A press release

                                 The Daily Pheesh
                                 saturday 2 October 2151

This is the text of the statement released by the Viva Human Purity(VHP) on the recent incidents in Sector 9* in Area 15091947.

The Viva Human Purity strongly condemns the murder of one of our activists at the hands of members from the Cosmic Human (CH) group. We would like to remind the dear humans of our planet that ever since the first of these dirty worshipers of the "double perpendicular" arrived on our planet in the last decade of the 21st century, there has been no peace for us humans. It must be remembered that we, along with our sister organizations all over the world, had managed to do away with 99% of all impure races by the middle of the last century employing tried and tested methods. Our acts have been driven by the very virtuous motivation of ensuring the triumph of the one-and-only-pure human race on this planet. However the CH, coming from the distant and foreign worlds seek to convert our our humans to their religion which emphasizes the worship of some unknown Cosmic being. All of us also know that these infidels promise our human brothers free trips to space to convert them to CH-ism. We have also seen how these calculating fiends managed to take away the life of our dear brother who was trying to conduct harmless experiments to enhance the purity of our human race. Friends, Brothers, we must wake up to attempts to defile our uniqueness.We must fight back! Down with this comic cosmic-isms we say. The CHs will burn in the fire of our pure anger and will be destroyed by the force of our sheer virtue.

We also request all our brothers to join in the vaporization journey of our beloved deceased brother. We would like to use this occasion to remember his work and perpetrate it further as a mark of respect to him. We urge all participants to maintain restraint. Let the world outside not know the full extent of our technical skill till we are completely ready.-DP




*Orissa is the 9th biggest state in India
Image credits

Terror Terror everywhere....

The Nanavati-Mehta Commission's report on the Godhra incident was released on the 25 of September. The report disputes the U.C Banerjee Committee's version of the incidents on the 27th of February 2002 and declares the incident to be the culmination of a "conspiracy", the intention of which was to "create terror and destabilize the administration." The report also exonerates Narendra Modi and his cohorts of any any wrong doing during the riots that followed and makes the even more fantastic claim that the Godhra incident and the riots that followed were not necessarily connected.

While the second and third conclusions have, with ample justification, provoked great outrage from most of the sane-minded populace, I would like to focus on the first point. Rather the sub-point of the first point. The part about "create terror" and all that.

(Let us for a second ignore the larger and most important issue of whether it was the Muslims of Godhra who set fire to the train and assume for merely "argumentative" purposes that the act was committed by them.)

Rarely in the recent past has terrorism and its manifold possibilities evoked such a powerful response in India. Even so, the Commission's charge that the Muslims of Godhra actually intended to create terror and destabilize the government is almost inconceivably stupid. The very thought that the extremist government of a state that is 89% Hindu(and very aggressively so) would be in any sense destabilized by a conspiracy by Muslims to burn Hindus(kar sevaks that too) alive in their own locality is to say the least, preposterous.

Come now, you would say, isn't it obvious that terror is nothing but violence inflicted mindlessly to instill fear and undermine the confidence of the people in their legitimately elected governments. By that standard, Godhra was definitely an attack of terror.

The above mentioned definition of terror is one that is gaining increasing acceptance. It is to be expected, for we live in a society where the impression of being under siege is cultivated with great ardor. As a society and a country we find it difficult to understand such bursts of violence. Therefor we attribute it to conspiracies and term the violence 'mindless'. The underlying assumption here is that conspiring and inflicting mindless violence are not traits that belong to our society, that we are victims. So we distance these traits and their perpetrators from our midst. As time passes and things grow more chaotic, the list of groups that fall under the umbrella of terror will increase. The communists, social democrats, trade unionists and all.

In the troubled times ahead, the biggest question will not be whether we will root out terror but what we will turn into in the process of rooting out terror. Will we keep in mind the fact that terrorism is not a disease but a weapon? Will we try to reason that the violence inflicted is never a mindless act but a strategy in a war being fought by sections of our own society against other sections? Will we restrain ourselves from linking every conflict, every issue with the "war against terror" ?

These questions linger on silent and unobtrusive, yet they will perhaps be the ones which determine the nature of the society we shall inhabit. After all how do you think Big Brother came to power?

In Memory of...

Today is October 2. Let us all rise and observe two minutes of silence in honor of....




Smoking in Public Spaces.
The Ramadoss has finally struck.
But there is the dirty 'I'* word still left as is obvious from this(click on the article "Govt in a spot on smoking ban")
But this is just the first step. "Kyonki battle abhi bhi baki hain."

PS.1 This post was written in a spirit of dispassionate, selfless concern for public welfare. I do not smoke.
PS.2 I can smell someone smoking right now on the floor beneath ours. Viva La resistance!
PS.3 * 'I' is for implementation.