Author: Jo

Coke Studio – A musical experience

Coke Studio

I remember an email that was circulated sometimes back with a picture of some beautiful Pakistani girls. It said, “this is what we missed because of partition“. 🙂 Not denying that ( 😉 ), but whenever I listen to some Pakistani music bands and artists, it makes me feel that it is them that the biggest loss of partition.

Recently, I came to know about Coke Studio (through my friend Thulasi), which brings a series of live studio recording sessions. Something similar to MTv Unplugged that rocked the music world. The participating artists include some of the popular names known to Indian music lovers as well – Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Ali Azmat, Strings etc. I have heard a couple of recordings and it sounds great.

Check out their episode #4 and realize what we really missed because of partition. 🙂

Myth: Tolerance is religion’s contribution

The Sangh Parivar and it’s supporters time and again have been saying that their violence is in response to centuries long oppression that Hindus had to face from it’s foreign invaders. They say Hindus had to suffer because of the tolerant nature of Hindus. They further explain that the Mughal raj, British raj, Missionaries and conversion are all results of this centuries long tolerance and universal acceptance of Hinduism. This has gained quite some sympathy from both national and international audience and is often used to justify the brutally violent acts of Sangh Parivar. But this story of tolerance is nothing but a myth.

Love, hate, tolerance and intolerace are all human traits. Religion could either enhance it or destroy it. The choice is left to the human beings. Jesus Christ taught the message of love and forgiveness to his disciples. He asked them to spread these words whereas some of his disciples simply went after spreading the religion and setting up it’s institution in the name of spreading his words. The abuse of Christianity had resulted in wars and religious persecution. Jesus Christ was gone and a religious institution replaced him. This abuse continues to happen as we hear US president George Bush say “God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq… And I did“.

Similarly, Hinduism is a beautiful philosophy. Many of the Hindu holy texts contain some beautiful thoughts and ideas. But by practice, Hinduism was not that universally accepting. The most celebrated “universal acceptance” of Hinduism is primarily based on our racist mentality that exists even now. I remember a couple of incidents – of how a northie wrote that “Madrasi chicks look ugly” which got the entire blogosphere in to a north-south divide discussion and then the most recent one from the first ever BlogCamp Kerala in 2008. One (and only) foreigner who attended the BlogCamp Kerala wrote this in his blog after the blog camp:

People were taking picture of me like I was a tourist attraction. 100 guys, 3 girls and one Guillaume, and everyone is interested in the Guillaume.

Yes, that happened in a so-called intellectual part of the society. Similarly, you go to an event, you see an african-american man and you don’t even feel like sitting beside him. But if he was white, you would definitely use any chance that you could talk to him and be a friend.

The above mentioned is one simple example of the racist mindset that we have. We love the color “White” or anything “foreign“. Hence we had warmly welcomed the Whites and other foreigners. This is one thing that resulted in the British Raj. The rulers of that time while they were treating their downtrodden within their social system (Dalits and poor people) like pigs, welcomed their White friends who later became their masters. Their own racist mindset resulted in all these. British Raj, Missionaries and such. And people call that racist mindset tolerance and universal acceptance. And that racist mentality is exactly what the problem behind conversion. Because it resulted in helping the foreigners, deep-rooting caste-system and poverty in it’s own society which later lead to missionaries and conversion.

If love, tolerance and acceptance were religious inventions, there wouldn’t have been atheists who are as humanitarians as some religious figures. The only difference is that such atheists (and I am not referring to some of those urban atheists who say “I am an atheist” for fashion) do not put any religion’s label in their work. So whenever you hear the Sangh’s doctrine about tolerance and universal acceptance, think again.

Indian Penal Code, Section 377

I can’t understand how they feel this thing! 😮

It is the same way we feel about women!

But still… 😀

Well, they prefer a different way. 🙂

I can’t imagine my son being this way. Would you feel okay if your future kid goes this way?

I wouldn’t. 😀 Now it’s got me thinking, isn’t it pure hypocrisy?

Yeah!

Need not be. You have the right to feel what you feel. But at the time you start imposing on others what you feel, that becomes a legal problem. So as long as your son/daughter dependant on you, you can control them. But once they are on their own, they are free to do it if they prefer it that way. To accept them or not are all based on how broad-minded you are. 😎

Right. And regardless of what I feel, the government should be taking care of the individual’s rights.

Absolutely. On that note, government should not club Homosexuality with Pedophilia. One is sex between two consenting adults and the other is sexual abuse.

Man! Are you gay? 😀

Yeah. 😛 So what? 😀

(That was a conversation between 3 people, including myself, when the news of Union Health Minister taking up the cause of Homosexuality came up)

Volvo Ocean Race, in Kochi

Volvo Ocean Race is the most prestigious and spectacular round the world marathon ocean yacht racing competition, seen as the ultimate in extreme adventure sporting. It is for the first time in its 35 year history that the Race is stopping over in India.

The toughest of extreme adventure sporting: The Race will commence its round-the-world marathon sailing in October 2008 and cover more than 39,000 nautical miles, visiting 11 ports across the world. Starting from Alicante in Spain, it would stopover at Cape Town, Cochin, , Qingdao, Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Galway, Goteborg and Stockholm, before reaching the finishing line at St.Petersburg. [Read more…]

The Price of BJP’s Secularism

BJP leader and the party’s prime minister candidate L K Advani has declared himself as “secular” because “he studied in a missionary school“. Don’t we know what it took him to be secular other than his missionary schooling credentials? That includes bringing down the Babri mosque which resulted in Hindu-Muslim riots throughout the nation that killed a large number of Hindus and Muslims and helped the extremist organizations of both religions to attract the youth to their fold. A secular nation’s social fabric was broken and Advani became a prominent figure in the party. Now as the prime ministerial candidate of BJP, Advani has become secular.

Oh, and guess what, a BJP leader says this:

“In Orissa, untouchability among the Hindus and a simmering discontent among the lower strata have drawn people to other religions. Social acceptance is a big dilemma there,” the BJP leader said.

A statement that has come quite late, but I am glad that he identifies the root cause (other than the missionary tactics) now which I have been mentioning in this blog for quite a long time. Now, what do they have to say about those innocent people who have been killed and misplaced because of the riots in Orissa? How many more people have to pay with their lives until the whole of Sangh Parivar realizes the meaning of real secularism?

(Image courtesy: Newsx.com)

Nalinikanth’s music album

Nalinikanth Josyabhatla is a techie and a passionate music lover. He loves composing songs and he made a music album in Telugu language with his newly found software. The songs are available in his blog to listen and comment. The first song itself has made my day. Go and listen to his album.

In April this year, I came across a Software (Noteworthy Composer) that can be used to Notate (western) and Simulate the music composed. Slowly, by the end of May, the repository built to about 20+ tunes, some Background Music bits and some western pieces for Piano, prompting me to make a self-driven private Music Album 🙂

Mutiny goes print

Mutiny.in, one of the largest group blogs from India, is going on print from this month (October) onwards. As of now, there is no opinion magazine in India that is dedicated to publish articles from ordinary citizens who write about what goes on in their country. Mutiny will be the first ever magazine in this genre. Only a few percentage of people in our country has access to Internet and those who read blogs are fewer. So taking the spirit of blogs to the mainstream media market is one giant step forward.

The subscription option is available from now for people in India and abroad. Click on the image below to subscribe to Mutiny Magazine and you stand a chance to win an iPhone 3G!

Rajan Zed on a promotional spree

It looks like Rajan Zed, the Hindu leader from Nevada is on a self-promotional spree. Rajan Zed has been in news quite often these days. First It was when he had been invited to read prayers to the US Senate. The news got widespread international attention when the prayers were disrupted with shouting of some fundamentalist Christians in the senate gallery. Since then Mr. Zed has been trying to be in the news consistently and project himself as the leader of Hinduism in America. But this has not been warmly welcomed by other Hindu leaders in the USA.

Leaders of three Seattle-area temples said they knew of Zed from news accounts or not at all.

“I don’t know how he advertises himself or how he gets access to these things,” said Shyam Oberoi, secretary of the board of trustees of the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center in Bothell.

Swami Bhaskarananda of the Vedanta Society of Western Washington in Seattle said Zed sounds like “someone ambitious” whose appearance might be “politically motivated — he wants to be known.” [Via]

Zed again came to news when he demanded that a special screening of The Love Guru (a comedy by Mike Myers) be allowed to the members of Hindu community before it was released in June (the movie had full promotional support of the new-age spiritual guru Deepak Chopra). As a result, the Hindu American Foundation was granted a pre-secreening of the film prior to the release.

It looks like Rajan Zed (or it could be his P.R.O or a fan) is doing a lot of self-promotional work these days. I got two emails, which was sent to an email group that I am part of, that seemingly came from Rajan Zed. He sent two articles which titled “Hindus urge European Union to formally apologize to its Roma population for centuries of abuse” and “Hindu statesman Zed inaugurated & blessed a Christian church in Nevada” and both of them had a “For favour of publication” note in the beginning. Then I got another email which was meant for me (because it is about music), which titled “Famous American band releases groundbreaking album on ancient Vedas and presents to Hindu statesman Zed” and for my convenience he had also attached a photo of the event. All three of these articles had mentioned Rajan Zed’s name in almost every paragraph with decorations such as “Acclaimed Hindu and Indo-American statesman Rajan Zed” or “Zed, who is the president of Universal Society of Hinduism” etc.

From what it looks like, there is a self-proclaimed pope-in-the-making for Hindus in America. Watch out for more publicity stunts from Mr. Rajan Zed in the coming days.

Details of the picture above (As given by Mr. Zed in his email):
Andrea (left) and Sara Forman (right), lead singers of Shanti Shanti rock band, presenting the first copy of their new album “Veda” to acclaimed Hindu leader Rajan Zed (center) in Nevada (USA).
Picture by: Roger Bowen Weld

India at 8th place of top 10 Super Computers

In the latest top 10 listing (from June 2008) of super computers, India has made it to the 8th place.

For the second time, India placed a system in the top10. The Computational Research Laboratories, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd. in Pune, India, installed a Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system. They integrated this system with their own innovative routing technology and achieved a performance of 132.8 Tflop/s which was sufficient for No. 8.

[Read more]

(Info via email from Ashik)

Osho

OshoI haven’t read much of Osho literature or heard any tapes even though plenty of them were available in the market. It was my late friend Biju who first told me that I should listen to Osho tapes because it had some brilliant ideas. The only other literature that he asked me to read was of Mahatma Gandhi. He used to say “the world thought that Gandhi was a serious person, but he was so funny yet explained every thing in simple and beautiful words“.

From what I had learned bout Osho, he seemed to be as cunning (if not more) as the people whom he accused of. I still think the same about him. However, after watching a couple of You Tube videos, I thought, no matter how eccentric this man might sound, no matter how crazy some of his ideas were, he did leave some brilliant thoughts behind. From one of the videos I watched (“Absolutely Free to be Funny“):

I love disturbing people. Because only by disturbing them, I can make them think. They have stopped thinking for centuries. Nobody has been there to disturb them.

A man who remains consistent through his whole life, must be an idiot. A growing person has to contradict himself many times. Because who knows what tomorrow brings in? Tomorrow may cancel this day completely.

(Image courtesy: biographyonline.net)