Monday, May 28, 2012

Patriots and Traitors !

The infamous "Tebbit test" was supposed to separate wheat from the chaff! It is an observational test where your loyalty to your country is measured by whether you support the home team or the visiting team in a cricket match. Fairly upright and honest British citizens of South Asian origin fail this test almost universally.  There is no such concept as the Tebbit test in North America; however there is a vague concept of " Being American", and "Canadian Values".  It is hard to define what these concepts actually mean but whatever their meaning , citizens of Asian descent and specially from the Indian subcontinent find it hard to measure up to those standards. Critics will immediately point out how they insist on dressing in a Salwar Kurta right in middle of New York city and how a lady dressed in a western style skirt will feel totally out of place in a mall in Brampton, Ontario. There are similar concerns about food habits ( smelly, spicy....)  ; their insistence on watching Bollywood flicks ( silly song and dance) and speaking Punjabi, Hindi , Urdu, Gujarati.... etc. etc.

Other than making childish jokes about miserly corner shop Patel and big Pakistani families collecting welfare; generally these traits are well tolerated by the society. Certainly at an official level US is a melting pot ( although all that's melting is their economy)  and Canada is  officially a multicultural society. It is helped in part by the fact that Neither the US nor Canada have any worth while Cricket team and  South Asian countries hardly  count in  Ice Hockey or Basketball. So no clashes occur to test loyalty there. People can support who ever ,when ever and nobody will question their allegiances!

Most of the Pakistani's have retained their pakistani passports even as they eagerly count the days when they become eligible to apply for the US/ Canadian ones. No one delays applying for it even for a day. Indian's can not retain their Indian passports, so as soon as they acquire the US/ Canadians ones; they  move heaven and earth to apply for an Overseas Citizen of India  card. Yet the respective US and the Canadian governments do not suspect their loyalties or hold back any  rights of the citizenship. Bravo! This kind of trust in their fellow citizens automatically generates loyalty. Why it is important is because these very same people who fail the Tebbit test happily; who stick their neck out for their respective lands of origin get treated with disdain by those very dispositions as a matter of course and with complete disinterest on their lucky day. All one has to do is to walk into any mission of their land of origin and the complete weight of an inefficient bureaucracy gets thrown in their face. Trust, helpfulness, clarity of rules and regulations , human rights, equality , respect for an individual and empowerment are not the words that can easily come to mind.

Actually it is no different from what any other citizen of these countries experiences every day of their life in their home countries . There they have to fight  to be treated with dignity or to be dealt with according to the rule of law and trusted as an equal citizen of the land. Sadly it does not happen very often. There they have a ruler and then they are the ruled . Although people constantly change roles from ruled to ruler depending on  situation to situation. A  taxi driver will think nothing of fudging the meter  and grossly over charging the rider. Yet the same Taxi driver will get fleeced on the next intersection by the traffic constable , who has a quota of tickets to fill for his boss. The boss who has to supply a decent efficiency figure howsoever  fictional  it maybe , to his own boss. The taxi rider on the other hand will consider it normal to pay a bribe to the local lineman if that means he can cheat on his electricity bill. The lineman will  share this bribe with his  engineer who in turn gives up a portion for the executive engineer; who has to arrange for a hefty sum to pay off his boss or he will get transferred to boondocks.  Everyone is engaged in usurping everyone's rights. In this situation whoever carries a bigger stick  prevails. Truth , fairness , rule of law and decency becomes a constant casualty. They cheat each other , they cheat their society , they cheat their families and they cheat their country . Incessantly. If this is not treason what is?

This is how regular traitors are made out of regular patriots . Ironically western system on the other hand takes a " Tebbit traitor" and creates a patriot out of him by simply providing clear laws and equal treatment. I am reminded of all this by the recent act of the Pakistan government where they slyly sentenced Dr. Shakil Afridi  to 33 years in prison for assisting CIA in its search for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The good Doctor made an error of judgement but should he not  have received a fair trial instead of a Kangaroo court where he could not even receive legal assistance ?  The question should also be asked when Scores of Pakistani generals helped CIA capture several other Terrorist leaders in Pakistan ,what crime did Dr. Afridi commit ? Afia Siddiqui,  a pakistani national  was captured and handed over to US without a trial  by the same authorities. Why is that not an act of treason ? How did Osama find safety 200 yards from the top Military college of pakistan? Who helped him for years and years? Why is that not treason? And when you are screaming from the rooftops that you want to capture Osama ; here is a good citizen who thought he will help.   Now that he has succeeded; why should he not be awarded? After all he helped your ally take down your enemy. Why does this not call for a"Nishan  e Pakistan"? Or was Osama your ally and Obama your enemy while you professed the opposite; confusing everyone.


Well the reasons are not  very difficult to fathom. As usual the rules are  not made clear on purpose. The governments say one thing and mean quite another. This allows them to interpret them in any which way they please. Terrorists are not terrorists if they can be used by them but people are not to be kept in loop about this dangerous policy. On top everyone will not be treated equally. Army is the sacred cow and people are so expendable!  With the result a doctor who until a fortnight ago was the epitome of a patriot  valiantly fighting disease and taking care of his people's health, has today turned into a Traitor deserving a life sentence.  It does not matter that bigger and worse traitors than him are roaming large  in every neighborhood. 

Friday, May 18, 2012

Cartoon Notwork !


When I was young we did not own a TV. I had no complaints though. It was really not a big issue for me. Primarily there was not a fat lot program wise  on it around  those days . Anyway we were also lucky to have richer next door neighbours who actually owned one. They also owned a  big heart and followed an open doors policy , specially for neighbourhood kids. What that meant was anyone who wanted to was welcome to their living room from 6 pm to 8 pm on weekdays to watch TV and a little longer on Sunday evenings for the weekly movie. Seriously! They would  expect every kid to be there if not their parents as well.  Although I was tempted everyday since all my friends would be there ; I went only rarely. Maybe I was shy and timid ;maybe I wanted to be in my parents good books or whatever but I would wait for the man of the house to knock at our door and invite me whenever something good was on. My bad luck was that I was more interested in watching news which came on exactly at 8 pm. Sadly the TV owners had no interest in it , neither had the rest of the sizable audience. So by consensus they switched  the set off promptly as the clock struck 8 . Everyone left for their homes and a waiting dinner.  I had to as well and I never got to watch  more than a minute of the news bulletin . But that's another story.

Sunday had a morning session too since the sole station aired programming for children.  They once in a while showed  cartoon movies. Now that was something I did  not want to miss. I would secretly hope for that knock on the door or even a call over the side wall. I ran to it as soon as It did. I am part of the generation that was reared on TV except that I was reared on cartoons and comics. TV played only a minor role. Due partly to the journalistic nature of my father's job ; I had comparatively extensive access to comics and cartoons. The organization he worked with published most of the better known ones. We got lots of magazines in the house too and the  first thing we went for was the cartoon strip. I grew up with "Dabooji". My childhood heroes were Phantom, Mandrake and Lothar. They still are. The girl of my dreams looked like Diana Palmer;  Phantom's girl friend. One who worked in UN's new york office. If you are young enough not to know who these characters are please go online. Some of the lasting values  I imbibed were from those comics. Some of my understanding of the ways of the world came from them as well. Even my understanding of as complex an issue as race relations got their idea seed from Phantom Comics. Of course there were all those other heroes from DC comics  stable and fabulous Walt Disney characters. And who can forget the jungle book  which has spawned a whole industry. Even today I watch it on DVD with my children.

Like every other kid I too had an older cousin .He subscribed to and collected Phantom series in those days. Every copy he owned was kept neat and clean in perfect chronological order in a glass door bookcase. To his chagrin however whenever I visited their house which was every school break,  too many times for his comfort ; I would take those comics out to read. Yeah, yeah ! behind his back! The matters would not  rest there. Afterwards I would re shelve them hurriedly, haphazardly and not even in the correct order. This would never fail to make him red hot angry.  Only my beloved aunt , bless her great noble soul would stand firmly between me and murder. Backing me against her own son too! I do not  fully understand exactly how or why it happens but  people cared passionately about comics and cartoons then as much as they  love them today.

Love them did I say? No , correct it . I mean hate it well and truly . Now they are afraid of cartoons and are sometimes seriously offended by them. No benevolent aunt stands a chance of coming between them and actual murder. As we saw about those Jyllands posten cartoons. We may dismiss those  violent objections as something originating from a medieval ,totalitarian  and extremist mentality but  not so fast though.  What would you say to the  recent  parliament pandemonium , in India of all places , over some cartoons ! Really ! So many parliamentarians of all shades of political opinion found a cartoon first published over sixty years ago ;  yes that is sixty; so objectionable that it was ordered to be expunged. Delete it they thundered.  No child should see it;  specially young adults in grade 11 and 12 have to be saved from it.  The so called democrats from the world's largest democracy hate and fear  today what was originally published in a national daily roughly sixty years ago without any hue and cry. Even the subjects of the cartoon were alive then!! And they were very powerful people too. One a prime minister and other a jurist responsible for crafting a constitution.  Those worthies took the cartoon as it should be taken. In a lighter vein! Today their petty minded followers  find it objectionable, insulting and every other bad word in the book. This comes right after a chief minister who came to power in an eastern state representing "grassroots society" ,jailed a professor because he had the temerity to circulate a cartoon that she did not like. 

How did we arrive at this bad place in these intervening sixty years? Where laughing is a crime; and you can get jailed or even get killed if you laughed at the wrong joke!  What kind of times are we living in when a cartoon puts a scowl on our face more often than a smile. Why are cartoons not working as intended ? Ask yourself this while I search on the internet for more......cartoons of course!