Not good enough, Jim Carrey!

Even being an Indian, living in independent India, I have never agreed with Mahatma Gandhi's principles.  It is one thing to be non-violent, quite another to be inactive, and I am beginning to know the difference, but for some reason, in the perception of India and its values and beliefs, the line between the two begins to blur.

Even for someone not vested in the either the nation state concept or the concept of religion, it is sometimes irritating.

An actor by the name of Jim Carrey has angered a lot of Hindus by his portrayal of Lord Ganesh in a sexual act on NBC's Saturday Night Live.  http://www.indianexpress.com/news/hindus-upset-with-jim-carrey-nbc-for-mocking-lord-ganesh/738479/

Apparently, NBC is a fairly popular and wide television network, reaching a sizable audience.  Whether this means it is a responsible broadcaster, I do not know.  However, it would seem incumbent upon any large corporation to take some care before broadcasting any content that is clearly not in good taste.

Lord Ganesh, the revered elephant God, is invoked by his believers, at all auspicious occasions, whether it is a festival, or the opening of a school.  He is loved by children, worshipped by billions, and is a lot more than a deity with the head of an elephant.  He is wisdom, he is patience, he is the remover of obstacles, and an adored non-controversial, ever present, celebrated child in every altar he finds a place in.

To a huge number of people all over the world - Ganesh brings peace and calm.  He is adorable and beautiful.  And he is the child of Shiva and Parvati, no less.  So, this is no vagabond sculpture that started a cult following either!  And Ganesh isn't going to lose his immense calmness because some fool tried to mock him.  He won't mind that.  But he will be disappointed that so little of his wisdom percolated down to an actor who took it upon him to impersonate him!

NBC does not need to know any of this.  Nor does this fellow Jim Carrey.  But what they should know in these tough economic times, is to not piss off a billion plus people.  There is going to be no fatwa.  No Hindu is going to make up his mind to kill Jim Carrey, but what will happen is this - Indian film distributors will come to know that this guy Jim Carrey is not good news.  A couple of Hindu organizations will call the Distributors Council and tell them they won't allow this idiot's films to be released anywhere in India.  So, they won't buy any of his films.  Let Hollywood decide if Carrey's market value goes up or down because of this achievement.

It is not as if India is dying without Hollywood product.  Hollywood films collect less than 5% of India's box office revenues.  But it is a billion plus market.  Ask the accounts department if that can be ignored.

Nobody in NBC may lose a job over this incident.  Hollywood may not really care if a Jim Carrey movie tanks at the box office.  The industry should however, really think about what Jittu Krishnamurthy, whom actress Janeane Garofalo has read a lot of, said - "In lieu of creativity, there is sexuality".

>>In a skit on NBC’s SNL (January eight) titled “The Wrath of Ganesh”, Jim Carrey (as erotic shaman Lee Licious) and Kenan Thomson (as Grady Wilson) demonstrate a sexual technique, mocking Lord Ganesh and his trunk in the process. Grady has traveled the world to find new sexual techniques to spice up the bedroom, the tagline of the episode (1587) “Grady Wilson's Tantric N'Tasty” says. <<

What?  You Americans mastered the Kamasutra in just 200 years?  Now you want new challenges?  Maybe the elephant is closer to your body shape these days that the Kamasutra is no longer a practical guide?

It was not that long ago that Hillary Clinton said of Mahatma Gandhi - "He ran a gas station down in St. Louis.".  No matter how she corrected herself, after a few morons in St. Louis thought it was funny, it shows some kind of residual stupidity in even grown up Americans.  If she had said Ahmedinajad's dad was a barber in Kansas City, the Muslim world would have issued a fatwa and she would have invited all sorts of condemnation, not for being a moron with a poor sense of humour, but for putting American lives at risk!

The USA almost has the patent on irreverence.  Reverence itself may be overrated, but many beautiful things come out of it.  One of them might be a unified Asian currency.  I can't wait for that to be unleashed upon the world, and I can't wait for oil to be pegged against it, instead of the US Dollar or the Euro.  The biggest consumer rules, doesn't he?

Dear "Americans", your idiots can mock other countries, religions, cultures, icons, and things they don't understand all they want, but for all the trumpet blowing about even your greatest achievement, democracy, think about this - At the end of the last parliamentary elections in India, an Italian Roman Catholic Christian lady headed the winning coalition, and she nominated a Sikh Prime Minister who took his oath before a Muslim president, in a country that is 83% Hindu.

Really, USA, you need to get over your puberty some time.  The world is fast losing its patience.  Your place in it is no longer a matter of what you can get away with.  It is clearly a challenge now, of what you can come up with.

Since some of you are probably so curious about this sort of thing -



Why watch Jim Carrey?

The Hindu Terrorist.

The dreaded Hindu Terrorist is here at last. It is not so much a new arrival of a phenomenon, but an acknowledgment that is beyond denial now.

Soon after the Babri Masjid destruction, I felt violated by an act of terror. One of my country's monuments had been destroyed, and even without the other incidents this act triggered in the years to come, I maintain that this was a singularly ugly act of terror against India. It was also significant for the clear evidence of the Hindu terrorist.

I had heated arguments with people who claimed in all their well meaning stupidity that these were people trying to correct an historic wrong, and that there was originally a temple in the site where the mosque had been built. Now, as far as I am concerned, I am an Indian citizen, and my country was born on the 15th of August 1947, and on that day, if it was a mosque, then it is my country's mosque, and I am proud of it. I don't care about what existed before for that may be part of the legacy of the Indian land, it certainly is not part of the Indian nation's history.

The greatest argument I had was with a group of people who interrupted a cricket game I was playing in to ask for donations, ostensibly to build the Ram Janm Bhoomi temple on that very spot. I flatly refused, but they proceeded to give themselves an iota of respectability by saying they were from the Indian Institute of Science. This got me furious. I asked them why when they had the gall to claim respectability by belonging to the INDIAN Institute of Science, how could they support the destruction of an INDIAN monument in the name of Hinduism?

To me, these people were supporters of terror, and should have been thrown behind bars for even attempting such an audacious task. India is a secular country, and we signed up for our constitution, which reaches well above a God concept and bows only to a Truth concept. We are way more secular than any other nation has ever even imagined itself to be. Religion and faith all have their places in our country, but more than anything, our respect of our principles of tolerance and acceptance should and will rule supreme.

The games of political parties already stand ruthlessly exposed. No Indian citizen's glee or disappointment with a political system should reflect negatively upon that person's contribution to the nation's ethos. Our ethos is one of knowledge, progress, truth, justice and compassion. No piece of history that took place before the 15th of August 1947 should put any responsibility upon any of our citizens to correct today, and no piece of legislation that came into existence after this date can be ignored without showing disrespect to the India we have today.

The presence of Islamic terror in India is a well documented fact and continues to be on our radar. What we now have is irrefutable proof that the Hindu terrorist exists. Political parties will run helter skelter to distance themselves from these elements, no doubt, and that is to be expected, for our politicians are rats in the majority. We have saffron clad, politically active public personalities involved in bombing that has claimed Indian lives. For parties like the VHP and the BJP, who love to claim that there is no Hindu terror, this is a clear "Shut up, thank you". The biggest alarm bells for us are indeed the involvement of military personnel, particularly those of officer ranks, in acts of terror in the exact fashion of Islamic terror - bombs!

On TV yesterday, I was puzzled by the expression used to describe a certain "militia in support of the government" in Congo. I would think this means the military of the country - wearing a national uniform, working in tandem with the government, officially entrusted with the job of protecting it from external threats. For some reason, this sounds like a group of armed people with no official sanction, but still supporting the government in a multi party, multi faceted clusterf^%k! If our military is fighting terror officially and unofficially causing it, where do we stand?

The loss of faith in our institutions would cause our nation to bleed a lot worse than any terror attack. We already do not have any faith in our police. We definitely do not have any faith in our politicians, except for the top few. We used to have faith in the military, but now, that is under severe test. Nothing short of hanging the guilty will do to restore some of this faith. But knowing our country fully well, this will probably get dragged into a long drawn affair, and end in a nebulous status quo that neither answers the question nor dismisses it. That is the India we are used to - a sluggish, unclear, directionless, chaotic mass that defies all logic and intelligence.

The Hindu terrorist could not have stated its existence at a worse time, but better late than never, and definitely it is never too early to show up if you exist. It is clear the Hindu terrorist has arrived. Using positions within respected institutions, with plenty of sanctuary in political ranks, Hindu terrorism is unlikely to give up and fade away, now that there is no reason to hide any more. We aren't just interested in rewriting the history of our monuments, we would like to bomb India as well, just like the Islamic terrorists we hate!

What could be the agenda of the Hindu terrorist? What hate could they possibly direct towards us Indian people? The scariest enemy is one whose motive is unknown. In comparison, the Islamic terrorist is fairly clear in its stupidity. We do not know the Hindu terrorist, except that he could be wearing a Lieutenant Colonel's uniform. The sanctity of no Indian institution lies above suspicion now. The culprits shouldn't just be brought to book, they should be roasted over a slow fire in public and killed mercilessly, since human rights should not and cannot apply to people who do not behave like humans and threaten the very existence of other humans.

Expect more chaos. Expect this to become a test of national character. Expect us to fail that test by not even beginning to answer it. Expect us to not feel bad about that either. Expect us to write another confusing chapter in our chequered political history that will baffle people for years to come. Expect our media to never get deep into this matter for it threatens to become too politically sensitive. Expect great lip service from our politicians. Expect India to treat this as just another incident and not like a tip of an unknown iceberg that looms just below the water level.