Election results have India on a razor's edge?

A vacuum always gets filled, is colloquially considered an immutable law of physics. And it’s so true in public life as well, as recently witnessed in the state elections in India. The bigger question is “who fills it?” The nearest available alternative, Indian public seems to say.

I believe that while a trend of preferring local leaders over national o...nes has been noticed, its import is lost on most analysts. National parties are missing the wood for the trees in trying to justify why they did so badly in states where they did not have a local leader. Atleast the Congress party has a reason, it’s incredibly corrupt and inept. The BJP does not even have that fig leaf and would do well to wake up and smell the proverbial coffee.

The people’s verdict to prefer a local leader over a national one, while desirable in many respects, also has a hint of caste-ism of a higher order. Politicians do what it takes to get them elected, we all know that. So how long is it before they being to wonder. “if my local-ness, is what gets me elected, why should I give a damn about the nation?”. This will reflect adversely in intra-country trade, in taxation, in levels of development and in incredibly irresponsible budgets leading to wholesale bankruptcy. Also, there will be no national leadership in Delhi, just a bunch of narrow-minded local satraps too busy looking after themselves than the nation.

If most states have a leadership like this, the national fabric of the country will undoubtedly be weakened. Already long decades of socialist, Congress rule have ensured that no single ‘national identity’ exists for India. India stands at a very delicate line between order and anarchy, democracy and revolution, Indian-ness and dismemberment. If the BJP is unable to remove its defeatist attitude, the lard surrounding it, the infighting and the greed for power, and its internal egos the country will slip into parochialism. What else can happen if the last nationalist party is unable to rise above itself when the occasion demands it?!

This is a sin we cannot afford especially when all constitutional institutions, the police, and armed forces have been systematically weakened over the last 7-8 years. The time to project a strong national leader is now and the BJP should grasp this moment. If the country slips into a loose arrangement of states, BJP alone will be responsible.
 

The Anna-gony of weak minds…

With anti-corruption fervour reaching a crescendo, India unfortunately has a lot of its usual naysayers come out of the woodwork. This is not surprising as there is a mentality of certain people who enjoy taking a contrarian stance, not out of conviction but out of habit (more often than not, these creatures lack the ability or the desire to understand the issues to form a conviction either way). Perhaps psychologists have already identified this as a condition emanating from the inability to garner attention in their lives, I don’t know. Or perhaps I am mistaken in considering myself the biggest cynic around, and it is these people who really deserve the title who are so afraid of expecting anything good in their lives lest they cant handle disappointment afterwards. Even if it were to end in disappointment, I believe in trying to give my all to the present and to such people I can only say, you cannot not go to a party tonight because you are scared of a hangover tomorrow.

Most of the arguments against the ongoing ‘Team Anna’ movement are focussed on the peripheries given that having substance to arguments takes efforts and intelligence. Since I know most people form views and then shut their minds tight (if they exist) from any information that is contra to what they believe, I have chosen to call my discussion facile points and my indulgence of those facile points rather than questions and answers:

Facile point 1: Once a government is elected, it is wrong to blackmail them

Indulgence 1: Weak minds like buzzwords, like ‘blackmail’. Another good one is ‘fake’. These words, to them, are arguments in themselves not requiring any further corroboration. “Once I call someone ‘fake’, that will seal the case” seems to be the refrain. Have you noticed very bad salespeople using a lot of buzz words? I remember Barkha Dutt keeping on harping about “Khabar” when she was caught red handed allegedly passing messages in what appears to be a horse trading transaction.

While clearly buzzwords carry weight among equally weak minds (it must, else it would not have been advanced as an argument anywhere), it really doesn’t hold any water. It is the constitutional right of everyone to protest and to brand that right is blackmail is to take someones right away. It is similar to taking away the right to freedom or right to free speech. If the protest is wrong or useless it will die down. Sometimes the protest is valid but does not capture public imagination and dies down, harshly. An example is the 73-day fast of Swami Nigamananda against mining near the Ganges which ended with his death. Notably, here the BJP was in power in that state (Uttarakhand). No one cried ‘blackmail’ then!  In fact I am sure that most people reading this article will only have a passing knowledge of this incident. So what these people are calling blackmail is actually the governments surprise on seeing mass support, as can be gleaned from the Ganga mining case, a person fasting to death alone is not ‘blackmail’ this government!

Facile point 2: People get the government they deserve, so live with corruption

Indulgence 2: Though I partially agree with the point, thankfully the Einsteins who make this argument blindly did not write India’s constitution. It is a sign of a mock democracy (covert dictatorship) if people elected parties but were then kept away from participative process of running the country. That’s a quasi dictatorship. If it was not, then the Indian constitution would have banned protests! Why it would have banned an opposition or even the holding of assembly sessions!

But that’s going too far, if this argument was true then several countries would not have been free and South Africa, U.S and most of the European world would have had legalised racial discrimination.

If this argument was really believed in by its proponents, then they should have protested against the National Advisory Commission which is also a self styled civil society body (though headed by Sonia Gandhi) which suggests ridiculous (in my reading) pieces of legislation such as the Communal Violence Bill, 2011.

But I know, no protests were forthcoming because the resistance of this fringe idiocracy was not due to ideological opposition to the concept of a vibrant democracy (which India did not appear to be till a few weeks back) but solely to make up for attention deficit in their personal or professional lives.

Facile point 3: Anna is corrupt/ he doesn’t represent the people/ he should stand for elections and then get his Bill

Indulgence 3: This logic is so far up the ridiculous scale that even its proponents believe that it’s a good argument.

The most striking feature of this argument is that from very general objections, this one is more specific, more personal. But again, specific arguments against the Jan Lokpal Bill itself (the real issue) are not advanced, because that would require a thorough reading of both the government and Anna’s draft, and that would mean efforts and bring into question the debaters mental abilities. We cant have that!

To this my rebuttal is simple. Maybe Anna is corrupt, so are you saying he is bringing an Act that will make it easier to arrest him? So you are saying he is smart enough to create a media circus, draft an actual bill, fight with an government and be corrupt at the same time but he is stupid enough to commit political suicide? Pick one guys, either decide he is smart and non-corrupt or decide he is stupid and corrupt. Perhaps that is too much effort? But that is the long form version of my answer, my personal view is, I don’t care either way. Show me what you find objectionable in the Bill. I too have my reservations on the Jan Lokpal but that is to be debated in the parliament and revised, but the governments Jokepal is so atrocious that I am willing to live with my reservations on Jan Lokpal not being considered rather than facing a Jokepal.

Anna does actually represent the people, he was appointed by a notification in the official gazette as a part of the team that represented the civil society. If the government did not think he was representative then were they so incompetent/ stupid to let him in anyway with a official gazette notification? If it is so, then do we want a incompetent/ stupid government at the helm or are we better off holding elections? That is my question back to these newtons. Anna does not need to stand for elections to get his Bill discussed as he was already part of the joint drafting committee. Also, if one were to wait for someone to get near 300 seats in elections before doing anything then nothing would happen in this country!

Facile point 4: Anna wants his copy of the bill to be passed.

Indulgence 4: This argument was completely wrong till a few days back but now its only partially wrong. The original demand of Anna was only that his bill be tabled along with the government’s draft in parliament for debate and voting. However, from what I see in the media Anna is now demanding his Bill be passed. However, Anna is also willing to concede to things like removing judiciary from its ambit. So in fact Anna was always willing to reconsider some of his view on the bill and that’s why he wanted it to be debated in parliament. Such debate would have also shown the country which party supports stringent anti corruption laws and which doesn’t!

Facile point 5: Everyone/ most who is protesting are corrupt themselves or have paid bribes

Indulgence 5: While this is a factual statement to a degree, it is hardly an argument for someone not to protest. The people protesting against corruption have been victims of corruption at some point, so should they not protest? This is like saying a rape victim should not ask for stringent punishment for rapists! It sounds illogical but this is exactly the argument that is being advanced. The proponents of this logic are somehow arguing that the poor bribe payer enjoyed giving the money away so he cant protest against it (why else would there be a moral issue in bribe payers fighting the corrupt?!), so are they also saying the rape victim enjoyed the act, hence cant fight for justice?! How preposterous is that!

It is also worthwhile to discuss what exactly one means by corruption as well. Subramanian Swamy has given us a ‘demand-side’ definition, ie. If anyone makes gains by the misuse of public office, then that is corruption. So if a husband demands dowry it is not corruption, its extortion, since no ‘public office’ was misused. So even if Baba Ramdev may have received donations (as the Congress alleges to try and discredit him) from black money pools, he cant be called corrupt (Swamy gives a good taxi driver analogy to make his point), since he has not used a public office for illegal gain. Moreover, his books are clean and available for examination so appears to have not been any cheating on the way the money was spent.

I propose to look at corruption from the ‘supply-side’. I divide it into two categories: a) corruption for undeserved benefit and b) Corruption in the nature of extortion. The first type is the one of the kind telecom companies allegedly indulged in, they were not qualified for legal and technical reasons to gain 2G spectrum but they bribed the telecom minister who misused public office and conferred undeserved gain. This type of corruption would seldom be complained against by its parties since both have gotten something out of it which they didn’t deserve. A telecom company got a scarce national resource for peanuts and the minister allegedly got billions and billions of dollars.

The second type of corruption affects common man (though arguably it’s the first type that’s worse for the country financially). Indians pay bribes for driving licenses, for almost every other sort of license, to get into colleges, to get passports done and what not. In poor areas people may be paying bribes to get government sponsored scheme benefits, to get out of jail, to get into government hospital, to get into public schools, to get food, to get water, to get anything. I think it’s a cruel joke, in very bad taste and a reflection of the uncouth culture of the person who equates both types of corruption knowingly.

So yes, most people protesting have paid bribes but they are the victims of the second type of corruption. Yes, a lot of them could have avoided (though sometimes that is not possible!) paying a bribe but people have lives, they cant afford to (not that they don’t want to) keep circling government offices for decades for something that should take 48 hours. This is like saying Mumbaikars go to work the day after serial blasts due to some sort of an ‘Mumbai spirit’ that only politicians seem to be able to see. People go, fearing for their life and limb, because they have no choice! They go because, unlike leaders, they don’t have money stashed away in swiss bank accounts to allow them to stay indefinitely at home without work. If anything a bribe payer of the second type has the most locus standi to protest!

I have endeavoured to answer all the facile arguments I have seen made on various social media mostly by people who are not doing anything in this fight and want to ride on Anna’s fame by deriding him. Deride him all you want, just tell me….what do you think is wrong with the Jan Lokpal Bill!

yoga logic, the way I perceived it then...

This is an extract of an email I sent to a good friend from Finland on the logic of 'yoga'. There probably is nothing 'logical' about it and even if there is, I am probably the least qualified to discuss it. But I think, for me, this was a good point to begin my personal, insignificant inquiry into the nature of reality. This was in response to her email asking me about my first kriya yoga class that I had attended...

It was good. Very tiring. The first day was a three hour orientation session, the next day was about 11 hours of discussions and teaching of a few yoga postures both physical and breathing. The last day was a marathon 13 hour session of putting together what we have learned. 

We used to start every day with the prayer:

Asatoma sadhgamaya,

tamasoma jyotirgamaya,

mrityorma amritamgamaya.

It means:

From untruth, take me to the truth,

From darkness, take me to light,

From death, take me to immortality.

I quite like the prayer as it is not to any specific third person and is so fundamental to what we all want but not selfish at the same time, since it is not asking for something that we do not already possess.

I cannot teach you the practice since you need to learn from a qualified source. But I can give you the underlying logic which will follow. I have added what I have learned from my study of scriptures earlier as the condensed version of the ast 27 hours will not give you a full picture.

The underlying truth espoused in Rigveda, the oldest of the Vedas is that everything that exists is made of a single matter (its called Akasha in the scriptures). In fact it asks the question “what is that by knowing which we can know everything?” and then goes on to answer it. The idea is that the same matter vibrating at different frequencies creates the world around us. In that, the world is considered to be false and the underlying matter is the one and only truth. This matter is the Creator in that sense, but is devoid of all attributes such as sex, emotion and even sin and virtue. Hence evil, as much as good, is its creation. That is the ultimate reality. Hence the duality between good and bad, night and day, this object and that object, even the difference you and me, for example, is falsehood and is referred to as “maya”.

By means of clarification (and not related to the current email), all the other Gods and saints whose worship is prevalent, are actually beings who have come closest to this realisation and thus exert a higher extent of command over the nature we see around us. This would be the equivalent of a Christ or a Ahura Mazda or Allah or Brahma or Vishnu or Mahesh. So prayers are addressed to these secondary beings as the real “God” is quality-less. So to ask it for money (e.g.) when no difference between rich and poor exists for it, is meaningless.

An interesting offshoot of this logic is that morality appears to be a cheap, unsophisticated substitute for consciousness. To explain, instead of one saying I should not hurt you or steal from you because its ‘bad’ or a higher being doesn’t want me to, does indeed appear unsophisticated in front of a much more elegant and yet simple logic: Do not hurt anyone else, because there is no “anyone else” it is all just you. Hence if you hurt someone else, you are actually hurting yourself…therein lies the law of karma. An action comes back upon you later or even in the next lifetime (or the next, or the next…) not through some mystical means but because you have inflicted it upon yourself. 

Yoga literally means anything that takes you to a higher plane of realisation. To take an extreme example, lets say you committed a sin…but the realisation of that sin took you to a higher plane of realisation, then that sin along with its realisation will be considered as yoga. In fact, in the Gita, a warrior (Arjun) refuses to fight on a battlefield overcome with grief that he would be killing his family members. To counter this, Krishna recites the Gita. While a warrior hesitating to battle is considered to be extremely sinful, Arjun’s reluctance is classified as yoga by the Gita itself. Since the reluctance led to the Gita and that led to Arjun seeing what reality is.

The course talked about how a layperson goes about realising the truth. The guru said, we have four things at our disposal: a body, a mind (intellect), emotions and prana (force that powers this body). My understanding of prana is ‘kinetic’ to put it in modern physical terms. The scriptures say that it is prana that modifies Akasha to create duality or this illusory world. It makes sense from logic…if there is matter, which when vibrated, leads to this creation…then obviously kinetic energy is involved here. So force acting on matter creates stuff.

With four things at our disposal, we can see the truth only with these. Hence the Gita prescribes four ways to achieve realisation: Karma yoga (yoga of work) for the body, Gyana yoga (yoga of intellect) for the brain (recommended for atheists), bhakti yoga (yoga of devotion) for emotions and kriya yoga (yoga of energy) to harness each persons ‘force’. Though, no one is all body or all brain hence everyone has a combination of two or more of these methods. I, for example, am not a man of faith hence I am naturally drawn to read the scriptures to see if they make any sense (gyana yoga). Along with this I have now learned kriya yoga. So a combination of atleast two yogas is seen here.

Now the course was on kriya yoga conducted by Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev who runs the Isha Yoga Centre (you can look it up it probably has a branch in UAE or Finland). The particular process he taught is Shambhavi Kriya (it literally means technique of the twilight).