Vimoh's Blog

How do I make sure people don’t accuse me of being biased? Simple! I dispel the notion that I am unbiased; because honestly, I am not.

Like many so-called educated people, I have deluded myself and those around me by imagining myself to be unbiased. But I want you to know, right now, that I am not. In fact, I am quite severely biased in favour of certain ideologies and violently opposed to some others.

I am against those who tell me how to lead my life. I don’t care about their culture and religion. Mine allows me go to pubs, drink, mingle with members of the opposite sex, and celebrate Valentine’s Day.

I am against those who support violence against women. No matter how ‘Indian’ or holy they claim their reasons to be.

I am also against violence as a way of protest. If you need to hurt people in order to have your voice heard, you don’t deserve any attention.

I am not proud of being an Indian or being a Hindu. I am however, very proud of India and Hinduism. Those who don’t understand the difference can either ask me or go do strange things to themselves.

There was a time, when I used to take the above things for granted. I assumed they constituted good sense and morality. Not any more. A line has been drawn and a side needs to be chosen. So here I am, making my stand.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. — A J Liebling

Dear NDTV and Barkha Dutt. Hope you are well, now that you have arm-twisted CKunte into submission.

Don’t get me wrong. You have as much right to sue people as I do. Especially when your reputations are at stake. But here are a few reasons why your approach may not be best suited to the present circumstances.

Following the terrorist attacks that happened in Mumbai on 26 November, 2008, many people took offence to the way Barkha Dutt reported the event. Her reporting was called “shoddy” and “irresponsible” (among other things).

Read the rest of this entry »

When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves. – Confucius

There is a story about a boy whose parents took him to the sage-poet Thiruvalluvar because he had too much of a weakness for sweets. They requested the sage to tell the boy not to eat so much sweetmeat. Thiruvalluvar sent the family away asking them to return in a fortnight.

When they did come back, the saint explained to the boy why he should ease up on the sweets and why too much sugar will turn out bad. The boy got the point. The parents didn’t. Why hadn’t he said the same thing the last time they were here?

Thiruvalluvar smiled and told them that he was a huge sweet-addict himself back then. He couldn’t have asked the boy to shun a habit he himself was guilty of nurturing.

Think about it.

I have fought rage and outrage like everyone else at many points in my life. But every single time, when the anger subsides, I realise I am turning into the object of my anger the moment I start hating him/her/it. No matter how righteous my anger or how deserving my cause.

I have not lived a clean life. In my time, I have been unreasonable, vindictive, deceptive and vicious. I have angered people and I have caused people pain.

The thing about such behaviour is that, it is inescapable. Knowingly or unknowingly, we can’t help rubbing others the wrong way. Even just by being yourself, you become a threat to many around you. Anger comes naturally, but it never solves anything. How then, does one go about keeping everyone happy?

Perhaps we are trying to solve the wrong problem.

I discovered the liberating feeling that comes with realising that I have no right to get angry at anyone. No right at all. Not because of what they did. Not because of what they are. And certainly not because of what they did to ME!

The moment realise I am myself capable of every evil that may ever confront me, the other person starts looking like an extension of my person — someone who I might have been, or someone who might have been me.

I realise that every wrong I see in the world around me, is a reflection of what is inside me. The world is only a mirror. It is easy to make faces at a mirror if I don’t like what it shows me. But if I really want to change what I see in the mirror — what I get from the world — I need to change myself.

In my home state of Orissa, in the last few weeks, Christians have been threatened, attacked, raped and murdered by people calling themselves Hindu. I want this to be an open letter to those murderers and criminals.

Let me get this straight. You are honourable members of the Hindu faith who feel violated by Christian intruders’ attempts to turn honest and god-fearing Hindus (such as yourself) to their faith. That’s it, right?

May I ask you which tenets of Hinduism ask you to maim, murder, and humiliate unarmed people in order to defend the faith you so claim to love? Where in all of those oft-quoted religious texts does violence against the unarmed find mention as one of your weapons?

Are you sure it is your religion that is making you do this? Are you sure you are not doing this because you are a gutless, illiterate, psychopathic criminal? Are you sure you are not doing this because you enjoy the killing and the raping? Or maybe you know all this and still choose to blame it on your religion. Religions don’t talk back, do they?

You decide to go do some manhunting. You find there is no way you can do all that and still have claim to residence in civilised society. So you rev up the rhetoric and call forth other criminals like yourself. You hide behind political organisations and religious bodies and do your killing conveniently. Anyone who opposes you automatically becomes a faithless traitor (or to use a more fashionable phrase, a ‘pseudo-secularist’).

Here comes another crucial part of your motivation. You just want to hurt. You are angry at a lot of things in your life. But not enough to fight. So you carefully choose people who can’t fight back. Going out and out criminal will cause you to go against the law. You don’t want that. Joining the army includes considerable risk to life and limb. So that is out of the question as well. Why not take it out on the helpless and the weak? If someone raises their voice, you can always play the ‘defender of faith‘ card, right?

That, right there, is your little game.

Tell you what… I am done with you. From what I have read, Hinduism is hard to define. We don’t worship one god, nor many. We don’t abhor violence, neither do we embrace it. But if it comes right down to the dirty matter of choosing sides, you can count me out of your little criminal club.

You and I are not the same. If you are a Hindu, I am not. I wish I could claim Hinduism as my own private little garden, but then I would have to breathe the same air as you scum. I would rather remain faithless then have anything to do with you.