WisdomWatch

The tree speaks to us in silence but those who have the capacity to understand hear its message loud and clear. It speaks of giving shade to the weary and a nesting place to the needy. It speaks of delicious fruit, nuts and nectar, and useful resin and oilseed. It silently offers its green leaves for fodder and dried leaves, full of nourishment fed by its roots, for fertiliser. It changes our carbon dioxide into oxygen. It holds the lose earth together and prevents flatlands from becoming deserts and hillsides sliding down in the rains. And when it dies, it burns for us as firewood.

The tree does not keep repeating 'I love you' every time someone passes by. It quietly shows that it does, in a way true lovers would do well to emulate. And, after this, it does not ask anything in return. It does its part without expectation of a reward, as if it had truly internalized one of the core teachings of our spiritual heritage.

Apart from the above, we can learn things from what the tree says when adverse weather threatens. When a tree breaks in a storm, it mostly does so because of overwhelming force, advanced age, disease or human intervention.Usually it wisely bends and becomes its normal self again, once the storm has passed. Compare this to how most of us behave during and after the real and imagined storms in our lives

Despite the above, we, who cannot do the smallest thing for others without asking “what is in it for us?” and who usually tend to become demoralized in adversity, say that the tree has no mind and no heart.

Indeed, the heart of the tree is larger than we can imagine and it has a consciousness which is wise enough to do the bidding of this heart. And, in its own way, it constantly speaks to us of both. Listening to it, we have to ask ourselves - is it better to have a mind and a heart like that of the tree or like that of the tree-choppers? Is it better to speak like the tree or like our verbose leaders? Is it better to act like the tree or like our normal selfish selves?

Let us try to listen to the speaking tree. The very effort to understand it will make us better human beings.

Kishore Asthana
asthana1@yahoo.com

Does someone in Arabia ask for scientific proof of the fact that the Holy Prophet rose to heaven from Jerusalam? Does someone in Rome ask for scientific proof that Jesus actually was born of a virgin and that he rose again after being dead? Yet, Indians are asked by their government, the intellectuals and the media to deny that Ram existed because there is no scientific proof. And, no Ram, means no Ram Setu.

A golden temple is made in India and millions are spent on it. Christian priests are interviewed on Indian TV channels and they opine that this money could have been better spent for charitable purposes. The H indu TV anchor vehemently supports this. Nobody points out to the TV anchor or the Catholic priest that the richest religious agency in the world is the Roman Catholic Church. No one asks why they do not apply the same norms there and ask the Church to sell their billions worth of treasure and pala ces and use the money to alleviate poverty around the world. Why, just the Pope’s Palace in the Vatican would be enough to raise the income level of most of Africa ’s starving millions.

A poor H indu from a village applies for a place in a College. He has always scored much higher marks than his neighbour. However, he is unable to get admission in the College while his neighbour who is from a minority community sails in on the reserved quota, despite being far wealthier and much less academically able.

An artist shows tasteless pictures of religious icons in an exhibition. H indu and Christian priests and activists raise objections. The Indian media and intellectuals rise to the defence of the artist’s freedom of expression in a knee jerk reaction and repeatedly criticise the ‘intolerance’ of the H indu activists. Curiously, they do not mention the equally vehement objections of the Christian priests. It is the same mediamen and intellectuals who had earlier castigated the Dutch cartoonist for making cartoons of Prophet Mohammad.

Secularism means “not religious” in English. In Hinglish, the common language of Bharat, it has acquired Orwellian overtones. Intellectuals, politicians and the media persons use it as a code word to mean "looking after the rights of the minorities at the cost o the Hindus". If someone says with pride, “I am a H indu ” he or she is sneeringly branded communal by these people.

The tragedy is that most intellectuals and media persons at the criticising end are H indu themselves. They appear to be ashamed of their religion and are, for whatever reason, forever apologising for being a H indu . To them their own religion is full of intolerance and all other religions can appear to do no wrong and, even if other religions do wrong it would not be “secular” to mention it.

When the institutions fail to do their duty, those at the receiving end pick up the gauntlet and adopt an aggressively protective mode. When the judicial system fails, mob justice results. The pressure bottles up and finds release in violence. When media and the intellectuals are seen to gang up against the H indu faith, the common man is left at the mercy of VHP, Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena and Mr. Modi’s BJP.

I submit that our so called “secular” media, intellectuals and politicians are acting as the self-appointed moral police and imposing their skewed views which make a travesty of our constitutional provision vis a vis secularism. They are causing more harm to the cause of true secularism than all the communal for ces combined. By being blatantly partisan they are ceding power to the very people they keep criticising. One day, sadly not too far away, the militantly H indu for ces will strike a collective chord in the long suffering H indu psyche and you can expect the slightest provocation to trigger Gujarat type riots in other pla ces as well. All they need is to replace the present rather dull and hackneyed leaders of their movement by a charismatic figure, who can sway H indu s by pointing out the injusti ces of the present “secular” establishment in a manner that they can resonate to. Just imagine what would happen if someone with the presence, though not ne ces sarily the mindset, of Vivekananda, Baba Saheb Ambedkar, Subhash Chandra Bose or Martin Luther King stood up to champion their cause and mobilised the masses, with “ I have a dream and it is of India where H indu s are treated with civility and granted equality with other faiths….”

The media, intellectuals and the government have to take the initiative back from the militantly protective religious organisations. Hypercriticism and biased treatment are not the way to do it. There are simple remedies which would prevent the above doomsday scenario – the Indian media and intellectuals should try to treat the H indu faith with at least as much respect and consideration as they do Christian and Muslim faiths. Furthermore, instead of repeatedly airing obscurantist practi ces , astrological programmes and suchlike in their hypocritically “secular” pursuit of trp ratings, they should support programmes which try to uplift the religion and remove the cobwebs around it, so that its innate beauty stands resplendent. And they should do this for all religions if they wish. On its part, the government, of whichever political hue, should stop bending backwards to appease communal vote banks and start treating the H indu s with the same consideration as it does the followers of other religions. Only then can India become truly Secular in the correct meaning of the term and only then can communal peace and harmony reign here.

Kishore Asthana
asthana1@yahoo.com

There is much that is good about Indian TV – its independence, its activism and so on. However there is much that is not good at all. Some of the not-good is mentioned below.

1. The WYP Brigade:

We have all seen our TV personalities interviewing celebrities. Most of these persons have wide grins on their faces, a strange light in their eyes and “simper, simper” written all over their body language. I call these media persons the WYP brigade. The initials stand for “Wet Your Pants”, which these interviewers appear to do every time a celebrity deigns to smile at them.

One exception is perhaps Karan Johar, but then he is not the typical media professional. He speaks to his interviewees as an equal and a friend. Karan Thapar is another exception. Most others belong to the WYP Brigade. Fairly well-known personalities are surprising members of the WYP Brigade. At times even Barkha Dutt and Rajat Sharma show symptoms of this, though their WYP status is a bit muted as compared to most others.

2. Repetitiveness:

Indian TV Channels appear to be seriously short of content. This is perhaps responsible for endless repetition of the same news item.

First the anchor tells us about the item in some detail. Then, visuals of the story will be shown and the media-rep on site will narrate exactly the same thing that the anchor has just said. The “participants”, victims or their next of kin are then interviewed with leading questions leading to cloned answers. Then two or three “observers” and “experts” are interviewed and they say the same thing. Often, after all this, the anchor repeats exactly what he or she had said the first time around. After one hour the whole circus is repeated again. And again.

3. Lack of homework:

This can frequently be seen in the discussion of issues. The TV anchor appears to be quite innocent of facts and figures. It appears that his or her job is only to take the mike from one member of the audience/panel to another. You can see this not only in “ordinary” anchors but even in programs conducted by well-known anchors such as Barkha Dutt. No hard questions based on the anchor’s own research, are asked. Karan Thapar and, sometimes, Rajat Sharma do their homework but they are exceptions.

4. Sensationalisation:

We have all heard the raving “Cola mein Zahar Hai” cry of many media anchors, based on half-baked “research” without any perspective, background information or other substantiating fact. Similar incidents about other matters tell us how TRP ratings and not professionalism dictate our media strategy. Accuracy does not appear to be a prime consideration of our TV reporting and neither does speaking in a ‘normal’ tone. The intonation of the majority of our TV anchors on the ‘popular’ channels is a high-pitched, breathless one, even if they are saying something inane.

5. Shamelessness:

Very often we find that a TV channel reported a “news” item that was based on unfounded rumors and is proven wrong the next day. The TV Channel never apologizes or corrects its previous report regardless of the magnitude of the blunder.

6. Trivialisation and dumbing down:

TV channels devote hours and hours to trivial stories such as Amitabh Bacchan visiting a temple, someone demonstrating against perceived slight to “their bhavanas”, long programmes on astrology etc. Never-ending pre-pre-match, pre-match, post match, post-post-match commentaries on cricket are the norm with talking heads opining gravely about something pre-match and then changing their tune post-match without so much as an excuse-me.

The common rationalization given is that the audience wants this. Surely the TV Channels have a very low opinion of the audience. Moreover, how will they know what the audience wants unless they try something else? Maybe this takes more creativity than they have in-house or are able to afford and they feel safe doing the same thing again and again. We see something similar in our TV serials and in our advertising companies using a celebrity in their ad so that they do not have to exercise their grey cells and be creative.

7. Dishonesty:

Almost all TV Channels have SMS polls, mostly on fairly inane subjects. They invite the audience to send in their SMSs but almost never tell them how much such an SMS would cost. Sometimes “premium rates apply” is mentioned but what these premium rates are, remains unsaid. The poll results do not mention the sample size or even whether repeat messages from the same number have been removed from the survey.

8. Advertorials:

This is perhaps an example of the previous point. Some TV Channels get paid for highlighting certain items – film releases, property or anything else. They never mention that their reporting in such cases is at least partly in return for funds received.

9. Prejudices:

Most channels have an “official” line. They are for something and dead set against something. For example, if a TV Channel is interviewing a member of the RSS of VHP, you can see that he or she is patently biased against these. However, as mentioned earlier, they will not back up their biases through homework. No channel has even bothered to analyse what secularism means, while parroting the views of “secular” politicians and intelligentsia.

They project themselves to be anti-this or anti-that because that is what they think their viewers like to see. The TV channels are not a faultless mirror reflecting the society. They are distorted reflectors, showing everything in the light of their own prejudices.

10. Newsmaking:

TV Channels have started making news. There is nothing wrong in this per se, if such newsmaking pertains to unearthing of scams and to other such antisocial practices. However, when they start giving air-time to lumpen elements who object to petty things – Richard Gere kissing Shilpa Shetty, for example – then these lumpen elements start protesting just to get air-time. In the process, everyone’s time is wasted, the undeserving get undue publicity and the gullible get misled, sometimes causing law and order problems and loss of public property, not to mention public sanity.

The Rs. 2 Crore question is, “What can we do about the above”?

Unfortunately there are no four choices available to pick from. The concerned authorities seem to wield a mean moralistic stick but do not appear concerned about the real rot mentioned above, so there no life-lines available either.

Kishore Asthana
Gurgaon
asthana1@yahoo.com

If it was not for the Pope, Cardinals and Bishops, I could be a Christian, for Esho’a is close to me. I feel his compassion whenever I think of him. I know that it is for me that he smiles. For me it is immaterial where he was born, and to whom, how he died and whether or not he arose thereafter. How he lived, lives inside me, vibrant, cheerful and ever inspiring.

If it was not for the Imams and Maulvis, I might be a Muslim, for I surrender to Allah’s divine music and often know what He is and why I am His. Like Mansur al Hallaj, I often feel “Ma fi jubbati ila Allah” – there is nothing in my cloak but Allah. I am sobered by the fact that al Hallaj was put to death for pronouncing the innermost spiritual secret – “Ana al Haq” – I am the Truth, but these words often burst out from the core of my heart unbeckoned.

But for the Pandits I would be a Hindu, for Krishna dances in my heart in quiet moments and Ram’s love and justness moves my mind. I have looked inside my Self and found the source of Ganesh’s wisdom, Sita’s purity and Hanuman’s faith. I have felt, too, the coiled Kundalini arise and I know the secret of Shiva’s Serpent, Shakti’s strength and Kamadeva’s holiness. I have discovered what brahmasmi really implies.

The scholars and pretenders think that they alone own the keys to the Kingdom of God. Little do they know that God’s Kingdom has no walls or doors for the likes of us and they look strange, standing guard in front of nothing.
They vie for my soul, all of them. The Priests, Imams and Pandits all try to claim me exclusively for their own. They do not realize that if I were to belong to any of them, I would not be worthy of my birth. They do not know that I already belong to Me and that they do so, too.

Kishore Asthana