free speech

The state of free speech in India, if I may be so optimistic to use the very term, has always been of concern to me. The the current populist spirit of 'better fed than free' makes sense when you speak of the imminent priorities of the country, but I believe (and hope) that there will be some time in the future when the right to expression would be more intensely promoted in the public sphere than what is being done today.

The episodes of Taslima Nasreen, MF Hussain and Kumar Ketkar have shown glimpses of the extent to which certain groups can oppose free speech to promote self-interests. It is also pathetic to see how the higher judiciary in India still refuses to come under the purview of the RTI, in spite of much support for the motion among the Indian intelligentsia. The smug unwillingness to show transparency is an abomination, especially after reports of many judges indulging in extravagant misuse of the state funds have pointed fingers at the judiciary. Another deplorable example showing the extent to which legal mechanisms can be misused to protect vested interests is that of the Ahmedabad police commissioner filing charges of sedition (not defamation, mind you) against the TOI for publishing reports that questioned his competency in providing anti-terrorist security to the Gujarat citizens. See Jug Suraiya's article about the dubious nature of a concept like sedition itself, and its recent appearances (and its misappropriations) in political rhetoric.

A passing note

With my masters dissertation approved, the last of my IIT duties have been dispensed. The next few days involve actively avoiding the computer and indulging myself to irresistible Bombay monsoons. The air outside my room is amazingly fresh and inviting; I want to indulge as much as I can.

I have decided not to subscribe to TOI anymore on Google reader, because it is an ordeal to go through every irrelevant and stupid news piece that it sends you. Check out this and this.

Karma

Amit Varma has cited two passages, one by Gandhi in 1934 and the other a recorded quote by Sharon Stone recently, where both describe earthquakes as cosmic punishments meted out to sinful humans. I was reminded of an interesting piece from Sam Harris's An Atheist Manifesto:

As Hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran: Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence; their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God‘s grace.

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world‘s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is--and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgments of their happiness for no good reason at all.

When I heard the learn'd astronomer

(A poem that I don't agree with but whose spirit of naked rebellion of order I find difficult not to admire)

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

- Walt Whitman

Jai Jai Money

Taking inspiration from Tirupati, it seems now that even the Vaishno Devi shrine authorities have adopted the concept of 'priority darshans'.

The decision to organise paid darshans was taken by the Vaishno Devi Shrine Board on Sunday. Now a traditional mata ki aarti can be organised inside the sanctum sanctorum at Rs 1000. And those who are unwilling to wait in long queue can enter the shrine by paying an entry fee of Rs 500 or Rs 200. This reduces the darshan time by over 50 to 70 per cent.

"The facility is like a tatkal service for devotees who have tight schedules and are keen to offer prayers at the earliest," M K Dwivedi, Additional Chief Executive Officer, told PTI.

In the age of Blackberries and palms, it is only fair that Gods have their schedules optimized. Darshan has become like an FMCG, and John Milton, unless his remains have long vapourized, would definitely be turning in his grave.

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait."

A Free Man's Worship

The Dawkinsque critique against theism is primarily occupied with countering literalist claims to the nature of reality and the universe presented by religious institutions and hence is considered atomistic and reductivist by many critics. Stephen Fry states in an interview that such a world view (referring to Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens) is devoid of the poetic liturgy that the believer can identify with in her copy of the King James Bible or the Bhagavad Gita. While literalism of any kind reflects a deeply entrenched delusion that needs to be uprooted through systematic reasoning, atheist rhetoric needs to traverse beyond the present counter-argumentative nature that merely confines itself to scientific diatribe against Intelligent Design.

Sam Harris says in his manifesto that "atheism is not a philosophy or a view of the world". I disagree with him when he says that it is simply a "refusal to deny the obvious". In the present format, atheism probably isn't a philosophy. But I believe it needs to strive towards being one. Religion finds staunch adherents, not because it offers a particularly appealing picture of the universe or nature, but because it pretends to offer transcendence to its followers. It appeals to the human condition in a way that one finds liberating from the instincts and desires that bind one to one's earthly existence. Religion took the easy way out because the quest for its perpetuation was always a quest for power. Through deceit and cunning, through the continual inculcation of fear and prejudice, by tabooing and chastising the spirit of inquiry, religion ensured its propagation through the ages. In its most iniquitous forms around the world, it persecuted the powerless, trapped others mentally causing them to turn a blind eye towards the suffering of their brethren and caused a systematic degeneration of a large part of society (which continues) ensuring that the parochial walls of fear and dogma-based faith make it impervious to reason and the nobler ideals of humanism.

Hence, if a rational and a liberal atheism has to triumph, it has to be integrated with a larger and a more universal world view that moves beyond merely debating the existence of a God. It has to strive to achieve those ideals for the individual and society which religion only pretended to achieve all these years. It has to convince man that the world holds in its bosom, a vast potential to the achievement of transcendental ideals, those that elevate his pursuits above and beyond the realms of his appetite.

I give you two excerpts from an essay by Bertrand Russell. It was one of his first essays arguing the case for atheism. While Dawkins, Harris and even other texts by Russell have convinced me of the intellectual, ethical and moral rectitude of being an atheist, this is perhaps the only essay upon reading which, I have felt truly inspired to proclaim that I do not require any God to lead a life that can extend beyond personal goals and ambitions.

1. Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.

2. The life of Man, viewed outwardly, is but a small thing in comparison with the forces of Nature. The slave is doomed to worship Time and Fate and Death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour. But, great as they are, to think of them greatly, to feel their passionless splendour, is greater still. And such thought makes us free men; we no longer bow before the inevitable in Oriental subjection, but we absorb it, and make it a part of ourselves. To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things--this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship. And this liberation is effected by a contemplation of Fate; for Fate itself is subdued by the mind which leaves nothing to be purged by the purifying fire of Time.

Single mothers, Gay and Lesbian couples win right to parenthood

In a landmark resolution in UK, single women and lesbian couples have been granted parental rights. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill waives the requirement that women need a male support in order to approach a fertility clinic. It is also expected (and naturally correct) that gay men who use surrogacy will be allowed to enjoy similar rights. It is said that the Bill will also recognize both partners as legitimate parents of the child as opposed to considering only the natural mother or the father involved in fertilization.

Understandably, there are dissenters. And it is no surprise to notice which ideological camp most of them come from. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster thinks it strange that the Government should want to take away not just the need for a father but the right for a father. Others disapprove stating that this would amount to conveying that fathers are not important, or are less important than mothers.

Such detracting criticism reflects the nature of the deeply entrenched patriarchy and religious literalism that plagues even fairly progressive societies. If the well being of every British child is what truly concerned these dissenters, then why isn't there a proposal to make every couple desirous of parenthood pass through a socioeconomic filter that would decide whether they are capable of raising a child in the first place? Does the presence of a father implicitly assure a good childhood as the Archbishop seems to suggest? Consider the first two comments following the news post:

1. Incredible. A male child growing up without a fatherly influence, will not get to know the behaviour of a mature man , like a father . Male childs will be weak if they get raised up by women only and when these humans grow up to their their twenties, they ll act more like a mother than a father.

2. And we wonder why society is breaking down, why young men who have no father figure knife each other. Get a grip NuLabor, your time is up.

I fear with the very thought of being around at a time in the future when these issues would be discussed in India; when these voices, reeking of the past and a lack of imagination, would be lurking around only to emerge from different faces.