Living with Nature

Our ancient civilization, or all traditional civilizations, I believe, see man as a part of nature. Usually, all ancient traditions teach us to conduct our lives so as not to destroy the balance in Nature and not to imperil our own existence. Some go so far as to nurture orphaned babies of wild animals, as this Bishnoi woman is seen doing.

Bishnoi woman feeding her baby and
an orphaned cinkara. Photo taken from Rediff.com

This reminds me of my childhood. The government did have the meteorological department, but given their capabilities now in terms of weather prediction, one can easily imagine what it could have been some 35-40 years ago. So, during the rainy season, if my mother had to take me somewhere, and was worried that it might rain, she would go to my aunt and ask, "Do you think it may rain?" Of course, this did not mean if it would rain the next five minutes, but rather if it would rain in the next 10-12 hours, a much more difficult question to answer. My aunt would look at the sky and the clouds (and remember, in those days in a suburban town, there were no apartment buildings and nothing hindering your view of the sky in any direction), and come up with her prediction. I do not have a statistics to show how often she was right. But we can assume that she was right a good fraction of time, otherwise my mother would not trust her.

I definitely do not have the ability to predict rain by looking at the sky. My son hardly ever looks at the sky. Somewhere, our civilizational progress is taking us away from our Natural roots!

Say No to Caste

The government has ultimately decided to go ahead with including caste in the
current census. Some of the castist parties are still unhappy with the
modalities. But I want to use this platform to launch a protest against
inclusion of caste in the census.

There is no denying that caste is one of the deep, almost defining
realities of the Indian society. I do not believe or hope that caste will
naturally wither away if we simply avoid talking about it, or do not include
it in the census. And I also believe that the issue of caste deserves a much
more nuanced debate, at political and academic levels, to make any headway
in removing this atrocious institution.

But, the political reality is that all mention of caste is with an aim of
perpetuating this horrible social crime. How else can you explain why
caste should be basis of admission in higher education, while millions
of children, naturally mostly from lower castes, do not have access to school
education? The Congress Party has already said they do not want to be on
wrong side of the caste divide this time (unlike 1990 Mandal issue). This
clearly reveals that the eye is on the votes, and everything else is an
excuse.

So, if you believe that caste census is another strategy in the game of
vote-bank politics, and want to see a caste-less India sometime, say NONE
to caste during census. Spread the word.

Let's make a beginning.