Vote Now: Who will win the Cricket T20 World Cup 2016?
March 15, 2016 Leave a comment
Let the Games.. Begin!
March 15, 2016 Leave a comment
So, after 12 matches – almost half of which affected by rain, and almost all of which nobody really cared about unless you were a Bangladesh team supporter – today is when the T20 World Cup finally begins. And the tournament is back in India, truly it’s rightful home.
Yes, it might be the third consecutive year cricket is seeing yet another World Cup – after the T20 World Cup in 2014 and the ‘real’ 50-over World Cup 2015 – and the fifth in the last six years, but don’t let it fool you into believing it is going to be just-another-world-cup. This year, a lot is at stake and heads are about to roll depending on who wins and who loses.
The stage is already set with Australia and South Africa already having had a ruthless go at each other in their own corner away from the glare while the first stage of this tournament was already in progress. Australia will be looking to assert their domination over South Africa in World Cups once again, whereas South Africa would be aiming for their first win of any ICC World tournament and overcome the “chokers” tag they so despise. Will SA finally realize their dream of a coveted trophy or will Australia add the missing T20 feather to their cap which is already overcrowded with so many other world cup triumphs?
India have just shown their complete T20 dominance over their continent in the Asia Cup, and of Australia in Australia, and feel confident that they have their death-bowling woes finally sorted out. With their Captain Cool recently showing sparks of thunder in his ultra-short-super-fast innings in the Asia Cup, along with the top order batting being in the form of their lives, and Yuvraj Singh finally looking like he is coming back into his flamboyant best, team India are firmly set as favourites to win the high stakes tournament.
With Bangladesh having shown what a magically improved side they have become since last year’s world cup, having beaten India last year and Sri Lanka and Pakistan this year, no team can afford to take them lightly anymore. But the pressure will still be upon them to perform up to expectations they have managed to create. England are just as dangerous as any other side though, historically, they always managed to create problems for themselves in World Cups. Will England be able to stamp their authority on the game and win the T20 World Cup a second time?
New Zealand have always been a terrific team on paper and proved their mettle by progressing to the final of last year’s World Cup, but to emulate their success in the sub-continent, in the absence of McCullum – arguably their fiercest leader till date – will be a big challenge which NZ might have a hard time overcoming.
Of the dark horses in the tournament, defending champions Sri Lanka are probably the team with the most problems in this tournament – yes, I mean more than even Pakistan. Pakistan have already had their usual share of pre-tournament problems, from the uncertainty over their participation in the tournament until quite recently, to their top players such as Afridi recently coming under fire for saying they felt more loved by the Indian audiences than their own home country – something that might hammer the final nail into the coffin carrying Pakistan’s chances at the World Cup, considering their poor showing at the Asia Cup. It is starting to feel a little bit like how their own media had vilified them at the start of last year’s World Cup after they lost to India, but then they did turn things around and came back with much better performances. So Pakistan have this much to be said about them that they are an unpredictable team which can play the most passionate game or the most lacklusture one; who can beat, and lose to, any team imaginable. It will all depend on whether the Good Pakistan or the Bad Pakistan turns up on match day. On the other hand, Sri Lanka themselves are known to upp their game in such tournaments and might turn up as far more clinical a side than we have seen them to be in recent times. It will be interesting to see if either of these teams beats expectations and manages to even progress to the next round. Will Pakistan continue to be dominated by India in the World Cups or will they be able to break the jinx? Have Sri Lanka finally dipped so low that they will no longer remain the feared opponent in world cricket as they used to be?
West Indies, have continued to have their own share of problems for decades now, but only the shortest format of the game gives them any chance to making a mark. You don’t really need eleven big-match players. A few big hits by their power-hitters and a few good wicket-taking overs – and who knows? After all, it is the only format in nearly four decades which they have managed to win a World Cup.
Afghanistan is the only team one needs to spare the comparisons. They have played well and beaten their opponents in the phase one and even much before that. It was sad they could not qualify for Asia Cup but even though no one really expects them to do very well facing the big teams, one might just want to watch them cause an upset or two by beating a regular team from their group and throwing open the nominations for the next round open to others.
Having said all that I could for the tournament, we know two things for sure. One is that the result of each match would be like flip of a coin – each team equally likely to win – but the one which does only a few things better, and faster, than the other will finally take the match. The most talented team will not necessarily win each time. And second, it is going to be a hard competition. India are definitely the team to beat, but there are hungry vultures circling overhead. Who will draw first blood?
What will happen? We will see!
What Dhoni’s 104m Six probably did to Bangladesh
March 7, 2016 Leave a comment
Despite all the criticism by the Indian media over his form in recent times, MS Dhoni, during the Asia Cup 2016, has shown exactly why he is the world’s most dangerous cricketer, and India’s Captain Cool at the same time.
What stood out the most for me was the first sixer Dhoni hit off the bowling of Al-Amin in the supposedly penultimate (and which invariably become the last) over of India’s chase. Until that ball (ov. 12.1), Bangladesh had sneaked in a tiny toe before the door to the Trophy was about to shut on them, and based on their own recent good form and a deservedly improved level of confidence, they did believe that they could give India a shock. This was a belief that they carried for months after beating India in their previous tour to Bangladesh and it somewhat overshadowed the fact that Bangladesh were never really in control of the match, even after the untimely dismissal of Shikhar Dhawan just a few deliveries ago. Bangladesh, their spectators more than the players, were upbeat and for a moment imagined a future where their bowlers would be able to restrict the battering ram of Indian middle order within 20 runs of the target. And so they brought their best bowler of the day in the 19th over to bowl one good over and choke India.
But they forgot who they were going to bowl against. What followed can only be termed as cruel. Even if Dhoni had hit him for 5 boundaries in a row, Al-Amin and Bangladesh might still have had some fight left in them, but the power of the six showed a cruel and utter disrespect for the confidence of an emerging team and seemed to have opened the eyes of 160 million Bangladeshis to the utter domination this Indian team, and their captain in particular, has enjoyed over them in this tournament. The metaphorical door slammed shut and took the Bangladeshi toe with it. Being such a master of the game, what Dhoni’s super-hit did to Bangladesh and their fans can’t really be explained any more than this. You need to be a Bangladesh fan to be able to feel it’s impact. If I had been a Bangladesh supporter, I would have cried in my sleep. Thankfully, I slept well.
Have a Happy and Pollution Free Diwali
November 11, 2015 Leave a comment
Diwali is here. Its that time of the year when we all get together with our families and loved ones and celebrate India’s grandest festival. I am not religious at all, neither do I really care about the story behind Diwali. The only thing I care about is that it is an occasion that brings families and loved ones together. I enjoy lighting candles and diyas, decorating our houses, buying new clothes, nice food, and the company of my favourite people.
The only thing that has stopped making sense to me, since over a decade and a half now, is people burning firecrackers. I cannot understand what point people are trying to make when they go nuts about firecrackers and cause so much polution that their fellow humans and animals can barely survive. What is it? Is it ego? Is it too much Money? Why the blatant disregard for the environment and our own health and safety?
This Diwali, spare a thought for the thousands, if not more, who already have it tough trying to breathe and how difficult it is going to become for them and everyone else, just because some people place their own amusement above the greater good of the planet.
Hope you have a nice but pollution free Diwali!!
The Curious Case of the missing Rahul Gandhi
February 13, 2015 Leave a comment
Rahul Gandhi has done it again, and I don’t mean just the massive self-destruction of the Congress party in the Delhi elections. On February 10th 2015, when the crocodile jaws engulfing the skull of Congress party’s fortunes finally snapped and reduced the party to dead pulp in Delhi, Rahul Gandhi did the vanishing act yet again and disappeared like a thief in the night. The news media went into a tizzy looking for a comment from him, but nobody in the entire Congress party was ready to reveal his whereabouts. Their silence was so astounding that it was scary.
Who exactly is Rahul Gandhi? Is he really as dynamic a leader as the staunch members of Congress keep projecting him to be while they shamelessly swallow their pride doing so? Is he really the great leader that India’s previous prime minister Manmohan Singh was dreaming to work under the leadership of? And was there anyone who thought it a disgrace that the former PM, while he was still the PM, virtually resigned himself into the hands of a mere nobody?
Oh, but dare you call Rahul Gandhi a nobody. He may not be as bright as Inspector Clouseau, but he definitely is the only lifeline that Congress thinks they have. The partymen sing praises of RaGa as if he were a manna from heaven, like a Lord coming back for resurrection. Just try to say anything negative for him and you see the entire Congress brass forming this huge wall of defence in front of him, protecting him from every critic and criticism, even to the extent of ridiculing their own selves and muddying their own names in the process. They will take all the blame on themselves and not a spot of mud will be allowed to touch the dear leader (Oh, do I sense a bit of North-Korean-ness in the matter?)
So, Rahul is like a specially challenged kid who hasn’t grown up. He is the kid that you hide in a backroom whenever strangers come asking questions.
There can be many reasons for Rahul Gandhi’s disappearance and his silence. Maybe, he is in hiding because everyone remembers how he was caught grinning when he stood alongside mother Gandhi who was addressing the media right after Congress’s drumming in the Lok Sabha elections last year. Maybe, he is in hiding because the speech writers in Congress have finally run out of script to prove that it was Rahul Gandhi’s victory even in defeat. I guess they knew it wouldn’t work so they decided not to damage the party anymore by even trying.
Not only are Congressmen silent on Rahul’s whereabouts, they are even silent on being silent. When questioned about Rahul, even in the most docile of manners, they appear to be deeply hurt. Not even a smile on their faces to at least lighten the moods. To a question such as “Is Rahul Gandhi in India or abroad,” there is still absolutely no attempt to answer at all. Just a sorry, troublesome, disgraceful and deeply worrying silence. It is obvious now, as if it weren’t earlier, that Rahul Gandhi is nothing but just a name. There is nothing behind the mask of the face that stupidly smiles at just the wrong time or a mouth that runs off to the detriment of the own party when left unregulated. A body that screams its own language, when exposed to the public, and betrays what the rest of the organization struggles to hide every moment – gross incompetence.
There is no doubt that the stalwarts of the Congress party – people who have dedicated their lives to the party’s work and achieved so much for it – must be silently feeling an increasing sense of anger and disappointment at having been forced to accept a political and intellectual nobody as their leader, to whom they must attribute the credit for all their achievements and who they must also dissociate from every failure of the party. In short, in the curious case of the Congress Party and Rahul Gandhi, failure has many fathers but success only one – Rahul Gandhi. And this will soon be proven again when Rahul is promoted to the top of the party from his current no. 2 position, while the rest of their cadre stand by the curb, preparing to act as human shields to protect the leader from the mocking and laughing jibes by all the other political parties across the nation.
Sadly, while the country has been independent since over half a century, its Grand Old Party is still disintegrating within the clutches of the Gandhis. And it doesn’t look like it will break free anytime soon.
A response to Rajnath Singh’s unscientific remarks
January 20, 2015 Leave a comment
“Rajnath Singh” is what happens when there is a disconnect between dogma and common sense. That the minister does not know science is a sorry fact, it is also indicative of the ignorance that has crept deep into the core of an organization that wishes to keep its eyes closed to reality. This post is a response to his unscientific comments made in front of news media, which can be read here. What he is basically trying to do here is merge Science with mythology by referring to pundits instead of scientists. Is it really necessary to go on ranting about stuff that you don’t really know and label Astronomy as coming from a ‘US Observatory’? I mean, where is the man really coming from? Clearly, it is an attempt to glorify his mythological beliefs, which no doubt are BJP’s main driving factor.
What Mr. Singh really doesn’t know, perhaps due to his lack of scientific education, is that it is not a ‘US observatory’ that observes and tells us when an eclipse is going to happen, it is the science of Astronomy, completely consistent across the world as well as in (surprise) India itself that ‘calculates’ (perhaps too difficult a word for him to contemplate) the occurrence of an eclipse. Concepts such as tilt of the axis of the earth, revolution of celestial bodies around the sun due to gravity and the position of the point of observer on the surface of the earth that, when put together give you the end result. But why should the minister worry about those factors when he has the neighborhood pundit by his side?
Nevermind the scientific calculations, Mr. Singh must now answer some more basic questions about the knowledge he seems to have derived from scriptures using the high intellect of his pundits (if that is what he meant).
First: Hindu mythology also says that the earth is sitting on the back of a giant turtle (or was it a tortoise). What I want to know is, does the minister really believe that that is the case? Does he really have the courage to go so far as to appear a complete fool by accepting this joke also as a truth? Is he angry or upset that science doesn’t care about his point of view and is doing well enough to steer clear of such an embarrassing claim?
Second: Does the minister really believe that the Earth was formed 196 crore years ago? 196 crores = 1,960,000,000, i.e., 1.96 billion years old. Scientists have a unanimous agreement that the Earth is at least more than 4.5 billion years old, so his pundits, whoever they are, have got this fact wrong by at least 2.5 billion years and ended up embarrassing the minister in front of the whole nation. Too bad! And by the way, that is just the age of the Earth and we haven’t even mentioned the age of the universe, which scientists agree is more than 14.5 billion years, and which the mythology somehow totally missed. How did this disaster befall the great Hindu mythology? The minister should have opened a science textbook instead of listening to his idiot pundits.
Third: What does the minister mean when he says “Earlier, science did not accept this..”? What the hell is he talking about? Another stupid thing his pundits told him? Who in the scientific community has accepted anything of this sort from the Hindu mythology? Science is a system of making observations, developing theories and then testing these theories rigorously to find out the truth and it is science that has discovered the actual age and not his pundits. There have been many ancient cultures in the world that have put their own guesses on the age of the earth and all of them have the missed the mark. It is purely a coincidence that Hindu mythology has come up with the longest time of them all, but it is still nowhere near the correct scientific calculation.
Fourth: According to Hindu mythology, when a man dies, his wife should throw herself into the fire of his funeral and become a Sati, whereas a man has no such obligation, and we can probably guess why that is. So, does the minister think this “traditional value” should also be followed by the country? Will he suggest such a step to his loved ones? Is this a tradition that he is proud of? As a citizen, I demand an answer.
“No other country could match our knowledge” Well, it might not be true of our country today, but it certainly appears to be true that nobody in the world can match the knowledge that Mr. Singh has procured through his detailed scientific assessments of his uneducated pundits. The world is light years ahead of India in terms of science and technology, perhaps because we still want to suck up to any myth, however uninformed and unscientific, as long as it makes some of us proud of it. What he doesn’t understand is that we do not want a false sense of pride, but real measurable achievements.
For instance, Algebra is now from India? When the hell did that happen? Did he derive this also from his foolish pundits? The word algebra comes from the Arabic language (“restoration”) from the title of the book Ilm al-jabr wa’l-muḳābala by al-Khwarizmi. The roots of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonians. The word entered the English language during Late Middle English from either Spanish, Italian, or Medieval Latin. Algebra originally referred to a surgical procedure, and still is used in that sense in Spanish, while the mathematical meaning was a later development. If you need to read more about it, go to wikipedia. So, not only does he want to inflate his sense of mythological pride, he even wants to steal from scientific achievements of other cultures.
At this stage, rather than going on attacking the minister, I would pardon him a break and make one point very clear. Progress on scientific fronts has happened throughout the course of history. It is in accordance with that that various theories and concepts came about in different ages. So, yes, there will always be some concepts that you can attribute as having originated in one country or developed and refined in another. But, it doesn’t by any means imply that people in India discovered everything scientific and that was the end of progress of all areas of knowledge across the world.
The theory of relativity was not discovered in India. Neither did the theory of gravitation, electricity, nuclear physics, the periodic table of elements, evolution. Countries such as Japan have mastered fantastic technologies such as magnetically levitated trains, while we still are unable to figure out why our trains keep running off tracks every now and then.
What the minister has forgotten, or perhaps failed to understand, is that even the scientific achievements of India from centuries in the past did not come from pundits and that was not even mythology being practiced. That was science itself. And any person, whichever age they lived in, who developed any scientific theory was a scientist and not a pundit. And there is a huge difference between the two. Of course, a believer in mythology can still be a scientist if they follow the scientific method to draw conclusions, but the results of their method are by no means mythological in nature. Yes, it was someone living in India who invented the concept of Zero, but did he say it was thanks to mythology that he found out about Zero or was it because he used his intelligence just like many others have done all across the world to come up with their own discoveries in mathematics and the various branches of science.
The minister also fails to realize that our country was for long a source of inspiration to many other upcoming nations and do you know what for? We were the first nation in the world that had in its constitution the duty of each citizen to “build scientific temper”. But, perhaps the unscientific minister merely confused temper with temple, which is why he is part of an organization that has its origins in mythology and seems to be more concerned with where the next temple could be built.
“When knowledge is cut-off from traditional values, it becomes disastrous.” Does this sentence make any sense at all? Does he mean to say that what is wrong with the world is lack of touching of feet? Really? He thinks science tells one to stop touching our parents’ feet? Which scientific book is he referring to? Traditional values have nothing to do with knowledge.
“Civilizations which get cut-off from their traditions and values do not survive for long.” Again, what is he talking about? Which civilizations is he getting his knowledge from?
“..highly-educated youth involved in terror activities..” Oh? Now now, isn’t he talking about the ill effects of religion itself?
Now, why criticize the man so ruthlessly when there are many more like him in the country? Because he is the Home Minister. He is in charge of the country in a very special way and I, as a citizen, am obviously quite concerned with what he thinks about science and technology. I really want to know if the Home Minister of India really believes the Earth is sitting on the back of a giant turtle. I really need to know which direction this man and his party are planning to take the country towards: a progressive development of science and technology or a systematic rusting of the scientific capability and regression of the nation?
We have a right to know.
Edit 1: Added link to TOI report on what Rajnath Singh exactly said and expanded the intro paragraph a bit.
Indi-Ban-ization
February 6, 2013 1 Comment
Only 4 days back, I wrote a post on the growing religious intolerance in our country. I mentioned how we are banning books, writers (because, you know, Pen is mightier than sword and so the writer might hurt some sensitive people.. sob sob), art and movies, etc.
In just 4 days, so much more has happened that it is with great reluctance that I am writing this post. After all, you need a break from one single topic but India is undergoing its own version of Talibanization at such a rapid pace that would put Schumacher and Usain Bolt to shame. Before we know it, the Talibani leaders might start applying for Indian citizenships.
Pardon me if I miss some more incidents, but fresh in my memory are the following from the last 4 days:
— The Grand Mufti (head of Muslim clergy) in Kashmir has declared a “Fatwa” against singing (Yes, SINGING!) saying it is un-islamic and a shameful act. Yes, you heard (or rather read) me right. Following this Fatwa and a series of online abuses by its supporters against them, Kashmir’s first and only All-Girl-Rock-Band, Pragaash, has called it quits and given up on singing and performing out of fear for their lives. But, the ruling national political party has promptly, after a delay of 3 days, acted by – wait for it – CRITICISING the Fatwa. See? We support our women. Nevertheless, the Band is still banned (no pun intended).
— Well, how could the Hindus be left behind? In yet another shocking (the magnitude of shocks now coming down with each case) incident, members of a regional (and religious) political outfit, desperate to maintain their fading (if not already extinct) relevance in Indian politics, have started protesting “democratically” in front of an art gallery in the capital warning of consequences (how democratic) if the exhibition is not shut down and some paintings not removed. Their problem? They think that depiction of bare human forms in art is derogatory to “our cultural values” and portrays women in an obscene manner. (Must be those devillish Westerners affecting our Art, I worry). How stupendous – political party, religious faction, art critics, all-in-one? I wonder where their concern for women vanishes when they and their affiliates beat up women for wearing jeans and going to parties.
— Further, BJP, a national political party, has also revealed their well known fascist and religious nature by invoking the Ram temple issue yet again just a year ahead of the upcoming national elections in 2014. To the unknowing, a piece of land in a town (or village?) called Ayodhaya has been the source of extremely dangerous tensions between the Hindu and Muslim communities since decades over a conflict regarding whether a temple or a mosque should be built at that place. The BJP has, as expected, again raised the pitch in favour of temple instead of the mosque.
As I was about to sign off on this post, I have just seen in the national news channels that the same outfit that is protesting against art (above) has contributed to the Ram temple issue by saying they will agitate in favour of building of the temple and, if required, are even ready to display the Hindu might. Okay, so now they won’t even wait for me to finish my blog?
In our country, a huge section of our population is living below poverty line, are uneducated and illiterate and therefore find solace in anything religious. We don’t have enough food, clean drinking water, schools, hospitals, electricity, and jobs and our economy is in tatters, but we worry more about where a temple is being built, which art can be exhibited and which not, which book should be read and which not, whether muslim girls should sing or not, and to top it all, we are even willing to slaughter people for such trivial issues. And this is not going to fade away. The talibanization of our country is afoot.
Why? Because we are a nation of fools and those who are negligent of this rising foolery. We will curtail every form of freedom of expression, speech, etc. etc… Oh, did you say freedom? We will ban the word itself one day.No use invoking the constitution – it does not forbid us from being fools and idiots.
And, did I mention we are also secular? Ya, but our definition of secularism is not the same as that of the “morally deprived west” in that we do not consider secularism to be freedom of and from religion. We think it is the freedom of forcing a religion’s outdated and illogical decrees on to everybody else, and we welcome with open arms, the venomous and regressive ideals that the fundamentalists bring with them.
I wonder why atheists and secularists and scientists do not make similar speeches to say that we will “unleash science education upon those who dare to act stupid,” or “the Earth is suspended in the Solar System due to gravity and we will slaughter any artist that depicts it being otherwise,” or “if you show a ghost in a movie, we will get it banned because as per science, ghosts do not exist.”
I think that would be quite funny. What do you think?
Japan’s technological edge
February 3, 2013 Leave a comment
Japan, today, has a demographic problem where over 22% of their population consists of senior citizens. In order to make the lives of senior citizens better and enable them to move around and do more work than they physically can, engineers in Japan have invented a robotic suite that can be worn around a person’s arms or legs and it allows the old and physically challenged to walk and use their limbs far better than they could otherwise.
Japan has come up with an innovative technological solution to a challenge faced by the country and this is one of the many things that truly make Japan one of the most efficient countries in the world.
And what have we been doing? We’ve been busy building statues, neglecting education, banning books and films, punishing cartoonists, curbing the Internet, and ridiculing ideas that most of the uneducated population does not understand. It’s like we have no real problems.
Popular Indian Athiests
January 26, 2013 Leave a comment
In a country battered by religious dogma for most of its existence, where riots on religious grounds have been commonplace, and where religion is as much a tool of suppression as of political advantage, it is important to highlight Atheism as a credible philosophy.
Where people take it for granted that belief in God is a virtue and that disbelief implies immorality, lack of character and integrity and attracts only scorn, ridicule and social boycotting from the masses, it is important to point out examples of popular people who were atheists and still known for their high moral and ethical standards as well as their unquestionable patriotic credentials (as patriotism can invariably be attached with belief in God by politically motivated forces).
So, here goes a list of some of the popular Indians who are also atheists:
Jawaharlal Nehru
1. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. He quoted on religion:
“The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests.”
Bhagat Singh
2. Bhagat Singh, one of the most popular figure in the Indian independence movement, whose popularity matched that of Mahatma Gandhi.
He wrote a book, Why I Am An Atheist, when he was in jail.
Amol Palekar
3. Amol Palekar, famous Bollywood and Marathi film actor and fimmaker. Regards himself as an agnostic.
4. Javed Akhtar, famous poet, lyricist and scriptwriter. He was born into a Muslim family, but later stated he was an atheist in his speech “Spirituality, Halo or Hoax”
Baba Amte
5. Baba Amte, A notable social activist.
6. Khushwant Singh, famous Journalist and Author of books such as Train to Pakistan
Kamal Haasan
7. Kamal Haasan, filmmaker and actor, known for making films having themes of both Atheism and Brahminical Hinduism
Baichung Bhutia
8. Baichung Bhutia, torchbearer of Indian football in the international arena
9. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Indian-American astrophysicist who also won the 1983 Nodel Prize for physics
10. Mani Shankar Aiyar, former Indian diplomat turned politician
11. Rajeev Khandelwal, Indian film and television actor
12. Arundhati Roy, Indian author and political activist
13. Salman Rushdie, author of Bestsellers like Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verse
14. Ram Gopal Varma, film director
15. Shriram Lagoo, notable actor and rationalist activist
16. Beechi, the Kannada humourist-philosopher, whose ‘positive atheism’ is similar to that of Douglas Adams.
17. Gopinath Muthukad, A notable magician.
18. P. L. Deshpande, A notable Marathi writer and artist.
For further readings on this topic, visit the sources for this blog:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism_in_India
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Indian_atheists
A Nation of Rapes
December 29, 2012 5 Comments
On December 16th, 2012, a 23-year-old girl from Delhi was gang raped by five men in a moving bus in South Delhi. Even the male friend accompanying her was brutally beaten, gagged and knocked unconscious. After the rape, they were both stripped and thrown out of the bus. They were found lying on the roads at about 11 PM at night.
What made this episode even more horrific was the fact that the rapists not only raped her but even inserted an iron rod into her which ended up completely damaging her genitalia and intestines.
The girl was admitted into a hospital where she was placed on ventilator and was extremely critical for a few days. The doctors had to remove her intestines because they were completely damaged by the attack and they feared she might be affected by gangrene. The result of this was that even if the victim survived this incident, she would never be able to eat again.
The incident sent shock waves throughout the country and in a surprising development, thousands of citizens across Delhi came together to protest the rising incidents of crime against women (esp. rapes) in Delhi and the prevailing indifference displayed by the political class towards the common people. they demanded that the rapists in this case be hanged for the brutality of their crime. Thousands more across the country jumped into protests in their own cities and for almost 2 weeks now, the movement has taken the entire country by storm. The girl, christened ‘Nirbhaya’ (meaning ‘fearless’) by the media to preserve her anonymity, and her sufferings have become the sole point of discussion in all homes across the country. She has become the daughter of the country and every family is now joined with her in sentiments.
As the citizens Delhi were protesting peacefully near the parliament, the police started using force on them through the use of water cannons, teargas shells and even lathi charge with increasing frequency and without any provocation. Many people were badly beaten up by the police and this only increased the sense of outraged that Delhi’ites felt. People were protesting to demand better policing, stronger laws and their better enforcement and everyone was hoping the political class would finally wake up and take stern measures to ensure safety for women. But they didn’t.
All political leaders in India watched silently as the country protested and displayed their outrage. The only comments that came out of political circles were to suggest that it is the fault of the people themselves that such incidents were taking place. Loose, rhetorical arguments such as “society needs to change itself” etc. were also being thrown in which only went to show that there is a huge disconnect between the political class and the citizenry.
The country burned.
Horribly enough, some politicians even had the audacity to attack women even more. In one case, the son of the President of India even went on to say that the women participating in the protests were “dented-painted” and also attacked the character of the women protesters further by saying that they were all coming to the protests after visiting discos and night clubs. This statement clearly displays how the politicians, who are supposed to represent the people, have such anti-people attitude.
This morning (29th Dec, 2012), the 23-year-old victim has finally breathed her last breath and succumbed to the injuries after battling bravely for 13 long and agonizing days.
There were times in between when media reports exposed that the police themselves were putting pressure on the victim to give a statement that was prepared by them, instead of giving the true account. This caused tremendous uproar among the people.
To just take you a step further towards showing how indecent the political class has become, let me state a few isolated incidents that happened around the same time as this brutal gang rape. A girl was raped in Kolkata, West Bengal, but the police refused to admit her complaint for 2 weeks. Not only that, a few days later, the Chief Minister of the state of West Bengal (a woman herself) shockingly claimed that there was no rape and that the entire “controversy” was “staged”. The victim kept repeating her statement but nothing would change the mind of the CM who went even further to say that the victim was in fact a sex-worker and the incident was only a deal gone wrong and thus there was no need to look into anything. The people of the country can only wonder how the CM obtained such insights into the case.
In another incident, it was reported that another girl in the state of Punjab was gang raped and when she went to report this to the local police, not only did they not register her complaint (as usual) of the vicitim, they started humiliating her by saying that she must have invited them to rape her and that she should “compromise” with the rapists instead of filing a complaint. They used to call her to the police stations “late at nights” to listen to her story but their only purpose was to ask her shameful questions about the rape “procedure” and they kept on humiliating her to such an extent that she was finally forced to commit suicide. In her suicide note, she has clearly mentioned what caused her to kill herself, but even now the policemen are defiant.
The 3 incidents that I have described are only less than 1% of what women in our country are suffering on a daily basis. These things and the insensitivity of the police are part of the news everyday and we do not find it shocking anymore that such an incident has occurred. It is occurring, not only daily, but hourly in our country and most of those are not even reported because the families of the victims fear humiliation and retribution from the same people who are supposed to protect them, the cops.
The people of the country are angry and outraged while the politicians are hoping that all the noise will die down in a few days, after which people will forget the incident. Till then, just remain evasive. Theek hai?
Books by Shitij Bagga
Confessions of a Disquisitive Writer
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