Shashi’s Seven minute Succinct Speech on Saying Sorry

Quite the tongue twister that one, eh? Yeah, that’s what happens when you try to work a little too hard on your title. You end up making a tongue twister that hardly anyone can read, much else dare to click on the link and read the supposedly equally horrifying content contained under such a dubious head line. However, coming to the topic at hand...

The Statesman who almost did things

Dr Shashi Tharoor
Image Courtesy: thehindu.com

Dr Shashi Tharoor, the man who almost headed the United Nations, the man who knows almost everything about socio-economic India in the present age; this man almost brought the British Empire down to its knees at the ‘Reparations debate’ at the Oxford Union Society. The proposition was that Britain owed reparations to her former colonies for their colonization.

The Case for an Apology

The British Empire Anachronous
Image Courtesy: The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick

Dr Tharoor spoke eloquently for the proposition, made mockery of the opposition, cited statistics, and even managed to calculate to a certain extent, how much Britain needs to pay India if she decides to do so. But, in the midst of all the financial talk, he said something that made perhaps more sense than everything else put together: The need to accept a mistake and say sorry. To pay or not to pay is a matter of ambiguous uncertainty but to say that a debt is indeed owed is what is important.

Indirect genocides through the inaction of the British Empire through various famines and the active participation in human rights abuse is something that needs to be accepted. Although it is true that a deliberate mass killing was not initiated but the death toll and one psychological, need to be addressed.

The Unanswered Question

However, one question does remain unanswered.

Sixty-eight years on, do Indians even care about reparations, and for that matter, do any of the former colonies who have since then stabilized, settled into their democratic framework and progressed with the world into the 21^st century?

This question is not meant as an insult to all those who fought for our freedom or who lost their near and dear ones either fighting for or against British rule in India. Only time and the unearthing of bones long put to rest will tell whether we are indeed capable of holding on to an almost seven decade long grudge against people long dead and dusted.

Haiku #10 – Self-Destruct

Image Courtesy: indianajones.wikia.com

The world conspires,

Brings you knowledge and power;

To destroy yourself.

Keeping the Peace: The UN Peacekeeping Force

The world celebrates the UN Peacekeeping Day today, the 29^th of May, but it hardly garners attention anywhere except in the camps of 16 operation bases around the world where the Peacekeeping force is striving to bring stability, establish the rule of law and end conflicts without resorting to war.

Strife is a global phenomenon and even now multiple armed conflicts are in progress either in the form of ethnic clashes, civil war, terrorism, dictatorships, coups or full scale war. More often than not, it is superpowers that intervene by either coercing or forcing both parties to co-operate and act as mediator but it may also happen that these nations may take sides in these conflicts.

This is the time where the need for a global non-partisan peacekeeping force betrays its importance. The UN Peacekeeping Force, comprising of personnel from all over the world, is the perfect third party to bring about a resolution to conflict.

The biggest contributors to the force are not the nations you expect. Expect surprises in the figures below which have been sourced from the UN website. These are the total number of personnel contributed by the nation:

1. Bangladesh – 9307
2. Pakistan – 8163
3. India – 8112
4. Ethiopia – 7864
5. Rwanda – 5575
6. Nepal – 5316
7. Senegal – 3570
8. Ghana - 3053
9. Nigeria - 2975
10. Egypt – 2937

Well, wasn’t that a surprise? Apart from the fact that none of the five nations that comprise of the United Nations Security Council feature in this list, the fact that the nations of the Indian sub-continent rank in the top 6 certainly show how much these nations and African countries who complete this list actually strive for world peace in spite of claims that they don’t contribute to the war on terror.

Image Courtesy: defencetalks.net

Although China makes it to the 11^th rank in the list of contributors to the Peacekeeping Force, the rest of the Big 5 are nowhere near. Here are the contributions of the Permanent seat holders in the UNSC:

1. China – 2899
2. France – 924
3. UK – 288
4. Germany – 194
5. USA – 95

This however, is not a condemnation of nations but a realization that those on whom the least expectation is placed often turn out to be front-runners in hindsight. It must also be noted that although these ‘developed’ nations my not directly be involved in the peacekeeping Force, they are the ones leading the alliance against major terrorist forces in the world today.

Although the force of arms is hardly the correct way to bring about peace, it is sometimes required to bring to sense to those who would prefer violence over cordial means and chaos over stability to establish control. This makes the UN Peacekeeping Force not just an interlocutor but a necessity in these times of grave turmoil.

On this day, the world should remember the lives given for the greater good of the world. People in conflict zones are actually thankful for the role these brave men and women have played in bringing some amount of calm to their days of unending warfare and nights filled with sobs stemming from constant nightmares. These angels of peace in Blue are worthy of the respect and reverence reserved for the highest form of sacrifice above and beyond the call of duty.

Death by Blasphemy

I’m writing this post today because I think I know that barring natural causes or a horrific accident, I’ll probably be alive reading the response that you so considerately are going to write in the comments section. But it is not so for a lot of other bloggers and by ‘other’, I mean bloggers in Bangladesh who don’t know whether they’ll be alive to see their message reach their readers or not. They don’t know if they are safe even within the sanctity of their homes.

Image Courtesy: The Hindu.

Two bloggers are already dead in our neighbouring nation because they apparently wrote blasphemous stuff on their blogs. They were supposedly atheists who wrote critically of religion. I’m not sure of the content of their writing but the answer to anything is never violence. It’s not that things cannot be solved that way, but it is nobody’s right to inflict it on another.

Obviously, it is wrong to write hateful things about other religions and their leaders and so on and so forth but the punishment for that cannot be death. Causing mass agitation and public anger can be argued to have severe consequence but death for anything without the due process of law is something I believe no brand of religion would condone.

Freedom of Expression is a basic right that cannot be taken away from anyone and those radicals who seek to do so cannot claim to be doing it on religious grounds. These people need psychiatric treatment and a thorough explanation of how civilized society is supposed to function.

It is not that I’m supporting the bloggers without knowing what they wrote. It is easy for a writer to become a terrorist and even if an assumption is made that they wrote something that could and did hurt religious feelings, I think the due process of law in Bangladesh could have taken care of the matter. In any case, writing anything against anyone is no reason for violence and it certainly didn’t make these two bloggers legitimate targets.

Radical behaviour has become quite the norm, not only in one country but across the board. Fanaticism is rampant In India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, the entirety of Middle-East Asia, Northern Africa and Europe as well. Tolerance and co-habitation seem to be ideas of the past as different coloured flags are followed by the same weapons, murdering people with the same colour of blood.

Legitimate Targets

Two days back, the wife of a terrorist leader was captured by the Lebanese armed forces. This came three days after the wife and child of another terrorist leader were captured by the same army. Whether this says something about their intelligence source or is pure dumb luck is another matter; what came after these arrests is what is really amusing.

The latest arrest was of the wife of a regional al-Qaeda commander who is apparently very upset about this particular development unlike al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS), another terrorist group, who didn’t even blink at the arrest of one of his wives and a child.

The al-Qaeda guy however, lost his cool and declared every woman, child and man in Lebanon legitimate targets for his terrorist operation. He demanded his spouse be released or the holding forces be ready to face his mighty wrath that would befall anyone within the blast radius of his ‘holy’ bombs.

Commander, with all due disgust, allow me to explain how you’re just stating something that is so passé that even the guy sending your message to the army is chuckling at your naivety.

Image Courtesy: Google Images.

Did you really not blow up innocent people before this? Have you never sent suicide bombers to blow up a busy marketplace or a place of religious worship before? Do you not already have the blood of innocents on your hands and on your soul? Have you not blackened your heart with the funeral fires of thousands of people who died because of your fight for ‘God’?

How can you say that these innocents are legitimate targets now? Was massacring them illegitimate before? Then why did you do it? Do you deny it? No? Why am I not surprised?

How do you expect God to be proud of you when you try to forward your vested interests in His name? You do not want people to fear God, you want them to fear you. You want to give reason to your madness and so you keep telling yourself, your mindless followers and the world that what you’re fighting for is a ‘holy war’ and not to make yourself king of the mountain.

You are no better than the ‘legitimate’ dictators, both, ruling and deposed. In fact, at some level they are better than you because they make no pretence of the fact that they want power. You cower behind your imaginary excuses and the lie atop the bodies of the slain with a ‘legitimate’ reason.

You talk of legitimacy? You have no right. Your wife is probably safer in the army’s hands than are the possibly hundreds or thousands of women that your brainwashed ‘holy warriors’ have raped and murdered to satisfy their ‘holy’ selves. You cannot speak of legitimacy. The very word is dishonoured by being present upon your tongue.

The only thing legitimate by human standards is for you and others like you to hang for your crimes against mankind.

The Battle for all Mankind

Months have passed since this blog saw a post on its virtual wall and still readers are hoping to see something worthwhile here. I am honoured. With this post, I’m hoping to be back on the Blogosphere with the same zeal that I entered into it with.

The world is going through a rough phase, a very rough one. Humanity as a whole today has the curse of battling two adversaries, both capable enough to wipe them out or corrupt them to a degree beyond which it would be virtually impossible to go back to life as it knows it. Both are also incapable of shaking the human spirit and will if world chooses to come together and fight the pincer attack that Mother Nature and human nature have encircled us with.

The two-pronged attack brought about by the pride of man and his greed is a test of human commitment and co-operation at the highest level. This test can either force us to withdraw into ourselves even more or come together to fight an enemy of the entire race.

The Ebola virus. Credit: Google Images.

On one hand is the dreaded virus that has affected more than 10,000 people and threatens to overrun the human race if not contained and decimated. On the other hand is the radical religious group that threaten to plunge the world into the third World War in order to establish its caliphate in the Middle-East. Between the both of them, they are capable enough to make sure that we are either decimated or at the very least, set back by decades in terms of advancement. And, if one were to use the other in propagating its means to achieve its ends, it’s going to be even more dangerous because if the virus has killed so many people in its natural form, it is unimaginable to think what havoc its weaponized form could cause.

And at this time, when international co-operation is in the best interests of the world, India, or rather its government has decided not to be part of any coalition battling these killers. Neither has it sent forces to battle the terrorist threat, nor has it sent medical personnel to battle the Ebola virus.

Proposed Islamic State Caliphate. Credit: Google Images.

The Islamic State’s influence has already reached India and it is just a matter of time before Ebola does and nobody who is Indian needs to be reminded of the fact that we are not in a position to contain an epidemic of such proportions, and we will not be in such a position for a very long time. Help begets help. If not out of compassion, the Indian government needs to send help to fight on both these fronts to make sure that they never reach our doorstep.

We are non-aligned in war, but need we be non-aligned in every international coalition? Can we not recognize the need to take active prevention measures before an action by the enemy forces a reaction that may be too late to prevent the loss of life that is inevitable in a nation such as ours?

For long we have remained the Switzerland of Asia but perhaps it is now time to recognize that if we want to be recognized as the South-Asian powerhouse we claim to be, we need to step up and do something to prove it. This is not a battle for the USA or Africa; this is the battle for mankind.

Unholy Deeds in the Holy Land and Beyond

Today, even as you are reading this, hundreds of people are dying, thousands are already dead millions are homeless refugees and the countless dead weep for those still alive in this rotten civilization. It almost seems like a prophecy, what Jesus said to the weeping women of Jerusalem on the way to the cross, “Weep not for me but for your children…”

Perhaps he was referring to these later generations who would fight each other millennia later, not against an invader but amongst themselves. As it has been, so it shall be again and again and again till the end of time. Man will continue to be ambitious, greedy, selfish and hungry for more power than he can possibly control, just because he can and not because he needs to.

Time and again has history seen that when a people are bound too tight, they will attempt to free themselves of their chains in order to claim the one thing that is theirs by divine right – Freedom. Speaking from the viewpoint of faith, even God it is said has given Man free will to do with life as He pleases. Then why do men bind men in the chains of slavery when some higher power thought not to do so? But mankind has always yearned to bind their brethren and the afflicted have always sought liberation.

It’s just not about Gaza, it’s about… everywhere! Ukraine, Central African Republic, Iraq, Thailand and everywhere else that there is strife among people of the same family. There may be different reasons and they may be right or wrong but the part that is beyond comprehension is the need to pick up arms at all.

Central African Republic

Gaza

   

 

Thailand

Iraq

Ukraine

Some invaders call themselves liberators and some righteous but what is ultimately right? It is not what contemporaries believe and it is not what can be seen from afar or within; history always belongs to the victors and though there may be parallel histories, the one believed always belongs to those who manage to survive what holocaust either one managed to conjure up to make life miserable for the common people upon whose shoulders they balance their ‘Gun of Liberation’, ‘Tank of Freedom’ or ‘Missile of justice’.

It is just incredibly sad to think of all those people homeless, wounded and seeking refuge from foreign governments who would deign to reach out to them, their own government incapable of providing for its own people.

I believe that humans want revolution but it is often without evolution which becomes the greatest hindrance for anything new to take root, but that is something for another time perhaps…

Images courtesy of: Google Images.

The Power of Division in Religion (Guest Post)

[The communal riots in the Central African Republic (C.A.R.) are not recent news. Muslims and Christians had been living in a state of unrest since its colonial power, France, granted them Independence.

Though we have seen it in India too, strained relations between Christians and Muslims seem a farce to me because it is widely believed that that the two religions along with Judaism had sprung from the same well. 

But today, Jews are fighting the Muslims, Muslims are fighting Christians and so on and so forth. 

Why?

One word: Power.]

[This post has been written as a guest post and you can read it on the Coffee Beans blog. This blog is authored by my very first blogger friend, Namrota Mazumdar.]

Death, I choose You!

Immortality, however tempting the concept may be, is still something to be well thought out. Given that there is a choice in the matter.I cannot speak for everyone, of course but I for one would like to die when my time comes. I would like to embrace it, for what is death but the next great adventure?

I put a lot of thought into it. In fact, I did not sleep last night because this particular thought was nagging me ever since I went to pick up the newspaper in the morning and saw my dog just lying on the floor and basically just chilling. I know not from where, but the thought of him dying entered my head. Well, he is old and I would be lying if I said that I hadn't thought of this before, but today, this thought took me in a new direction and this tangent ended at the point of Immortality and its desire.

So, as mentioned, when I was thinking of my dog’s impending death, I thought of my life with him. He had been there ever since I had moved into the house and we had hit it off immediately. I’m kind of a dog charmer (or so I think myself to be) and these three stray dogs soon became my best buddies. They’d be there whenever I came back from school and they’d come to the end of my street to see me off on my bicycle when I went out. Then they used to wait for my bi-monthly visits home when I went to study in another city. They used to stand right outside the door of the rickshaw and pounce on me the moment I set foot on the ground.

Now, one of them is dead and the second one is old, very old and I fear that the next time I come home, he may not be there to welcome me back. So, at this point I got to thinking about immortality and how would I be able to bear the pain of losing everyone I knew and loved and cherished when I cannot bear the pain of my canine friends passing from this realm into the next.

How would I be able to watch years and decades and centuries and millennia pass by and watch the world change before my very eyes? 

To lose everything I once had, to see time literally run away like sand from my hands and witness an ever-growing sense of loss in my soul. 

How terrible to make and remake relationships and bonds and then see them being ravaged by the sands of time? Again and over again...

It is a pretty horrifying prospect to me and one that far outweighs the benefits of everlasting life. So if I ever had a choice, I’m going to choose death – voluntarily.

Go figure.