jeevan yaatra

जीवन यात्रा

जन्म से मृत्यु तक

सुबह शाम का आना जाना

सोना, जगना और खाना

पढ़ लिख कर प्रतिभा पाना

घर बनाना और सजाना

धन परिवार और प्रसिद्धी पाना

और फिर संसार के सागर में

लहरों की तरह अहंकार से

उछल उछल कर

मृत्यु के तट पर

सर पटक पटक कर

प्रयाण कर जाना

किसने देखा फिर वापिस आना

किसने देखा स्वर्ग में जाना

सुरक्षा के लिए भगवान सजाये

समझाने के लिए दर्शन बनाये

मुक्ति के कई रस्ते दिखाए

पर पैगम्बर, धर्म और दर्शन

आज तक कुछ सिद्ध न कर पाए

सिसीफस की तरह

निरंतर कर्म में ही मुक्ति मानो

वर्तमान को ही सत्य जानो

प्रत्यक्ष को ही यथार्थ मानो

 

Asi te whiskey peende ne

"Asi te whiskey peende ne." Modern Hindu Indian men can be defined by this phrase. Their manhood, their grit, their courage, their very essence can be measured by the number of black label shots they can gulp in a single evening.  As they enter a party arena, after the namastes and Hi they head to the bar, asking for black label with soda, water, or on the rocks, or neat, and make a bee line for repeat shots until the bottle's bottom is up or the bar is closed. This goes on from the beginning of the party to the end. Yes, not to the end of cocktail hour, or dinner, but till the end of the party or as I said the bottles are bottom up or the bar is closed. No other drinks, no Kailua, no Martini, no liquor, they keep it simple. Only Black Label please. There is nothing else to a party.  What wine, wine is for women and wusses. Drinking for drinking sake, not to shed inhibitions or to enjoy the entertainment offered in the party but drinking is the entertainment. A one liter bottle of whiskey has about 22-25 shots and it is not uncommon for four people to finish one bottle in two hours, thus each consuming 5-6 shots meeting the definition of National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's defintion of binge drinking - of 5 or more drinks in a two hour period. 

While most Muslims are holding the line on alcohol, Hindu Indians have become alcohol-struck.  Before independence alcohol was considered a vice and only the elite who socialized with the British, or the poor used to drink alcohol. The former drank imported liquors or wine while the latter drank locally/home brewed spirits like Daru, tharra, arrack, many dying in bootlegging accidents. Now alcohol has become the very essence of middle class social life. Women have joined the fray, as a declaration of their independence and modernity. Any many drink to the point of inebriation, and often drive after drinking. And spirits such as whiskey are the staple. The generous midlands of Indian men and women, as Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul says, are becoming even more generous and expansive, often jutting out of tight and minimalistic clothes of modern Indian women who proudly flout them on the face book, in postures that further exaggerate them.

Although it is difficult to relate rapes and other antisocial behavior to alcohol beause of lack of proper statistics, alcohol is certainly a contributor. About a fifth of psychiatric emergencies in Indian hospitals and 60 percent of injuries presenting in the emergency rooms are alcohol related. Alcohol related liver damage (compounded by a high prevalence of hepatitis B in India), brain damage, obesity, and diabetes are glossed over for the minimal benefit of limited amount of alcohol in coronary artery disease that is often cited as rationalization for alcohol consumption by the nouveau riche. Domestic violence is on the rise and many a family has seen their destruction due to alcoholism. Battered women keep mum for the sake of family reputation. And while in the past women used to hold the line on alcohol, the modern Hindu women proudly support their alcoholic men in their manly sport of drinking, "hamare inko drink karna accha lagta hai.”

The government is lax because of excise revenue and multinationals are raking huge profits in the name of liberalization. And religion and traditionalism that informed our social behavior have become matters of convenience. Social restraint or religious deterrence are a thing of the past, archaic. Yes, we do puja, we do jagran, we go to Vaishno Devi but didn’t Shiv Ji drink cannabis, didn’t tantriks drink alcohol, they argue. In fact, Hindu religious ethics have become secondary to religious ritualism to placate gods to give more and more so that the party goes on unabated and unrestrained.

And yes, people drink in the west, but the pattern of social drinking by middle class in the west is restrained and limited and not binging on spirits until bottoms are up. And even if they drink excessively do we have to follow everything western? But the alcohol juggernaut is on among Hindu Asian Indians.  Maybe I an old hag, out of touch with modern pop culture, at least Hindu Asian Indian culture?

Are Asian Indians generally homophobic?

Are Asian Indians generally homophobic? Yes, like in any other traditional culture, homosexuality has a stigma in the Asian Indian community, but the views are changing as more and more Asian Indian children in the USA are declaring that they are homosexuals.  They will change further by dialogue, not by slamming an old culture with entrenched traditions and taboos for millennia. In democracies, change occurs slowly through evolution and not cataclysmically, through revolution.  Delhi High Court, in 2009, declared many parts of the section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalized gay sex, as illegal. Still popular culture considers homosexuality as an aberrant behavior. Innunedos and jokes about gays are rampant. If a child does not marry at the marriageable age, rumors spread about the child's sexual orientation.

From the Hindu religious standpoint. the true self of the person is atma or spirit which is eternal and not the body which is ephemeral.  And that atma or spirit is pure and similar or same in everyone irrespective of sexual orientation. We are all God’s children. What one does in his or her private life is not any one’s concern. According to Indian culture sex is a private affair which should not be talked about and least of all displayed in public view. This is called lajja in Hindi or haya in Urdu.  So in our culture, at least until my time, sexuality, hetero or homo, was not flouted in public and public expression of romantic love was generally avoided, at least in front of elders. Yes, sexual talk, curiosity, and even prurience and voyeurism were common place.  Now some youngsters express romantic love, hetero or homo, such as kissing on the lips or sitting in each other’s laps in parties, as a statement of their modernity and liberty. To me, maybe I am old fashioned, such exhibitionism seems crass and unnecessary.  

And a word of caution to Asian Indian parents. Sexual orientation is not due to poor upbringing or bad influence. Some people are not naturally attracted to the opposite sex. There is more to the life of children than good grades. Parents should take interest in their children’s “other” activities and ideas and have conversations with them about these, including sexual orientation. Yes, the news of your child being a homosexual might come as a shock because we value marriage as a prelude to reproduction and grandchildren, but do not judge your children as good or bad solely on the basis of sexual orientation. Do not isolate yourselves socially when you learn of your child's sexual orientation. Seek counseling, if you need to, to come to terms with the reality.

Indian Secularism

Indian press is abuzz with the word secularism nowadays – each politician defining it to suit and meet his or her needs.  Holyoake coined the word secularism as a social order that is not based upon religion but does not reject religious belief. Thus people can practice religion but will not bring their religious views and practices to bear upon the political and civic discourse that involves people of other faiths. Thus he did not suggest that are religious faith and practices in a secular state be rejected altogether but that the political discourse and structure and religious discourse and structure be separate. Gandhi, a person of faith, did not reject faith but promoted that all religions be treated equally by the state (sarva dharma sambhaav). In a country where religious faith and practices are intertwined with culture and social behavior, this definition made sense. Gandhi knew India and its people. He knew that the moral fabric of this country was based upon religion and hence, religion cannot be done away with it but wanted that all religions are treated equally.
Unfortunately, the politicians in India have turned this definition on its head. While they have done away with religion as the foundation of their behavior, they constantly bring religion in the political discourse and electoral calculations. They abuse the term secularism to induce the followers of one or the other faith to vote in a particular way, with one group of parties vying for the followers of smaller religions who generally vote en block and hence have become priceless vote banks and the other group promoting itself as the defender of the majority religion. The former reject the whole corpus of majority religion as archaic overlooking and even supporting anachronisms in smaller religions. The latter adore the whole corpus of the majority religion defending all its foibles and follies rejecting the preferential treatment of the minority vote banks as appeasement.
All this talk of secularism diverts attention of the electorate from the real issues of India: the economy, integrity, health and safety, and education. Indian economy has not been able to provide the infrastructure that modern economies need; cities lack power and water; people lack sanitary facilities; healthcare is riddled with ills that Amir Khan has so aptly shown in his Satyameva Jayate, and education is geared to producing English speaking workers for multinational corporations without creating citizens of character and integrity who know and are proud of their history and heritage.
India needs honest politicians to join hands to make a collective front for the development of India against the corrupt politicians who use the ploy of secularism for vote bank politics. The focus in India should be on growth and development and improving the quality of life of common folks, rather than on fear mongering in the name of religion for capturing votes. And religion should be harnessed to improve the moral fabric so that the corrupt do not steal the bread that feeds the poor. The divisive politics of pseudosecularism will fragment India into vote-enclaves of different OBCs, religions, languages and tribes, each ruled by a corrupt enclave politician.

Defamation of Hinduism in Bollywood Movies

Like many other Indians I was so excited that Slumdog Millionaire, a movie set in India, received the best movie award at the Golden Globe Awards that I rushed to see it. However, my pride and joy turned to sadness because, for no special advantage to the storyline, it showed Hindus rioting and killing Muslims. It also showed eye-gouging of a child in the context of a favorite bhajan (devotional song) of so many Hindus, darshan do ghanshyam. In fact the screenplay has been changed substantially from the novel to include sensational but defamatory materials. Although a vast majority of Hindus are secular and nonviolent (the number of sectarian killings in India, although not justified- are far less than in Northern Ireland, Horn of Africa, Pakistan and many other parts of the world), since the Bombay riots of 1993, it has become a trend in Bollywood to depict Hindus as killers of Muslims, because Hindus are soft targets, not reacting as angrily or violently as some other communities do when their prophets are slighted . Starting with Bombay (1995) that was based upon the Bombay riots of 1993 that were started by Muslims in South Bombay but subsequently avenged by Shiva Sena, Bollywood has made Parzania (2005) and Dharm (2007) in which Hindu mobs are shown marauding Muslim neighborhoods. Parzania (2005) sounds like a one-sided extrajudicial trial and conviction of Hindus of Gujarat and tries to incite negative feelings against Hindus in Parsees who have lived in harmony with Hindus for centuries.  It does not mention the beginnings of these riots in Godhra in which innocent pilgrims were burned to death (although the beginning did not justify the end). Dharm (2007), too, shows a Muslim mother pleading with a Hindu priest to take her child in his care to save him from Hindu mobs attacking and killing Muslims, but his humanity takes the better of his orthodox views and he risks is life to save the child.  These movies gloss over the fact that the majority of Muslims in India live in harmony with Hindus.

Negative stereotyping of Hindus in Bollywood is coming from several quarters. Some producers and writers who themselves are products of secular and liberalized Hinduism, such as Geeta Mehta, have made a business of profiting from the social evils that crept into Hinduism in the medieval times. Instead of presenting a balanced picture of the good and bad in the religion and depicting a few enlightened characters from within the Hindu society as well as bad ones they present an almost evil caricature of Hinduism. While her theme of atrocities against widows is noble her movie does not include enlightened Hindu characters (Hindus reformers as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Debendra Nath Tagore and Swami Dayananda campaigned against mistreatment of widows) and adds fuel to the fire by showing child abuse. In Chingari (2006) Mithun Chakravorti plays the role of a pundit who rapes village women in the name of tantra.   Although the movie ends with a rebellion by women, one gets the impression that pundits and swamis are rapists and imposters. Banaras (2006) shows the cruelty of an upper caste Hindu against the lower caste lover of his daughter and once again the complicity of Hindu priests in the injustice. 

While Bollywood brazenly portrays the social evils of Hinduism (because Hindus are indifferent or tolerant), it rarely displays the social evils of other religions and communities in India, perhaps for fear of reaction and agitation. While Hindu priests and rituals are often scandalized, the clergy of other religions are shown as noble and kind. While the sacred words of other religions are used respectfully in appropriate contexts, Hindu sacred words such as Om Shanti Om (Om Shanti Om, 2007) are used profanely in dance sequences involving half-clad women gyrating sensually.

Bollywod has tremendous power in shaping the fashions, social behavior and worldview of Asian-Indians and others' view of India and Hinduism and therefore, should be cognizant of its social responsibility. While I understand that media has a responsibility to create awareness about social evils and am not advocating for sanitized images of religions, I object to the discriminatory behavior of Bollywood towards Hinduism and its priests, rituals and sacred words.  I urge Bollywood story writers, movie directors and producers to present a balanced view, not to hurt the feelings of any community, not to belittle their prophets, avatars and clergy and not to incite hatred against a particular religion or community.

A dialogue with a preacher

उपदेशक बोला

यह जीवन अनित्य

और असत्य है

केवल जीवनातीत अनंत ही

नित्य और सत्य है

आँख मूँद लो

कान बंद कर लो

शरीर को नकार दो

तुम केवल आत्मा हो

यह 'सत्य' है मान लो

प्रश्न उठा जीवन के यह 

कुछ क्षण जिन्हें 

मैंने छुआ है

देखा और भाला है

ही तो मेरी पूँजी हैं

खो दूँ इन्हें मृत्यु के 

उस पार की मृगत्रिश्ना मैं 

सत्य असत्य का द्वन्द 

और  पाप दंड का 

भान हुआ मन में  

अल्पज्ञ ही सही 

पर मेरा सत्य, मेरा यथार्थ  
यही क्षण, यही वर्तमान है

जो साक्षात विद्यमान है

अमर हूँ तो कल भी था

कल भी रहूँगा
पर आज मुझे जीने दो

जीवन की हाला को पीने दो