akala chalo re

 at first I didn't know how to start a blog. Then a kind friend helped me out. And now after a week of blogging I have suddenly realized that all the people I know from my e-mail list are as ignorant about how to follow a blog and comment on it as i was . As a result I have no followers of my blog. so following gurudev thakur 's advice  " akala chalo re , akala chalo " , i blog alone .

Some years ago, a  knowledgeable friend had  commented on how India  used to be, not one big country, but many big, small, and smaller independent states which fought wars with each other/  married into each other's royal families/ and generally formed a  loosely  hanging around Federation. And then British, for their own  administrative convenience, managed to almost cobble them together in a sort of a nation.

Every election in the recent past keeps making one aware of how from being one homogenous  country since our independence, we are again heading towards progressive fragmentation into smaller states. a significant   number of new  states have been  formed in the last 20 years or so. And with the demand for independent telangana , gorkhaland , vidharba etc , the fragmentation will further continue.

 The power of regional leaders and regional parties in swaying elections after elections is a solid testimony to this. in our democracy the concept of a two party, or at the most a three party, system seems to be fast fading. Congress did not win Assam. gogoi did .  Congress did not win poschim bangla. mamata bannerjee did .  Congress did not lose Tamil Nadu.  dmk did .

 and this story will continue in all the elections to come in the future.  may be at some point of time we need to examine if we need a new form of democracy, where we vote  for individual leaders rather than parties ,both at state levels and at the centre.  but  then that's a long drawn debate.

 but talking of the  elections that just got over yesterday, the most significant factor, is the victory of mamata bannerjee .  not only because she won so decisively, not only  because she  won against a firmly entrenched adversary ,  but because she is the first woman leader who represented woman–power in the true sense of the word. She is the first, and so far the only, woman leader who is not there because she's somebody's daughter/ wife/ daughter-in-law/ girlfriend or  companion (or  to use a more politically correct word, protege )  of some powerful  man. She's there because of herself. And that's a huge statement. No lady leader in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka or  Bangladesh can claim that honor. Take a bow mamata didi . !!

thats the good news .and that it happened in poshchim bangla ,  which worships a woman deity  more than any other part of the country  ,is a true  feather in the cap  of that state.

now the bad news .  the most worrisome fact of such landslide victories is the unreasonable expectations that go with it. that's where , what I call '  the Obama syndrome'  comes into play.  you can do a bloody good job but the dissonance between what  people expected and what you deliver always pulls you down.  and that's a scary thought.
Here's hoping that she manages well  the tightrope walking between being populist and being progressive .  not just for herself  but for paschim bangla . and for india .
amen . 

Against terrorism

Some years ago, I had written and directed the play 'purush '  which was about a fight of a young schoolteacher who is raped by a politician. When things get tough for her to fight against power and money she turns to her Dalit boyfriend, who is always actively involved in taking up causes for the Dalit downtrodden. When he refuses to help her in  her fight because she is a Brahmin,  she turns on him like a tigress and says “I now realize, that you are not against injustice, you are only against injustice done to your people".

 While watching all the media coverage about how Indian government should now petition America to put pressure on Pakistan to get dawood ibrahim kaskar . or  launch a strike against him the way they did to get Osama bin Laden .
 and I said how naive can we get. America is not against terrorism or terrorists. it's against acts of terrorism  against Americans . They would spend billions of dollars and sanction huge manpower to avenge acts of terrorism against their people and their land. and rightly so. the American government owes its foremost responsibility to the American people and not to the world at large.(  unless of course it involves oil, money  or other form of materialistic profit.  but then that is being overly cynical. )

 but the point that emerges from all these actions of the Western superpowers, is, why create these ' bhasmasurs  '?  any follower of modern history is well aware that  these so-called evil creatures are created by them because it suits their purpose at that point of time. idi amin 'dada '  Was regarded by his British superiors as an iconic figure with tremendous leadership qualities that could help uganda (  till  one-day he flexed his muscles and thumbed  his nose at the white masters. And then he suddenly became this cannibal monster.) Saddam Hussein was promoted, trained, funded by America when it suited them to use him against a belligerent iran of ayatollah khomeini .  just weeks before his invasion of kuwait (  which historically was a part of Iraq,till  the British decided to hive it off  for their own personal reasons) he was seen hobnobbing with the American Secretary of State/ Defence Secretary or somesuch in baghdad.  now the ex-Satan incarnate Osama bin laden was  promoted, funded, trained and otherwise amply supported by the Americans because he was fighting against the Russians in afganistan , and he was a good weapon to promote underground to do their own dirty work on the ground.

 all these guys, and many others only became evil  when they continued to do the same thing but now against their previous Masters.  same people. same actions. different perspective.  as is said'  one man's terrorist, is another man's martyr.'

 or as Hitler once said “history is always written from the point of view of the Victor'.

 it always was like this. and will always will be. 

i recently participated in a star tv seminar on maharashtra in 2020 . top politicians , top journalists , actors , singers ......and me . lots of impressive statistics floating around about the bright prospects of maharashtra . i said , we know there are three types of lies " lies, damn lies , and statistics " . ( iam quite brave on tv seminars ).I said  rather than self-congratulatory statements about  how Maharashtra is the greatest state in the country, we need to do a SWOT analysis to effectively take the state forward.
 Furthermore, there are two aspects to this. Maharashtra going forward, and maharashtrians going forward. Mutually exhaustive. Maharashtra  will continue to prosper, with or  in spite of maharashtrians. Since this was a function for a marathi  channel, I said let's restrict ourselves to how maharashtrians  will go forward. maharashtrians believe, and rightly so, that we have some of the greatest writers/ and poets/ fine artists/ playwrights/ filmmakers etc .  but then so do Tamil Nadu, kerala , gujarat  and most other states in India. and each state happily lives in, what in Sanskrit is  called,' cupa manduka vrutti' . as long as people in your own state and in your own language know the gems  that we possess, who gives it damn if anybody  else outside your state knows about them or not. all states believe this .  All except Bengal. Today if a ravindrnath thakur or a vivekananda or a ramakrishna  is a household name across India and across the world, it's because Bengal took them  beyond the confines of the state boundary and their own  language. this is not to doubt their greatness,  it is to point out how other states and other languages also had more or less similar great people that are not even heard of outside their states. this is where we need to break the umbilical cord of our mother tongue and take  our great literature,  great writers et al to  the rest of India, in a language that they understand.  how many of us have made the efforts to read gurudev thakur's 's gitanjali in bengai ( p.l. deshpande did .  and how many amongst you, who are non-maharashtrians,  know  who p.l. deshpande is ) .

 case rests .

If we leave our america inspired prejudices aside for a while and impassionately look at osama bin laden' s face, isn't it the most pious, spiritual face exuding great inner calm? Don't jump.look without pre conceived notions and knowledge of who and what he was.now see his face.more serene and spiritual than most, in fact, all our so called godmen and gurus.right.they look more like terrorists and evil guys.
Strange but true.
In.