Does the Ayodhya judgement(s) fall between two stools in an effort to appear at once legally tenable and politically correct? Can any verdict, that can only be a binary yes or no particularly in a title suit, imitate King Solomon’s decision vis-a-vis that disputed baby? Can law take a leap to faith? Is it the job of a court to at all find an ‘amicable’ solution to problems? Is the court an adjudicator or an arbiter?
Browsing: COLUMNS
Let’s also adjourn Ayodhya to the week-after, a la, the Apex Court. In the meantime, let’s excavate the Hindu mind, from the surface to the subconscious. If it is true that everyone is a religious person at the core, let’s find out what kind of a ‘temple’ lies buried deep in the Hindu psyche.
‘Kashmir on the boil again’, is an all too familiar headline of late. But I object – not to the fact that Kashmir is boiling, but to the word ‘again’. For has Kashmir ever been cool, if you see what I mean? Even when other burning issues like say, IPL or CWG or a superhero’s latest release were boiling on the frontpages, Kashmir was simmering on the back burner. So what’s surprising beyond, maybe, knowing where in boiling Kashmir have new blisters arisen?
In his Ramayana, poet Kambar, when describing ten-headed Ravana’s deeply disturbed disposition, equates it to that of a man in debt (kadan pattaar nenjam pol …). Aeons after Ravana and centuries since Kambar, debt continues to reign over and ruin the lives of individuals, families and businesses. But paradoxically, even if debt is death, you cannot live without it either, in these leveraged times. Small wonder that overdoses of this lifeline can turn fatal.
That the whole world is a stage is old stuff; ‘Casino Royale’ would be a more apt moniker with every move and moment of mankind making the globe seem like a kind of a gambling den.
Now, call it profound philosophy or practical polemics, but the fact is all thought and deed are open-ended w.r.t results! While many filled this void of uncertainty with God, religion and astrology, the more enterprising found in it an opportunity for a fast buck (or whatever it was in those barter days).
It no longer surprises or shocks us when politicos help themselves to public money. The only highlight perhaps in lawmakers voting a higher salary for Self & Co is that the ugly heist has been staged in full public view instead of on the sly, and quite lawfully too. So, sans the shady secrecy, it therefore loses the spectacular status of a scam or scandal, despite qualifying in every other way.
Here is a confession, coming ironically after I-Day: I just became an Englishman! Am I not if I am going to talk about the weather in all seriousness as the E-men do first thing in the morning or whenever two of them happen to meet? Well, in any case, weather is a perfect filler when there is nothing else to write about and one does not have to belong to England for that.
Freedom from foreign yoke may have come long back. But a British legacy, Commonwealth Games, haunts us this I-day, over six decades hence. The CW itself is an alumni of exploited colonial cousins and a hangover from a shameful past. But the warm-up to the games that have already generated unbearable heat makes one forget even that ignominy and yearn again for freedom, this time from the neo albeit indigenous looters.
It is common knowledge that politicos love to play with common money. That the Common Wealth Games, due in sixty days, is already being dubbed as ‘Corrupt Wealth Games’ or ‘Contractor Wealth Games’ is, therefore, quite in tune with our national political culture.