Off the Road

Sometime back we started getting bored of the usual running haunts in Bangalore and then someone suggested these two places. Two amazing ways to start your weekend. The one overlooking the lake is from the monolith of Savan-durga and the trail going into the woods is of Bellandur.

Next time you come down to Blore, do remind me to take you to one of these places.

सब दीवारें तोड़ दो!

Saw this on a trip to Nandi Hills

Total filmy laga - the fort that might have been of tactical importance has become lovers' hideout! Actually, the amount of grafitti on the walls really ticked me off। But I will reserve my views on ASI and its attempts to 'conserve' monuments for some other time. Don't know if this story took off at all or may be this was some guy's imagination at work but if it happened, it surely would have been interesting!

Nine Decades of Non-violence

Read this article, Nine Decades of Non-violence, in The Hindu (August 23, 2007). It is a piece about Baji Mohammed who is one of the last living freedom fighters of India. Sainath starts it off as a telling tale of our increasing religious intolerance but soon veers on to the journey of Satyagraha and our own freedom.

Some excerpts:

“We were sitting in the tent, they tore it down. We kept sitting,” the old freedom fighter told us. “They threw water on the ground and at us. They tried making the ground wet and difficult to sit on. We remained seated. Then when I went to drink some water and bent down near the tap, they smashed me on the head, fracturing my skull. I had to be rushed to hospital.”

Baji Mohammed is one of India’s last living freedom fighters — just one of four or five nationally recognised ones still alive in Orissa’s Koraput region. He is not talking about British brutality in 1942.(Though he has much to say on that, too.) He’s describing the vicious attack on him during the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, half a century later. “I was there as part of a 100-member peace team.” But the team was given no peace. The old Gandhian fighter, already in his mid-seventies, spent ten days in hospital and a month in a Varanasi ashram recovering from the injury to his head.

Lets Kill The Brand

These things often start with an advertisement. Somebody in the HRD ministry had this idea of putting up an advertisement in all the newspapers calling for applications to the IIM director’s post. This is indeed in line with the tempestuous relationship that the IIMs have had with the HRD ministry of the governments of the last decade. One might want to ask, what is the big deal with a seemingly harmless advert? Traditionally, the Director’s name has been proposed by the governing council of the institutes and the approved by the HRD ministry. The approval has been a formality but it seems that things might change as the man in the charge of human resource development for the nation wants to meddle more. Bakul Dholakia (Director, IIMA) was initially combative and then allegedly struck a re-conciliatory note (With TOI group, everything has to be allegedly).

What is the big deal with autonomy? Institutes like the IITs and IIMs want greater autonomy because they want the freedom to fix salaries (get/retain the best faculty), start cross-border collaboration programs, improve infrastructure, spend on capability building initiatives etc. However, governments have wanted to increase their grip on these institutes of excellence because it makes strong political statement. I am not sure about the target segment of voters that they are trying to approach via this increasingly meddlesome approach.

So while these steps try to destroy the last vestiges of idealism and excellence in the country, I hope someone wants to build something as well. Governments should try and build alternate brands to the IITs and the IIMs. Merely creating more of such institutes might be counter-productive at best. It would be better if they inject funds for infra development and to attract better faculty at the NITs and the next line of Management institutes. While such steps make headlines, I really wonder if Arjun Singh is bothered beyond gaining some cheap publicity out of this. Would be great if his bunch of cronies apply themselves to improving the primary and the secondary education infrastructure than with such retro steps. Anyway, all this would be nothing more that noise for them so let me not waste my time either.

Lage Raho

As I type this there are at least three online petitions trying to garner, what else, support. The petitioners are pitching the case of Munna Bhai to our government. The underlying motif being that the guy who preaches Gandigiri cannot be bad. He should not be made to serve his (excessive) sentence. Have we lost it totally? I would want to think that the answer to that is NO! However I seriously doubt the sanity of the 148 and 4300 people who have signed it on gopetition.com and petitiononline respectively.

Here’s an excerpt from the petition on petitiononline.com (You will have to read the comments to believe them with some comparing Sanjay Dutt with Valmiki)

Sanjay Dutt has already suffered 14 long grueling years waiting for the verdict… He has served 18 months in jail as an under trial….He has already repented a lot more for a mistake committed in his youth… As far as I can remember we all have always been taught that the reason a person is jailed is in order to make him a better person .. a more reformed individual fit for the society… And in no way is a person jailed just to punish him…. So why jail a person who has already repented and gone through so much of anguish and pain in the last 14 years of this trial ..Why jail a person who is already reformed? Why jail a person who is in no way harmful to the society… And anyway who are we to punish some one for his mistakes … Just like Jesus Christ once said “Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone”

I never knew that Law aims only to reform and not to punish. Whatever happened to the good old idea of setting a precedent and acting as a deterrent to any deviant behavior! Another argument put forth is that if a person has asked for forgiveness and apologized for the ‘mistake’ he should be let off. Would we be willing to do that in the case of a normal thug?

May be I should not be reacting to this. May be it is too childish… just a simple case of confusing the screen identity for all that the person stands for. May be it is just a belief that future should have a smaller weight attached to the past. But that does not mean that one can get away from his past. And that is the way things should be! It is important to set this precedent so that public personalities understand that they are not above the law. Hope that the budding Salmans, Pataudis, Nandas and others with the financial muscle would take a lesson from this and would sincerely try not to side-step the law all the time.

Jhoot Bole Kauwa Kate!

Routine.

Handphone alarm goes off at 5:15 AM – the familiar screech and the flashing message of ‘WAKE UP!’ I woke up with the desire of snuggling back into the comfort of the quilt. Desire often comes with a gnawing guilt. This time it was the commitment to Praveen that I would tag along for the Wednesday Speed training at Cubbon park. I did what felt right!

I caved.

So I shot a message that I had sprained my ankle and would not be able to join in. Thus, buying some more time for sleep (and exonerating myself from any value judgment that preveen might make). Guilt had her own way of finding her way back into my consciousness. Hence, when I woke up at 7:00 AM I was remorseful for not having run. So I rushed and put on my shoes. A healthy 6 Km run at an above average pace. Felt great! Last 600m, I sped and guess what, I sprained my ankle!

Am just hoping that I would be in shape for the weekend runs!

Are We Biased?

Three interesting ‘events’ that happened in the recent past makes me feel that the Law enforcement machinery is biased. Biased negatively towards the Muslim populace in the country (if not inclined towards the Hindu majority).

Event 1: Md. Haneef is detained under Australian terror laws and is subsequently freed after the public outcry in Australia

Event 2: Sanjay Dutt’s conviction in the Bombay Blasts case ends with a sentence of rigorous imprisonment for six years

Event 3: Sulaiman Memon is acquitted after spending 6 long years in jail as an under-trial whilst his wife is handed a life sentence

From Frontline on the Mumbai blasts case:

Zakir Hussain burst out in court that the judiciary was biased.
“If a Hindu does something, a commission is set up. But if a Muslim does something, he is hanged,” he shouted.

Outside the courtroom, family members of the convicted echoed this sentiment. “It was one-sided. What happened to the Srikrishna Commission report? Why was it not implemented? What happened to those who killed innocent Muslims during the riots?” asked an inconsolable Ismailbi, Abdul Khan’s mother

In the blasts case, 100 have been sentenced, 12 have been sentenced to death, 20 given life terms. I cannot help but wonder that if it were Salman Khan in place of Sanju baba in the ‘AK-56 possession’ case, it might have been a longer sentence. Someone would need to answer these questions that the media and a few in the society have been asking. The congress government that believes that they are the most secular of governments in recent times might want to hazard an answer to them. I think they will try and make some politically correct statements given the fact that the Loksabha elections are not too far now!

What is an act of terror? I do not know how the law defines it but I do believe that organized riots like the ones in Sikh riots (1984), Mumbai Riots (1992-93), Gujarat Riots (2003) are also acts of terror. However the Indian law enforcement machinery would not want to pass any sentence on any of these with such sense of idealism that we have seen in the Mumbai blasts case. Mind you, I am not saying that the judgments by Justice PD Kode were wrong. I hope that they are as righteous as such cases should be, especially in terms of setting the right precedent. But I cannot help but wonder what happened to the report submitted by Justice Srikrishna commission. The NDA government in power (Centre and State) did its bit to rubbish it but the present regime is not worried about it either. Was it because the ‘fish’ named were too big to be nabbed by the net of the Law?

Dr. Haneef’s episode is another case-in-point to illustrate the bias in our government machinery. It curiously refused to (re)act. I think the conclusions of team at the (Ministry of External Affairs) would have been in line with the English and the Australian government i.e. Muslim=Terrorist!! I fail to understand how MEA forgot that he is an Indian citizen as well. Was it not our responsibility to speak-up on his behalf? The lackadaisical requests that the government made (post the public outcry in Australia and their media) were lame at best. Though we did get loud once it was clear that he would be let off the hook. Our media acted in a similar fashion.

However, in Sanju Baba’s case the media (and some from political jamboree) is all over the place, shouting themselves hoarse about the ‘unfair’ nature of the sentence. We have spin doctors telling us how he has a heart of gold, how he shared a wonderful rapport with Abhishek Bacchan and Zayed khan and how he advised DJ Aqeel against the usage of dugs etc. I understand that they believe that these are reasons good enough for Mr. Dutt to be released or to be awarded a truncated sentence! These ‘supporters’ seem to believe that illegal procurement of arms from the chief conspirator and then their destruction to save oneself from the law does not warrant this kind of a sentence. Not to forget that he was named a co-conspirator in the initial phases of the case, a charge that was subsequently dropped.

Sulaiman saw his business destroyed in the 6 years he spent in Jail. His wife Rubina got a life sentence because her car was used in the bombing. Apparently there is no other evidence that she was a part of the planning or abetted the conspiracy. However, the lady behind the veil who might have not had any clue about what her Brothers-in-law were up to will spend the rest of her life behind bars.

While our law ensures that the guilty are punished, it should also appear impartial. We might find it increasingly difficult to include the Gen-next of muslims in our mainstream if they cannot trust the Government. They need to believe that the law is impartial and would punish the guilty irrespective of their religious moorings. A good starting point might be a quick closure on all riot cases that have been stowed away in cold storage. I hope it is not too much to ask for!