BESIDES VANCOUVER’S ALLURING IMAGE IT’S ALSO A CITY OF HOMELESSNESS

December 22, 2019Edit

By Promod Puri

“Canada is the best country in the world.” Alongside Vancouver prides itself with 1st, 2nd, or 3rd standing as the “most liveable place.” But underneath all these rewarding certifications, there are visible sites that take away some appeal from Vancouver’s alluring image.

The fast-developing metro, with its massive and lavish highrises, is also the home of homeless people. They mostly dwell under the very shadow of its thriving and affluent downtown core.

According to the latest figures, over 2200 people have been counted who don’t have shelter to live and sleep. The situation is more pathetic and deplorable in the harsh cold and rainy months of Vancouver.

Out of these numbers, as per the recent survey by the City, 23 percent are women and teenage girls. The same is the percentage of people who are 55 years of age or older.

The homelessness problem can be realized in the context of Vancouver’s chronic rental housing shortage. Poverty and homelessness go together. With small income or very low-income, affordable housing is just impossible to find.

Sidewalks, parks, and back alleys are the shelters places. Another accessible site for these destitute people in the front entrances of stores the moment their shutters are down at night. Cardboards are often the material for their makeshift dwellings. A few lucky ones carry tents.

Poor health with weather-related ailments is the result when these indigent souls are down with flu and pneumonia, etc. Then there is a mental issue as well.

Poverty and homelessness are the afflictions that go along with Vancouver’s worldwide reputation as the “most liveable city.” But not for these poor folks.

POLITICAL ANARCHISM BREWING IN INDIA

December 20, 2019Edit

When political opposition becomes ineffective, or it is almost non-existence, political anarchism takes place led by leaderless young revolutionaries against the governing party and its leadership.

This is precisely the situation in India where the Congress Party and other major opposition groups, including the Left fronts, are hardly visible on the street to oppose the anti-Muslim acts in the government’s new citizenship amendments.

India has exploded in recent weeks with violent protests by the students from every major university in the country. They’re demonstrating against the discriminatory rejection of Muslim migrants, while fast-tracking permanent residency for non-Muslim refugees from the neighboring countries.

The students’ demonstrations and outcries have been met by police firing and brutality. The war game has started. “People’s Power” seems to be emerging in an anarchist spread by the students’ solidarity.

-By Promod Puri

INDIA’S NEW CITIZENSHIP ACT DISCRIMINATORY TOWARDS MUSLIMS

December 19, 2019Edit

by Promod Puri

There have been some severe and quick fundamental transformations taking place in India to reweave the social and secular fabric of the nation.

In this operation, the country’s citizenship act has been stoked to allow only non-Muslims, migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan for permanent residency.

This is where the problem erupted and escalating to angry protests all over the country and triggering strong condemnation across the globe.

The Citizenship Amendment Act was passed in both houses of Parliament early this month. In the majority ruled Bhartiya Janata Party coalition, prime minister Narendra Modi’s trusted lieutenant Home Minister Amit Shah delivered the controversial changes.

The changes are clearly discriminatory both in its spirit and practice. It lays the path for non-secular India to make Muslims feel outcaste. They can’t be part of saffron India conceived in the Hindutva frame.

“if Hindus in Pakistan want to move to India, why not Muslim in India go to Pakistan,” was one anti-Muslim post I recently noticed on the social media.

That is the mood the BJP and its ‘Parivar’ are catering to meet their longstanding agenda of a theocratic and monolithic “Hindu Rashtra.”

The very notion of such a state violates the fundamentals of the Indian constitution as a secular nation in a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society. India, unlike Pakistan, was not envisioned as a purely Hindu state at the time of the partition in 1947. The commitment to the secular character of the nation was authored and signed by its first law minister, Dr. Ambedkar.

The Citizenship Amendment Act, along with another BJP government trap, the National Register of Citizens, sends out a clear message that Muslims are being segregated to be second-class citizens in a country where ethnic and religious equality is enshrined in its constitution.

India is the home of the third-largest population (10.9 %) of Muslims in the world after Indonesia (12.7 %) and Pakistan (11.0 %).

The idiotic argument of “go to Pakistan” is racist, anti-national, and anti-constitutional. This is the same constitution upon which the BJP lawmakers and their partners offered their pledge to uphold its fundamentals of secularism.

GETTING RID OF CLOGGING IDENTITIES

By Promod Puri

Nationality, caste, color, creed, ritual-based religion: do we still have to wear these badges? When these identities become obsolete, dead, and gone?

Nations across the globe have become or becoming cosmopolitan in both the physical and virtual worlds.

Political boundaries are only relevant to the administrative and bureaucratic functioning of governments. But not for propping up nationalism and its related precept of patriotism.

In a universal temperament, caste, color, creed, and ritual-based religion are irrelevant. Instead these antiquated social and faith-based divisions clog the advance of peace and harmony in our lives.

Who Knows!

I’ve heard, you’ve heard:

“Humans beings are the most
Intelligent and favorite
Creation of God.”

Birds, cats, dogs, donkeys…..
Probably think equal as well.

Trees, plants, and flowers
Likely hold the same pride too.

Who knows!

He Knows
May be maybe not.

Who knows!

-by Promod Puri

UNDERSTANDING SATSANG AND ITS VIRTUES

December 13, 2019Edit

By Promod Puri

In Hindu and Sikh religious activities, Satsang is a popular religious tradition.

It is group participation that involves listening or reading of scriptures, discussion on spiritual and theological topics, and singing of hymns. Some activities also include brief sessions of meditation.

Satsang can be a daily, weekly, or monthly get together. It usually lasts for an hour or two. With divine feelings and sentiments, Satsang ends as a social meeting along with light refreshments.

Satsang is derived from the Sanskrit word “satsanga.” By splitting the name into “sat” and “sanga,” its actual meaning is revealed as ‘true’ and ‘association,’ respectively.

It is an association of like-minded people seeking as well as creating an environment of spirituality with or without any guiding or an enlightened individual.

Questions and answers often become part of the entire Satsang session. And whatever the heat is produced during the dialogue and discussion period on religious topics abates by the soothing music and group singing by the participants. This part is also referred to as Kirtan.

Satsang creates pure religious consciousness.

Can we have Satsang within ourselves without the company of others and create the same spiritual ambiance and realization as in a group setting?

The answer can be “yes.”

Satsang basically means being in the company of truth. The “sat” and “sang” reside in the nobility and divinity of our thoughts and our karmas based on them.

It is a disciplined and conscientious activity creating an ongoing Satsang.

Although we miss some of the most visible features of group Satsang, self-Satsang has its own virtues with its harmonic overtones and contentment.

KUDOS TO GAMBIA SEEKING JUSTICE FOR MYANMAR MUSLIMS

December 11, 2019Edit

By Promod Puri

Hats off to the Republic of The Gambia, one of the world’s smallest countries in West Africa, who launched proceedings against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the latter’s crimes and genocide of its Muslim population.

Most influential nations in the world who champion the cause of human rights, including Canada, have never thought of going to the ICJ to seek justice for the Myanmar Muslims. The Gambia government must be applauded for this initiative.

The Gambia brought the case against the Myanmar government led by Noble Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. She is defending her country before the International Court in The Hague, where three-day proceedings began December 10.

The Gambia is asking the court to order Myanmar to bar ongoing atrocities against the Rohingya Muslims, averting further irreparable harm.

The case focuses on the clearance operations carried out since October 2016 by Myanmar’s military rulers against the Rohingya Muslims. It is a distinct ethnic and religious community group that resides primarily in the Rakhine state.

These operations amounted to a genocidal campaign of violence that included mass murder, forcible displacement, rape, and other forms of sexual abuse. The UN says that over 742,000 Rohingyas have fled Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh since 2017, who are living in dire conditions in the refugee camps.

In defending her government and the military junta, Peace Nobelist Aung San Suu Kyi told the court the case against Myanmar is “incomplete and incorrect.” And that it is an “internal armed conflict.”

Ms. Suu Kyi was once an international celebrity who was an icon for the cause of democracy. Now she is a de facto ruler of Myanmar serving her military bosses who kept her under house arrest for many years.

Ms. Suu Kyi was bestowed with honorary Canadian citizenship in October 2007 for being a champion of democracy for her nation. But considering her total denial of military violence against the Rohingya Muslims, she was stripped of her honorary Canadian citizenship in October 2018.

TACKLING RAPE PROBLEM BY GOING BEYOND CANDLE-LIT VIGILS AND PROTESTS

December 3, 2019Edit

By Promod Puri

Priyanka Reddy, Asifa Banu, Jyoti Singh, and hundreds perhaps thousands more became victims or going to be next: now, today or tomorrow.

Headlines make the scene. Speeches and statements drum up. Anger, frustrations, and emotions ventilated. Slogans are raised, “hang them, shoot them.” Protests are organized, candles are lit. Articles are written, rewritten, poetry composed. Social media is flooded with outrage. And a lot more expressed, discussed, and debated.

Meaningful but helpless expressions become just rituals. Continue for a few days, remains dormant, and then come back when another news of national shame breaks out. The cycle is renewed and rerun.

In its response, can the nation go beyond this emotional and enraged cry?

The hungry sex devils don’t care and are immune to all the public outbursts. During the barbaric moments, the evil lust dominates and erases any civility, morals, or even the laws against the vulturous acts of violence and rape. There is no fear and shame for them in society or their own families.

That is the reality which transfers a man, a teenager from being a human to a beast.

They are diseased with a behavior disorder. The syndrome erupts with an uncontrolled desire to grapple the victim, molest, and burnt alive. In those horrifying moments, the unconstrained sensual appetite supersedes the society’s protests and the legal punishments, including hanging. Their mental faculties are deranged. The aftermath consequences do not matter.

The civil society’s sentiments and strict legal statues do have impact and solace for the victims and their families. But this is a disease that can’t be controlled by candles, protests, poetry, prose, and punishments.

Who are rapists? Medical and psychological investigations can reveal the symptoms of the disease to determine the profile of a rapist.

The seriousness of the disease and its escalating spread must be of utmost concern for the nation’s medical community, especially in the faculty of psychology and related faculties, along with social scientists to deliberate on all aspects of the rape issues.

After all, it is not only the women who are raped but in the developing rape culture, the entire nation is a victim too.

(Promod Puri is a writer, journalist and author of Hinduism Beyond Rituals, Customs. And Traditions.) Websites: promodpuri.com, progressivehindudialogue.com, and promodpuri.blogspot.com