A fast is not a childish tantrum. Childish tantrums are unconsciously selfish. A fast is not an adult tantrum. Adult tantrums are consciously selfish, and thus far worse than the unconscious tantrums of children.

A fast is conscious, and selfless. A fasting protester essentially makes this point – I believe in the justness of my cause far more than I believe in the importance of my own body or life. And it is this enticing hook, this glimpse of a larger vision, and higher possibility that makes supporters gravitate toward the center of this ultimate protest. The center, to borrow a Sufi metaphor, is the divine flame toward which rush the moths, seeking total annihilation and union with the divine.

Conscious and selfless activities usually disturb rule makers. The rule makers would rather have you lie in stupor, surrounded by the pettiness of your personal universe, and its little problems. Were you to peek over this wall and look out into the world, they fear you would see too much, and know much more. And knowing usually leads to doing – at least in the uninitiated. The well initiated know the pragmatic answer – that not acting is the best action to take.

At the center of the fast though, there is no room for pragmatism. At the center is a clarion call against the deepest instinct of self preservation. At the center is the echo of a resounding slap against the measured, risk free baby steps of our lives. No pretenses can hold their end of an argument here, in the face of a body that is consuming itself for a stand.

The journey toward that center is one we must take. In that journey something important may be discovered. That the gnawing “I” that takes up our all our time, doesn’t matter that much.

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After note:

There is something very Eastern about fasting too. A culture that believes in the perpetuity of consciousness, regardless of the impermanence of the body clearly makes it possible for one to stake the body in the interest of a cause that could benefit humanity even in one’s absence. Of course the drive to seek justice in any case is a universal phenomenon.

Secondly, critics may argue that fasts are a form of blackmail, and hence must not be supported. However, the true success of a fast lies in the amount of support it garners from the general public. And it is here that we can hope that the moral compass of the ‘crowd’ will make the right choice, and support only just causes.

As analysts have pointed out, the Bill contains many structural flaws. First, there will be compulsory unseating of two-third of the members every election. Second, there will be no incentive for MPs to nurse constituencies. Third, there is the undeniable fact that family politics will be further enhanced as a male who suddenly loses his seat to a reserved constituency will be tempted to simply put up a female relative as a proxy. Thus the floodgates of bahu-betis may open. More here

The lyrics by Gulzar create in the mind an impression of tenuous knots of over a fifty years coming loose, at least for a moment of release.

Do Kadam, from Meenaxi.

It’s’ really a song about inviting life on a journey – or even the body and spirit urging each other to move towards a final destination or consummation, at a magical place full of mystery, beauty and fulfillment. And the last verse (Koun rehta hain sada? chalke dekhen to zara) is possibly the most philosophical question a hindi film lyric has ever asked, though I’m not about whether that was intentional.

Rehna Tu, from Delhi 6

I imagine a melancholic man walking alone through the streets of a city at midnight, lost in his own thoughts, while explaining his spiritual position on love to no one in particular except the night itself.

Q. The New York Times Magazine, I’ve been told by a former editor, considers itself “centrist” — playing stories straight down the center. Any comment?

— Ron Mwangaguhunga

A. Interesting. What you’re asking is: Does the Magazine have an ideology? At the risk of giving some of my colleagues hives, I think it does. Call it Urban Modern. That is, I think it reflects not a left-or-right POLITICAL ideology but a geographical one, the mentality of the place it is created: 21st Century Manhattan.

So: The Magazine reflects a place where women have professional ambition, where immigrants are welcome, and where gay men and lesbians can be themselves (if not marry, yet). The Magazine also reflects a place where being rich is not a bad thing, where fashion is not a sign of superficiality and where individualism is embraced. Here, arguing is not bad manners. Here, a chief way of loving your hometown is criticizing it: For, say, not doing enough for those (children, the poor, the homeless) who are most vulnerable. Here, art is seldom spoken of in moral terms, and most aspects of everyday life — food and drink and bathroom fixtures — are mostly spoken of in aesthetic terms. And here, as E.B White famously wrote, it tends to be those who come from elsewhere full of longing who make the place what it is.

More generally, we reflect a place where change is not a threat, where doubt and complexity are more TRUE than certainty, and where most everything non-criminal is tolerated — except a bad haircut.

More here

The current Minister of State also took gentle digs at Sonia Gandhi, pointing out that she went to Cambridge to study English, not political philosophy. Referring to Ms Gandhi’s “renunciation” and her nomination of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister, he said, “A builder’s daughter from Turino, without a college degree, with no experience of Indian life beyond the rarefied realms of the Prime Minister’s residence, fiercely protective of her privacy, so reserved and unsmiling in public that she has been unkindly dubbed ‘the Turin Shroud’ leading a billion Indians at the head of the world’s most complex, rambunctious and violent democracy? This situation, improbable if weren’t true, is proof again of the enduring appeal of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.”

Amazing that Tharoor got away with so much and also managed to get a ministerial berth in the current government.

Two books, two consequences

Most opinions end up becoming part of our identity. Any threat to the opinion becomes thus a threat to our ego, and our self definition. I think the best way is to have opinions, yet be sufficiently detached from them and allow them to be criticized.

Sen, a former Trinity master, economist, philosopher and mathematician, all rolled into one, in his latest book ‘The Idea of Justice’ says the income approach to poverty, which considers people earning less than a certain amount annually as poor, is not an accurate measure of how well people live.

Instead the laureate gives precedence to one’s capability or the capacity that people have of choosing and leading their lives. More here

Sagarika Ghose: So you are not saying talk to the enemy, do not lock him up.

Amartya Sen: No, I am not saying that.

Sagarika Ghose: But that’s the kind of message I am getting from your book.

Amartya Sen: Are you sure you are not reading a different book?

Three children — Anne, Bob and Carla — are quarrelling over a flute: Anne claims the flute on the ground that she is the only one of the three who knows how to play it; Bob demands it on the basis that he is so poor that — unlike others — he has no other toys to play with and it would therefore mean a lot to him if the flute were given to him; and Carla says that it belongs to her because she has made it with her own labour.

I think the best solution is for Carla to sell her flute to Anne for a price and thereby get rewarded for her efforts. In the interest of justice, Carla should probably teach Bob how to make his own flute. That way Bob gains a flute as well as the skill to make and sell more flutes, which in turn will hopefully make him ‘rich enough’ to buy other kinds of toys as well.  Sen believes there is no perfect solution.

I think this solution structure fits in well with the reservation debate in India. Meritorious students claim that they deserve seats in the best institutions owing to their demonstrated capabilities. The supporters of reservations argue that reserving seats (on non-merit based criteria) is the only way in which backward castes can get into the mainstream of society. The government of course actually creates or facilitates the creation of seats. So, what the government must do is to sell these seats to the meritorious for a price, and invest aggressively in the skill enhancement of the so called backward communities so that they can play on a level playing field with the others.

Instead the government is arbitrarily giving away seats to individuals who may not yet have developed adequate skills to compete with the mainstream, thereby ensuring that these people have a symbolic tag of education, but not necessarily skills that will lead to employment or any improvement in their quality of life.