Thursday, September 30, 2010

A Clarification on my Political loyalty

I wrote a comment on FB
"cost of cwg 70k crore, cost of waiving loans of all farmers in country before last election 50k crore .....if these are priorities of our nation, no wonder we have Maoists fighting for tribals, & farmers commiting suicides ...& the messiah of tribals, farmers , the youth icon prince Rahul gandhi has nothing to say , nor does the PM , nor sonia .... even though all the people associated with games are from congress" 

Clarification:
It was taken as a saffron man opposing congress.NO.Its not like that

Let me clear first what i wanted to highlight by that msg
1)Our nations priorities are wrong...here i want to critize all of us , the people
2)The image of PM,sonia , rahul have been maintained clean and no blame put on them...here i critize the media who are delibratly creating a clean image for them and not putting the blame on people who deserve it.Media should not be biased , even if it means bias towards good...they need to be neutral and let people decide
3)I critise Congress and its leaders.Leaders can not shy away from taking responsibility for wrong deeds done in their organisation.

Leaders must take responsibility:
But beyond above points , i want to say that i would have equally criticized saffron , left or anyone , if they had done this...I am equally opposed to the clean image of Vajpayee that was created and people were fooled with it.. So also i am equally opposed to any Thackeray being called hindu hrudaysamrat or marathihrudaysamrat. All the above leaders cannot be a leader of a organisation of dacoits and call themselves clean.If  Dr Rajendra prasad or Mahatma Gandhi had been in position of these leaders, they would have left the organisation on seeing such corrupt(dacoity) practices around them.Those are men of  high character standards , not the current leaders

My questions:
1)Why should a congress supporter  not oppose anything wrong thats done by its party and never appreciate anything good done by opposition
2)Why should a saffron supporter  never appriciate anything good done by congress and oppose anythingh wrong done by its party

Create Competition:
If we are "once a congress supporter , always a congress supporter" or "once a saffron supporter always a saffron supporter" , then we dont give reason to the parties to compete and improve.For eg since congress supporter never appreciates the excellent grassroots workers of rss and ss , congress never finds a reason to strengthen its own 'congress seva dal' wing.... and since saffron supporters dont criticize their parties for lack of developmental agenda , they never bother to develop one...

People need tell their parties/leaders that they cant take them for granted and every good deed will be appreciated and every bad deed  will be criticized , irrespective of which party/leader it comes from.

Where should the loyalty be:
Raja Shivaji had once arrested a fort sardar for forcibly keeping a village girl in the fort on orders of sambhaji.The sardar said, i just loyally followed orders of sambhaji, whats my fault.Shivaji told him
"Your loyalty should not be towards the king, but towards swaraj...kings will come and go , but swaraj must exist.If anyone goes against principles of swaraj , you should oppose him , even if its me."

In Mahabharat,after the war when bhisma asked krishna why did i suffer this fate? krishna said thats becuase you vowed your loyalty towards the King of Hastinapur and not towards the Nation of Hastinapur.Hence when even though the king was bad , you had to support him and so you suffered with him.

My Loyalty:
On the same lines , i am not loyal to any political party or leader.I am loyal to my nation.Hence i will appriciate/critize  anything/anybody thats good/bad for my country irrespective of whether its white , saffron , blue , green , left , right , center.

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Govinda Aala Re Aala






After about 4 yrs I am in mumbai at the time of Govinda festival.Went around to enjoy the fun.First to chembur, saw the govinda at chembur naka.They had even organised lavani dance. Then there was one at chembur station.Came back to seawoods.There were lots of Dahi handi's everywhere.In every five minutes of dirve you could hear govinda music in front of some dahi-handi.Everywhere on the streets where seen trucks full of govinda's.In Nerul , participated in a small dahi handi.When the handi was broken and the curd water fell on me , felt blessed. Enjoyed the day very much.



Some observations

1)There are about 600 dahi handi mandals.Considering each mandal has about 40 people , it makes 24000 people. Thats a huge number of people who practice for months for this one day.

2) Lavni dance performance was seen everywhere.This could be Raj Thackeray effect, but i guess the credit goes more to movie Natarang and its fantastic lavni songs composed by Ajay-Atul.

3) English media seems to give very little coverage to such "Indian" festivals.I think they still think anything "Indian" is down-market and doesn't go well with their brand image. 

4) NCP, ShivSena , Manase and even RPI were seen organising the festival all over the city.BJP and Congress were not seen to be too enthusiastic about this.Same can be observed for ganesh festival , Navratri. I wonder what stops national parties from celebrating local festivals and event.

5) I was able to enjoy as i was on vacation and not working and hence had entire day to participate in the festival.I wonder why cant we have a holiday on all festivals. Agreed we have lot many festivals, but then i still dont think they are too many.The loss to economy would be there, but then whats the point of gains, when we cant enjoy those gains.We kindoff  have a mindset , if west have less holidays, we should also not have more. Also even this loss can be compensated by making sunday working on the weekend on which there is festival off.

We can find ways to enjoy festivals , make them much more bigger, inclusive and socially beneficial if we want to. I think we need to.Till then , Jara Matki Sambhal Brijbala :)