Vibhishan’s Burden

The White Man’s Burden

Vibhishan’s Burden :

A poem in the making

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to naught.Take up the White Man’s burden–
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Ye dare not stoop to less–
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen feebles
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Have done with childish days–
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.

-By Rudyard Kipling -By Babu

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Macaulay’s ‘Minute on Education’

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In this article I have tried to explain in a historical context what Macaulay’s Minute on Education has come to mean to modern India. While it is much larger than the Preamble to the Constitution of India, this is arguably the shortest written document that has had so far reaching effects on the future. If today India has the largest English speaking population and is riding on the wave of IT and ITES, a large part of the fortunate credit goes to this document about which not many might be aware. Today, Indian English is more rampant than American English or the Queen’s English. Today India is ahead of China in the service sector much due to this early linguistic advantage. It would seem that through a quirk of fate the British gave the opium to the Chinese, and English and modern science to the Indians. Despite this springboard, it required the humongous incompetence of our culture to consign us to the dumpyard of many a world’s endeavours.

Macaulay was a master of English, and much like Machiavelli with whom he shares much in reputation, Macaulay is read both in English and Political Science classes. A simple read of what he wanted to bring about, and what we have in its place (take up any newspaper to gauge the pedestrian nature of its prose) brings the stark irony to the forefront. But then it is never too late to make a virtue of an incompetence. Since we could not master Queen’s, we created our very own demesne – Indian English.

For those who might not have come across this document elsewhere, I present Macaulay’s Minute on Education here:
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Continue reading Macaulay’s ‘Minute on Education’

What’s the matter, Babu?

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There are many words in and out of the dictionary that are used with a certain passion, while their exact meaning remain confined to the pages of the dictionary. There are various categories of such words. Some sound sophisticated – raunchy, intrepid, serendipity. Some are just fashionable – fag, dude, anti-Semitism, imperialism. Some, with the passage of time, attain layers of grime and ignorance, and through a process of Semantical acrobatics (that’s a new word that I am trying to ‘coin’; once it has attained fringe parlance, it shall be called a ‘neologism’; once it is accepted as everyday parlance, not necessarily respectable as some books would tell you, it shall be inducted into the dictionary. For most words, mind you, that is ceremonial cremation. Once a word enters the portals of a tome, it remains forgotten and surfaces only when researched. A word in the dictionary is like a comatose on life support. Just joking) acquire absolutely new passion, absolutely new colours, absolutely new meaning. I can think of no better word to introduce this development than ‘babu’.

And while we are at it we shall beckon a ‘thought of the day’ and try to understand what someone said about lies.

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
–Joseph Goebbels

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Goebbels was the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda during the Nazi regime, and one of the closest advisors of the little genius. Do keep in mind that Goebbels started his life as a journalist. So, how was it that he proceeded to propagate the lie and garner enlightenment for his Chosen People. I would presume he recalled an incident from Medieval history on the shores of Mediterranean.

Everyone loves Alexander. At a young age he did what people thrice his age could only dream of. Across the world people spent the next 23 centuries trying to match his exploits. While not a match, there were quite a few common things between Hitler and Alexander – they were both short, they were both brave, they were both mad, they were both stubborn, they were both ravishers and thrived on rape and rapine and pillage, both came close to conquering the world, and both died rather ingloriously (Alexander died of mosquito bite or whatever, we still don’t quite know; Hitler reportedly took cyanide and simultaneously shot himself – one does not know what hit him first, the poison or the bullet). History, however, looks quite differently at the two. There is a city called Alexandria. There is no city called Adlofia or Hitleria. Hitleristan, anyone? Now for some strange reason we shall overlook, Alexandria had the world’s greatest library. Well, at that time, Alexandria was the greatest city for that matter. Any city that goes either too much towards the sky, or too much towards any other direction, incurs the wrath of gods or people. Sometime back those foolish people in the Middle East (can anyone tell me why is it called Middle East? I mean, there can be a west, there can be a east. If it is in the middle, it is called centre. But Middle East! Don’t much blame Tolkien for that matter. He must have got his Middle Earth designation from present geography only) tried to build a little tower in a city then called Babilu, now called Babylon. What happened? Well, something happened that we are not quite sure of, but the remains looked like the aftermath of some cosmic erectile dysfunction. In another city of a continent that is an accident of history (well, there was this fool who wanted to find India and sailed West when everyone went the other way. He met a few Neanderthals with bananas – he DID NOT find the plains of Punjab) people became vain again. And time and again like in the Biblical times, plagues rain down on New York. Sometimes it is a rather large dinosaur that stampedes across the town. Then come some gorillas. Then some icecaps melt up in the north, and it is flood. Sometimes huge rocks rain down from the sky. See, bible again and again. Then they built a tall tower. Wait, not one, but TWO. Whoever heard of such sacrilege. And see what happened.

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So, on the shores of the Mediterranean, the largest city of the ancient world was built. It was also the site of an ancient wonder, a wonder that withstood the wrath of man and god for more than a thousand years. Close to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, scholars from around the world came and studied everything under the sun and the moon. Every book that passed by the city was taken to the library – a copy was returned back. Of course, it was not the time of copyright yet. Outside of the library the city flourished, enticing traders. With trade comes prosperity. With prosperity come the people looking for a shortcut – marauders and conquerors. Like most cities, Alexandria was conquered not once but many times. But finally it fell to the Muslim army led by Amr ibn al ‘Aas (okay, that is not the origin of IBN!). Message was sent to the Caliph as to what is to be done with the library and its books. Amr received the famous reply:

“If what is written there is in the Koran, they are superfluous. If what is written is not in the Koran, it is blasphemous.”

Amr used the books to heat bathwater for his soldiers. Viru in Sholay got his idea of the coin from this monologue – heads I win, tails you lose. Goebbels got his inspiration to burn books from this example.

Continue reading What’s the matter, Babu?

The Great Indian Middle Class

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Having read a couple of books by Pavan Kumar Varma, an Indian Foreign Service Officer, I have come round to the view that he is certainly one of the better writers of English we have in these parts. I think it was 1997, the year of our Golden Jubilee, that Varma wrote The Great Indian Middle Class, a thorough indictment of the soul of the second largest Middle Class in the world (someone please explain why China’s is not the largest? I think it is). I thought I had the book with me lying somewhere – I would hate to go without some of the charming quotes I could have given from the book. Calling this class the ‘muddle class’, Varma probes how this whole class moves in concert, inspired by insipid selfishness, dictated by the profit motive, infatuated by the Great American Dream and sodomized by the prospect of lucre. Muddle is word that has great symbolism in A Passage to India, by E.M.Forster:
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In Part Two of A Passage to India, E.M. Forster frequently refers to India as a “muddle.” This is not necessarily because he is racist, but because his logical Western mind cannot accept the extreme diversity of Indian religion, society, wildlife, and even architecture. Westerners, Forster explains, are always trying to categorize and label things, but India defies labelling. But the Indians quietly accept this diversity, not as a muddle but as a “mystery,” like the Catholic Trinity or Sacraments, things ordained by God that must be accepted but cannot be explained in terms of reason. Additionally, Indians rely more on emotion and intuition in their judgments of people and events, whereas the British are always trying to make their opinions scientific and logical, like McBryde with his pseudo-scientific theory about the lusting after of dark men for white women. These differences in outlook and psychology, Forster implies, are the ultimate differences between the British and the Indians. For British minds, shackled by reason and race, cannot understand the Indian psyche. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Passage_To_India]

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Now, I don’t particularly recall if Varma referred to Forster, but I do find a commonality between the indictment of both the authors. The Middle Class assumes something, probably from the Middle Path of Buddhism – a desire for personal salvation, a dereliction of responsibility towards the world. But whereas Buddha renounced the riches for nirvana, the Middle Class hogs the opposite way.

Do keep these views in mind when we see this:
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New Delhi: Manjunath Kalmani occasionally gives a confused smile. But his eyes never smile. Framed by the iron headrest of his hospital bed, a striped sheet draped over him, Manju remains immobile. Actually, he can’t move even if he wanted to — he was paralysed neck down following a car accident in the US on May 1, 2002.
The date is etched in his brain that’s ticking away — and registering every bizarre twist in his life story that took a dramatic turn on that early May morning. Not only was his promising life as a software engineer rudely interrupted at the age of 27, but he was reduced to a vegetable, living under the care of nurses in an alien land. And today he’s back home, but with no one to take care of him.
That’s the latest twist in his short but eventful life. On Wednesday an air ambulance ferried him from Northside Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia, to the Palam airport. And from there, he was taken and dumped at Safdarjung Hospital which put him on a ventilator. The crippling paralysis has made his respiratory system useless.
Manju was on his way home from Nashville that May Day when his car spun out of control and hit a tree, leaving him with a badly injured spine. Following a brain stroke, and an emergency operation, he was paralysed neck down.
So all he can do now is speak in a rasping whisper that’s not easy to comprehend. ‘‘I want to meet my mother. I haven’t met her for the past eight years. Please tell her I’m missing her if you get to speak to her,’’ he told TOI. Manju’s family is in Koppal, Karnataka. But hesitant to come to Delhi.
‘‘Come, and do what?’’ asked his brother Sudhakar when contacted over phone. The family can’t afford his treatment, and fears it might be forced to take him back home. ‘‘We can’t take care of Manju. He is on ventilator and we don’t have the facility to take care of him,’’ said Sudhakar, who works in a cooperative society that lends money to farmers and petty businessmen. Manju’s father is a farmer and mother Vidyawati a housewife.
There was a time when the same family thought Manju would change everything for them. He had got a job with an American new economy company, weather.com, for which he was developing software. But the economy turned choppy and weather.com laid off many. Manju, too, got the pink slip. As it turned out, life had greater trials in store. [Source: Times of India, 8th March 2008, New Delhi Edition]

The moment I dragged my eyes to this piece of news I recalled Varma. Here was a dismal picture of a failed Great American Dream. An object of pity with a past that was promising. Perfect recipe for some emotional juxtaposition – here, see…my son could have been at his place. Such a pity. Why is god so cruel! Et tu bhagvan! And who but the champion of the Middle Class, The Times of India, would splash this tragedy for the consumption of the Middle Class. I knew at that instant that that single article would bring a world of change – to Manjunath. His mother would be reunited with her. Hundreds of cheques would keep coming. A thousand emails would jam the inbox of TOI. Call me a Nostradamus – check today’s paper. Well, here it is:
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New Delhi: Manju is no longer abandoned. Vidyavathi, the 54-year-old mother of the software techie who lies paralyzed neck down at Safdarjung Hospital after being sent back from the US, is coming here to meet her boy, braving her frail health to travel from Koppal in Karnataka. The impending reunion after eight years will be a result of TOI’s front page report on Manjunath Kalmani on Saturday.
In fact, a lot more has happened. There has been a groundswell of worldwide support for Manju who went to the US on a H-1B visa, worked as a software engineer with weather.com, got laid off, and was involved in a crippling accident in May 2002. For five years, US doctors and support groups helped keep the quadriplegic in hospital.
But after his visa expired, he was transported back on March 5 and put in Safdarjung Hospital. Abandoned until Friday — even by his family, which appears to not have the means to look after the cripple who needs a respirator to breathe and 24-hour nursing for his every other need. ‘‘Where will the money come from?’’ his brother Sudhakar had despaired.
Well, money will hopefully not be such a big problem, given the volume of responses that have poured in. Reader after reader, dozens and scores of them, have written in to TOI offering help. And not just financial help — some of them volunteered to be at his bedside and alleviate his loneliness, while others sent in inspiring stories of other quadriplegics who despite their similar and crushing disabilities have not only managed to stay alive, but be productive too.
Like Rajinder Johar who has been paralyzed neck down and bedridden for the last 20 years. Writing about him, Kumud Mohan has said that Johar, along with his supportive family, founded the Family of Disabled which has so far helped get employment for 275 people with disabilities. She has said that with his mental skills intact, and his abilities with the computer — Manju has been communicating with the world on his blog by using the sip-n-puff mouth control device — the paralyzed techie had a brighter future.
Then there are letters of heartfelt empathy. Biplab, an Indian based in Houston, has written to give his own story. ‘‘I can relate to him. I am also a techie and I had a bad car accident three months ago.’’ He, too, had spinal injury — ‘‘but nothing compared to Manju’s’’ — and after being hospitalised for two months is now in rehab. ‘‘It’s time for positive action,’’ said Biplab.
Yes, it will require a lot of positive action for Manju’s rehabilitation. Doctors that TOI spoke to say that his best bet is a sophisticated wheelchair, which will have to be imported, and on which he can be strapped. A portable ventilator would help him with mobility. They spoke of many other sophisticated gadgets with which Manju can operate a computer — like sip-n-puff — and possibly carry out small things of life like ringing a bell or switching off the light.
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All of this will require money. Manju will also require a lot of compassion and understanding. Who will provide it? A number of readers have written in to express their appreciation for the US and its people who, despite having no legal requirement to help him, kept him for five long years. ‘‘Which other country would support an immigrant for five years?’’ asked Atul. ‘‘Now it is the turn of the Indian government and its people to help Manju,’’ said Naveen.
With this outpouring of concern, Manju’s life could be set for yet another dramatic turn. One in which the despairing techie is touched with some hope. Perhaps the touch he would be seeking the most would be that of his mother’s on his forehead.
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Want to aid Manjunath?
Numerous readers have written in to offer help for Manjunath while urging The Times of India to set up a fund for the helpless techie where they can send in money. In response to their request, the TOI has set up a fund for Manju. Readers who wish to send in contributions may write out a cheque in favour of ‘Times Foundation’. They should also send in a covering letter with ‘Manjunath’ written in the subject line. We will ensure that every rupee is used in Manju’s best interest.

Now, this is a thought experiment. How many cheques would have swarmed in had the victim been a Bihari unemployed who had come Delhi in search of a job and got hit by Blueline? In fact, the question does not arise as TOI would not have posted such a gloomy story on its frontpage. Migrant labour death is seventh page news on the sidelines. As story after story come in the papers and the television, I am more and more disturbed by this trend where only the Middle Class matters. The NDTV has started a Save the Tiger campaign. It has collected lacs of signatures. It is the very same people who would want a piece of the choicest real estate when NDTV and TOI gives a advert of a new housing colony. Housing colony that rise up in tiger territory.

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Sixth Pay Commission cometh…

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Long years back, there was this Russian physician called Pavlov. He really loved his dog. He was especially fond of feeding it. Being grandiose, he would ring the bell each time he would feed his dog. This went on for a long time. Soon, the dog, ever the intelligent creature, learnt what the bell meant – it meant food. The moment the bell would ring, he would know food has arrived.1

One fine day the Indian Government recalled the Russian. The particular problem of Sarkar was that there were too many working for them. Of course Sarkar and the people loved to have so many servants working for them. But when payday came, the Sarkar started to get Parkinson’s.2 So, Sarkar got its own bell, like the Russian. He gave it a fancy name – he called it some pay…pay…pay what..ah…Pay Commission! That’s right. Every ten years, he would need a new bell. So far he has bought five. Sarkar tells us he is getting the sixth one.

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Now, Pay Commission is to the Babus what UPSC is to the civil service aspirants. And Pay Commission recommendation is like the UPSC final results. I recall a line from a short story I had read in my college years – “her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood”3. On the Budget Day the FM promised that the 6PC would bring out its award in about a month. Yeah, can you feel the blood rushing?

No, I don’t intend to bring out my own predictions. I would just like to point interested soul to a website that does a better job of tracking it. Go to:
http://sixpaycommission.blogspot.com/

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  1. Stop. I was just joking. You can read the real story here.
  2. It’s not difficult to understand. Remember Amitabh Bachchan. Well, he was the Sarkar in one movie, and he started having Parkinson’s in another movie. The latter was on payday…Okay, that’s a PJ.
  3. Araby by James Joyce.

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