Radical

I keep hearing the term "radicalized" and "radicalization" in casual conversations with people these days. Can only imagine what it must be like listening to news. So what is all this about being a "radical"? 

As a kid my definition of radical was a group of atoms that was free to attach to another group of atoms. 

The other definition is "affecting the fundamental nature of something, far reaching or thorough" and apparently that is what is being talked about, "Far reaching".

For lack of a better analogy, let us say there are multiple folks who want to go from various parts of the bay area to the golden gate bridge. If I had to go there I would take highway 101. Sure bet in my opinion and have been driving on it for many years. Know when to change to which lane, where to expect traffic, know I will get there.  If you ask anyone else in our house, chances are they will also say "take 101. best way"

There may be others who will bet on 280 for their own reasons. They will also get to the golden gate. Might be faster or slower, but they will get there and to them it is a safe bet.

There might even be a guy who says "I have a jet pack. I can get there much faster by going up to 2000 feet and going down". He may be right, he may be wrong. The jet pack might work for him, who knows?! Hopefully he does reach as well.

If a new family visits us here and they have never travelled to SFO, we might recommend them through 101 while a different family might suggest 280. Or they might just say "let me use Google maps to decide which route to take based on traffic info. that is crowdsourced"

Where am I going with all this?

Religion mostly provides some kind of route to a destination which most of us are worried about or cannot necessarily deal with until we die. Salvation! 

We will all swear by our religions as a sure bet to reach the other side based on our own lifes experiences, experiences of others we take for granted that are passed on through generations. Most of the time it is information that we cannot rely on as it is embellished over time and it seems to be a very rare event when someone seems to have died and come back to tell us what is on the other side. There is no dearth of smart people on the planet who can explain things by making us look here, there, inward, outward, etc. etc.

At the end of the day, there is no problem with people picking a comforable route to reach their destination. 

The problem is when one says emphatically that "my route is the only route. all other routes are false". It would be great if everyone got to go on a rotation program with different religions, much like a new college grad goes through different departments in a company before joining a particular group. It would be like we all get to try 101 and 280 or that jet pack if we can get our hands on it and see which route we prefer. Unfortunately, that is not realistic. 

What we could do is to acknowledge that different people will have their own comfort zones and let people go through their own routes. While this seems to be simple enough to say "live and let live", it may not be the real problem. It is all about money. That is a bigger problem that is beyond salvation of any kind. However, live and let live is a good place to start.

When I hear someone say "all muslims are terrorists", that person has been radicalized to believe something that is not true. It is as radical as folks who are chanting "death to America". 

There was a recent conversation with a friend who asked me "Most of the Indians I know in the bay area are so far right that they will put the tea party guys look like Bernie Sanders, yet you are preaching live and let live?" 

In all honesty I told him "the average american kid today is not getting an education on the world. they won't know the difference between India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Iran or Syria or for that matter a difference between different religions. My kids might know their world history and geography but that is not enough. It is like being a safe driver on a freeway where a drunk guy is coming in the wrong direction. End result is not going to be good for either driver. There are folks teaching their kids to hate, based on the fact that other kids are of a different skin color or wear a scarf or turban of some kind. My kids could wear a dupatta on their head and could be the target of a hate crime. I want to make sure that I support a live and let live policy and counter this hate"

I also acknowledged that islamophobia is very high among Hindu households that we interact with here in the bay area. Even on the recent India trip, we had many conversations with folks who belive that the Muslim population in India is increasing dispropotionately, not because more people are believing in Islam or converting to the religion, but because the Muslim folks are on a drive to increase their population where they are a local minority, irrespective of the quality of life they can give their kids.

A relative told me "while other communities are stopping with one or two kids, Muslim families are having four or five plus kids, the families tend to be poor and the kids are not educated and this in turn, feeds a dependence on their religious links to sponsor them and in return they are willing to do anything for their sponsors who are invariably people from the middle east with an agenda to create supporters in India". 

I am not sure if that is what is going on, as this sounds like how things were in Indian villages post Independence irrespective of religion. More kids meant more income and it could simply be that the poor folks are living in the past and economic and religious demographics are being mixed up.

What was clear to me after those conversations, was that the problems are not all about whose route is better. It is about the thought that there is strength in numbers, money and power! 

We are all pawns in an elaborate game played by folks who control the money. Most of what we hear is one side of a story that manages to reach us and the stories with money behind them invariably reach us better.

It is going to take the parents of today a herculean effort to make sure that their bigotry is not passed on to the kids. Our kids don't need to learn to hate. They could learn to love and accept diversity and differences. We need to educate our kids better. Not just our kids. All kids! Yes, I sound like an ad for "no child left behind!" that too for an education on social sciences in a world where math and science are being ignored to accomodate spreading more bigotry.

When I hear what is happening in our kids schools based on the stories they tell me, my stomach churns. In spite of what we teach them at home, they are becoming who they are based on the sum total of their experiences in and outside the house. They are smart and inquisitive and will absorb everything like a sponge. Sometimes I just cry because there are no decent answers to their questions. 

Think it was Deming who said "In god we trust. Everyone else bring data".

The way the world is going, we might have to ask God to bring data as well.

As for "radicalization", for anything to reach far, there are two forces behind it. A push and a pull. The pull for radicalization is there in every shape and form with every over zealous preacher saying "only route xyz can save you!". In spite of that pull existing, not everyone takes a radical view.

It also needs a push. Either the push is a mental defect of some kind in some individuals, or a society that creates a situation where people around the person push that person closer to what is pulling. The youth of today don't need that push. The more we teach our kids to hate, or fear people and things that are different from them, the more the push.

Actually like the Chinese folks I interact with in Asia. They work hard, play hard and religion doesn't seem to be a big part of the day to day life and they are doing fine. They think they are all going to a nice place after thus life and don't seem too worried. The Chinese folks in Cupertino though, seem to be very much like the desi folks when it comes to religious prejudices. The melting pot that is the US of A does seem to do strange things to folks when they melt in.

As we close down on 2015, it is my sincere hope that we all spread a message of peace and do our best to educate everyone around us on going after facts, instead of made up stuff on FB and Whatsapp! Teach your kids to be nice to all their classmates. We are working on it at home.

Political leanings

Most of you who read this blog have seen my feeble attempt to understand my own political leanings here..

The recent Indian elections have created a confusion of sorts for my family and friends alike who ask me questions like "You are a social liberal in the United States and support the Democrats but you also support Narendra Modi who is pretty much the Ronald Reagan of India?" or "If you support Modi in India because of his economic policies, you have a blatant double standard for what you want in India vs. what you want in the US, no?" or worse "Hi, if you are all for securalism in the US, then why are you supporting BJP instead of Congress?"

Not being a politician, I do not have well rehearsed answers for these questions. Actually have to think deeply to find out answers to these questions and sometimes you might still end up wringing your hands!

The trick to answering some of these questions though is understanding that the words "liberal" and "secular" seem to be interpreted differently in India and the US. Most of the folks I interact with seem to have notions of these two words that fit a different context. 

Lets take the "secular" thing first as it is relatively easy. When I grew up in India, the "secular" word meant "a co-existing of all religious faiths" which meant a "freedom of the local darga to put loud speakers and blast out muslim prayers at 4AM and the ability of the local Maariamman temple to start with Maariamma engal maariammmmmaaa at 4:05 AM". Every so often the Velankanni chariot procession with a Mother Mary statue in it will add its loud speakers to it. When the cacophony is heard by your tired and groggy ear as "alllllah whooo ammmma!", your brain subconsciously lets you understand that they are all an equal nuisance and the best thing for you to do is to turn your head in the opposite direction of "Sathyavaanimuththu Nagar" , put a pillow over your head and try to sleep. 

India is a place where religion competes openly much harder than FB and Google fight for your eyeball time in the internet. Loud speakers, garish displays, festivals created by the local populace that are no where to be found in calendars of folks in other countries who practice the same religions, it is an endless barrage of "in your face religion". My understanding of Secular was that everyone could go visit whatever place of worship they wanted to go to and they had an equal right to assault the eardrums of everyone in a 5 km vicinity. They were also free to take over busy streets, cut holes in them and do "thee midhis" (fire walking) be it in the name of some Indian godess or some descendent or relative of the prophet Mohammad. I always used to wonder why the Christians in India didn't have a nice fire walking ceremony to add to the fun.

What was also odd was that the guys who do the loudspeakers are mostly cousins and some just converted to different religions. They would all show up at our house to collect money for the various festivals and my father, nice guy that he is, would kind of do a deferred payment by agreeing to let them use "electricity" from our house for their loud speakers. The irony of that is not lost on me. There are so many times I have wished to just go uproot that "illegal" umbilical cord that ran across the street from our electric box to those speakers. All said and done, everyone was different and yet everyone was the same. That kind of summed up "secular" for me.

The funny thing was that the two main political parties in Tamil Nadu were both Atheist and 90+ % of the folks doing the fire walking had a choice of voting for atheist vs. atheist. 

Later in life though, it hit me hard when the reservation system reared its ugly head and I actually understood the concept of a "vote bank" after living in Banaras for 4 years. Secular meant the extension of the British Raj by the Congress party by using the "divide and rule" policy. Prey on the differences, give special treatment to minority groups where you define minority in local geographic terms and capitalize this to get votes. 

In the US, my understanding of secular in my early immigrant years can be summed up in one sentence. "We are a Christian country, but we will let you go to a temple and pray the way you want as long as you understand that when we say ONE NATION UNDER GOD, we mean Jesus!" . Over the years, I have realized that given anything other than Christianity is a minority religion in the US, my understanding was more or less accurate. We were seen as a small bit of of spice to the melting pot that did not ruin the taste. The US is 79% Christian, 5% other religions, 16% non religious. Of the 16% non religious, 5% is "secular" or "unassociated". 

In the US, Secular means "I am neutral to religion" in a very different way. 

Now to understand the "Liberal" thingy. I am glad this was not on an exam paper for 10 marks, because I would have run out of paper or ink and not finished the exam in any alloted time. I was not sure exactly what my political leaning was in India. I never voted in an Indian election. In the south I did like the leader of one of the two Atheist parties because he had a way with words when it came to the Tamil language but did not like his party or its followers for their "hate crimes". The rest of my family loved the other parties leader as she acted as though their was a Hinduistic lean. Turned out they were both playing a similar game in different sectors. They have their own TV channels, airlines, newspapers, etc. FOX news executives can learn a thing or two from both these parties and we have a sum total of one guy who represents the  Jon Stewart and Colbert spectrum in Tamil Nadu.

At a national level though, I have never liked any party be it the BJP or Congress. The congress was doing the divide and rule and their economic policies sucked. Sucked the money out of India to Swiss banks that is! The BJP was great for the local economy and Nationalistic pride makes nations improve their standing in the world (see China and how it is doing now!).  However witnessing the demolishon of mosques and watching hindus and muslims go on killing sprees, curfews and shoot at sight orders in Banaras left a bitter after taste for religious politics. It is also difficult to map what party in the US maps to what party in India!

If you had to compare Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians to the Congress, BJP and the new Aam Aadmi party it really gets to be difficult. Somehow folks expect this to be a 1:1 but it is not.  When it comes to economic policies, development policies, influence of religion on the party, govenment reach into policies, individual freedoms and government guarantees they are all over the place. 

Now for the Modi Reagan question. I am going to agree that being a minority in the US based on my religion and part of the majority in India for the same religion, there are some views that are shaped by this discrepancy. Why? While I am not the "in your face" religious type, I do like the freedom to practice what I want to, be it religion or spirituality. It is also the reason why I am probably turned off by the far right in the US while I am not alarmed by the BJP's vote base that is equally far right because they happen to be Hindu. Somehow the reasoning that India is more of a spiritual place seems to supresses that tingling spider sense. 

Supporting Obama because he will bring Healthcare to all and even out the increased divide between the folks who have access to lobbyists and folks who are being left behind while simultaneously supporting Modi who is bringing in Reagan era scalebacks of social subsidy programs does sound hypocratic. But my brain puts it in a differnt context. It is true that both countries have corrupt politicians who make themselves and the rich, richer while the poor get poorer. There are differnces though to concepts like a minimum wage that exists in US but is non existant in India. Social Welfare itself implies different things in the two countries! Infrastructure development does not have the same priority in the US and India. The needs and priorities in the two countries are very different. Yes, they both could use a multi party system and honest politicians and a populace that is not swayed by advertising and lies that makes them vote against their own interests. 

In a way, Modi is closer to Obama and not Reagan because he stands to do a lot better than his partymates, seems to have a character that seems to be outside of the 3*sigma window of the politicians in his party and seems to have an uncanny ability to rally the troops when push comes to shove. He also seems to be as determined to develop the infrastructure and open up trade in the same way Obama pushed the healthcare reform. He also seems to have a personal charm, integrity and conviction, not to mention those things that are common to soccer, tennis, table tennis and cricket. 

After all that rambling, the takeaway is this. The 1:1 mapping does not work between the parties or select leaders.

I am sure there will be a lot of you telling me in intricate detail where I am wrong and where I am right. Will also find out over the years myself on where my bets were right and wrong. It happened with Obama being toothless and playing victim, when it came to taking on certain fights and I am sure the same thing will happen to Modi if he plays pacifist between his far right base and his development agenda. As long as he doesn't start crying like John Boehner, think it will be okay!

Branding

There are elections in India. The only thing we were looking forward to, was to see the incumbent Congress party go. Looks like that is happening. 

We have been getting updates from supporters of different parties on the Facebook feed more than from any news media. This morning, decided to see what Google news presented for me and here it was (link)

Now for someone who is not that much into Indian History and knows Nehru as Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi as Mahatma Gandhi... 

Ok, I know the desi's who read this are going "not possible", but seriously! Today's American textbooks have three pages for Indian political history. Not much mention is there of the fact that Indira Gandhi, who gets mentioned as the first woman prime minister of India is not related to the Mahatma. People put two and two and come up with four!

In all of Indian history, this move by Indira to marry a dude with the same last name as Mahatma Gandhi, was probably the most brilliant branding or marketing idea! 

In South INdian families we stopped using caste or religious sub sect related last names post Indian Independence. Then folks started using their fathers first name as their last name, as "expanded initials". That is why I am now Sundar Narayanan instead of Sundar Iyer. My fathers first name is now my last name. Still it made sense in a way that we were all part of the Narayanan family. Unlike family names in the US, this gets to be tricky. My wife does not want to take my fathers first name as her last name. She was okay with being Sangeetha Sundar (which is how it works in India if a woman wanted to change her last name, she took her husbands first name!) and that also made sense.  

This is a common issue in desi families when they apply for a US passport. They all want to fill out one customs form and have the same last name but cannot agree on one. So the new trend is that the entire family changes their name to the old system. Either go with sect, subsect names or their Gothrams(lineage) in Brahmin families. 

If we ever cross that bridge, we should take a page from Indira and find a "nice" family name to change to!