English । ইংরেজি

The government’s concern at the circulation of patently false news items is quite understandable as there is a noticeable rise in the visibility of such items circulating on the social media. In fact, 2023 is the tenth year since this new weapon was added to the arsenal of India’s major political parties. These items stir up emotions, for or against the regime, and whip up rage at perceived attacks and insults on one’s religion. There are clear reasons to assume that several hordes of people or teams must be working overtime to disseminate them in order to raise the temperature in people’s minds with these distortions of the truth.

1. Three fourth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions result from burning of fossil fuels for energy and everyone agrees that the world must rid itself of these fossil fuels that endanger human and other forms of life. Half a century ago, we were told to produce energy at any cost, but in this century, the mission is to move to cleaner renewable energy resources. The important question now is by when will we be able to use only or mainly renewable resources for energy generation. By we, I refer to both India and the world, but in this talk we shall restrict ourselves only to India.

There are reasons to believe that some 12 lakh crore rupees have been systematically siphoned off from banks in the first 8 years of Narendra Modi’s rule — mainly by big corporate borrowers,. This was/is done quite ‘legitimately’ by taking loans for units and then getting them written off as unrecoverable non-performing assets (NPAs) The scale of that is 4 to 6 times higher than the internationally accepted norm. Obviously such a massive but smooth operation is simply not possible without complete political backing. Every GM, ED or CMD of a bank knows that when he is told by someone representing the core of political power “to lend to X”, he jolly well does it.

Like many other ordinary Members of Parliament, we wait with bated breath for the day that we shall all be herded in silence into the august presence of the interior of the new Parliament building. We shall gaze with yokelish amazement at the latest wonder that you are bestowing upon India.

They are caught playing around with the time-tested established principles and procedures of good and fair governance.

In a democracy, public affairs are no one’s personal fiefdom, though those in power often get their way in, say, getting someone into a position. But even here, the rules of eligibility must permit or be stretched to cover the executive’s will, or be vague enough not to stand in the way.

When Prime Minister Modi addressed a highly publicised meeting in Bali recently and remembered ever so fondly that Indians from Odisha had gone to Bali several centuries ago to spread “Indian civilisation”, he was actually admitting more than he meant.

Two recent news stories about Ram from two extremes of India, Ayodhya and Ram Setu, would have caught one’s attention. Where Ayodhya is concerned, the Pandora’s box had actually been opened long ago, in December 1949, when KKK Nair, the not-so-secular district magistrate of Faizabad, facilitated the sudden ‘appearance’ of Ram-Sita images inside Babri Masjid.

Bengalis have to be different. On Diwali, for instance, while much of India prays to the fair goddess Lakshmi with millions of dazzling lights, to seek wealth and prosperity, the Bengali Hindus pray to their dark goddess on the darkest night of the year, to seek some much required strength. After all, they have completed their tryst with Lakshmi several weeks before, right after Durga Puja.

Among regional festivals that have been most widely publicised by Bollywood, Karva Chauth takes the pride of place — along with Mumbai’s Ganesh Festival. But while Ganesh is a pan-Indian Hindu deity, most would never have known the quaint one-day festival called Karva Chauth — had it not been for Hindi cinema.

Tonight is Lakshmi Puja in Bengal and much of the East, comprising of Assam, Odisha and Tripura. South India has a different tradition of worshiping Lakshmi during 3 of the 9 nights of Navaratri, which ends just five days before. This is how diversity thrives amidst unity in India, for several millennia.

Aldous Huxley was among the first to brand Gandhi and his movements `anti- science’. “Tolstoyan’s and Gandhiites tell us to `return to nature’,” he said, “in other words, abandon science altogether and live like primitives”. This impression was surely in currency and, in the absence of a determined, evidence laden rebuttal, it continues to prevail. Dr Meghnad Saha once told the Russians that he and his fellow scientists had “as little regard” for Gandhi’s economic and social theories “as you ‘the Russians’ have for Tolstoy”.

Narendra Modi is not all oratory or glory with trumpets – he has a long track record of boasting and bungling, and sometimes just disregarding rules and conventions as well.

When I first met Shivendra Singh Dungarpur in 2014, he had just started his Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) in Mumbai. I was then the Chief Executive Officer of Prasar Bharati in Delhi and he wanted archivists from Doordarshan to join his proposed workshop on restoration and preservation of films and audio visual materials. He had captioned it as the ‘first Film Preservation and Restoration School India’ which was to be held in February 2015.

Sri Aurobindo, the venerable sage of French Pondicherry, turned 75 on the very day British India – which he had quit after leading its first revolutionary war of liberation – attained Independence. The sheer coincidence was not lost then, though it is almost completely forgotten today, on the 150th anniversary of his birth.

On the 14th of August, 1947, Pakistan broke free from the erstwhile united India and that very night, India declared freedom. Amidst the euphoria and waves of support were doubts, doomsayers and opponents. This new India was not one entity but consisted of 14 British provinces and 565 princely states, with a mind boggling multiplicity of cultural identities, languages and ethnicities. Many were reminded of John Strachey’s jibe that “there is not and never was an India…no India nation, no people of India.”

Now that US President Donald Trump is getting more overbearing by the day, Prime Minister Modi has, at last, decided to stand up to him. No self-respecting nation can exist at the mercy of another and India has a track record of standing up to American hegemony and its Seventh Fleet gunboats and paying the price for them. Remember former Prime Minister Indira ticking off Nixon-Kissinger or even Vajpayee going ahead with his Pokhran II nuclear demolition?

Puri’s Ratha Yatra reminds Bengalis about Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who was known for his extreme demonstrations of piety and love for Jagannath. When he reached Puri after he took Sannyas in 1510, he was so overwhelmed with emotions that he rushed in a trance to embrace the image of Jagannath — and got roughed up by the priests who took him to be crazy.

As fire and protests rage across the country, one is reminded of the utter lawlessness that Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, the three classical political philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries had referred to as the 'state of nature'. Things are not yet so bad, thankfully so, in spite of scenes of thousands of the unemployed young torching millions' worth of public property. They are up against the new Agnipath scheme that seeks to recruit some 45,000 short-time 'soldiers' into the army on a contractual basis. Modi's India has not seen such a worrisome breakdown of law and order, one that is so expressly violent and widespread in so many states.

The Sangh's mouthpiece, Swaraj, in its issue of June 23, 2019, insists that Syama Prasad Mookerjee had actually saved Hindu Bengalis from "imminent annihilation", and its powerful social media repeats this claim incessantly. The PM renamed Kolkata Port Trust in his name and there appears a renewed interest in Mookerjee — the founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh that later metamorphosed into the Bharatiya Janata Party. As the son of the most powerful Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University — Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee — Syama Prasad's academic achievements were under a bit of a cloud in the 1920s.

We should strengthen the Archaeological Survey of India and lessen its burden of guarding thousands of sites. Only then can it be an effective custodian of the Places of Worship Act.

The Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI) stand at the Qutub Minar that it cannot permit Hindus to pray there may have reinforced people’s faith in plural tolerance. But such a stand has been its traditional policy.

In 2010, there were concerted attempts by a section of Muslims to start namaz at the Qutub Minar and at other prominent Islamic monuments of India. But the ASI simply refused to budge and the culture ministry’s stand was supported by the Union cabinet. The government decided to confront the demand as a law-and-order problem. The section of fanatics gave up their tantrums in the face of such determination.

The ASI’s argument is simple — there are too many contested ‘non-worshipped’ monuments that Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists are raring to claim for their prayers and for de facto possession.

>These sites do not belong to any community and are the common property of India and Indians — hence no fresh worship should be allowed so that the delicate equilibrium is maintained. Such a stand could perhaps be studied by the judiciary.