Where the mind is without fear....

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought
and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

The lines still evoke the same tingling sensation in the spine as they used to five years ago, when recited in the morning assembly as the Monday prayer by Col.(Retd.) B.R.Sharma.

व्यष्टि से समष्टि की वीथी कहाँ आरम्भ होती और कहाँ अंत, शायद कोई नहीं समझ पाया...हम न जाने किस मरीचिका में भटकते रहे, सोचते रहे कि आदर्शों की नींव पर खड़ा हमारे स्वप्नों का संसार कभी तो यथार्थ में रूपांतरित होगा, कभी तो मानवजाति अपने सत्व प्राप्त कर सकेगी...उस सत्व को जो मृत्युंजय है, कालजयी है।

वह सत्व जो स्वतः दृष्टिगोचर न सही, परन्तु प्रत्येक अणु में विद्यमान है॥

इस विश्वास को पुनर्जीवित कर दो...अगर इस मरीचिका के पार एक चिरंतन सत्य की निर्झरनी है तो इतनी शक्ति दो कि इस वीथी के कंटकों को पार कर अपने गंतव्य तक पहुँच सकें...

Equality is a dangerous concept...deceitful as well
We are not born equal...neither does anybody try to be an equal to a standard set by many....we all try to break that barrier, consciously or unconsciously...isn't it???

Then why preach equality...beauty lies in the difference that speaks out so eloquently all around us...

You may strive for being satisfied with what u are and what you can be...how much more different...instead of being more and more like the 'rest'....

The ‘Naxal Threat’: As we call it!

It is neither easy, nor ordinary when the hands that plough the fields choose to raise guns. The incident dates back to the year 1967 when peasants in the Naxalbari village of West Bengal, rose in rebellion against ages of oppression and injustice. The rebellion escalated in the face of violence and soon insurgencies from various parts of the country surfaced. There was a huge participation of students, particularly in West Bengal where a number of students left their education to join the movement. What followed was a period of turmoil when numerous radical groups became active in different regions across the country.

The country has come a long way since then. We forgot Naxalbari; we forgot the movement, the raison d'être that led to it. What has remained is a term, largely ambiguous, Naxalism, another addition to the numerous ‘isms’ that continue hovering over our social, economic and political consciousness, but nevertheless inconsequential. In fact, it poses one of the greatest threats to the nation’s internal peace and harmony.

Where did we go wrong and where did ‘they’ go wrong? Or, is it the rift created between ‘we’ and ‘they’ that led to this state of affairs? The question has met with a shameful apathy since its inception and still awaits an answer. So do many questions that have been fostered by these years of insurgency.

The uprising at Naxalbari was supposed to be a wake-up call for our policy makers, governments and above all the ‘class’ that was constituted of both the oppressors and the majority which remained impassive to the plight of the oppressed. The unorganized rebellion was crushed with an iron hand and as time passed by it fragmented into numerous groups of varying degrees of extremism and varying ideologies. From what was initially a struggle for one’s basic human right to live with dignity, it transformed into a ‘class struggle’, and a cruel manifestation of the same in the principle of ‘annihilation of class enemy’.

The movement truly lost its direction, if it had any, and the world has changed in more ways than one since then. What is the significance of Naxalism in the current scenario is the question that needs to be pondered upon. Is creation of ‘Salwa Judums’ the solution for the rising militancy? Or, does the solution lie in a much deeper understanding of the entire problem, its dynamics, the factors that lead to such insurgencies and thereby undertaking some fundamental systemic reforms?

The Bihar I knew…

What did I know about Bihar, the place I was born at, the place where my roots lie? My recent visit to the interiors of Bihar was an eye-opener to someone like me, born in Bihar, but brought up in Jharkhand, culturally similar, yet very different from its parent state. Did I know the real Bihar, as it exists today? Or, was I harboring numerous illusions drifting me away from the reality? Did I simply know Biharis, living away from Bihar, representing a considerable chunk of Bihar, but certainly not the whole of it? The questions are disturbing enough.

Of course, I did not know that Bihar is considered amongst the fastest growing economies in 2006-2007, owing to its fast changing macro-environment. I did not know that Patna, the richest city of Bihar, boasts of a per capita income greater than the Indian average. I never cared to know that!

But, I certainly knew the Bihar which has been the birthplace of religions like Buddhism and Jainism, which first propagated the principle of non-violence so vehemently, a concept that has eluded the civilized world till now, the Bihar which marks the birthplace of Goddess Sita, who epitomizes womanhood for the Hindus of North India, and Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru of Sikhs. It has been the land of Chandragupta Maurya and Ashok who gave this country one of its best periods of its social, economic and cultural history. It has given birth to the oldest and the best centers of education of Ancient India, in the name of Nalanda and Vikramshila universities. And, we all know the Bihar which gave this country some great national leaders, writers, scholars, academicians and is still producing the maximum number of IAS, IPS officers, IITians, Medical graduates, Software professionals and what not!

Everything seems a repetition after some time. Is not it? All this glorification and deification of a place which has been ranked amongst the poorest of all the states of India, a place where education is in its most dismal state, and corruption breaking its backbone in all sphere. A place where I found some of the finest people I ever met. At the same time a place where I saw some of the rudest and the most uncivilized lot living under the garb of an elite upper class and trying to be elite Middle class.

I cannot close my eyes towards its scintillating past which becomes almost haunting at times. I cannot remain silent at the mocking remarks of my fellow non-Biharis. It is too much for my proud soul to accept wordlessly. I can not join hands for Bihar-bashing either. I seek solutions; I seek answers from the Biharis, in and outside Bihar, who have remained neutral and just shamelessly neutral towards all this.

Era of Hatred!

Recently I was watching this movie named 'Do Aankhein Barah Haath' based on a humanitarian jailer who transforms 6 murderers into non-violent peasants, by his new experiment of 'Open Prison'. The movie eloquently speaks of the power of love, the triumph of humanity.

I was surprised watching the movie, even more surprised by the fact that it was based on a true story! And i know most of the people of my generation will be surprised too.

But Love does have the power to bring about miracles, transform people, curb maladies, maladies of hatred, contempt, heal wounds. Is not it?
We have been told that, we have read that.

Then why this surprise? Why the whole concept of transforming hearts through love seems so inconceivable?

It was certainly not inconceivable when the movie was produced...our movies reflect our times. Don't they?

Then why has it become an alien concept now? What is it that has changed so fundamentally? And it has certainly not changed for good. So, where have we gone wrong?

Is it not that we have been brought up in an era of hatred, violence? We have grown in the shadows of terrorism, bloodshed, corruption and a shameful apathy on the part of our 'civilized' society.
Is it not that the principles of humanity, the concept of love, brotherhood, have merely been confined to the pages of literature? The generation has been slowly, gradually transformed into 'computerized intelligentsia', past caring, past listening.