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metamatar · 3 years ago

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Virendranath Chattopadhyaya or 'Chatto' by Heike Liebau

Indian radical revolutionary, journalist, communist

via Ole Birk Laursen, right, celebrating May Day in Leningrad

Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (1880-1937) was part of a large transnational network of Indian political activists who, during the first decades of the 20th century, carried out organised anti-imperial and anti-colonial propaganda activities outside India, first in Europe and North America. He grew up in an intellectual Bengali Brahmin family as the second of eight children. Among his siblings were the famous Bengali poet and musician Harindranath Chattopadhyaya (1898-1990) and the political activist, campaigner for women’s rights, and renowned poet Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949).

Chatto studied in Madras and Calcutta before he entered Oxford University in 1902 and became a law student at the Middle Temple. Like other nationalist Indian students in England, he joined India House in Highgate, London where he contributed to the journal The Indian Sociologist published by Shyamji Krishnavarma (1857-1930). For a short period in 1909, Chatto was involved in the production of the journal Talvar. During his years in England, Chattopadhyaya established intensive contacts with revolutionary socialist and social democratic circles in Europe. Thus, in 1907 he participated in the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International. In 1910 Chatto, like other Indian political activists, moved from London to Paris and from there, in April 1914, to Germany where he enrolled in comparative linguistics at the University of Halle.

Involvement in International Anti-imperialist Movements during the First World War

While during the first decade of the 20th century, London and Paris were central sites for the Indian anti-colonial movement, with the outbreak of the First World War, Berlin became a hub for Indian revolutionary exiles. Chatto, already living in Germany in summer 1914, sought collaboration with the German Foreign Office and became a leading figure within the Indian Independence Committee (IIC), founded in Berlin in September 1914. Initiated and supported by the Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient (Information Service for the East), part of the German Foreign Office, the Committee was a loose association of South Asian political activists which had been built on earlier European and American networks. Despite the frictions within the Committee, it became a strong tool for Indian revolutionary and anti-colonial activities abroad. Together with other nationalist “independence committees”, the IIC was an important element of Germany’s so-called program for revolution which aimed at instigating unrest within the French, British, and Russian Empires. “Revolution was openly acknowledged as a means of warfare and as an aim of war”, argued Fritz Fischer. Colonial inhabitants were actively involved in this strategy, thereby also pursuing their own political aims.

The IIC carried out propaganda in and outside India, first of all among Indian soldiers at the front as well as among POWs. The Committee also engaged in military action and weapons training. Being a leading figure in the IIC and hoping for support from the German Foreign Office, Chattopadhyaya re-activated members of radical political networks, which existed before the war and invited other Indian activists like Har Dayal (1884-1939) to come to Germany. At the same time, Chattopadhyaya constantly enlarged and improved his international political alliances. In 1917, disenchanted with the role of Germany and with the conflicts among the IIC, Chattopadhyaya shifted the weight of his political activities to neutral Sweden, where he established contacts with the Socialist International Comintern, especially Russian socialist circles.

Activities and Conflicts within the Comintern Movement

Back in Germany, after the First World War, Chattopadhyaya founded the Indian Information Bureau, based in Berlin which engaged in improving Indian-German relations, including commerce and economic enterprises. The bureau also supported Indian students who came to study at German universities. At the same time, Chatto continued his collaboration with the Russian Bolsheviks and with the Communist International. In 1920, together with other former members of the now dissolved Berlin IIC, Chatto went to Moscow to present his “Thesis on India and the World Revolution” and to seek support from the Comintern for the anti-colonial struggle in India. However, the Berlin delegation’s negotiations with the representatives of the Comintern were not successful. At this time, Chattopadhyaya also became active in the League against Imperialism. He was the co-organiser of the Brussels Congress of the League in 1927 and became one of its joint secretaries.

Period of Repression in the Soviet Union

Chattopadhyaya spent the last years of his life in the Soviet Union. He moved there in 1931 and worked in Leningrad at the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. During the period of Stalin’s repressions, he was accused of espionage. Virendranath Chattopadhyaya was arrested and shot to death on 2 September 1937, having spent most of his life in exile in search of an applicable ideology to build a future world. He navigated his life through competing alliances and disconnections, through periods of active engagements as well as “silent moments”.

#chatto #virendranath chattopadhyaya #indian revolutionary figures #anti imperialism

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thevividgreenmoss · 5 years ago

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The RSS was founded ninety years ago, in 1925, on an uncannily Gramscian principle that enduring political power can arise only on the basis of a prior cultural transformation and consent, and this broad based cultural consent to the extreme right’s doctrines can only be built through a long historical process, from the bottom up. What follows from this ideological articulation of the long-term strategy is that if the RSS succeeds in constituting a certain sort of social subjectivity for the great majority of Hindus in India who are said to constitute some 80 per cent of the Indian population (we shall come later to this claim) and if they can all be unified, positively, in pursuit of a civilisational mission, and, negatively, in permanent opposition to a fancied enemy (Muslim and Christian minorities in the countries), as the Nazis sought to unite the German nation against the Jews, then the demographic majority can be turned into a permanent political majority. In that case, what the left might designate as the extreme right could rule comfortably through the institutions of liberal democracy in India that have already adjusted themselves to low-intensity but punctual use of violence against religious minorities.

...The RSS has also sought to address in practice a historic dilemma regarding the possibility of revolution in the liberal age, whether from the left or the right. Gramsci is, of course, the great thinker who addressed this dilemma at great length and with great intellectual splendour. However, he addresses it conceptually, never on the organisational level: how could he, organisationally, from inside a prison? The RSS has addressed the dilemma in its organisational practices, over decades, through trial and error, with remarkable success so far, even though it is unclear whether or not they will be entirely successful eventually. That dilemma has been posed to the Leninist tradition in the following terms: revolutions are made by cadre parties, the ones who are able to create something of a counter-state against a state seen by the people as illegitimate (Czarism; the colonial master), able to counter state violence with revolutionary violence, and, in a moment of ultimate revolutionary crisis, able to seize power through frontal attack, dismantle that state, erect a state of a new type. However, once a liberal democratic system of representative government in all its intricacies has been erected, universalising a bourgeois political subjectivity which believes in norms of liberal legality and the primacy of representative democracy, the revolutionaries face a situation in which they can either refuse to participate in this "bourgeois democracy" and get politically marginalised, or they can participate in the electoral world of liberal democracy, renouncing the ambition of creating a vanguard revolutionary party and committing themselves to socialist transformation through electoral means. This is a real, inescapable dilemma. In India, Maoism chose the path of revolutionary violence, condemning themselves thus far to political marginalisation and internal degeneration. The parliamentary left, as represented by both communist parties, CPI and CPI(M), chose the electoral way, effectively recognising the legitimacy of the liberal state and the specific form of Indian constitutionality, thus foreclosing the revolutionary option, rhetorical stances notwithstanding. There has been a blockage at both ends.

The RSS addressed that question from the extreme right, not theoretically but organisationally. Their documents are at best turgid and unreadable for the stupidity of their content. Their organisational practices, by contrast, have often been frighteningly brilliant.

...The RSS arose not as a unique expression of what came to be known as "Hindu nationalism" (as contrasted to the canonical "secular nationalism" of Gandhi, Nehru, etc.), but as one of many. Founded in 1913, some twelve years before the RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha remained by far the larger organisation of that kind well into the 1950s when it began to decay and many of its members got assimilated into the RSS and its affiliates. Ironically, the Mahasabha continued to function from inside the professedly "secular" Indian National Congress until 1938; and after Independence, Shyama Prashad Mukherjee, one of its illustrious leaders, resurfaced as a minister in the cabinet of none other than Nehru himself. Certain strands of Hindu extremism and conservatism were thus not entirely alien to what I have called India’s canonical nationalism and which never tires of asserting its purportedly pristine secularism.

...Parenthetically, we should note that even today the RSS is by far the most important organisation of the Hindu right but by no means has any exclusive monopoly of it. There are many outside its own umbrella (or family — parivar — as its fronts like to be called). The most notable is the Shiv Sena, but countless small groups of the most violent sort keep cropping up all the time, and it is not always possible to know which of them are covertly RSS outfits and which are not.

Nor were the Mahasabha and the RSS the first originators of this outlook, or the first political expression of it. Certain upper caste clusters in late nineteenth century Bengal had provided a rather impressive nursery for the incubation of revivalist longing and nostalgia for a Hindu Golden Age in the classical past; some of these ideas had played a powerful role in the Swadeshi movement in early years of the twentieth century. At the other end of the country, highly influential political, social and educational movements were emerging already in late nineteenth century Maharashtra to combat the Brahminical caste order, for advancement of the untouchable castes and so on. This challenge to Brahminism served to unite much of the Brahmin elite to defend their caste privileges but, predictably, as defenders of "Hindus" as such. It was recalled that the Peshwai kingdom of the Maharashtrians was the last to have been defeated by the British in India; as such, the Maharashtrian elite had not just the duty but the right to devise and lead a new kind of nationalism, a "Hindu nationalism" that excluded the Muslim usurpers and that would resurrect the ancient glory of the Hindus, purifying the culture of the land. The majority of the founders and early leaders of the RSS turned out to be Maharashtrian Brahmins. ...In its formative phase, Hindu nationalist ideology had three distinctive components. First, there was the nationalism of "blood and soil" descended from right-wing Romanticisms of the European nineteenth century which got re-inscribed in terms of race and religion in many nationalisms of the twentieth century, including the cultural nationalism of the Hindu right. Second, right-wing nationalism also inherited a colonialist reading of India’s history, already canonised by James Mill in his iconic six-volume The History of British India that started appearing in 1817, as comprising three historical periods: that of the Hindu Golden Age; that of the defeat and fall of Hindu civilisation at the hands of Muslim tyranny; and the then-dawning phase for which the British were represented as liberators of Hindus from that tyranny. The latter element accounts for the great ambivalence of Hindu nationalism toward colonialism and imperialism. When Hindutva ideologues speak of the Hindus having suffered under "foreign rule", they routinely refer to the period of the Muslim dynasties, not to the British. And although they would like to claim some anti-colonial lineage, there is scant evidence of their actually having participated much in those struggles. Thanks to these powerful ideological legacies, their nationalism of today is remarkably devoid of any anti-imperialist positions and, thanks to the neoliberal consensus, devoid even of the sort of ideologies of self-reliance that Gandhian/Nehruvian variant of nationalism had envisioned for the development of Indian capitalism. ...The "blood-and-soil" nationalism and mythologies of Muslim tyranny were combined with something else as well: anxieties among large sections of the upper caste elites as they were pressed by the upsurge of the lower castes from one side, and the rise of a multi-religious, multi-caste nationalism that was fast becoming a veritable mass movement with Gandhi’s shepherding of the Congress, especially after 1919. Ideas of the Hindu Golden Age and Muslim tyranny were elements often imbibed from colonial education, hence widespread among the educated Hindu elites. In that respect, Hindu nationalism could appeal to them quite credibly. The intensities of Brahminical caste anxieties were a different matter, however, and those remained a major source for the isolation of the RSS in the heyday of the anti-colonial movement, 1919-47, and during the early decades of the Republic.

...The Anthropological Survey of India holds that the Indian population is comprised of thousands of distinct communities, sociologically so defined by custom, speech, location, cuisine, spiritual belief, caste, sub-caste, occupation, what have you. The RSS is the only organisation in India which has the ambition to have fronts for as many of these diversities as possible and does indeed go on creating more and more of them. In this sense, it is a spectacular missionary organisation, and the mission is religious, cultural, social, economic, educational and of course political. The heart of this problem for the RSS is that even though the word "Hindu" is used by all as if the word referred to some homogeneous religious community or a unified social category, the reality is that all these diversities even immense differences of custom and religious belief exist among precisely the 80 per cent of the Indians who are considered "Hindu". Contrary to this reality, the RSS has fairly precise ideas of what it means to be a Hindu, based on its own doctrine that being a Hindu is not merely a religious category, divorced from other kinds of subjectivity or conduct, but an entire way of life, from cradle to grave. It wants to make sure that the ideal type it has invented becomes the normative standard among that 80 per cent. Its commitment to creating a cultural homogeneity out of this ocean of diversities, and to translate that cultural homogeneity into a unified political will, means that it wishes to become both church and state simultaneously. That ambition is at the heart of its fight against secular civility and the specific content of its authoritarianism. That so comprehensive a civilizational project would wholly succeed appears implausible. The undertaking is audacious, however, and the success so far, although partial, is also undeniably impressive.

...In this situation the proper stance is not: watch out, Nazis are coming. The real question is the one that Kalecki posed at the time of Goldwater’s bid for the US presidency in the 1960s: what would fascism look like if it came to a democratic industrial country that had no powerful working-class movement to oppose it? That is the general question, and I think it applies with particular force to the India of today: the far right need not abolish the outer shell of the liberal democratic institutions because these institutions can be taken over by its own personnel altogether peacefully and because most others are quite willing to go along with it so long as acts of large-scale violence remain only sporadic and the more frequent low-intensity violence can be kept out of general view, by media monopoly combined with mutual agreement between liberalism and the far right. Meanwhile, the communists are now too small a force to be considered even for a ban. Of course, the question of fascism of the classical type may well resurface if a powerful socialist movement were to be re-founded, on whatever new premises and strategic perspectives that may now be necessary for that act of re-founding and reconstruction.

Aijaz Ahmad, India: Liberal Democracy and the Extreme Right

#*#aijaz ahmad

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odishaphotos · 3 years ago

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Tatya Tope

Tatya Tope 1857 Workers of the Sepoy Rebellion

Ramchandra Pandurang Tope (1814-1859) was a leading figure in the 1957 Indian Rebellion. Known as the "Tatya Tope," Tope, as a warlord and patriot, landed in battle against British rule and showed great courage. He is one of the first freedom fighters in history.

Short biography -

Born in the Marathi Brahmin family in Yewola, near Nasik in Maharashtra, Tope was the only child of Pandurang Rao Tope. There is no record of Tatyana's personal life.

His role in the 1857 revolution -

Some of the facts recorded in English describe Tatyana's role in the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion. Tatya was a Maratha Brahmin who was employed in the service of Maratha Peshwa Bajirao and later his adopted son Nana Saheb. Joining Nana Saheb's army in the Kanpur Rebellion, he asserted his dominance by defeating the British. His father, Maratha Peshwa II, was a parishioner of Bajirao. After re-occupying Kanpur, he, along with Queen Lakshmibai, led an anti-British uprising in Bundelkhand. However, the anti-British rebellion continued, despite the fact that Queen Lakshmibai was killed and the cannon was defeated in the battle.

On June 5, 1857, when the rebellion broke out in Kanpur, Nanasaheb became the leader of the rebels. After the British Army surrendered on 25 June 1957, they were transferred to Satichoura Ghat, where they were massacred. By the end of June, Mr. Nana had been declared a profession. The British general, General Hawlok, fought twice with Mr. Nana's army, but was defeated for the third time and fled to Bithur. Tatya stayed in Bithur and continued the program in the name of Nana Saheb. At this point, Mr. Nana decided to trade with the British, holding some British prisoners. However, at the behest of General Henry Hawlok, the company army moved from Allahabad to Kanpur. The two companies, led by Nana Saheb, were sent to a standstill by the company to defeat the British, and it is alleged that the ambassador provided the information to Hussein. However, no accurate information has been provided. According to some, Tatya was not a supporter of such massacres, but rather saved the lives of 53 British women and children. The bomber struck shortly after noon in front of a U.S. military base, firing on protesters. As a result, many Indian women, children and Nana Saheb's youngest daughter, Maunavati, were burnt alive in the palace.

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insomenarnia · 7 years ago

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Soup (Chapter One)

"Eureka." Stanley muttered under his dry lips. The heat from the pot steamed his lanky body, dripping with perspiration. He wiped his forehead and took out his secondhand pocket watch from a shoplifting frenzy he had. Hence, why he managed to afford a crateful of goods. He did it by tucking them under his shrink-o'-meter hoodie. If you place the object underneath, it triggers the automation, blasting an inaudible beam to shrink an object to the size of a dollhouse piece. But taking it out under the fabrics causes a drastic change back to its original size. And to Stanley, inverted pockets were his token of pride.

He checked the compass-like watch, a rusty chain swing over to the humid pot, contacting with each other. Without thinking, Stanley pulled the end of the chain, hell crawled through the tips of his fingers. He yelped like a wounded guard dog and he immediately twists his tap water on, letting his fingers fumble with the rushing water while his weary eyes watch the baby hand spinning like a swift merry-go-round. Crap. He mouthed. He'll need a new replacement, he tossed that crap, missing the bin. It shattered into millions of crystal-clear ice, the numbers and the family hands popped out, remaining a golden doughnut rim.

Crap. One more cuss and he'll have to create a counter for all the Craps he had blown out of his nasty mouth. His eyes blankly stared at the broken pieces, until a tremulous boil fizzled behind him. Stanley glanced around, his soup became a volcano, erupting blisters under the quaking lid. The flow began to slide down the stovetop and on the floor, making a hot spring fit for the devil. Stanley gave out a bundle of Fucks as he dived into the drawers and reach out for his floral mittens. He splashed the bubble-coated turner with his ice-cold water and with all his slippery ninja skills, he shut the flames downs with one full turn.

"Hello, neighbour. You makin' soup?" Stanley faced his head to the eerie voice, it was his neighbour, Jules. Jules Montganomy.

Stanley nodded, he can't be bothered to converse with a real dead person; Jules dark-coloured eyes were puffy and the end of his lips remained curled up as he speaks in monotone. In Stanley's neighbourhood, his movements are synchronised with all the other weird neighbours and even the stray cats. They line up on sidewalks and marched in flocks, together, their steps shook the street until they break out of the line and go to their separate ways. Normal humans like Stanley prized them the entitlement of The Evolved Humans or E-humans for short. They aren't really robots, they have organs, a beating heart and a crappy neuro system. These bag of ices were populated to be systemised, analytical and future masterminds of the world. Their striking IQ exploded the range that could beat Albert Einstein any day; they are born geniuses.

However, their single flaw stand out in the public, they lack emotions, their emotional intelligence is of a dead person. The only similarity Stanley acquired from them is their ability to not give any fucks, especially barging into your neighbour's house and watching him dance with his kitchen catastrophes.

Jules stepped inside the kitchen, his posture was perfect, exposing his chest of confidence; his hands were clenched in tight fists, locked with swinging mechanic arms. His smile, the ever-so-eerie-smile, had flinched Stanley's body hair as Jules gracefully grabbed a bowl from the dishwasher.

"May I taste your soup, neighbour? It must taste really good." Stanley grimaced at Jules who held his bowl like a beggar not begging for anything.

"Jules, just call me Stanley and I'm not done yet," he replied.

"Then, I'll sit and wait, Stanley!" And he marched to the scrappy dining room, which is Stanley's study desk.

Stanley forcefully put his fist in his tiny mouth, he had a long day: he burnt himself, his soup was burnt and now, he has to please his ever-so-creepy neighbour to get him out of the house. He can't cook another one as his ingredients were limited, the hand-me-down recipe from his great grandmother was listed with a variety of colourful components like carrots, potatoes, squash, pumpkin and so it goes with the vegetables. Add a dash of salt and pepper, the usual condiments of his great grandmother's time. Finally, an extra part from Stanley, grating moon rocks to sparkle one's delight.

Suddenly, Stanley remembered, the E-humans can't get impatient. Jules can sit in that position for who-knows-how-long, giving Stanley the opportunity to go back to the mart and make his family's finest soup. Although he first thought of shooing Jules away, Stanley has a spot for sharing his family's tradition, earning him a place as a traditional Cooper member. He set an unconditional love for all those related to him (Except for his aunt Alison, they cut ties with her after marrying an E-human), he swears an oath to never abandon them, to never throw the soup recipe away and to never destroy their normal bloodline and genetics.

Stanley paced along his street, the stumpings combined into one hell of a giant's step. He peeked over his shoulders, only to have a handful of stares at him, each batch had their hands up to Stanley, waving at him without pausing for a brief moment.

"Hello, neighbour!" Is what they would say and Stanley had enough of it.

He thought of revolution, he thought of banishing the E-humans or creating a border between the Normals and them. He thought of dropping their bodies into a damn huge coffin and bury it near the Earth's core. Because that's where they belong, they are practically dead, anyways. He thought. Wiping half of the general population means we can start fresh, right?

Stanley knew his fantasies couldn't dethrone the president's imperialistic nature. Everyone, especially the normals, thought of Mr Brahmins as a typical E-human with thoughtful intentions to their society, but Stanley's scepticism kicked in, he had nightmares of Mr Brahmins overtaking the world and flushing the Normals down into the drain for his sweet babies to continue increasing their kind of people. The tan-skinned, lean body and charming features made Stanley want to vomit inside.

And when Stanley entered Pi's Mart, the tan-skinned, lean body and charming features were right in front of him.

"Hello, normal person!" Mr Brahmins reached out his hand, but Stanley ignored it. E-humans always tried to make a connection with the normals, giving them friendly visits at their home, gifting them with a basket of foods or striking a conversation about the weather, all sort of friendly shenanigans they could imitate. Even the president is friendly enough to be in the public's eyes. He's trying to be friendly with the Normals so that he could gain their trust. And so Stanley thought.

"What a great mart this is, am I correct? The prices are pi, what a funny one!" Mr Brahmins burst out laughing. Stanley urged to laugh too because his laugh was ridiculous and somewhat sarcastic. Though, he got the prices right. Every item in Pi's Mart is priced three e-dollars and fourteen e-cents and Stanley hated receiving the change of six e-cents for every four e-dollars he gives. That's why he turned into a shoplifter, the numbers get him itchy and irritated. Luckily, no one suspects him, they either are too friendly to report or they don't give a fuck. Stanley wondered how they were even born geniuses if they can't handle both social and emotional aspects of being an actual human.

"I'm in a rush, Mr President," said Stanley.

"Why don't we talk about the weather? It's 36 Celsius or 96.8 Fahrenheit, it's a sunny day here in Hornsworth! Must be really hot outside, why don't we take a couple of cold drinks and stop by at the beach? Would do you say?"

Stanley rejected him, to other Normals, it seems like a big opportunity to hang out with the president and place their complaint on the E-humans making foot noises or intruding their home with food baskets, which the president will just laugh it off. Stanley, on the other hand, he could never trust an E-human authority.

Mr Brahmins smiled and waved goodbye to me as he passes through the automatic doors. He sighed in relief until all of the cashiers greeted him, "Good afternoon, Mr Cooper!" Half of them has dreary faces while the others are painted with big smiles. When working together with the E-humans, it is a routine to greet your customers. Stanley pitied his kind, no one wants to be too friendly for half of the day.

#my crappy writing #writing #write #story #literature #fiction #words #scifi #writers #my writing

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oldmanessays · 7 years ago

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A Reflection On The Society That We Live In

Let us not murder equality, let us not create a divide, let us not weigh the aspects of the world we live in, measuring everything on a scale of biasedness. Let us not teach our children, the forerunners of the generation to arrive, that all Indians are my brothers and sisters, let us not tell them that the whole world is their family, let us not tell them that we are at war with some other country, that we are hell bent upon suffocating each other within, let us spare them the contradiction. Why embrace equality to finally murder it, our innocence begins to die since the very day we are born, raging psychopaths are we, if anything, for who conjures ethical principles only to wound them open and spill them as guts of innocents, a horrid dream for some, till it becomes a fairy tale notion. You are a Hindu, you are a Muslim, you are a Christian, You are a Jain – wait, why didn’t I begin the sentence with – you’re a Jain, or you’re a Muslim? If I had been born and brought up as a Catholic in America, I might have had initiated my lines with the aspects of being a Christian – see, it has steeped within our minds, infecting our subconscious – the prominence of dominence. A la a in George Orwell’s Animal Farm – ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than the others’ – hence no matter who you are, residing in what so ever part of the world, a fragment of equality shall be denied to you, if you hold your rights back, they shall be snatched, if you fight for them, you would be fought back by people with a zero fundamental range who recite slogans of dementia, and the fight shall continue, until you’ve won or until they have succeeded in oppressing your voice. The righteous has a voice, for the ones the will of who is flawed enough to be judged as wrong, have brute force in the form of guns and bombs, tear gas and pellets, agents of wounds that age into scars, tears that end up nourishing revolutions. Look there goes a Kashmiri, frown upon him. Reason? Isn’t being a Kashmiri enough, he must be despising us, he should be despising this nation and if this form of trending propaganda doesn’t appeal you much, then I shall churn out one too many for you. Come close and I shall whisper in your ear, I whisper for I know, I shall sound rotten to the core – he is a Muslim too. What am I? A Hindu and I feel as if I am flowing in a stream of equality, I have always thought as such. For my life is such a bliss. All through my childhood, I was taught, that in Hinduism exists a caste system, synonymous to ranking – from the most elite in the society, to the most futile – Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra and not only this – I always thought I was a Kshatriya until my father told me that I was a Kayastha and we didn’t belong in any of the above-mentioned categories. And though we were categorised as ‘General’, we were signing petitions to be listed as ‘scheduled castes’, so that we can derive the quotas, that drive the undeserving to access and claim what should have had been rightfully belonged to the deserving. Reservations. Just because, forefathers of many were oppressed a hundred years ago, that means that the future generations of theirs shall be provided with special privileges indefinitely, thereby making up for all that they have lost, no matter if they really deserve it or not. I don’t hear of a black quota in America. Are we Indians coward enough, does hard work and putting up a fight to win over something scares us to such an extent that we adhere to means as mean as such? Now a days, those who are actually capable, those who actually deserve, lose a lot more due to this reservation system, and we don’t realize that in a way, history is repeating itself, if not on a grander scale, if there is no elephant in the room, yet this parasite of a system is sucking us dry. What is this system, where biased tactics thrive, and what’s rightfully someone’s, shall be taken away? It happened then, it’s happening now and it’s just like standing in front of a mirror when axis change but the sense of the scenario transpiring remains the same. Where is the essence of equality in that? I don’t get it. As of being a Kayastha, my father told me that we specialized in writing and other aspects that involved a pen and a paper, but I cannot forget that a classmate of mine in college, a person replete with castists beliefs, was spreading rumors about me, relating them to my caste – hence, you honor, if there is any, if one tries to create a divide with respect to religions, I rest my case, for my religion is rotten enough in itself, that I did rather unfollow the notion, become an atheist and kill any form of religious perspective, that might have had ever existed in me. Thank you. Equality, is it? I believe in the rights of women, I travel via the metro, I witness the separate compartment reserved for them, I witness their reserved seats. All right by me. What is not right by me, if when you are in your twenties, leisuring about your reserved seat, hooked up on your phone, all fine – walking, talking, then how can you deny an elderly woman, who has a problem standing in a crowd, the people in which are basically sticking to one another? From when did our ethical human virtues were taken upon by one’s right as a woman. Finally, a guy stood up and offered his seat to the woman. Equality – woman fight for equality when they cannot stand for one another. My words can be criticized, but yes, a singular incident is exemplary for human nature. Women’s magazines, with women acting as editors, don’t feature obese women on their cover, no short woman, no physically flawed woman, no rape survivors, no acid attack victims – for once we can do without the glitz and the glam, for once we can consider all women equal, and start treating them equally amongst one another. That would be the first step. Same goes for Men’s magazine, same goes for the billboards that prostitute around entire cities, same goes for everything. The truth lies within the folds, it’s a pity we are not opening up. LGBT, people treat your sexuality as if a weapon, people even treat the notion of sex as an abomination. The reason for their very being is an abomination. Three cheers to that. If you’re gay, you shall be frowned upon, you shall be bullied, here in India, you can even be killed honorably. That’s the story, you are a walking talking nuclear weapon, hell you can even be infectious, you shall not be interacted with – and the funny part is, that many a people, who take pride in claiming that they stand with the LGBT movement, make use of words of the likes of ‘Gay’ and ‘Lesbian’ in manners that are nothing short of being derogatory. Hypocrisy, I tell you. And if that’s not enough, in comes racial bigotry. Brown people looking down upon blacks, yellow ones looking down upon brown, a white man looking down them all. Even here, even in our good old nation, if you are dark complexioned, you must be familiar with sarcastic slangs that find their derivation from the color of your skin tone. When not many, but a few in our own nation are racist, how offended are we, when we face racism in distant lands! Religion, sexuality, gender, color – and the forms of inequality have we derived from them are nothing but detestable. What should have had held us together, what should have blended everything in shades that please the eye – is tearing the world apart. And you know what, the most dangerous beings of all, the intellects, use your fallacies to their benefits. Yes, they understand what’s right, they understand what’s wrong, and they are spread everywhere, from politics to corporate enterprises, and yet they do nothing about it, because of narcissistic reasons, they want to be in power, they want to govern, they want differences to arise, they want the debate to go on and on and on, they love playing the puppeteer to us puppets. Every sane mind realizes that loving someone can in no manner what so ever be wrong, and yet, the government doesn’t legalize same sex marriages, owing only to one reason and one reason specifically – they don’t want to succumb to your demands, they want you to beg, plead and even fight them, for they want to show you who is in power, that who is ‘in-charge’. Such dismissive actions reflect of their importance. If the people in power grant us every single thing we demand, they shall be taken for granted, they shall not be regarded and owing to this, they prefer not to lose their Midas touch. That’s the recipe. The world today The world today- bans love, represses voices, kills innocents and chooses maniac clowns for leaders. Here, there, everywhere! Polish your principles to such an extent, that you, yourself, become the principle, then pick up a fight, for in the world as such, there are people who want to bring the change and people who want to stand beside revolutionaries and be noticed. They possess a greater threat than the one we believe we are facing. The change should first occur amidst ourselves, then should it be scattered like pollen in the world yonder, for the greater good.

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