Untouchability and Constitution of India

 In the book excerpt of the book  Assembling India's Constitution: A New Democratic History | How Citizens, Communities, and Public Movements Shaped Constitutionalism, Democracy, and the Making of Independent India the authors state how some high caste Hindus including the Shankaracharya did not want the constitution to declare untouchability as illegal.

It is sad to see that humans do not wish equality of humans. Every community who have an upper hand wish to continue to hold that upper hand do not wish to embrace equality of humans.

While the context here is the Indian community, it applies to every community anywhere in the world. Be it the white skinned humans who wish to retain their supremacy over the "coloured" humans, or the humans who are males wish to retain their supremacy over the humans who are females, or the wealthy, privileged humans and the humans in power come together to retain supremacy over humans who are not wealthy and not in power.

The wisdom of the committee of Constituent Assembly must be lauded because they turned down this request and went with declaring all humans to be equal and also enshrined Universal Adult Franchise from day one. The later was diluted by changing the definition of adult to 18 years from the earlier 21. This was done without considering the fact that, at least, Indian men and women do not show concern towards the country and its citizens till they are settled in life which comes sometime between the early and late 20s. Given this fact the Government should have raised the age to 25 instead of lowering it to 18. It was done by the Congress simply to stay in power by awing the youth. Again another instance of a community wishing to retain power over others. 

What the world needs is a "social revolution" led by a group which strongly believes in equality of humanity and believe that every living being should have a right to lead a free life. Where and when will such a community/group come about? Will it even be possible that such an event will happen given the divisiveness of humans?

Misogyny in India

 In the book excerpt from the book The Song of the Clay Pot by Sumana Chandrashekar the author says that the world of Carnatic Music is full of misogyny. The male artistes refuse to have a female percussionist. The reasons are never known, it is just that it is a tradition.

Traditions arise due to various circumstances and become entrenched in the society. It becomes difficult to shake them. At the same time not trying to change a tradition which does not align with the current right thoughts, with right reasoning, needs to be considered.

In this example it is important that newer artistes start breaking the taboo and let women percussionists play alongside them. The women can lead the change, even if the men do not wish a change.

This has to happen vehemently, but silently. It has to send a message to those artistes not willing to take on a women percussionists, "Look, you are in minority". If this movement is kick started then it will take at least a generation for the men to accept this change.

This kind of misogyny is present not just in Carnatic Music, but is present in every facet of life, in every part of the world, including the so called "progressive", "advanced" nations of the West that pride themselves in leading the change. They forget that their women were not allowed to vote for a very long time and even today women change their name, not the men. The children take the name of the father, not that of the mother. By default in most societies the inheritance goes to the male children.

All this needs to change. The biggest driver will be education. The teachers (given that many of them are women) have to start driving these aspects into the heads of the children right from the beginning. The stress has to be on equality of gender and mutual respect for humans (irrespective of any difference between them) has to be cultivated from childhood, for the society to change and become better.

Expecting the privileged men to take this step is foolhardy. Will the women who, are the most of time guilty of discriminating against their daughters and even more towards their daughters-in-law take up the gauntlet to bring about the change?

 

Tree Cutting in India

Just click on the link Google Search of Tree Cutting the Last Month and check the number of protests against cutting trees.

Going by the sheer volume of trees marked for cutting it will appear that whole of India is a forest and the only way to develop India is by cutting trees.

While everyone, including those who are asking for trees to be cut know fully well the precarious situation of the environment not only in India but through the world. Despite this knowledge trees are being cut and being cut indiscriminately. All this to create more "comfort" and "luxury" for humans.

Trees are cut for the following reasons

1. To "develop" agriculture to feed humans

2. To "develop" infrastructure so that humans can go faster

3. To "develop" infrastructure so that humans can stay "closer to nature" luxuriously

4. To "develop" infrastructure so that humans can easily go to worship their Gods

5. To build wooden furniture so that humans can have "better luxury" furniture

6. To cook food so that humans can eat

Just look at the above points, except for the last point which is driven mostly due to lack of access to other types of fuel the rest are meant for "bettering" the lives of humans. What they are not realising the is the dreadful future that they are creating for themselves. The next few generations may manage somehow to avoid all the ill effects of global warming but the future generations are going to have a tough time.

It is high time that the Government, not just of India but of the entire world, accept global warming for a fact (somebody knock that that joker Donald Trump on his head and thrust this fact into his head) and work towards conserving the existing forest cover and in fact make attempts at afforestation.The afforestation should be based on local flora and not imported "good looking" flora which only serve as decoration and do not help the local ecosystem.

It is not we are averse or lack the technology to build tall skyscrapers. Just come and take a look at Mumbai or Gurugram. The height of the buildings are going up every day and they are scaling higher and higher heights. Now take a slum cluster in a city like Mumbai. If the slums are removed and are housed in a sky scrapper the amount of land that will be freed up will be phenomenal. This land can be used to create greener, gardens and parks. There will be enough left for the "real estate builders" and the "politicians" to make sufficient "black money" of the constructions in the remaining area. But this is unlikely to happen given the level of human greed. Everyone wants to earn so much money that so that they end up worrying how to make more money and how to safeguard the ginormous amount of wealth they have accumulated. Environment, Global Warming nothing matters to them. All that matters is that my wealth has to increase and sometimes it is that my power, hold over humans, has to increase.

It may appear to be a cynical view (and I hope it is so) but the truth seems to be that we are headed for a disaster not in far future but in the next 50 to 100 years. Only God can drive sense into the heads of the humans in power to ensure that we are able to steer away from the looming disaster.

 

Review - Tigers of Tadoba - Volume 2

A work of love from the authors. The book clearly illustrates the fascination and passion of the authors have for the tigers, and it is worth it.

 The initial section of how to figure out the age of tigers and how to identify a tiger are very insightful. One needs to carefully watch the stripes of the tigers to identify them, Just like two humans do not have the same fingerprint, not two tigers have the same pattern of stripes. Another interesting information is that the stripes remain the same from birth to old age, ratifying the adage "A tiger does not change its stripes".

 

The authors give details of about 48 tigers from the older generation, born between 2008 to 2016 and 14 tigers of the new generation, born 2019 onwards.Along with the details of the older generation tigers are three photographs, thoughtfully selected so that one can see the frontal view and the left and right flanks. The patterns on the face and flanks are important for identifying the tigers as individuals. This is a very good book to carry with one when one goes to the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve for safaris.

The book does not have too much of text but the photographs more than compensate for it. As they say a photo is worth thousand words. Each photograph in the book is worth is weight in gold. From the front cover to the back cover the photos are simply wonderful.

Buy and see to enjoy the photos.

 A must read for all the wildlife enthusiasts. 

Experience of Vande Bharat Train

 Recently I happened to take the Mumbai - Shiridi Vande Bharat Express. The impression that one gets when a Vande Bharat train streams into the station is one of awe, maybe not awestruck but definitely awe. That we in India can manufacture such a train should be matter of pride.

Vande Bharat Train Entering a Station

Once one enters the train what one sees also gives a good feeling. After having seen the regular trains of Indian Railways one does feel that we have done something nice and better than we have done in all these years.

It is nothing like what one sees in the normal trains.

It runs fast. The one in which I traveled touch 130 Kmph which is not bad considering the speed of the other trains in India.

The seats are comfortable, much more than in any existing train. They can be turned 180 degrees. So one can turn it 90 degrees to watch the scenery outside or one can turn it 180 degrees to face the seat in front/back and have a discussion with those sitting there. (I was in the executive class so I am not sure of the other class).

The few places where there is enough scope for improvement are as under

1. Food Service leave a lot to be desired

2. Despite notices saying do not pay the attendants any tip they come and ask for tips

3. The mounts of the seats are sturdy to put it in a euphemistic way. They are not sleek. One can understand that it needs to be sturdy, but it will be good if it can be made sleek as well and make it move with a little lesser effort.

4. The toilets are bio toilets which is good, but again the spit and polish is missing in them.

So all in all not a bad effort at all. It is indeed a good move forward, but there is scope for further improvement.

Next time I will try the vistadome and see how it feels like.

Elections 2024

The Loksabha elections in India culminated and the results took everyone by surprise. The BJP led by the one and only Mr. Narendra Modi had set a target of 370 seats for his own party and 400+ for his coalition. The exit polls predicted that Mr. Modi and his coalition will more or less reach close to the numbers that they had targeted.

When the results were declared on the 4th of June, Mr. Modi's party did not even reach the majority seats of 273. The BJP managed only 240 seats and the coalition ended up with 293 a little above the majority. The INDI Alliance managed to prove everyone wrong. The Indian National Congress ended up with 99 seats and the alliance 200+ seats.

Mr. Modi had to keep up a good bravado to face his party workers during the "victory" meet. Definitely there would have been an introspection within the party about the state in which they find themselves.

Here are some reasons and suggestions for them to ponder over

1. The Ram Mandir was the biggest bet that BJP was going on. But looks like it did not get them the seats they wanted. This shows that the common citizen is more interested in earning a livelihood than visiting temples. There is a only a small set of people who, if at all, are interested in the Mandirs that BJP promises. The consequence would be that Kashi and Mathura will go to the back burner. It is unlikely that more temples will be unearthed.
2. The attack on Muslims during his speeches are unlikely to have gone down well with the common citizen. The common citizen has now quarrel with the Muslims as such. There is definitely an undercurrent and suppressed feeling of major differences with the Muslims among the Hindus (which is rarely highlighted by the local media) and vice versa (which is never highlighted by the foreign media). Attacking the Muslims openly and brazenly will only end up with loss in votes and seats.
3. The usage of Hindi everywhere will definitely alienate the South of India renaming laws, ranks of military in Hindi or Sanskritised words will not win votes except, if at all in the
   
4. Renaming of places to remove any trace of the Mughals and other are things that will appeal to only a few and not the entire population. The worst was trying to rename India to Bharat. It is already called Bharat in many contexts
   
5. Nationalism was lacking in India, but taking nationalism to the extreme is not going to take anyone anywhere. Extreme nationalism is harmful, linking everything to nationalism or anti-nationalism will make things worse.
   

In short BJP proved the cliche "Pride comes before a fall". All the good work done to boost India's image, all the good work to upgrade railway trains, all the "revdis", even when blaming the opposition for the same fault, (some revdis were necessary) all went down the drain.

There are many thing that needs to change in the approach and strategy of BJP if they wish to win the next elections. They need to tone down many of their rhetoric. Hope they realise their mistakes and change in the right direction it will help India and its citizens.

Beginning of Rains in Mumbai

 Actually not really the beginning, but just a precursor to the rains in Mumbai. Today afternoon Mumbai experienced a dust storm (one wonders where from came so much dust) and then this was followed by a rain storm with thunder.

The dust storm before the rains part 1

 

 

The dust storm before the rains part 2

 

 

Exhilarating trailer to the Mumbai monsoons - the rain storm

The Underdog

 Why is it that one wishes to side with the Underdog all the time. Is it because one considers oneself, or is actually, an underdog?

Is it a phenomenon only with the pesssimists, the ones that are diffident, the ones that are average or below average?

The only exception is when ones own country is playing one supports one's own country even if the other team happens to be the underdog.

Why this discrepancy?

Unable to control one's emotion and remain "stoic".