Why we need to understand our origins and history before building artificial intelligence

According to ancient Sumerian tablets, a race of beings from another planet called Anunnaki descended on Earth in search of gold. Why they needed gold isn’t clear yet but they needed lots of gold. When the slaves they brought with them to mine for gold revolted, they extracted the genes of pre-human race of beings (Neanderthals, Homo Erectus) and combined with their own genes to create us. This is up for a lot of debate and in Genesis 1:26 in the Bible, God says “let us create them in our own image” where “let us” means there is no one God that created us. I am a believer in this story for two reasons:

1) Our natural tendency to look up when we pray which indicates the Gods we are worshiping came from above us

2) Unlike metals like iron, copper and aluminum, gold is useless to us. Then why take all the effort to mine it and why is it precious to us? Tons of gold have kept in a temple in India under the protection of the temple God for hundreds of years. This means gold is important to the Gods which is why it is precious to us.

Most importantly, the story is an indicator to us that we were created as biological robots to obey our creators. Why didn’t the Gods simply build mechanical robots for mining and why did they take all the effort to engage in genetic engineering to create us? Because they wanted us to think on our own and also have emotional intelligence. Why emotional intelligence? Because they wanted to control us emotionally and not mechanically. How? When we talk about Gods, we do not ask ourselves how did the concept of God and the fear of an unknown all knowing entity became embedded in us. We are in the 21st century and with so much of technological advances we are still under the control of Gods through various religions. There is nothing more advanced, complicated and powerful that can control us than the concept of God.

Do we have a similar controlling mechanism for the intelligent machines we are building? What would happen if AI grew to a point where it could think and act autonomously? The scene in The Matrix where Agent Smith tells Morpheus that human beings are the most dangerous virus on the planet has stuck with me. It is not only true that we do behave like viruses, if intelligence created by us becomes powerful enough to come to such a conclusion, what is shown in the Matrix and Terminator series will become real.

When I see all the excitement and euphoria over what AI can do all it tells me is how blatantly ignorant we are about ourselves and our past. 

The tale of 2 Indias

Yes, Vir Das was absolutely right. There are indeed two Indias.

I came across an article that describes how a star can get reduced into a planetary body. For this to happen, the star will have to come under the influence of a bigger star and a host of other conditions will have to be satisfied. It is written by an award-winning astrophysicist and will not be to everybody’s taste and comprehension. So why am I writing about a mundane article on astronomy here?

In Indian astrology, the Shani God is associated with Saturn and is supposedly the son of the Sun God (Surya Putra). The primary effect of Shani on people’s lives is to control their earthly desires, lead them to a more spiritual life and reduce their worldly needs. In ancient Rome, Saturnalia was a week-long festival celebrated to honour their agricultural God Saturn. So why was Saturn given so much significance and, more importantly, attributed to the Sun? This is where our understanding of ancient texts and beliefs improves as science and technology leaps forward and influences all fields of study. By connecting the above article with the ancient beliefs and significance of Saturn, it can be easily deduced that Saturn was a star and it got reduced to a planet when it came into the influence of the Sun.

So, where did these Gods come in the explanation of a celestial event? Any celestial event that can exert its influence on our planet can have great implications on the planet and on our lives. But describing celestial events to people and passing them on through generations would be impossible. What we need to understand here is there is written history and then there is pre-history. Pre-history is that time when there were no writing methods and events from the past were passed on as stories in the form of poems because it is easier for us to remember songs and poems, recite them and pass them on through the generations. For example, indigenous tribes in Africa and Australia still pass on stories from their distant past through songs. Valmiki was apparently the first one to record the story of Ramayana and Vyasa was the first one to record the story of Mahabharata in written forms. Great wars are mentioned in both the epics but weapons are described in the form of bows and arrows. Mahabharata even mentions mushroom cloud, which we understood only when we exploded the first atom bomb. All of this only means the first people who recorded in the written form only understood weapons as bows and arrows. The same is the case with Sun and Saturn. We will easily remember Gods and festivals, so every celestial event is associated with a God and a festival was attached to it. So for an easy explanation, all the astronomical details were stripped off and it is simply mentioned that Shani is the son of the Sun God.

This leads to even larger questions. What exactly is the churning of the ocean of milk as mentioned in ancient Indian texts? Is it a metaphor for the creation of the Milky Way or is it describing a certain process in which the Milky Way was created? This, in turn, leads to the biggest question of all. First, Brahma is born from the navel of Vishnu, who then proceeds to create the Universe. Again is this a metaphor or the process of creation of the Universe being described? No evidence of the people and events mentioned in the Ramayana and Mahabharata have been found yet, but the technological references in them are too good for the stories to be ignored as myths. In the Mahabharata, the charioteer of the blind king Dhritarashtra was given the ability to “see” the war from the confines of the palace itself and narrate it to the king. Experiments with remote viewing, which is using the ability of our mind to see far off things and events, went on in the U.S. for decades.

Though there are similarities in the descriptions of the Trinity of Gods and creation stories of the world and humans across all ancient civilizations, none of them matches the vivid descriptions mentioned in ancient Indian texts. The detailed technical designs of the vimanas, descriptions of highly advanced and destructive weapons and their after effects, natural treatment methods, what the ancient texts contain are probably keys to unlocking the knowledge of the Universe itself. Then what is holding us back from understanding them?

One, our knowledge about science, technology and our own abilities is still in its infancy. Why is it mentioned that those who wanted to do penance used to go to deep forests and mountain tops? For complete focus and concentration, yes, but why did they go to very specific places? Why did Shankaracharya walk all the way from his village in Kerala to the Himalayas more than 2000 years back? Why did he do penance at obscure places like at the Kodachadri mountain to which accessibility is difficult even now and where a Goddess apparently appeared before him? How did these Gods appear before those who sat in penance to invoke them? Scientists now know that there are wormholes in the Universe that open at certain points and can act as portals between extremely vast distances in the Universe, but they do not know how to keep them open long enough to travel through them. What if penance was done at places where wormholes could open through which Gods could travel and Sankaracharya was searching for such places to do penance?

The second and most important reason, blind belief. Indian society is conditioned not to ask questions, especially the question of why. The Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum has tons of gold inside it sitting idle. Why is it being kept and safeguarded? Ram travelled from north India all the way to south India and to Lanka. Did Ram write Ramayana? No. Did anyone travel with him and chronicle his journey to write in such great detail? No. If the weapons mentioned in the Mahabharata were indeed used at Kurukshetra, the place where the war was supposedly fought, most of the north Indian plains would probably still be uninhabitable because of nuclear radiation. Questions to ask are too many.

What Hindus in India are in possession of are ancient texts, the origins of which are indeterminate. The Vedas and Puranas are treasure troves of knowledge that we largely do not understand. The epics Ramayana and Mahabharata contain information about extremely advanced technology that we have just started make sense of with our technological advancements. After Christianity was integrated into Rome, the hundreds of Christian sects existing at that time got together to choose the gospels for the Bible with the sole intention of creating the holy book of Christianity. Similar is the case with Islam and Quran. Were any ancient Indian texts written with the objective of making them holy books of a religion? No. Indian kings such as Ashoka went abroad and spread India’s culture, not a religion, which is why a currency note of Indonesia, the largest Muslim populated country, has the image of Lord Ganesha. If India had a religion from ancient times, it would have had unified the people just like Christianity and Islam did. Foreign invaders would have had found it almost impossible to find a footing on Indian land. Instead, what they found was small and fragmented kingdoms squabbling with one another, which made their conquests of India so much easier. Moreover, Indians have willingly converted to other religions, which would not have happened if there was already an existing religion binding them together.

So yes, there are two Indias. One is unable to use the vast repository of knowledge at its disposal. The other is deep-rooted in the blind belief of a culture that is now being manipulated and used as a religion of 33 million Gods and the exploitation of society in the form of caste system based vote banks. Everything else we see in Indian society today is the manifestation of these two aspects.

Reasons for India’s COVID part deux – Failed governance, irrational people & complete ignorance about nature

The second wave of COVID-19 pandemic is upon India with greater ferocity. The pandemic started in late 2019, had spread from China to Europe and had just touched the shores of the USA. The Government of India was warned and was well aware of the impending crisis but it dithered in closing down international borders. The result was an epidemic like situation which resulted in harsh lockdown of people and millions suffered in the aftermath with unemployment and hunger.

This time around, the reason for the lockdown is even more ridiculous. Restrictions were eased, life seemed to be getting back to normal and the government even boasted that India had beaten back the virus without any supporting evidence. Festivals were allowed to be organized and state assembly elections were announced by the Election Commission. There was massive congregation for Kumbh Mela festival and huge election rallies in 5 states. It is peak summer across most of India at this time and people are vulnerable to falling sick. People tend to eat less food and sleep less when weather becomes hot which results in reduced immunity. So it is no surprise that COVID-19 has reared up its ugly head again.

Lockdowns are essentially government’s way of saying it is incapable of handling an escalating situation, abdicating responsibility and passing the buck on to the people. In simple terms, diseases are conflicts between higher order and lower order organisms in nature and along with the food chain is how nature keeps the population of every living being under control. Microorganisms are constantly mutating and evolving in nature. A disease of any magnitude could break out any time in nature. We have always been living on this ticking time bomb. Even if the government does not understand this, it is its responsibility to constantly improve and ramp up the health infrastructure of the country. In India, in most of the states, education and health are on the lowest side of the government’s priority list. So will the government be ever prepared for a pandemic? This governance failure is passed on to people and people are made to suffer. Locking people up inside their homes has the detrimental effect of lowering their immunity level and making them vulnerable to more diseases but the government is shortsighted enough to focus on winning a battle now and not being able to see a war coming in the future.

Kerala government is coming up with weird rules as it began a state wide lockdown yesterday. Unlike during the last year’s lockdown, when supermarkets were allowed to function, this time supermarkets have been closed down. Supermarkets are the best places to manage crowds and enforce social distancing. Now, people are rushing to the local stores where crowd control and social distancing is impossible. Opening supermarket stores will distribute the people among the supermarkets and local shops and reduce the possibility of transmission. In a nearby local store, two customers were apparently squabbling over one remaining packet of bread. I wrote to the district collector to consider opening supermarkets and received no response. Now, the government has come up with a website portal for generating e-pass for emergency travel within respective cities and towns. The instructions state that even for medical emergencies, people have to apply for the e-pass, wait for approval, then print it and carry with them. The irony here is, the government seems to be expecting everyone who has internet access at home to also own printers. Printing is usually done at local internet browsing centers which are all shut down now. Upon enquiry, I was told two things. 1) To call the local councilor and he/she will make all arrangements 2) A self written affidavit is enough for medical emergencies. They are expecting someone to sit and write an affidavit or call the councilor and wait when their father/mother/sibling needs emergency medical care. This is the level of incompetence and complete lack of rationale that plagues India’s civil administration.

The virulence of COVID-19 virus is of very small magnitude when compared to the virus that caused small pox. Millions have died because of small pox and my granny used to say that wailing could be heard from every other house because death was everywhere. When a foreign substance of any form enters our body, our immune system immediately mobilizes itself to fight and destroy it. Our body is a sophisticated system and our immune system is designed in such a way as to aggressively restore the balance of the body when something causes an imbalance. The first step is to isolate the foreign substance and prevent it from multiplying and spreading through the blood. Once this is done, the immune system will eliminate the foreign substance. In the case of COVID-19, the first step is failing so the immune system tries more aggressively to attack the virus. This is resulting in the immune system losing focus from other diseases people are suffering from and the subsequent complications led to most number of deaths in the first wave.

After the second wave has started, I am hearing about younger people and people without comorbidities getting
affected. There seems to be only one reason for this. Rapid urbanization has revamped people’s food habits and lifestyle completely which has alienated people even further from nature. Our immune system stays efficient only when it comes into contact with different types of microorganisms constantly, fights them and adapts itself to new diseases. This is all about information, so the greater information our immune system has about microorganisms the better it will be able to protect us. When a boxer quits fighting he invariably gains weight and becomes sluggish. The same happens with the immune system when we spend our entire time holed up in A/c rooms and travel in A/c vehicles. Then, when our junk food and “eating-at-whatever-time” lifestyle leads to diseases like cholesterol, diabetes, high BP and cardiac issues, the immune system is in no state to fight them. On top of all this, when a new virus attacks us for which the immune system needs time to fight, we can only expect the worse to happen to us.

The entire Indian system is at fault for this second wave. The Election Commission should not have gone ahead with the state assembly elections without a clear green signal from the medical fraternity. Even when the elections were declared, no political party showed any inclination to oppose the decision knowing fully well that election rallies are inevitable in the electoral process in India which always leads to massive uncontrolled crowds. Every political party is hungry to win elections and grab people’s power no matter what the situation is. Even the Supreme Court did not choose to step in, cancel the elections and order incumbent state governments to continue as caretaker governments. We, the people did not bother either. We knew what happened last year yet we chose to go for election rallies and on election day to vote in large numbers. Add to this, Indians are addicted to festivals and festivities. Even pandemics don’t matter because Gods will protect us.

The disaster the world is witnessing now has been in the making from the time of India’s independence from colonial rule. India is a democracy only by it’s Constitution. “Rule” is still the word used instead of “govern”, especially by the media. India is “ruled” by central & respective state governments. People’s representatives become people’s rulers & become inaccessible & unaccountable after they win elections. Corruption has become an incurable disease. Religions driven by blind belief take precedence over law & order. Orders passed by courts are imposed by civil administration which is controlled by the government so courts do not have the power to punish lapses in governance. So warnings of a second wave of the pandemic were conveniently ignored for conducting elections & festivals and the entire country is suffering again. Calls for Modi to resign are insensible because replacing leaders without reforming the system is not going to change anything.

Finally, what is incomprehensible is the fear of death among people which the media is amplifying and driving into everybody’s minds. Death is a natural conclusion to life in the entire universe. Our Sun will burn out and die in a few billion years. The Universe itself is supposed to come to an end. Millions of animals and human beings are dying every day because of a variety of reasons. Diseases are one way of population control in nature. This may not be to everybody’s taste but this is how nature works. I say this knowing fully well that my parents and I could also get infected with COVID-19. Nature follows the golden rule of “Survival of the fittest”. Only the strongest will survive in nature. We moved away from nature and forgot the golden rule and to keep ourselves healthy at all times. I hope this pandemic will be a reminder for everyone to return to nature, understand nature better and improve our lifestyle drastically. Our lives hinge on abiding and living by nature’s rules and flouting them will only lead to our own destruction.

Human destruction of nature – a historical and religious angle

I was on my regular morning walk yesterday looking to photograph anything interesting happening in nature when I suddenly heard a short whirring sound which sounded familiar. I looked around and saw a huge mounted electric transformer on the side. It was the deathly sound of a bird getting electrocuted. Because of overhead transmission cables and transformers kept in the open, house crows keep getting electrocuted all the time.

The crow that was with the one that died was in total shock and was making different kinds of sounds. Helplessly I stood there for a while wondering why do we create and construct things that we know will harm animals but do not care. So many different types of birds die every day because of our fishing nets alone. Why do we have scant respect for nature and animals?

When we look back at our history, we start from the point where we were afraid of everything we did not understand. We do not know when and why but we started worshipping natural elements like fire, rain, thunder and lightning and animals by creating Gods for them. The most probable reason is lack of scientific understanding of natural elements and the higher sensory abilities of animals. This is what became known as paganism. Though we started cultivation and raising livestock with time, in the name of worshipping all the Gods, we conserved and protected nature.

But pagan cultures developed deep flaws with time. To understand and relate to Gods, we started reducing Gods into human forms which resulted in idol worship. Emperors and Kings started calling themselves as Gods on Earth who could communicate with the Gods that were being worshipped. All of these eventually led to the evolution of monotheism, the concept of one God. Monotheism, introduced by Christianity became dominant with the advent of Islam and spread all over the world. As the world gradually moved away from pagan culture, it has had a significant impact on our perception of nature and wild animals.

Then, there is this critically important part in the Bible.

Genesis 1:26-28

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion (7287) over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it (3533): and have dominion (7287) over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

First of all, the first 5 days of creation as explained in the Bible does not have scientific merit. The Earth and everything we see about it has evolved over billions of years. Then, God says Let “us” make man in “our” image, after “our” likeness. So “God” apparently is made of blood, muscle and bone and looks just like us. Note the usage us and our. So it was not just one God. There were others who were equally powerful as the God and powerful enough to create us. This is a question mark over the concept of one God espoused by Christianity.

Then comes the most important part of giving us the control (dominion) over the planet and all other living beings. To have such control, we needed to possess far greater intelligence than all other living beings on Earth. We have to notice here that we have been given the ability to control only the living beings, not the ability to control nature and natural elements. This could be the reason why we cannot understand natural disasters in advance and cannot escape from them. To understand nature through animals may be the reason why we were given control over them. It may have been left to our interpretation and could be the decisive factor in determining the survival or extinction of our species. We cannot destroy nature and other living beings and survive on the planet. We were given intelligence so that we can understand this as we evolve. This is why by destroying nature and wild animals we are setting the premise for our own extinction.

While I do not intend to state that the Bible is the reason why we are destroying nature and killing off wild animals, the shift from pagan culture to monotheistic belief has definitely had it’s influence on how we see and treat nature. With the tremendous growth we have achieved in science and technology especially in the last few decades, we need to urgently start looking at nature through the lens of logic, commonsense and rationale and understand ancient texts from the scientific perspective.

The dilemma of feeding wild animals when we shouldn’t

So often, we come across messages explaining why we should not feed wild animals. I am not talking about animals in forests. All animals that live in nature are wild. We are even told not to feed animals in zoos. The primary culprits among animals who have the propensity to look for food from us are monkeys. Here are a few illustrations. The problem with these pictures is, they are used to generalize and create opinion against feeding all wild animals. In the case of monkeys, they are primates like us and we still have similarities with them in the food we eat. They have adapted to our food habits quickly. But why are House Crows, Red Whiskered Bulbuls, Red Vented Bulbuls, Greater Coucals, Asian Koels, Common Mynas, Rufous Treepies and Yellow-billed Babblers coming to my home to eat rice and chapathi (Indian bread) every day? They started coming looking for scraps and that’s how we started feeding them. Everybody who is interested in understanding life and its evolution should watch the English movie Lucy. Though it is a fantasy sci-fi movie, how single celled organisms became multicellular ones and went on to become complex beings has been wonderfully explained. When habitats are available and food is in abundance, animals procreate and try to increase their population. When habitats decrease and food becomes scarce, animals choose self preservation over procreation. This is how crocodiles and turtles seem to have survived when almost all other animals got wiped out after the asteroid strike 66 million years back. There are plenty of trees in the area where I stay which provides the birds with enough habitat to nest and reproduce. But animals don’t go away from their habitat area in search of food which is why they have evolved into eating different types of food within their habitat area. Now what if we do not feed animals in the wild? Our encroachment into nature continues unabated as our population keeps swelling. Earth comprises of 30% land mass and 70% water so we and all other land animals are jostling for space in the 30% area. Cutting down trees and destroying forests have two effects on animals. 1) Their habitat areas and food sources dwindle and consequently 2) competition for both increases, not just between animals of the same species but between different species. If this destruction is allowed to continue, most of the animals will be forced to go into self preservation mode. When we decide not to feed them, this can lead to their starvation and death. Extinction of animals do not have to happen by a cataclysmic event alone. Steady loss of habitat and food sources can create the same result over a period of time. Man-eating tigers do not walk for hundreds of kilometers from forests into villages and cities to feed on us. Tigers usually prefer to stay away from humans. We have encroached so much into forest land that our living area has overlapped with their habitat and older tigers are finding us easy kills. The consequences of our actions do not end here. Before religions took shape, we used to follow pagan culture and fundamental to it is nature worship. Hinduism is a pagan culture and not a religion which is why it has animal Gods and animals depicted as vehicles of Gods. Monkeys have adapted to living with us and can be seen in large numbers across cities in India. Because Hindus worship monkey God Hanuman, monkeys have no threat from people which has allowed them to procreate in large numbers. Similar is the case with the Karni Mata temple, also known as the Temple of Rats in Rajasthan where rats are revered and fed daily and thousands of rats live. Nature is a system that keeps the population of every being within it under control through food chain and diseases. With the knowledge of agriculture, rearing livestock and treatment of diseases, we exited from nature’s food chain a long time back. This is why our population has exploded. The population of monkeys in Indian cities and rats in the temple has similarly increased because their population is no longer controlled by nature’s food chain. But diseases still control population to a certain extent which is why in spite of all medical breakthroughs thousands of humans die every year. Same is the case with monkeys and rats. By adapting to our society and lifestyle, monkeys have also become vulnerable to dying in traffic accidents, just like stray cats and dogs. When animals have enough food in nature, they will have no interest in the food we eat. The only way to make this possible is by giving them back the land we have taken from them and let nature restore their habitats and food supply. Pictures and illustrations like the ones above are being wrongly used to demonstrate why we should not feed animals. They should be used to educate people on why nature is important, how badly we have destroyed nature and its ecosystem and highlight the need to control our population.

The greatest leveler

Of all the numerous consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is one that is the most significant yet the least discussed. Fear of death. Media has played a central role in unleashing it upon the masses. We simply have to look into our history to see the havoc epidemics like malaria, chicken pox, small pox, etc. had created on our population. 90% of the South American population was wiped out by the Spanish Inquisition and the diseases the Spaniards brought with them. I am yet to come across a case where a normal healthy person with no underlying medical conditions has died only because of COVID-19 infection. Anyways, this is not about what is happening around COVID-19. Why do we fear death? It is our companion from the time we became zygotes in our mothers’ womb. The womb has a sophisticated self check mechanism to see if the genetic combination of the zygote will affect the mother or any future offspring. From the time of the fusion of sperm and egg, every life that grows on to become an adult is a miracle. Case in point is the cat that delivered 3 kittens on the top of our house. While 2 are healthy and have grown quickly, 1 was genetically weak and ill. 4 days of trying to save it with medicines and feeding proved futile as it passed away eventually. This is how fragile life is. So the fact that our population is 7 billion and counting is undefinable. So what exactly is death? We know it is an inevitable door through which each one of us has to journey without exception. But we don’t know where it opens to and what lies on the other side. What makes it more complicated is, we cannot go through the door, see what’s on the other side and return. Its a one way trip. Its not like going to sleep, being in a dream and waking up back to our world. Its like leaving home and going to another place knowing that we cannot go back home, ever. So we ended up creating many “systems” on the other side, the most common one being the Gods and the heaven-hell system which has helped to reign in and control people’s lives. When we ponder over the intricacies of death, we are blissfully ignorant of the extraordinary complications of life. Most of us are living blissfully in the belief that there are no connections between what we do and what we experience and no two events in our lives are connected. Either we can choose to live in the assumption that the place we were born, the family and circumstances we were born into, the friends we make, are all coincidental and beyond our control or we can choose to believe that they are all connected and makes sense somewhere. Astrology says planets and stars exert their influence on our lives which has a direct bearing on the place and time we were born. Do their influences extend to animals as well? I believe it does because animals are more attuned to nature than we are. So why is death still a mystery? Super rich people are already trying to cheat death by doing whatever they can to increase their lifespan. The patriarch of the Rothschild family reportedly did 19 heart transplants before he eventually succumbed. If we knew what is the on the other side of the door, we will most probably stop caring on what is on our side. We would only want to escape death by any means. We have been searching for the fountain of youth and elixir of everlasting life for thousands of years. One aspect of Alchemy was to create this elixir. A larger and cosmic reason exists. Anything that starts has to come to a stop. This is not just a universal law but it is also the law that governs the universe itself. The Universe has a lifespan beyond which it will cease to exist. If the Universe has to die everything inside it will also have to die. The world of astronomy is hard at work trying to determine if a Universe existed before the one we are part of. A positive result could mean rebirth exists for all of us. Is there something called destiny in life? Was I destined to become an engineer? Taking up engineering was more of a circumstantial than a preferred choice at that time. I love mathematics but I am passionate about biology. Nevertheless, the choice was mine irrespective of the reasons. Our lives are littered with choices and the choices we make defines our way in life ahead. If we harm someone, it will come back to bite us. When we belittle and look down on people during their times of distress, we forget that tough times will catch up with each one of us. If destiny does exist, how I see it is if we are destined to go through bad times, then someone could end up harming us and then that person’s karma would decide his/her destiny in another life. This would keep the wheel of life and death rolling if the cycles of rebirth does exist. But the question here is, how relevant understanding death is. Once the outpouring of grief over the death of a loved one is over, our mind starts drifting back into the reality we exist in. The personal belongings of the deceased are all supposed to be destroyed or thrown away so that his/her intimate memories no longer remain part of our lives. We are rooted to the world we are part of and the world keeps moving ahead regardless of births and deaths. Death is not supposed to distract us from living out our lives. Knowing about death will fundamentally alter this state of our living. Death is the greatest leveler in the cosmos. No matter how rich we become, no matter how high we fly, after we die, all of us will be addressed as “body”. Death erases the name that was given to us at our birth. I realized death even makes it irrelevant that the deceased was related to the living when I heard a son addressing his father’s mortal remains as “body”. The one person I look up to here is former Indian President Dr. Abdul Kalam. A marquee rocket scientist, he served the country at the highest possible levels and passed away with a smile on his face. He wasn’t married and turned out that the only earthly possession he had was some pair of clothes and a box full of books. While billionaires take so much effort in the name of philanthropy, he did not even bother to earn and hold on to money in the first place. I may not see a wealthier person than him in my life. The man may have never thought about or feared death. He lived his life to the fullest and went when his time was up. Its a life worth aspiring for to emulate.

Hindu nationalists are ignorant about the emergence of Hinduism

 

A good friend of mine shared this article about preserving secularism and Hindu ethos in India. The author, Ashwin Sanghi shares some interesting thoughts and slices of history to substantiate his views but unfortunately in the name of preserving India’s secularism, he inadvertently exposes his Hindutva leanings and Islamophobia by invoking the Hindu ethos. As he winds his way back into history, he forgets to look at the word Hindu itself.

Hindu as a word manifests from the Persian and Greek references to the people of the land beyond the river Sindhu or Indus from the 1st Millenium BCE. Many centuries later did the word start getting associated with the people of India who were not Christians or Muslims. The indigenous Indian population practiced paganism, characterized by nature worship. The Indian pantheon of Gods can be divided into 3 broad categories: The Trinity (creator, preserver, destroyer), the Gods of natural elements (Air, Water, Fire, Rain, etc) and animals (elephant, serpent, birds, etc) which was later extended to include Gods for human aspects such as knowledge, medicine, architecture, etc and heroes of people who were made Gods by bestowing divinity upon them (Ram, Krishna, Ayyappa, etc).

We have always considered what we do not understand as supernatural and worshipped them. It is not clear when we started representing natural elements as Gods but what we do know is that ancient Indian texts are replete with stories about these Gods. Same goes with animals. Some animals are represented as Gods, such as Ganesh for elephant and Vasuki for serpent and most other Gods are shown to have animals as their means of transport. This is clearly in line with paganism and treating everything in nature with reverence which continues to this day, the best example of which is the Karni Mata temple or the Rat temple in Bikaner, Rajasthan. The difference between paganism and religions can be seen from the fact that Christians and Muslims are bound by many rules which makes them subservient to their religions whereas the same does not exist in Hinduism.

In none of ancient texts including the epics Ramayan and Mahabharata do we find the words Hindu or Hinduism. Even after the people of India started building temples to worship Gods in human form there was no reference to religion. Ram and Krishna, the most popular Hindu Gods did not create Hinduism. Incarnations changed and came to be described as son of God when referring to Christ but he did not create Christianity. The tenets Muhammad the messenger of God created with the Quran led to the creation of Islam. So as society evolved, incarnations became children and then the messengers of God. What is important here is that the word Hindu came a long time after the people who came to be called as Hindus started worshipping their Gods. This in turn creates the air of uncertainty over the religion called Hinduism and when it came into existence.

Then Mr. Sanghi talks about the invasion of India by kings and warlords from foreign lands and the destruction they caused to Hindu religion. So why was India invaded and occupied by different foreign rulers? As far back as the time when the Roman Empire was at its zenith, India was doing trade with them in spices and silk among other valuable items. India was known to the rest of the world as a rich and prosperous land. Columbus set sail in search of India for the same riches.

Long before India was invaded by the Greeks, Indian kings were fighting one another and had led to the rise and fall of many large kingdoms like the Mauryan empire and smaller kingdoms. When King Ashoka massacred the people of Kalinga, people on both sides of the war were indigenous Indians only and there were no Christians and Muslims at that time. So did he not have any qualms about killing people who shared his own beliefs? External invaders succeeded in vandalizing and establishing themselves on Indian soil because the hegemony of Indian kings and their empires had faded long back, India was fragmented into a large number of small kingdoms and most of them were squabbling with one another.

Mr. Sanghi’s angst is particularly against all the Muslim invaders who pillaged and looted India and warlords like Babar who founded the Mughal empire in India. Islam was already an established religion by then and Muslims were aggressively expanding their religion through population increase and conquests of land. This reveals some very important insights. Islam spread rapidly because Muslim kings fought wars with different kingdoms and tribes and forcefully converted them to Islam. But why didn’t erstwhile Indian kings did not do the same and aggressively expand Hinduism to foreign lands? Rather we see Indian traditions and ways of worship being spread to south east Asia by peaceful means. Would Mr. Sanghi have felt any different about Muslim invaders if Indian kings like Ashoka and Chandragupta Maurya had gone to war with kingdoms outside India in the name of spreading Hinduism during their times? The fact that they didn’t means only one thing. There was no religion called Hinduism at that time and paganism is never spread by violent means. Like Islam, there was no unifying factor to bring together all the Indian kingdoms and face Muslim invaders together. This was why it was easier to convert Indians into Christianity and Islam. If Indians had been unified by a religion at that time, India would have been more like present day China than the most diverse and vibrant country it is today.

Mr. Sanghi’s arguments about Muslim invaders and what they did in India is insensible and irrelevant in the present time. The world was in a state of flux and there were wars going on all over the known world at that time. Crusade wars were going on between Christians and Muslims for the control of Jerusalem the Holy land. When compared to Europe and Middle Eastern region, India was a far more peaceful place at that time. Indigenous tribes everywhere had their own pagan beliefs, but they were all desecrated and were forced to convert to Christianity and Islam. The same happened in India as well. Muslim kings destroying temples and building mosques over them did not just happen in India. This did not happen with Christianity because it spread by peaceful means in India and by the time colonials arrived, Christianity was already well established.

I believe Hinduism as a religion started taking shape from the time of Maratha king Shivaji in the 17th century who sought to unify Hindus to fight against the Mughal empire. Only from that time did the pride of being a Hindu start getting instilled among the indigenous Indian population. The hatred for Muslim kings started building from that time, especially after Mughal emperor Aurangazeb and Muslim king Tipu Sultan desecrated Hindu temples. Looking from this perspective, we can see that Hinduism is a far newer religion than even Islam. What has emerged from that time is the concept of Hindutva in the 20th century, to assert and establish Hinduism in similar ways as that of erstwhile Islam. This is why the felling of Babri Masjid and construction of Ram temple is of particular significance to Hindu nationalists.

Mr. Sanghi’s use of the term collective memory and use of Jews as an example to justify Hindu nationalism clearly highlights his ignorance about Jewish history. Jews were persecuted and chased away after Christianity was adopted as Rome’s primary religion by King Constantine. They got fragmented and settled all over the world, some even migrating all the way to India and their population dwindled and waned with time. The Jews we know today are descendants of the semi-nomadic Turkic people from the ancient Khazarian empire who converted to Judaism. Jews did not go to war with the Khazarians to establish Judaism on their land. Khazarians accepted Judaism willingly. This reinforces my earlier statement that paganism is never spread by violent means. The present day Jews have absolutely no collective memory of what happened to the Jews in Jerusalem. The collective memory they do have is of the Holocaust but in spite of being a powerful country today, Israel bears no animosity towards Germany. They know it simply makes no sense to continue bearing the grudge towards present day Germans for what their ancestors did.

The Indian ethos is thousands of years old but not the Hindu one. Mr. Sanghi fails completely in differentiating between the two because he is blinded in his zest to promote Islamophobia and Hindu nationalism. The Muslims in India today are descendants of indigenous Indians who converted to Islam centuries back. They have got nothing to do with what the Muslim invaders and kings did in the past. Hindu nationalists would do well to understand this simple fact when they abuse, lynch and kill people mercilessly in the name of Ram. Do they realize they are giving notoriety to Ram’s name and future generations could remember him with disgust?

How the Gods of yore are determining India’s future

 

Now that Hindu God Ram is in the limelight, it is a good time to take a look at the Gods on the planet. Texts from ancient civilizations all over the world are replete with references to Gods. There are some Gods who descended to Earth directly and some who came in different living forms as their incarnations. Gods have very powerful meaning and it is very interesting to compare between Gods of different civilizations.

First of all, there is a troika or Trinity of Gods in most of the ancient civilization. Anu, Enkil and Enlil in ancient Mesopotamia, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades in Greece and Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in India are a few examples. These are all powerful Gods and represents creation, preservation and destruction of life and the Universe itself. But the Trinity of Gods in different civilizations are not comparable to one another. For example, Hades is the God of the underworld but Shiva is the destroyer of life and the Universe.

The Indian pantheon of Gods are far better and meaningfully structured with clear delegations to their roles. In the Greek Trinity, Zeus controls thunder and lightning and Poseidon is the God of the oceans. But in the Indian Trinity, only Shiva has control over natural elements. He controls fire with which he destroys and then uses water from the river he controls in his hair bun to help create life again. Then there are a plethora of Gods for natural elements and other aspects such as knowledge, wealth, etc. Shiva controls water and fire but both have its own Gods.

So why so many Gods in India? It is human nature to give divinity to forces that are powerful and incomprehensible. When we didn’t understand the forces of nature, we created Gods out of all of them. Indra is the ruler of heaven and the God of rain and thunder, similar to Zeus in these aspects, but Zeus is the most powerful God in Greek texts. My granny used to say that the rumbling of thunder is the sound of giant vessels being rolled in heaven for cleaning after they were used to cook food for the Gods. When monkey king Hanuman, as a child, played a prank on Indra, he used a powerful weapon which made Hanuman unconscious and fall to Earth. Maruti, the God of wind and father of Hanuman, in his rage pulled away all the air on the planet and released it only after Hanuman became conscious again.

So what are Wind God, Fire God, Water God, etc? From the story of Hanuman, these could be human or non-human entities that have the ability to control the natural elements. Then there are planetary Gods. A Sun God could be an entity that can control the effect of Sun on our planet. Then where are these Gods? Krishna, when he left for the heavenly abode had apparently said that in the Kali Yug, only he can hear people’s prayers which means the Gods do not have access to our planet during the time of Kali Yug. Then there are animal Gods, like Hanuman the monkey God, Ganesh the elephant God, Vasuki the serpent God, etc. Also, most of the Hindu Gods have animals as their vehicles.

Until the Gods are found and all of these are proved, I will go with a more rational interpretation. Every natural element is important to the existence of our planet. Every form of life is important for the sustenance of nature. The electromagnetic fields of celestial bodies in the solar system exert their influences on our planet and on our lives so this also needs to be understood. It is impossible to make each one of us understand the science behind nature and the cosmos and create respect for them in us, so the best and easy way is to represent them with Gods.

Then there are Gods like Ram and Krishna. Fierce warriors, virtuous kings and extremely popular among their people. Through time, hero worship turned into bestowing divinity upon them and treating them as Gods. Among the Trinity, Brahma the creator God is not worshipped by Hindus. Divinity is given to heroes by associating them with either Vishnu or Shiva. Ganesh the elephant God is considered to be the son of Shiva and there is a story woven around it. The best example of how heroes become Gods is the story of Ayyappa.

During the churning of the ocean of milk (a metaphorical story for the creation of the Milky Way), demons get possession of the pot of elixir that materializes out from the ocean. To steal it from them for the Gods, Vishnu disguises himself as Mohini, a celestial beauty and enamours the demons. The plot ended there but was later extended to include the part where Shiva gets infatuated by Mohini and a child is born to them who becomes Ayyappa. He was supposedly a Robin Hood styled hero in a tribal belt whose stature grew with time and eventually became a God when he was associated with Vishnu and Shiva. This is how the Hindu pantheon of Gods grew to 33 million.

For the longest time, Hindus chose to look at nature and the Universe through the lens of divinity. But India has embraced cultures from all over the world through thousands of years. Hindus can worship cows in the name of the mythical cow Kamadhenu but they cannot enforce this on say Christians who go by the Bible which says man was created to rule over the lands, seas and all other living beings. The rise of Hindu nationalism in India is ironical. On one side, the nationalists want to take Indian society back to the time when every aspect of life was determined in the name of Gods and on the other side they are enamored by western culture, aspire to live in western countries, teach their children in western universities and avail the best benefits the western society can offer.

I am a Hindu and I grew up going to temples and listening to stories about Gods. I also learned science and it became difficult after some time to see natural elements from the perspectives of science and divinity simultaneously. I have never needed to remember a God to respect something in nature. I am completely crazy about elephants but that love has got nothing to do with the elephant God Ganesh. I look up to Ram and Krishna for the qualities they possessed and aspire to become strong and wise as they have been described. Praying to them should be to inculcate the qualities they had in us. Building temples in their name, begging before their idols for worldly pleasures, using abusive language as a ruse to protect them and chanting their name when assaulting, lynching and murdering others amounts to insulting them and giving them notoriety.

Ram will be appalled that he will be remembered with disgust by future generations.

Ram temple on New York billboard and what lies in it’s underbelly

 

So the model of the temple that is going to be built at Ayodhya in the honor of Hindu God Ram is going to be shown on the iconic Times Square billboard in New York on August 5. Ram is going global. How much does the world know about Ram? More important is the question why specifically Ram when there are 33 million Gods in India. Let me try to fill in some information here. Why me? Because I was a district level prize winner of a quiz competition based on Ramayan, the epic that narrates the story of Ram when I was in high school.

According to what Hindus believe, Ram was the most honest and illustrious King there ever was. He willfully abdicates his rightful inheritance to the throne of his kingdom for his younger step brother at the insistence of his step mother and goes on exile for 14 years into the forest as per his father’s wish, searches relentlessly for the most powerful demonic king who kidnaps his wife, slays him and returns victoriously back to his home with his wife. He was the most ideal son, brother, husband, warrior and king everyone aspired to have.

But why Ram? As a comparison, Krishna is a far more popular warrior king than Ram. Colorful personality, as mighty a warrior as Ram and probably more astute and resourceful than Ram. Both fought and slayed demons and demon kings and ruled their respective kingdoms wisely. Then why Ram and not Krishna?

When Ram was banished to the forest for 14 years, his wife Sita was not explicitly told to accompany him. But she goes, nevertheless, as his dutiful wife. Ram’s brother Lakshman who accompanied him into exile chopped off the breasts and nose of a demoness who tried to seduce him. After rescuing Sita from the demon king Ravan who kidnapped her, Ram asked her to walk through fire to prove her “purity” for him. A woman by the name of Ahalya who was cursed to become a stone regains her form when Ram puts his foot on her.

Sita wasn’t banished with Ram into exile but being his “dutiful” wife, she had no choice. Lakshman disfigured the demoness because she expressed her sexual desire for him. Even as a prisoner, Sita had lived in the house of another man so by walking through fire, she had to prove that she had not become physically or emotionally connected to Ravan. Ahalya’s curse got redeemed when a virtuous man touched her with his feet. What do these tell us?

In a single word, patriarchy. Glorification of the male through subjugation of the female. The extreme form of it was the custom of sati, where women were forced to jump into the funeral pyre of their husbands. A wife may do it as an act of love for her husband but being forced to do as a societal custom is another thing just like Sita had no choice but to accompany Ram into the forest. A woman expressing her sexual desire is blasphemy and had to be punished accordingly and immediately.

This form of patriarchy is what the proponents of Hindutva want to reimpose on Hindu society. This is why they have little to no tolerance for free thinking women. This is why they want Hindu women to cover themselves completely when stepping out just like how it is required to wear burqa in Islam. Free thinking women were considered as witches and burnt alive on stakes by the Vatican in the Dark Ages. Lilith and not Eve was apparently the first woman created by God but she turned out to be a free thinking open minded woman. So in Judaism, she was demonized and has been described as the first demoness on Earth. No religion is different when it comes to persecution of women. What is different with Hinduism is that Hindus worship Goddesses in temples on one side and abuse the women in their houses in every possible way on the other.

There are supposedly 300 versions of Ramayan in existence. The one Hindus follow in India was written clearly to glorify male virtuosity and keep women under the hegemony of men, both of which are exemplified clearly in the story of Ahalya where she had to be touched by Ram’s feet to become a woman again. ‪This version of Ramayan was written either for a patriarchal society prevalent at the time of it’s writing or to create a patriarchal society that would prevail through time in the name of Ram.‬

Building a temple in Ram’s name is a symbolic act for the conversion of Hindu society back into its patriarchal form. A temple in Ayodhya does not prove that the place was where Ram’s city used to exist. If I name my house as Ayodhya, it doesn’t mean Ram was born in my house. His city was supposedly the greatest during his time but no ruins of a city has been dug out from Ayodhya yet which means no ancient city ever existed at Ayodhya. Even if the ruins of an ancient city is found, how would we know it was indeed the city of Ram?

Ram was a mighty warrior and an embodiment of virtuosity whom we can look up to but why worship him? Because he is said to be the incarnation of Vishnu, the second of the Hindu Trinity of Gods. It could be possible because if we are intelligent beings doing space travel there could also be beings in the Universe who can travel and take the form of any being on any planet. But that’s not the reason why Ram and Krishna are revered. They both had the ability to connect with Shiva and get his blessings.

In the Trinity of Hindu Gods, Shiva is the one who destroys the Universe and everything within it. But he destroys in such a way that life can be started again. This is why he is depicted with a third eye that spews fire when it opens and holding the river Ganga in his hair bun. Fire is the only natural element that can destroy without polluting itself. Reminiscent of the recent bush fire in Australia, rain after fire is what restarts life. Shiva is a metaphor for this phenomenon. Someone in control of two natural elements and with the ability to destroy and restart life has to be the most powerful being in the Universe. Prayers of mere mortals will never reach such a mighty one. Ram and Krishna are conduits for Hindus to pray to Shiva, for better times in our lives after the bad ones.

I am not a non-believer. Ram and Krishna most probably did exist because there can be no smoke without fire. My problem is with how their stories and lives have been twisted and mangled by some among us through time to impose their rules on the rest of us. There are Gods in all ancient civilizations. But present day Greeks do not worship Zeus and build temples for him. Present day Scandinavians do not worship Odin and Thor and build temples for them. Then why are Hindus possessed with reclaiming the supposed lost glory of Ram’s time by building a temple for him? Why chant in Ram’s and not in Krishna’s name? Proponents of Hindutva will never be able to answer. This is why Hindutva is not Hinduism.

What I am curious about is, in the Ramayan, Ram is mentioned as someone whose hands extends beyond his knees. Do the Hindutva ideologists have any clue about this? Will they build Ram’s idol in his original representation or as a human?

Time to dumb down our collective intelligence and conscience and witness the building of a temple while a large population of Hindus suffer in poverty and terrible living conditions.

How patriarchy has played a far greater role than Islamophobia in the rise of Hindu nationalism

The rise of Hindu nationalism, better known as Hindutva in India is no accident. Though resentment towards Muslims is being perceived as the fundamental reason for it’s current status, patriarchy has played the underlying role with far greater significance.

Indian society’s evolution after it’s independence from British rule can be traced mostly through the evolution of it’s film industry, mainly Bollywood. Through the 1940’s and 50’s, a virtuous male and female protagonist was always the flavour of the movies which would be complemented by the songs and their lyrics. Of course there would be other characters who would either be virtuous or villainous and the distinction would be very clear from the beginning of the movies. Into the 60’s and experiments with male protagonists having grey shades began. Enter the 70’s and film makers started portraying both male and female protagonists with grey shades. It was the time of hip hop and gypsy culture and both reflected on the stories of the movies. But the virtuous female continued to exist, the most enduring one being the roles essayed by the actress Vidya Sinha. Then through the 80’s and 90’s we see women protagonists becoming more assertive in their personality and character which then started reflecting on their appearance and attire. Now we see bold women protagonists openly expressing their sexuality and even murdering their husbands for his millions.

My dad was raised up in Kolkata where grandpa worked for about 40 years. He used to have the projector and screen to show movies and he used to get movies on reels for rent. I was born in the 70’s and grew up listening to grandma talking incessantly about the movies from the 50’s and 60’s especially when songs from those movies used to appear on TV. Now I realize that the movies she talked about the most were from the 50’s and early 60’s and her interest in movies had started decreasing from the later half of the 60’s. She had hardly watched movies from the 70’s and used to selectively watch Hindi movies on TV. What is eye opening is that this coincides with the waning of virtuosity in the male and female protagonists. She used to openly display her dislike for characters with negative shades in every movie she used to watch.

One important reason for the rise of Hindu nationalism is for the restoration of this patriarchy on Hindu society. After the liberalization of Indian economy in 1991, the country has literally been invaded by western culture and lifestyle. I had never heard about Valentine’s day throughout my academic years from school to college but it has become like a festival in India now. Girls and women openly expressing their love and sexuality in a society where the virtuous female protagonist from the movies of the 50’s and 60’s committing suicide after being raped by the villain was considered appropriate to redeem herself was always bound to ignite patriarchal angst. When the liberal part of Indian society cry hoarse every year on Valentine’s day when young dating couples are caught and chased away by Hindu nationalists, they do not see how deep rooted patriarchy is in Indian society. Many of them might even be adoring male protagonists in movies bashing up and butchering villains who dared to violate the modesty of the female protagonists. This is reflected on how people literally worship the actors who play the virtuous heroes and have even built temples with their idols. Patriarchal mindset has what made Hindutva leaders denounce western attire for women and make horrific comments like women who expose their skin in public deserves to get raped.

These are the reasons why Hindu nationalists are using the premise of Ram to assert their dominance. The king from the epic Ramayan whom Hindus worship as God is considered as the epitome of virtuosity. The ever obedient son who abdicated the throne and accepted to live in the forest for 14 years to fulfill the wish of his step mother, the hero who crossed the ocean to kill a demonic king and rescue his wife from his clutches and the husband who demanded that his wife walk through fire to prove her “purity” for him. Ramayan was written and rewritten time and again to maintain the stranglehold of patriarchy on Hindu society. If hatred for Muslims was the primary or sole reason, Krishna was a better candidate than Ram because based on the sheer number of demons Krishna had apparently slayed, demonizing Islam and invoking Krishna would have had been their go-to strategy. But according to the four ages or Yugas Hindus follow, Krishna lived in a time that was far less virtuous than Ram so obviously patriarchal rules weren’t so stringent during Krishna’s time.

Contrast this with the story of Iliad in Greek culture. A similar story line as that of Ramayan but with telltale differences. The female protagonist chooses to leave an abusive husband and king and go with the prince from another kingdom whom she falls in love with. The king uses his wife’s infidelity as the excuse to wage war with that kingdom and destroy it. All characters in the story have virtuosity but also have shades from grey to dark. Iliad was written and fits perfectly with the contemporary times but an openly abusive male protagonist and an overly assertive female protagonist are like the Antichrist in the world patriarchy.

Simply put, Indian society is in the throes of the conflict between the ideologies of Ramayan and Iliad now. Though the world is seeing the venom of Islamophobia being spread across India, the hatred for Muslims is being used to create the illusion of a common enemy to unite all Hindus under one umbrella so that archaic patriarchal rules can be reinforced on Hindu society. It is not without reason that Ramayan was adapted as a television series back in the 90’s and the government has started rerunning the series recently on TV. Add to this, a prominent cabinet minister took a picture of him watching Ramayan at home and advertised it on social media with the caption “I am watching Ramayan. Are you?” The message is clearly for the older generations of Hindus to admonish the younger generation for their wayward western lifestyle and bring them on the track of patriarchy.

Where it gets dicey is in how patriarchy is being sold to the Hindu community. With patriarchy Islamophobia is attached along with the aura of leadership and invincibility created around Modi, the PM and leader of the Hindu nationalist party the BJP. There are also some of the upper caste communities trying to restore their hegemony on Hindu society and to achieve this objective everyone at the helm of organizations that propagate Hindutva ideology are upper caste Hindus. Patriarchy and upper caste hegemony are two sides of the same coin. This is a complete package deal. The ones who choose Modi have to accept patriarchy and endorse Islamophobia. Many Hindus might be supporting Hindutva for one aspect but they are left with no choice but support everything else. On the flip side, a Hindu who does not support patriarchy or Islamophobia or both gets flagged as a Modi hater irrespective of any or no political affiliations.

In this situation it is quite easy to win elections because narratives can be created on one or multiple aspects at a time that can also be interconnected. The animosity with Pakistan was well exploited to create Islamophobia during the 2019 general elections and they easily pocketed the votes of Hindus who support India’s stand against Pakistan politically and militarily and the votes of Hindus who hate Muslims in general. In the recent Delhi assembly elections, the AAP party had successfully negated the BJP’s attempt to invoke the name of Ram to get votes by countering with their own call to Hanuman, the monkey king and Ram’s sidekick in the Ramayan but BJP still managed to garner votes and win 8 seats by unleashing Islamophobia. There are no fences and fence sitters in Indian general elections now. The choice is between being a Modi supporter or a Modi hater.

How India exits the COVID-19 induced lock down is on focus now but looks like the lock down imposed by the patriarchal Hindutva juggernaut will maintain it’s stranglehold for some more time. It remains to be seen how these short term and long term lock downs are going to shape Indian society and her future.