Film Review- Born Into Brothels

Last night we watched the 2003 Orscar winning HBO documentary 'Born Into Brothels' on Netflix Streaming. I had seen a similar documentary on an organization that did undercover sting operations to expose and bring to justice coerced prostitution in India and elsewhere. This one dealt with children of prostitutes living in Sona Gachi, one of Asia's largest red light districts.

The film focused in on a dozen kids who are introduced to us in a very personal way through the course of the movie. The filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman shot the movie through several months of living and working in Sona Gachi. Briski, a theology major from Cambridge, spent a few years living with the kids, teaching them photography and eventually staging an exhibit of their works in India and elsewhere.

The film traces how the kids lives are slowly changed as they move into schools after months of red tape, social ostracism and concerns about potential HIV infection (as it turned out, non-existent) kept the kids from decent schools. It then traces Avijit Halder (now in his senior year at NYU) is praised for his work in photography and is selected to go to Amsterdam where his work is exhibited among a select group of kids with outstanding skills.

The movie ends with notes about how the kids are faring. Except a couple of kids who mvoed back into the sex trade (primarily due to their family's reluctance to let them study further), the others all fared well and as of today are doing very well in India and the United States.

I liked the fact that the movie stresses the significance of social change as a result of commitment and consensus. The parents of some of these kids earned some money out of the film project but one of them did not want her daughter to move out of the trade. In a recent interview she says, "'At this age, I have a flat, a laptop, costly phones and plenty of money. What do I lack?"

One wonders why these parents did not see far enough to understand the opportunities these kids had before them. They got some cash from the proceeds of the movie, and they had a good reason to keep their kids off the trade. Another kid whose aunt was raising her after her mother's death was pressurizing her to go into prostitution. While she wanted to go to school and learn, she wasn't allowed to; and moved back into the flesh trade.

Of course, cash isn't the issue- but perhaps in Sona Gachi the abilty to understand that life outside of the familiar if hellish street life is something desirable may be limited. Years ago as a summer intern in my second year of MBA I lived in Bombay for 2 months at the YMCA on Lamington Road near the Opera House. Although it is nothing to compare with Sona Gachi, it is a semi-red light area. You turn the corner from a nice-looking street and come up on this crowded area with tired yellow buildings built at the turn of the last century. Many evanglists came to preach at the YMCA, and several good friends who were committed followers of Christ lived there, but everyone (including me) turned our faces away from the griding poverty and the nightly circus that went on on the sidewalks, the women pacing up and down amongst the crowds, shifty-eyed, druken men moving in and out of their tenements. One day in the early hours of dawn we were woken by angry shouts from the streets below. We were on the 5th floor of the building. I looked down and a number of prostitutes were fighiting, presumably over money, screaming at each other, mouthing profanities, pulling each others' hair.

The HBO movie shows us a similar scene inside the brothel (a squalid, dark place which most of us would never see). It is remarkable how these women, all in the same tragic plight, would accuse each other of being filthy and immoral. The film shows us the faces of the listening kids, their expressions showing numbness and distress at the same time. Sometimes a picture like that takes you back to Lamington Road in an instant, shocking you without warning.

Margaret Mead once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." The more I live the more I see the truth of this. As I read the book Mountains Beyond Mountains on Dr. Paul Farmer, and understand how the battle over high drug prices in poverty-stricken Lima, Port-au-Prince and Russian prisons were fought, by a committed minority, and won decisively, and I see the pain and heartbreak that accompanies such commitment, the more I realize that a bunch of people promising huge amounts of money in aid through Government programs may not truly realize the insignificance of their actions. You can spend a fortune on the Third World and see the cash disappearing down a black hole without making the slightest difference to anyone's life- unless you know that at the other end are committed people with the ability to connect with people.

This movie was made on a shoestring budget. The kids went to school based on the creative energy unleashed by the filmmaker's commitment in teaching the kids the skills they knew. Who can deny that their lives were changes by the commitment of a few?

Postscript:

I had ended my post with te above paragraph, but I need to end with a nod to the music. Composer John McDowell weaves both Indian melodies, some from Bollywood and others from India's religious tradition, into the movie. The result is outstanding. One of the hooks, Gopala, doesn't leave my mind. As an aside I can appreciate why they chose this song. Gopala is a devotional to Krsna, his childhood as a precocious happy little charmer has captured Indian's imagination and affection for centuries.

You can see a vide of a live performance of this song here:

The Demographic Myths of Our Self-Centered Age

The term 'demographic-economic paradox' refers to the inverse relationship between economic progress and birth rates. Education and wealth go up at the cost of birth rates. This has been observed in almost all developed and developing nations. Although countries like China and India have government sposnsored programs to restrict their populations, unbiased population metrics from the Western countries and industrialized Asian nations like Japan and South Korea confirm this.

In my economics and civics classes in high school, India's population growth rates were partly attributed to the farming community's labour-intensive trade, in which more children (especially male) meant more farmhands and therefore more revenue. As agriculture declined as a percentage of the GDP and agricultural income for farming families began to be articificially kept low in India due to the presence of Government intermediaries and established 'fair prices', besides the low per-capita land holding that has been established, more children began to translate into more cost and much less revenue. India was one of the first countries to encourage family planning. This came to an undesirable extreme in the Seventies when Sanjay Gandhi forcefully sterilized, some say up to a million people in an attempt to control population growth. For an economy growing at a snail's pace of 2-3 percent a year from a poor base, more population simply meant fewer resources per capita and therefore a diminished standard of living.

After Gandhi's forced sterilization program met with outraged protests and a change of Government took place, the family planning program has been far more benign, playing the role of an advisor and encourager. China has been another aggressive implementer of family planning, imposing stiff pentalties on couples who had more than one child. Many have written about social problems and future economic problems that this has posed or will pose. Other measures like prohibition of gender determination have led to fewer female child abortions lately, but the gender imbalance in both these countries remains sharp.

The US has no such Government program but has experienced the decline in birth rates that all industrialized countries have. Unlike some other countries like Sweden and Norway which experience declining population growth rates, the US has kept up a rate of over 2 percent due to better population replacement rates internally as well as through immigration. Even so, the US has an aging population who will be supported by the younger citizens in the years to come. This is especially clear in the case of the social security funds which are now being propped up by payments made by those still working to cover the retirees. In 20 years there will be a small section of the population (younger taxpayers) supporting a larger group of aged retirees, meaning that there will be insufficient funds in social security. This is expected to lead to need-based rationing/provisioning of funds as well as a cut in the percentage of per-capita allowance of these funds.

India has a rapid GDP growth rate- even upto 7.5 percent in the recessionary 2009-10 years. China too has not skipped a beat in its blistering growth. However the economic effects a smaller percentage of a younger population are expected to show up in 30 years. This will mean fewer resources to deploy in critical manufacturing and services for export that these countries have specialized in, less availability of specialized labour to meet the growth rates needed to continue growth, a skewed distribution of labour in several fields and of course the dangers of a gender imbalance. At present the danger of a small percent of young people supporting the aged does not seem imminent, as the percentage of younger people is quite high in these countries. One-fifth of the total world population under 20 years of age is in India. As they enter the labour force the opportunities and resources are bound to be stretched, but the market that they represent as consumers in an expanding economy will be sizeable.

Here is the paradox of population economics in simple terms. The world over statistics on population remind us that hunger, disease, malnutrition, unemployment, underemployment, expoitation and other ills stalk the majority of the population. Countries that have sought to implement population controls have mostly been socialistic in the past or continue to be so today to some extend. It is easy to understand why. A socialistic view of population regards it as a partaker of the total wealth of the nation. Thew fewer the people the better the per capita income. This is true for countries in which the buying power of people is less. When GDP rates remain low, resources get divided again and again, translating into smaller populations. Land is one such resource. But standards of living are based on many other 'goods' than simply the limited natural resources of the world. India and China realized several years ago that their populations are an asset to them in an export-oriented, free trading, outsourcing world. Large teams in India could be deployed very quickly to provide application development services or financial and accounting services, while large masses of the rural population in China could find employment in the manufacturing boomtowns on the East Coast. In the past 15 years these workers have also increased domestic consumption in these countries, leading to stronger economies that have so far withstood the assault of the global recession. As income rates grew and national GDP grew consistently over a decade, these countries began thinking along new lines concernig their population, asking who are the employable people within their population.

Indian companies have had to implement stringent recruiting norms to avoid hiring less skilled employees in the face of bugeoning demand. They also began to face skewed labour distributions. Engineers in India wanted to work in IT and less in other fields. In China the long-predicted take over of the services sector has not happened because they have not been able to train enough people in the English language- despite massive Government initiatives. People want to take the shortest route to wealth and do not toe the party line.

As these populations increase, the countries are looking to educate them better. After all sustainable economic growth comes from domestic production, demostic consumption and domestic innovation. When the pie is fixed the impetus to share is limited. As the pie grows in size, the partakers realize that the more the workers the larger the size of the pie. The trick is to ensure better productivity.

This brings us back to the old agricultural paradigm full circle. At one time agriculture was relatively profitable. Indeed it may well have been the oldest profession. As other fields of endeavour eclipsed its position in the economy, its predominance declined and the number of employees/children farm hands also declined. These ex-farm hands moved on to manufacturing or services where the money was.

If one kept aside the limited resources our world offers- land, water, fossil fuels and others- one must ask the question: are all our population control programs barking up the wrong tree? Sure enough, there are several millions who are not part of the economic growth enjoyed by a section of the population of the emerging nations and the majority of the people in developed countries. If this were considered a reason to continue these programs, one must then ask: is there a real redistribution of resources, education, skill and other essentials needed for a safe, healthy and progressing life that is being shared with the have-nots? Of course there is, but only a trickle. Within the emerging nations, the have-nots are part of the economy. In a trickle-down sense, these people survive from the crumbs that fall from the tables of the haves. Despite the revulsion that this image may conjure up in our minds, the reality is that they are better of than the have nots in countries that are laggards in this economic rat race.

Putting this question in another way: if economic jump-starts in the emerging nations worked wonders for them, why are the other nations left behind in this race. The reasons are plenty and obvious- lack of political cohesion, a population that is already riddled with horros of war, AIDS, religious and other strife. It appears that many governments and even some of us may already have classified these people as "unemployable" or worse, dispensable.

It is my view that population control programs in most parts of the world are predatory measures that are set up to eliminate the "unemployables" and the "dispensables", looking for a bigger bite of the pie before them. Perhaps the evil of any economic system is not so much that it exploits the people it employs, but that it leaves out the people it deemes unnecessary. Large well-meaning leaders could take a leaf out of rehabilitation programs that NGOs implement in areas affected by natural disasters. Their goal is to infuse capital into not just rebuilding homes, but creating communities that can rise up from the ashes of destruction into sustainable, skilled people. The direction of capital into future opportunities is the spirit of free enterprise, but it takes visionaries to initiate this into populations deemed the refuse of the earth. Perhaps the failing of capitalism is that it has failed to recognize the ability of people to emancipate themselves and therefore stayed its hand in investing into their future.

Dumbing Down of India

Here are some observations I have made about Indian Americans and Indian expats in the US.

• My expat Northern Indian friend doesn't think Delhi is the right place to raise kids or live because it is a far more liberal place (in terms of morality) than the US.

• Far more expats than Indian residents are conscious of their heritage, many take religion seriously even if they had never given it a thought in their past in India.

• Many are conscious of the good things in US culture as they are of the good things in Indian culture.

• The US smoking population has come down in large numbers, the tobacco industry never recovered from the body blow it received in the mid-Nineties. Litigation that won user reparations of $248 billion from the US tobacco industry meant that some of the largest producers went into bankruptcy, were acquired or simply diversified into other businesses. TV ads over the past decade have abounded with ways to kick the habit. The Indian expat community has not yet adapted to this good development as the rest of the US population has; but chain smokers are a rarity.

• The stereotypical image of the binge drinking college student may or may not be relevant any more, but people into their Thirties do not behave this way in general. The odd exceptions prove this rule.

• Raising kids is serious business. Most parents teach their kids some kind of sexual modesty, regardless of their wild youth. One may call this hypocrisy, I prefer to see it as living vicariously a life of purpose through their kids.

• Indians who believed that family was for life viewed the US lifestyle with disdain because of the incidence of divorce in the country. Despite the common notion that America remains plagued by a divorce epidemic, the national per capita divorce rate has declined steadily since its peak in 1981 and is now at its lowest level since 1970. The rate peaked at 5.3 divorces per 1,000 people in 1981. But since then it’s dropped by one-third, to 3.6. That’s the lowest rate since 1970. Most people are convinced that marriage problems are not reasons enough to divorce- they are interested in learning how to stay married.


You see, when I left India over 10 years ago, many people I knew talked about the US as a morally lax and directionless society. Several believed the stereotypes about US culture as being crude, unsophisticated, rude, brash, boorish, arrogant, too wealthy for anyone's good, lustful, ignorant of true faith, making a mockery of religion by selling it to crowds of the needy with loud music, manufactured excitement and fake miracles.

Several years ago many Americans believed that India was a land of snake charmers, snake oil salesmen, evil tantriks mouthing mumbo jumbo and half naked beggars.

If stereotypes defined us all, I wonder if we'd have any love lost for each other.

Here are some of my observations of people living in India that I know or know of:

• On my wife's Facebook page a friend and her husband are on vacation in Goa. A picture proudly displayed shows their 8 month old baby holding a bottle of whiskey. Another shows the dad and baby lying next to each other, dad with a bottle of beer in his mouth and the baby with a bottle of milk in hers.

• Smoking in India continued unabated; many friends are not just heavy drinkers but they talk about their sordid binge drinking weekends proudly on social networks. Smoking in public spaces has been banned- but as far as I have seen, among the thirty-to-forty-somethings this does not necessarily translate into reduction in smoking.

• Several of our friends are divorced. Many have no kids. Some have one child and do not want another child. Most marry late, though they can afford to marry at an earlier age. Many have kids closer to 40 years of age. Some support the notion of passing laws like China's one-child policy.

I don't need to make too many observations for a reader to understand where I'm going with this. You see, I see India dumbing down. I see adults who simply have not grown out of college. I see a bunch of pot-bellied, graying boozers and chain smokers cockily walking about in bermudas with a smirk on their faces, teaching kids to behave likewise and learning or teaching nothing of value to the youngsters, least of all anything of true moral or spiritual worth. Their politics leaves far more to be desired. From clueless but spirited 'citizens' who support Narendra Modi's proposal to make everyone "vote by force" to borderline fanatics who support the gunning down of lawyers who represent terrorists in India's judicial system, we have people utterly without perpsective.

Am I exaggerating? I may have taken all of this a bit more kindly. Why am I so rattled? When I talk to many friends I hardly raise these topics. But too many audaciously claim bizarre things about the US. Arrogance radiates from these self-assured know-it-alls on so many levels- arrogance of economic growth, social issues, US political failures, the so-called 'superiority' of India's educational system (which is a myth that is believed lock, stock and barrell by gullible Indians). One could be blind, but when the blind believe they can see, the blindness is serious indeed.

One must ask, what of the older generation, the parents and grandparents whose culture was far more praiseworthy, those who raised these young turks, this brat pack that has fallen pretty far from the trees? It seems to me they are scared stiff to contradict their kids. After all, this is the internet generation, the kids who are the seven figure income earners that their parents never were. The new technologies- the iPhones, the Kindles, the Youtubes, all scare the wits out of the older, gentler folks. They don't understand it. If they did, they would wonder why the brat pack was so cocky about it all. Technology doesn't make us better people. They usually entertain us or save labour. And as anyone who is wise could tell us, labour saving devices do not make us happy by themselves. Much less do they make us better people.

Do we want to really know where this is leading us? Where does unabated pleasure lead us? Social critic Neil Postman writes this in his book 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' about two views of the future- one of a strictly controlled life, by George Orwell in his book 1984; and the other by Aldous Huxley in his book 'Brave New World', that of a world where irrelevance, pleasure and indifference to reality make up the future:

"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right."
— Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Satyam's Great Fall

Satyam CEO's revelations on inflated cash have rocked the bottom of the already deflated stock indices in India. Some say that India's outsourcing industry itself will now be viewed with suspicion. While I do not think it will happen (what with the American financial institutions in trouble due to reckless lending and the double whammy from Mr. Madoff's Ponzi scheme still smarting, I do not thinkg the offshore outsourcing industry will be singled out as a miscreant), I do think that such events are serious blows to our credibility as a world-beating player in IT services. They come at a diificult time and any merger or acquisition that will see Satyam become part of another company will undermine the true value that Satyam has commendably built into itself- in terms of its delivery processes and strength in Enterprise Application Services.

On online forums, Indians are reacting with customary hyperbole, "Raju is worse than Kasab (the captured Pakistani terrorist from the Mumbai siege):, says one. Another asks, "Who is the idiot who is running their Finance department?"

Raju released a letter to the board of Satym and the SEBI chairman yesterday. A paragraph in the letter caught my attention:

The gap in the balance sheet has arisen purely on account of inflated profits over a period of last several years (limited only to Satyam standalone, books of subsidiaries reflecting true performance). What started as a marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the books of accounts continued to grow over the years. It has attained unmanageable proportions as the size of the company operations grew significantly (annualized revenue run rate of Rs 11,276 crore in the September quarter, 2008 and official reserves of Rs 8.392 crore). The differential in the real profits and the one reflected in the books was further accentuated by the fact that the company had to carry additional resources and assets to justify higher level of operations – thereby significantly increasing the costs.

While ethical standards in companies like Wipro and Infosys are considered to be high by the general public (and their managements have been conservative and transparent to strengthen this impression), this is a scenario that could unfold in any organization. If there is a small differential in the cash flow as reflected by the books and appears in reality, will a CEO contradict his published, audited books and go public with this discrepancy? Will that not affect the impression of the company in the minds of its investors, customers, employees and other stakeholders. In Raju's case he just postponed the problem until it grew bigger and dominated the company itself. If he had gone public when this problem first started, will it have taken a beating? It may well have, and that is what a CEO needs to commit in his/her mind. Wipro's ethical guidelines state that "anything grey is black", meaning that whatever the price, the company will stay on the right side of the law and ethics. Will this be put to practice in a situation like Satyam's?

I'm firm in my view that the laws of the land must take their course in prosecuting Mr. Raju and any others involved. But the fact is, as Solzhenitsyn said, "the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man."

The Hour and the Man

I lay awake last night, restless and thinking of why our wealth makes us dull to the gospel and soulless. Yes, we hear about Angelina Jolie and Madonna adopting infants from impoverished nations, and Bono spearheading efforts in Africa to combat HIV and AIDS. We anticipate- skeptic and believer alike- the fulfilment of the promises our President-Elect made on his unique and inspiring campaign. These are stories from the wealth of America. But these are remarkable because they are doing something counter-intuitive- and that is, sharing of their time, wealth and indeed of themselves.

I thought of Gandhi, wondering how a man could influence so many and transform the moral direction of a nation. My dad, born in 1941, tells me that when he was 5, before India's independence, people referred to Gandhi as "Gandhi Appooppan" (Grandpa Gandhi). In a remote village in Southern India, which was still a princely state and would continue to remain so until the fifties, they looked with respect to a man from faraway Gujarat and were arguably guided by his principles. Today's India has very little of those principles. Politically India's policies prior to the 90s were socialist im principle. The welfare state it created faces a crisis of epic proportions in the early 90s when policies were dramatically reversed and now has created a consumeristic nation characterized by greed and selfishness. In the turnaround which was necessary and laudable, something else happened which happens all too often- a trading away of values that called for simple living, even austerity, to make way for trumpery and shallow living. India's leadership today bears no resemblance to the one in the 40s. Martin Luther King once remarked on his trip to India, "To other countries I go as a visitor. To India I come as a pilgrim." To King, Gandhi's land held a moral clarity and courage that was unparalleled inthe world then. Gnadhi rose up in the context of an unjust and predatory governance system. Besides him so many Indian leaders then crafted a policy that was exemplary and powerful to oppose the British government with peace and civil disobedience. The hour produced the men.

Ah, but then America had Dr. King himself, a man known for his similar resistance in the face of injustice. The greatest humans in history are known for moral courage, rather than for the power they wielded, the skill they had, the money they made or the feats they accomplished. Mother Teresa, Francis of Assissi, Nelson Mandela, Diertrich Bonhoeffer- are all known for this. Others have had a moral dimension to them that fuelled their specia well-known activities, despite any failing they may have had elsewhere- Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churcill, President Roosevelt. Poets and authors are known much more for their profound thoughts on moral dilemmas and their resolutions- Dostoevsky, Tagore, Tolstoy. Those whose wealth and skills make the world a better place are often known because they make the world a better place, not because of themselves. Thus Alfred Nobel is known more for the prize he instituted than for his fortune in armaments. Bill Gates for now is known for Microsoft, but if he persists at his charity, he may be known much more for it in the future. This brings us to the celebrities who too are known for charitable activities than for their achievements in show business.

Why do we admire moral courage. Why is it so empirically verifiable that true greatness always comes in the face of adversity? In America we face an economic crisis, accompanied by unprecedented loss of jobs, wars in other countries and other worries. RZIM writer Margaret Manning asks in today's 'Slice of Infinity' if it is possible today to sing 'Joy to the World' when there is no apparent joy to be found. Can those of us who are not yet affected by the crisis be legitimately joyful when there are others who are so affected?

The fact is, these conditions are not new to many among the have-nots of this world. For them the crisis has been an ongoing affair. For the rest of us this is a new reality that is scary. Margaret tells us that Christmas means precisely this, that the promised Messiah came to a world that was truly dark- this made all the difference to a people that were on the verge of losing hope. The long-awaited Messiah was just so- he came into a sinful, evil world. To know the reality of this is to have known the reality of evil in our world, and indeed in ourselves.

In yesterday's 'Slice', writer Jill Carattini writes that John the Baptist who came to prepare the way of the Lord, actually exhorts us even today to make his paths straight, in our own hearts. To receive the Messiah, I need to feel my evil and repent from the bottom of my heart.

I mentioned that the hour produces the man- it did so 2000 years ago in Bethlehem. But that was God's gift to us and not the will of man. But isn't it true that every man who is so produced comes out of God's will? Jesus is God's Son, but the prophets were his messengers. My prayer is that we who need a prohet more than ever would get one- even if he calls us to turn away from our most familiar, beloved and sinful ways.

Deafening Silence in Mumbai

In the aftermath of last week's carnage in Mumbai, the global media are exhibiting their usual callousness in reporting on the issue. There are some improvements: most (with some glaring exceptions) of the major newspapers are referring to the event as an act of terror and the perpetrators as terrorists. Except some who still keep the flag flying, they have given up on the term 'militants' in referring to those who kill civilians and destroy societies in India. This was not the case 5 years ago when a ragtag bunch of terrorists drove into the campus of the Parliament House in New Delhi, their car laden with explosives.

CNN covered the event consistently- which was another exception for the media and especially for CNN. Besides these there is barely anything that I can view without revulsion in Western media reportage on this event.

The headlines are quick to judge, condemn and at the least 'tut, tut'. This article in 'The Week' magazine talks about some of them. They are urging India to let the "new" Pakistani government cooperate with Indians, asking India and Pakistan to do some "non-reacting", noting that India as usual is accusing Pakistan prematurely and without evidence, rebuking India for fomenting religious tensions and creating "disenfranchised" Muslim youth, showing puzzlement why India would continue to gnaw at Pakistan's heels when the Pakistani government clearly said they were not involved in the event and showed their cooperative side by sending their spy chief to India to talk to the government. Others are talking of how this will affect the way foreign investors look at India's business climate, thereby inflicting a heavy wound on the economy. Some others are deriding (sic) India's handling of the situation. Others are claiming that this was an event perpetrated by Hindu extremists, notwithstanding the growing mountain of evidence as to the orchestrators of the act. All of them are asking India to begin dialogue on the Kashmir issue, to open it up to the US and other nations to solve multilaterally and to ensure that the Muslim community which is by and large economically and societally backward and undereducated, is given focus and care in being able to redeem itself. Some of the more honest ones speculate that this will divert Pakistan's attention to engaging India's anger when it should be focused on the Afghanistan border. After all that is more important than subcontinental tragedies that will inevitably be forgotten in a few weeks.

It is events like this that open one's eyes to the agenda, prejudices and stubbornness that characterize Western political minds when it comes to India. As Samuel Huntington observed in 'The Clash of Civilizations', India is the only major country that is isolated, alone and culturally set apart from the world. India has no true friend. The closes of its allies, Israel and the US, are proving to be opportunists as India has always suspected them to be. The most puzzling question is why India has not been as hardnosed and decisive as China has been in pursuing a tough, self-centered, independent foreign policy.

The other remarkable observation one could make (this is no surprise though, having been repeated ad nauseam in the past) is the alactrity with which Pakistan has removed itself from suspecting eyes. The Pakistani government is new, ostensibly helping the US find the last stalwarts of the Al Qaeda hiding in the Afghan border, and has washed its hand off the responsibility. It is a victim of homegrown terror and the media argue therefore that it must be trusted implicitly by India, never mind that the legilative branch of the government has no connection to the Executive, especially the military; and never mind the calls and emails of the terrorists traced back to Pakistan; and certainly not the confessions of the captured terrorist that he had trained in Pakistan with the terrorist group LeT to fight his dirty war. Some Pakistani journalists are making the case they have always attempted to make- that the solution to all of this is for India to clean up its own backyard. Granted that India has many societal problems, but how convenient to suggest that if only India started behaving, perhaps giving away Kashmir among other things, it would all be solved. Almost all these articles call for US intervention to investigate the cause. Clearly they are dissatisfied with the evidence that is coming out of India's cops interrogating the captured terrorist and the email/phone conversations traced to Pakistan from the terrorists' satellite phone, the contact names of LeT leaders on those phones and so on. And they seem to sincerely believe that India should disbelieve its own police force and trust the US to come up with a plausible explanation for the tragedy, which of course, must exonerate Pakistan.

The LeT had of course named former president Musharraf as its honorary head prior to 9/11. This was hastily removed later. Reports of the LeT and the ISI, Pakistan's spy agency being almost interchangable, are also of course old news and therefore to be conveniently forgotten. We must trust the Pakistani claims that the LeT has somehow fallen from grace and is now an enemy to Pakistan. the connections with the ISI and deeply rooted common individual elements in these two organizations must not be relevant any more, for whatever reason.

For any media eyewash in the US, this issue has to take the cake o nbeing the most blatant. Their deafening silence in speaking out what is the obvious truth is telling. The US newspapers claim that India and Pakistan "mistrust" each other. This patronizing psycho-babble clearly muddles American minds. To India and Indians this will remain a deeply personal matter, and will only serve to further convict them of US opportunism. There may be no permanent friends in politics, but it will serve India well to remember that there are no friends at all in politics, only situations that they can manipulate. Machiavelli would be proud then, never mid Gandhi.

An Orissa in Afghanistan

The Taliban in Afghanistan, as the saffron brigade in India, kills a British aid worker because she was "spreading Christianity". Here is the news from IHT. It is a sign of the times that the popular sentiment in the West, though critical of the killers, is still indifference or an attitude that Christians should simply not tell anyone else about their faith. As for Asia, it is losing grips with reality and logic in that they attempt to kill the messenger when they cannot kill the message- and seek to justify these killings under the same sentiment expressed by indifferent Westerners. How long will we tolerate intolerance like this? We are eager to root out perceived intolerance in the form of evangelization, but we justify the brutishness of these cultures by our confused logic.

It is no surprise for a Christian, but familiar ground through history, and one accurately foretold by Jesus:

Luke 21:12- 19
"... they will lay hands on you and persecute you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. This will result in your being witnesses to them. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. By standing firm you will gain life."

Voices from Orissa

These are excerpts from newspapers from around the world with reports of the anti-Christian pogroms happening now in Orissa. It is incredible to see the responses of educated young Indian Hindus to these articles, many blaming forced conversions (which are alleged inducements given to the converts, such as food, education, healthcare, jobs and so on). Many of these comments justify the killings and the rapes as simply the only way to "reconvert" people to Hinduism.

To add perspective, I have included an astounding article from Shashi Tharoor, which while stating that the allegation of forced Christian conversions are supported only by anecdotal evidence (from dubious sources: addition mine), holds the killing and the killers unjustifiable even if those allegations were to be proved right.

In my view, a minority of Christian missionaries have indeed been aggressive and dismissive of Indian culture, Hindu deities and beliefs in their sharing the faith. None of that deserves such merciless treatment. Even if one were to claim that the killers were uneducated tribals and the trigger was the missionary denigration of their faith, India's shame is that the leaders, the cognoscenti, the politicians, the police, the courts, the people, the religious leaders, et al who have the power to change things... stood by and did NOTHING. What is their excuse?

Besides, unlike what Mr. Subhash Chauhan says (in the NYT article below), it is naiveté to assume that a sustained, month-long mass movement could arise out of spontaneous anger- especially when you consider that anti-Christian violence is nothing new in this region. As before in Gujarat and much before in 1984 when in the wake of Indira Gandhi's assassination, the anti-Sikh pogroms were aided and abetted by the Congress Party (leading to Rajiv Gandhi's infamous comment that when a large tree falls the earth trembles), a large scale pogrom like this could happen precisely because it was planned and executed by a statewide, powerful body which had a vested interest in killing Christians. If one could point to the swami Laxmanananda Saraswati's murder as having been carefully planned by a powerful body, how much more planned was an operation that rendered at least 100 people dead and 10000 displaced?

Articles from the BBC:

The Strange Case of Parikkit Nayak

I was told of a man named Parikkit Nayak, who escaped from the initial surge of violence. Two days later as he tried to flee from his village with his wife and two children, he was caught by a local mob.

They tied a rope around his neck and dragged him along the ground for 400m (1,312ft). Bruised and battered, he was then paraded through the village like an animal and asked if he would renounce Christianity. When he said no, he was cut to pieces with knives, while his young family had to look on.

Manoj, a Young Priest

I met a young priest named Manoj, now in temporary exile, who related the story of his father.

"They came to our house and held an axe to his neck. 'If you stay Christian', he was told, 'you will be killed.' He was taken to a local temple and forced to convert."

"To live in this world today," Manoj's father relates in a letter smuggled out of his village, "we have to live as Hindus."

The young Hindu woman

Even though she herself is a Hindu, she was gang-raped by her grandparents' neighbours because her uncle refused to renounce his Christian beliefs.

She says: "But we won't lie about it. Even if they throw money at our feet, we will continue to tell the truth."

From Sky News:

A Victim's Testimony:

One victim's lip quivered uncontrollably as she told us how she watched her brother being burned alive by the Hindu mobs. They came in their hundreds and just ransacked our homes, setting them on fire. If you didn't run away, you were beaten. They told us we could only stay if we converted to Hinduism. Otherwise, they said they would kill us.

A BJP Leader responds:

Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, a BJP politician who runs the South Indian state, blames Christian groups for the violence.

"While Christians and Hindus have co-existed peacefully in the state, there have been unconstitutional and illegal efforts by some Christian organisations such as 'New Life' to forcibly convert or to induce conversion to Christianity," he says, according to The Times of India, adding: "Efforts of such organization include publishing booklets like 'Satya Darshini' in which Hindu gods and goddesses were denigrated. Our constitution provides for freedom of religion but does not permit forcible or induced conversion."

From the New York Times:

Solomon Digal's family:

The family of Solomon Digal was summoned by neighbors to what serves as a public square in front of the village tea shop.

They were ordered to get on their knees and bow before the portrait of a Hindu preacher. They were told to turn over their Bibles, hymnals and the two brightly colored calendar images of Christ that hung on their wall. Then, Mr. Digal, 45, a Christian since childhood, was forced to watch his Hindu neighbors set the items on fire.

“ ‘Embrace Hinduism, and your house will not be demolished,’ ” Mr. Digal recalled being told on that Wednesday afternoon in September. “ ‘Otherwise, you will be killed, or you will be thrown out of the village.’ ”

A Nun's Brutal Rape

Two nights after his death, a Hindu mob in the village of Nuagaon dragged a Catholic priest and a nun from their residence, tore off much of their clothing and paraded them through the streets.

The nun told the police that she had been raped by four men, a charge the police say was borne out by a medical examination. Yet no one was arrested in the case until five weeks later, after a storm of media coverage. Today, five men are under arrest in connection with inciting the riots. The police say they are trying to find the nun and bring her back here to identify her attackers.

Subhash Chauhan:" Hindus By Birth"

Given a chance to explain the recent violence, Subash Chauhan, the state’s highest-ranking leader of Bajrang Dal, a Hindu radical group, described much of it as “a spontaneous reaction.” He said in an interview that the nun had not been raped but had had regular consensual sex.

On Sunday evening, as much of Kandhamal remained under curfew, Mr. Chauhan sat in the hall of a Hindu school in the state capital, Bhubaneshwar, beneath a huge portrait of the swami. A state police officer was assigned to protect him round the clock. He cupped a trilling Blackberry in his hand.

Mr. Chauhan denied that his group was responsible for forced conversions and in turn accused Christian missionaries of luring villagers with incentives of schools and social services.

He was asked repeatedly whether Christians in Orissa should be left free to worship the god of their choice. “Why not?” he finally said, but he warned that it was unrealistic to expect the Kandhas to politely let their Pana enemies live among them as followers of Jesus.

“Who am I to give assurance?” he snapped. “Those who have exploited the Kandhas say they want to live together?”

Besides, he said, “they are Hindus by birth.”

Daud Nayak:

Trembling with fear, Daud Nayak, 56, submitted to a shaving, a Hindu sign of sacrifice. He drank, as instructed, a tumbler of diluted cow dung, considered to be purifying.

In the eyes of his neighbors, he reckoned, he became a Hindu.
In his heart, he said, he could not bear it.

Solomon Digal's Final Insult:

Here in Borepanga, the family of Solomon Digal was not so lucky. Shortly after they recounted their Sept. 10 Hindu conversion story to a reporter in the dark of night, the Digals were again summoned by their neighbors. They were scolded and fined 501 rupees, or about $12, a pinching sum here.

The next morning, calmly clearing his cauliflower field, Lisura Paricha, one of the Hindu men who had summoned the Digals, confirmed that they had been penalized. Their crime, he said, was to talk to outsiders.

From the Huffigton Post (Originally Appearing in the Times of India)- by Shashi Tharoor:

Of course, it is easy enough to condemn anti-Christian violence because it is violence, and because it represents a threat to law and order as well as to that nebulous idea we call India's 'image'. But an argument that several readers have made needs to be faced squarely. In the words of one correspondent: could the violence ''be a reaction to provocations from those religions that believe that only their path is the right path and the rest of humanity are infidels?'' He went on to critique ''the aggressive strategy being pursued by some interests in the US to get people in India converted en masse to Christianity, not necessarily by means fair.''

In his view, ''aggressive evangelism directed against India by powerful church organisations in America enjoying enormous money power, has only one focused objective -- to get India into the Christian fold, as they have succeeded, to a considerable extent, in South Korea and are now in the process of conquering Mongolia.'' Arguing that ''mass conversions of illiterates and semi-literates -- and they also happen to be poor, extremely poor'' is exploitative, he concluded: ''powerful organisations from abroad with enormous money power indulging in mass conversion'' are ''a destabilising factor provoking retaliation''.

I have great respect for the reader in question, but on this issue I strongly disagree. I cannot accept any justification for the thugs' actions, nor am I prepared to see behind the violence an ''understandable'' Hindu resistance to Christian zealotry. Put simply, no non-violent activity, however provocative, can ever legitimise violence. We must reject and denounce assaults and killings, whatever they may claim to be reacting to. Our democracy will not survive if we condone people resorting to violence in pursuit of their ends, however genuine and heartfelt their grievances may be. The whole point of our system of governance is that it allows all Indians to resolve their concerns through legitimate means, including seeking legal redress or political change -- but not violence.

Let us assume, for the purposes of argument, that Christian missionaries are indeed using a variety of inducements (development assistance, healthcare, education, sanitation, even chicanery -- though there is only anecdotal evidence of missionary ''trickery'') to win converts for their faith. So what? If a citizen of India feels that his faith has not helped him to find peace of mind and material fulfillment, why should he not have the option of trying a different item on the spiritual menu? Surely freedom of belief is any Indian's fundamental right under our democratic Constitution, however ill-founded his belief might be.

And if Hindu zealots suspect that conversion was fraudulently obtained, why do they not offer counter-inducements rather than violence? Instead of destroying churches, perhaps a Hindu-financed sewage system or paathshala might reopen the blinkered eyes of the credulous. Better still, perhaps Christians and Hindus (and Muslims and Baha'is, for that matter) could all compete in our villages to offer material temptations for religious conversions. The development of our poor country might actually accelerate with this sort of spiritual competition.

What Belies These Articles

Tharoor's article above asks why it should matter if different religions compete in offering material incentives to people? The question, as does every question raised here, belies the fear within Hindu minds. This is not so much about forced conversions, missionaries denigrating their faith, Hindus being concerned about gullible people being fooled by Christian promises or the alleged hand of the CIA in these conversions. After all, if I were a Hindu leader, I would first try to dispel any perceived falsehood by spreading truth, creating grassroots level organizations to counteract ideological claims. I would try to combat any unjust prosyletizing through the legal and political system. Besides, I would also assume that those who claim to have converted into Christianity simply because of material incentives aren't really Christians after all! And if indeed they converted to Christianity due to such gifts, do I consider such fickle-minded folk to be really Hindus? They are simply indifferent to religion.

I'm sure you are shaking your head and thinking how foolish I am. Of course, you are right. This is not about whether these people are simpletons! What is the real reason for leaders dividing communities according to caste, religion, colour, ethnicity, regional allegiance and so on?

This is first and foremost about power. Just as the imperial power of Rome bowed before the babe in the manger in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, Christianity comes to destroy the power of those who seek it for unjust purposes- including those who use Christianity itself to further their own power. Why should we let the politicians have the benefit of doubt by letting them hide their fear of losing power behind their lies? The case of Solomon Digal lays it bare for all it is. Those who have things to hide hate the truth. They fined him for talking about his "forced reconversion." It is the Truth, of course, that sets us free. The smokescreen of lies that tries to hide this fact serves its purpose for the moment. It will soon be revealed for what it is.

As a Christian, I have hope in our God who is our saviour. He is the transcendant one who becams immanent for our salvation. I believe that his incarnation into humanity is the hope for Orissa and India. We too, being incarnational into the situations of those who were hurt and wounded in the cities and villages of India, serving Him, will certainly lead India to embracing Christ. History has proven invariably that violence against Christians will only serve to strengthen Christianity.

Not Done Yet

There is something else to be said loud and clear, and with no compromise. The Hindu nationalist organizations mock such display of sympathy from Christian organizations and individuals, but for the sake of truth and justice in the sight of our Lord, this must be said unequivocally. The saffron brigade claims that the murder of the swami Laxmanananda Saraswati was perpetrated by Christians. His organization claims that they received threatening letters from Christians before the murder. They had requested police protection from the State Government, but were given only 4 baton-wielding constables. As angry members of the Orissa assembly averred, this is clearly a ridiculous response from the Government in a state known for Maoist sympathies, and if the saffron brigade is to be believed, over half of this group in this particular state comprises Christians. The larger Maoist movement is not predominantly Christian, but Hindu- if at all those with such strong atheistic tenets could claim to have any religion. Maoism was described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a few years ago as India's biggest threat. This is after considering competitors to that title such as Islamic extremists, Pakistan, China and so on. If so, the State Government protection given to the swami was criminal. We do not have yet any definitive statements on who killed the swami, except the outbursts by the swami's lieutenants which are good guesses at best. Whoever they were, as Christians, we need to pray for justice to be accomplished, that the killers would be caught, judged and punished appropriately. We can pray for them to accept Christ's mercy, but let's pray for them to be judged by the Indian judiciary. We also need to be uncompromising in our sympathies for this fallen leader and his near and dear ones. The appropriate gesture is mourning. Raising grievances about the swami's activities that may have been provocative are as out of place as the saffron brigade pointing to Christian missions as the cause of the Hindu violence against themselves.

A Final Word on Charities: from the Blogosphere

The above is an article on front organizations of the RSS that collect money from overseas for ostensibly charitable purposes. It is not surprising that this organization accuses Christians of appropriating foreign funds for religious conversion. After all it is easier to accuse someone else and appear innocent when you are misappropriating charitable donations yourself.

Our Private Faith- Why It Remains Private

In our most recent church newsletter, called Fellowship Journal, one of our associate pastors, Jay Thomas, writes about the concept of the changing church that has always been the idea of church. He cites the example of Redeemer Prebyterian Church in Manhattan that is comfortable in its multicultural, sophisticated setting and is thriving even as it holds to its orthodox Christianity. Jay also talks about the fact that the Wheaton area, long a Christian bubble, as our new senior pastor- Josh Moody- described it, is now experiencing a rapid change, with new ethnicities and nationalities coming in. He emphasizes the fact that the church that does not adapt itself to reach out to these people in its own backyard is the church that actually is changing, and in a negative sense- it is actually clinging to a tradition than to its mission.

Pastor Josh Moody half-jokingly talked about having breakfast with 5 honest pagans each week just to retain his edge in this Christian bubble. He was raised in secular England where you'd have 5 Christians among 700 non-Christians, and later went to Cambridge University and New York City, where conditions are not dissimilar. Jay is half-Indian and on-eighth Native American, while I'm fully Indian. Just to set things straight, I feel- and I'm sure he does as well- right at home in Wheaton. It is densely populated with Christians, but our church has been a sending church, reaching out to many peoples around the world with the gospel, medical and counseling care, Bible translation and other missional work. I have also felt at home in that while the churchmembers are warm and kindhearted they do not go overboard in welcoming us into the congregation on the pretext that we are Indian. I have often been on the receiving end of well-meaning but a little embarrassing outpouring of special attention in other churches, where they'd express amazement that we are Christians and Indians. After these pourparlers are done, we broach the familiar topics- do Indians still have "arranged marriages" (not that again!)? and "Isn't there more freedom in America?" and the now familiar "Just last week I talked to someone named Chris (but actually Krishna) in Bangalore about my credit card payments! If you're Indian, you are smiling wryly, having been there before. I haven't seen too much of that among College Church members, but I have seen seriousness of purpose in the Bible studies and other meetings, especially Sunday services.

Reverting to our theme, I recently went to the website of Dallas Theological Seminary and downloaded some lectures given by Dr. Mark Young, whose sermons and teachings I have been truly privileged to listen to in my short stay (8 months) in Dallas. Mark is a gifted teacher, besides being a Bible scholar and a Pauline figure by example and by his zeal, and it's a treat to listen to him. In these lectures, Mark too talks about the Latin phrase Missio Dei, meaning the sending or sentness of God. In these he passionately argues that mission is not only Biblicaly based, but the Bible itself is a missional book and that our God is a missionary God. The Bible demonstrates first God's missionary focus from Genesis through Revelation, God's purpose for his people- first the Patriarchs, then Israel, and now the church- to be missional so as to demonstrate his glory to all peoples and to draw all nations to Him. The Bible also says that we are created in God's image. Mark tells us that this can be also translated "as God's image", in that we somehow are God's agents to reveal his glory to all creation. The Bible also demonstrates Jesus' authority on Earth over sin and death, and everything there is, and how he shares his authority with us to revere Him and reveal Him to all humanity.

Mark's third lecture in this series insists that contemporary Evangelical ecclesiology is derived from the Reformation and may be incompatible for today's churches. He says that the Reformation saw an ecclesiology that sought to distinguish Biblical truth from certain errors that were practised, not with a pagan land, but within the context of Christendom. But this ecclesiology has changed little today. Our context is different. Christendom is no more, and we face vastly different environments in which to live and reveal God's truth.

We have a Hindu neighbour whose 13-year old daughter has been facing difficult issues at school and they have been looking for Christian schools to enroll her in. The two Wheaton are schools she contacted let her know that they take in only Christian students. She related to us later her puzzlement that this should be so. Her interpretation was that this was unjust discrimination, just as a Hindu school in India that exludes students of other faiths would be perceived as discrimnatory. Having studied at a Catholic school in India, she had good things to say about Christian education and institutions, but this experience left her bewildered. In a culture like India's such criteria for admission would not be even allowed.

In America, it's not tough to understand why this happened. This was no instance of a "holy huddle", but the fact that public schools sometimes have students with value systems that are different or even contradictory to what Christian kids are raised to live by, as well as sometimes real and sometimes perceived agenda in US public education to turn kids into socially liberal causes such as being pro-gay rights, non-theistic evolution, refusing private prayers or religious societies within the school system being formed by students. Sometimes these may include rampant drug use, bringing guns to school, violence, sex, dirty language, loose morals, dress code and so on, besides a lower quality of education. Christian schools try to create a morally strong environment within their sphere of influence and would seek to keep out kids of other faiths based on these desires.

I was still sad to hear that there aren't schools which are Christian in character and mission that are open to everyone- like Madras Christian College was, and is. In secular (or Hindu, whichever way you look at it) India, this institution was created 175 years ago for the purpose of evangelization, and today, though that focus is no longer the driving force, the college still witnesses strongly about Christ to new students. It was there that the Lord found me, and how thankful I am for it!

In his third lecture (out of the series of 4), which deals with how the Missio Dei relates to the Populus Dei, Dr. Mark Young ends on a suddenly somber and divergent note. I can imagine him doing this, on a whim, after his theologically powerful and passionate lecture is through. He says" Frankly this idea (of the missional church) gives me nightmares. Somehow I think that at the end of my life, I will still be standing at a pulpit, saying these same things to a church full of people who just don't care."

We lament the privatization of faith in the US. Has it occured to us that we ourselves may be partly to blame?

Thoughts on Order and Space

A country's physical infrastruture tells us a few things about the country. One, of course, is if the country was relatively wealthy. Although this is generally true, it may not remain true for much longer. Large nations like China (and probably India though the desire to do the same is not in evidence) can build shining cities with the collective wealth of a large population while the per capita income remains small compared to that of an advanced nation. The other piece of information we get is if the culture is used to thinking about space and architecture in way to benefit the daily demands of the society. Eastern nations have built great temples, as have Western nations built imposing cathedrals, but the architecture of the past 100 years- call it modern, postmodern, prairie-style, whatever- has by and large sought to understand how humanity could live, work and play optimally within the walls of a building- and hence we have skyscrapers, Ikea furniture, wall-beds, studio apartments, and so on.

Besides, the layout of the physical infrastructure tells us how a society can harness its leadership, creativity and resources to create a sense of order. Asian countries like Singapore have created order that is clinical and driven from the top down, no questions asked by anyone below the food chain. As film-maker Ang Lee once said about his experience in making Sense and Sensibility, in Taiwan the director is king- the underlings learn from him without a word, but in the West, the actors want to discuss things, give suggestions; and this made him feel he came across as a bad director. China is a recent example of building great order out of pre-'80s chaos.

In India the chaos is pervasive, the only places where this doesn't exist are the homes where concepts like Vaastu have taken hold. Private space is most respected, and public space is not. Therefore you have high sidewalks which are difficult to mount, full of trees that obstruct your path, billboards, hawkers and what have you. Homes in contrast are clean. Last year I was on the campus of a large IT service provider where the lawns were beautifully manicured and buildings wonderful. Just outside the gate, in Electronic City, Bangalore, was a potholed road, in disrepair for several years. That gives one the idea.

By and large in Western societies the sense of order is not drive top down, but understood by the society as a whole to be the norm. But the kind of order than you have in Chicago can be understood to be less orderly than that you find in Shanghai. O'Hare airport is the busiest airport in the US, but also a very crowded one, the highways connecting it clogged during peak hours, and longstanding demands for upgrade have been so far unfulfilled. However this is not unfulfilled in the sense that one gets in India. This is not as much to do with inertia or corruption (although they exist) as with egalitarian priorities.

Virtual infrastructure though is becoming a panacea for many of India's headaches. A colleague who has been in IT services sales for many years recently described to me the horrors of getting an RFP from a government institution in India. This was many years ago. The announcement that an RFP was to be released would hit the news. On the morning of the day of release the sales managers would crowd outside the door or window where RFP hard copies would be handed out. There are always limited copies, so the most burly or aggressive of the lot would fight and get their copies, and those who couldn't get in first would go home emptyhanded. Today though, RFPs are released electronically, and the number of recipients has increased. This is not to say that all problems in India have been similarly solved. Standardized tests and group discussions for B-school admissions are still chaos.

One would imagine that the Internet and electronic sourcing, commerce and other tools have made order out of chaos. The fact is that these tools have simply achieved what the police or infrastructure could not achieve - to keep the people disciplined and orderly. The concept of standing in a line is today made irrelevant, and hence the clutter is cut down. But the rules of web applications and the protocols of the Internet, email and other electronic tools are defined by people who sought to create order from chaos.

Could an Asian country have defined these rules originally? Perhaps an Indian pioneer who was disgruntled with the state of things could have brought this about. Or a Chinese government employee, wanting to be conscientious or earn brownie points or earn a higher rank, could have done it. I think these highly improbable situations. I do not imply that Indians or Chinese lack creativity or motivation. For nothing good comes without these. India has seen volunteer projects like Exnora. China has seen cracked the rice genome.

I just mean that a society that can conceive of physical infrastructure in ways to benefit humanity is the society that can define rules for virtual infrastructure as well. Creativity in orderliness is the same underpinning for both these infrastructures. The mechanics of these may be replicated in other societies- some more successfully than others. But order is something felt internally, and the more it is true of the people, the more we see it outside of them.

Fear and Loathing in India

As once again Indians are trying to comprehend the sadness and shock from yesterday's multiple blasts in New Delhi, it is important to remember that out of the nine bombs that the terrorists had emailed the police about, only 5 actually exploded. They found 3 and defused them, and one remains undetected.

Here is the story from Sify of how the three unexploded bombs were found in 5 minutes and defused. It is a story of courage that gives hope to Indians who are currently grieving and also clueless about the perpetrators. The command and control structure of the group called Indian Mujahideen is yet unknown, which makes it dangerous and unpredictable.

On Hindu nationalist blogs and forums on the internet, the usual questions are being asked. One of them was 'why aren't the imams issuing a fatwa against these killers?' The answer to that is simple: people who can issue fatwas against innocent people are the same ones who will issue any fatwas at all. A fatwa is taking the law into your own hands. This makes one little different from a terrorist. In any case the equivalent of a fatwa is informally understood by extremists of every stripe when it comes to taking revenge.

It is best to trust the courage of our people and pray that we would ourselves would not stay our hand if we were to face a situation like the police faced in the above link.

The Ways of the way of life

How many times have you heard this statement: "Not a religion, but a way of life." Chances are, several times. I first heard this from my dad about Christianity. I've heard this of Hinduism, Wicca, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, Islam and any number of shamanistic, tribal or animistic religions as well, Hinduism currently topping the number by a wide margin, most often implying that by virtue of it being a way of life it is somehow better to link your lot with it than any other worldview.

Which religion isn't a way of life? After all religions are worldviews and they all expound on the condition of man (sinful, unenlightened, ignorant, fulfilling Karmic law, unfulfilled potential and so on), the ways to change the condition (redemption, self-realization, cycle of births, acquiring wisdom, meditation), ways to live the earthly life (ethics, morals, laws, situational ethics, choosing the least evil), who God is (the Triune God, Allah, Brahman, Impersonal Reality, various deities), purpose of life (devotion to God, self-fulfillment, completion of just earthly duties). They may not all have a holy book but they all have sacred writings (Bible, Koran, Vedas, Upanishads, Buddhist treatises, Guru Granth Sahib), some form of organization (hierarchical, conciliar, congregationalist, loosely bound), key men who have founded or nurtured them (Jesus, Mohammed, Sankara, Buddha).

And so this pithy polemic that they are ways of life is best left unsaid. Indeed Christianity in its earliest days was not known as Christianity but simply as "the Way", clearly referring to the Jesus' definitive statement, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life". But this did not mean simply that it was A Way, but that Jesus himself was The Way.

Hinduism is on trial this week in the Indian state of Orissa. If indeed it is not a religion but a way of life then it is very loosely defined. Is the violence being unleashed on Christians part of this way of life? Most Hindus would disagree though some may disingenuously say that the violence was just the natural response to the slaying of a respected Hindu leader and not normal Hidu behaviour. One must be careful whe one uses this statement. After all the proponents of Hindutva insist that they are being taken for a ride because they are a peace-loving people. History does not prove that exactly, what with the wars among the Hindus before the Muslims invaded India. Indeed the explosive birth of Buddhism in India was precisely in the aftermath of one of the bloodiest battles of the ancient world, Kalinga (ironically enough, in Orissa), fought among Hindus. Besides the long history of discrimnation, reprisals and brutality based on Jati and Varna (known to the world as the Caste System) reduce such notions to nought. And one must ask the question, if indeed Hinduism is a religion of peace, how does one account for the current cycle of violence? Blaming "forced conversions" is a fig leaf for the insecurities that social ills engender in Indian society that contemporary Hindus feel and do not want to acknowledge.

How is a convert forcibly converted? From Wikipedia, "A forced conversion is the conversion to a religion or philosophy under duress, with the threatened consequence of earthly penalties or harm. These consequences range from job loss and social isolation to incarceration, torture or death. Typically, such a conversion entails the repudiation of former religious or philosophical convictions".

But these kind of conversions are not the forced conversions alleged by Hindu nationalists against Christians. These are not reprisals for not converting but positive reinforcements (implicit or explicit) for converting. A poor tribal Hindu is in need of a job. Christian social workers and missionaries not only preach the Gospel to him but help him get a job. The local Hindu Nationalist leaders are agitated. They are losing a lower caste Hindu from the ranks of their indentured servants; and they are threatened by the advent of a faith that challenges their supremacy. Besides they see economic progress coming to a convert from whom it had long been denied. They bogey of forced conversions is then raised.

Perhaps a more reasonable question could be asked: Do the missionaries deny the assistance to a poor Hindu that they give a poor Christian convert? If the answer is yes, then shame on the missionaries! God causes his rain to fall on the wicked and the just. How could we then distinguish between two human beings on the basis of their faith, much less their character?

A missionary helps people in need but especially those he comes into close contact with. A new convert has the opportunity to interact much more with him than a non-convert. Why is it so hard to give him the benefit of doubt in such a situation? Besides, even in such a case the response of the nationalist leaders gives their game away. An organized political resistance to such preferential and unjust treatments would have gone a long way, and indeed Hindus have a history of organizing themselves well against social evils. Even in their current response they are organized well, and this could have been applauded but for their evil intent and methods- violence, intimidation and terror.

The current spate of violence is being understood among the nationalist circles as the response to the killing of Swami Lakshmanananda. The mob has its own twisted notions of justice. But keep in mind that the government, the police and the nationalist leaders themselves have nothing to say or do to contain the violence. Even the questions being raised in the Orissa state assembly seek to understand from the incumbent party why Hindus are not being protected. There is no mention of the Christians who are being slaughtered in the aftermath. Have the lawmakers forgotten to serve the people who are in most need? Every Christian leader has unequivocally condemned the killing of the swami, burying for the moment their deep grievances about his actions against them. Is there noone among the Hindu leaders to shed a tear for the victims of the nationalist rabble? While the more bloody Gujarat riots are recalled to mind, it is important to know that the evidence for implicating leaders is not so much evidence for instigating the rabble but that for standing by and doing nothing.

It is time to ask a basic question: if Hinduism is indeed a way of life, then whose way of life is it? Will the real Hindu please stand up? Is he the face of the mob in Orissa? Or the complex avatar, Ram, often called the perfect man worthy of emulation (Maryada Purush)? In both cases, the answers raise more doubts than solutions, and present that ancient way of life as one not worth following.

Rediscovering Our Souls

'America discovers its soul again', said the headline. It was interesting. I saw the headline on Google news and I was skeptical, coming as it did from the website of Variety. I decided to check it out and sure enough, it disappointed. It was about Isaac Hayes, the controversial musician whose 'soul' hits in the seventies helped define the genre. Hayes passed away two days ago. Clearly the death of a well-known artist is something to write about, the fans and the curious rightly express their sorrow on the comment forms. But something about that title piqued my interest and let me down as well.

What is the soul of a nation and when does it discover it? In India I have sat through lectures in schools, speeches and meetings in public fora that talked about India's soul- invariably it was connected with the legacy of India's past, when great sages wrote glorious epics, ethical treatises; mathematicians, kings and warriors were also saints. During these discussions it was implied that in our struggle for independence from Britain this soul was rediscovered to an extend and through the sacrifices made by a few, it was bared to the public to view and wonder and admire. In the wars we fought against Pakistan and China too, some of this soul was rediscovered. It is true that adversity brings about heroism and we relate the heroism to our ideals, especially those found in our past.

How about the United States? Here is a nation that strives to preserve its short history as a nation in public memory. In incredible contrast to India which does not record its culture, accomplishments or history adequately, the Americans have built monuments and museums in every major city to document and present well their history-prehistoric, colonial, national, anthropological, social, technological, political, religious and other history. The US has the most widespread, biggest and well-maintained public library system I have seen. Everywhere you go you see reminders of how Americans defined the concept of America by sheer individual grit, enterprise, discipline and romance. The moon shot, the wars, the music, the sports...

China- a nation that drives the agenda of defining its soul from top down. In contradistinction to the US, this is a nation that does not necessarily have its people defining the concept of China for themselves; but the Chinese government actively promotes this- and from what we see it has achieved much more success than other such experiments elsewhere, like the erstwhile USSR or Eastern Europe. Nowhere is this more evident than at the Olympics. At the time of this writing, China leads the medals table with 9 golds versus 3 US golds and 4 South Korean ones. The documentaries aired about the 16-year old gymnasts who perform incredible feats on the uneven bars reveal China's astonishing desire to excel and outcompete other nations in sports. The athletes trained in human hothouses from kindergarten for the sole purpose of winning Olympic gold medals turn out to be world-beaters, even as 98 percent (as a recent Guardian report suggested) of the population remains indifferent to actually participating sports, compared to academic achievement.

Wherein lies the soul? What makes Americans and America? What makes me an Indian? Or the Chinese? We each struggle to define ourselves in the light of our circumstances and our dreams. Who can deny that it is our dreams that frame our lives? Human desire and passion are stronger than that of nations. The more we are true to ourselves and God the more we are free to be what He wants us to be. As Solzhenitsyn said, a single word of truth can outweigh the whole world.

Postscript on Aug 12: By now it is commonly known that the little girl who sang 'Ode to the Motherland' in the Olympic opening ceremony was lipsynching to another girl who remained in the background because she was considered 'not cute enough'. Another example of driving the agenda from top down. And sure enough, the Western press has pounced on it, and rightly so. So often I feel that China has enough power economically, culturally and politically to create a unique position for itself in the world. All too often it seems they are desperately trying to look good in Western eyes. They are playing the game the way of the West. China's own game should have been good enough. The arguments the Chinese leaders gave in defense of the Olympic lipsynching event are eye-opening, as found here in the New York Times

Christian Missions- Drop Your Prejudices!

A few points to consider for missionaries to India in particular, and to overseas missionaries in general:

1. Resist the temptation to make quick judgments. Indian tourists in the US often make this mistake about American society. A recent visiting relative asked me why people walk around in their underwear, referring to the scant summer clothing in the 90 degree heat. The broader view is that American society is immoral. I've heard numerous similar observations which folks make, based on their cultural perspectives. Americans tourists in India are very concerned about arranged marriages, child workers, beggars and so on. Christians are concerned rightly so, but it takes some thought to understand if some of these are actually evils or simply excuses that are used by the unscrupulous to generate evil. More on this later in this post.

2. Attempt to change society only by changing an individual at a time. Do not start a civil rights movement in a foreign country. It is dangerous as well as counterproductive. Focus on individuals who need care or counseling. Do not force your cultural prerogatives on them. You may imagine a bride to be scared witless in an arranged wedding, but it may not be so. The culture takes it as normal. If you were to encourage people to date or men to ask for a woman's hand, it may be perceived as cheap, immoral, intrusive or making unwelcome sexual advances in some cases. I've known women who have sharply rebuked or even slapped men for confessing their affection for them. Many women (clearly not all, as India is a nation in cataclysmic transition) prefer the security of a marriage approved and arranged by parents to one they arrange for themselves.

3. Do not belittle their deeply held assumptions about life. If a worldview needs to change, there must be at least some cultural conflict. That is a given, but so often we assume that Christianity is simply incompatible with some cultures. The Hindu scriptures are a mishmash of different worldviews including panentheism, deism, polytheism and even atheism. If you read a little closely you will see that although their view of the fallen world and the remedies prescribed are not in line with ours, the fears and challenges expressed in them are rightly placed- fears of sin, punishment, honour, duty, righteousness. It is important to affirm that these fears are genuine and that they find their answers in the person of Jesus. Jesus must come into their fears, not what you believe their fears should be.

4. Recognize the evils prepetrated using culture as a cover. Although it is a bad idea to fight traditions such as arranged marriage, you must recognize that some people use this tradition to make money through exorbitant dowries that are used to fatten the parents' wallets or create situations of domestic servitude. Only do not assume that this is the norm- it is not.

5. Pray for sensitivity. Every human being on the face of the earth has some prejudice or other. This is inescapable and it is sinful. The church I'm part of in America has been welcoming and kind; and I feel at home. I have known Indians who haev not felt that way. This will happen when you visit a foreign culture- you may feel unwelcome and you may harbour some form of prejudice against them. Recognize this as fact and ask God to change yourself. After all it is not in living in denial of personal sin but in seeking God's strength to remove sin that we succeed as Christians.

Chinese Rise to IT Stardom?

China's date to surpass India's IT services export industry is now 2011 (every 2 years or so this changes but people take it for granted that it will happen at some time)- Reported by CNET in early 2007

The former Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Times writes in this article (A Long Wait at the Gate to Greatness) about the misplaced expectations on China's rise.

For all the efforts they are making I feel this is going to take them longer than they think. Besides they are prone to exactly the same challenges India is facing- attrition, rising salaries, competition from mature global players, quality challenges and so on. It has taken us over 20 years and a great first-mover advantage to come this far, including quality systems that were pioneered in India, albeit designed in the US. It has been almost 2 years since the CNET report. Time to measure progress. We need to wait and see, but it;s not likely to be 2011 unless something drastic happens in India to disrupt the industry.

Twist of Karma- the Hindu American Foundation's Two Faces

Amazing enough that the Hindu American Foundation which has often complained about Protestant missions in India now lobbying hard against the Bush Administration restricting some religious visas.

The link is here. Some of HAF's members in the past have complained about missionaries coming in to India on visitors' visas and preaching in a church. India, of course, doesn't grant religious visas to missionaries.

It's pretty typical that the HAF would like to enjoy the liberties for adherents of the Hindu faith in the US that they would not grant those of other faiths in India. Thus they would fight against having Christian artifacts, paintings, the Ten Commandements and so on placed in American public buildings, ignoring the fact that it is commnplace in India to have Hindu artifacts in Indian public buildings. The same goes for other minority faiths in the US. The Islamic community would lobby hard for privileges that would never be allowed other faiths in countries that have accepted Islam as state religion.

It certainly speaks highly of the US as being a truly open, clear-thinking community; and the HAF should do well to think hard about the value of these liberties which they would deny their non-Hindu brethren in India.

Winds of Change in Burma

Burma's military dictatorship has so far reacted with less ferocity than expected at the massive pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks and nuns. While the world has pretty unanimously voiced its indignation at whatever violence the government has inflicted on the protesters, and puppet master China has called for restraint, one gets the feeling that the worst is yet to come. Daw Ang San Suu Kyi who has been a prisoner of conscience for a long time, said many years ago that it is fear, not power, that corrupts. When you fear losing power, you become corrupt. As of now the Burmese government is repressive because it fears its people.

What is interesting in the question of Burma is the attitudes of other countries. China has long supported the military rulers in Burma. Having unleashed violence on its own people in 1989, China knows well that civil uprisings are tough and has always encouraged Burma with military and economic aid. Besides China has always counted Burma as a hedge against India. A democratic Burma has no value as a hedge.

India has always been supportive of the pro-democracy movement in Burma. Recently though the thinking in New Delhi has shifted considerably. It is as though India has grown tired of playing the pacifist and renounced its moral high horse position. Today Indian policy toward Burme is one of realpolitik, of curbing the influx of narcotics and arms from Burma into India's volatile North East, rife as it is with Chinese propaganda. India, though supportive of democracy, has been developing economic relationships with Burma, and engaging them in dialogue, thereby winning the government over to crackdown on the narcotics and arms trade. And to make it clear from the outset, to me this is the best bet from both a practical and humane angle. I will explain why shortly.

The ASEAN has also been engaging Burma in trade, admitting the country into its association in 1997. The Philippines recently decried the violence in Burma, surprisingly and unprecedently upping the ante against the military rule. But in general these nations have not imposed sanctions on Burma like the West has.

The West has imposed sanctions on Burma and has reached out to Burma's neighbours to do the same. The sanctions have had no effect as China has supported Burma mightily through thick and thin. Besides, India, realizing late that its interests in the region are compromised by the sanctions, and knowing that a foothold in the energy-rich nation is essential to meet its exploding demand for energy, is involved in a race with China to secure its place in Burma. The South East nations have siezed the opportunity to trade with Burma in the face of Western sanctions. At the same time, the West has not done anything in Burma other than the ineffective sanctions. Their focus has been on the Middle East and Latin America.

Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' theory posits that the Western world acts in its own interests- a fact borne out by numerous incidents. Individuals within the Western world are independent agents and hold their own opinions, but their governments always act in their own interests. Thus they may turn a deaf ear to massacres in Srebrenica, but act quickly in Cuba or Nicaragua. They may support military rulership in Pakistan and decry the same thing in Burma.

The West also tried to influence other nations and cultures with its line of thinking. Take Russia, for instance. Pressured to alienate Iran, Russia does not want to create an unfriendly neighbour. There is no toeing the Western line there. Unlike the West, these Asian/Eurasian nations do not usually cry themselves hoarse about repressive nations that the West supports, such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, because they are not united in their opinions and/or they do not want to compromise their own relationship with these nations. Thus the US states freely that India and Pakistan are both allies, but the fact remains that Pakistan is ruled by a dictator who initiaited a war with India and whose nation is clearly in the wrong as far as exporting terrorism to India is concerned. The recent revelations of nuclear technology transfer from Pakistan to North Korea have rattled the West enough to censure Pakistan, but this bears out the fact that democracy outside of the West interests the West only when it is beneficial to the West. If a dictatorship is similarly beneficial then the West usually supports it. In China's case there has been recently a turn of events- some call it political maturity, others call it the result of affluence or economic integration with the world. China could and did ignore world opinion on a lot of matters in the past. The massacre at Tianenmen square was an example. Its actions today are markedly more benign. Could this be India's nuclear capability? Could it be that world opinions matter now for attracting investment in China, especially now that India and other nations have become as hungry and ready for it? Could it be that Beijing is accomplishing a facelift, of which its newly gleaming cities and the Olympics next year are examples? For whatever reason, one finds that China reacts considerably differently to events such as the Maoist threat in Nepal and North Korean nuclear ambitions. So it is with the protests in Burma. This represents an opportunity for the West to push their agenda (at least a little) in some of these nations.

What about Burma? Or specifically what can India and the US do (separately) about Burma? India cannot march in and crush the junta as the consequences of a sustained war and a proxy-war with China are unthinkable. Already the lessons from Sri Lanka are fresh in Indian minds. India cannot impose sanctions as they are not only ineffective but counter-productive to the confidence building measures and economic relationship fostered painstakingly over the last decade. India cannot as its policy arm militants as it has been itself a victim of such export of terror. India can incentivize a return to democracy and freedom by establishing economic cooperation. Besides the shabby treatment of Daw Ang San Suu Kyi and the pro-democracy movement by the junta has always worsened when it felt threatened. Democracy imposed from the outside is never a true democracy, as Solzhenitsyn recently remarked about the US remaking of the Iraqi government.

The US is the most serious player in this equation. In its war against terror the US has a moral responsibility to oppose regimes such as Pakistan and Burma, but experience with other Asian countries must have taught the US that democracy imposed from without is of no use. The US too must begin constructive dialogue with Burma. It must help Burma move on from being an international pariah to economic powerhouse that it is entitled to be, given its rich resources and people. A nation like Singapore is a US ally without being a true democracy- why not Burma? What prevents this is (1) US fear over Chinese influence on Burma; and (2) the prevailing mistrust in Burma towards the US. These are tough to overcome, but absolutely necessary to create a peaceful Burma. The US must take the lead in bringing both the junta and the pro-democracy leaders to the negotiating table. As all dictatorships do, Burma's will fall one day. To prevent the spillage of blood in the meantime, there needs to be a give and take as Burma becomes stronger and integrated with the world.

One can hope for the pro-democracy movement to succeed in Burma, and if it does, it is good news indeed. Hopefully it will result in a good plan and action towards democracy and join India as the only true grassroots democracies in Asia. If it doesn't, the best other nations can do is to help integrate that nation with the rest of the world.

Bihar- India's Final Frontier

You can talk till the cows come home about India's cities, companies and people making progress in many fields. We always have another take from other quarters on our progress. The site of ancient civilizations, learning and cultures, the state of Bihar today is pitiable.

Sometime back there was the shocking news of a baby girl abandoned in rural AP that I had posted here. This new video on Bihar cops assisting a mob to attack a jewel thief is equally shocking.

Warning: This video shows a violent situation which may not be suitable for all to see

We have all known for long that the long arm of the Indian judiciary in Bihar is no match for the 'justice' meted out by the public. For an outsider to Bihar the extend of that brutality is not usually clear except from stories Biharis tell us. Now it's there for us to see and it's terrifying to see what a mob can 'democratically' do and actually think it's doing the right thing. Is there a stronger case for a impartial moral authority?