Islamic Dawah, Cricket and winning hearts

Andrew Carnegie has said, “Dealing with people is a lot like digging for GOLD: When you go digging for an ounce of gold, you have to move tons of dirt. But when you go digging, you don’t go looking for the dirt, you go looking for the gold.” The same logic applies in Dawah work as well. If one expects to sow a seed in one moment and pluck fruit in another, he could not prove to be a good Da’ee. It is here that the analogy of Da’ee with a bowler is best illustrated. Even best of the bowlers in the world bowl extensively, throws wide and no-balls, shed runs, hit for fours and sixes, and it is only on a couple of those lucky balls which earns him wicket in which his credibility as a bowler lies. This patience and perseverance of a bowler is extremely essential for a Da’ee.

To be a bowler, you don’t need to attend hi-fi coaching. To bowl, you just need a ball and will to bowl. With a ball in the hand and will to bowl in the heart, when you first reach the ground to face the batsman, your first ball will crawl over the pitch barely able to reach the crease. It will be followed by dozens of wide and no balls; some balls will go over the batsman in the gloves of wicketkeeper, others over him as well, across the boundary line. Then the umpire may whisper in your ear that your action is not appropriate. After all this, when your first ‘legal’ ball will reach the batsman, he may send it flying for six for several times. It is only after going through this ‘humiliating’ process that you could aspire to be a Muttiah Muralitharan, Glenn McGrath or Shane Warne.

In the same manner, you have to hit the grounds for Dawah work. You must train yourself, polish your arguments, read extensively but your actual training centre will only be your Dawah field. You may commit mistakes but these mistakes will teach you lessons that thousands of books and lectures could not. Every question that your addressee asks and whose answer you don’t know will prompt you to increase your knowledge, every taunt of your addressee on your personality will help you improve your personality.

Believe me, if you get busy in Dawah work sincerely, the day is not far when you will notice that whatever you are preaching, you are automatically practising yourself. Dawah work will improve your personality, skills, character and most important of all, it will be an asset for the afterlife.

Khan Yasir in Radiance Views Weekly, New Delhi. Here

11-Year Hunger strike and Anna Hazare's gimmick

She arrived in an ambulance, thin and ghostly pale, a tube dangling from her nostril. Flanked by police officers, she was ushered into the judge’s chambers for a fortnightly ritual she has repeated hundreds of times. Was she ready to end her fast?

Irom Chanu Sharmila, a 39-year-old poet and activist, gave her usual reply: no. With that, she was taken back to the hospital room where she spends her days in isolation, force-fed a sludgy mix of nutrients though the tube in her nose. This routine has gone on, remarkably, for 11 years.

A recent 12-day fast by the social activist Anna Hazareparalyzed India’s political system, captured the nonstop attention of its hyperkinetic 24-hour cable news media and inspired hundreds of thousands of people across the country to rally in his crusade against corruption. 

In New York Times, Lydia Polgreen meets Irom Chanu Sharmila who has been on a hunger strike for the past 11 years and is force-fed through a tube more

Social Fascism, Anna Hazare and A Raja

Social fascism becomes the reality of a civil society that constructs a moral basis of its own. A middle class like the Indian one, which has erected strong caste enclosures around itself, looks for morality to serve its own interests. Corruption in general becomes a buzzword of condemnation within its day-to-day discourse, despite the fact that it lives with corrupt practices on a daily basis. For example, a middle-class government or NGO functionary does not hesitate to take Rs 1 lakh or more as salary, plus thousands of rupees of honorarium and sitting fees, but that same person would treat a chaprasi, who works for a Rs 5,000 monthly salary, as corrupt if he/she asks for Rs 200 for extra work.

The civil society that led the anti-corruption crusade also does not see corporate houses paying hundreds of crores of bribe money as corruption, but, a minister, an MP or a government official, who takes such bribe money is seen as corrupt because the corporate houses are still in the hands of “their people”, while the political and bureaucratic positions are slipping into the hands of people who are “corrupt by birth”.

Take, for example, A. Raja and Kanimozhi. They are treated as corrupt but the corporate houses that gave kickbacks and took huge contracts at throwaway prices are not treated as corrupt. The same corporate houses and their media boxes have been mobilising civil society of Gandhi topi into maidans to fight corruption.

Kancha Ilaiah in Deccan Chronicle. Here

Advani's Antim Yatra

The BJP conceded three goals in quick succession very much against the run of the play. Till a few weeks back, the party was in somewhat aggressive mood and tried to capitalize on the atmosphere created by Anna Hazare. It started appearing that the BJP would finally outplay the Congress. But then, like a bombshell, came the report of the Lokayukta and subsequent drama, which forced the party to get rid of Yeddyurappa. All this happened at the height of the Anna’s movement––that is a few days before and after his 12-day fast.

In the earlier two occasions the crusade against corruption has helped the BJP and erstwhile Jan Sangh. The party fully consolidated its position during the 1974 JP movement in Bihar and Navnirman movement in Gujarat. Thus gradually it emerged as the strongest of the five constituents of the Janata Party, which was formed in 1977. The conglomeration ruled the country for less than three years. The Janata Party disintegrated and in 1980 the Bharatiya Janata Party, instead of Bharatiya Jan Sangh, was formed. 

Similarly, the BJP fully capitalized the Bofors kickback issue for its own political end though it was V P Singh, who first raised the issue. Advani fully mixed the battle against corruption with the religious issue of Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. This ultimately paved the way for its victory. It thus led a 24 parties alliance and ruled the country for six years.

However, this time the crusade against corruption is not going to cut much ice. There is no Emergency in the country as in mid-1970s. Nor is there any scope to once again whip up the religious sentiment as in late 1980s and early 1990s. Now the voters of the country have tested the ‘honesty’ of the party with a difference too. Several scams rocked the country during its six years rule between 1998 and 2004. The then national president of the BJP, Bangaru Laxman, was caught in camera accepting Rs one crore from a fictitious arms dealers.

In the states, Karnataka has shown a new way to loot the country’s treasure. Octogenarian Advani finds his party in a very tight position. The second rung leadership of Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley are no match to the stature of Vajpayee and Advani while there is no dearth of partymen who want to keep Narendra Modi away. In that way Advani once again had to take up the responsibility of leading his team and playing another innings. 

Advani’s position is like Australian cricketer Bobby Simpson, who had to come out from retirement and lead his team after almost the premier players rebelled and joined World Series Cricket organized by Kerry Packer between 1977 and 1979. But that was just a stop-gap arrangement. Advani knows his role and is no doubt too old to captain the team, which is now packed.

Soroor Ahmed in Two Circles. More Here.

Advani's Antim Yatra

There is nothing more revealing in politics than a old, doddering politician who buries his head in the sand and tries to gauge the prevailing wind of public opinion. And so it is with the “former future prime minister of India“, Lalchand Kishinchand Advani who has announced what many are derisively calling his “Antim Yatra“.

At one level, Advani’s impromptu announcement of a nationwide tour at the age of 84 is proof that the flame of ambition has flickered feverishly despite the renunciation of key posts (like leader of opposition and party president) at the less-than-gentle nudging of the extra-constitutional knicker lobby that really wears the pants in the BJP.

At another level, the “Antim Yatra” is proof that the BJP is now officially bereft of both ideas and leadership. That it took the success of Anna Hazare‘s campaign for the lead opposition party to take up corruption as an issue reveals plenty about what it has been doing these past two and a half years since the 2009 electoral defeat.

And that the BJP leadership thinks that it has the credibility to talk about corruption, when its own governments and leaders in Karnataka, Gujarat, Uttaranchal and Chhatisgarh are battling (or stalling investigation of) serious charges of corruption shows the hypocrisy of it all.

Above all, Advani’s announcement of a yatra throws cold water on the aspirations of almost the entire second generation of leaders in the BJP, all of whom privately envision themselves as national leaders and almost all of whom entertain dreams of becoming prime minister.

Questions: Will Advani’s “Antim Yatra” evoke any response? Is Advani’s “Antim Yatra” merely to save his skin now that the reprehensible cash-for-votes scandal has landed squarely in his court? Notwithstanding the Congress’s plight, does the BJP have the credibility to talk of clean, corruption-free governance? Will Advani be acceptable as the face of the BJP in 2014, when he will be 86?

Courtesy : Churumuri. Here 

Thankfully, cleanliness is next only to Godliness

The saner way of looking at this picture is to view it rationally. Surely, the all-knowing, all-seeing lord, in his infinite wisdom, would understand that his time-, attention-, and devotion-strapped devotees didn’t have the time, attention or devotion to bid him goodbye in the same way they welcomed him.

The less charitable way of looking at this picture is to view it as proof, full and final, of our civic consciousness, or utter lack of it. The brazen use of plaster of paris and lethal chemicals and paints to immortalise our devotion says much of how much we value his creations—the ponds, the lakes, the rivers—with vacuous prayers on our lips.

Which is why, this idol which wouldn’t become one with the water at a special pond in the Ulsoor lake in Bangalore on Wednesday, is now having to be disposed of thus, like last night’s garbage. Not that the good lord would mind, of course, in his infinite wisdom.
Or perhaps not.

Courtesy : Churumuri