Inner Metamorphosis

The popular cinema in India generally indulges in mindless plots punctuated by songs, action & comic sequences which cling to the narrative simply because they are put on.  Such movies, irrespective of their commercial outcome, lack the harmony and connection to forcefully create an impression among audience. K. Viswanath , a pan-Indian filmmaker whose (major) works incidentally happen to be in Telugu, is among the handful of Indian directors whose works (less than 25 films) created memorable characters that would stand the test of time. Weaving stories centred on a passionate protagonist against the larger context of preserving Indian arts and culture, Viswanath churned out masterpieces year after year until, much like Sankara Sastry’s story, his era was eclipsed by rise of “commercial cinema”. Born in generation that never saw his movies in theatres, my introduction to his movies was with explicit knowledge about his repute. But expectations notwithstanding, I w...

The recent  controversy  on Vande Mataram isn’t about whether singing/ respecting it alone makes one patriotic, as many pseudo-secularists would want us to believe. Of course, respect cannot be imposed. And in a free country, anybody can decline to sing a particular song - however revered - because of any number of reasons, reasonable or not. Briefly the opposition to Vande Mataram hinges on: The song worships the nation as Mother India and Goddess Durga. First, it goes against the basic Islamic tenet of Allah being the only worshipable entity. Second, it worships an idolized form of India, again against Islamic tenets where idolatry is strictly prohibited. Third, with its allusion to Hindu symbols more than explicit, it personifies Hindu cultural nationalism and doesn’t strike an emotive chord with Muslims. The poem appears in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel  Anandamath , which calls for Hindu nationalism to uproot...

The Karnataka elections episode offers valuable lessons for BJP. It’s a now or never for BJP to recover its confidence and give a spirited performance in 2014. Below-mentioned are few observations of mine & constructive criticism of BJP's approach written partly in open-letter format. Encourage Internal democracy The larger point of removing Yeddyurappa wasn’t whether it was a wise decision or not. The real question is more basic: WHO removed Yeddyurappa? Was it the decision taken by Karnataka BJP Unit or was it imposed by its Delhi High Command? From what we understand, the Delhi High Command unilaterally took the decision without consulting the state unit. Thus, it was its Delhi based leaders, some of whom cannot even win an election on their own, who decided to throw out a genuinely elected leader responsible for overthrowing decades-long Congress rule. BJP should understand that unlike Congress, where dynasty acts as binding glue for divisive forces, it ca...

The concept of Dharma is not adequately understood by Hindus themselves, not to mention others. Dharma is not a set of do’s and don’t’s or a simplistic evaluation of good and bad. It requires considerable intellectual exertion to even begin understanding Dharma, let alone mastering its use. Is Dharma Translatable? Few words of a language cannot be faithfully translated into another without injuring its meaning, context & spirit. English translations of Dharma are blurred and yield words like religion, sense of righteousness, discrimination between good and bad, morals and ethics or that which is lawful. All these fall short of fully grasping the essence of Dharma. Every language has an ecosystem of words, categories and grammar which allow a user to stitch words together to maximum effect such that meaning permeates the text without necessarily being explicitly explained at each point. Sanskrit words such dharma, karma, sloka, mantra, guru etc., now incorporated in Eng...

Julayi  (telugu movie) released last year had an interesting premise and fantastic dialogues (trademark Trivikram style), though its retains all the commercial elements that are a norm in mass-entertainers. As the plot unfolds we find that our intelligent hero doesn’t believe in hard work and in an effort to make a quick buck falls prey to a series of events eventually culminating in his sister’s kidnap and his father getting seriously injured. In the only emotional scene of the movie, the father recovering from his injuries in hospital explains the value of steady growth and hard work to his son. Few routine action sequences later “all ends well” and our hero, now wiser, is on the way to attend an interview for a salary he once considered a pittance. Many of us, thanks to success-stories bombarded on us by media, think that our achieving our goals is simply a matter of charting a strategy and executing it. If only it were that easy – events as they say has its own way of u...

What do communists, evangelican Christians and Islamists have in common? Notwithstanding the irreconcilable differences between themselves, which group invokes hatred among all the three? Yes, as the title indicates, it is Hindu-hatred or Hinduphobia. This is my attempt to understand the core ideas that inform the perspective of  evangelican right  and  academic left  and am thankful to  Rajiv Malhotra  whose work forms the basis that I build upon. Abrahamic perception of Hinduism To the more devout sections of Christians and Muslims the fact that India is still majorly populated by  heathens  despite their best "efforts" [a millennium of Islamic aggression and two centuries of Western imperialism ] is an eyesore. The differences between Judaism, Christianity and Islam is mostly about how the latest ideology supercedes the earlier ones, rendering the earlier belief obsolete because the newer one is more complete/ t...

I was introduced to Ayn Rand 's ideas during the last year of   my engineering by a close friend who seemed   floored by her philosophy. I read Capitalism – The Unknown Ideal and The New Intellectual – both smaller books explaining her philosophy which she named Objectivism . These two books kindled my interest to read her two main works of fiction with strong philosophical undercurrent : The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged later. The enduring influence of Rand's philosophy on college-goers can hardly be exaggerated. You get those " What on earth do you read " looks when you betray your ignorance about her. What's it about her that endears her to most college-goers (OK, among the serious type at college)? Throughout her works she advocates free-market capitalism, individualism, rationalism and decries every strand of socialist thinking. Beginning to write around 1930s, she hails the unbridled capitalism as practised in US in 19 th century and op...