Those born to rule

The Myth of the Muslim Vote Bank from Kafila by Sohail Hashmi

The assumption that Muslims are more religiously inclined is based on selective observation, Muslims congregate for prayers every Friday at a specific time and so their religiosity becomes more visible… The idea that the lives of Muslims are governed more by religion than is the case with other communities is also based on selective readings of the life of Muslims… And yet this stereotyping continues. And now about Muslims being a Monolithic block?

Muslims  have been divided between Shias and Sunnis for centuries…To the sectarian divisions among the Muslims you can add the peculiarities created through the interaction of Indian traditions and Islam and you have Muslims who think of themselves as the Ashraf- those born to rule and according to whom the non Asraf are the Arzal – those who are not fit to rule. The Ashraf would be the Sheikhs, the Syeds and the Pathans and everybody else will fall in the category of the Arzal… to these you must also add the modern day differences between the Land-Lord and the Poor-Peasant or landless labour, between the industrialist and the factory worker and all other economic distinctions and classes that exist among the general population, it may come as a surprise but it is a fact that there are Muslim scavengers, who face as much discrimination as do the Dalits… So what do we have now, we have Muslims divided in a large number of sects, Muslims divided among high and low, Muslims divided among contending classes and there isn’t one religious leader whose pronouncements have universal acceptance. Is there then any possibility of Muslims still behaving like a Vote Bank? […]

The very Idea that Muslims in India, almost 13% of the population, close to 160 million individuals, more than half of whom, 80 million people, are voters, with all their sectional, professional, cultural, economic, social, linguistic diversities and differences, at times rather antagonistic differences, can be herded like sheep and be guided, persuaded, pressurised to vote for a party or a set of parties or candidates is so stupendously devoid of commonsense that it is breathtaking in its stupidity. […]

The idea that 13.4 % of this country has stopped thinking is an idea that betrays a fascist bent of mind. Such an idea has its foundation in the assumption that Muslims are different from other human beings, that they are genetically designed to not have a brain. The idea that they can be led by their leaders and religious leaders at that in such, this worldly, secular, matters and made to do  things that  saner elements – read non Muslims- can’t be made to do is an idea that is born out of the tendency towards stereotyping, branding and profiling an entire segment of population? […]

After the demolition of Babri Masjid and more specifically after the Gujarat Genocide, the Muslim Voters try to ensure in whatever manner they can, that as far as possible the candidates put up by the BJP should not win. But that is not vote bank politics that is sheer self-defence, what else can they do? […] (A slightly different version of this article has appeared in Think India magazine.)

Extracting advantage by speaking good English

Democracy Sans Politics - by Aspirant By Aspirant S. from Critique of The Lives Blatant partiality of all kinds: It may take the form of a bias in favour of

• those who are in one’s own power-circle,
• those who are financially well-off,
• those who have been in some high position outside and come here for their retired life,
• those of the same language,
• and those who are aggressive and liable to be a nuisance.
• Surprising, but true, just being able to speak good English sometimes helps.

People in the powerful ones' own circle always find it easier to get what they want even if it is a luxury, while those outside it may not get even their justified needs fulfilled… Some of the current aspiring busy­-bodies are given more and more power in spite of their unscrupulous activities because they are the utility men for the authorities. Their enthusiasm towards work obviously lies in their seeking to enlarge their power base... 

Perhaps the whole issue of Peter's book has come about to highlight the declining values here which many of us have been gradually getting accustomed to and even beginning to accept slothfully, avoiding the inconvenience and work that it would take to at least express to the Trustees our aspirations for better administrative policies from them. 

In Delhi politics, where you're from is all that matters - Sunetra Choudhury | Saturday, June 16, 2012

‘Where are you from?’ is usually the first question they ask when they are sizing you up. People’s surnames are usually a giveaway but with mine, they don’t know whether I’m from Haryana or Howrah or somewhere else altogether. And so they pry, some of the more earthy ones even ask our caste, and it took me a while to figure out just why.

When I’d tell them I was from Delhi, they didn’t really know what that meant. They thought, and rightly so, that no one can be originally from Delhi, it’s just this dog-eat-dog place where people came for work, out of necessity. For them, the capital city was all about wily bureaucrats, power brokers and fat cats who weren’t to be trusted. And when they looked for people they could really talk to, journalists who could be trusted, who’d present their perspective, it had to be people who knew where they came from — who’d get their private jokes, who’d understand the sentiments of their people. If they weren’t from the same village, they’d at least have to speak the same language.

And that’s when I looked around and saw the various regional packs that were at work in Parliament. You had the Thakur and the Bihar gang, which extends not just to politicians but also to powerful bureaucrats. You have the South Indian journalists, with the Mallu lobby being especially useful, but none of these can come close at this moment to the much-hyped importance of the Bengali brigade.

Salvation for Sri Aurobindo doesn't have a religious meaning

Perfection of Human Life Depends on Our Spiritual Focus from Sri Aurobindo Studies 

Humanity has tried to improve or perfect itself through the modalities of physical organisation, vital enhancement and mental systems or rules. None of these has the capability of transforming human life or ushering in a divine life on earth. Each of them suffers from limitations that lead to various forms of systemisation or legislating behavior which fail by either a too restrictive regimentation or by an over-emphasis on one aspect or another at the expense of the rest of human development. Many past attempts to define a higher formation of life on earth have failed due to reliance on external methodologies.

• We have witnessed, just in the last centuries a number of such attempts, such as the Third Reich which attempted through strict regimentation and exercise of vital power to cull out humanity and create a master race.
• We saw the attempt in the People’s Republic of China to massively re-educate citizens to fit into a pre-determined regimented formulation by restricting individual initiative and creative thought.
• We have seen in the West an attempt to enhance humanity through “free enterprise” and through the increasing understanding and control of our environment through application of science and technology.
• And we have seen any number of religions attempt to unify and create harmony through bringing about adherence to a particular belief set, even if it required coercion and rigid fundamentalism to create that adherence.

Clearly none of these approaches has proven itself capable of leading humanity to a true spiritual future based on Oneness while supporting the diversity and multiplicity of approaches that are modeled for us in Nature.

Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of Social Development - Page 182  - Preview No Miracles: The follower of the integral method of yoga does not believe in miracles. It’s a slow and gradual process, … Sri Aurobindo's Social Philosophy is based on hard facts. Every game has its rules. One who wants to play must follow the rules or ... It may be questioned whether such a mass progress or conversion is possible; but if it is not, ...

Sri Aurobindo and the Idea of Human Unity - Ramin Jahanbegloo

“Yoga”, asserts Aurobindo, “is the exchange of an egoistic for a universal or cosmic consciousness lifted towards or informed by the super-cosmic, transcendent ...

According to Aurobindo, the progress of the civilization depended on its advance towards human unity. “The perfect society”, affirmed Aurobindo, “ will be that which most entirely favors the perfection of the individual; the perfection of the individual will be incomplete if it does not help him towards the perfect state of the social aggregate to which he belongs and eventually to that of the largest possible human aggregate, the whole of a united humanity.” Aurobindo saw the perfection of the individual as a widening and a heightening in human and cosmic development. This heightening results in the integration of all levels of life and the achievement of unicity by the mind. As such salvation for Aurobindo does not have a religious meaning. It is a rebirth of Man as a supramental being.

The Indian Imagination: Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English - Google Books Result - K. D. Verma - 2000 - Fiction - 268 pages - Preview But it is the "prophetic mind" of Whitman, asserts Aurobindo, that "consciously and largely foresaw and prepared the paths" to future poetry: He [Whitman] belongs to the largest mind of the nineteenth century by the stress and energy of...
Sri Aurobindo and Whitehead on the nature of God - Satya Prakash Singh - 1972 - 196 pages - "A nothing which is full of all potentialities," asserts Aurobindo, "is the complete opposition of terms and things possible".4 Just as the mathematical zero, which, although apparently standing for nothing, really constitutes the ...

The future of man according to Teilhard de Chardin and Aurobindo Ghose J. Chetany - 1978 - 500 pages - And the purpose of the evolutionary process is the "finding of his own individuality and its perfect disengagement," asserts Aurobindo, "from the lower subsconscient in which the individual is overpowered by the mass-consciousness of ...

Responsibility, integrity, compassion and an urge to drive change

Symposium on Flat Ethics from Larval Subjects (Levi Bryant)

Thinkers such as Donna Haraway with her cyborgs, Andy Clark with his extended mind, and Latour with his alliances of actors, Barad with her agential realism, Bennett with her distributed agency, and Alaimo with her trans-corporeality have significantly complicated our understanding of just what a person is… Indeed, Marx and Engels, in The Communist Manifesto, go so far as to argue that the peasant farmer and the factory worker belong to two entirely different species. Here they sound a lot like Deleuze and Guattari who say that we should distinguish beings by their capacities and that a work horse has more in common with an ox than with a race horse. Larval Subjects: Differends - Adam Kotsko said... DECEMBER 20, 2006 10:55 AM

I neither believe that secularism leads ineluctably to violence nor that religion is likely to stop "secular" violence. I find the worries about "religious violence" to be overblown and one-sided -- why would I just flip it upside down? I do not take responsibility for your dichotomies. In such terminology as "doctrinaire atheist" or "knee-jerk secularist," the emphasis is on the adjective.

It seems to fall outside the realm of your conceptual competence to understand that I'm not an apologist for religion. And of course, the swipe about me being "effectively" an apologist for the religious right was absurd.

My contribution to the Agamben symposium from An und für sich by Adam Kotsko The Political Theology blog has published my contribution to their symposium on The Kingdom and the Glory, which discusses Agamben’s method in dialogue with Alberto Toscano’s critical review of the book.

I have tried to show elsewhere that Agamben’s method, drawn from Walter Benjamin, places no importance on the line between the religious and the secular (see my essay in After the Postsecular and the Postmodern). In The Sacrament of Language, for instance, he frequently castigates theorists of religion who too easily demarcate “the religious” as a purely separate sphere, and in The Kingdom and the Glory, he takes a similar line on the “secularization debate.” […]

While I don’t agree with Toscano that Agamben betrays the genealogical method, I do concede that Agamben’s “pervasive Heideggerianism” (128) is problematic in several respects. The difficulty, however, is not so much that the influence of Heidegger leads him to a too-substantial view of the concepts or “signatures” at play in his genealogy, but rather that his Heideggerian sympathies lead him to flatten out the historical field through which they move. Like Heidegger, Agamben seems to view “the West” as an unproblematic historical unity, for which the advent of modernity represents at best a particularly extreme development. He certainly does not appear to regard the Christian era as something notably different from the late classical era, and his account of the history of Christian thought treats the patristic and medieval periods as essentially one undifferentiated field.

Agamben’s fidelity to the genealogical task pushes against this Heideggerian oversimplification, but the Heideggerian influence does artificially limit the number of “pivot points” in his narrative. It is clearly the case that Agamben has more work to do in connecting up his “theological genealogy” with modernity, but in my view he also still has more work to do in fully developing the “theological genealogy,” with greater attention to the twists and turns of the history of Christianity and of Christian thought. I would argue in addition that he needs to cast a wider net in terms of filling out the context within which the notion of “economy” operates in any given era—for instance, “economy” is central to the way the patristic writers understood the salvation that God had brought about in Christ, and so why couldn’t Agamben look at some of their narrative accounts of how that plan was supposed to have been carried out? The very significant difference between patristic and medieval narratives of salvation would have made it clear that no easy continuity can be found between the two era’s notions of “economy” (I carry out a detailed comparison of patristic and medieval accounts of the narrative of salvation in my book Politics of Redemption). Adam Kotsko is Assistant Professor at Shimer College. He is the author, most recently, of Why We Love Sociopaths (Zero Books, 2012). He blogs at An und für sich.

Why I will not make it to Parliament The Asian Age Jun 10, 2012‎ - Vandana Gopikumar

Life took a different course and I ended up working with some of the most marginalised eople in poor rural and urban pockets — people affected by mental health issues, including the homeless. It’s now been 20 years. I have seen stark poverty, gross inequality, appalling corruption, mind-numbing inertia and shocking apathy as political structures operate in a top-down fashion — a style that certainly does not befit a nation that we describe as the world’s largest democracy.
Aspiration and idealism have given way to cynicism. Here are five reasons why my dream of becoming a parliamentarian will remain just that, a dream.
1. Power is for the rich, the famous and the well-networked: Politics more often than not is an incestuous world where everyone knows everyone else. Outsiders are rarely accorded a warm welcome. If you desire to fit in, you have to conform. The ability to rise above political differences and be human and civil, even friendly, and yet subscribe to different ideologies isn’t the way to stay close to the hot seat of power.
2. Only stereotypes, please: We are a society that likes its leaders — political, spiritual or social — in attires and gatherings that have popular sanction; speaking a language that places them above the rest, in a position to wield power and bestow privileges on those beneath. This creates a distance between the common man and the leader and builds a vertical hierarchy, which is typically feudal in character.
We get what we seek. We seem to be awe-struck by larger-than-life personalities. A common platform that brings together unequals is an aberration. We are enslaved by class and status.
3. Always perfect, always correct: They are confident, make the right noises and always seem to offer solutions to the most complex problems. I, on the contrary, am flawed and have in my insignificant life sometimes been confused, arrogant, misled, foolish and articulated poor logic just as I have been kind, strategic, fair and smart. While I learn from my mistakes and life in general, I will not compromise on the spontaneity of my behaviour, be guarded, and toe a boring, straight line. I should have the freedom to be me and not portray an ideal merely because it is believed that being both profound and a bumbling fool is a paradox, and thus unacceptable.
4. The root of all evil — money: In some panchayats that I work in, it is normal to spend anything from `20-70 lakh on an election. Voters expect gifts as a norm; this is now seen less as a violation of ethical code and more as an entitlement. Any aspirant, not backed by big bucks, will watch his/her dreams of a political career die a natural death.
5. The victim card: This for me is unthinkable. How can I throw my caste/gender/race as a trump card? In my case, of course, my caste wouldn’t “work” for me, though my gender could serve me well. However, I don’t want to exploit it, especially since I was born into a family that desired a girl child. This doesn’t negate the pain of millions of others who live lives of misery and discrimination, owing to their status and gender. I do understand the politics of representation and opportunity. But does suffering, disempowerment and difference alone qualify as a ticket to leadership?
In a country like ours, a leader must show extraordinary commitment, an unparalleled sense of responsibility, integrity, compassion and an urge, ability and talent to drive change. Chasing unidimensional notions of economic progress alone will not do.
Imagine if honesty were an appreciated value; imagine if barriers weren’t created every time idealism spoke or emerged; imagine if the world judged its leaders on the basis of his/her merits; imagine if fervour and passion were encouraged, recognised and cultivated. Imagine a world where you and I capture the imagination of our people and gain entry into an otherwise intimidating circle of power. It is only then that we will be free, equal and alive as a nation and do India justice. We are, after all, a nation of a billion people; it’s time we found our heroes from amongst the common man. The writer is the co-founder of The Banyan, a civil society organisation that works closely with people with mental disabilities
and marginalised groups, particularly the homeless

Sri Aurobindo was influenced by Carlyle, Ruskin, and Arnold

Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx: integral sociology and dialectical ... - Page 163 - Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya - 1988 - 336 pages - Preview The World-Union or the World-State The ambivalence of Sri Aurobindo's political sociology is evident from the fact that while he recognises the inevitability of the centralising tendency leading to a world-state, he consistently ...

Encyclopaedia of Eminent Thinkers: The political thought of Aurobindo - Page 35 - K. S. Bharathi - 1998 - 111 pages - Preview We find emphasis both on the organic concept of the social totality and the spiritual-cosmic character of the individual. The key political concept of Aurobindo's political philosophy is reciprocity and mutuality between the individual ...

Empire, the National, and the Postcolonial, 1890-1920: Resistance ... - Page 82 - Elleke Boehmer - 2005 - 239 pages - Preview Some of Aurobindo's political reference points therefore coincided with those of the twenty-something Margaret Noble, who, during the period that he was in Cambridge, the early 1890s, was teaching in Wimbledon in the company of ...

The Upstart Spring: Esalen and the Human Potential Movement: The ... - Page 31 - Walter Truett Anderson - 2004 - 352 pages - Preview Like that of his contemporary, Gandhi, Aurobindo's political thinking was on a cosmic scale, in which ideas of social change mingled with ideas of spiritual transformation. He was profoundly influenced by India's religious traditions, ...

Life and Times of Netaji Subhas: Yogi Sri Aurobindo's "terrorism", ... - Page xvi - Adwaita P. Ganguly - 2003 - 224 pages - Preview Along with Yogi Sri Aurobindo's 'political philosophy of terrorism' as a technique to fight against British imperialism we have examined the influence of Tagore's universalism, especially manifest in his poem Gitanjali (which made him ...

The Lives of Sri Aurobindo - Page 144 - Peter Heehs - 2008 - 496 pages - Preview 127 This experience of the silent brahman coming at the peak of Aurobindo's political career was the most dramatic turning-point in his life. He had arrived in Baroda as a leader ofa movement that involved the lives and energies of ...

Nationalism, religion, and beyond: writings on politics, society, ... - Aurobindo Ghose, Peter Heehs - 2005 - 364 pages - This is not to say that Aurobindo's political and social writings have no contemporary value. His overviews of European and Indian history are still of considerable interest, and the lines of future development he extrapolated from his...

Principles Of Education - Page 218 - S.S. Chandra, Rajendra Kumar Sharma - 2004 - 246 pages - Preview Swadeshi was the avowed principle in Sri Aurobindo's political philosophy. Each nation, according to him, has to grow and develop in tune with its peculiar Swabhav and Swadharma. This principle has been advocated by Indian thinkers ...

Modern Indian political thought - Vishwanath Prasad Varma - 1971 - 640 pages - To a pure materialist, Plato and St. Augustine and Hegel sound reactionary; while to a spiritualist, Machiavelli and Hobbes appear superficial. To a believer in the powers of the spirit, Aurobindo's political philosophy has a great ...

All India Conference on the Relevance of Sri Aurobindo Today, ... - Aurobindo Ghose, Sri Aurobindo Samiti - 1975 - 106 pages - To turn from Fascism and Nazism to Sri Aurobindo's political ideas is to turn from the cult of intolerance and unfreedom to an intellectually rich theory of sanity, and faith in man. The ideal of human unity is to be achieved through ...

Hinduism in public and private: reform, Hindutva, gender, and ... - Antony R. H. Copley - 2003 - 303 pages - Aurobindo's political and social ideas were strongly influenced by poets of the English Romantic movement, notably Shelley and Wordsworth, by later English critics such as Carlyle, Ruskin, and Arnold, by European political theorists ...

Sayajirao of Baroda, the prince and the man - Fatesinhrao Gaekwad (Maharaja of Baroda) - 1989 - 397 pages - Sayajirao was perfectly aware of Aurobindo's political views and activities and, by all accounts, secretly sympathised with them. He was also aware that, to harbour a well-known extremist in his educational service was, for someone in ...

Political thought in modern India - Thomas Pantham, Kenneth L. Deutsch - 1986 - 362 pages - 4 The year 1908 became a watershed year in Aurobindo's political career. Bengal in that year was a likely site for the growing Indian spirit of repression and even terror. These clashes became highly dramatized in the Alipore Bomb ...

Glimpses of Vedantism in Sri Aurobindo's political thought - Samar Basu, Sri Aurobindo Ashram - 1998 - 73 pages - Chapter I Appearance of a Young Politician with Deep Insight "The world needs India and needs her free. The work she has to do now is to organise life in the terms of Vedanta, and that is a work she cannot do while overshadowed by a ...

Sri Aurobindo's integral approach to political thought - Shiva Kumar Mital - 1981 - 268 pages - He also adds an appendix to show how Sri Aurobindo's political philosophy differs from Tilak, and the views of BC Pal and CR Das. ... He also refers to the idealistic and utopian elements in Sri Aurobindo's political thought.

The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Page 412 - V. P. Varma - 1990 - 494 pages - Preview (d) Reflections on Aurobindo's Political Idealism For the realization of the sociological, political and economic programmes of the spiritualized society, a consecrated spirit of religious surrender to the divine is necessary.

Aurobindo's philosophy of Brahman - Page 90 - Stephen H. Phillips - 1986 - 200 pages - Preview Aurobindo's political life and nationalism Aurobindo was politically active in many ways including speaking and organizing, but he became famous through his writing. He contributed to the Yugantar, a Bengali weekly first published in ...

Tradition and the Rhetoric of Right: Popular Political Argument in ... - Page 61 - David J. Lorenzo - 1999 - 339 pages - Preview One analyst of Aurobindo's political activities, Jean Sherer, argues that only the modernist aspects of Aurobindo's early career are important. Her thesis is that during the Partition crisis and after, Aurobindo "encountered" the world ...

Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of Social Development - Page 152 - Preview 29 Gospel of Nationalism Nationalism is the greatest God in Sri Aurobindo's political philosophy though his nationalism extends to internationalism and ultimately to divinity. The gospel of nationalism does not mean that Sri Aurobindo ...

Mother India: monthly review of culture: Volume 58 - Sri Aurobindo Ashram - 2005 - Every day father would try valiantly to make these junior professors understand and see Sri Aurobindo's political vision and wisdom. In the meantime the Japanese began bombing Chittagong and Cox Bazaar. At once Feni turned into a ...

Indian idea of political resistance: Aurobindo, Tilak, Gandhi, and ... - Ashok S. Chousalkar - 1990 - 131 pages - Aurobindo's political theory ] was dominated by three ideological factors (a) in India religion ' and politics were not different, they were one and the same (b) ! India did not want to become carbon copy of west; in fact, ... 

The Essential Aurobindo - Page 36 - Aurobindo Ghose, Robert A. McDermott - 2001 - 288 pages - Preview The spiritual method and goal of this revolution, however, included a radical political program which Sri Aurobindo later summarized as follows: There were three sides to Sri Aurobindo's political ideas and activities.

The Indian Scriptures and the Life Divine - Page 6 - Binita Pani - 1993 - 367 pages - Preview Sri Aurobindo's political life was limited to a short period of fifteen years from 1893 to 1908 of which the first ten years were mostly devoted to secret activities and the last five years were only his active period.

Political science review: Volume 2 - University of Rajasthan. Dept. of Political Science - 1963 - A detailed examination of Sri Aurobindo's political thoughts yet remains a desideratum Speaking generally there are two difficulties in appreciating Sri Aurobindo's political ideas. For one thing, to grasp his thoughts properly one ...