Indaus

R.I.P: The British Raj

2007-11-05T13:04:00.000-08:00

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgement Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
- The Ballad of East and West, Rudyard Kipling.

This year is the 150th anniversary of the Sepoy Mutiny or the Rebellion of 1857 against the British, whose subsequent defeat by the British led to them assuming direct possession over her jewel in the crown from the East India Company.

While i certainly don't care much for the British, i care even less for those *cough* pseudo seculars *cough* who are planning on portraying the rebellion with great hype and politically motivated propaganda in the coming weeks as a historic nationalist uprising against British imperialism that supposedly united Hindus and Muslims under a common cause. In fact had i been alive at the time, i would have gladly sided with the British and helped crush the uprising if only for no other reason than the mutineers plan to restore the rule of the enfeebled Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar whose authority at that time barely extended beyond the walls of the red fort.

While its true that the reasons (some im sympathetic too, some very suspect) that motivated those who fought in the uprisings are many, i'll be damned if the end result is the mere replacement one set of foreign rulers by bringing back the previously infinitely worse bunch. While some Mughal Emperors like Akbar and in particular Shah Jehan's son and chosen heir Prince Dara Shikoh were indeed enlightened and could have perhaps dramatically altered India's history had he won the crucial battle of succession, nonetheless with the triumph of fanatic tyrannical rulers like Aurangzeb in wrestling control of the throne every so often in an otherwise generally oppressive rule, clearly the Mughal empire or what was left of it had to be put to the sword.

Todays its difficult to imagine what India would be like if the uprising had succeeded (probably fragmented into hundreds of feuding princely states interspersed with a handful of large regional empires). In the end the uprising though coming fairly close to forcing the British from India eventually failed and the British retook Delhi with vengeance by exiling the Mughal and executing his sons, thus striking the final blow to muslim rule in India.
Though British rule was far from pleasant, one should see the British period as a means to an end. For almost a thousand years Indic civilisation had been in a state of more or less utter decay and demoralisation under the brutal thumb of numerous Islamic invasions and rule.
The Poet Iqbal once mockingly but nonetheless very precisely said about the struggle for political supremacy between the Congress party and the Muslim League ahead of India's anticipated independence from the British that "we (muslims) have only been slaves for 200 years, while you Hindu's have been slaves for a thousand years.

To paraphrase V.S Naipaul, "India from the very moment it became British colony, in many ways began to be regenerated, the muslims wounded by their loss of power, prestige and entitlement remained backward and self segrated much as they are today, while Hindus eagerly embraced the new opportunities and freedoms while increasing their relative wealth, education and power exponentially".
"They were also able to receive the new learning of Europe and its enlightenment, to get the institutions that went with that learning, heralding the arrival of great social reformers and later Indian independence leaders who enshrined those virtues in our constitution as a modern democracy", while many other similar nations entered the 20th century in a state of upheaval and with more revolutions than a carousel.

While one may rightly criticize British imperialism that more or less robbed India of much of its wealth and helped to a substantial extent fuel Britain's Industrial Revolution, in the process every so often leading to the mass starvation of tens of millions of Indians, through the imposition of their grossly distorted agricultural and trade policies, one can say that to a certain extent much of this shift in global power and wealth would have happened in any case with or without colonialism as Europe by the 15th century had already started its rapid ascension in comparison to other regions of the world.
Besides economic devastation can be overcome in a matter of decades as shown by post war Japan, a populated nation with almost no resources bar her own people, as well as by the progress China and India itself are making today. So if one is going to blame the British, much more so of the blame must also be laid at the feet of that moron Nehru and his version of Fabian Socialism that dreadfully wasted a further 50 years.

In perspective, the British Raj, while also generally oppressive was also fairly benign in many respects especially in comparison to other European colonial powers like Portugal or the Spanish. The East India Company activities certainly started out innocuously enough as a purely commercial relationship but gradually changed with territorial expansion.

In the inital phase when British military superiority was far from assured, it is often noted that the adventurous men of the East India Company learned local languages, and being far away from the conservative environment of England for long periods of time kept numerous local mistresses as an accepted and common practice in addition to the brothels stretching from Darjeeling to Dalhousie. It is said that some 90% of British officers stationed in India by the mid-eighteenth century had marriages from such liaisons, the offspring of which played a vital role in building up the strength of the East India Company Army, and its further subsequent territorial expansion.

But with technological developments such as the railways and steam ships as well as the opening of the Suez Canal, Christian Evangelicals and the Memsahibs (English women) increasingly began to come to India in relatively large numbers. The role of both the these groups was to maintain civilised standards, which in practice led to an unparalleled social divide between the British Raj and its Indian subjects.

By the 19th century an increasingly arrogant and imperialistic British in possession of India, a huge expanse of territory, with a relatively small army, saw the inevitable happen with the rebellion of 1857. Although the British were very slow to react, they gradually gained the upper hand with the help of allied Indian forces and reinforcements from abroad, though by that time they had been given a rightly deserved bloody nose.

While it would take a further 90 years before India achieved its independence through Mahatma Gandhi's non violent civil disobedience campaign, this one can say was infinitely preferable to the ill conceived armed uprisings of 1857 that India clearly wasn't ready for and if it had succeeded would have brought about more chaos than any good.

Man is a Civilised Animal

2007-02-03T01:32:00.000-08:00

Man is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.
- Plato.

2006-06-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

Pricecheck for Jackass!!!.... and Lameass???

Xboxing

2006-04-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

Yep thats right, i is got meself an xbox 360, thus being one of the reasons i havent been blogging for a while and wont be for atleast a little while longer (that's my excuse and im sticking to it).

A Presidential Passage to India

2006-03-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

After reading endless articles about President George W. Bush's maiden three day visit to India starting today with many important agreements to be signed, not least our strategic civil nuclear cooperation deal with the United States, one obviously cannot help being impressed by the massive turnaround in our bilateral relationship since our nuclear tests in 1998, when the Americans were publically threatening to bury us in the grave we supposedly were digging for ourselves. though as Jaswant Singh our foreign minister at the time amusingly pointed out, Indians dont bury rather cremate their dead.

While its nobody's argument that the sanctions imposed on us at the time by the international community, especially by those that already proudly possessed nuclear weapons and those that blissfully lived under its nuclear umbrella wasn't condescending hypocrisy in the extreme, the fact is that never mind the previous circumstances and barring further technical details yet to be ironed out, the nuclear deal is still an incredibly generous gesture towards India.

For this, full credit obviously has to go George W. Bush and his Republican administration, though i still have many major and minor issues with dubya like kyoto and the Iraq war, the nuclear deal has transformed my perception of them to a reasonably favourable one, especially in comparison to their democratic opponents which had done virtually nothing for India apart from the occasional browbeating when they were in office.
When President Clinton paid a state visit to India in 2000, during his last year in office, i remembered India being completely bowled over by his airy fairy mouthing's, which stands in stands in stark contrast to the substance and business like approach to the Bush visit.
While one may well say that the world has changed irrevocably since 9/11 which has helped propel India closer to the U.S, Bush nonetheless needs to be applauded for finally doing something right in regards to America's foreign policy.

P.S. As for India's leftist and muslim enemies who are conspiring together (suprise, suprise) to protest against your visit, I wouldn't worry too much about them, India alway accords its honored guests a warm welcome.
Its the former two traitors who've overstayed any welcome they might have ever enjoyed in India.

Once on a time, Ganges said to Himalaya

2006-02-27T05:45:00.000-08:00

Once on a time, laying hold of the skirt of the mountain,
Ganges said to Himalaya:
"O thou mantled in snow since the morn of creation,
Thou whose form is girdled with streams,
God made thee a partner in the secrets of heaven.
But deprived thy foot of graceful gait.
He took away from thee the power to walk,
What avails this sublimity and stateliness?
Life springs from perpetual movement,
Motion constitutes the wave's whole existence,"
When the mountain heard this taunt from the river,
He puffed angrily like a sea of fire,
And answered: "Thy wide waters are my looking-glass,
Within my bosom are a hundred rivers like thee.
This graceful gait of thine is an instrument of death,
Whoso goeth from Self is meet to die.
Thou hast no knowledge of thine own case,
Thou exultest in thy misfortune: thou art a fool!
O born of the womb of the revolving sky,
A fallen-in bank is better than thou!
Thou hast made thine existence an offering to the ocean,
Thou hast thrown the rich purse of thy life to the highway man.
Be self-contained like the rose in the garden,
Do not 'go to the florist in order to spread thy perfume!
To live is to grow in thyself
And gather roses from thine own flower bed.
Ages have gone by and my foot is fast on earth,
Dost thou fancy that I am far from my goal?
My being grew and reached the sky,
The Pleads sank to rest under my skirts.
Thy being vanishes in the ocean,
But on my crest the stars bow their heads.
Mine eye sees the mysteries of heaven,
Mine ear is familiar with angels wings.
Since I glowed with the heat of unceasing toil,
I amassed rubies, diamonds, and other gems.
I am stone within, and in the stone is fire,
Water cannot pass over my fire".
Art thou a drop, of water? Do not break at. thine own feet,
But endeavor to surge and wrestle with the sea.
Desire the water of a jewel, become a jewel!
Be an ear-drop, adorn a beauty
Oh, expand thyself! Move swiftly!
Be a cloud that shoots lightning and sheds a flood of rain!
Let the ocean sue for thy storms as a beggar,
Let it complain of the straightness of its skirts
Let it deem itself less -than a wave
And glide along at thy feet!

Who Says, Swamy Army

2006-02-27T02:48:00.000-08:00

It is often said that India's obsession with the gentlemans game is one of the great ironies of British colonial rule, and though beating England in this most English of sports is passe, having been overshadowed long ago with our life and death battles with arch rivals Pakistan and more recent epic duels with world champions Australia, Englands gruelling two month long tour of India is still going to be quite a exciting series for both teams for a number of reasons.

First of all is England's remarkable recent win over Australia at home in the Ashes series that seems to have temporarily thrown a spanner in the works to India's pretentions of being the best team in the world-after Australia offcourse and therefore the rightful challengers to Australia's reign at the top during the Border-Gavaskar trophy series.

I remember going to the final Ashes test in Sydney back in 2003, when England having been given cricket lessons all summer, finally pulled one back on the aussies. With that win i remembered thinking to myself that despite their recent string of bad losses, England had all the makings of a very promising team centered around Michael Vaughan as captain. Little did i know then that they would soon go on and win the next Ashes series in 2005 for the first time in 18 years.

This off course this doesnt mean to say i believe Englands win, as great as it was in recent times, can compare to India's triump over Australia in 2001. When India, one test down, staged arguably the greatest comeback in history, having been forced to follow on in the second test, and then pulling off a lazarus like ressurection to smash the greatest winning streak in test cricket history by defeating Steve Waugh's invincibles at their absolute height with 15 consecutive test wins on the trot and going on to seal the series 2-1 in India's favour.

Plus England will also need to back up their Ashes performance at home by having a successful return tour of Australia as India have already done, and that sure as hell wont be easy. I remember India's tour to Australia when talk of bloody revenge was in the air with threats of "chin music" making the rounds in a crude attempt to rattle the Indian batting lineup. Inspite of that, India took the attack to Australia and put them on the back foot from the start with Sourav Ganguly for once leading from the front with a gutsy 144 n.o in Brisbane, followed by the stunning win in Adelaide when Australia had compiled a 500 plus total in the first innings. Having come to within a whisker of a series win on Australian soil at the Sydney test, India still by all accounts had outplayed Autralia in their own backyard in all respects.

Since then, things have not gone according to plan for either of the two teams, Australia have conquered India's final frontier after some 35 years and England while still on their post Ashes high, have gotten a harsh wakeup call in Pakistan that has softened them up nicely for India.

Looking at the two teams (provided England is at full strength), they do seem rather evenly matched, led by two captains, Vaughan and Dravid who both have a very similiar appraoch to cricket and leadng their team.

Then off course there's the Barmy Army who will be hopelessly outnumbered, though i dont think this will matter to them at all. I remember sitting amongst many of them at the SCG with the Barmy Army chanting to the tune of the Beatles - Yellow Submarine: "you all live in a convict colony, a convict colony, a convict colony". This despite that fact that they were completely surrounded by a sea of green and gold Aussie cricket fans.

My bold prediction for the series: India will beat them comprehensively, both in the tests and the ODI's.

Actual Results
Tests: India: 1 - England : 1
ODI's: India: 5 - England: 1
P.S: At the risk of being gratuitous, i couldn't resist also throwing in Yuvraj's 6 sixes against England from the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa.
The look on Freddy Flintoff's face... Priceless!

Cricket Results

2006-02-20T16:28:00.000-08:00

Tests:
India - 0
Pakistan - 1

ODI's:
India - 4
Pakistan - 1

The Relation between Superiors and Inferiors

2006-02-07T01:22:00.000-08:00

Ji Kang Zi asked the master (Confucius) about government, saying, "What do you say to killing those who are unprincipled and immoral for the good of those who are principled?" Confucius replied, "Sir, in carrying on your government, why should you use killing at all? Let your obvious desires be for what is good, and the people will be good. The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass: the grass is bound to bend when the wind blows across it."

Barbarians at the Gate

2005-12-17T03:49:00.000-08:00

When i first heard about the community protest organised by residents of the beachside surburb of Cronulla, shouting slogans of "go home lebs", "leb free zone" and my personal favourite "fuck allah, save nulla", which fuelled by alcohol, eventually degenerated into violent riots and attacks against numerous unsuspecting persons of middle eastern appearance, my initial reaction was like "what the fuck".
When over the following nights, some 70 carloads of lebanese muslim gangs from the suburbs of Southwestern Sydney went on a rampages through cronulla in violent retaliation, my reaction was "is that shit still going on".

Most sydney-siders much like myself were completely caught off guard and had little idea of the recent buildup of simmering tension apparently caused by feral anti-social elements mainly of lebanese muslim descent, sexually harassing and intimidating female beach-goers among many other things. The assault on three volunteer surf lifeguards by such a group was apparently the final straw.

Though i absolutely condemn such violent and un-Australian behavior and have at times witnessed certain crowds of aussies behaving like hooligans when drunk, like most average Australians, i still put the blame primarily on unruly muslims who once again are in the news for all the wrong reasons.
Unfortunately many articles have appeared in the international media, trying to simplistically portray Australia as a racist redneck country without looking at the wider context and in light of other recent controversies that have involved muslims. In any case, surely few so called "racist countries" would have prominent lebanese like Marie Bashir, as the governer of New South Wales and Steve Bracks, the premier of Victoria, to name a few

The clashes in Sydney seems more to be an emerging religio-cultural conflict stemming from self segregation among certain sections of the muslim community and calls of racism are just merely intended to put any discussion of this real divide between these muslims and mainstream Australia beyond the pale.

While Australians has always been a tolerant easy going nation proud of its unique culture and lifestyle, it naturally doesn't much appreciate those who come here behaving as if they've never left their homeland and refusing to integrate (note: not assimilate) into their quiet peaceful surrounds.
Learning another language and adapting to the culture of those around you in a foreign land isnt much to ask and often can mean the difference between people loving you and just tolerating you. After all wave after wave of immigrants who have come to Australia have made just such a transition without any problems. But looking at many muslims one often gets the impression that they would rather remake Australia in their own image.

Much of the fault lies with the jokers who represent the muslim community. The "grand mufti" of Sydney for example though being here for years, can only speak halting English and mostly relies on a interpreter. Not long ago, while on a personal trip to Lebanon he was caught on camera making inflammatory anti-israeli speeches, this while projecting the image of a responsible moderate leader wanting interfaith dialogue back home in Australia. Other spokesmen of the community are little better and always seem to be suggesting that its not them who should be integrating, but rather us Australians who need to change in order to accommodate them.

For the last many months when a special anti-terror bill was being passed through parliament, these same leaders were insisting that they knew their community and assured us that there were no home grown terrorists in various stages of planning attacks on fellow Australians , despite intelligence inputs indicating the contrary. Naturally enough, not long after, two terrorist cells that were in the final stages of carrying out catastrophic attacks were smashed by A.S.I.O and Australian Federal Police, with the arrest of 19, including Australia's first would be suicide bomber.

When confronted with the evidence, they took recourse to the usual denials and evasion of the problems within the community. Instead they were much more comfortable citing Australia's foreign policy as the instigating factor for these domestic problems, as if only we stopped supporting the U.S/Israel we would be guaranteed safety and live happily ever after. I wonder how muslims would feel if we proposed that their fundamental rights in Australia are conditional upon how minorities are treated back home in their respective Islamic countries of origin. For muslims regardless of their origins, true to being faithful followers of the Arab religion, love to wax lyrical about the plight of the Palestinians but you'll never hear so much as a peep out of them about the ongoing genocide in Darfur let alone their universally discriminatory and often brutal treatment of non-muslim minorities.

When in 2000 and again in 2002, local girls were kidnapped and brutally gang raped for days by up to 12 muslim youths in southwestern sydney, while being abused as "aussie sluts", these same leaders seemed more interested in condemning the media and talk back radio programs for "inciting passions", rather than the condemning the crimes themselves. Many of them also pointed to the provocative clothing worn by the girls as a contributing factor in the attacks and actually suggested that Australian show some understanding of the different cultural backround of the attackers.

While 9/11 and the Bali bombings (6 of the dead were from Cronulla), as well as world events in general, have certainly fuelled suspicion and sometimes outright hostility toward muslims, they only have themselves to blame for all their constant doublespeak and for doing precious little to reassure Australians of their commitment to Australia and its values.

Things to be learnt from the riots...

As my colleague BP observed, Australians are so good with their alcohol that they can bash arabs with one hand, while holding an ice cold beer in the other, all without spilling a precious drop.

Muslims have once again shown their aggressive and threatening side to Australians. This though, is too be expected, as the fact is that wherever there are muslims, there will inevitably be conflict (Darul-Harb) as can be seen the world over, for that is what has been laid down in their unholy book by their pedophile Prophet. Hopefully what has gone on the past week in Sydney will surely be long overdue wakeup call for all Australians.

Though Australia's muslim problem certainly has not yet reached anywhere near the dire straits that some so called multikultural countries in Europe find themselves in, measures still need to be taken to prevent further troubles in the future. Ideally muslim immigrants should be barred altogether from coming to Australia for the forseeable future. Failing that, admission criteria should be made so much more stringent for all immigrants muslim or otherwise inorder to discourage ungrateful immigrants such as the ones weve seen above who've abused their welcome.

Happy Diwali and a Prosperous New Year

2005-11-01T10:35:00.000-08:00

The festival of lights, the victory of good of over the evil and the ushering in of Ram Rajya after Lord Rama's return to Ayodhya from exile.

Happy Diwali and Jai Hind!

Freedom from Tyranny

2005-10-22T01:30:00.000-07:00

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannise them will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious or otherwise, to put shackles on sleeping men.
- Voltaire.

Thus Spoke Natwar

2005-09-22T05:03:00.000-07:00

Wake up, wake up
this night is gone
wake up
abandon abandon
even your dear self
abandon
there is an idiot
in our market place
selling a precious soul
if you doubt my word
get up this moment
and head for the market now
don’t listen to trickery
don’t listen to the witches
don’t wash blood with blood
first turn yourself upside down
empty yourself like a cup of wine
then fill to the brim with the essence
a voice is descending
from the heavens
a healer is coming
if you desire healing
let yourself fall ill
let yourself fall ill.
- Rumi.

After three long decades of international nuclear slumber India has finally awoken to sign a historic and unprecedented nuclear deal with America that would make India a potential and rightful exception to existing laws that prohibit civilian nuclear cooperation with a non-signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
While most Indians are eager to see the deal come to full fruition, our foreign minister ~~Nutwar~~ Natwar Singh on the other hand appears to be doing his best to jeopardise the bills long and tedious passage through the U.S congress (already in considerable danger) by needlessly stirring up his American hosts during a trip to Washington with needless idiotic remarks about the growing confrontation between them and Iran's nuclear program.

Though we have fairly cordial relations with Iran, still it is not very wise for a non-veto wielding country like India to be insensitive to the concerns of a determined America in favour of the dubious claims of the ayatollahs who happen to rule Iran. Though we would like to import gas from Iran the fact is that it has as many if not more hurdles than nuclear energy, and few would argue that generating nuclear power with the help of the latest cost effective technologies available to the west is a far more sound long term solution for our energy than reliance on unreliable sources of the finite fossil fuels such as Iran which has repeatedly reneged on previously signed agreements.

One may well say that it would be hypocritcal for India to side against Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons considering our own stockpiles and certainly the best outcome for India would be to walk the tightrope and abstain in any such future vote. But nontheless one shouldnt compare apples and oranges, India unlike Iran was never a signatory to the NPT or CTBT and had always maintained its right to possess such weapons. Iran on the other hand is a signed up member that has not only voted against us on the CTBT issue previously but been also been caught concealing evidence of possible secret weapons programs from the IAEA.

With one nuclear neighbour too many, such things are very undesirable especially in the hands of more islamaniacs. Why then are some rebellious government ministers, not to mention the comrades who support them from the outside willing to sell India down the drain in solidarity with the fundamentalists in Tehran. Im afraid this is nothing more than anti-americanism way beyond the call of sanity!

For far too long India was enamoured with such outdated thinking while other more nimble-witted nations merely paid us lip service and continued to solely look after their own well being. Now if only someone could cure Natwar Singh of his head in the sand cold war non-aligned movement mindset.

Maha-Bharat: The Wheel of Dharma

2005-04-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

The world is the wheel of God, turning round

And round with all living creatures upon its rim

The world is the river of God ,

Flowing from him and flowing back to him.

On this ever-revolving wheel of being

The individual self goes round and round

Through life after life, believing itself

To be a separate creature, until

It sees its identity with the Lord of Love

And attains immortality in the indivisible whole."

- Shvetashvatara Upanishad 1.4-6.

Farther India, Indochina, East Indies. The great story of India and the Indic civilisational legacy in Southeast Asia is perhaps most remarkable in terms of the differing levels of cultural diffusion achieved in comparison to Southeast Asia's other giant neighbour - China.

Whilst Chinese culture spread primarily in the regions that were military occupied by it or were vassal states like Vietnam, Indian civilisation on the other hand, with its process of peaceful penetration rather than military conquest (much like with the great Buddhist Emporer Ashoka centuries later) was able to leave a far greater and more enduring imprint on the region, providing the basis and inspiration for the great Hindu empires that flourished like that of the Angkor-Khmer empire in Cambodia, the Chams in Vietnam, as well as Mataram, Majapahit and Sri Vijaya empires in Indonesia and Malaysia among many others including Buddhist kingdoms in Thailand and Burma.

To paraphrase George Coedes in his work 'The Indianized states of Southeast Asia' - The expansion of Indian culture was a very broad process, the results of which differ in various countries. The speed and ease with which the Indian immigrants propagated their more advanced culture is in no doubt due to many common underlying traits beneath the Indian veneer already shared with monsoon Asia.
The sacred scholarly Sanskrit language of India was instrumental in transmitting parts of our culture or at least a copy of it, including aspects of its customs and laws, holy scriptures and alphabet as well as social and religious establishment into the region. Indeed the most ancient Sanskrit inscriptions in Southeast Asia are not much less older than the first Sanskrit inscriptions in India itself.

Even so, Indianised civilisations in Southeast Asia were more so the civilisation of the elite. The Hindu concept of Deva-Raja (God-King) gave the local king divine status, effectively being an intermediary between heaven and earth, maintaining the balance between the two worlds and ensuring the protection and prosperity of his people. As per the Indian concept of Mandala, at the center was where Indianisation was strongest with concentric circles spreading out from that point and gradually diminishing in influence at edges of kingdom and empire.

Apart from lucrative trade relations, it is not clear what exactly prompted the Indian expansion especially considering that crossing the seaswas thought of as polluting by the Brahmans atleast. Nonetheless over time Brahman advisors came to hold enormous sway over the local royal rulers in their courts. Indeed according to one Cambodian legend as to the origin of their people, they believe they are descended from the union of an Indian Brahman named Kaundinya who married a local mythical Cambodian princess, thereby establishing the foundation for the first Indianised state of Funan and of classical Cambodian civilisation.

After thousands of years of glorious civilisation and its great achievements, Theravada Buddhism began to slowly displace both Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism in mainland Indochina. In Indonesia the coming of Islam (ironically brought moslty by Indian seafarers from the Coromandel coast and Gujarat) and the rise of coastal muslim sultanates saw the gradual disintegration of the last great inland Hindu empire of Majapahit and the forced exile of the royalty along with a large number of its retainers eastward to the Hindu Island of Bali.

Today Indonesia is the world largest muslim nation, but beneath the surface some of the former local Hindu culture still endures. The great Indian epics of the Mahabharat and Ramayana, though no longer with their same previous religious significance are still quite popular throughout the archipelago especially Java and obviously also Bali. Indeed to this day, a Ramayana ballet is apparently still being performed by a muslim troupe of artists in the shadow of the Prambanan temple near Yogyakarta.

With the recent re-articulation of India's "Look East Policy", there will hopefully at long last be a concerted effort to shift some of our attention away from our immediate west and instead focus it on Southeast Asia with which we have equally long and deep historical, cultural and civilisational ties. This is even more pertinent in consideration of the so called "peaceful" rise of Chinese power in the region. Once again Southeast Asia has assumed its historical role as a commercial trading hub and a important source of resources in the middle of the India-China trade route, therefore it is vital for India to get its act together and present itself as a friendly counterbalance of sorts to South East Asian nations wary of the Chinese juggernaut.

General Musharraf - Treacherous Architect of Kargil

2005-04-16T03:59:00.000-07:00

India v Pakistan

2005-04-05T03:59:00.000-07:00

- Nawab of Najafgarh / Sultan of Multan
- Ganguly's got to go!!!
- Has India unearthed its latest gem from Jharkhand?

One has no words to describe the phenomenon that is Virender Sehwag. The man can simply do no wrong of late. His supremely confident attitude perfectly reflects all that the new India of the 21st century aspires to be. As for Ganguly. That niggaz got to go! If he doesnt perform in the remaining matches, his head will be on the chopping block. He's an absolute sitting duck out there in the middle to bowlers like Mohamed Sami, whose effectively made ganguly his bitch. For how long can India keep giving other teams what is essentially a 1 wicket advantage. He should retire and let Rahul Dravid take over the role of captaincy.

Call off the search! Ladies & Gentlemen, i present to you at long last India's new wicket keeper batsman - Mahendra Singh Dhoni. I know he could be just another flash in the pan and one shouldnt be quick to judge him by one performance alone, however spectacular it was. But i cant resist. What he did out there was absolutely amazing and so beyond the capabilities of previous pretenders to the position that even Adam Gilchrist would have been impressed. Sehwags swagger must be rubbing off on the youngsters coming up. Lets hope that he can continue to suceed in the role and relieve some pressure of a poor old workhorse like Rahul Dravid.

Finally India must not get complacent again like in the tests. Any total will be fair game for a Pakistan with Shahid Afridi opening. He sure can live up to his name with his explosive fidayeen attacks in the first 15 overs. I've seen him absolutely annihilate Australia before, so getting him before he can do any damage is one of the keys.

India vs Pakistan. "Dosti Series"

2005-03-28T03:57:00.000-08:00

Shall i hear the lament of the nightingale,
submissively lending my ear
am i the rose to suffer its cry in silence
year after year?
The fire of verse gives me courage
and bids me no more to be faint
with dust in my mouth, I am abject
to God i make my complaint.
Sometimes you favour our rivals
then sometimes with us,
You are free
I am sorry to say it so boldly,
You are no less fickle than we.
- Iqbal.

***Actual Results***
1st Test: Pakistan fights back brilliantly to draw the match, when India seemed be to cruising to victory. Damn you Paki's!!!
2nd Test: Wah, Wah! India crush Pakistan by 195 runs!!!
3nd Test: India self-destruct on last day. Pak's return the favour, winning by 168 runs.

If any Desi's out there r looking for free live radio stream for the game. Click Here
If u wanna watch free live video stream, download "Peercast" software then during game go to their website for the link.

India: Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, *Sourav Ganguly, +Dinesh Karthik, Irfan Pathan, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh, Ashish Nehra, L Balaji.

Pakistan: Taufeeq Umar, Salman Butt, Yasir Hameed, *Inzamam-ul-Haq, Younis Khan, Yousuf Youhana, Asim Kamal, Abdul Razzaq, Shahid Afridi, Shoaib Malik, +Kamran Akmal, Danish Kaneria, Mohammad Sami, Naved-ul-Hasan, Arshad Khan, Mohammad Khalil

As usual the star studded Indian test batting lineup looks more formidable than that of the Pakistani's, atleast on paper. But with Shoaib injured, India's bowling lineup also looks slightly better. Nonetheless this means little when it comes to India/Pakistan matches, which often goes down to the wire.

The Indian team when its at full strength, like it is now, is just a coaches dream. Infact we have a problem of plenty with Yuvraj and Kaif not getting a look in. The only weak points are obviously the batting form of our captain as well as newbies Gautam Gambhir and Dinesh Karthik. I think Zaheer should be included in the first test rather than Balaji, whose coming back from injury. As for Pakistan, well they're as unpredictable as ever. Often their lower order has more punch than the top order. In any case their bowlers will have quite a job to do.

At the risk of having egg on my face, i predict the India will win the 3 test series either 1-0 or 2-0. In the 6 one dayers it'll probably be a 3-3 draw.

Bollywood & Prejudice

2005-03-04T03:56:00.000-08:00

Calmly and gracefully
thou movest along the path of life,
tearless and smileless,
and scarce a heedless glance of indifferent attention
ruffles thy calm.
Thou art good and wise
and all things are remote from thee,
and of no one hast thou need.
Thou art fair,
and no one can say,
whether thou prizest thy beauty or not.
No sympathy hast thou to give;
none dost thou desire.
Thy glance is deep,
and no thought is in it;
in that clear depth is emptiness.
So in the Elysian field,
to the solemn strains of Gluck's melodies,
move without grief or bliss thy graceful shades.
- Ivan Turgenev.

Ahemmm, youre attention please. I have something important to declare.
I hate Bollywood, with a passion!!!

It seems to me that if you happen to be born overseas and you're not brought up on a regular diet of bollywood movies during your formative years, then you'll probably never catch the Bollywood bug.
Though im hardly a fan of much of the stuff Hollywood spits out, I cringe and squirm in discomfort every time i somehow stupidly convince myself into watching another Bollywood movie. Usually i end up walking out as soon as first song and dance sequence begins. Thus this was more or less the case when i went to see or rather should i say downloaded Gurinder Chadha's "Bride & Prejudice". I rather enjoyed "Bend it like Beckham", so i thought B&P might also be a pleasant surprise. After seeing the trailer on TV my interest was further piqued, how bad could it be i said.

How naive i was! It was terrible! In fact it is so terrible that im putting a fatwa on the punishment of death on anyone who goes to see it. Three hours of my life absolutely wasted when i could have been out doing something productive like curing cancer.

Unfortunately Indian Cinema seems to be basically divided into two genres - crass and kitschy commercial cinema (ie; Bollywood musicals in la la Land) and the so called "artsy movies" that no one watches. I'd love to be the head of the film censor board, so i could ban disgraceful Bollywood films left, right and centre and ensure that the only film makers who make them are those ones behind bars. Perhaps only with such harsh artistic repression as there was in the former Soviet Union would free our film makers from mediocrity and spur them on to create maybe some cinematic masterpieces.

My other big gripe with Bollywood films is the increasing mixture of the English language whether in the titles, dialogue or (God forbid) the song & dance sequences. There should be a strict separation and ideally no English at all unless absolutely necessary. I dont mind news bulletins in the English language or reading books by Indian authors in the English language but in a popular entertainment medium such as movies it just doesnt sound right and is a definite no no, especially considering Hindi is certainly one of if not the most beautiful languages in the world.

"We now resemble an alien people, with unfamiliar customs, a culture with no roots in our land and no chance of blossoming here".

Somewhat like the rest of India but more so, Bollywood seems to verge from the sublime, ie: many of the great films of yesteryear) to the ridiculous (ie: much of what gets released today). One may say im being a bit hard on Bollywood. After all its simple something for everyone plots with melodramatic acting does appeal to many audiences around the world (not to mention many NRI's), who may find it difficult to identify with the cultural context of Hollywood movies. Im always surprised by Bollywood's large (though often exaggerated) reach into far off places such as Nigeria, Egypt, Uzbekistan and what not.
But unfortunately even these positive attributes are steadily being undermined an increasing wave of extremely vulgar movies with unashamedly provocative and gratuitous sexual themes that would make a prostitute blush. Thus while in the past one could at least somewhat acknowledge Bollywood for its depiction and promotion of traditional Indian culture and values, today it is increasingly being reduced to little more than pathetically imitating Western culture, in the process creating a horrible hybrid that is neither here nor there and makes of mockery of both.
Anywhu, if one is interested, here are some of the better Bollywood music videos. Enjoy.....

Maar Dala

Ishq Bina

Choli Ke Peeche

Freedom of Action

2005-03-02T10:05:00.000-08:00

One day, Mughal Emperor Akbar and his minister Raja Birbal were walking in the palace gardens. Suddenly, Akbar turned to his wise minister and asked, 'Birbal, who is more powerful -- God or Emperor?' Birbal thought for a moment and said with all seriousness, 'Emperor, you are more powerful than God.'

Akbar was astounded. He thought Birbal was indulging in flattery and proceeded to banish him from the empire. Birbal replied that the punishment itself was proof that what he had said was true.

Birbal then reasoned, 'Emperor, if you want to banish me, you can send me out of your empire and I shall have to go. But if God wanted to banish me, is he powerful enough to do that? Where would he send me, for all the universe is his empire.'

Akbar laughed heartily and praised his clever minister and gifted Birbal one more palace beauty!.

Moral of the story: the lesser guy has more choice and freedom of action than the one at the top.

Nepals Monarchy & the Maoists

2005-03-01T03:55:00.000-08:00

The gates are mine to open
And the gates are mine to close,
As I set my house in order,
Said our Lady of the snows.
- Rudyard Kipling.

The double standards and hypocrisy practiced by the congress party always amazes me. Their birdbrained foreign policy strategists have once again haphazardly mounted their moral high horse this time by stopping critical military aid to the Royal Nepalese Army following King Gyanendra's dissolution of parliament and consolidation of power inorder to take the fight to the maoists after years of watching politicians squabble while the moaist people's army took advantage and grew from strength to strength.

Thus while India has no problem engaging in dialogue with our "friendly" neighbourhood military dictator General Pervez Musharaf (mastermind of Kargil) even inviting him to watch a friendly game of cricket and according a warm welcome to General Than Shwe of Burma and promising to supply his despicable military junta with arms in the hope they will use them to flush out Indian separatists militant camps on their side of the border instead of against their own citizens, we apply a completely different and patronising approach to poor little Nepal and its King by boycotting SAARC and shunning them in their hour of need.

This decision can only have negative consequences for India. We are effectively pushing the King into a corner, making the situation ripe for others to go fishing in troubled waters. In fact the first thing the King did before sacking the government was to close down the Tibet centre in Kathmandu. This was a clear move to appease the Chinese and obtain its full support for his decision.

What on earth is the congress hoping to achieve by this CPI ~~morons~~ (marxist) inspired policy. Does it want to isolate the King enough to push him into the hands of the Chinese or Pakistan. Does it want to teach the King a lesson even at the cost of weakening his hand in the battle against the maoists. Does it not know the potentially huge price India could pay in regards to facing its own emboldened red menace should their Nepalese comrades come to power next door with their half baked ideology.

Yes by taking such draconian steps the arrogant and unpopular King Gyanendra is undoubtedly riding a tiger he dare not dismount, in the mistaken belief that it will save his country. As the saying goes, "Kings once uncrowned become outlaws, they can never be ordinary citizens".
Nonetheless India should instead have used other diplomatic measures to persuade the King come around to its point of view. The maoist scourge can only be defeated by launching a full scale war, inorder to either completely annihilate the menace or perhaps bomb them back to the negotiating table and a political solution. Even the maoists themselves have previously stated that they'll only ever deal directly with the King.
I can only hope that common sense prevails upon the Indian foreign ministry to moderate its stance and resume military aid. But then again common sense has never been very common among those in the congress party.

Fire (Aag)

2005-02-23T05:37:00.000-08:00

With the blow of wind she flares up,
And dies as soon as she drinks water;
Even though she is a pretty woman,
She’s not a woman, though she’s feminine.

2008: An Indian Space Odyssey

2005-02-22T03:55:00.000-08:00

He is a sacrificial fire
in which the gods are constantly putting fuel
when darkness spreads its vast sheet
even then
he is the untiring life flaming in the background
Dyaus, o ancient father
it is you who has made these wonderful seasons
you the wrinkles on the face
the blood of the shoots
the drying up of wounds
you are love
like a beehive full of honey
warm and sweet
present in our souls
you are
the agitation that turns the earth upside down.
- Hymn to Dyaus Pitr (Sky Father), Rig veda.

Less than 3 years to go! In late 2007 or early 2008, India's first unmanned mission to the moon "Chandrayan 1" (moon-voyage 1) will blast off on top of a four stage Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) for a 2 year orbit of the moon, carrying out a 3D mapping of the moon as well as the most detailed analysis of the moons mineral and chemical composition ever conducted.Apart from a lunar impacter that will permanently place India's flag on the moon's surface, the mission will carry out scientific experiments on behalf of the US, ESA and Bulgaria.

Naturally as is always the case in India, there are those who have questioned the scientific value of the mission and pointed instead to its use for Indian nationalism and prestige. Well duh! Of course it will be a matter of enormous pride for Indians to witnesses India's entry into the elite club of the few space faring nations. But to say that India is a wasting money on extravagant space adventures that could be better spent back home on the welfare of its citizens is plainly misguided and ignorant. You will never see these same bleeding hearts utter a peep about costs of outdated economic ideologies that they continue to champion that has made and kept India poor for the last 50 years or the massive subsidies handed out year after year to perpetually loss making public enterprises or the failure to push through so many vitally needed reforms that would save India far more money than that spent on a nascent space exploration program.

Rather this unmanned mission to the moon is just a small stepping stone to far more ambitious and cost effective space missions where India has the ability and opportunity to leapfrog other nations into the space age. Already ISRO is planning a second mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-2, in 2011-12; a mission to an asteroid; an unmanned mission to Mars in 2013, a human spaceflight in 2015 and a possible manned moon mission sometime after 2020.

Then there are also substantial technological benefits that will result from the mission and have practical applications such as in ISRO's development of next generation Geosynchronous Launch Vehicle (GSLV-Mark 3) which will be powerful enough to launch the India's biggest satellites. A Launch of the GSLV-Mark3 will only cost about half the rate charged by France, US, and Russia.

Additionally the mission will further boost India's strength in remote sensing satellite imagery, which is the among the most advanced in the world. This currently produces enormous benefit not only for military but also in the country's development by helping farmers, fishermen and connecting remote rural areas through its satellite technology. It is estimated that the ISRO's projects have added between two or three times the organisations budget to the nations GDP.

Jai Hind!

The Clash of Monotheisms

2005-02-19T03:54:00.000-08:00

Recently i decided to read the book "The Clash of Civilisations" by Samuel P. Huntington, which i had previously heard a lot about especially from those who criticised it. As far as im concerned these critics are generally a bunch of fools who need to take off their rose tinted glasses. I found it to be an excellent must read book for anyone interested in geopolitics. My problem with the book is that it basically is the kind of book i've always dreamt of writing one day. Perhaps this little blog at the edge of the blogosphere will be the furthest my literary career gets.

In any case the world has also fundamentally changed since the book was written and though much has gone according to Huntingtons paradigm from the events of 9/11 to the recent Ukraine elections, there still are many areas that could be further added upon, especially in relation to India.

Speaking of Clash of the Civilisations, the pope looks like he's going to kick to bucket any day now. Thus the question on everyones lips is could an African become the next pope. With Christianity locked into a head on contest with Islam in Africa, a black brother in the Vatican could give xtians that strategic advantage over Islam in the battle for souls and market share in Africa. I've always thought it interesting watching Africans take so enthusiastically to the religions of their oppressive former slave trading masters, whether Arab or European. As always they like others are essentially being treated as little more than a commodity, a people deemed incapable of having a coherent religion of their own so they must be given one to civilise them as per the British colonialist David Livingstone's famous formulation of "Civilization, Commerce and Christianity".

Anyways would a black pope be able to stem let alone reverse the steady decline of Christianity in Europe since the enlightenment. Hell no.
What's for sure though is that in the 21st century there will be huge gains made by Chrisitianity in Asia. The current pope John Paul while always talking about interfaith harmony n other gibberish has revealed many times that he wants to reap a rich harvest in Asia.
With Christianity struggling to maintain its market leader status due to its low birth rate as compared to the exploding birth rates in the muslim world, atheist China will represent the last great virgin territory for Christian proselytizing to fuck over.

Apart the local confucian traditions and also Buddhism there is really very little to conceivably stop the march of Christianity there. One of things that has always impressed me about the Chinese is their general indifference towards organised religion, but increasingly this no longer looks to be the the case especially in light of the almost complete hollowing out of China's Communist state ideology. Already there are estimates of 50-250 million christian converts in China. Much is often made about China emerging as a potential threat to the US in the future. But I think this is somewhat overstated, the Americans are not just going to sit there and do nothing, they know they can use and indeed are using Christian missionaries (a force greater than even the US military or Hollywood) as a powerful foreign policy tool to decisively change future geopolitical equations. Once the Chinese are a predominantly Christian nation, which they one day very well could be just like South Korea is now, China will effectively have been recruited on the side of the west or Christendom in any future civilisational battle against Islam.

So what about Hinduism and the future prospects of the world's 885 million Hindu's. Well naturally one wishes we could be immune from the plague of such aggressive, arrogant and obnoxious religions but unfortunately they are already in our midst. Christian missionaries have longed eyed India as a huge potential source for converts and are actively targeting economically and socially weaker sections of our society. Already most of the tribals and mongoloids in the northeast have been won over to Christianity. Lower castes and those in South India are next on the chopping block. Unless like in muslim countries a credible threat of violence is employed to warn such missionary groups, they will most likely continue their activities unfettered and succeed to an certain extent in their mission. To what extent exactly remains to be seen and will depend on our vigilance as well as our assertiveness in reinforcing our unique identity. Thus if Hinduism wants to withstand the onslaught, it will once again have to adapt to the changing times as it has done so brilliantly throughout the millenia and work to overcome sources of weakness such as the caste system that keeps us divided.

Of all people, Hindu's should know better than most the historical consequences of failing to provide a united front to external threats. Our only consolation in this fight is that though many battles will be and already have been lost the war can never be won in an age of reason amongst a people who have always respected intellectual openness and plurality as opposed to dogma, falsehood and infallibility.

The Bookworm

2005-02-18T05:33:00.000-08:00

A moth ate words.
I thought that was quite curious,
that a mere worm,
a thief in the dark, ate what a man wrote,
his brilliant language and its strong foundation.
The thief got no wiser for all that he fattened himself on words.

Criticisms for the Beloved Parivar

2005-02-17T03:52:00.000-08:00

Now dont get me wrong, i consider myself a committed long distance armchair supporter of the Sangh Parivar. I have much sympathy and admiration for them and their cause of Hindutva.
But i must say that much of of my worldview and opinions has been shaped not as much by the right wing, but rather infact more by reading and seeing the utter failure and hypocrisy of the leftist pseudo-secular "intelligensia" of India, who not satisfied with doing their best to run India into the ground over the last fifty years, take great pride at every turn in continually denigrating our ancient religion and culture.

While i support the Sangh and always will in what ever way possible, i still disagree with them on a number of important issues.
As i have a pathological hatred for Indian marxists and their ideology, it pains me particularly that the RSS still champions the policy of Swadeshi (self-sufficiency). Thus in India we have the absurd situation that both the right wing and the extreme left share the same economic viewpoint.
The RSS should shed such outdated ideas and embrace free market economics much like the American right wing has done. This position on economics also conflicts with the BJP, the political wing of the RSS. The BJP came to power in the 90's with one of its main support planks being middle classes and merchant castes. Overseas Indians in America and the west who are overwhelmingly strong supporters of the Sangh and provide large financial donations also would like to see a change in their stance, after all they left India precisly because of swadeshi.

The second issue i have with them is their conservative views on Indian culture. While i certainly believe that many of their views are legitimate concerns that i also share, i feel sometimes groups especially like the Shiv Sena and VHP are often too crude and often take umbrage at trivial things like their campaign against Valentines day, etc, when there are far bigger fish to fry. This only achieves in enabling their enemies to easily paint unflattering images of them, therefore belittling both the Sangh and all their other activities.
I believe it was Mahatma Gandhi who once said: "We will let the winds of all lands blow through our door, but we will be swept away by none".
One therefore should not be fearful of today's globalised world for i believe that most Indians are smart enough to automatically take what is good and largely reject what is not. For those that dont? Well we can always ostracize them as outcastes as is our time honoured tradition, lol.

Ironically what most Indians especially the Sangh dont recognise is that India's conservative cultural ethos is in a great part due to the influence of Islam as well as the victorian era hypocrisy of the British.
It wasnt always like this, at one time Indian attitudes to things such as sex must also have been somewhat liberal and permissive. It was during the Gupta dynasty "The Golden Age of Hinduism" that works like the Kamasutra's were composed. It was in the 10th century just prior to Islamic rule over Northern India that the great temples of Khajuraho were built with their explicit erotic sculptures.

If the muslims had found them they almost certainly would have been smashed them to bits like they did to every other major temple complex in Northern India. When the British first saw them they also though of them as extremely vulgar.
Today the values they once represented are frowned upon by most Indians. Today things such as pornography and homosexuality (given our talent for procreation, we could use a few homo's) are illegal and a punishable crimes in India, when once over a thousand years ago they were apparently accepted and depicted. It is truely incredible how times change.

The Difference Between a Dog and a Man

2005-02-12T05:28:00.000-08:00

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
- Mark Twain.

Kashmir Conflict

2005-02-09T03:51:00.000-08:00

It is said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will eventually start to believe it. This is certainly the case in regards to Pakistan and its obsession with Kashmir. As a regular reader of Paki newspapers, im always surprised by the amount of lies and conspiracy theories that go unchallenged and are basically accepted as the gospel there.

I cant go into all of them otherwise this column will go on forever, but things like the so called "forgery" of the document of accession signed by the Maharaja unifying Jammu & Kashmir with India and ratified in the Kashmiri parliament by "Sher-e-Kashmir" Sheikh Abdullah, the popularly elected leader of Kashmir.

Other claims like that India invaded Kashmir when the fact is that it was the Pakistani army who first sent the so called "tribal lashkar" backed by Pakistani army commandos) into Kashmir to create an artificial uprising and pressure the Maharaja to hand over Kashmir to Pakistan. Jawaharlal Nehru and Lord Mountbatten only gave the order to airlift Indian troops and force back the invaders when they had nearly reached the outskirts of Srinager.

Then there's the UN resolutions that they claim India has refused to implement. First of all it was India that took the issue to the UN and its complaint against the Pakistani invasion was filed under chapter 6 of the UN charter which are only recommendations and non-binding. The resolution calls for the complete withdrawn of Pakistan troops (something they've never done) and a limited Indian presence should any plebiscite to be held. Another condition was that people's not residing in Kashmir prior to 1947 should leave immediately. Here once again Pakistan has attempted to change the demographics in its favour in any future referendum by encouraging Punjabi and tribal Pashtun immigrants to reside in these areas.

Then there the charges of human rights abuses by the Indian army. While it is true that many violations unfortunately did take place especially in the early days and sometimes still do considering there's still an insurgency going on, nonetheless much of it is baseless Pakistani propaganda and rhetoric. They never mention the fanatical jihadi's sent from the seminaries of Pakistan who are responsible for the most barbarous crimes, like throwing acid on the legs and faces of women who dont dress the way they want, or like chopping off the nose, ears, and lips of anyone who dares oppose them, especially if they happen to be suspected informers, surrendered local militants, elected officials or members of village defence committees. Whenever such crimes are reported if they are reported at all in the Paki media, it always says they were by "unindentified persons" rather than "mujahideen", which they always use when there is an attack on the Indian Army.

But the biggest and most pathetic lie by far is that the almost 400,000 Hindu Pandits (the original inhabitants of the Kashmir valley) who were slaughtered and then completely ethnically cleansed by the Pakistani backed Islamic militants in the early 90's and are now mostly residing in refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi, were in fact intentionally ordered to leave their homes by the Indian government in a conspiracy to defame the jihad. This is the most shameless of all their lies! When the jihad was launched in the early 90's for their "Nizam-e-Mustafa", and when the targeted killing of the Pandits started, there were notices plastered everywhere with slogans such as "be one with us, run or die" or "Asi gachchi Pakistan Batao roas te batanev san" (We want Pakistan, along with Hindu women, but without their men).

The Pakistani's have built up all these lies over time to disguise the fact that they have absolutely no leg to stand on in Kashmir. The military dictators who rule Pakistan have the gall to call for the freedom of Kashmir when they themselves are in power undemocratically. They call the elections in Indian Kashmir a sham and its democratically elected leaders Indian puppets, when in fact it is Pakistan occupied Kashmir where there isnt even a hint of democracy, instead being governed directly from Islamabad, when it is in this so called "Azad Kashmir" where there is little political dissent allowed and where all leaders holding office must swear allegience to the Pakistani state.

If the Kashmiris were allowed to choose their future, Hindu majority Jammu and Buddhist majority Ladakh would choose India in a heartbeat. The so called "Azad Kashmir" (which is mostly neither really part of Kashmir nor azad) would go to Pakistan as would the Northern Areas barring possibly Baltistan(?).

The Kashmir valley (which is what the conflict is really about and what Pakistan really wants) would choose independence if it were on the table (something neither country would ever seriously contemplate).

If India and Pakistan are the only choices its difficult to say who they'de choose if any. At the moment Pakistan (despite recent interesting survey's to the contrary) would still most probably enjoy greater support than India, because of the Kashmir valley's resentment towards the heavy Indian troop deployment there, but this doesnt by any stretch of the imagination mean they would want to join Pakistan. The Kashmiris know of the territory that Pakistan has unilaterally ceded forever to China without their permission, they know of the pathetically dysfunctional internal state of Pakistan and POK, thus as time passes by unless Pakistan can continue to flame the fires of jihad, they will eventually lose their influence with Kashmiri's, who will surely realise the numerous benefits of remaining within a secular, stable and increasingly prosperous India. The tide has already began to turn once again, this time against Pakistan and they know it, India just has to be patient and wait.

Another important thing in India's favour and something Pakistan has tried its level best to destroy is the concept of "Kashmiriyat". While Kashmiriyat has been torn to pieces and hanging by a thread today, the Kashmiri Hindus are still considered by the kashmiri muslims as an essential element of the valley's collective identity and till they fully return to their homes they feel they will not be complete. But few Hindu's are willing to risk their lives in returning, so long as the murderous jihadi's are still active. When they hopefully do one day return, they would never accept the valley becoming part of Pakistan, because they know what the position of the few Hindu's still left remaining in that so called "land of the pure". Should any attempt be made ever in this regard, the Hindu's of the valley would certainly demand for their "Punan Kashmir" homeland to be carved out the valley and given the status of a union territory of India.
Thus Pakistan would be the death of Kashmiriyat!

India's Energy Diplomacy

2005-02-09T03:50:00.000-08:00

The PR machine of union oil minister Mani Shankar Aiyar has been in overdrive in recent weeks with news of all sorts of mega deals.
I developed an extreme dislike of him from his days as the leading Congress party/Gandhi family sycophant at the Indian Express newpaper. Just looking at the smug half psychotic smile plastered on his face makes me sick. Little did i know then that his unashamedly biased views as a self-proclaimed "secular fundamentalist" columnist would eventually land him to a plum job within the new government.

This is something that has always puzzled me about Parliamentary democracy. How is it that politicians that have little or no knowledge about their respective ministries are expected to run them effectively.

Mani "madman" Aiyar for instance, has apparently just signed a massive US $40-60 billion deal with Iran for gas supply over 25 years as well as a 20% stake in the another oil field, but during a press statement made the factual blooper that Iran had the world's largest gas reserves when in fact it is Russia. How can we have confidence in his ability to negiotiate crucial details such as the price where the Iranians tried to break our balls when he cant even get such simple facts right.

Also when speaking on the status of the US $4.5 billion gas pipeline from Iran to India through Pakistan, he said he was very keen and confident a deal would be reached soon. In my view he's being way to eager when he should be playing his cards close to his chest as the number one rule of diplomacy is reciprocity. In any case i generally believe the pipeline to be a very bad idea that is being pushed for very dubious reasons. To have a country like Pakistan controlling the tap on a major future source of energy to India and paying them $700 million in annual transit fees for the privilege is like hiring someone to guard your store even after knowing he's a felon who used to rob stores.
Even if the pipeline goes ahead, how is it that Pakistan will be able to ensure the safety of the pipeline when they cant even prevent their own domestic pipelines from being blownup by Baluch militants who are engaged in an increasingly intense insurgency.

Speaking of our search for global energy sources, India's Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is bidding for a US $9 billion 15% stake in the troubled Yukos oil company of Russia. ONGC and GAIL are also bidding against each other in tie-ups with Rosneft and Gazprom respectively for the Sakhalain 3 project. Given our supposedly very close friendship with Russia, this would be an excellent chance for us to secure a couple of major energy assets in the new Great Game of the 21st century. So far we've been able to clinch sizeable deals in Sudan, Vietnam, and Sakhalin, but this would be by far the biggest.

Coincidentally the IAF is currently shopping around for 126 fighter jets in a deal worth US $3 billion at roughly $25 million a piece. The main contenders are the Russian MiG-29, the American F16, Sweden's Grippen, and the French Mirage. Given that India has historically been a major consumer of Russian military hardware exports and practically bankrolled much of their defence industries in the 90's, we could use this also as a bit of a bargaining chip to secure access to Russia's vast energy resources.

Interesting the lastest news out today is that the IAF has just signed a US $1 billion contract for 40 indigenously built LCA supersonic fighter aircraft powered by the GE 404F engines from Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

While its good to see that India, which possesses some of the finest engineering minds on earth is increasingly competing head on with other advanced nations by designing, developing and marketing its own sophisticated weapons systems such as the Brahmos missile, i have read too many disconcerting articles on the dreadful track record of government defence establishments ability to meet the army's stringent specifications on major weapons systems without huge cost and time overruns. One can only hope that in the future private sector companies like Larsen & Toubro, the Tatas and others play a much greater role in such defence procurement contracts as is the case in the U.S, which will almost certainly be much more effective in reducing our dependence on foreign suppliers.

Bark of Wisdom

2005-02-07T04:58:00.000-08:00

Even if thou art the worst of sinners thou shalt cross the ocean of sin by the bark of wisdom
- Bhagavad Gita, 4.36.

"Hindutva Rate of Growth"

2005-02-05T03:49:00.000-08:00

Great is the sword and mighty is the pen,

But over all the labouring ploughman's blade

For on its oxen and its husbandmen

An Empire's strength is laid.

- Rudyard Kipling.

For over 5,500 years India has been a pre-eminent civilization.

Throughout history there has seldom been a land of such great wealth and richness, thus one of the reasons for it being so attractive for plunder and conquest by some of the more war-likeraces beyond (Yes, you, Afghan man, look at me when im talking to you and wipe that smirk off your face).

When the Persian Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739, massacring some 30,000-150,000 inhabitants, it is said that so much loot was plundered (a vast wagon train of 10,000 heavily laden elephants, 7,000 horses and 10,000 camels filled, including the famous Kohinoor diamond and Peacock Throne), that the people of Persia were exempt from tax for four years.

Unfortunately Europe knew of this wealth also, thus they set sail to reach India, in the process finding a completely unknown new continent. When they finally made it to the real India, they realised that they had the good fortune to arrive at a point in time when India was once again ripe for conquest. There was a power vacuum, the mighty Mughal empire had collapsed after Aurangzeb's vainglorious Islamic fanaticism and relentless attacks in response by the Sikhs in the North, the Rajput confederacy in the west, the Maratha Peshwa's in the southwest, and the rebellious muslim sultanates in the south.

In 1750, India produced 24.5% of the world's economic output (Huntington, 1997:86), while Great Britain had a little over 2%. India also had the world's largest textile industry, which was a crucial first step for Industrialisation. By 1947, the British imperialists had completely distorted the Indian economy and destroyed the textile industry to fuel their own Industrial revolution,thus reducing India "the Jewel of the British Empire" to the status of a pauper with less than 3% of global output, while Great Britain rose to 21%.

This leprous daybreak, dawn nights fangs have mangled

This is not that long-looked for break of day.

Not that clear dawn in quest of which those comrades

Set out, believing that in heavens wide void

Somewhere must be the stars last halting place

Somewhere the verge of nights slow washing tide,

Somewhere an anchorage for the ship of heartache.

- Faiz.

Thanks to the disastrous economic policies of the congress party, India's Independence in 1947 was essentially a false dawn as it wasted its first 40 years of freedom wallowing in poverty, chasing the mythical socialist utopia, while its share of world output declined further relative to other nations.

Under Jawaharlal Nehru's brand of fabian socialism, India became inward orientated, the government controlled the commanding heights of the economy, discouraged foreign trade and trampled on the spirit of entrepreneurship, but was too busy riding its bureaucratic pony to notice the damage to the very moral fiber of India.

With the policy of Import Substitution Industrialisation (ISI), we went about achieving our aim of self-sufficiency. The problem was that we started at the wrong end. Nehru believed in using machines to make machines. Thus while the ISI policies of nations in East Asia focused on the replacement of consumer goods, India had a disproportionate focus on capital goods. Because this didn’t leverage India's abundant factors of production (ie: cheap labour) and due to the fact that there was only a small market for these goods, they were an enormously inefficient waste of scarce resources.

The other mistake was the fact that we held on to the policy of ISI for far too long while nations of East Asia initially built up their industries then let them trade and compete with the world.

By the mid 1970's when the economy stubbornly refused to grow faster than 3%, which is disastrously slow for a developing country with a burgeoning population, rather then admitting the failure of their borrowed socialist ideology, they instead termed it the ~~"Nehru rate of Growth"~~ "Hindu rate of growth" and put the blame on the supposedly static and backward nature of Hindu society.

For them the solution to the mess they created was not a free market with Indian characteristics, but rather more socialism, thus India was condemned for another decade or so of abysmal growth, till a balance of payments crisis in 1991 finally put a end to the madness and forced the Indian government to begin dismantling its socialist legacy and transition towards a market economy.

Since breaking free from the shackles of socialism and unleashing her people's creative energies,India has marched ahead with rapid economic growth of over 7% year on year, which should rightly be called the Hindutva rate of growth.

But even with the impressive economic achievements attained since 1991, there still are many pseudo-secular socialists who constantly decry the reforms as being anti-poor or pro rich. What they always fail to ever mention, is how or why the poverty level has come down from 40% to 23% in the last decade. What the never explain, is how a bloated inefficient government and bureaucracy that institutionalised corruption on a massive scale, helps the poor, how loss making public sectors enterprises that are propped up by they taxes pay is good for the poor. As India prospers and makes the 21st century hers, I’m sure these traitorous Indians and their disastrous borrowed ideas will eventually die a natural death.

Last year the 8.5% growth rate was the highest ever since the reforms. The demise of the Hindu nationalist BJP government in the elections though was a enormous setback, especially in light of Arun Shourie's bold privatisation program, that had already started paying dividends and would have gone an enormous way in restructuring India's finances and economy.

To keep the momentum going, India must obviously continue reforms and investment,especially in key infrastructure bottlenecks.

Like many economists i also believe that India currently is at an inflection point and ready to take off. China, which started its reforms over a decade earlier, was at a similar point to where India is now in 1992, with FDI at around $11 billion, when its economy took off and never looked back. Today its attracting well over $55 billion in FDI, which is impressive considering India and China were roughly even in most statistics in 1980.

India is close to replicating China's feat right now, provided the right reform program is carried forward aggressively. Last year saw its highest inflow of FII at $8.8 billion and that is likely to be topped this year. Our FDI stands at around $7.4 billion, corporate profits are excellent, foreign trade's growing at well over 25% is likely to double in share by 2010 and the IT sector is absolutely booming, beating the 30% projections and likely to meet the target of $50 billion software and ITes exports by 2008.

While this still wont be nearly enough to catch China in the short term, by 2025 our share of global output will still have risen to over 10% from the current 5.7%, thus becoming the world's third largest economy. China's output by that time will be 25%. But after 2025 and perhaps most probably also much before this date, as the consequences of China's one child policy kicks in among other factors, India will start overtaking China in its rate of growth and begin to narrow the gap. In a Goldman Sach's scenario, by 2050 China will account for 24.1% of world GDP versus 16% for India, while the US will be sandwiched in between with 20.3%.

A chinese proverb says "may you live in interesting times", in the 21st century for India and Indians alike, im sure it will be.

The Story of the Zen Master.

2005-02-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

In a village, a little boy is given a gift of a horse. The villagers all say, "Isn't that fabulous? Isn't that wonderful? What a wonderful gift."

The Zen master says, "We'll see."

A couple years later the boy falls off the horse and breaks his leg. The villagers all say, "Isn't that terrible? The horse is cursed! That's horrible!"

The Zen master says, "We'll see."

A few years later the country goes to war and the government conscripts all the males into the army, but the boy's leg is so badly messed up, he doesn't have to go. The villagers all say, "Isn't that fabulous? Isn't that wonderful?"

The Zen master says, "We'll see."

Mahabharat

2005-02-03T03:48:00.000-08:00

"The Great Seven-fold River
The singer, O ye waters
shall tell your grandeur forth that is beyond compare.
The rivers have come forward triply, seven and seven,
Sindhu in might surpasses all the streams that floweth.
Thou speedest o'er precipitous ridges of the earth,
when thou art Lord and Leader of these moving floods.
His roar is lifted up to heaven above the earth,
he puts forth endless vigour with a flash of light,
like floods of rain that fall in thunder from the cloud,
so Sindhu rushes on bellowing like a bull.
Like mothers to their calves,
Like milch kine with their milk,
so, Sindhu, unto thee the roaring rivers run.
Thou leadest as a warrior king thine army's wings
what time thou comest in the van of those swift streams.
And again,
unable to resolve if this mighty flowing torrent
the colour of liquid graphite is a masculine or feminine being.
Flashing and whitely-gleaming in her mightiness,
she moves along her ample volumes through the realms,
most active of the active,
Sindhu unrestrained,
like to a dappled mare,
beautiful, fair to see".
- Hymn to Maha Sapta Sindhu, Rig Veda.
Great India, Bharat Mata, Hindustan, the ancient homeland of the Hindu's for 5,500 years spanning from the river Sindhu where our civilisation all began with the great cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa to the abode of our god's in the high Himalaya's of the north, bounded along its peninsula by the Indian ocean and finally to its heart and soul on the River Ganges, India surely is one the most geographically well defined regions on earth.

Today this civilisational lebensraum has been reduced to within the borders of modern India, as Pakistan in the west and Bangladesh in the east have been carved out in the name of Islam. Since they have systematically tried of wipe out all remnants of their collective Hindu past and are blissfully high on the opiate of Islam, it seems that the only way to create a greater India once again and reclaim our historical territory would be to develop a missile defence shield (which we are hoping to do) and then literally nuke the bastards. Obviously this is little more than wishful thinking and not a serious prosposal, besides the area would be contaminated and of little use, lol.
With any such modern day equivalent of the Spanish reconquista unlikely, perhaps then it is our fate for our past mistakes and weakness that we should have to uneasily live side by side with them, hopefully in a future that is more amicable than at present.

Nonetheless we should still be immensly proud from the fact that even after a thousand years of some of the most tyrannical Islamic rule imaginable, during in which we suffered enormous losses (from the 17 raids by Ghazni on Somnath to the massacre and destruction at the great international Buddhist universities of Nalanda and Vikramshila by Khilji to the ruins of Vijayanagar among innumerable other atrocities perpetrated), our people and culture still somehow endured and our resilient civilisation still managed to emerge largely intact. We could very well have all become muslims today, not knowing what had happened to our ancestors and how we came to be what we are, not caring, only ready to serve the cause of the newly adopted faith, perhaps even dying for it, fighting against those very "infidels" who our forefathers once belonged to.

Thus while from Morocco to Malaysia other civilistisations that once lay claim to greatness, most notably Persia, were quickly decapitated by the sword of Islam and are today little more than minions of Arab culture. It is only the great Indian civilisation that withstood the onslaught and now we must begin the process of rejuvenation.

While this rejuvenation will naturally take many different forms, i am still sceptical that India can ever realise its ambitions be a world power so long as we are divided, only when we Hindu's are able to fully unite and defeat the pseudo-secular socialist forces and drive out the followers of the arab religion can India achieve its full potential.

The Smiling Buddha

2005-02-02T03:47:00.000-08:00

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to suddenly burst forth at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one". "Now I am become death, shatterer of worlds, annihilating all things". Robert Oppenheimer misquoting Lord Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita.

After our first so called "Smiling Buddha" "peaceful nuclear experiment" at the Pokhran test range in the Rajasthani desert in 1974, we took another 24 years before we fully came out of the closet with our badly kept secret and declared ourselves a nuclear power by conducting five more underground nuclear tests as part of the Pokhran II Shakti series.

What disappoints me is that we basically more or less rested on our laurels in the long intervening years between the two tests and waited for circumstances for force us into a new round of testing. It was only in the mid to late 80's, when it was increasingly becoming clear the pakistan was close to getting the bomb as signaled by the Pressler Amendment, that India was finally stung into action and into building a credible nuclear deterrent.

Though we rightfully refused to sign the discriminatory and hypocritical nuclear non proliferation treaty and comprehesive test ban treaty, which even Bush administration has refused to ratify, we still always seem to like to constrain ourselves, this time by putting a moratorium on further tests in order to appease world opinion.
Between 1998 and 2002, when we were under sanctions, we should have taken advantage of the situation in the knowledge there was little more the world powers could do and gone ahead and tested many more types of nuclear devices. Though i'm by no means a nuclear expert it seems inconceivable to me that after only five tests we should be satisfied of our current capabilities, especially considering that the US which though already having conducted well over a thousand tests has signaled its desire to once again resume testing, this time tactical nuclear weapons.

Now that we've missed this opportunity and with the sanctions lifted thanks to 9/11, further nuclear tests are a much more difficult proposition, especially considering the U.S stand off with Iran and North Korea over their programs. Though if one or more of these nations do eventually decide to go nuclear, therefore smashing open the exclusive nuclear weapon club, India could use this as a pretext to conduct further test of its own.

Another self imposed constraint i don't understand is our no first use policy, which contradicts our stated threat perception. At the time of the tests, defence minister George Fernandes stated like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel before him during the maudlin days of "Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai", that China was our number one enemy and that the tests were in response to a legitimate threat from this hostile neighbour as opposed to Pakistan where we already had a vastly superior conventional force.

If China is indeed our number one threat, India must also renounce our no first use policy and develop an effective first strike capability with the development of the Agni III and other longer range missiles, we will be able to strike deep inside China and target all its major cities, to deter any aggression and hopefully quicken the progress of talks for the settlement of our border disputes. With China on our doorstep for the first time in history due to its conquest of the historical buffer of Tibet and with the Himalayas no longer the formidable barrier they once were, the chinese are in effect encircling us using Pakistan and Gwador in the west and Bangladesh and Burma in the east. But im sure two can play at this game by India increasing its strategic military cooperation with Japan and Vietnam in order to frustrate Chinese designs.

On the other hand, if we continue to rely solely on our second strike capability, i believe India should make it plainly clear that in the case of a nuclear war with Pakistan, after wiping Pakistan off the world map for good, historical wrongs must and will also be righted in a final act of reckoning, with inevitable strikes on Saudi Arabia, the financial and historical ideological backer of Pakistan as well as on China for being the source of crucial nuclear technology transfers (ie; Uranium for enrichment and bomb design) . Plus in the case of possible nuclear retaliation against Saudi Arabia, it would be the ideal opportunity for that arab recluse "allah" to show himself and intervene like he was so prone to doing 1400 years ago. Though one may be accused of talking way too casually about such terrible hypothetical scenarios, nonetheless i believe if India (god forbid) is ever caught in such a eventuality, if we are going down well take others with us.

P.S: (Why did Pakistan take a full two weeks after the Indian tests to explode its own atomic bomb? Because they had to translate all the foreign manuals).
This applies even more so for their new coat of paint North Korean and Chinese made missiles which they like to name after the foreign invaders that conquered India and thus themselves also. Perhaps it would be more appropriate if they named their missiles "Uncle Mao" "and "Dear Leader Kim".

The Path of Righteoussness

2005-02-01T01:18:00.000-08:00

With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my crooked arm for a pillow - is not joy to be found therein? Riches and honors acquired through unrighteousness are to me as the floating clouds - Confucious.

Hail Queen Sonia, Empress of India.

2005-01-30T03:37:00.000-08:00

The result in the national election last year was one of the worst days in the history of India. Not only was the BJP voted out of office, but a foreigner whose only qualification is the surname of the family she married into, was on her way to reclaim the family throne.

What was even more pathetic was watching the behavior of the eunuchs who surround the queen bee like they did around Indira Gandhi, begging her to become Prime minister. Have we as Indians truly progressed from the days of the Maharaja's or when Queen Victoria announced herself "Empress of India". The once great congress party has today been reduced to little more than a pathetic shell of former itself due to decades of shameless nepotism by the Nehru/Gandhi family.

While those not familiar with India might think my opposition to Sonia is merely due to her being a foreigner and my xenophobia. This i can assure you is not so, in fact if longtime indophiles like Mark Tully ever wanted to become India's PM i'd be like...bring it. Hell even if George Harrison or Alfred Ford was India's PM, i'd be like...right on!

No, my hatred of Sonia Gandhi is more substantial than that. First of all i simply cant stand the incredibly shrill speeches she makes, i hate the where she stands on almost every major political issue, i hate her self serving family, i hate the political party she leads and most of all i have a blinding hatred of (and desire to purge) all the pseudo-secular socialists who underpin its bankrupt ideology through their control of much of the media and other important institutions.

So even after supposedly claiming the high moral ground by her act of renunciation (perhaps the pope should canonize her), Sonia continues to wield the real power behind the scenes of the Manmohan Singh government. This is blatantly borne out by the fact she has accepted General Musharaffs invitation to visit Pakistan. How dare a person who is not minister let alone an Indian interfere and undermine an extremely sensitive foreign policy issue of vital importance to national security.
If it were a strictly personal visit it wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but Sonia sure isn’t going there to discuss the prices of onions.

The Foolish Wolf

2005-01-30T03:36:00.000-08:00

A hungry wolf comes upon a horse mired in the mud. The wolf prepares for a feast, but the horse asks him whether he shouldn't pull his meal out of the mud first. So the wolf performs this chore and prepares, once again, to eat.

But shouldn't the wolf first clean his food? the horse argues. The wolf acknowledges that this might be a good idea and licks the mud off the horse. The wolf is finally ready to dig in when the horse says, "Hey, there's some writing on the hoof of my hind leg. Before you eat me, read that, please." The curious wolf walks around the horse, who lifts one of his hind legs and easily bashes in the wolf's skull with a single kick.

The wolf, alone and dying in the mud, howls to himself "I was a fool.... Am I the owner that I should have pulled the horse from the mud? Am I the mother who should have licked and cleaned the horse's body? When did I learn to read and write? I was stupid and now I am dying."
- Mongolian folktale.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

2005-01-30T03:35:00.000-08:00

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
the best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity".
- WB Yeats, The Second Coming.

When the UPA government came to power, the stock markets went into a tailspin and foreign investors headed for the hills because of the communist support the new alliance needed to hold power. While i was and still am nervous about the progress of the next generation economic reforms, i knew that India had come to far down the road of liberalization to accept any major rollbacks forced upon it by the communists thus returning to the bad old days of the license Raj.

With the appointment of free marketwallahs like Montek Singh Ahluwalia and P. Chidambaram to important posts within Manmohan Singh government we were assured that the reforms would continue.
Since then despite this promise, weve seen the communist make one insane demand after the other on the government. They have shouted so much at the top of their voices for so long, that they have lost all power of reasoning. The fact is that the communists have absolutely no mandate whatsoever to force their agenda on the rest of the nation, especially considering that they only hold power in 2 states out of 27. Even there, Kerala is little more than a remittance economy, while West Bengal has been in terminal decline throughout the uninterrupted 27-year rule of the Communists.

Just how does a non-performing government with a defunct ideology discredited worldwide stay in power for so long i hear you ask? Well its quite simple really, all you've gotta do is allow millions of illegal Muslim Bangladeshi immigrants to migrate to your state and then get them on the voter registry lists, therefore guaranteeing yourself a loyal vote bank you can always rely on to stay in power. While this strategy works well in the short run, it is bound to be disastrous in the long run not only for the communists but also for national security. As one should well know, Marx and mohammed don’t make for good bed fellows. One has to only look across the border in Bangladesh to see the pathetic status of the communist movement let alone in other Islamic countries like Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia where im pretty sure they wouldn't even exist.

For India, the communist lust for power at all costs will be an even bigger nightmare. Since the time of partition when the muslim league lobbied for a complete and not moth eaten Pakistan, there have been calls for a greater Bangladesh (absurd as it is). For most of that period since this was little more than a dream, but now as each day goes past, little by little it looks like becoming more of a reality. Many districts close to the border already have once again become a muslim majority with scores of madrases churning out countless anti-India muslim extremists. A massive swathe of territory stretching from eastern Bihar to lower Assam lying along the extremely strategic chickens neck passage that connects India proper to its northeastern states is now vulnerable. One can only hope something is done to address the situation, before a second partition of India is upon us, for that will surely necessitate the complete annihilation of the muslims in India for once and for all.

Yudisthira at Heavens Gate

2005-01-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

The great king Yudhisthira had ruled over the Pandava people for many years, and, among his many achievements had waged a successful war against the forces of evil. It was time for him to withdraw from the world, and to enter the Celestial City of the Immortals.

King Yudhisthira set off on the long journey into the northern mountains, along with his four brothers and his beloved wife Drapaudi. They were soon joined on their journey by a small, ill-kempt stray dog.

The journey was hard. They tired. And in the course of the journey first one brother and then another, then the third and then the fourth, fell, exhausted, and died. Unable to do anything for them, Yudhisthira and Drapaudi continued on the journey, followed by the dog. Eventually Drapaudi, too, fell by the wayside and died.

With utmost sadness, Yudhisthira turned and continued, the dog faithfully keeping pace. At last Yudhisthira and the dog reached the gates of the Celestial City, home of the Immortals. Yudhisthira bowed humbly and asked to be admitted. The great sky God Indra arrived to meet Yudhisthira and to welcome him to heaven.

But then Yudhisthira said that without his beloved wife and his four brothers, he did not have the heart to enter. Indra replied that these loved ones were already in Heaven, they had come before him.

This lifted Yudhisthira's heart, but he had one more request.
"This dog has faithfully accompanied me on this long journey, never left my side. I cannot leave him now outside heaven's gate. My heart is full of love for him."
Indra shook his head. The earth quaked.

"You, Yudhisthira, through your goodness and courage, and by enduring this long and difficult journey, have earned your way into heaven. But you cannot bring a dog into heaven. A dog would pollute the Celestial City. Leave the dog behind Yudhisthira. It is no sin."

"But where would he go? He has given up the pleasures of the earth to be my companion. I cannot desert him now." Yudhisthira turned to leave.

Indra asked, astonished, "You would abandon heaven just for the sake of a dog?"
Yudhisthira declared that long ago he had vowed never to turn his back on anyone needing his protection and help. "And so," he concluded, "I will not abandon my loyal friend."
Yudisthira turned from heaven's gate and began to walk away.

At that moment a remarkable thing happened. The faithful dog was transformed into the god Dharma, the god of righteousness and justice.

And Indra declared, "You are a good man, Yudhisthira. You have shown loyalty and love to a small, faithful dog and compassion for all creatures, ready to renounce for yourself all the rewards of heaven for this humble dog's sake. You shall be honored in heaven!"

And so Yudhisthira entered heaven and was reunited with his wife and with brothers to enjoy eternal happiness.

Dharma

2005-01-28T03:30:00.000-08:00

"Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, of unfathomed depth?
Death was not then, nor was there immortality: no sign was there, the divider of day and night.
That one thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness, this all was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of warmth was born that singularity.
Thereafter rose desire in the beginning, desire the primal seed and germ of spirit.
Sages, who searched with their hearts, discovered the existent’s kinship in the non-existent.
Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder.
Who verily knows and who can declare it, when was it born and whence comes this creation?
The gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then when it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows it not" - Rig-Veda 10.129.7

As a Hindu i am occasionally asked by other people and even often ask myself whether i believe in Hinduism. After giving it much thought, i always end up finding this question perhaps somewhat of a misunderstanding of such a vast, diverse religion and to me personally irrelevant.
But to answer the question in a round about way i usually like to say that the core aim of Hinduism and therefore a Hindu is to acquire the truth and since Hindu's believe there are many paths to the truth, there's no need for one to have blind faith or devotion in any particular one, not that one necessarily cant or shouldn't.
An invocation in the Upanishad says...

"Truth alone triumphs, not untruth.
Lead me from the unreal to the Real.
Lead me from darkness to Light.
Lead me from death to Immortality".

What make Hinduism so unique among world religions is this intrinsic philosophical realisation that there are many paths to the Truth / God, which can be summed up in its central motto "let noble truths come from all directions".

If you happen to deny the existence of God, that's fine too, Hinduism has always accommodated if not necessarily accepted such alternate views (Nastika) as exemplified by Buddhism and Jainism. In fact, within Hinduism and Ancient India there have been many atheist schools of thought such as Charvakanism that strongly advocated materialism and rational thought as can be seen in their following exhortation...

"While life is yours, live joyously;
None can escape death's searching eye:
When once this frame of ours they burn,
How shall it ever again return".

Unlike the 3 major monotheistic Abrahamic religions, Hinduism for the most part is not a "revealed" religion which claims to have a monopoly on the Truth / God.
Like other Eastern religions, Hinduism is a philosophical religion that is the sum of Indian religious thought, practice and tradition for over that last 5,500 years and as such is the worlds oldest continually existing religion.
It has no founder, no one supreme holy texts but rather several of them and no set definition of what it means to be a Hindu. At the same time, Hinduism is much more than just merely a religion, it is also synonymous with Indian culture and civilisation.

Hindu scriptures and most Hindus generally agree on the existence of one supreme impersonal divine being (Brahman) that can be worshipped in many forms, thus explaining the proliferation of the numerous personal deities (devas) that most non-Hindu's are familiar with when they think about our religion. To Hindu's it matters not how many or to which God one prays to, God can be reached through whichever way is endearing to the believer so long as its sincere.
A popular Hindu invocation says...
"O Lord, please forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations:
Thou art everywhere, but I worship you here;
Thou art without form, but I worship you in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayers and salutations.
Lord, please forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations".

Nevertheless there are still four principle orthodox ways of achieving union (Yoga) of the soul (Atman) which is the body's immortal nectar (Amrit) with God (Brahman) and therefore liberation (Moksha / Nirvana for Buddhists) from the cycle of death and rebirth (Samsara) and thus the illusion (Maya) of our perceived reality as opposed to our supreme cosmic reality. These ways are Bhakti Yoga (the path of love and devotion), Karma Yoga (the path of right action), Raja Yoga (the path of meditation) and Jnana Yoga (the path of knowledge and wisdom).

These are complemented by the four stages of human life: Brahmacharya (Student Life) where one acquires knowledge, self discipline at the feet of a Guru (Spiritual Teacher) and learns to live a life of Dharma (Righteousness) , Grihastha (Household Life) where one fufils ones duty to family and society, Vanaprastha (Retired Life) where one gradually withdraws from the world and freely shares wisdom with others, Sannyasa (Renounced Life) where one completely renounces the world and dedicates themselves to spiritual pursuits.

While is free to follow any or all of these four paths to liberation, Bhakti Yoga is generally considered the ultimate form of religious expression. Though personally as an agnostic Hindu who considers all notion of a personal god or gods found in all the major religion as blasphemous, i cant say im a big fan of the Bhakti practice of worshiping idols and incarnations of God whether in homes or temples which i disfavour both on philosophic and often on aesthetic grounds but that currently is prevalent among the masses in Hinduism. I would prefer an emphasis away from such practices and towards Hinduisms more abstract expressions of worship and devotion. But to quote Mahatma Gandhi on this very issue and at the risk of sounding condescending "You dare not take the crutch from a lame man's arm until you have taught the cripple how to walk".

Another problem Hinduism falls prey upon is what Tagore noticed in a conversation with H.G. Wells, namely that there is too much religious tolerance in India, so much so that any sort of injustice can be perpetrated in the name of religion, both by its own practitioners as well as those by a particularly nasty foreign arab religion, without anyone batting an eyelid.

Though Hinduism much like India itself has always at its own pace changed with the times as is indeed happening today, nonetheless some purposeful housecleaning is obviously in order and gradual reforms brought about through greater social consciousness/activism and community outreach are what is needed to keep our great Hindu tradition strong.

The National Anthem Controversy

2005-01-27T06:00:00.000-08:00

Better than the entire world, is our Hindustan;
we are its nightingales, and it is our garden abode
Though in foreign lands we may reside, with our homeland our hearts abide,
Regard us also to be there, where exist our hearts
That mountain most high, neighbor to the skies;
it is our sentinel; it is our protector
In the lap of whose, play thousands of rivers;
gardens they sustain; the envy-of-the-heavens of ours
O waters of the Ganga mighty, do you recall the day
when on your banks, did land the caravan of ours
Religion does not teach us to bear ill-will among us
We are Indians; India is our homeland.
While Greece, Egypt, Rome have all been wiped out
till now yet remains, this civilization of ours
Something there is that keeps us,our entity from being eroded
For ages has been our enemy, the way of the world.
- Saare jehan se aachaa Hindustan humaara.

Some punk with obviously nothing better to do, has petitioned the supreme court to remove the word Sindh from the national anthem because the province of Sindh is no longer part of India and went fully to Pakistan during partition.
While im not sure exactly this will achieve (except for some unwarranted publicity), i think this person is forgetting our civilisation began on the banks of the Indus in Sindh. It is we alone who are the claimants to that heritage. For the Pakistani converts, their falsified history begins and ends with Islam. For Indians and for the millions of Hindu Sindhi refugees who had to flee from their homeland in 1947, the land of Sindh has a special place in our history.

This controversy though does hightlight one of the problems with our national anthem "Jana Gana Mana" that was chosen instead of the far more popular freedom struggle songs of "Vande Mataram" and"Sare Jahan Se Achcha Hindustan Hamara" which should have been the natural choices. So if we are going to tinker with the national anthem, we might as well get rid of it altogether while were at it, alas the latter two compositions also come with their own historical baggage. One being written by Iqbal who off course latter became the ideological inspiration for the creation of Pakistan and the other "Vande Mataram" opposed by some sections of muslims, therefore needing to be appeased once again by pseudo-secularists.

The Gods Must be Crazy

2005-01-27T05:59:00.000-08:00

Look not above, there is no answer there
Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer
Near is as near to God as any Far
And here is just the same deceit as there.
- Omar Khayyam.

After the tsunami that hit Asia, it amazed me that so many of those who managed to survive were thanking god they were spared by his/her? supposedly infinite compassion, grace, mercy, what have you, while all around them tens of thousand lay dead. Many even pointed to the fact that "some" temples, mosques, & churches still remained standing, Solid foundations? (im not talking about the spiritual foundations either) while everything else was washed away, therefore being a sign from god.
Now religious leaders are saying that the tsunami occurred due to the sins of the people. This argument is also very strange cause it always seems that time n again its the worlds poor who suffer most from such events, whether it is cyclones in Bangladesh, earthquakes in turkey or just about every disaster you can think of in Africa. Interestingly Aceh, the worst hit place is also by far Indonesia's most conservative muslim province. Instead of punishing the poor n innocent, one may ask why god doesnt send a massive tsunami heading towards dens of "vice and decadence" like Ibiza or Monaco or the great satan Amrika.

If there does exist a god, it seems its a impersonal being who signed a build, operate and then transfer contract. People pray all the time for world peace, will it ever happen? So what makes people think that god will answer their other more selfish prayers. I believe deep down most such people know this, but are hedging their bets just in case a benevolent god does somehow show up and come to their aid.

This benevolent god is essentially the Santa Claus for grown ups, keeping tabs on whose been naughty and nice. But while for some it might be comforting to know there's a higher power watching over us in heaven, to me it is somewhat like the case of the little child who is told not to do bad things and in turn is promised rewards if he behaves himself, which might be fine. But when he grows up and understands himself fully and still you reward him for the good things he has done, you are actually insulting him.

As someone who has a inkling that when one dies, thats it, the end, nothing happens and you go nowhere, kinda of like that state of affairs before one is born, even going to hell is a bonus.
Besides who wants to go to heaven with all those goodie two shoes anyways. wouldn't hell be so much more exciting, having extra hot cups of chai, discussing religion and politics with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mohammed, various Popes etc.

Republic Day Parade

2005-01-26T05:49:00.000-08:00

My first post ever.
Today is Australia day and for whatever reason i've decided to start a blog.
Coincidentally today is also India's Republic Day.
While most Aussies just invite over their mates for a few beers and throw some snags on the BBQ, India a normally pacifist nation likes to showcase its military might.

If our enemies wanted to attack us, today would be the day to do it. With so much military personnel & hardware on display you'd wonder whether anyone's still left guarding our borders. With all those sitting ducks, it's a Pearl Harbour waiting to happen.
But who doesn't love the spectacle, its the one day of the year where our nation can beat its chest and say to the rest of the world.... you want a piece of this, biyatch!!!
My favourite part is when they bring out the nuclear capable missiles mounted on the back of those trucks that look like they could star in the next terminator movie. It is sometimes said that missiles are like a nations penis, the longer they are the better, but they don't count for much if you haven't got the balls to ever use them.

Meanwhile, at the border...