Saturday 5 December 2015

Subjugation is what they want, not tolerance

The award wapsis, 'con star' echoing their fears and their wife's fears have all heated up a total non-issue into a hot headliner. Entire mainstream media is abuzz with discussions about the safety of minorities. Hindus with no media to vent their point of view have taken to social media.  The illogical, preposterous and the ridiculous allegations have been rightly rebutted in the social media. While countering these absurd allegations we should also try to find out the reasons for them at this juncture, especially when no big communal tension has erupted in the last sixteen months. Is it to derail the investments which are bound to come due to the initiatives taken by our Prime Minister, by projecting that this land is not safe enough for investments? Is the 'intolerance bogie' a creation of the Pseudo secular Intellectuals as they are not able to tolerate anything other than their ideology? Is it a ploy to veer the voters away especially during the assembly elections from the corruption free and development plank with which the ruling party has almost eclipsed a party which has ruled the country for six decades? Or is there something else which lies underneath the carpet which is too obvious for all of us to ignore?

Let us see some of the actions/decisions by this Government in the last one and a half year. Swacch Bharat programs, Make in India Initiatives, Jan Dhan Yojna schemes, Pahal Yojana scheme, Billions of dollars which are bound to come in as Investments due to the steps taken by Prime Minister are all not mere rhetorics. They are concrete action plans which have already started to materialize. But the signs of a Government which is not just focused on economic development but also keen on safeguarding the interests of the nation's cultural heritage came to fore through the cancellation of licenses of nearly 15000 NGos and announcing a 500 cr package to resettle the kashmiri Pundits. Choking the funds for the NGOs, many of which were actually indulging in nefarious and anti-national activities covertly was one main reason behind all these agitations. The '5star activists' are rattled as their funds are choked and not only that the government is also investigating about their erstwhile activities. The result is the rage which we see in the media. The Jihadis and the missionaries who are behind these NGOs are finding this new turf a difficult one to play on. They are not used to this kind of assertion. The Jihadis and Missionaries have all along toyed with a society which was lacking in self-esteem, confidence and courage. What they actually want and expect is subjugation and not assertion. Even after independence our country seldom showed this kind of assertion as it was ruled by people who were more like proxies to the colonial rulers.

This is a sign of a nation coming out of the shackles. If the rumblings are more, be assured that we are progressing in the right direction.


V.V.Balasubramanian
YB-ET

Thursday 26 November 2015

In the eyes of ….

What a foreigner would think about India if he reads about the happenings in our country? A country where there is no law and order and peace prevailing. A country more risky and dangerous at the moment than Syria. That’s the picture anyone will get if he relies on the media especially the English media’s reporting on India. Suppression of freedom of expression, hate killings, returning of the awards by the yesteryear awardees all goes to paint a picture which looks so grim. But is it true? Is it even closer to reality? It has become a habit for these media pundits to demand an answer from Prime Minister for all issues starting from student’s rebellion in Pune to the recent Dadri incident. An issue concerning the state administration is being made to look as the folly of the central government. But one wonders how many times these people have sought responses from Manmohan Singh when he was at the helm of affairs, and even when he was accountable and responsible to answer the nation?

This gives rise to the ever raising doubt that whether these awards were given to the touts of the ruling party then. The orchestrated manner in which all these so called ‘liberals’ are ranting against the government confirms this doubt. When the 1984 genocide of Sikhs happened, when on 26/11 in broad daylight and under media glare the henchmen from Pakistan shot down several of our country men, when 1993 bomb attack killed several and maimed hundreds of our brethren, when our own brothers in Kashmir were made to flee their homes and take refuge elsewhere we didn’t see any of these liberals surrender their awards nor raise their voice against the crime that was being committed. And in the last two decades many bomb blasts and such attacks happened which should have shaken the conscience of these people. Alas, they were silent. The reason what the writers are quoting is that to protest against the increasing violence and intolerance against minorities. It doesn't help them or public in any way. Fact is that only the so called secular and attention seeking writers are returning their award and they are doing so not because they want to prove a point but to be in lime light. It has become fashion these days to slam government to become famous.

Well as far as the hate crimes are concerned India is not in the race to top the table. Canada which has 1/40 of India‘s population has 1200 hate crimes in an year. And these are not Indian style ink throwing incidents. Sweden, a much developed country which has 1/120 of India’s population has about 6500 hate violence incidents last year. Even France and Ireland have more. In a country of 1.3 billion people of various hues we can very well say that these crimes are not on an alarming rise. But exaggerating one incident and marring a whole nation is done with malicious intent. It’s good that they are returning their ill-gotten awards. Better let them return it with the prize money along with interest is the thought which pops up in every one’s mind.
V.V.Balasubramanian

YB-ET

Tuesday 6 October 2015

Bring back values…

First it was the Ambedkar – Periyar study circle in IIT Madras and then the strike by ‘Students’ in Film institute Pune. These are certainly the aftershocks of the jolt felt by the support drained left lobby which is trying to resurrect itself after getting a blow from the recent elections and the consequent political activities. One may wonder about the role of politics in the varsity campus. But that is where it is deeply entrenched and spreading its roots. Varsity is the testing ground for all the budding politicians. They get groomed there by learning all goondagiris and then enter the real stage. Capturing a country politically is only a battle half won. Knowing this the ‘comrades’ are using the varsity as a place to indoctrinate the gullible students. On the other hand text books will be written by leftist intellectuals deriding desi culture and projecting all aspects of our Dharma as malicious. This multi-pronged attack at the psyche of a nation is brutal and would have spelt doom for any culture within a decade. It’s a surprising fact that our society has withstood this onslaught for the past several decades and still has zeal to fight back. It’s a case of State trying to quell the aspirations of the Nation.

Through surreptitious means the comrades were successfully making the State Fight against the Nation, though they never came to power in the Centre. The electoral victory last year for the right wing and the subsequent victories in the states like Maharashtra has shaken them from their dream. And the repercussions are what we see in the form of Varsity protests. It’s time for the present government to change the way education is given. Modern education is only career oriented and it is sans any virtue. It churns out zombies who apes what the Media wants them to do, which often falls on line of perversion. It does not teach self-control nor does it emphasize the significance of harmony with fellow Human beings. It is a far cry from age old values like Truth, Honesty, Compassion etc, which an evolved person should express while interacting with the society. Decline of Moral and Cultural standards in the society has direct bearing to our abandonment of values.

The increased number of rape cases, and other pervert abuse cases are a result of this desertion. Swami Vivekananda said, “Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, charactermaking, assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library…The ass carrying its load of sandalwood knows only the weight and not the value of the sandalwood.” If education is identical with information, the libraries are the greatest sages in the world, and encyclopedias are the Rishis. The ideal, therefore, is that we must have the whole education of our country, spiritual and secular, in our own hands, and it must be on national lines, through nationalmethods as far as practical.”

--V.V.Balasubramanian
YB-ET

Monday 31 August 2015

Universal Brotherhood

Will there be relief for Humanity from the strife and struggles it is undergoing? Can peace and love engulf us in a way that we dream? Can the world live in peace without the threat of religious fundamentalism? These doubts loom large as we ponder about the future. We all know that India, with its wonderful philosophical treasures packed with wisdom can provide an answer to all these doubts. When swami Vivekananda
addressed the parliament of Religions with those epoch making words “sisters and brothers of America”, he was not propounding any new hypothesis to the World. He was only echoing the age old ideas practiced in our country by every individual. But it was a new exposition to the western world.

Our culture has ingrained these wonderful, lifesaving concepts in our day to day life through rituals and celebrations. Celebrations like Raksha bandhan are actually intended to ingrain these values into our veins. But alas, the society which has to guide the mankind is itself in shambles. We, as a society, are shamelessly dragging ourselves down through castiesm. Caste, another tool derived by our ancestors to drive the society, is now driving away many of our own brothers from our fold. We tend to bury ourselves deep into our self-imposed shackles by further confining ourselves to sub sects within the castes. It’s like throwing away the core as chaff and retaining only the husk. Seeing this appalling state of our society Swami Vivekananda chided us by saying these words which are to reminded every day. He said, ‘..teach your children that they are divine, that religion is a positive something and not a negative nonsense; that it is not subjection to groans when under oppression, but expansion and manifestation.’ These words are becoming more and more relevant now. Swami Vivekananda also hinted the revival of Dharma in a grand manner. He said,’… 

“sect after sect arose in India and seemed to shake the religion of the Vedas to its very foundations, but like the waters of the seashore in a tremendous earthquake it receded only for a while, only to return in an all absorbing flood, a thousand times more vigorous, and when the tumult of the rush was over, these sects were all sucked in, absorbed and assimilated into the immense body of the mother faith’.

Such a revival can never be possible without a lifesaving universal idea. We tend to forget this quite often. Spiritual giants emerge time and again to remind us about these eternal values, and as a result of which this unique principle, though endangered has survived all these centuries.

World needs these values, but are we in a position to deliver? No student will come forward to learn from a master who has lost moorings with his core competencies. We should understand and assimilate these values.  Then comes the practice. The best way to express love towards Humanity is Service. It not only alleviates people from their misery but also helps us in unfolding ourselves. Selfless service is sure way to shed this hatred and selfishness. This will help our society to reshape itself in the design proposed by the Vedantic Philosophy of Advaidic Oneness. Such a role model will inspire the strife ridden world to emulate us.

--V.V.Balasubramanian
YB-ET

Monday 10 August 2015

VIVEKANANDA KENDRA CALLING - Ma.Eknath Ranade

Young India today is throbbing with life and activity. There is a ferment all round among the people, especially among the youth — the students. Even during the exciting phases of the freedom struggle against the British Government, such wide-spread commotion and unrest as is now prevailing was not witnessed. It is indeed a sign of our country returning to its normal health.
Unrest, like zest, is a sign of robust life and is a harbinger of progress. It generates energy and activity. Social unrest, even though it may sometimes bring in its wake violence and consequent human suffering, is still preferable to social tranquility born out of the people’s inertia. Social inertia indicates people’s loss of power to react to any challenging situation confronting them and is, there­fore, as dreadful as paralysis in a human body. A glaring example of that sort of social quietude was witnessed during the horrible man-made famine of Bengal in the year 1943. While multitudes of people were being denied food and were starving, the grain shops and restaurants, situated right in the midst of those hungry millions, were seen carrying on their business as usual without the least fear of being attacked or looted. This could happen, obviously, not because the people had reached a Paramahamsa state or were too conscientious to take to avowedly criminal acts for a morsel of food or just for their physical survival; there were neither food riots nor did the people resort to looting for the simple reason that they had lost all power to react, resist or assert. Some western correspondents who were in Bengal, then, expressed great surprise over this pheno­menon which they considered inconceivable in their own countries.
In fact, if we look back to our history of the past several centuries, our country had been under the spell of utter inertia (Tamas), except for brief periods of manly vigour and activity here and there. It is said that Bakhtiyar Khilji with a handful of horsemen rode all the way from Delhi to Bengal, traversing the vast plains of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, but that none of the people on the way felt like challenging this band of armed foreigners. It is further said that these Turks managed to straightway enter the palace at Nadia, the then capital of Bengal, and massacred the inmates while the king, Lakshamana Sen, fled by the back-door. Even granting that there is a lot of exaggeration in this historical account as taught in schools, and that perhaps only a fraction of it may be true, the fact remains that the people had lost their vigour and the will to resist and were as inert as stocks and stones.
Even during Swami Vivekananda’s times he had to face the same appalling insensitiveness of the people. His biographers report about an apparently queer piece of advice Swami Vivekananda felt like giving to a lazy and indolent youth, who had approached him with a desire to know from him what he should do to know God and how he was to get free. Swamiji who knew the questioner to be quite a do-nothing fellow asked him: “Can you tell a lie?” The boy replied, “No”. Swamiji then said to him, “Then you must learn to do so. It is better to tell a lie than to be a brute, or a log of wood. You are inactive, you have not certainly reached the highest state which is beyond all action, calm and serene; you are too dull even to do some­thing wicked”. Of course, Swamiji said all this satirically and out of his exasperation over the vegetating young boy. But this shows amply that even in Swamiji’s days the apathy of the people was one of the major problems before the country.
Today, however, the people in general, and the younger generation in particular are showing signs of an awakening from a long stupor of centuries. They have begun to feel, and react to situations favourably or unfavourably, according as they are palatable or unpalatable to them. Authorities, whether in charge of universities or industries or those at the helm of government administration, can no more take the people for granted; nay, even the parents are not able to command submission from their youngsters.
The question “Can you tell a lie?” put by Swami Vivekananda to a typically lazy and inactive student of those days, has no relevance today. Because, the student of today has ceased to be the passive and submissive creature that he was yesterday. Today, he is full of energy and his activity covers such novel spheres as Swami Vivekananda could not have even imagined then. Even an average student of today can truthfully say that he is capable of not only telling a lie, but can also pelt stones at passenger-buses and trains, and even remove fish-plates from the railway track just for the fun of it ; he can as well set fire to buses, trains, buildings and even knife his teachers just to satisfy his curiosity to know how newspapers would report the incidents next day.
Similarly, the general mass of people and especially the younger generation have now totally got rid of their old passivity and sub­mission. They have not only regained their normal capacity to feel and perceive but have also developed an ultra-sensitiveness. Even the presence of an invigilator in the examination hall makes their blood boil — nay, the very system of examination irritates them. They are equally sensitive, and even allergic, to the sight of bus-conductors asking bus-fares from their fraternity, railway inspectors detecting ticketless students, gate-keepers in cinema halls checking up tickets or even policemen obstructing stone-throwing.
In short, the country has, at long last, shed its torpidity and the people now are up and doing. As long as the entire nation was numb with inertia, nothing could be expected except a gradually increasing deterioration. But, by the grace of God, the country has turned the corner, and the people have become conscious of themselves and their capacity to do and undo, and to build and destroy.

One may take an alarmist view of the present trends in the younger generation. But, in fact, there is more reason to rejoice than to be frightened. Because it is not through the peace of the graveyard but only through the dynamism of action, whether good, bad or even wicked, that nations, sooner or later, light upon the right vision and adopt the course ordained for them. Out of the present exuberance of meaningless or destructive activity of the young, there is bound to emerge soon the next phase, the dawn of wisdom and discrimination (Vivek) which will make the country re-discover its mission andgive a new creative direction to all its endeavours.
                                                                                                                                      Ma.Eknath Ranade

Tuesday 2 June 2015

War of a different kind



Freedom, democracy, adult franchise, are these enough to ensure that a country is free? But our experience with all these proves that for ensuring a fair administration and safeguarding a nation’s sovereignty something much more than these are needed. The modern day wars are not necessarily fought on turfs where it used to be. Instead a surreptitious  means to destabilize economy, fund groups which are rebellious and secessionist in nature, and thereby wreck the strength of your enemy, are the norms of this war which is fought by homebred ‘Civil’  Society activists.

When the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report, in which it has placed India in tier -2, meaning that the religious freedom violations in India are serious, one can understand that the war is on. USA has never acted in Similar fashion against Autocrats, Dictators, Mass Murderers, Ethnic Cleansers, Usurpers of power, Murderers of Democracy, War Criminals Terrorists Al Qaeda-ISI-LeT-TTP-Boko Haram-Hamas-PLO-IM- Taliban etc. Then why they are so much agitated about the violation of religious freedom, which in reality is violation of freedom to exploit the masses?  Any growing economy is viewed as a threat and India is no exception.  That this foul cry comes immediately after the government announced curbs on more than ten thousand NGOs rips the secret open as to who is the boss for all these civil society soldiers. Government action is nothing but an acknowledgement of this war and a fitting constitutional response to it.  Several thousand crores are being pumped into our country through these pseudo activists and many development activities are put on hold by these mercenaries leading the country to choke. According to a report given by Ministry of home affairs there are more than 20 lakh NGOs in India, supposedly working for the welfare of the society. Around 43000 of them receive foreign funding for their ‘activities’. Nearly 11500 crores were received in the year 2012, practically making them a parallel economy. One may wonder with this many organisations working to alleviate poverty, bring medical assistance to poor and education to the needy, why our country doesn’t seem to show any signs of its impact. A report by IB says that many of the NGOs which receive foreign funds are aimed at stalling development projects in India. It further says that, “A significant number of Indian NGOs (funded by some donors based in the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries) have been noticed to be using people-centric issues to create an environment which lends itself to stalling development projects.” According to the report, the negative impact on GDP growth is assessed to be 2-3 per cent per annum. The 21-page report calls the NGOs’ activities “anti-development” and has highlighted their plans for 2014. These include a campaign against palm oil imports from Indonesia and disposal of e-waste of Indian IT firms, organising construction workers in urban areas, protests against identified projects such as Gujarat’s Special Investment Regions, Par-Tapi Narmada River Interlinking Project and the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor. These dangerous conspiracies on the one hand exploit and harm the vulnerable villagers and on the other hand weaken the entire nation’s economy. In a troubled economy the scope for soul harvesting is more and the soul hunting churches are always lurking behind these activists to exploit the masses. In cases like Koodankulam power plant agitation church was seen prominently and in fact leading the agitation, hoping that it would bring in lot more faithful gullible people.

 The fact remains that for many of these NGOs their noble objectives remain only in their deed of memorandum and their actual deeds will be to undermine the sovereignty of the nation.  Government should follow a hot pursuit against these NGOs and find where the money has actually gone. Exposing their misdeeds is of paramount importance as these ‘activists’ were all these years just hobnobbing with our corrupt politicians to get favors, but are now directly entering the political arena and with a corrupt media they will be shown as messiahs to the gullible society. There is dire need to enlighten the society about these NGOs and their anti-national agendas.


V.V.Balasubramanian.
YB-ET.