We did practice too...
Me in the cyan shirt, playing over the rhythms. Don't remember which song it was... did that for diwali...I played around with the image a bit, the quality wasn't so good, so I tried to be a bit artsy ;)
Monday, November 22, 2004
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
An indian organization
For once I thought this show is gonna get cancelled. The way I saw people clashing for absent reasons, I thought it was the end of this show, an abrupt end of all the effort we had put to let the show rock.
In retrospect, this was not something different from what I have observed in Indian organizations. Since, there is actually no reason to "organize" and "congregrate" in Indian culture, all the organizations start showing signs of favorism (what we call bhai-bhatija-vaad in Hindi) the marks which the factions based on caste, region or ethnicity leave, make the whole organization a total fiasco. This is how most of the British establishments in India, which people tried to continue without British supervision have failed badly. They have succeeded only at places, where people genuinely tried to copy West, either by getting converted to Christianity or getting educated in missionaries, and having no mercy in being deleterious to so-called Indian values and culture.
I seriously believe in all what Naipaul says in "a million mutinies now"... We "unite" only because we are afraid of falling, its just ...it never gets down to our "own" philosophy of things, the "way" we look at things. The personal contribution is never demanded in such organizations. You are only supposed to go with the crowd in the organization, and get involved in all the favorism, corruption and groupism which looks eternal to a pessimist like me. The organization never questions what should be the religion of everyone who says he belongs to the organization.
We in India, have been dodging the questions all the way. When we talk of philosophy and the religion (just in a social psychological sense as lets say, in the work ethics), we are branded fundamentalists. Nobody is supposed to say anything about the required oneness of culture and institution. Institution is something that Brits brought, where everyone is supposed to obey the orders, listen to the peers, butter the seniors for approval... stick to the class structure in organization which Brits introduced.
Brits found it easy. Indian people don't change the 'environment'. They, having given Buddhism to the world, try to get comfy with the nature. They consider themselves to be the part of nature (a bit like pantheism) rather than considering themselves, as agents of God meant to do something 'right' and remove all 'evil' from the world. Thats how they have been. British introduced excellent systems to change the 'environment' of these people and these people, due to their age old tradition of not-trying-to-change things, tended to accept everything.
So, you found the most devout of Hindus and Muslims writing exams to do some clerical job in the British system, and thinking that it was their "God" that helped them succeed in life (which was actually determined by the British in those times, and by western organizations in modern times) Now, after the Raj was gone, these people tried to take control of everything. But wait a minute, they cannot change a thing. So its in a confusing state. Indian culture, due to a hands-off policy of Brits, can't accept change anymore. It doesn't even change - it has nothing to do with philosophy. Its there only because "my mom wants me to do it"... Definitely, such culture cannot support an organization.
So, you have the current bastardization of Indian people. All those who control things, who matter in the society, are wannabe whites. They act like they are Westerners, they choose West over East in everything, act snobbish to everything that is native to India. Indian culture is the legacy of unpriveleged, backward, inflexible (many a times pious) people living in small cities of India. Metros are all half-westernized, existing as a bastion of bastardization to sustain a progressive-everWesternizing India and the rotten sphagetti that India is, a whole chaos of ideas that don't connect to any philosophy, that would be incompatible with each other on grounds of ethnicity, caste or religion. Metros are where an elephant is accebtably assumed to be the symbol of one's ethnicity. The history of that fucking elephant, its importance in theology ...err. mythology (Indian theology is about mythology, afterall) doesn't matter to anyone. Nor should it matter in a secular state. Its just a symbol, you could have replaced it with anything. Some others southwards, replace it with a dick...Its fun...tradition, worshipping itself, is just fun...no more serious.
No organization should be run for Indians in the Western world. There is nothing that unites Indians. It were the British who wanted us to do that, it is for the sustainance of their systems, and the benefites we seek from that system that we unite. We got nothing in our culture, which can make us think of anything above our own small community determined by the genes that our parents gave us, be it caste, ethnicity ... The western ideas of freedom, equality, fraternity of human beings, or the very idea of being a human that transcends all boundaries of religion caste and political borders looks so foreign being an Indian.
In retrospect, this was not something different from what I have observed in Indian organizations. Since, there is actually no reason to "organize" and "congregrate" in Indian culture, all the organizations start showing signs of favorism (what we call bhai-bhatija-vaad in Hindi) the marks which the factions based on caste, region or ethnicity leave, make the whole organization a total fiasco. This is how most of the British establishments in India, which people tried to continue without British supervision have failed badly. They have succeeded only at places, where people genuinely tried to copy West, either by getting converted to Christianity or getting educated in missionaries, and having no mercy in being deleterious to so-called Indian values and culture.
I seriously believe in all what Naipaul says in "a million mutinies now"... We "unite" only because we are afraid of falling, its just ...it never gets down to our "own" philosophy of things, the "way" we look at things. The personal contribution is never demanded in such organizations. You are only supposed to go with the crowd in the organization, and get involved in all the favorism, corruption and groupism which looks eternal to a pessimist like me. The organization never questions what should be the religion of everyone who says he belongs to the organization.
We in India, have been dodging the questions all the way. When we talk of philosophy and the religion (just in a social psychological sense as lets say, in the work ethics), we are branded fundamentalists. Nobody is supposed to say anything about the required oneness of culture and institution. Institution is something that Brits brought, where everyone is supposed to obey the orders, listen to the peers, butter the seniors for approval... stick to the class structure in organization which Brits introduced.
Brits found it easy. Indian people don't change the 'environment'. They, having given Buddhism to the world, try to get comfy with the nature. They consider themselves to be the part of nature (a bit like pantheism) rather than considering themselves, as agents of God meant to do something 'right' and remove all 'evil' from the world. Thats how they have been. British introduced excellent systems to change the 'environment' of these people and these people, due to their age old tradition of not-trying-to-change things, tended to accept everything.
So, you found the most devout of Hindus and Muslims writing exams to do some clerical job in the British system, and thinking that it was their "God" that helped them succeed in life (which was actually determined by the British in those times, and by western organizations in modern times) Now, after the Raj was gone, these people tried to take control of everything. But wait a minute, they cannot change a thing. So its in a confusing state. Indian culture, due to a hands-off policy of Brits, can't accept change anymore. It doesn't even change - it has nothing to do with philosophy. Its there only because "my mom wants me to do it"... Definitely, such culture cannot support an organization.
So, you have the current bastardization of Indian people. All those who control things, who matter in the society, are wannabe whites. They act like they are Westerners, they choose West over East in everything, act snobbish to everything that is native to India. Indian culture is the legacy of unpriveleged, backward, inflexible (many a times pious) people living in small cities of India. Metros are all half-westernized, existing as a bastion of bastardization to sustain a progressive-everWesternizing India and the rotten sphagetti that India is, a whole chaos of ideas that don't connect to any philosophy, that would be incompatible with each other on grounds of ethnicity, caste or religion. Metros are where an elephant is accebtably assumed to be the symbol of one's ethnicity. The history of that fucking elephant, its importance in theology ...err. mythology (Indian theology is about mythology, afterall) doesn't matter to anyone. Nor should it matter in a secular state. Its just a symbol, you could have replaced it with anything. Some others southwards, replace it with a dick...Its fun...tradition, worshipping itself, is just fun...no more serious.
No organization should be run for Indians in the Western world. There is nothing that unites Indians. It were the British who wanted us to do that, it is for the sustainance of their systems, and the benefites we seek from that system that we unite. We got nothing in our culture, which can make us think of anything above our own small community determined by the genes that our parents gave us, be it caste, ethnicity ... The western ideas of freedom, equality, fraternity of human beings, or the very idea of being a human that transcends all boundaries of religion caste and political borders looks so foreign being an Indian.
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