Australia - European Heritage of Darkness - Vestiges of Colonialism

For a while it did look like the world was getting better, with a growing light within - but whenever there is a Descent of Light the darkness of nether wells up and fights it.

And now there is the new outbreak of a plague of spirit of darkness inherited from Europe haunting the world again, especially continental Europe and the regions occupied by colonial settlers from UK and Europe. Racism this time in various has manifested in various episodes against Asians, mainly from India.

A few decades ago, a housemate from Australia, needless to say one of European colonialist origin (those days Australia did not allow any other settlers, and it was perhaps not too long after their horrible policies to the native population of the continent had begun to be only slightly less horrible) spoke out openly about the immigration policy with a casual, final, "we don't want "Asian hordes" to flock our country" - while the words are approximate within the first set of quotes they are exact within the second. I liked this housemate in most other ways, an open and friendly person. Apart from the habit of buying used clothes to save money and this statement so unconcious about the racism, and about geography or geology, a fine person.

A few years later a relative relocated to Australia, and we spoke about the place in a desultory mode, he assured me that Australia today was the country of future much as US was a few centuries ago. There was a new hope for the family and they emigrated. Now, they are settled. They rarely visit, unlike those that emigrate to US who visit at the very least every couple of years for a holiday, for keeping in touch with the roots and acquaint the new generation with the mother country. This family is perhaps uncomfortable about it, since differences are not tolerated in Australia, even more so than in say Germany.

I remember having precisely this conversation with a relative about how Australia compares with Germany, explaining that Germans don't want any outsiders but if and when one has to go there for say business, it works; while Australia is impossible since the people there won't work with an outsider at all, and the racism is in that respect much higher. Germans behave correctly often enough. Australians don't bother with rectitude.

First, refusing to take complaints from the victims fighting for life in hospitals, then refusing to concede it was racist, then advising the victims to not speak their own languages in public, publicly speaking out by police authorities and saying the students from India are too passive and thus their victimhoood, and finally after the international outcry and peace rally (where the marchers got arrested and dragged to police station physically) the victims are being advised by the same police not to keep vigils for protection and depend on the police for protection. The attacks meanwhile have continued, and why wouln't they? No discouragement to the attackers from the authorities. Who cares if the parliament of Australia claims it is not racist, certainly not the goons attacking the easy targets from India.

And now they mull over race crime laws.

Speaking in another language in a public place in US or UK gets perhaps a glance or not even that. A different dress in a public place or whatever in US worn by anyone usually gets a very genuine appreciation, while in UK again there is hardly a glance if that. In Germany speaking in any language other than German gets hostile glances from people around, the younger the crowd the more hostile the mute anger. But this is irrespective of the language. In fact speaking English in public is likely to be a far more sureshot way of one being a target of a hostile attack.

And now, in Australia, the police are explaining to the victims of racist murderous attacks that they - the victims - are too passive, and that they should not speak their "native" languages in public places. This is not really a change from the days when the natives of Australia, including children, were beaten up for speaking their own native language of Australia, by the settlers from Europe.

Furthermore, not only the police are refusing to take or record any complaints from the victims of murderous racist attacks, they are also in fact attacking peace rallies, dragging students who are waiting to hand over the complaints to authorities so violently the students are landing up in hospitals. And they are refusing to admit there is any racism.

So much for the immigrants' hope for Australia as a continent of the future -

The nation that is also a continent was settled originally by convict colonies from UK and had racist policies right from its start, with prohibition against Asian or any other people entering - and yet geographically it is a hop from Asia, in fact geologically Australia is connected to Asia, and as such Asians are the more natural immigrants to the continent.

Yet few people in the world realise that Australia is not a natural part of other colonies of Europe geographically, in fact it is a hop from Indonesia and other Asian islands while even New Zealand which is usually clubbed together with Australia is much further away as miles go. Tectonic plates that India and Australia belong to are conected at the very least if not actually same.

And yet the settlers from Europe, mostly from UK and second large population being from Germany, claim the continent belongs to them, by the last vestiges of a colonial mindset. That denies the very existence of the original population of the continent, much as it happens in the other continent across the Pacific from Australia, with the original populations either marginalised, packed in reservations (ghetto, anyone?) or used as almost bonded slave labour in all but words as in various countries from Columbia to Ushuaia.

Australians - the original ones - fare no better, in fact they were systematically decimated by the European colonisers.

For a long time the European settlers had abominable behaviour towards the natives of the continent (who are linguistically linked to Tamilians, of southern part of India, incidentally) and while males of European extraction used the native Australian women their children were taken away from them by force and families separated, broken, with generations of Australians suffering from identity loss and worse, psychological trauma, name it.

Attacks on students from India is only another recent manifestation of the xenophobia of the primitive mindset of European population of Australia, a mindset that one can see in Germany in recent times and in fact in Paris too, recently. This basically amounts to, if someone looks different from you in the slightest (colour of hair or eyes, colour of skin, not the same fashion as you are familiar with, lack of cosmetics or different clothes, ..) - attack.

This has more to do with the European settlers' racism, hatered of any others who do well, and general tendancy to dominate the world and make slaves out of everyone (think south "America", the continent that lost its indigenous name as well,) or herd them in "reservations" (as in US) or worse, destroy their families and lose their identities in an effort to "whitewash" them (as in natives of Australia) and generally treat them as animals or worse, in fact. Hatred for India is due to India doing well.

Australia not only makes money from the students from India, there is tourism as well, and a lot of films from India have been shot in Australia in recent years (India has the largest film industry in the world in terms of number of films made every year as well as the numbers in viewership around the world, as a matter of fact) - so the loss if people of India are put off from Australia are non trivial to say the least. Moreover it won't be as if Australia could do very well without all this - need of manpower was what made Australia open its gates in the first place to people of non European ethnicities, while ironically it sits in a neighbourhood not of Europe but of Asia, a hop from Brunei - which is visible from Australia's northern tip of Cairns.

Hate blogs on the internet are questioning people of other cultures are being allowed in the lands of Anglo culture if they hate it so much. This of course is turning it completely around into a falsehood. The attacks are from the European colonial settlers of the land on Asians, not the other way around. Demanding that everyone confirm and ape the Anglo culture willy nilly is merely prolonging colonial era, gone from the world except where hidden in caves of mindsets like these. Do they even realise this is precisely what nazi regime was about? No surprise there, after all the largest minority of settlers in Australia has been from Germany, chiefly post war.

Demanding that one give up one's own roots and culture is bringing back the Rabbit Proof Fence.

Which, just in case anyone is unaware of it, is not about the rabbits or the fence to protect the farmland which helped the two abducted little girls go back home walking across the span of the continent along it - it is about the European colonials' demands made from all other cultures however superior they be, to give up their own culture, roots, families, and ape the colonial rulers and settlers or else be caged in smaller and smaller parts of earth, work like slaves to support the luxuries of the European settled nations, and at some convenient point of time in future - convenient to the European settlers and their needs of luxuries that need almost slave labour for a while yet - be wiped off the face of the earth. Not that different from the Jews of Germany who were invited by the rulers in Berlin just a couple of centuries before they were massacred, invited for sake of betterment of the then appalling state of economy.

Are people from India picked to be the next victims of genocide after they have served the needs of economy of various nations appropriated by European settlers around the globe, along perhaps with natives of various of those continents? Or perhaps the natives of those continents serve better as a slave labour force and a zoo for exhibition ("we did not exterminate them, those left alive are allowed to live their way") while those from India with a strong culture with deep roots are invoking hatred for being better, just as Jews did by being relatives of the one worshipped (at least on the surface, with a lip service rather than an actual attempt at following and transforming) in Europe?

Fighting Terrorism

Fighting terorists today is not easy for any state agency, since the very nature of today's terrorist tactics consists of being hidden in plain sight amongst families, women and children and old and so on, denying their own acts except in media and not identifying their own fighting personnel to the enemy.

Ancient India had other ethics, where not only a war was fought away from the civil society, but there were very strong ethics of a stronger person and a fighter not raising a weapon or arm against someone weak, old, unarmed, too young to fight, or even simply unwilling to fight; there was no question of anyone getting away with harming a woman or a child or anyone weak and unarmed, and even a fighter would not attack another one without fair warning of an attack and an acceptance to the effect, a shown readiness.

India was later invaded by another sort of ethics that was prevalent elsewhere, and some time ago a European colleague from a country in central Europe remarked that he "could not understand the ethical injunction against soldiers who were victorious in a war availing themselves of the opportunity of taking every possible advantage of the women of the defeated society, in fact (he said) he would definitely have done so". And a look at the way the two world wars were fought shows the fact of the matter - allies kept the ethics, at least US and UK did, about not attacking the civilians of the defeated enemy in Europe; the other side did not.

The war being waged today with terrorist organisations is waged most often against civilians of the nations and people that the terrorist organisations wish to destroy, and fighting the terrorists with scruples about their civilian populations can be afforded perhaps by large nations with huge populations where a few hundred or even a few hundred thousand suffering at the hands of terrorists are glossed over, forgotten, taken in stride, whatever, as the train and bus and market blasts in India have been (until the rich were attacked in their very own den at the luxury hotels); a little nation not retaliating with adequate measures will only be complying with their enemies' promise of "pushing them into the ocean" as they promised a half century ago.

A couple of decades ago the terrorism in Delhi was beign waged in a way that had an eery similarity to that happening for last few decades in Israel, with no function of joy be it a wedding or a child's party remain without a threat of attack with several dead. The agenda in either case is simple, the population under attack must be made unable to forget terror for life and to enjoy life in any way.

Fighting this and hunting terrorists down is no simple task, and their beign able to argue civil ethics in their favour - notably as has been recently employed by another nation refuting or confounding every attempt by India to track down the source of terrorism and the masterminds hiding amongst the population there - merely amounts to enabling the terrorists not only continue with impunity but with glee about the attacked being no good at fighting back.

A few years ago Atlantic Monthly carried a long article, well researched, about a video that until then was in circulation, depicting a young boy hiding behind his father dying in crossfire. It ought to be easy enough to find and go through. The arguments are almost scientific and if there were any possibility of a refutation it would have made headlines in most media. Instead the story died down. Similar two stories have also met the same fate, when questioned by investigative agencies of various global organisations, one in Kashmir against Indian military, '90 or '91, and another very famous in Lebanon, early eighties.

And genocide of sikh population, known innocent, has met with no investigation or uproar of the sort that is raised against happenings in western states of India - for that matter, Bhagalpur remains forgotten as does Calcutta of '46. This shows agenda of the terrorism - attack any society or part thereof that is prosperous, with a relatively well functioning society with civil structure. Destroy their happiness and peace. Claims about such a society being bad to minorities are never raised much less acted upon in case of a totaliatarian regime or a poor society where similar things happen in far more horrible way - which shows that the agenda of terrorists has nothing whatsoever to do with fighting injustice anywhere, only to shout injustice against anyone prosperous, happy, progressing and maintaining a reasonably good civil structure.

India And Love In Ancient Tradition

Only One Day For Love

Really hilarious in many ways, and unfortunate in others, this war over various issues of western influence in India, including the rights to pubgoing for urban women, and now over a day for love every year. And as happens over many world issues that suddenly get an unexpected twist in India, this one has capped them and got more than one twist.
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The news however is disheartening, to anyone with some sense, some compassion. The media reports goons out in full force through the day, attacking couples everywhere.There were few exceptions. Some places were quiet.

In a few places there were ordinary citizens out in force through all sorts of age groups and firm about saying, they understood culture of India just as well as anyone else and were out to make it known. In some places - one, at least - they had celebrations of a cultural sort celebrating old couples with youngsters performing classical music and old couples taken out in buggies in procession with applause.

Other places had cultural celebrations about their own roots, with beautiful indigenous dresses and processions including elephants and horses.

Some people sold greeting cards at nominal prices, as a sensible way to counter the exorbitant prices of cards and flowers this day normally that seems like a day for profit by some name or other - which really is one factor the various protestors could speak out against sensibly.

Most places however shown on news show couples beaten up, including one case of a pair of siblings whom nobody asked if they were related and in what way, before they beat him up even as she was screaming and protesting. Their crime was to be out together on this day, in a place where normally girls are safer taking their brothers with them for protection.

One is really put off by all of this goon culture on rampage and wishes this mud on face of India was not thrown at it by those that are of India in the name of Indian culture, bringing them in line with misogynists by any name across the world. These goons do not know about Indian culture really.
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One leader however went clear on the issue and said, love exists in many forms and should be in every relationship whether parents and children or couples or siblings or whatever, and they are not against love in any relationship, but they do not see the need to limit a celebration to one day that happens to be memorial to some ancient Roman who is supposed to have been lovers' protector - there are many love stories in India and love is celebrated in India and should be, not just one day but all through the year, all through life.

This made immense sense, although then his next words quoting various love stories told of his having forgotten his own heritage - he spoke of various legendary lovers but forgot the really important ones, the heritage of the ancient Indian tradition.

If one begins to count, one does not know where to stop, so many are the tales, of heroes, heroines and worshipped Avataars. Not only they loved and married for love, but often they went against the parents or society, and mind you it is all sanctioned in the Dharma itself.

No other social or religious or cultural tradition gives a santity to a wedding of two lovers with only Gods as witness.

Or has a tradition of a would be bride's parents inviting appropriate and eligible would be grooms for inspection so she could select one for herself, which then stands true.

Sometimes it used to involve a test of valour of the would be groom, the more desirable the bride the more difficult the test. And sometimes, it was merely the selection by the bride, going around inspecting each one while her designated friend for the purpose would relate to her about each one as she stood before him. Either way the chosen one was honoured and others accepted the choice of the bride.
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Where does one begin to count as far as the love stories go?

One might begin with Satie and Shiva, then Rudra, who were disparaged by her father during a major occasion by her father - everyone else was offered gifts and her husband was not in spite of being a God. She corrected this slight from her father to her husband by jumping into the fire as an offering to her husband the God that had not been offered like other Gods were.

One can definitely begin with the young daughter of mountains Himaalaya, Uma or Parvatie (she has many names and many forms), who fell in love with Shiva the God who chose to be without belongings much less palaces or wealth such as silk clothing or ornaments - he sat alone in dire places and meditated, an austere life. Uma went out to find him with her mother crying after her, U, Ma (O, don't) and hence her name Uma; she meditated with a single wish, that of invoking love in Shiva, and began to fast; when she stopped eating even leaves she was put to a further test and she overcame that hurdle too effortlessly, and then appeared Shiva who was testing her. Their honeymoon was long and was only interrupted by other Gods needing his help to defeat a nether being that had become too powerful for the good of the world.

One might count Savitrie (the daughter of Sun the source of Divine Light), who went to find her heart's choice all around protected by her father's soldiers, and fell in love finally with a youth in a forest chopping wood, Satyavaan (Truthful) who was a prince living in the forest with his blind parents due to dire circumstances. She not only married him there and then, but then when relating about her choice to her parents was told by a Divine Messanger about his being short lived did not recant or relent due to her parents' grief, and stood by her choice and went back to live in the forest with him and his parents, without any royal accompaniment of servants this time except to bring and leave her there. Moreover she fought his death and won - by her sheer spirit. And love.

One can definitely take Raam and Sietaa, who married because he could alone satisfy the condition set extremely tough by her father for the purpose, but had in fact happened to see each other in the garden when he strolled about with his brother and she was proceeding to the temple with her friends - they saw one another, their eyes met, and that was it, they loved each other.

She could have lived safe and comfortable in the palace when subsequently he was banished to a forest life due to a pact between his stepmother and his father that was invoked before his being crowned, but Sietaa chose instead to accompany her husband to the fourteen years of an ascetic life in the forest with all possible dangers and discomforts it involved. He tried to make her stay back, but she was adamant, being together was more important for her love than comforts and security for her person.

Mind you the risks included wild beasts and this was an era of bows and arrows, and they were on foot for the duration.

Then of course there are the many, many couples of Mahaabhaarata, from Nala and Damayantie to Shakuntalaa and Dushyanta to Arjun and Subhadraa - why the most remarkable being Krshna and his first, chief, consort and wife and queen, Rukminie, for that matter. Her parents were too old to counter her not so nice brother, who was adamant about giving her away to a friend of his, while she loved Krshna. She wrote to the one she loved and he came and took her away, battling the armies of her brother and coming away victorious with his bride.
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Never a more true word was spoken - why one one day, for some Roman memorised? India has love galore in every form and love should be celebrated in India by India every day whole year.

Once someone in another country asked about how people fall in love, if they are under parents' control in India, unlike the person who was asking and their ways of finding love.

I simply explained that no one can really stop any lover from what is the heart's true desire - in any culture or country there is only a difference in name of finding a mate, for that matter. People who think they have a culture of finding love actually have a cuture of having to find their own mate and have to be geared to the search right from the school years, while people who claim they could not do something or other due to parental pressure ( - and who says parents approve everything in countries where love is supposed to be the norm? That is hypocrisy of course! Or else they would not always fall in love with suitable people generally) - they are forgetting they had the choice of suffering a disapproval and forging ahead with love and taking on any and every problem. Parental disapproval - when it does not consist of a whole society geared to hunt out and murder the couple - is merely the parents' right to their own opinion.

If a person insists on his or her love being only possible if approved by everyone or else lamenting about social pressure, is not serious about love. Or his or her choice and decision, or identity for that matter.

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Post Script - Why Media Push This Story

The battle lines are being drawn about something frivoulous on one level and very basic question of right on the other - do upper class and other well off young women have a right to go drink at pubs in western states of India?

Some channels won't let it go, and keep harping on this one. It is irritating and one wonders if they really care about what country they are in, what the people of the country care about.

One would like to hear about what level the investigations are at in grisly murders of women in Delhi on their way to or from work, or even about the man with a young family who has been beheaded by Taliban for a ransom of US $50,000.00 - a sum that could feed half a million people one sumptuous meal where he came from. But no, these channels, one especially, is like a dog with a bone to dig up - they won't let the pubs and women story be scaled down to where it belongs.

No matter that in Lucknow railways station a married couple walking towards the town just fresh from the train have a local male push his hand casually in the woman's crotch and look back with victory as the shocked couple looks back in rage. He can run, while they are unlikely to be able to catch and beat him up. It is his town.

No matter that in Allahabad a woman cannot go shopping for vegetables for her home in her neighbourhood without being similarly handled on the go by another local guy. She is dressed conservatively and is middle class, with no make up and no nonsense. Being a woman is one thing she cannot escape however she dresses, hence the manhandling is a factor of life unless one appoints a servant for the purpose with all its ensuing problems.

In short, these incidents - common, although no woman would admit to them publicly since the shame would be considered theirs, and they might just be beaten up by their own families for being looted of their honour for having stepped out.

Delhi is the worst unless you are a woman with a car, a driver, and a powerful male protector, preferably a husband rich and powerful. If you are middle class and walk to the market instead of having your husband take you or even better, send a servant - or the ultimate, phone in the list and have it delivered so you cannot look and shop around - you are fair game.

The media couldn't care less.

People by hundreds dying of multiple blasts on trains, buses, and other places middle class and other normal people frequent, are mere unfortunate payoff for one building (while hundreds of others are going up ever since everywhere else) to be blamed on the very convenient party without support from outside.

Women of middle class and poorer than that being abused, raped, murdered on regular basis in states north of the Vindhya is a mere fact of life, who cares, they are not the glitzy ones in pubs spending mucho dollars on drinks, they are merely trying their best to survive and take care of themselves and their families in their regular activities of work, shopping, and little else.

In the western states however the women are free to study and work and shop and go out and are relatively free of fear, until the recent murders - and even then televisions did not pick up on the women being murdered while they were at home, the blitz was short and it was about a couple of IT workers on night shift. That made news because they could go after good sturdy multinational companies and ask if women should be discouraged from working night shifts.

No one asked - what about the ordinary women being murdered at home?

And now, the whole hoopla about the pubs. Why - why is right to get drunk in public more important than right to be safe at home?

It isn't.

The whole point is, when a woman stays home, she is not spending on alcohol and so there is no vested interest involved. No one pays the television channels to go on a blitz to publicize the poor middle class women whose only fault was opening the door when someone knocked - they had been used to being fearless, living in the safe western states, you see.

So the pubs story about the right of women to go drinking in western states being given far more importance than any rights or safety issues of women as such, is not about women or their rights or safety at all.

On a small scale it is about hitting out at anyone who happens to bear the names that are not from outside uness you are shamed of that name and all it implies, and are deprecatory about it.

On a large scale it is about the importance of getting people to spend on things like alcohol where one gets into danger of life as a value received for money, since there are mucho sellers and producers and importers and fraudsters selling non imported in name of imported, in pubs .

If you buy from a shop, it is cheaper (German practical sense about drinking) and also you might check on the brand, the price, and not pay unless you are satisfied. And then you might not drink stupid and drive over a few innocent people, but instead have a little peg quietly at home and go to bed, safely.

Pub drinking however is about socialising mixed with drinking, a very dangerous beast. You are ashamed to question the brand and the honesty, ashamed to say no to begin with or as long as the server or your peers say come on have another one. And the rates are likely to be ten times as much as you would spend on comparative quality by shopping and taking home a bottle.

But anyone who drinks only at home and stays sober and safe is unlikely to promote a crowd of others to join. And there are billion people in India, all potential customers for liquor industry. The pay for channels to keep the pub story alive cannot be small.

Hence the lopsided amount of importance given to rights in various states for various aspects of life making it seem like drinking in pubs in western states is far more a fundamental right than being unmolested when going to school, college, university, work, or grocery shopping in northern states.

Just wonder - do these people want the billion people of India to live Angela's Ashes? Or worse, is it they couldn't care less as long as the get their payoff from the liquor industry?

Bars and liberty

Every time you think you know all facets of something India surprises you and often into helpless laughter, sometimes into taking positions you did not think you could.

The recent attacks on women by people calling themselves Shri Ram sena, much discussed in media with great heat, had a lot of surprises. First the people copying Taliban behaviour had forgotten about the Somarasa of Vedic times, and that women as men did partake Madira through old times. And that women of India were free to move and to act according to their decisions, with men not being approved for attacking one in any way. Never.

A sena would justify its name if it fought armed opposition, not attacking helpless young women and molesting them. Even the sena of Raama did not attack women of Lanka, whatever they were doing - and Vaalmieki does describe them drunk does he not?

As for Raama, his ideal was not attacking any woman (except one who tried to cannibalise them) but in fact bringing one back from a petrified state to life, Ahilyaa.

On one hand the spokesperson of the major party spoke early and said, why is this being sensationalised and politicised when in fact Delhi has had so many murders and rapes of young women on or from their way to work and it was not sensationalised or politicised by them? Good point, and the point still stands. BJP is falsely named Hindu party by media in interest of sensationalising, branding and hacking to bits - it is not clear if it is only BJP or India and its soul they are after, so it would be easy for everyone else to cannibalise it.

And it certainly is true that while the three more progressive and free states of west are being attacked relentlessly in the media, in north women have not been free to go even to school, college, office, work, shopping, or a walk, without fear of molestation.

The fear is not baseless, and things very unpleasant happen with great frequency. The women are brave if necessary, going out and accomplishing and silent about the fear and incidents they often suffer (why complain if it only brings about a return to being shut up in the home, or is useless anyway?); but men often react with "why do they need to go out" when I have discussed it, and further elaborate with "if they need to go to the temple they can take a brother to go with them". What about those with no easily available hefty male protector, are they easy targets (yes of course, in practice) to be disapproved of for stepping out of the home?

There is no easy answer, but here is a clue - you might live in a northern state next door to some family for a year without ever realising they have a teenage daughter, and this is not a palace they are living in but a small house we are talking about.

So really what the spokesperson said needs to be extended and demands need to be made to have women of north as free and safe at least as those in south are until now. The difference has been considerable, and the balance changes with large scale migrations. Like it or not, such is fact of Mumbai and other places too.

Media needs to wake up and realise women coming home from work in Delhi are not less important than women drinking in Karnataka. The former get regularly raped and murdered while media shouting about the latter being a couple of times recently slapped around is losing credibility, for being out of proportion in dealing with the two.

Does that mean the latter should be ignored?

No - because the freedom to go to the bar is included in the freedom of movement in general, and the ridiculous people later found by one channel to explain why only women were attacked were not thinking.

Today they complain that women going to bars are risking being manhandled and this is the excuse for the sena attacking the women - tomorrow it would be about women going to work being murdered and then someone else attacking them for their own safety.

There was already talk of companies being reluctant to hire women or being shouted at for having women employees work at late night shifts, when the few murders of working women happened in Bangalore. But even in the same town far more number of women were murdered around the same time at home, in daylight or at night, and nobody turned around and said, hey, women are not safe at home - please go out, sisters, for your own safety! It would have made far more sense too, since few would dare to murder someone in a public place with witnesses.

They need to clean up their act and thinking, and realise and admit that they attacked women because it is easy and cheap. Attacking males might just bring danger to their own persona. In short, they did not behave like men, but like less than animals. Animals or even insects do not attack their own species females. Men who do not feel certain of their own manhood, do.

What are these idiots trying to do, get the society ready to receive oppressive regimes of terror?

What is the media trying to do, pretending drinking libery is more than life?

Banning pubs or drinks or alcohol at private parties might in fact solve one problem, that of drunken drivers killing others and themselves as two separate happenings in Bangalore last week alone showed. It is not about freedom to spend your own money, it is about freedom of others and their right to life that drunken drivers are putting at risk. And more.

Or else it needs one hefty gun toting policeman per drunken pubgoer to make sure they do not drive. Too much. Can India afford the cost of rapid westernisation to this extent, is India ready? It is ok to go slow, and restrain drinking meanwhile - especially for men.

As for the argument that a hard working person needs to relax, why is this assumed that drink is the only possibility?

The burgeoning cities of today need parks, trees, grass, benches, playgrounds and more, where people can go relax - walk or sit or chat or play, without fear and with being able to breather without fumes of traffic. Read on a park bench quietly without molestation, go with your spouse and friends and family or alone walking without fear of miscreants that has driven middle class out of the existing spaces.

Middle class of Mumbai have the seashore and some cities like Pune have a culture of people walking without fear, but this needs to be extended to others.

As for the anticlimax of Rajasthan CM declaring he disapproves of malls and is going to close them down, because boys and girls go together to them - while his party is taken aback, he is of course securing his own seat by playing to the worst of his backwater state of keeping women enclosed. Today, no malls, tomorrow, no school either - in fact not so many girls do go to school in his state, while in Karnataka they regularly top the results.

The people who mix together are unlikely to attack each other, for they become friends, and if he cares about the daughters of his home state he would prescribe girls and boys going to the malls and elsewhere in mixed groups as friends.

The people who should be not going to the malls are small children, breating fumes and taking in the noise and suffering in the crowd; and the food - don't even begin to think of the effects of fast food on young children. The people who should be banned are the little ones, anyone shorter than four feet and younger than twelve, not yet in high school and not quite responsible or able to take care of oneself. Let there be other, open and safe, places for them. Without lifts and escalators, not so much crowd as trees and benches and playgrounds including cinema hall. And good country food, made from raw ingredients the way grandmother used to make it. Healthy.

Yet Another Poland ...?

Sandwiched

For a long time there was a phrase, a verb, balconisation - and while I am unsure now what it exactly meant, since I was either too young or younger than that when the phrase was coined and largely used, I cannot but help thinking there is need of another phrase, if humanity need to learn from history rather than make the same mistakes over and over across the boundaries of artificial sort, around the globe.

The verb should be Polandisation.

I remember meeting a couple of fellow travelers who were from Poland, when on a trip through Moscow and Warsaw, long ago. They spoke Russian and German but no English, and I spoke very little German, which made for a truly heroic - and often hilarious - attempt at being friendly across the limitations with communication. I remember a few things they said, and one of them was explaining why they spoke the two extra languages other than Polish. Their nation was usually swallowed by one neighbour or another, the two Big Brothers they had one on each side, they explained. I knew this sort of vaguely, but it was very clear when we landed at Warsaw and the snowstorm had messed up flights schedules and further connections needed to be sorted out. The officials at the airport spoke very little English and I had a lot of trouble getting attention much less help, since they naturally took care of those that spoke their three languages, which included everyone else - almost. Those were the days before, long before, glassnost and breakdown of iron curtain.

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Today when the world faces undeclared wars in every corner of the globe - funny how we keep on with old phrases when they are incorrect in light of new information, how can globe have corners? - the lesson from history of Poland is again relevant in a spot far away and rather unrelated at a superficial view. India faces a gathering of vultures, perhaps only one or two but not all small, and needs to remember Poland.

For the longest time there was a misconception that Poland was ridiculous, they had no real military and their fight against an invasion in '39 was hilariously stupid and contemptible. Nothing could be further from truth. What is true however is that most nations were then unprepared to fight the sort of aggression that certain powers with agendas of a different sort had gotten themselves ready to unleash on the world, and Poland was only the first to resist and fall.

The world, whether Europe or India or any other part, had seen aggression often enough, and usually the agenda was profit from aggression, either of the sort that loots and runs back home or the sort that stays put and exploits on and on. Either way it was a matter of time before the aggressors settled down sated and the business of the world went on as usual and most ordinary populations only watched out for their own safety by laying low, not fighting back, and paying extortion to a different or yet another one once again.

This aggression however was different and few understood it well, and its aim was a complete destruction of the world, civilisation and evolution and all the achievements of humanity until then in every field, all the factors that were not base or bestial and all that uplifted humanity above crawling beasts - no surprise few understood this well, for how can one be normal and comprehend such an agenda? Most of us assume normality or a semblance of it in the worst of the enemy facing us, and it was difficult to understand that this time was different. The enemy faced by humanity was not human, although humans to the tune of eighty million had been leashed as captive servers and they were not aware of this, so they assumed they were being normal and it was all very confusing, very deceptive.

Poland faced and fought back bravely while other nations declared war in tandem but could not come to aid soon enough, and in fact while Poland fought it was an embarrassment for the aggressors - they had most modern well equipped military and here was a nation fighting back on and on rather than falling in a few minutes as other nations had done, with really outdated equipment and no preparations at all.

And subsequently Poland faced far worse a destiny when the war had been fought and won, when decisions were made - allies did not have Poland at the table to decide as a participant but rather gave it away in subjugation to the strong and demanding ally who had fought at different times on either side of the war, even though Poland had fought through the war - when the nation was occupied there were regiments that fought from Britain, every bit as valiantly as De Gaulle's branch of Allied forces - and then it took some decades of work to free Poland and indeed all of the block behind iron curtain.

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Today it is a war of another sort, and the powers that seek to occupy and convert a culture or two are of another nature, the aggression wears another face and the onslaught is being carried out using other tactics. But basic lessons that can be learnt from Poland are very relevant. India is one of the points where the urgency of this lesson cannot be overemphasized. Which is rather frustrating - India does not learn such lessons easily, complacency being a very favourite national vice, and giving away everything an aggressor wants an old habit employed with sloth that presents itself as peace. Peace is a very real gift from the Divine and is not for the lazy cowards that would allow everyone to walk over and take the neighbours' child to throw to the wolves in the interest of saving one's own skin for now.

The world and India specifically needs to be aware, to learn, and to know the difference of the most essential sort - the humans that are the face of aggressor are not the aggressor, even though they think they are, they are merely the agents shackled in service without perhaps their own knowledge of what they are doing. Nevertheless the aggression is very real and has perhaps the same aggressor behind the scene, and by that what is meant is not the particular nation that was the face of the aggressor seventy years ago, but the real one behind. The powers it has chosen this time as a front or a face are of a different nature - perhaps not even nations, but another sort or two, wearing different uniforms and chanting different slogans than of national sort - but their aggression and intentions are no different, the agenda is destruction of all growth and hope of humanity, all progress and well being and peace and evolution, any survival of civilisation at all.

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It is definitely not the time to point fingers at who marched around that might have been the excuse for a war, who broke which building or destroyed another ancient monument whether house of worship or a tremendous statue, which might be blamed for the subsequent horrors heaped on innocent populations. If loss of a building or an empty monument or a huge statue globally understood as object of worship justifies or excuses hundreds and thousands of people being killed, the implications of such a statement would be far more universal and indeed the stupid excuses for humans much less leaders who spout such crap deserve to be explained what implications of their statements are before they are run out with a few articles of footwear out of any position they could do damage to humanity from.

Stupidity in face of aggression is dangerous, not to mention hilarious for the enemy whose work is made easy by such idiots, those that think branding the Polish army as the reason for WWII would solve all problems and save their estates from damage. While they feed neighbours' children to wolves they do not stop to reflect that they in fact are getting the wolf used to being fed at their doorstep and their own near and dear will face it one day, when the wolves will be stronger and more aggressive due to all the easy feeding and used to it, with no loyalty required. Wolves are nobody's pet dogs.

These poor excuses for humanity accidentally in positions of power that they could inflict much damage from by mouthing dangerous inanities should be made to read a few pertinent things and then made to chant over and over the very relevant lines of Donne.

Berlin, Paris, ....

This country, this nation never ceases to surprise anyone observing.

Just when you would think that the nation is at least united in grief for the dead and sorrow for the bereaved, and the good job the police and other agencies, even various media channels are doing of helping the descovery of the roots of attackers, with help of various people who are unafraid of facing the camera to tell what they saw and found, just when you think anyone of and from this much derided nation - for its poverty and its claims to a global player role nevertheless, rather than an acceptance of a poor dependent or an ex-slave haning head in shame role - must have good reason to be quietly proud of its resilence and unity in face of threat, one channel comes out with a whammy of a slap with on camera interviews of a few middle class people in the city across at the other side of the country volubly taking sides with the terrorists and the nation that is globally now not only known but even acknowledged to sponser them with various tools, chiefly ideological support and infrastructure, and channeling the necessities of terror - weapons and funds - from thoe that provide such for other purposes.

These people, not in danger of being attacked by terrorists any time soon (- although they did undergo the most horrible massacres not so long ago, which they now excuse perhaps as happening in need of breaking the nation apart before freedom, or so some of them have said to me on the internet, I don't really have proof of identity of those who did and do not really know if they were who they said) - since they have successfully killed their inherited city from being a thriving capital once to a dying one for a long time with their politics, have no need to be in solidarity with those that were murdered by terrorists and can afford to be sympathetic in media bytes with those that perpetrated the terror.

Perhaps those bytes were carefully orchestrated by the channel that aired them, being ever cautious about not seen taking sides of the people who are more victims on the whole, but the words did not seem rehearsed and if there was an orchestration it was in selection of those that would say those things, including an assertion of the poor other nation being unable to afford funds for the purpose of supporting terrorists and their exhortations of our nation's need to understand the terrorists and their reasons for the criminal acts.

Perhaps it is their ideology, in need of acting differently from the other nation that was attacked seven years ago and should not be emulated by those of a formal leftist faith in any manner including a solidarity when attacked, so if US was united after wtc then these people must instead provide an example of how some people of a nation attacked with terror can be sympathetic to terrorists instead; and, too, to the nations that support infrastructure of these attacks with all sorts of needs - poor youth trained in ideology of terrorism and little hope for lives while money flowing freely for those that are willing, for example - the whole culture, money and ideaology and weapons, everything; the sympathisers have either forgotten the massacres in their beloved city or truly believe sympathy will get them enough browny points to be safe from those attacks personally.

It is all very well for the channel to wish to air some such bytes, the reality was they found people to mouth them, even if it was clear across the country, on camera too. The channel might be goaded by the terror dons with carrots and sticks, but the people were not actors hired for the purpose - they seemed genuine enough. Then again, who knows! They were a handful, unlike the crowds marching in support of the victims and martyrs.

One cannot help comparing Berlin during the cold war where people had resilience in face of the wolf that had all but swallowed them and they lived every day with a courage difficult to imagine. Then again one might remember Paris and indeed France during the wars, occupied during the second without much of a fight, with most people unsympathetic to the occupation but unable to speak or act, some active in resistance and more collaborateurs - post war, the quiet but definite and unrelenting treatment meted out from resistance to collaborateurs is barely whispered as is the persecution of known saviours - Schindler, Wallenberg - of the persecuted of the holocaust across the border. Both were real.

France fell without a fight and made it that much difficult for the sole remaining one the allies then, the one possibility of any defence of civilisation and humanity, and Britain must be admired for the qualities that came forth in the hour of need when the nation was severely tested. They could have avoided it easily enough, and never suffered - they were really admired by those that they would not succumb to - but others would have suffered horribly, and India part of those that were thus protected when London fought on and resisted being sucked into the whorl of the end of humanity.

Poland did not give in without a fight and in fact had regiments fighting alonside the allies, were in fact part of the allies and were callously pushed aside at the talks while France was given an equal status - and Poland fought on another occupation for another half a century valiantly while France went on to join the ex-enemy to form a united Europe. Poland was helped along by US and their unrelenting media exposure, and one now comprehends why the singling out of Poland to the exclusion of other nations for such help across the iron curtain. They deserved protection no less than Czechoslovakia who was browbeaten into submission without a fight - and Hungary or Austria certainly who were half and half when it came to their own participation in holocaust but were only techically occupied, with collaboration of various sorts widespread. Any discussion gets murkier with only individuals being in the clear as guilty or innocent, and the nations or societies of all these nations not in the clear really - how many fought back, how many resisted,
what culpability as nations do they bear ....

France escaped a great many horrors, but was less than friendly with those that had rescued the nation, or so the rescuers had thought they were, with much confusion about why the resued were far less than appreciative after the rescue. For a long time people - tourists, students, whatever - visiting from UK or US, indeed most English speaking visitors, got a cold treatment in France at best, hostility thinly veiled. Germany used to be less hostile, and since the fall of Berlin wall the two swapped with France becoming friendlier and Germany perhaps now affording to be hostile at the street and commuter train levels to English speakers and other visible "foreigners".

This difference of attitudes and the changes in one matched with opposite in the other probably has more to do with the economy. France, as UK and Soviets did too, refused the Marshall Aid that was offered them as well, while Germany and Japan accepted and were affluent far sooner. Indeed the war time rationing and strained circumstances of UK citizens continued for well over a decade after the war. Another - more obvious but perhaps only equal to economy or even less than that - is the political picture; with the break up of Soviets leading to lessening of threat on eastern horizon for Germany and the unification of the nation along with its position as leader of the central European nations that are closer to (or often even are) German speaking; so a stronger Germany can afford to be more confident about themselves and its citizens, particularly youth, has really not been taught what they were supposed to be taught at school. They need to reclaim their pride and do not see what is wrong with that.

In India, it is unclear if a state that is leftist, border state and has not suffered from terror since the freedom is more comparable to a divided Germany and a Berlin before the fall of the Berlin wall, or France that did not fight and capitulated with the other - the only one unoccupied, what with Poland losing before others could defend in reality - ally left to fight alone. Perhaps it is a bit of each. Then again, comparisons go only so far, and perhaps this case is entirely its own, with their need to stay aloof and prove they are above the others who are victims of terror.

During the era of KGB terror in Soviet Union the stories and jokes told around often said more of the valiant citizens of the nation and their resolute keeping of sanity and values. One of them went - "when they came for my neighbour, I kept quiet pretending to be asleep; when they took my family, I did not protest; when they came for me there was no one to speak out" - which is not verbatim, I forget the exact words, but one gets the sense. Then again some perhaps do not mind feeding the wolf with whatever it takes, neighbours' chldren, one's own sheep and dogs, or one's own limbs if it comes to that.
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A leader of the opposition has made remarks including some disparagement of the western-style candle vigils at the sites of terror, mostly Taj even though the train station saw at least as much of a massacre, and this leader mentioned the upper class women wearing "lipstick" and thinking their candle lighting was a sufficient gesture. This leader cannot be personally reproached, he belongs to the community the media and left would give a wide berth from any accusation. So the media have instead gone for the party he belongs to and gave extensive time to a media person who disparaged his - the opposition member's - side, with a "they cannot tolerate educated women".

This famous glittarati member forgets that most of the nation has a very large educated class of women and indeed men who prefer to stay with their own culture and values, and do not see any reason to ape fashion of the west, lipstick or whatever; he also conveniently does not explain if he thought all lipstick wearing was indicative of education. He in fact is disparaging the whole nation, in his equating lipstick and westernised aped fashion in general with education and awareness. He comes across as disgustingly ill informed or thoughtless at best.

Whether he equates education and awareness of mind with a schooling of a western orientation and much expense, completely writing off the intellectual wealth and deep roots of the nation he is supposed to belong to, one does not know. This is even apart from the fact that even those that have not been able to go to a poor school are often very knowledgeable, not only in their own professions and spheres of life but far more.

This member of glitterati as many others of his like with similar schooling - one is reminded of the opening speech in Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra - need an education desperately and are not likely to get one because they have closed minds, equating all legacies and agendas of the past colonial rule with superiority of every sort.

It is easy - at least possible - to wake up those that are asleep, not those that pretend.
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Just when you would think Delhi was all about westernised upper class growing and fashion above all, one sees children of public schools - from well to do families by definition - performing a worship and invocation for the souls of the victims and martyrs, for peace and security of their brethren across a thousand miles away.

It is a statement of solidarity, unmatched, with its genuine nature rooted in their deep and true concern, and their innocence of pretensions and of any needs to pose.

If Mumbai is New York and London of India, Delhi is London and Washington D.C.; when they are together in spirit one can still hope, in spite of few others.

For that matter the statements of support are from clear across the whole nation from every small town as well, and a few bytes by a few poseurs to the contrary merely act as so much red pepper in a much needed medicine for a wound. It stings, but perhaps those that put it there had a knife pointed to their throats. It is not difficult to guess who held the knives.