Rahuls remarks

Calling the Saffron linked terror dangerous is obviously correct. But calling it more dangerous than the LeT, Al-Qaida etc is absolutely out of perspective. Can the numbers on record in terms of incidents, casualties, spread, etc explain Rahul Ji’s assertion? Calling a spade a spade is courageous but calling a spade more dangerous than an AK-47 should have other motives. Pakistan is already using the Sachar committee report to imply that the 26/11 could have local muslim support. With such comments by Rahul baba, all the efforts of India in tackling the various terror groups will be diluted.

Scams and new meanings

UPA II is giving new meanings to many things. Scheme should be understood as scheming against people. A Prime Ministerial govt no longer has the PM as the centre piece. Cabinet responsibility does not mean sinking or sailing together. It’s alright to have an allegedly corrupt officer as CVC. Portfolio allocation includes the influence of the rich and famous. And finally, ‘the buck stops here’, might mean that the money filled bags stop at his/her table.

Bihar verdict

Democracy is not a destination, it’s a journey. In India, Democracy is a churning in which many undesirable elements emerge before the nectar. This was proved in the Bihar elections. There was a phase when the caste groups supported only their candidates. The fact that the top post was occupied by their caste man kept people happy. But after that, people wanted more than caste politics. They want development to be done beyond just caste representation. Lalu could not pass the second phase.

26/11...two years

26/11: two years passed without Kasab being hanged. How ridiculous! India is unhappy that Pak is not doing enough to bring the perpetrators to justice. India should first hang Kasab before lecturing any other nation. It’s unfortunate that substantial human rights are being extended to the enemy of the state whereas for the common man, no human right is guaranteed.

My opinion sent to Sri Krishna Committee

Dear Sir,

I am a student from Telangana. I neither come from any business family nor any political group which has any kind of vested interest. I am just a common man who feels strongly for Telangana. The most significant achievement I and people like me would have from the formation of the state of Telangana is ‘identity’. The Telangana struggle has now gone beyond the question of development, the distribution of resources or allocation of jobs etc. The struggle is now for identity - an identity that we lost in 1956 and which is still elusive.

Sir, I have only 3 points to make which I get into directly.

1) Telangana is long over due and is not suppressible.
The demand has been around for the past 60 years. Though the demand was latent before 2001, one cannot say it was not there. The sentiment existed just like a dormant volcano. The sentiment has been simmering and erupting whenever there was a political vent and opportunity to voice the demand. Even if the demand is diluted now, it can surely come back again and again. Worse even, the sentiment of Telangana can be exploited by the politicians and distract the student community leading to scores of suicides.

2) Telangana blocks any further reorganization of states in India
Can we say that there would not be any form of States’ reorganization in the future? Certainly not. So, can any reorganization of states be made, bypassing the issue of Telangana? No; not without the Telangana movement coming back and taking more lives. Telangana has blocked the pipeline for any further reorganization of states and the deepening of democracy. It is better to solve the problem now than leave it to become a bigger sub-national problem.

3) Telangana can not be allowed to become another Kashmir
Telangana has been the hot bed for Maoist violence. The unrest among the student agitators for Telangana could turn them to violence as all other constitutional methods have been resorted to, but in vain. Such agitators who have a violent predisposition could be used by the Maoists and also by Islamic terror networks. The ‘enemy nations’ of India would be happy to plant the seeds of bigger problems to our nation.

Sir,

Telangana is the most Constitutional demand of four crore people. If this is not accepted, then it cannot be said that real democracy exists in this part of the country. Suppression of the legitimate and reasonable aspirations of the people goes against the spirit of India as a ‘Federation with a Unitary bias’. Federalism does not give the right to separate (read secede) but it surely allows for deepening of democracy in the form of separation of administrative units in the country.

Please deliver the people of Telangana from the oppression of the Andhras.

// Jai Hind // //Jai Telangana //

Reservation to Backward Muslims

Secularization and not Secularism is the need of the hour

Though one can not deny the backwardness of many of the muslims, one can certainly doubt if reservation would guarantee improvement of their state. The real question to be asked is: What is the real reason for their lagging behind? Is it that they are in any way discriminated or denied opportunities in the current times? It would not be an exaggeration to say: as the majority of the majority is going forward, a majority of the minority is moving backward. The community should introspect why they do not move along with the majority. Is their overzealous religiosity and ritualism the root cause? Is what their religious men preach every Friday, in tune with the modern times and pro-development in the contemporary sense?

What the community needs more urgently is Secularization. A phase of Secularization of education, thought and attitude should precede any reservation, so that the benefit is not dissipated.

Violation of my Fundamental Right to life and personal liberty from noise pollution

Shri Ramesh Dave
The Hon’ble Chief Justice
Andhra Pradesh High Court
Hyderabad
February 1, 2010
Re: Violation of my Fundamental Right to life and personal liberty from noise pollution


Dear Sir,
1. My name is Aditya.D; a resident of Hyderabad. I am preparing for my Civil Services examination these days. I bring to you a very sensitive problem for which there is no proper redressal mechanism. The issue is an old one for which the Hon’ble Supreme Court has already pronounced the judgment. People baulk from addressing the problem in the name of it being a sensitive and religious issue.

2. There are multiple mosques around my home that have come up in the past few years. They are all mounted with huge megaphones. They use these sound amplifying systems to make their call for prayers five times a day. Unfortunately, the volume they maintain is very high and this is very annoying. Especially the azaan (call for prayer) at 5:30 in the mornings is too loud and jolts people from sleep. The volume of the speaker system is set to such high limit that one can hear the screeching sound of the speakers. It looks as if the volume is deliberately kept high to irritate the people in the surrounding areas, because the purpose does not merit such high volume.

3. The political representative here belongs to the muslim community, and when the public requests him to look into the problem, he does not respond positively as he feels the speakers are used only for a couple of minutes everyday.

4. Sir, a couple of minutes is enough to disturb ones sleep, a couple of minutes is enough to raise a sick person’s blood pressure, a couple of minutes is enough to wake infants up into cries, a couple of minutes, five times a day, everyday adds up to a lot of disturbance.

5. Though the prayer call lasts for about two to three minutes, due to the presence of multiple mosques, the aggregate duration of all of them goes beyond 15-20 minutes, as it is not possible for all of them to coordinate their prayer calls. The dawn in my locality sounds like a city in distress when these blaring prayer calls from all the mosques overlap.

6. We have talked about this with the local police authorities and they assure us every time that they would talk to the persons concerned. After that, the volume of the morning azan is reduced for a couple of days. But later on, they put it back to the same high volume. Again we will have to request the police to intervene. There is no scientific mechanism used to limit the maximum volume of the public address systems, though the Hon’ble Supreme Court has prescribed the decibel levels.

7. The children, the sick, the students, and the people who work late into the night need to sleep beyond the mosques’ call for their morning prayer. I cannot be expected to change my lifestyle according to mosques’ prayer timings. This violates my right to peaceful living. People have gone into such a compromise with this issue that they neither have the patience nor the courage to speak up against this violation of the fundamental right. Any sensible person who complains about this is made to keep quiet under the pretext of it being a sensitive and religious issue. My angst is more from the way the right of the people is violated with all impunity, than from the fact that it disturbs so many people everyday in the morning, not to mention four more times in the day.

8. The mosques have institutionalized the system of right to disturbing others and the right to create noise pollution. Such attitude from any religion is not acceptable in a civilized society based on rule of law. Such violation of right should be condemned when a temple or a church does it also. This problem not only polarizes people but also hampers harmonious living. With no other option, the people who suffer are in a way forced to leave the locality and move to another one, leading to communal (religion) based localities.

9. Most of the western countries have banned and many of the progressive muslim countries control the use of loud speakers by mosques. But in India, even though the Judiciary has delivered the judgment, it is not implemented. What is the sanctity of a judgment, which is not enforced? The valuable time of the court cannot be wasted by cases wherein the decisions are not taken seriously.

10. When the Executive of the State is found wanting in will to act, the Judiciary has acted in the interest of the public. Even when the Judiciary prescribes the rules, the Executive is lacking in its will to conform to the rules. In such a scenario, who is the public to go to?

11. Sir, I am not interested to get into litigation with anyone. I neither have the time nor the resources for litigation. However, I would be very happy to put my case before you orally. I would feel unburdened if you could give me a hearing.

12. It is my belief that the Constitutional values ought to be respected by everyone to live in a multi-cultural society like ours. One person’s tolerance cannot be taken undue advantage of, in the name of religion and secularism.

Prayer: I request the Hon’ble Court to intervene and find a permanent mechanism to ensure the implementation of the rules prescribed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court and see to it that the Fundamental Right under Article 21 is not violated.

Sincerely
Aditya

Avatar: Justice with Courage always triumphs

Descending of the savior, the hero, the fighter for justice. It is justice that matters and not the latest technologies and war machines that decide the battle. ‘Raamavatar’ had justice on his side but not a great army. All he had was ape-like creatures as soldiers. Jake Sully had no mean machines, but he too stood up for a just cause. His army was of the various tribal clans, the wild and flying beasts of Pandora and of course the courage to fight against his own people when they took to destruction of the innocent and the weak.

Avatar shows the disrespect humans would have developed towards diversity. To any species that does not look like us, behave like us, think like us or follow the mass world culture that is developing today and which kills all other diverse cultures of the peoples of the world. The disrespect to the beliefs and sentiments of the native Navi beings on Pandora leads to the forced evacuation and bombing of the Navis’ sacred Tree of Voices. This unjust hegemony of the powerful over the weak, makes Jake Sully take a U turn against his own kind. Do we the people of the 21^st century have a strong lesson to learn from there? May be we do. It is now so much more necessary to maintain the balance of power of the world that it ever was since the end of the cold war.

The hunger for power and energy sources has done more destruction to the planet and its environment in a span of two centuries than our ancestors could ever do since the beginning of humanity. Avatar just fast forwarded a few decades to show what humans could do in search of energy sources. By then, we would have exhausted all our oil and gas; the earth would have been an inhospitable planet; the globe would have warmed enough to force us to find a new planet. Even then we would not have learnt to respect the fine balance between nature and all the life forms it supports. As a line in the movie says: A network of energy flows through all living things. All energy is borrowed. And one day you have to give it back’. May be the movie should have come out before the Copenhagen summit. Yet, no guarantee that the world nations would have had a pact to do something about global warming; but it might have helped, if the leaders had watched it before the summit.

Avatar upholds the values that humans should live on or at least start to learn now. Respect for diversity of world cultures, judicious use of energy, integration with nature than trying to control it, and the most important being justice-never to use one’s might over the weak unjustly.

In short, Avatar is “Justice with courage always triumphs”