Peace and Justice Post

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The Toynbee Convector, April 18 2008

The impact of Religiosity upon Caste in India has begotten the unparalleled social abuse of “Untouchability”; and since there has never been any effective move to abolish or even mitigate “Untouchability” on the part of the Brahmans – the hieratic caste which has become master of the ceremonies of the whole caste-system and has assigned to itself the highest place in it – the enormity survives, except in so far as it has been assailed by revolution.

The euphemism “Scheduled Castes” came from the Government of India Act 1935.

The earliest known revolts against Caste are those of Mahavira, the founder of Jainism (occubuit prae 500 B.C.) and Siddhārtha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism (vivebat circa 567-487 B.C.): two creative personalities who were non-Brahmans themselves and who ignored the established barriers of Caste in recruiting the bands of disciples whom they gathered round them to wrestle with the moral problems of the Indic “Time of Troubles”. If either Buddhism or Jainism had succeeded in captivating the Indic World, then conceivably the institution of Caste might have been sloughed off with the rest of the social debris of a disintegrating Indic Society, and an affiliated Hindu Civilization might have started life free from this incubus. As it turned out, however, the role of universal church in the last chapter of the Indic decline and fall was played not by Buddhism but by Hinduism – a parvenu archaistic syncretism of things new and old; and one of the old things which Hinduism resuscitated was Caste. Not content with resuscitating this old abuse, it embroidered upon it. The Hindu Civilization has been handicapped from the outset by a considerably heavier burden of Caste (a veritable load of karma) than the burden that once weighed upon its predecessor; and accordingly the series of revolts against Caste has run over from Indic into Hindu history.

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 by Badri Raina

When was the last you saw  bees and birds

Sing or chirp their free-floating fancies,

Settling on or passing by  that expectant

Tree or twig?

Or droves of raucous rooks homing in

With sharp  collective mind

Into  a Peepal of nooks and cranies

With the soothing fading of the light?

The sparrows  that never failed to dot

With  teeny delight the ground below

Our feet, or the parapet above—

Into what undiscovered country have

Their  soulful little wings  taken flight?

Or the bulbul that used to feed like spoiled child

Off  my  mother’s unfailing palm?

Nothing may bespeak  our hollow selves

More than the  fact  that our rejection

By bees and birds  touches us not.

Our brains  emptied of thought,

Our  hearts no longer wrought,

We are  eyes without sight,  bodies

Without souls, cacophony without calm.

Our leather skin and metal mind

Find  solace in purchases of similar kind.

Lest you think this a backward-looking lament

About  “modern life,”  disfigured by nostalgia,

I am here to tell you that modernity

Need not have been so crass and  fatal,

But something pretty, provided  our reason

Had looked beyond our skins, embracing

Equally  the thorn with the petal,

The  sweet pea with the nettle.

If only we  had  done to the universe

As we wished the universe to do to us.

Alas,  our   unrepentant  prowess,

Our  brainless scramble  may sooner than

We think mix us back with stone and bramble

In one  unlovely molten heap,

As the seas climb to the mountains,

And the  cities that   glitter sink into the deep.

August 11, 2012

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An Essay by Dirk Kurbjuweit, Speigel Online International. Aug. 9, 2012

USAF

The German military is considering the purchase of combat drones. But we should not allow ourselves to be seduced by the idea that an unmanned aircraft is a humane weapon. On the contrary, they expose the true nature of war in all its brutality.

 A suicide bomber needs to be 100 percent willing to sacrifice his life. With a drone pilot, on the other hand, the risk of pilot death drops to zero percent. The West’s war on Islamist terror is currently being waged between these two conflicting priorities. Nothing is more indicative of the asymmetry of the war, and nothing is as symbolic of the cultures that are waging it. It’s a war between those who are willing to sacrifice everything and those who are unwilling to give up anything — a war of sacrifice versus convenience, bodies versus technology and risk versus safety.

kashmirawarness.org

The historical tragedy of Kashmir conflict goes way back in history. The political and cultural invasion started in 1585 with Mughal king, Akbar entrapping and imprisoning Yousuf Shah Chak, the king of Kashmir. Chak’s forces had earlier defeated the invading forces of King Akbar of India. Having failed in defeating the Kashmiri warriors outright he devised a devious scheme of controlling Kashmir by inviting the Kashmir ruler as a guest and then putting him in prison.

Then came the Afghan occupation at the end of Mughal rule in 1752. The Mughal and Afghan rule though an occupation, was not necessarily colonial in its modus operandi. Kashmir did enjoy a period of independence before the Sikh rule. Afghan rule was replaced by the Sikh occupation which put an end to that period of self rule.

Sikh rule was engineered through joint conspiracies of Ranjit Singh, a Sikh; Birbal, a  Pundit  from the Valley; and Ghulab Singh, a Dogra Hindu from Jammu.. The common cause among these parties was to end the  Muslim rule in Jammu and Kashmir. After two failed attempts Sikhs ( under Ranjit Singh ) occupied Jammu and Kashmir in 1819.The Sikh rule was a tyranny that lasted 28 years and came to an end after its treacherous relationship with the British rulers.

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By Martin Khor, uruknet.info, August 8, 2012

The use of drones by one state to kill people in other countries is fast emerging as an international human rights issue of serious public concern. This was evident in the recent session (June 18-July 6, 2012) of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, both in the official meetings and in NGO seminars. The use of drones, or pilotless aircraft operated by remote control, by the government in one country to strike at persons and other targets in other countries, has been increasingly used by the United States, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. Instead of following clear legal standards, the practice of drone attacks has become a vaguely defined and unaccountable “license to kill”, according to a 2010 report of a UN human rights special rapporteur. Continues >>

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Paul Craig Roberts, opednews.com, August 8, 2012

The bumper sticker on the beat-up pickup truck read: “Friends don’t let friends vote Democrat.”

The driver was obviously not affluent. Yet, despite all the news about mega-trillion dollar bankster bailouts, mega-million dollar bonuses for financial crooks, and unimaginable compensation packages for corporate CEOs who have moved middle class jobs out of America, something made the down-and-out pickup truck driver associate with the political party of the super-rich.

As I wondered at this strange alliance of the dirt poor with the mega-rich, I remembered that in 2004 Thomas Frank wondered about how the Republicans had managed to convince the poor to vote against their best interests. Frank’s answer, or part of his answer, is that the Republicans use “social issues,” such as gay marriage and Janet Jackson’s exposed nipple to work up indignation over the threat to moral values posed by liberal Democrats.

The working poor have been convinced by Republican propaganda that voting Democrat means giving the working poor’s tax dollars to the non-working poor, to providing medical care and schooling for illegal aliens, and being soft on terrorism.

To the pick-up truck driver, standing up for America means standing up for bankster bailouts and the military/security complex’s multi-trillion dollar wars.

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Chris Hedges, truthdig.com, August 6, 2012

Illustration by Mr. Fish

On this day in 1945 the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished and the Soviet regime with which it was allied. Over Hiroshima, and three days later over Nagasaki, it exploded an atomic device that was the most efficient weapon of genocide in human history. The blast killed tens of thousands of men, women and children. It was an act of mass annihilation that was strategically and militarily indefensible. The Japanese had been on the verge of surrender. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military significance. It was a war crime for which no one was ever tried. The explosions, which marked the culmination of three centuries of physics, signaled the ascendancy of the technician and scientist as our most potent agents of death.

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Published by: ATHEIST CENTRE Vijayawada — 520 006 India.
Printed at: INSAAN PRINTERS Benz Centre, Vijayawada — 520 006.

Contents

Preface

• Return to Contents

Gora propagated atheism as a positive way of life. He toured extensively in India and went round the world in 1970 and again in 1974.

He undertook many practical programmes to fight against social, economic and political inequalities and injustices. He conducted satyagraha campaigns before and after Independence and went to gaol many a time. As a social revolutionary, he took up programmes for the eradication of caste and untouchability and fought against superstitions and blind beliefs. Gora’s life was a saga of struggle for the propagation of atheism.

Gora was a prolific writer. He wrote extensively in Telugu and English on atheism for more than four decades. In this book we are publishing a collection of his articles written in The Atheist, between 1969-75. They deal with diverse aspects.

Atheist Centre intends to publish the select writings of Gora in English and Telugu. Already more than twenty books have been published. With the cooperation and support of innumerable friends, we wish to publish all other writings soon.

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