Mumabi Meri Jaan

The film Mumabi meri jaan is one of the best films produced in hindi in the recent time. it is a rare combination of social consciousness and craftsmanship. The film is about mumbai and its people. It is about anger, humility, humanity, fear, self realizations, hate and self loathing, all surfacing over the heartbeats of mumbai. Here parallel story telling technique is used without hurting the flow of the story. The story starts from the footage of the famous independence day speech by Nehru accompanied by the visuals of changing face of mumbai. The main characters in this film are living in mumbai who have nothing in common -police constable, TV journalist, coffeewallah, technocrat, unemployed suspicious young man, etc., All there life were suddenly changed by a bomb explosion in the metro train. The explosion has brought different feelings in the characters. one of them becomes more suspicious about Muslims, another one fears to travel in trains, the coffeewallah plays with the paranoid, the wisdom of the retiring cop always in confrontation with the idealistic cop who had to cancel his holiday.. and the tv journo who has now become the story.. The film strongly criticize the media. Must watch film...!!!!!!!!!!!

The threats of narrow identity politics

I know many of you guys are not interested in politics but I would like to share some information because I think it is very important for our future and future of our country. Many of us are not aware how the Sangh Pariwar is emerging as a powerful force in India. After Gujarat massacre and the consecutive victories in the state assembly elections one thing they (Sangh Pariwar) understood was that mass violence and destructive identity politics (and thus creating fear psychosis) is very effective in gathering votes and thus capturing power. Now they have got multiple locations to carry out this exercise (Orissa, Karnataka, M.P and Rajasthan, etc,). They are playing with religious identity politics.

Let me explain some details about the identity politics. Identity is a crucial element in social life. When someone ask you the question who are you? What answer will u give? Name, sex, physical features, family, place, occupation, hobbies, ethnicity, religion, affiliations, nationality etc. This is the identity of a person living in a society. All of us have multiple identities - some identities are inherited by birth like sexuality, physical features, etc, and some identities are gathered from the social life like religion, nationality, occupation, etc.

Now let me ask one question. When i ask, who are you? Why do you have to give this much of information? It basically because you are differentiating yourself from "others". There are females in this world that is why you have to write I am a male (if there are only males in this world no one would ask this question to you); there are "other" different religions in this society that is why you have to say "i am Hindu or Muslim or Christian", there are "other" hobbies in this world that is why you have to say I like cricket. So we can say that it is because of "others", I have an identity in this world.

Identities become prominent when identity conflicts happen. Let me explain that. When you are living in India and someone asks you who are you? Usually you don't have to tell that u r an Indian. But when u go to other countries and someone asks you, who you are? You have to tell I am Indian. So you will be more conscious about your identity when u faces conflicts.

There are individual identities (like name) as well as group identity (like religion, nationality). In social life consciously or unconsciously we compare, associate and differentiate us with others. That is why we wear "Poonnool" or "Cap" or "Uniform" etc. The concept of "others" is very powerful to create and run a nation. For an example: The nation "India" is formed because of the presence of an "other". The states in India are different in language (very important identity which creates majority of nations), culture and geographical features. Even then the unity of India is formed because of the freedom fight against the "other - British". And it is only that fight which brought us together to form a nation called “India”. So the "other" is very important in politics that is why we use the word "ideology" (without even thinking that what it actually means).

Now, let me come to the present scenario. All the political movements and "ideologies" always associate itself with some group identities - sometimes in a broader sense and sometimes in a narrow way. Ideology of communists and socialists associate itself with the identity of working class. The working class is a broader identity - means it includes men, women, all religions, all nationalities, etc. That is why the socialist party and communist parties spread across the globe.

On the contrary, there were other parties which used narrow identities in politics like Hitler's NAZI party - which was created on the basis of "ARYAN" identity. He had successfully implemented the politics of superior and inferior identities, which means by birth you belong to a superior race or inferior race. So, all the inferior races should be terminated or bring under "control" by the superior race to achieve the ultimate development. For NAZI party "Jews", "Communists", all races other than ARYANS were the others. He had carried out genocides on the basis of this identity politics. But ultimately it resulted in the collapse of German State.

Now in India we are facing such a narrow and dangerous identity politics- which tells us all Muslims, Christian’s, secular forces are threats to our nation. They have created an artificial & unrealistic "HINDU IDENTITY" and proclaim the superiority of that religion. One of their famous statements is that "All Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims" (after sometime they will say that all Muslims are terrorists or sympathizers of terrorism). The reality is that majority of terrorist group in the world are non-muslim organizations like LTTE, ULFA, IRA, etc., also please don't forget Khalistan movement). According to the UN declaration. the biggest terrorist group in the world is not Al-qaeda but LTTE (which includes Hindus also).

This political formation is systematically spreading the communal agenda throughout the country. There are ample number of evidences that many of the so called terrorist attacks were manipulated by Bajrang Dal and such communal organisations. Why r they doing this? Simply so as to create the "other" as Muslims who are monstrous & dangerous. Once you created that image then it is easy to polarise the society and implement the fear psychosis. Media is the best tool to do so. Throughout India Bajrang Dal and such fundamentalist groups are training people to take arms up against minority communities and secular forces.

Sangh Pariwar is really a threat not only to the minority communities but to our democratic system too. They are against our constitution which is built on secular values and principles of human rights. The pluralistic India is facing extinction. What can we do to stop this. Whatever religion you belongs to or whatever political party you belong to this is the time to act because we are moving towards a fascist nation.

The time is reached to recognise this truth and tell your fellow citizens about it.