Showing posts with label temple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label temple. Show all posts
Tuesday, 3 January 2023
Monday, 12 September 2022
Thursday, 30 July 2020
A coronavirus vaccine could split America
In the battle between public science and anti-vaxxer sentiment, science is heavily outgunned writes Edward Luce in The FT
It is late October and Donald Trump has a surprise for you. Unlike the traditional pre-election shock — involving war or imminent terrorist attack — this revelation is about hope rather than fear. The “China virus” has been defeated thanks to the ingenuity of America’s president. The US has developed a vaccine that will be available to all citizens by the end of the year. Get online and book your jab.
It is possible Mr Trump could sway a critical slice of voters with such a declaration. The bigger danger is that he would deepen America’s mistrust of science. A recent poll found that only half of Americans definitely plan to take a coronavirus vaccine. Other polls said that between a quarter and a third of the nation would never get inoculated.
Whatever the true number, anti-vaccine campaigners are having a great pandemic — as indeed is Covid-19. At least three-quarters of the population would need to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity.
Infectious diseases thrive on mistrust. It is hard to imagine a better Petri dish than today’s America. Some of the country’s “vaccine hesitancy” is well grounded. Regulators are under tremendous pressure to let big pharma shorten clinical trials. That could lead to mistakes.
Vaccine nationalism is not just about rich governments pre-ordering as many vials as they can. It is also about winning unimaginably large bragging rights in the race to save the world. Cutting immunological corners could be dangerous to public health.
Such caution accounts for many of those who would hesitate to be injected. The rest are captured by conspiracy theories. In the battle between public science and anti-vaxxer sentiment, science is heavily outgunned. It faces a rainbow coalition of metastasising folk suspicions on both the left and the right. Public health messages are little match for the memology of social media opponents.
It is that mix of technological savvy and intellectual derangement that drives today’s politics. Mr Trump did not invent postmodern quackery — though he has endorsed some life-threatening remedies. The irony is that he could fall victim to the mistrust he has stoked.
Should an effective vaccine loom into view before the US goes to the polls in 95 days, Mr Trump would not be the ideal person to inform the country. The story is as old as cry wolf. Having endorsed the use of disinfectants and hydroxychloroquine, Mr Trump has forfeited any credibility. Validation should come from Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious-diseases expert, whose trust ratings are almost double those of the president he serves.
Even then, however, the challenge would only just be starting. There is no cause to doubt the world-beating potential of US scientific research. There are good reasons to suspect the medical establishment’s ability to win over public opinion.
The modern anti-vaxxer movement began on the left. It is still going strong. It follows the “my body is my temple” philosophy. Corporate science cannot be trusted to put healthy things into our bodies. The tendency for modern parents to award themselves overnight Wikipedia degrees in specialist fields is also to blame.
Not all of this mistrust is madcap. African Americans have good reason to distrust public health following the postwar Tuskegee experiments in which hundreds were infected with syphilis and left to fester without penicillin. Polls show that more blacks than whites would refuse a coronavirus vaccine. Given their higher likelihood of exposure, such mistrust has tragic potential.
But rightwing anti-vaxxers have greater momentum. America’s 19th century anti-vaccination movements drew equally from religious paranoia that vaccines were the work of the devil and a more general fear that liberty was under threat. Both strains have resurfaced in QAnon, the virtual cult that believes America is run by a satanic deep state that abuses children.
It would be hard to invent a more unhinged account of how the world works. Yet Mr Trump has retweeted QAnon-friendly accounts more than 90 times since the pandemic began. Among QAnon’s other theories is that Covid-19 is a Dr Fauci-led hoax to sink Mr Trump’s chances of being re-elected. Science cannot emulate such imaginative forms of storytelling.
All of which poses a migraine for the silent majority that would happily take the vaccine shots. Their lives are threatened both by a pandemic and by an infodemic. It is a bizarre feature of our times that the first looks easier to solve than the second.
It is late October and Donald Trump has a surprise for you. Unlike the traditional pre-election shock — involving war or imminent terrorist attack — this revelation is about hope rather than fear. The “China virus” has been defeated thanks to the ingenuity of America’s president. The US has developed a vaccine that will be available to all citizens by the end of the year. Get online and book your jab.
It is possible Mr Trump could sway a critical slice of voters with such a declaration. The bigger danger is that he would deepen America’s mistrust of science. A recent poll found that only half of Americans definitely plan to take a coronavirus vaccine. Other polls said that between a quarter and a third of the nation would never get inoculated.
Whatever the true number, anti-vaccine campaigners are having a great pandemic — as indeed is Covid-19. At least three-quarters of the population would need to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity.
Infectious diseases thrive on mistrust. It is hard to imagine a better Petri dish than today’s America. Some of the country’s “vaccine hesitancy” is well grounded. Regulators are under tremendous pressure to let big pharma shorten clinical trials. That could lead to mistakes.
Vaccine nationalism is not just about rich governments pre-ordering as many vials as they can. It is also about winning unimaginably large bragging rights in the race to save the world. Cutting immunological corners could be dangerous to public health.
Such caution accounts for many of those who would hesitate to be injected. The rest are captured by conspiracy theories. In the battle between public science and anti-vaxxer sentiment, science is heavily outgunned. It faces a rainbow coalition of metastasising folk suspicions on both the left and the right. Public health messages are little match for the memology of social media opponents.
It is that mix of technological savvy and intellectual derangement that drives today’s politics. Mr Trump did not invent postmodern quackery — though he has endorsed some life-threatening remedies. The irony is that he could fall victim to the mistrust he has stoked.
Should an effective vaccine loom into view before the US goes to the polls in 95 days, Mr Trump would not be the ideal person to inform the country. The story is as old as cry wolf. Having endorsed the use of disinfectants and hydroxychloroquine, Mr Trump has forfeited any credibility. Validation should come from Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious-diseases expert, whose trust ratings are almost double those of the president he serves.
Even then, however, the challenge would only just be starting. There is no cause to doubt the world-beating potential of US scientific research. There are good reasons to suspect the medical establishment’s ability to win over public opinion.
The modern anti-vaxxer movement began on the left. It is still going strong. It follows the “my body is my temple” philosophy. Corporate science cannot be trusted to put healthy things into our bodies. The tendency for modern parents to award themselves overnight Wikipedia degrees in specialist fields is also to blame.
Not all of this mistrust is madcap. African Americans have good reason to distrust public health following the postwar Tuskegee experiments in which hundreds were infected with syphilis and left to fester without penicillin. Polls show that more blacks than whites would refuse a coronavirus vaccine. Given their higher likelihood of exposure, such mistrust has tragic potential.
But rightwing anti-vaxxers have greater momentum. America’s 19th century anti-vaccination movements drew equally from religious paranoia that vaccines were the work of the devil and a more general fear that liberty was under threat. Both strains have resurfaced in QAnon, the virtual cult that believes America is run by a satanic deep state that abuses children.
It would be hard to invent a more unhinged account of how the world works. Yet Mr Trump has retweeted QAnon-friendly accounts more than 90 times since the pandemic began. Among QAnon’s other theories is that Covid-19 is a Dr Fauci-led hoax to sink Mr Trump’s chances of being re-elected. Science cannot emulate such imaginative forms of storytelling.
All of which poses a migraine for the silent majority that would happily take the vaccine shots. Their lives are threatened both by a pandemic and by an infodemic. It is a bizarre feature of our times that the first looks easier to solve than the second.
Thursday, 6 December 2018
Tuesday, 19 June 2018
‘Hindus have to come out and say: not in our religion’s name’
Why Malayalam novelist KP Ramanunni undertook a penance for the Kathua gangrape in a Kerala temple. According to him, it was his response as a Hindu and a believer. He said he was following the Gandhian tradition of personal atonement for a public evil.
Amrith Lal in The Indian Express
Sahitya Akademi winner and Malayalam novelist KP Ramanunni.
Some weeks ago, this year’s Sahitya Akademi winner and Malayalam novelist KP Ramanunni said he intended to atone for the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in a temple in Kathua, Jammu. This, he said, was his response as a Hindu and a believer. He said he was following the Gandhian tradition of personal atonement for a public evil. He said he would do a shayana pradakshinam (circumambulation of the sanctum sanctorum by rolling on the ground) along with others at the Sreekrishna Temple in Kadalayi, Kannur. In an appeal, he stated the reasons for his penance. “The Hindus have a responsibility to show an example of resistance from their own platform of faith against the forces of evil. Because, the fundamental dharma of Hinduism is to pray for the well-being of all the world and stand with truth,” he wrote. He found support from the Kerala Samskrita Sanghom, an organisation of Left-leaning Sanskrit lovers, and a section of intellectuals, including poet and scholar K Satchidanandan.
But when Ramanunni and two others, including a Hindu monk, declared that they would undertake the penance on June 7, many Hindutva bodies opposed the decision. On the designated day, the writer, accompanied by a large posse of police, activists and believers against and in support of the act, undertook the penance by following all the rituals and traditions of the temple.
Ramanunni’s act of atonement has raised a slew of questions. The Hindu right saw it as an anti-BJP political protest. Some felt it was a vacuous spectacle. A few felt secular politics ought not to enter temple spaces or engage with rituals, since that would lead to a validation of Hindu right-wing politics. Even the claim of the circumambulation being a Gandhian act of atonement has been questioned: Can such a singular, individualistic act revive the Gandhian political tradition in a state where the tradition has been marginalised? How different is it from the instrumentalist use of religion by politicians? There are no easy or simple answers to these questions.
For the 63-year-old Kozhikode based writer, this was one way to engage with other Hindus and believers. It was very much in line with the religious syncretism that underlines his fiction, from the much-celebrated Sufi Paranja Katha (A Tale Told By a Sufi, 1995) to his last work, Deivathinte Pustakam (The Book of God, 2017). A recent paper by the Left thinker, B Rajeevan, Sarva Dharma Samabhavana, which called for reclaiming religion from bigots by combining the thoughts of Gandhi, Ambedkar, Sree Narayana Guru and Marx and positing its subaltern self against communalism, inspired him. In this interview, Ramanunni speaks about his attempt to wrest back religious thought from hate. Excerpts:
What made you undertake the act of penance at the Kannur temple?
Every religion, I believe, is getting more and more radicalised and places of worship are increasingly turning into centres of crime. How does one address this issue? I don’t think a purely rationalist approach that excludes religious thought can provide any solution. There are democratic spaces and revolutionary strands within the religious sphere that could help resist communalism. I see Mahatma Gandhi as a practitioner of this sort of a politics. He called himself a sanatani Hindu and revolutionised Hinduism. The fraternal feelings he espoused for Muslims were part of his revolutionary understanding of religion. It was also a carefully thought-out moral and political strategy. The idea was to repair the communal divide the British had created in India. But this strand of political activism ended with him, there was no continuity. It also allowed Hinduism to become reactionary and communal. We need to revive the Hinduism of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Swami Vivekananda, Sree Narayana Guru, Gandhiji and so on.
Many Muslim groups openly declare that what organisations like the Islamic State preach and do is not Islam. Hindus, too, have to come out and say what is being done today in the name of Hinduism is not Hinduism. The Kathua rape and murder was a heinous crime carried out and defended in the name of Hinduism. There has always been a strand of self-purification and self-criticism within the Hindu religion; doing penance is a part of that tradition. When a Junaid is killed only because he is a Muslim, all Hindus have to bear the burden of that sin, I believe. The rape and murder in Kathua was not just of a Muslim child but also of Hinduism. It is to build such a conscience that I undertook the shayana pradakshinam at the Kadalayi temple.
But why such a protest at a temple?
We hold a lot of town-hall meetings against communalism. We speak to secular people, and all of us are mostly in agreement. I find this funny. This is almost like putting up resistance on the Pakistan border when there is an attack on the Chinese frontier. The communal forces are spreading hate through believers, using places of worship. These spaces have been abandoned by secular intellectuals, whereas communal organisations are mobilising around them. This wasn’t so in the past. Temple festivals and functions were more social than religious events. Now, the attempt is to turn ordinary Hindus into bigots. This is done by inviting bigoted people, including sanyasis, to give lectures. But these talks are aimed at creating prejudice against other religions. This sort of brainwashing of people, especially ordinary believing women, has been going on for a while. There is a need to engage with believers, and in their spaces. As a believer, a practising Hindu I have to do it, I will do it.
When did you start thinking about this need to engage with believers?
Some months ago, I planned to tour religious places to spread a message of communal harmony. There was some criticism and people backed out. Around this time, Marxist thinker B Rajeevan and poet K Satchidanandan had spoken about mobilising around the idea of sarva dharma samabhavana, which spoke about equal respect to all religions. Rajeevan’s concept inspired me. I have always held that ours is a secularism inclusive of faiths, not one that rejects faiths.
Political parties, including the CPM and the Congress, have been fully supportive of my initiative. They, of course, didn’t want it to be a party programme. That’s when Kerala Samskrita Sanghom came in support. This is an organisation of people who love Sanskrit. Many of its member are also believers, and some of them had worked in organisations like the RSS in the past. We chose the temple in Kannur because it is known as the Guruvayur of Malabar. Swami Athmatheertha had initially expressed interest in joining me, but he opted out. Organisations like the Hindu Aikya Vedi, a Sangh Parivar outfit, viciously opposed us. If we talk about repentance and penance in a temple, they knew it would hurt their interests.
Is this a one-off thing?
We have discussed the need to work among the believers. Or else, Kerala will soon become a different place. We have a history of communal harmony and shared spaces among different faiths. That is now under threat. Even fraternal relations with people of other faith are now looked upon with suspicion. Communal hatred is increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. Muslims, made insecure by the communalisation of Hindus, are withdrawing into the shell of religious spaces. Communalism is mutually reinforcing. A secularism that keeps out religion is not capable of fighting this regressive trend.
Your initiative has been described as a Left-backed anti-BJP political activity or dismissed as a publicity gimmick.
Malayalis have become very cynical. Social media is most vicious, it is full of bigots and cynics. They will try to discourage or make fun of you. Unfortunately, those who support you are not vocal in public. We live in an age where forces of virtue are weak and the powers of vice are efficient.
What about the criticism that political parties have an instrumentalist approach towards religion? That their interventions in matters of faith have only a political motive?
That’s when you reduce your engagement with believers and matters of faith to tactics. A large majority of people who vote CPM in Kerala would be believers. In fact, there are Leftist traditions that engage with religious faith in a positive way. It is important to have a democratic mindset that respects someone’s right to believe in god. According to me, if he exists, god is the greatest discovery of mankind; if he doesn’t, he is mankind’s greatest invention for the support and betterment of humans.
Some weeks ago, this year’s Sahitya Akademi winner and Malayalam novelist KP Ramanunni said he intended to atone for the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in a temple in Kathua, Jammu. This, he said, was his response as a Hindu and a believer. He said he was following the Gandhian tradition of personal atonement for a public evil. He said he would do a shayana pradakshinam (circumambulation of the sanctum sanctorum by rolling on the ground) along with others at the Sreekrishna Temple in Kadalayi, Kannur. In an appeal, he stated the reasons for his penance. “The Hindus have a responsibility to show an example of resistance from their own platform of faith against the forces of evil. Because, the fundamental dharma of Hinduism is to pray for the well-being of all the world and stand with truth,” he wrote. He found support from the Kerala Samskrita Sanghom, an organisation of Left-leaning Sanskrit lovers, and a section of intellectuals, including poet and scholar K Satchidanandan.
But when Ramanunni and two others, including a Hindu monk, declared that they would undertake the penance on June 7, many Hindutva bodies opposed the decision. On the designated day, the writer, accompanied by a large posse of police, activists and believers against and in support of the act, undertook the penance by following all the rituals and traditions of the temple.
Ramanunni’s act of atonement has raised a slew of questions. The Hindu right saw it as an anti-BJP political protest. Some felt it was a vacuous spectacle. A few felt secular politics ought not to enter temple spaces or engage with rituals, since that would lead to a validation of Hindu right-wing politics. Even the claim of the circumambulation being a Gandhian act of atonement has been questioned: Can such a singular, individualistic act revive the Gandhian political tradition in a state where the tradition has been marginalised? How different is it from the instrumentalist use of religion by politicians? There are no easy or simple answers to these questions.
For the 63-year-old Kozhikode based writer, this was one way to engage with other Hindus and believers. It was very much in line with the religious syncretism that underlines his fiction, from the much-celebrated Sufi Paranja Katha (A Tale Told By a Sufi, 1995) to his last work, Deivathinte Pustakam (The Book of God, 2017). A recent paper by the Left thinker, B Rajeevan, Sarva Dharma Samabhavana, which called for reclaiming religion from bigots by combining the thoughts of Gandhi, Ambedkar, Sree Narayana Guru and Marx and positing its subaltern self against communalism, inspired him. In this interview, Ramanunni speaks about his attempt to wrest back religious thought from hate. Excerpts:
What made you undertake the act of penance at the Kannur temple?
Every religion, I believe, is getting more and more radicalised and places of worship are increasingly turning into centres of crime. How does one address this issue? I don’t think a purely rationalist approach that excludes religious thought can provide any solution. There are democratic spaces and revolutionary strands within the religious sphere that could help resist communalism. I see Mahatma Gandhi as a practitioner of this sort of a politics. He called himself a sanatani Hindu and revolutionised Hinduism. The fraternal feelings he espoused for Muslims were part of his revolutionary understanding of religion. It was also a carefully thought-out moral and political strategy. The idea was to repair the communal divide the British had created in India. But this strand of political activism ended with him, there was no continuity. It also allowed Hinduism to become reactionary and communal. We need to revive the Hinduism of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Swami Vivekananda, Sree Narayana Guru, Gandhiji and so on.
Many Muslim groups openly declare that what organisations like the Islamic State preach and do is not Islam. Hindus, too, have to come out and say what is being done today in the name of Hinduism is not Hinduism. The Kathua rape and murder was a heinous crime carried out and defended in the name of Hinduism. There has always been a strand of self-purification and self-criticism within the Hindu religion; doing penance is a part of that tradition. When a Junaid is killed only because he is a Muslim, all Hindus have to bear the burden of that sin, I believe. The rape and murder in Kathua was not just of a Muslim child but also of Hinduism. It is to build such a conscience that I undertook the shayana pradakshinam at the Kadalayi temple.
But why such a protest at a temple?
We hold a lot of town-hall meetings against communalism. We speak to secular people, and all of us are mostly in agreement. I find this funny. This is almost like putting up resistance on the Pakistan border when there is an attack on the Chinese frontier. The communal forces are spreading hate through believers, using places of worship. These spaces have been abandoned by secular intellectuals, whereas communal organisations are mobilising around them. This wasn’t so in the past. Temple festivals and functions were more social than religious events. Now, the attempt is to turn ordinary Hindus into bigots. This is done by inviting bigoted people, including sanyasis, to give lectures. But these talks are aimed at creating prejudice against other religions. This sort of brainwashing of people, especially ordinary believing women, has been going on for a while. There is a need to engage with believers, and in their spaces. As a believer, a practising Hindu I have to do it, I will do it.
When did you start thinking about this need to engage with believers?
Some months ago, I planned to tour religious places to spread a message of communal harmony. There was some criticism and people backed out. Around this time, Marxist thinker B Rajeevan and poet K Satchidanandan had spoken about mobilising around the idea of sarva dharma samabhavana, which spoke about equal respect to all religions. Rajeevan’s concept inspired me. I have always held that ours is a secularism inclusive of faiths, not one that rejects faiths.
Political parties, including the CPM and the Congress, have been fully supportive of my initiative. They, of course, didn’t want it to be a party programme. That’s when Kerala Samskrita Sanghom came in support. This is an organisation of people who love Sanskrit. Many of its member are also believers, and some of them had worked in organisations like the RSS in the past. We chose the temple in Kannur because it is known as the Guruvayur of Malabar. Swami Athmatheertha had initially expressed interest in joining me, but he opted out. Organisations like the Hindu Aikya Vedi, a Sangh Parivar outfit, viciously opposed us. If we talk about repentance and penance in a temple, they knew it would hurt their interests.
Is this a one-off thing?
We have discussed the need to work among the believers. Or else, Kerala will soon become a different place. We have a history of communal harmony and shared spaces among different faiths. That is now under threat. Even fraternal relations with people of other faith are now looked upon with suspicion. Communal hatred is increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. Muslims, made insecure by the communalisation of Hindus, are withdrawing into the shell of religious spaces. Communalism is mutually reinforcing. A secularism that keeps out religion is not capable of fighting this regressive trend.
Your initiative has been described as a Left-backed anti-BJP political activity or dismissed as a publicity gimmick.
Malayalis have become very cynical. Social media is most vicious, it is full of bigots and cynics. They will try to discourage or make fun of you. Unfortunately, those who support you are not vocal in public. We live in an age where forces of virtue are weak and the powers of vice are efficient.
What about the criticism that political parties have an instrumentalist approach towards religion? That their interventions in matters of faith have only a political motive?
That’s when you reduce your engagement with believers and matters of faith to tactics. A large majority of people who vote CPM in Kerala would be believers. In fact, there are Leftist traditions that engage with religious faith in a positive way. It is important to have a democratic mindset that respects someone’s right to believe in god. According to me, if he exists, god is the greatest discovery of mankind; if he doesn’t, he is mankind’s greatest invention for the support and betterment of humans.
Saturday, 14 September 2013
A Church/Temple for Atheists - Now that's a godless congregation and a great idea
Atheist Sunday Assembly branches out in first wave of expansion
London's godless congregation to launch satellite assemblies in other UK cities and as far afield as New York and Sydney
Sanderson Jones (holding mic) and Pippa Evans (with guitar) with congregants at the Sunday Assembly in Islington, north London. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
It started, as a number of the world's great religions have done, with a small group of friends and a persuasive idea: why should atheists miss out on all the good things churches have to offer? What would happen if they set up a "godless congregation" that met to celebrate life, with no hope of the hereafter?
Eight months after their first meeting in a deconsecrated church in north London, the founders of the Sunday Assembly have their answer: on Sunday they will announce the formation of satellite congregations in more than 20 cities across Britain and the world, the first wave of an expansion that they believe could see 40 atheist churches springing up by the year and as many as 1,000 worldwide within a decade.
From Glasgow, Leeds, Bristol and Dublin, to New York, San Diego and Vancouver, toPerth, Melbourne and Sydney, groups of non-believers will be getting together to form their own monthly Sunday Assemblies, with the movement's founders – the standup comedians Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans – visiting the fledgling congregations in what they are calling, only partly in jest, a "global missionary tour".
Though he always suspected he was not the only one to regret that his lack of faith excluded him from a church-style community, Jones admits to being a little bewildered by the speed and scale at which his idea has caught on. "When I had the idea for this, I always thought if it was something I would like to go to in London then it was something other people would like to go to in other places.
"The one thing that we didn't take into account was the power of the internet, and I think even more than that, the fact that there is obviously a latent need for this kind of thing. People have always congregated around things that they believe in. I think people are going to look back at the fact that it didn't happen as the oddity, not this part."
Satellite assemblies will agree to the central charter of Jones and Evans's original gathering – which still meets monthly in central London – and Jones expects them, initially at least, to stick to a similar format, in which a "host" leads several hundred congregants through songs, moments of contemplation and a sermon-like (but secular) talk.
"If we do it in London and there are 400 people who come, that's brilliant, but if we find a way to help hundreds of people to set one up then we can have a bigger impact than we could ever dream of," says Jones. Their vision, he says, is "a godless gathering in every town, city or village that wants one".
Stuart Balkham is one of a small group of Brighton unbelievers who next weekend will hold their inaugural assembly – the theme is beginnings – in a disused church in Hove.
He and his partner went to the London gathering where, he says, "there was just something that clicked". Part of the appeal was the style of non-worship: "It's unashamedly copying a familiar Church of England format, so it's part of the collective consciousness."
Balkham says he has envied churches the sense of community they can offer, and thinks atheists can learn from the social good that many churches do. "It's naive to deny that there's a lot of good that comes out of organised religion, and I think helping in the community is another thing that Sunday Assemblies should be aspiring to unashamedly copy."
Nick Spencer, research director of Theos, a thinktank looking at religion's role in society, says the growth of the movement may appear striking but it is not necessarily new. "This contemporary idea of people who are not religious but wanting to maintain some kind of church-like existence has got form. We've been here before."
Spencer, who will publish a book next year on the history of atheism, sees echoes of the late 19th century, when hundreds of "ethical unions" were founded in response to the growing atheism of the times. The movement, he says, similarly concentrated on good works and community around a recognisably church-like liturgy, but petered out within a generation or two.
"The reason for that was because you need more than an absence to keep you together. You need a firm common purpose. What you can see in these modern-day atheist churches is people united by a felt absence of community. I suspect what brings them together is a real desire for community when in a modern, urbanised individualised city like London you can often feel very alone. That creates a lot of camaraderie, but the challenge then becomes, what actually unites us?"
Jones says he is alive to criticism that the assemblies appeal to a limited demographic – young, professional and overwhelmingly white – but says: "I don't there's anything that's inherently elite about people getting together to sing songs and think about themselves and improve their community. But we can't wait to see people doing it in all manner of different places in all manner of different ways, that appeal to all manner of different people."
In the meantime, a few members of the London congregation have already started thinking about setting up a free school guided by Sunday Assembly principles, raising the prospect, as Jones notes, "of Christians one day lying about being atheists to get their children into school".
The Sunday Assembly missionary tour
October Tuesday 22nd, Edinburgh; Wednesday 23rd, Glasgow; Thursday 24th, Brighton; Friday 25th, Bristol; Saturday 26th, Oxford; Sunday 27th, Cambridge; Monday 28th, Milton Keynes; Tuesday 29th, Leeds; Wednesday 30th, Manchester.
November Friday 1st, Dublin; Monday 4th, New York; Tuesday 5th, Harvard; Wednesday 6th, Washington DC; Friday 8th, Chicago; Saturday 9th, San Diego; Sunday 10th, Los Angeles; Monday 11th, Silicon Valley; Wednesday 13th, Vancouver; Sunday 17th, Perth; Wednesday 20th, Adelaide; Thursday 21st, Melbourne; Friday 22nd,Brisbane; Sunday 24th, Sydney; Saturday 30th, Crystal Palace.
Saturday, 25 May 2013
Palakkad: A quiet Kerala town where elephants symbolize social status
Palakkad is quiet and sleepy. A border district between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, it has a few engineering, polytechnic institutions, a popular dam or two, a number of renowned temples; in 2010, Palakkad was scheduled to become India's first "fully electrified district". The town does not boast of its humble offerings, for the concept of 'wealth' here is not determined by currency alone. And as brothers MA Haridas and MA Parameswaran will tell you, sometimes wealth is 10 feet tall, sociable and rather fond of palm leaves.
The brothers own the largest number of elephants in the state, 14 in all, creating a personal asset base of Rs10-12 crore. The Angadiyil House in Mangalamkunnu, rural Palakkad, is witness to 14 pachyderms on parade — but only when they aren't busy handling crucial matters for temples in the area. "There is a good demand for the elephants from various temple managements," says Haridas. Two of their elephants, Karnan and Ayyappan, are over 10 feet tall and preferred by temple management committees to carry the deity during the festival seasons.
Elephants are an essential element of temple festivals in Kerala. In fact, during the festival season, temple managements compete with each other to get the best elephants (ones with well-proportioned growth in terms of height, head posture, length of the tusk, etc) for the festival days, paying a hefty fee to the owner. The elephants have an important role — they carry the idols during the festivals, and temple managements are careful to publicise the event by printing and exhibiting posters with the names and photographs of elephants on temple duty.
Some elephants have superstar status in the state — when they reach a particular temple, thousands of elephant lovers assemble to see them. Stories of elephants and their attachments to a few temples and their owners are told and retold, forming urban legends such as the one about Guruvayoor Kesavan. The most popular elephant of the Guruvayoor temple, Kesavan remains a household name in Kerala; he was even the subject of a biopic after his demise in the mid-1970s. Guruvayoor Padmanabhan, the tallest and most 'good looking' elephant in Guruvayoor temple at present, has acquired the status of a legend.
The 14 elephants of Angadiyil House have also become household names in north and central Kerala. "Our elephants are taken for temple festivals for about 130 days in a year," says Haridas. When they're not busy with the festival season, Haridas and Parameswaran's elephants spend some time in front of the camera. "Once the festival season is over, the demand is usually from film shooting units and event managers for inauguration of shops or other such events," says Parameswaran. "We get enquiries for marriages also, but mostly from Coimbatore or Bangalore," he adds. In the past, elephants were used in timber depots to load trucks with logs.
The brothers own the largest number of elephants in the state, 14 in all, creating a personal asset base of Rs10-12 crore. The Angadiyil House in Mangalamkunnu, rural Palakkad, is witness to 14 pachyderms on parade — but only when they aren't busy handling crucial matters for temples in the area. "There is a good demand for the elephants from various temple managements," says Haridas. Two of their elephants, Karnan and Ayyappan, are over 10 feet tall and preferred by temple management committees to carry the deity during the festival seasons.
Elephants are an essential element of temple festivals in Kerala. In fact, during the festival season, temple managements compete with each other to get the best elephants (ones with well-proportioned growth in terms of height, head posture, length of the tusk, etc) for the festival days, paying a hefty fee to the owner. The elephants have an important role — they carry the idols during the festivals, and temple managements are careful to publicise the event by printing and exhibiting posters with the names and photographs of elephants on temple duty.
Some elephants have superstar status in the state — when they reach a particular temple, thousands of elephant lovers assemble to see them. Stories of elephants and their attachments to a few temples and their owners are told and retold, forming urban legends such as the one about Guruvayoor Kesavan. The most popular elephant of the Guruvayoor temple, Kesavan remains a household name in Kerala; he was even the subject of a biopic after his demise in the mid-1970s. Guruvayoor Padmanabhan, the tallest and most 'good looking' elephant in Guruvayoor temple at present, has acquired the status of a legend.
The 14 elephants of Angadiyil House have also become household names in north and central Kerala. "Our elephants are taken for temple festivals for about 130 days in a year," says Haridas. When they're not busy with the festival season, Haridas and Parameswaran's elephants spend some time in front of the camera. "Once the festival season is over, the demand is usually from film shooting units and event managers for inauguration of shops or other such events," says Parameswaran. "We get enquiries for marriages also, but mostly from Coimbatore or Bangalore," he adds. In the past, elephants were used in timber depots to load trucks with logs.
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Is sport an art?
In the early 1990s, there was a famous Reebok t-shirt with the simple slogan: "Sport is an art." Nice idea, but is it true? Can sport - which, by definition, is practical (score runs, take wickets) and competitive (beat the other guy) - belong to the same sphere as painting, literature and music?
The debate is not helped by the fact that sport and the arts are usually portrayed as antagonistic opposites - athletes v aesthetes, hearties v arties, jocks v thespians. From school to adult life, it is often (wrongly) assumed that there is little overlap between artistic creators and sporting competitors. (Writers, in fact, are often just as fiercely competitive as sportsmen.)
And yet no one (well, almost no one) disputes that sport can be beautiful. Last month, I tried to describe the aesthetic pleasure of watching David Gower bat - or just seeing him stand languidly and unhurriedly at the crease. When we watch Sachin Tendulkar turn his wrists at the very last moment, flicking the blade of the bat towards the on side just as the ball arrives under his eyes, we have experienced something beautiful: not just poise and grace but also concision and completeness. Nothing can be added or taken away from that Tendulkar flick that would not diminish the shot. Within its own terms, it cannot be improved upon.
A couple of years ago I watched Arsenal play Barcelona. The game finished a draw, but it was the spectacle rather than the result that left the deepest impression on me. Judged in terms of pure beauty - the physical grace of the players, the inventiveness of their movement - the match was surely the equal of any artistic or cultural event taking place in London that evening. Only someone with his eyes closed could pretend that the match had been defined completely in terms of goals scored and points bagged.
Occasionally I still hear arts-lovers complain that all sport is dull or anti-aesthetic. They are watching the wrong stuff. Anyone who loves ballet must surely recognise Roger Federer as one of their own. Again, elegance is matched by economy: the Federer effect is created not only by what he does but by what he avoids doing. There are no false brush strokes, no unnecessary chords, no superfluous sentences. There is no straining for effect, nothing is artificially tacked on.
There is another parallel between sport and the arts. In each sphere, the greats often have golden, productive spells late in their careers - periods when the insecurities have faded, when the urgent confusions that follow from deep ambition have receded. In his essay "Late Style", the academic Edward Said described how "age confers a spirit of reconciliation and serenity on late works". Yes, the artist may have been at the peak of his powers in his middle or "High" phase. But there is something even more moving about the final creative outpouring. (If you take only one thing from this article, listen, as I am doing now, to Richard Strauss'Four Last Songs - true Late Style.)
Said was writing about the arts, but the same principle applies to sport. The discerning fan will know the feeling of having watched a great player near the end of his career play sport on a higher level - without the fear and frantic-ness of his younger, restless days. We saw Late Federer in the Wimbledon final this summer, conjuring victory despite being outplayed for most of the first two sets. Late Zidane, too, seemed to grasp the whole football pitch before he made even the simplest pass. There was greatness in the small things - especially the small things.
But being beautiful does not make something an art. Many things are beautiful that cannot be classified as art. In The Principles of Art, the English philosopher RG Collingwood (no relation) set out to define the difference between an art and a craft. A skilled worker in a furniture workshop might be highly skilled - and might derive deep satisfaction from his work - but he is not an artist. He is a craftsman. A carpenter assembles bits of wood according to a plan for a table and, usually, the more exact the plan the better the table.
In contrast, art (according to Collingwood) demands a separation of means and ends. There must be an act of alchemy, the emergence of a creative vision. A poet "converts emotions into poems". Unlike the assembly of a table, the final poem is more than - and different from - the sum of its parts.
| A great sportsmen, very occasionally, does something that transcends the activity of scoring a goal or making a shot. He taps into a deep instinct that he cannot quite understand | |||
Where does this leave sport? I would say sport usually has more in common with craft than art. The batsman practising in the nets over many years is honing his craft. He is searching for a technique that is reliable, consistent, resilient and robust. And if one bit breaks or becomes damaged, he hopes the rest of his game will function adequately while he makes running repairs. The job of a good craftsman is to create a finished article that can be repaired without the whole thing always needing a structural refit.
But sport is not limited to being a craft. A great sportsmen, very occasionally, does something that transcends the activity of scoring a goal or making a shot. He taps into a deep instinct that he cannot quite understand, let alone articulate. But I suspect this artistic strand can only be achieved by accident. If I was a coach, I would be worried if my star batsman said, "Today I am going to bat beautifully." Far better that he tried to bat as simply and naturally as possible - and the beauty happened along the way, as a happy but unintentional by-product.
Sport, I think, can momentarily touch the arts. But it cannot permanently belong as one.
But sports certainly fulfil some artistic roles. In the classical world, the arts had a defined religious purpose. For the Greeks, watching a play was a communal act of piety, a form of shared worship. Modern sport achieves something similar. What do we feel when we walk among the masses to a vast sports stadium? We are part of the crowd, we share a purpose and sense of hope with the thousands around us - we belong to a broader congregation. That religious language follows naturally. The art critic Robert Hughes famously wrote that train stations were the cathedrals of the industrial age. To update Hughes: sports stadiums are the cathedrals of the post-industrial age.
Above all, sport provides us with timeless stories. It reveals, in dramatic ways, essential elements of the human condition. A few years ago, speaking at a BBC debate called "Sport v the Arts", the classical scholar Edith Hall made this startling claim: "Sport has only two narratives - either you win or you lose - how boring!"
The truth could not be more different. A moment's reflection reveals that within the overarching narrative of victory or defeat (there are also draws and ties, Edith), there are countless twists and subplots - often far more interesting and affecting than the headline-grabbing result. Sometimes you have to look more carefully to see the real story.
Sport can be experienced at many different levels. Just like the arts.
Monday, 18 July 2011
How to wipe out Islamic terror
Subramanian Swamy | Saturday, July 16, 2011in the DNA
The terrorist blast in Mumbai on July 13, 2011, requires decisive soul-searching by the Hindus of India. Hindus cannot accept to be killed in this halal fashion, continuously bleeding every day till the nation finally collapses. Terrorism I define here as the illegal use of force to overawe the civilian population to make it do or not do an act against its will and well-being.
Islamic terrorism is India’s number one problem of national security. About this there will be no doubt after 2012. By that year, I expect a Taliban takeover in Pakistan and the Americans to flee Afghanistan. Then, Islam will confront Hinduism to “complete unfinished business”. Already the successor to Osama bin Laden as al-Qaeda leader has declared that India is the priority target for that terrorist organisation and not the USA.
Fanatic Muslims consider Hindu-dominated India “an unfinished chapter of Islamic conquests”. All other countries conquered by Islam 100% converted to Islam within two decades of the Islamic invasion. Undivided India in 1947 was 75% Hindu even after 800 years of brutal Islamic rule. That is jarring for the fanatics.
In one sense, I do not blame the Muslim fanatics for targeting Hindus. I blame Hindus who have taken their individuality permitted in Sanatan Dharma to the extreme. Millions of Hindus can assemble without state patronage for the Kumbh Mela, completely self-organised, but they all leave for home oblivious of the targeting of Hindus in Kashmir, Mau, Melvisharam and Malappuram and do not lift their little finger to help organise Hindus. If half the Hindus voted together, rising above caste and language, a genuine Hindu party would have a two-thirds majority in Parliament and the assemblies.
The first lesson to be learnt from the recent history of Islamic terrorism against India and for tackling terrorism in India is that the Hindu is the target and that Muslims of India are being programmed by a slow reactive process to become radical and thus slide into suicide against Hindus. It is to undermine the Hindu psyche and create the fear of civil war that terror attacks are organised.
Hindus must collectively respond as Hindus against the terrorist and not feel individually isolated or, worse, be complacent because he or she is not personally affected. If one Hindu dies merely because he or she was a Hindu, then a bit of every Hindu also dies. This is an essential mental attitude, a necessary part of a virat (committed) Hindu.
We need a collective mindset as Hindus to stand against the Islamic terrorist. The Muslims of India can join us if they genuinely feel for the Hindu. That they do I will not believe unless they acknowledge with pride that though they may be Muslims, their ancestors were Hindus. If any Muslim acknowledges his or her Hindu legacy, then we Hindus can accept him or her as a part of the Brihad Hindu Samaj (greater Hindu society) which is Hindustan. India that is Bharat that is Hindustan is a nation of Hindus and others whose ancestors were Hindus. Others, who refuse to acknowledge this, or those foreigners who become Indian citizens by registration, can remain in India but should not have voting rights (which means they cannot be elected representatives).
Any policy to combat terrorism must begin with requiring each and every Hindu becoming a virat Hindu. For this, one must have a Hindu mindset that recognises that there is vyaktigat charitra (personal character) and rashtriya charitra (national character). For example, Manmohan Singh has high personal character, but by being a rubber stamp of a semi-literate Sonia Gandhi and waffling on all national issues, he has proved that he has no rashtriya charitra.
The second lesson for combating terrorism is that we must never capitulate or concede any demand, as we did in 1989 (freeing five terrorists in exchange for Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s daughter Rubaiya) and in 1999, freeing three terrorists after the hijack of Indian Airlines flight IC-814.
The third lesson is that whatever and however small the terrorist incident, the nation must retaliate massively. For example, when the Ayodhya temple was sought to be attacked, we should have retaliated by re-building the Ram temple at the site.
According to bleeding heart liberals, terrorists are born or bred because of illiteracy, poverty, oppression, and discrimination. They argue that instead of eliminating them, the root cause of these four disabilities in society should be removed. This is rubbish. Osama bin laden was a billionaire. In the failed Times Square episode, failed terrorist Shahzad was from a highly placed family in Pakistan and had an MBA from a reputed US university.
It is also a ridiculous idea that terrorists cannot be deterred because they are irrational and willing to die. Terrorist masterminds have political goals and a method in their madness. An effective strategy to deter terrorism is to defeat those political goals and to rubbish them by counter-terrorist action.Thus, I advocate the following strategy to negate the political goals of Islamic terrorism in India.
Goal 1: Overawe India on Kashmir.
Strategy: Remove Article 370 and resettle ex-servicemen in the valley. Create Panun Kashmir for the Hindu Pandit community. Look for or create an opportunity to take over PoK. If Pakistan continues to back terrorists, assist the Baluchis and Sindhis to get their independence.
Goal 2: Blast temples, kill Hindu devotees.
Strategy: Remove the masjid in Kashi Vishwanath temple and the 300 masjids at other temple sites.
Goal 3: Turn India into Darul Islam.
Strategy: Implement the uniform civil code, make learning of Sanskrit and singing of Vande Mataram mandatory, and declare India a Hindu Rashtra in which non-Hindus can vote only if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus. Rename India Hindustan as a nation of Hindus and those whose ancestors were Hindus.
Goal 4: Change India’s demography by illegal immigration, conversion, and refusal to adopt family planning.
Strategy: Enact a national law prohibiting conversion from Hinduism to any other religion. Re-conversion will not be banned. Declare that caste is not based on birth but on code or discipline. Welcome non-Hindus to re-convert to the caste of their choice provided they adhere to the code of discipline. Annex land from Bangladesh in proportion to the illegal migrants from that country staying in India. At present, the northern third from Sylhet to Khulna can be annexed to re-settle illegal migrants.
Goal 5: Denigrate Hinduism through vulgar writings and preaching in mosques, madrassas, and churches to create loss of self-respect amongst Hindus and make them fit for capitulation.
Strategy: Propagate the development of a Hindu mindset.
India can solve its terrorist problem within five years by such a deterrent strategy, but for that we have to learn the four lessons outlined above, and have a Hindu mindset to take bold, risky, and hard decisions to defend the nation. If the Jews could be transformed from lambs walking meekly to the gas chambers to fiery lions in just 10 years, it should not be difficult for Hindus in much better circumstances (after all we are 83% of India), to do so in five years.
Guru Gobind Singh showed us how just five fearless persons under spiritual guidance can transform a society. Even if half the Hindu voters are persuaded to collectively vote as Hindus, and for a party sincerely committed to a Hindu agenda, then we can forge an instrument for change. And that is the bottom line in the strategy to deter terrorism in a democratic Hindustan at this moment of truth.
The writer is president of the Janata Party, a former Union minister, and a professor of economics.
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