I submitted an M.Phil Research Synopsis to Center for International Politics, Organizations, Diplomacy and Disarmament at the School of International Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University. My Question - Would history have been the same if the South American Tribes knew of the existence of European cultural Practices when Hernan Cortez landed on the green shores of SA? Or when the Portuguese landed in India? Or when the French met the British for the First time? What if they had some doctrines in case of such first contacts with a different sub-species with different appearance, cultural system, socio-economic material reality?
With the chances of our contact with an alien sentient life form increasing day by day, dare we neglect the necessity of the construction of such a framework?
You may laugh. One day, One momentous day, for good or for bad, we are going to make first contact - with a sentient non-human life form, be it technologically inferior or superior, peaceful or hostile, humanoid or non-humanoid, organic or inorganic. It may come to conquer us, it may come to initiate diplomatic ties with us. It all depends. But shall we, or shall we not, prepare for that day, even if we plan to do it by para-psychological theoretical models based on international relations and our own cultural intra-human first contacts?
Preparing a Diplomatic Framework for Alien contact may seem far-fetched in the current day. Yet the coming decades and centuries could necessitate the creation of such a protean framework (based on our previous intra-species cultural interactions). This would help minimize misunderstandings and maximize socio-economic and technological gains when/if Humanity comes in contact with a Non-Humans Species from another Planet/ Solar System. This Thesis will intend to create awareness and initiate discussion on a novel theory of Xeno-Diplomacy that seeks to extract the best deal out of such an encounter without sacrificing what the humans have achieved in the course of History. Such a Theory of Xeno-diplomacy deserves special study in these times of mutual distrust and state of flux in the international order and will perhaps pave the way for a future without boundaries and barriers, both spatial and psychological.
The voices of sanity seldom scream. They whisper softly, with a heart made weak by indifference and a throat parched with economic hardships. Rarely do they shout, because they become frenzied parochial outbursts the moment they do so. Perhaps that is why they are lost in the din of fanatical religious chants and political machinations. Full Stop. We are under constant attack by forces that seek to divide us. We need to End it. We need to fight back - Hard.
Cut to Now. I speak this not as a demagogue about to set forth on a Yatra to garner votes, neither as a paranoid cleric aiming to induce fear-psychosis in the hearts of minorities but as a law-abiding, middle-class, care-free, college-going guy who has always taken pride in Liberte, egalite, and fraternite of my country and someone who is suddenly waking up to the harsh reality of raised eyebrows and furtive glances whenever his name is spoken. With a single blast, a mere fiery speech, a lone terror-threat, the world slowly starts turning topsy-turvy, neatly bifurcating into us and them. Even the most enlightened begin pondering over the million-dollar-question – Terror has no religion, but terrorists? Why do terrorists always belong to one religion and the victims to another? I will try to address this enigma.
We are witnessing today a dramatic increase in barbaric attacks on our civil and political institutions – bombs, riots, murders and assaults - which are generally ascribed to a particular community. We may be politically correct and pretend that everything is fine, but the cruel fact exists that Muslim community is increasingly being seen as the breeding grounds for mad-men who cause havoc and destruction all around them. This argument is furthered by charging the entire Muslim community itself as lacking the will to prevent such huge humanitarian lapses. True, the community has produced some black sheep who need to be hounded out without any mercy and severely punished, but those who brush off the entire community as terrorists based on the action of these select few maniacs commit no lesser sin. Rather than trying to inculcate this realization in the masses, a large chunk of the media is busy stoking the fire of communal passion, even if unwittingly.
The estrangement being fostered in a community because of media's ostensible step-treatment is all the more deplorable because the entire process of information dissemination is extremely vital in shaping up the weltanschauung of a country. Just as the (print) media can create Nations (Benedict Anderson), it can also construct rickety, lop-sided mass-opinions. A bias, I feel, has today crept in the media, especially Hindi media - It is evident in its nomenclature- its semiotics and semantics. Any recalcitrant person, indulging in any inhuman act, be it a bomb-blast or a riot or a murder is an extremist (a marginalized person outside the political center of a society) – as long as he does not belong to a certain religious group. If he does, then he is, going by an analysis of media coverages, a terrorist. Terrorism, therefore, is no longer a generic term per se – Our media has limited its scope by intricately associated it with a particular religion, in gargantuan metonymic proportions. Terrorists usually belong to a particular religion because we do not get adequate information about parallel anti-social elements from other denominations. A petty criminal with a certain name is capitulated to the front pages as a terrorist and his history uncovered, analysed, re-analysed, sometimes even re-made, whereas a Bajrang Dal activist hurt while making bombs finds a passing mention in a column deep inside. The former is a terrorist, the latter certainly not so. A mob that burns churches is never connected with terrorism; an individual with a particular name who spreads the fires of hatred automatically is (although rightly so). Why these double standards? If terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion, then does not the mob deserve to be called the quintessential terrorist? Is it, ever? Why do we hear of Hindu ‘Extremists’ and Muslim ‘Terrorists’? Shouldn’t they both be at par and punished all the same? When was the last time we heard the term Muslim ‘Extremists’? This is when we say terrorists/extremists have no religion. Yet, ‘Muslim ‘Whatever-ists’ always manage to make headlines. Wonder why.
Similarly, another general trend discernible was the replacement of common nouns by proper nouns in the headlines (of especially Hindi print media) when members of a particular community were involved and vice-versa. ‘Accused Caught’ is very different from, say, ‘Moosa Nabbed’. Plus, if members of a particular community die, their names are splashed across the paper. However, if people from another community die, they are referred by numbers rather than names, if they are reported. Maybe I’m reading too much between the lines. But then, isn’t everybody?
Geography too is extremely important. If an act of vandalism occurs in Kashmir, it is dastardly terrorism, a threat to national security (which, no doubt, it is) but if the same act is done in Orissa, then it is just those Naxalite ‘extremists’ again – not worthy of much importance. Slaughter of distinct ethnic groups is not terrorism – it is reaction or extremism depending on the perpetrators. The Kashmiri Terrorists are far more dangerous and in vogue for the media to focus upon than their North-Eastern Extremist counterparts, even when both have the same success rate and aim – to seize power / gain independence by coercing the nation-state. While both have to be tackled at multiple levels, prioritizing responses based on personal prejudices is illogical. Therefore, I conclude, terrorists usually belong to one single religion because the very term terrorism is used denotative of a community by the media. ‘Mr A’ can be a terrorist or an extremist or a merely misguided individual depending on his religion / geographical location that shape our media’s (and hence, the nation’s) perception of him.
Thus even a simple prima facie deconstruction of reporting depicts a tangible tilt – concern for one group and an almost indifference to another. The point was precipitated when I was perusing some Hindi and English national dailies. I was surprised to realize the near absence of follow-ups on some of the recent blasts, a fact mystified by the trend that these very newspapers had been replete with follow-up stories on bomb blasts – on the helpless victims, their families, and backgrounds, the contexts of blasts and speculation on perpetrators in most minute and excruciating detail. The Delhi blasts, for example, were all over them. But the recent Malegaon (Maharastra) and Modasa (Gujrat) Blasts hardly found a mention. They are present more by the metaphysics of their absence. One wonders why these newspapers focus solely on selective blasts, selective victims, and selective perpetrators and indulge in grossly selective follow-ups even when casualties are equal in numbers. Perhaps I am too dumb to understand. Maybe some blasts are more equal than others.
Moving on, in its quest to emulate American Media to give a ‘face’ to terror, are not the immutable personal liberties enshrined in our constitution being shamelessly trampled upon by the often kindergarten analysis of our media who take people to task, labeling them, branding them, not giving them a chance to speak their side of the story, even before the Law has pronounced its verdict? Just because we have no Osamas of our country does not mean we need to create such bete-noires out of nothing.
True, we really need to stamp out the menace of violence and hatred from amongst our midst but we need to proceed in a way that distinguishes civilized people from savages. Media has to realize that the sly nomenclatural discrimination and subtle withholding of information it is indulging in, even if unknowingly, is causing a deep rift in the fabric of our nation and is strengthening the alienation of the minority communities. Some sections of the much harped about fourth-pillar of democracy need shedding of their personal prejudices and TRP vendettas if the government of the people, by the people, and for the people is not to perish from our country. I most humbly beg the Media to do what it was meant to do – Impart information, without fear, favour or bias – and this is not mere rhetoric.
Contention: I hate People charging more than it. :P
I write as a concerned student who’s worried about the plight of another section of my brethren and speak out against their divestment of the most fundamental of democratic rights – Free Choice. Privatization of Education has led to a paradigm shift in the world-view of youth today, thereby creating a life-style that is becoming increasingly commodity-fetishized, and that hierarchizes money over dreams. For example, owing to an almost 200% increase in Fees for their PGPM Programme (by IIM-A), MBA from a Tier-I college today has risen to cost about 10 Lakhs of rupees, that too sans interest. With interest the figure reaches upto 15-20 Lakhs (noted exceptions are FMS and University MBAs). What began as an isolated event egged on by rising salaries of graduates and high-costs of talent acquisition/retention, later spread to B-Schools all over the country. This fee hike now refuses to be slowed down even by recession, fall in salary packages and student outcry. When the fee-hike began, it was not considered such a serious threat as understandably, IIM grads do have the purchasing power to repay the loans, but who speaks out against average B-Schools that have followed this dangerous precedent, but with none the respite in good placements? Worse, with no possibilities of roll-backs the situation offers but a Hobson's choice for interested students. Worse still, by addressing grievous inquiries by harping on the mantra of bank-loans and a select few scholarships, B-Schools have managed to get away with it.
Is the mere availability of a bank-loan excuse enough to raise college fees to unthinkable levels, pay commission or not? Should not Return on Investment be a major factor in colleges fixing their fees rather than aping the IIMs? Would not it have been criminal on my part if I were a Doctor asking for about 5 Crores for a Bypass Surgery from a Patient (when it cost somewhat in Lakhs) only because the best hospital had raised its bill to that level? Moreover, would I have been absolved of all guilt if I managed to get him a bank loan at about 0.5% lower rate of interest? Negative.
This Fee Hike is going to negate the free choice Managerial Graduates had and instead of opting for preferred profiles will opt for best paying packages to repay the loans taken, thereby leading them up an existential path of drudgery, not choice. The high fees will not only keep the poor outside the gates of MBA colleges but will ensure that those who wanted to enter governmental services or academics think twice before pursuing an MBA.
It is highly unfortunate that Min. of HRD took no action in this matter and led such preposterous fee structure to be implemented. Business conglomerates must not be allowed to dictate education policy in our country. It is requested that MHRD looks into the matter and takes to task B-Schools that plan to make hay when the sun shines at the sole expense of students. Such elitism in education needs to be stopped as it is contrary to the entire democratic structure of our nation.
Ever since the sun first rose on man who was able to distinguish between me and them, a scourge of inequality has plagued humanity. It was with this dawn of a new bourgeoisie Reich that humanity was divided into two antagonistic classes of students- the have- marks and the have –no-marks. The have-marks, fully aware of the ontological and epistemologically attenuated numerical drawbacks of their kind, were quick enough to forge an alliance with another dreaded group-the teachers, to strengthen their societal position, and this unholy nexus has dominated the world since. The have-no-marks, blissfully ignorant of their rights and their share of the world, allowed the minority have-mark’s hegemony to continue unabated. Mahatma Pink Floyd in the sacred text Education, Revolution and The Wall calls for the abolishment of such exploiting classes by saying “Teachorial authority was the opium by which the have-no-marks class was subdued by the have-marks class. And, of course, since we don’t need no education, we don’t need no teachers too”.
This shameless exploitation of the have-no-marks proletariat has continued unabated for centuries. Time is now ripe for a revolution to overthrow the capitalist have-marks and get rid of the scum, not a la Nicholas Sarkozy but Trinity-Father George W Bush. Our argument for the replacement of the present ruling class and abolition of the difference between the ruler and the ruled is based, contrary to the popular perception, purely upon justice, equality, freedom and dialectic bunkism.
Pseudo-democrat and fascist arguments defending the right of the few have-marks to dominate over the many have-no-marks is that the have-marks deserve to dominate since they work harder than the have-no-marks, or that they possess comparatively superior intellect. For students, marks are equivalent to money. Therefore, the argument seems to suggest that the have-marks get more money/marks as they work harder for it. So far so good, but the underlying vein of selfishness hidden in it will remain invisible until closer scrutiny. Allow me to counter the perverse logic of this argument.
Based on the biblical quote- “He who shall not work, shall not eat”, our motto has always been pay according to work, and hence, work according to pay. Reduce that equation to student terms, and the matrix emerges as fee according to study, and hence, study according to the fee paid. A fortiori, since all pay equal fee, they should also study equal number of hours and get the same grades! However, some selfish and self-centred individuals study more than the allotted study hours (calculated as per the fee paid by an individual to a school/university) and try to use education as a shuttle to the ruling class. Moreover, as a corollary to the study-fee law, the have-marks are most on scholarships and freeships. Ipso facto, they pay less fee than the have-no-marks and this in turn renders them liable to lesser study hours per se (simply because they have paid less fee!). Still, it is not the poor have-no-marks (who stay true to their public commitment of not studying a second more than the time allotted, sometimes even less, for the public good) but the have-bloody-marks who breach their allotted study hour limits, day and night. How could this backstabbing the society’s trust and public good be tolerated? The problem is, not only is it tolerated, but also encouraged.
As for those whose sense of civic duty compells them not to study more than the allotted time but manage to get better marks owning to their superior intellect, their mind should be surgically altered, or better still, they should simply be purged (my fascist-democrat friends will find the term annoyingly familiar) for we have no place for such Ubermensch in our envisaged equal society which would be equalin every possible way.
Res ipsa loquitur, and the exploitation of those not good in studies still continues. What is the solution? How to proceed with the glorious revolution and uproot the corruption so deeply rooted in the system? First, it is sine qua non for the have-no-marks to gain control of the ownership of the means of checking of exam papers. It is from exams that the marks emanate. And, marks=money=power. A posteriori, we should immediately seize control of the means of production of marks, and those are-examinations.
Secondly, classes have to abolished straightaway. Especially the teacher-class as the teachers openly violate Geneva Convention’s agreement to preserve human dignity and subject the students to torture in the form of exams and classes. One hour in a classroom (read gulag) forces a student to beg for a communion with death with greater zeal than Juliet’s desire for Romeo- “Death, Death! Wherefore art thou Death?” If Comrade St Marl Karx envisaged a classless society, whey then do we still have classes, lectures and Tutes?
Another thing required for the success of the revolution is the collectivization of marks. That is, from each according to his capability to each according to his need. If A gets 90 marks and B gets 30 marks then 30 marks will be automatically transferred from A to B. Both will then have equal marks (60) and the delicate equilibrium of the society will be maintained, not to mention its economic and humane significance.
The abovementioned policies necessary to initiate a revolution stay true to the two fundamental rights of a free student (no, free student is not a misnomer or a contradiction. They can exist, if ink is spilt for their creation). And those rights are- Right to Pass with Distinction and Right to Bunk. Suppression of these two rights has led many-a-students to raise their voice against the terrible suffering and injustice they were subjected to. The Paris student uprising, the banning of have-marks students from Pyongyang University campus, and the glorious abolishment of classes and teachers in Patna university (when the new VC thought about conducting an annual class to give the students their syllabus) bear testimony to the power that lies in the hands of the have-no-marks.
ACollege, they say, is the microcosm of the contemporary world. If we want to change the world, we should start from the college itself. Here are some recommendations as per the envisaged have-no-marks constitution which will apply the liberating and equalizing principles to a college on macro and micro-levels:
Abolish all classes, lectures and tutorials, effective immediately.
Transfer of the Ownership of the Means of Checking from teachers to have-no-marks students, with immediate effect. Also, the class called parents shall never be dragged into the conflict between the teachers and the have-no-marks students, EVER.
Immediate constitution of a CBC (College Bunking Committee) which oversees and enforces mass bunks.
Raise a Law Enforcement Agency, a la KGB (christened “Wewillscrewbloodyhavemarks”) which maintains law and order and exterminates the notorious have-marks and those who for their selfish ends refuse to cooperate with mass-bunks and other reactionary activities. Such people will be publically guillotined, courtesy the French Embassy de Delhi. (Note- Tenders for the construction of a Guillotine in University Stadium will soon be released.)
The college should be known as the Have-no-marksStudentsRepublic of XXXCollege or Union of Soviet of have-no-marks students of XXXCollege and never ever simply as XXX College. (It’s way uncool, dude!)
Rename the Annual Fests to Nouns Like - Dialiectical Materialismia, Communist Euphoria, Peoples' Samvaad, Surplus Value, etc.
Ban studies. It is an American- capitalist concept.
More than 40% attendance will be declared illegal and will ensure a tête-à-tête with Mr. Guillotine.
Constitute committees, sub-committees and sub-sub-committees to safeguard the revolution.
The leitmotif, as Comrade St Marl Karx said- Only when the have-marks students and teachers are overthrown, classes and lectures abolished, and communal ownership of the means of checking of Examination papers is established by an initial dictatorship of the have-no-marks proletariat can economic and social justice be achieved.
Have-no-marks students of the world, unite! You have nothing to loose but your bad grades! Beware, all ye aggressors and oppressors, for the Marksist Revolution Cometh!
P.S. - I'm NOT anti-marxism. On the contrary, I am a staunch communist believing that liberty and equality can only be achieved through a people's revolution . However, one needs to joke about things and be critical of them - especially of those that he holds close to his heart - so he can evolve them further and cherish them forever. Lal Salaam!
Write, for example, 'The Psycho-Analytic Treatment of the Marxist Analysis of the Structuralist Critique of The Meta-Physcial Imagery in Romantic Poetry'.
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings like Himesh.
Tonight I can write the saddest Assignment I wrote it, and sometimes I understood it too.
Through nights like this one I held the Assignment in my arms. I cursed it again and again under the endless sky.
The Assignment understood me, sometimes I understood it too. How could a masochist not have loved its blurred eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest Assignment To think that I do not understand it. To feel that I have lost it.
To hear the immense night, still more immense with the Assignment And the verse falls to the soul like Nimboo-Paani to the parched throat.
What does it matter that my mind could not comprehend it. The night is starry and the Assignment is with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is bunking. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has not lost the Assignment.
My sight tries to find it as though to bring it closer. And kill it. Destroy it. And set fire to it. Then kill it again. My heart looks for it, and it is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer understand the topic, that's certain, but how I tried to. My voice tried to find the wind to touch its souls.
Another's. The Assignment will be another's. As it was before my musings. Its incomprehensible topic. Its mind-numbing compelxity. Its infinite specificity.
I no longer understand anything, that's certain, but maybe I understood it. Notes are so long, Assignment is so short.
Because through nights like this one I held it in my arms my soul is not satisfied that it has lost it.
Though this be the last pain that it makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for it.
India, the email forward went, never invaded any country in her last 1000 years of history. My chest puffed with pride at the non-violent, altruistic, and peaceful past of my country and having switched off the computer, I decided to have a little ramble. A few steps down the main road, I was greeted by a giant Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007 hoarding. 'Music's First World War - Only on Zee', ran the words in a flashy print. Visually, Bappi Da was pathetically imitating a Trench Warfare scream. I would have pointed out that he was more suited for an armoured thrust, had not Himesh Reshammiya, carrying the globe in hands, along with Ismail Darbar and Vishal Shekhar, caught my attention. Reshammiya was perhaps trying to play Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Music, it seems, is no longer a worship, an art sans frontiers, or a medium that binds humanity together. It is now a mode of active combat, propelled by the commodity fetishism of our age. This specific promotional poster could be attributed to the workings of a neurotic copywriter, but an analysis of other such adverstisements forces me to conclude that they are not sporadic incidents but a representation of contemporary collevtive unconscious.
Even comedy shows, apart from Music shows, are today a symbol-cum-substitute for war. The 'Great Indian Laughter Challenge' on Star needs 'Warriors of Comedy' (Comedy Ka Yoddha). Fed up with a 5 decade long cold war which sometimes became hot, we have now begun to project our war-mongering on quintessentially anti-war mediums such as music, sports and television. Next thing, we'll be renaming our Special Forces as the John Lennon Brigade.
The phenomena is not limited to Television, but expands, of course, to the arche of such a mentality - Sports. According to Benedict Anderson, "print-capitalism" led to the creation of imagined communities. It created nations where they did not exist. Similarly, today's Media has provided ample impetus to the retrogressive nationalist viewing of Sports as War. For example, in Premier Hockey League we have Maratha Warriors, Sher-e-Jullundhur, Hyderabad Sultans, and whose advertisements are an exact replica of the state of actual war. The Field has metamorphosed into the Battlefield.
Linking the past with the present, just as it was difficult being a Jew in Nazi Germany, it's hard, as the Neo-Sports Ad Campaign when Sri Lanka toured India went, to be a Sri Lankan in India. Ditto for the West Indies, which portrayed the nation that sweared by vasudhaiva kutumbkum and ateethi devo bhava maltreating and harassing tourists based on their nationality. All because their Cricket teams had the misfortune of touring India at that critical juncture. Although this particular campaign was stopped by the Govt of India, the damage had already been done. Tomorrow, it will be difficult to be a UP-wallah in Maharashtra and a Bihari in the North East. Last heard, Bajrang Dal and LeT were on a massive manhunt for such copywriters to bestow honours upon them in a lavish felicitation ceremony.
Advertising, as Marshal McLuhan once remarked, is the greatest art form of the twentieth century. If this is what our advertising has become, then our art has truly degenerated. Moreover, we talk about freedom of expression Vs the National Sentiments, send many Chandramohans to jail, but do not bat an eyelid when the entire peaceful past of India is covertly replaced by a militant-hysterical present. One does not need to be a Barthes or a Freud to locate this shocking shift from a magnanimous, humanitarian, pacifist society to a nation obsessed with military symbolism and imagery of war. Aren't we as a nation witnessing a subtle shift in our weltanschauungs to something sinister, xenophobic, brutal and coercive? Are soul-force and peace really passe in the land of the Mahatma? If advertisements are an indicator of a country's consciousness, then sadly, it certainly seems to be the case.
