Posts Tagged ‘faith’
How great were Mughals?
I have lot of doubts on accuracy of history, of India, about all kings – about all kingdoms! Something does not seem right to me, except British Raj! During their time they had press running in the country, which made things bit transparent. Apart from that there were other secret publications run by freedom fighters. With all these records we have a clear idea of bloodthirsty rulers of British East India.
History of Older kingdoms, on the other hand, was mostly based on travelogues of a few visitors and other delicate records. Travellers certainly had the pleasure of King’s hospitality, then, would definitely write something neat on him. Stone encryptions, again, are commissioned by royals. There are also palm leaf scriptures (in Pali, Sanskrit etc) which were written by the elite (educated) crowd of King’s court. Obviously, their education (and living) was funded by king himself. Now why wouldn’t we expect plain old asslicking praise on king and his kingdom? If these go on making history, how accurate is our history?
Talking about history and its accuracy, I would like mention about a post I came across on desicritics by beingCynical. It was about Aurangzeb and his misdeeds, especially his intolerance. This post presents a beautiful argument on this Mughal emperor, and claims that history is inaccurate about his rule. I am pasting a Para from that post:
What drives us to be so judgemental and conclusive without knowing the facts? Is it the bad and wrong history that been taught via the millions of government supplied history books, where truth is far fetched as history is fabricated to support someones ego and wants? The fact is good history is rarely about good guys and bad guys but unfortunately we follow this simplistic logic while going over our history, resulting in putting on a perception pair of glasses while engrossing it. I believe that history should be presented as it is, no biasing, no fabrication or no forced conclusion and the readers should be left to decide the good or the bad for themselves. I was sure that our text books are being pathetically modified, God knows for what and whom, so I always had a fascination for all those controversial & bad characters or so being pictured in books.
This part is 100% true; we certainly have omitted a large portion of history for our convenience (or likings). It could be due to several reasons, most probably to make our history look good, simple “tidy up”.
Anyways, my claim here is that our kings were not great, tolerant and merciful, Read the rest of this entry »
MF Husain and his freedom
Maqbool Fida Husain is no longer an Indian, he has accepted Qatari citizenship. It’s not a total surprise considering he was on voluntary exile from Indian Judicial system since 2006. There are few criminal charges against him for having hurt religious sentiments of Indians. For those who are not familiar with this, it’s a typical “freedom of expression” Vs “offending belief system” case. Husain now 94, painted few Hindu deities and Mother India in nude and socially objectionable positions (Indian context). When charged for this, he decided it would be better not to answer to the system and officially absconding since then.
Million dollar question behind this is “what is the boundary of freedom of expression?”, ideally there are none. In an ideal society freedom of expression is that anyone can express anything and nobody gets offended. It possibly could be well accepted if it were done with all intentions answered. But we do not live in ideal society. Here, each group consider themselves to be suppressed and others being appeased. Plenty of moral police are patrolling to maintain this attitude. So, anything could trigger hatred among the groups if the situations are not properly handled. Same is happened here – ‘not properly handled’!
Husain's Bharat mata
Husain claimed that he painted them for the love of those deities; let’s take it is true. Artists have different way to look at things and depict them. He also claimed that there were no intention of offending people, this also can be accepted. But the question followed by this is never answered. Why only deities related to a particular religion is chosen, why not others or his own? In a society where all communities look at each other with suspicion, this question certainly will raise eyebrows. This part seems to be a big hypocrisy on his part. BTW I am not after his apologies, just an explanation.
Right wing on the other hand, can never justify breaking things. They always have right to get offended and protest for it, but not Physical attack.
BTW quoting Khajaraho is never an answer for this; those were carved when these things were probably acceptable in society. Now we live in a society where kissing in public is not OK but pissing is! Society has changed since those temples were carved, so are the rules of every society. Something valid a millennium ago is no longer valid today. This is called “Change”. That’s the reason few things cannot be justified quoting, it “was”, in the same country. This change may not be good (like this one), it can always be protested on, from within the system.
There will be a day, may be in next hundred years, when all these things may not be issues at all. Majority of civilised world would have rejected religions and deities. This discussion would look silly then.
My list of ten best documentaries
I highly recommend this set of ten documentaries. I rate all of them above 9.5/10. I know there are many more which may be as good as these; I just did not have a chance to watch them. Please feel free to recommend them to me.
An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore. You already would have seen this. If not, shame on you 
Capitalism – A Love Story, by Michael More. This gives a complete picture on “how capitalism works”. Basically this is about industries maximising profits with optimal resource utilisation with minimum ethics.
Earthlings: All the things you need to know about meat, fur, leather etc. It’s the story of human exploitation of his fellow earthlings for food, clothing’s, and entertainment. Recommended only for people with strong stomach.
Food Inc. by Robert Kenner. A fantastic movie on how food goods in supermarket shelves are generated in assembly line. Shocking information, a must see.
Food Inc.
Home, by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. It’s a collection of areal videos, arranged in coherence to narrate a compelling story on our Home- earth. Superb presentation on how small we are, how big we have screwed it up. This movie is free on youtube.
Religulous - This is a fantastic movie from the director of Borat, Larry Charles and presented by Bill Maher, obviously you can expect this to be satirical and hilarious at the same time. The name says it all – religion is ridiculous, and this is the most interesting topic for me. In this movie, Bill roams around places (mostly USA) visiting religious people, debating them. Various encounters and the argument they put forward are simply ROFL.
Sicko, by Michael More. This movie addresses problems in American Medical care, being manipulated by insurance and pharmaceutical companies. In coming few years this documentary may not be as strong as it is now, democrats may end up changing the system for good. Anyways, both the countries I lived in had (kind of) socialised medicine, which also mean receipt for medicine does not hurt when you are sick, it happens only in America.
Story of the stuff, by Anne. This is story of all the stuff, starting from raw materials till it becomes rubbish i.e extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. It is criticised to be inaccurate, but hey, the story is still true and compelling.
The Age of Stupid, a British movie on climate change. This is set in future where whole earth is already disturbed by climate change and remaining humans do causal analysis using all stored footages.
Zeitgeist - This has two parts, one addresses Christianity, the other on capitalist economics. Compelling arguments, must watch.
Atheist Barbie
Presenting Atheist Barbie, as an answer to various religious barbies in market, including few in Rev attire and Hijabs. Clever and creative on BlagHag by Jen. Remember Jen? One who also created boobquakes throughout the planet to disprove an Iranian “Intellectual”.
Anyways, here is the design, due to be released shortly, I think.
Atheist Barbie
Among all features of this Barbie, I find ‘lunch bag’ as very hilarious. I am breaking it down for the Indian crowd, who may be unaware of the relevance. This is “South Park” style satire for those who are always surprised of Atheists morals, “If you don’t follow a (read :‘our’) religion, where do you get morals from?”. It’s the same bunch of people (especially Americans) who believe morals were invented on the day “invisible space daddy” presented Moses with tablets of Ten Commandments. Without this list people (Atheists, etc) tend to kill each other or even eat babies!!!
How many of us had trouble understanding Evolution taught in high school biology? I am sure we did not. Apparently a lot of Americans do! Parents and teachers in some states in America are not comfortable to teach only science in science class. They claim other theories like Creationism, Intelligent design are as valid as science.
I wasn’t made this confused when I was a kid. I studied in Hindu (later Christian) administered schools. They taught me evolution as the way it is, no teacher ever disputed the theory. Creationism was never a logical way to look at life on earth, in academic circles.
BTW, Flying Spaghetti Monster has come down to earth to resolve all these disputes.
