Fanaticism – Page 2

India: Homosexuality Legalized

In a historic judgment, the Delhi High Court has passed a ruling that recommends section 377 of IPC should be amended and any sex between two consenting adults should be legalized. This comes as a big solace to India’s homosexuals as it opens up the way to legalize consensual sex between two adult homosexuals. The Court has said that section 377, if not amended would be a violation of Article 21 of the constitution which states that every citizen should be treated equally before the law. I am happy that the Court has upheld the values of human rights and the right to live with dignity and equal opportunity (at least in the eyes of the law).

Chief Justice Shah and Justice Muralidhar said, “We declare Section 377 in so far as it criminalizes consensual sexual acts of adults in private is violative of articles 14, 21 and 15 of the Constitution. The provision of Section 377 will continue to govern non-consensual penile non-vaginal sex and penile non vaginal sex involving minors.” [Legally gay: historic court order makes it possible – CNN IBN]

The new ruling however will not be immediately implemented because it is now up to the parliament to take a decision to amend the law. And I am not sure whether the politicians would take a positive stand on the matter because there is strong protest from various religious groups including Christians, Hindus and Muslims (which also means “vote banks”). I have only one thing to ask them. You have time and again taken pride in saying that your respective religion has revised it’s teachings and text according to the times. Each of you claim that you are the most modern religion. Now is your chance to prove it. If you think that a supreme force like God(s) cannot be inclusive, what kind of love and tolerance do you preach?

As for the LGBT community, they have many challenges lying ahead. For the starters, they should begin educating people on homosexuality rather than keeping people off with the explicit symbols of sexuality. The homosexuals need to let the heterosexuals know that other than their preference in love and sex, they are not a sex-hungry group but normal people, just like the rest of us. They should also help others identify whether they are truly Gay or not. (I read an excellent post on this topic in Sam’s blog where he answered someone about the differences between feeling Gay and being Gay).

Anyways, the Indian society cannot live in denial. Homosexuality and homosexuals are for real. Our denial only makes the whole situation worse, adding up to the failed marriages, sexual diseases and suicides. So no matter what an individual thinks of homosexuality, the Government and Law should uphold the rights of every individual. The Court has done it’s part. Will the Government follow?

The Headpriest Speaks

And now comes another blow at the Sangh Parivar and BJP. Straight from the head priest of Ram Janmabhoomi, Satyendra Das.

But Babri Masjid was demolished so that Ram Mandir could be built.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid was an unfortunate incident. It was like a mandir only [sic]. It protected Ram Lalla and pujas were regularly organised there. Thousands of devotees thronged the place. After they destroyed the masjid, Ram Lalla stands unprotected in storm and rain. There’s only a makeshift structure. They said they would build a mandir; their intention was to grab power. Earlier, nobody had a problem with the fact that pujas were held inside the masjid, nobody protested. But all problems started after the Babri Masjid was demolished.

Local Muslims never had a problem with pujas being held inside the Babri Masjid?

Nobody had any problem. They even used to say that let us all sit together and find a solution to the Ram Mandir-Babri Masjid issue. It was only when the BJP and the Bajrang Dal came and started the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that relations soured between the two communities. There was bloodshed, mandirs were destroyed. Now everything is normal again. It is not an issue in Ayodhya, never was. Hindus and Muslims have always lived in peace in Ayodhya. The BJP’s lust for power created all the problems.

The times of Times of India

I admit that when I read a news report titled “NGOs, Teesta spiced up Gujarat riot incidents: SIT” in Times of India, I almost bought it. I know it is stupid to blindly believe everything that the media churns out, but the story was published in TOI and they quoted the SIT in their news report which added to some primary credibility. Then there were immediate responses from Sangh Parivar sympathizers. They said that the “pseudo-secular media” conveniently withheld the story from publishing since it is election time. They attacked their enemies, those who stand for the secular ethos of the country. They also wanted the Supreme Court to initiate action on the “pseudo secular media” because of their silence on the issue.

I was shocked to read the whole thing. I got confused too, as whom to believe and whom not to believe on such sensitive issues. I thought that the very same secular values that many people in this great country stood for have just got dirty because of people like Teesta. Like I said before, I almost bought it.

Yet, the main charges/claims of the Times of India reporter had no substance and it did not come from the SIT. The major claims in the Times of India report mentioned the following:

The riot witnesses were tutored by Teesta Setalvad before submitting the affidavits
The celebrated rights activist [referring to Teesta] cooked up macabre tales of wanton killings
The gangrape on Kausar Banu, and the gouging out of her foetus by the mob was found with “no truth”
Dumping of dead bodies into a well by rioters at Naroda Patiya was also found with “no truth”

The TOI report said that all of these were told by SIT chief R K Raghavan in the Supreme Court on April 13th, Monday. But hold your horses, because none from the SIT or Mr. Raghavan himself were present in the apex court on April 13 to tell anything.

Even though the TOI article was referring to the SIT report, the person whom they quoted was Gujarat government’s counsel, Mukul Rohtagi. And the SIT chief Mr. Raghavan told Hindutan Times that the alleged leaks appear to have been based on statements of state police officials and “cannot be termed as findings of the report.”[via]

Then came the second article in Times of India, by the same reporter and this time the reporter said nothing about the above claims and rather held on to “discrepancies” and “contradictions“. No word about Kausar Banu, Wanton Killing or the Tutoring of Teesta. He chose to be silent on those allegations which he had earlier stated as the “SIT found untrue“.

So yes, if this is the kind of journalism we are fed with, there needs to have legal action against “such” media houses. Unfortunately, these are the times of India.

PS: It doesn’t take a genius to guess why the Gujarat counsel’s claims made news just 3 days before the 1st phase of general elections. I am not for or against Teesta’s case. We have a process of law in place and our Supreme Court to judge the case. So let the law take it’s due course.

Related reading:

About warped minds – Dilip D’Souza
‘Cooking Up Macabre Tales’: FAQ – Outlook

From The Horse’s Mouth

When the Mangalore pub attack happened, a popular Hindutva website based in Kerala sort of justified the attack saying that what Sri Ram Sene has done was to save the Hindu girls from being lured away by Muslim youth. They also coined the term Jehadi Romeo. A Malayalam newspaper which is known to have strong ties with SNDP Yogam and it’s chief Vellappally Nadesan (who is famous for his anti-minority views), carried out an article about Love Jehad which mentions the new strategies of Jehadis.

Now the SRS chief says that the issue was not about Muslim boys, but about girls drinking:

The Amnesia pub attack. Was your problem that the girls were drinking, or that they were hanging out with Muslim boys?

No, there was no religious issue. It was about girls drinking.
[via]

I am just wondering what would the SRS supporters have to say now.

The Sene Sainik

Hey! What’s up? Haven’t seen you lately.

Yeah, I’ve been busy.

Busy with what? Work?

Yeah, work. But not the office work. I joined a cultural army and was busy protecting our culture.

Oh, you joined the Sene Sainiks? I heard you guys beat up some girls in a pub or something? Man, why would you do something like that??

We were actually protecting our women, silly! Did you know that Muslim boys lure away our girls and get them converted at Ponnani in Kerala? And it is not only our girls, but the Christian girls too. Christian girls man! Your tribe. Do you see the danger now? We gotta be together in this fight against Jehadi Romeos!

Oh! Didn’t know that. Hmmm… but hey! Wait a minute! Why would you beat the girls for what boys are doing to them? You were beating up them poor victims for the fault of someone else?

That is why we talk about culture saala! These girls did not consider our warnings about Jehadis and became a threat to our great culture.

So you beat them up in order to protect our culture?

Well, that too.

But what right do you hold to come in and beat up these girls? Shouldn’t it be left to themselves to decide what they want to do with their life and culture?

When they fail on their duty to uphold the culture, we come in and take care of that. See what a selfless service we do to our country?

Hmm… well, you remind me of someone else whom I’ve seen in the media. I can’t remember who it is, but you resemble him a lot.

Oh yeah? Who is it? Well, anyways, do you see what western culture is doing to us with all these?

Well, what is this western culture?

Immorality, that’s what the West is all about! They booze, they date, they always think about sex.

I’m just thinking who was that other guy I’ve seen on TV. You remind me of him a lot.

What?

Forget it. Anyways, I think we had all of what you said since thousands of years back? We even wrote Kamasutra that explained… well.. you know… several ways of having sex.

That is part of the culture, silly! We taught the world how to have sex! And compare it to what these girls do in pubs! They get boozed and dances with men of other religions! What a horrible crime that is!!

Oh yeah, I can see that. And what is it that you have against Valentine’s Day?

Valentine’s Day is a Christian festival. And Christians imported such festivals from the West to convert people to Christianity!

Valentine’s Day is a Christian festival? I never heard of any Church in India celebrating the festival of St. Valentine.

You wouldn’t. Such are the tactics of the Christians!

I got it! I got it!!

What?

The guy whom you reminded me of.

Who is it?

Osama Bin Laden! He too used to talk passionately about protecting his religion and culture from the west, the Christian west’s agenda to de-stabilize the Islamic countries, and upholding the culture by taking it on women and innocent people!

You bloody pseudo-secularist, Commie, Christian! I will see what to do with you!

(PS: Those who are interested can also participate in the Pink Chaddi campaign. There could be no better Valentine’s Day gift than a Pink Chaddi to send to the Sri Ram Sene folks! 🙂 )

Indian Taliban back in action

The names change, from Bajrang Dal to Sri Rama Sena, but the radical Hindutva organizations continue to assault the countrymen in the name of ‘protecting Indian culture’. This time they attacked women. When I had written against such groups earlier in this blog, there were people protesting and saying that calling them Indian Taliban is too much. But just read the news quote given below and tell me how these Senas are any different from Taliban. Also tell me how come we are vocal against Taliban but so silent on such home-grown organizations.

The Sena activists accused the women of involving themselves in immoral activities, including consuming alcohol, dressing indecently, and mixing with youths of other faith”.

And don’t think that they would stop having fun now. The day when these organizations conduct their annual ritual of cultural protection is coming up. And yes, you guessed it right – the Valentines Day on February 14th. Last year, it was the turn of Bajrang Dal to clean up the culture. We got to either speak up against these groups or get ready to be Talibanized in the near future. Taliban too, started out with small scale operations.

Related posts: The Hindutva hypocrisy again

(Image courtesy: Times of India)

Menses justifies polygamy?

Kanthapuram A P Aboobacker Musaliar It is very common that religion being used for all the wrong purposes when it could have helped to enhance the lives of weak and the oppressed. Most of the times it would be the priests or clerics from a religion who would be misinterpreting the Holy Books to sustain their own interests and misleading the others within the community. The latest controversy about a comment from the senior Muslim cleric Kanthapuram A P Aboobacker Musaliar on polygamy shows that this trend still continues. Kanthapuram reportedly have said this: A second wife is biologically justified. Women’s menstrual cycle prevents them from sexual contact for 5-6 days.

His statement came in the backdrop of a state law reforms commission has come out with a draft bill to check polygamy and divorce by Talaq. The bill seeks that ‘monogamy shall be the rule’ and that ‘marrying again during the lifetime of husband or wife is an offence.’

The proposed bill wants that “if any married Muslim, man or woman, marries again during the subsistence of the first marriage, the party who violates shall be guilty of bigamy under the IPC and punishable as such.”

Continue reading Menses justifies polygamy?

What about the language?

I just came to read a blog post that discusses the linguistic chauvinism and about the need of preserving a certain language. The language in question was Malayalam. The author of the post obviously got angry by the comment of a Government school teacher that a criminal case should be booked against the parents who send their kids to English medium schools. And I felt that both the comments from professor and the blogger have too much emotional elements in it.

The comment from the professor is of course stupid and irresponsible. Capital punishment to parents for sending their kids to the school of their choice is more of a laughable view point. However, in the process of placing counter arguments I feel that the blogger too has got emotional. There were a couple of questions raised in the post:

1) I speak malayalam, and read/write it with some difficulty, yet I do not see the point in learning poetry and prose! I mean, what is the whole idea?

A language is not just a mere tool for communication. There is a huge wealth of knowledge base that comes with it which is perfected across several years by several generations and passed on from generation to generation. This wealth of knowledge is recorded in various forms – Literature (and by literature, I am not referring to fiction only), proverbs, folk songs etc. Most of these forms contribute to a historical record of the then social system, society, eco system, weather and life in general. These have time and over shaped up the culture and our social and individual identity.

Now a possible question: Can the same not be translated to a globally accepted language, like English, so that it will be available to all those who are interested and they will not have to face the difficult of learning a particular language?

As well know, the language loses it’s beauty and more importantly the context, when it is translated. To understand something that is written in a language with it’s original beauty and context, you need to read it in the language in which it is written. The translations can have several interpretations and can be politically abused.

2) Languages evolve, but do they get killed?

Speaking of the death of a language, here is a quote from Wikipedia:

The most common process leading to language death is one in which a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language until they cease to use their original (or heritage) language. This is a process of assimilation which may be voluntary or may be forced upon a population. Speakers of some languages, particularly regional or minority languages, may decide to abandon them based on economic or utilitarian grounds, in favour of languages regarded as having greater utility or prestige.

Ironically, the languages which even evolve in itself can get killed by the same people who use it. The next question would be whether we need to preserve a language which is not in need by the same people who use it. But there comes the importance of preserving the knowledge treasure that the language has generated. And whether a person should acquire this knowledge or not is a personal choice, but there is no doubt that we don’t have any right to deny that treasure to the future generations to come, hence the need of preseverance.

English medium education and Malayalam

Learning English is essential these days to compete in the globalized world. I do not question that (and the sad state of affiars in Kerala state proves that even the English medium schools are not helping our children on using that language properly). But the news that the children being punished or fined for speaking Malayalam in the school premises do not leave a good impression on the kind of English education system that we have. This leaves an impression in the children that speaking Malayalam is a henious thing to do and they would begin to see their own language as third-class (which will then lead to view one’s own culture and tradition as third-class).

Linguistic chauvinism

Too much of love for anything that we hold dear to our hearts could make us extremists. So we need to take good care of the whole language-love not leading to regional or linguistic chauvinism. There is nothing wrong in taking pride of one’s own language or culture but when it turns to establish that only ours is supreme, it will cause trouble. That is what we see from the recent examples of social troubles caused by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena during anti-North Indian campaign or Kannada Rakshana Vedige during Raj Kumar’s capture and death.

[Image source: Wikipedia]

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.

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)