On Lord Krishna and Hinduism... in response to Taslima Nasreen

Dear Taslima ji, (reference to your article here -> http://freethoughtblogs.com/taslima/2013/08/29/india-is-celebrating-5241th-birth-anniversary-of-krishna-the-god)

While you are entitled to your views, I for one would urge you to go deeper into understanding the true Hindu ideology and religious beliefs, before you make up your opinions and even further put them to expression.

Your understanding is so extremely simplistic and belittling, as watching a star hundred times larger than our Sun, from millions of lights years afar on earth and making sense of it. Even my knowledge of Islam or Latin literature far exceeds your understanding of Hinduism in content, which is not much to compare.

In short, Hinduism is not about Lord Krishna or Lord Ram or even Hanuman, Ravana or Arjun, these are probably all ancient beings, divine or otherwise, that rule Hindu imagination, but these are only a few more popular ones among the whole pantheon of millions of other deities/gods we have... core to our belief is that we consider all life is a part of one supreme source (the formless and omnipresent conscience represented by the sound of Om) and any intelligent being can attain the same state as the God almighty in life and vice versa - god can also manifest itself in millions of avatars in various forms, human or animal... which is why Hinduism is so tolerant and assimilative of all religions - that many Hindus would even take prophets from all over the world including Jesus, Mohammed, Zarathustra to be divine reincarnations and would not hesitate to pray or bow to them if they feel the divinity in a church or mosque or synagogue... we believe in many paths to god, not just one, and definitely not just the one we preach.... some offshoot religions like Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc were similarly assimilated and co-revered by Hindus over time as we did not consider each other mutually threatening and basic principles were the same.

Our issue with Abrahamic religions, is that they seek or give no option to co-exist and seek to denigrate and annihilate hinduism without even understanding it - pure bigotry - only accepting their book and their name for god as sacred. This makes Hindus take an antagonistic stand towards these religions only in self-preservation.

What I have mentioned above is also a very generic belief core to most hindus, and as one of my other friends elaborated in another comment, we have multiple schools of thought and philosophy, each championed by inspiring and charismatic icons in ancient times, leading to Dvaita, Advaita, Sankhya, Karma, Brahmo, Bhakti, Mimamsa, Nastik etc branches of Hinduism, with further subdivisions like Shaivite/Vaishnavite... some are against idol-worship in particular like Abrahamic religions... and while many do practise Idol-worship, it is not the same as in animistic premitive so-called "pagan" tribal ways... it has more profound and reasoned objectives - about which you can read from Abul Fazl in Akbarnama... and I am sure it will open your eyes.

It is another story that over time  the religious practices by ordinary Hindus may have lost this profound foundation, and could look similar to a premitive animalistic tribal form to the uninitiated, and the society has become quagmired in caste system, women supression (despite praising the women form as supreme Goddess Shakti that completes Shiva), sheer idolatory and superstitions. Our orthodoxy and religious leaders haven't done a good job of keeping true Hinduism alive in the masses.

I have no knowledge or opinion on Islam and Christianity worth sharing here, hence my silence on them. I hope I have been able to ignite some curiosity in your mind about my religion and hope this would force you to think how much you know or don’t know about the subject that you have written about in your article.

Kashmir... the side of the story that's often missed

While all the Indian media, parroted the separatist line on Kashmir over the last couple of weeks, about the demands of Azadi from Kashmiris in the valley... a "blog"... not a news story.. came up on TOI about an unprecedented dialogue on the issue involving the real kashmiris... wonder how this never got reported in the  mass media?? If only, we could provide support to similar initiatives, we could atleast solve part of the problem.

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indus-calling/entry/an-unprecedented-dialogue-on-kashmir

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indus-calling/entry/kashmir-s-azadi-with-the

Another interesting news story... came around the same time... now this is what the idiots in the Indian media should be covering instead of the handful of protestors pelting stones on the roads...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Protesters-in-Kashmir-face-stones-their-own-bitter-pill/articleshow/6420878.cms

Spineless Government and Politics of India

If you've been following the recent spate of Naxalite (Maoist) violence in several states of India.. you'd wonder what the law and order machinery in this country is doing? The massacre continues... everyday these naxalites attack our security forces and civilians with daredevilry and kill in scores... they have the audacity of challenging the state itself, declaring that they are on track to overthrow the state by 2025.... the audacity to attack at will and get away with it.

And what is the government's response?? well what did you expect... have we not be desensitized to violence and gore already, with the gaping wounds in Kashmir, in the NorthEast, and now all over India. It is not even front page news nowadays unless the casualties are in the hundreds, and our government does nothing but bury the incidents in stong condemnations, investigation committees, blame games, and political one upmanship... "How dare you challenge my government??... so what if terrorists attacked the parliament, or held the country hostage in Mumbai, or hijacked our airplanes and got our home minister to personally deliver terrorists languishing in our jails across the border... if there were 5 such incidents during the tenure of this government, there were more when the opposition was in power... so please don't politicize the issue... and let us sleep!!"

The maoists are on the rampage, the numbers of casualties pour in daily - 20, 15, 40, 200, 10, 12, 25... and our home minister is struggling to get cabinet approval to use airpower (read helicopters, gunships, reconaaisance aircraft etc.) to help our land troops in their fight against the guerillas. The government is wary of losing support at the grassroots level in the maoist dominated villages, where many of them are known to support the maoists covertly, and hence no political party wants to risk an all out confrontation. Hence all sorts of rubbish arguments against the use of military and airpower and any kind of meaningful strict action... instead meek talk about engaging them in dialogue, bring them into mainstream, and maintaining a superfluous facade of state resistance in the form of undertrained and demoralized reserve paramilitary forces, with little or no strategy and no firepower, fed like fodder in this war, while the sucker politicians and bureacrats can ponder forever in inaction. The poor and brave policemen, who lay their lives everyday, are like expendable pawns for our government.

I still remember that day when I was in Canada, and the news came in about a few policemen that were killed fighting some drugs mafia holed up in a farm in some suburb. The whole country mourned the loss with such grief.. the flags were lowered to half mast across the country, people paid their homage to the slain martyrs and government gave all the aid and support it could to the families. I only wish, that all politics aside, if we could atleast give the due to the security forces in this country, we could claim to be a responsible nation capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with the greatest world powers.

Is India really Shining?

Most readers of this post, the elite few in this country, with access to broadband network connection and computers, educated in English medium schools and prestigious universities, carry a notion of 'India Shining'. The shine is eye-caching in the urban centers of development like Gurgaon, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad etc with the mushrooming new skyrises, shopping malls and multiplexes, 8-lane national highways, 7 digit salaries in the IT and Financial Sectors, the rise of the Sensex from 5000 to 20000, and revolutionizing upheavals in various industry segments like telecommunications, road tranport, commercial transport, air-travel, banking and investment, insurance, media and entertainment, education, power & energy, and information technology,

No doubt India has seen tremendous growth in the last 2 decades and it has been for good, but we need to look beneath this shining carpet for the dirt within, that covers the majority of our population, who are not only bereft of any benefits of this growth, but have no means to voice their opinion or anguish at the widening gap between the haves and the have nots. And the greatest irony is that this majority of have nots in our country has the decisive say in the formation of a so-called democratic government that in turn choses to ignore the very same masses to play in the hands of the rich.

I do not mean to discredit the achivements of our nation, but is it really shining? Is it like the shining glare from the surface of water in a dirty pond, that makes it appear beautiful, hiding away the rotting filth within? Just the other day I read two contrasting stories on the newspaper frontpage, and the agony and pain I felt within was revolting. One reported that the Supreme Court reprimanded the government for treating our soldiers and martyrs as beggars, by offering them a measly Rs 1000 (USD 20) as monthly pension, and when challenged by the families of the martyrs of Kargil, it went to the court to fight it out, and on the other side, another story reported that the MPs and MLAs of Delhi are demanding allocation of posh apartments in the newly constructed Games village in New Delhi post the Commonwealth games from the government. Can it get any worse?

Lessons from the resurgence of the Congress Party in Indian Politics and the fall of BJP

Towards the end of 2003, the demise of Congress Party seemed inevitable, and the new bloc in power, BJP, seemed confident, probably overconfident, of its dominance on the Indian political scene for the time to come. Congress leaders, whatever were left of them, had pinned all hopes of survival in the hands of the last known figure of the Nehru-Gandhi 'Parivar', Sonia Gandhi, who till that time had no experience with Indian Politics, Indian Culture, Language, or anything Indian for that matter; her only credential being her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi, the last scion of the Nehru-Gandhi parivar, and a former Prime Minister of India. Today, it seems more distant in the past than the Indian Independence day, and Congress has returned back to dominate the Indian Politics, with BJP clearly losing its grip. As I look back to 2003 and the events thereafter, as a management student I see invaluable lessions in leadership, management, organizational behavior, Indian politics, branding and strategy. I would end this post here, and will share more thoughts on this later.... but hope its food for thought...