Mountain of light

It is all about discipline isn’t it. Discipline at work, discipline in your studies, discipline in your savings and that biggest virtue of all – moral discipline. I see my life disappearing and getting trampled under these boulders. Its like a landslide coming from the top of a mountain towards my little cottage at the foothills. Before I know it my life will be ironed out and I will fall into line. Culled into someone I never wanted to be, someone I never wanted to look at in the mirror. Disciplined people look like robots to me, going about their lives in mechanical fashion. I don’t know if they even think what they are doing, if they analyse what else could they be doing. I think they are too scared to even think about living their lives in any other way.

Discipline comes under various guises – professionalism, maturity, sense of responsibility and decency among others. I am supposed to aspire towards these qualities among others. This is what makes me acceptable to everyone and their uncles. This is what grants me that social acceptability. Undisciplined vagabonds have no place in society because they have no cloak of acceptability to hide their indiscipline. Some of these attributes are forced upon me by my parents (well wishers?) and some of it is dictated by monetary considerations. Getting up today morning and coming to work was pure monetary and it went against the advise of every nerve in my body. I came to work today so I could buy that music CD, so I could go pay for that Italian meal and for my cable internet connection. Nothing that I can do today can offer me any professional satisfaction, not by the way my morning went. I have to discipline myself not to take leave on every small pretext which a few corollaries down the line means that I am able to pay for my needs.

I don’t see any point in externally imposed discipline. The realization and the actual act should come from inside. But then the problem with people is that once they discipline themselves they take it upon themselves as their mission in life to discipline everyone around them. I thrive in my indiscipline, in my chaos and this cluttered mind and even my cluttered table. I’ll start to hate myself if I get too disciplined. I don’t think anyone should have a problem with what I do as long as I am not hurting anyone (including myself). I think discipline is too boring and too staid. Once you get into the disciplined way then there is no end to it. There is always someone higher than you and someone more disciplined than you. I guess we look to get inspiration from disciplined people because it doesn’t come naturally to us. I always come across people who make me look like Operation Brassstacks, but do they inspire me? No! I like the way I am and I will change only when the impetus comes from inside of me. I like to keep my balance inside of me and not outside.

Which is not to say I am the perfect man. I am not and never will be. Who wants to be perfect anyway? Too boring.

We as citizens of this country are often guilty of picking out our country’s faults and harping on them and not focusing enough on the positives. No matter how bad a situation is there are always bound to be some positives. While it is important to talk about the negatives and work towards constant improvement, I feel that we should also talk about the positives and give credit where it is due. I am also guilty on this count and from this post onwards I am going to look at a situation and talk about both positives and negatives, as they exist side by side.

We often talk about how our political systems don’t work. How the regulators, watchdogs of the system don’t do their jobs effectively. Most of what we say is by and large based on true facts. But what doesn’t meet our eye and I blame the media for it partly, is the fact that there are people out there who are fighting the corruption and the red tape in the system. They are fighting inspite of the fact that it could potentially endanger their careers, they could be transferred out every 6 months or so because their political masters find them to be a nuisance and they could find themselves in some god forsaken place looking after animal husbandry. They need all the support that we can give them in the same manner, as the people who form part of the corrupt system should be afforded as much resistance from us. But do we support the honest and do we resist the corrupt? No! We (me included) are too busy living our lives, earning our bread and butter, and climbing the corporate ladder and what have you. But in all this we do find time to criticize the system.

I have wanted to write a letter to our current Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) – James M Lyngdoh. Except I couldn’t bring myself to write anything in the letter. So I was just a silent admirer, closely following him through the media. This week I read that he has been awarded the Magsaysay Award for Government Service. The site says ‘ The Foundation recognizes “his convincing validation of free and fair elections as the foundation and best hope of secular democracy in free and fair India”’ These are strong words coming from an independent, external institution. We (citizens, politicians etc) keep harping on how we are the largest democracy in the world. But what does it take to be that democracy, who is the watchdog for the democracy and who ensures that the democracy doesn’t turn in into an idiocracy (I made this word up!). Among the watchdogs of this democracy is the Election Commission that is headed by the CEC.

Over the last year this very democracy was threatened on two counts. One on ensuring peaceful elections (it was never going to be free and fair) in Gujarat especially after the violence that had taken place and second, ensuring that elections in Jammu and Kashmir are free and fair so atleast we can live up to being a “democracy” and not have a sham of elections which had been happening there for the past two decades. One would agree that in such circumstances the Election Commission would need all the support that it can get. Except what did it get in instead?

What it got instead was - A legal battle in the Supreme Court between the Central Government and the Election Commission (EC) questioning the EC’s powers to postpone the election in Gujarat by 6 months. The court ruled in the favor of the EC and had a few things to say to the Central Government in the process. The CEC’s name and religion was thrown about in public and it was said that he was in co hoots with a certain politician of Italian origin. The kind of abuse that went around, and how his middle name was repeated again and again would make even a hardened ruffian squirm. Much was made of an incident where he called certain bureaucrats in Gujarat as “jokers”. I think Mr. Lyndgoh was being very civil with them because I would have called them murderers. The bureaucrats ofcourse were quite enraged on that comment and there was talk at that time of a defamation suit. I mean we all know that there are jokers but we can’t call them jokers.

The elections in Gujarat went off peacefully, the results were a foregone conclusion. But God only knows what would have happened if the elections had been held immediately in the aftermath of the riots. We would never know I guess. The elections in Jammu and Kashmir were a thumping success and even the PM, whose statements are very measured and controlled, and whose party lost the elections, said that these are the first free and fair elections in Kashmir after a long time. Those elections in Kashmir will hold us in good stead for a very very long time. I don’t think we even realize the implications that will flow in the next few years from just one set of elections.

So, did we nominate Mr. Lyndgoh for the Bharat Ratna? Ok that is too high an award maybe the Padmashree then. I don’t understand the rules and regulations too well. Maybe there is a rule that serving civil servants can’t get nominated for these awards (but they can get awards from outside?). Ok so what about a statement from the PM congratulating the EC on a job well done. You could say well he was only doing his job. The past two decades of elections in Kashmir were because of people who were only doing their jobs and didn’t have the courage to stand up to the politicians. Another award Mr. Lyndgoh got was a “Star of Asia”, conferred by the Business Week magazine in the policy makers category. He was placed on par with the Chinese Premier Hu Jintao for his commitment to fighting SARS. Can you imagine the honor? Business Week again is a prestigious international publication.

Did any Indian organization, company, group of individuals confer him with an award? Not that I know off, please do tell me if you know of something. Did we tell him through a citation that, Thank you sir! We as a democracy are privileged to have you managing our elections. Maybe now that he has got the Magsaysay, people will sit up and notice and decide to give him an award. This is like what happened with Amartya Sen after he got the Nobel. The government stood up and took notice of his research and he also suddenly started getting so many awards.

To end I quote from an article of Rajdeep Sardesai (NDTV) in Mid-Day. He had this to say about the elections in Kashmir.
“Every Kashmiri you spoke to, would hark back to the 1987 elections, widely believed to have been rigged, an election which was seen to have given separatist sentiments a new momentum. This 2002 election has partly, if not entirely, buried some of the ghosts of 1987 and revived a flicker of hope in the valley. For that alone, Lyngdoh and his team, who have personally visited the valley at least half a dozen times in the last few months, deserve full praise. Omar Abdullah might wonder what went wrong, but maybe even he in a moment of reflection might pause to admire the quiet revolution brought about in Indian democracy by a man of few words with a black belt in judo”

Mr. Lyndgoh, thank you.

I subscribe to this magazine called The Little Magazine (www.littlemag.com). This is a bi-monthly publication and takes quite a while to go through. Each issue is based on one topic (like crime or media) and then they are essays on that article by people who are authorities in that field. Then there is fiction and poetry on the same topic , book reviews on the same and it usually ends with a film or a play script that is again based on the same cover issue. A lot of fiction and poetry is, quite refreshingly, from languages other than English. The magazine draws a lot from all corners of India to come with wonderful pieces. Each issue for me is a wonderful learning experience. The last issue I read was on Crime. Among the things they talked about was communal violence. I wanted to write about it for quite some time except I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write. It is also easy to get very negative about the whole thing and then I tend to lose my point altogether.

Communal violence as I understand is violence based on among other things, religion. This is something I have never been quite able to understand. I understand people fighting over money, women, opinions, and even television remotes. But why religion? Most of us don’t even choose our religion, we kind off inherit it from our parents at birth. But then religion is also something we manage to hang on to most closely. As I start analysing the whole thing it is easy to see why communal violence happens.

India, as our founding fathers saw it, is a secular country where there is no discrimination on the basis of religion. All religions are equal. But even after centuries of these religions mingling together I see minority (in terms of religion) communities living all concentrated together. Near these dwellings will be a place of worship and the most of the shops in the surrounding areas will also be owned by the same community. Depending on where you go, inter-religious marriages are still frowned upon even by the majority community. We still don’t know too much about each other’s festivals even though we have lived with each other for generations. As in a country like ours, where different religions have co-existed for centuries, I would expect current thinking and ideas (even education) to draw upon the knowledge and wisdom from all these religions (like language, for example). To my mind, there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of other religions and how they are only different paths to the same God.

It is precisely this ignorance which shows its ugly face in the form of communal violence. Ignorance you see can breed a lot of negative attributes like fear, hatred etc. When we strike violently against someone isn’t it a combination of fear and hatred? Fear because the other person has the ability to bring harm to us, and hatred because we perceive that he has or plans to bring harm to us. This ignorance when combined with things like lack of economic opportunities, hunger, and some mischievous religious leaders, becomes this huge demon which is all ready to spout fire at the other community. This could take the form of demolishing century old mosques, raping nuns and burning clerics alive or even demanding for a Hindu state.

To my mind there are two ways of stopping this kind of violence. One, by effectively clamping down on the people who do the violence and the people who plan it right down to the last fire and two, by education and bringing down unemployment. Both solutions are easier said than done and I don’t see anything been done on any of these counts. Sometimes I get all cynical and wonder that given these conditions why isn’t there like a major riot every year and at each major religious festival. The kind of nonsense which sometimes get dished out in the front pages makes me shiver as I think of what kind of mind does it take to make these statements and what else is that devious mind capable off.

The other day I was searching for some famous quotes and among others I came across these two.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." Blaise Pascal

Harvey Milk, at a 1978 Gay Freedom Day Rally. (Harvey Milk was killed later that year by a fanatic).
"The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, THAT my friends, is true perversion."