To be like water, formless

I've been thinking of setting up an alternate, anonymous blog. When you have a blog that a lot of friends follow, you start to sub-consciously filter what you really want to say. One becomes a prisoner of one's 'image'.
But that's also what I wanted to explore, questions of free will. Free Will not in terms of going where you want or buying what you want, but in being free at all levels. We're all prisoners of society and biology.
I discovered that I was tailoring a lot of my thoughts to fit this blog because there was the question of political correctness. When one has liberal friends -- those who identify themselves as liberals politically -- one is expected to conform to the political ideas that are currently in fashion. But liberalism too can be imprisoning. When the police kill, it is state brutality. When the Naxals kill, it is class revolution. Fuck that.
This blog will still be functional, of course. Not that I've been prolific on this.

Meanwhile, I wrote this note on my Facebook page:

Communists
The problem with Indian communist parties is they think they have a copyright over communism. Kerala CM Achutanandan may or may not be a good communist, but by punishing him for 'acting against party interests' (rather than ethical interests), the CPM behaves exactly like the entities it is ideologically opposed to -- structured religions. The Party has become a citadel, like the Vatican, with the general secretary acting like the Pope. At least the Vatican has some moral codes to live by.
Look at The Hindu, look at how it toes the Party position. Today there was an edit piece by a Chinese 'journalist' stating that the violence in China's Urumqi, the site of clashes between the Hans and the Uighurs, was the work of 'external' forces. The communists have long revelled in the pleasure of crediting all disturbances to their governance to an external bogeyman. The newspaper dutifully carries the Party position (the Party in this case being the entity to which all dutiful communists genuflect to -- the Chinese government), forgetting its role as a newspaper that's supposed to at least air both sides of the story.
I like the scene in that beautiful movie, Arabikatha, where old-world communist 'Cuba' Mukundan, having given away his life's savings to a Chinese girl, says: 'He who lives for the needy -- he is the true communist.'
The true communist is not required to subscribe to stupid Party positions -- he is above that. He follows a higher calling.
Prakash Karat should go get himself a... a... haircut.

GUTS: The 14th edition

Open publication - Free publishing - More sudirman cup

'You call this a democracy'

...The determination of the State to stamp out democratic dissent. They refuse to leave any space for it. You call that a democracy? Arre, we are asking for justice within your system, we are not picking up the gun. We are writing you letters, petitioning your offices, holding jan sunwais. And that rouses the State’s ire? Are they going to leave room only for the Naxals and a violent brand of protest? When the adivasis go to register complaints, the police lock them up in jail. There are hundreds of adivasis in jail on false charges or killed in false encounters, branded as Naxals when all they were doing was collecting wood in the forest or grazing goats. The Supreme Court had ordered the State to set up committees to assess damage and examine all the atrocities by the Salwa Judum and pay compensation. Not one committee has been set up till date. And they talk of destroying Naxals through a military operation? If they want to take over this land and give it to corporations to extract minerals, there is a Constitutional way of going about it. Why this war waged by subterfuge?
- Activist Himanshu Kumar, in Tehelka

Poofball democracy

The present system of representative democracy in India is based on the notion that people in a particular geographical locality share common concerns. This precludes the possibility of having a representative in Parliament for issues outside geographical/ community-based considerations. I do not see the meaning of a democracy as purely a system to build roads or drains in my area -- I need it to address the concerns of the marginalised: the disabled, for instance. Their numbers are vast enough to form a small state, but they are distributed throughout the country. Why should not a minister represent them in Parliament? Why should 'constituencies' mean land only?