Sanity egresses

In the aftermath of multiple blasts in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Delhi, within the last 2 months, Indian politicians and the mediascape have notched up the din on combating Terrorism with tougher terror laws. Even a catchy name has been assigned to the blasts that gels with the foot-tapping beats and motion graphics of News Networks. Operation BAD (Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Delhi). The nifty acronym optimistically presumes that this might be the end of the operation since Delhi was bombed on the 13th of September.

The responsibility of the blasts was taken by a group that calls itself the Indian Mujahideen. In perverted displays of machismo, the group sent out emails to media networks and SMS messages to cops, minutes before the blasts, presaging the inevitable certainty of what was about to happen and taunting them to stop it if they could. Perhaps this was their idea of fair play and feeling invincible. Twenty one people were killed in Delhi that day.

When a bomb rips through a busy public place it kills without prejudice. It does not discriminate between a man, woman or a child, a believer or a kaffir, rich or poor, black, white, brown or yellow. It is unbiased as the harbinger of death and destruction to all those and that within its periphery. As it shamelessly robs its victims of life, it also rips through the social bonds they carry with their loved ones. Just like the barbarity of those who planted it and the truculence of a Government that vows revenge, a bomb is apathetic to that extended adjunct of its prey. These families and friends are left to deal with their psychological wounds on their own. Then there are those who are left maimed at the borders. A lost limb, a lost sense, shredded skin and a benumbed mind. These scars of trauma they carry for the rest of their lives.

The Final Solution

Five years ago, in 2003, Rakesh Sharma made a documentary film, the Final Solution about the politics of hate in Gujarat. It chronicled the instigation and aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat Riots.

These riots broke out after the burning of Coach S/6, on the Sabarmati Express, in Godhra, on February 27th, 2002. Fifty eight people (23 men, 15 women and 20 children) were killed, burnt to death by a mob, while returning from a pilgrimage from Ayodhya. Using these killings as an excuse, the Hindutva outfits VHP, RSS and Bajrang Dal (members of the Sangh Parivar) unleashed mass riots in which close to two thousand people were killed and over a hundred and fifty thousand people displaced. Most of them were Muslims.

The Sangh Parivar (family of strong associations) is a group of various political parties. The BJP, which controlled both the state and national government, at the time of the riots, is the largest member of this family. The Prime Minster of India, at that time, Atal Bihari Vajpayee started his political career as a member of the RSS. The BJP chief minister of Gujarat, Narinder Modi has close ties to the VHP and the Bajrang Dal.

When the riots went on unchecked for over two months, till May 2002, allegations started surfacing that these riots were pre-planned, organized and aided by local authorities with carte blanche from the Government. It was a serious charge because if these allegations were true, it meant the government of Gujarat was aiding the massacre of its own people divided on lines of religion.

Robots screwing Robots

America seems to be the land of abstractions, where numbers have taken on an existence of their own in phrases like "57 Varieties," "the 5 and 10," or "7 Up" and "behind the 8-ball." It figures. Perhaps this is a kind of echo of an industrial culture that depends heavily on prices, charts, and figures. Take 36-24-36. Numbers cannot become more sensuously tactile than when mumbled as the magic formula for the female figure while the haptic* hand sweeps the air.

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
Marshall McLuhan, 1964

* The Greeks referred to the faculty of touch as the "haptic" sense.

Quantitative analysis is the foundation on which logic, science and reason stand. So great is our dependency on quantitative analysis that when something doesn't make sense we refer to the numbers. Numbers are seen as the unbiased validation of truth. Our faith in numbers is the basis of testing intelligence, of calculating progress, of creating economic models. The Number can tell you if you are happy or not, it can detect if you are lying or telling the truth. It can even pronounce you mentally insane. We strengthen our arguments by backing it up with numbers because everyone trusts the number. We measure success by numbers. And if the numbers don't add up, we attribute that to human error. The Supremacy of the Number even allows us to predict and control chaos and the unknown. It enables us to see into the future.

The abstract power of the Number is felt most tangibly in Economics. Today, Chaos Math and Game Theory are commonly applied to predict the Stock Market, the World Economy, Inflation, Employment, the GDP and even Poker Games (which a lot of people take quite seriously). In fact, Game Theory originated as a model to predict results in a Poker Game.

The first political applications of Game Theory are traced back to the paranoia of the Cold War years. In the late fifties it was used, at the Rand Corporation, to play out different scenarios of nuclear war and how to avert it. Simple quantitative models of human nature were drawn, based on radars that monitored Soviet activity, fed into a computer and then used by strategists to predict Soviet behavior and decide US policy. It was the first step to believing that we could incorporate the enemy into our own thinking. We could harness the power of the Number and mathematically predict how we and our enemy would play on a set of known and unknown rules.

But underlying Game Theory was a dark vision of human beings. That we were driven only by self-interest and constantly distrustful of those around us. One mathematician at Rand, John Nash (who entered pop culture through the film A Beautiful Mind) set out to show that this dark vision was not just applicable to the Cold War but could be used to create stability in all of Human Society. To prove his thesis, he invented a series of cruel games, the most famous of which he called "Fuck You Buddy".

SIMI without its first S and last I

News networks are displaying headlines in 22 point font size claiming "Terror probe comes to an end", "Villains behind July 26 blasts identified, held", "Case Cracked". And then I heard the Gujarat Director General of Police, P.C Pandey at a press conference making a ridiculous claim with more sensational value than logic:

"The Indian Mujaheedin (IM) is nothing but another name for the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). If you remove the first S and the last I, you get IM from SIMI."

DGP sahib, you're joking right? Is this what you offer by way of proof? If I remove the middle G from your designation of DGP, I get Dog-Poop (DP) or even Delirious Paranoia (DP). How about Devil's Puppet (DP)? I can rearrange the letters in your title to create a few other meanings but the two vowels in SIMI's name are convenient and offer you an unfair advantage. But then, being the police, you are used to having unfair advantage. You can blasphemously slander and maim anyone and no one holds you accountable. Put a face, any face, with a beard on the "terror network" and the people without the beards will believe you and feel safe. This time you've chosen Mufti Abdul Bashar Kasmi. Okay children, he's a Muslim and we've caught him. Go to sleep.

Memories of War

On August 6 and 9, 1945, 63 years ago, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked with nuclear weapons. "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

Many of us were not alive yet, but on those two days 220,000 people were killed, most of them vaporized within minutes. Over the years thousands more have died in the region due to radiation and exposure.

Keiji Nakazawa, who was 6 years old at the time, is one of the few survivors from the attacks. He went on to create Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen), a manga (comic book series) about his memories. It became hugely popular and was adapted into three live action films.

His work becomes ever more pertinent today as we move to an age where nuclear weapons are considered safety nets and touted as weapons of peace.