Indian Beauty

For those who after reading the title are imagining beautiful indian women I would suggest to move on this blog. For this article I will try and talk about the beauty of India or Indianess more accurately.

At 1st glance by anyone, not just foreigners but indians as well, India looks like a dirty, unorganized & dishevelled country. And they are absolutely right. India is dirty with people preferring to consider the roads as dust bins more than infrastructure. It is unorganized and dishevelled for nothing here seems to have a basic framework and work, from personal to public, goes on in a random manner. Beauty of India lies in surprisingly these very facts which for anyone but indian is nauseating. It is the reason why most of the world looks at India and wonders " How in the hell does it even stand up leave alone walk and run??"

But somehow, maybe through many millenia of dogged determination the Indian has mastered the art of not just surviving but sometimes flourishing in the most trying of situations and conditions. And there in lies our truest strength to someday reclaim our rightful place in the world .."The Golden Bird"

Colour of Religion

Dawn of the new millenium brought to attention the world over a growing threat from islamic ideologue. Though India had been suffering from it ever since independence due to mostly political and sometimes religious  reasons the world especially the superpower US came face to face with islamic terrorism only after 9/11 attacks. The damage that these islamic fundamentalists have done to Islam and its people will take many years to repair.

The middle ages also saw another religious extremism, that from Christianity. To say that the christian crusades were bloody would be an understatement which originally was to recapture the "holy" land from muslims ended up becoming a war against all other belief systems. Christianity still has not been able to break the hold of that gruesome period on its psyche though its been close to 6 centuries since the crusaders last roamed.

Hinduism has had a long history, no tradition of compassion towards all irrespective of faith. Yet the last 2 decades have stood as spectator to a  new and budding extremism- the Hindu fanatics. Driven by political leaders masquerading behind "Hindutva" philosophy it still has not reached its potential unlike the others, christianity and islam ,but with rising support and political patronage it will in a few years. The coming centuries may well be the golden ,no "Saffron" age of Hindu extremism. Unless the political class and common man nip it in its bud now it will develop into a very thorny problem for us .

Politicians and intellectuals may say there is no colour for extremism but common sense tells there is. The middle ages witnessed the Red White and Blue extremism . We are witnessing Green (Islamic and not environmentalists) fundamentalism and in the future we may suffer from "Saffron" terrorism. No guesses which country will suffer most from it.....