Prabhakaran and LTTE are history... Lankan Tamils are not

I had an argument with my uncle, a stanch supporter of LTTE and its late supremo V. Prabhakaran, about whether or not Lankan Tamils were served by Prabhakaran.

The Lankan Tamils were mistreated since Sri Lankan independence from Britain. Their language and culture was not recognized as part of Sri Lankan. They were slowly relegated to second class citizens. Sinhalese leaders did it deliberately and efficiently. The Sinhalese population also rioted against the Tamils over issues such as language. The disenfranchised Tamils started a popular uprising against Sri Lanka. This was supported by India. Their brethren in Tamil Nadu gave them all the support required. The largest of the militant groups fighting in Sri Lanka was the LTTE led by its leader Prabhakaran. By 1980s with Lankan army bogged down by several Tamil militant groups and India receiving constant stream of Lankan Tamil refugees, the Indian government forced Sri Lanka to a peace accord that would allow for devolution of powers and autonomy to Tamil majority areas in the northern and eastern parts of the country. Among the militant groups LTTE was not happy with the accord but agreed to it in theory. By theory, I mean they went ahead with launching attacks against Lankans. There are many storylines of who did what and why. But there is no doubting that Prabhakaran was not in support of the accord and did everything to bury it. He was confident of a military victory. In the end, the Indian peace keeping force ended up fighting the LTTE that India had initially supported with training and material support. History has recorded these events. LTTE retaliated against India by killing Rajiv Gandhi.

Today, the situation is same as before. I support the Lankan Tamils rights. But LTTE is a different matter. It is fascist movement led by a dictatorial leader who killed his own comrades, people and put guns in the hands of little children. Every war crime known to man, he has committed. Democracy is not something he believed in. Majority of the Lankan Tamils did not trust him!!! Even if my uncle did. They never did. He killed off every other popular Tamil leader. He believed that militarily he could win. Killing off friends and making enemies.

Many idiots like Vaiko believed Tamils support for LTTE was as unquestionable as its support for Lankan Tamils. It is NOT. Indian Tamils are Indians first. Our leader was killed. His children tried to make sense of the bloody history by visiting the people who killed their father and forgiving them. Jayalalitha thought Vaiko had found some holy grail during election time. She too tried to drink from it with allegations that Priyanka Gandhi’s visit spurred the Sri Lankan army to hit harder at LTTE.

When the news of Prabhakaran’s death was announced, my sense of sadness was only for the Lankan Tamils. As with all dictators Prabhakaran had killed anyone with a voice of his own and left his people like sheep. They have no leaders to speak for them or to pursue their rights. It is only hopped that the Sri Lankan government understands the war will never end until they address the aspirations of the Lankan Tamils for protection of their rights and autonomy.

New Parliament ups the ante from a MP shaving her head to threat of suicide.

Well the new parliament is up. Kudos on the election of a dalit woman as speaker of the house. Oh, we still have a long way to go on the women’s equality. The self congratulatory and condescending speeches from the males members would be enough to make any self respecting woman in the developed world reach for her bobbit razor.

More women’s empowerment to come. Reservation for women in parliament. That’s where champion of downtrodden through in a spanner in the works. Sharad Yadav threatened to kill himself if the bill was passed in the present form without specifying reservation within the reservation for women from scheduled caste and tribes like the speaker of the Parliament. Needless to say open that can of worms... and the bill would never see the day. Next some MPs will raise the banner of reservation in parliament for men of those classes too. That will bring in people asking for reservation for the minority community. Where will all this leave the actual process of election?

I don’t believe India’s democracy can dance that far out.


PS :- During the last parliament, Sushma Swaraj, dy. leader of opposition threatened to shave her head if foreign born Sonia Gandhi became Prime Minister. Sonia let Manmohan Singh take up the post and Sushma got to keep her hair on.

You get what you did not vote for...

Low voter turnout in Bangalore (my home) and even less in Mumbai (I like that city too). I can see that news channels talking about voter disenchantment with the politicians. Really? I doubt that. Half of the disenchantment did not vote the previous time either. Which probably means they never voted in their life. I don't think "disenchanted and indignant" electorate should be questioning what their MPs did for them in the 5 years they were in office. Especially, when they could not get off their ass once in 5 years to vote!!! People in Kashmir, Naxal infested areas with a lot more to complain have braved violence to perform their civic duty.

Bangaloreans should remember this the next time a political party holds rally for the rural voters in the outskirts of the city. After all, rural majority turned out in larger numbers. It would seem that the urban educated electorate cannot to be counted on to do much for their country.

Oh by the way, we are still getting an MP. Yeah, he represents only a minority. If you had something to say you should have said it today. Now, he is your leader. He will decide if it is alright for your daughter or sister to be molested on the streets for her life's choices. If you are thinking about doing away with politicians altogether? Thats cool too. But remember - that means you get to be fucked by every bureaucrat.

There are no free lunches in the world.

Netbeans Vs Eclipse

I am new to both. I started a month or so ago. And no, I have not tried JBoss or other IDEs out there.

My two cents says, Netbeans miles away from Eclipse.I may be wrong. Eclipse may be great. You will find many developers swearing on Eclipse. I was introduced to Eclipse in college. Trouble began with trying to configure eclipse with Tomcat, setting classpath etc. Every forum I visited raised more questions than gave answers. Netbeans 6.5 comes with Tomcat, MySQL JDBC driver, glassfish v2 and v3, facilitates numerous frameworks including JSF, Hibernate etc. It took me 3 weeks to configure eclipse. It took me a day to write my first web application on netbeans.

In netbeans, you can easily navigate your project, add libraries. Netbeans tutorials help you get started with your project quickly. You can access your database, application servers directly on netbeans.

Do I really believe I am wrong about netbeans? I think not!!

RSS, Taliban, Arundhati Roy...!?

So here is SAT Princeton review

RSS is to Hinduism as

Taliban is to Islam as

Evangelists are to Christianity as

Military Industrial complex is to Capitalism as

Maoists are to Communism as

Arundhati Roy, Medha Patkar etc are to Liberalism

Yes she is all that!! She is known to me as one who supported the accused in the parliamentary attack, justified Mumbai carnage, protested the launch of Nano, among other idiotic / "liberal" activities. She and others like her live to protest in the name of liberalism. But they carry no conscience, no sense of reality and no intelligence. She has a Booker prize to her name. Have you tried to read God of Small things? It is as unreadable as Satanic Verses as Jack Straw (British Foreign Secretary) put it.

PS :- Satanic Verses was written by Salman Rushdie, who won Booker prize for Midnight Children. I don't know about Midnight Children. I have not read it. But Satanic Verses was definitely unreadable.

The Spawn of Menaka

During his vitriolic speech against Muslims, Varun has shown why his grandmother thought so less of his mother. After trying many different ways to showcase herself has inheriting the Gandhi family name, she picked up on animal rights. She ran far with it. Now the fools who swallowed that story should rethink. This is a woman who could not teach her spawn, Varun, to love his fellow human beings.

Both the woman and her spawn are bound by their common hatred. Their ideals are neither Gandhian nor Indian.

The Bastards of Manu.

These last two weeks saw repeated attacks on our freedom by these self-styled custodians of our culture. Who gave these bastards the right to dictate how I should express my culture? I did not. So I call that filth Muthalik of Ram Sene, a bastard and raise questions on his origins, his parents, his mother, his sister, everything that he holds dear.

No, I will not apologize for the words I choose for him. He has impinged on my rights. He does not know me or own me. How dare he do that to anyone? Why shouldn't I insult his parents? The first line of any child's education is his parents. It is said that do not teach a child about religion for it will blind him to faith later in life.

I wish these people could have stayed in country ruled by an absolute monarch. I did. I helped me appreciate the freedoms enshrined in our constitution. But the constitution is not worth the paper it is written on unless our people are civilized enough to appreciate it. The Muthaliks, Advanis, Modis etc in our country are not. They have been raised in their homes on a steady diet of us against them. Sent to RSS schools across the nation, the us among them invariably becomes a smaller and select group.

There are Muslim scholars who will ask you to read the Quran to understand that Islam is peace loving religion. That is so. I have read the Quran and know about Islam's history. However, Islam has had a violent start and growth. There are constant references in the Quran to infidels. This forms the fodder for the most ardent among them to raise against people of other faiths. Its history and such references, are the anger that drives the Osamas. And once you go down that path there is no stopping it - its terror does not even spare fellow Muslims.

The Bible and Christianity's origin is just as violent. There was a period of intolerance, injustice and misuse of the name of god. But over the ages, the quiet majority have slowly spoken up. Gone are the ages of inquisition. Christian institutions are respected around the world. Their priests are respected for their service and advice. Islam must do the same if it wants to survive to the next century. And it must do it fast. Mass media did not exist in the middle ages. It does now. People can see and make up their own mind. There are movements in Egypt and Turkey for reform. Humanity does not need religion to teach it kindness, good living and love. Some systems, we are born with, others we learn from our parents, and the rest from what we see around us and from our religious denomination.

I feel a great sadness and anger when I see the "religion" and culture from which I draw my faith being used in similar manner to assault people for personal gain. These single and depraved assholes, men who used to fester in the streets, are now in the halls of power. Coming elections will show if we Indians are uncivilized as these bastards of Manu.

PS :- Manu is the reference Manusmrithi. An aberration in history of Hindu thought. Its only aim seems to have been to somehow maintain status quo of the writers during a time of change in ancient India.