Pseudo Secularism

Today's (28th March 2006) Hindu, Delhi edition carried a small news item which I have reproduced verbatim. I doubt whether this is there on the online edition of The Hindu.

Support for Husain

A group of 33 artists, writers, film-makers, art enthusiasts and academicians on Monday expressed concern at the filing of cases recently against artist M.F.Husaun for allegedly "offending Hindu sentiments" with his nude painting, "Mother India".

Pointing out that they did not want to comment on the specific cases filed in courts, they said Mr.Husain's paintings represented the "multicultural and multireligious mosaic of our identity." To accuse such an artist of religious insensitivity or disrespect for Bharat Mata was an example of "not only ignorance, but perhaps of mischief", they said in a statement.

"Such mischievous acts can arise only out of a narrow-mindedness which is completely contrary to the tolerance and breadth of Indian culture."

OK "art-connoisseurs" , "tolerant", "well informed", "goody-goody" people of India. Enough of your double standards. You good for nothing bums can only protest when the matter concerns Hinduism. Did you have the guts to protest when death threats for the Danish cartoonists were issued by none other than a minister for Haj in UP? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, Haj is a subsidised pilgrimage right? Oh! How could I forget? India practises "secularism" of the Animal farm type wherein 'All religions are equal but some religions are more equal than the other".

Anyway, coming back to the point, if Mohammad is sacred to Muslims, Bharat Mata is sacred to Indians, not only Hindus. So, for your kind information, this protest is more nationalistic than religious.

Either condemn all attacks on freedom of expresison as this author does, or else don't condemn any....Choice is yours. This ain't animal farm, this is a country!! Simply don't embark on such publicity stunts from the air conditioned comforts of some hall at IIC or IHC.

Abel "Nobel":The Math Honour

Everyone of us is familiar with the Nobel prize issued anually in the field of Physics, Chemistry, medicine, Literature, Economics and Peace. If you notice carefully, there is an important branch of science missing. An wonder of wonders, it is Mathematics, the queen of subjects. There have been many speculative reasons for Alfred Nobel not to have left behind a legacy of a prize for mathematics. The wikipedia link that I have provided should answer all questions. I'll quote the clinching arguments here:

There are several possible reasons why Nobel created no Prize for mathematics. Nobel was not interested in mathematics. Nobel's will speaks of prizes for those inventions or discoveries of greatest practical benefit to mankind, possibly having in mind more practical than theoretical works. Mathematics was not considered a practical science from which humanity could benefit (a key purpose for the Nobel Foundation).

One other possible reason was that there was already a well known Scandinavian prize for mathematicians. The existing mathematical awards at the time were mainly due to the work of Gösta Mittag-Leffler, who founded the Acta Mathematica, which a century later is still one of the world's leading mathematical journals. Through his influence in Stockholm he persuaded King Oscar II to endow prize competitions and honor distinguished mathematicians all over Europe, including Hermite, Bertrand, Weierstrass, and Poincaré.

It is often repeated that Nobel refused to endow a mathematics prize because his wife had an affair with Mittag-Leffler. This story is patently untrue, as Nobel never married

All said and done, the Norwegian government began awarding the Abel Prize as a substitute for the Nobel from 2001 onwards. This is named after Niels Henrik Abel who was a young genius of his times. I still remember my mathematics lecturer in MES College quote his name reverentially, "Abel....a great man..a great mathematician" with a shake of his head as if to say, "Why did he have to die so early?" The only other mathematician in the mould of Abel, i.e. one who contributed very heavily to the world of mathematics but died early is Srinivasa Ramanujan. If you want to know more about Ramanujan, i recommend you to read this book called "The Man Who Knew Infinity" by Robert Kanigel. Brilliant writing! Even the mathematical aspects are dealt with lovely skill and the photographs are a collector's delight. Also read the magazine called Resonance. Brilliant scientific writing, much better than the crap-shit that they serve at IEEE and Sciencedirect.

This year's Abel Prize has been awarded to the Swedish mathematician Lennart Carleson. read his biography here. Prof. Carleson's work is based on the elementary but powerful Fourier series that is being taught right from the undergraduate classes. His efforts can be summed up by these lines:

For more than 150 years after Fourier’s discovery, no adequate formulation and justification was found of his claim that every function equals the sum of its Fourier series. In hindsight this loose statement should be interpreted as regarding every function for which "it is possible to draw the graph", or more precisely, every continuous function. Despite contributions by several mathematicians, the problem remained open.

In 1913 it was formalized by the Russian mathematician Lusin in the form of what became known as Lusin’s conjecture. A famous negative result of Kolmogorov in 1926, together with the lack of any progress, made experts believe that it would only be a matter of time before someone constructed a continuous function for which the sum of its Fourier series failed to give the function value anywhere. In 1966, to the surprise of the mathematical community, Carleson broke the decades-long impasse by proving Lusin’s conjecture that every square-integrable function, and thus in particular every continuous function, equals the sum of its Fourier series “almost everywhere”.

The proof of this result is so difficult that for over thirty years it stood mostly isolated from the rest of harmonic analysis. It is only within the past decade that mathematicians have understood the general theory of operators into which this theorem fits and have started to use his powerful ideas in their own work.

An article in The Guardian simplifies matters and even gives us additional fundas about Prof. Carleson's work being used in the iPod. Sample a little:

In the 1960s Carleson showed that any sound, no matter how complicated, can be represented as a series of sine waves. "That translates in the real world as the idea that any sound can be reproduced using the sound of a tuning fork," said a University of Oxford mathematician, Marcus du Sautoy. "The sound of a lion roaring can be broken down into just simple tuning forks."

Nice isn't it? Just when you think that something has been dissected thoroughly and passed through the "sugarcane-crusher" until the last drop has been extracted, someone comes along and refines it. This is research and this is what I am not able to do.

Talking of mathematicians, no conversation is complete without paying homage to the Hungarian mathematicians who are dreaded by their contemporaries elsewhere. I remember having read somewhere after the author had mentioned a particularly difficult problem, said something similar to, "..but don't be surprised if a Hungarian walks up, takes a quick look and writes out the solution..."

Hmm...Hungary reminds me, I'm hungry...For what? I don't know...

Where have all the women gone?

Manish Jha asked this question in Matrubhoomi.

and........

I ask it today.....

It was while returning from the Andhra Bhavan Restaurant today; first by foot to the National Museum bus stop and then by bus to IIT that I realised that I had seen only 5 women who were not in autos or cars or on bikes, that is to say only 5 women in total seen at the bus stops and in the bus. All this at mid-night? No, at 21:00 hrs.

I can only think of the following possible reasons: (please don't label any point u are opposed to as chauvinistic)
1. Delhi females are getting richer by the day and are able to afford auto fares, or buy cars or two wheelers. If this is the case, then women have been sufficiently empowered in Delhi and its the male's turn to do all the catching up.
2. The Delhi female's boyfriend or husband is not a fan of public transport AND/OR is physically & mentally & financially & automobilially acceptable to his GF/wife. These are dangerous signs for "single and ready to mingle" characters like me. "Have....to...improve...attributes....to...get...a...GF...keep....trying...GROAN..SNAP...FALLDOWN"
3. The safety of women in Delhi is pathetic. All along the bus journey I put myself in the shoes (OR chappals if u please) of a female; lets call her Aache-Maneya-Subbamma. Would she have felt comfortable standing alone at a bus stop with poor or no illumination? Would she have felt comfortable travelling in a bus full of men out of whom, at any given point of time 70% would be staring at her?

Well, finally 2 females did get on at Sarojini Nagar market stop. And you should have seen the 'u go first' kinda sacrifice being made by the guys sitting on the ladies' seats. Sacrifice did i say?? Make that 'sacrifice'. Each one was in fact trying to nudge someone else to get up!! The conductor had to intervene to get them the seats.

Bad, bad Delhi!! You are not giving your daughters the freedom to roam around at any time of the 24 hours that make up a day. Learn from New York or closer home, Bombay.

I pray for you Delhi woman (and by way of extension for the Indian woman)! I pray that you should be able to walk 14 blocks at close to midnight like Carrie Bradshaw does in Sex and the City when cabs refuse to go to her part of town. I pray for the day when you will be able to ooze out your sexuality like Samantha Jones; i pray for the day when you are able to show the middle finger like Miranda Hobbes when people mess around with you and I pray for the day when you can shyly step into heaven: the ability to make independent decisions like Charlotte York.

Sleep peacefully Delhi woman, someday things are going to get better.

And oh yeah! When you want to live life like Charlotte York, remember that she chose a non-flamboyant guy Harry Goldenblatt!! Lots of such guys abound!!!!

some more...........

Pakistanis read more!! Geeks!! Now read Kicking Schoolbags

This is how we loved our leaders!!!

Gandhi dead!!!

the era of black and white

beautiful snap! taken before the rival cameraman got into position

Stalwarts both

Looks morphed doesn't it?

Human Durga

Ever Travelled like this

The horrors of partition

Nehru's swearing in

Chocolate promised but potato mash served.....

lovely article on kissing. The pleasant surprise is that Indiatimes put it up in a lovely romantic way unlike the sleaze that they usually come up with.

arm vs reich...

....in German translates as poor vs rich. and no better article epitomising the wide gulf between
arm and reich in Indien. (forgive the German usage,am learning it, so would like to show off). an
excellent article published by TIME tries to analyse the divide. found this article through this link.

now lets start one of my favourite sections of this blog i.e. my attempt at analysing the
article.

the last three years of my life have seen a total metamorphosis. from being a rabid capitalist
who cheered whenever the stock markets rose to someone who believes in the naxalite ideology
(though not their means of achieving it..[but again one should remember Che Guevara's dialogue

in The Motorcycle Diaries "A revolution without guns? You must be crazy"...); the journey has
encountered many "tale-tirugiso" (head turning) incidents.

The first was the defeat of the TDP in Andhra Pradesh followed by the defeat of the BJP at the
centre and the "i have to kick you out, but have to keep you too" verdict for the Congress under

S.M.Krishna in Karnataka. Of course there had been similar ousters previously like these in

Madhya Pradesh (Digvijay Singh) and Rajasthan (Ashok Gehlot). But this stung since 2004

was the first time that I voted. BJP at the centre and the Congress at the state level (Karnataka)

screamed my vote as I cast it into the ballot box at the KREC school. I must admit that

the India Shining campaign of the BJP government at the centre and the Bangalore-centric

agenda of the Krishna government had blinded me so much that i had forgotten that

there were places like Dharavi, Telengana, Vidharba and Wayanad.

Vidharba raises another interesting question. The HQ of the biggest scoundrels in the

country namely the RSS and hence indirectly the spiritual and ideological HQ of the BJP,

Nagpur is the biggest city of this area. wtf were they doing with regard to the farmers?

The second major influence happened when I came to IIT Delhi. It was on a winter night in January 2005, I was returning from Connaught Place where I had seen all the post new year revelries still shining. About 400 metres from IIT is a crude home of migrant labourers. These homes are nothing more than tents and to the credit of the males among these labourers (Learn, all ye female foetus exterminators), the women and the girls were huddled in the tents (and a good thing too, God knows who might have kidnapped them in a moving car and raped them..Delhi is the rape capital na???) while the male folks shivered outside. Chivalry apart, the quiet and determined nature by which these guys braved the cold while many of us fortunate ones ranted and raved about the chilly winds, cursed the temperature and longed (foolishly) for summer to arrive.

The third one is of course, 'The Motorcycle Diaries'. This one dragged me towards socialism, a
kind of socialism which encourages the 'bade-bade log' to progress but ensures that distribution

of wealth is done by an independent honest regulator of course aided by some efficient and

impartial tax collectors.

Coming back to the TIME article, there are certain statements and quotes that show how

much of poverty is being thrust into our face and yet we bury our heads in our sand with

our asses jutting out in the air like ostriches. no wonder the naxalites are butt-fucking us

currently in dandakaranya. Sample a few:

Fifty years ago in newly independent India, castes mixed in the street and overt
displays of wealth were more than crass—they were suspicious. But today

rich and poor lead wholly separate lives. The rich shop in malls, patronize

private schools and hospitals, and relax in gyms and spas. The poor live in

slums, send their children to work, and can't afford health care.

This economic partition means that a two-bedroom flat in south Bombay, with a view of
the 700,000-resident Dharavi slum, may sell for $750,000. Construction giant Sahara offers
Swiss-style chalets and Burmese-style teak villas in a secure 2,025-hectare park outside Bombay.

Manager Seemanto Roy says Amby Valley will have artificial lakes, a golf course, an indoor ski

slope and a dial-a-nightclub service enabling residents to order lights and sound to their

own patios. When residents venture out, they can be whisked by a high-speed train to

downtown Bombay, which Roy says will cut a three-hour trek through the slums to

20 minutes in comfort. In the words of Delhi University politics professor Achin Vanaik,

those on the train will avoid the "angry humiliation" of India's backwardness.

Slumped in her Patilpada doorway, Jaie Bhambruy, 32, struggles to pull her one-year-old
twins onto her breasts. The children, one wailing, one limp, are too weak to suckle.

"We went to the hospital," she says, "but they sent us away [so as] not to embarrass the
government."

This article goes on to state that "growth never trickles down evenly. its only by opening the
economy, producing the odd billionaire who produces thousands of jobs that poverty can be
overcome". True, and this is also what I preach. But what does one do if that billionaire is a
tax evader, hoards wealth and the share of money that trickles down is miniscule? This

situation is not even going back to square one, it is negative because in the process of

making one man super rich, how many people would have been unsettled, just for the sake

of the crumbs that he would have thrown at them with the contempt that he would not have

reserved for even his dogs. Something we all need to think about.

No country seems to have sorted this issue out. Donno who will be the pioneer in eradicating
poverty. But it certainly won't be eradicated by silly concerts and G8 declarations...

I'll just say "All my people right here right now; do you know what i mean?"

or as the Germans say, "Alle, wissen sie?"