Battle between equals!

The recent tiff between the judiciary and the legislature, and to that effect, the executive, brings to fore the increasing tensions between the two wings of governance. On one hand, where the executive is responsible and accountable to the legislature on a daily basis, the legislature is accountable to the people only once in 5 years, or if the people's luck favours them, earlier than that. The people nowadays are peeved at the manner in which the legislature, and by implication, the executive, is running the country. The judiciary, as a consequence of its role as the guardian of the Constitution, is and has been compelled to intervene on the entreaties of the People in the very act of governance of the State.

Very recently, when the Bombay High Court passed its landmark judgement on the Mumbai Mill Lands Case, wherein it castigated both the Government of Maharashtra and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation for having abdicated their responsibilities towards providing low-cost housing facilities, open spaces, and liveable conditions to the people of the city of Mumbai, the activism of the judiciary was starkly illustrated. On the same day, nearly 17 articles were found in the Times of India regarding some direction from the courts to the Executive on matters strictly non-judicial. The judgement of the Supreme Court of India regarding the rights of the heirs of a tenant to the tenancy also cleared up the air regarding the most vexing issue, which often became a major election-time concern, yielding precious votes. That the heirs of a tenant cannot by implication claim inheritance of the tenancy could have been stated even by a ordinary citizen, and the judges shouldn't have been bothered, but the fact remains, when you have such a spineless legislature, and your executive is derived from such an assemblage, your only recourse can by the judiciary.

And yet, the fact that the judiciary has to resort to such activism doesn't call for celebration. True, this indicates that our democracy is vibrant, that it is responsive to the needs of the People, and that not all hope is lost. But, in truth, attempts should be made to ensure that the judiciary can concentrate on matters more attuned to their duties, as indicated in the Constitution. Cases are pending in the highest court of the land for the last 20 years, and in lower courts for more than five decades. These cases may not be of so much political significance, maybe even their outcome may not change the course of the nation's history, but for the plaintiff and the defendant, the case is all that matters. These cases should be dealt with first, and that the judiciary also acknowledges this, implies the serious need for the Executive and the Legislature to get their act together.

The former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, R.C. Lahoti had, in one of his press comments, remarked that the Courts weren't subservient to any of the arms of the State; rather they were equal partners in the governance of the State. Furthermore, in a most bitter comment on the conflict between the judiciary and the Executive-Legislature combine, he remarked that if the combine so much as despised the judiciary's manner of working, they should close down the courts, and abrogate the duties of the same. And this is saddening. One of the few arms of the State which are actually working is being bullied into replicating the inefficiency of the laggards. Although I have titled this blog as a battle between equals, that the combatants are equals only in name is clear. Only the victor will be neither, for the People need a responsive Judiciary as also a responsible Executive-Legislature. One prays that this battle end in a draw, a mature draw.

Be reasonable, please!

A recent incident in Chennai over teenagers and young adults kissing and hugging, and such photos being splayed all over the newspapers was shocking and disturbing, to say the least. And the responses even more.
Indian society has always been non-committal about sex education, and has been rather coy about inter-gender relations prior to marriage. Of course, this coyness was often a mask for much deep rooted hypocrisy. And that such hypocrisy emerges out of the coyest societies isn't unusual. After all, the most restricted souls most desire of even the most depraved of excitements. But for the sake of maintaining a sort of holier-than-thou posture, such societies choose to don a "conservative" outlook. They frown on any deviations from their traditions, their customs, and their beliefs. So, the general uproar about the couples kissing, hugging, and fondling each other was really expected.
Not that I am supporting the uproar, but really, the so-called miscreants should really have done whatever they were doing then in more private confines. Admitted, they being citizens of a free India are permitted the freedoms of expression, but surely this freedom cannot be presumed to be absolute. Maybe in this particular case, there weren't families i.e. children around to witness their frolicking; however there is emerging a general tendency to brazenly ignore societal concerns on morality and general good social behaviour in public places.

But what I found even more disgusting was the tendency of the print media to splay the pictures of these blokes on the front page, as if encouraging people to see their brazen behaviour, and maybe even emulate it. Admitted, of late the print media has considerably lowered its standards, especially to counter the influence of the television news media, but surely, one could have expected better behaviour from individuals calling themselves the vanguards of democracy, as the guardians of the reader.

There is also a very heated debate on whether or not practices such as a live-in relationship should be encouraged. A recent televised discussion on this listed one of the live-in arrangement's advantages as that any one of the partners could easily leave the other without having to resort to messy legal procedures should he/she find himself/herself unwilling to accept the other partner's style of living. And I watched amazed. For me, such a relationship is a farce, one that should never be termed a relationship in the first place, because it is based not on trust or on love, but on a sort of uneasy compromise to be broken as and when one feels.

No relationship can be deemed pure and unblemished unless it is based on trust and love. If you choose to hide details of your life from the ones whom you claim to love, then you sadly do not love them, you merely tolerate them. Hurting those who love you is the greatest sin imaginable, and cannot be washed away for all eternity. But these kids simply have abnegated the feelings of shame, and responsibility to a greater being than themselves - their family.

This incident and many more like this brings to fore the confusion of the so-called westernized populace of the urban classes, who whilst insisting on their rights to privacy, persist in doing all sorts of depraved displays of affection in public. Someone ought to wring their ears and yell in them, "Care to be reasonable, pal?"

Musings en général!

The past one week has been a remarkably eventful one for me, with both happy, and somewhat despodent moments here and there. Guess one can term it a microcosm of life in general.

Had my first "real" simulated CAT test on the 24th, and did much better than I expected. Actually, much would be understating my surprise, because I managed to enter the hallowed ranks of the top 1 percent students giving the test. And this when I really am not preparing to the best of my abilities. My mom always would tell me that although I never put in the most of my abilities in whatever I did, and mind you, despite this, I still would manage to scrape through with pretty good grades, imagine what could have happened if I would have been better prepared. But the bumbler that I am, the message simply never sank in, until now.

And yet, I see no reason to be exultant over my performance, simply because the test in question was a simple one, and mastering it would really have tested not many people's skills. And yet, I am not questioning the ways of the Fates. I am greatful for this boost, and I pray that my performance should continue to maintain this level, irrespective of the grade of difficulty or ease of the test concerned.

Of course the very next day, i.e. on the 25th, had my viva voce on Digital Signal Processing. In truth, the subject is a very interesting one, especially after the seminar I had attended on the topic wherein some very interesting applications of this subject were explored. But after the test on the 24th, I was so tired that studying was simply something my mind had pushed to the back of the priority queue. Of course, I did manage to brush up something before the viva, but as usual, became blank when faced with questions. I did manage to make a complete mess of things by not satisfactorily answering even those questions whose answers I knew very well. And then like a jerk, I sulked and simply refused to be social with my friends for the rest of the evening. Maybe they understood my emotions, but had I been in their place, I perhaps would have been offended by my behaviour. My apologies to my friends for my most childish behaviour.

Guess I should be signing off now. Just leaving you with a thought for the day:
There is nothing more painful than seeing someone you love loving someone else. But there is nothing more rewarding than seeing two people you love loving each other. ~ J.H. Li

What is Love?

Was just listening to Haddaway exclaiming what must perhaps be his most famous song, when this post struck me like lightning. And made me wonder, what really is love? Since I cannot claim to be an expert on love, I let the professionals do the talking:

• Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. ~ W. H. Auden
• I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. ~ Mother Teresa
• If you love something, let it go free. If it doesn't come back, you never had it. If it comes back, love it forever. ~Doug Horton
• Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• Love doesn't make the world go around. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile. ~ Franklin Jones
• Love gives us in a moment what we can hardly attain by effort after years of toil. ~ Goethe
• Love is good in feeling, even if you are always being hurt. It is better to be hurt by love than not loving at all.
• Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. ~ Robert Heinlein
• Men always want to be a woman's first love. Woman like to be a man's last romance. ~Oscar Wilde
• Once a tear fell off my cheek and into the ocean. The day I find it will be the day I stop loving you.
• True love is giving all you have to someone you know you're going to lose. ~Ray H. Wall
• We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love. ~Tom Robbins.
• Woman was created from the rib of man: Not from his head to be thought of only, nor from his hand to be owned, nor from his foot to be beneath, but from under his arm to be protected, from his side to be equal, and from his heart to be loved...

My experiences with Science

It has always been a matter of great astonishment to me that people should insist that the pursuit of science and that of religion are two different things, and one cannot be or rather should not be mistaken for the other. Science, for all those who believe it be the supreme source of life, is the art of the intellect, while religion, in common belief, is the fact of the senses.

To some, the intellect is any day more superior to the senses, for what are the senses in comparison to the mind? They feel, they see, they hear, but they do not think. And for some, the knack of thought is more important than the ability to emote, the skill of sensation, and the art of feeling. But to quote Ralph J. Cudworth, the 15th century theologian and philosopher, “Sense is like a line which is the flux of a point running out from itself, but intellect, like a circle, keeps within itself.” Can there be a more eloquent yet simple expression, a more subtle speech that should so demonstrate the superiority of the senses over the mind? But, in no way do I wish to state that religion is superior to science, for the twain are brothers of the same seed, and within brethren, there is no one superior to the other, for brethren are born equal, equal halves of the seed. The seed here is the human race, and from its mind, and its senses have arisen the sciences and religion. Whenever the mind dominated our understanding of our world, we termed it as science, and whenever the senses dominated, it became religion. Different names for different viewpoints, yet the view remains the same.

It is remarkable that despite the apparent differences in the two, they are so very similar. True science and true religion can both never be achieved so long as there exists rigidity in the rules governing that concerned. God and science alike reserve their attentions for those who go beyond the rules, who dare to seek new heights, who dare to challenge what they perceive to be wrong. Why is then that we should insist on the separation of the religious mind from the scientific mind? Why should scientific temper be so highly valued as opposed to religious piety? For are not they sides of the same coin, expressions of devotion to the supreme Knowledge, be it science or God? Were not the greatest scientists such as Galileo Galilee, Isaac Newton, Nicolas Copernicus, Edward Hubble, C.V. Raman and Albert Einstein devout theologists? In the earlier days, there was no difference between a scientist and a theologian. Monasteries and temples have for countless millennia been the seat of learning, be it spiritual or scientific. In the medieval ages perhaps, a few black sheep in religion persecuted those whose ideas went against their beliefs. Can we not to blame the mind here, for “the eye sees only that what the mind comprehends”? In response to this, science left the folds of religion, and since has never re-entered into it. We do have to realise that history is the story of the victor, and today, science assumes such a role. But what hath brought about the brethren, shall it cause them to drift apart so? That will remain the existential question as to whether man, who created the two, shall now cause them to go so apart that one cannot survive so long as the other exists. The death of either is tragic, and will reduce our race and our world to an insentient one for sure.

I have but few experiences with science, and very few with what one could call “pure science”, but in my experiences with computer programming, and they remain but a drop in the ocean, I have come to realise that whatever I have learnt so far has to some extent connotations of Hindu and sometimes even sociology. I jest for sure, you say? But no, for we all see these signs, yet like horses with blinkers, we choose to look only at what we set out to do, and not at the environs in which we must attain our goals.

Consider this. The Hindu faith emphasises on the collection of good karma in one’s life, for the life to be deemed successful. The procurement of even a single moment of bad karma, or experiences that go against the laws of society, propels man back down to rebirth. But a life filled with experiences compliant with the laws of society is but a gateway to enlightenment, to perpetual moksha. Now compare this with a C or C++ program. There exist laws of programming that define the rights and wrongs that may arise when writing a program.

Should we go against these laws, we encounter erroneous code when compiling and we are compelled to debug the program from start. But if we always maintain conformity with the laws, our program runs without a hitch, and to say the least, we need never even look at the program code again, a sort of programming moksha. Again, all religions insist on the duality of faith, the existence of good and evil in the same world. Compare this with the language of the conventional computer. The basis of all communication with the computer is the binary system, the dual system, where 0 stands for “inactive” or “false”, and 1 stands for “active” or “truth”. To see such similarities between programming and religious faith may seem naive, but as said before, the pursuit of knowledge is important, not the source of the knowledge.

Often, I would think that the human race is like a couple of adaptive machines. Adaptive machines, you ask what are these? Well, I am not sure whether such a term already exists, but in my mind, these machines are those who are not instructed as to what situations they may possibly encounter in their lifecycle, nor are they told what they may do when such situations arise. These machines are expected to experience, learn and adapt to these situations, and should they ever come across the same situation again, act according to what they have experienced before. It is clear to even the lay mind that the machines of our day, such as the computer, the telephone, etc. are very much non-adaptive machines, for they need to be told everything. In this very significant fact lies the reason why the human race is superior to machines. I wouldn’t say that we are superior to animals, because they too have the power to adapt, just their ability to retain these experiences may seem limited as compared to us.

In this context, whenever I read of someone researching in the field of AI (Artificial Intelligence to the uninitiated), I would be confused. Is man so noble a creature to bestow a power that makes him so unique, the power to learn of one’s own volition, upon insentient machines? For when such powers be resident in the metallic hearts of robots and machines, what would the uniqueness of the human race, and why would the earth feel the need to retain them? These questions troubled me, and still do, though not to such an extent. For the reduction of my doubts, I am eternally grateful to a most dear friend of mine, who explained to me that the uniqueness of man does not lie merely in the fact that he is able to learn of his own choice, rather it lies more importantly in the fact that he is able to discern between right and wrong, a power that no other being on this earth possesses to such a large extent.

So long as man confers mere learning powers onto machines, no harm is done, for still man makes the decision as to what the machine may learn and what it may not. But should the discretionary powers be bequeathed to machines, then what? Where shall the human race go from there? Such are the questions that the human race shall have to live with for all eternity.

Is the Nation turning its back on the Father?

Yesterday India celebrated, or at least I think it must have celebrated, the 136th birth anniversary of its greatest child, a child whom it honoured by calling him the Father of the Nation. This it did, not because he was a member of some aristocratic family to whom the nation was indebted, not because he was one of its former Prime Ministers or Presidents, but because through his simplicity, he drove the colonial powers from the shores of India, unveiling a new sun of freedom and hope. For achieving his goals, he didn't take recourse to arms a la Bolivar; for him, to be able to befriend even one's enemy is the finest outcome that can emerge out of a struggle. But, even in that, there is no paradox, no contradiction.

Befriending someone never means one gives up one's right to criticise and to question the actions of that friend. So it was even with satyagraha. Only perhaps the mode of criticism was starling different from the rest. The revolutionaries before him, and even after his struggle showed results, always believed that criticism masked in violence is often the best understood. They may be right, but in the end, such comprehension is filled with rancour, and as such can never end well.

That his aim was appreciated by not only those to whom he spoke and preached personally, but appealed to all across the globe, is a mark of the universality of his message. Sometimes, it makes no sense to take recourse to violence, what matters is you must never abandon the truth. Whenever I hear the word 'satyagraha', I tend to feel it means 'insistence on the pursuit of the truth', as in 'satya' or truth' + 'agraha' or 'insistence'. And where truth is the aim, the final goal, no wrong can ever occur in the path.

And yet, 57 years after his demise, the Nation stands accused of ignoring the man, in whose grief it cried out that the light had been extinguished. It is accused of forgetting his message of sarva dharma samabhava, and adopting the rubbish termed 'secularism' nowadays. It stands guilty of ignoring his insistence on a value-based system, preferring a materialistic society instead. His appeals to his colleagues to abandon self-gratification and to embrace the greater good of humanity have gone unheard. His 'heartlands' remain as they were in his days, and cry out seeking redemption of his promises to them. Promises of a new dawn which would come along with independence. Promises of liberation from shackles innumerable, once the foreigners left.
Promises that now bite. Because whence we were ruled by the British, our under-development could at least be attributed to their inherent desire to enrich their own nation. But now when our own rule us, what reason can we attribute to this? I am sure that if today he were to live, he would jump into the ocean, and cry out, 'Fie be upon me, for I have begotten the demon!' Simply singing 'Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram' on the 2nd of October is not enough; to truly honour him, we must live his dreams, his dreams of an India, where there would exist no divide, where religion would be a source of healing, not of pain. Until then, every moment the flame flickers at Rajghat, we mock the sacrifice, guidance & leadership of a man whom history knows as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a man whom the world knows as MAHATMA GANDHI.