capital in agriculture, which they feel will rationalize the system, but they tend to choose national or favoured foreign corporates which they believe (possibly) will not undermine the nation. One also sees several efforts on smaller scale by NGOs, entreprenuers and CSRs to build ecologically balanced spaces. How effective such efforts can be in the eye of the wider storm of large scale development? I don’t know. There are strange distortions too. The trends for millets for example has made millets an expensive food, for instance. The really meaningful efforts for ecological balance are still small scale.

Perhaps we would be naïve to ignore the importance of bigger scale systems, remaining caught in a romance of the small? After all change can come only through systemic shifts in larger socio-economic structures. Here I think some of the arguments that favour the new narrative are worth considering, though not necessarily accepted blindly. An argument from a Hindu nationalist thinker I heard was that one of the reasons that India remained deeply caste-ridden and unequal was because of its deep ruralisation. From a historical perspective he argued that after the decline of the great kingdoms (and here he refers to the early medieval period), a lot of the large cities declined, and majority of people were in rural areas, where caste became entrenched. He believes it is urbanization that breaks this pattern– as caste has strong links with feudalism. He and some other political thinkers believe that by focusing on urbanizing tier 2 and 3 towns, and small areas, and connecting them via highways, creating industry jobs etc., these social features can be altered[1]. It can be asked that when hereditary, feudal hierarchies existed in almost all societies, why has Indian society become so locked and defined by it. Why unlike others it has not been able to weaken these ties in the same way. Of course there may be many answers to that –religious authority, excessive colonial recording and research, electoral politics and caste activism, and so on. There is to some extent a troubled relation with our past – which we want to shed and conserve in the same breath. Anyhow, so the view here is that urbanization, industry, connectivity, technology, aspiration, economic participation – all these will open up a society which till about 2 decades ago was run chiefly by its elite and old middle class. A similar argument was made for bullet trains. I like others, had felt that India really did not need bullet trains, and there was no need to emulate other nations without reasonable grounds. This was again based on the idea, maybe even romance, of gentle paces, local culture, and efficient railway systems that have a rhythm of their own. Yet the view of those pushing fast trains is again about creating well connected city and town networks, allowing the growth of expanded hubs of urban activity and living. Perhaps, developed countries of both Asia and the West have done the same for their own rural areas, allowing for a larger modernization of their social fabric? So, then this means the old must give way for the new, then? Are there also benefits? Will less Biharis now migrate to Punjab, Gujarat or Kerala to work in the future? In a recent discussion on the Punjab, I heard a view. Academics from the region mentioned that a romantic idea of Punjab as a rural area has been developed, though in truth it has historically been one of the areas with maximum urbanization, as well as modern life, culture and education. They were arguing that Punjab needs to think beyond the idea of the ‘pind’ and address economic stagnation.

Of course one can question all this discussion quite easily too. Much of the modern growth is not sustainable, it is harmful to humans and nature alike, and may not last fiscally either. Residential areas have poor occupation, cracking walls, and sewage and waste disposal problems. And so much more. One can cite the impact of fast trains on animal-human conflicts. One can speak of Kerala which involves another kind of rural-urban continuum, which is much more people friendly.

I think both views have merit, though the rapid development model has perhaps too high a cost. Surely, we can no more live in the romance of the village republic, the imagined Gandhian idea of the self-sufficient village, wherein every caste does its professional task and contributes some idea of a whole. Caste activism has deconstructed this picture. Yet the very same Gandhian economic view also went in other useful directions, and engaged with ideas to build ecologically balanced and wholesome lives for people. Many of these are as relevant today as ever, as long as we do not ignore the realities of social inequalities. There is of course a dual aspect. It is the knowledge of specific communities - tribes and castes – that is the carrier of indigenous knowledge as well. It is the same feature that prevents beautiful uses of this very knowledge.

I have watched over the past few years, various Japanese, Chinese and other Asian films and dramas. I see hints of how modernization and indigenous knowledge has been simultaneously nurtured, some of it in ways better than what India did (and some less?). It is up to us perhaps to see what meaningful ideas we catch in our fishnet. For example, if we borrow from Japan –there is Foukouka’s natural farming. But there is also the quick fix solution of Miyawaki forests that have become to new trend today – allowing builders and developers to flatten old trees and then plant new rapidly growing ones. All kinds of knowledges and development paths can serve some benefits, I suppose, if they are invoked from a sensitive, informed and balanced perspective.

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[1] It is also a fact that both for governments as well as market interests, the class group they want to reach out to now, is the new middle classes and poor. Just like in the 90s it was all about our own middle classes. One can see it in much of the advertising and promotion material one sees. There is felt need to tap this talent, and market, also of course also to uplift and empower. Ironically perhaps, these have always gone together.

Can we really cry about the heatwave?

 

There is no denying the heatwave in north India. There is however, also no denying that our abilities to cope with the weather, to adapt to existing weather conditions as a people is at an all time low. The temperatures after all are only 3-4 degrees higher than is usual, every year. But of course, as our bodies are adapted more and more often to ACs, the blast of heat we feel when we step out, the struggle that our bodies internal immunity, circulation, temperature adaptation has to do each time is also equally intense. Even sitting in ACs so many of us crib, that it is not cooling enough, even while our very ACs add further heat to the environment outside, where some poor souls are still carrying on with their work. We are not so much the victims of a heatwave, but rather of a vicious circle of our own making.

Also some basic art of how to be in hot weather is not followed by us. As humans are warm blooded, drinking cold water in the heat, will only make the body generate more heat to maintain balance. Instead, regular water, or at most water with a few sips of cold added for relief is what we ought to stick to. Having a cup or two of tea also helps, counter intuitively. Eat some grains as they steady the stomach, but eat light, not too greasy, don’t move rapidly between very cold and very hot spaces. These would ideally be some basics. Moving quickly from AC to non-AC situations, or drinking cold water on a hot day, is often the reason we end up with colds, headaches and stomach upsets.

A calm mind and slow, deliberate actions also helps – preventing our blood pressures from spiraling here and there. Steady walks in the evening, or even a swim is great, even if it is hot. An active body, is always better at maintaining homeostasis.

The vicious circle is worst because all the offices, malls, homes, cars that rely on ACs, only exacerbates the heat in the surrounding areas, where often less well-off people still have to work – bad weather or not.

Most of us know all this, but somehow, caught in the wave of what our peers say, and the media hype, we just do what everyone else does. Another strange thing is no one really talks of the heat in say Patna, or Churu and Jhunjhunu much, it’s always Delhi – but that’s media focus we suppose. Meanwhile, we are still cutting down trees for development projects – really, do we even have a right to be upset?

Notes with myself

The energy in oneself, energy with potential and intent, remains restless. It is waiting to find the right kind of outlet. This is sometimes a ruse - forever looking. Yet, there are moments where the energy flows and lends itself to me much more willingly. These directions are to be sought. 

Meanwhile, I can see that I have developed such a habit of spending this restlessness is all the wrong directions. When energy is spent  well - you emerge, tired but refreshed. Sometimes the task right in front needs to be done, whether one likes it or not. Sometimes, rebel and move to something else. How to know what to do so, what to act towards? 

I see how much I waste myself. 

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I find that any task, any exploration done in the Work, is not meaningful unless I use it to address my weaknesses, wrong patterns. Doing a task just to cultivate attention alone - well sometimes that is also good. Of course I realize that these two are not entirely different. Whenever attention is brought back, I encounter my contradictions. So this is it - not the mundane doing of tasks, but to be alive to the specific fears, jealousies, insecurities, weakness etc. I encounter. 

Yet, there is something more. Because man can become caught in her own suffering, her own limitations ans the struggle with them. It is like seeking water, while standing by the lakeside sometimes. Slowly, it is also a matter of making that gestalt shift - the moment I capture my attention, I am here, then the past, the wrongs, the sufferings end here. In the now, and i can act and be fully, for whatever is needed. Even this positive action, is a positive struggle. I suppose the struggle is only for the lower self, and for the higher self it is a joy. There are two sides to struggle... worth remembering. Perhaps the trick is to not miss that light peeking behind the struggle. Even struggle is at the realm of the ego, and there is another level too. 

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The many faces of 'Therapy'

 

Sometimes a theory and its critique are both valid. This is what is magical about life and knowledge about life - because it is multi-dimensional. For example, there can be meaningful spiritual and mythic as well as scientific theories about the origin of the universe, and both are true, only at different registers. 

I recently thought about how Freud's theories, those of Carl Jung who distances himself from Freud in many ways, as well as the somewhat controversial 'Logotherapy' are all useful approaches to make sense of human suffering, delusion or trauma, even though they are philosophically/ontologically? so apart. 

Freud tends to see the subconscious as a place of primitive, uncontrolled, dark desires, though also the place for creativity and sexual desire. His whole ouevre is about the struggles of modern man to deal with his neurosis - as a civilized being (typically male) he must suppress several of these primitive influences, though as a result they keep poking at him in dreams, unfulfilled desires and neuroses. Apart from this somewhat questionable macro-theory though, his discovery of the subconscious remains potent. How so many things we experience slide into the subconscious, and sometimes get trapped there in need of release. 

A simple fictional example I read in a period romance novel recently. A man who hurt his knee in a war in the early 1900s, still suffered from pain and stiffness in it, though the doctors had told him he had recovered, and would soon walk normally. Then one day, when he must rescue his lover, he is able to carry the man in his lap for a long distance, without his knee becoming a bother. He is shocked. His fiend tells him, that this is because after his injury, he felt both physical pain and mental pain, as he lost his position in the army and felt useless, unable to help. When the opportunity suddenly arose again, the memory of the pain also dissolved! though this is a fictional case, it is a typical example of the potency of psychotherapy as revealed initially by Freud. 

Carl Jung then, has a different take. He perceived the subconscious not as a dark place hiding bad urges, but as the creative well of the entire human civilization. His approach is linked with his religious-spiritual views. Colonial academics had two kinds of views of primitive times- either as dark pasts that need to be overcome, or a romantic, effervescent wellspring from when mankind was closer to the Gods, nature and the spirits, closer to his truer nature. Accordingly, Jung sees dreams and mythologies as teachers and guides, reminding us of who we are, bringing us back into balance, and telling us of our divine tasks and personalities. 

Logotherapy emerged in the controversial context of the Holocaust (developed by a Holocaust survivor), and seems sometimes like a positive motivational approach, rather than serious psychotherapy? Logotherapy also does not see the subconscious as the enemy. In fact rather than putting much store in the subconscious, it suggests that our problems may be more direct, existential struggles. For instance, I read a case in the popular book 'Ikigai' - Here, a political bureaucrat who is extremely unhappy with his job, underwent therapy for 5 years. He was told that he has a problem with authority, and so he must resolve his issues with his father, in order that things may improve at work. After five years of struggle he tried Logotherapy. It was instead suggested that he may not be in the career of his liking, and after making a change, he became steadily happier. Logotherapy, offers the useful corrective to over analytical academics and therapy which would like to always find a complex answer to a direct, lived problem. 

Jiddu Krishnamurti suggests that both the conscious and the subconscious minds, are really of one essence, and will remain in a mess unless an attention that is without judgment, a choiceless awareness is not fostered. Over my own life I have found that a combination of psychoanalytic, existential and spiritual angles have helped resolve matters. And in the remaining cases, all you need is a some good friends, some dancing, good food, a walk under the moonlight, maybe a drink! 

Romancing other ages and other places

I just finished reading the ‘A Charm of Magpies’ series by K. J. Charles. These are a m/m romance series by a British author, who also by the way is a woman. It is of course not uncommon for women to be writers of male romantic fiction.

Now mostly such romance is to be read for casual pleasure, much like a Mills and Boons, not to be taken too seriously, and with a certain awareness of its unrealistic romantic storymaking. Putting that aside though, I found something amazingly fascinating going on in this series.

 

This story is set in an imaginary Victorian England in which magic operates, and involves a love story between a ‘practitioner’ from a humble class background and a man who is an Earl from an influential family, but has returned to England after a rough 20 years spent as a trader and smuggler in China. A ‘practitioner’ here, implies someone who can do magic, that is control the ether - the energy fields that pervade everything, much like a shaman can manipulate ch’i. The practitioner can manipulate energy through his fingers, move things, touch people and influence their thoughts, hurt someone or heal them, sense negative energies, trap and free spirits, perform some spells, spirits possessions occur, magical duels too. They are sort of like Merlin the warlock, except warlocks here are practitioners gone rogue and evil. Two people deeply connected in magic and affection, may even sense each other’s feelings. The practitioner who is our male lead, Stephen, has the role of a justiciar -  those who ensure that magical norms and ethics are being followed by others like them.

 Anyway, what is of interest here is that Stephen’s, love interest is Lord Crane, who lived freely and openly as a man’s man (i.e. as gay) all those 20 years in Shanghai, a land where no one cares two hoots about all this. He now hates having to be stuck in the niceties of high society Victorian England and further having to hide his sexual preference in a time when people are sent to prison for it. The East is presented with some typical orientalizing gaze, it is crude, rough, lawless, but also freeing, not priggish and open to gay life, lively and never boring. Lord Crane misses that life, but also wants to stay in England as the man he loves - Stephen - is here. Won’t go into the details as that is not the point of this piece.

In England too, the community of practitioners are not that strict about men being with men, as they are of pagan faiths, though they may use such secret knowledge to blackmail people on and off. The Earl Crane’s forefather was a practitioner himself, and magical blood runs through Crane’s veins. While he himself does not do magic, he knows much about it from the openly practiced shamanic cultures of Shanghai, where again magic is openly practiced. Shamans are respected and feared, and are meant to practice simple lives and even celibacy. Stephen, his lover is fascinated to know about this unknown Eastern world where both magic and loving a man can be practiced openly. He wonder what such a life would be like! One of the novels also shows the temperance movement in London in those days, another conservative movement which sees drinking alcohol as evil. 

It is a fascinating twist to today’s age. I have read about gay couples in India who wish to move to the West where they can live more freely. It is also well-known how some people move to the West to move away from narrow-minded cultures (though many in India move more for ambition, jobs and status). To turn this around, to a Victorian age when Britain was far more conservative than some Eastern lands (where homosexuality was at least not a sin, though maybe not as free as depicted in this fiction) makes for a great twist. 

In the last of the books [SPOILERS] the two men have finally taken the leap to travel the world, to see the East. They go to Constantinople, to Shanghai, but finally land in Nagasaki. In this city which is cosmopolitan in those times, they feel a desire to settle. They can be openly together, they begin to learn the language. They enjoy how the peach tree blossom in season and people stop busy activity to admire them and picnic ad even drink under them. Public luxuries unknown in foggy and what priggish England of the age. They decide to live and work there for some years. Most importantly, Stephen the practitioner, begins to work with the magical community here. Here I made the most exciting discovery. While the practitioners in Shanghai were known as Shaman, those in Japan are the mahoutskai! This term immediately harked me back to that sweet Japanese m/m romance called Cherry Maho (those who see this sort of stuff will know). And suddenly I began to see K J Charles' work coming from this vast influence of Japanese, Korean and Chinese paranormal and m/m romance content. Of course that is not the sole influence. Cherry Maho is a quirky story about how men who stay virgin till 30, suddenly gain a magic power that lets them read the thoughts of anyone they touch. This power then (obviously!) helps the lead character find the man he can love.

Cherry Maho is not important I suppose, because mahuotskai might be a generic word for shaman type people and may exist in many other stories. It just happened that for me it was linked with Cherry Maho. There are some nice connections though - the association of magic with m/m romance is not new. Perhaps it is romantic and unreal - in the harshness of the real world. It is a bit like the Angels in America stuff, though that one has a more tragic past. Yet the links of magic with love, especially in male romance stories, whether it is China's danmei stories like Mo Dao Zhu Shi or Cherry Magic or a whole range of paranormal romance (even lesbian and straight) is a fascinating cultural phenomenon. In short the term mahoutskai suddenly brought these universes in contact for me. 

Somewhere in the story, having begun to settle in Nagasaki, Stephen realizes that he may not want to return to England having discovered the freedoms of this land. And recognizing the wanderlust of his lover. He reflects that, ‘it was a great deal easier to hold one’s country sacred if you didn’t have anywhere to compare it to’.

 This thought made me suddenly think so many things. I felt that KJ Charles may have (I’m speculating) felt the same kind of thrill and joy I have experienced in the past few years seeing some Asian dramas (the ones that are not too melodramatic), seeing/m romance, or with paranormal stories, or just simple children’s fantasy or stories with ghosts and mythological creatures from Japan. And she masterfully tries to weave some essences from this into her Victorian fantasy. It may not be true that the Eastern nations were actually that open to alternative lifestyles. But it is the concept of it. Perhaps it is the world that male romance stories and fantasy dramas from the East have conjured in our minds. And how they have suddenly opened out a different mythology, a different kind of television entertainment, so different the American and British content we grew up with in the past decades.

For me over my life, it has been amazing how everything from an Enid Blyton to now Asian dramas or British detective shows from the 80s and 90s, or Iranian films or an American show like Dr. Quinn Medicine woman (donno why I thought of that), have all widened my horizons, have been a forms of travel, have shown me parallels to my own country’s world. Sadly, it is rarely high cinema that moves me, but rather popular television and fiction. People in a different land having challenges similar to yours, and also not at all caring for some things that are big issues in your world, suddenly puts things into perspective. It is the most entertaining way to free oneself from dogma.

 It seems to me that in the past decade Asian content has opened new imaginations in the minds of people, the way perhaps Star Wars or Friends or Abba or the Beatles must have for the rest of the world in another age. I wonder perhaps does this bode of the rise of Asian countries as new superpowers. After all entertainment, runs closely with cultural dominance right? Yet it is so much more than that too. Miyazaki’s own Studio Ghibli films for instance were hugely influenced by European content and music. They carry the deep feeling for Japan and also for universal values, for happy and trauma free childhoods, for healing pain and loss, living through war etc. Don’t we all draw from the cultural depths of others as much as our own? And then it comes back full circle, to teach yet another generation in another land. 

Just the other day I encountered a fascinating YouTube talk. A pair of fathers in America- one of whom is a filmmaker and another a therapist -  were discussing Miyazaki’s film ‘My neighbor  Totoro’. It is a heartfelt film, which could be called a children’s movie, but really could touch anyone who watched it. The two men, were sitting on lazyboy chairs, having not ‘beer and sports TV’ but a detailed discussion on how the film is an fine example on the art of good parenting, how a father raises his two girls, responds to their fantasies an fears and constant excitement without being judgmental and balances his own anxieties. The two middle-aged American men are fascinated with this artistic and heartfelt Japanese film and analyze it thoughtfully. It was yet again a fine example, of how good content is culturally unique and yet belongs to the whole world, transforming anyone who finds it.

 Wow, did not know K J Charles’s m/m romance could take me in this journey of reflection! 

Time, History and Fact - reflections on race

Those who argue that race is a construction, a fiction made up by regressive and prejudiced people are perhaps making a mistake similar to those these criticize. Racial profiling is something we all do often. Within India we recognize people as south-Indian or North-Indian also as racial profiling. When we go to a foreign country and feel lonely we seek to talk to those from our land and we seek them in public spaces through racial features. When we see a sportsperson or an actor we like, we look and try to guess where they must be from. Thus racial profiling exists, not only in negative contexts but in all kinds of positive ones. Of course such profiling stems from stereotyping and patterns we are used to and our guesses are right perhaps only 7 out of 10 times. Those who live in western countries where people from all parts of the world have been coming to settle, and have now lived there for 2-4 generations, have become more sensitive to the fact that it is hard to pinpoint people's 'origins'. There are many with mixed race backgrounds.

In a country like India, such mixing occurred at earlier points in history. In a country like America we see it occurring in these past decades with immigration. So, in India we see diversity but never really think of it as racial difference, because culturally we became enmeshed over the centuries. In America the differences remain sharp and will change over a few more generations.

Liberals are of course right to pin-point that all societies are and have always been mixing. It is true. Waves of migrations and intermixings have been occurring throughout history because of good and bad forces – war, love, travel, exploration, climatic distress, commerce and power-alliances. That reality does not undo the fact that race is encountered experientially. Even though Indians are a heady mix of various races and populations, differences of features and traits are still very visible. Recent studies of genetics show that some communities here, owing to marriage rules of  caste or tribe have actually maintained genetic purity for more than 2000 years, even while many other groups, including those who think they are very caste-pure are much more mixed than they imagine. Genes are also not the only factor, as diet and environment are equally relevant in shaping communities.

So both racial patterns and racial mixing are our heritage. If we look far enough at most races their apparently fixed identity itself emerges as a result of some previous mixings. There is a tendency to see social histories as different and opposite from race and genes, which are considered more fixed and scientific. But after all isn’t a gene or race itself simply the congealed form of social history? If a people live together with common memories, customs, diet and climate and they continue to marry within themselves, racial and genetic types will accentuate. If they scatter then these will dilute. And both these things have occurred throughout human history. Some racial factors are deeper and long lasting, many others are more malleable. Some can shift in even one lifetime and other can take 10 generations. These patterns of history and nature are visible on our bodies and faces. They can even help predict disease patterns in population groups. And yet most of the time they are nothing more than the accumulation of repeated historical acts and habits. The gene patterns that affect a population today may not have the same effect 5-10 generations later, if their people migrate and mix with others.

The forces of both preservation and change constantly operate in the world and subconsciously affect the way humans think and feel. The longings of love, travel and exploration have been as strong as the longings to maintain order, community and continuity. Perhaps together they make a world that is both balanced and also exciting and ever new. Liberals want to prove that the differences between humanity are the fiction of conservatives, so they keep trying to prove that race does not exist (to be fair what they are often trying to do is puncture narrow-minded studies on race). Conservatives always feel that liberals consider no traditions holy and and insist on the continuity of group identity. Their anxieties sometimes come from egoistic needs to maintain social dominance and at other times express more understandable fears in the face of loss and change. The subconscious minds of communities fear that too much mixing will obliterate their uniqueness and their group identity. So they can even go as far as to perform honor killings to prevent such change. Perhaps this is why there are Romeo-Juliet and Heer-Ranjha-like tragic stories in all feudal societies, where the intense pull of love and its inevitable failure both exist.

This much is now clear that there are vast mixings throughout our history and yet also there are racial continuities. Meanwhile, we can ask ourselves do we need to prove that race does not exist, in order to be kind and just people? Does this mean that if science proved beyond doubt that race exists, we  would somehow get a license to oppress or exterminate some people? Also if we can see that race itself, is not something eternal, but a product of long-term history, then it is something that is always being made and unmade, ever so slowly. Meanwhile, justice and open-mindedness can very well flower alongside.

Wisdom that pervades life

In this country, and perhaps in other places in the world too, there is a deep hunger in the common women and men for true spiritual knowledge. When we interact with people at this level, we find that many common people, have uncommon intelligence. Those who would fail at school and have been considered dim-witted in terms of many knowledges, will display an ability to grasp the most subtle of cosmic truths.

In most cases people’s words are misleading. They can make you believe that there is such shallow understanding. It is the nature of the mind perhaps to repeat words, intelligent sounding words that have been learnt over the years. Good words and speeches, idioms and axioms, quotations from religious texts of popular mythologies, accepted academic wisdoms. But this is the mere surface. While our lower and ordinary natures are wont to conform and seek security in familiar concepts, there is another side to us which is hungry for and instantly recognizes the living and everlasting truth, when it is communicated to them. This is why perhaps at least in the Asians worlds it is the ordinary people that have continued to cherish and nourish holy people, whether these holy people are garbed in ascetic clothing or simply live among us as ordinary folk.

It is sad really that those who consider themselves wise and rational and wish to rid the common people of their superstitions, are really unable to perceive this ocean of intelligence that lies in the hearts of a people. It teaches them to doubt their intuitive relation with truth and see everything in terms of loss and gain, power and defeat, rights and stances. Even the most evolved of concepts is but a blip before the experience of the ever-flowing river of truth. Concepts about social equality, justice and freedom are great historical achievements, but without a relationship with the ever present ocean of continuity and totality, they will foster only a continuous restlessness, a disconnect from others but also more primarily a disconnect with one’s most important and deeper needs. They will paint everything in the light of struggle and protest.

The re-turn to religion and faith is a great achievement in the world today, and if perceived in the right  and open-minded light it is not antagonistic to equality and freedom, it is in fact their natural evolution.

Some queer love songs...

I saw #Arthur Bressen's 1977 documentary #GayUSA on mubi.com. It is such a beautifully crafted film. Perhaps the only documentary I have watched twice! What brought me there the second time was the songs. 

I tried to look for their words online but couldn't find them. I did find a list of their names on a site dedicated to the music in Bressen's films. (queer music heritage dot com). 

Then I decided to hear and copy out the words. I wonder if sharing them here will violate copyright? I'll put a few nuggets. Even though they are about gay love, they speak to just any heart. And hey are sung in a lilting and natural style. 

(I think this one is 'Glad to be loving you')

    When I look into your eyes

    I see the whispers and the cries

    I see the silence 

    You're a woman... I am too 

    No longer scared to tell you

    I love you 

    Though those moments we're apart 

    seemed so long 

    the love we shared with each other 

    kept getting strong...er

    now we speak more openly 

    dropping inhibitions isn't easy 

    born with so much deep inside 

    its hard to know who we can confide ... in 

......... 

An Almost-Vegan who also eats ‘Non-Veg’?: Diets beyond definition

 

(wrote this article initially sometime in 2015-16, at the height of tensions about vegetarian and non-vegetarian messes in the IITs.)

A hard to define diet

I have trouble digesting Lactose. So I do not drink milk except in small measures in tea. I eat curd and cheese only sometimes. I do eat ghee in decent amounts, as my main source of ‘good fat’. My home is a vegetarian one, and I have grown as such. As with many Hindus of vegetarian families/castes, I did not know much about ‘non-vegetarian’ foods till I was in school. But since then, as I entered college life, owing to my love for trying cuisines, of relating with the different states of my country and feeling closer to the lives of my friends who now came from various parts of India, I have eaten and still occasionally do eat ‘non-vegetarian’ food – fermented fish paste called Ngari from Manipur, Calamari or lamb starters in a pub, Beef recipes of Kerala, or even the slow cooked meatballs from Kashmir have all been on my occasional list. To top this confused list, I did grow up eating and loving egg but after a bout of jaundice, I have become allergic to it. So in recent years it has been no to eggs but yes to a rare tandoori chicken. Most confusing.

So when people ask me if I am vegetarian or non-vegetarian, I have to stop myself from launching into a long thesis for explanation. I guess, functionally I am on most days a vegetarian who has less dairy products. An oddity; an almost vegan, who sometimes eats some meat.

An eclectic morality

These are of course my personal dilemmas, yet I feel that there are insights here that are worth sharing. They point to the fact that macro debates about diets and morality do not always do justice to the unique biographies of people. This combination of diet that I have developed over the years is not completely random. It emerged as an evolving understanding of what works for my body and my values. I think my diet has a peculiar morality of its own. I do think about both environmental and nutritional concerns too. Totally unrelated to the veg-non-veg maha-debate in India, I try as much as possible not to buy packaged biscuits and chips, though I am very fond of them. Fresh stuff from a bakery or a ‘Hot Chips’ stall, in a paper bag is preferable. I control how much I order food online, as I dislike the use of plastics in packaging and the fact that some poor soul is zipping through traffic and pollution to fetch me my meal. I prefer - especially since I have matured in age - to either eat at home or myself step out to eat. Here too, whenever possible I love to patronize clean but common-man friendly dhabas, perhaps due to my limited pocket but also because they feel good. Surely gourmet cuisine or visits to capitalist Starbucks also happen. But I keep it in check.

Daily Musings...

 

Daily notes on things I see, read or reflect on... ongoing understandings

Avoid the bandwagons

I recently came across some information which indicated that modern poultry farming techniques, which ensured high quality egg production, rearing of hens so that they produce more eggs, all this was supported and encouraged in India by the Peace Corps, an American social service organization which combined bringing Christian values and modern development to the 'less fortunate' world. It also believed it was fighting world hunger by improving the amount and quality of protein nutrition in developing countries.

Following these interventions the modern poultry farms grew in India and slowly become more mechanized, organized and high producing, so that by today only 20% of India's eggs are produced on local farms, and the rest 80% on factory farms. Indian governments too, encouraged by the global wisdom about protein and health, advertised to their populations that eating an egg a day will keep them healthy. The acceptance was so effective that even a number Hindu vegetarian families would feel their young children eggs, as it was deemed necessary for growth.

Surely the peace corps are not entirely responsible for introducing the modern poultry industry in India but they were surely significant. Their strongest presence was in the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh I think , states that to this day are high egg producers. Today India is the third largest egg producer in the world, after China and America (i gather, from a video on veganism). 

Today, again from the West a new wave has come to India. Animal Rights groups, both Indian and Western, show us the terrible conditions of egg-farms. Terrible they surely are. They are now educating us of other vegan sources of protein. They are telling us that modern animal factory farming, create large amounts of green house gases and obviously are cruel to animals. They also tell us how especially the large scale farming of cattle, requires much production of fodder for them to eat, which uses land, which eventually exacerbated world hunger. So we are being urged to go vegan, to use other sources of protein, to contribute in solving world hunger and reducing climate change, poultry farms are being urged to stop using battery-cages to keep hens. 

I do not mean to say that vegan advocacy is wrong. Or simply that it is just a western ploy to fool us. Much of what vegans say does seem to make sense. in particular their description of the suffering of animals in egg and milk industries makes a strong impression on me. 

Yet, I find it disconcerting that entire countries and populations are routinely taken on one ride and then another ride, driven by mandates that some people have decided are wise. India of course used and abused animals in its own way, as did other cultures. Yet most of the time keeping a few cows in one's house or a few chickens or pigs or goats, was always way less cruel than what modern factory farms are doing today. We went through such a large shift, only to now stop and decide to change our ways. 

The lesson for me really is, live simply and non-violently, and avoid jumping on bandwagons of any kind!

Encounters between Scandinavian Missionaries and Santhali tribes in 1867-1900

While on academia.com, I came across a book review about a book on missionaries from Norway who worked among Santhali communities during the time of the British rule. This note is not related to the genuine and controversial debates about conversion activities among tribal groups. It makes some other observations. 

The book (of which the review was) had noted that the attitude of these missionaries to the tribal person was different from the usual style displayed by missionarie from lets say UK or Germany. Norway, their country of origin and also the Santhal land had both been exposed to modern technology and to trains at around the same time. A sense of Santhali identity and nationhood was growing among the tribal people and it was similarly found in Norway. Norway had till very recently had strong pagan traditions of Viking Gods and their memories were still strong even among the Christian missionaries. For example, they found similarities between the chief Santal boga (spirit) Maran Buru with the Scandinavian shape-shifting God, Loki (we all know that God, don't we!). 

Pagan faiths in both Norway and Santhal culture

So, the book had observed - that the missionaries who had themselves left these pagan faiths and been attracted to Christianity did not see Indian lives as 'civilized Europeans making sense of savage people', as was common perhaps among missionaries from some other countries. Instead, they were 'confronted with their own sinful past'. Possibly Irish missionaries would also have been different, as their local histories had also gone through processes of suppression by mainstream Britain. 

The colonizing West had its own suppressed histories

I found this example so fascinating because you can see the tragedy of it so starkly. That even the West had a non-Christian past, which it came to reject. Of course some years later, these old histories began to to revived and they never really left, as we see with the fascination for the history of Scotland and Ireland. Yet the British were going all over the world trying to reform other people. Also, it is an interesting instance to the see the variations within Europe and how all colonizer-colonized encounters in India were not the same. 

(These ideas are cited from a book review of 'An encounter of Peripheries: Santals, Missionaries and their changing worlds 1867-1900, by Marine Carrin and Harald Tambs-Lyche, in 2008)

**************************

Veganism isn't about eating natural 

These days we read and hear about various new approaches to diet. There is the organic movement, a growing preference towards eating traditional and indigenous diets, and growing without pesticides and fertilizers, there is the Keto diet which is about having more protein and fat and less carbs to reduce weight. There is veganism that encourages people to give up eating meat as well as dairy products. 

Veganism's main concern is to stop cruelty to animals

One cannot be blamed for assuming that veganism's push towards eating a 'plant-based diet' must be all about eating natural. However that is hardly the interest of Veganism. In fact it can be quite comfortable not eating natural as well. Their main goals are two - that we avoid any form of cruelty to animals and that we eat and consume in a manner that reduces the rapid effects of climate change. Data has shown over the years that both the large scale meat and dairy industries operate in a manner that generates huge amounts of greenhouse gasses. A significant percentage of farmed land includes that which produces animal feed to cater to these animals - cattle and poultry mostly. Also vast amounts of water is consumed.  It is believed that the reducing the scale of this industry will have direct benefits for climate change and resources conservation. 

Even more urgently vegan activists would like to tell us all that animals undergo immense violence and very reduced and poor lifetimes within factory farms. These farms are nothing compared to a romantic vision we have of farming and animal care during the medieval age. The forces of mass production are such. To make milk and meat freely and continuously available for a large consumption market - not only individual households but restaurants and fast food chains - the mistreatment of animals is unavoidable. These animals are routinely separated from their mothers, denied their milk. Male calves and chicks little use except as meat. The conditions even of those who live, are quite horrible. The lifespans of cows that have to be made pregnant repeatedly reduces by almost 1/3rd. 

If meat is grown in a lab, its ok

So these are really the concerns of veganism. In an environment where many people are realizing that plant-based diets, at least predominantly plant-based diets are healthier options in the sedentary lives of al least privileged classes, veganism also chooses to speak for vegetarian diets. However this goal is what we discussed above. Vegan experts tell us that a plant and nut based diet is actually sufficient source for protein and calcium. If at all we have deficiencies of vitamin D or B12, the two things that dairy and meat alone are believed to provide, these they say can be had in the form of supplements. There is a growing vegan business worldwide of producing either clean meat - which is basically meat cultured and grow in a lab, or plant-based meat, foods made from plant-based protein sources. Various small additives from various plants are added to it, in order to create items that look, smell and even taste like meat, but are sourced from plants. 

A blurring of boundary between natural and synthetic

In a world today when both a human muscle and a chicken muscle can be cultured and grown in a laboratory we can see that the category of natural itself is not what it used to be. Additionally today nutritional and biochemical sciences have broken down nutritional components and flavour and taste elements into much more fundamental parts. so plant-based meat uses small and selective extracts from yeast, olive oil, coconut, beetroot, various concentrates, mineral and vitamin compounds and what not to bring together that meat-like experience in a food that has not animal meat in it. 

So natural food too can potentially be perceived as a sum of its many chemical and biochemical parts, in a way that blurs distinctions between chemical, synthetic, natural and artificial. It was perhaps to be expected. Whether it is the process of replacing fertilisers and chemicals with natural alternatives or attempts to integrate traditional medicine into modern biomedicine, we find similar shifts. The natural is studied with greater and greater scrutiny, at molecular, chemical and microscopic levels in order to increase its efficient understanding and use. 

If one speculates, in a certain extreme case Veganism would even be ok with growing vegetables indoors in nutrient rich water - another new and growing field in agricultural 'sciences'. So if some years hence, we feel that Earth has had it, lets go and colonise Mars, then could we even go and colonize this new planet and grow vegetables in such water and live non-cruelly? Maybe i'm taking it too far. After all the need to save animals and the climate is for the purpose of our lives, here and now. Yet, it is worthy observation because today with new simultaneous explorations in various sciences, veganism could as easily map on to synthetic mass food production as it could we moving towards healthier and natural diets. Vegans for instance would not necessarily be against GM foods and seeds. 

Sustainable Agriculture and livelihoods

Veganism of course has many faces and levels. Those who are most passionate about animal rights alone, are at one end. There are other who may prefer to reduce factory level meat consumption and are  also interested in healthy diets. Many environmentalist in India have somewhat divergent interests. They are more focused on sustainable agriculture - for instance the use of local and hardy seed varieties that need less water and also free farmers from dependence and debt under the forces of multinational seed companies. This is a very different kind of focus. Here again the main concern may not be about eating natural, unprocessed foods, but at the core lies the idea of economic self-sufficiency and ecological security. 

So where is Health actually?

Health in all this seems to occupy an interesting space of convergence. 

spiritual too. 

A world without domestic animals?

Spirit of the Kikar Trees

I decided then and there that I would go and visit the Mangar Bani. 

Mangar Bani is among the few remaining pristine forest areas left in the Aravali hill ranges around Delhi and Haryana, in the misst of which the Delhi-Faridabad-Gurgaon highways also run. It is also a sacred grove and a Paleolithic archeological site, that has remained relatively untouched over the years. Villages do exist close to this eco-sensitive area. Despite its sensitive and important significance, governments in the past have not done enough to protect it. As it fell under the villages' jurisdictions, as common land or Panchayat land, the locals took some care till some decades ago, but slowly with increasing commercial activity, the area began to get affected. Environmentalists who are trying to protect the Aravalis from illegal or even legal mining, various forms of development and dangers have been concerned about it. 

I knew nothing about this place till very recently. Why suddenly then did I become interested in this place? Mangar Bani entered my imagination in the past weeks because of various things that occurred around me.

Painful romance with Sociology

An old Piece from 2007. 

Sociology...

The past 6 months have messed up my brain. literally. the only time I can think clearly is when I'm not really thinking. and the rest of the time I'm reading laborious writings in which some other very thinking people are thinking. And I used to think I was a thinking person. Now I no more know what I think.

Welcome to my life-world (a sociological term) of a masters in sociology.

I have wanted to write my first blog entry for so long, but my brain has been too cluttered. So without putting all that down, I really cannot move forward. To throw it all out is my intention, but that may not be the end I reach. For as sociology teaches us (oh for christ's sake!) life hardly works by a means and ends logic, and a lot of sociology is the study of the unintended consequence [Hence perhaps ur Chattis ka aankda with the model -loving economics dept!!!].

The original beauty of sociology is undeniable. You see so much of your own thinking, existence, mundane and special activity in such novel ways. Also gratifying in many ways is to see theorists talking of things you have observed from time to time.

But then the texts!

From Taking Stances to Real Understanding

What years of knowledge about the rights of gay, lesbian or trasngender people could not do for me in terms of creating a transformation in attitude, was achieved by watching gay and LGBTQ romance shows. I was never someone who was opposed to ‘alternative sexualities’, but I always thought of their issues in terms of rights and in terms of sex. Gay relations for instance were always imagined understood in terms of – they are attracted to the same gender. I didn't always relate to it, I even sometimes found it odd, unrelatable. I could only say that well, there are different kinds of people, different realities and people have a right to be who they are. So standing for a gay person for instance, involved ‘taking a stance’. However after watching male love stories, there was not even any need to take a stance. my understanding extended from a sexual orientation definition, to romance, feelings, flirting, heartbreaks, loneliness, acceptance by family, aspirations for one’s own family and so on. The naturalness with which I felt an understanding was of another level. Somehow never having had a close gay friend I never accessed these things earlier.

Dan Levy the man who co-scripted the series Schitt’s Creek with his father, said something like this about his show. I wanted to create a world wherein everyone felt safe and had respect and place in that town in which the tale was told. He plays a gay character and a romantic relationship is also portrayed in the show. No one in that show is fighting for the right to be gay, the family, the neighbourhood are all at ease with it, other men are not uncomfortable around him and so on. This may be somewhat idealistic, but I feel that by writing and creating films or shows in this manner, we make it possible to imagine that what we think are really big issues or will make us awkward actually may not be so, or could easily be worked out. On the other hand, a narrative that is mostly about rights and struggle, creates two parties pitted against each other – obscuring the fact of how we live in shared worlds. The very structure of this narrative, compels each group in a sort of automated way – to stick to its guns.

I don’t mean that stories of struggle and rights are not important. Times matter too. In the 70s and 80s public content that was even sympathetic to gay or queer people focused more on their struggles, the prejudice and violence against them. And of course this was a reality. It still is, though perhaps a little less. It is probably the natural evolution of a social movement and its narrative to reach such a stage today, when rather than only fighting for space, stories are more and more about imagining coming out to one’s family, teenage love, romance, marriage or families for LGBTQ people.

Anyhow, this experience for me was a learning one. Very quickly we get into debates, we stand for or against issues. But such a support is in the shape of concepts, ideas. There is another joy in actually coming upon a lived reality of another, such that a ‘stance’ shifts to an ‘understanding’ or as something relatable. To take a different example, rather than simply saying that Pakistan too is a country with its own people and culture and is not simply a hub of terrorists, that we ought to be more understanding, watching a show such as Zindagi Gulzaar Hai, could make it immediately relevant to an Indian. College life, youth, family troubles, fashion, gender struggles, dating etc. all come alive in this show and make an obscured neighbor a little more relatable.

Shakeel Badayuni.. A time.. A mood

  Today I played my Mughal-e-Azam music cassette. I have until now managed to continue the playing of some cassettes (that are still working) on my philips cassette player 

Mughal-e-Azam's music is absolutely divine. Classical, Filmy, emotional, kathak thumris, Shayarana... Pardah nahin jabkoi khuda se, bandon se pardah karna kya... gets to me each time. I just started looking up Shakeel Badayuni's life story on wikipedia (yes that has become the first stop these days.. hopefully not always the last). he is the lyricist of the songs of this film. What a life this man had. what a beautiful contribution to life, to India, to music and emotion. 

I read that he had been given an education in the usual persian, arabic, urdu and hindi at home, as was common in many muslim homes. Really an education in the languages and literature in a home-based scenario with a strict but concerned teacher, is probably the most beautiful thing of the pre-modern era... a sort of intellectual luxury.  

Badayuni did not display an early bent towards poetry at a young age but when he went to study at Aligarh Muslim university he started taking part in inter-college mushairas and it turned out he was quite good at them. Imagine that these beautiful things used to happen in some of top universities... The wikipedia piece mentions that in those days (which is the 1930s and 40s, a period of nationalist ferment and also modern religious reform) shayars often used poetry to comment on the downtrodden sections of society and the betterment of all. Badayuni however was more inclined to romantic and heartfelt writing. Often we who have grown up later, think that shayari was only about weak emotion, soppy romanticism. we forget that it has had many other sides too. Even romance ought not to be taken lightly. Romance is after all about our highest ideals, our visions of the ideal life, not only for ourselves but our country, our world, the betterment of humanity. I recall that many a time my romantic visions involved meeting someone whom i loved and how we both would maybe set up a school, or open an organic farm, or set up and organise waste management and composting or some such crazy idea. change things, help people. my romance was always tied to some such activity as well. So romance is tied with idealism. In pride and prejudice romance was tied deeply with the question of how a man and women ought to treat each other and respect each other's intellect. for its time it was important idealism. 

The shayars at our universities were expressing their concerns about equality and social reform through their poetry... and no poetry is complete without the edge and black humor about the realities of life. Badayuni grew in such an age. I feel that at that time soooo many beautiful, unforgettable musicians, lyricists and screenplay writers emerged in India... many but surely not all of them muslims. They expressed not only a 'muslim' sensibility but the very poetry that india was at that time. 

What drove them? I feel that sometimes it happens this way... somewhere deep down the consciousness of a people living in a certain time is aware that the times they are living in are crucial, that they will never return, they will be gone forever. The ganga jumna sanskriti, the confluence of Indic, Hindu, Muslim and sikh sensibilities in northern India, were dying out in these years as independent India was marching ahead. So such people knew, without knowing, that they must pour out their entire creativity, their nostalgia, their entire knowledge because even poetry is knowledge - a model of relating with interiority. So they sang, and wrote and made stories which channelled the very mood and warp and woof of their times. These expressions carry an entire 'dharohar' (heritage) of a certain kind of personhood. funnily it emerges as its brightest just before it is going to be overrun... and then the memories drive the next generations... teaching them important tales, built on their own very bonfire. 

मुश्किल समय के लये कुछ उपाय

आजकल इस सुन्दर देश के लिए कुछ चिंता लगी रहती है | कोरोना वायरस की बिमारी से तो माहौल गंभीर है ही, पर इसकी कोई ज़्यादा चिंता नहीं है | यह तो प्रकृति से ही पैदा हुई है , इसका  इरादा बुरा नहीं, यह निष्पक्ष है |  इसे तो बस हमें झेलना है | चिंता तो यह है , कि कई लोगों में भय, अविश्वास , मलाल और गुस्सा कहीं पल रहा है |  हिंदुस्तान के लोगों में बहुत सूझ बूझ है, और इसलिए सरकार का सभी मुश्किल समय में साथ दे रहे हैं | पर इसके साथ साथ कुछ उलझन का एहसास भी होता है | आजकल हमारे देश में सकारात्मक सोच पर बहुत ज़ोर रहता है | राष्ट्रीय एकता का भी आवाहन होता रहता है |  ऐसी मांग करना अपने में तो गलत नहीं है | पर कहीं ऐसा तो नहीं कि इस चक्कर में हम एक दुसरे का या अपना ही दर्द या डर पहचान नहीं रहे ? इन्हें खुले मन से और सब्र के साथ परखने में हमारा शायद भला ही हो जाए |

पिछले कुछ सालों में हिंदुस्तान काफी बदल चुका है | अब शायद और भी बदलेगा | कई चीज़ें जिन्हे हम आम मानते थे , वे अब शायद न हों, और समाज शायद कई नए रूप ले | पहला का कुछ अच्छा-बुरा जायेगा , और कुछ नया भी अच्छा-बुरा आ सकता है |  दुनिया में भारी बदलाव का फेर चल रहा है , और हमारा देश भी इसमें शामिल है | तरह तरह की ज्योतिष तो यह बातें बोल ही रहे हैं , वैसे भी समय की हवा बता रही है | काम, नौकरी, धर्म के तरीके, रहन सहन, शासन का तरीका, रोज़ाना की ज़िन्दगी, इन सब में बदलाव आ सकते हैं | में एक आम नागरिक हूँ , पर मुझे यह साफ़ मेसूस हो रहा है | कोरोना ने पहले से ही बदलते हुए समय की गति को 'चौथा गेयर' लगा दिया है | राजनैतिक दृष्टि से देखें तो  भा.ज.पा. के सरकार में दूसरी बार आने के बाद से बदलाव बढ़ने ही लगे थे | अच्छे बुरे की अभी के लिए  छोड़िये | जब भा.ज.पा. कांग्रेस मुक्त भारत की बात करती थी तो अजीब सा लगता था | जैसे यूँहीं शेखी मार रहे हों | अब चाहे कांग्रेस मुक्त किया के नहीं यह ज़रूरी नहीं है , पर इसका मतलब यह तो हो गया है की रोज़ाना की राजनीति, कानून, कौम और धर्म का स्थान, ताकत का मतलब, शांति का स्थान सब बदल रहा है | एक नए समय का फेर है |

हिंदुस्तान की बात एक है | इसके अलावा पूरी दुनिया में भी आर्थिक स्तिति के बदलाव आ रहे हैं | जो देश पहले ताकतवर थे और पूरी दुनिया का दस्तूर बनाते थे अब उनके स्थान थोड़े हिल गए हैं और नयी ताकतें आ रही हैं | ऐसे बदलाव इतिहास में हर ७०-८० सालों में , या १०० सालों में आ ही जाते हैं | पहले से चल रहे बदलाव की हवा यूं ही एकदम तेज़ी पकड़ लेती है |

इस बदलाव में इंसान खुद को कुछ खोया हुआ पा सकता है | क्योंकि यूं तो मैं वही इंसान हूँ जो कल थी, और आसपास देखने में तो सब वैसा ही लगता है, लेकिन हमसे आंखें चुरा कर आस पास सब चीज़ों ने मानों अपनी पहचान बदल ली है | वही शब्द पर माईने अलग, आम लगने वाले कानून पर असर अलग, राजनीती वही पर ताकतें नई, बच्चे वही पर उनकी समस्याएं अलग इत्यादि | नौकरियों के रूप बदल सकते है , जीवन शैली बदल सकती है | यह सब एकदम नहीं होगा | कुछ लोगों के लिए शायद कुछ भी न बदले | पर फिर भी हम एक नई दुनिया में प्रवेश कर रहे होंगे |

मुझे लगता है कई लोग इसका एहसास, अगर खुली तरह से नहीं तो अनजाने में, मन ही मन में कर रहे हैं | इसके कारण शायद कुछ लोगों में उत्सुकता हो, पर कई लोगों में चिंता और असुरक्षा हो सकती है |  ऐसा होना स्वाभाविक है | इसके अलावा मुझे लगता है कि हिंदुस्तान के मुस्लिम परिवारों में ख़ास चिंता हो सकती है | हमारे देश में इस समय एक सच है की हिन्दू समाज एक नई ताकत के साथ अपनी पहचान ढून्ढ रहा है | इतिहास में हर कौम ऐसे वक्त से कभी कभी गुज़रती है | ऐसे समय में हिन्दू समाज में नई ऊर्जा और नया जीवन भी बन सकता है , और साथ में कट्टरपन और छोटी सोच भी | हिन्दू समाज में जागरूकता कुछ हद तक अच्छी बात है | अंग्रेज़ों के राज्य के समय से हिन्दू समाज और इतिहास के बारे में चलती आ रही कुछ धारणाओं पर सवाल उठना स्वाभाविक था| पर सवाल ऐसे उठने चाहिए के इंसानियत और विद्या की सत्यता को ठेस न पहुचाये | भगवान् करे ऐसा हो |

साथ में भारत का मुस्लिम समाज भी कई बदलाव देख रहा है | दुसरे मुस्लिम देशों में हो रहे सामाजिक और धार्मिक मंथन का असर उनपर भी आता है | यही नहीं , भरत का मुस्लिम भी आज मध्यम वर्ग में आता एक समाज है | ऐसे बदलाव समाज में आते हैं और स्वाभाविक हैं | वे क्या रूप लेंगे यह तो वक्त ही बताता है | लेकिन यह तो हमारे हाथ में है की ऐसे समय में हम आपसी भरोसा तोड़ दें या बनाये रखें | आज कोरोना के समय में मुझे मुस्लिम परिवार्रों के लिए चिंता है | कुछ टीवी चैनलों ने इस आपदा के समय में भी उन्हें काफी ठेस पहुंचाने का काम  किया है | उन्हें ही क्यों, किसी भी अक्ल वाले इंसान को बुरा ही लगा होगा | तब्लिकि जमात ने गैर ज़िम्मेदारी तो की ही थी , लेकिन रोज़ाना उसका इतना प्रचार करके लोगों में शक और नफरत बढ़ाई गई है | यह बिमारी विदेश से आये कोई भी लोग फैला सकते थे | और शुरू में किसी को भी अंदेशा नहीं था की यह संक्रमण कितना तेज़ी से फैल रहा है | एक 'चांस' से हुई घटना को साजिश बनाना बेहद दुःख की बात है | और जब इस बिमारी के आने से ठीक पहले नागरिकता कानून से जुडी गर्मी ठंडी भी नहीं हुई थी, और आज भी कई लोग इस कानून से चिंतित हैं, ऐसे में इस तरह का अलगाव फैलाना तो देशद्रोह से कम नहीं | कोरोना बिमारी को आम जनता पूरी तरह से समझती भी नहीं है, उससे भयभीत है, और फिर एक कौम को इसके फैलाव से बार बार जोड़ना (चाहे साफ़ शब्दों में कहा भी न हो ) बहुत गलत है | यह कोई छोटी बात नहीं है | हमारे देश में हिंदु और मुस्लिम लोगों में दूरिया और गलतफैमियाँ वैसे ही बढ़ रही थीं | हमारे देश बड़ी से बड़ी आपदा झेल ले , अगर हमारे मन मलाल से बचे रहें |

कितने दुःख की बात है कि कुछ समृद्ध इलाकों में रहने वाले लोग, दर के मारे कोरोना के मरीज़ों से दूर रहते हैं और उन्हें दुत्कारते हैं | किसी होटल में कहीं संक्रमित लोगों को रखने की कोशिश होती है तो आस पास की कॉलोनी आपत्ति करती हैं | तब तो कोई टीवी वाले इस पर सवाल नहीं करते? फिर देशनिष्ठा का आवाहन कोई क्यों नहीं करता ? दोष देने की भी अपनी ही अजीब राजनीति है |

हिन्दू लोगों के लिए भी सोचने का समय है | आज हमारी प्रथाओं और धरोहर नए रूप से हमारे सामने आ रही है | कई घर्म गुरु , किताबे, वीडियो नै चीज़ें सीखा रहे हैं | इसमें बहुत कुछ अच्छा है | आध्यात्म के रास्ते के बहुत से तरीके और यन्त्र मिल रहे हैं | पर साथ-साथ कहीं एक अभिमान और संकीर्णता भी बढ़ रही है | धर्म के गौरव में हम कहीं अपने  धर्म का मर्म और तत्व न भूल जाएँ , यह हमारे हाथ में है |

सच तो यह है कि आज और आने वाले समय में हमें ही अपने मन और दिमाग को बचा कर रखना होगा | आज देश के हर इंसान के सामने एक सवाल है | यह एक बहुत खुदगर्ज़ सवाल है, अपनी अंतर-आत्मा के हित  के लिए| हम किस भावना के साथ हैं? और क्या हम समय के रुख को पहचानते हुए, समझ और सब्र के साथ आगे बढ़ेंगे ? क्यां हम गंद पर ध्यान देंगे या ऊंचे विचारों पर ? सोशिअल मीडिया पर सब कुछ सुनकर हमेशा बेताब और गर्म रहना क्या ज़रूरी है ? क्या जिस स्वच्छता और एकता का आवाहन हमें सुनाया जाता है, हम उसे अपनी अंतरात्मा से टटोल सकते हैं ? हम सरकार या मीडिया या इश्तेहार या अलग अलग ताकतों के बहकावें में आने के शायद आदि हो चुके थे | अपनी सुनने की आदत कुछ कम हो गयी थी |  कोरोना के समय में हम इसे बदल सकते हैं |  बेकार की बातों के भुलावे से बचना पड़ेगा | बदलते हुए समय में, समुद्र मंथन की कहानी की तरह, पहले तो बहुत विष निकलता है |आने वाले सालों में, हमारे सामने उलझन पैदा करने वाली ताकतें भी आएँगी और नई राह दिखाने वाली, नए विचार, नए दोस्त , नए रिश्ते दिखाने वाली ताकत भी | नया से मतलब यह ज़रूरी नहीं की परंपरा के खिलाफ हो | नया मतलब ऐसा कुछ जो सोच को खोले , जो जीने का कोई सुन्दर सलीका दे | शायद कोई नया काम करने का आईडिया, या कोई नया सफर, या अध्यात्म की तरफ, यह कोई बुरी आदत छोड़ना, या पुरखों की कोई बढ़िया बात पकड़ लेना, या कोई बेकार सी प्रथा छोड़ देना, रोज़ फोन बंद करके टहलने जाना, या यूहीं बैठ जाना | इस समय में बहुत लोगों को यह भी नहीं पता होगा की आगे क्या होगा | कोई नहीं | मुश्किल तो है , पर कोई नहीं | अपने अंदर के जीवन को अगर हम कायम रख लिए, चाहे हम किसी भी समाज के हों, अमीर हो या गरीब हों, तो यकीनन हम यह समय पार कर जाएंगे |

इन सब चिंताओं के साथ साथ प्रकृति की बढ़ती सुंदरता है , जो 'लाकडाउन' ने हमें देखा दी है | एक तरफ समय तेज़ी से बढ़ रहा है , दूसरी तरफ मानो थम गया है | जैसी धरती हमारे दादा-दादियों ने देखी थी उसकी एक झलक मिल रही है | जैसे कोई चुपके से कह रहा हो, दोस्तों , जीना का एक अलग तरीका भी मुमक़िन है |

Harna nahin

May I hold on to the good
May I not loose simple happiness
An Easy relating
May I not be caught in hardening ego
in Resentment, in meaningless chatter
inside my mind
or in this endless jungle of a world

पथभ्रष्ट न हूँ
कमज़ोर न हूँ
मन हल्का रहे , मन सीमित न हो
अपने निश्चय की क़ीमत बनी रहे

कुछ औकात हो
सुबह उठकर खुद को देखने का मन करे
लोग भी थोड़ा दरें
यह नहीं के कुछ भी कह के निकल जाएँ
पुरुषार्थ की शक्ति

शायद यूहीं पहाड़ बना लिया है
मज़े मज़े में इंसान बड़े काम कर जाता है
इतना विचार क्यों
यह विचार भी डर से ही निकल रहा है
नाकामी का ?

अब मन बना ही लिया है
तो मज़े में करो
जो छूट जाए समझो ज़रूरी नहीं था
जीवन से लड़ने में
जीना तो नहीं भूल सकते
जो है सब यहीं तो है


जागते रहो

Autorickshaw

Ek to honi chahiye kavita
autoricksha ki shaan mein

hai to bas ek teen ka dabba
khad khad karta bejaunk purzon ka rela
par ek ajab si chalti hui duniya
na darwaaje, na kunde
ek khuli hui si jagah...

plastic ki body uski
kabhi raajniti ka jhanda
to kabhi ishtehaar
election mein prachaar
ya shero shayri ka hathiyar

kabhi madam ki akeli sawari
ya kaamgaar logon ki le zimmedari
ek kone mein pani ki botal, side mein taango safa
seat ke niche khane ka dabba, aur ho gaya apna kabza

baahar ka andar aur andar se baahar
mausam ka maza, ya cigrette ka kash,
nae shahar ke nazraane ya ped ki chhaon must

badi vichitra si baat hai
ek teen ki chhat aur ek khuli si jagah
kuchh seemit.
Aur kitni sambhavnayen

Kaise?

agar abhi tak pyar nahin hua
to phir yeh kya hai?

jo zahan mein khulta hai
jo tum par atakta hai
jo lagaav, jo hijr jaisa khichaav hai

chahe aage pyar mil bhi jaaye
pehle to yeh hua hai
iske dard ne hi dil ko pakaya hai
pyar ke layaak, aur pyar ke qaa'il
kiya hai

itni badi chhaap kaise kam karoon
waqt apna kaam kare, to kare

To clean for comfort?

There is a great uneasiness with this urge to clean-up. And these last 5-6 years India seems to be in its grip. It is not easy to see its dangers, because it is being done in the name of good. It even has cross-party appeal. PM Modi's cleanliness campaign is in fact preceeded by the AAP's broom. The most recent expressions are Yogi Adityanand's efforts.

There seems to be a visual, aesthetic dimension to this. And so removing dirt for AAP, includes not just garbage but leaves and dust too! The removal of corruption, seems to end up meaning that an informal economy that is not in the radar of banks be brought in line. Surely there is some wisdom in this. In India only 2-3% of or economy was in the radar of banks, and the rest was cash economy. In a first world nation like US, it is the other way round. So the biggest power - both positive and negative - is this new rationalisation through banks in India. The removal of corruption, this clean-up, is basically about what we can map. Of course new forms of power will be born with this, and some old ones snuffed.

Yogi A's steps. Protecting girls, removing pan and gutka and closing slaughter houses. So many kinds of clean-up. Protecting girls is hard to separate from preventing couples from meeting and of course - the real and the imagined zones of love-jihad. So clean-up can also be about putting things in their place. Of course we all would like it if government offices did not have pan stains in their walls, right? Most government officers would themselves agree to stop it, admiring the new chain of command. For in India ministers hardly make anything happen. So when someone is decisive that itself feels so refreshing! But what unwitting shifts come with this?

This is the problem to be worked through. What value is superior to what value? For instance in the demand to have separate hostels for vegetarians and non-vegetarians in some institutions... One valid value is the comfort of vegetarians. [Of course it is interesting to ask how people survived quite happily all these years with it]. But the other value is of togetherness. What is the price we pay? I recall a story i heard from my mother. Her family lived in Daryaganj when they were young. There were a group of homes in a sort of enclosed area with a central area. A Bengali couple lived on the ground floor. The husband used to dispense homeopathic medicines as a hobby and also made homemade anar-firecrackers on diwali for the kids! The day his wife cooked fish, she would step out in the courtyard and yell - Main machhi bana rahi hoon, khidki band kar lo!! A great lesson for me here, was a pathway, an idea, that even if discomfort is valid, can it be allowed to defeat a larger value of togetherness. What do we want to clean-up and what 'dirt' do we find beauty in? What are the costs we are willing to pay?

Curiouser and Curiouser...!

In India there are the cow vigilantes who kill you for eating killing cows for meat and there are protests  against this culture in the form of beef parties... in France now many schools are being made to put Pork back on the meal menu... in the name of secular France. Why should we give up our cuisine  just to pander to Jew and Muslim concerns, these people feel. Some years ago Pork and wine parties were held in France, at times close to Muslim dominated areas to make a point about being French. In Saudi Arabia of course no one can eat Pork (i guess).

Denmark recently decided that Kosher and Halal are less humane ways to kill animals for meat and effectively banned it. It is not the first country in Europe to try or actually do this. So there is a tension and debate about what is the best way to kill. A man responds to this news by saying animals should not be bred in captivity and killed anyway. So he prefers to hunts his animals in the wild and then eat them. This is the romance of past days - how we used to hunt and eat non-chemical meat of wild animals who grew free and happy. There is also this great discomfort about the quality of life animals have and then what is the use of eating the meat of animal that has grown in captivity. A sad animal makes for sad meat, innit? 

Some others remind us that who are we to decide more humane ways of killing when we do massive lab-testing using animals across the world. So there is a violence by man endemic to the world already - we are living in the Anthropocene, not a natural world in which humans adapt, but a man-made world where increasingly nature and animals have to adapt. Some vegetarian Hindus avoid meat for religious and non-violent ideologies, but gorge on dairy products and look down upon meat eating religions as being violent. Vegans meanwhile want to avoid any form of cruelty to animals. They tell us its not just about the killing of animals for meat. Even the dairy industry is terribly cruel to animals. So they give up both meat and dairy, a devise many strange kinds of meat and dairy substitutes that are often expensive.

The matter of street dogs is a big unsolvable. Long ago we destroyed their habitats anyway. Now, semi domesticated, they live among humans, their life dependent on human kindness. Still street dogs are wild and can bite and hurt. So is it good to feed them and take care of them? If we do that they become territorial in our colonies and bark and bite at people who come form outside - strangely mostly the working classes. Classist dogs! If we don't feed them we watch them suffer or eat garbage and get diseases or simply see them becoming ferocious. So do we neuter dogs? Maybe yes, but it continues to feel queesy. How does mankind have such power over the populations of another species, to decide if they should breed or not. But then we do that to our fellow humans too, eh? In some countries women are encouraged to breed more, in others they are restricted, all to create optimum population levels. 

Recently in a zoo in Denmark a young giraffe Marius was 'executed' (yes that's the word they used). then they chopped him off and fed him to the lions publicly. He was executed because he was not genetically desirable for breeding... they have done this a few time with other animals like goats, zebra and snakes too... for the benefit of their breeding programme for future generations of animals. Marius was executed even while there were many protests and demands to send him to another zoo.
And then the same zoo killed 4 lions. 2 old because, well they were old... and their two cubs because a new male lion was on his way to the zoo to breed advantageously with two females and would anyway have killed the two pups. This now is a growing logic. Already with us humans too, in the West there is a great push to check if your unborn fetous my be carrying a disease or even you as parents may be carrying one and thus ought not to reproduce. 

Wow! 

We seem to be violent both when we care and when we don't! Sadly man has too much control and too much intervention in the propagation of life. This control itself is violent, however we end up using it.