Where I differe from Roys and Chomskys.

I have argued before that the massive energy we are investing in keeping Kashmir in, does not worth it and we should let them go, or to appease my more nationalistic friends I would say, we should kick Kashmir out of India. This is something which I wrote in detail somewhere before, and recent attacks in Mumbai again bring my attention to this matter. However, my position is not same as that taken as that of Roys and other leftist liberals- supporting Kashmiri cause, or supporting their independence. I find the Kashmiri or any type of separatism disgusting. These separatist tendencies, isolationist urges, extreme identification with ethnicities- they are equally rotten, whether Kashmiri or Indian. As long as one party is demanding this land for oneself, other would be there to contest it. Separatism and isolation do not solve a damn thing. Of course one can ask for more rights for state, more autonomy and one can almost make the demand for independence almost redundant. One is born in a culture and one carries the way of life associated with it, and one can enjoy it and live it. But the excessive obsession with it, the emotional appeal for separatism based on regional or ethnic identity, or even national or religion for that matter leads to divided and fragmented view of reality, which breeds violence, or rather I would emphasize this fragmented and divided view is violence itself.
What problem separation of Pakistan and India has solved- and I don't live under the illusion that it would have been different had there been no partition. These intellectuals think that world is fixed, there are victims and victimizers. But it is never so and had never been so. These so called oppressed, marginalized victims are as dumb and stupid as their victimizers. These witless victims of oppression have their own victims and they are as much sadist as any other. Moreover since they lack refinement and sophistication- just because of lack of exposure to education, they are even more dangerous. Laloo, Mulayam, Mayawati, Karunanidhi, Chautala etc. - they all came into power with the promise of uplifting backward classes, but they only uplifted themselves and their relatives. The plight of tribals of Chhatisgarh and Jharkhand that Roy often cites, they are controlling the governments over there. But have those tribal chief ministers worked for them- Shibu soren, Munda, Ajit jogi or they have turned into pipmps of greed, cruelty, insensitivity, corruption, political manipulation themselves.
And everything is so evident, still Roys and chomskys remain so confident in viewing everything from their fixed glasses of class struggle and keep on propagating the myth that changing a system, just manipulating some circumstances- giving independence to Kashmir, educating tribals, preventing mining, and so on would somehow change everything. It is very hard to realize that nothing changes. History tells us, we had handed over complete dictatorship to proletariat- nothing changed. It is high time we realize that there are seeds of destruction inside our psyche, there is something flawed with it, and unless that is seen and tackled everything would remain merely cosmetic. Whatever utopia we build with that flawed psyche, it will not only be meaningless, but the added energy and enthusiasm would make that even more lethal. But seeing the things as they are, this vast reality as it is, requires a solitary journey, losing our beliefs and faiths of religious and secular utopias, not being able to take refuge in anything man made something which ignorant as well as so called intellectuals obsessed with activity are singularly incapable of. It requires a receptive heart, one which is silent, one which is humble in its approach to reality, one which is seeing the totality of it- and not imposing on the reality its own learned knowledge and classification- seeing the oppressor as well oppressed, and the rest of it, what is outside as well as what is inside. to explore what an extraordinary phenomenon life is. There is no leader in this not are there followers in it, no one can be guide or intermediate in this. And without understanding this extraordinary movement of life, this vast reality one is bound to live in illusion and life is reduced to the mechanical labor which has no meaning. And history has shown us, without clearing that corruption and poverty of the psyche- all the movements inevitably degenerate into same thing against which they arose.
It does not mean that I support the oppresors or exploiters, I just wish to add that situation is far more complex and demands far more seriousness and attention then viewing and applying Marxist solutions to it.

Lessons from Malegaon Probe

There are many who are criticizing police for going hard on so called "Hindu terrorists" and others who are criticising these critics in turn, each labeling the other as traitors or political manipulators.
We do not know what was right or wrong. BJP is setting a bad precedent for so called secularists also, now if there is any anti terrorist investigation against Muslims or minorities during the BJP rule, BJP would have to face the same criticisms which it is labeling right now on congress.
This does not mean that the methods of ATS are not flawed and they are not to be criticized or to be called to explain certain confusing and deliberately misleading aspects of the probe. But it also hints that similar travesty of justice would have been carried out when several Muslims have been held in the past.
I have many friends of the patriotic sort who have supported heavy handed and preferably extrajudicial actions (even killing in encounters) against terrorists when they happened to be Muslims. The same pattern of action is expected against other criminals too. They also invariably concede that our police forces are extremely corrupt and inhuman. But somehow they could not connect these two points to see that the supporting police force in these incompetent and cowardly encounters done mainly to get promotions or please political masters would not only lead to suffering of many innocent people and their families in particular but would also lead to general insensitivity of police force and people towards human rights and rule of law to an extent that no one would expect that these agencies should be transparent and accountable to the most ordinary Indians, who usually shiver with fear with the very thought of going to police stations. For every real terrorist caught (if at all) there would be thousands of ordinary people who would be harassed by our corrupt police force. The sense of power and invincibility police gets when it is not questioned will lead to immense torture of ordinary poor and downtrodden who will be routinely rounded up, tortured into confession to 'crack' the case. And then there will be many even in middle class who will be facing the similar prospects just because they have offended someone.
According to a human right group there have been 7500 deaths in past 5 years in India in police custody, though the actual numbers might be far higher.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7474656.stm This does not include the people killed everywhere in police firing during demonstartions and crimes and deaths resulting from the nexus of police and criminals. Some estimates put the cases of torture by police every year at around 1.8 million
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7689491.stm
The terror of police is much more prevalent and pervasive than the terror of terrorists. 99% won't know anyone who has been directly affected by terrorism, it is so rare, while almost all of us would know someone or the other who has been harassed by police. It will be hard to find a village or town where someone or the other has not been tortured by police in recent memory. Still we and our media keep on suppporting police against the innocent victims caught in the name of terrorists. Now since so called 'Hindu terrorists' have been caught, it is time not to attribute political motives but to ask for greater accountability and transparency from the police-whether the accused are Muslims or Hindus. We should expect them to follow the rule of law themselves first and they should be expected to operate within the constraints of our constitution and human rights to nab the criminals. Of course it would be tougher but let us realize that this is the only way to do things. Apart from victimization and framing of thousands of innocents accused from the petty to very serious crimes as terrorism, it also breeds a culture of incompetence where police forces loose their capacity to solve a case (if at all they have), to bring real culprits to justice and to challenge our judicial system to perform better. While the innocents will be trapped behind the bars caught in maze of judiciary- real criminals will prevail and prosper. They system would be inevitably skewed in the favour of real criminals- and the crime rates would be bound to go up.
I often hear that the job of police will be very difficult then, but is it not precisely why they get salary and power. Right now would be constables have the attitude of harassing innocents and making money, let them be aware of the situations in which they would have to operate and perform, and then let them decide to join the police force or not.

Liberation of females and progress

I visited India in OCtober 2008, and was able to talk to people from many walks of life and could see the very obvious lawlessness, and rule of goondaism in daytoday life. While media will focus on Raj Thackrey etal, in most of the Hindi speaking provinces, there is no rule of law. The only reason that there is apparent peace, is because of vast majority goes about their lives bending their heads and deriving whatever benefit they can from such lawlessness. THere are goonda politicians who rule the population as well as the resources, they can insult, and even physically threaten bearocrats. There are courtiers of these feudal lords, their psychofant loyal supporters, who are situated in every department of public sector right from education, health, taxation, water supply, housing, transport- whose only job is to control the government funds and in return provide protection to incompetent government workers from being reprimanded. And in order to assert and reassert their power, to reassure themselves of it, they have to abuse daily, their coworkers. Helpless though they are, yet they accept it readily as it only to victimize most ordinary Indians.
Only one or two really thinking man/woman I encountered were pessimistic and their only solution was to 'wait for another Gandhi'. But I felt optimistic, there was a reason for it.
I have a hypothesis. If I spread the map of the world before me, and I mark those societies where women are liberated-sexually, financially, socially, politically and free to pursue their own identities- through education or otherwise and have entered the public space- I inevitably see these societies as free from corruption, goondaism and so on. And those societies where females have been subjugated, suppressed are practically exploding, or they are under dictators who are under great strain to postpone the explosion. And there might be various reasons for this.
And as I moved across India, I saw women asserting themselves, young girls being educated and being able to express themselves much more freely than the previous generations, being liberated from the 'kitchen' and attached responsibilites- I have a reason to be optimistic.
Don't agree with me? See this news coming from my own home state.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/mp-minister-gets-jail-lady-officer-gets-appreciation/384297/