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Monday, May 27, 2013

Naxalism - A Dirty Menace

At an early age of 6 or 7 years, I had a vague idea of what Naxalism was because of my grandfather's political affiliation to CPI(M). Summer vacations were spent predominantly in the village which had some strange affinity towards communism which unanimously elected my grandpa as sarpanch consecutively. Naxalism was treated with respect and evening entertainment was all about song and dance performances by revolutionary balladeers. I was put under a strong impression that naxalites were true patriots and everything related to western world was treated with contempt.

It was late 80's when the naxalite movement was in it's zenith and quite often we could see some news of naxalites blasting railway stations or cops or radio stations etc. I was a bit puzzled because the kind of blasts and violence in news didn't quite add up to match the patriotic image of Naxals I was inculcated earlier.

After few years of confusion came Gaddar's revolutionary song cassettes and R.Narayanamurthy's string of red movies which I thought spearheaded more hatred and anarchy than the good they did. I thought the art was more anti-state and anti-rich than pro-oppressed. Continual violence and destruction of public property only exasperated my disdain towards neo-revolutionaries. The final nail in the coffin was outrageous series of extortion and abductions carried out on their behest which enjoyed unconditional support of so called revolutionary balladeers, poets and writers. The entire RED revolution seemed so farce. That was the beginning of my hatred towards the movement which propelled me to know more about the background, motive and objective of Naxalites.

Basically naxalism is all about staging a coup against India from India on the lines of Mao Zedong of China who successfully did that in his country and then was responsible for millions of deaths in China most notably the Tiananmen Square massacre. China's resurrection towards being the power centre started after his successor Deng Xiaoping initiated the rollback and triggered massive economic reforms. And here in India, insurgents not only want to follow the failed ideology but also changed their outfit's name to CPI (Maoist) and have proved themselves to be anti-globalization, anti-liberalization, anti-reforms, anti-development and anti-people. Period !

Revolution and insurgency can be understood if it is for the benefit of the country, but the knowledge in public domain is that Maoists were and are in direct collaboration with Lashkar-e-Toiba, LTTE, Nepali Maoists and many other terror outfits and anti-nationals like Arundhati Roy who did everything to destabilize India..and all this in the mask of being people's revolutionaries.

It's not a secret anymore that the ammunition and funds Maoists or erstwhile Naxalites collect is through extortion and opium trade comparable to Dawood Ibrahim and Mumbai underworld. They have been doing this crap since almost 5 decades in the best interest of tribals and oppressed. But the fact remains that the very oppressed still remain oppressed while wealth-creators and landlords lost their fortunes. Again things don't add up here.

While these anti-nationals loot, murder, extort, blackmail government and civilians alike, there are affiliated groups like human rights groups, revolutionary writers' association and other bunkum to perpetrate their propaganda and cry victims every time they die. The hilarious charge is about fake-encounters when maoists die as if there are ethics to be followed to purge the society from the rot, menace and shit called maoism.

Yesterday's ambush attack from 200-300 terrorists to kill 27 was heart-wrenching. Though I'm not a big fan of congress party's ideology, this dastardly attack by anti-people terrorists on democratic leadership is heinous. But I always doubt how difficult would it to be decimate the menace from terror infested red corridor of India ? Why can't government of India utilize it's state-of-the-art defence technology and guerilla warfare to rip off the rot of the society ? If they couldn't do that from last few decades, how efficient are they considered to be in wake of any external exigency ?

Union government must realize that it's soft policies against internal terror is taking lives of scores of commandos, soldiers, police in attacks like Dantewada, Bastar and more; and it's just matter of time before the matter slips completely out of control. In that case, the only alternative would be wait for the central committee members of maoist politburo or whatever it is, to just die their natural death and the cadre to lack direction and ideology. Till then we are good to outrage as and when such attacks occur.


Friday, May 3, 2013

English Vinglish - Lost in translation

I agree that Sridevi's comeback smash hit "English Vinglish" is all about spectacular triumph of determination, grit and character over much overrated flamboyance or elitism, but this blog-post is not another movie review.

The flick was not a hit just because of flawless acting or impeccable direction, but majorly because it provided an escapist pleasure to an overwhelming majority of Indians who were made to feel inferior, neglected or humiliated in some way due to their inability to communicate in good english; and all said and done, they form a humongous majority despite India ironically being one of the biggest english speaking workforce.

My own experience: Back in 1997, when I moved to Kurnool to pursue my engineering studies, I had to hesitantly share accommodation with 3 localites who hailed from telugu medium education. That world was completely alien to me because like everybody else in my society and times I was raised with the notion that convent education was the nirvana and everything else was inferior.

I was mildly shocked when I learnt all of them got EAMCET ranks below 1000 whereas I got 4 times that. And a bolt from the blue was when I started feeling like an idiot in any topic of discussion, both in terms of education or otherwise. They were supremely knowledgeable and I felt like a midget. That was an eye-opener for me. But unfortunately none of them could make a career they deserved. Blame it squarely on the corporate world and the anglo-aristocratic mindset of hiring managers.

Also later in my career, I've met quite a few people who were fantastic at their core competence and who could have brought much to the table but had to confine to mediocrity thanks to their achilles heel, the language. Those were the times when I saw the relevance in the famous saying by Albert Einstein that if a fish was judged by its ability to climb a tree, it would spend its entire life believing itself to be stupid.

Later in my career till date, I've been meeting people day in and day out who are better communicators, presenters with better vocab, more flamboyant, dapper than me. I realized and admit that am not a good english speaker or writer but thanks to my reality check of engineering days, I strongly believe that english language or the associated flair is just a channel of communication and the real essence lies in the gist or content; once this was clear, everything else fell in place. I have been trying to mask my weakness by channelizing strengths in core areas and that seemed to work.

If this piece of advice could bring solace to anybody else in my shoes who feel out of place communicating in english, just fix it in your mind that communication is all about injecting your thoughts into other persons' minds (or vice-versa) in a way that they understand every bit of what you say and language is just a medium.