Category Archives: News
Start a group on Orkut.
That, according to Abhijit Panse of the Shiv Sena’s student wing, is enough to pose a threat to “communal harmony” in India. Panse is upset that everyone doesn’t adore the leaders he worships, and some have even started hate groups against them on Orkut, which he wants to ban. Rediff reports:
It is not only Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and our leader Balasaheb Thackeray but leaders like Indira Gandhi and Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar too. Some mischief-mongers have also started a ‘I hate India’ campaign on Orkut and they want to disturb the communal harmony in our country,” says Panse.
“We have time and again raised this issue but nothing is being done about it so we feel the best solution would be to ban Orkut in India,” he adds.
Note that this isn’t even about religion. These holy cows are flesh and blood people, three of them politicians, and while I don’t know enough about Ambedkar to comment on him, the other two have been malevolent forces in Indian politics. (More on Indira: 1, 2.) For Panse, though, any deviation from what he and his troops believe is unacceptable, and will be handled with physical violence.
When pointed out that the Internet is a free medium and there is no way for him to prevent someone sitting in, say, Australia to post anti-India messages, he said, “I know this. Our software engineers are working on this front and we will track down such people. If that person is even sitting in America we will go and thrash that person. We want to catch hold of such culprits who do such things and thrash them.”
Such courage. Meanwhile, the rest of India quivers as the “I hate India” group on Orkut threatens its very existence. And harmony. Heh.
(More posts on Orkut: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
And my essays on free speech and censorship: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Link via email from Gautam John.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 09 June, 2007 in
Freedom |
India |
News |
Politics
CNN-IBN reports that a “prestigious cricket club” in Chennai did not allow a civil servant to enter its premises because he was dressed in a veshti.
On a tangent, I wonder—and I know I can check this with two mouse-clicks, but it’s more fun to wonder—whether you’re allowed to play cricket in a veshti. Why should cricket only be played in trousers? Indeed, with a veshti, you could actually catch a ball between your legs without the risk of scraping the skin on your fingers. If you have a really long veshti, you could let it loose in the breeze while running a single, possibly ensuring that you’re inside both creases at the same time. And if you’re at the non-striker’s end, and your partner’s having a problem with the sightscreen, you could stand on your head.
I hope the BCCI takes this matter up with the ICC. The colonial hangover must go, and air must circulate.
(Link via email from Gautam John.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 08 June, 2007 in
News |
Small thoughts |
Sport
Mid Day introduces a story thus:
Four well-built Nigerian drug peddlers beat up a scrawny constable during a raid.
Sigh. Bloated government and scrawny policemen is the exact opposite of my dream society. Our priorities are just upside down, aren’t they?
Posted by Amit Varma on 06 June, 2007 in
India |
News
Yesterday at the gym, puffing and panting and wondering if fitness was over-rated, I saw on the monitor in front of me a startling revelation. For a full five minutes it flashed again and again, the same caption, the one you see below: ”Amitabh no farmer.”
But his daughter-in-law did marry a tree, no?
Posted by Amit Varma on 02 June, 2007 in
India |
News |
Personal
... it can also be a political statement.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with political statements, and I wish these neo-Buddhists well, and respect their decision. But I wonder what the Buddha would have thought.
Posted by Amit Varma on 28 May, 2007 in
India |
News |
Politics
Remember the post in which I expressed incredulity about the supposed bomb disposal squad in Hyderabad not wearing any protective clothing at all? Well, CNN-IBN reveals why that was so. The bomb they were defusing wasn’t a bomb at all, but “a tiffin-box full of rice.” It appears to have been a hoax, to make the cops look good, and we are told that “[t]he four police officials involved in the drama are likely to face action.”
The cops, of course, do plenty of things to make themselves look good. At least there was no human cost involved here.
(Link via email from Gautam John.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 28 May, 2007 in
India |
News
That’s the only conclusion I can draw from this news report:
A man told a judge in the Calcutta High Court that he and his family did not want his wife, whom he had driven out of home, to wear a salwar kameez.
The husband, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, drew the attention of Justice Partha Sakha Dutta to the red salwar kameez his wife Rupali was wearing during the court proceeding, a dress worn by millions of Indian women.
“We are an orthodox family. We cannot accept such dresses, she should wear a sari,” the husband told an astonished Justice Dutta.
What I find sad is that the judge “directed Dibyendu to take his wife and child home and asked him not to create problems over such trivial issues.” I presume she was constrained by a lack of economic independence, for why would any sensible woman want to live with a man like that?
Also, how could “millions of Indian women” have worn “the red salwar kameez his wife Rupali was wearing”? Couldn’t they have worn their own salwar kameezes?
(You can read my other posts mentioning salwars here and here. I’m a huge fan. Cows should wear salwars.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 25 May, 2007 in
Freedom |
India |
News
Bomb disposal squads abroad typically wear a fair bit of protective clothing, as shown in this picture (via). But Indians seem to be macho, with no need of such protection. Check out the photograph below, from CNN-IBN, of a bomb disposal squad at work in Hyderabad:
Now, if they were parliamentarians, I could understand. That type is so thick-skinned…
(Links via email from Gautam John.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 21 May, 2007 in
India |
News
Question: What do you do when the object of your affection rejects you because you are too dark?
Answer: Sit outside her house for two days and get a tan.
In the case of Saral Prasad from Bihar, this worked. The lady in question “was finally moved by the gesture of the young man and married him.”
So now every time he wants to sulk, you know what will happen. He’ll go outside the house and wait. Men!
(Link via email from reader Nox Rupawalla.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 21 May, 2007 in
India |
News
Reuters reports:
Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom’s more sober brother instead, police said Monday.
Scott Adams wants to know “if the bride is hideous.” Does it matter when you’re drunk?
I can actually imagine the Reuters reporter asking the police that. Guess what they’d probably reply.
“Monday.”
(Adams link via email from Gaurav Mishra.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 02 May, 2007 in
India |
News
It’s shocking, what these cops from Gujarat got up to. (1, 2.)
But is it surprising?
Update: Reader Srikanth Viswanathan points me to a piece by PR Ramesh in the Economic Times that stands up for the police, and says that “we have to defend those who defend us.”
I see!
Posted by Amit Varma on 02 May, 2007 in
India |
News
DNA reports:
Sources said a gang of women thieves operating at the Thane station area is increasingly targeting, apparently well-to-do people walking out of the railway station and rob them of valuables and cash. According to information, these women after identifying their target deliberately bump into them and begin shouting for help. The police constables present nearby immediately approach them and start threatening the victim. In full view of the crowd that accumulates to witness the commotion, the policemen whisk away the victim and the woman concerned on the pretext of taking action against him for eve-teasing.
However, on their way to the police station, the constables start negotiating with the victim threatening him with police action followed by legal complications.
A terrified victim usually agrees to settle the matter by paying up. After ‘settling’ the matter, policemen and the lady return to the station in search of their next victim.
In an earlier piece, The Matunga Racket, I’d written about similar blackmail carried out by the police in the context of Section 377. But it isn’t only laws against victimless crimes that the police can exploit to harass people, but absolutely any law out there, as this report illustrates. It’s all a revenue stream.
Posted by Amit Varma on 27 April, 2007 in
India |
News
Two incidents involving cops. One:
Close to 2,000 cops spent the entire Sunday night hunting for a cabbie who had stolen an expensive mobile phone belonging to member of Parliament and yesteryear actor Vinod Khanna’s son, Saakshi. Nakabandis were put in place across south Mumbai and the suburbs and a message was flashed to all police stations and patrolling vehicles. The taxi’s owner was traced in no time and the mobile was recovered from the cabbie’s house in Behrampada, Bandra (east) on Monday afternoon.
Two:
Thirty-five-year Savita Jangam, a resident of Worli Village, lives in constant fear. She can hardly sleep. Savita was like another normal woman till a few days ago, but an incident on April 8 made her lose her mental balance. She was stripped, beaten and paraded half-naked by villagers and hung on a tree for nine hours at her native village in Bhor, Pune, before being rescued by her husband.
[...]
“We approached the local police station in Bhor on the same day, but initially, the officials refused to register our complaint,” [her husband] Gopal said.
Needless to say, the location of the above incidents is irrelevant. In this country, if you’re rich and influential, the police are like your personal servants. If you’re poor, you don’t exist. That’s all there is to it.
Posted by Amit Varma on 18 April, 2007 in
India |
News
The Telegraph reports:
[S]he has blue blood running in her veins, no mixes anywhere. Her name is Sultana Begum and she is the great granddaughter-in-law of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar.
Neither the Bengal government nor the Centre has — in her own words — bothered to help her or shown any respect to her bloodline.
Well, why should they? I can’t think of a good reason why our tax money should go towards helping someone purely because she is the heir of a former emperor. Her sense of entitlement is baffling. She is welcome to private charity dispensed willingly, but to demand that the hard-earned money I pay as taxes go to her upkeep is outrageous. Such shamelessness.
On the other hand, if I was Bahadur Shah Zafar’s descendant, I’d want the Kohinoor back. “That’s mah stone,” I’d yell. “Give me mah stone, and mah throne while you’re at it. And where’s the harem? I want an harem. Organise!”
Posted by Amit Varma on 17 April, 2007 in
Freedom |
India |
News
The shameless Alistair Pereira, sentenced to six months of jail for running over seven people, still denies that he did any wrong. DNA reports:
When DNA caught up with Pereira on Friday, he scoffed, “I will have to go in for six months, all thanks to the media.”
So now you know the truth. The media was driving the car.
Meanwhile, Salman Khan is a hero. Joy to the world.
Posted by Amit Varma on 15 April, 2007 in
India |
News
The Times of India reports that an undertrial accused of rape is scheduled to marry his alleged victim at the Baripada Circle Jail. My favourite part of the story:
“Dara Singh, convicted of murdering Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, may also attend it,” a source said.
Well, that’s one guest the Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding can never snag.
Posted by Amit Varma on 14 April, 2007 in
India |
Journalism |
News
I love serendipity. It’s convenient.
Posted by Amit Varma on 11 April, 2007 in
News |
Small thoughts
Vinod Nayar, Arun Nayar’s daddy, is upset because Liz Hurley didn’t treat him well during her wedding to Arun, from which he was apparently ‘ejected’. Nayar has been quoted as saying:
May be they didn’t really want my side of the family there. They didn’t even have the manners to invite my 87-year-old mother. I have totally disowned them (his sons). I want nothing more to do with them or their wives. It was important for her (Hurley) to get celebrity faces there.
No matter how much Liz may dislike Arun’s family, she should thank her freakin’ stars that it’s nothing like this one. Indian families contain unspeakable horrors. The only way to put an end to the monstrosity is to ban copulation. You with me on this?
Ok, fine, forget it. Have a good day.
(KSBKBT link via email from reader VatsaL, though not in this gory context.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 09 April, 2007 in
Arts and entertainment |
India |
News
There’s global warming on Mars.
Posted by Amit Varma on 08 April, 2007 in
News |
Small thoughts
It seems that couples across the city are holding hands. That too, in public spaces, as if they belong to the public. But worry not: the police is countering this moral, social and epistemological crisis with an iron hand. Aren’t you relieved?
(Link via feedback from reader Annette.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 05 April, 2007 in
Freedom |
India |
News
An ice-cream vending contractor caught raping a six-year-old girl at Nithari was lynched by a mob yesterday. Apart from the anger you’d expect the crowd to feel, what else did the lynching demonstrate? Their lack of faith in the cops and the justice system, that’s what.
The mob might well have felt, “The courts will take years to punish this man, if they ever do at all. Why should be not take matters into our own hand and ensure that justice is done?”
Now, I’m against mobs and lynching and so on. But how do you answer that question?
Posted by Amit Varma on 04 April, 2007 in
India |
News
One question: will Bhavna Koli be any better or any worse a corporator if her caste certificate turns out to be genuine?
Posted by Amit Varma on 28 March, 2007 in
India |
News |
Politics
The Times of India has an eye-catching headline on its website: ‘India to face severe water crisis by 2045’.
Apropos of absolutely nothing, my mind wanders to Paul Ehrlich, and his bet with Julian Simon. Now, why did I think of that?
Posted by Amit Varma on 28 March, 2007 in
India |
News
PTI reports:
Stating that “winning and losing is a part of the game”, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray on Monday asked the disappointed cricket fans not to attack the players’ houses.
Conceding that India’s defeat to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in the World Cup was a cause of anguish, Thackeray said in a statement that attacking players’ houses and taking out their mock funeral processions was not the way to express anger.
“This is not our culture...It does not behove us. Nowhere in the world do such things happen,” Thackeray said.
Immense amusement bestows itself liberally. We all know what kind of culture Mr Thackeray believes in. Do we not?
Posted by Amit Varma on 27 March, 2007 in
India |
News |
Politics
PTI informs us:
Homegrown major Dabur India Ltd is planning to host beauty pageants - Dabur Amla Sundar, Susheel, Yogya Pratiyogita - across rural India. The competition for finding beautiful, good-natured and capable women from villages as part of its strategy to relaunch the firm’s flagship hair oil- Dabur Amla.
I wonder what will happen when these contests are held in rural Bihar and UP. Will you have local mafia dons demanding to be judges, and insisting on bikini rounds? Cadaverous caravans cascade.
I wouldn’t be worried about women being commodified by these contests, by the way. Women are already treated as sub-human in much of rural India. No?
Posted by Amit Varma on 26 March, 2007 in
India |
News
Anand Ramachandran tells us how. Heh.
Other random links I’ve come across this morning:
A couple of posts about Nandigram by Somnath Batabyal and Yash Jain. Somnath makes an interesting point:
I see Nandigram in the same light as the horrific events in Gujarat. Yes, the number of deaths is less but it is the state machinery that went out to hunt the minority. In Gujarat, it was the Muslims, here they were poor peasants. Show me the difference? Both are minorities.
Ayn Rand once said, “The smallest minority on earth is the individual.” But some minortities, of course, are more equal than others. My thoughts on Nandigram are the same as my thoughts on Singur, which I’d expressed here.
Last link for this post: Old pal Rohit Gupta, who now calls himself DJ Fadereu, is writing a book, of which the first chapter can be downloaded here. If you like it, he is asking you to donate money that will help him write more of the book. I like the model: doodh ka doodh, paani ka paani.
Posted by Amit Varma on 26 March, 2007 in
Miscellaneous |
News |
Sport
I’ve just been watching the TV news channels, and they’re all a little psyched right now. The CBI has announced that Surendra Koli is solely responsible for the Nithari killings, most of which took place when Moninder Singh Pandher was either out of the country or not in his house. The anchors and reporters are bewildered, and are hinting at all manners of dark conspiracies. There are soundbytes of relatives of the victims protesting against the “injustice.” One thing is clear: many of these people decided long ago, after a rapturous media trial, that Pandher was guilty of the serial killings. Now that he’s not even being charged of the killings, they don’t know how to deal with it.
This is especially so because a significant part of the media made it a class issue. They focussed a bit too much on the subtext of a rich, influential businessman killing off poor, defenseless kids in his neighbourhood, and much of the outrage about the Nithari killings came from the class difference. Now that storyline is sinking, and they’re trying to figure out what angle to take. Perverted psychopath killing and eating a whole bunch of kids is less juicy if it’s the servant and not the master we’re talking about.
The whole truth of the matter will hopefully emerge as the trial proceeds, and it might well turn out, as some of the reporters are insinuating, that Koli is covering up for Pandher. But it might also turn out that he’s telling the truth. Either way, should we not suspend our decision until the facts are established?
Posted by Amit Varma on 23 March, 2007 in
India |
Journalism |
News
Air Deccan’s getting much attention from CNN-IBN, and rightly so: their disregard for customers has been so blatant for so long that something had to give. Well, Gautam John points me, via email, to an excellent comments thread of people relating their experiences with Air Deccan. One of them, in two parts, by a gentleman named Saurabh Chauhan, is particularly hilarious, and I carry it below the fold.
Read more...
Posted by Amit Varma on 22 March, 2007 in
India |
News
IANS reports that “[s]ex education will no longer be imparted in schools in Madhya Pradesh.” MP’s chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has explained his decision with the following words to HRD minister Arjun Singh:
The union government has devaluated [sic] Indian culture and its values. I believe that the text material on the subject was not submitted before you in a proper manner or else you would have not approved it.Instead, the younger generation should be taught about yoga, Indian culture and its values.
How these old fogies take kids for granted! Biology is stronger than culture, and these kids will get their sex education whether the schools provide it or not. As for Yoga, if you teach it to them at school, they might end up hating it for the rest of their lives. Such naïveté.
Posted by Amit Varma on 20 March, 2007 in
India |
News
We’ll only know if Anand Jon is guilty of the charges against him when the trial is done, but if there was a law against silly euphemisms, his attorney, one Ronald Richards, would be in serious trouble. Consider the gentleman’s defence of Jon:
These girls fly in for model jobs after months of dialogue filled with flirtation, they have sexual interaction and if he doesn’t put them in the show… then sometime later they claim they had unwanted sex.
“Sexual interaction?” “Unwanted sex?” Dude?
And it’s interesting how a section of the Indian media has jumped to Jon’s defence simply because he is an Indian celebrity in the US. So we have stories with quotes from celebs saying things like “Oh, I met him once at a party, and he seemed so polite. I’m sure he couldn’t have done this!” Joy.
Madhur Bhandarkar should make a film on this.
Posted by Amit Varma on 20 March, 2007 in
Arts and entertainment |
Journalism |
News
So says Reuters. And what do I say?
Men who have children should boil them.
Posted by Amit Varma on 14 March, 2007 in
News |
Small thoughts
All the newspapers today are full of the “rave party” that was busted by cops near Pune yesterday. It is a party that I might well have gone to in my youth (I never did drugs, but I did like to rebel), and I feel sorry for the kids who’ve been arrested for activities that harmed no one. It is a pity that so many victimless acts are treated as crimes in our country. If I want to snort a little of whatever it is kids these days snort, what business is it of anyone else? Unlike cigarettes, where bystanders can be hurt by passive smoking, most recreational drugs don’t even harm anyone else.
But then, who cares about individual freedom in this country?
An aside: And do check out the following line in the Hindu report:
All those arrested have been booked under the NDPS Act and Foreigners Act, while the police are also thinking of invoking provisions of the IT Act against them because the invitations for the party were sent via the Internet, he [the superintendent of police in Pune] said.
That’s right, shoot the messenger. Bang bang.
Posted by Amit Varma on 05 March, 2007 in
Freedom |
India |
News
A depressing headline, this: ”Polio cases jump in Pakistan as clerics declare vaccination an American plot.”
What bugs me the most is that if some people unconnected with religion spread such rumours, and deaths were caused by that, legal or police action would almost certainly be taken against the mischief mongers. But because these guys are clerics, they’re untouchable, immune from the consequences of their actions. It’s a pity so many of us put religion on such a pedestal—and it’s not only Islam I’m talking about.
Recent related posts: 1, 2, 3.
(Link via email from Gautam John.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 17 February, 2007 in
Miscellaneous |
News
