'Who says a dog cannot receive better treatment than a servant?': Hinduja family members sentenced to jail for exploiting domestic staff

 Sam Jones in The FT 

Four members of the multi-billionaire Hinduja clan, the UK’s wealthiest family, have been convicted of exploiting their domestic staff and sentenced to lengthy jail terms by a court in Geneva. 

In a ruling on Friday, a panel of three judges found Prakash Hinduja, his wife Kamal, as well as their son Ajay and his wife, Namrata, guilty of serious employment offences related to Indian staff. 

“They spent more on [their] dog than one of their servants,” Genevan public prosecutor Yves Bertossa told the court this week in a case that shed a harsh light on the punishing conditions to which one of the world’s wealthiest families subjected their workers. 

The court cleared the four Hindujas of the more serious charge of human trafficking that had been brought by the authorities. 

The domestic staff at the centre of the case, who were mostly illiterate, had been flown in directly from India to work at the family’s palatial home in Switzerland. 

In a damning verdict, presiding judge Sabina Mascotto said the Hindujas had no excuses for their behaviour. 

“[The workers] were exploited given their situation in India was so precarious and they were exploited as they didn’t know the language, had their passports confiscated and were only ever paid every 3-6 months,” said Mascotto. 

“The four Hindujas knew the vulnerabilities of the staff and knew what the rules were in Switzerland, as they all were Swiss citizens and Ajay was educated in Switzerland,” she added. 

The court nevertheless ruled that the employees had known the terms they were signing up for when they entered the family’s service in India and therefore could not have been said to be trafficked. 

Reflecting the seriousness of the offences the four were convicted of, Prakash and Kamal were sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison. Ajay and Namrata received a four-year sentence. 

An appeal process could take years in Switzerland’s often slow-moving justice system, under which a judgment is not considered final until all avenues of appeal have been exhausted. The four Hinduja family members were not present at the court for the verdict. 

Romain Jordan, a lawyer for the family, said his clients were “appalled and disappointed” by the court’s decision. 

“Importantly, the family has been acquitted of human trafficking charges,” he said. 

An appeal has already been filed. “Under Swiss law, the presumption of innocence is paramount until an adverse final judgment by the highest adjudicating authority is enforced,” Jordan emphasised. 

Prakash is the second of three brothers behind the Hinduja Group, a sprawling multinational conglomerate with interests in everything from cars and petrochemicals to banking and armaments. 

His older brothers Gopichand and Srichand settled in London in the 1980s and made it the centre of the group’s affairs. Gopichand, worth an estimated £35bn, is the UK’s richest man. Srichand died last May. 

Prakash settled in Switzerland, from where he runs the family business. He was made a Swiss citizen in 2000. His younger brother, Ashok, runs the Hinduja Group’s Indian interests. 

In a week of explosive revelations, Geneva’s public prosecutor accused Prakash, Kamal, Ajay and Namrata of treating their employees as indentured servants. 

They were accused of keeping the staff trapped at a villa in the ultra-exclusive Geneva lakeside suburb of Cologny, where they slept in substandard conditions in basement rooms. 

The workers were paid less than one-tenth of the salary they were entitled to under Swiss law, according to the prosecutor Bertossa. 

One servant was paid just 7 Swiss francs a day, and worked as many as 18 hours, 7 days a week, Bertossa alleged. The family dog had more than three times as much spent on it, according to documents seized by police and presented to the court. 

As well as attending to the family at Cologny, the retinue of staff travelled with the Hindujas to their ski chalet in the Swiss alps and villa on the Cote d’Azur, but otherwise had almost no personal freedom, Bertossa said. 

Their passports were taken from them. They were paid in rupees into Indian bank accounts, which they did not have access to while in Switzerland, he said. 

Giving testimony, members of the family denied the allegations against them, and said their staff had been like “members of the family.” 

Ajay’s lawyer, Yael Hayat, told the court that the prosecutor’s claims about employees were exaggerated. “When they sit down to watch a movie with the kids, can that be considered work?” she asked the court to consider. 

A civil case brought against the family on behalf of their staff was settled for an undisclosed sum last week.

Modi's 10 Years Have Created Fragile 82 Crore Indians on Free Rations

 

This BJP govt is easy to understand. If you read what Modi, Shah, Nadda read when they were young

Shekhar Gupta in The Print

In this heavy headline- and intrigue-laden political environment, we run the risk of missing out on three vital pointers. Let’s go chronologically.

First, on the day of the consecration of the Ram temple at Ayodhya, many key handles of the Bharatiya Janata Party shared the ‘original’ version of “Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram”. Or what’s called the Ram Dhun, composed by maestro, late Vishnu Digambar Paluskar.

Then, the prime minister, in his latest Mann Ki Baat, displayed the original first page and Preamble of the Constitution – that’s without the words “secular and socialist” that Indira Gandhi added in her sixth-year parliament in 1976.

And finally, Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech, introduced the idea of a committee to look at the “challenge of population growth”. Each of these represents key elements of the BJP/RSS thinking and helps us understand the politics of the Modi government.

If you are curious why the Ram Dhun is an issue, do note that the original being shared now does not have the second line we have all sung through three generations and which we presumed was part of the original: “Ishwar, Allah tero naam, sab ko sanmati de Bhagwan” (Ishwar or Allah, you are the same God, please bless everyone with wisdom). This line was a Gandhian modification to give the composition a secular flavour.

On the day of the Pran Pratishtha, the BJP was reminding us which Ram Dhun, in its view, was secular, and which pseudo-secular. The tune also made an appearance at the Beating the Retreat ceremony later in the week (after 2016), and you’d wonder which words were being hummed by the BJP’s leading lights.

The context of the original Preamble is BJP is reminding you the word “secular” is a latter-day insertion by an illegitimate Lok Sabha (its term extended in the Emergency in 1976). Like that Ishwar-Allah line in Ram Dhun. Population growth is another old RSS/BJP concern, never mind that Indian birth rates are already at replacement levels and declining. In fact, we risk facing the challenge of declining and ageing population by the time our per capita incomes are at around $3,500, while the Chinese find a crippling threat at the $12,500 figure today. Never argue with ideological beliefs, however.

Now, we come to harder politics. Over its decade in power, the Modi government has acquired a reputation of keeping everything close to its chest, of always succeeding in surprising the closest watchers of Indian politics.

But is this government really so mysterious and inscrutable? Is there a key to breaking the code of this BJP’s politics, a window to its mind? The key lies in understanding its ideological commitment.

We have to be sobered by how cruel this Modi-Shah, and now Modi-Shah-Nadda approach has been. Particularly cruel to the reputation of the dwindling tribe of senior political journalists. This particularly includes many claimants to inside knowledge, and who were acknowledged to be, and also see themselves as being close to the BJP.

Nobody saw demonetisation coming, or the choice of Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh, the overnight changes in Jammu & Kashmir, passing of CAA, ban on triple talaq, crackdown on those seen as the radical Left sympathisers – whom the BJP calls Urban Naxals. And the latest choices for the three Hindi states’ chief ministers.

We might have been less surprised if we had paid more attention to understanding the BJP/RSS ideology.

For Modi’s critics, some of this comes from the abhorrence and contempt for that ideology. They are also seen as not particularly intellectually endowed. The fact is, they are in power for a decade and, instead of fading away, keep getting stronger. There is, therefore, juice in that ideology for enough voters.

If India’s rulers for a decade haven’t read the literature that shaped the older, generally Congress-friendly ‘secular’ ideology, it isn’t as if they haven’t been reading anything. They’ve read their contemporary scriptures, from Hedgewar, Golwalkar, and Savarkar to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.

The Modi government’s economic moves, for example, would be less of a surprise if you’d read two works by Deen Dayal Upadhyaya: Integral Humanism, and The Two Plans: Promise, Performance, Prospects. You will then have a clearer understanding of why the Modi government ensures the delivery of so many benefits, especially free foodgrains and cash, directly to the poorest.

If you are daunted by entire books, please do google Antyodaya. It is Deen Dayal Upadhyaya’s idea of the state’s first responsibility being to the last man standing, of ensuring nobody is left out. To that extent, it isn’t so different from Gandhi’s: “I will give you a talisman…recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman]…”.

The other book, The Two Plans, is his critique of Nehruvian planned economics. More specifically, it talks about the first and the second five-year plans. It is just that when the book was published, nobody took the Jana Sangh (BJP’s original avatar) and the RSS so seriously. But you’ve got to acknowledge that the RSS minds plugged on, undaunted.

Some of the latest emphasis on “aatmanirbharta”, shepherding and patronising Indian entrepreneurs to become big and rich, protecting them from global competition, are all ideas you can see trickling down from here. Every Sarsanghchalak has spoken about these. The idea of one nation, one election comes, by the way, from Golwalkar. You can check out golwalkarguruji.org. It’s been resurrected by his followers in the 50th year of his death.

You can’t ignore these texts however much you dislike the BJP/RSS ideology. Unlike the texts of the Left, they do not lean on the great global names of the 19/20th century political history: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao. Unlike Nehru’s Discovery of India for the Congress, these aren’t so enjoyable. The RSS/BJP Gurus are Indian.

Very few voters are familiar with them, unlike the writings of Nehru and Gandhi in our school textbooks. But that doesn’t matter. The most important thing is, people are voting for those following these texts. The coming generations of Indians will also be reading them in their school textbooks.

The essential difference between the BJP and the Congress governments of the past is the commitment to ideology. The Congress leaderships had much greater flexibility. Ideology guided its policies, but never governed them. For the BJP, it is different. Its commitment to ideology is almost fundamentalist.

The changes in Kashmir, Muslim personal laws, building of the Ram temple and consecration under the prime minister’s watch, and a whole lot of the economic changes, including import restraints and PLI incentives, were all drawn from this ideology. If you delve deeper, even demonetisation. If we were reading their texts, we’d be less surprised.

That’s why, read again the three instances I listed earlier on. Going ahead in the Modi-BJP (read RSS) epoch, we should expect a concerted “cleaning up” of what’s seen as pseudo-secular contamination, from the Ram Dhun to the Preamble. And population growth (read Muslim population) will be a focus area.

Late Prof Stephen Cohen was asked why the CIA failed to pick anything on the Vajpayee government’s Pokhran-2 tests. He famously said the problem with intelligence people is, they never read anything that isn’t marked classified. Like the BJP election manifesto. If only they had read it, they would’ve known the tests will follow soon after they were sworn in. Apply the same test to our understanding of the Modi government and the BJP now. Start reading their texts. None is marked classified.

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Indian Matchmaking Only Scratches the Surface of a Big Problem - A Critique

Sonia Saraiya in Vanity Fair

Every reality show has at least one villain. In Indian Matchmaking, that villain is 34-year-old Aparna Shewakramani, a prospective bride who’s critical of every man she meets and vocal about disliking things like the beach, relaxing, and podcasts. Early on, she tells the camera she hasn’t regretted a decision she’s made since the age of three. In her finest moment, presented with a suitor with a sense of humor, she sighs: “You know how I hate comedy.”

In reality, Aparna’s probably not as insufferable as she seems. But her apparent unsuitability for the dating world makes her a perfect subject for Indian Matchmaking, which follows Mumbai–based matchmaker Sima Taparia as she tries to get every single and reasonably well-to-do Indian in her path married to a heterosexual partner of her, and their parents’, choosing.

Okay, I’m being a little flippant. As Sima and the show itself frequently remind us, arranged marriage is not quite the form of social control it used to be; everyone here emphasizes that they have the right to choose or refuse the matches presented to them. But as becomes especially clear when Sima works in India, that choice is frequently and rather roughly pressured by an anvil of social expectations and family duty.

In the most extreme case, a 25-year-old prospective groom named Akshay Jakhete is practically bullied by his mother, Preeti, into choosing a bride. Somehow, she claims, Akshay’s failure to choose a bride by the ripe old age of 25 is a disappointment to his parents, an obstacle to the conception of his older brother’s as yet nonexistent firstborn baby, even a drag on Preeti’s own physical health. She breaks out her home blood pressure monitor, telling him that her high numbers are a direct result of the stress he’s causing her. I’ve always thought of my mom as a champion of desi guilt, but Preeti really puts her to shame. (It should be said that despite all of this, Akshay says on the show that his ideal bride is “someone just like my mother.”)

Indian Matchmaking smartly reclaims and updates the arranged marriage myth for the 21st century, demystifying the process and revealing how much romance and heartache is baked into the process even when older adults are meddling every step of the way. But for me, at least, the show’s value is as a vibrant validation of how brutal the gauntlet of Indian matchmaking can be—a practice that begins with your parents’ friends and relatives gossiping about you as a teenager and only intensifies as you get older. Though these families use a matchmaker, the matching process is one the entire community and culture is invested in. In this context, romance is not a private matter; your love life is everyone’s business.

Let’s start by clearing up some terminology. Netflix’s unscripted show is called Indian Matchmaking, but it takes place both in India and America, with matchmaker Sima, based in Mumbai, flying back and forth as well as handling clients via FaceTime. The Indians and immigrants represented aren’t really a cross section of the country’s vast diversity: The show focuses almost entirely on upper-caste, well-to-do, North Indian Hindu families. (That’s also my background, so Indian Matchmaking is playing tennis in my backyard.) A few families show off a level of wealth that borders on obscene: At one point, Preeti pulls out a king’s ransom of precious jewelry, emeralds and diamonds and gold, and proudly brags that the display is just “20%” of what her future daughter-in-law will inherit on her wedding day.   

Altogether, it’s a little alarming that Indian Matchmaking features not a single Muslim match, just one or two individuals with heritage from South India, and only one whom we could call low-caste, though the show takes pains to not present it so bluntly.

Director Smriti Mundhra told Jezebel that she pitched the show around Sima, who works with an exclusive set of clients. Perhaps that narrow focus expresses more about the stratification of Indian culture than it does about the producers’ biases—but Indian Matchmaking touches lightly on the culture that creates these biases. The most explicit it gets is with the story of event planner Nadia Jagessar, who tells the camera she’s struggled to find a match in the past because she’s Guyanese Indian. This is code for a number of conditions: Nadia’s family, originally Indian, immigrated to Guyana in the 1800s, along with a vast influx of indentured Indian labor shipped around the world after the British outlawed slavery. Many consider them low-caste, or not “really” Indian; there is a suspicion of their heritage being mixed, carrying with it the stigma of being tainted. Yet the show merely explains that for many Indian men, bright, bubbly, beautiful Nadia is not a suitable match.

The parents task Sima with following multiple stringent expectations. Some are understandably cultural, perhaps: A preference for a certain language or religion, or for astrological compatibility, which remains significant for many Hindus. Other preferences, though, are little more than discrimination. They demand that prospective brides be “slim,” “fair,” and “tall,” a ruthless standard for female beauty that’s also racialized—and while the demands are most exacting in India, they are not exclusive to the subcontinent. Houston–based Aparna, for example, euphemistically states her preference for a “North Indian”—which might sound innocent enough to the average listener, but to me sounded like just another way of saying light-skinned. In the final episode, a new participant, Richa, makes it explicit: “not too dark, you know, like fair-skinned.” As Mallika Rao writes at Vulture, it’s not exactly surprising, but whew.

Divorced clients are also subjected to particularly harsh judgment. Sima bluntly tells one fetching single mom, Rupam, that she would typically never take on a client like her. The options she finds for Rupam are pointedly, pathetically slim pickings; Rupam ends up leaving the matchmaking process after meeting a prospective match on Bumble instead.

In Delhi, Ankita Bansal’s story takes on multiple dimensions of exclusion and judgment. She’s both a career woman and one who doesn’t adhere to the Indian beauty standard; previous efforts to find a match have returned the feedback that she’s too independent or not attractive enough. Which is mind-boggling, because Ankita is gorgeous. But she’s also darker, curvier, and shorter than is ideal, and the fact that she started and runs her own company is a threat to men who are looking for a wife to run their household.

To Ankita’s credit, she rejects suggestions that she needs to change herself; she’s become a sort of heroine for Indian Matchmaking viewers, who cheer her for speaking out against this process’s constrictive standards while trying to find love. During her first date on the show, though, Ankita hits it off with a suitor only to have a meltdown, a few scenes later, upon learning that he’s divorced. Granted, some of the anxiety seems to stem from the matchmakers not informing her before their date that he had previously been married. But the failure of what was otherwise a charming first date goes toward illustrating how harsh the stigma can be in Indian matchmaking—and how discrimination cuts both ways. 

What I want from Indian Matchmaking is probably impossible: Not just an exploration of arranged marriage, but a true reckoning with its limitations. Mundhra, the director, addressed some of these limitations in her 2017 documentary A Suitable Girl. But Indian Matchmaking turns the tradition’s hypocrisies and frailties into a carnivalesque background for individual stories to take place in front of. To a degree, that’s how it works for those of us who are in the culture; whether or not you participate, the expectations and biases of arranged marriage are always just an arm’s length away. But it’s charitable—outright propaganda, arguably—to frame it merely as a fun, silly circus of chattering parents and matchmakers with spreadsheets.

The proponents of arranged marriage are quick to point to India’s low divorce rate and various success stories—and undoubtedly, in the past and today, there are countless happy couples who were set up through some version of traditional matchmaking. But that doesn’t change the fact that arranged marriage is a family-sanctioned form of social control—a way for a community’s elders to enforce certain norms onto their children. Quite literally, it regulates reproduction by determining the bounds of their descendants’ gene pool. It diminishes the individual’s personal choice in favor of the collective’s stability.

To many young men and women looking to get married, that’s precisely the appeal: They love their families, and want to match with someone who will mesh with the religion, traditions, and values that they practice. As Sima says frequently in Indian Matchmaking, a wedding unites two families, so it’s only natural that the two families would have a say in what happens to their child. Yet this sunny view of arranged marriage glosses over a lot of potential complications, ranging from individual heartache and loss to the wholesale porting of familial dysfunction and despair from one generation to the next. The stigma around divorce is so high—the show does not dance around that, at least—that the choice of partner is typically permanent, regardless of how unsuitable a pair might be for each other. The combination of tradition and unhappiness can be extremely dangerous: In 2005, India’s large-scale National Family Health Survey found that over 37% of women in India had experienced some kind of physical or sexual spousal abuse. Beyond violence, women in India are often cut off from access to household funds, and are not permitted to make decisions up to and including family planning.

It is the great irony of a country that churns out love songs in its melodramatic Bollywood musicals, that turns weddings into three-, five-, or seven-day affairs: Indian marriage is frequently unhappy and unequal—less romantic, more another building block in a patriarchal society. Yet the passion for traditional arranged marriage is so intense that when couples marry outside the strictures of their familial norms, they may be disowned or ostracized. And as the show never even acknowledges, there is no place in arranged marriages—or much of traditional Indian society—for any sort of queer partnership.

This last detail might be why Pradhyuman Maloo, a self-described “rich pretty boy,” is both one of the show’s more loathsome characters and possibly one of its heroes. His well-connected family is eager for him to get married; a bevy of dark-skinned service staff hover out of frame in every scene. He’s a professional jewelry designer and enthusiastic amateur chef, with impeccable hair in every scene. Pradhyuman has reportedly been offered more than 150 proposals from eligible girls, and has turned every single one down. On one hand, he seems like a self-centered asshole—at one point, he tells his sister he feels deep love only for himself. On the other hand, you wish someone on the show would simply ask him if he’s even interested in women.

Irony isn’t dead: None of the participants in Indian Matchmaking found a spouse on the show. The eight-episode first season doesn’t end so much as run out of time—but there’s plenty of room for a season two, if Netflix wants one.

In the meantime, I’m left with my own thoughts. My parents had an arranged marriage, and it has been an unhappy one. I decided at a young age I wouldn’t go through the same process, with all the confidence and American privilege only a five year old can have. Neither my refusal nor their own unhappiness stopped my parents from trying to set me up—more and more feverishly as I passed 30 and still hadn’t “settled down,” as they put it.

It wasn’t just them—it was everyone. I wore high heels and a sari to a pre-event for a cousin’s wedding in India and got a marriage proposal by the end of the day, from another guest who had a relative in America. My cousin told me I should have expected it because I wore clothes that looked so adult. I was barely 22. An American college student has no context for marriage proposals from complete strangers; I didn’t even know how to talk about this phenomenon with friends. I just did my best to ignore it.

At a low point for all of us, my mom made a profile for me on shaadi.com, a popular matchmaking site for Indians abroad. I was a little astounded to find not only was she messaging potential suitors—“everyone does it for their kids,” she informed me—but that she’d also radically altered my physical type for the website; I had grown a couple of inches taller and lost 30 pounds. Weight came up again and again in this world. I grudgingly went on a date organized by my mom’s cousin, only to discover after we decidedly had no sparks that the guy I met had to be talked into meeting someone who weighed more than 125 pounds.

I did get married; my matchmaker was Tinder, and to my delight, my husband satisfies none of the search criteria my mother put into the shaadi.com search engine. I’m lucky that my parents came around to having a white son-in-law, and I know that if he were Black, Muslim, or low-caste, it would have been a much harder path to acceptance. He and I watched Indian Matchmaking together, and though the show has its limitations, I am grateful that it offered him a window into the pressures I grew up with. (He says while he would like to end up with me in “all possible timelines,” he would also pay good money to see me on the show.)

My parents have split up now, which is still incredibly uncommon, even in the Indian diaspora. But it interested me that in Indian Matchmaking, two different participants have parents who divorced: Aparna’s one, and a charming, nerdy guy named Vyasar Ganesan is the other. Even where the arranged marriage model hasn’t worked, the appetite for it is outsized.

Indian culture makes marriage so central to society—and so vital to an individual’s path—that it tends to ignore the potential downsides. The people who don’t fit into tradition’s methodology get sifted out, left not just without a picture-perfect marriage but without the acceptance and cultural identity that accompany it. I know that by opting out of the arranged marriage pathway, I have made it much harder for my future child to speak the language or practice the religious traditions of my ancestors; he’ll have to navigate the annoying cultural straddling of being from many places at once. It was the right choice for me, but it’s a hard thing to live with. The price of belonging to an Indian culture is to leave some of your individuality behind—and for me, at least, it was a price I was not willing to pay.

By the end, Aparna became a tragic figure for me. When we see her at home—dressed in outfits that seem identical to her mother’s, pushing her two tiny dogs in a stroller—she looks like an oversize little girl. There’s something so sad about her narrow ideas of what her future partner should be like; it reflects how little latitude she allows herself in her own life. Her mother, Jotika, is another meme-able figure: The production cuts together a proclamation that all she wants for her daughter is happiness and a serious monologue, directed at the camera, about how “all” she asked of her daughters is to never make her look bad and to get not just one or two degrees, but “nothing less than three.” A few episodes later, Aparna tells a suitor that she hates being a lawyer, and has been trying to do something else for years.

The tradition in India and the Indian diaspora seems to be less about marriage and more about this intense, all-consuming pressure to mold your children. Nothing seems to fuel the marriage complex more than the fear of social stigma, of being somehow outside, somehow othered. In this context, it’s no wonder that matchmaking brings out the worst colorism, casteism, and classism that Indians have to offer. I wish Indian Matchmaking said anything about that. But at least it gives the world a view into the false promise of arranged marriage, even if, by the end, the series is still starry-eyed, committed to a fantasy. Aparna, my parents, all of the frantic parents who catch Sima’s wrist at a party and whisper biodata into her ear; they just want what was promised. They just want to belong.

Where do Indians migrate?

Real Things White People Have Said to Me

How Scotland erased Guyana from its past

The portrayal of Scots as abolitionists and liberal champions has hidden a long history of profiting from slavery in the Caribbean writes Yvonne Singh in The Guardian 


The mangrove-fringed coast of Guyana, at the north-eastern tip of South America, does not immediately bring to mind the Highlands of Scotland, in the northernmost part of Great Britain. Guyana’s mudflats and silty brown coastal water have little in common with the lush green mountains and glens of the Highlands. If these landscapes share anything, it is their remoteness – one on the edge of a former empire burnished by the relentless equatorial sun and one on the edge of Europe whipped mercilessly by the Atlantic winds.
But look closer and the links are there: Alness, Ankerville, Belladrum, Borlum, Cromarty, Culcairn, Dingwall, Dunrobin, Fyrish, Glastullich, Inverness, Kintail, Kintyre, Rosehall, Tain, Tarlogie, a join-the-dots list of placenames (30 in all) south of Guyana’s capital Georgetown that hint of a hidden association with the Scottish Highlands some 5,000 miles away.

As a child, I knew little of my parents’ country Guyana. I knew that it was part of the British West Indies and the only English-speaking country in South America. I knew that my parents, as part of the Windrush generation, had answered the call for labour in postwar Britain. My father, aged 19, travelled by ship from Trinidad in 1960 and enjoyed a long career with the Royal Mail; my mother arrived by plane a couple of years later, to work as a nurse at Rushgreen hospital in Essex.

I had visited Guyana just once at nine years old (our only plane holiday as children) when my mother’s youngest sister was getting married. My memories of that time are fragmented and rather strange: the scorching heat; the propensity of people to douse themselves with Limacol (“breeze in a bottle”); the glossy rubber leaves the size of dinner plates that were used to serve sticky balls of rice at the wedding dinner; the constant nag of insects – mosquitoes, cockroaches, spiders, flies – magnified in size and more vicious than any I’d seen in the UK; the pain and humiliation of getting sunburnt for the first time (“wha’ happ’n wid de gal face”); and finally my aunt looking demure in a white lace wedding dress for the Christian wedding ceremony, then transforming into a Lakshmi-like vision in a red-and-gold sari for the Hindu nuptials.

For this was and is a country that celebrated all religions – Christian, Hindu, Muslim – all features of a colonial past that involved the forced movement of people across continents to a life of bondage and indenture. Those people later settled and made Guyana their home, so it is known as the land of six peoples, with people of African, Indian, Chinese and European descent, as well as native Amerindians and a sizeable mixed-race group, making up its population.

The story of why my own family came to be in the Caribbean had been blurred over time: it was something to do with the British, something to do with slavery, but that was all that was shared. Decades later the Guyanese-American journalist Gaiutra Bahadur published the seminal book Coolie Woman, which brought much insight, but there have been few other notable works. Guyana doesn’t feature in the history books or the school curriculum in Britain.

This is astonishing when you think that the British had such a role to play in that nation’s birth and how central that colony was to the United Kingdom’s industrial wealth and growth in the 19th century. Unlike the Caribbean islands of Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad, it is possible that Guyana’s unique geography (being attached to the South American mainland) has rendered it and its history all but invisible from the collective British consciousness. Perhaps fittingly, it was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.

I am standing on a ridge cluttered with dried grass and leaves on the eastern bank of Loch Ness. Below me, shimmering like a sheet of burnished steel, is the fabled water. I watch as puffy clouds tow shadows across its surface. North of where I stand is Dochfour House and Gardens, a sprawling, sandy-coloured, Italianate mansion, the ancestral home of the Baillie family, now owned by Alexander Baillie, after the death of his father – the eccentric Lord Burton – in 2013. The late lord was a hands-on estate owner and guarded his lands fiercely up until his death – one story has him forcing a car bonnet down on the hand of a passing motorist who had the temerity to examine his car engine near the entrance of the property.

Today the 11,000-acre estate can be hired for “exclusive house parties” and corporate events. Guests can spend time in the grand mansion, or enjoy shooting, fishing and sailing in the extensive grounds.

It’s an impressive legacy, even more so when you realise that the Baillies of Dochfour were leading “West Indian merchants” in the 1700s and early 1800s, active in the slave trade and the ownership of plantations in the Caribbean. Brothers Alexander and James, along with their cousin George, started trading in St Kitts and Grenada as Smith & Baillies in the 1760s. Their substantial interests spread to include plantations in Jamaica, Nevis, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago.

When the soils of the neighbouring islands had been exploited, excursions into Guyana presented more fertile territory. Consequently, the Baillies established a number of plantations there, with this colony yielding substantial profits even after the abolition of slavery.

 

Stabroek market in Georgetown, Guyana. Photograph: benedek/Getty Images

The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 didn’t just bring an end to chattel slavery, it also compensated Britain’s 46,000 slave owners for the loss of their “property”. As Guyana’s plantations were mostly involved in sugar-making, and sugar boilers commanded a compensation figure of £100 compared with that of £18 for an unskilled field worker, the Baillies and other plantation owners were heavily compensated for their estates in Guyana.

Consequently, the Baillies received a total of £110,000 (equivalent to around £9.2m today) compensation for the 3,100 slaves they lost, which they invested in a Monopoly board of estates across the Highlands, ensuring that they and their descendants would become one of the largest landed proprietors in the north of Scotland, largely thanks to the profits of slavery.

Imeet with historian David Alston in Cromarty, a small town in the Highlands that sits at the mouth of Cromarty Firth. Comprised of just a few streets, the town boasts a wealth of Georgian and Victorian architecture and its fair share of chi-chi boutiques, catering to the American and Canadian tourists who visit the area eager to seek a piece of Highland ancestry.

Alston explains that there are 13 different sites in this tiny place that have connections to slave plantations – mostly in Guyana. He says: “If you lived in the Highlands in the 1800s, you would know about Demerara and Berbice [in Guyana]; people would talk about coming back ‘as rich as a Demerary man’.”

It’s hard to process that a network of Scotsmen from here and the surrounding area used Guyana as a “get-rich-quick scheme”, exploiting for profit the trafficked humans (both slaves and indentured labourers) who were my ancestors. A “gold rush” with no thought of the tragic human consequence.

As I wade through research and testimonials of the fate of slaves in Guyana, it’s difficult to suppress the anger I feel: up until 1826 (nearly two decades after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807), “the 11 o’clock flog” was administered in Berbice’s searing heat to men and women who flagged in their tasks; sexual abuse was so endemic in the same district that, in 1819, one in 50 of the enslaved population was the child or grandchild of a white European.

What is also astonishing is that the people I speak to in Guyana don’t seem aware of this link with the Highlands. I speak to an older cousin who grew up in Guyana but now lives in the US. “We were taught about Cuffy [a rebel slave leader] and the slave rebellion of 1763,” she recounts. “But the slave trade wasn’t discussed.”

 A statue of Cuffy, the slave rebellion leader, in Georgetown, Guyana. Photograph: Krystyna Szulecka/Alamy

I tell her about Cromarty and she laughs at the pronunciation of a well-known place from her childhood, near Cotton Tree in Berbice. “You know Aunty Florence’s mother, Big Mama, was half-Scottish,” she says. “We all used to wonder why she was so white and so much bigger than us, but then one day Granny told us that her father was a Scotsman.”

She then recalls a troubling story. “Granny said that the Indian women would be working out in the rice fields and it was then that most of the rapes would take place. No one would hear them scream … it was only nine months later that they had to deal with the consequences.”

The Baillies were part of an Inverness network of Scots, including the Frasers, the Inglis family and the Chisholms, who had substantial plantation interests in Guyana. However, slave ownership wasn’t confined to the wealthy: ordinary working people had a chance to buy slaves too. Alston has compiled a comprehensive index of more than 600 people from the Highlands with connections to Guyana before emancipation.

He says: “Guyana offered some the prospect of making a fortune, even for those of limited means, if they were prepared to start work as clerks, overseers and tradesmen. The key to success was to own slaves.”

Alston explains: “It was a weird accident that so many people from the Highlands went over. Plantations employed all sorts of people: carpenters, gardeners, bookkeepers and doctors were needed. Scotland had a good education system and the population was mobile. Tacksman [prinicipal tenants in Highlands after landowners] led immigrations and looked for opportunities.”

Despite Guyana’s distance and dangers (many Scots succumbed to yellow fever), the reward was seen as worth the risk. The benefits were many, there were people returning from Guyana buying land and estates and improving farms in Scotland, and the plantation economy also fired industrial wealth.

Alston states: “The livelihoods of some of the poorest people in Cromarty depended on what was going on in the Caribbean. There is a red sandstone building near the harbour which was established in the 1770s as a proto-factory: it imported hemp from St Petersburg and employed 250 people and 600 out-workers – more than the population of Cromarty now – to produce cloth to make bags and sacks for West Indian goods.”

The economic benefits of slavery had a trickle-down effect on every part of the Scottish economy: there was a boom in herring fishing in the Highland lochs, as this salted-down fish was a major export to the Caribbean as a protein-rich source of slave nutrition. Similarly, in the Outer Hebrides, many workers were employed in the manufacture of rough linen, known as slave cloth, for export to the colonies. In fact, Cromarty profited so much from the slave trade, it was one of the towns that petitioned against its abolition.

Highlanders also have the dubious accolade of pioneering the first shiploads of Indian indentured labourers to Guyana shortly after the abolition of slavery. John Gladstone (a Guyanese planter and father of the future British prime minister, who received £106,769 in compensation, the equivalent of about £9m today) wrote to Francis Mackenzie Gillanders of Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co in Calcutta, requesting a new source of cheap and easily controlled labour.

Gillanders had already sent Indians to Mauritius under five-year contracts and was keen to fulfil Gladstone’s request. He perceived no difficulty with the new recruits, declaring they have “few wants beyond eating, sleeping and drinking”, referring to the “hill coolies of India” as “more akin to the monkey than the man”, unaware of “the place they agree to go to or the voyage they are undertaking”.

The arrival of the ships Whitby and Hesperus in Guyana in 1838 would herald the movement of more than half a million Indians to the Caribbean to work under overseers in the sweltering plantations, until the end of the practice in 1917.

What is shocking, given the extent of the involvement of Highland Scots in the history of Guyana, is the way their role has been airbrushed from history. Not many Scottish people would have a clue where Guyana is or of its importance to their own nation’s industrial growth.

Scots have been portrayed as abolitionists, reformers and liberal champions, so David Livingstone is remembered fondly, as is Scotland’s role in abolition, while the slave-owning firms of Sandbach Tinne, John Gladstone, HD and JE Baillie, CW&F Shand, Reid Irving and others are referred to euphemistically as “West Indian merchants”.

Unlike in Liverpool, Bristol or London, there is little acknowledgment in Glasgow of public buildings funded by the slave trade. Buchanan Street, Glassford Street and Ingram Street are named after notorious slavers, but there is no mention of this in the city’s history.

“The research I was doing in the 1990s felt very lonely,” says Alston. He recalls the opening of the National Museum of Scotland in 1998. “Despite huge sections devoted to Scotland and the world, there was not a mention of the slave trade or the slave-based plantation economies, which supported the rise of Scotland’s industrialisation. The story sits very uncomfortably with the narrative that people want to tell about Scotland and Highlanders.”

Alston explains that Scotland’s own historical grievances, specifically the Highland clearances (when tens of thousands of Highlanders were forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for large-scale sheep farming), make it unable to confront the past. He says: “If you want to portray yourself as a victim, the last thing you want to do is be the victimiser, and it is difficult for that to change because it is so embedded in the Scottish view of itself and the Highlands view of itself.

 

Cromarty graveyard in the Highlands, where some Scottish slave owners are buried. Photograph: Calum Davidson/Alamy

“In Sutherland county there is a memorial to the clearances funded by a Canadian whose ancestors were cleared [the Emigrants Statue]. The tone on the inscription is very much that the Scots enlightened the world. There was talk of putting replica statues up in all the places that Scots went to … I wonder if they will put one up in Georgetown, Guyana.”

Helen Cameron, who now lives in Australia, visited both Cromarty and Guyana in an attempt to trace her roots. Helen is related to the Camerons of Glen Nevis: John Cameron, her great, great, great-grandfather, came to Berbice in the early 1800s and set up a plantation with his kinsman Donald Charles Cameron. Accounts of their time there include shipments of coffee, cotton, rum and sugar, and the sale and hire of slaves. John Cameron had a relationship with Elizabeth Sharpe, “a free coloured woman” (a descendant of slaves) and they had seven children. The couple’s five sons all emigrated to Australia, while the daughters remained unmarried.

Helen writes by email: “It will seem strange that I did not make the intellectual connection of being a descendant of a plantation owner as also being a descendant of a slave owner. I was slightly taken aback when the manager of the hotel where we stayed in Guyana said, ‘This is the first time I have met the descendant of a slave owner.’”

She continues: “I had known that the family had plantations, but I do confess that until this research I had not considered who actually worked these plantations. I was also ignorant of Britain’s dependence on slavery.

“I hope my ancestors were benevolent slave owners,” she writes. “I do not like to think they were inhumane, even though, as one person in Guyana said, ‘Why would you think otherwise?’”

Scotland’s role in empire does not belong in the margins or footnotes: Highland Scots had a huge role to play in the large-scale trafficking of human beings for profit. I believe that however unpalatable this history is, it is a shared one, and contributes to our understanding of race and how the movements of people from long ago fits with our story now. To obscure these facts is to rob individuals of their stories all over again, and to deny them any sense of belonging or place in the world.

Today, steps are being made to acknowledge Scotland’s slaving past: there is a campaign to establish a museum of slavery, and for memorials and plaques to go up across the country on statues, streets and homes linked to the slave trade. In September 2018, Glasgow University published a report revealing that the institution benefited directly from the slave trade, despite its leading role in the abolitionist movement – receiving bequests of almost £200m in today’s money. The university has now launched a “reparative justice programme” that will involve the creation of a centre for the study of slavery as well as a collaboration with the University of the West Indies.

In Cromarty’s graveyard, the mid-morning sun slants across the gravestones pockmarked with moss and lichen, illuminating the faint inscriptions. The statue of Hugh Miller, the town’s famed geologist and writer, perched Nelson-like on a high column, overlooks the scene. I read the carved words on one crumbling grey stone that has sat in this cemetery for more than 150 years. It says: “John Munro late of Demerara.” Less clear is “Berbice” on another stone. A mere 20 miles south-west of this cemetery, at Gilchrist near Muir of Ord, is an ornate mausoleum containing the well-preserved tomb of Gillanders – he of the famous monkey quote. One truth remains: however hard we try to cover over our past, it rarely stays buried.

The need for an Indian Grand Narrative

Rajiv Malhotra

Talk at the UK Parliament

An Indian Headshake - What it means?

When women ask for Sex

When Women Ask For It

If I was “asking for it”, it would be a lot more than showing cleavage, or leg. If I am asking for it, dude, you will know it.

VEENA VENUGOPAL 

To me, the most memorable scene in Dev D is the one where Paro takes a mattress from home and ties it to her cycle. When she reaches the edge of the field, she abandons the cycle, lifts the mattress on her shoulder and marches to the clearing where she lays it down and waits for her lover. There are no words spoken and the camera holds her face close. Her expression is one of intense seriousness. You can see her desire is a field force of intensity that fuels every step. She is determined to see it through, to let that desire take over herself completely; not surrender to it but to let it explode out of her. You know that when she meets Dev, the sex would be passionate and powerful.  And yet, in the south Delhi multiplex where I was watching the film, most of the audience burst into rapacious laughter. The women smiled embarrassedly at each other. Which made me wonder, why is female desire a laughing matter?

I thought back to the movie and that scene because even now, in the last seven weeks that we have been talking about sex, sexuality, power, passion and crime, we are still, yet to talk about female desire. In the conversations about rape that we have had, there have been infinite references to provocation. That if women dress a certain way, they are “asking for it.” To my mind, what this means is that men don’t know when we are really asking for it. Because if I was “asking for it”, it would be a lot more than showing cleavage, or leg. If I am asking for it, dude, you will know it.

When did desire become a male privilege? There is so little conversation about a woman’s desire for sex that a lot of people simply assume it doesn’t exist. A Times of India article last month starts with this surprising headline, Women too have high sex drive. Did you not know that?  To my mind, understanding that there is such a thing as female desire is essential to knowing how we behave. There has, rightly, been a call for the Indian film industry, especially Bollywood, to introspect how it depicts its women. The whole “chhed-chhad” business, the near stalker-ish behaviour that Hindi film heroes indulge in does influence how men on the streets behave. That it gives that boorishness credibility. And eventually, the girl succumbs. What is important to the girl, it suggests, is acceptance. She does not desire. She does not chase. She does not acknowledge, even to herself, that she wants this man. She gives in, relents, submits.

Truth is, female desire is as much a brute force as male desire. Sometimes it takes us by surprise, often we relent to it. Some of us take risks to indulge our desire. Some of us fight it, telling ourselves why this particular one is not good for us. It occurs to us just as randomly as it does to men. When we watch a movie, read a book, walk down the street, see someone hot, at the pub drinking, at the temple praying. Sometimes we fabricate it, filling our head with fantasies. Sometimes we deny it. Sometimes we fake it. Sometimes it’s a coiled spring. Sometimes it’s a warm breeze. But what is important for you to know is that we feel it. We know what it is.

In an early episode of Girls, one of the characters reads from a dating manual. “Sex from behind is degrading. He should want to look at your beautiful face,” she reads. To which the other asks, “what if I want something different? What if I want to feel like I have udders?” Because, you know, sometimes we do. In Saudi Arabia, where laughably a lot of people seem to think there are no rapes because women are “properly attired”, the intense segregation of the sexes makes us turn our desires to other women. Don’t believe me? Read Seba Al-Herz’s book, The Others. Because no matter what you believe, you can’t put a burqa on a thought or wrap a hijab around a feeling.

We probably don’t talk about what we desire enough. But we certainly think about it. So this will probably come as a surprise to you. When you proposition us, on the road, in the bus, or at a movie theatre, and we say no, we are not saying that we don’t feel any desire. We are simply saying that it’s not you who we desire.

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Veena Venugopal is a journalist in Delhi. She is the author of the book Would You Like Some Bread With That Book, published by Yoda Press in 2012. She is a contributing writer forQuartz and Mint. This piece first appeared at Kafila

The Mahabharata Explained

Modern Indian Spirituality

I am quite sure ladies and gentlemen, that in this august assembly nobody would envy my position at this moment. Speaking after such a charismatic and formidable personality like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is like coming out of the pavilion to play after Tendulkar has made a sparkling century. But in some weak moment I had committed myself.

There are certain things that I would like to make very clear at the very outset. Dont get carried away by my name Javed Akhtar. I am not revealing a secret, I am saying something that I have said many times, in writing or on TV, in publicI am an atheist, I have no religious beliefs. And obviously I dont believe in spirituality of some kind. Some kind!

Another thing. I am not standing here to criticize, analyze, or attack this gentleman who is sitting here. We have a very pleasant, civilized relation. I have always found him to be an extremely courteous person.

One is talking about an idea, an attitude, a mindset. Not any individual. I must tell you that when Rajeev opened this session, for a moment I felt that I have come to the wrong place. Because, if we are discussing the philosophy of Krishan and Gautam and Kabir, Vivekanand, then I have nothing to say. I can sit down right now. I am not here to discuss a glorious past of which I suppose every Indian is proud, and rightly so. I am here to
discuss a dubious present.

India Today has invited me and I have come here to talk of spirituality today. Lets not be confused by this word spirituality, you can find two people with the same name and they can be totally different people. Ram Charit Manas was written by Tulsidas. And the television film has been made by Ramanand Sagar. Ramayan is common but I dont think it would be very wise to club Tulsidas with Ramanand Sagar. I remember, when he had written Ramcharit Manas, he had faced a kind of a social boycott. How could he write a holy book in such a language like Avadhi? Sometimes I wonder fundamentalists of all hues and all colors, religions and communitie show how similar they are. In 1798, a gentleman called Shah Abdul Qadir, in this very city, for the first time translated Quran in Urdu, and all the ulemas of that time gave fatwa against him that how could he translate this holy book in such a heathen language.

When Tulsi wrote Ramcharit Manas and he was boycotted, I remember a chowpai that he had written.

*Dhut kaho abdhut kaho rajput kaho ki julawa kohu*
*Kohu ki beti se beta na biahab, kohu ki jaat bigaar na chahu*
*Mang ke khaibo, mehjid ma raihbo, lebe ka ek na debe ka dohu*

Ramanand Sagar, when he made his television serial, he made millions. I am not undermining him, but obviously he is much lower in the rung. I will give you another example. Perhaps it would be more direct and more appropriate. Gautam came out of a palace and went into wilderness to find the truth. But nowadays we see, the modern age gurus, come out of the wilderness and wind up in the palaces. They are moving in the opposite direction. We cant talk of them in the same breath. So let us not hide behind names which are dear and respectable for every Indian.

When I was invited to give this talk, I felt that yes, I am an atheist, try to be a rationalist in any given situation, Maybe thats why I have been called. But suddenly I have realized that there is another quality that I share with Modern Age gurus. I work in films. We have lot in common. Both of us, sell dreams, both of us create illusions, both of us create icons, but with a difference. After three hours we put a placard 'the end'. Go back to reality. They dont.

So ladies and gentlemen, let me make it very clear that I have come to talk of this spirituality that has a supermarket in the world. Arms, drugs and spirituality these are the three big businesses in the world. But in arms and drugs you really have to do something, give something. Thats the difference. Here you dont have to give anything.

In this supermarket you get instant Nirvana, Moksha by mail, a crash course in self realization, cosmic consciousness in four easy lessons. This supermarket has its chain all over the world, where the restless elite buy spiritual fast food. I am talking about this spirituality.

Plato in his dialogues has said many a wise thing, and one of them is before starting any discussion decide on the meanings of words. Let us tryto decide on the meaning of this word spirituality. Does it mean love for mankind that transcends all religion, caste, creed, race? Is that so? Then I have no problem. Except that I call it humanity. Does it mean love of plants, trees, mountains, oceans, rivers, animals? The non-human world? If that is so, again I have no problem at all. Except that I call it environmental consciousness. Does spirituality mean heartfelt regard for social institutions like marriage, parenthood, fine arts, judiciary, freedom of expression. I have no problem again sir, how can I disagree here? I call it civil responsibility. Does spirituality mean going into your own world trying to understand the meaning of your own life? Who can object on that? I call it self-introspection, self assessment. Does spirituality mean Yoga? Thanks to Patanjali, who has given us the details of Yoga, *Yam, Yatam, aasan, pranayam*We may do it under any name, but if we are doing pranayam, wonderful. I call it health-care. Physical fitness.

Now is it a matter of only semantics. If all this is spirituality, then what is the discussion. All these words that I have used are extremely respectable and totally acceptable words. There is nothing abstract or intangible about them. So why stick to this word spirituality? What is there in spirituality that has not been covered by all these words? Is there something? If that is so then what is that?

Somebody in return can ask me what is my problem with this word. I am asking to change it, leave it, drop it, make it obsolete but why so? I will tell you what is my reservation. If spirituality means all this then there is no discussion. But there is something else which makes me uneasy. In a dictionary, the meaning of spirituality is rooted in a word called spirit. When mankind didnt know whether this earth is round or flat, he had decided that human beings are actually the combination of two things. Body and spirit. Body is temporary, it dies. But the spirit is, shall I say, non-biodegradable. In your body you have a liver and heart and intestines and the brain, but since the brain is a part of the body, and mind lies within the brain, it is inferior because ultimately the brain too shall die with the body, but dont worry, you are not going to die, because you are your spirit, and the spirit has the supreme consciousness that will remain, and whatever problem you have is because you listen to your mind. Stop listening to your mind. Listen to your spirit - the supreme consciousness that knows the cosmic truth. All right. Its not surprising that in Pune there is an ashram and I used to go there. I loved the oratory. On the gate of the lecture hall there was a placard. Leave your shoes and minds here. There are other gurus who dont mind if you carry your shoes. But minds? Sorry!

Now, if you leave your mind what do you do? You need the Guru to find the next station of consciousness. That hides somewhere in the spirit. He has reached the supreme consciousness, he knows the supreme truth. But can he tell you. No sir, he cannot tell you. So can you find out on your own? No sir, you need the guru for that. You need him but he cannot guarantee that you will know the ultimate truth and what is that ultimate truth? What is the cosmic truth? Relating to cosmos? I have really not been able to understand that. The moment we step out of the solar system the first star is Alpha Centuari. It is just four light years away. How do I relate to that!! What do I do!!

So the emperor is wearing robes that only the wise can see. And the emperor is becoming bigger and bigger. And there are more and more wise people who are appreciating the robe.

I used to think that actually spirituality is the second line of defence for the religious people. When they get embarrassed about traditional religion, when it starts looking too down-market, they hide behind this smokescreen of cosmos and super consciousness. But that is not the complete truth. Because the clientele of traditional religion and spirituality is different. You take the map of the world, you start marking places which are extremely religious, within India or outside India, Asia, Latin America, Europe wherever. You will find that wherever there is lot of religion there is lack of human rights. There is repression. Anywhere. Our Marxist friends used to say that religion is the opium of poor masses, the sigh of the oppressed. I dont want to get into that discussion. But spirituality nowadays is definitely the tranquilizer of the rich.


You see that the clientele is well heeled, it is the affluent class. Alright, so the guru gets power, high self esteem, status, wealth (which is not that important), power and lot of wealth too. What does the disciple get? When I looked at them carefully I realized that there are categories and categories of these disciples. Its not a monolith. There are different kinds of followers. Different kinds of disciples. One, who is rich, successful, doing extremely well in his life, making money, gaining property. Now, since he has everything he wants absolution too. So guru tells him - whatever you are doing, is *niskaam karma *you are playing a role, this is all *Maya*, the money that you are making everyday and the property that you are acquiring, you are not emotionally involved with it. You are just playing a role. You come to me because you are in search of eternal truth. Maybe your hands are dirty, but your spirit and soul are pure. And this man, he starts feeling wonderful about himself. For seven days he is exploiting the world, and at the end of the seven days when he goes and sits at the feet of the guru, he feels I am a sensitive person




There is another category. That too comes from the affluent class. But he is not the winner like the first one. You know winning or losing that is also relative. A rickshaw-wallah if he is gambling on the pavement and wins hundred rupees will feel victorious, and if a corporate man makes only 300 million dollars, while his brother is a billionaire, he will feel like a failure. Now, what does this rich failure do? He needs a guru to tell him
who says that you have failed? You have other worlds, you have another vision, you have other sensibility that your brother doesnt have. He thinks that he is successful, wrong. The world is very cruel, you know. The world tells you honestly, no sir, you have got three out of ten. The other person has seven out of ten. Fair. They will treat you that way and they will meet you that way. There he gets compassion. There he plays another game.

Another category. And I will talk about this category not with contempt or with any sense of superiority, not any bitterness, but all the compassion available one that is a very big client of this modern day guru and todays spirituality, is the unhappy rich wife. Here is a person who put all her individuality, aspirations and dreams, and her being at the altar of marriage and in return she got an indifferent husband. Who at the most gave her a couple of children. Who is rather busy with his work, or busy with other women. This woman needs a shoulder. She knows that she is an existential failure. There is nothing to look forward to. She has a vacuous, empty, comfortable yet purposeless life. Its sad, but it is true.

Then there are other people. Who are suddenly traumatized. They lose a child. The wife dies. The husband dies. Or they lose the property, they lose their business. Something happens that shocks them and they ask why me? So who do they ask? They go to the Guru. And the guru tells him that this is Karma. But there is another world if you follow me. Where there is no pain. Where there is no death. Where there is immortality. Where there is only bliss. He tells all these unhappy souls follow me and I will take you to heaven, to paradise, where there is no pain. I am sorry sir, it is disappointing but true that there is no such paradise. Life will always have a certain quota of pain, of hurts, a possibility of defeats. But they do get some satisfaction.


Somebody may ask me if they are feeling better, if they are getting peace then what is your problem. It reminds me of a story that I have read. Its an old Indian story told by a sage, that a hungry dog finds a dry bone and tries to eat it and in the process bites its own tongue. And the tongue is bleeding and the dog feels that he is getting nourishment from the bone. I feel sad. I dont want them, these adults, to behave like this because I respect them. Drugs and alcohol are also supposed to give mental peace and serenity, but is that kind of piece or serenity desirable or advisable?


The answer is no. Any mental peace that is not anchored in rational thoughts is nothing but self-deception. Any serenity that takes you away from truth is just an illusion a mirage. I know that there is a kind of a security in this which is like the security of a tri-cycle. If you are riding a tri-cycle you cant fall. But adults do not ride tricycles. They ride bi-cycles. They can even fall. It is a part of life.

There is one more kind. Like everybody who is the member of the golf club is not fond of golf. In the same way everybody who is seen in an ashram is not a spiritual person. A film producer who is an ardent follower of a guru, whose ashram is about two hours from Delhi once told me that you must go to my Guru. You will see the whos who of Delhi there. Let me tell you my Guruji is another Chandraswami in the making. Now this is a contact point
for networking. I have great respect for people who are spiritual, or religious, and in spite of this they are good people. And I have a reason. I believe that like every emotion or feeling, you have a limitation.
 
You can see up to a point. And you cant see further. You can hear up to a point, but beyond that you wont be able to register sounds. You can mourn up to a point and then you will get over your mourning. You will feel happy up-to a point and then you will be through with your happiness. Same way, I am sure that you have a certain capacity for nobility also. You can be as noble and no more. Now suppose if we count this capacity for nobility in the average man as ten units, now anybody who goes to pray in a mosque five times is consuming his five units, there anybody who goes to the temple or sits in the feet of the Guru, he is consuming his quota of nobility there. And in a totally non-productive manner. I dont go to pray. I dont pray. If I dont go to any guru, or mosque or temple or church, what do I do with my quota of nobility. I will have to help somebody, feed somebody, give shelter to somebody. People who use their quota in worshipping, praying, adoring religious figures and spiritual figures, in spite of that, if they are left with some nobility, hats off to them.

You may ask me, that if I have this kind of ideas about religious people, why should I show such reverence for Krishan and Kabir and Gautam? You can ask me. Ill tell you why I respect them. These were the great contributors in the human civilization. They were born in different points of time in history, in different situations. But one thing is common in them. They stood up against injustice. They fought for the downtrodden. Whether it was Ravana, or Kansha or the pharaoh or the high priests or the British Samrajya in front of Gandhi or the communal empire of Firoze Tughlaq in the times of Kabir, they stood against that.
 
And what surprises me, and confirms my worst feelings, that today, the enlightened people who know the cosmic truth, none of them stand up against the powers that be. None of them raises his voice against the ruling classes and the privileged classes. Charity, yes, when it is approved and cleared by the establishment and the powers that be. But I want to know which was that guru which took the dalits to those temples which are still closed to them. I want to know which was that guru who stood for the rights of the Adivasis against the thekedaars and contractors. I want to know which was that guru  who spoke about the victims of Gujarat and went to their relief camps. They are human beings too.

Sir, It is not enough to teach the rich how to breathe. It is the rich mans recreation. It is the hypocrites pretension. It is a mischievous deception. And you know that in the oxford dictionary, mischievous deception is a term that is used for a word, and that word is HOAX.


Speech by JAVED AKHTAR at India Today Conclave  *


 

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