adarsh bhat’s blog

We live in an interesting time. Where we once simply remarked that India is changing, today we get to see that change happen. A liberal India is emerging out of the shackles, freeing herself from the grips of the ‘moral police’. Being open-minded and a free-thinker yourself, I am sure that you agree with me when I say that the recent Delhi High Court judgment reading down IPC section 377 is a giant leap for equality in India.

The judgment has been given a lot of press coverage in India and abroad. It deserves every bit of it, and not only because it decriminalizes homosexuality. The judgment has thrown the focus back on the very basis on which our society, country and constitution were formed.

If there is one constitutional tenet that can be said to be the underlying theme of the Indian Constitution, it is that of ‘inclusiveness’. This Court believes that the Indian Constitution reflects this value deeply ingrained in Indian society, nurtured over several generations. The inclusiveness that Indian society traditionally displayed, literally in every aspect of life, is manifest in recognising a role in society for everyone.

I believe that this judgment is historic, and the next generation of Indians will look at us with shock, and ask us what took us so long.

I realize that not everyone approves of gays and lesbians. I would like to ask these people how many gay friends they have; how many gay people they know on a personal level. My guess is that the answer is zero. Zilch. Nada. It is easy to judge an entire population or community en-masse when you don’t know anyone in the group on a personal level. It is easy to think that Muslims are terrorists; to think that blacks are inferior to whites; to think that queers are perverts. But go meet a real man who follows Islam, a real black person and a real gay man. You will find that your blanket opinions will shift sooner than you thought possible.

Go out and make friends with a gay man or woman. My hunch is that you will find that person personable and just like everybody else. (I don’t mean to suggest that you should make love to someone of the same sex. That would be entirely up to you.)

“Well,” you say, “so where does one go to find a gay friend?”

My answer to that question is that you don’t have to ‘go’ anywhere. All you have to do is open your mind and your eyes, and look around you. Queers are everywhere. It could be your close friend, someone in your class, someone at your workplace, your brother or sister, an uncle, an aunt or even a parent. But they may not be out to you yet, because they think you wouldn’t understand. Let people around you know that you are OK with homosexuality — tell them that — and you will find that they will come out to you themselves.

It is entirely possible, dare I say very likely, that you already have a gay friend. You just don’t know about it yet.

homosexuality, india, society

Awesome quotes about the Mangalore incident:

We were just having a good time and next you know people pulling your hair, hitting you and calling you names like prostitutes, whores..
One of the victims

…if I apologize, the girls will do it again
Prasad Attavar, state convener, Sri Rama Sena

Drinking by women is not Indian culture. It’ll morally degrade our society. Women are our mothers and they should behave like that
Prasad Attavar, state convener, Sri Rama Sena

For years, we have been undertaking various programmes to see that the culture of boys and girls going hand-in-hand to pubs and malls is stopped
K Narahari, RSS secretary in the southern states

The Sene would continue with the same if the authorities and people don’t stop diluting Hindu culture, allowing girls and women resorting to the “shameful act”
Jitesh Kumar, state co-convener, Sri Rama Sena

Even Lord Sri Rama will be ashamed to know the act carried out by Sri Rama Sene. If they (Sene) is concerned about women, let them build toilets in rural areas, where women till today have to wait for sunset to answer Nature’s call…
Vatal Nagaraj, Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha president and former MLA

It is against Indian culture and women are to be blamed for the episode. Government has given licence and permitted men to visit pubs
Bhargavi, President, Karnataka Mahila Rakshana Vedike (state womens protection forum)

The main agenda of Sri Ram Sena is an end to fashion shows, which they say is against Hindu culture.
News report

india, society

In another such barbaric incident, a man is murdered and another is lynched over a cell phone.

Update: Video removed because ibnlive.com expects me to pay the price of tolerating pop-ups if I have to keep the video here.

india, society

As an unfortunate consequence of the so-called war against terror, the common man has had to give up more and more. The government is doing it’s part in keeping the FUD going.

• CNN Video – Mouse click could plunge city in to darkness
• The Guardian – Charred chilli dip causes terror alert
  

  If we can’t enjoy spicy dips then the terrorists have already won! They hate us for our spicy Thai cuisine!

politics, society, technology

(A few backdated posts about my early experiences in the US are due.)

I have a television at the apartment. I find it really hard to watch any tv. I have a strong bias that nothing is good on television here.

The last time I was here, I watched Fox News for 15 min and could not watch television for a month after that. CNN is better, but news channels here still lack the neutrality that I could find back in India. As it is, they play only US and Pakistan news. I like the food channel though. I haven’t started watching soaps and sitcoms yet. Need to figure out what channel they are on.

NPR on radio is much better. That’s the station my radio alarm is set to. Each morning I wake up to news about the presidential candidates – for instance how Hillary Clinton didn’t leave the waitress a tip.

I use television mostly as a way to keep me awake. On occasion, I’m really bored at the apartment. When I feel that I might fall asleep on the couch before dinner, I turn on the television so that the noise distracts my sleep.

This confirms my theory that I can live without television.

society

Democracy, ha!
Free Speech, ha ha ha!

Of course, soon someone left the YouTube junkies loose.

politics, society

OMG! Amitabh Bachchan in is trouble over some property matters. Now although it was his own fault that he falsely declared himself a farmer to buy 24 acres of land, I’m pretty sure that this is going to be blamed on his unlucky daughter-in-law, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

society

Having welcomed Mothers’ Day, Women’s Day and Valentine’s Day with open arms, we are now ready for indigenous sales inducing festivals. Akshaya Trithiya is perhaps the first in this breed, and there is nothing to indicate that it is going to be the last.Two years back, nobody had heard of Akshaya Trithiya. Last year, newspapers carried advertisements telling people how auspicious it was to bring home gold on this holy day. No, they said, it was absolutely vital that you do so. Gold jewellers laughed their way to the banks. Apparently this did not go unnoticed by the banks. So this year, they decided to sell gold coins themselves. This time, the advertisements were on newspapers, television screens, FM radio and the glass panes of every ATM.

I am not particularly against all such synthetic festivals. Mothers’ Day gives otherwise busy people a chance to remember their old mothers. If a Hallmark made money on it, that’s just as well. The feeling of love that underlies the idea is perhaps worth the commercialisation.

What bothers me about Akshaya Trithiya is that the idea behind it is one of so called auspiciousness. This reeks of religion and superstition. An unrelated contemporary event is celebrity actress Aishwarya Rai marrying two trees and a stone idol before marrying actor Abhishek Bachchan, just so that her human husband would not have to bear the consequences of her inauspicious horoscope. Such heavily advertised retrograde ideas force the society’s mind backwards, whereas we should now be focusing all our efforts in the opposite direction.

More reaction

• Modern traditional festivals – Arvind wonders where this festival came from
• Akshaya Trithiya: When the leitmotif is gold
  

  Last year, “a very conservative estimate” put gold purchases on that day at 38 tonnes, compared with a daily average sale of two tonnes.

  What is common to the power equipment producer BHEL, space research organisation ISRO and AIR Corporation Employees Cooperative Society? All of them have bought gold coins in bulk (from Indian Bank) to distribute among their employees.

  Sales of gold coins in the run up to this year’s Akshaya Trithiya are 50 per cent higher than in the comparable period of last year.

  A tenth of Tanishq’s annual sales of around Rs 1,000 crore takes place on this one day.

• Indian jewellers get boost from religious festival – from the World Gold Council, who first started promoting Akshaya Trithiya after careful research.
  

  Last year Akshaye Trithya festival brought in a lot of customers who had deserted us because of hardening prices.

  The festival celebrates the day when Lord Rishabha broke his first year-long fast by drinking sugar cane juice. (WTF?)

• Akshaye Trithya centre of gold campaign
  

  The World Gold Council has announced that the star, otherwise known as Baa, from Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi will be used to promote Akshaye Trithya, an important Hindu festival.

  Madhumita Dutta, from the World Gold Council, said that the organisation is committed to women seeing gold as the fashion accessory of choice.

• Akshaya Tritiya
  

  White is the most auspicious colour of the day. (Newspaper reports indicated that many people insisted on buying white gold!)

  It’s the fourth most auspicious day in the Hindu calendar.

  This year, along with gold and silver, buying the white metal – platinum – is considered most auspicious.

  Offer white-coloured prasadam to the Gods.

  Use white-coloured utensils for puja.

  Whatever you purchase today, will increase in value in just a year.

• Wikipedia article
  

  According to Hindu mythology, on this day the Treta Yuga began; and the Ganges River, the most holy and sacred river of India, descended to the earth from the heaven.

I better stop before I pass out.

society

India needs to look away from the past. As a country of a billion, we need urgently to turn around and take a hard look at what lies ahead of us – what lies in the present, what is in store for the future. It is not so much the problems that we may encounter in the future that worry me, as much as the fact that we’re not looking ahead. We’re walking ahead alright, but we are constantly looking back even as we march ahead.

Take any average Indian. You get to pick who. You could really choose anyone from this country – a college-going teenager from a metropolis like Mumbai, or a poor nobody from the remotest part of rural India. Ask him this simple question: “What makes you proud to be an Indian?”

No matter who you chose, the answer is bound to come quickly and it is bound to be the same. You are going to hear the same rant about the culture and heritage of this country.

We all know the works. We have all been trained from our very childhood to repeat this same ramble, just as a beauty pageant contestant go on and on about Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa.

India is a country with a long heritage. We’ve been around for five thousand years. We have a great culture and heritage that we’re all proud of. There isn’t anything modern day scientists know today, that our ancients didn’t already know. Despite all this knowledge, Indians have always been the most humble too. Indians are the most peace-loving people in the whole wide world. We love each other, and we are the epitome of unity – despite, despite, and despite our many traditions, religions and languages. These only add to the richness of our culture.

It nauseates me to go on. If you are an Indian, you probably didn’t even read the previous paragraph. You simply skimmed over the surface. Why? Because you already know what is written. You’ve heard it a thousand times before. I myself did not have to think before forming those sentences. It was almost as if my fingers knew what to type and did their job without any help from my brain.

We are too much in love with ourselves. Over generations, this love has turned blind. We don’t know what we are in love with. We don’t know why we are in love with it. All we know is that we are a great nation: because our mothers told us so, because the television programmes told us so, because the newspapers told us so.

Sit back and think for a while what it is that really drives your love for this country. When you do so, you will begin finding answers. You will still be in love with this country, but you will know why. The reasons will not be as rosy as the beauty pageant answers; they will be far more humble.

But it is important that we start asking these questions. We all need this reality check today.

society

There are so many problems in the world around me that I feel inclined to do something about it. I decided that I should start listing all the problems I notice, so that who ever it is that is supposed to fix them can do their part. Here are the most pressing problems, in no particular order.

• Share market crashing
• Inflation out of control
• Man-eating stray dogs in Bangalore
• Power crisis in Karnataka
• Rave parties at Pune
• Shah Rukh – Amithabh rivalry
• Impending “re-org” at work

(gulp)

Oh by the way, please feel free to add your own to the list.

society