Amir Khan: Terror Apologist

(Via rediff)

Aamir Khan rips the media apart

"On the issue of terrorism too, the star was equally outspoken: 'What I'd like to say as a Muslim here is that any person claiming to be a Muslim who indulges in killing innocent people, in my opinion, is not a Muslim.' But he criticised the media, who 'conveniently take it (the government version) on face value and say that phalana dhimka from phalana dhimka group has in fact done this (terrorist act).'
'The job of the authorities is to find out who's behind it and the job of the press I feel is to investigate whether the authorities are telling the truth,' he added."

I find this sad and ironical. Sad because his films were part of my growing up. One of my first films (first on VCR) was QSQT.
Although I do not claim to be a movie connosieur (my preference being "latke" and "jhatke" than "hatke"), I enjoyed his movies.
However since he became an activist his leanings and his statesments have made me uncomfortable.
The political statement that "Mangal Pandey: The Rising" made was ridiculous at best.

But the interview takes the cake.
Now Amir Khan who was searching for his "Muslim identity" has become an amateur conspiracy theorist. According to him the media coverage of Varanasi blasts was shoddy.
Actually it was, but the other way.
His grouse is that an Islamic terrorist group was identified by the administration and media did not investigate it. I can understand if he feels embarassed by actions of fellow Muslims (hell I sometimes feel embarassed by actions of fellow Hindus), but that doesn't mean that he get rid of sanity for paranoid delusions.

He can be rest assured that "secular" government (both in UP and Delhi) were not trying to indict Muslims and that there was a Islamic terrorist group behind attack is expected.
He should also watch some other channel other Doordarshan he would have realized that the attack by terrorist groups is a fairly known fact.

There are three morals

1) There is a good reason that actors should not become activists. They are dolts.

2) That Aamir Khan, who by all account is a moderate Muslim is inventing excuses, instead of confronting the truth should be a reality check to the secularist who expect moderate Muslims to reform Islam on their own. Ofcourse ultimately it is up to Muslims to steer their religion, but it is a common human failing to cop out unfortunately this is something India can not afford now.

3) The whole issue of identity is a pretty complicated business. Partition can be redeuced to problem of identity. That and clashes of personality.

RIP

Manohar Shyam Joshi is dead.
He was one of the few authors in Hindi who could write beyond proletariat.
I may be called philistine but I prefer writers and poets who worked with cinema and television (Fanishwar Nath Renu, Kaifi Azmi etc)
Literature needs to be popular and connect to masses. Unfortunately Hindi literature has become seduced by the trumpets of communism. There is no joy and all existential dilemmas.

What I learned from My Alma Mater

Consider this; I have two weeks to make a presentation. Of these 14 days, I spend 12 in purely intellectual pursuit of surfing net or doing anything except for presentation.

The end result is that I have to finish the job on weekends, which I do after two consecutive night outs, and using all sorts of short cuts available. I am ashamed to say that I slept during final hour.
At present I am not in a position to post about anything. But I will try.

Wake up and pay attention

If you wish to have a night out, then the final hours are crucial. It is essential that you do not let your guard down at that time. Otherwise you have lost to sleep.

This is my 300th post by the way

Some thoughts about marriage.

No I don’t want to go into debate about arranged marriage vs. love marriage.

For that another post. However for me arranged marriage is a bit embarrassing
(I do not relish the thought of rejecting inanimate mobiles, rejecting a living human being is all the more difficult or being rejected for that matter) and love marriage inconvenient (high investment, outrageously low return, not to mention my being omega male).

So, I think marriages are good, even necessary. Why necessary? Because marriage is a contract between people. Why is a contact necessary? Because it secures relationship between man and woman. Why the security is necessary, shouldn’t relationship be about love? Well love is a good thing, problem love can not be objectified or quantified or even defined, which makes it impossible to factor into social institutions. Therefore a suitable contract stabilizes the relationship.

Again, why the stability, shouldn’t love be enough? As said before love can not be analyzed, however aim of any social institution is to promote general well being and stability of human civilization, all said and done security and commitment go a long way to accomplish this, as real as love is, so is power play between interacting individuals, a matter of basic psychology.
Love is the cement, not the structure.

Further children are more secure when the parents are married than otherwise. There is nothing bigoted about, I think studies prove. (Although I won’t bother to present it here, out of sheer sloth)

What kind of marriage is better? In my view it is monogamy, though I may be biased as I live in monogamist society. However my reasoning is that a relationship involving two persons is simplest to handle. Anything complex and power dynamics become too complicated to be stable.

Coefficient of coolness

Despite the title the post has nothing to do with thermodynamics (although I must say that thermodynamics is an interesting subject, which I hope to cover in some later post). No sir, this post is about society.

One of the more remarkable aspects of human behavior in modern age is this fetish with “coolness”, alternatively called “hotness”, “hepness” etc. Having never been cool (or hot), I have no in depth knowledge of this phenomena. Yet what is remarkable about this is its superficiality and hypocrisy.
Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against intellectual fads and fashions of the society.
From Plato to Aristotle, from Voltaire to Thomas Paine and onto Nietzsche, every epoch had its heroes.
History has seen every thing from Age of belief to Age of reason, even Age of Superman. Nothing this age is witnessing has not been seen earlier. Any idea in currency today has its precedence hidden in long shadows of past.
But this modern pretension is different from earlier fads. What is the credo of “cool” citizens? Non – conformity. Zeitgeist of this age is independence, contrariness, speaking “truth to the power”.
The motive behind this is to emulate the heroes and martyrs of bygone eras, long dead and buried, noble indeed! But this nobility has feet of smoke, so as to say. Because it is all prentension, no substance.
People are contrarian not because they have an argument to back them up, but just for sake of being; in the manner one wears his or her hair. It is not the content of the debate which has relevance but the posture one makes.
Since we live in a relatively benign era, we can not find many villains, dilemma for the profession of heroism. Therefore we invent villain where there aren’t any, we go on our knees and look in all the difficult corners of the human civilization to find any pretense of a cause, which merits martyrdom.
The independent stands with puffed chest to fight off a monster and save the maidenhood of civilization. Only he doesn’t fight monsters, he tilts his lance against shadows, shadows of deceit that he himself has created.
It is immaterial what the issue is, or whether there is merit, the standard operating procedure is to make a show of swimming against the current. This sham act merits Cub Scout badges of tired intelligentsia. There need not be any point; the mere act is the whole point.
So if you are a cocaine smoking (is cocaine smoked? Or snorted?) Rock star living a self gratifying life style you are a hero, a champion of this age. There is no goal but pleasure. No higher virtue other than self indulgence. Any mention of morality or purpose is worse than blasphemy, it is “irrational”. Freedom of speech has been confused with the worth of speech and any attempt to inject circumspection or intelligence is resisted.
So anything is cool, anything goes as long as it is against conventional, no demand at all for acumen, or thinking for that matter.
We do not say this is good or bad, the adjectives are cool and uncool. Coolness rules on its own with no relevance to scrutiny and is worthy of acclaim and emulation.
The only measure of worth is popularity in a self appointed circle of dissimulators of modern wisdom.
As one wag said this non conformity is all gothic.
This is not hedonism; this is morality of new age.


And hence I bury my seven year grudge.

Of Blood and Tears

Today is the day when Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev sacrificed their life for the mother, this land, called Bharat, Hindustaan, or India through the ages

Bhagat Singh did not do it only for Punjab, Chandrashekhar Azaad did not do it only for UP, Batukeshwar Dutt did not do it only for Bengal.AshfaqullaKhan did not do it only for Muslims.

These people died so as to free every Indian irrespective of region, caste, creed from the yokel of British slavery.

These people did not flinch in the face of death because they believed in something,that was as idea of India free from tyranny and for which they were ready to die. India as an idea which existed in collective subconscious and found expression in cultural harmony for more than millennium but was realized on 15 August 1947 when India got independence and on 26 January 1950 when India got the constitution.

This is an old nation because it has existed as civilization since time immemorial, yet it is new too because for the first time India has been united under the will of her people and not a king, or a foreign despot.

Even as India completes her sixth decade of independence, I am dismayed to note people forgetting the nation which we take for granted was taken at a very high price, a tithe of blood and misery of some of the finest and noblest souls has been paid for the right of freedom.
And yet, do we respect this? Do we realize the importance of nation?

Amidst all the babble of how there is a golden rule of either communism (or the latest fad libertarianism) and nation has become irrelevant, we do a disservice to the freedom fighters.
Nation protects what is good and noble from nihilists. Nation thwarts the “barbarian at the gates”.

Does it sound paranoid? It isn’t.Civilization and progress is not a given, it takes blood and toil. The price of freedom is eternal and unceasing vigilance. So let’s protect what we have.
Absent alertness and readiness to defend it, civilization is fragile.
Great civilizations have, in past, crumbled from nothing more than indifference.
Let us not get duped by the promises of utopia and neglect our nation.