Tuesday, June 30, 2009

CHURCH IN YOUR PANTS?

I am a practicing Christian. And I am proud of it. I am also a supporter of equal rights for gays and lesbians. And I am equally proud of it. And I don’t see a contradiction between the two.

First, nowhere in the Bible is there any record, no direct quote from Jesus Christ about homosexuality. Either condemning it or condoning it. Not one word. The other important thing to note is that nowhere in the Bible does it say anything about homosexuality as a sexual orientation. It only refers to certain homosexual acts.

And these acts/events/incidents are interpreted by different people at different points in history. But interpretations are always defined by time, place and societal context. And interpretations change with the afore-mentioned variables. Just a couple of quick examples. There are portions in the Bible which view slavery and slave trade as a legitimate activity. Not anymore. Again, in the Old Testament, deliberately withdrawing before ejaculation was equated to abortion. Not anymore. The church has evolved with the times. Things that were taboo are norm nowadays.

At the heart of this debate is viewing homosexuality as a sexual orientation. You can no more deplore homosexuality than you can condemn left-handedness. It’s not a disease. It’s just the way some people are. That’s it. Homosexual affection can be as selfless as heterosexual affection. Gay persons desire and need deep and lasting relationships, just like heterosexuals do. They too are human after all. The Bible only mentions “Love your neighbour as you love thyself.” It doesn’t mention the neighbour’s gender.

The Catholic Church in India has blindly taken this position because Vatican has decreed so. But that’s where the problem lies. In India, the gay rights debate has little to do with whether God is accepting of homosexuals or not. Whether it is anti-Christian or not. It’s about an archaic, asinine law called Section 377. A colonial relic which we should’ve junked along with the British. Instead it continues to discriminate against and criminalize millions of gay and lesbian men and women. Why? Are they the children of a lesser God? Were they not also created by the same God, who created you and me? By opposing homosexuality, the Church is also uncannily supporting this ridiculous law. It’s the only issue on which the Church, the Jamaat e Islami and the VHP are on the same side. Not the kind of company, the Church would like to keep.

This is an appeal to the various denominations in India to come clean on this issue. Supporting homosexuals in their fight for civil rights is equivalent to supporting Dalits in their fight against the caste system. Christianity is pillared on the fundamental of social justice. Everyone is equal in the eyes of God. At its root, this problem is about equality. It’s not as much about ‘them’, as it is about all of us.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

NAXALS ARE NOT TERRORISTS, MR. CHIDAMBARAM

The ability of governments to score self-goals is just phenomenal. The UPA government has done just that by banning Naxal group CPI (Maoist). By equating Naxals with terrorist outfits like Lashkar and HuJI, the government has once again missed the tree for the woods.

Before we get to anything else, let’s get this one simple fact straight. Naxalism is not born out of the flawed interpretation of some religion. Naxalism is born out of hunger. Out of poverty. Out of extreme social and economic deprivation. Naxlism breeds precisely because Mr. Chidambaram and his institutions cannot provide vast swathes of our poor people three square meals a day and a decent life. That’s why poor, famished people who have no other resort, take to the loud bang of a gun. To make a deaf government hear their voice.

WHAT ABOUT STATE SPONSORED TERROR?

It’s funny how when any poor man raises a gun against the state it’s termed as terrorism. But when the state itself raises a gun against its own people, it’s called patriotism. What about extra judicial killings? What about custodial deaths? Doesn’t this amount to terrorism as well? Transparency International says, every year around the world more people fall victim to state sponsored terrorism than to terrorism per se.

DISPROPORTIONATE USE OF FORCE

Just look at the number of troops fighting the naxals. There are 26 battalions, that’s 26,000 men of the Central Paramilitary Forces alone who are dedicated to fighting Naxals. In addition you now have the elite anti-naxal COBRA force which makes up for another 11,000. Apart from this, state governments themselves have special anti-naxal forces. The greyhounds in Andhra Pradesh number about 18,000. Jharkhand has a special force of about 14,000. In all, if you look at the entire red corridor, there are about half a million security men taking on a motley army of Maoists. And has anyone bothered to check the number of Maoists. Deprived men and women whom, the Prime Minister calls India’s enemy number one. All over the country, the cadres strength of the Maoists is just 10,500. If this is not an unequal war, then what is?

And after all this, the number of violent incidents attributed to Maoists has been reported only in 4% of the police stations across India.

WHY A BAN IS FUTILE

The Government had earlier banned the previous avatar of the CPI Maoists, the People’s War Group (PWG). Not that the Maoist movement simply withered away. It assumed a new name and a new form. Bans per se amount to squat. If the government is serious about tackling the Naxal menace, it has to review the way it perceives Naxalism. It’s not just a black and white law and order menace. It has to be treated as a socio-economic problem. These are our own people who are begging for their voices to be heard. But the question is: Is a Van Heusen clad Home Minister listening?

Monday, June 15, 2009

WHY INDIA MUST TALK TO PAKISTAN

There’s been a lot of chest-thumping over the last few weeks on why India should not talk to Pakistan. Pakistan has done nothing to dismantle the terror infrastructure operating from its soil. Pakistan has allowed the perpetrators of 26/11 like Hafiz Saeed to walk scot-free. And nothing has changed on the ground. All very pertinent arguments, but they don’t answer one basic, underlying question. What do we achieve by not talking? The answer is simple. Nothing.

Let’s get this straight. In the aftermath of 26/11 India had only two choices. Option one was to militarily attack Pakistan and destroy what we believe are terror training factories in PoK. Now, we don’t have either the diplomatic gall or the military guile to do that. More importantly such a response would have only led to a full-blown military conflict. It’s naïve to assume otherwise. Almost a sixth of the world going to war with each other with the prospect of nuclear missiles flying into Karachi or Kolkata isn’t exactly a rosy thought. The only other option is talks.

Students of international relations are always taught this. Military action is always over-estimated. And diplomacy is always under-estimated. Iraq and Afghanistan are two classic examples of how the use of force was grossly exaggerated. And public discourse also has some classic cases of how multi-national diplomacy can bring around some of the most devious nation states. A case in point is Libya.

In the eighties, Libya was a country, much like Pakistan, which used terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy. The most infamous being the Lockerbie bombing of 1988. 270 people were killed. 160 of them Americans. It was the deadliest terror strike on American nationals before 9/11. The masterminds were traced down to Libya. But the government headed by Muammar Gaddafi refused to hand them over. America didn’t thump its chest promising to bomb Libya out of the face of the planet.

Instead, what followed was a superb thesis on carrot-and-stick diplomacy. A calibrated process, which combined multi-lateral economic sanctions with the threat of military action. At the same time, every positive step taken by Libya was matched with concessions. Finally, after ten long years, Libya came around. Both the Libyan suspects were convicted by a court in the Hague. The case was finally settled in August 2003. Libya has now expelled terror groups, closed down terrorist camps and given up using terror as an instrument of foreign policy. It’s a slow process, but it has worked.

We can do the same with Pakistan. But for that we have to start talking. And more importantly we have to bring major world powers on the table for this. I know this is a tricky subject. India has always been wary of third-party intervention in our dispute with Pakistan. And I’m not suggesting that either. But never before has India been presented with such an opportunity. The Americans have more stake in Pakistan than ever before. More than India, it’s America which wants Pakistan to renounce terror against India so that it can fight the bigger war on the Western front, along the Afghan border. India should be able to leverage Obama on this. After all, Indo-US ties have never been as strong. India should be able to convince America to follow the same carrot and stick policy with Pakistan, which they did with Libya.


Which is why when Zardari and Manmohan Singh shake hands in Yekaterinburg, it could mark a new beginning. It’s upto us to make it count.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

THE SILENT REVOLUTION IN TAMIL CINEMA

I’d been wanting to write about this for a long time now. But things sort of galvanized over the weekend. I managed to catch two delightful and out of the box Tamil movies in a short trip to Chennai. Kungumapoovum Konchumpuravum and Pasanga are as different as chalk and cheese. But they have now come to symbolize what’s been going on in Tamil cinema for quite a few years now. They are products of this wonderful silent revolution which is sweeping Kollywood.

In Kungumapoovum, the hero is a debutant, Ramakrishnan. I’ve pasted his pic below. He’s the kind of guy you’d find as a helper in a tea-stall or as a cleaner in a mechanic shop. The kind of guy who’s not worth a second glance, leave alone casting him as a lead protagonist in a 70 mm film.


The look and feel of the average hero has undergone a radical change. The hero has been completely deglamourised. He doesn’t have to be as good-looking and fancy as a Kamal Haasan. He doesn’t even have to bash up the baddies and mouth powerful dialogues like a Rajinikanth. He can be the average, regular guy next door. No six-packs. No dimpled smiles. Just the regular kind of guy who wouldn’t bring the world to a screeching halt, if he went missing for a day.

So you have heroes like Ramakrishnan in Kungumapoovum, or the boys in Chennai 28 or even a Sasi Kumar in Subramaniapuram. None of them fit into your bracket as an average Tamil film hero. Even comedians like Vadivelu and Lawrence have today been cast as heroes. And their movies have done well. It takes some spinal chord to make a movie like Pulikesi and make it work at the box office.

The other defining feature of some of these movies is the caste factor. There’s been a de-Brahminification of cast, plot and setting. Stories like Paruthiveeran which are set in some quaint dusty village in Theni with lower caste lead protagonists have become runaway hits. Kungumapoovum was set in a tiny fishing hamlet in Tuticorin. Pasanga was set in a corporation school in Virachalai.

And the reason for this silent revolution is the phenomenal directorial talent from small towns which is taking Kollywood by storm. A Balaji Sakthivel, an Ameer, a Mysskin or even a Bala for that matter have now come to symbolize this phenomenon. The good thing is that they’re being backed by big banners and established players in the industry, unlike in Malayalam where new talent is seen as a nuisance.

This revolution, which can be called, the post-Rajini Kamal, post Mani Ratnam-Shankar phase in Tamil cinema started with Balaji Sakthivel’s watershed movie Kathal. It marked the beginning of a phase where to make a box-office success, you didn’t need big stars or big banners. All you needed was a solid script. Sine then, the range of stories we’ve seen in Kollywood is just mind-boggling. From the story of two eighties ruffians in Subramaniapuram to the beautiful Mozhi to even a film based on cricket like Chennai 28.

It’s also a tribute to the Tamil cinema audience, the ordinary folk who make or mar these movies. It’s a tribute that the viewer is willing to watch good cinema, shorn of stars, shorn of glamour as long as it tells him a story well. And that’s whole but simple point of any cinema. To tell a good story well. New age Tamil cinema has well and truly arrived.

Monday, June 1, 2009

THE RISE AND RISE OF MK STALIN

If life played out as per plan, Mu Ka Stalin, the second son of Muthuvel Karunanidhi, would’ve been Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu way back in 2001. After all, Stalin as Mayor of Chennai had changed the face and odour of the city. Stalin’s most famous contribution to the growth of Chennai was the privatization of garbage. A city that’s infamous for the stench of the Cooum, one fine day woke up to the beauties of privately collected garbage. Suddenly there were big green waste bins with ONYX written on them at every street corner. Young men and women dressed in bright yellow and green, wearing caps and gloves used to come home to collect garbage. Chennai hadn’t seen anything like this before. And voters were very enthused to vote positively for the DMK.

But Stalin made one small but costly mistake. He underestimated his opponent. In 2001, Jayaraman Jayalalithaa had more than 30 criminal cases against her. She had just finished a stint in jail and was disqualified by the Election Commission from contesting. No one, not even the staunchest of Amma loyalists gave her a chance. She did the one thing Stalin will never be able to. She spread out her palloo, went from constituency to constituency, and begged for people’s votes, in the name of her mentor Puratchi Thalaivar MGR. The image moved the melodramatic Tamil electorate. MGR’s chosen heir had become a woman wronged. A professional actor, Amma played victim to the hilt. When the votes were counted the AIADMK alliance won 196 out of 234 seats. Stalin was left waiting.

But his moment arrived last week. After an eight-year hitch Stalin was named Deputy CM. But it has been a long and hard grind for the DMK scion. Stalin shot to fame in 1976. He had just passed out after studying history at the Madras Presidency college, all of 23. Indira had put India was under emergency. His father’s government got dismissed. And Stalin found himself in jail under the notorious MISA. He spent a year confined in an 8 by 10 prison cell. Even today he shows you marks on his body and proudly proclaims them as the scars of democracy.

In 1984 he fought his first election from the Thousand Lights Assembly constituency. He lost by a narrow margin. Then there was a long hiatus in the wilderness. Stalin even tried his hand at acting. He acted in two serials, one for Doordarshan and the other for the family owned Sun TV. In fact, some people even today recognize him as Soorya, the lead actor in a serial by the same name.

But 1989 changed all that. The DMK rode on the anti-Rajiv storm across the country and won by a handsome margin. Stalin too won from Thousand Lights. He became a youth icon and got the title Ilaya Thalapathi or Young Lieutenant. It’s stuck with him ever since. Even today when he’s 56 years old.

As always the political purple patch was short lived. The DMK got decimated in the Rajiv Gandhi sympathy wave of 1991. Only 2 DMK MLAs won. And Stalin was not one of them. Five more years in the wilderness. Only to come back with a bang in 1996. Stalin got elected as the Mayor of Chennai defeating the formidable VS Chandralekha by well over four lakh votes. That’s when Stalin started being groomed as Karunanidhi’s heir-in-waiting. Apart from the garbage bins, Stalin also rechristened Chennai’s infamous public transport system. From PTC (Pallavan Transport Corporation) it became MTC (Metropolitan Transport Corporation). The city also saw the mushrooming of a dozen odd flyovers and mini-flyovers. But none of this was good enough for victory in 2001.

In the 2011 elections, Stalin will finally emerge out of the shadow of his legendary father. His opponent though will remain the same. The Regent of Poes Garden. He made the mistake of under-estimating her in 2001 and paid the price for it. Ten years later, the Young Lieutenant will hopefully be wiser.