Irony that is India

The other day I was having a chat with the head of sales of a mid sized Indian offshore service provider. And, he mentioned that Bangalore was closed because of a "state sponsored" bandh to show their grievances about north karnataka area that is claimed by karnataka and maharastra. Then, came the protests against english.

It made me wonder about the various stupid acts that we seem to proudly carryon. I think Gandhi probably never realized that the non-violent non cooperation movement will legitimize bandh, hartal and what ever you may call it...And, is it really non-violent? Try telling that to someone who is trying to get to a hospital for a medical emergency.

We take a lot of pride in claiming that ours was a non-violent struggle for freedom.But, we forget that the first act was to kill each other. Yes, we did not fight the british with arms, we fought our own.

Then, there is the stupid practice of calling the disadvantaged folks "harijans". As, if calling them that will change the people's behaviour. Why not just try to remove the need to classify people and enforce the non-discrimination law. And, that is not the same as handouts.