Raj Thackeray and Chhath Puja

Raj Thackeray, leader of the Maharashtra Navanirman Sena, says that “North” Indians should not celebrate Chhath Puja as it is against the ethos of Marathi culture. Wow! That is all that I can come up with now. Doesn’t that make a proud Indian, oh wait, “North” Indian. His remarks are not only anti-Indian but anti-Hindu as well. Mumbai has people from all over the country. Chhath Puja ,celebrated mainly in Bihar and in parts of UP and MP , is a festival dedicated to the Sun God , who is indubitably a Hindu God and not just a Bihari one . Then how the hell does the celebration of Chhath against Marathi values? Are not Marathi’s Hindus? And going by Mr. Raj Thackeray’s rationale , Tamil’s should not celebrate Pongal , Malayali’s should not celebrate Onam , Sikh’s should not celebrate Baisakhi and so on . I bet all these festivals indigenous to states other than Maharastra also contribute to the poisoning and deterioration of Marathi culture. I guess if Ganpathi Puja is started being celebrated in Bihar with the Mumbaiyya pomp, it will be very much against Bihari values, won’t it? For God’s sake, literally what the hell was he thinking? Does this person even consider himself to be a Hindu? If he does, his act is indeed very blasphemous. I bet our neighbors must be ecstatic over all this in-fighting. And what the hell is North Indian? The word suggest that there is a country called North India. There isn’t. There is only one India, at least on the map. It certainly does not look like “One” to me. We have North Indians and South Indians, and of course Maharashtra. I feel like lashing out when I am called a North Indian. I think that this word should be banned. I was born in a country spanning from Kashmir in the north and Kanyakumari in the south, which goes by the name of India and that makes me an Indian. The British did not just divide the country along the lines of religion. Gone are the good old days when we used to fight just over religion and caste. India has indeed moved ahead in every sense. Now are we fighting over pseudo ethnicity. It makes my blood boil. What’s next ? People being corporally chastised for conversing in languages other than Marathi ? I think that has already happened . May be the time has come to delineate Hinduism on the basis of language and state . God Save My Motherland !

About my name

My name is Kislay Chandra. The word Kislay is rarely used as a name, something which I have come to believe through my personal experience. The meaning of this word, Kislay, can be a young shoot, a bud or a new leaf. And the reason why I think it’s a rare name is because , first , when I say it out loud , the person on the receiving end finds it hard to comprehend what I said . And secondly, when his sense of hearing conveys the right message to his brain, it fails to process it as he has never heard of it before. I have not have had the pleasure of meeting a person whose eyes have lit up with knowledge upon hearing my name till date , and I sincerely wish it happens before I depart . My first name has been often misinterpreted, and the different forms it has taken are kiss-ley, kis-liye (which in Hindi means why or for what purpose), kish-lay, Krishna, and so on. When I was a child I was often teased by my family that I had been named Kislay because I had kissed a girl when I was a toddler. How I wish that was true. It would have made a wonderful anecdote, and would have been a feather in my cap as well. After I explain my name to my audience, more often than not the person exclaims “Interesting name!” which makes me wonder whether they really mean it or they just said “What a weird name” in their head. When I was introducing myself to my class on the first day of college, my teacher mis-pronounced it as kiss-lay and the class erupted, to my embarrassment .And the best part of it all, having a name like Kislay and a disposition somewhat like a lamb, ended up in me having a nick name like Chummi, which in Hindi means a kiss. Not very hard to deduce, eh? The perpetrator of this crime was my friend who I seriously think did it to pull my leg hard enough to dismember it from my body. It has been an embarrassing four years being addressed as Chummi, as it sounds really really stupid. There was a time when I almost forgot that I had been named Kislay by my parents and being addressed by real name made me think twice before acknowledging. To cut the first part of a long story short, I have started dreading saying out my name.

And now begins the second part of this story. My surname, Chandra, which means moon, and is more of a first name than a surname. It is actually the first name of my grandfather, Chandra Narayana Thakur. And how I, the grandson of C N Thakur and the son of A K Thakur ended up being named K Chandra instead of being K A Thakur is a reflection of the hideousness of one the more prominent evils of Hindu society in a state ridden with almost all of them. Casteism! It was by design that I am not carrying my family name of Thakur, which means Lord. Chucking out the actual family name and substituting it with one which doesn’t give away your caste has become a common practice in my home state. In Bihar, you can’t hit a brick without hitting some Kumar, and you come across people having names like Shiv Vikram, Sudhanshu Shekhar, Aditya Alok, etc.And this makes me very sad. It is not that I hate being called Kislay Chandra, but I hate hiding what I am. I was born a Thakur, but as the generations above me gradually pass away, so will my family name. When somebody fails to get a clue about my caste on hearing my name , they ask my father’s and to keep them guessing I drop the Thakur , and say Arun Kumar . It has happened to me a few times. Of course, I have come across few shameless idiots who have hit me with the question enquiring of my caste with such a straight face that I was absolutely dumbfounded. “There are all kinds of idiots in this world”, is what I say to console myself, and after mentally hurling a long string of invectives of the best kind, I let it go. Shakespeare said so – “What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.” A person cannot become a great emperor like Ashoka, the Great just by being his namesake. But would Ashoka would have been Ashoka, the Great had he been named Aditya? The whole point of this rigmarole being that why do I have hide what I am. Even that name, which is not a part of me, is a part of me and has shaped me in some unknown fashion to be what I am now. It is a part of my identity and I don’t want it be lost. I wish I was consulted before I was named.

Tolerance

There are many meanings of this word, but the one I am referring to is this: Willingness to recognize and respect the beliefs or practices of others. I sincerely feel that people do not have enough tolerance for religions other than their own. And some of them have them none. Zero, zilch, and they also go to the extent of blasting away that faith or faith’s in question. And this seriously bothers me. As a Hindu and living in India , where we have a Hindu majority , I don’t think I have directly come across or experienced any hostility due to lack of tolerance , but of lately , as an active member of a couple of communities on Orkut , I finally faced this hideous monster . It is so ugly. I am a Hindu, a practicing one, if there is such an animal and a proud one. But never ever in my life has this thought crossed in my mind that Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma (which is the correct expression) is the best religion of all or the only path to a place in Heaven, salvation or whatever you are seeking. I cannot believe that Hinduism is the only way to lead a healthy and fulfilling life. Although I am partial to Hindu philosophy, I do not look down upon the other schools of thought. I have been taught that all the different religions are different ways to the one and only God (the credit goes to my dear Grandfather). And I sincerely believe that. Ramakrishna Paramhansa practiced different religions and ultimately realized that the various religions are different ways to reach The Absolute, and that the Ultimate Reality could never be expressed in human terms. Is it that hard to believe someone as great as him? Forget him; there are billions who haven’t even heard of him. What about my own logical and analytical capabilities, what do they say? That we have different religions so that we can fight amongst each other, and will therefore never get bored. Or that there are different religions because the world is not same everywhere. The Middle-east is one big desert, Siberia is covered in ice, and Africa has jungles darker than night and so on. If there is diversity in nature and in our own species, why can’t it be present in the way we worship Him? I believe the way different religions teach you to lead you life has a lot to do with the geography of the ground zero, i.e. the place of its origin. It is seriously disturbing that people put no thought before debasing a faith other than their own. Even if I do find something weird, nonsensical, stupid or plain evil about some faith, I would rather keep my mouth shut than open it, because I might hurt someone. I can’t expect everyone to be objective and scientific in their approach, and learn to call a spade a spade. I am hurt when I am labeled as heathen, a pagan or a kaafir, just because I follow a different religion. For me Ishwar, Allah, Waheguru and Jehovah are all synonyms of the one God. And this was regarding all those who believe in a God. About those who didn’t. The Atheists. I have nothing against them either. If you don’t want to believe in the Almighty, you are most welcome not to. I don’t want you to just because I do. It would be an imbecilic act to force someone to do so. Diversity comes into play again. People who believe in God and call him by different names and people who don’t. And of course, there are also the ones who have put a question mark at the end, the Agnostics. About these Atheists. I have come across innumerable posts on Orkut in which people have so mercilessly, so blatantly and so brutally ripped away the teachings of a faith. Ripping them away, shredding them into pieces, thoughtlessly. They make fun of and heap insults at everything that religion has to say, and the usually the religion they inherited through birth is the one which suffers at their hands the most. I have come across posts in which these Hindu born morons have spewed nothing less than poison and I was utterly disgusted and devastated by it .What I want to ask them is , did they try and find out why Krishna had 16000 wives before labeling Him as a sex maniac . I mean, literally, for God’s sake, what answer did they get? Krishna saved those women from the harem of Jarasandha , and he was married to them , but the relationship was platonic . It is called bhakti yoga. I have my doubts and questions. But I try and keep an open mind, be as objective as possible. If I have a preconceived notion about something, I will never be able learn something new. Why oh why do they have to do that? This world has become a really difficult place to live in, all because of the lack of tolerance. And I was talking about religion; it’s not just limited to religion. Language, culture and race are also affected. It boils down to this; a man is not tolerant of another one who is different, to a degree more than what is acceptable to him. A language may sound gibberish because of the lack of its knowledge. It may sound sweeter to you than your own once you learn it. I hope my fellow man is tolerant of me, if only out of politeness than respect for me as a fellow human wherever I go.

“The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”

Bertrand Russell

“The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.”

Eric Hoffer

“The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.”

Jerome Nathanson

“It is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others' religions as we would have them respect our own, a friendly study of the world's religions is a sacred duty.”

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

“I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.”

Paul McCartney

“Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.”

Celebrations of Life, 1981

Rene Dubos

“What is tolerance? -- It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature.”

Voltaire

http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_tolerance.html - Source of the above Quotes

Random Thought #3 : GOD

Do we humans question the existence of God,debate over Him,in short make a BIG song and dance about it because we ,like everything around us ,are created and destroyed,and therefore the concept of an eternal,ageless,timeless God just doesn't seem right ? Is it beyond the realms of our three dimensional,logical,rational and analytical intelligence to encompass the true understanding of the entity we fondly refer to as God ? May be that's it , God is God because we in our human form cannot possibly come even close to understanding Him.I guess that is why we just don't need to believe in Him,we need indubitable Conviction ! Does all this make any sense ? :)

Random Thought #2: Perfection

Perfection: The state of being perfect, without defect or blemish. We humans are always trying to achieve perfection is our little endeavours. And it is often said that nothing in this world is perfect except God. But is our definition of perfect correct? Maybe something is perfect only when it has flaw, at least a tiny one. Maybe that defect is necessary for the system to ultimately break down, end itself and perish. Because everything that is created is destroyed. Everything has a life. Even our universe. Hindu philosophy says that the entire process of creation-evolution-destruction has been going on since aeons. The eternal cycle of birth and death, of creation, preservation and eventual destruction. If there were to exist an entity which would be perfect by our standards, it would cause a glitch in the overall operation. We have defined perfect as flawless, I guess, because we do not want to create again and again, only to see it destroyed. Maybe we have defined perfection for our own convenience. Let us consider our own species. If we were created by the God who is perfect himself, again by our definition, then why did we evolve over time? Why are we still evolving? Perfection would imply that nothing could be better than the current state. I guess that’s against the very concept of Life. Our body creates itself out of mere nothing, a sperm cell and a minuscule egg. Driven by the super software of DNA, we develop into a living organism. And once fulfilling our biological and/or spiritual purpose, we die and disintegrate. Isn’t this perfect? Why does man-kind crave immortality? That’s stupid. If I were to be born again and again on this earth , I would prefer not to start from scratch in every iteration of the loop,i.e. it would be really cool if I could re-load my last conscious image and continue from there , provided I was born in the same species . Now that would be Perfect ! An imperfect system would be the one without a flaw, because then, it would cease to fit “perfectly” in the big picture. Its one hell of a cycle!