Dear Shetubondhon Friends,
Please read the article given below that I received from a friend. Sadly every
word of it is pure truth and our politics is quickly becoming monkey business.
But monkeys are everywhere, not only in the subcontinent. Monkeys are even
claiming that they are better than humans. Ambivalence, if not schizophrenia is
becoming the prototype of mass behavior in this postmodern world. On one hand
there are efforts to clone human cells and send astronauts to Mars and right
next to it there is home schooling with Bible as the major Science textbook.

The cyber India is dipping in the same Holy water right next to the Sadhus with
long tresses and beards. They are following a slick way of intellectual
brokerage where the smart gets all. Here they keep enjoying all the electronic
toys, all the advantages of consumerism and yet indulging in every sort of
medieval tricks to 'wash away their sins'. It is quite different from the
ignorant villager who is nothing but a victim and was made to believe in those
tricks. The sad part is that the so-called educated people are playing this
double game of logic and mysticism quite amusingly. After all who knows if
really there could be a God sitting with a huge club in his hand and a crypt
full of fire and mean critters for you- just be cautious and pay taxes to the
divine authority as well.

Look at the sheer number of the pilgrims of the third Millenium in Kumbha Mela.
Look at the incredible Varity of Shadhus and Holy men peddling all sorts of
salvation. One wonders how only even a trace of sin will survive in this land
henceforth! Look at the wastage of human energy, the long march backwards, the
erosion of sensibility in the name of tradition. And yet there are computers,
satellite communication and genetically engineered food only a few miles away
from the Sangam.

They tell me that ambivalence is okay. They tell me that tradition can live side
by side with modernity. They may be right.

But often tradition turns into frenzy, prayers into war cry and faith into
xenophobia. Then we have no option but to shift our blame on some imaginary bad
guys responsible for that horrendous mischief. After all religions are pure,
they are from God, how can we blame them for bloodshed and hate mongering.

Let me ask you this Vladimir Ilyich. Did you always know that our journey will
be one step forward two steps back and your dream will crumble under the
collective burden of ignorance and collective fear of unknown. It will perish
under this mammoth mix of hypocrisy, self-deception and sheer stupidity. Did you
know that we won't grow up, won't mature into responsible citizens of the world,
did you know that our minds would never be without fear.

You lied to us Vladimir Ilyich, I hate you, and you confused us all. It is not
an external conspiracy, a bourgeois ploy but the roots of inequality and
exploitation are in every mind big and small. Perhaps it is God given. Its
vehicle is ignorance, selective intellectual blindness and self-deception.


Wanted enlightened humans
Wanted enlightened humans
Wanted enlightened humans

Kaushik Sen



----- Original Message -----
From: Khorshed A. Mohammad <khorshed@...>
To: <ksen@...>
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 7:55 AM
Subject: FW: Monkeys and more





> A Monkey Machination!
> ( A News Analysis )
> By A.H. Jaffor Ullah
>
> Have you ever noticed that the radio broadcasting has some added advantage
> over print journalism or to television newscasting. Since radio
> broadcasting of news primarily relies on words as opposed to television
> journalism, the news writers take the advantage of language to the fullest
> extent to describe any newsworthy or not so newsworthy item. Some news
> organization often uses non-newsworthy items to enliven the broadcasting,
> never mind the wry humor or sarcasm that are often the integral part of
> the news. Of all the news organizations that beam the news into the
> airwaves, I like the wit and charm of National Public Broadcasting or NPR
> as they are lovingly called. NPR is my constant companion when I make the
> commute of 30 some odd miles back and forth from my home to my place of
> vocation.
> On January 10, 2001, as I was heading to my work in the morning, my car
> radio was tuned to NPR's "Morning Edition with Bob Edwards" as usual. I
> must admit that in the past years I have learned a lot about this world
> that we live in listening to venerable Edwards. This morning an innocuous
> news caught me by surprise. Later when I had a chance to log onto the
> Internet news, I could not see any reporting on it. NPR has a funny way of
> putting news and this time it was no exception. The news dealt with
> monkeys-the long tailed monkeys or Hanumans of New Delhi, India.
> These days the Deshi news organizations are religiously printing the news
> of sacred Kumbha Mela, which happens once every twelve year. The Kumbha
> Mela fever has spread all over the world. Jamal Hasan, an expatriate
> Bangalee who often writes in various newspapers told me that Washington
> DC's première newspaper The Washington Post also had an article on Kumbha
> Mela on its January 10 issue. For those of you who have no interest on
> religious festivities especially the Hindu ones may like know that this
> year's Kumbha Mela just got started day before yesterday and it will
> continue for about 40 more days. When it is all done and said, an
> estimated 30 million devotees would participate in the festivities and
> many would take the auspicious dip into the muddy waters of Allahabad in
> the confluence of three rivers of which two are real (the Ganges and
> Jumna) and one is imaginary (the mythical Saraswati River). All the other
> religious congregations seem to be tame when compared with the Kumbha Mela
> for its scale and scope. The other religious congregation that is getting
> some discernible attention these days is Bishwa Ejtema, which just ended
> on January 8, 2001in Tongi, a town near Dhaka. The entire South Asia is
> now amidst a religious reawakening these days. The liberalism of the
> sixties has all but vanished and in its place the miasma of religious
> fervor has set in. From Raiwind, Punjab (Pakistan) through Allahabad,
> Uttar Pradesh (India), and all the way east to Tongi (Bangladesh) a sea of
> humanity is just waiting to be blessed undergoing some sort of pilgrimage.
> Under this backdrop the NPR news took my breadth away. Read on and you
> will know why am I saying this.
> NPR's Bob Edward put it humorously in the airwaves that tens of thousands
> of monkeys in New Delhi have overtaken the Indian government's office just
> yesterday. Not a single department of government of India was spared from
> this onslaught of the monkeys. To their surprise the office workers found
> that files were all scattered inside their offices. Antically, the monkeys
> even got into the office of Indian prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to
> do their stunt. With a sardonic voice the veritable newscaster of NPR
> mentioned that monkeys are revered throughout India.
> Indeed, it is true that in India we have a thriving population of monkeys
> because people feed them bananas and other staples with the hope that
> mythical Monkey God would bless them eternally. The monkeys' blessing
> would not break the endless cycle of birth-death and rebirth (for that one
> has to dip in the confluence of Jumna and the Ganges in Allahabad during
> Kumbha Mela) but it would bring solace to folks whose life is mired with
> impoverishness and maladies of all kind.
> In the last decade or so, all three major nations in South Asia have made
> a U-tern and now treading the placid path of Bhagavan or Allah. Pakistan
> in the Western edge of our subcontinent is doing some dangerous experiment
> to bring the firebrand Talibani style of governance into the land of
> Jinnah. The founder in 1947 gave some lectures in the constituent assembly
> in Karachi where he specifically mentioned that Clerics should stay out of
> politics. In all likelihood, Jinnah wanted to have a separate secular
> state for Muslims where they could preserve the cultural identity of
> minority Muslims of India. The India of Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Abul Kalam
> Azad, on the other hand, wanted to tread the secular path knowing full
> well that India is a patchwork of many different varieties of people. But
> sadly, ever since Pakistanis have gone haywire with their backward journey
> to the medieval period, the nationalists among Indians have found their
> answers in Hinduism. The governing political party, Bharatiya Janata Party
> or BJP, had been gaining grounds in the last decade playing on the raw
> emotion of Indian people. This militaristic political party has mesmerized
> its people by blasting some thermonuclear devices not too long ago. The
> saffron bombs of India influenced the Pakistani government to blast their
> nuclear bombs in a short notice. Thereby the entire subcontinent has gone
> nuke by the action of two religiously bent government of Vajpayee and
> Nawaz Sharif. Trust me, religious fanaticism is on the rise in South Asia.
> The docile nation of Bangladesh is not sitting idle, either. Granted,
> Bangladesh is not playing with nuclear bombs, but certain section of
> Bangalees is playing a far more dangerous game with dharma itself.
> Religious strife had skyrocketed in this tiny land, lately. More people
> are attending Bishwa Ejtema, which is not even mandated by Qur'an or
> Hadith. Should I add anymore?
> The NPR's news about Hanuman (prevalent long-tailed monkeys of India)
> ransacking the government building in New Delhi brought laughter no doubt,
> but it paints a dismal picture about India's backwardness even at this
> time when India toots its own horn telling anyone who would listen to her
> bragging that it is producing a deluge of software engineers for the West.
> India wants to believe that she has embarked on a journey that would bring
> amazing prosperity to her people, but even then, she is keeping one of her
> feet solidly grounded to the ethos of yesteryears. And we see that the way
> her people treat the wise Hanumans. If Bill Gates only knew that Atal
> Bihari Vajpayee and his disciples have so much ardor and reverence for
> monkeys, he would think twice before hiring any of those garden variety
> cyber coolies India imports these days to Redmond, Washington.