China India Ties

Media, diplomats and important officials keep addressing India and China as the two 'Asian Giants'- China - the Dragon, India- the Elephant. But Chinese premier has taken a step ahead to deny the dragon - elephant relationship between the two. Both Wen and Prime Minister Singh took a step ahead to speak out what the two countries see their relation as- Partners in Developmental Cooperation and not Rivals in Competition.
With the uncertainty in the air about the talks going on at the Diplomatic level, it is still not easy to trust Chinese commitments with its selfish moves. China wants to march ahead into Indian markets to try its hands in Indian domestic consumption after capturing a good share in the western economies at large. China seeks a FTA( Free Trade Agreement) with India, with a promise of better access to Indian Companies in IT, Pharmaceuticals and Farm products. But on the other hand, its movement in the Indian ocean seen as the String of pearls, military support to the erring Pakistan Government in terms of its cross border state funded terrorism, infiltration into Indian borders with an attempt to hamper Indian Sovereignty.
Let apart its support to Pakistan, its increasing infrastructure activity in the Tibetan region, and the claim on territories in Arunachal Pradesh. China's prolonged trade imbalance with India, despite India being the second largest trade partner after U.S., and protectionist policies reflect upon the selfishness and self centered behavior of the chinese.
There are 6 agreements that have been signed, but within India, there are sections who are not ready to trust Chinese intentions of the so called wish for healthy natural relations with India, given its appetite for quest for acquisition of more and more territory, no support for human rights. India and China are culturally (political) and ideologically different. We will have to wait and watch to see the outcomes of the bilateral trades very maturely handles by Indian Diplomacy to the best of its intentions and approach. Just hope, given the size of the economy, territory and demographics of the two 'Asian Giants', China actually realizes importance of Sino-Indian relationship as it is necessary to carve the future of nt just South Asia, but the world too.

Respect Diplomats or forget all ties

Two incidents of Diplomats being frisked and humiliated in U.S. in the name of security check is a question of India's prestige. India must press for a written apology for this and strict action must be taken to check this.

To make this issue more seen with the right intensity, there must be a few tit for tat incidents forced on big names like Hillary Clinton and others. And specially because these incidents have hurt the cultural sentiments of the country. Is following Diplomatic procedures that hectic that the administration can not command how to follow procedures made for particular purposes.

They disrespected Shah Rukh Khan last year, despite him being a brand ambassador for India. Now the U.S. airport authorities have crossed all lines, humiliating the diplomats who maintain the global politico-economic and social relations.

VIGILANT EYE

Project Vigitech is a project to involve citizens with the Central Vigilance Commission to bring down the Corruption mercury in the country. This aims at including different stakeholders who suffer due to corruption to use Technology and bring in light the corrupt bureaucrats or any Government official . This project is to empower the citizenry and a chance for them to be a part of the process of reducing corruption and to save our country from the black spot of being one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

http://182.18.181.234/vigeye/

Communal harmony and internal security of India are interlinked

The word Communal gains its origin from the word ‘commune’, which means a group of people sharing some commonality living together taking care of each other’s interests and needs. Communalism in a narrow sense, especially in India, is seen as feeling of belongingness to one religion. It is seen as love for one’s own religion and hatred for others. But broadly, communalism is a feeling of competition amongst different groups of people, for differential reasons. The communes formed on the basis of religion, or caste, or common rituals, culture etc, all differentiate people and highlights them as different groups distinct from others.

Community one belongs to is a form of identity one carries. Formation of different communities was a hallmark of human civilization, because without commune formations, communications and interaction of man with man would not have developed and made man the superior most animal on earth. It is the human interaction that led to the growth of a society and further growth and maturity into more complex societies. A person if left in solitude after birth would not have any purpose in life unless he is attached to some sort of group of human beings. The whole reason of man’s birth is explained in his attachment to a particular community.

A healthy competition amongst different groups of people is what makes life possible and gives meaning to innumerous chores that human beings perform, the relationships and bonds they share with their near and dear ones.

Communalism is the negative aspect of community life. When feeling of attachment , commitment and love extends to the limit when it hurts the freedom of life of other community and their feelings, faiths and beliefs. When there is a competition of proving the superiority of one group over the other, this is when a healthy society turns into a group of communes competing with each other, to denounce the faith, beliefs and cultures of any other group than its own.

Communal harmony in India had been a question ever since its existence is known to mankind. Pluralism has been the hallmark of Indian subcontinent and its culture and society. India – the nation was a concept mostly unknown to India and Indians, until British forcefully for their own administrative advantage collected the different kingdoms together under one tag called India. Indian soil has been inhabited by people of different origins ,in addition to the native indigenous people, like Aryans, Mughals etc. India thus has never been a single culture or single religion land.

Different communities, languages, customs, culture, rituals and the life of India with huge variety and vibrant nature has been a defining feature , demarcating it from the rest of the world. But this should be noted that the communalism in its present form was not the differentiating feature of Indian society. History witnessed harmony and coexistence and a feeling of brotherhood between different religions, cultures. Indologists have discussed about the facts like caste-tribe continuum, reflecting the exchange of culture between the caste structure and those living in forests ever since the times of the various epics. Consider the Ramayana or the Mahabharata, there is continous exchange of people living in the main stream villages and those in the villages. Inter-caste marriages have created a number of caste and religious groups that they may claim to know their descent but it can barely be proved, due to prolonged coexistence , India is a land of all the people who live in it. No one can claim if he is a Brahmin or a hindu today, then his ten ancestors shared the same identity too.

But today, communalism is reaching its extreme due to reasons, new and old, prolonged and newly emerging. Today’s communalism is more sinister than what it had ever been in the history of India. It is not just the tussle between religions , rather, the issues like regionalism , naxalism, sons of soils, prolonged casteism even after 64 years of independence in newer and changed forms are a reflection of man’s quest for more and more, in terms of fame, name, benefits from their locality or superiority.

The whole sanctity of India’s existence and its culture has been hampered due to the ever rising and multiplying issues different forms of communalism. The freedom fighters and the constitution framers dreamt of a free India, with its people master of their own will, living together and enshrining India with its “Unity in Diversity” character. The dream of our freedom fighters to make Indian into a happy and sovereign nation seems to be shattered at the stake of communal tensions.

The issues of internal security in India is not merely due to religious tensions, but due to differential distribution of benefits of the progress made by India since Independence. The internal issues India faced just after independence and thereafter were different from what they are today. The prolonged increase in tension between the hindus and the muslims ever since independence is as much due to external unsurgency as much it is from internal competition posed by the right wing extremism , questioning the identity of the minority community, and the historical deprivation.  The unequal distribution of benefits has created more communities striving for their historic right as the citizens of India. The rising Maoism and naxalism in the less developed and the poorest of the states in India is a sign of lack of governance and political and social will in the society to develop a more equitable society.

Internal security of India can be ensured if the progress India is making takes into account the needs of the low lying and deprived sections of the society. Indian economy is the third fastest growing economy in the World, the progress we are making is not less as compared to what britishers left us with after draining the wealth of our nation in a course of two centuries of rule over us. Policies made for minorities , women , below poverty line people and other targeted sections of the society, are never implemented successfully, due to the parasite called corruption.

Those siphoning the amount spent by the government fail to understand that prolonged deprivation can not stretch forever. Like the dalits, and the subaltern groups are developing a consciousness of their existence, power and strength of their existence and their rights and the citizen of the nation, forming lobbys, those causing issues hampering the internal security of India have been suppressed and deprived historically, and its time they are given their well deserved right or pay price of marginalizing them.

The calm that persisted in the country after the long awaiting ayodhya verdict, has proved that India is maturing. Indian youth is aware that there are more important issues than violence and fighting over religion and making it the reason for disturbing the peace in the country, said the finance minister. But it is important that we understand that more sinister forms of communalism present and what consequences they can have on Indian society as a whole in the larger run.

Dialectical Secularism

Reading about secessionists separatists everyday in news papers and magazines and discussing about them in different platforms is not a very happy endeavor. I am sad, I am unhappy.. I feel helpless, with the paradoxical presence of multiculturalism and intolerance presence in my society, my country. My fellow countrymen, due to innumerable reasons suffer everyday, due to aggression, artificial unrest created by those who never want people to coexist those who want to capture power at any cost,  even at the cost of their fellow men or their own people.
 Since the very beginning , from time immemorial, according to different researches, Indian subcontinent has witnessed a blend of cultures, not just like a salad but also somewhat like a melting pot. Different cultures and religions have been preserving their identities as well as mingling with each other time and again , creating even more vibrant cultures not known to any other country in the world. There are debates and discussions , researches and studies on who are endogenous and who are exogenous to a territory. Why? Just to claim superiority? or to capture power? what?? why?? what is the need? Why can't those, who have this much strength to hamper the peaceful existence of people, put in efforts to maintain harmony amongst people. Why there seems no way of creating a tolerant society.
The role played by religion in Indian society or for that matter in the world, questions the very birth of religion. Religion was supposed to be there to regulate and discipline the lives of people and of common man. Since the purpose of human beings being born is unknown even till now, there was a need of a force and a strength to regulate man's life for healthy and productive co-existence of humanity. But what religion is doing today...?? Is it playing the role of a regulator? and guide? providing vision to man? No. it largely is not. Rather, religion offers a form of identity to man, which he is emotively attached to. He is trained by the process of socialization to fight for and to be violent to protect the honor and status of religion.
Men are fighting amongst each other to prove the superiority of their religion. Same religion has different interpretations of its teachings in different boundaries of territories, different preachings, different rituals, different norms and values. Who defines anyone as the custodian of any religion. Man is born as secular, with no religion, no identity....His birth attaches an identity which is multiplied manifold due to the process of socialization. Family decides, what a person understands about religion, how he is going to look at society and others and other religions and societies.
My heart cries at the condition of my society and my country and my countrymen and fellow human beings everywhere. When God has made us humans and gave us brains to develop and grow and live happily by using our brains our ability to think and our creativity, what we end up doing is fighting on petty issues? creating issues of nothing and making them futile grievances? Making issues for even the not yet born generations to ensure their involvement in violence, hatred, tensions and an unnatural society and unnatural world, which is not worth living in. Why do we not use our creativity in collective well being ...by making best use of the limited resources? Why do we not teach our children to be happy and make others happy? Why do we teach our young ones to stick to our identities rigidity and striving hard to sustain them.
I believe tolerance is not as such a big deal, but due to the magnitude of our country and the extent of diversity  in it has made it nearly impossible for people to co exist and tendencies like separate territory and autonomy for people associated to the same culture and religion and like expressing superiority of one religion or cult over the other have become indispensable.
Education, knowledge awareness, understanding is imperative in making people realize the materialistic nature of religion as is being perceived today and what exactly it should be, a driving force to just govern and discipline people from becoming inhuman. But what comes in way of imparting this awareness, this knowledge is the religion again. Dare anyone teach or tell anyone that religion should not be taken so intensely that it is, the person will be torn into bits and pieces. So the cause itself comes in the way of solutions of the problem, making it a self recurring problem.
Our constitution aims at making India a secular state, but it forgot that like religious texts have been interpreted and re interpreted and even misinterpreted, so will it be. Now the conflict between Western interpretation of secularism vs Indian interpretation of secularism. France is being criticised of not allowing people to follow their religion freely, but does religion anywhere distinguishes between public and private lives of people? It is the duty of state to so that. If religion entering in the public sphere is acting like a menace, then its the duty of the state to ensure that it distinguishes between the two and directs its subjects to practice religion peacefully in private life and let public life be free of religion and make it secular- that is equal respect for all than an unending contest of proving the superiority of one religion over the other.
Directive Principles of state Policy direct the Government to facilitate people to practice their religion freely, and the philosophy of the state guides it to be equal to all religions. There is no provision of solving the dialectics between the two. And no minority is minority in the exponentially growing population in India today and any policy affecting any religion positively or negatively has a huge protest from the same community or the others. There seems to be no end to this dialectic and the pitiful condition of communal disputes in my country .This dispute which is not restricted to the territory in the era of globalization, it affects people across te borders of a country .

Honor and Indian Society

The concept of honor is common to every society. Human behavior in any society are directly and explicitly or indirectly and inherently is grossly regularized by social norms, values, customs and rules. To stay in harmony, man is bound to respect the will of the collectivity. But is it too difficult to observe that although Honor is basically constructed by collectivity but its main purpose is to exercise power and authority? The will of the powerful and the superior strata of the society is generally what is imposed on the collectivity by different means. Means like religion, spiritual , moral and legal preachings.

Starting from the Era of antiquity to pre modern society to evolving modern society there are changes from one era to the other in different aspects of the society. These changes involve socio-economic spheres, cultural spheres, political spheres etc. With the growth of human rights and exponential development in the spere of communication, man has moved on to become a better informed and exposed to newer ideas. All this has lead to the paradoxical freedom given to individuals, who are made to believe that they are free and capable to choose for themselves and do ad they feel like as long as they do not hamper these human rights for other individuals, in the context that the diminant and the powerful section of the society still has the urge to curtail individual freedom and regulate individual actions by the concepts of morality and humanity.

To begin with customs like sati pratha, untouchability, polygamy etc. every practice and every ill custom is collectively endorsed by members of the society because they are so beautifully taught to the people with proper and seemingly sane justifications. But if these justifications behind the malpractices of the society are critically analyzed, it can easily find the power game persisting deep rooted in the society.

Although the societies claim to have reformed and removed these ills of the society but the actual reality can be understood by understanding the process of change. The society consists of institutions and organizations and agencies and actors all of whose roles and the interlinkages are specifically defined by the society and its norms and values, which actually regulate the actually shape of the society. And Social change is merely the replacement of the old order by new order and nothing else. The structures of the societies are rigid and subject to continuity for prolonged period of time. The current Indian society seems to have changed superficially but the structure in actuality is merely altered and modified and can be considered to be almost the same. The society is still strongly driven by patriarchy and the strong dominance of male over the other gender; it still is highly driven by the institution of caste to a large extent- directly or indirectly.

This is why the social constructs on women have modified to a large extent but their centre still lies in the male dominated and culturally trained social structure.

To enumerate some uncivilized acts that causes shame to societies include marrying against the rules of the society that vary from society to soceity. The actions of this section of the society still revolves around the hapiness of the other gender. The type of clothes, the sort of occupation, the kind of behavior, the kind of marriage, relationships, sexual aspects, every act of a women is still dominated by male dominance. Female gender is still the center for the other gender to poke their eyes on as objects of meat and flesh meant for sole purpose of sex and dominance. Yes the outlook has changed, but there still are jokes cracked on the naivity of women and the decisions they make as being filled with emotions and insaneness; men still love their women to cook food for the family on the irrational contexts that they are better cooks and love to cook etc.; women prove to be equal to men in every aspect, be it knowledge, intellect or intelligence; but the biological superiority still allows men to have forcefull sex with women, which people give a short and sweet word - rape; this word is hyped for few days after such incidents and then forgotten by the other gender, but the victim gender has to remain cautious of what every other man can cause to her. So to stick to these norms of the society and stay mentally and psycologically stable with a balance between family and society with some level of dialogue creating compromised harmony in their worlds women- the oppressed gender and the less biologically powerful is bound to adhere to the patriarchal society.

Looking into power struggle in the caste instituion of the society: Who says caste has  reduced in the society? , If you do, you are bound to be half blind. The truth is that caste has changed shape. Earlier the so called superiors, who were intelligent enought to create a culture and language and interpret it to their advantage developed customs and norms of the society to oppress the rest. In today's situation the oppressed take pride of being evolved from such an oppressed descent and still creating goods for themselves and the oppressors of the past are suffocated to accept that the once 'neech' is today being equated to them. They still practice untouchability and casteism in one form or the other, by accepting human rights but still offering their superiority in form of religion and customs and rituals.

Intercatse marriages and marriage amongst the people belonging to the same gotra is a proof of this prolonged existence of the institutions and structures of the society. Only a replacement of the order changes, rest remains the same. The murderes of people allegated of marrying in the same gotra, causing dishonor to the family and society might be killed, but the Khap Panchayats that support and actually ordered the mandate are still supported by the State.

This strange definition of honor is out of my limits of understanding, I fail to understand if it is possible for Indian society to ever go for an ideological transformation and if not then what is the way out for the individuals, who are under the false impression of being absolutely free and masters of their own will. Can there be a space for the existence of such individuals and groups to survive. An individual to gratify its needs, social, physical, emotional- needs to be a part of some society, but what a paradox when one has to fight with the same society on the level of ideology and perspectives in life.

Finally, I created this one. The intensity of thoughts, judgements and my emotions on the matters relating to society is expanding manifolds. Reasons, the chain of incidents- happened in my recent past, around me, in Indian Context along with the Sociology class that I am attending these days. While the discussions are going on in the class or I am reading on some issues, at some instants the Women inside me errupts like lava that I feel like starting up a whole debate on certain issues to being discussed from a feministic perspective, and at others, the feeling of compassion and understanding of society and the wish to do something  and to contribute to progressive social change in some way or the other, because of the huge scope for it in all dimensions of our Indian Society, churns inside me with the such an intensity that I felt the need of an outlet of these thoughts.
I considered two options: one is the blog thing and the other writing with pen paper so as to practice writing, which can help in exams but then I thought Pen and Paper essays will restrict my thoughts to myself and reduce any chance of external  thoughts to touch the ideas and this wont be complete in sense of critical analysis, so I ended creating this.