No more abibliophobia: All thanks to technology

https://myvoice.opindia.com/2018/12/no-more-abibliophobia-all-thanks-to-technology/

I drop yet another book halfway unfinished with no intention of finishing it. I have got quite selective in what I read, dropping books in between when a book fails to interest and inspire me. 

A colleague recommended a book by the author  „Haruki Murakami“. I instantly placed an order on amazon; seems so convinient today. You want to read something; then order it and have it delivered within a week; or receive immediately on Kindle. This is the one I plan to read next.

There are millions of books to read, why waste time on the ones which do not engage oneself?

Once upon a time many years ago, I read everything I could get my hands on; there were not enough  non-academic books to read. I got jittery and nervous when I was on the verge of finishing a book. There were withdrawal symptoms. My biggest concern- what am I going to read next? I had to go hunting for the next book I would read. Usually it would be anything I could lay my hands on by means of exchange or borrowing. It meant eagerly waiting while my freinds finished reading before they would lend or exchange. Growing up in a rather small town my book woes were three-fold.

I went to a school which did not have a decent library substantially restricting my access to good literature. Books were precious and expensive. My school was wary of lending too many books for fear of them getting lost or not returned. Once I was given the responsibility of cleaning the school library. I spent two days doing that. I got sick from dust allergy, but those were two very happy days.

The town I lived in had but one good fiction book store. This served as more a hangout store for young people. The store stocked gift items, birthday cards, albums and such fancy stuff fas well. There was a British library in the town. I had no idea how to get membership or if I was even eligible for a membership. In general, memberships needed some beaurocratic strings to be pulled.

In those days, the Indian middle class did not spend on non-essentials. Books were not an essential commodity. Any non-academic book was definitely not an essential and could be lived without. Reading was considered a „good habit“. However,.any non-academic reading was not considered fruitful towards preparation for a stable career, therefore  was not encouraged.

These facts are also indicative of the fact that the town lacked a literary culture among the general populace. That meant that access to second hand books, which could be procured cheap, was also limited or practically non-existent.

The silver lining, if one can see that, to this situation was that the lifestyle of those times left little time for reading fiction. The distractions of today were still not known; but we lived in joint families giving us much less individual or alone time. The focus on academics was high as is today. Career options, for which reading non-academic books would help much, were not as popular as they are today.

My personal acceptance for e-books came after a prolonged struggle. It cannot compare to the feel of a book in hand- the design, layout, the jacket, the cover, forwrard, authors bio at the end. And all the paraphernalia which indicated that the moment you open a book, the world we live in fades into background and another alternate universe is created. It was hard to create the same universe with an e-book.

Technology has the most perceptible impact on my reading habits. Reading multiple books simultaneously, opposed to one read at a time as was my habit, has become a norm for me. It used to be quite often the case that I had certain titles in mind, but did not have the means logistically (and otherwise) to procure them conviniently. This situation certainly has altered. Notwithstanding the negatives and drawbacks of ebooks, the comfort and convinience it has brought to me is enormous.

I possibly belong to the last of the generation of Indians who have seen and experienced the comparatively claustrophobic pre-internet days. My kindle refreshed and „Murakami“ downloaded and waiting for me, those days seem far away.

Life after 1984

https://myvoice.opindia.com/2018/11/life-after-1984/

Two of the best occasions to meet interesting people are during train journeys and flight layovers. People are relaxed and not distracted by important engagements. The feeling that you will possibly never see the person again brings people at ease and makes them relatively tactless. 

It was during one long layover at Amsterdam airport that a met an amazing lady from the Punjab state of India. She was a Khalsa (Amritdhari Sikh); she had all the overt signs of deep religiosity - uncut hair, sporting a turban, carrying a Kanga (wooden comb) and a Kirpan (small steel sword) and wearing a Kara (steel bracelet). After meeting her, I became one of the few people who can claim to have met and interacted with someone who has spent years in jail; and for no mean offense either.

She had spent two years in jail on charges of TADA. TADA - Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention Act), was an Indian anti-terrorism law which was in force between 1985 and 1995 under the background of Punjab insurgency. This law gave wide powers to the law enforcement agencies for dealing with national terrorist and ‘socially disruptive’ activities.

I was travelling alone and so was she. She asked me if I was travelling to Delhi. I was. Acting a little lost and unsure as elderly Indian ladies are sometimes, she requested me to stay together with her as she was scared of missing her flight. I was happy to help. It was only after a little while that I understood that she was only making conversation and securing company for the long layover. I was anyway happy to tag along with her. She was friendly and talkative; full of interesting stories.

She ran an orphanage for Sikh children in Punjab who had lost their families during the violent times the Sikhs faced in 1984 post the assassination of the then Indian Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. She was returning after a month from her trip to raise awareness about and raise funds for her orphanage from wealthy benefactors of her community. The Sikh community had not forgotten the plight of their own during those black years and was very supportive of her efforts to help these children. She was very proud of her work.

To say that it was a hard time for Sikhs in India post Indira Gandhi assassination in 1984 is a gross understatement. She did not get into details of the politics and the situation at that time. Her arrest was under charges of possessing arms under TADA act. She was accused to be running away together with two men on a bike when confronted. The law enforcement agencies reported that three people were involved- a man was driving and a man was sitting behind her while she was brandishing a gun at the police.

Her life must have been very stressful. She was laughing about it now.

‘How stupid they were. When sitting on a bike with two men, a woman will never sit in the middle. She would always sit at the back,’ she laughed. This kind of argument to prove one’s innocence in such a situation could only be valid in India. It made complete sense to me.

However, I could not comprehend how she could laugh about that even now. It was not just the two years spent in jail. The constant fear before and after that for all these years, being targeted for no fault of hers, seeing her family and people killed or jailed, the whole community living in fear, people fleeing away leaving their homes to save their lives. It was such a period of distress which could suck the life out of the living. People were killed in police custody, in false encounters, on suspicion of possessing arms and supporting the ISI supported Khalistan movement; families were wiped out; children were orphaned. She herself had lost most of her family. Many Sikhs had fled to other parts of India; many had cut off their hair to escape explicit identification.

How do we not give enough recognition to this brutality against the miniscule Sikh community in India? Where were the Human Rights watch groups when these massacres were taking place?

‘They framed false charges and arrested many people. After two years, they could not prove anything against me; and I was free.’ She concluded satisfied.

She talked about how she arranged matrimonial matches for the orphaned children. She was proud about the matches she had made between seemingly unmatched couples; lying where needed; hiding facts about financial status of candidates where she thought necessary; using any means she felt right to help the orphaned kids make a good marriage. It was indeed a very important service as marriages in India are still for the most part arranged by family members. She had extensive network within her community who supported her in her endeavors.

Her positivity and chirpiness, after having endured years in jail, and living in fear before and after that, was infectious. She talked about her own daughters and how they encouraged her to use social media to raise awareness for her cause. She talked of movies. She talked of Punjab. She talked of the children she had helped and how happy it made her to see them having families of their own.

Being falsely unfairly jailed did not break her. Instead, it gave her life a new purpose. There was no bitterness. She was full of life and excitement. I did not ask much about her time in jail. I assumed it would have been a tough time that she would not have wanted to talk about. Looking back now and remembering her exuberance, I think she would have described her jail time in a matter of fact way; something that had happened in her past and now stays in the past. She was safe and happy now and I could feel her gratitude for the present; and hopes for the future.

 

Combatting Christian Missionaries in Germany

https://myind.net/Home/viewArticle/combating-christian-missionaries-at-my-door-step-in-germany


https://myvoice.opindia.com/2019/03/combatting-christian-missionaries-in-germany-thank-you-for-strengthening-my-faith-into-sanatan-dharma/

I live in the German city of Stuttgart. A few weeks back, I had unexpected visitors at my doorstep. I wondered if it was by chance or I had been spotted and singled out for the honor. On second thoughts, I am pretty sure, they came specifically for me.

My doorbell rang; two somewhat old gentlemen stood at my door when I opened the door. They introduced themselves (gave their names) and started talking to me in Hindi. It was such a delight to hear a German in Germany speaking your mother tongue, but it was all very confusing. More confusing were the questions they asked me.

‘Kya aapko lagta hai ki haalat behtar hone waale hai?,’ they asked in Hindi. 
 

Translated it means ‘Do you think that things are going to get better?’

I was too confused to answer. They repeated. I came out of stupor  and said ‘yes’. After that I understood the purport of their question. They took out a pamphlet about Christianity and started to explain me how I could be saved and which was the one way the world could be saved. 

They explained how becoming a Christian is the right way to make things better, while I stood stupefied and looked at the pamphlet only wondering how they knew enough about me to send Hindi speaking evangelists to my home. Did they notice me and singled me out as a soft target? They could very easily make out that I was Indian. How did they find my address, my mother tongue and other details? Some friends informed me that they had also been approached in similar manner a couple of times. The church seemed to be privy to their data as well. 

Is this not a breach of privacy?

“Is there a nexus between the Church and the state for them to be able to have such information in a country obsessed with individual data privacy?’ I thought.

He explained about how Jesus was going to make things better for us and save us.  He was reading from the pamphlet in Hindi.

Back home in India, a close relative has two friends who are newly converted Christians, both of them being converted in different churches. Whenever, my relative discusses stress at work or at home with them as one does with friends, they get into a contest for taking her to their very own church. As it turns out, both these wonderful people have converted when they had been under extreme stress and the Church provided as some kind of a moral support for them. That is a fair enough reason; but moral support can also be provided without being induced to convert.

The men at my doorstep promised to come visit me again with their wives, probably hoping I would be more open with and receptive to talks with other women. I smiled and they took their leave.

After this unexpected visit, I started to take cognizance of some of the overt conversion activities. In the marketplace, I had been stopped by a group who wanted me to experience extreme joy by becoming a Christian. I have seen young people standing in the center and shouting their lungs out. Their scripts are always the same. ‘Jesus is the only one who could save us. He died for us’. There are other faiths also being peddled looking for distressed souls to increase their head count. There is Quran being given out to interested candidates. One can also sometimes, albeit rarely, see the ‘Krishna Mission’ group dancing through the marketplace.

I remember having marked myself as non-Christian in my tax data form, which meant I will not pay Church tax. Digging a little deep after this incident, I found that Churches in Germany enjoy quite some privileges, in spite of the fact that Germany in principle has a separation of the Church and state. “Church Tax”, which could be anywhere between 8% to 9% of an individual’s income, is not the only entitlement churches enjoy. The state pays, out of the budget that pays civil servants (not out of the church tax), salaries of bishops and religious teachers who incidentally are not allowed to teach without the consent of their respective churches. The maintenance of buildings owned by the church costing about 450 million euro a year is financed by all taxpayers, in excess of church tax.

Churches do not have a say in state matters in Germany, but the devotion of the State to support and strengthen the Church is obvious. Can this devotion go to the extent of exposing specific personal data of the residents to facilitate efficient conversion activities of the Church? I have noticed, in daily interactions, that people in Germany in general are somewhat cautious about their personal data. Involvement of the state seemed a precarious idea.

The questions still remained, how did the Church have access to my personal data? Dipping membership had raised concerns and instigated churches to employ varied aggressive and soft tactics to attract new members. It is a possibility that the church itself employ private analytics companies, which provide such data to the church. Social media analytics has made such basic information about people quite easy to obtain and deduce. This seemed a more plausible explanation.

What is the exact truth? There is no way of knowing that without rubbing the authorities in the wrong way.

A friend involved actively in Church activities once asked me- ‘how else can you save a faith unless you convert other people to your faith or breed enough? The faith would die if you did not do these two things’. He gave examples of dwindling number of people following Jewish faith. He was statistically correct. The largest faiths, in terms of number of affiliated members, do have a history of forceful, violent, organized, treacherous and incentivized conversions.

He also subconsciously exposed the simple fact that the Church indulges in conversion to save the idea of Jesus and the power it can wield on people thereby; but this number game is no big secret anyway.

As much as I was surprised at having been a targeted customer at soul shop, I was also thankful. Since that day, my awareness and appreciation of my own faith has increased. I am more cognizant of the depth of the faith and philosophy I was born into; and now consciously choose to be a part of. I have become a more aware Sanatani.