Swiss give no bliss

It was the year 1893 that Switzerland banned the Jewish ritual of kosher slaughter through a referendum with anti-Semitic undertones.

It is the year 2009 wherein Switzerland imposes a ban on mosque minarets again through a referendum with anti-Muslim undertones.

The former ban was said to have been imposed since Switzerland feared the invasion of Jews from Eastern Europe regarding them to be estranged and unreliable people. Thus the prohibition of a vital ritual was deemed the best way to impede their coming to the land.

As for the latter it is said that the Alpine people fear their identity is at stake and do not want any religious identifications to be flared so explicitly in the public. That is, they want people(in this case Muslims) to exhibit a neutral stance. What I fail to understand is how can only four minarets in all of Switzerland be threatening to the nation's cultural identity? Furthermore the applications for the construction of minarets was only two more, which were anticipated to be erected not before the next five years.

It baffles me that the Western European thinking has trickled down to such a low level that I don't exactly know how to react. Like the many opinions slated by many Muslim people around the world, it's not a feeling of anger or revenge it's a feeling of sadness and surprise. Statistically there are 30 million Muslims in Europe and they perceive this to be quite a setback not to their religious duties but to their functioning as normal dedicated European citizens. They have significantly contributed in favour of growth of the region through various professions for a few decades now. It has been asked in the wake of anti-Muslim sentiments post 9/11 that they must integrate into society more often and not alienate themselves from social gatherings where multi-ethnic, multicultural people are to be found. Here I ask, in making such an appeal and simultaneously scrutinizing every action of theirs, is it expected of them to contribute in any fearless and favourable way?

Switzerland is known for their civil liberties and secular nature. Having followed the ideals of democracy it is anti-climactical for this nation to ask for a referendum on something which goes against the very meaning of democracy. It is a precedent which now set by a (so-called) secular, tolerant country seemingly evokes the likes of many others to fall in line. Germany and Netherlands have wished to take up a similar stance. However, many people around the world from human rights groups to various other organizations including the UNO have condemned such a move by the Swiss and also call for a reversion of the ban. Most people have wisely come to realize that there might be repercussions which can be highly unfavourable and therefore have asked for the re-consideration of such a move. Adding to that piece of wisdom I say for the betterment of mankind that we musn't impose a ban on not only religious structures but also on the structures of human sensibilities.

Results are out!

It can't be more despicable to live in a system that only fails you every moment you are at it. Sadly as I say this I don't have many people by my side to back my claims. They in fact by all means accept it and some others claim it an exceptional platform to shape their lives. Indeed, in essence it is meant to be exactly that, if only it was more efficacious and adequate for the world we live in today. I speak of the inexorable educational system, that knows not of 'change'. There were once those times when our predecessors shunned the English system and considered it as a taboo for the revered cultural teachings of India, and now are the times when we must move on, but yet we want to hanker to something when the status quo demands a different deal.

We have the former Economics Professor as the Prime Minister of our country on his second term now, however, Education doesn's look as bright. I'm speaking of those numerous teaching shops that famously claim to inculcate all it takes to be skilled and qualified for the right job. There's so much universality in their language that you feel you're under an umbrella Education Bazaar. Nonetheless things don't look so dingy anymore. The Right to Education Bill which apparently existed in the Constitution is believed to have been passed by the Government and certain other proposals have been put forth, like having a central board that would decide on curricula, making board exams optional, having private players participate more vividly in the education process and also calling in foreign univeristies to have campuses in India. Of course a Stanford, Harvard, Oxford sounds as much tempting as eluding. Let's not deny that there are going to be plenty of objections from various areas concerning foreign universities setting up campuses here, primarily the inevitable question of reservations will be mooted. The revamp of education per se will have a lot of conflicts before it comes into any real effect but what we've lost out on today, can't be undone. However, it must be seen that educational reforms take their time to show effects, perhaps a decade long, so if we don't do anything now, the already pending period will only have to be stretched longer.

The method of teaching and evaluation has become so hackneyed and oddly so, we've grown immune to it. How many of us really question the pedagogical methods employed to imparting education? How much of what we study holds relevance to what must be known? We're trying to squash too many things into one bottle, aren't we? We're all wearing blinkers and set goals that would give us good grades and thus good jobs. It brings me to ask do we subconciously show contempt for dialectical methods just as the way the Greeks once did when Socrates tried to develop them? Can't we do away with mindless memorization and concentrate greater on developing a creative way of learning. We're a a good population of young people who have tremendous potential to serve the nation and largely the world if only we got ourselves the right start in education. A few early years of correct moves will result in commendable leaps in the future. We have plenty of players in the private field who shell out quite an amount of money on higher Technical education, we need them to invest in primary education. The reality lies in the roots, we need them to go deep down, hold on to rocks that would stand the heat of all times, for that's where lies the the secret behind the huge tree that speaks of its productive fruits.

Black not in vogue

H.G. Wells once said “those swarms of blacks, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people ... will have to go.” He said this in connection with the society of eugenics, whose philosophy he openly advocated. I was ignorant of this fact until now, and I was apalled at hearing this remark. What might be the odds of finding a person having read "Time Machine" and appreciated it. However, this remark was made in the later part of the nineteenth century, where apartheid was the lingo. It's further awful to know that the discoverer of DNA, James Watson claims that white people are relatively more intelligent than people who are coloured. So much so that he goes on to say that the future of Africa is questionable. It's baffling how anyone can rank anyone else's intellect on the basis of their colour, in so much as to decide a continent's fate.

It's not coincidental that I'm mentioning this in the recent backdrop of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., an American black scholar and professor at Harvard University. He was back home, and forced open the front door, which was wrongly concluded by a neighbour as an act of burglary. Indeed what appeared to be a misunderstanding initially, turned out to be a major event that attracted not only news headlines but also got people raising the topic of racism. And ironically this happens at a time when the President of America, happens to be African American. Well however it's not totally out of context to bring this up, as the fact of the matter is, it reflects on yet how the blacks are perceived to be stigmatic to society. It's nevertheless true that a small community that cannot fend for themselves have to inevitably adopt to unlawful acts to survive and this illegitimacy has proved to be a burden for the rest. But to come to an unreasonable conclusion as happened in the Gates case, has proved to be quite unproductive. The arrest was certainly uncalled for, especially after providing evidence that it was his own house, by producing an ID bearing his name and addresss.

This really points to a more pertinent question, what do people really fear about the blacks? Why would people like H.G Wells go to the extent of saying that "they should go..". Indeed once they were conducted, what are known as acts of sterilization to get rid of these so-called less intellectual minds. Why have a eugenics society at all? Doesn't nature do the job of favouring the better species on its own, and hasn't it wisely come to the conclusion that humans have the survivng streak. Why make a differentiation at all?

More Brown less Blue, Susan thanks to you!

While Gordon Brown is being battered back home, the cartoonists are having a ball of a time(pun intended). Well, you must've heard of Susan Boyle, the singing sensation who got popular through the popular British Talent show 'Got Talent'. She crashed out of the show in the semifinals and suffered from what many would call, mental stress. Brown shares one other similarity with her, they hail from Scotland. This cartoon published by the Times bears a satirical joke wherein Gordon Borwn dressed as Susan Boyle(note: not the other way round) is trying to get some of her talent passed onto him, to fill in for the Labour votes as he'd have wished. Here, not Boyle but Brown uses her clout to attract votes. It's so comical how they've gotten to draw this parallel so much so that it was Brown who was the laughing stock, contrary to what would've conventionally suited Boyle as she had a nervous breakdown, after her defeat. It truly singals how his popularity has suffered the worst ever stance and how he's at immense stress. Aparently the Business Secretary standing beside him says, "People aren't voting for Susan Boyle just because she's Scottish, Gordon—she's talented and popular!"

Adopting her much-weighted talents, I hope Mr. Brown you go a long way!

On an identity chase

It’s kinda funny how we always need some plank to define ourselves to the world. It’s a much compelling trail that never leaves us, irrespective of what identity one really has. So much that we get inevitably entangled in a crisis less innocuous than we really think. I’d been on a visit to the U.K and Italy last month and this impulsive need to distinguish myself on various grounds such as place of birth, cultural association, belief system, social background and even behavioral pattern has been very predominant. This distinction has not been in any self-demeaning fashion, but is a reflection of identifying what one is not when in a dissimilar society.

The more recent attacks on students in Australia has focused on the country of birth they hail, as opposed to whether these attacks were consciously intended on Indians. There are fewer people, who would give a fair chance to the notion that these attacks may not have been based on cultural lines. Rather may have resulted due to some mischief makers, more commonly called criminals, and the victims happened to be Indians amongst the many others living in not-so-high class areas of the country. I am not being defensive of Australia, but just trying to reflect on how seriously we take to our identities. If there were to have been a similar crude attack in India by uncivilized Indians then we’d treat it like an act of crime.

As one would hear more often that we live in a globalized society, it brings me to ask what does it really imply? Sometimes I wonder if globalization has truly made boundaries less significant. Ironically, I think it has made people cling on to their civilizational base more vividly in the fear of its disappearing in this laissez-faire. At every level we ascend, our identity doesn’t diminish but only takes on a form encompassing a greater homogenous society. For example if I went to Delhi, I would invariably identify myself as South Indian there. But if I with a Delhiite friend went to Japan, we’d like to identify ourselves as Indians. Further on, I with the Delhiite and Japanese friends were to go to France then we’d impulsively identify ourselves as Asians. But does this culminate under one single canopy? Is there a non-dividing homogenous society? That invokes the theory of the ‘clash of civilizations’, a concept put forward by Samuel Huntington. I’ve been reading the Huntington book and he spells out the nine civilizations in the world that stand non-overlapped and by and large conflicting. Every single day we’ve had scores of reasons to believe it. Conflicts based on ethnic lines in various parts of the world, representative of their civilizations have occurred time and again.

Having said this I would like to reiterate what I mentioned before, the identity chase is truly a greater imposing affair than we really think.

Ramblings...

Trivial things have kept me busy, like staring into space, switching channels mindlessly, eating biscuits, calculating the number of lines on my palm, re-reading the same paragraph of a book I started two months ago and mostly biting my nails for my visa to come through. Having said that, I discovered last week that not only H1B visas but the VAF1series(UK visa) can also make as much headlines, if someone would only try. Having taken the initiative to gather frivolous news I shall throw light on how VAF1s can be so worthy of "breaking news". Well, before I get started, a disclaimer first.

"Anyone from the British Visa Office, ever accidentally bumps into this space, then I'd like to state that I am in no way responsible for this preposterous content, however if you are adamant then please give me enough time to run."

Now that I've stated the obvious, let me get started in the true sense.
It was the 17th of April, and it was a morning, as early as 7:30 a.m and I was, no, not snuggling in my blanket, instead standing in a queue that was to lead to a bigger queue in the middle of the day, and then another of its kind, only to know the wait's extending three weeks. People stand in three queues to get a visa to the UK? We're not even getting to meet the Queen! In the first queue you are moving fast, you realize you're close and then you're handed over this coupon which gets you nauseated when you read the 3-digit number on it. It's pressing to ask at the counter, "is it possible that I'd get home for dinner tommorrow night..oh okay, it's really okay, I don't mind it here either!"

Now you are playing this slithering snail, crawling, pretending to know where you are heading. After a long, lethargic wait you find yourself addressing this awfully curt person(the agent), who can't get enough of needling you, giving you just the glimpse of the "powerful" guy to come, the one who may reject your visa and ask, where do you shop for your shirts?(under my breath: dude, you like the pink one instead?).

If that's not enough, Brits like being generous. The biometrics test stands testimony to it. They want your fingerprints, I mean your thumb, left and right, your index, middle, ring and the little one, again left and right, well I hope that satisfies them. No, don't be so cruel, they don't take your toe prints.

It's at this moment, the defining moment when you feel you've been rescued from the edge-of-the-cliff experience, when you are going to be handed over with a receipt which contains your reference number, so as to follow-up the status of your visa. Yes it's coming and bang! tragedy strikes! The guy forgets to give you the receipt, and you're dying, you have no previous memory of what you were seeking out to get. You feel strangulated, and you just need to free yourself of the "UK paranoia", you decide to run, you are running really really fast. It's at this final moment, when you are beginning to be released from the clutches, the realization sets in and you feel cheated, disillisioned and alienated. You want to go back at the counter and tell them, "I'll skip dinner, however do you mind if I play frankenstein tonight?"

What do I want to ask myself at the end of this exercise? Will I get my visa?

Ideology what?

It's pretty amusing how the Third Front is taking shape. Elections are round the corner and political alliances are just as likely as snow is in North America. The media has to seldom search for a breaking story, there's always one round the corner. Grabbing the greatest space are the Third Front stories-"What's cooking? Parties hosting lavish dinners", "Lalu Paswan strike a deal", "BSP will not align with any party: Mayawati", "Third Front takes rebirth yet again", "Alliance should lead to increase in seats: Pranab", "Shocked BJP blames BJD for alliance breakdown" and needless to say the list continues.

However, this particular emergence of an amalgamation of smaller parties has greater paralells with the 1977-1979 government led by Morarji Desai. The situation back then resulted due to iregularities in the administration and bureaucracy, the reigning Gandhi herself coming under the scanner. The Emergency indeed was a very uneventful event leading to circumstances abetting small fishes to capitalize on it, the big names being Morarji Desai (Congress(O)), Charan Singh (Bharatiya Lok Dal),Atal Behari Vajpayee(Bharatiya Jana Sangh) and Jayprakash Narayan (largely from the Socialist party). Now this kind of an alliance, symbolizes one that results not under a common ideology but under a strategic agenda. This kind of an approach is rather deterring as the objective is only to come to power and fulfil the immediate issues. Further on gradual bickering in the alliances would result in as much a dysfunctional government as a single party with not so pro-labour, pro-farmer policies. There lay a strategic agenda, yet again, this time to abate the powers of the two largest political parties in India.

The common ideology in the third block is simply non-existent. It is in very simple terms power politics. The TDP once a part of the NDA, is now very much in alliance with the the Third Front. The AIADMK never puts its cards on the table until the right time, leaving you constantly guessing. Once been in alliance with the NDA, their doors are now claimed to be open to the present UPA construct or even an emerging Third Front. Simlarly the SP which sided with the Congress during the Indo-U.S nuke deal has recently opened its arms to Kalyan Singh, once a very staunch right winger. The BSP appears to be eyeing the South Block, on Raisinia Hills, irrespective of the course. NCP's Sharad Pawar is no different. Mr. Pawar had this to say, "there was a feeling among the people of Maharashtra that the state should get an opportunity for the top job". Oh, I hope Raj Thackeray has no problems, it's only a job for the Prime Minister's post! Not to mention the JD(S) which is a predominant part of this Third Front is hoping for a 1996 like situation, where Deve Gowda will emerge from the ashes to be crowned.

The point I'm making here is that there is no common forward looking ground to this block. If the existent political parties are inefficient, a new party with jigsaw pieces is not the solution. We need an effective opposition, not one that is flawed in its attempts to improvise the government, but one that would support it when policies are genuinely constructive, and criticize it when policies are inpalaltable.
Ofcourse a coalition government seems more plausible in the present scenario, so parties which offer support can always read the riot act when the majority ruling party goes offtrack. The big shots will feel more accountable if they are constantly in check both by the opposition and the parties giving support from outside.

Whatever the case at the end of the day its the voter who calls the shots!