Does anyone know, How British captured India ? Lord Macaulay, the first paymaster general between 1846 and 1848 in his address to British Parliament on 2^nd February, 1835(far before first war of Independence) said that “India is unable to conquer because of its cultural and spiritual heritage, so in order to conquer a country like India, we must have to weaken its cultural and spiritual heritage” and then what happened is a history.

Since the day we Indians are born, we found ourselves surrounded by corruption. For birth-certificate to Death-certificate, we need to pay bribe. We have no option because we believe that a stupid common man can do nothing. When someone else starts fighting for it, he becomes our hero. History is full of such heroes. Nowadays we found someone in our street, someone in our locality, someone in our city fighting for something. Do they deserve to be our Hero ? Yes, if they are fighting for us, not for fame or name. Today its very easy to become hero, pick a sensitive topic related to culture, religion or heritage. Find some person who is trying to deteriorate it and start fighting with him. You will soon become hero and will be compared with Gandhi, Teresa and other philanthropic creatures.

In recent days, Ramdev covers newspaper more than advertisements, earlier they used to cover the maximum portion but Ramdev had overtook them. Some are comparing Ramdev with Gandhi while others are seeing God in him, who took avtar to remove corruption form nation. Is it fair to compare Ramdev with Gandhi ? Gandhi was fighting against British ,they were like dictators and ruling over us without our desire. On the other hand, the govt that we have today is the one that we had voted yesterday. 70 years back we had no constitution, There was no democracy.   But now, we have Democratic govt, a democracy is considered to be the most powerful force that exists on this universe. We have the biggest constitution in this world, what’s the use of it if we are not going by it.

It seems very easy to curse things. Its not easy to govern the largest Democracy of the world, but still we are blessed to be governed by a man who got D.Phil from University of Oxford and Economic tripos from University of Cambridge, and we still think that we are in wrong hands.

How many of us really know about Ramdev demands.? 70% of the persons who were there on the Ramlila ground didn’t know 50% of what exactly Ramdev wanted and what were his demands, What they knew was someone was fighting against corruption and they had to support him. Ramdev is demanding abolishment of Rs1000 notes and Rs500 currency notes, so that people are not be able to take bribe, Is it feasible ?, what if they start taking it in dollars, Abolishing 500 or 1000 notes seems to be the stupidest method of curing corruption. He asked to disable the operations of any bank which belongs to a country that is a tax haven. To replace British-inherited system of governance, administration, taxation, education, law and order with a swadeshi alternative. Till date all my attempts to understand this vague word “Swadeshi” has gone in vain. My knowledge about things state that things are either right or wrong, good or bad. How can we differentiate between things because of their radix. Most of the languages of world including Italian and Chinese were derived from Sanskrit. If they can adopt good things from us, why not we.? He is demanding to promote Hindi at the expense of English. Is he now trying to cut us from the rest of world?

Ramdev who is speaking so much about and against corruption and asking to make wages of different categories of labourers uniform across the country, Himself imposes different fees for ones who sit in first row to the ones who sit in last in his shivirs.

The man who is fighting for publicity and not for corruption is taking the name of 400 lakh crore rupees in foreign banks to be deposited in govt. fund. But he himself had a turnover of 1200 crores in just one year(2009-2010). How can someone who is teaching Yoga philanthropically can earn so much. Its only when we do business we can earn so much money.

How many of us know that Ramdev, owns a complete Island, people used to own an apartment, a house and a bungalow but the yoga king owns a complete island near Scotland. When he was asked about it, he said he should teach yoga there. Either we Indians are super dumb or he is super intelligent. In anycase if we are supporting him, we are going against our govt and we ourselves are becoming the hurdles in smooth functioning of our govt. Let not Ramdev be next Lord Macaulay.

—-

Photo Credit: Satish Acharya

I’m Hindu by religion and grown up reading stories of Rama, Krishna, and Ganesh. As a kid, I used to visit temple with my Mom, had to fast on Mahashivratri, decorated temple on Janamashtmi to have a daity glimpse of God and had a deep rooted fear that If I did something wrong than Lord Kali would punish me. Spending my childhood in Rishikesh, Religion always fascinates me. But, till date all my attempts to understand my religion leads me to nowhere. I used to call myself Hindu but none of my religious book have a mention of the word “Hindu”. Infact, earlier I don’t know that Hinduism is not a religion, it’s a tradition. Its been a derivative of Sanatan Dharam.

The thing that confound me most about my religion is that I have to worship a pantheon of Gods. Every day of week is devoted to a single God and every God is unique in himself. If you like idealism, pray lord Rama, If you are notorious and contumacious, pray lord Krishna and if you want to success in career and studies, pray lord Saraswati. The religion itself is very flexible, there are no strict rules and guidelines which need to be followed. There is no one single religious book, There is no center body defining rules. Unlike Islam and Christianity where maulvi and Priest are shepherds, The Hindu priest is a man acting as a link between ourselves and our God. Our Gods are not divine creatures, though they have superficial powers, but we can follow them in our lifestyle.

The best thing about Hindu religion is manifestations, unlike Islam we need not to visit mosque five times a day or visit church on every Sunday, Hindu faith will manifest itself into his daily chores, We worship cows that stand in front of our house, We worship Stone, We worship river, We worship mountains and everything that surrounds us is God in one or another form.

But in recent past years, the religion has took a drastic change, Its been molded by our bloody politicians and other people so as to take benefit from it. Respect for nature has made Hindu non-violent by blood. But we have Mosque demolition and Gujarat riots which showcased the darker side religion. No religion can teach violence, In fact, love for mankind is the common thing on which all religions reside. But the lust of power and corruption has deteriorated mankind to such an extent, that it can’t even hesitate in using God. Casteism, the bitterest aspect of Hinduism, evolved during the period when Aryans visited india, was evolved for some good cause but since then it’s a game played by people to gain power.

There are things which should be kept away from deterioration and should be preserved and our religion is one of them. Moreover, Hinduism is not only a religion it’s tradition, philosophy and it’s a way of living. The things that governed us and benefit us till date, should continue govern us in the same way. So, its our moral duty to preserve our religion.

Now a days, The most common thing that we human beings come across is EXCUSES. Excuses for flunking a class, Excuses for failing in exam and excuses for missing deadline in office. The facet becomes worst when we start giving excuses to ourselves. Excuses for taking drugs, Excuses for breaking a relationship and an excuse for every nefarious act. The very fact is the day we start giving excuses to ourselves we are not in our mere control. A strong desire and indepth commitment never needs an excuse and every immoral act in this world starts with an excuse.

Lets take an example of Drinking When someone starts Drinking the First excuse he gives is “Do try everything in Life” and when this Trying becomes repeatable the excuse comes is “Drinking is bad only, if you are addicted to it, occasional drinking is never bad”. Later on when the frequency of these occasions increases and their time period decreases and one finds himself addicted to it, the next excuse is “Drinking is never bad until and unless after drinking you do something that is REALLY BAD” and when he starts doing something REALLY BAD the excuse is he can’t do anything because the things are now, not in his hand. So we found that how a simple excuse can change the things.

Giving excuse is never difficult. We can completely conclude a scenario or situation in simply few sentences or words. But at the same time, a voice from our inner soul, must question ourselves, our ability but later on when the frequency of these excuses increases we start overhearing that feeble voice.

When we failed in an exam, we have a wonderful universal excuse that Question Paper was tough, But there always exist a person who have performed well in that exam, If he can that why can’t we. We give excuse to ourselves when we break up with our near and dear ones saying that they are not honest and we are wrong in judging them. But how one person who once sounded perfectly perfect can turn into malevolent. They may for sometime behave undesirably but that doesn’t mean they have changed. What actually has changed is our opinion towards them and inspite of accepting it we gave ourselves lame excuses.

Life can be far better and perfect, if we stop giving ourselves excuses. Excuses are nothing but our weaknesses. If we are passionate about doing something then we never give any excuse. Moreover, if anyhow we have made mistake then its better to accept it than to make an excuse. Excuses lead to nowhere.