The other day, the Prime minister was telling the students at a university in Banaras about the virtues of being young and free-minded individuals they have to become if the country has to move forward.  Maybe the grotesque irony of the situation was completely lost on him.  Because just a couple of days before that, there was a brutal crackdown on a group of students by the police on the campus of one of the premier liberal arts university in the country, the JNU in the capital New Delhi.  Their supposed crime was that they were chanting 'anti India/anti national' slogans.  This peaceful agitation so unnerved the government about the imminent collapse of the mighty Indian state that it used methods which was grossly disproportionate to the so called 'treasonous act' by a handful of disaffected youngsters.  Anyone not familiar with the devious high-handedness of the Indian state would have thought this something out of a banana republic!

   There is a basic problem with the attitude of the government.  They believe that they have a monopoly over what constitute nationalism and patriotism.  When you start defining these nebulous and subjective facets of community life into a rigid structure of your ideological value system; then it is a very short step before your patriotism turns into a worldview grounded in jingoism, reaction and half-truths, that can do incalculable damage to this country.  To me, the freedom of speech and expression is absolute and non-negotiable.  I must have the right to express my views without any fear, and this also includes the freedom to mock and ridicule any religion or nationality, and if in the process, somebody's sentiments are offended, so be it.  As long as people are not indulging in violent activities, why can't the government just let us be?  Even the Constitution has not defined nationalism and has left it to the individual's devices.  I am much more concerned about the health of the Republic which need to be guarded against the growing virus of intolerance.

Nowadays I have almost completely given up on watching national news channels.  I realized that news on Indian television is not about the good old fashioned reporting from the ground, but mostly about talking heads in the studio.  I am certain that it's a part of a deliberate ploy to generate so much sound and fury that the real issues gets hopelessly lost in the mad cacophony.  Instead of adding to my knowledge about anything, they were only giving me headache.  So I stopped, I now occasionally tune into international networks like the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera.  They are much more sober and have a lot more informed debates and discussion.

  What I do mostly these days, is that almost every night-- except maybe on weekend--I listen to the discourse by Osho.  As soon as I'm done with my supper, I get the audio recordings of his lectures turned on and wrap myself in a cocoon of my own world.  The soothing voice of Rajneesh.  It coaxes and cajoles, provokes and agitates in equal measure, but most importantly, it expands your mind and adds a focus to your consciousness.  So, here I am lying down, trying to get cozy.  I have shut my eyes and I'm just letting the words wash over me.  What is it that I'm looking for?  That truth can only be conveyed and understood in silence.  It is more important to know for yourself than to blindly accept, because when you just accept something in the name of religion or tradition, it is a totally borrowed wisdom and not your own.  There is some meditation on life and death.  You come to understand that your life is just one end of the spectrum.  The other end of that is death and that neither can exist without the other.  When there is no disease, there is health.  When there is no health, there is disease.  When there is no light, there is darkness, just like when there is no darkness, there is light.  This human existence is based on polarity, a kind of tension between opposing forces.  The future never comes, rather what is a slow accumulation of present moment, we delude ourselves as future.  These and plenty of other things swirl in my mind, and then I retire for the night.