Roopa's Fetish

When Roopa entered the bathroom that morning, the very thought that Raja Rao had his bath there earlier thrilled her sensuality, and as she undressed herself, she recalled his searching gaze that insensibly made her imagine him in that setting, which in turn, has induced pulsations in her frame that furthered her craving for his possession. So, showering herself leisurely and sighing for him longingly, at length, she reached for her soap, but seeing theirs, she was drawn to it impulsively. Thereafter, in her bath of fantasy, the soap became a fetish that freshened as well as excited her in equal measure.

Then in the evening,

When Sandhya came out from the bathroom, Roopa tried to goad Raja Rao into it, but as he insisted that he would shower later, she went in there disappointed. Nevertheless, after her fetish-less bath, about to clear the clothesline, she changed her mind and chose to leave her dirty linen behind.

‘Surely, he would scan my innerwear,’ she thought thrilled about the possibility. ‘That could be the reason why he insisted that I have my bath before him. What a clever lover! Won’t he size my brassiere for his grasp and smell it as well for my body odour? When it comes to my panty, well.’

At that, the thought of his fetishism involving her bra and drawer created a sensation in her body, which made her shiver expectantly. ‘Why not I confirm his doings by noting the arrangement,’ she thought mischievously and arranged her lingerie meticulously.

Thereafter, as he went for bath, she kept time. While she visualized him handling her brassiere, she felt as though he were squeezing her breasts, and when she anticipated him to smell the thing, she felt as though his breath had warmed her breasts but above all, the idea that he would be toying with her panty pulsated her frame.

As he came out of it, lying in wait, she rushed into the bathroom, only to return from there in a fulfilled manner much later.

Excerpted from the author's Benign Falme: Saga of Love, a free ebook in the public doamin https://g.co/kgs/C9XXEk   

The Led ‘n the Leader

An origination is the outcome of the desire of a group of co-activists of a given calling to organize their group activity effectively and profitably. Given that an organization needs a hierarchy to function, and, indeed, to exist, the group seeks to create one for it. The hierarchy, then, comes into being by the process of election, selection, and / or both for the ostensible purpose of promoting the interests of the group to which it owes its existence.

Human nature being what it is, each member of the group, though working for the group interests at large, seeks to promote or at least protect his individual interests, within the group, as he perceives them. It is this compulsion that influences the nature and quality of the hierarchy. As can be expected in such a background, the leadership naturally passes on to those individuals who generally seem to represent the common interests of the group. This is essentially a status-quo approach to leadership selection, which severely restricts the elevation of capable and competent people to leadership positions. Generally, the group dynamics favor either mediocre people with a pliable image, or those with a commitment for self-promotion.

Fortunately, however, in those groups where the group interests take precedence over individual interests, made possible by the collective enlightenment or a shared ideology of the group members at large, capable, and competent leadership emerges. This can be described as the professional approach to the leadership formation. Here the accent of the leadership commitment will be on the general group promotion as opposed to the narrow individual interests. Thus professionalism is the capacity of the members of a group to subordinate their individual interests to the group objectives, though as a means to achieving the former.

The study of the subject of leadership is as old as civilization itself and the philosophers of yore, as well as modern management analysts have tried to analyse and bracket the attributes, characteristics and dynamics that go with leadership in men. Similarly leadership styles variously described as autocratic, benevolent and otherwise have been analysed and the situational requirements for their practical application identified.

It is pertinent to ask as to why then most men, otherwise competent and qualified, who occupy leadership positions, fail to provide effective leadership. To understand this phenomenon one should appreciate that the effectiveness of a leader depends as much on his own leadership abilities as on the cumulative influence of the various factors that make up the organizational environment in which he operates. Understanding and analyzing these secondary causes that determine the functional effectiveness of a leader can only bring totality to the analysis and appreciation of leadership. What then are they?

National Characteristics

Peoples of various nations have distinctive characteristics, which, among other things, influence their approach and outlook to the organized way of working. The outstanding revival of Japan and Germany from the ravages of the Second World War is more due to the collective organized will of their people than due to any outstanding leadership contribution. In this context it is pertinent to quote from the Nazi intellectual Joseph Goebbels’ last testament to his people, written before his decision to give up his life in solidarity with his Fuehrer at the time of the disintegration of the Third Reich:

“In doing this, I believe that I am doing the best service I can to the future of the German people. In the hard times to come, examples will be more important than men. Men will always be found to lead the nation forward; but a reconstruction of our national life would not be possible unless developed on the basis of clear and obvious examples.”

Thus the national ethos developed over a period of time by the examples set by the leaders and the led alike has a definitive bearing on the functioning of the leadership. Likewise, the seemingly ineffective leadership in a given situation may be due to the lack of a perceivable national or organizational ethos as the case may be.

In one of its reports on the economies of the Third World countries, the World Bank had inferred that the poor state of their economy is due to the lack of managerial skills. To this it can be added that the poor sense of organizational commitment of the people in these countries has much to do with the tardy economic progress.

Organizational Nature

Organizations vary in their nature and scope and with them the content and extent of leadership. Broadly, organizations can be categorized as social, political and business or industry. Structurally, the social organizations are less cohesive and the leadership has to possess extraordinary commitment to have any impact for generally, service being the only motive of these organizations, personal sacrifices are implicit with their leadership positions.

Ideology, power or the pursuit of it provide cohesiveness and bondage to political associations and this unambiguity is at once the strength and the weakness of their leadership. The success or even the survival of the leadership lies in its ability to indoctrinate the organization with the professed ideology on the one hand and by actually achieving or seeming to achieve political power for it on the other.

However, the scope of the present analysis primarily confines itself to the business and industrial organizations’ leadership possibilities. In a country like India, where the concept of mixed economy is pursued as a State policy, these organizations can be categorized as private and public. Though the organizational aspects affecting their leadership are the same, the functional features differ vastly. Private organizations have a head start in that the commitment for obtaining a return on investment is the main motivating factor of the leadership. The leadership is generally self evolved as it is the major investors or the leading promoters who come to occupy these positions. And this assures a continuity of commitment for performance, made possible by the personal stakes the investment brings in its wake. The loyalty to the organization and the authority in it, stem from this source and the twin virtues of loyalty and commitment can easily be made to percolate down the organizational ladder.

On the contrary, in the case of public organization where personal investment is not a part of leadership, its commitment, and loyalty are subjective. Owing to the State control, leadership is either implanted from within or imposed from without the organization, as opposed to its natural evolution in a private one. The policy is laid down by the State, often without taking the individual organizational requirements into consideration, and this invariably cramps the leadership style besides restricting its authority.

Work Ethos

Availability or otherwise of adequately educated, sufficiently trained and properly motivated personnel in the organization in the final analysis determines leadership effectiveness. The presence of such personal attributes as devotion to duty, integrity of character and self-discipline in the personnel manning an organization adds to its effectiveness even under mediocre leadership. On the other hand, even an outstanding leadership will be ineffective in an organization devoid of these characteristic in its people.

Essentially, leadership function is to provide policy, give direction, impart dynamism, create harmony, infuse morale, and develop skills besides planning for the growth of the organisation. Basically, it is the people of the organization who have to put in their combined effort, backed by their collective will, in order to make the organization function effectively. When the effort is lacking or the will is absent in the people, the best of leadership comes to grief in such an organization.

Morale Factor

Morale is all about an individual’s disposition as regards to discipline and confidence. Thus essentially, it is a state of mind influenced as such by the background of the individual concerned and the environment in which he operates. Though it appears to be a personal phenomenon, no other single factor affects an organization as the level of morale in its manpower. The twin tasks of inculcating discipline and infusing confidence in the people of an organization can be achieved by giving attention to the individual’s basic as well as higher needs. We may call this morale management. Many modern methods have been developed to improve the morale of the people in an organization and one of the more effective ones is the concept of ‘quality circles’. The impact of quality circles on behavioral changes is summarized by BB. Skinner thus: “By a careful cultural design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave - the motives, the desires, and the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises.”

Since various organizational aspects interact and influence the morale level of the people, the same are to be properly structured  as to maintain a healthy morale level. Any leadership can ignore morale management at its own peril, illustrative of this morale factor is the defeat, often, of well organized and well equipped armies but lacking in morale, at the hands of motivated though ill-equipped and loosely organized troops.

Leadership effectiveness thus depends to a great extent on various factors inherent in the organizational environment. The purpose of this article, however, is neither to propagate the theory of leadership susceptibility to the organizational environment, nor to provide umbrage for the ineffective leadership as such. The conclusion, on the contrary, is much different. It is aimed at focusing various organizational ingredients that leadership has to reckon with and to highlight the need for overcoming the shortcomings that are inherent in the given environment of an organization.

This understanding of the organizational environment with all its attendant strengths and weakness will enable leadership to mould it to suit the functional needs of the organization. This indeed is the hallmark of dynamic leadership. The first step towards achieving organizational excellence is for the leader to show unmistakable faith in and visible commitment of the organization. The art of leadership is in leading from the front as opposed to chasing from behind.

Since an organization is conceived by human ingenuity to perform those tasks collectively which could not otherwise be performed individually, coordination among the people is a prerequisite for achieving this aim. The onus is on the leadership to elicit co-coordinated effort from the people. To sum up in sports parlance, the individuals of an organization should function with the team spirit of relay racing. Where this spirit is absent, the organization is transformed into an arena for a perpetual race of hurdles. The referee, however, it is the leader and it is he who can call the name of the fare.

Rousseau’s Feminist Chains

Jean-Jacques Rousseau had set out to determine ‘whether there can be a legitimate political authority, since people’s interactions he saw at his time seemed to put them in a state far worse than the good one they were at in the state of nature, even though living in isolation’. Consequently, he had formulated The Social Contract ‘as the best way to establish a political community, in the face of the problems of commercial society’, with the immortal opening line, Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains, that is literally true for over two centuries now.

However, the socio-religious circles of individual freedom came to vary from society to society, in times to times; and the objective of this piece is to take a cursory look at the same. In this context, it should be noted that traditionally, societies world over, for the most part, tended to restrain women in chains that are far too shorter than Rousseau’s Chains that bound men, and that ensues female freedoms are encapsulated within the realms of male constraints. Nevertheless, for the purpose of this exercise, we may examine the changes in female ‘freedom’ circles in the Christian, Islamic and the Hindu societies.

Christian Ultra- feminism

The conservative Christian world, like much of the globe, had always been a man’s world, though not religiously inimical to women, that is till the early twentieth century, when it was shaken, on the legal ground, by the first wave of feminism, seeking the voting and property rights to underscore the gender equality. But it was Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex that ushered in The Women’s Liberation Movement, in the middle of that century, which set the course for enabling women to gain equal rights with men in every human activity and social sphere. However, as the impact of the third feminist wave that ushered in ultra-feminism, which in my view, besides being detrimental to femininity, the charm of womanhood, began to uproot the family system, the fulcrum of social stability, a debate about it is bound to abound in its fourth wave, as and when it tends.

Muslim Male Chauvinism

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,” those were the words of Jesus Christ (John 8.7) when he was asked by a group of men whether the punishment to a woman accused of adultery should be stoning to death as prescribed by the Mosaic Law (of the Jews).

Given that none of them ventured to harm that woman, the New Testament  avers that “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John. 3.17).

Whereas Jesus broke the God’s rule thus, in later days, the Jews, His chosen people, having been driven out of their promised land and dispersed  all over the Christian lands, had no way to stone their adulteresses to death in the alien lands as commanded by Him.

Maybe it was thus, the Jealous God of the Jews, some six hundred years after His Son’s death, sent Muhammad as His Messenger into their cousins’ land to get tougher than ever with the fair sex; so, much so that His ‘brand new’ religion branded women as an inferior species in ways many, whereby, to cite an example, the witness of four Muslim women equals that of one male Muslim that is besides granting the men of the faith the right to take as many women to cohabit with, that too, on a contractual basis, of course, with an unfettered right to beat, and an inalienable right to divorce them, to name only two.

But as time passed by, the wisdom of some modern Muslim rulers, in countries such as Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and Afghanistan, set aside the God’s Quranic diktats to grant their women-subjects what the rest of the world gave its womenfolk. But sadly, though not surprisingly, given the intensity of the Islamic belief-system and the ghetto-construct of the Musalmans, the gate-keepers of the faith were outraged for the female modernism began to alter Islam’s patriarchal ethos, the fulcrum of its dogma. So, in time, to the hurt of the Muslim women, by uprooting the progressive rulers and undermining the egalitarian measures, they had ensured that the very character of the faith that afforded them primacy in the scheme of all things Islamic was restored. Intended or otherwise, that Islamic regression gave raise to Wahabism, in turn fuelling Islamic extremism the world over, rendering the golden period of Muslim feminism into a transient rainbow lost in the gathering clouds in the God’s own dark skies.

Hindu Swayamvaram

In the Aryavarta of yore, girls were groomed in gurukulas to become satyavadini by the time they turned fifteen, and some of them pursued higher studies to blossom into scholars such as Maitreyi, Ghosa, Gargi, Lopamudra et al.

Even when India was Bharat, still a bride was entitled to choose her man from among her suitors, known in Sanskrit is swayamvaram, which only proves that the ancient Hindu men were wise enough to realize that woman’s liberation lay in her right over her body to entrust it to the man she coveted; that is proof enough if it were ever required.

The sum and substance of woman’s life in the Hindu ethos was that she was on an equal footing with that of her male counterpart in the social and religious spheres, which more or less held ground till the eleventh century as captured by Al-Biruni in his Indica.

However, slowly but surely, from that feminist pinnacle, women were insensibly and progressively pushed into the abyss of subservience and worse. Though no historical research is in place that delves into this inexplicable Hindu social degradation, exemplified by female-inimical sati, child marriage, illiteracy to name a few, it can be speculated that so as to spare their fair sex from the glad eyes of the Muslim invaders, the Hindu society would have felt the need to protect its women in ways that proved to be inimical to their well-being in the long run. However, as Islam began to spread its male chauvinistic wings, its corruptive influence on the Hindu male propensities could have exacerbated the feminist interests.

If anything, the evangelic thrust in British India, with its accent on sin and tirade against sex, further dented feminism in the Hindu society that was wont to celebrate female sexuality.

Nevertheless, after India gained its independence, it was only a matter of time before the Hindu society began to yearn for its feminist moorings of yore. But brainwashed by the leftist ideology, by then, it had thrown the Hindu baby with the ‘Brahmanical’ bathwater, whereby ensuing a cultural vacuum. And ironically the same is increasingly sough to be filled with the Christian ultra feminist setting, which, given the contrasting social moorings and the sexual ethos, has proved to be a square peg in the round hole.

If only Indian women look back into Vedic times, they would be able to gather enough cultural implements to wriggle themselves out of Rousseau’s Feminist Chains, once and for all.

 

  

Reinvigoration of Individual Managerial Environment (RIME)

“It’s the managerial environment in the organization that is the cause of delay,” read a middle-level manager’s one line rejoinder to the full page memo from his boss.

Succinctly put, it summaries the perceptions of most managers at different levels in the Indian organizational setting about the environment in which they are called upon to operate. Their ineffectiveness is attributed to the incapacitating organizational atmosphere in which they are the supposedly undeserving victims.

It is another matter, however, that few would bring themselves to expressing exasperation so forthrightly to the presiding powers of their career destiny. Though the causes are many and vary with each organization, the effect is singular and universal - a working environment perceived by many as choking.

Root Cause

It is this feeling of alienation in managers from the very management body they are expected to provide the soul with, which is the root cause of many ills afflicting the Indian managerial scene. A closer examination will show that individual managers at all levels can redeem the situation by applying the principles of RIME (Reinvigoration of Individual Managerial Environment)

A perfect organization like a perfect individual is utopian in concept and quixotic in expectation. As it is not natural for a man to be perfect, the same applies to organizations which are but conceived by his intellect and shaped by his temper.

Organizational practices are like religious precepts in that they are infused into the large body of men from above. Organizational managers are akin to religious messiahs and are in a position to propagate ideals or mess up the message.

An organization has to be perceived as a dynamic metabolism and not as a static procedural statute. It cannot be denied that it is the top management which should perpetually keep the ball rolling and infuse dynamism. But what if it had gone into slumber once the rules of the game are set! Then it would be a different ball game and RIME is all about winning it.

The concept of reinvigorating individual managerial environment is based on the conviction that personal growth can be achieved only by giving one’s best to the organization. It involves striving to think how best to give, than being preoccupied with what can be got from the organization, and this equally applies to the citizen and the state.

Personal growth is not measured in terms of promotions one is bestowed with. It symbolizes the confidence imbibed about one’s worth and this could be achieved by reinvigorating his working environment.

The operations of a modern organization are many and complex. The systems and procedures are often fashioned, at the outset, by the top managerial personnel from those models they are familiar with.

It is ironical that top executives are not affected by the rules they set even as the lower levels play the game accordingly. After all, it is the leg wearing the shoe that feels the pinch. Over-whelmed by the odds which affect their day-to-day functioning, managers in due course either become frustrated or develop an attitude of resignation. Reality however is not that gloomy. In spite of all shortcomings in the environment there will always be room for manoeuvre with ingenuity and imagination.

RIME is Remedy

It may be observed that 80 percent of one’s work is self-supervised, irrespective of the position he holds in an organization. The balance 20 per cent alone falls within the purview of one’s superior in the management chain and even if the policies and procedures that affect this minimal though vital portion of work are not conducive for efficiency, an individual manager can effectively streamline the major portion of his activities that are entirely within his control.

Through an example, let us consider the possibilities of RIME for a typical department head.

The department work can be more equitably distributed after rationally analyzing the aptitudes and capabilities of the staff, leading to streamlined working and increased efficiency. In many department though, work distribution is lopsided.

The office layout, within the space restrictions can be modified to improve the working atmosphere and reduce wastage of time. Haphazard strewing of tables and chairs in most offices is a common sight even our times of modular furniture. A parallel can be drawn from the way a 2BK apartment with all kinds of things is turned more or less into storeroom stunting the quality of living therein.

Design a system of distribution and control of official correspondence so as to facilitate ready reporting from the staff on urgent matters, in most departments, the route taken by papers and files is long and arduous and ultimately lost track of.

Devise an efficient filing procedure and install a workable record recall system for facilitating smooth working.

Identify and eliminate the duplication of work and effort in the department and in related functional entities. Study existing working methods and develop improved ones.

Boost staff morale by leading from the front instead of chasing from behind, exhibit concern for the improvement of their working environment and inculcate the departmental pride for performance as an entity.

These examples are only illustrative. Possibility for improvement is not confined to managerial levels alone. Junior managers, officers and even the subordinate staff can work out ways to improve their exclusive working environment.

The ability to reinvigorate the working environment depends, besides ingenuity, on exposure to the advances made elsewhere in one’s field of activity. In short, one is required to update his technical knowledge of the job.

Thus a lack of original thinking makes managers resort to the easy way out of blaming the top management for defects they can cure. They forgot that in the first place they are expected by the top management to help streamline the working of various pockets of operational logistics. The circle can be complete when they know what the top management feels about their contribution to the organizational improvement.

Political Hurdle to Indian Nationalism

The raise of Narendra Modi in the Indian political firmament has brought to the fore the debate on nationalism and anti-nationalism, like never before, and that too with a rare patriotic fervor. With the unfolding events in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, it’s as if the ‘secular’ left and the ‘Hindu’ right have drawn battle lines for what could be a decisive ideological war on the Indian patriotic front. 

While the hitherto ideologically muzzled majority is shrill over the campus ranting of ‘bharat ki barbaadi’ as an anti-national activity, the religiously-rooted minorities, backed by high-decibel left-liberals, have come to articulate that ‘Afzal teri katil zindahai’ sloganeering is just an instance of ‘free speech’, that too enshrined in the constitution. Contrast this with the universal taboo on Nazi symbolisms that ironically include the Hindu Swastika, imaginatively ‘tilted’ by Adolf Hitler for artistic effect. And all this is so long after our British colonial masters had granted us the right to breathe our own ‘fresh’ air.

If Gandhi’s Congress, in the main, conceived a social structure for free India, mainly it’s Nehru, who had designed and built our political edifice. And if a dwelling turns out to be unwieldy for living in it, blame the intellect of architect for it, but if it develops cracks, shouldn’t the builder be brought to book? And it’s a double jeopardy for India that not only the premise of the design was unrealistic but the material of construction was unsound. Before going into the genesis of our patriotic paradox, it is imperative to understand what nationalism is all about and who is an anti-national for that matter. The dictionary defines nationalism as the spirit or aspirations common to the whole of a nation and an anti national as the one who is opposed to national interests or nationalism.

Name it Bharat that is India or Ila Varta or Arya Varta, this ancient land had all along been a nation of nations as parts of it were kingdoms with distinctive political boundaries though culturally unified. That was before foreign forces came to set up their sultanates. Though the entry of the Afghans and the Turks did not sunder the land, the Islamic surge they occasioned had culturally divided the people, eventually resulting in the country’s partition for the Muslim accommodation. Add to it the British mischief that left it to the rajahs and sultans to take their fiefdoms whichever way they wanted, so to say, nipped the evolution of Indian nationalism in its bud. While an ailing Sardar’s patriotic energies were consumed in creating an Indian political entity, he died before he could infuse a national unity into it. But sadly for India, Nehru messed up Patel’s unfinished job.

What with the Muslim classes having left for Pakistan, leaving behind the Islamic masses, the supercilious Nehru took it upon himself to play the role of an unsolicited Mullah. Be that as it may, had he energized himself to improve their economic plight and rationalize their fundamentalist mindset, as he tried in case of the Hindu majority, he would have served India well. But instead, he took the easy route (the lazy man) to humour them by catering to their religious instincts and separatist psyche, thereby keeping them away from the Indian nationalist mainstream. And beginning with his daughter, Indira, as the unscrupulous politicians in the cow belt saw the electoral dividends catering to the Muslim religious sentiments fetched, never mind its inimical impact on the community at large, more so its women folks, vote bank politics took deep roots to ruin the nation that, any way, was never in the making.

The sum and substance of this political zero sum game is that it not only hinders the entry of the Musalman into the national mainstream but also stymies his personal well-being through ghettoized thinking. That Muslims should fall prey to this Machiavellian deception packaged as secularism for electoral consumption is the bane of the Indian democracy. It’s thus; the cynical secularism of the self-serving politicians that won’t allow us to inculcate the spirit and aspirations common to us as the citizens of the whole of India is the hurdle to our nationalism.

      

Irony of India’s un-nationalism

That 9/11 in 2001, when some of the 44 passengers aboard the Al Qaeda-hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 came to know about the carnage of the World Trade Center through their cell-phones, realizing that their lives would soon end in the debris of some notable building, maybe the White House itself, they had conveyed to the callers their intent to unnerve the hijackers to avert further damage to their nation, only to perish in the process shortly thereafter.  

But three years earlier, when the Indian Airlines Flight 814 was hijacked by Islamic militants to Kandahar in 12/1999, the families of its 178 passengers managed to build the public opinion for their trade off with terrorists jailed in Indian prisons, which eventually pushed the government in that direction. Whatever might have been the on-board mood of the passengers-in-captivity, the symphony of joy played out at their family reunions carried no jarring note of it having come at the cost of their nation’s well-being!

This piece though is not about the America’s exemplary sense of nationalism, but is all about the Indian non-nationalism.

India’s left-oriented historians and the Nehru-mould intellectuals would rather have it that never was India a nation before the British colonized it into one, albeit before its partition. Nothing is farther from the truth for from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari and from Kandahar to Comilla, it had been the Hindu tradition to begin a prayer or ritual with the ‘jambu dweepe, bharata varshe bharata khande’ sankalpa that further contains the applicable sub-geographical location, the on-going yuga, the current  year etc. Wonder how this vital fact of Aryavarta is lost on all those who scoff at the Hindu nationalism as the said sankalpa reverberates in every nook and corner of our India that is Bharat every day, even these days.

The idea of India, devoid of a nationalist urge, even after it became a free nation, after two millennia of subjugation, was ironically shaped by the very leadership that was instrumental in helping it gain freedom! Given this abnormality, the question that naturally arises is why and how so, but before answering the same, it is relevant to observe the fascinating proposition of Ms. Maryam Jameelah that “If the Mughal monarchs had assumed their responsibilities as Muslim rulers and organized intensive tabliq or missionary work, the majority of Indians would have embraced Islam and hence the necessity for partition and all the disasters that followed in its wake, never would have arisen.” (Islam and Orientalism, Adam Publishers, New Delhi). Indeed, it is ironical that Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s homeland for the Indian Musalmans, was later vivisected by the Bengali Muslims to cater to their cultural separateness though within the Islamic fold.

When the entire case for India’s partition was built by the Muslims, solely upon the incompatibility of their Islamic faith with the Hindu beliefs, logically speaking, post-partition, there was no case for any Muslim to remain in the parent country. Yet, as if to showcase Hindu pluralistic ethos or to win the world acclaim, and or both, our leaders of that era were not averse to letting the wiling Musalmans to stay put in India. Well, it can be argued that all Muslims were not enamored of a separate homeland, but yet, after the partition of the land on religious fault-lines, they had lost the rights of tenancy, derived from the virtue of ancestry, legally as well as morally that is.

Whatever, they were allowed to stay back in numbers to form a substantial Muslim minority amidst India’s Hindu majority, and sadly for both, instead of ironing the incompatibilities of their alien faith with the Hindu beliefs, the raison d’être of the partition, for the harmonization of the country’s communal amity, Nehru strived to nurture the Islamic sense of separateness among India’s formidable minority. One often wonders that but for Dr. BR Ambedkar, whether Gandhi, Nehru et al, well-educated all, had an idea of what Islam is all about – its supremacist and separatist ethos, its animosity to the people of other faiths, its insatiable urge to make it a Muslim world by means of procreation, conversion and coercion, its concept of Muslim Brotherhood that’s at odds with nationalistic impulses, and such fissiparous doctrines. Moreover, their refusal to amalgamate with the non-Islamic societies they happen to live is akin to their being merely tenets on lease devoid of any stake in or an emotional attachment with it. Given their Islamic naivety on constant exhibition, needless to say, the Hindu intellectuals of our generation fare no better in a critical appraisal of the world’s fastest growing religion with an avowed intent to imperil every other faith (interested may access my free ebook, ‘Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife’, through Google).

Since nationalism is anathema to Islam, so as to spare the Muslims from such an irreligious suffering, it was only proper for the Indian State to dent the Hindu nationalistic ethos, exemplified by their ‘jambu dweepe, bharata varshe bharata khande’ sankalpa, so might have thought Nehru, the alter ego of Gandhi, who was silly enough to aver that Hindus should smilingly face death if Muslims were to kill them, and acted besides. But if he had a long-term vision, he would have clearly envisaged the possibility of Hindu-Muslim amity brought about by shared national ethos for Hindu nationalism was non-intrusive, and at that point of time the Muslims would have been more amenable to that idea than ever before or ever after. While his mentor dented the resurgent national impulses being cultivated by Subhas Bose in the bud, Nehru made India miss the nationalist bus, probably forever. What’s worse, when his daughter, Indira, saw the electoral benefits accruing to her dynasty from the sectarian strategy, she fine-tuned it to form Muslim Vote-Banks all across the country, which, in time, became the edifices of the secular ‘idea of India’.

The cumulative effect of this peculiar aversion to nationalism (name another nation on earth, whose citizens are devoid of nationalist impulses) in time became the cause of India’s undoing in every conceivable way. While the nationalistic void was insensibly filled by caste and communal bondage to India’s democratic detriment, the lack of nationalist ethos fomented the nation-destructing art of self-aggrandizement, leaving the moral fabric of our society in tatters. The widespread corruption that plagues our country exemplifies the near total absence of nationalistic feeling in our society for as graft hurts a country, it’s an anti-national activity. Nothing illustrates the baneful affects of India’s non-nationalistic character than the congenital lethargy in its government offices and the dismal failure of its public sector enterprises. The grand success of Bharat Atomic Research Centre and Indian Space Research Organization and the dismal failure of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited would underscore the beneficial outcomes even in the public sector, when driven by nationalist commitment.

 

              

 

Media and Literature

Being a land of many languages, India’s media is no monolithic phenomenon. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the regional differences, the vernacular media has a uniformity of character. Thus we can broadly categorize the Indian media into the English version and the vernacular variety. The difference between these is more pronounced in the ‘space value’ of the print media than in the ‘airtime quality’ of the electronic variant.

Over to the English print media first. The lament of the learned is that sparse is the space for literature in it. And their nostalgia is for the media that propped up fiction through its columns in the golden era of the novel in Europe. After all, weren’t the classics of yore dawned on the world as the serials in newspapers there? The lament continues and the nostalgia persists as the Indian media fails to address the concerns of the connoisseurs. It’s not as though it had turned its back on literature as such but has come to be hand in glove with the mainstream publishers to publicize the stuff they want promoted. And what it is like? Well if the writer were to be famous, never mind his notoriety, or established, don’t worry about the quality, then the publishers sign up without a second thought. And why not it is so? Wouldn’t some hype ensure initial sales? The eulogy-interview-review regimen in the media sets the tone for the book release. Thus willy-nilly the media helps the commercial publishing coup de grace by hyping the author as a new literary avatar. Of course, all this, more often than not, tends to favour the dubious writer than to highlight a deserving book. After all, it’s one thing to glamourize the author of questionable quality and another to evaluate the literary worth of a writer’s work. Well, the media hype might help buttress the publishers’ bottom lines but critiquing genuine works only would serve the cause of literature. While the publishers shun the genuine literature for the lack of guts, the author-published books get a short shrift from the media for want of space.          

But for wasting the precious media space on many a penny work, the hype wouldn’t help, for after all the discerning readers would have seen through the game any way. True, in the short run, the hype turns the novice into a literary celebrity before anyone had shown any inclination to read his work! But being the talk of the town for a while, most of these books collect dust in the bookstores before they become fodder to the shredding machines in time. Well the newspapers/magazines that hyped them too would be no more than waste paper by the month end, in time to turn pulp in the paper mills. What an irony of hollowness of both! What is more, being a victim of its own propaganda, the media periodically props up the image of those that it helped create in the first place! It is thus the media space is made to supplant the reader base that made the authors of yore the leading lights of literature. That being the case, where is the space for the emerging talent to get sighted when all attention is bestowed on those that it has established in the first place. That the media only covers the activities of the celebrity authors but seldom discusses about the sum and substance of their works might sound absurd. Well there is a method in this madness for the hype was built around the authors’ persona and not over the content of his books. Won’t all this prove Shakespeare right? He did aver that reputation is a most idle and false imposition often got without merit and lost without deserving!

However, this sad state of affairs could be redressed, while yet catering to the modern media’s penchant for the trivia. It’s a pity though that the media managers seem not to apply their minds to the malaise that afflicts them. And it boils down to managing the media space for profit with a corner still left for literary promotion. But for the naïve, none would fault the media for the red carpet it spreads for advertising. Why, it is the advertising revenue that enables the media houses to get their dailies delivered at the doorsteps of the readers. What about the rest of the vast space in the print and round the clock airtime on the cable networks? Can’t a literary niche be created in them both without hurt to the rest of what goes on for the news? Any SWOT analysis would underline the need for the media to nourish quality literature.

When the world was not a global village, the news was not thick and fast, and that afforded literature to get its due. Well, the times have changed, just not for the media alone! On the flip side, it may be said that the ‘writing of the day’ too is not the ‘literature of the pas’. Be that as it may, the media needs to help nourish quality writing in its columns for its own well-being in the long run. How else the language skills of the future media personnel would have got honed than by going through the language grill of the current newspaper columns? And if the media mangers-of-the-day fail to keep an eye on the literary quality of the writing in their columns, then tomorrow’s dispatches from their correspondents would bear e-mail mark. And that would be that, but how to avert that!

All said and done, it needs to be borne in mind that bringing out newspapers is a rush job. After all, they have to reach millions of homes far and wide well before the subscribers stir out of their beds. Thus, the time available at the editorial desks to process the gathered news leaves no time to make literary drafts out of it all. It is this constraint that all the more calls for the development of language skills in the reporters and the journalists alike. And that would be possible only when the books the would-be newsmen take to have a literary quality of their own. And that in turn depends on promoting books of literary quality in the media for a beneficial reader orientation. Shouldn’t one find adequate media space for that?

One only needs to scan the newspapers of the day to note that much of the precious space is mindlessly wasted. Understandably, politics, business and sports besides crime, cinema and trivia take the bulk of the media space for these are the topics that make the average readers buy newspapers in the main. And in what could be seen as tokenism, some, if not all, newspapers concede moderate space for literary subjects; mainly in the form of book reviews that is whatever is left after hyping the selected works. Nonetheless, the space for the ‘news that sells’ itself could be better structured so as to make enormous room for the less glamorous literary cause. It is not unusual that the news on one page figures on another, wasting the precious media space, and if only     properly drafted and edited, the space so saved could be used to accommodate literature and its poor cousins of fine arts. If and when that happens there would be media space   enough for the promotion of literature and arts as well.

Besides, road accidents, murders, rapes, dowry deaths, and such mishaps are accorded the status of dispatches with headlines, and all that occupy so many columns. If all of them were grouped together under the relevant headings, the space so released would be no mean a space. Another wasteful practice with the English media is its penchant for the ‘carpet coverage’ of the cricket news. What the special correspondent elaborates in the main story is as well carried in the guest column of an eminent past master of the game. It is a different story with other sports though. Well, it seems we have come to have media haves and media have-nots.  Same is the case with the trivia that is given so much space in today’s media along with cinema. The way trivia is highlighted makes one suspect that the media is starved of newsworthy material. However, if all the trivia could be clubbed in a corner, wouldn’t that suffice to satiate the appetite of the curious? Besides, that would save the bother for the interested readers to scan through the entire paper and miss some of it some time. Thus, if imaginatively structured, half a page or more a day could be made available for literature and the fine arts in all English dailies.

This is about space creation and what about its utilization? If that extra space goes to hype the favoured or fancied writer as the case may be, it won’t make a value addition to literary columns. Book reviews are meant to be windows of literature for the potential readers to peep at the book world. But are they as positioned in today’s media, be it newspapers or magazines? What one would like to know is about the ‘new arrivals’ and what they ‘are about’ so as to find out which of them are likely to interest one, for which one would like to be briefed about as many books as possible in the media. Here too the media fails the book-reading public. The books that are taken up for reviews are the same that are hyped throughout though it’s another thing that what gets hyped gets rubbished as well in the same media! The media mindset being such, no book, whatever its worth would never get reviewed so long as the publishers wouldn’t throw their weight behind the same. And the books that get reviewed in every newspaper and magazine, without exception, are the ones the leading publishers push for. If not, how come all the book review editors in the country unerringly select the very same books for review in their columns? Moreover, it can’t be a case of coincidence-in-perpetuity. So the media, instead of bestowing upon the readers the ‘variety of many’ burdens them with the ‘monotony of a few’. Wouldn’t that suggest that it is not the editorial selection but the publishers’ pull or the celebrity push that’s the raison d’être of the book reviews?

While the English media chokes the Indian English writing thus, the vernacular media through the weeklies tend to trivialize the bhasha produce by providing ready space to it. Thanks to the preponderance of magazines in all regional languages, there is space out there for the bhaasha writers to get published. This largesse of the vernacular media naturally lowers the standard of the bhasha literatures what with writers in scores having hundreds of short stories to their credit! This magazine space produces poets by their dozens who are incapable of rhyming a couplet even. As a measure of mediocrity of the regional writing these manage to compile anthologies of their poems in a couple or more volumes. On the other hand, those who take to writing in English have to pen full-length fiction as a prelude, as there are no magazine routes to take his or her piecemeal work along. And the only publishing avenue available for these aspiring authors is the commercially governed mainstream publishing. While the budding bhaasha writer’s short story is not expected to steamroll the magazine sales, the English fiction publishers have their own calculus about the return on the investment on the manuscripts they take up.

But with a right intent the media could play a sterling role in promoting quality literature. If only the extra half-page that was talked about is earmarked for excerpts from the author published books, then the book lovers would have opportunities to make their literary choices. Likewise, instead of parroting the same news 24x7, the cable networks could air the book readings of the budding authors, who would spare no effort to send in the videos of their reading for the screening. Of course the interested could obtain the chosen books from the writers themselves as there would be none to undertake distribution of the unheralded authors. Wouldn’t this in time determine the type of books that the public favours forcing the publishers to get onto the right literary track away from the commercial path on which they have been treading for long. So it is left to the media first to arrest the decline and then to help the Indian literature reach the creative heights it is capable of attaining.

Matrix of Rape

The refrain of a rapist is that he was unjustly arraigned even though the bitch of the accuser had equally enjoyed the fling. While the woman’s possible yielding to the rapist and her probable acquiescence during the act cannot be equated to her having had sex with him on her own volition, her violator’s averment that she enjoyed sex with him is akin to adding insult to her injury. Given that rape is ‘the act of forcing a woman to have sexual intercourse against her will’, the chemistry of female injury is better appreciated by visualizing the physics of male force. Where else is there a better laboratory for that than a household to test the characteristics of the sexes, and to develop the matrix of rape, we must discern the moulds of sex in the minds of the couple.

Let us begin with man, the sexual aggressor. Should he be half-hearted about lovemaking, a woman, with her advances, might yet lead him onto the sexual track, and by the same token, a man-in-mood could nudge his off-mood wife into the sexual act. However, if man were to be emotionally dead set against sex, in spite of her amorous overtures, the woman-in-want would fail to drag him onto the arousal course; but a man with his physical imposition on his emotionally unwilling mate, still would be able to penetrate into her mentally reluctant self. Hence, the moot point is that while a woman won’t be able to have sex with an unwilling man, yet she could sexually yield to him against her will, with the attendant, although transient, resentment against him. Nevertheless, should his sexual impositions against her will, become all too frequent, it is then they acquire the infamous tag of marital rape. That being the case of man’s forceful sex with his own woman against her will, the violent penetration into her self, by a total stranger, or someone she is not sexually inclined to, can well be imagined as it is not the physical pain of penetration but the painful affects of it, on her psyche, which make the matrix of rape. 

Now, back to the rapist’s refrain that ‘the bitch of the accuser had equally enjoyed the fling’ and those who back such, like Judge Derek Johnson of a Californian Court that the alleged victim of rape ‘didn't put up a fight" during her assault and that if someone doesn't want sexual intercourse the body "will not permit that to happen".

What is amiss in this line of argument of woman’s coalescence to rape and her enjoyment in it is the realization that it is not warranted that man might force himself upon an unwilling or disinterested woman, never mind her biological vulnerability to his sexual assault might have eventually let her yield her body for his pleasure, in spite of her mental apathy for mating with him. More than man’s distasteful violation of her, it is the thought of having allowed him to have her, even seemingly enjoyed sex with him, that induces a demeaning feeling in woman’s mind-set, which self-diminishes her in her own esteem, and that is the tragic import of rape on a woman.