... hurting the sentiments of people

Intolerance, backed and supported by the State, continues to be a constant source of amusement for me. A few recent examples will illustrate what I exactly mean.

1. Jaswant Singh's book on Jinnah was banned in Gujurat because it glorified Jinnah and called Sardar Patel as the reason for Partition.

2. Many libraries in the USA do not allow patrons to issue "Tintin in the Congo", one of the earliest Tintin books because of the naive, objectionable ways it depicts Africans.

3. Sites like Orkut have been banned in the UAE because of the moral decay they apparently spread in people.

4. Catholic Groups all around the world demanded a ban on Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy as it supposedly preached atheism.

There are so many such examples, some that make you laugh while others that make you worry. I have tried to include perspectives from around the world, to show that this is widespread even in countries you might assume are liberal.

The USA is certainly not a very liberal country especially as fringe hardball Catholic groups have always commanded great attention.

Banning books or other forms of art on the basis that they preach against a religion is a major form of hypocrisy. How can any work of Art hurt your sentiments about God? This belief is supposed to be a highly personal, highly strong bond. A mere painting should not be capable of hurting this bond. If it does, then your faith was never strong in the first place.

I believe that the Pareto's principle applies in the case of intolerance as well. 80% of all these protests, calls for bans and other extreme reactions are done by only about 20% of the practitioners of the particular religion. The rest 80% are the silent majority who unfortunately let these 20% hog the limelight, allowing them to act as spokespeople.

I hold the worst scorn for Governments which ban works of Art for the apparent "Good" of their people. India is a secular country, but the States are run in a bigoted feudalistic fashion. States such as Gujurat, Maharashtra and Karnataka have generally been at the forefront of banning stuff left, right and centre.

I very strongly believe in the freedom of expression. For me, no work of art can shake my belief in God. If one actually goes by the holy Books of every major religion, in no Book is it written that Ban something that goes against your religious beliefs. Dialogue and Debate are at the heart of a healthy society.

If you do not agree with the contents of a particular book, don't buy it, but don't stop other people from exercising their fundamental right of being able to buy that book. If you are worried about your children falling prey to the corrupt influences of such material, discuss with them about the pitfalls associated with such material, allow them to build a rationalistic approach towards life.

It is indeed sad that a fanatical fringe group of society decide our lives for us and worse when the very Government (especially one which claims to be a Secular Republic) which should support our rights to express our individual opinions in Society chooses to do the very opposite.

A thought experiment

Is it possible for someone to change their personality overnight?

At least outwardly. And once the outward change is completely manifested over a period of time, will this gradually lead to an equivalent change inwardly as well?

Especially if that someone has entered into the latter half of his twenties?

This is a thought experiment being conducted to ascertain the feasibility of such a theory.

A precognition required for this discussion is the concept of inner and outer personalities, one which is apparent to the outside world and one which is apparent only to the individual.

Let us start by assuming that it is not possible to do so.
It is not possible for someone to change his or her personality once they are well into their adulthood.

This means that this person will display the same set of different reactions to various stimuli consistently according to the dictates of his conscious personality.

Ergo, the person's reactions can be predicted to an accurate degree by keen observation during the application of a same set of stimuli under different circumstances.

But, the one thing that nature has taught us and which has been proved by considerable empirical evidence is that the behaviour of men is highly stochastic.

This means that there is a part of the behaviour which is known, predictable and easily explainable. But there is another, quite substantial part, which cannot be understood and thus predicted or explained.

This is especially true in times of extreme stress or under those rare but unavoidable circumstances when the rational brain is bypassed by the amygdala to achieve quick, instinctive responses.

Thus, an apparent paradox comes into being which can only be resolved by recognizing that our initial assumption is untrue.

Thus, it is possible for a person to change his or her personality even at an age when conventional wisdom states that the personality is more or less reaching a state of stasis.

As to what proportion of outward personality can be changed vis-à-vis the inward personality is still unclear and may require further discussion by people more erudite than myself.

As to the possible application of the conclusion derived above, that is something I plan to adopt in the following days.

Whether the attempt is successful ergo proving my hypothesis is something left to the people in my coterie to ascertain.

I can only hope that it is so.

Note : The desirability of the application of the result of this thought experiment to society is something which is not included in the scope of this discussion.

Homeland Security

In the manufactured world of the media, the detention of Shah Rukh Khan by the security staff at a US airport has knocked off the dreary details of Swine Flu off the main pages. Everybody and his uncle has an opinion on this one and as usual the media is blowing this incident way out of proportion. Our politicians have got into the act as well and now this threatens to be a diplomatic issue between New Delhi and Washington DC.

My opinion is that

a) This is a stupid issue.
b) King Khan is pretty much Kommoner Khan when it comes to the rest of the world.
b) An official complaint by the Indian Government on this issue will have as much effect on the Obama Government as much as that pesky fly did in one of his interviews (It got squished by the President of USA - for the benefit of those who didn't watch the video on Youtube).
c) US is doing a damn better job of protecting its shores with its racial profiling policies than India is.

Of course, its mightily racist of the US to target people in airports just because they happen to be Muslim. But lets face it, Islamic terrorists did attack the US on 911. We must understand that after 911 the Government swore that they'd never let another such incident occur again. Plus, they are doing it within the confines of their country. If we don't like it then we should stop visiting the US.

Hence, a Khan or a Siddiqui or a Sheikh will continue to face detention in US Airports, whether they like it or not. Thats until some Hindu terrorists (Oh they do exist!) carry out some attck on Uncle Sam. Then even Bhats will no longer be secure.

As for India, it has been almost a year since the September 11 attacks and we still haven't been able to convict one Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab. We are as vulnerable to another terrorist attack as we were on September 10, 2008. Of course it is difficult to similarly profile people at our airports considering that Hindu or Muslim we all look alike. Also, there are too many options open for the ghuspetiyas to ghus into our country.

Shahrukh has petulantly threatened that he will never visit the US again. Good for him.

On a parting note, isn't it curious that Shahrukh's new film is called "My name is Khan" whose story is about an Indian Muslim in the US who is unfairly targetted by the Government after 911. Is it a case of real life imitating the reel one, or is it just me but this stinks of a publicity stunt.

Either ways we shouldn't care.

P.S. I am kinda glad that Swine Flu is off the front pages after the blitzkrieg coverage it received from the media in the past few days.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYNa4rhxffc&feature=related



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORZ00OyKp0I

The curious incident of the light in the night time

Ok this is some real freaky shit that's happening to me!

Someone is playing tricks with me and my parents swear it ain't them.
On Thursday morning, I woke up to find my mom standing in front of my bed with a frown on her face.

I wasn't in the mood to find out the reason for this so I pulled the covers over me further. But she pulled them off anyways and finally I found out what bugged her.

I had left the room tubelight on during the night. Knowing it was a touchy subject with her, I grudgingly listened to her complaints about the rising electricity bills, the recessionary state of the economy, etc.

Eventually I managed to soothe her frayed temper by promising never to commit such a heinous act again in a million years.

But on Friday morning the same scene was reenacted. This time I was mightily confused. I was damn sure I had switched out the light before hitting the snooze mode myself. This time she hadn't turned it off herself like yesterday so that I could see the proof with my own eyes.

Before hitting the bed yesterday, I paid special attention to the fact that I had switched the damn light off and I had locked my door too. But today morning the damn thing was on again.

Either I'm losing my mind, am suffering from some strange sleepwalking episode where all I do is switch on the light or there is a frigging ghost in my room with a pretty sad sense of humour. I plan to stay awake tonight with the lights off. I am going to solve this once and for all.

Hell yeah!