Violent Non-Violence

I have my own share of weird things; unique and to some extent funny things which happen to me. Recently, I was walking down Parliament Street in New Delhi, looking for a building belonging to a certain institution, its position and probable location given to me by my mother, who also happened to drop me at the above place, when a certain weird and funny thing happened. 

My mind was preoccupied with my task, as I walked along, craning my neck this way and that, looking for the building. But still from the corner of my eyes I did happen to notice a lot of uniformed fellows from the Delhi Police wearing helmets, carrying sticks and batons and cane shields apparently waiting for someone or something. Well since their positions around me looked a bit disorganised I didn't mind them (as a matter of fact - they didn't seem to mind me walking in their midst too ! ). I also happened to walk past three barricades (well by their sides, not through them) and also happened to notice a blue fire-brigade-like water tanker behind those barricades standing right in the middle of the road. But as I already mentioned, my mind was too preoccupied with my current "objective", so I didn't give these thingies a second thought and ambled along....

My search for the building seemed to be in vain, because in spite of my mother's directions I couldn't locate it. Just then, as I walked a bit more further, I noticed a crowd, waving some banners and flags, marching towards me ! Naturally I was confused a bit... And then in the back of my mind the fact registered... the presence of the huge security blanket behind me, the barricades and the water cannon (that's what the fire truck really was). 

Problem was, I was still walking... towards the protesting and oncoming crowd ! Slow that my brain cogs are... Well they did fall into place finally and I stopped ! Looking behind, I saw the cops had now formed a Human Wall amongst themselves, ready with their cane shields and batons. Looking in front, I saw the approaching crowd (should I call them a mob yet?... )... And Me, right in the middle of the empty road in between these two "monstrosities" !! 

Funny situation... ain't it !! Well you should be there to know for yourself !

If I turned right I would have walked into the parliament street police station premises. Turn left - passing some barricades and policemen, into an office complex. Well since I don't like the Delhi police I decided for the latter! Reasons for my retreat?? Well I didn't think the oncoming mob's ideologies could be same as mine, plus the situation was too comic. Guess a TV reporter should have videoed me or at least photographed me.. it would have made a fine blooper ! And even if our ideologies were to have been common... I was least interested... my only thought at that time... My mother wouldn't like to see me broken bodied in some hospital ! So as I passed the cops and one of them said to me in an undertone "Jaldi se cut lo yahan se!" (meaning - beat it from here quick), I didn't need prompting twice !

Later as I reached home and narrated the whole incident to my mother, she informed me that the road led to the "Jantar Mantar" (a tourist spot and a collection of astronomical instruments - like a huge sundial for instance), which in-spite of or maybe because of what and where it was, was a frequent meeting place for all kinds of political and non-political protests and other such marches in Delhi ! No wonder the Delhi Police was so pre-prompt !

Well.. that was the incident and here I have a thing to add... 

These political marches... violent or non-violent.. gained popularity in India when Mr. M.K. Gandhi used them as his way of "protesting" against the British rule in India in the previous century. And that's where my point lies.. well an after thought more like...

Mr. Gandhi... known as a "Mahatma" among many Indians and foreigners alike. Cos of his "non-violent attitude" for everything. As pointed out by Mr. Haldane in one of his essays Gandhi liked the Bhagavad Gita as his favoutrite "poem", but this same "poem" was actually used by Lord Krishna in order to incite violence in Arjuna during the war of Mahabharata, at the same time giving "Dharma" as its reason. 

Wow.. Too true.. Now why didn't I think of it before!! It could have always been my argument against non-violent Gandhian principles of gaining independence and for my support of Bhagat Singh, Chandashekhar Azad, Sukhdev, Lala Lajpat Rai, Subhash Chandra Bose and lots of other "violent" pro-independence Indian Martyrs and their ideologies !

And as an afterthought, Mr. Gandhi did like "violent" Indian Gods and did worship them too. The all too popular chant "Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram" sung at all the Gandhi Ashrams all over India, is an ode to Lord Ram. And as we all know Lord Ram was a violent King. Again Dharma is given as a reason for Lord Ram vanquishing Ravana and conducting the Ashwamedha Yagna, in which a lot of "inferior kings and kingdoms were destroyed (also where Rama met the wrath of queen Jana for killing her son and so cursed to be killed by His own sons; as did happen later, where he was killed by Lava and Kusha, his sons, to be again revived by Sage Valmiki, who btw wrote the original Ramayana, not Tulsidas, as most Hindus nowadays tend to believe). 

And I think righteous violence in the name of freedom for our motherland India is always right,as thought the violent freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh and Subhash Bose. If Arjuna should have fought violently for the Dharma of regaining Indraprastha from the Kauravas and Lord Rama should have fought violently for the Dharma of regaining His wife Sita from Ravana and violently fought wars in the name of Dharma of supreme emperor-ship by the Ashwamedha Yagna, so should have all the freedom fighters "fought" violently for the Dharma of freeing our motherland India from the British. I don't think Dharma applies to Gods only and not for or to mere humans like Bhagat Singh and Lajpat Rai et al. 

Too hypocritical of Mr. Gandhi don't you think so??... (You still don't? Well then do give it a thought and do read the Gita and Ramayana fully to gain better insight...!!!)

As for me, I still would, for the remainder of my life, be totally supportive of Bhagat Singh, Bose et al., and would think the reason that the Indian masses joined Gandhi in his "freedom struggle" was that they were cowards (were afraid of righteous violence) and had the same thought that I had during the incident I described above (My mother/family wouldn't like to see me broken bodied in some hospital).....

As always I am open to debates and open to views to prove me wrong...!!!

Bread And Wine

Recently I had pulled out an old book from the collection-o'-books at home. It's got the Title - "On Being The Right Size" - authored by J.B.S.Haldane, a noted biologist, socialist and philosopher... The book is actually a collection of essays by the author from different sources (like newspapers, magazines, manifestos etc. where he actually published them) and I have to say, these essays have left me very impressed. Of course, as a biology student back at school (so what if I turned out to be an engineer; having parents specialising in the field of bio I guess I always had a liking for the subject ;) ), I knew a bit about Mr. Haldane's works, but its only recently that I had an actual insight into his philosophical nature too ! Although I had previously read the title essay "On being the right size" - which, by the way, clearly and lucidly explains why Godzilla and Hollywood's horror movie giant bugs can't simply exist, so as to obey the laws of nature (physics, chem, bio included); I did not find rest of the essays so "interesting" at that time,  as obviously I was back at school then and much too taken up by detective novels to care about scientific philosophy. But now... well... I have "grown up" for one thing :) and then secondly I have too much free time nowadays to just " Think" !!!

Anyway, that's the "epilogue" for many of my future posts in this blog, i.e., so as to say, I'll be taking cue and reference from the above personality's essays... well... that is, the things which came up to my "free mind" after reading those essays !

Now as my title says - "Bread and Wine"... In one of Haldane's essays "God Makers", which by the way is about something totally different, he mentioned a line from The Bible, particularly from "The Last Supper", where Jesus tells his disciples that the bread  that is in front of them is his flesh and the wine is his blood. 

Well, a thorough examination of the statement would let us see that the words have some amount of truth in them. How? Of course whatever we eat- bread, for instance, after digestion and assimilation in our body, is used up by our body cells to build themselves and carry on with their metabolic activities. That means, of course, that we are eating our bread to create our body - in other words "to become ourselves". now again wine or the water in it (if not the alcohol) is again used up by our body in its metabolic functions and well... since our body is more than 70% water I can safely say to build up our body again. So whatever Jesus said was at least partially and philosophically true....

But my point is a bit different, rather I infer bread and water { well since I am a teetotaler, I won't mention wine ;) } "becoming us" in a different way... 

Basically, whatever we eat and drink (as long as they are accepted by our bodies and form the basic ingredients of the building blocks of our body like carbohydrates, proteins, fats etc. etc.) are to some extent becoming our bodies.. the apparent lifeless molecules are gaining "life" in us, by becoming us. So what I mean is, whatever we eat, as long as it is acceptable to our body, is our food. That food irrespective of the source (plants/animals) are ultimately going to become a part of our body. That food is ultimately going to be us...!!! So then I ask why the argument about being a vegetarian and non-vegetarian :) !!!

Veggies please pardon and let me explain a bit further. 

A lot of people nowadays are vociferously campaigning for vegetarianism. Their manifesto seems to be "Convert the whole bloody world into Vegetarians". Basically my following say is against the lopsided and meaningless philosophy of these people. 

What I recommend is - "Let the Vegetarians stay as they are and who they are and likewise let the non-vegetarian people stay as they are and who they are". What I mean is, let's not convert (or try to convert) these people into either. Scientifically seeing, both these ways of life, or eating, are good in their own ways. 

Veggies get more energy from the food chain for the same amount of food the non-veggies get. 

The non-veggies get many good items such as essential vitamins and omega fatty acids form their food apart from their food being more easily assimilable (animal proteins need not be converted to form human proteins and can be directly absorbed in the intestines, as  against plant proteins which need to be broken down into their constituent amino acids before being formed into human proteins, hence requiring a bit more energy). But then again non-veggies aren't exactly carnivores and they do eat a lot of plant products too !! 

And the fact is that the "convert the world into veggies" funda or philosophy is Environmentally wrong and surely a way to world destruction ! 

Why..? Here's how. 

Now as I mentioned before, the non-veggies aren't carnivores and they do eat a lot of plant products. Now I believe and rather hope, that at least 90% of the world non-veggies don't kill wild animals or endangered animals for food; almost all their non-veg food items come from farm animals (like poultry and cattle) which are domesticated and grown just like we farm plants for food. True.. many people here will say people also kill whales and other endangered sea creatures which is harmful to the environment. I wouldn't say they are wrong. That's why I said 90%. Now these farm animals do consume grasslands and emit global warming methane and CO2 gases without doubt. That's one big factor against them. 

But then lets see what kind of effects would the Environment have if the world non-veggies are turned into veggies: 

a. Getting people to get rid of their meat eating habits would mean requiring more plant products; more plant products mean more plants and hence more fresh air or lets say more O2 and less CO2... well... so far so good.

b. Food habits of vegetarian people mean they eat not only cereals and pulses but also a lot of vegetables and fruits, all of which require fertile and empty tracts of land for their growth. 

c. As consumption of vegetable products would increase, it is then more than obvious that more land would be required for cultivation. More land would mean more deforestation (cutting down forest trees and clearing large part of forest lands) and/or reclamation of wetlands (means draining of wetlands and turning them into cultivable land). As it is, the world is slowly losing vast tracts of forest land (good example is the slow but steady degradation of the amazon river basin) for food cultivation due to an increasing population - so the consequences of the whole world turning veggies is easily imaginable. 

d. Next we need fertile soil to grow more and better food. And as already population pressure has increased the use of chemical fertilisers on farmlands, so it is obvious that the world non-veggies turning veggies would mean an increase in the consumption of chemical fertilisers. Some people supporting industrialisation would say that's good cos it'll lead to better business for the chemical industries and hence a nation's growth... Well... good enough, but my next points would prove them wrong somewhat.

e. More consumption of fertilisers means, of course, increased application of these fertilisers (mostly nitrates and phosphates) on the same patch of land year after year to achieve a sustainable plant (crop) growth. This would have two side-effects though. One is the increase in the salinity of the soil hence rendering the piece of soil unable to sustain plant growth after a period of time and the next is the process of increased eutrophication (a process wherein due to leaching of these fertilisers into water sources a rapid growth of water plants occur and causes the aquatic animals living in the water source to die of reduced space and air).

f. Thus a chain of bad effects would be started... destruction of land and water sources due to the above causes would lead to a further increase in the destruction of forests, for want of cultivable land, plus along with the destruction of wetlands and other such fresh water sources by chemical fertilisers would combinedly lead to destruction of the habitats of wild animals, who would die out as a result - a thing, ironically, the pro-vegtarianisms were trying to prevent in the first place !!

Having said that, I would ask what's wrong with some people eating animals (and animal products)..? Yes we are civilised and we are humans (hence should be humane) in this modern period of time. But then again as I heard this statement somewhere - "We humans don't have bicuspids and canines for nothing"! (meaning we do have canines and bicuspids for something !!) Those are two types of teeth in our mouth by-the-way, whose primary function in carnivores is to bite and tear into the tough flesh of other animals and yes they have the same functions in humans too. Plant eating animals (cows, buffaloes, sheep, goat etc. etc.) don't have these teeth. So as humans have been farming and eating plant food for atleast thousands of years, we ought to have lost these teeth to nature long ago like the herbivores !! So if nature intended us to use them, why not do so ?! And anyway, Non-veggies as I said earlier, 90% of them atleast, eat farm "grown" animals otherwise fish products mostly from fisheries (developed either on land or sometimes in a specific part of the sea/sea coast) where the fish are again "grown" like plants ! 

So there we go... I would plead as a conclusion to those "Convert the whole bloody world into veggies" propagandists to "Look Before you leap" and if you really want to do something to waste or make use of your time, please do exert your influence on the governments of certain countries (India among them no doubt) and if possible go out to the people themselves and give stress on and spread the idea of  family planning. 

Because population explosion in many countries is the biggest threat to the fellow creatures living on this planet than people eating meat. 

And I believe it is best to leave the meat eaters to themselves and likewise to leave the plant eaters to themselves.. they are somewhat balanced now (not taking into account the population increase).. and it is best for the survival of this planet to let the balance be retained.