Honour Killings – Blatant Transgressions of Human Laws!!

A series of incidents related to ‘honour killing’ are coming to light with a promptitude that defies logic. The slaying of young couples is based simply on the premise that the family’s honour is sacrosanct and thus, supersedes all forms of attachment to the kin. Then we have had a glut of human rights activists & NGOs filing petitions to introduce new legislations that would curb this burgeoning menace.

What exactly is the sin of the girl or the boy in question to be condemned to eternal perdition? Simply that they undertook a peremptory pledge to spend the rest of their lives together as two like-minded human beings would and justifiably, should with regard to the Universal law of nature. This has set me thinking as to what ideals, morals & ethics fall within the ambit of human survival, which one believed held good so long as you are true to yourself and to the laws of the Universe. Bernard Gert, a philosopher of ethics & utilitarianism had propounded a theory on moral rights based on the hypothesis that every human had a right ‘not to be killed’ inasmuch as ‘not to be deprived of basic freedom’.

In fact, every human faces the ethical dilemma of choosing his or her actions in such a way as would be morally acceptable to everybody and that one’s motives would be constructive rather than exploitative. In that sense, a couple which defies age-old conventions is bound to attract some amount of indignation, yet, the fundamental basis of human rights is that everyone should be treated as a free individual to execute his or her own will within the permissible laws. So, as long as two adults are compatible, it appears quite a travesty that the ruse of ‘family honour’ could be used as a bayonet to fragment their moral & spiritual union.

The Universal declaration of human rights validates what Immanuel Kant in his metaphysical thesis on morality had stated – ‘an action could be deemed morally right for a person if he acts in such a way that the maxim is generalized or becomes universally applicable’. For such families who are fettered by the strongholds of orthodoxy and thus, indulgent in such barbaric acts, the question that needs to be answered is whether they would be accepted unanimously and whether every other person would have acted on similar lines given the exigencies of the same situation.

The ambit of the society stretches out to castes and sub-castes so that it often does not result in similar interpretation of moral rules. Yet, in spite of this, nature has bestowed in varying capacities the power to freely choose the aims that each one of us desire to pursue. Thus, ‘honour killings’ committed without a sense of guilt or shame are nothing but transgressions of natural laws beyond acceptable or defensible limits, whereby, a person’s basic rights to live and to co-exist in harmony & peace are being ruthlessly trampled upon.

A Carbon-conserving Economy for Environmental Sustenance

We all are bearing the brunt of one of the hottest summers ever. As one grapples with the scorching clammy heat, there is an intense desire to be swathed in the summer-cooled sheaths in a ceaselessly ‘arid’ zone. The successive climatic changes are a clear pointer to the fact that the summers are getting longer and more ruthless with every passing year.

We may truthfully say of our ancestors that for years on end, they left the earth quite vibrant & undamaged. People lived a modest life based on limited renewable energy sources for centuries together on planet earth, which consisted of a combined availability from plant growth and the power of sun, wind & water for their sustenance. However, the industrial revolution in the later part of the 18th century, gave humanity the power to start exploring the rich stores of fossil fuels that had accumulated in the earth’s crust over several million years. As a result, human power and thus, the damaging impacts of human activities in a way, grew exponentially.

Since then, the world over, industrial and urban development has been driven by an increase in the burning of fossil fuels and as an offshoot, our continuing our reliance on them. According to most estimates, oil, coal and natural gas presently account for more than 80% of the energy throughout the world. This raises two questions. First, fossil fuels are non-renewable and every barrel of oil and ton of coal that we burn is lost for use by future generations. Second, combustion of fossil fuels continues to dump billions of tons of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere. By an estimate, only about half of our annual emissions of some 10 million tones of carbon is currently being absorbed by the biosphere, which is likely to create potentially disastrous long-range effects on the climate. Even though, there are about 20 so-called greenhouse gases that make up the earth’s atmosphere, scientists are primarily concerned about the increase in the levels of carbon-dioxide since it is difficult to quantify the exact cause and effect of the others. However, it can be safely concluded that the capacity of the biosphere to absorb these gases is being reduced majorly through deforestation, erosion and depletion of carbon-rich soil by unsustainable farming methods. The more of the carbon-dioxide build-up, the more heat trapped near the Earth and thereby, raising the temperatures alarmingly worldwide. Thus, the challenges facing us are not just to reduce annual global carbon-dioxide emissions but also their annual concentrations in the atmosphere.

The mainstream of environmental ethic can be realised in terms of the principles which reduce industrial expansion and energy consumption and forbid the use of non-renewable resources like fossil fuels in ways which would threaten their future availability. We must therefore, find the means for sustaining the natural world in such a way as to create a viable future for humanity on a finite planet. A transition to a carbon-conserving economy thus, would be vital for climatic protection and human security.

Kakori Conspiracy [25th August, 1925] – A Historical Testament

A small district oblivious of its historical moorings lies 14 km. North of Lucknow. Kakori, once a flourishing town famous for Urdu poetry & literature, is the seat of Qadiria Qalandria Sufi order. Among its eminent personalities were Mohsin Kakorvi, a great poet of the ‘na’at’ genre and Noorul Hasan Nayyier, the compiler of Noorul Lughaat, among the most authentic of Urdu dictionaries. It traces back the Abbasi clan that claims lineage to Al-Abbas, an uncle of Prophet Mohammed. Nawab Ishtiaq Ahmed Abbasi, a noted lawyer from the district was married to Akhtari Faizabadi, who rose in stature as ‘Begum of Kakori’. She was none other than the legendary Begum Akhtar, who also earned the sobriquet of ‘Mallika-e-Ghazal’.

The town attained national eminence on 9th August 1925 with the ‘Kakori Conspiracy’, a well-documented testament of India’s freedom struggle, when a group of revolutionaries braved death to capture the British treasury being ferried in the Shahjahanpur-Lucknow section of the Northern Railway. These brave young men shared a common affiliation as members of the Hindustan Republican Association [HRA], later re-christened as Hindustan Socialist Republican Association [HSRA] whose sole aim was to overthrow the British rule through armed revolution. When caught, most of them were either hanged or deported for life for trials under the Birtish were generally farcical.

As the legend goes, one of its members, Pt. Ramprasad Bismil, who often traveled the Shahjahanpur-Lucknow route, observed that the British treasury was loaded and transported to Lucknow with the minimum of security measures. This is how the seed of thought to loot the treasure-chest germinated in his mind, to help fund the activities of the HRA. At the fall of dusk, when Number 8 Down was about to touch Kakori, the group of revolutionaries that had boarded the train, pulled the chain and overpowered the guard. The steel box carrying the cash was pulled out. Though, it had a hole in the middle through which cash used to be dumped in, the box was so huge that no hand could reach down below to pull out the currency notes. It required a few hefty blows by a stout Ashfaqullah Khan to break open the lock. A sum of Rs. 10,000/- of the British Treasury was taken out and transferred to gunny bags which were then carried away by the revolutionaries in batches.

For a while, no one was captured though investigations had begun in the right earnest. The HRA, however, was not a well-organised group and as expected, once the British dragnet was spread, all the revolutionaries involved in the act were rounded up. Pt. Ramprasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan, Rajendra Lahiri & Roshan Singh were awarded capital punishment, which may appear undeservingly harsh, for all they did was to purloin a diminutive portion of the Government coffers. But it was not so simple. Apparently, during the hold-up, despite the warnings to the passengers not to leave their seats, one European attempted to slip out and was shot dead. That, besides the audacity of the act, was reason enough for stringent court reprisals, for in those days, killing a ‘white’ was considered the most heinous of crimes. Despite a nationwide clamour for mercy, all four were hanged in November 1927. In their poignant memory, a ‘Shaheed Smarak’ has been established just adjacent to the exact spot of the incident, which is identified by an isolated stele (1085 km./47) erected on the left side of the railway track, 02 km. beyond the Kakori station.

This heart-wrenching saga of sacrifice & valour is described somewhat aptly by these lines of Mirza Zauq, set to tune by Khaiyyam and embellished in the vocals of the erstwhile ‘Begum of Kakori’ – ‘Layee hayaat aaye, qazaa le chali chale, apni khushi na aaye, na apni khushi chale..’. Farewell to you, O brave soldiers of the revolution!

15th August, 1947 - A Nation's Tryst With Destiny

At the stroke of the midnight hour on the on the 15th of August, 1947, India attained independence and a day before, Lord Mountbatten was at Karachi to inaugurate the Dominion of Pakistan. Thus, two new Dominions came into existence to usher in an era of communal peace & amity in the sub-continent. On the eve of the occasion, Nehru’s famous extempore on our ‘tryst with destiny’ and the arrival of a day to ‘redeem our pledge’ is now well entrenched as a voluble testament in the annals of Indian history.

Let us trace down the sequence of events from a year before the D-day –16th of May, 1946 to be precise - when the historic ‘Cabinet Mission Plan’ was drawn up after two months of deliberations, one which both the Congress and the Indian Muslim League had initially agreed to, on principle. This was perhaps, the first major step by the British to eventually hand over the reins to their subjects, with the formation of an ‘Interim Government’ comprising mainly of the Congress and the Indian Muslim League members. It was described by Gandhiji himself as ‘the best document the British could have produced in the circumstances’.

Initially, the League accepted the Plan in toto but then suddenly back-tracked as they felt that the Congress had reneged on the clause, which called for the grouping of provinces and wanted to go into the Constituent Assembly with a sense of hegemony. With the benefit of hindsight, this was perhaps, justified as the League had accepted the Plan on the basis of distribution among the Centre, the Provinces and the Groups. Nehru’s statement during the AICC meet on the 17th of July, 1946 in Mumbai, that the Congress had only accepted a participation in the Constituent Assembly and nothing else, added fuel to fire. That the Congress did not accept the Plan in its entirety, after having consented just a month earlier, sowed the seeds of doubt in the minds of their counter-parts. Jinnah’s plea for a vivisection purely on religious grounds suddenly gathered momentum, through his fragile premonition that the two communities could never live together peacefully in an Independent India.

This is where Lord Wavell might have erred in his judgment, when he invited Nehru to head the Interim Government leaving out the Muslim League - who had decided to boycott it - instead of trying further to bring the warring factions together. 16th of August, 1946, was a calumny in India’s political history when Jinnah played a final, desperate card calling for a ‘Direct Action Day’, which on principle, was ‘Pakistan Day’. Who would have realized that exactly a year before the dawn of independence, destiny would have unleashed a carnage - a 4-day terror regime that would claim close to 6000 lives.

The Interim Government was formed on the 2nd of September, 1946 and Congress adopted the resolution that India should be a Democratic Republic. Nehru, in his own capacity extended the offer to the League to join the Interim Government, which was crucial to curb the communal conflagrations that had gripped the nation, which they did after a lot of persuasion on the 15th of October, 1946. However, by this stage the feeling of suspicion, distrust & mutual antipathy had made such deep inroads in both the Congress and the League that there was no way the Interim Government was going to function smoothly. Even as the Constituent Assembly used to be in session, the League members boycotted it time and again. As the Congress and the League were at dagger’s drawn on every possible issue, ranging from Defence to Home to Finance to Communications, partition began to appear an inevitability and even as Lord Mountbatten arrived in India, the Congress had reconciled itself to Pakistan as a ‘lesser evil’.

With the mounting communal passions, the Labour Government headed by Clement Atlee took a conscious decision on the 20th of February, 1947 that power must be transferred before the 30th of June, 1948 to responsible Indian hands. Subsequently, the White Paper, based on the plan formulated by Lord Mountbatten, to partition India, was given constitutional approval by the British Parliament and finally the Royal Sanction on the 18th of July, 1947, which became a qualifying decree to the fate of 40 crore Indians, who had for centuries lived in peace and amity.

In retrospect, what would have happened if Lord Wavell had been able to convince Atlee not to make haste and hold on to the reins a little longer? What if he had not been forced to resign to be replaced by Mountbatten, who had pre-meditated every one of his moves before landing in India? What if the Congress Working Committee had agreed unanimously to have Jinnah at the helm of affairs? Could we have avoided the discomfiture of a divided nation?

Such questions shall be raised time and again without any tangible answers. It has been 62 years since we gained independence; let us savour as of now.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY TO ALL!!

Racial Attacks in Australia

Australia sadly has been on a scurrilous boil of late. So many Asians have faced the brunt of racial attacks that have been burgeoning with alarming promptitude and despite the palliatives extended by the Australian Government to somehow quell the conflagrations, sporadic incidents are coming to light almost every other day.

I on a personal level find these to be exceedingly painful as they are in direct contrast to the convivial spirit that prevailed during the two years that I happened to be in Australia, from 1995 to 1997. I happened to pursue my Master’s degree from an Institute called Charles Sturt University in NSW that accommodated a wide conglomerate of international students from the Asian sub-continent. Initially, I did face up to the onerous task of adapting to a culture that straddled between the bohemian and the hedonistic. What at first, struck me as a trait atypical of the Aussies was their brash outspokenness. And I must admit I too was at the short end of the stick a number of times. At the same time, flashes of humour would break through the hard crust of a rugged exterior. The Aussies generally never shouted, just a broad grin or a twitch of the eyebrows would communicate anger, which at worst would be articulated in hushed or muted overtones.

The Aussies generally took pride in their white bona-fides but certainly not to the extent of deriding one who was ‘coloured’, so to speak! I for one shared a cottage during my tenure with four Australians and I can say in all sobriety that there wasn’t a single instance when I felt sidelined or isolated. However, it was expected of us to exercise restraint and not to press for equality of status in the social hierarchy with the Aussies, an unwritten code that we adhered to till the very end. As such, whatever merry-making we indulged or participated in had to strike a balance – not being superfluously copious but neither being scrupulously reserved.

Australia in truth has always had a chequered history. The native Aborigines there have been carrying out a movement for equal rights for years on end, despite the fact that their cultural moorings are protected with the passing of the Aboriginal and Torrets Islander Heritage Protection Act in 1984, which is but small consolation for them. So in a sense, discrimination in some form has always been conspicuous in the Australian society. Yet it appears so very perplexing as to how a nation, otherwise so very adaptive and accommodative of eclectic cultures and diverse backgrounds, could appear so diminutive at the hands of some vindictive elements and their improprieties that nothing but sheer ignorance could have heaped upon them. Such acrimony is nothing but the manifestation of the most corruptible of influences. Having said that, the stream of time is constantly washing the dissoluble fabrics of all individuals and from that standpoint one should take this to be a passing phase, which would eventually see the Asian community emerge stronger & united out of their ordeals. Amen!!

Is This The End Of Ethnic Strife In Sri Lanka??

With the LTTE finally silencing its guns, the Sri Lankan Army has stormed what for long appeared an impregnable bastion of an armed rebellion. Every time they basked in vainglory of having wiped out the vestiges of LTTE’s armoury, there used to be another cavalcade of strikes, which used to catch the nation once again in the tentacles of fear and agony. LTTE proved as much a bete-noire as the Taliban in the N-E frontiers of Pakistan, in rising like the proverbial phoenix from an ashen wanderlust and mushrooming with such ferocious rapidity after every combat as though, just a grain had been picked from a landslide. This also was a culmination of a 3-decade chronology that has witnessed the final decimation of LTTE as a force, who, for long projected themselves as the sole benefactors of the 12% population of Sri Lankan Tamils.

More than a century ago, with the dominant Sinhalese’s ethnic control of the state system, a degree of suppression of the minority Tamil community began to take root, which further intensified due to the hardliner elements that infiltrated the national hierarchy. A fallout of the intransigent stance adopted by the majority Sinhalese towards the Tamil community was the eruption of civil and later armed conflicts. In gradual course, whether at war or during peace-talks, the Tamils espoused their cause for a community-based separate state while the Sinhalese argued for a unitary state that is multi-ethnic. Ethnicity, religion and language are important factors in the articulation of Sinhala & Tamil ideologies and one would imagine, the idealist state of Tamil Eelam was a natural offshoot of the conflict between two ideologically segregated ethnic communities.

What kind of scenario is likely to emerge now? Can LTTE’s requiem be sounded out? Not as yet, for there is a possibility that it would regroup in splinters and continue to remain an insurgency threat to the Sri Lankan Government. Whatever be it, the possibility of a structured Eelam movement by ethnic Tamils is now remote and regardless of the rights of the Tamil people for democratic self-determination, a separate Tamil state would be intangible as it would only bring about a diminution of social & economic circumstances in Sri Lanka.

The fact however, remains that the rights of all ethnic groups are to enjoy cultural, religious and linguistic rights in peace & harmony. In the current scenario, some form of ethnic reconciliation is the only means for peace to return in a strife-ridden country. Thus, a revamp of the country’s political system to ensure equitable representation of the people and making the minority Tamils more representative in all major organs of administration viz. the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the armed forces, would be the need of the hour.

The ‘Pearl In The East’ is bound to glisten again so long as the wellsprings of time & destiny do not reduce it once again to a teardrop.

A.R. Rahman - One up on his illustrious predecessors

After sweeping a litany of awards, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ managed a most eclectic slice of an a la carte spread at the Oscar feast - zipping off an enviable 08 trophies in a treasure chest of honorifics. Even as the nation erupted, the channels were choc-a-bloc with the images of Danny Boyle and his effusive band cavorting in style, one of whom was an unassuming character who did a quiet promenade across the red carpet to collect his ‘twin tango delights’, to the wonder of the boisterous Hollywood glitterati. Allah Rakha Rahman, as Indian cinema’s true-blue composer created history of epic proportions as he stormed the international music bastion like none before.

If one looks back at the history of Indian film composers, there have been sporadic instances of a euphonic cross-over without anyone quite managing to leave a strong imprimatur. The legendary Shanker-Jaikishan recorded the first ever English number for the film, ‘Sangam’ in 1964 that went, ‘Eich Leibdisch, I Love You’ sung by Vivin Lobo that made considerable waves. In the years ahead, the duo performed a daring feat of coming up with an album, entitled, ‘Raga Jazz Style’ where different Indian ragas were strung together, embellished in Western Orchestra to create a unique ensemble of sound, beat and rhythm. This was one of the first attempts at creating a hybrid style of the West and the East. Another credit to the duo was when one of their funk and garage rock numbers was used in a Terri Zwigoff’s film, ‘Ghost World’. Yet, in the 1960s in India, such sporadic instances just about skimmed the surface of the boundless creativity of Indian composers in an international perspective. We also had instances of Salil Chowdhury creating something out of Mozart’s G-Minor symphony or employing innovations of scale progression based on Western classical music principles. RD Burman’s rise in the 1970s was quite phenomenal and it could so easily be concluded that as a composer he was way ahead of his times. He was often compared to Dave Brubeck for his innovative methods and a penchant for breaking the traditional boundaries of composition. It was in the latter stage of his career that he did an international album called ‘Pantera’, his private collaboration with Jose Flores for an out and out heavy metal album, which sadly did not create any musical ripples back home. For all his genius, RDB never quite managed to break the chain of Bollywood fetters to go blazingly international, something he was quite capable of doing. In the 90s, we had Illaiyaraja, of the ‘Cheeni Kum’ fame, recording his first major work in Western classical music, named Symphony No.1, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London under the baton of John Scott; the first Asian to do so. But again, back home, his achievement went unsung and the album is yet to be released in the Indian market.

All of these instances, make Rahman’s achievement all the more noteworthy for here is one composer who has made world critics and jury members to sit up and take note of the unbridled magic that Indian composers can weave for an international audience. The man who had his basic grounding in the Trinity College of Music, started off as a keyboard player and arranger in a band called ‘Roots’ before graduating to jingles, until Mani Ratnam and ‘Roja’ catapulted him to instant fame. As his film career galloped along, Rahman had begun to measure his strides across global frontiers, first with the film ‘Warriors of Heaven and Earth’ followed by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s neo-opera, ‘Bombay Dreams’. This was followed by ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in association with a Finnish folk-music band ‘Vartinna’ and Shekhar Kapoor’s ‘Elizabeth’ before his melismatic sounds struck a precise note in mainstream Hollywood, even as a ‘slumdog’ managed to rake in a ‘millionaire’s’ shekels, so to speak. The hallowed fortress has finally been breached and how! Rahman has succeeded where all his predecessors somehow proved unsuccessful – to become the global face of Indian cine-music.