Tough questions the media refuses to ask about Andhra politics

The government should stop slandering political opponents and focus on honouring pre-election commitments.

POLITICS | 5-minute read |   06-06-2017

Rakesh Kotti

When the creation of Telangana was announced in July 2013, I was in transit for the night in Hyderabad as I proceeded to Pune for some personal work. Not wanting to shell out a lot of money just for a few hours of rest and remain in proximity to the Begumpet station, I chose to stay at a nondescript "working men’s hostel" that provided a bed and food for cheap.

As the news broke I felt a sense of confusion, as I was a proponent of united Andhra. Nevertheless, I wasn’t too surprised because in the preceding election of 2009, the TRS and TDP were part of the grand alliance.

As I went to bed that night, I felt that common daily life would not be affected and there would be assurances for the residual state of Andhra Pradesh. Most parties had come to an apparent consensus over Telangana (both TDP and YSRCP had written letters supporting the creating of Telangana).

I completely misread the situation because almost immediately there were protests and a clear rift emerged within most political parties based in the region. I felt this too shall pass with time. However, there was sustained media coverage and emotions were whipped up.

I admit that I fell prey to the rhetoric, as my initial feeling of indifference soon morphed into rage and a sense of profound injustice. The media instead of posing questions to the political parties over the doublespeak, settled for sensationalism, which further stoked the cinders of hatred.

In the next one year, which led up to the general (and state) elections of 2014, there was acrimony across the residual state and regular life came to a halt. The continued reporting about disturbances and arson by miscreants only sustained an atmosphere of political psychosis, where people didn’t realise that the protesting parties had consented to bifurcation, implicitly and explicitly.

During campaign for the 2014 election, both BJP and TDP leaders, including Narendra Modi, Venkaiah Naidu and Chandrababu Naidu, promised to accord Andhra Pradesh special category status.

After the elections, the government claimed the state was not eligible for special category status and brazenly ruled out engaging with any dissenting voices. In this backdrop, when the Congress led the Pratyeka Hoda Bharosa Sabha, along with many likeminded parties, in solidarity with the people of Andhra Pradesh, I was motivated to listen to what the various leaders have to say.

When the TDP takes credit for creating Telangana, on what grounds do they "blame" the Congress for bifurcation? Photo: India Today

As I listened to the galaxy of leaders reiterate their resolve to continue fighting for the cause of Andhra Pradesh, I received a text from my friend asking how the meeting was progressing. When I informed him that the ground was brimming with people in rapt attention, he seemed perplexed because he had been informed by the TV channels that only a small trickle of people attended the event. Moreover, many channels showed the black flag protests led by TDP activists that demanded that Rahul Gandhi go back. The protesters alleged that he was responsible for the bifurcation of the state.

While the media should remain neutral and report objectively, they should also learn to pose questions to politicians. Not one channel questioned the double standards of the TDP with regard to Telangana, both at the time of bifurcation and during the black flag protests on June 4.

While Chandrababu Naidu claimed in Telangana that it was with his support that the new state became a reality, in Andhra Pradesh he projected the bifurcation onto the Congress. None in the media appeared courageous enough to pin down the TDP and seek answers for the acute political schizophrenia they appeared to suffer from.

As a common citizen, I seek answers for the following pertinent questions the media refuses to ask the government:

1) When the TDP was in alliance with the TRS in 2009, wasn’t it implicit that they supported the creation of Telangana, given that that was the raison d’etre of the TRS? When the TDP takes credit for creating Telangana, on what grounds do they "blame" the Congress for bifurcation?

2) Did the BJP and TDP not know before the election that Andhra Pradesh was not eligible for being accorded special category status? Are there any recent developments in the state so drastic that they had to change their stand on the issue? Both the BJP and TDP stated that the special category status is cardinal for the progress of the state. Hence, is it not their duty to ensure Andhra Pradesh is given its due? Why the stepmotherly treatment?

The recent developments make me recall a quote attributed to Malcolm X - If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing!

Unlike in 2014, I refuse to be carried away by the rhetoric of the media and seek answers from the government. The government should stop slandering their political opponents and focus on honouring their pre-election commitments.

In our obsession with facts, let’s not lose track of the truth - there is a concerted effort to stifle dissent and curb citizens from asking difficult questions!

Also read: Why Narendra Modi hates the English news media and what it means for India's democracy 

CBI raiding NDTV’s Prannoy and Radhika Roy is highly strange

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Source: dailyo

శ్రీ కౌముది జూన్ 2017

శ్రీ కౌముది  జూన్ 2017

From Ramayana to the scriptures, it's clear India has a long history of eating meat

Food and culture

The Vedas refer to about 50 animals deemed fit for sacrifice and, by inference, for eating.

Wellcome Library, London

Apr 10, 2017 · 12:30 pm

Mrinal Pande

Folks with infantile minds keep laying down laws for what is dharma and the true path and what is holy or unholy, says Matsyendranath (the guru of Gorakhnath who laid the foundations for the Nath sect in North India), in his seminal treatise Akulveer Tantra (78-87). One doesn’t know if his present-day follower, the newly incumbent chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Adityanath, would agree, but according to Guru Matsyendranath, to gain true knowledge is to rise above various petty rules and definitions propagated in the name of dharma. Kaulopanishad, the shorter but even more intense treatise of the Kaul Siddhanta (yes, the Kashmiri surname derives from it), goes a step further and says the only thing that is forbidden is badmouthing others (lok ninda). Real self-knowledge, adhyatma, means observing no fasting, feasting or rules thereof, and no desire for founding a sect. All are created equal and one who realises this becomes truly free (mukt).

The present-day political dispensation, blinded as it is by its politicised and reductive vision of things, including vegetarianism, would do well to look towards the true Indian culture foreign to its lunatic fringes, and one that they are unable to absorb. My mother’s teacher, the great scholar Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, once used a wonderful term from the Shakta Tantra for a true understanding of history. He called it shav sadhana, a term used by a tantrik sadhaka to explain to him that to gain true knowledge (siddhi), one needs to find and straddle a dead body at a masan (cremation ground, a spot where all lives have been reduced to ash) and then meditate, shutting out everything around him. It is a long and tedious process during which evil forces try their best to distract the seeker with half-truths, but if he can remain detached and focused, at some point the head of the corpse will turn completely around and as it faces the constant sadhaka, address and explain the quintessential wisdom, setting all his queries at rest. Picture this: pure knowledge being passed on through an inert form with the head at an angle of 360 degrees, offering no attachment either to the old or the new, the traditional or the practised forms of life. This, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi writes, is knowledge that sets one free.

It is only against this rather long philosophical context (the Sanskrit for philosophy is darshan, meaning to see) that the highly incendiary subject of the long history of meat eating in India can be understood properly.

History of meat-eating

There is enough historical evidence by now that Indians since the days of the Indus Valley have indulged in dishes made with meat and poultry: zebu cattle (humped cattle), gaur (Indian bison), sheep, goat, turtle, ghariyal (a crocodile-like reptile), fish fowl and game. The Vedas refer to more than 250 animals of whom about 50 were deemed fit to be sacrificed and, by inference, for eating. The marketplace had various stalls for vendors of different kinds of meat: gogataka (cattle), arabika (sheep), shookarika (swine), nagarika (deer) and shakuntika (fowl). There were even separate vends for selling alligator and tortoise meat (giddabuddaka). The Rigveda describes horses, buffaloes, rams and goats as sacrificial animals. The 162nd hymn of the Rigveda describes the elaborate horse sacrifice performed by emperors. Different Vedic gods are said to have different preferences for animal meat. Thus Agni likes bulls and barren cows, Rudra likes red cows, Vishnu prefers a dwarf ox, while Indra likes a bull with droopy horns with a mark on its head, and Pushan a black cow. The Brahmanas that were compiled later specify that for special guests, a fattened ox or goat must be sacrificed. The Taittireeya Upanishad praises the sacrifice of a hundred bulls by the sage Agasthya. And the grammarian Panini even coined a new adjective, goghna (killing of a cow), for the guests to be thus honoured.

The meat, we learn, was mostly roasted on spits or boiled in vats. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad has reference to meat cooked with rice. Also the Ramayana, where during their sojourn in the Dandakaranya forest, Rama, Lakshmana and Sita are said to have relished such rice (with meat and vegetables). It is called mamsambhutdana. In the palace at Ayodhya, during the sacrifices performed by king Dashratha, the recipes described are far more exotic with acid fruit juices being added to mutton, pork, chicken and peacock meat and cloves, caraway seeds and masur dal also being added to various dishes. The Mahabharata has references to rice cooked with minced meat (pistaudana) and picnics where various kinds of roasted game and game birds were served. Buffalo meat was fried in ghee with rock salt, fruit juices, powdered black pepper, asafetida (hingu) and caraway seeds, and served garnished with radishes, pomegranate seeds and lemons.

Then come the Buddhist Jatakas and Brahtsamhita (6th Century CE) that maintain the list of non-vegetarian food items, adding some more species. All in all, meat till then appears to have been deemed a nourishing food. It is even recommended by the famed physician Charaka for the lean, the very hard working and those convalescing from a long illness. The Jains, of course, remained totally averse to devouring any form of life. But the Buddha did not forbid the eating of meat if offered as alms to Buddhist bhikkus, provided the killing should not have happened in the presence of the monks. It was the responsibility of the giver of the alms to ensure this.

No inhibitions down south

Down south, the inhibitions against eating meat and fish are rare. In the earliest writings on food dating back to 300 CE, pepper (kari) is described as the main spice for flavouring meat. Fried meat had three names and meat boiled with tamarind and pepper was called pulingari. It was occasionally ground to make a sort of pasty relish. Kapilar, the famous Brahmin priest of the Sangam age, speaks with a certain relish of consuming meat and liquor. Old Tamil has four terms for beef: valluram, shushiyam, shuttiraichi and padithiram. There were 15 names for pork, a special favourite, we learn, among the wives of traders in the coastal region. There are also references to wild boar, rabbits and deer being hunted with hunting dogs. Captured boars were fattened with rice flour and kept away from the female to make their flesh tastier. Among more exotic meats were porcupines (a favourite of the Kuruvars) and fried snails (favoured by the Mallars). Down south, there was also no taboo on eating domestic fowl (kozhi). Fish and prawns were greatly relished all along the coastal region, so much so that the word for fish, meen, also entered the lexicon of Sanskrit as the north learnt to relish this fruit of the seas.

Contrary to prevalent notions, the Ayurvedacharyas did not deem meat as avoidable. The Sushrut Samhita compiled by the physician sage Sushruta lists eight kinds of meats. The Manasollas, a treatise ascribed to the 13th century king Someshwara, similarly gives pride of place to the chapter on food entitled Annabhoga. It refers to nuggets of liver roasted or fried and then served with yogurt or a decoction of black mustard, to pigs roasted whole with rock salt and pepper with a dash of lemon and served carved in strips resembling palm leaves.

There are no fewer than three great artistic works in Hindi that, like the panels of a tryptich, portray the hellish vision of things for this century: Yashpal’s Jhootha Sach, Rahi Masoom Raza’s Adha Gaon and Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas. The Yogi’s Raj had only to make its entrance to mime what fiction had already imagined.

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Source: scrollin