Virtual Truth Commission

VIRTUAL TRUTH COMMISSION

A site about America's actions over the rest of the world. Thanks to whoever created this. And thanks to my friend Indranil for pointing this out to me.

Evo Morales

Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and a coca farmer is the new president of Bolivia. Here is an excerpt from a site on him.

“Thanks to Pachamama, Mother Earth, thanks for the Coca Plant.

We, Aymaras and Quechuas, original nations of the Andes, have survived the onslaught of the white man until today thanks to our coca leaf. From the moment the white man came to our land he has tried to control our leaf for his own enrichment. He has abused it here and now he is abusing it everywhere else. Since it has escaped his control he is intent on destroying it.

He has labelled our sacred plant a drug, to be prohibited and eliminated under universally binding drugs conventions. With these conventions the United Nations have offended and betrayed the Aymara and Quechua Nations. Under the cover of these conventions and after impoverishing our people with their neoliberal policies, the United States government, foremost enemy of the Indians, has used its dollars to bribe the officials of Bolivia, corrupt its institutions and pit white Bolivians against us. Recently the United States Embassy in La Paz has funded a mercenary force with orders to eliminate the coca plant and the Indians defending it. Coca is not a drug!

This lie has to be called. The moment has come for us to stop the menace of annihilation of the coca plant and our communal ways of living. The coca plant has sustained us through all adversities until today and we will strive, with all our might and with her help, to thwart the white man's wicked plans. Like other plants coca is a medicine, a holy plant. Thanks to coca we have withstood the untold sufferings brought upon us by the white man's unholy war on drugs.

Therefore, the United Nations should respect our coca leaf and take it off their prohibitive lists. Therefore, the United States should get all their drug war personnel and equipment out of Bolivia. They have abused their stay. Let them go home to fight their own drug war. Therefore, the white men should stop their war on drugs and accept that we live peacefully with the coca plant. They should consider reports from Harvard University, their most cherished academic institution, about the beneficial uses of our plant.

But this will not come about without our active intervention. We have to rise to the occasion. The moment has come for the original nations to take power in our own hands. The moment has come for us to redeem the coca plant.We have learned to treat the plant with respect and she has generously rewarded us. From now on we will no longer tolerate any foreign powers harming our plant. We will be her sovereign guardians. Those nations that accept this will be our friends. We will help them treat its abuse. Those that will continue to repress our plant will be our enemies and the predictions of sickness and misery proffered by our yaquiris, as recorded by legend, will certainly befall them.

As long as the American invader fights us, we, the original nations, won't forget our war cry, born from the pain of our people:

Causachun coca! Wañuchun yanquis!
Long live coca! Yankees go home!"

The BBC published some excerpts from his inaugural speech - no wonder the bankers in USA are terrified.

Special thanks to Indranil Ghosh Dastidar for directing me to this site.

History again...

Now, Indian history textbooks raise a storm in California- The Times of India

So here they are at it - again. After selectively editing the school syllabus and text books in India (refer to 1, 2 and 3), the hindutva maniacs are trying the same in the US.

Examples?

(1) "Aryan Invasion" - Hindu organisations claimed that Aryans were not a race, but a term for persons of noble intellect, and it was not an "invasion". Okay, so we have to prove that only the Muslims (Ghori, Babar etc) were the invaders, we hindus have always been peace-loving, and we are the direct descendants of aryans. So, change the "invasion" word to "migration". Thank goodness, they didn't claim (as they did in India in some text books taught in Vidyabharti) that aryans originated from India...

(2) They wanted the sentence "Men had many more rights than women," to be replaced by "Men had different duties (dharma), as well as rights, than women." Afraid of acknowledging the truth? Was it going to raise some embarrassing questions over our so-called ancient knowledge and culture? The truth is even the scriptures tell stories about this differentiation - Gargi was threatened by Uddaalak that her head will explode if she doesn't stop asking questions...and that's only one example. Scriptures reveal innumerable social exploitations in the name of religion...

Why do we need to prove that we are better than the rest? That too by rewriting history according to our needs? Ironically, this is true in almost all beliefs - hindus do it, christians do, muslims do the same...bragging about..."we are the good children of the God, the rest are hidens or kafirs or infidels or x or y or z"...

I'm rather content with Lennon...

"Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...

Imagine no possesions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say Im a dreamer,
but Im not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one."

Land of curries and snake charmers - who's responsible?

Since writing my last post, I have been thinking about this phrase Vinayak mentioned in his comments - "land of curries and snake charmers". It is true, at least partially, especially in the US. But then who is responsible?

A few years ago, just after my marriage, I was sent by TCS (where I worked at that time) to work onsite at Colorado Springs. My wife was staying alone at Delhi. The day before I was about to return, they arranged for a lunch. I was very happy then because I was about to return home. The Manager from the Client-side, Mimi, was puzzled to hear that I actually dated my wife since my college days before getting married, and she almost fell off the chair when she learnt that my wife held a post-graduate degree in Civil Engineering and used to work in a decent company!!! "Do you guys date?" "Do Indian women work?"

She knew about Roop Kanwar, but she didn't know about Capt. Durba Banerjee or Kiran Bedi or numerous other women who have formed the core of Indian society...

This is how we portrayed India infront of the world by letting a woman burn alive...

When Gujarat was burning, I was attending a conference at Edinburgh. During the conference dinner, I was sitting next to Ali from EPCC, a nice and friendly bloke, originally from Iran. The Fire Brigade Unions were on strike in the UK at that time, or some other national strike was going on, I don't exactly remember it. What I remember, and will always remember as long as I live was Ali's comment (on something I said about strikes in India) - "You guy's don't strike, you guys riot."

He knew about Gujarat - thanks to Narendra Modi. He also knew about December 6th, 1992 - thanks to LK Advani, Uma Bharti et. al.

This is how we portrayed India infront of the world by murdering thousands of innocents...

We always harp on our ancient culture - our ancient knowledge - all that knowledge and culture are drained down the gutters when a Roop Kanwar dies or a Best Bakery occurs...it's just two of the hundreds and thousands incidents happening every day...Each such incident sends down the "land of curries and snake charmers" phrase down another person's mind.

"Unity in diversity" was what we read in the history books...only if we really wanted to create a "pluralistic society" in a true sense for ourselves...we could have easily erased that phrase from the vocabulary of the world.

Update on "Of freedom and revolution"

Thank you for your comment Vinayak (on my last post).

I would still stick to my stand and belief, that the perception of majority of Indians about Indian Communists or Communism as a whole is totally and blatantly wrong. Rather, majority of the Indians have been fed this wrong idea by a certain section of religious and political leaders (read RSS here). I could have pointed to thousands of articles to prove my point - pieces of history lying in the National Archives...works like "Memoirs" by Major Jaipal Singh, or "Mole In The Crown" by Michael Carritt...but I refrain from doing so.

What you point out is a topic of interesting debate, and I don't mind in having a good and well-thought debate. The whole point in my blog is to counter the kinds of posts found in TOI and Rediff - which can be written only by people void of any thought, belief or committment.

And Ramdev? Every citizen of India possesses the right to pick up a sample of medicine (ayurvedic or anything else) from a pharmacy and get it tested in the laboratory. And if you read recent international developments, a lot of ayurvedic medicines from renowned Indian ayurvedic pharmacies have been banned in Canada (soon others will follow) because laboratory tests have detected potentially harmful heavy-metal content. In India, it is all about belief - people believe in Ramdev, so he gets the right to do whatever he wants to do. And because we do not have any regulatory laws (atleast not implemented), anybody can do whatever he or she wants to do - like Coke/Pepsi - in India they don't follow the standards followed elsewhere...Brinda Karat just publicized a laboratory report of medicines from Ramdev's laboratory - and Ramdev's followers maligned her (and other workers) as "cohorts of multinationals". Oh, I forgot to mention, the Indian Communists were maligned by the same "multinationals" when they spoke against Coke/Pepsi in recent past when harmful chemicals were detected in the soft drinks...To me, it seems like diverting peoples view from the issues. I should post the link to the statement released by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) which clarifies the stand.

I applaud Brinda for bringing this issue open into the eyes of the public.

BTW - are you a man or a machine? I mean it seems to me that you search blogs with certain phrases and post the same comment everywhere...I found exactly same comments posted by you here...

Of freedom and revolution

Of freedom and revolution

This is a review of "Memoirs: 25 Communist Freedom Fighters". The reviewer correctly points out - "Communist biography is among the most neglected fields in the historiography of the freedom struggle. The lives of communists have been ignored not only by the mainstream nationalist historians and the latter day historians of the `subaltern' and `post-colonial' variety, but also studiedly avoided by the major Left historians themselves. There must be some reason why major figures such as Muzaffar Ahmad, Hasrat Mohani and B.T. Ranadive never get written about. It is only the occasional, often amateur, attempts by people associated with them, which appear erratically as small write-ups in the magazines and newspapers of the communist parties, and hardly get noticed beyond the circle of their regular readers".

It's no surprise why a large section of Indians publish hysterical anti-communist posts and comments on the blog sites provided by the likes of Times Of India and Rediff.

I am dying to get hold of this book.

I feel pity on these people

The Times of India highlights several blogs each day. Sometimes some of them are really good, thought-provoking, but most of the time? I just bumped into this one - crap would be a too soft word for this. I really pity these people who post such thoughts and those who post such uneducated, ill-mannered comments...

And I really pity TOI - a renowned newspaper, highlighting such blogs...