Just Jo

I was happy to hear that the Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference (KCBC) conducted an inter-religious talk with various Hindu leaders today. It took place at Hotel Sarovaram in Kochi. The talk was intended to explain the activities of Catholic church and it’s missionary policy. When the communal hatred flares up, it is the duty of religious leaders to come together, have dialogue and make something positive out of it for the greater good of the society and nation. But my moment of joy faded away in a flash when I read that the leaders of Viswa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and RSS where invited to the talks.

VHP and their pet organizations like Bajrang Dal are communal and religious extremist forces who are spreading hatred between Christian-Hindu and Muslim-Hindu communities. Their only political agenda is to gain supreme power in India and establish a Hindu Rashtra which is based on the One Nation, One Religion concept. And above it all, VHP and RSS do not represent the majority of Hindus (if it is so, we will have to say that the New Life Church or other such new-age evangelical churches represent Christianity or SIMI and Al-Qaeda represent Muslims). Their terrorist youth wing Bajrang Dal have been killing Christians and burning their properties in many parts of the country by cashing-in on the ordinary Hindu’s sentiments against some Missionary tactics. Such extremists need to be dealt with the law of the land. The Catholic Bishops should have urged and put pressure on the state and central Governments to jail the culprits like Bajrang Dal activists instead of choosing to have dialogue with their peers of VHP and RSS.

The extremist organizations like VHP, Bajrang Dal and their political wing BJP will not refrain themselves from their activities because they are only after power (by terror). By falling on their feet, the Bishops have done injustice to the innocent people (both Christians and Hindus) who have been killed in the Christian-Hindu riots which is a result of induced hatred by VHP and Bajrang Dal in Orissa, Karnataka and Kerala. When there are respected Hindu leaders from Chinmaya Mission, Kaladi Mutt etc and various Hindu organizations like SNDP and NSS who represent the majority of Hindus in Kerala (Chinmaya Mission, Sivarigi Mutt and Amrutanandamayi Ashram were invited to the event), why did the KCBC invite extremist people like Kummanam Rajasekharan and K P Sasikala? Were they stupid enough to think that this would make a change in the mindset of the extremists of VHP? And if the KCBC could invite the extremists of VHP and RSS, why didn’t they invite the Pentecostal groups who are aggressively into conversion business? Or is this showing the Kerala Catholic Church’s newly found love for VHP to fight their common enemy of Communism in Kerala?

It looks like Rajan Zed, the Hindu leader from Nevada is on a self-promotional spree. Rajan Zed has been in news quite often these days. First It was when he had been invited to read prayers to the US Senate. The news got widespread international attention when the prayers were disrupted with shouting of some fundamentalist Christians in the senate gallery. Since then Mr. Zed has been trying to be in the news consistently and project himself as the leader of Hinduism in America. But this has not been warmly welcomed by other Hindu leaders in the USA.

Leaders of three Seattle-area temples said they knew of Zed from news accounts or not at all.

“I don’t know how he advertises himself or how he gets access to these things,” said Shyam Oberoi, secretary of the board of trustees of the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center in Bothell.

Swami Bhaskarananda of the Vedanta Society of Western Washington in Seattle said Zed sounds like “someone ambitious” whose appearance might be “politically motivated — he wants to be known.” [Via]

Zed again came to news when he demanded that a special screening of The Love Guru (a comedy by Mike Myers) be allowed to the members of Hindu community before it was released in June (the movie had full promotional support of the new-age spiritual guru Deepak Chopra). As a result, the Hindu American Foundation was granted a pre-secreening of the film prior to the release.

It looks like Rajan Zed (or it could be his P.R.O or a fan) is doing a lot of self-promotional work these days. I got two emails, which was sent to an email group that I am part of, that seemingly came from Rajan Zed. He sent two articles which titled “Hindus urge European Union to formally apologize to its Roma population for centuries of abuse” and “Hindu statesman Zed inaugurated & blessed a Christian church in Nevada” and both of them had a “For favour of publication” note in the beginning. Then I got another email which was meant for me (because it is about music), which titled “Famous American band releases groundbreaking album on ancient Vedas and presents to Hindu statesman Zed” and for my convenience he had also attached a photo of the event. All three of these articles had mentioned Rajan Zed’s name in almost every paragraph with decorations such as “Acclaimed Hindu and Indo-American statesman Rajan Zed” or “Zed, who is the president of Universal Society of Hinduism” etc.

From what it looks like, there is a self-proclaimed pope-in-the-making for Hindus in America. Watch out for more publicity stunts from Mr. Rajan Zed in the coming days.

Details of the picture above (As given by Mr. Zed in his email):
Andrea (left) and Sara Forman (right), lead singers of Shanti Shanti rock band, presenting the first copy of their new album “Veda” to acclaimed Hindu leader Rajan Zed (center) in Nevada (USA).
Picture by: Roger Bowen Weld

As Orissa keeps burning, Kala Baaz gives us a detailed analytical look on the set of people who are the real victims of Hindutva vs. Evengelists wars – the Dalits of India.

As cruelty yields more cruelty, even the Dalits have a caste system within themselves which is equally oppressive. It is somewhat comparable to the House Slave vs. the Field Slave in American plantations during the days of slavery. Most Dalits in India work as bonded labor. 70% of India’s Christian Population is Dalit and most of them are still treated as lower castes by Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

A rapid fire session of Indian reality: Since India is so fragmented and loose in its social structure, manipulative ways are needed to create that monotheistic delusion: Nationalism. When there was a foreign oppressor it was easier, but with the oppressor gone, it gets tricky to unify a nation.

The author gives us a detailed un-biased look on the politics of both the Evangelists and Hindutva vaadis. A must read post.

This brings us from the Great Commission of the 1st century to the killings in Kandhamal, Orissa happening in the 21st Century. The Hindutva project has been steadily progressing since the 1990′s. Selling itself as a tit-for-tat final solution to those seeking to convert, it has found immense support in the upper-caste Hindus. And as seen often in history, the Tit is even more cruel than the Tat. Either fall in line with Hindutva or get out. Get out, generally means out of India or out of life.

In the latest top 10 listing (from June 2008) of super computers, India has made it to the 8th place.

For the second time, India placed a system in the top10. The Computational Research Laboratories, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd. in Pune, India, installed a Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system. They integrated this system with their own innovative routing technology and achieved a performance of 132.8 Tflop/s which was sufficient for No. 8.

[Read more]

(Info via email from Ashik)

I haven’t read much of Osho literature or heard any tapes even though plenty of them were available in the market. It was my late friend Biju who first told me that I should listen to Osho tapes because it had some brilliant ideas. The only other literature that he asked me to read was of Mahatma Gandhi. He used to say “the world thought that Gandhi was a serious person, but he was so funny yet explained every thing in simple and beautiful words“.

From what I had learned bout Osho, he seemed to be as cunning (if not more) as the people whom he accused of. I still think the same about him. However, after watching a couple of You Tube videos, I thought, no matter how eccentric this man might sound, no matter how crazy some of his ideas were, he did leave some brilliant thoughts behind. From one of the videos I watched (“Absolutely Free to be Funny“):

I love disturbing people. Because only by disturbing them, I can make them think. They have stopped thinking for centuries. Nobody has been there to disturb them.

A man who remains consistent through his whole life, must be an idiot. A growing person has to contradict himself many times. Because who knows what tomorrow brings in? Tomorrow may cancel this day completely.

(Image courtesy: biographyonline.net)

Our mainstream print media is now making it a habit to steal images from Flickr or blogs and use it for free without leaving any proper credits to the original photographer. I have been tracking such incidents right from the day my picture had been stolen and used by a book publisher.

Here is a summary of copyright infringement in the recent past.

Mridula was on a flight from Delhi to Bangalore and while flipping the pages of airline magazine she had found a photo taken by her used in their featured article. No credits were given.

I was browsing through the book review section of Mathrubhumi weekly and found out that one of my photos were used for a book cover. The person who stole the photo did not leave any credit to me.

The same person, Shanavas M A (of Madhyamam weekly), had stolen a Canadian citizen’s picture to use in the cover for Madhyamam. And this seems to be a regular practice of Mr. Shanavas and Madhymam.

Haree had to face the same situation when Madhyamam (again) used one of his photos for an article of their supplement.

Hindustan Times stole a photo taken by Nita and published it in their newspaper without any due credits.

Twilight Fairy found out that her photo was used by Times of India and when contacted she got an arrogant response.

Seema also had to face the same where Times of India becomes the culprit once again.

The latest victim is Sreenidhi whose photo has been flicked off by Times of India.

This is such a bad situation that the mainstream print media houses are showing such ignorance towards image copyright. They need to be held responsible and dragged to courts. High time that we have stricter copyright laws.

(Image courtesy: Seema K K)

There is so much talk in the online space about religious conversion. There are people asking for an outright ban on conversions. Another set of people justify the crimes commited by the extremist outfits like Bajrang Dal for they are angry about conversions in general. Some people say “Christians deserved it” or the Bajrang Dal attacks were plain retaliation. At this point, I would like to share my thoughts on religious conversion again and about the people who benefit out of it.

• Any religious conversion that is either by force or by offering monetary benefits should be banned by the law. This should include re-conversions as well (the VHP is allegedly re-converting people by making better offers than their Christian counterparts).
• Any conversion by one’s own conviction and will should be allowed. We are talking about basic human rights here.
• Any religion, including Christianity, should be allowed to preach their religion and their form of spirituality (all religions do the religious/spiritual discourses) but in the process, no one should be allowed to abuse the other religions and their Gods to establish supremacy.

The current anti-Conversion laws in some states of India should consider the above mentioned and cannot outrightly ban conversion. And if anybody breaks the law, it is the duty of the legal system in India to handle the offenders by the means of law, and that duty is not left to the groups like VHP or Bajrang Dal to manhandle people, kill them, burn their houses, churches etc. That is the law of jungle and imagine if every community reacted this way.

The people who benefit from the conversion business are of two types. The evangelical Christian missionaries and the Hindutva brigade aka Sangh Parivar.

The Missionary Agenda

Spreading the word of God is what Jesus asked his followers. Jesus asked to spread His message, not money. But there is a wide-spread Evangelical network that works against the principles of Jesus Christ. For them, it is just a matter of getting more and more people into their fold. For this, they are ready to spend any amount of money. Their offers are so tempting that many people in India get converted to have monetary benefits. Four-five people join a Church and then separate themselves from it, forms a new Church, converts people and widen the strength of their Church, sends the group photos of their Church members to their western benefactors, gets more money etc etc. This has become a business of religion. Jesus Christ has no place in this whole business. Such conversion machines have to be stopped by the law.

The Hindutva Agenda

What the Hindutva brigade want is power over the society. Just like the missionaries want a Christianized world, the Hindutva vaadis want a Hindu Rashtra and for that they need an India cleansed off Muslims and Christians. Gujarat, Karnataka and Orissa are just test phases. The real and the biggest execution is yet to come and we have to wait for it until the BJP gets the majority in center.

Hindutva brigade selectively target Christians over the conversion issue. They easily ignore the mass conversions to Budhism every year. They do not make any hue and cry over it because it will dig up the dung of Casteism in their own yard. Also they do not draw any distinction between the Evangelical Christians and the rest of Indian Christians. They do not want to do so, because their concept of Hindu Rashtra is based on the ethnic cleansing of Christians and Muslims in India.

Those who support both these types should think about it again. Those who support the violence induced by Sangh Parivar as a form of ‘reaction’ or ‘retaliation’ should think about it again too. Imagine if everybody retaliated by taking law in hands.

Bajrang Dal is a religious extremist terrorist outfit that often gets into various activities such as moral policing (particularly on Valentine days), rioting, killing and burning Christians, their houses and churches. In the early days, they and their supporters used to deny their crime charges as Christian conspiracy or “it was not us, but the Hindus in general retaliating“. But ever since their political supporters (BJP) have formed the Government in the Indian states of Karnataka and Orissa, they have come out in public and claimed before the TV cameras that they have done it and they will do it again. And nobody really cares.

The Government (of Karnataka) which is supposed to protect it’s citizens turn a blind eye. The police force which is supposed to take attackers into custody had instead chose to lathi charge protesting Christians. This again raises the question – what security does Christians in India have under the BJP rule when BJP let loose it’s terrorist wings such as Bajrang Dal? Where are those people who had said that “religious minorities will be safe under BJP’s rule“? What examples do they see in Orissa and Karnataka?

The saddest thing of all these is that Christian religious heads of Kerala are more worried about Communists than Sangh Parivar. The Bishops who have brought Christians on road to protest against the textbook, are speaking very less on Hindutva extremism. The objective here is clear. For the Church administration, institution is far more important than the community members and their lives. They do not see that the Saffron Brigade has already extended their terrorist wings to Kasaragod district (in Kerala) and soon, may be within a couple of years, you will see Karnatake/Orissa model attacks on Christians in other parts of Kerala. Like Mavelikkara and Thiruvananthapuram (Kasaragod, Mavelikkara and Thiruvananthapram are the strong holds of Sangh Parivar in Kerala).

So we have SIMI banned in India for years which is a good move. Now when is the Indian Government going to ban VHP and Bajrang Dal? Or how many more man slaughtering by Hindutva brigade do they need to see before doing it?

Picture: An armed training camp of Bajrang Dal in Sarojini Nagar, outside Lucknow.
(Picture courtesy)

Mother Jane, the Indie rock music band’s new album – Maktub – is going to have a web premiere. Starting from the 18th midnight to 27th, they are posting previews of the 9 songs from this new album. You can download the ringtones & read the inside story of each song in their website.

The live web premiere and album launch details below:

Venue : www.motherjane.in
Date : 27/09/2008
Time : 8pm IST

Click here to check out the podcast interview by M-Pod (the Malayalam podcast) with Suraj Mani, the frontman cum lead vocalist of Mother Jane.

Vinod Joseph, author of Hitchhiker and my good friend, has honored me with a Brillante Weblog 2008 award. Thank you Vinod! You’ve been encouraging me a lot with your comments on my songs.

Also check out Vinod’s blog to read his short stories, book reviews, travelogues etc.

Now as per the rules, I have to honor 7 people with this award and here goes a list of 6:

Pradip Somasundaran – For he is an excellent singer and music blogger who keeps challenging himself with every new song post.

Slogan Murugan – The copywriter who captures Bangalore everyday with his camera.

Ujjwala – Artblog-ger. An amazingly talented artist.

Madhukar Shukla – Reading his blog has helped me see things from an alternate perspective.

Nita – Her blog posts are always insightful.

Thulasi – The guy who digs extra ordinary shots from ordinary life.