India, Bengal, Calcutta…February 2013

I just returned from a short, two-week trip to India.

It was way too short. Two weeks in India, especially when you’re visiting only once a year or every other year, is not enough time at all.

But new responsibilities at work do not allow for more than two weeks of away time. Plus, traveling by yourself and leaving your family behind here in New York, in this extreme, February cold when temperature is always below zero, it does not allow you to relax. You always have anxieties and worries about the people you left behind.

But India is always fun. Calcutta is always fascinating. Two weeks or one week. Meeting old and new people. Walking down the street — North to South, East to West. Crossing the Ganges over the two big bridges. Calling friends. Getting calls from friends you haven’t seen in thirty…even forty years. Attending weddings. Visiting someone in distress. Sharing stories of a friend of a friend who poured his heart out for you…just because nobody else wanted to hear his story anymore.

Waking up at three in the morning…for the first couple of days because of a terrible jet lag, and then followed by barking of street dogs…followed by crowing crows at four thirty…followed by the same-old old man whom you’d forgotten over the past twelve months since you came here the last time…the man whom you never saw but heard every morning at five to five fifteen before he disappeared rambling strangely…to himself. He had a strange, deep, eerie voice. Or, it could be that because you heard him in those strange hours, he sounded so.

Then the sound of the Hindu household dawn worship…the conch shell or sankha followed by soft, tinkling hand-held bells…and you know it’s about time to wake up…and ask for some early morning tea…and stroll off to do your early morning green vegetable and fish bazar at the open, country-style market…fish is now very expensive…fish is out of reach of a middle-class, lower middle-class Bengali family…and you know Bengalis couldn’t eat their rice without fish…in fact, everything is so unbelievably expensive…you can feel it even though you came back only after a year!

I went to the famous annual book fair. Books are expensive too. But I went twice. I had to. It brought back so many memories from those wonderful, romantic, youthful, Kolkata days. I couldn’t possibly miss the Boi Mela, as they call the fair in Bengali.

I went to see Sandipta Chatterjee’s grieving parents. I was by their side for two hours. I had to. It was too precious of an experience. To know how she died. Why she died. How careless her own people had been. How brutal the so-called, modern Indian medical system had been…how cruel they had all been to her!

To find some peace back, I went to our Scottish Church School alumni’s Saraswati Puja and saw old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in forty years. And they spoke with me with an incredible affection and love…the typical Calcutta way. And some others called to find out how my twenty five years of American living had been. And some of those I met asked me sing a few Tagore songs…just the same way they asked me to sing a few Tagore songs forty years ago…

Tired. Will write more. This is just the start.

I hope you come back and stay with me. This is a new, fascinating journey.

A journey into humanity.

Sincerely Writing Again,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

Calcutta, where ordinary people still save money to buy books.

Swami Vivekananda at 150: the Socialist Saint

THE MASTER AS I SAW HIM. — “He believed that the one thing to be renounced was any idea of birth as the charter of leadership. He believed that the whole of India was about to be thrown into the melting pot, and that no man could say what new forms of power and greatness would be the result.” — Written by Vivekananda’s disciple Sister Nivedita (aka Margaret Noble).

__________________________________________________

Today, January 12, Swami Vivekananda turns 150.

For us who grew up knowing him, reading him, idolizing him — it’s a very special day.

For those of us who grew up in Calcutta, India, and that too, within half a mile of his residence, within quarter of a mile of the college he studied — it gives us goosebumps to imagine how this young monk who passed away at the age of thirty nine, turned Bengal and India upside down, by his rousing call to young India — to get rid of superstitions, castes, and all forms of social and religious dogmas.

Swami Vivekananda, a Ramakrishna-ordained Hindu saint who relinquished mortal pleasures to work to uplift the Hindu religion, used the religion to uplift the morality and soul of Indians. He dared to say: It’s better to play football than to study the Vedas. Indian revolutionaries who fought back against the British colonial tyranny idolized him, emulated him.

No wonder he was often fondly called the Socialist Saint.

Vivekananda’s disciple Sister Nivedita (aka Margaret Noble, an Irish woman) followed his footsteps, and worked among the poorest in Calcutta until her death at the age of forty four. She was also responsible for co-founding a major socialist movement in India — a “crime” for which Ramakrishna Mission (a nationwide, now international, organization her guru created) ostracized her.

India, unfortunately, did not follow the religion-based morality-upliftment lessons Vivekananda and Nivedita preached. Social patriarchs — including missions and monasteries — took their religion part and forgot about the upliftment part. Media selectively glorified some of their “innocuous” teaching and conveniently excluded the “controversial” ones. As a result, Vivekananda’s India is now one of the most corrupt, violent and immoral places on earth. The recent developments in the land of Tagore, Gandhi, Vivekananda and Ramakrishna are truly catastrophic, calamitous, ominous.

I want to say more about this great man whose life and teaching we can perhaps compare with those of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Both used spirituality to teach the downtrodden how to rise up and walk straight and tall. Both died at the age of thirty nine.

I’m including a famous poem Swami Vivekananda wrote and Sister Nivedita used in her writings on the guru. It may bring some special reflection on this dark and depressing time. At least, I hope it does.

Let us invoke the Holy Mother. Come, Mother, come!

_______

Kali worshiper Ramakrishna Paramhansa, the Swami’s “illiterate” mentor.

Kali the Mother

The stars are blotted out,

The clouds are covering clouds

It is darkness vibrant, sonant.

In the roaring, whirling wind

Are the souls of a million lunatics

Just loosed from the prison-house,

Wrenching trees by the roots,

Sweeping all from the path.

The sea has joined the fray,

And swirls up mountain-waves,

To reach the pitchy sky.

The flash of lurid light

Reveals on every side

A thousand, thousand shades

Of Death begrimed and black —

Scattering plagues and sorrows,

Dancing mad with joy,

Come, Mother, come!

For Terror is Thy name,

Death is in Thy breath.

And every shaking step

Destroys a world for e’er.

Thou ‘Time’, the All-destroyer!

Come, O Mother, come!

Who dares misery love,

And hug the form of Death,

Dance in Destruction’s dance,

To him the Mother comes.

###

Sister Nivedita. Know her.

Manmohan *Mir Jafar* Singh!

You perhaps know that Manmohan Singh is the head of the country of India — its prime minister.

The Queen Mother and Her Bishop

Do you know who Mir Jafar was? And why I called Mr. Singh Mir Jafar? Believe me, a lot of Indians — including some of my best friends — would be terribly upset when they see this article. The most common reaction would be: “Please, Manmohan Singh and Mir Jafar? We are familiar with your hyperbole, but this is a new low for you.” Another common response would be: “We all know Singh is a puppet of Sonia Gandhi, and we also know he failed to lift India out of its horrific corruption, but he is a decent, honest man.”

But truly, I’m not the first person making such a comparison. Recently, when West Bengal’s firebrand chief minister Mamata Banerjee opposed the election of India’s longtime finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, an IMF-chosen leader, as the next president of the country, Singh and Mukherjee’s ruling Congress Party called Mamata the Mir Jafar for her lone opposition from the ruling coalition’s side (she left the coalition since then). Mir Jafar, for historical reasons, has become synonymous with someone people consider a national traitor.

So, I’m only following the footsteps of those Congress Party leaders.

It’s a very sensitive subject: calling the prime minister of India a traitor is no trivial matter. I must come up with evidence to prove my point. Plus, it’s more about the policy than the person.

I have decided to take on this subject after a lot of thinking. I have decided that someone must tell the true story of India — a country that I identify with very closely – that connects India’s dark, colonial past with the presently-unfolding new colonialism. This is a very scary neoliberal, economic takeover and occupation of modern India — neocolonization that would completely devastate and disintegrate the country and its one billion poor people, and that too, in a very short time. I have written about it before. If you’re interested to read about it, please click on this link.

But in order to understand the story, I seek your permission to give you a quick history lesson.

-One-

In 1757, East India Company — a British merchants’ group — came to then-prosperous, undivided India with a sole, sinister motive: to occupy and colonize the country. Over the previous few decades, they used India’s fractious sociopolitical system with no central rule and Hindu kings and Muslim nawabs fighting with each other, and by using various methods — bribes here and battles there, took over huge areas of land paying minimum taxes to the local rulers, and started shipping raw materials from India to Britain to run the engine of a new Industrial Revolution.

But then they decided that they would completely displace the Indian sociopolitical system with a colonial rule, and thus they created desperate situations where the otherwise lazy nawab of perhaps the most prosperous place of all — Bengal — decided to resist the British onslaught in a war now known as the Battle of Plassey. Muslim Nawab Siraj-Ud-Daulah had a big, formidable army with cannons and Hindu generals such as Mohan Lal known for their bravery, and it was apparent that the British army would be no match for the unified Hindu-Muslim regiment.

But the British had other plans.

The British commander in chief Lord Robert Clive had found a few senior, corrupt confidantes of the nawab and promised them tons of money and gold and also tax-free, fertile Bengal land. Jagat Seth, Umi Chand and such traitors with their leader Mir Jafar betrayed the nawab, divulged the top secret battle plans to Clive, moved their own regiments away from the battlefield at a very crucial moment, and the British army in the Battle of Plassey vanquished Nawab Siraj Daulah. The gallant generals under the nawab perished in the war, Clive beheaded the nawab, and after conquering Bengal, East India Company slowly declared the land of India to be a colony of the British monarchy.

Mir Jafar was made the ceremonial nawab of Bengal — only to be replaced by another puppet in a few years.

British created man-made famines in India, killing millions.

For the next two hundred years, British Raj plundered Bengal and India, brutalized and exploited their Indian subjects, forced them to plant indigo in fertile rice fields and manufacture other products used in Europe for their newly developing industries, looted coal, textile, and enormous amounts of gold and diamond. They created famines — unheard of in Bengal before they took over — and millions of farmers with their families and children died of starvation. All the rebellions across India against the British Raj were ruthlessly crushed for two centuries, and the rebels and revolutionaries were shot to death, hanged or imprisoned for life.

In 1947, the British finally gave up on the colonial rule of India, mainly because of critical economic and political turmoil in their own country in the aftermath of World War II, and left  after partitioning the country in three pieces, creating incredible misery and bloodshed.

The British also left, putting their handpicked feudal Indian rulers — ruling class that would later continue the British colonial system in a so-called free country.

That is modern Indian history as we all know it — until the next episode.

-Two-

In late December of 1984, two Sikh bodyguards of India’s mighty prime minister Indira Gandhi shot her to death, allegedly as a revenge for the leader’s desecration of a major Sikh temple in Punjab. Indira Gandhi, just like her father Jawaharlal Nehru the first prime minister of India, pampered and perpetuated a dynasty rule, and her elder son Rajiv Gandhi who had no experience or interest in politics suddenly became India’s “leader.”

He chose Dr. Manmohan Singh as his director for India’s Reserve Bank (RBI); later, Singh became the national finance minister. With help from IMF, World Bank and Western corporate world, Singh massively deregulated and privatized India’s erstwhile semi-socialistic market. Foreign corporations entered the newly-opened floodgate, and very soon, India saw a huge spike in prices of essential commodities that was always kept under control for the poor, drastic devaluation of its currency, and even more outrageous income inequality that the country had ever seen. At the same time, middle class Indians with this new economy saw prosperity that they hadn’t seen before, and however temporary the luxury was and however far their personal debts grew, were greatly reassured by this so-called prosperity. Indian Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street and corporate media showered praise on this new “reform.”

Indira Rajiv Sonia — the dynasty

Rajiv Gandhi was also assassinated a few years later by Tamil extremists, and after a couple of short stints of prime ministership by non-Gandhi-dynasty politicians, Manmohan Singh became the prime minister — this time, with the return and patronization of Rajiv’s widow Sonia Gandhi whom the Indian and Western media soon made the de facto queen mother of India’s politics. Manmohan Singh has since been India’s prime minister for almost ten years, blessed by Sonia Gandhi and sponsored by India’s corporate media. In these ten years, India’s politics and economy has created the worst-possible corruption, largest rich-poor divide, steepest inflation with out-of-control price rise of oil and essential commodities, horrific human rights violations, and most drastic devaluation of the Indian Rupee.

I have emphasized a number of times how with help from India’s finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, who was the country’s official IMF director during his tenure, Manmohan Singh promulgated IMF-dictated Structural Adjustment Program, and privatization and corporatization of the Indian economy have risen up to a new level.

-Three-

Now, just a few weeks ago, since Pranab Mukherjee the IMF-chosen finance minister became the president of India, Manmohan Singh with blessing from Sonia Gandhi has taken it to a new level. He announced that India’s economy is not growing at the rate IMF and World Bank would like to see, and therefore he said he would open up India’s economy to foreign markets even more widely. One of the primary policy changes Singh announced was in the area of FDI or Foreign Direct Investment: he invited retail chains such as Wal-Mart to open up their shops in India, and he also made sure global corporations such as the infamous oil companies, or Rupert Murdoch and his Fox Network, would get major access to the Indian market. To expedite these processes, Singh government began distributing enormous amounts of India’s land — much of it fertile, agricultural land that Indian farmers have depended for their living for centuries — so that the foreign corporations could start constructions there immediately.

Following a massive policy change proposal in the U.S., the Singh government also has proposed privatization and investment into the private equity market India’s vast life insurance sector — a public sector — putting in severe peril the only life’s savings ordinary people managed to have.

Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and Sonia Gandhi call this process necessary for jump starting India’s economic growth; Indian and Western media have again showered high praise for Singh’s “bold and courageous” stand. Media compared Singh a “roaring lion.”

People and politicians who challenged this completely outrageous economic overhaul that in their opinion would destroy India’s national economy (of whatever was left after the first decade’s “reform”) were quickly blasted by the Congress Party, Indian Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street, and Indian and Western corporate media. Mamata Banerjee has become the whipping horse for the press: there is little discussion on WHY her quitting the privileged position in the national government is a principled, pro-people stand. On the other hand, the largest opposition party in India — BJP — has always been lamblasted by India’s media on the pretext that they are far right and always against anything liberal; BJP’s social and religious dogma mimicking the Republican Party here in the U.S. did not help them either to be at the forefront of any economic policy discussion. Further, Congress Party has characteristically bribed and bought off some other opposition parties to find support for this newest round of “reform.”

IMF and Greece

This new round of reform is IMF and World Bank dictated, and their neoliberal reform policies have devastated other countries in recent months. Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal have been the latest victims. Argentina went through their horror a decade ago. Unemployment, inflation and massive layoff of public sector workers have gone out of control. Just like the Indian president, IMF has also chosen their men to be presidents of Italy and Spain, and Greece is going through a horrendous turmoil because they refused to let IMF select their own destiny.

Labor unions and teacher unions and student unions have took the hardest hit — because of their resistance and opposition to this new, horrendous, anti-people “reform.”

For India, this so-called reform at the behest of Manmohan Singh would be even more catastrophic and millions of poor people will starve and die. I have written about it before. I have also written about Malaysia’s former prime minister Mohathir Bin Mohamad who resisted the IMF onslaught a few years ago before he became a slaughter lamb himself for his outspoken criticism of this new global economic terror.

I re-quote Mahathir Bin Mohamad.

“In the old days you needed to conquer a country with military force, and then you could control that country. Today it’s not necessary at all. You can destabilize a country, make it poor, and then make it request [IMF] help. And [in exchange] for the help that is given, you gain control over the policies of the country, and when you gain control over the policies of a country, effectively you have colonized that country.”

India is country where I still have a lot of belongingness. I feel very strongly for India even after being in the U.S. for twenty five years. I can see how Wal-Mart, GE, Monsanto (which in ten years has forced 200,000 Indian farmers to commit suicide), Fox, Coke, KFC, MTV and McDonald’s — along with their Indian corporate counterparts and cheerleading media — are going to change the face of the country, once and for all.

I can see how the farming lands and forests and villages and their people who have survived and prospered since the ages of Ramayana and Mahabharata will soon be destroyed, once and for all.

British aggressors forced Indian farmers to plant indigo in their fertile rice fields. Now, the new FDI and IMF aggressors will force Indian farmers to simply go extinct.

This is neocolonization happening right in front of our eyes. And it is going to enslave one billion poor Indians for many years to come, just the same way the British once colonized India with help from the country’s Mir Jafars. Mir Jafars sold India off to foreign traders.

It’s a very scary, bone-chilling deja vu unfolding right now.

Manmohan Singh once said after the horrific Union Carbide disaster: “Bhopals will happen, but India must move on.”

Are we okay with that kind of moving on?

You decide.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

###

Mir Jafar: Mamata or Manmohan? You decide!

Of Boson, Bengal, God and His No-Name Particles

Bose with His Esraj (FYI: Bose was from India and so was Esraj)

Note: Professor Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak, another world-renowned intellectual originally from Calcutta and Bengal, read this blog and wrote me a message of support.

She wrote:

“He [Prof. S. N. Bose] came quite a few times to our house. He was our Satyen [uncle] because he was friends with Montu [uncle] (Dilip Kumar Roy, Mother’s 1st cousin). If I remember right (these are very old memories), he sat on the floor of the living room and sang with us. A very simple man, absolutely unassuming.”
_______

I am writing about the Boson half of the now-famous Higgs-Boson — the God Particle.

I’m writing about kind of the half-life of the half-word: like, how it evaporates — in this case, quite rapidly, as if it never existed.

No, it’s not a scientific article; I do not have the necessary qualifications to write about physics, particle physics, mathematics or statistics.

I’m writing about Professor S. N. Bose — an unassuming physicist-mathematician from Bengal — who first conceptualized the Bosons, with help from Albert Einstein. I’m writing about my frustration about Western media’s near-zero coverage of Prof. Bose, even when they’re going gaga about Higgs, Boson and the so-called discovery of God Particle.

I’m writing about a historic, predictable pattern of Western media and establishment’s way of reporting, underreporting and no-reporting of news: how they selectively report and include their preferred facts and names behind the facts, and at the same time, exclude or downplay their non-preferred facts and names behind the facts.

Western media — especially British and American media — have always done it. I shall cite some examples out of a long list we have. I could talk about how New York Times repeatedly mentioned Rabindranath Tagore as Babindranath Tagore (Read Dutta and Robinson: Rabindranath Tagore the Myriad-Minded Man). But I shall concentrate for now on the media exclusion of Prof. S. N. Bose from Calcutta and Dhaka — from West Bengal, now India and East Bengal, now Bangladesh. (By the way, these are the two halves the British cut open and severely bled when they left India after two hundred years of occupation, brutality and pauperization — that’s a story I told a number of times already — on this blog and many other places.)

It is unbelievable that in this 24/7 hyped-up coverage of Higgs-Boson, the so-called global media do not find any serious obligation to tell their global audience what in the world this strange name Boson came from, even when they’re telling big stories about Professor Higgs and what kind of a major genius the British scientist is. (I have no dispute about Prof. Higgs’ genius.)

Bose was from Calcutta and Dhaka (now you know what media says about those God-damn places, right?)

Briefly, it’s like this. Someone hears or reads a news item about Higgs-Boson — also known as the God Particle. A reader or viewer, or two, have this question in their mind, and they ask their Media God (actually, nobody asks: media decides what to say and what not to say, or how much to say it):

“Dear Media God, can you please tell us what or who Higgs-Boson is?”

The Media God replies: (actually, I borrowed the description below from Wikipedia):

“The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is a proposed elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. The Higgs boson is named after Peter Higgs who, along with others, proposed the mechanism that predicted such a particle in 1964. The existence of the Higgs boson and the associated Higgs field explain why the other massive elementary particles in the standard model have their mass. [...] The Higgs field interaction is the simplest mechanism which explains why some elementary particles have mass. The Higgs boson—the smallest possible excitation of the Higgs field—has been the target of a long search in particle physics. One of the primary design goals of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland—one of the most complicated scientific instruments ever built— was to test the existence of the Higgs boson and measure its properties.

Because of its role in a fundamental property of elementary particles, the Higgs boson has been referred to as the “God particle” in popular culture, although virtually all scientists regard this as a hyperbole. According to the Standard Model, the Higgs particle is a boson, a type of particle that allows multiple identical particles to exist in the same place in the same quantum state. Furthermore, the model posits that the particle has no intrinsic spin, no electric charge, and no colour charge. It is also very unstable, decaying almost immediately after its creation.

On 4 July 2012, the CMS and the ATLAS experimental collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider announced that they observed a new particle that is consistent with the Higgs boson, noting that further data and analysis were needed before the particle could be positively identified.”

Great!

At this point, most of the readers and viewers would be satisfied and resign to the dinner table. Just a handful of obstinate and stubborn people would not be satisfied, and ask:

“But Dear Media God, what then is Boson? Where did the name come from? I like that name — Boson. Could you please tell us, Oh Dear Media God, what the hell Boson is?”

But Media God would now be silent.

I just heard that Tagore, Satyajit Ray and Amartya Sen were also from Bengal. Like, are you kidding me?

See, even in the detailed Wikipedia description, there is no mention of the fact that this no-name Esraj-playing scientist from some God-damn corner of God-damn India and God-damn Bangladesh actually conceptualized the Boson particle way back when — in 1924 or something — through a series of pers. comm.’s (personal communications) with Western scientific and political establishment’s poster child Einstein (no disrespect for the great genius here, believe me!). But science? Physics? Quantum physics? Statistics? In Calcutta? Dhaka? Like, when did they learn how to read and write, let alone do science?

See, nobody except for a handful of obstinate and stubborn people would even suspect that Boson had a lot to do with Bose — this guy from a dilapidated corner of British-partitioned, blood-soaked Bengal — if you only go by the Wikipedia or as of today, major Western media: print, TV, radio or the Internet.

God, His God Particle and all such major discoveries and prizes — such as the Nobel Prize — would be owned, re-owned and renewedly re-owned by God’s preferred men, women and children. Western establishments and media — along with their clone Indian establishments and media — will make sure it happens that way.

So, because they’re not going to do it, let’s see if we can educate and enlighten ourselves on our way. Here’s what I learned over the past few days since the Higgs-Boson news broke big time. Not that I understood it all. But like Sheriff Andy Taylor’s deputy Bernie Fife said to him, I knew “It’s big…like…real big!”

In the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs boson is a hypothetical elementary particle that “belongs to a class of particles known as bosons, characterized by an integer value of their spin quantum number.” The term “boson” is related to the forgotten Indian contribution to the discovery. It owes its name to Satyendra Nath Bose, an Indian physicist from Kolkata, whose pioneering work in the field in the early 1920s changed the way particle physics had been approached. (Quoted from: http://www.ibtimes.com – read the full article here on this link.)

Just couldn’t resist showing these two men together.

The above article writes more about his fortuitous connection with Einstein:

“Born in 1894, Bose specialized in mathematical physics. He became a lecturer at the University of Calcutta in 1916 and joined the Dhaka University as Professor of Physics in 1921. While teaching the theory of radiation and ultraviolet catastrophe at the University of Dhaka, Bose attempted to show his students that the predicted results did not match the existing derivations of Planck’s radiation law. He made a simple mistake, which accidentally gave rise to a third prediction that produced accurate results! He derived Planck’s blackbody radiation law without the use of classical electrodynamics as Planck himself had done. He later developed a logically satisfactory derivation based entirely on Einstein’s photon concept and sent his paper on quantum statistics to a British journal, which refused to publish it, calling it erroneous.

Rejection of his paper might have frustrated Bose but he sent it it to Albert Einstein himself, with a request to arrange its publication in ‘Zeitschrift für Physik’.”

[...]

Einstein immediately grasped the immense significance of Bose’s paper, translated it into German and published it in the August 1924 issue of Zeitschrift für Physik under the title, “Plancksgesetz Lichtquantenhypothese” (the English title was “Planck’s Law and Light Quantum Hypothesis”). He also added the following comment to Bose’s article:

“Bose’s derivative of Planck’s formula appears to me to be an important step forward. The method used here gives also the quantum theory of an ideal gas, as I shall show elsewhere.”

Einstein later applied Bose’s method to give the theory of the ideal quantum gas, and predicted the phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation that became a basis of quantum mechanics.

As Amit Chaudhuri explains in The Guardian, “Einstein saw that it had profound implications for physics; that it had opened the way for this subatomic particle, which he named, after his Indian collaborator, ‘boson‘.”

Bose’s discovery, along with its subsequent development by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, provided the basis of categorizing the fundamental particles into two groups – “bosons” after Bose and “fermions” after Fermi.” (End of article excerpt).

Great too!

Prof. Bose lived in this house in Calcutta. We used to see him on our way to school.

See, the entire set of facts was published in an Indian publication and written by an Indian author named Kukil Bora (and he quotes another Indian author who wrote in the Guardian, a “lefty” paper). I can’t thank him enough. But what do you think: at this important time when the entire, civilized and developed Western world and its media publish so many stories on Higgs-Boson, shouldn’t they also have reported on the Boson half of Higgs-Boson?

Like I said before, it’s a historic, predictable pattern of Western establishment’s coverage of facts — according to their preference. Very soon, after some initial “disrespectful” reporting, their clone Indian media and establishment would also sweep the Bose and Boson half of the Higgs-Boson particle, by God’s Grace, under the eternally oblivious rug.

Acharya J. C. Bose, legendary scientist and author (and a close friend of Tagore) with students such as S. N. Bose and Meghnad Saha

Just like another Indian scientist Sir J. C. Bose’s name was erased from global memory, first by British media and then by Indians (read article here — click on this link), Prof. S. N. Bose’s name would also be erased from global memory, first by the Euro-American media and then by their clone Indian corporate media.

Neither S. N. Bose nor J. C. Bose was awarded the Nobel Prize (in fact, there’s strong evidence that J. C. Bose was denied by the then-European rulers of India of his invention of the radio — in favor of Marconi — see the article I linked in the above paragraph). And, then, a whole host of Bengali and Indian writers and scientists were bypassed by the Nobel and other international awards committees for we often say and we all know, prejudice, bias and political reasons. Like, Gandhi was never awarded a Nobel Peace Prize (but Kissinger was)! That tradition is on.

There will be some no-name reporting in some no-name publications; but God’s no-name particles rising from this no-name, God-damn, pauperized corner of the globe would soon be erased from human memory by the global media and their puppet masters.

Boson’s connection with Bose, Bose’s connection with Bengal and India, and all these no-name God’s particles from those God-damn, uncivilized corners of the world will remain just like that — no-name — by God’s Grace.

Or, at least, by the grace of God’s more civilized children from the Western half of the world.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

I remember seeing them when I was a pre-teen. They lived right next to our Scottish Church School in North Calcutta.

Terror Sells Better Than Sex (Or, President Carter: Have You Seen “Kahaani”?)

The Goddess Durga Imagery…Vanquishing the Demon (only this time…extra-judicially)

I shall now try to prove that terror and terrorism sells better than sex. It does it both in the real world and make-believe world of “entertainment.”

In fact, I would argue that in post-9/11 copy America and clone India, sex is condom’ed up and commonplace, and therefore boring (like, it’s so predictable!). On the other hand, terror is like unsafe sex and thus unpredictable and more “fun.” Terror and terrorism is dangerous, scary and highly ticklish. In fact, it’s a hair-raising, high ‘rousing experience.

That is, if you are a president, or into media and film making. That is, if you know how to get political profit or plain, oldfashioned money profit out of terror.

I shall write briefly here about a new Indian movie named “Kahaani.” But before that, I want to talk about President Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States.

Carter wrote a scathing op-ed in the New York Times today, June 26, 2012. He wrote:

“The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.”

He went on:

“Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.”

He is Definitely One of a Kind…Unlike Some Other Nobel Peace Prize Winners (you know who they are)

One final segment I want to quote from the Carter column:

“While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.

The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” “

You can read the entire Carter op-ed here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html?src=me&ref=general .

“Get’em!”

So, President Jimmy Carter is talking about America’s so-called War on Terror, and blasting the U.S. administration — the current Obama administration — for its extra-judicial killings and tortures worldwide. He is drawing particular attention to the numerous, lethal U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan and the indefinite detentions and physical and mental tortures at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Now, what does it have to do with the Indian flick “Kahaani?”

Here’s a gist for the movie. Kahaani — in Hindi it means a story — talks about a terror attack in my birthplace Calcutta (Kolkata) where an evil terrorist has used a toxic gas on the subway train to kill hundreds of innocent people (Heavens forbid!), and disappeared. Indian secret service has failed to hunt him down. A young, pregnant woman lost her husband in that attack, and in a fascinating, clandestine, personal jihad (forgive my word choice here), comes to the city from London, befriends, uses and exploits India’s hostile police force and cruel secret service, and finally finds and captures the primary terrorist and kills him in broad daylight. Then she disappears too.

Turns out a number of high-level secret service officers were involved in the terrorist attack who also hired a contract killer later to silence anybody investigating the case. The contract killer indiscriminately kills any help to this poor woman; the woman on the other hand finds her own way to kill or have killed all the terrorists and their accomplices.

Kahaani is a new sensation in India — a super hit!

My question is this: if the U.S. government can justify its extra-judicial killings of perceived terrorists, with no regard for the 1948 international human rights laws President Carter talks about, and in particular, if it can use its self-styled, post-9/11 War on Terror as the justification for the killings, then why would India and the people at the seat of power not use the same justification to kill its perceived terrorists indiscriminately, without any regard for the laws and any due judicial process?

Sure, one is real life and the other is just “fun and entertainment,” but what about the enormous influence this hugely popular entertainment has had on young Indian minds? Or, am I talking rubbish? Okay, ask Center for Constitutional Rights lawyers. (Or, Amnesty, ACLU, HRW, etc.).

In Kahaani, the woman (who pulled the biggest surprise at the end of the movie — which I would not divulge just to give some credit for the director, actors and the cinematography and of course, my city of Calcutta) absolutely vanquished the main terrorist, took his gun away and had him in a position of total surrender; yet, she pumped five extra bullets in to kill him when she could easily have handed him over to the police force chasing after them and were just ’round the corner.

Personal jihad — didn’t I use the term before? Like, go for it, girl! (I have a feeling she — Vidya Balan — would get the best actress award this year for the role she played.)

In the movie poster, she is actually likened with the Hindu Goddess Durga who in a holy armed battle, vanquishes the demon. Some critics have likened the woman in the movie as a new symbol of Indian feminism. Why not? Anything goes! Anything sells!

Soft-hearted Indian Cop…and…Ruthless “Feminist” Killer (and it all sells!)

See, I could’ve talked about the graphic nature of violence, and the new fab kid of Indian movie the gun (NRA would be ecstatic only if they believed in globalization!), in a typical movie review. In fact, someone must talk about the horrific justification of broad daylight killings and validation of semi-automatic guns — and that too — in a progressive city of Calcutta where even today, the average person resists violence and extrajudicial killings: they’ve seen enough!). I could’ve talked about the disturbing, terrifying imitation of Dirty Harry and Taxi Driver type blood-splattering violence used in the movie. In fact, someone should do it.

But I’m really emphasizing on the extra-judicial killing aspect that was used so abundantly in the film, mainly because to my knowledge, nobody has challenged it from that point of view. Indian movie industry has recently made a number of such films where judicial due process has been actively and purposefully ignored and excluded from people’s minds. And all these movies used terror and terrorism as the premise and justification for the extra-judicial killings. See A Wednesday. It’s just one example.

All of these movies and their directors and stars became overnight sensation. All these movies made huge box-office hits. The producers made millions.

The U.S. self-styled War on Terror is now copied and followed with every sincerity in a country like India. Indians have now accepted McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut with religious devotion. They’ve accepted Monsanto and Union Carbide. They’ve accepted Wal-Mart and GE. They’ve surrendered to IMF with complete unquestioning — the Indian way.

They’ve now also accepted the principles and practices of U.S. War on Terror, where the state and its contract officers are instructed and allowed to torture and kill any perceived terrorists — no questions asked. You believe he is a terrorist? Okay, go finish him, now!

President Carter perhaps doesn’t know much about “Kahaani.” I’d strongly recommend that he watch it.

If he did, he’d know that in today’s India, terror sells better than sex. Just like in today’s U.S., terror sells better than anything else — especially in an election year.

That’s the ultimate writhing, moaning, panting-pleasure climax.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

Contract Killer Throws Pregnant Woman Under Subway Train (It’s just fun entertainment, man! Don’t break a sweat!)

“Mukhiya”: I Think I Can Read Faces!

Can You Read Their Faces? I Can!

In fact, it just dawned upon me: I woke up one morning to believe that I was a “Mukhiya” and therefore, I could read faces!

In fact, I was convinced I could do it.

Now, for those who don’t know, Mukhiya is a Hindi word that can have at least two meanings. Mukhiya could mean a village elder in India who is either elected, or assumes the role of, a leader to mitigate disputes or quarrels. Mukhiya has other Indian language synonyms: in Bengali, for example, they’re called Pradhan or Morol. It’s a privileged and respected seat of power. Just like any other seat, many of these men also abuse power.

There is another type of Mukhiya that means face reader. There are places in India — primarily in the countryside — where some people claim that they can study faces of men, women and children (face is “mukh” in Hindi, Bengali or such Sanskrit-descent languages — hence “Mukhiya”), and tell their past and predict their future. According to these people who often wander around from village to village, or village to town looking for clients, it’s a scientific or at least highly credible study, and I’ve heard that some Mukhiyas make good money reading faces, just like many others across the world make good money practicing horoscope, palmistry or astrology. They all call their vocations scientific or at least highly credible.

We shall reserve our opinions as to the veracity of their claim.

About my face-reading though — my new realization that I can do it — doesn’t come from any late-night God-given, supernatural dream. It comes from studying faces carefully all my life. I observe faces. I have always observed faces. I have always loved to do it; in fact, it gives me immense pleasure to do it. And I can tell a lot about the owners of these faces: not their past or future, but rather their present. I have grown this enormous liking to watch and examine faces, and use all my education, experience and analysis to conclude what these faces are up to. It’s possible to do if you put your mind to it. You’ll be surprised how much we can tell together — only if we observe and analyze carefully.

Now, just like any other vocation, this kind-of-strange face-reading vocation also comes with practice. If you’re serious about it, you practice a lot, and you practice with determination. With some good education, a lot of experience and God-given talent to analyze, you can be greatly successful at this vocation too.

How do you practice?

Lifelong Sacrifice the Uncivilized, Old World Way.

Okay, let’s see. Really, you do it over many years, going through the grind of life, one year at a time. You observe people you know, you educate yourself with their behaviors, you grow with them, and you learn some and you learn some more. You experiment with known people, and then you experiment with strangers or semi-strangers.

You keep getting better at it…year after year.

For example, here’s my two cousins. The guy with glasses — nicknamed Bhaiyah — is about my age, lives in South Calcutta, works with the government tram agency, lives with his brothers and sisters (both parents passed away long ago), and takes total care of this severely crippled brother nicknamed Bachchu. The crippled brother — supposedly a victim of cerebral palsy – is lifelong crippled; he is now forty five years old even though he looks perhaps much younger. He is mentally one hundred percent alert, but physically enormously challenged; Bhaiyah voluntarily took the responsibility upon himself to look after his poor brother; without his help, Bachchu could not eat, drink or go to the bathroom. He sits in his favorite wooden chair now installed with a pair of wheels, watches his favorite football or cricket, and greets everybody with a big smile (he cannot speak). Bhaiyah remained a bachelor and gave up all other pleasures of life to devote himself to care for his brother. Without Bhaiyah and my other cousins, poor Bachchu would’ve died long ago.

I learned a heck of lot of stuff reading Bhaiyah and Bachchu’s faces for many years. I know what they’re up to. I know what their minds are up to. I can tell what kind of a personality they are. They gave me a lot of practice on my face reading vocation.

Their Smiles Can Deceive You.

Here are two faces familiar to my longtime blog readers. Bhagirathi and Jamuna are our household help back in our North Calcutta mezzanine apartment; this is where I grew up. I go back to visit this place every time I visit India; I make it a point to stay with my aunt who now lives there, and spend some time with her reminiscing about our past when Ma was alive and well, and the time when she brought me up. This is the apartment where father taught me English, Geography and Math after coming back from his factory job. This is the place where I went through my very difficult adolescent years — riddled with social and political violence, poverty and abuse.

Now, Bhagirathi and Jamuna, it seems, have stayed with us forever even though in reality, they started working for us after Ma passed away. But that itself has been some thirty-five years; therefore, for more than three decades, these two poor women have helped us every single day with cooking and cleaning; after we left for USA, they stayed back with my aunt Sova and helped her with her needs. Bhagirathi — the woman with the red shawl — is the cook and shopping help, and Jamuna helps with washing and cleaning. This is very common in a middle-class Indian household. They become a part of the family, and they share their pains and pleasures with us. They become extremely happy when we visit Calcutta; they would go out of their way to cook and clean for us, and share their life’s stories with us.

For my vocation, I got a lot of practice studying their faces, and connecting the faces with the stories of their impoverished, unfortunate lives. (Their smiles can easily deceive you).

I knew how Bhagirathi and her family became refugees after the bloody partition of Bengal; she lost everything she had in East Pakistan and came to West Bengal with her husband and holding the hand of her handicapped daughter (the daughter is now a grown woman, and could never marry because of the handicap — in India, a handicapped girl is the last thing you want to have especially if you’re poor). She actually fled to India much later; my parents in-law on the other hand left immediately after the 1947 partition when fanatic Muslim rioters butchered my mother in-law’s dad — the old man refused to leave his home and was slaughtered. Anyway, Bhagirathi ever since lived in a slum close to our mezzanine apartment in North Calcutta and worked as domestic maid at three different houses. Every morning at the crack of dawn, she would come knock at the door of my aunt’s and start her chores first by going to the government milk shop with the ration card to pick up the milk for the day.

Jamuna’s story is even more difficult; her village in the tiger-infested Sundarbans delta was wiped out of a flood some thirty years ago. She lost her family farm, whatever little of a straw-thatched roof she had over her head, and her husband was drowned in the flood (or something like it; she wouldn’t want to talk about it much). Jamuna and her three infant daughters came to Calcutta and began living under the staircase of our apartment. One of her daughters was forcibly taken by a man who wanted to marry her, and Jamuna didn’t get to see her one last time before the man and his accomplices took her away. Jamuna was severely depressed and became schizophrenic. She’s gotten better over the years, but the emotional scar is still there; every mention of that daughter brings new tears in her eyes.

Jamuna’s story gave me a lot of practice into my vocation too. I now look at the face of another woman like her, and I can read her face quite easily. I can tell some past, some present, and a future too, if there is one.

I’ve become better and better at it, practicing with real-life case studies. I shall tell you more stories and secrets of my vocation.

I hope you come back.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

Late Breaking News!! IMF Just Bought A New India President!!

The Three New Stooges!

An unprincipled, corrupt political system with an unprincipled, corrupt media just elected an IMF-nominated and Corporate-America-backed career-partisan politician as the new president of India — a man who as the longtime finance minister has brought the country’s economy to the bring of doom. It is truly a sad day for India and her one billion poor and hapless people — a country and the people I so deeply know and care about.

I hope you read this little blog and the accompanying blog on IMF and Wall Street’s global politics and terrorism, and share them with your friends, family and colleagues. Thank you for your time for reading, thinking and sharing.

__________________________

Background:

The Indian president has always been a nameplate: a rubber stamp for the prime minister. But there’s a strong possibility that Pranab Mukherjee’s (the person in the middle — see photo with Sonia Gandhi) incumbency will change this because (1) he is the current finance minister of India and ALSO the current IMF director of India (very few know this); (2) in all likelihood, through putting him as the next India president, IMF will perpetuate its economic status quo that began during Rajiv Gandhi and his then-finance minister Manmohan Singh (India’s current prime minister: the bearded man on the left); (3) media do not mention, let alone discuss in-depth, the role of IMF and its Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) that turned a once-egalitarian (egalitarian compared to what it is now) economy upside down — both in India and elsewhere such as Argentina, Greece, Italy and Spain; (4) Sonia Gandhi, India’s de facto queen mother, is completely unchallenged by India’s so-called democratic political hegemony and media establishment when in actuality, she’s been a part of the country’s catastrophic and historic corruption, inflation and violence; and (5) Sonia Gandhi is obviously transferring power from now-prime minister Manmohan Singh so that she can put her son Rahul Gandhi, a political neophyte just like his father Rajiv Gandhi, as the next prime minister in 2014, and that her handpicked president Mukherjee can expedite that process.

Foreground:

Fascists and bigots are now supporting a new, scary, global economic fascism!

India’s KKK Shiv Sena, a far right Hindu outfit originally created in the 80′s to violently break down a legendary textile workers’ strike in Bombay, just threw their support behind Sonia Gandhi’s handpicked presidential candidate. Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray said: “Islamic terrorism is growing and Hindu terrorism is the only way to counter it. We need suicide bomb squads to protect India and Hindus.”

Indian media that often brandishes secularism, does not say a word. The liberal pundits and political parties do not cry foul either.

International Monetary Fascism — also known as IMF — is playing their scary, scandalous game to take India over. It’s the beginning of a long, dark era of recolonization.

History Repeats Itself!

Lord Clive’s East India Company, with sabotage from a bunch of their paid spies and operatives, took India over in 1757. Then they ruled, looted and destroyed the country for the next two centuries before they broke the country in three pieces, created famines, killed millions, and made millions more permanently destitute. Now, two hundred and fifty years later, their new reincarnate IMF,  World Bank, the global corporate puppeteers and their notorious intelligence agencies, with help from their Indian operatives, are going to take over the country of 1.2 billion people — eighty percent of them haplessly poor — for the next number of centuries.

The Barbaric, British Partition of India, 1947.

Sounds too much of an exaggeration? Okay, quiz me on it. I’d love to take up on your challenge.

IMF is almost there to put its own man Pranab Mukherjee — the current finance minister of India and ALSO the country’s official IMF director (never disclosed by media)– as the next president of India. The “democratic” process is almost complete. Billions of dollars have changed hands underground to bring necessary votes to the table. Those few still bargaining for a better deal will be dealt with — in cash or kind. Media will be euphoric, vindicating Indian democracy.

You can quote me: you shall see eulogies in New York Times soon. I’ll come back and tell you when it happens.

New IMF “Renaissance” in Italy. They Got Spain Too!

The new colonists have just recently put their own men on top of two other major democracies Spain and Italy. India — the largest democracy in the world today — is their latest kill.

And the entire takeover is happening in broad daylight — in a nonviolent, bloodless, even invisible coup!

It might sound like I’m staging a major drama and scaring off people on unfounded allegations. First of all, I am a small, powerless Indian-American man sitting in New York — 10,000 miles away from New Delhi.  Secondly, I have no political or monetary stake here: I do not belong to any of the political or non-political parties that are busy playing the game. Plus, I can’t do much damage to anybody — let alone the mighty IMF or Sonia Gandhi family — by writing a small, no-name blog.

Don’t worry: I cannot upstage anybody’s game.

But I still want to write and talk about it because I am convinced this is exactly what is happening, and I just cannot be silent about it. I may be poor and powerless, but they could not YET take away my education, analysis and conscience, and my decades of grassroots political experience, both in India and America.

I believe what is happening in India right now is absolutely horrendous and this silent, bloodless coup can bring India to at least another century of miserable slavery. I know this takeover will kill countless poor people and families in the subcontinent.

I told you before that IMF’s New Terror in India is Going to Kill My Family. I’m telling you again: it’s going to be a genocide where hundreds of thousands of innocent and poor people will lose their lives and dignity. Women will lose their honor. Children will die of new starvation. Workers — men, women and children — will be thrown into even more brutal subjugation and violence.

A horrendous inflation and price rise for oil and essential commodities — we see it happening right now — will devastate millions of poor and middle-class Indian people.

I said it before, and I’m saying it again. You decide.

I’m inviting you to read the other recent posts I wrote here on my blog — on this subject. Please let me know what you think. Please let me know if there’s anything we can do to stop the International Monetary Fascists before they reoccupy India with their invisible and media-overlooked weapons of mass destruction (you can call it WMD or SAP): (1) permanent economic policy change by opening the floodgate to multinational, corporate investment, (2) drastic devaluation of Indian currency, (3) total privatization and deregulation of India’s economy, (4) destruction of India’s social welfare system, (5) obliteration of the nationalized banks and financial systems, (6) repression of labor union and workers’ rights, and (7) drastic cuts in taxes for the rich.

This is IMF’s new “Shock and Awe.”

I am NOT crying wolf. I am warning you about the violent, grotesque wolf that is about to start mass killing. I told you this before and I’m telling you this again, now.

The New IMF Terrorism in India Can Kill My Family. Read it here. Click on this link. Let me know what you think. Let others know about it too. Please.

Let’s do something about it. Can we do anything about it?

If you decide not to, let me tell you: YOU ARE NEXT!

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

###

Horrible, Old Wine in a Horrible, New Bottle!

Beat ‘er ‘n Teach ‘er: the Poor Got Richer!

Continued from my previous post:
Of Graphs and Graphs and New Global Maps.

and

New IMF Terror in India Can Kill My Family.

Greetings. I’m posting a few more important charts and graphs here. We shall have a good discussion.

So we say, Beat ‘er ‘n Teach ‘er: the Poor Got Richer!

We have three graphs below.

Graph 1. “The Poor Got Richer.”

Over the past couple of centuries, worldwide (on average), the poor came out of extreme poverty. At the same time, the rich-poor divide has widened drastically. Now, question is, is that a good thing (that the poor is not that poor anymore), or is it a bad thing (that the economic divide escalated)?

We shall come back and address the issue later. Please let me know what your thoughts are. Thank you.

Here is the graph. Of course, this particular graph is a U.S. scenario. But you can extrapolate and replicate it, with varying degrees, for the entire world.

“The Poor Got Richer.”

Graph 2. “Global Misery Declined.”

This graph below tells us a similar story: on a global average, extreme poverty and misery such as child mortality, no-access to clean water, terrible malnourishment, total illiteracy, miserable wages — have all declined over the years especially in the new globalization era. Again, the facts are facts. Question I have for you is, do you think that is a good thing for the five billion poor people all across the world, or you think it doesn’t matter because [your reasons here].

“Global Misery Declined.”

Graph 3. The Champagne-Glass Model of World Economy.

Now, those who didn’t particularly care about the two graphs above might find some reasons to cheer looking at this description of the world’s state of affairs. Again, I leave it up to you to analyze and decide. What do you think? Can you connect Graph 3 with 1 and 2, or they are not directly correlated, or in your opinion, they do not tell the whole story about you and me and us and them?

Let’s have a good discussion. I hope we do.

“The Champagne Glass” of World Economy, Now.

I SINCERELY look forward to your comments, feedback, questions, analyses and yes, criticism too. Criticism is good. Challenge is better. Questioning is the best. Dissent is awesome. (You know what I’m talking about.)

It’s important that we do it. It’s important for me.

Isn’t it important for you?

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

###

Look Ma, We Have Dish!

Of Graphs and Gaps and New Global Maps

Dramatic and Dreadful? You Bet It Is!

So, my most recent post on the IMF terrorist plot in India and about my family in serious and real threat of being killed was a “huge success.”

Literally, thousands of people from all over the world — for the first time ever — graced it by their precious presence. I want to say a special “thank you” to all wherever you are.

Success? That is, if I want to call such a depressing note about economic terror a success. Given my blog is purely, absolutely not for profit, and I don’t even know how to circulate it the best possible way — other than sharing it on my Facebook and Twitter — it was absolutely mind-boggling that I had readers practically from all over the world: from Norway to Nigeria to New Zealand, from Argentina to Australia to Austria to Athens, and from Dhaka to Dakar to Dar-Es-Salam to Estonia, España, El Salvador.

And then, a remarkably high number of readers read my IMF blog from America, India and Italy. Yes, Italy! Maybe, my grim warning shook up some conscientious, Renaissance Italians who are scared about the IMF takeover of their wonderful, ahead-of-the-curve country. (Even Berlusconi couldn’t dumb them down.)

That was incredible. That was majorly reassuring.

So, I thought, maybe this is about time I took a little departure and detour from my personal, emotional literary-spiritual journey, and wrote about my new insight and teaching experience as a labor educator — teaching my seasoned union worker students — and put out some hard facts that I learned over the years. I thought, given this is a very important election year here in the U.S. — an election that in all likelihood will change the lives and fates of some 300 million American workers and their families, and by default change the fate of the entire world and its six billion inhabitants of which at least five billion are poor people — I thought, maybe, I should make a serious attempt to put out some knowledge that mainstream media would never put out for the ordinary people, and then maybe, I make a real-life connection between those simple facts of life and a simple life’s facts.

I thought, that connection between the facts of life and life’s facts would be simple for us to easily understand. And then, hopefully, we shall see the connection between our lives — lives of us the ordinary, working people — all across the world.

Maybe, I thought, it could even give rise to a new, global solidarity. Not by being depressed together, but by being empowered together with gaining and analyzing this new or less-discussed knowledge — in a simple way.

Of Graphs and Gaps and the New Global Maps? Yes, that’s the idea. Let’s talk about some simple graphs. Then we’ll talk about some simple-to-understand gaps. Finally, we shall make a serious effort to appreciate the newly evolving global maps: political, social, geographical and of course, economic maps. Yes, maps are sure evolving fast — in front of our eyes.

Do the numbers and figures and charts and graphs and percentages and statistics and colors and lines have anything to do with me and you and my family and your family?

Like, do they make any sense in our day-to-day lives?

Let’s talk about two graphs I recently came across. Both are from the 2010 book The Spirit Level by Wilkinson and Pickett. The British social scientists did a long-term, comprehensive global study on poverty, inequality and social problems. The two graphs below are worth discussing here.

Graph 1.

The Higher the Inequality the Bigger the Social Problems. Simple.

The graph  shows that among the so-called developed countries such as USA, U.K., Australia, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden and Japan, USA has the highest income inequality (i.e., rich-poor divide), and that inequality is directly correlated to a maximum amount of social problems. Mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, obesity, infant mortality, murders, imprisonment — these are some of the social problems the two researchers used.

Trust…mental illness…obesity…and math…and social mobility…together? These are interrelated? We normally don’t think about them to have any connection, right? Like, if you talk to somebody on the street and tell them that these are all tied together, chances are, they’ll call you either stupid or crazy…or…in U.S., a communist perhaps. Or, they’ll at least smirk and let you go.

But believe me, they are wrong and you are right. These are totally connected to each other. And they are connected by way of directly related — scientifically and statistically — with ONE single factor: income inequality.

Contrary to what most people believe, thanks to global corporate media’s lies and half-truths, USA tops the list followed by Portugal and U.K. These are countries where the rich-poor divide is the maximum. On the other end of the graph we have countries such as Japan, Norway, Sweden and Belgium followed by countries such as the Netherlands, Spain, France and Germany where the inequality and correlated social problems are somewhat low although they are higher than in Japan or Sweden.

What does it all mean? If the situation is so dismal here in the U.S. (by the way, a study report release only this week showed even in the U.S., New York has the highest income inequality), then why (1) we do not hear about it either in American media or their clone media in India or Bangladesh; and (2) why do we follow the U.S. as the leading economic model when the truth is that the country is ravaged and riddled with extremely high social and health problems?

Plus, on the education front, American students lag far behind in math, language, geography and science than all other developed nations. Here’s a new report on that.

Why wouldn’t we find that report or any discussions thereof — in the glossy magazines that my father and I used to read at a rich relative’s house back in Calcutta when I was little (I remember Span and Life), or the glitzy, laugh-all, mindless American shows that my nephews and nieces and teenage children of my friends watch on their home TV, now, in June 2012?

What does the story say about the real truth of American-brand capitalism? At least, back in my childhood in the sixties, American capitalism was doing okay, thanks to the legacy of FDR and his New Deal economic policies that put enough food on the worker’s table and also gave them enough money to buy a decent house, afford good health and low-cost education.

Do the rabid admirers of Wall Street’s bankrupt economics in India and countries such as India know what the real story is — the sky-high divide and the abysmal, horrible social problems? Do people know that poor Americans must drive a car and pay the high cost of gasoline and insurance, not because it’s a luxury, but because otherwise, they can’t get to work because there is no public transportation here in America? Do they know that McDonald’s or KFC is directly related to poverty, obesity and illiteracy? Do Indian urban parents know that the country has now the second-highest number of young, obese people?

When do we cut through the propaganda clutters?

By the way, Wilkinson and Pickett did not compare apples and oranges: all the countries in the above graph are capitalism countries. Of course, here in the U.S., public perception is that any economy that even remotely talks about equality and minimal rich-poor divide must be a communist country, or at least, as “socialist” as Sweden, Belgium, France or Germany (yes, France now has a socialist government; but it’s definitely not Cuba). Mis-education and brainwashing have reached a new low. But that’s another story we’ll tell later.

Dark, Dank and Desperate. But Very Profitable!

Also by the way, did you know that U.S. has at least one million poor blacks and other minorities in jail — a large majority of them without trial because they could not afford it? And that is a direct consequence of the extreme disparity and poverty in the American society — one that created maximum hopelessness, drug use and crimes. Nowhere in the civilized world so many young people are rotting in jails with little hope for rehabilitation.

Did you know the prison industry is a privatized, corporate industry in the U.S., with its stocks sold on the stock market? It’s all about profit and maximizing profit — by keeping as many people in jail as possible, as long as possible. Don’t believe me? Check it out (click on the link).

Graph 2. We’ll come back and talk about this graph, and more. Please do return.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

USA, India, Africa and Latin America: Huge Rich-Poor Gap

One Last Tagore Birthday Before My Death

Satyajit Ray, an agnostic, thought Tagore was like a God.

It took me a long time to decide on the title. I thought about it and thought it over.

I read it once. I read it twice. I paused and read it again. Finally, I decided. This is it. This is the title.

No, I don’t want to make it sound corny. That’s not the purpose. I truly feel that it could be one last time I get to live on the 25th of Baisakh — Tagore’s birthday — which normally falls on the 8th of May. This year, it’s the poet’s one hundred fifty-first birth anniversary. This year, just like any other year, much fanfare is happening in West Bengal and Bangladesh, various Bengali neighborhoods of India, as well as cities across the world wherever there is a community of Bengali people — big or small.

There will be Tagore’s songs. There will be Tagore’s plays. There will be Tagore’s poetry. There will be Tagore’s dances. There will be talks about the poet-philosopher’s poetry and philosophy. More resourceful Bengali communities in places such as Calcutta (Kolkata) and Dhaka and London and Toronto will put out special literary publications to observe the special day. Some will try experimental music — using Tagore’s songs. Some will stage Tagore’s famous plays — Post Office, Land of Cards or Red Oleanders from a new, refreshing point of view. Some will perhaps have an exhibition of Tagore’s paintings.

I know here in New York, a group of Bengali musicians and artists is putting together an audio book of Tagore’s short stories — the Man from Kabul, Return of the Little Boy, the Postmaster — with help from young-generation, college-age Bengali-American boys and girls. Kudos to them.

I have no doubt there’s going to be countless other events, programs and performances all over the world to celebrate this occasion. Especially, Tagore’s 150th birthday was particularly celebratory; it is likely this year many places are perhaps completing their year-long observance with special wrap-up celebrations.

Tagore Dance Drama in U.K.

I could not be a part of any of the numerous gatherings — either in America or Bengal. I am not a part of any of the numerous Bengali clubs, societies and organizations — either in America or Bengal. I do not live in India anymore. I live in a Brooklyn neighborhood where there is a small smattering of immigrants from West Bengal; I know once they had an association that held Durga Puja and therefore, perhaps, Tagore Jubilee as well. But I know the group slowly dwindled, some old inhabitants left this unsung corner of New York City and some others went back to India. In any case, we never hear from them.

There is a large Bangladeshi community within walking distance of where we live in Brooklyn. In fact, working as an immigrant rights activist especially among the South Asians, once I had made an estimate that only this community counted about 30,000 people. It is a large community that has associations from many known and unknown districts of Bangladesh; they frequently host their picnics, street fairs and Eid dinners. But I am not sure if they ever hosted any Tagore birthday celebration. I learned from various friends that most of them came from conservative-Muslim areas in Bangladesh where “Hindu-liberal” Rabindranath Tagore was not such a household name. That is not to say all conservative Muslims are anti-Tagore or anti-Hindu.

In some other West Bengali and Bangladeshi communities in New York and New Jersey, there will be programs and performances. But these days, after working with and for especially the Bangladeshi community, it has dawned to me that inviting someone like me who is not from political Bangladesh is not a priority. After living in New York City for so many years, my family and I have accepted the fact that in spite of our desire to belong with a larger, undivided Bengali diaspora, we are not, in any real sense, part of either a “mainstream immigrant” Bangladesh or West Bengal. (Apologies for using an oxymoron.)

Chances are, we will not know if there were Tagore celebrations in New York or New Jersey where my long, post-9/11 activist experience once had an estimate of some two hundred thousand Bengalis — over eighty percent of whom were from Bangladesh. Practically all the weekend Bengali-language parochial schools and practically all of the two dozens of weekly Bengali-language newspapers and magazines operating and publishing out of New York are Bangladeshi.

The Land of Bengal: a Glorious History of a Thousand Years.

For a long time, my family and I were actively involved with one of the weekend schools where I taught advanced-level Bengali to just-graduated students, and my family members participated in their cultural programs. For a number of years, especially after 9/11, as an important part of my immigrant rights activism, I wrote columns in a number of Bengali weekly newspapers and magazines — Thikana, Ekhon Samoy, Bangalee, Sangbad, Porshee.

With the schools and publications alike, I always did what I always do: educate the community about the difference between culture and kitsch, and speak and write about human rights and justice. When I worked professionally for two immigrant advocacy organizations — one in Jackson Heights, New York City and the other in New Jersey, I also worked with Bangladeshi immigrant families who bore the brunt of a terribly unjust and primitive immigration system here in the U.S. Among other activities, I worked with a few men and women who were in prison for a long time for minor immigration violations; I also worked with some others who were spared from prison detention or deportation because of our work.

I have many friends and acquaintances. I built precious connections with journalists, activists, writers, singers, playwrights and music teachers. I always felt proud to have thought I was a member of the larger immigrant Bengal and immigrant South Asia.

Tagore Festival Toronto

Yet, there is a strange disjunct — an insurmountable wall — between me and my family and the societies both in the Bangladeshi and West Bengali community. West Bengali immigrants do not know us well: we live in a not-affluent area in Brooklyn mostly inhabited by African-Americans, Jewish people, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. Bangladeshi immigrants do not think we are one of them because we came from India — a country they do not know anymore. The conservative-Muslim Bangladeshis (the variety I mentioned above) do not like or understand a liberal-progressive, one-nation Bengal that Tagore and his predecessors from Bengal Renaissance envisioned. The young-generation, liberal-educated Bangladeshis do not know the common history and heritage of two Bengals shared over one thousand years before the British cut the land of Bengal in halves, erecting insurmountable, blood-soaked borders.

Yet, a very large section of Bangladeshi Bengalis (it’s a very strange term, in my opinion) — most are Muslims — are moderate in their religious and social views, avid music, theater and literature lovers, and are the biggest consumers of music and movies from Calcutta and West Bengal — even today. Strangely, however, some of them have a general apathy, indifference, ignorance and often anathema about political West Bengal and India. When they find out I am from India and not from Dhaka, Sylhet or Chittagong, they talk to me differently. Again, I’m not generalizing. How can I, when I have so many special friends from Dhaka, Sylhet or Chittagong?

New York’s Bengali paper Thikana published a nice review of my Tagore album. I keep working with them.

There are quite a few other Bengali immigrants both from Bangladesh and West Bengal — highly educated, scholarly and erudite — who are satisfied with the small society they have and therefore do not feel any particular urge to invite outsiders like us. New Jersey or Long Island — where most of these more affluent, educated West Bengalis live — is like a group of islands only connected by long-distance, car-driven highways, creating more distances between people. We do not have the time or desire to go out of New York City to see either a Durga Puja or a Tagore performance, and return more depressed that we never felt truly welcome.

All of the above — the entire, personal, true story I told here — is a slow but sure recipé for death. If I was not a high-energy, activist, never-say-die-type personality who would go out of his way to find new friends, colleagues and communities and stay involved with newer and ever-challenging, creative activities — immigrant movement or labor education or Brooklyn For Peace or Durga Puja or Bengali New Year celebration (or even the Tagore-150 we organized in Manhattan last year with help from New Yorker) — death would have come much faster. In my twenty-five-plus years of living in the U.S., I have seen a number of people — a few of them being highly talented but decidedly loners — falling victims of this extreme alienation followed by depression, dark diseases and death. I always, always carry that fear deep inside that one day, I’m going to be a victim of a similar alienation and die untimely.

My new Tagore album: maybe you’ll like the songs — I hope you do

Every year, therefore, at this time when the rest of the world is celebrating the life and work of this incredible genius named Rabindranath Tagore, the question comes to my mind: am I going to live one more year to see the next Tagore birthday celebration? Which song would be the last Tagore song I hear before I die? Which Tagore poem would be the last one I read? Which short story would I translate the last before I perish — and perish prematurely?

I hope I didn’t make you too sad or perturbed and I certainly hope I didn’t make it sound too corny, as if I was trying to draw your sympathy — sympathy for a forlorn soul.

If you feel that way, I am sorry. I do not have anything to offer you to compensate for it — other than the two dozens of Tagore songs I recorded. I also have a few translations of these songs as well as translations of a few Tagore short stories.

I also have a YouTube of one of my talks on culture and Tagore — a talk I gave recently at an Indian university. And if I may say it, I have recently managed to compile a whole host of my essays on Tagore in relation to cultural erosion and globalized kitsch. I’m actually in the middle of writing a book on the above.

I hope you receive these gifts I leave for you, and forgive me for my personal, not-so-cheerful rambling.

Celebrate Tagore. He showed us an educated, modern, progressive way to live. He was not a perfect man. In fact, he had many flaws. I do not consider him a God. I consider him a very important, humanist philosopher-poet teacher who taught us human spirituality, universality and peace.

Tagore taught us the message of emancipation: in Bengali, the word is Mukti. It means inner freedom: liberation of the soul. Nandini showed us the way in Red Oleanders.

If this is the last Tagore birthday before my death, I want to remember him that way.

I hope you get to know him.

Sincerely Writing,

Partha Banerjee

Brooklyn, New York

Land of Cards