Art of Living World Culture Festival 2016

World culture celebration and the opinion of The Hindu

Look how intolerant this self-styled intellectual paper 'The Hindu', the most overtly 'Anti-Hindu' of all is. The editor has the gall to call the entire Art of Living World Culture Festival a "spectacular thoughtless environmental destruction" and the "stage with garish symbols built for the event". All the 'destruction' that is alleged can be brought out with correct numbers, and the editorial based on facts. But as always, 'The Hindu' editorial passes judgments, spews venom out of sheer visceral hatred for anything/anyone that upholds the culture of India. Had this been an event by some Communist, Leftist, LGBT, Islamic, Christian..and the ilk, 'The Hindu' editorial would have spoken of their Fundamental Right to do it.

The fact is, the Art of Living World Culture Festival is so huge, so diverse, to close to the scale of the United Nations or Olympics events. Art of Living has punched above its weight and it surely is one in the face of the cultural naysayers.

Intolerance in India again !

This to is a little older but not out of time

1) Tolerance is to condone intolerance for the very existence if India as we know it.
2) Lit fest is a pseudu name for Dalit-fest, where belief is narrowed to eating beef.
3) Left is when someone takes to wrong to oppose the right.
4) Peaceful protest is to call for pieces of this country.
5) Dissent is to intellectualize anti-nationalism.
6) University is which threatens the Union (of India).
7) JNU is where snobs with jholas say to outsiders, JNU is Not for U.
8) Irony is Hatred for India unites Pakistan. Love for this nation can not unite India.

Intolerance in India

This is an older writeup when this discussion on Intolerance in India was the most run news on TV. Posting now.

5 x a day of namaz...starting at 5 30 am. The highly intolerant 'kalma' at that. The rabid dog called Akbar owaisi openly calling for murder of India and still roaming free. Going against the constitution to provide reservations to muslims. Not to mention hajj subsidies. Cheering to the cheap shit of these khans who earn their living by becoming raj n bhuvan n prem. Making the PK movie which takes potrayal of Lord Shiva into a toilet and makes him crawl, a huge hit. And this country is now labelled intolerant ? This land which gave shelter to persians when they were driven out of persia by islamists; the land which supported jews since Bnei Menashe to holocaust without any trace of anti-semitism. Raising Abdul Kalam to the level of a saint, this country which allows adnan samis, to settle indefinitely, shelters tasleema nasreen and the dalai lama, is now called intolerant? Is this not what in hindi is called 'jis thali me khaya usi me ched karna'. Yes, that is what these ungrateful sons of this motherland are doing. India would be better off without these ingrates.

So, when are they leaving.

Excellence - through any means ?

Excellence can never come from extremism; for, excellence involves balance, freedom and empathy. Excellence built through use of force, fear and coercion stands on a weak foundation, waiting to crumble under its own weight. History stands testimony to this.

Asoka, the greatest king of ancient India, set out to conquer Kalinga. In his quest for awesomeness, he waged the bloodiest of wars and won spectacularly. The great king realized the futility of earning peoples’ trust through violence. After seeing the bloodshed and destruction he caused, he changed his policy from bheri-gosha (call of war) to dhamma-gosha (call for righteousness) . Dharma and ahimsa earned him true and enduring excellence.

In modern world history, Hitler’s vision to establish supremacy of the Aryan race and ‘Lebensraum’ took him to extreme measures, leading to WW II and the holocaust.

On the contrary, MK Gandhi believed that ends and means are inextricably linked. Even when he could have commanded brute force of multitude of Indians, he chose to pursue freedom through peaceful means.

More close to our actual lives, the organizations we work for, where we spend more time than in our homes, how should excellence be measured?  If employees are the crucial asset of an organization, shouldn’t the health, happiness and well being of employees be a measure of organization’s excellence?

For all the need for creativity, out-of–the-box thinking and for building ‘tomorrow’s enterprise’, employee-happiness is indispensable.

When transfer policies are harsh, work from home is disallowed; and the HR is not helpful and management is more concerned about revenue and stock price, the employee-satisfaction becomes incidental. Employee-happiness is sacrificed at the altar of organizational excellence. This kind of organization-excellence might make Karl Marx’s concept of ‘alienation’ of worker come true. This form excellence at the cost of employee is neither sustainable nor desirable.

Bharat Ratna to Sachin

Seriously, what does bharat ratna stand for? why was that initiated and who were it awarded to during the early years of this nation.
Just a glance of the initial recepients of the highest civilian honor of this nation, gives an idea of what kind of "performance of highest order in any field of human endeavour" deserves it. These are people like Rajaji, CV Raman, Vishweshwarayya, Radhakrishna, Ambedkar, MGR, Nelson Mandela, MS, Satyajit Ray, JP – some of the recipients who I feel, really did something worth calling a human endeavor.

There are issues of highest seriousness that they dealt with, crusaded against all odds, inspired masses, turned the course of this nation, and are responsible for Bharat as we live in today. Issues like rights of the oppressed, framing of the The Constitution of India, politicization and empowerment of people, upholding the heritage of this great land in the form of music, vocal and instrumental, potraying the reality of lives of the wretched masses of this land in the form of alternative cinema, building the temples of modern india in the form of dams and institutions etc…only to name a few.

It is the issues these people stood for, the ideas, the values, the heritage that makes people of this land feel proud about that is to be the deciding factor for Bharat Ratna. I do not mean to say Sachin does not make me proud. Just that cricket is not as real, serious, as life changing, as course corrective of the nation as the issues I spoke above.

Was there a dearth of such people who deserved bharat ratna? Absolutely not. There are people like Dr. Kurien (who could have been awarded but died in 2012) who gave milk to starving children of this nation and also changed the lives of millions of rural women through rural cooperatives (go read about amul), then Dr. Swaminathan who gave us food in the form of Green revolution when this nation was living off wheat donated by the US. Not to forget AB Vajpayee, and many others.

If at all sports was to be included, why not Vishwanathan anand. Its coz nobody watches his game (neither do I). And cricket is more of public show off. Sachin’s award is more about politics. The sports category was included with the aim of awarding Sachin, so that some of crickets show off could be turned into votes. Speaking of cricketers serving the nation, I think they serve themselves primarily and any service to nation is only purely incidental. Anyway, I don’t even think Sachin should be in Rajya Sabha.

UPSC got its English wrong: a contra response

 Apropos the article ‘UPSC got its English wrong’, the author Kankipati Rajesh, IAS;the article is filled with non-sequiturs and betrays his warped thinking, though he uses great terms like Right to Equality and Right
to Expression.

Where was the Equality when Mains allowed 2 optionals, written in multiple languages, not to mention about 18 language literatures as optionals? Where was the yardstick to evaluate Expression when candidates like doctors, engineers etc. who until then, never had any interest in Literatures , suddenly opt for them and learn (read mug-up) the syllabus in 2-3 months with guidance (read coaching classes) and fetch insanely high marks and get through the exam. Literatures optional were turned into a fraud on the system; where the
evaluators of literature papers tend to award high marks as the candidates would belong to their State. This could be the reason why, as the author himself says, ‘90 per cent of the candidates clearing the exam qualify with a language as an optional subject, and write the exam in regional language and that this is true for many other States of India’

Coming to the point of not allowing candidates to write Mains in regional languages, the author mentions that many students shift to English medium for their college education, but are not very proficient in English. Now why would students shift to English medium? It’s because they believe that English is inevitable in their future
careers and without English, their prospects would be grim. Why should the same thinking not be applied when applying for government jobs? Is public service a fair game to be filled with those who are not good at
English? For god’s sake, these are the people who would make policies, become bureaucrats, represent India’s interests. Though English is not the indicator for a good administrator, this nation deserves people
who are comfortable with English and not shy away from it. Sixty years of visceral bias against English in government service has produced umpteen number of highly placed officials who struggle to clearly
articulate in English what then intend to convey, as we see on television these days.

The author mentions that ‘During the training of IAS officers at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, 40 per cent of the time spent in Phase-I of the programme is for the language of the State where the officer will serve’. When 40% of training can be spent of learning the regional language, and the trainee officers are fine with it; is it excessive to ask the candidates to write the exam in the medium in which they did their graduation? The reason they do not crib about spending 40% of time learning local language is that they are already selected and they don’t really care what they are asked to learn. The fight is all about getting through the exam, when, all of a sudden, they fall in love with Literatures and their mother tongues. Strange, isn’t it?

When there are loud calls for UPSC to make the exam more common and make it an equalizer for all the aspirants, these reforms were a step in the right direction. There is some merit in asking ‘when Hindi is
allowed as a language medium for the UPSC mains examination unconditionally, why not other languages like Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati? UPSC should think about only this one point and make some changes to address the concern here. All other changes are in the right spirit and should not be reversed.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/upsc-is-taking-a-step-in-the-right-direction/article4533258.ece

Hindu on paper but Buddhist at heart

You know what, now I totally disbelieve in god and his existence, not that I ever believed all that fully. Now I call him the vainglorious ****. Yes, its all bullshit. But does that give me the freedom to become immoral, inhuman, anti-human. No. Being pious only on the belief of existence of god is forced, fake piousness, fake goodness. Trying to be good under the fear that this force will punish for wrong doings is no goodness at all. Despite absence of any such force, a person should be naturally humane.

Now that I have dismissed the idea of god, I ve turned to what is called karma, or let’s say law of nature, which means what you sow is what you get. I want to test it, experience it and if it fails, dismiss that too. I would like to know what happens of people who pained me, which includes my mother. I want to see what law of nature does to them. Trust me, I do not wish ill for any of those who pained me. But I just want to sit and see what happens to them. Will the law of nature take its course and dispense justice, or will it just never act as people expect it to. Mind you again, I wish no ill for anyone. If karma, or god, or law of nature would come to me in private and secretly ask my wish, as to what should happen to people who pained me, and also promise to me that my answer will not be known to anyone in the world, I would truly say, I have no answer, I wish no ill for anyone. I will say, I only want the laws of nature, to work, and I want to see for myself if they really work. But my strong gut feeling is, there is nothing like law of nature, the sayings like as you sow so you reap is a painkiller for the helpless, to endure the pain. World works wildly, at the directions of wily, powerful, ruthless people with some role for uncertainty and chance. Not karma or law of nature. Because, I know, I have not done anything ever to put anyone to pain knowingly. But pain befalls me from multiple directions. I have already half dismissed karma and law of nature, but just want to have few more case studies to base it on.

But does that still give me the right to be inhuman. Again, No. Absolutely not. I would have to be what I am. That’s what separates the weak but pious, from the strong, powerful, power addicted, careless, arrogant types.

Oh, it was after i wrote these lines, a few months later, that i realized this is what is Buddhism.

I believed in it even before i read about it under the name of Buddhism.