McDonalds in Varanasi

Good Job Varanasi, you really made it! Now you have a McDonald's, may be not one but a few. Coming of age! However, there is more to it than meets the eyes.  It really is a rendezvous of two very different ideas, two different worlds.

No one is stranger to what McDonald's is? where it started ? as the Golden Arches are recognized everywhere in the world.  Besides the product it sells, service and employment it provides it is also a brand, a franchise, a billion dollar corporation and a profit shop. At the top of the pyramid a billionaire is positioned with a well oiled machinery. That machinery will keep churning dollars with little or no intervention from the person, which can be passed on to generation after generation! The pyramid will live on. 

The base of the pyramid will widen while the top of the pyramid will shoot for the sky. Every component of the pyramid will contribute towards elevation of the top. The base which is made of the customers or the components of the pyramid which will include franchisee, supplier, logistics or anybody in the middle must pass that extra bucks all the way to the top for the sake of this great product and the brand.  

Does McDonald's makes a great burger or nuggets, absolutely! Any kid who has been to one will vouch for it. But once that perfect burger was found and appreciated by the customer a system was put in place, a foundation of the profit shop was laid that will keep paying in perpetuity. Anyone who wants to join the bandwagon must pay too.  A cut must be given, a commission must be paid a premium must be charged. The secrets must be protected with vengeance using patents, using battery of lawyers in cahoots with politicians, whatever it takes! 

Poor Varanasi, never had any of it. That one weaver who made that beautiful Sari with exquisite golden and silver embroidery never marketed it, or patented it. People definitely paid premium for this niche product and benefited him directly and may be few others person in the process. However, Franchisee idea did not cross his mind and as soon as demand grew and he could not cope with it. More and more people started learning art from the person and catering to the demand. No pyramid was was ever built, so much so nobody even knows the name of the person. Soon the entire city was filled with those artisan who were making those Sari, which came to be called “Banarasi Sari”. 

Varanasi is not just famous for the Sari but entire gamut of things. It is also famous for Paan, Banarasi Laddu, Banarasi Pede, Brass works among many others. Just like Varanasi many cities in India were famous for many items where entire city used to make a specific product and were famous for it. Like Bhagalpur for silk, Meerut for Locks, Surat for diamond cutting, Calicut for Calico printing from which it derives it’s name. I can go on and on. These became Center of excellence in a particular art and communities prospered and benefited from it. Anyone wanted to learn the art could travel to those places and learn, even foreigners.  

One interesting example is muslin made in Dhaka, in British India. It was a hand woven premium fabric which had massive demand in Europe. British deliberately cut the thumbs of the weavers and smashed their looms so that they could not practice their craft. This was obviously to favor British cloth import to India because they could not compete with it.  

Traditionally, there was never a restriction on the knowledge and art,  only consideration was the capability of the student themselves. When the Indians invented the decimal number system, there was no effort made to patent it or conceal this knowledge. Arabian traders learnt it and passed it to Europeans and got some credit in the process. When Nalanda University was at its peak students from as far away as Thailand, Indonesia and Japan would come and get the education. Prospective students would line up at the gate early in the morning and they would be asked questions right at the gate to judge their merit. Once they cleared it they became responsibility of the university. No fees was ever charged and it was totally funded by charitable donations and funding from kings.  

When the attempts were made in the western countries to patent Basmati Rice and the medicinal properties of the Neem, that’s when India woke up to this news reality. The knowledge which was in public domain in India for thousands of years and nobody ever felt a need to patent those. That was completely alien to ethos and culture of India. 

On one hand a nice product was capitalized to the hilt, profiteered and an entire empire of business was built around that idea. A brand which came to be recognized by the individual. At the same time in another part of the world this idea was completely alien. The idea was used for the growth of the community and society and represented by the name of a town where it prospered. 

NPR NRC CAA

There is a big hullabaloo in India these days, and NPR,NRC and CAA are flavors of the season. Unfortunately, this reached to a flash point where some lives were lost in the ensuing riot. Somebody had a great sense of timing to coincide it with the Trump’s visit to India, to gain maximum coverage in the international media.  Which they actually succeeded in doing so, the handlers must be smiling .There is every shade of understanding from zilch to nada with all kind of misinformation and propaganda thrown in the mix. The protest are going on since December 12, when the CAA was enacted.


India is a big country and it comes with its own share of chaos and challenges . Not aided by some of the hostile neighbors, few of which were actually part of India not a century ago.  Does India has details of all the residents? no. Does India has the records of all its citizens? hardly. Does India has a robust policy to deal with refugee? No. Does India has a consistent policy for granting citizenship to foreigners? ad hoc at best. This leads to massive problem for it, starting from dealing with terrorism which is fomented by the neighbors to managing the government plans and addressing massive corruption. The list does not stop here, it goes on from patronage of illegal migrants by some political parties for their vested interest, local crimes with cross border implications, demography change and impact to native culture and language. Just to keep in mind India is not a rich country and these illegal immigrants are not PhD holders. India needs to protect the interest of its citizens and must stand by the most vulnerable of the society. Just to give you the scale of the illegal immigrant problem, it ranges from 15 million to 25 million since 1971. Which will be bigger than population of Australia, Netherlands or Sri Lanka. No European country has absorbed immigrant of this scale and if they do, it will be sufficient to change their demography for ever. The problem is especially pronounced at the India Bangladesh border where agents run thriving human trafficking business. For 5000 Indian rupee (100 USD) they will traffic a person across the border, provide night shelter, next days breakfast and help with acquiring voter ID card. Agents will do it in cahoot with with local rogue legislators for which they will become vote bank later on. Win win situation!



NPR (National Population Register) is a register of all the residents of India that will include foreigners on valid visa and all the Indians residents living at a location for 6 months or more. This is a plan which was first mooted by the Congress in 2010 when it was in power, ironically they the one vehemently opposing it now. There was a parallel initiative at that time which was called UIDAI(Unique Identification Authority of India) and more popularly know by the Aadhar card(ID Document) which was created as part of this process for every lawful resident. Aadhar got better traction and NPR fizzled out in favor of UIDAI. Does a country need it, of course! This helps with all the different kind of planning from schooling to hospital to law and order.



NRC(National Register of Citizens) is a register of all the Indian citizen. One would expect that any government would have some kind of data of its citizens. India does not have it and it poses mammoth problems. Unless someone applied for a passport or has a voter ID card government would not have any idea about its citizens in India. Owing to large population and huge illiteracy problem, there were large number of Indian citizen which were still outside of the government system. This weakness was exploited to the hilt by the illegal immigrant mostly from Bangladesh and to a lesser extent by Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. These illegal immigrants got all the required documents forged with the political patronage of the political party for which they prepare the vote bank. How long can this go on, before native will revolt. This problem is so widespread in West Bengal and Assam two provinces of India. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that these two states are on the boil ever since.



CAA(Citizenship Amendment Act), act is not about the Indian citizen at all.  The act says that Hindus, Buddhist, Christians, Parsis, Jain who come from Afghanistan, Pakistan or Bangladesh to India till 2014 after being persecuted in their home countries will be given citizenship on priority basis. India has a very tardy application process for citizenship and it takes decades to actually grant it.  Meanwhile, unless the refugee has lots of money to support themselves cannot get ration card, education or employment which is very painful. Take for instance Taslima Nasreen who is a renowned writer, still she did not get her citizenship even after more than 10 years in the application process. Any developed country would have awarded her citizenship in a jiffy, not India. The crux of the problem lies here. Are these religions being persecuted in these countries? Absolutely. Are they coming to India and seeking citizenship? Yes. Is India slamming its door on all the other religions? No. All it is doing is prioritizing their citizenship application who meet the above criteria. Does India as a sovereign country has a right to decide who comes to it and who it can grant citizenship? Sure.



Then what’s the problem? It’s the unwritten word than the written word. Why the Muslims are not included in the act? or make it religion agnostic. In other words make it secular, which itself is a very borrowed western concept for India. Just to keep in mind this act has been passed by both the Houses of Parliament and it is a law now. Anybody calling it biased law is insulting a sovereign country and in turn the people of India who have elected this government. Having said that, people can still protest and challenge it through democratic means and that option is available to them. However, they cannot hold hostage a society, a city, a country and have bloodbath on the street. As that happened in now notorious Shaheen Bag in Delhi. It is very important to see this in context. Pakistan and India were part of the same country before 1947 when it got independence from the British rule. Why was it divided? because Muslim elitist suffering from superiority complex and did not want to live in peace with rest of India and its native religions. Therefore they carved out separate homeland for Muslims from India and the expectation was that all the Muslims will go there and Hindus will live in India as these two were the dominant religions at the time in India. Other minorities like Christian, Buddhist, Parsi, Sikhs or Jain could have lived on either side of the border peacefully. As ridiculous this idea was the outcome was no different than disaster. Minorities were not persecuted in India but they were systematically annihilated from Pakistan. Their combined population dwindled from 15% to about 1% today. Even the Pakistan which was formed on the basis of religion split into Pakistan and Bangladesh, apparently that glue of religion could also not hold it together. The elitist decimated the country to failed states and international migraine and now they want to come to India, why should India take them?



Minorities are not considered more than commodity in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Everyday girls from minority community are kidnapped, raped and married off to the rapists and, even when the matter reaches the court the girl and their family is threatened into submission and resigned to their fate. All their right on Education, employment, businesses, health, freedom of worship are denied. When the borders were drawn nobody asked for their opinion even though their entire generation lived on that land. Just because they landed on the other side of border India cannot wash its hands off them, they were Indian subject at one point and India has a locus standi. On the other hand the Muslims or any other minority in India are thriving as the country itself, this is the inclusive growth story of India. Can anybody vouch that India will remain secular country if Hindus are not in majority? all you have to do is look in neighborhood to find the answer. The state of affair is no different in Afghanistan which was part of the ancient India and therefore also included in the act. Afghanistan has a mountain range called Hindukush which literally means killer of Hindus, how disgraceful!. India has always been tolerant society through the ages and only in the face of mounting internal pressure it has to regulate immigration. Case in point is when Tibet was annexed by China forcibly is it any surprise that most of its Tibetan population found refuge in India and nobody went to Pakistan, Afghanistan? Even though they were neighbors.



CAA may look discriminatory but India has to protect its interest like any other country. Oil Rich Muslim counties like Saudi Arabia, UAE does not grant citizenship to anybody including Muslims who are born outside of its borders even if they work their entire life there. Through all the Middle East crisis they did not take any refugee. But these countries will be quick to condemn India as part of OIC(Organisation of Islamic Cooperation). USA has favored the Europeans for migration till 1965, even now it allocates quota for green card based on the country of birth rather than the merit of the candidate, is that discrimination? Yes for sure. Therefore people from China and India has to wait way longer as compared to Sri Lanka and Nepal which has much smaller population. USA is protecting its interest (BBC does not call this law discriminatory!) The people who are migrating to USA from India are cream of the population (just find out who are the CEO of Google and Microsoft). They are migrating legally and they are contributing to the growth of America. On the other hand the illegal immigrant who are getting backdoor entry to Indian citizenship are not scholars, they are menial laborers and worst criminals or jihadist. They are burden to the economy and stealing the jobs of the locals, any elected government has a duty to protect their interest. India is worst sufferer of terrorism and, part of the problem are these illegal immigrants as well, what India should do? When Canada turned back the Indian immigrant on the ship Komagata Maru back to India was it fair? No, but it was well within the right of a sovereign country to make its own law.  These are all the measures taken to regulate the immigration and it has no bearing on the existing citizens of the country, CAA is no different in case of India. Therefore, existing citizens protesting against it makes very little sense.



There is another logic presented to oppose CAA is, India is a secular country therefore there should be no discrimination based on the religion and it is somehow also against the constitution. Then why the same people oppose the Uniform Civil Code? Which means same civil code for all the citizens and most of the countries have it, but India does not because the same set of people want special treatment. For the uninitiated, Muslim man in India can marry 4 women legally while everybody else can only marry one woman. There is Muslim Personal Law provision in Indian constitution, that is hardly secular. Current disturbances in India is reminiscent of the famous Shah Bano maintenance lawsuit in India. Supreme Court delivered judgement in favor of the aggrieved Muslim woman but the Muslims refused to accept it because it was somehow in contravention with the Muslim Personal Law and they refused to accept it. Massive protests and disturbances were created. Ultimately the government of the day bowed down to the vote bank politics and reversed the supreme court order by bringing in an ordinance. That only served as encouragement and may have its roots even in current protests.

Sabrimala Temple - Women's entry and Protest

All of a sudden Sabrimala Temple in Kerala is converted into battleground for all the wrong reasons by all the wrong players. In arguably secular country like India where state should not have anything to do with religious affairs as long as no laws are violated. It gets embroiled regardless, one way or the other. This Hindu temple in Kerala which is in the eye of storm, has presiding deity Aiyappa which is considered a celibate male. Therefore any fertile female is not allowed in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple, which translates into women between ages 10 and 50 being barred.  Not going into the merits of convention or the tradition of this yardstick, purely looking at this as is, leaves many questions  unanswered. On one side of the aisle there are crusaders who armed with the Supreme Court verdict want to break this tradition at any cost, on the other side of iit are right wingers who want to protect the sanctity of the temple and preserve the tradition. Few of these crusader actually succeeded doing so, but the state of affair are not tenable in long run. 

        This is hundreds of year old tradition if not thousands. Guess who solidified it! High court of Kerala in 1991 in a judgement endorsed it, which was eventually reversed by Supreme Court of India in 2018. Question is why did court went into the business of legislation? Are judges religious experts deciding on religious affair? Anyway, this restriction is not based on gender as woman outside the fertile age group are actually allowed in the temple. The restriction is also not based on caste or sect which could again form the basis of discrimination. The restriction is purely based on the certain age which is not a permanent disqualification as well, this does not add up to the discrimination stigma theory resulting in some kind of human right violation. The trumped up discrimination charges and attracting an army of crusaders are definitely not warranted.

This is purely a matter of faith and belief of the devotee, religious customs and traditions. Courts cannot decide on these and should not have any business doing so. If the women devotees believe in Aiyappa then they will have to believe in everything about the deity, including it being celibate and the custom of not going inside the sanctum sanctorum. They cannot pick and choose to believe in one thing and not believe in other. On the other hand if they do not believe in the deity at all then they have no reason to visit the temple, either way there is no conflict. Crusaders like Trupti Desai should clarify whether she is just a crusader who believes in cutting the ribbon at Mahalaxmi Temple, Shani Shignapur Temple, Trimbakeshwar temple and even Haji Ali Dargah or she is truly a devotee, either way it makes no sense. Woman’s equality, non discrimination,  Human rights and all those modern values are good but then which religion vouches to uphold it all! You can be either be rationalist or religious bot not both at the same time. Then the opposing group who are bent on the violence to protect the sanctity of the temple are also not right, the religious matter is purely between the deity and the devotee, leave the lord Aiyappa to punish the devotee if they break the rule. He definitely does not need your help as he is already so powerful. 

There are many traditions in hinduism which the rationalist will scoff at for instance prostrating before the God or Guru. People bend down and touch the feet of parents and guru, this may look very demeaning for someone unaware of the culture but not to a Hindu. It’s part of their culture and shows the respect of the prostrating person for the other. Should somebody take this to court to enforce that nobody touches feet of anyone as it is some kind of discrimination? No. Should courts entertain this kind of case, definitely not. In hinduism married woman also apply vermillion on their forehead and wear mangalsutra(a kind of neckless), not all the women do that but that is purely their personal choice. The question now is should there be a brigade to enforce that all the Hindu women do it? Suppose there is a bunch of Hindu men who also want to apply vermillion and wear mangalsutra, just like the women crusaders trying to enter Sabrimala. Should the same brigade stop the men from doing so? Of course not. Should the courts deliberate on this? Good God, don’t they have tons of backlogs to dispense with. Similarly Hindu men sometimes wear sacred thread(Janeu), should anybody have any business telling women that you cannot wear that thread. It should be left with the practitioner and their religious belief and state should not get tangled into it anyway.