| Khushwant Singh | ||
The practice of killing an animal or a bird just because its flesh tastes better than vegetables is morally inexcusable. You have to see goats being slaughtered in Calcutta’s Kali temple or the throat of birds being slit at Kamakhya temple in Guwahati and your stomach will churn in disgust. You will swear never to eat meat again. Whether it is halal or jhatka: taking life is butchery, not sacrifice. Nevertheless, the vast majority of peoples round the globe are meat-eaters. Vegetarians and vegans (those who refuse to consume animal products like egg, milk, butter, cream and honey) are eloquent about the harmful effects of having a non-vegetarian diet. But they have to face a few awkward facts. Let me spell them out. Vegetarianism is not in the order of nature. Apart from ruminants like cattle, sheep, goats, deer, horses or donkeys, which eat grass and elephants, which eat leaves, all other species of animals, whether they be canines (of the dog family, such as wolves, foxes, jackals and the like) or felines, (like cats, tigers, lions or leopards) live by eating ruminants. Every other creature in the food chain, such as birds, reptiles, insects and fish, lives off eating each other. This is the ‘tooth and claw’ pattern of survival ordained by nature. It is nature’s way of controlling over-breeding among animals. About 90 per cent of the human population are flesh-eaters. There are regions where no vegetables can be grown and people live entirely on meat or fish. Humankind eats a baffling variety of life: cattle, birds, pigs, deer, rats, dogs, monkeys, snakes, fish, frogs and insects. Some religious communities are selective non-vegetarians. For instance, Muslims would not eat pig flesh, Hindus and Sikhs do not eat beef. It is often maintained by vegetarians that their diet is healthier than the non-vegetarians’. The argument is not sustainable. Meat and fish are easier to digest than many vegetables. The ideal balanced diet is a mixture of meat and fish, with vegetables like beans, tomatoes, peas or potatoes. Meat-eaters are sturdier than vegetarians. They manage to live longer. Vegetarians often say that the strongest creature in the animal kingdom is not the lion, the designated king of beasts, and a notorious non-vegetarian, but the elephant, which lives on foliage. Perhaps a fitting answer to this asinine argument would be that even the mighty pachyderm is tamed to obey a mahout, who sits on its head and prods it with a stick to make it kneel, stand up or raise its trunk. But no man has yet sat on a lion and ordered it to do his bidding. If he tried, he would soon find himself in the lion’s belly. Hocus pocus On February 16, 1980 there was a total solar eclipse over Bombay. The Bhattys happened to be living in one of the suburbs. As the day darkened into night, Margaret Bhatty went out to do her daily shopping. Her neighbours shouted at her from their windows, warning her of the dire consequences that might follow her venturing out while the eclipse was on. They asked her to stay indoors and observe a fast, as they were doing. Margaret ignored their warnings but could not buy anything, as all shops were closed. Life in the metroplis had come to a standstill. But she ate a hearty meal. Nothing happened to her. Solar eclipses occur at different places all over the globe at different times of the year. People usually treat them as an astronomic phenomenon without fussing about them. Only Indians succumb to irrational superstitions. Margaret Bhatty now lives in a village close to Nagpur. She has made it her life’s mission to debunk belief in the occult and so-called miracles. She has analysed them scientifically and put her findings together in a slender book, Fraud, Fakery and Flim-flam. How Sai Baba produces bibhuti or sacred ash by simply rubbing his fingers is explained. There is an acid preparation; if put on the fingers and rubbed, it produces ash. I have seen magicians do it. How did Maharishi Mahesh Yogi levitate himself or fly in the air? There was a hidden prop under his bottom that escaped the eyes and cameras. He claimed to be able to fly but actually flew by plane like everybody else. When a Christian priest claimed he could light candles by prayer and a sadhu claimed that he could kindle a fire by meditating on a heap of firewood, she analysed the chemicals in the candles and the firewood and found them combustible. Bhatty has also helped to de-publicize vaastu. Every modern architect takes care of natural phenomenon, like the movements of the sun and winds, while designing a building. But there is nothing scientific about vaastu. Some years ago, the entrance to the BJP headquarters in Delhi was changed as per advice tendered by a vaastu pandit. The party lost in the next election. Bhatty’s book is not as well-produced or marketed as it should be but it deserves the attention of our superstition-ridden masses. |
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Vegetarianism and story of a rationalist
Saturday, April 12, 2008
"Door" to Dooars - 2008 - Masai Maara of West Bengal
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Islam - different angle - Khushwant Singh
Prejudice is like poison. Unless purged out of one’s mind in early stages, it can spread like cancer and make one incapable of differentiating between right and wrong. Of the many kinds of prejudice, the worst is to believe that one’s own religion is superior to all others, which may be tolerated but never taken seriously or accepted as equally valid as one’s own.
The most misunderstood of the major religions today is Islam, which, after Christianity, is the second most widely practised religion in the world. It also gains more converts than any of the other religions. Prejudice against Islam was spread in Christendom from the time Muslims gained dominance in the Middle East, North Africa and Spain. Christian crusaders failed in their missions to crush Islam in its homeland but continued to vilify its founder, Mohammed. The emergence of militant Islamic groups like al-Qaida and taliban gave them reasons to do so. The attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001 provided fresh ammunition to vilifiers of Islam. Since then Islamophobia has been deliberately spread throughout the non-Muslim world. The two principle contentions of the anti-Islamists are that Islam was spread by the sword and that its founder-prophet was not the paragon of virtue that Muslims make him out to be.
It can be proved by historical evidence that Islam was not forced upon the people; it was readily accepted by millions because it offered them new values, principally equality of mankind and rights to women that were unheard of in those times. In countries like Indonesia and Malayasia, Islam was not forced on the population by Muslim invaders but by Muslim missionaries.
Muslims are extremely sensitive to criticism of their Prophet. A popular adage in Persian is: ba khuda diwaana basho, ba Mohammed hoshiar! — “say what you like about God, but beware of what you say about Mohammed.” They regard him as the most perfect man who ever trod upon the earth, a successor of Adam, Moses, Noah, Abraham and Christ. He was the last of the prophets.
If you honestly want to know how Muslims see him, you ought to take a good look at his life and teachings, which he claimed had been revealed to him by God. It would be as wrong to judge him by the doings of al-Qaida and taliban or by the fatwas periodically pronounced by Ayatollahs and half-baked mullahs.
You do not judge Hinduism of the Vedas and Upanishads by the doings of Hindus who, in the name of Hindutva, destroy mosques, murder missionaries and nuns, vandalize libraries and works of art. You do not judge the teachings of the Sikh gurus by the utterances of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and by the murder of innocents by his hooligans.
Likewise, judge Mohammed by what he taught and stood for and not by what his so-called followers do in his name.
Mohammed was born in Mecca in 570 AD. He lost both his parents while still a child and was brought up by his grandfather and uncle. He managed the business of a widow, whom he later married. She bore him six children. He took no other wife until she died. He was 40 years old when he started having revelations while in trance. They proclaimed Mohammed as the new messiah. Such revelation kept coming at random, sometimes dealing with problems at hand, at other times with matters spiritual. They were memorized or written down by his admirers and became the Quran, which means recitation. It should be kept in mind that Mohammed was not preaching ideas of his own but only reiterating most of what was already in the Judaic creed. Allah was the Arabic name for God before him.
Similarly, Islam was ‘surrender’ and salman was ‘peace’. Mecca was the main market city of the Bedouin tribes. They gathered at the Kaaba, the huge courtyard with the black meteorite embedded in it during two pilgrimages — the bigger Haj and the lesser Umrah. Mohammed accepted Judaic traditions regarding food which is halaal (lawful) or haraam (forbidden, such as pig meat), names of the five daily prayers and circumcision of male children.
Mohammed only asserted the oneness of God that did not accept of any equal such as the stone goddesses worshiped by different tribes. Mohammed never forced people to accept his faith and indeed quoted Allah’s message of freedom of faith. “There must be no coercion in matters of faith — la ikra f’il deen.” Further: “And if God had so willed, He would have made you all one single command; but He willed otherwise in order to test you by means of what He has vouchsafed unto you. Vie, then with one another in doing good works!”
As might have been expected, Mohammed’s mission roused fierce hostility. Many attempts were made to assassinate him but he had miraculously escaped. Ultimately, in 622 AD he was advised to flee from Mecca to Medina. This is know as the Hijra(emigration) and recognized as the beginning of the Muslim calendar. Meccans made a few attempts to capture Medina but were ousted. Muslim armies led by Mohammed triumphed and returned to Mecca as conquerors. By the time Mohammed died in Medina in 632 AD, the Arabian peninsula was united as a confederacy of different tribes under the banner of Islam.
Most of the ill-founded criticism against Mohammed is directed towards the number of women he married after the death of his first wife, Khadijah. This has to be seen in the perspective of Arabian society of the time. Tribes lived by warring against each other and looting caravans. There were heavy casualties of men, creating serious gender imbalance. Widows and orphans of men killed had to be provided with homes and sustenance. Otherwise they took to prostitution or begging. So they were given protection by being taken in marriages. Also, matrimonial alliances were a good way of creating bonds between different tribes. Mohammed did nothing not acceptable to his people.
He went further: he was the first teacher to proclaim that the best union was a monogamous marriage and fixed the maximum limit to four, provided a man could keep all of his wives equally happy — which was most unlikely. The pertinent verse in the Quran reads: “And if you have reason to fear you might not act equitably towards orphans, then marry from among other women who are lawful to you, even two or three or four; but if you have reason to fear you might not be able to treat them with equal fairness, then only one.” Bear in mind that at that time polygamy was the norm in patriarchal societies all over the world.
To make a beginning in clearing your mind of anti-Muslim prejudices, I suggest you read Karen Armstrong’s Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time. Armstrong is the leading writer on comparative religions today. She is not Muslim.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Vedic Astrology
| KHUSHWANT SINGH |
J. N. Srivastava of Ghaziabad has collected data on predictions made by our leading astrologers which turned out to be false. Some of it makes amusing reading. In January 2004, it was predicted that Aishwarya Rai would marry Vivek Oberoi by the end of the year. She is still unmarried and is engaged to marry, not Oberoi but Abhishek Bachchan, some time this year. When Karisma Kapoor married, Bejan Daruwala predicted she would make an ideal wife: “She got Raja Hindustani and he got Biwi Number One,” he pronounced. A month later, Karisma hauled up her husband to court and gave him a tongue-lashing before the judge. Both are back in happy matrimony. But you have to give it to Daruwala, he lends religious sanction to his predictions by chanting “Sri Ganeshaya Namah”. He is a Parsi. Not to be forgotten are prophecies made about the end of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government before the last elections. It was predicted it would be back in power before the end of 2004. There are as yet no signs of it doing so. Such false prophecies are on the menus of star-gazers’ restaurants every day, but have failed to fill the bellies of our multitudes which continue to hunger for them. Their champion, Murli Manohar Joshi, remains unfazed. When asked, after losing in the election, if he still believed in astrology, he replied emphatically, “Certainly” (pronounced, in Almora accent, ‘suttonly’). The same is true of T.N. Seshan, ex-chief of the Election Commission who failed in his bid to become Rashtrapati, but remains unshaken in his belief in the divine messages sent down by the stars. So all kinds of irrationality thrives: changes of spellings of names (Jayalalitha to Jayalalithaa, Shobha Dé to Shobhaa Dé) altering ingresses to homes and offices and turning around furniture according to vaastu. Unreason manifests itself in numerous ways. Even reminding people that most of our great leaders — Dayanand Saraswati, Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru — disdained astrology as superstition makes no difference. When A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was to be sworn in as president and was asked to suggest an auspicious day, he replied in his gentle manner: “Days and nights are formed by rotation of the earth on its axis. So long as the earth rotates, each day and every moment is auspicious for filing nominations for the Supreme Commander of the Indian Army.” J.V. Narliker, equally eminent Indian scientist in the realm of astronomy, blasted astrological forecasts based on eclipse of the sun. He said, “Eclipses are mere shadows and don’t affect human life in any way. The grounds on which the original beliefs were based have long been debunked.” It might be worth remembering that on August 15, 2001, while M.M. Joshi was still lauding Vedic astrology and mathematics, 128 scientists signed a declaration in Delhi to the effect that “Vedic maths is neither Vedic nor Maths. As such it would be fraud on children to introduce it in their syllabus”. Has the kind of debunking made any difference to astrologers and people who have horoscopes cast on birth to guide them in choosing careers, life-partners or gauging their life-spans? Reason and logic cannot pierce the skulls of the thick-headed; they remain thick-headed to the last even if they manage to live longer than predicted in their horoscopes. |
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Layman's guide to Bauls and Baul Mela: Kenduli Mela 2007
It is held on the auscipicious occasion of birth anniversary of Poet Joydeb.
Here the largest numbers of Bauls, Fakirs come at different akhras(tent) to sing.
We took a train to go to Shantiniketan.From their WBTDC took us to their WBTDC Tourist lodge.
After lunch we went to the Mela site by the car of WBTDC. We stayed there upto 1230 pm. There is hardly anything to eat or drink. The crowd is not controlled and there is no police to control the traffic.I must say it is highly mis organized. It is not recommendable for that reason.
Ajay river just beside Kenduli mela
Ajay river just beside Kenduli mela
A saint blessing Mohua and also composing a song for her instantly.
A saint blessing Mohua
Mask seller in the mela
Beggar
A muslim(Fakir) and a Vaishnavite asking for alms side by side in the mela
Fakir in the mela
Kumor Parar gorur gari , bojhai kara kalshi hari, sange chale bhagne madan.....
Terracotta temple beside Ajay river
Bauls use a variety of indigenous musical instruments to embellish their compositions. The "ektara", a one-stringed drone instrument, is the common instrument of a Baul singer. It is the carved from gourd, and made of bamboo and goatskin. Other commonly used musical instrument include "dotara", a multi-stringed instrument ; "dugi", a small hand-held earthen drum; leather instruments like "dhol", "khol" ; chime tools like "ghungur", the bamboo flute etc.