Love All

America is a secular country. Secularism is absolute. It cannot vary in degrees. It cannot vary depending on the circumstance. There is nothing the government can do about the decision of some people to profess their faith, to gather peacefully and to practice their religion. And if those that gather there also attempt to reach out, to explain to others that they come there on good faith, that they’re tolerant, that they mean no harm, the government must simply stand by it. And so there is nothing the government can do about the decision to build an Islamic Centre merely two blocks from Ground Zero, where several people died by a Jihadist attack.

The very idea of an Islamic Centre seems to irk the sensitivities of many people. Perhaps they wonder if their yet-to-heal wounds are being rubbed raw. Perhaps they wonder if they’re being laughed at for putting up with other religions. Or perhaps they do not want to be asked for understanding and forgiving for they are not done grieving. Secularism occupies no place in their heart. Memories of loved ones do. And they cannot find it in themselves to understand, to support other religions again, a support that they offered once freely, a support that they feel was fully misused. And perhaps all they’re asking is for these people to go away for now, to come back later, when they can remember peace-time again. And they’re asking that an exception be made, an exception that takes into account their sensitivity and their vulnerability.

But the constitution does not grant the right to sensitivity, vulnerability or fear. It asks simply that people continue to be strong regardless of circumstance in order to uphold a higher value- that of tolerance. For its founders believed that one can find courage, strength and the will to do what is right under absolutely every single circumstance, no matter how trying.

Perhaps they would rather live somewhere else where everyone professes the same religion that they do. Alternatively, perhaps they would live somewhere where everyone practices their religion in secret so that religion is never questioned. But perhaps it would all of us some good to remember what tolerance feels like in peacetime.

I grew up in India, another secular country albeit Hindu dominated. On my street among a majority of Hindus, are also Muslims and Christians. Every Diwali ( a Hindu festival), my mother asks me to distribute sweets to the neighbours. We distribute them to all our neighbours regardless of religion- regardless of the Christmas Trees in the courtyards or the Quranic verse on the walls. I am certain that this act of distributing sweets is never interpreted as my trumpeting my religion, for I am always welcomed with open arms. Come Christmas, I can expect sweets from my Christian neighbor and come Eid I can expect sweets again from my Muslim neighbor. None of us is afraid of one another. Indeed we have often given them our house keys to help guard our house while we are out of town. We go to our temples, churches and mosques. My Muslim neighbor does not find any ill in asking other neighbours to contribute to the temple because the temple plans to use those funds to build a park. And my Christian neighbor does not refuse to pay the community maintenance fees despite the community leader being a devout Hindu. Nor does the community leader insist that the community consist of solely Hindus. It can be argued that we tolerate each other because we fear our lives. But the honest-to-God or whatever-you-believe-in truth is we tolerate each other simply because we care for each other.

Perhaps those of the Cordoba Initiative are over-reaching and are testing American secularism too much. But the test is so easily passed. If Americans only extend their once steady, now trembling hands, they will realize that what’s waiting for them is a warm, firm grip, a balm that will finally ease the pain.

Much Ado About “Nothing we didn’t already know”

Confidential reports about the state of the war in Afghanistan was recently released by an organization called Wikileaks :- an organization devoted to whistle blowing (collecting and releasing documents that wikileaks feels the public ought to know). It headlined in 3 leading newspapers :- NyTimes, Guardian, Der Spiegel, while every other piece of news including Iran’s sudden “ Oh. Now that you really really really mean to punish me by meting out sanctions, is there somewhere we can sit and discuss this?” was fully submerged. By the end of the day, the documents’ revelations- ISI collusion with the Taliban, civilian casualty, bribe and corruption, the strength of Taliban’s military capability were concluded as “there’s nothing new here. We already knew this.” Yet the manner in which it all came out, the sensational undercover Wikileaks organization, its platinum-blonde, handsome and forthright editor-in-chief & spokesperson Julian Assange and the sheer magnitude of the reports made it meaty media material.

Editorials and opinions swarmed the internet, and again, they concluded that we knew all this already. Perhaps a few things have been distorted. We were lead to believe that American Helicopters were shot down by guns and artillery whereas they were shot down by heat seaking missiles that the Taliban possess. Some of the money going into the war is being used to bribe Afghan officials into doing their job. Afghan civilians are even more scared about the Taliban than we originally thought. But really, these are questions of degree, not of outright lying and purposeful misleading. Terrorism in Afghanistan is real and present. If it isn’t stopped, the rest of the world is going to be attacked. AGAIN.

White house officials for their part got all childish and insisted that it put their troops in risk (because until now the Taliban and the ISI thought that the US had believed their bluff about being nice people ???). They insisted that the person who had passed on these reports be found and prosecuted, only making ordinary people ask “ Why are you so scared that we know the truth. What else are you hiding from us. Did we never land on the moon either ?”. Ultimately however, everyone had to at least revisit their opinion about the war strategy.

For a while now, people have pretended that this war is anything like other wars- where the battlefields are clear, where civilians can wait safely in their houses, risking only those lives that are in the battlezone. And we’ve also pretended that there is a mathematics to it that will let us set an unambiguous deadline for finishing the war and heading home. It seems that the American people must be reminded more frequently that Afghan Terrorism exists today because we sought their help while fighting the commies and then hung them to dry when we’d finished with Russia. We left them in the lurch then. To do that again would be not only foolhardy, not only unfair, but also dangerous. Afghan anger against Americans and allied forces is fully justified. So also is their fear and perhaps even their belief that the Taliban will do them more good as long as they listened and abided by every radical rule that was imposed on them. To earn Afghan loyalty is of prime importance – as rightly and strongly outlined in Gen. Petraeus’s CounterInsurgency Field Manuals. To abandon them, when some of them may at last be seeing hope outside of Taliban’s dictatorship would be ridiculous. Earning trust is not something we can put a timestamp on. Neither is saying “we’ll protect you for the next 3 years. After that we’ll throw you to a pack of wolves”, which is what it must seem like to the Afghans. Thankfully, the US congress finally approved more funds for the war and perhaps president Obama will stop the nonsense about discussing timelines come December.

Meanwhile, all is not lost. Media in Afghanistan is ramping up. At least some people are looking at soap operas, of lives lived in foreign lands and are beginning to wonder if they could live like that too. Gossiping about the neighbor, plotting against mother-in-laws may be a luxury that they will soon begin to yearn. At least some people are listening to criticism against the Taliban and are wondering if there may be some truth to it. And at least some of them are looking at images of cities with roads, hospitals and education and are hoping that they too can be like that someday.

And already women are beginning to get enrolled in schools. And people are beginning to talk to each other non-stop on cellphones and landlines. And thanks to US occupation, many of them can at least apply a band-aid on a gash if not have their hip replaced. Some of this is worth fighting a really long time. Even if the peace lasts only a day or two, there will be some kids that will go on to remember what it was like to play in fields of hay and will strive to make that last in turn.

Manners and mannerisms

I am not sure why Jane Austen never wrote a book titled manners and mannerisms. After all, she wrote pride & prejudice and sense & sensibility. In any case, I'm glad she didn't, because in this copyright observing, plagiarism fearing world, I can happily write a blogpost titled "manners and mannerisms."

It will forever be beyond me why a certain republican congressman felt so compelled to call president Obama a liar. This is not because I adore president Obama. I am as yet undecided about him. And this is mostly because I am new to understanding how large nations work, be it India, where I come from, and where it is equally outrageous but not necessarily unlikely to call the prime minister a liar on live TV or be it the US, where, I have been raise to believe, that it is pretty unlikely for anyone to behave like such a brute.

At this point I see nothing that can be called civilized. I do not see how a set of people so divided, so unwilling to talk, so doggedly blind to reason can hope to govern a nation or can believe that they have earned the right to tell other nations what to do. Unless of course, the entire human population, through mutual consensus decide to behave like another species. Apparently, that if anything, can get an easy "bipartisan" support.

I know for a fact, due to the nature of my work, that loud monkeys will climb up the social hierarchy pretty quickly and establish their dominance. Sitting on that clumsily obtained , lofty perch, they will proceed for the rest of their lives, to earn the respect of many, many monkeys. They of course, do not have a well developed brain. But we do. Of course, we have inherited from them the need to climb ladders of hierarchy. And because of the strange way we think and perceive, we have very complex ladders of hierarchy. Indeed, life, at times feels as though it's an escher painting, where every attempt to go upwards only makes us one step closer to going downwards. And perhaps that is true. In trying to move away from barbarian tendencies, we have deftly achieved an uncanny simian similarity.

Taming the shrew

I am reminded of my high school civics professor who was teaching us about the election commission. Civics classes used to be held thrice a week during the final periods; when the sun was too hot to bear and we were too distracted to listen. Yet we sat, quietly, most of the time lost in our own thoughts, because as chairman of the school, the professor couldn't be fooled. And none of us dared. Besides, his love for his country seemed so pure, that none of us had the heart to break him out of his reverie. So we let him drone, occasionally amused enough to listen but most of the time not spririted enough to believe that India was ever going to get anywhere. We'd inherited that attitude partly because of our age and partly because middle class India was fed up at that time. And we wondered if we were ever gonna have anything great to say besides counting every year, the number of years we had been independent. But my civics professor remembered the days of the youth, when he was full of hope for our young independent country, when everyone seemed honest and everyone seemed united. And he spoke fondly about democracy, about adult francise, and about the power of being able to decide your leaders. By the people, for the people, of the people, he would say. Stressing, in great british style, the world "by", "for" and "of". All of us wanted to pat him on his back and say "there, there old man, wake up, and look around, where has your beloved independence got us". With cable TV making its foray, we saw India and we saw resplendent foreign lands. And we didn't think too much of democracy. And of the electoral commission, the ones that set up electoral booths in the farthest of India's corners, from the might peaks of Kashmir to the horizon where the three seas meet, Kanyakumari, from the desert of Rajhasthan, to the "non-described" north eastern states ( I've never known much about those states except they simply get lumped as a north-eastern-mess), we had almost no regard. We weren't old enough to vote yet. And so we couldn't really be impressed by the feat of getting everyone to come and have the smallest say in choosing their government.

We simply were resigned to be lower than those glorious foreign lands. And this we took to be our burden, our albatross around neck, for sins that we hadn't ever committed. And somehow we all got old enough to vote and hardened enough not to bother. I've wanted to vote. But I've been appalled by who my choices were. Furthermore, I was appalled by how streets and roads of houses would go missing from the electoral list and how the few times I had a choice to make (SM Krishna for CM was something I felt strongly about, although they've packaged him off and sent him to Maharashtra while Deve Gowda and his rowdy lot seem to be either to sleepy to speak or to incoherent to be understood) my name was never there. And I too wondered why we could never manage to pull it together. Progress, consistently seemed to be happening, but it seemed like it was because the higer-ups were too dumb to stop it, instead of smart enough to initiate it. While a party needed to rein in a whole theme called Hindutva will forever be beyond me. And why scores of educated people supported them will continue to stupefy me. Perhaps because the only other option at that time, the Congress was getting too bulky and corrupt and complascent. Perhaps too, that we wanted something else to bind us all together apart from, "tonight we make a tryst with destiny". It seemed like it was a destiny with a twist instead. I took politician and crook to be synonymous. And government and incompetency to be synonymous.

And then, I guess my prefrontal cortex grew. The prefrontal cortex in the brain is the region of executive control, of judgement, and its evolution is one of the many things that mark humans as cultured and other apes and monkeys as uncultured. And we aren't born with a large prefrontal cortex. It grows through our lives, till about the age of 20. Until which time all of us show amazingly poor lack of judgment. The glorious years of teenage are stamps of poor judgment and many mistakes. And so today, with, what I hope is a fully developed prefrontal cortex, I see things in a better light.

I see, that democracy is not easy with a billion people. The one thing Indians seem to be able to take for granted is that we're a democratic country. And I remember once again, when my civics professor, thundered at us, apparently possessed with the words of the preamble to the Indian constitution. SOVEREIGN, SOCIALIST, SECULAR, DEMOCRATIC, REPUBLIC. Now, the world(and by that I mean the who's who of the world) wants to bully us into give up our sovereignity, and many of our own threaten our secularity, and we seem cursed with the Congress's need to forever have a Gandhi at its helm ( though the Gandhis seem to have a more slowly grown prefrontal cortex- they do seem to make it up by occasionally listening to non Gandhians), we're not republic either, and socialism is always going to be a distant ideal. But democratic, we surely and truly are. And I begin to see that now and I am beginning to well up inside when I reflect that it couldn't have been easy.

We've been given our democracy. Along with that, we take up very seriously, the art of yelling, screaming, rioting and wearing our heart on our sleeves. It must be something about the tropical sun and the crowds and the dusty humidity but we're forever walking around with blood that's about to explode. And I mean it. And there are times when we need a collective, tight slap. Every one of us. And we seem bent on understanding democracy, the right to have a say, as really the right to veto. And yet we've come along haven't we ? Through fits and starts and apparently calculated risks. And the country I know today is vastly different from the country during the time of my civics classes. There's hope again, and that powerful feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, we might just make it to the top. And we're not going to give all that credit to those bumbling politicians, but we will continue to give them a chance. Elections happen systematically. And many of us seem to take it seriously. And we won't stand if we have no choice to make, even if the choices aren't all that appealing. Pranay Rai has made a living out of analyzing election news to death. And it must be because we take our chance to have a say seriously enough, to have that say counted and analyzed and leads to results which if disappointing, we quickly are ready to change our say the next time around. Poor voting records, notwithstanding, there are several that turn up and vote. Enough for the ticker tape to buzz, to buy pranay rai is ammonia free hair dye and for us to listen. Politicians come out on the roads with the loudest of speakerphones telling us what their garlanded leaders are going to do for us. And while some of us believe, the rest pooh pooh, but we're all affected by it, no matter how distant we want to be.

And this time we've manage to dispatch our cricket to south africa (not cancel it mind you), do our elections in tiny phases(not suspend it mind you )because we're all afraid of terrorism, but it only gives us reason to get stronger and fuller with our democracy. And its in our blood. In every household there's going to be the confusion about what to watch- cricket or the election. Both equally important. Both equally elements of self expression. And some households will consider buying a second TV to sort out this mess. This for me is progress, that we're finally able to have the cake and eat it too, love our cricket and get mad at our politicians too - because after over a half century of independence, now we can, and yes we can !!!