..yours randomly!

I've been thinking about this whole debate going on in social media which has my atheist n liberal friends at each others throats. The whole question of------ Whether Islam is a religion of peace or a religion of violence?  I've come to the conclusion that both sides are wrong in this debate. No religion in itself can be called either peaceful OR violent. Its true that Islam and Christianity are young proselytising religions..ie conversions of infidels are not only allowed but encouraged, thus leading to more wars in their names n forceful conversions. But older religions like Judaism and Hinduism dont convert and they've wrecked untold horrors too...Hinduism through caste system on dalits and Judaism through zionism. ( i suspect the caste system would take the crown in terms of sheers numbers it destroyed). To this one side will loudly exclaim that 'but there are verses in the Koran which prompt the believers to kill infidels'; while the supporters of Islam

Every once in a while along comes a book which will completely turn your world upside down. For an ordinary Indian, this is one such book. The author, a long time reporter, gives a vivid and horrifying account of the fake encounter 'industry' which has cropped in the army in all the conflict areas of india, specially in North East. For promotion, for money, for bosses, for smuggling, for awards....Indian citizens (and poor immigrants) are being murdered most ingloriously by members of one of the most revered institutions in India: The Army!  For most Indians this is the most horrible shock, incl for ppl like me who come from army families. We grew up with images of duty, sacrifice, patriotism...not murder. Most of the book is a confessional: an anonymous army officer who confesses the army's 'illegal business' to the journalist: cases, units, dates, motives. Many books have been written on fake encounters, but its an ode to Bhattacharjee's excelle

This article was first published in Indiaresists.com  at following link  http://www.indiaresists.com/indias-adventures-in-wonderland/   But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll) Haruki Murakami, the very popular Japanese novelist in his curious book IQ84 talks of a parallel world to ours where one can slip into without knowing.Strange and improbable things happened in the unreal world which had 2 moons. And the only way to figure out whether you were in the real world or the parallel world was the see the sky and see whether there were one moon or two. During the past few weeks, I’ve often had the urge to peer up at the sky convinced that I would see two moons instead of one. Because what’s happening in

(This article was first published on https://thewomaninc.com  ) ON MURTHAL By Meha Khanduri This article nearly never got written because as I start to write on the issue I start seeing red. When India was raptly watching students of a prestigious university go through a long drama of whether slogan shouting students had committed sedition or not…rampaging mobs were burning, looting, and ransacking the cities of Haryana, right next door to the capital Delhi. Nobody was really outraged, no resignations were called for, no charges of sedition were made and after nearly two days of looting and burning worth 34000 crores, the government cordially accepted the demands of the rampaging mobs and the burning and looting came to an end.  An amicable solution all around..except for criminality and couple of thousand crores of national property but …..this is India! Four days later some ghost stories started floating around. The whispers said that not only Haryana’s cities had been bu

Of Pests And Genocides:  Anupam Kher and a tweet that is wrong on all levels by Meha Khanduri To my horror, I learnt a few days back, that Anupam Kher, the respected Bollywood actor, 2016 Padma Bhushan awardee, and whose profile says he is the 'UN Women champion of Gender Equality", tweeted this on 20 February in Hindi:  "Gharon mein pest control hota hai to cockroach, keede makode etyadi bahar nikalte hain. Ghar saaf hota hai. Waise hi aajkal desh ka pest control chal raha hai" (When pest control is done in the house, then cockroaches, insects etc come out. The house becomes clean. Similarly, these days the country is undergoing pest control.) To say that I am shocked is an understatement. I only hope fervently, that the actor who has in the past lashed out against academics and writers, doesn't know the historical context of the word 'pest' /cockroaches/vermin being used consistently during genocides. It is also unclear to me whether he was

There is a bond between readers which transcends time and space...the bond of shared imagination. Rohith liked Carl Sagan, nature and stars. So do I. He dreamt of going to different planets. As did I. I spent nights watching stars in the isolation of natures, dreaming of civilisations inside those stars and when humankind would reach them. And perhaps he did too. I read every science fiction book I could, I was the one of the crew in Rama, i was the one who discovered the alien presence in Contact. Perhaps when I was dreaming of stars so was Rohith.  Except that from science fiction, I returned into my upper caste world of privilege, and he returned to his (i assume) small house in a small village supporting his family. Dreaming of distant lands, I went to a ivy league university in New York; while he worked towards a scientific phd in the urban metro of Hyderabad, trying to support his family and perhaps congratulating himself on arriving at a casteless world. However he soon b