A monster called corruption

Synopsis : The corruption eats away the national wealth that can be used in the development of the country yet it is a worldwide phenomenon that needs intense scrutiny. This blog is about corruption and how to deal with it.

A monster called corruption

Source : Google photo

When I used to go to college every morning, I used to cross the bridge on the river which was a double-decker bridge meaning the trains passed on top and the vehicular traffic below. It is a steel bridge made during the British Raj that proudly showed the Liverpool emblem on its spans. It is a bridge over which passed a highway to the next state  so there was constant vehicular traffic day and night that was mostly truck traffic . We had to carefully stay on our narrow bicycle lane and hold on to the railings on the side whenever a train passed overhead shaking the bridge.

At the entrance to the bridge on both sides of the river stood a policeman who took money from the drivers of trucks and allowed them to pass. If the driver did not like to pay or not pay the right amount, he was not allowed to cross the river until he relented. The pocket of the policeman filled up quickly with money that he collected illegally the whole day and every day of the week and he was not ashamed that we noticed.

Now imagine thousands of policemen doing the same all over the country on national highways bothering truckers and collecting their loot openly and you will begin to understand the scale of the corruption nationwide. I have seen the same thing whenever I travelled by train when the ticket checker came at night on the long distance trains , sat down after checking the tickets of the passengers and then started taking money from those who had boarded the train without reservation . These people crowded the corridors bothering the passengers who had reservations and paid the bribe to stay.

The train coaches were divided among various ticket checkers to that the loot could be divided among them. This type of corruption goes on in thousands of trains nationwide in India where the train travel is the most popular mode of transport making the ticket checkers rich but I still feel ashamed to see such widespread corruption and greed everywhere in a country that was once known for its rich culture, religiosity and morally upright citizens.

The corrupt people there do not like to call it corruption but a facilitating fee that in some other countries are called the commission even if it is patently illegal to do so. You cannot get practically anything done unless you pay the bribe. The degree of corruption varies from the ordinary policeman to the train ticket checker to the clerks who work in various offices where one has to go to get the deed of sale or some such things.

In one such office the clerk kept on pulling out the drawer of his desk and pushing it shut to indicate that the bribe must be paid before he will do what he is paid to do so I was in a rebellious mood when I went to such office to register the deed of donation of my house to a religious organization. Luckily the Swamijee of the RK Mission himself went with me so they were ashamed to take bribe and processed the papers quickly.

The corruption comes in many forms. It is not simply the bribe they ask for but it shows when the milk vendor dilutes his milk with water, when the fishmongers colors the gills of fish with red tint to make it look fresh, when the salesman  cheats on the scale  and gives you less than what you pay for, when the cloth merchant cheats in measuring the length of cloth you buy , when they pump up chicken with water to make it heavier, when they sell you milk that carries the carcinogenic substance they inject into the cows, when people deliberately go to their office late and leave early. The corruption list is indeed a long one and new ways of corruption are being invented everyday by unscrupulous people everywhere in the world. No country is an exception.

When Howard Hughes was called to a Congressional meeting in Washington, D.C where they were investigating his business practices, he replied that wining and dining the government agents was a standard business practice so that he would get the lucrative contracts to build his planes. This is still the standard practice of business people there and in many countries. The government officers are given expensive gifts, plane tickets to Bahamas for vacation and numerous other enticements in order to get the government contracts that may run into millions.

One prince in the Middle East who lived in his palace of 200 rooms and 18 dining areas with a staff of 150 said that he was just a commissioner taking a 15 to 20 % of the total contract to buy defense equipment that explained his wealth. The makers of the equipment simply inflated the price of the planes or tanks to cover this commission thus costing the tax payers millions in additional costs so that is corruption on a very large-scale.

You could see this corruption in Rumania where a dictator built a thousand room palace decorated with very expensive chandeliers and gold bath tub while the people remained very poor and jobless. He was not so lucky because the enraged people caught up with him and his wife and shot them dead on the spot just like Gaddafi.

So corruption is not just taking a bribe but comes in many forms and deprives the national exchequer billions of dollars in revenues that could be used to build schools and hospitals and infrastructure everywhere. In some countries like China, the government comes down hard on people once they catch them stealing money and taking bribes to do their job and punish them with death with just a bullet at the back of the head and bill the family for the bullet. It is quite effective as I was told people are scared to take bribe there.

But in India, a corrupt man or woman does not get this sort of punishment and often goes Scott free although I know a case in my hometown where a person got his come uppance the hardest way possible when he invited his boss to the blessing of his new house. The boss was surprised at the lavish house because he knew the salary of the person and wondered how he could afford such a house. So he ordered an audit when he got back to his office. The audit proved that this person could never have built a lavish house on his salary even if he saved it all for many years so the ill-gotten wealth was the suspect. The fellow was dismissed from the service and his pension and all benefits were frozen but this is a rare case of punishment.

Now in some countries the governments are finding new ways of fighting corruption. In India it was the standard practice for any government contractor to take a part of the salary from all the workers he employed. They worked very hard to build roads and bridges etc. but had to pay the contractor his share from their hard-earned money. Now the Government pays the workers directly into their bank account where the bank issues them ATM cards.

Similarly in the Philippines the government started paying the school teachers their salaries directly into their bank accounts cutting out the middle men who were exploiting the poor teachers and taking most of their salaries just because the teachers had borrowed some money from them.

I think the corruption is closely related to the moral degeneration of people everywhere these days. When people deliberately blur the line between what is moral and immoral then corruption becomes easier on their conscience if they have any to begin with.  I knew an old man who bragged that his son was earning with his two hands. When people tend to forget the  difference between the right and wrong than it becomes easier to steal. It all starts with greed and the easy way to satisfy the greed.

Some say that the poverty is the reason but I know many poor people in many countries who are not greedy and who are not corrupt. So poverty itself alone does not make a person corrupt so what does?  An Indian saw the milkman putting milk filled bottles at the door steps of houses in England and collecting the empty ones so he suggested that the poor milkman could make more money by diluting the milk. The milkman was very surprised at such an immoral suggestion and asked if the Indian had children and how he would feel giving diluted milk to his children. There was no answer so he retorted that Sir we do not do such immoral things in England.

The houses collapse due to poor construction materials used by the corrupt contractors so many people die buried under the rubble due to earth quakes like in Haiti or Mexico. The irrigation canals break apart because the contractor steals money and puts less cement and more sand in Haiti. A large sugar mill just outside Port Au Prince in Haiti stands as a monument to corruption of the Duvalier government that never finished the project and letting all the imported equipment rust. The same thing happened to an unfinished factory on the way to Meroe in Sudan that is rusting and being claimed by the desert sand.

All over the world one can see the waste of tax payers’ money this way in massive failed projects due to widespread corruption. Just outside El Obeid also in Sudan where I used to work, there are plastic storage bins imported from Italy that are falling apart but no one cares. Massive steel pipes rust by the roadside near El Obeid that were never used to bring fresh water to the town from a great distance  although only some 12 kms remained to complete the pipeline.  I can cite many such examples in many countries all pointing to corruption.

When people are not accountable then there is no end to corruption. The huge unfinished nuclear power plant in Bataan in the Philippines is one more classic example of corruption where you can see all the equipment imported at a great cost is just rusting away while the government is still paying for it after all these years.

Let us now examine the root cause of all sorts of corruption I mentioned above. I think the corruption thrives in any society where there is no accountability and where the moral compass has gone haywire. This has something to do with the degeneration of values that defines a people who honored honesty above all virtues. The basic commandments of Moses written in stones are placed in front of many public buildings in many countries but do people seriously follow those commandments? One says “Thou shall not steal” but do some people believe in it?

Mohamed said that the thieves should be punished and their hands cut off but some of the biggest commissioners are found in the Middle East living in their 200 room palaces. They are not accountable to anyone. So I see a degeneration of moral values and principles that are necessary to build the foundation of a just society where no one steals , lies or cheats others, where people are honest and help each other at the time of need.

These values are learned at home so a child growing up in a family where honesty is their hallmark then the child learns to be honest but if the child sees that the parents are dishonest who cheat others and lie all the time then the child absorbs these things as well because he is like a sponge that soaks up anything good or bad. This brings me back to the subject of religion again because all religions teach honesty, truthfulness and how to develop a strong moral character among other things.

There was a time when the religion played an important role in the life of an average person and taught him how to be a good person but we see now a decline of this role that religions used to play but do so with fewer rigors. I will not write about the scandals that plague many churches where pedophilia exists and where the priests have lost their moral ascendancy over the people in their parish because no one believes in such priests. So who will guide the common people who are looking for moral guidance? Just say Hail Mary a thousand times and sin no more kind of advice will not cut anymore because the corrupt people know that a few Hail Mary will exculpate them so that they  can go on doing bad things. It reminds me of the mafia movies.

So in conclusion I think that the common people who have lost their moral compass need a strong leader who they believe in and whom they want to follow as a good example who can extricate them from the morass of immorality they find themselves in and lift the people to greater height of glory with moral rejuvenation. Such leaders are very rare now so it must start with the parents who must teach their children the good values and strong morality through their own example. Perhaps it will take a generation or two to make any country great and not just slogans.

 

Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links as well as my biography:

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The untouchables

The untouchables

Synopsis : This blog is about the plight of the untouchables in India and elsewhere who are slowly gaining their rights that have been denied them for centuries by the upper caste Brahmins and what the future holds for them.

Source: Google photo of untouchable woman cleaning toilets

There was a time when the Hindus stratified their society based on the trade the people were involved in so the Brahmins occupied the highest level because they were the sole dispenser of knowledge .They alone  could read the Vedas and opened schools to teach other Brahmins the ancient texts in Sanskrit and  to become teachers themselves later. Next to the Brahmins were the warrior caste that was called the Kshatrias who were responsible for the military protection of the kingdoms and were trained in the martial art by the Brahmin gurus but only the selected few of noble families were thus trained who in their turn trained others like the soldiers.

The third caste was that of the tradesmen called Vaishyas who were not educated in the Bhahmin schools but knew enough of math to keep their records and run their business but it is the last caste called the Sudras  who are the subject of this blog today. They were relegated to the lowest in the caste rankings and were the untouchables because they cleaned the toilets, swept the streets and carried off the dead animals and did all the other things that others of superior caste did not.

This caste distinction was arbitrary and was designed by the Brahmins to keep to themselves all the power and prestige that came with their superior position in the society not to mention money and property and keep others in their place who had to be always subservient to the ruling class of Brahmins. The Brahmins kept them uneducated deliberately so that they could not compete with them in any way or challenge their authority in the society. They invented numerous rules and laws to protect their privileges and added more rules as their list of privileges grew that made them super powerful.

There is a story from Mahabharata which is the Hindu epic story of the Kauravas and Pandavas and their battle for supremacy where a Brahmin guru who trained the princes in the martial art went to the forest with his students in tow for hunting and practicing their skills in archery. Their dogs also followed them and started to bark furiously at something or someone deep in the forest but came back with a mouth full of arrows. Now the Guru named Drone was very surprised at this skill of the archer and wanted to find him and learn where he had learned such skills because none of his students were this proficient.

He found a young boy practicing his archery in front of a statue of Drone himself who said that he had silenced the dogs because they were disturbing him during his practice so Drone asked him who he was .He said that he was a tribal boy of low social standing who could not get admitted to the archery school of Drone so he built a statue of Drone and practiced his skills in the archery. Now Arjun was the favorite of his teacher and became very jealous of the tribal boy called Ekalavya and asked his teacher to demand a token of tribute from the tribal boy.

The cruelty of this story is that the teacher then asked the boy to cut off his thumb to give it to him as a tribute so the boy did so rendering his hand useless. This was suggested by Arjun who did not like anyone better than him.

The Brahmins were very good at keeping others in their place to safeguard their own status and made sure that everyone followed the rules so this caste system worked for centuries. The Brahmins being the educated people who ran schools for other elites were exalted by all the kings and queens who paid them gifts in gold and land because the Brahmins were even higher in status than the kings and queens.

I give you this background about the origin of the untouchables that has divided the Hindus since a long time about what to do with the lowest of the low-caste of the untouchables because they still cannot accept that all human beings are equal no matter what trade they are in and must be treated with compassion and fairness. The untouchables suffered  under this arbitrary rule imposed on them for centuries and were abused by the higher caste people  until the Moslem invaders came to India and declared that all human beings are equal in the eyes of God so must become Moslems and follow the dictates of Koran.

So many millions of the low-caste people converted some willingly and others were forced to do so creating the huge Moslem population in India that led to many riots, massacres and wars that redefined the political borders of the vast subcontinent called India. Some even wanted to return to their original faith but the high nose Hindu Brahmins said that reconversion was forbidden so they vowed to become a perpetual thorn on the side of the Hindus.

We now come to the present period when we see that the so-called untouchables are going through a transformation due to many steps taken by the government that encourages their education and reserves a certain percentage of all government jobs for them if they are educated.  Vir Savarkar fought very hard for their right to be treated fairly and compelled the Brahmins to admit them into places of worship that was previously forbidden to them. Thus slowly the untouchables now called the schedule caste people gained the rights denied them for centuries by the higher caste people. They fought elections and won to become parliamentarians and one of them has now become the President of India.

But the deeply entrenched caste system is easier to get rid of through legislation than in reality so most Brahmins still practice them and will not allow an untouchable to caste even their dirty shadow on them that makes them impure. Gandhi and Ambedkar fought hard for the low-caste people for limited rights although Gandhi himself was a believer in the caste system so could not demand an abolition of the system as such.

So what has changed? I think most people do not even realize that the World Bank had something to do with the change in the status of the untouchables. They funded the improvement of the sewer system in many towns where the old system was slowly replaced by the flush toilets thus freeing the janitors who were the untouchables from their dirty job of cleaning toilets. I myself built a flush toilet in my parent’s house with a huge septic tank when there was no sewer line nearby. The others who helped uplift the untouchables were the Moslems and later the evangelical Christians because there are no untouchables in their religion.

Still there are a large number of such people who continue to be treated abominably by the upper caste Hindus who resist any reform in the system of caste differentiation because they believe in it and practice it.

Source : Google photo of Twa children in Burundi who are the untouchables.

To treat a human being in the abominable way is no longer acceptable anywhere no matter what their culture and tradition dictates. But I have seen the same thing in Africa where the Twa people in Burundi and Rwanda are treated like animals and are not allowed to live among the Hutus and Tutsis so these poor uneducated people live in grass huts at the outskirt of villages and somehow make a pitiful living working as carpenters and blacksmiths.

We find this sort of social stratification in many parts of the world where even today there are House of Lords and commons in England and the old bourgeoisie in Europe still thrives although not to the extent like elsewhere. I have always admired people who through their example have tried to be social reformers like Vir Savarkar and  Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar and Swami Vivekananda. The founder of Brahmo Samaj in Bengal was the Thakur family of Rabindra Nath that explained that there has to be a new way of treating people like humans who have equal rights and equal place in the society but were ridiculed by the traditional Hindus who considered them as renegades who did not believe in their caste system and tried to reform the rigid system. The Brahmos were the equivalent of the protestant movement in Europe notably in Germany. Thus the Brahmo Samaj people have remained in the fringes as their movement never really caught on due to strong resistance from others.

Vidya Sagar and Raja Ram Mohan Roy pushed for the marriage of young widows and offered educational and job opportunities to them when the Hindus treated the widows with scorn and ridicule for getting married again. They were the real social reformers of their time but the most un appreciated people  even today are the untouchables who are trying hard to be appreciated  because they are now getting education and jobs that were denied them for centuries.

The aversion to doing the dirtiest work like cleaning toilets by the upper caste Hindus was the main reason for the social degradation of the untouchables. Someone had to do it so they created the caste system that gave these people the lowest status if at all in their society and made sure that they stayed in their caste so the marriage to upper caste people was prohibited. Once you are born in a caste, you remain there for ever no matter how much education you get and improve your life.  It is like the children of former slaves in Africa are still treated with scorn by others although it is not limited to Africa.  The white supremacists in the USA still look down on the blacks because they are the descendants of slaves that their forefathers owned.

Buddha preached 2500 years ago that all human being deserve fair and equal treatment irrespective of their trades but it came into the conflict with the strict Brahmins who saw it as a threat to their supremacy so instead of treating Buddhism as a separate religion, they assimilated it into their own religion albeit with the caveat that the caste system stays. Thus Buddhism practically disappeared from India and spread elsewhere in the world.

The Hindus and the Buddhists are not evangelists like the Christians or the Moslems so they did not force people to become Hindus or Buddhists. Those who became converted in other countries did it out of their own volition because they saw something good in it although unequal treatment of a fellow human being was not one of them.

The future:

Source: Google photo of untouchable children studying to improve their status in the Hindu society

Now I see a change in the attitude of some people in India who grudgingly admit that the caste system has outlived its usefulness and needs to conform to the needs of a modern society where everyone should have equal opportunity in education and jobs so that the country as a whole can make progress. But they will stop short at social mixing with the untouchables so the intermarriage is still a taboo that no one wants to break. I know people who have married outside their religion and are somehow accepted but a person of higher caste marrying an untouchable woman is unheard of because of strong social disapproval.

Strangely enough some religious leaders were strong advocates of equal rights for everyone so among them we know of Swami Dayananda  Saraswati who formed the Arya Samaaj ( Society of Aryas) that helps poor people get married at no cost and dowry . They perform mass marriage from time to time and even help find suitable bride or groom for each other so these are some of the steps taken by the social reformers who are trying to chip away at the foundation of the caste system that breeds inequality among people.

Source : Google photo of Swami Dayananda Saraswati

Dayananda Saraswati (12 February 1824 – 30 October 1883) was an Indian religious leader and founder of the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movements of the Vedic dharma. He was also a renowned scholar of the Vedic lore and Sanskrit language. … He was a sanyasi (ascetic) from boyhood, and a scholar.( Source : Wikipedia)

I think the future generation will come to realize that rigid people must change with the time or else their system will come under greater scrutiny by the new, young and educated generation that wants to do away with the old system and bring about greater equality to all people so perhaps there will come a time when there will be no more untouchables. The pressure to change is on so I think it is only a matter of time while in the meantime, the diehard Brahmins continue their old ways.

Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.

Mis blogs en espagnol

Blogs von Anil in Deutsch

Blogs in Japanese

My blogs at Wix site

tumblr posts    

Blogger.com

Medium.com

Anil’s biography in English.

Biographie d’Anil en français

La biografía de anil en español.

Anil’s Biografie auf Deutsch

Anil’s biography in Japanese

Биография Анила по-русски

What is your mettle?

Synopsis : This blogs deals with the subject of sheer human courage called mettle that can bring about profound changes in the society and challenges the wrongdoers but often suffers the consequences in terms of personal sacrifices.

What is your mettle?

Published by The Associated Press, originally photographed by Jeff Widener, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=239713

It is a loaded word that means far more than what it implies so simply. The mettle of a person shows his  true character and his  resolve in facing adversity even at the cost of his life. How many people you know who have this resolve ,who stand up for their rights and are willing to suffer pain and even death but will not yield on their principle one bit ? Rare is such a person but they are the ones who make history by sacrificing themselves so that others may enjoy freedom.

There is a girl who took a bullet in her head because she believes in education for all girls in the world. We have all heard of her because she has the mettle and her name is Malala Yousafzai. There was a man who fought apartheid in South Africa and spent 28 years in prison because he had mettle. His name was Nelson Mandela. The history of mankind is full of such people who had the courage and audacity to stand for what they believed and paid a heavy price because tyrants, dictators and evil people in this world hate such courage and try to crush it because they tremble in fear facing such pure energy coming from poor, helpless and defenseless people who symbolize all that is good and decent. They hate it because they know the power of good over evil.

The Talibans hate Malala because they know that she is right and they are wrong. The racist people hate the activists who are fighting for a world free of hate and racism. The mill owners hate the workers who demand for their rights, better pay and health care. The ruthless landlords hate the poor tenant farmers who demand a better compensation for all the hard work they do to grow the food. The middle men hate the farmers who want to sell their produce directly to the consumers at a lower price.

The evil people always hate those who are fighting the evil in this world because they make money through the human exploitation but they fear the activists who try to make this world a better place for everybody and have the mettle. The lone Chinese boy facing the tanks in Tian An Men square had the mettle and he was willing to be crushed under the tank to prove that he was fighting for the freedom of everyone. I would very much like to know the name of that courageous person and know if he is still alive and free. All over the world we find people who are willing to step forward and be heard and who are willing to make the extreme sacrifice of their lives so that others may be free.

There is a tremendous amount of money to be made through all the evil activities everywhere so we see the mafia, the drug dealers, the smugglers of humans and goods, the poachers who kill rare and beautiful animals for profit, the polluters of land, water and air so that they can make money, the dictators and tyrants who hang on to power no matter how much people suffer. The world is so full of evil people that sometimes it seems an impossible task to overcome them.

They steal, rule and kill innocent people with impunity because they feel that they are above the law so no one can bring them to justice. They bribe the justices and policemen and when that does not work, send in their goons to threaten or kill them. They hire goons to protect them all the time and erect iron clad security around them because they are so afraid of the oppressed people who may one day claim retribution.

So I greatly admire the activists who show their mettle and who are not afraid to stand up and face the threat when no one will. They are truly the special people who are born courageous to fight injustice everywhere but are always beaten, incarcerated, tortured and even killed by the evil people because the evil is always afraid of such pure energy of goodness that ultimately overwhelms them and relegates them to the dustbin of history. Where is Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Mugabe, Marcos, Noriega and their cohorts? Where is Genghis Khan, Shaka, Mutesa, Mobutu and thousands of others who were so powerful but died in ignominy?

It takes great courage to fight evil when you are weak, powerless and frail. It takes tremendous courage to fight evil when you are poor and sick, without voice and support. Often the activists find themselves fighting a lonely battle against very powerful and evil people who have all the money and resources to harm you and tie you up in lengthy court battles for years through their paid and immoral lawyers when direct threat does not work. It makes the activists shine all the more because they are the underdogs who fight for what is right so win the hearts of all the victims they represent.

There was a lady who saw how the poor female embroiders in Lucknow were exploited by the cruel middlemen who paid them pittance for the exquisite embroideries they produced in low light and in dark slum like workshops so she organized a cooperative to improve their situation, gave them well lit and clean workshops and freed them from slavery and sold their products at a great price that benefitted the women directly for the first time. But the lady was threatened by the evil middle men with death daily until the government gave her the protection she needed. Such is the life of an activist.

The jails all over the world are full of people who simply wanted a better life for themselves and for others, wanted religious freedom, freedom to speak freely and demonstrate but it could not be tolerated by the authorities so they are thrown in jails where they are mistreated, poorly fed and even tortured. Vir Savarkar was beaten and tortured daily by his jailer in Andaman just because he wanted freedom for all Indians.

Rajeev Dixit was murdered by the goons because he was an activist who was not afraid to talk about all the corrupt and immoral politicians in India and exposed them in his U tube videos openly so he was killed. Did he not know the danger he was in? I am sure he did but continued anyway knowing that any day it could be his last .He had mettle. It is this sheer courage of such people that separates them from the rest because they are not afraid to stand alone and fight by speaking out or writing. Pen is mightier than a sword so the evil people are very afraid of the pen.

The newspaper journalists are also very courageous and expose wrong doings of the powerful daily so they are hauled to the court on false charges and are often forced to reveal their sources of information by the corrupt judges. The judges are in cahoots with the evil politicians so they help protect the evil and punish the activists.

The Archbishop Romero was shot dead in El Salvador because he always spoke out about the exploitation of the poor in his country and Pope John Paul. II was shot because the Moslems falsely thought that he was against them. They were the prominent people who tried to help the poor and suffered the consequences. But the activists who are thrown in jail and beaten or killed are the common people who are often not known at all but they emerge out of obscurity because they feel that they must take a stand even if alone . That takes tremendous courage.

We know them when they try to protect tortured animals and help create sanctuaries for them like in India where they protect the bears and other endangered animals from the abusers. We know them when they try to protect the poor women embroiders of Lucknow from the cruel middlemen. We know them when we see them marching against the pollution of water, land and air by the big companies that dump waste everywhere without care or concern. We see them when they pick up the oil drenched sea birds and mammals, clean them and bring them back to life.

They are the everyday common people with an uncommon will to fight for what is right so they are my heroes. They are vilified, threatened and often beaten by the goons sent by the evil people who are the wrongdoers because the evil people themselves remain behind the buffer and hire people to do their dirty work for them. You can never prove in a court who gave the order to murder Rajeev Dixit or Bishop Romero because such orders are not given in a way that can be proven just like in the mafia movies.

All over the world in practically every country, you will find them in the person of Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Che Guevara, Vir Savarkar, Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar Ajaad, Queen Lakhsmi Bai of Jhansi who sacrificed themselves for others.

But the ordinary people can also be heroes because they too keep on fighting for what is right in their own way. When you refuse to pay bribe and stand your ground, you are a hero. When you raise your child properly and give him an education in spite of your poverty and great difficulties, you are a hero. When you speak up against workplace sexual harassment of female staff, you are an activist and a hero even if you get fired from your job for taking a stand. When you stop a child molester and bring him to justice, you are a hero and an activist. When you rescue poor village girls from slavery and prostitution, you are an activist and a hero.

Man Singh was a modern-day Robin Hood and helped poor farmers fight for their rights in Bhind and Morena but he was shot dead by the police with 64 bullets because they were protecting the cruel land lords and not the exploited farmers in India. This kind of story is repeated all over the world even today because the rich and the powerful feel that they can do anything and get away with it but there comes a person with a mettle who says it is wrong what you are doing so it must stop.

Do you have the mettle?

 

Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.

Mis blogs en espagnol

Blogs von Anil in Deutsch

Blogs in Japanese

My blogs at Wix site

tumblr posts    

Blogger.com

Medium.com

Anil’s biography in English.

Biographie d’Anil en français

La biografía de anil en español.

Anil’s Biografie auf Deutsch

Anil’s biography in Japanese

Биография Анила по-русски

Patriarchal dichotomy:

Synopsis : This blog is about the conflict between the exalted position of women as deities in Hindu religion and their treatment of women as inferior to men due to their tribal tradition of patriarchy.

Patriarchal dichotomy:

Source : Google photo

I have written a few times about the patriarchal system practiced in India and its effect on the people who grow up biased against women from their childhood. Today I would like to expand on this theme and study the great pernicious effect called the gender bias in India that denigrate women to a secondary role in the Hindu society although their religion places great importance of worshipping female deities like Kali, Durga and many others. This is where lies the dichotomy of their society that on one hand venerates female deities and on the other hand relegates women into a subservient role that diminishes their importance in their society as a whole.

I think this dichotomy comes from the tribal origin of the patriarchal system and has less to do with the religion itself although if you will study the ancient literature of India, you will learn how great women were and how their intellect and ability to govern or take part in the important matter of the state were highly appreciated by everyone. Women had equal rights in every respect and chose their mates freely often in open contest where prospective grooms had to prove their worth in intelligence as well as military prowess.

There were great mathematicians and astrologers in the ancient times who were women so much so that the ancient sages named them in the Vedas and Puranas  full of their praises. Ghosha( wisdom), Lopamudra( intelligence),  Maitreyi ( philosophy),  Gargi ( Philosophy),  Swati,  Arundhati ,  Khana  and many others are mentioned for their contribution to the intellectual  discussion that led to the  development of  Vedic  scriptures and many treatise on great Hindu philosophies. Men and women had equal rights in education and some were trained in martial arts just like men whereas the Greek and other ancient civilizations gave women a secondary role and were not in favor of giving  those equal rights and education.

Female deities in the Hindu religion were given more importance than males so their names appear first like Sita Ram, Lakshmi Narayan etc. Here are some women who are known as the role models for all women in India.

Lalita Mahatripura Sundari. (Supreme Goddess who is even higher than Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra.)

1) Sita. (Intelligence, Self-determination, and courage.)
2) Savitri. (Self Determination and intelligence.)
3) Anasuya. (For her humility, and extreme power.)
4) Satyabhama. (Valour.)
5) Lopamudra (composer/contributor of Rig Veda.)
6) Vakh Ambrini (composer/contributor of Rig Veda.)

We see how highly women were placed in the Vedic society and how much their abilities in science, mathematics, philosophy ,astronomy and other fields of knowledge were appreciated and praised in the scriptures so long ago but when we come to the present period of the long Hindu civilization, we find that women do not enjoy the equality they did long ago and have definitely regressed to the point where they are treated as less than males and therefore subject to greater scrutiny  and restrictions that  casts a dark shadow on the Hindu society as a whole .

We therefore ask what has caused this regression and why the Hindus do not see it as a dichotomy. Why they venerate the women as deities on one hand and treat their women less than men. I think this is where the tribalism comes in that introduces bias against women that has nothing to do with the past glories of women as mentioned above. Hindus see it as a separate issue that has less to do with their religion and more to do with the Hindu culture where the patriarchal system is firmly established that favors boys over girls.

Let us now analyze this and find out the reasons behind the development of the patriarchy that favors boys and not girls. I have written in my earlier blogs that the property inheritance from father to son to grandson is the practice in such a system where the females do not enjoy the same rights as males and where the females are seen as the liability and not the assets. This denigrates females automatically to a subservient role in the patriarchal society where they become the passive participants in the society because all the important decisions are made by the males in favor of males. Women are married off and leave the family whereas the men stay and look after the parents and grandparents. This is perhaps one of the reasons for patriarchy that is self-serving.

But I have to go back to the period when the role of women in the society started to diminish and the reason why. I think  the Moslem invasion of India and its subjugation by them for centuries led to the  idea that women were subject to protection being of the weaker sex so many restrictions on them were introduced by men to “ protect them” from those who saw their liberty as an invitation to molest them with impunity. Beautiful women were kidnapped and sold to prostitution or worse and were traded freely by the invaders so women started to hide their faces by wearing veils for the first time. As late as the 7^th century, women were quite free and dressed as they liked judging from the Khajuraho  temple sculptures but slowly they gave up their freedom to be safe from marauders.

A woman alone could no longer walk anywhere without being molested so she became dependent on the males for her protection. The dependency led to subservience that diminished her role as an equal participant in the development of the society. Her roles became limited to breeding, raising the children and preparing the home and hearth to serve her male relatives. The education for them became secondary as she was not expected to work and earn a living so became totally dependent on the males who were the bread earners and who assumed the role of superiority over women. Thus they assumed the role of provider and the protector of women that further eroded woman’s rights as enjoyed by them during the Vedic period.

I think this background is necessary to understand the status of women in India today because it is all tied to the history. It is of no use talking to men about women’s rights and equality as they had enjoyed in the past because the patriarchal system is well established and deeply entrenched everywhere so people just follow it instead of challenging it and changing it.

There is another factor that influences this bias against women in India. It is called the fear of women. People are very afraid of women who now demand equality in every respect because that challenges the male dominance of the society that can turn the patriarchal system upside down and may have drastic unknown social consequences  so people try hard not to abandon the only system they have known and embrace something unknown.

The system favors males over females so they are not ready to see a new breed of educated women who are joining the work force, now join the army and the air force and are showing that they are in no way inferior to anyone in any field. There are women pilots, engineers, doctors, scientists, teachers and great athletes who win accolades. They are proving that they as working mothers can and do raise good families and help improve their standard of living by earning in full-time jobs. This is a drastic change from the past that gives women more voice than their mothers and grandmothers who were so tied to their home and hearth that they had to sacrifice their own ambitions and aspirations for the sake of peace and amity.

But the tribal culture that views women as the weaker sex and of inferior status in the society still persists in the mainly uneducated class where the tribalism is rife and where women are still mistreated based on certain beliefs. I have written in the past that the sexual harassment and abuse of women is a form of social disapproval albeit in a violent form of liberated woman who walks alone or with a male friend at night or dresses in a certain way that provokes cat calling and eve teasing. It is their way of telling that the traditional society does not approve the behavior of newly liberated women so they must be shown disapproval this way often with tragic consequences.

It is in no way different from other strictly traditional societies where they require women to wear Abaya or a black tent with only two peep holes and where they may not walk alone anywhere or even drive. In India it is not so drastic but the social disapproval of women dressing nontraditionally and demanding equal rights exists although women are gaining more independence through education and better working opportunities that good quality education provides them.

In one aspect women are still very dependent on their parents is the matter of marriage because the parents feel that it is their traditional duty to arrange the marriage of their daughter so she must not have a boyfriend and declare a “love marriage” because the marriage is India has nothing to do with love at first and is purely an arranged marriage. By and large most women accept it as their fate because they are not allowed to have a boyfriend.  A girl child is told not to look at boys or play with them since the childhood and the boys are told the same thing so there is a strict separation of sexes even when the children do not understand what their sex means to others.  A boy who plays with girls is teased endlessly by other boys and called names.

I know this because I was so teased by other boys but I ignored them because as children we did not put any importance to the artificial separation of sexes this way until much later when the society became more intolerant to the notion of teen age infatuations.  At the age of eight, my best friend was a girl and even at the age of 13 or 14 ,my neighbors I played with were girls of my own age and were my friends but I was a rebel from the start and did not much believe in conventions.

Girls in India now say that the boys do not know how to behave with girls so are very awkward if they are thrown together socially because they do not know how to accept girls naturally and behave in a normal way. May be it is also true of girls because they too have the same type of upbringing. Now with the spread of education for both sexes, there is a natural mixing in colleges and later at the work places so they are learning how to behave toward each other in a normal way but still need approval of their parents for marriage for the sake of tradition.

A great deal of sexual abuse, harassment and eve teasing is the result of strict traditional upbringing of boys who look at girls in a patronizing way and at best become proprietary toward them. No boy I know has ever stood up to his parents and say that I will not marry a woman whom I do not know and will not agree that you take a dowry from the poor girl’s parents.  Any woman who knows about such a principled person will have great deal of respect for him even if he is not the chosen groom for her but I have not met such a person.

In fact I have not met a single woman who is so principled  either although I have heard of cases where  girls broke off the  engagement on the day of marriage due to excessive demands of the groom or the would be in-laws for dowry and gifts because they had self-respect and could not tolerate such abomination. But such girls are rare and need to come forward to give hope to millions of girls who are so chained to their traditions. To break with tradition requires a great deal of courage and independence because people are afraid of social disapprobation. Perhaps the parents are more afraid so they insist of the tradition and require the sons and daughters to obey them. The education has less to do with the making of a principled man or woman and has more to do with the realization that there are inherent flaws in the tradition they practice so it must be corrected.

When the boys and girls, men and women learn to act naturally toward each other, they take a giant step toward dismantling the patronizing patriarchal system and make the society more just and fair. In equal treatment for the sons and daughters, the parents also take the first step in promoting equal rights for the women and help weaken the patriarchal system that normally defies such pressure to change. This come from the education of the parents who then promote the education of their children so I believe that eventually women will gain more rights, more education and more independence from the tribal culture and live the way they want.

The golden age of female liberation  as  enjoyed during the Vedic period may still be a pipe dream for most women but with the spread of education particularly in the middle class, more and more women will start to stand up for their rights to choose their mates and live the life they all dream of . But this will only happen when men also come forward and show some spine to meet the expectations of college educated women of today  and acknowledge that  the ancient traditions  are now outdated  because women are a very integral part of the development of a new society that is fair, just and equitable . I still have hope because it does not make sense to venerate female deities and denigrate women at the same time just because the tradition calls for it. Such dichotomy has no place in any modern society anywhere so I say to all boys and girls “Come forward and join hands to make our society a better place for everyone “.

 

Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.

Mis blogs en espagnol

Blogs von Anil in Deutsch

Blogs in Japanese

My blogs at Wix site

tumblr posts    

Blogger.com

Medium.com

Anil’s biography in English.

Biographie d’Anil en français

La biografía de anil en español.

Anil’s Biografie auf Deutsch

Anil’s biography in Japanese

Биография Анила по-русски

The concept of family

Synopsis : The blog is about the meaning of family in the modern era and the interrelationship between the members of a family that faces many challenges and stress due to many social reasons.

The concept of family

Source : Google photo

What is a family and why it means different things to different people? I have asked this question to many people I know but never received satisfactory answer so today I decided to try to answer this question using my own experience in life and open up a channel of discussion among my readers.

I often use the analogy of a hand to describe what a family is. Looking at the hand we notice that all the fingers are of different length, thickness and of use although they all belong to the same hand. Similarly all the siblings coming from the same parents may have very different personalities and grow up differently from each other although they all receive the same parental care and upbringing if the parents are not biased by their culture and upbringing. That is a big if.

We all know that people are a product of their upbringing, their beliefs and their social environment where the beliefs are born and instilled in a person at a certain age. In some cultures, they prefer male children and look down on the females so there is a built-in bias in favor of males and against the females. In such societies the male children are pampered, given education and inherit properties of the parents after their death while the females are married off so that the parents can literally wash their hands off. This is the common practice in patriarchal societies.

I know of a case where the second wife of a person who had lost his first wife was so pressured by her husband to favor the first child who was a son that she did so at the expense of all her daughters. He had to be given the finest food and clothes while the daughters were neglected. They could not even eat at the same table with their brother and waited pitifully until the first-born was attended to. They wore tattered and soiled clothes while the parents showered their attention on the son. The result was that the son lost his mental balance and became a nutcase. The daughters left the family one by one after their marriage and never looked back.

This is perhaps an extreme case of psychologically deranged parents who needed professional help to learn a thing or two about raising children properly giving them the equal and fair treatment but sadly they did all the wrong things resulting in the insanity in the family.

You have heard of the female infanticide in India which is like an epidemic due to a mistaken belief that the male children are more preferable than the females so the government had to enact a law to ban the ultrasound to determine the sex of the baby before birth so that the parents will not opt for an abortion. I did not know this and thought that the women in India were very stupid to believe that a baby must cook inside for 10 months and 10 days and that the sex is known only after the birth.

They had never heard of ultrasound and their beliefs were based on old wives’ tales and not facts. Then the transvestite who are in cahoots with the nurses in the hospitals find your address and come to your gate to dance and demand a lot of money if a son is born. The superstitious women who favor sons are so afraid of the curses of the transvestites that they give anything to get rid of them. Needless to say that the birth of a daughter is totally ignored by the transvestites due to social reasons so it is a blessing in disguise.

Such social customs and traditions are practiced in the Indian subcontinent that is based on the inheritance laws that are purely tribal in nature where the sons inherit the property and not the daughters hence the preference of sons over daughters.  The daughters once married leave the family, change their family name and belong to another family so the main reason for the property laws was to keep out the in-laws who were not family. The parents feel that their obligation to the daughters is limited only to paying their dowry for the marriage.

There has been a sea change in this tradition and social behavior among the educated middle class in India that limits the family to a maximum of two children and many have only one child due to the economic pressure and high cost of living so lucky is the child if she happens to be a girl and often the only child so she gets all the attention, education and even inherits the property of the parents.

But in rural India where the education is low and people have large families, such preference for boys is still popular. In such rural families, the girls at a very early age are married off although child marriage is unlawful yet practiced widely. Rural girls may go to school up to a certain age to get only the primary education while the sons may continue. It gets worse in traditional Moslem societies where the terrorists blow up the schools to prevent female education due to mistaken beliefs so the parents are helpless even if they want their daughters to go to school. The case of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan has focused the world attention on this subject that has showered its attention on her effort to educate all female children in her country and gave her the Nobel Prize.

But the tribal laws that are rooted in very old social traditions and customs are harder to change that the governments struggle every day with. The enactment of laws to protect the rights of females to education, jobs and equal treatment is easier done on paper but difficult to enforce because the enforcers are also the same people who believe in tribal laws.

So I come back once again to the question I posed at the start. The concept of family varies from country to country because it is influenced by the religion, the tribal and often illegal customs and traditions and the level of education of the parents. The government support for female equality in jobs, education and marital rights is limited to where it is effective although many NGOs are involved in improving the lives of women worldwide and have notched up some success in some parts. The fact is that much more needs to be done to educate the parents to change their attitude and treat all the children in a family equally and fairly without bias and prejudice.

Now let us say that the parents are educated and treat all their children fairly so why they all grow up with different personalities and different abilities and go in different directions in life? Why do we see brothers and sisters in many families lose their affinity for each other after the death of their parents or even before?  Why the success of a son or daughter in getting quality education and job is envied by others in the family who did not do so well perhaps due to their own fault?

I know that we as children are more influenced by the company we keep at a certain age than the parents who may be too busy to look into what a child is doing in school or outside. This influence of others on a child may be of paramount importance in shaping the life of a child that may determine his or her success or failure in life.

I have written in one of my blogs the effect of canto boys (vagabonds) in the Philippines on sons that can have a very detrimental influence on a child because they influence boys at a certain age to drink and keep bad company that make them drop out of school and end up as vagabonds. The girls are spared because there are no canto girls to influence them although some may end up keeping bad company of other girls and drop out of schools but relatively they do better than boys, finish their college education and get good jobs and end up supporting their parents even after marriage. Girls do better in a matriarchal society like in the Philippines while the boys do better in a patriarchal society like India in general. There are exceptions to all rules so that should be taken as a fact.

If a family has many children then the age difference between the first and the last child may become a barrier to bonding and closeness because people seek others of their own age. This is one reason why the family closeness does not develop in large families where they fail to bond due to tremendous age difference. In a small family where the couple has perhaps only two kids, the age difference between them is not enormous and in such families the siblings may become closer to each other and keep this closeness later even if they part their ways and live in faraway places due to work or marriage.

I have seen the generosity of parents in some societies where they adopt children of various races and bring them up together in one family giving them all the same opportunities they would have given their own children. It is not a common practice but they exist. Such children growing up together form a bond that endures through good time and bad because the parents enable this bond to form in the first place.

But in other societies where women do not like to adopt children and prefer to make their own feel no motherly feelings toward adopted children and treat them unfairly ( Cinderella syndrome ) even if the child is a step child. There are many sorrowful stories about step children and how they are treated by their step mothers or fathers. This negative attitude toward the adopted or step child has something to do with the education and liberal or conservative outlook of the parents that is shaped by their own upbringing and the social environment where they grew in.

So the concept of family has less to do with the tradition of a society and its cultural beliefs that may be tinged with prejudice and bias they learn from others and more to do with what a couple thinks what a family is and what it should be. This concept varies from country to country and often from region to region within a geographical area. No doubt the religion plays an important role in forming a liberal attitude in the minds of some people who adopt children often of different races and consider them as their own while in tribal cultures, the religion may not be as important as the tribal traditions that discourage adoption.

In India and in many other countries there are a very large numbers of orphans who are placed in government-run orphanages and where many women abandon their newly born kids and run away from the hospitals because they had illegitimate kids that draws social disapprobation in traditional communities.  I know a case where this happened but a couple adopted the child and now is raising her as their own so that child is very lucky.

The question that comes to my mind to which I always seek an answer in vain is the following. We come together as a family only once meaning that this combination of parents and siblings is never again repeated. You may be born again somewhere in your next life if you are a believer in reincarnation but never will you have the same family together again so why so many families fall apart and the siblings lose their affinity for each other  and even grow away in love and affection for their biological parents?

Granted not all parents are ideal so we see many parents doing a poor job of raising their children due to many reasons that I will not dwell upon here but could you have come to this world without your parents? Could you have grown up without all the sacrifices they made for you to raise you? Didn’t your elder siblings take care of you when your parents could not?

I hope that reading this blog will make you think that coming together as a family for the only time in this world will make you realize the importance of family and value your siblings all the more because when all is said and done, the blood is thicker than water and we all carry the same DNA.  Wise people say that we often fail to realize something valuable until it is gone. It holds true of family.

 

Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.

Mis blogs en espagnol

Blogs von Anil in Deutsch

Blogs in Japanese

My blogs at Wix site

tumblr posts    

Blogger.com

Medium.com

Anil’s biography in English.

Biographie d’Anil en français

La biografía de anil en español.

Anil’s Biografie auf Deutsch

Anil’s biography in Japanese

Биография Анила по-русски

Is depression curable?

Synopsis : This blog treats the subject of mental depression that affects the humanity in a significant way and offers some solutions to overcome it.

Is depression curable?

 

Source : Google photo

Depression is a common mental disorder that causes people to experience depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, low energy, and poor concentration. Depression is different from feeling down or sad. ( source : Wikipedia)

I am always sympathetic to people who suffer from depression due to causes beyond their control. If you just look at the video of people who are forced to show grief by crying convulsively during the funeral of a leader in North Korea, you will understand what depression means and how harmful it is to their physical and mental health. There anyone who does not cry and shed tears enough is punished by the gun-toting guards who keep a keen eye on the crowd.

This is perhaps an extreme example of depravity of their unelected leader  who holds their life in the palm of his hand and can do whatever he likes with it so thousands of people are put in jails just because they failed to show grief when a dictator died.

Just ask the people of Fallujah in Iraq how happy they were when a brutal dictator was removed from power and later hanged. People there still remember the massacre of innocent men, women and children by poison gas just because they did not like a dictator and were very depressed to live a life of pity over which they had literally lost control. This kind of mental depression is brought about by the external factor like a madman ruling over them who ruled with impunity answering to no one for their sufferings.

The acute mental depression due to war, famine, pestilence and dictatorship found in many countries today leads to physical exhaustion because people see no reprieve from their conditions and no help from anywhere. Some flee their countries in rickety boats that capsize and the bodies are washed ashore somewhere while others arrive in Europe or Australia only to languish in makeshift camps for years living like animals with no future and hope for them anywhere because no country wants them.

They wait endlessly in prison camps hoping that they will be given asylum somewhere and will be able to restart their life but many years pass so they start hunger strike and riot so that someone will take notice and do something. The worst refugee crisis facing the mankind is due to incessant wars in many countries forcing these people to flee to safety in other countries only to realize that no one wants them and no one cares for them.

The UN repeatedly appeals to richer countries to do more and donate more money to take care of the refugees but is always short of funds so they do what they can with their limited resources. The race and the religion of the refugees often plays a role in determining who gets asylum and who does not but that is another issue I cannot write about now. These are all man-made reasons why people suffer from depression. The opium addiction is rampant in Afghanistan where people for decades have been suffering from war and have given up hope to live a normal life so they take to drugs and often die of overdose. Men, women and even children take drugs and are destroying themselves because no one cares for them and their future is so bleak.

I have seen this desperation in the rural riverside villages in the Northern Thailand where people lie senseless in the dirt due to their opium addiction. What makes people so depressed that they take opium to forget their misery? How has their government failed them in creating jobs for them and giving them some hope to live a normal life?

Now let me write about the mental depression caused by the natural calamities like earthquake and famine that has taken numerous live in every continent. I lived in Haiti where although poor, people eked out a living by farming and by selling the things they could sell like charcoal or handicraft and managed to live a normal but poor life because poverty is quite normal there. Their depression is hidden and comes out in the open during their annual Mardi Gras festival when you see people drinking excessively and venting their frustration at everything this way.

Then all of a sudden the country was hit by an earthquake that buried people alive numbering in thousands and leveled a part of Port-au-Prince leaving the survivors desperate for help, food and shelter. The government appealed for the international help so some help arrived but it was too little for the magnitude of the destruction and sufferings. Years later people are still living in conditions that can only be termed as abominable so people suffer from depression. The same thing happened in Mexico City but Mexican Government helped people and rebuilt the devastated areas using their considerable oil resources. Haiti has no such resource so depends on the external aid even today.

Now imagine yourself living in exile for 60 years because you do not have a home to go to. This is what the Palestinians are going through even today and are living in many countries as refugees because the politicians cannot agree on giving them their homeland. I would also be very depressed if I were a Palestinian. Similarly the Kurds are still fighting for their homeland and many generations later still don’t have it. In Pakistan the Baluch are fighting for their homeland and are suffering but no one outside Baluchistan cares about their struggle and their misery.

The mental depression can be a serious problem for anyone that can push a person into alcoholism or drugs if they do not get help in coming out of their depression. It is a fact that those who live in very cold and dark places drink a great deal and stay indoors because they do not see the sun and live under very gloomy weather conditions over which they have no control. In such communities, mental depression rate is much higher than in those people who live in very sunny climate and clement weather.

Now the technology has come to the aid of depressed people and provides artificial light that is like sun and cheers people up a great deal. People who are compelled to live in very close proximity of each other in densely packed and small apartments can also suffer from depression because people need free space and parks around them. If you tightly pack rats together, they will attack each other so it also applies to people who react to crowding and get easily depressed.

Human beings are social animals so they need each other. Where people do not have a social life and live in isolation become lonely which is a precursor to depression. The social media like Facebook and twitter etc. now give an opportunity to many who get to know many people this way but only electronically so it leaves them wanting physical contact and get depressed because they cannot find anyone to talk to face to face.

I do not know if the young people get more easily depressed than the older ones due to loneliness  but  the lack of social contacts and isolation can have a very depressing effect on anyone . I have noticed that some people open up to total strangers and start telling them their life story because their desire to talk to somebody or anybody is strong due to the lonely life they live.

In all cultures people have social gatherings during festivals that serve as an outlet for people to come out of their depression and enjoy the company of others but it does not last long so the reprieve is temporary and superficial. In other countries people will invite you to dance clubs or parties where drugs and alcohol flow freely so lonely people go there to be with others who have similar issues.

One thing that can bring about a depression is the terminal sickness of someone close to you knowing that the person has a short time to live and is beyond any medical help. Such hopelessness can trigger a depression in some people who know that they are going to lose someone they love. Hopelessness can also be related to severe mental disorder that can lead to insanity as I knew from a case during my childhood and have written about it in my previous blogs.

Most people suffering from depression eventually come out of it in time and cheer up because they get close support from people they know so it is like the dark cloud that passes over them and the sun comes out in its full brilliance but others may not be so lucky. It is a fact that the primitive people who live in close social contacts and live very simply like the Bushmen of Kalahari do not suffer from depression because they are never lonely and have strong social support for each other while people who live very isolated lives suffer the most.

For most people the depression starts at home where the parents treat their children harshly due to their religious or other beliefs. When a child’s freedom to enjoy life or go to school or play is taken away by the parents, it can lead to depression. Malala Yousafzai is fighting for girl’s education in a society that is very repressive towards them so I commend her for her bravery. In other countries you will find a high rate of depression among very young girls who are forced to marry. India is such a country where despite the minimum age of 18 when girls should marry, there is the practice of child marriage that is quite unlawful. All over the world their numbers run into millions who are deprived of their normal childhood this way due to some mistaken belief that children should be married off.

What is the cure to depression?

To find a cure one has to look for the root cause of depression and solve it so the answer is yes. Depression can be cured if people look at the root cause and find a solution. If it is the forced child marriage of girls then it can be prevented by law and enforcing the law to prevent such marriages. There are some NGOs in India that are helping the girls and have a hotline they can call for help.

If it has something to do with loneliness then they can join some social groups but it only works for the young people. The old people join some religious groups that makes them feel a part of a group so feel less lonely but that may have some consequences depending on what type of religious groups they join. Some become rabid fanatics that can make them imbalanced.

I think children are the easiest to bring out of depression because they can be easily distracted by games and toys but adults are more complicated than children so they need more help and support but no one is a hopeless case.

In the case of alcoholics who take to the bottle to fight depression, they have alcoholic anonymous type of social groups in the United States where the alcoholics gather and help each other finding ways to beat the affliction and in other countries they also have similar social groups that help.

The main reason why in some countries people enjoy a higher quality of life and feel less depressed is because their government provides free education  to people, with jobs and good affordable housing and  excellent low-cost health care for everybody so people feel happy. Happy people do not get depressed.

But the governments cannot solve all the problems so it is really up to the people to help themselves. One can learn a great deal from the Amish people about how to live a happy life due to their strong social bonding and their social support for each other so it is not the high standard of living that helps depressed people but the strong social bonding that some communities have to help each other that is the ultimate cure to depression. So don’t lose hope. The sun always shines when the dark clouds pass.

 

Note :  My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese  languages at the following links as well as my biography:

Mes blogs en français.

Mis blogs en espagnol

Blogs von Anil in Deutsch

Blogs in Japanese

My blogs at Wix site

tumblr posts    

Blogger.com

Medium.com

Anil’s biography in English.

Biographie d’Anil en français

La biografía de anil en español.

Anil’s Biografie auf Deutsch

Anil’s biography in Japanese

Биография Анила по-русски

Learn from Haroun Al Rashid

Synopsis : The humanity often fails to learn the lessons from the past so this blogs shows how some historical persons taught the world how to govern people in a fair and equitable way to bring justice to all.

Learn from Haroun Al Rashid

Source : Google photo

There was a legendary Khalifa of Baghdad in the olden times called Haroun Al Rashid ( AD 763-803) and was known for his just rule, fair treatment to all his subjects and respect for all scribes whom he honored with gifts and titles. He was stern and impartial toward the justice and meted out strict punishment for the wrong doers resulting in a Caliphate that was peaceful where all citizens benefited from the benign rule of the Khalifa.

He was known to mingle with the crowd of common people in the market and in other public places in disguise to learn about what their problems were and what difficulties they faced in their daily life so enacted laws and decrees to solve those issues thus making him endearing to his subject. People believed in him and went to his court with petitions about many issues they faced and often were  given reprieve with cash and gifts . Haroun Al Rashid was given wise advice by his vizier and others close to him in his court in state matters and helped alleviate the problems his subject faced. It could be related to better health and sanitation or providing clean drinking water in areas where there was a water shortage. He faced numerous problems in his caliphate and tried his best to solve them.

Source : Google photo

The great Mughal emperor Jalal Uddin Mohamed Akbar who ruled India in the 16^th century( AD 1542- 1605) was called Akbar which in Arabic means great because he too followed the example of Haroun Al Rashid and often visited the market place in disguise to learn about the problems his subject faced. He once learned that the Hindu pilgrims to holy sites were taxed but the Moslems were not so he ordered a tax relief for all Hindus thus endearing him to them although the Moslems were not pleased. He married Rajput princess Jodha Bai and made her the queen of India thus placating the Rajputs who were against his rule and made Man Singh his army general who was a Rajput and served him well. The love story of JodhaBai and Akbar was told in the movie Jodha Akbar is worth watching

Akbar made a new religion called Deen Ilahi that took the best of Islam and the Hindu religion to make it a more benign and humanistic religion that riled the fundamentalist Moslems to no end but was popular with the masses. Akbar and Haroun Al Rashid both had this quality of caring for the subject and enacting laws that benefitted them but were harsh in the treatment of criminals and bandits. If you go to the city of Fateh Pur Sikri near Agra that Akbar built and made it his capital, you will see a huge stone peg where a massive elephant was tethered. By the order of the emperor, a criminal was crushed to death by the huge elephant that stepped on his chest so justice was instantaneous.

What made me write this blog was the news this morning when the Head of the Veteran’s administration in the United States said that he was unaware of the veterans facing serious problems in the hospitals that included neglect of injured patients, long wait to see the doctors and specialists and get the necessary medical help from them. The dirty beds, rooms that were not cleaned regularly and stank of cockroaches, the indifference of the staff to their sufferings were many such issues but the head was unaware because he was never told by his subordinates so he did nothing. He also never visited the hospital wards to see the conditions himself or talk to the patients.

This is the state of the affairs because people have not learned the lessons that Haroun Al Rashid and Indian Mughal emperor Akbar taught about how to take care of people and solve their problems. If you ask such officials if they had ever heard of Haroun Al Rashid and Akbar, they will most likely answer that they have never heard of them and instead of asking who were they, they may ask what is Haroon and what in the world is Akber? Is ignorance ever a good excuse anywhere?

All over the world the elected and unelected leaders face the same issue of good governance. While some try to improve the living standards of the common people by creating jobs for them and build hospitals to care for the sick, most fall short always blaming others for their shortcomings and never accepting their own responsibility just like the fellow at the Veteran’s Administration. In poorer countries the excuse is always the shortage of funds which may to some extent be true but a poor country like Cuba shines in the world as a country where health care and education is universal and at a minimum cost and where land reform has been successful giving every peasant land to cultivate and grow his own food.

In other countries like Zimbabwe where people fall in kilometer long line just to buy a loaf of bread with their useless currency and where the shelves of stores are empty, the president had his luxurious private bus and got enormously rich yet the country has diamond mines and is very rich in natural resources. Similarly Venezuela is another country where people are suffering daily but the country has the largest reserve of oil in the world so why people suffer? Where does the oil money go?

When the leaders enrich themselves first and think of the people last, such injustice prevails. Just look at North Korea and its lavish spending on arms, rockets and missiles tipped with nuclear bombs while people starve and you will get to understand what the meaning of misrule is but this sort of things happens in autocratic countries where there is no democracy. However, in countries where people are elected to their office, we also see the misrule like the example given above. People in charge do not seem to care about the people who they are supposed to serve so “no one told me” type of excuse does not cut it anymore.

No one tells the king he has no clothes until a child speaks out. Now the child comes in the form of investigative reporters who take photos of the terrible conditions of the hospitals and the suffering veterans who tell them their problems and then it breaks into major newspapers and TV channels as a scandalous story that then draws attention of the king who finds out that he really is naked.  I have heard of this type of stories again and again and wonder if the public servants really believe that they are to serve the public as elected or appointed officials and they are accountable to the public who pay their salaries through the tax they pay.

There is a case of a rich man who donated his mansion in California to the veterans who could stay there for free while recuperating from their war injuries or traumas until they could find a job but the saddest part of this story is the fact that the mansion gates are padlocked and the lawns are full of weeds due to some bureaucratic red tape that deprives the veterans of this wonderful place. The rich man is perhaps turning in his grave at this gross negligence and mismanagement of the affair.

People often criticize the historic rulers saying that there was no democracy in those days but has the democracy today made it better for the average citizen?  The quick justice that was meted out by Emperor Akbar was perhaps brutal but is the current justice system where the criminals stay in jails for years at the expense of tax payers and then often escape by bribing the corrupt guards is any better? You shoot someone and pretend that you are mentally sick and deranged so that they can put you in a nicely furnished mental asylum for years.

Then there are corrupt lawyers who know a zillion ways to delay the justice system so that a corrupt official who has plundered the national exchequer never faces the music and is released because the evidence to prosecute him is mysteriously missing or the witnesses are too scared to come forward to testify.  There are no modern-day Haroun Al Rashids or Akbar. The elected officials or the appointed ones are as far removed from the public as possible because they are always scared that someone may take a pot shot at them for not doing their job well so they are surrounded by the gun-toting and mean looking security people who always wear dark glasses and present an intimidating air of menace at all times.

The baby kissing politicians with fake smile are the worst of the lot but they always present an aura of fake grandeur that does not fool anybody. Then there are the boot licking sycophants who surround the officials and always come in between the people and the officials so people are not impressed .The assiduous reporters lay bare their scandalous private life so that people will know and respect them all the less. Such reporters have caught red-handed a high-ranking public official once near the Potomac river in Washington, D.C. chasing a naked stripper at midnight so he had to resign when the news broke the next day. Looking at their shiny limos and the aura of great importance you will never guess what scums they are until a kid cries Oh look –the king has no clothes.

But there was a time long ago when the rulers took an interest in the welfare of people and did something to improve their lives. If you go to see the Red Fort in Delhi, you will see the Diwane Aam ( court for the general public) where the emperor sat on his high throne and received petitions  from the ordinary people who could thus talk directly to the King. Then the guide will show you the Diwane Khas ( the court of the special matters) next where more important state matters were discussed in private.

Now one can’t even get to meet an ordinary official without appointment and a lot of hassle. I was once kept waiting for a long time in an outer room until a flushed secretary came running and said to me that the big boss has just found a five-minute time slot to see me so I must hurry. I was ushered into his office where I caught him looking at my biodata but he stood up with a fake smile and asked how was I feeling that day and how I was getting along in my job etc. each time looking at the biodata and asking me questions to which the data sheet had the answers already. Finally my precious five minutes were up so he stood up indicating that he had granted me a special favor for this audience. I was more impressed by the number of sycophants who cow towed to him including the secretary who acted like a fierce Amazonian lady protecting her boss from the rabble.

The kings and Khalifas of the past were respected and admired by the public because they showed that they cared and made laws that were just and benefited everyone. They did not ride in fancy limousines surrounded by machine gun-toting guards and were quite approachable by the ordinary people who posed no threat to their security although the palace guards kept an eye on everyone.

The times have changed now. I only wish the modern-day bozos took some lessons from the history book and learn a thing or two from Haroun Al Rashid about how to govern and be just and fair to all but perhaps I am hoping too much. That is my problem. I am always optimistic about such things so perhaps I should learn to lower my expectations.

 

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