Hindus and their Bond with the Cow

      “Don’t kill a cow or eat its meat. This is India” say many Hindu Indians to all around.  A group of persons reply: “Dietry habits are a part of our freedom.  Have tolerance, don’t impose your religious beliefs and let not government ban slaughtering of cows”.  Newspapers and television channels continue the debate and views on this issue chiefly reflect one’s religious beliefs.  What then are other key factors here?

     First, some statistics from India’s 2011 census.  Hindus make up 79.8% of the population, Muslims 14.2% and Christians 2.3%.  Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains are each in lesser numbers than Christians.

      You know that among Indians, Hindus consider the cow sacred and worship it in some way. They abhor killing of that animal or eating its meat, whoever does it.  Non-vegetarians among Hindus would also feel that way, as vegetarians do.  Muslims and Christians have no taboo with cow’s meat, and a tiny minority of Hindus also consume it by deliberate choice. Jains believe in not harming any living being or eating flesh of any variety.  As for Sikhs and Buddhists, a very large part of them would stay away from consuming cow’s meat, by their own preference and to respect dominant Hindu sentiments.

      Take a glimpse of a foreign scenario, with regard to dogs.  Americans love pets, as the world knows.  Reports say that all 50 states in the US have banned the sale of dog meat to the general public and its use in public restaurants.  According to the Humane Society, six of them – Virginia, California, Hawaii, New York, Georgia, and Michigan –  go further, specifically  prohibiting the consumption of dogs and cats, i.e., even by cooking their meat for use within the home (see inhabitat.com).  Wikipedia reveals that dog meat is considered taboo in Britain and France, has been prohibited in Germany and that it is not a feature of modern Japanese culture “because Japanese people believe that certain dogs have special powers in their religion of Shintoism and Buddhism” and that “in Japanese shrines certain animals are worshipped, such as dogs as it is believed they will give people a good luck charm”. 

      So you find a country not eating dog’s meat for religious reasons and some other countries abstaining from it for the love of the dog, one or two backing up with strict legal measures too.  Even in the hugely freedom-loving United States, disallowing the killing of dogs for their meat is not considered as violating individual freedom.

      If US dogs can win protection against destruction for meat, weathering arguments of “my freedom lost” or “religious intolerance”, Indian cows may surely butt aside similar arguments and have longer lives.

        It looks a good majority of Muslims and Christians in India, who know that butchering a cow or eating its meat offends the sensibilities of vast numbers of Hindus, would be inclined not to do such acts – to give comfort to the Hindu majority who have been inhabiting India since centuries before other religions sprouted here – and so they peacefully accept legal bans on slaughter of cows that are in place in 21 out of 28 states and in a few union territories.  In earlier periods, Mughal emperors Babur, Akbar, Jahangir, Ahmad Shah and the last of them Bahadur Shah Zafar are known to have banned slaughter of cows in their regimes in India.  So did kings Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan who ruled from Mysore.  Maharaja Ranjt Singh, the founder of the Sikh empire in Punjab, had also prohibited cow slaughter which remained a capital offence during the Sikh reign.

       In the present day, persons of non-American origin living in the US, who could be used to dog meat, respect the American ban on that food rather than protest the law on grounds of individual freedom.

        In India, it is mainly some groups of Hindu intellectuals who claim that killing a cow or eating its meat is a matter of one’s freedom and that it should be freely allowed or that banning such acts is religious intolerance – giving a false impression to many lay persons that most Indian Muslims and Christians may have a stubborn clash of ideas with Hindus on this issue.  

      Some of those Hindu intellectuals also argue that cow’s meat was consumed by all in India during Vedic period and till Buddhism began spreading in India, to stress that Hindus need not specially protect the cow’s life today.  But I think their views are insensitive and against ground realities. 

       Even assuming cow’s meat was in the diet of Hindus of ancient India – about 2,000 to 4000 years ago - for several centuries past till now Hindus have been saying no to that food for religious reasons, which is enough to settle our issues.  And surely, history cannot be rolled back for 2000 years – not even for 200 years, as we know, for most things in life – to urge today’s Hindus to follow the diet habits of their forefathers of such hoary past.  Likewise, Indian history cannot also be unwound for a shorter length of around 1000 years for another object – that is, though Hindus of that period were converted to another religion, for that reason all their living descendants of today cannot be expected to return to the Hindu fold.  

        To Indians who still ask for cow’s meat to be allowed freely in this country, here is a question. If they were living as a religious minority of around 15% in a huge Muslim majority nation, would they reject the religious beliefs of that land and ask for liberty to eat pork which is taboo for Muslims, arguing that local Muslims could abstain from pork but others should be free to consume that meat? They would be wrong if they answer yes.

      But the issue has another dimension, and India has more sad stories about its cows. Some humans, some animals and some natural resources are to be worshiped or treated sacrosanct by Hindus – such as one’s mother (“matru devo bhava”, means “revere your mother as God”), the cow and the river Ganges.  But today they are frequently or grossly disrespected, neglected or ill-treated and defiled on our land.  Among them the cow, in most cases, is not properly fed by its owner, has no shelter, and is let loose on the streets to eat rubbish along with plastic bags containing scraps of food which damage its stomach and shorten its life.  It is also given harmful injections to induce an abnormal high yield of milk. Keeping in place a ban on cow slaughter is right.  But saying that the animal is sacred to us and yet doing all those things to the poor cow would be a a paap or sin, isn’t it?

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Copyright © R. Veera Raghavan 2015

The Sahitya Akademi, its Awards and Awardees

The Sahitya Akademi has never been in the news like now, not even during its awards ceremony. That is because, as you know, scores of authors who won literary awards from the Akademi have ‘returned’ the awards, citing some reasons. Are they doing the right thing?

Let me say it upfront.  No crime is to be condoned, especially by the police or the State.  If a law defining an act as crime is itself abominable or seriously unfair, you may criticise the law and demand its revocation– and that is a different issue.

More than twenty Indian writers have announced one after another they are ‘returning’ awards Sahitya Akademi conferred on them for their works in the past. They explain it is their way of denouncing recent criminal assaults on dalits, minorities and rationalists or of faulting the Akademi for not itself protesting against such incidents. Some have said they are doing it to oppose religious intolerance and to stand by freedom of expression.  Reports say seven of the returned awards were earned at least 15 years back, one of them 40 (yes, FORTY) years ago. 

What does a literary award mean? It marks the merit of an author’s work. It helps the author, and the reading public. If the award-giving body commands respect, the honour benefits the writer and the reader even more.  The publisher too gets a push. All the beneficiaries of a good award should get their due within a few years, and something more automatically flows later too.  If an author accepts an award and returns it later – 5 or 40 years later- for reasons cited now, surely the writer does not mean it was wrongly given earlier. Nor would the later act strengthen his or her condemnation of any crime occurring in society at any time.

Is returning a literary award for such reasons any sacrifice?  Certainly not, as anyone would feel. The returning, if at all, brings new media spotlight on the writer, reminding more of the public about the distinction he or she earned before. Also, an award-giving body cannot take back its award for the reasons now being stated for surrendering them.  So, the awards returned have come to stay more prominently.  For some, it is the award that returns

Keeping law and order, or even road traffic, in good shape is not something for which India is well known. Crimes are common, even notorious, in some states.  If you have not been a victim of minor or major crimes, thank your stars and not the State. This is not said flimsily.  Just look at the number and frequency of rapes of women and girl children being committed across the country, terrorist offences still taking place in some parts of India and the general nation-wide fear and distrust of the police forces by law-abiding citizens and a resultant insecure feeling in everyone - with India’s abundant poor persons trembling more in their hearts when they see a policeman near them. These scenes are enough to remind us that our freedom belongs more to the legal world than real life.  If people affected or likely to be affected in these situations cannot talk about it openly, that is the actual lack of freedom of expression in India. But the returning authors have not pointed to these long-time grave issues as the cause of their acts – not that I feel that would justify giving back their prizes.

We know that the Sahitya Akademi is not a part of the government.  It is a separate body formed and functioning under a law which regulates societies, and many apartment owners’ associations work in a similar way. If the Akademi does an act contradicting its chief functions, or if it selects some absolutely meritless book for an award, even then all writers may fault the institution, and no prior awardee need return an award.  When it is not even the job of the Akademi to prevent criminal assaults on any persons – including those committed out of religious or caste hatred - why should Akademi awards be returned, faulting the Akademi?  If such crimes are not prevented, when preventable, or if they are not swiftly and impartially investigated to bring the offenders to justice should the Akademi take the blame or should the failing police officers and the concerned state home minister or chief minister face the music?  The protesting award winners are barking up the wrong tree.

Look at this scenario.  We know all sorts of crimes are rife in some African countries, and terror freely stalks those lands.  There could be a literary society in a country over there, announcing an award for a local author.  If the writer accepts it, should he or she return the award the next week to protest some atrocity occurring nearby?  And should that literary society be busy condemning those crimes?  If it routinely denounces all criminal acts happening around, does it not expose its governing body to risk of attacks by mad men– possibly with guns and bombs?  The sense of insecurity among Indians may not be as high, but anyone serving a literary society in India would wish to be sensibly cautious.

The action of the Akademi awardees looks presumptuous and somewhat hollow, from another point of view. They have not come out with clarity on their concerns about ‘religious intolerance’ and ‘freedom of expression’ – especially about who is not tolerating, what is not being tolerated and who is curbing whose freedom.  Even if those concerns are valid and well grounded, they should be shared by other groups too who are interested in the democratic way of life, like judges, lawyers, opposition parties including their lawmakers and academicians.  Should these people also be protesting as the returning awardees do, and return all they could in like manner? Performing artistes, businessmen, doctors, chartered accountants and women and children are also vitally benefited by public order, freedom and democracy.  Should they protest too?

Come to the global situation. Without doubt, every day more injustice, suppression and horrendous criminal acts take place around the world than in India. What should the institutions awarding Nobel prizes, and the Nobel awardees, be doing amidst all this?  I hope the returning awardees of India would agree that those august bodies and the Nobel laureates should just get on with their work and leave the ills of the world to be tackled by agencies charged with fighting those maladies. If those agencies fail in their jobs the action needed is just revamping them with right officers. That is what we need to do in India, but don’t do most of the time.

        Finally, if it makes sense for Indian writers to return previously conferred literary awards, and for the reasons we learn, it should also make sense for yet-to-be-awarded writers here with similar views to declare they would not, for like reasons that always abound in our country, accept any award in future until they are firmly and permanently remedied.  But then, it does not make sense this way or that way.

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Copyright © R. Veera Raghavan 2015

Mr. Rajinikanth, Well Said About the Judiciary – But There is More to Say

     Speaking in public recently about the Indian judiciary, actor Rajinikanth said, “The nation has its faith in courts.  It’ll be ruined if courts go the wrong way”.  Well said.  What he meant is also clear. But there is something more to say.

     Just look at what the judiciary does for you in India, and in what ambience it functions. Also consider what the other two wings of the state - the executive and the legislature - are expected to do for the judiciary in a democracy and how far they go.

      To begin with, imagine situations like these:

·      you buy an article, it malfunctions and the manufacturer or servicing agent doesn’t honour the product warranty;

·     your co-owner of some property claims for himself your rightful share in a house, and squats on it;

·         your rival in trade, politics or show business defames you;

·        you report to the police a crime committed on you, but they don’t register and investigate it;

·       a property registering officer or a taxman demands from you excessive stamp duty or tax;

·   the legislature passes an unauthorized law affecting you – like taking away some fundamental right 

      

     How do you resolve these problems? You know the answer: you have to go to court if the other person or the government insists on being unreasonable with you.  By choice or by practical compulsions you may not approach the court, but the best you can hope for anywhere in a persisting dispute is a chance to plead your case before a dedicated third-party agency like a court which has authority to direct parties to a binding solution.  And you have it in India.

      The executive – or ‘the government’ – rubs shoulders with citizens every day and every hour, and so you could get affected constantly that way.  The legislature may cross your path only when it enacts wrong laws, but lawmaking itself happens rarely by comparison.  Your confrontation with Indian legislatures, whenever it happens, is also theoretical, and you would then really be battling the government that wears the mask of the legislature.  This is why it is so.  Every statute law is mostly initiated by the government in the legislature, by introducing a bill.  The bill is passed automatically with the government-supporting majority voting for it, thanks to the anti-defection provisions in our Constitution.  Those provisions say that if a legislator votes inside the legislature against the directive of his political party, or remains absent at voting time, he vacates his seat in the legislature unless his political party condones his defiance within 15 days – why would anyone wish to be ejected from a legislature in that fashion when it is a hard battle to get nominated and a harder one to win an election – when that battle is quite expensive too?  So any bad or oppressive law passed by a legislature and affecting people is virtually an act of the government.

      Governments, you know, are run by politicians at the helm, and so it is really them you have to fight the most to keep your rights as a free citizen if they are denied.  Most governments in India, meaning most of the ruling political class in India, respect your key rights and interests against them because they reckon that the judiciary will keep them in check if challenged.  The saddest part of that fact is, only judges and politicians know that fact well – not the multitudes of people who are so protected by the judiciary.  Our democracy is yet to evolve to the level where a government, on its own by a trait, will respect rights of people who would also be informed and aware.  As of now our democracy is just God-blessed, not citizen-powered.

     And then the judiciary assists the government too if a private person – an individual or a corporation – does a wrong to the government or to the public which the government cannot or does not set right.  Like in collecting huge tax arrears, evicting squatters on public property and even recovering colossal amounts of public revenues lost through government’s misallocation of natural resources such as spectrum or coal mines.

      Did you notice this?  The judiciary is not placed to receive help from individuals, corporations or the government.  The judiciary is only a giver, and scarcely a receiver.  It does a sort of a parenting role in our democracy.

    The Indian judiciary’s performance has been one of the very best among all democratic countries – especially if you note the counterweights put against its independence and dignity from outside, some open and audacious and some subtle but serious.  Judicial institutions in mature democracies would not be facing such grave onslaughts from their executive branches.  Worse still, they do not suffer brazen disrespect and indignities at the hands of lawyers themselves at many levels and in many places.  And still the Indian judiciary carries on doing its job admirably well.

      You might have a question, “Politicians are despised and ridiculed even more, but carry on with their functions – so how are judges different or superior?”  The answer is: Our politicians are faulted for straying from the straight path, and they could have secret rewards.  Judges in India mostly face opposition for boldly coming down on law-breakers, deriving no special benefits for themselves.  That is the difference.

      True, there are also some among the vast numbers of our judges who misbehave and the judiciary needs some cleansing here and there.  But there is no doubt that, more than others, judges have preserved freedom and democracy in free India till now.

       There is nothing wrong in saying publicly that judges should be independent and credible.   At the same time we must also say out that we salute them for their work and, more than that, ask all in public life, and lawyers, to give judges the respect and dignity they deserve – like we do for army men.  Probably, many feel reticent about telling that openly so all politicians and others could hear, and yet could appeal to judges to be on the right path and serve the nation.  Our democracy needs to grow to make us feel really free.

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Copyright © R. Veera Raghavan 2015

New Signals from Gujarat : Reservation is a Problem, Not a Solution

What does a 50% reservation of jobs with governments and seats in college courses, in favour of persons of several caste groups, achieve - when better-scoring and more qualified contenders from excluded caste groups are denied those slots? If you are in India, your answer would be: Nothing.

Across India there is now a fresh debate on reservation, in the backdrop of the current agitation in Gujarat spearheaded by a young Hardik Patel demanding inclusion of the Patidar community for reservation benefits.  The Hindu quotes him as saying, “Either free the country from reservation or make everybody the slave of reservation”.  Here I am talking generally about reservation, not on his agitation.

In post-independent India reservation began to be implemented on a medium scale, no doubt with good objectives.  In 1993 the central government gave effect to an extra 27% reservation for newly included caste groups.  Presently reservation goes upto nearly 50% of vacancies in government and semi-government jobs and of prized college admissions, at centre and state levels.

All these years, reservation has been lulling innocent people in the reserved groups into a false belief that the government is doing a huge favour to their groups. On the other side, non-performing politicians running governments have been feeling glad they did not have to answer much for their unimaginative thinking and poor governing skills in managing and improving the economy of the country or any of its regions.  Why does mere reservation not work and what does it lead to?

Reservation must have been thought of as an antidote to the casteist outlook and behavior of ‘upper’ caste men and women looking down on people of ‘lower’ castes. That mindset and its manifestation are prevalent to a high degree in villages or rural areas (home for 69% of India’s population) where tradition rules, where people stick with their caste groups and cling to their caste identities and where there is less of open-minded interaction among different communities. Colleges, especially engineering and medical colleges, and government offices with large numbers of employees are mostly in cities, more of them in bigger cities – places that witness much less of caste consciousness or casteist tendencies.

The contrast in the two locations is also reflected in the spectacle of caste conflicts or skirmishes emanating from rural areas, not from cities - with very rare exceptions if any.  Just look at the size of the population in cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad or Hyderabad and the number of persons livings in any place which reports caste atrocities or showdowns, and you know that dominant casteist forces operate only in the smaller places, mostly villages - that too not in every village.  In this scenario, you find that the malady of casteism is present on one location where we are not able to administer any medicine, while a strong medicine of 50% reservation is applied on another location, a healthy one, which only produces symptoms of a wrong drug, and sometimes strong reactions too.  What we do in India is just one step short of enforcing – if that would be possible to do – reservations within and among Indian origin persons in college courses and government employments in the United States, a location where immigrant Indians would harbor or display no casteist outlook at all.

 

By the way, let us also be clear – anyone following some traditions and customs generally prevalent in a caste, without wanting to undermine people of other castes, is not ‘casteist’ and he or she is not a problem to others.

Take two developed countries, Singapore and United States. India is far below their rank when you think of food, clothing, shelter, security and incomes for its people.   Neither of them provided for reservation like India does, and the US, the democratic one of the two, had a far more hateful division and degrading relationship among its population – between whites and African Americans – than India had ever seen.  That nation has developed its economy and promoted the welfare of its population, including the once-slaving African Americans, through sheer hard work and merit-based open competition for all – no reservation and no discrimination. 

If the US could so maximize the general economic well-being of all its citizens, why cannot India do it and bring more prosperity to all its citizens without reservation?  The reason why an Indian government cannot is, our political class as a whole have been finding it much easier to keep reservation in place and give it to more people as much as possible, than to think hard for the nation, work more for its people and get results through the sweat and agony of thinking and doing. 

 

The presumed advantage of reservation is that it economically uplifts some groups of people by providing them with jobs and incomes that come along.  But that does not happen with bad economic policies working in the background.  To understand this in another way, look at Pakistan which mismanages its economy far worse and whose people have far lower standards of living and security compared to Indians.  As per available data, 95 to 98% of Pakistan’s population comprises Muslims.

Though not by legal compulsion, it happens by circumstance that nearly 100% of all jobs in Pakistan, government or non-government, go to Muslims.  Assuming – merely assuming, so we clearly see some other picture – that 20% of Pakistan’s population consists of men and women following other religions, and further assuming that, by some enforced reservation, still all jobs with the government go only to Muslims, the mere exclusion of that 20% of its population from government jobs would not raise the prosperity levels for Pakistani Muslims.  To improve the lot of Muslims in Pakistan the government of the country has to address its economy and allied issues, and so merely giving all government jobs to Muslims over there will not uplift them.  The Indian situation – with 50% reservation of jobs put in place by laws – is similar and no better.

The obvious things reservation may do is to get college admissions, give jobs and secure incomes to a tiny few among various groups of people, but it has failed as a state policy on many fronts. To implement reservation on the ground, the central and state governments in India have documented and listed all castes and sub-castes to be eligible for benefits of that policy. Publicised official records name over 5,000 castes in a central list of 'other backward classes', over 1,100 castes as 'scheduled castes' and over 740 tribes as 'scheduled tribes'.  Persons not covered in these lists are widely and unofficially mentioned as 'forward castes'.  So when the state itself draws thick caste outlines on the profiles of its citizens for all time to come, divisions among the people along those lines get hardened and there is no hope of caste consciousness receding or dying out when people spread out and mingle.

Education is a good means to let the mind flower and broaden one’s outlook, and to make us understand that fellowship with others around – and surely with people of other castes - is necessary and profitable in today’s inter-connected world.  Is it not jarring that, in the field of education itself, reservation compels young men and women to remember their caste identities and use them as a passport, if they are part of any reserved group, to secure admissions for themselves in preferred courses ejecting other better-performing candidates?  Here, unwittingly the law is festering an old wound and is keeping people apart. This is the biggest tragedy of reservation.

All active politicians should know that reservation is creating unintended mischief, but any one of them cannot, even if he is inclined, say it out openly because he would then lose his vote bank.  As long as the law allows reservation they have to play music to it to survive.  But if all major political parties agree to do away with the law of reservation - perhaps limiting it for the present to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes alone, to a maximum of 20% of the vacancies, and also freezing the present lists of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes – no political party would stand to lose since all will have a level-playing filed on reservation.  If any major political party blocks that idea, it gets no special advantage because then the other parties would say that they also want reservation to continue, and then the honours will remain equally shared. 
     

So it is time to watch our politicians, without giving up our prayers.   If de-reservation begins, our people can gradually bring out the best in themselves for the good of the nation and for their own good.  If African Americans could do it in the US with a neutral law talking tough on strict equality, Indians can surely do it in India if we have also the right law to back it, helped by  astute governments  and a responsible Opposition in building bridges with people.

        Indians and their progeny in vast numbers have already shown they can live happily without reservation, and proof lies in a bit of statistics and a few facts anyone knows. First, you will note from a website of the Indian central government that over 25 million people of Indian origin are living outside India, in more than 200 countries.  They should belong to different caste groups of India.  We know that a great majority of them lead a better life abroad, and that is why they are still there. Wherever they are they live in good fellowship with many Indian origin persons. And, you will also note, certainly they don't think about not getting reservation in securing college admissions or government jobs in those territories, especially in the advanced countries.  We have a clear message.

 

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Copyright © R. Veera Raghavan 2015

அம்புஜம் பாட்டி அலசுகிறாள் : சுந்தர் பிச்சை! உங்கிட்ட ஒண்ணு ரண்டு வார்த்தை

ஏண்டாப்பா, ’கூகிள்’ள பெரிய ஆபீசர் ஆயிட்டியாமே? அமெரிக்காவில நீதான் இப்ப கம்பெனி சி.இ.ஓ-ன்னு பாத்தேன். நன்னா இருடாப்பா!

எங்கயுமே கம்பெனி நிர்வாகத்துல மேல மேல வரதுங்கறது ஈஸி இல்லையே?  நன்னா படிச்சிருந்தா மட்டும் போறாது.  குடுத்த வேலைய நன்னா பண்ணத் தெரிஞ்சா மட்டும் போறாது.  குடுக்காத வேலையையும் கொஞ்சம் எடுத்துப் பண்ணணும். அதுவும் போறாது. கூட வேலை செய்யறவாட்ட, உனக்கு கீழ வேலை பண்றவாட்ட, மேல் அதிகாரிகள்ட்ட நீ எப்டி எப்டி பழகற, நடந்துக்கறங்கற நெளிவு சுளுவு சமாசாரமும் இதுல நிறைய இருக்கு. இதெல்லாம் வீட்டுக்குள்ள நடக்கற மாதிரித்தான்.  எப்டிச் சொல்றேன்னு கேளு.

அந்தக் காலத்துல எங்கள்ள சிலர், குடும்பத்துல எப்படிப் பேர் எடுத்தோம் தெரியுமோ? சமயல் பண்றதுக்கு விறகடுப்பு, குமுட்டி, அம்மி, ஆட்டுக்கல்லோட போராடணும். சாப்பாட்டு வேளைன்னா, குழம்பு ரசம் காய்கறியோட அப்பப்ப அப்பளாமும் பொரிக்கணும், வடாமும் வறுக்கணும் - அதையும் முன்னாலயே இட்டு பிழிஞ்சு காயவச்சு எடுக்கணும். ஸீஸன்போது மாவடோட மல்லுக் கட்டணும். ரொம்ப முக்கியமா, எல்லார்ட்டயும் அனுசரணையா இருக்கணும், வாஞ்சையாப் பேசணும். ஆத்துக்காரரைக் கவனிக்கணும், மாமியாரை சமாளிக்கணும், மச்சினரை மதிக்கணும், நாத்தனாருக்கு ஈடு குடுக்கணும், சொந்தக்காராள விசாரிக்கணும், அடுத்த வீட்டுக்காராட்டயும் பேச்சு வச்சுக்கணும். அப்பறம் குழந்தைகளயும் வளக்கணும், கல்யாண வேலைக்கும் ஓடணும், ப்ரசவத்தையும் பாக்கணும். இத்தனைக்கு நடுவுலதான் எங்கள்ள சில மனுஷிகள் கால் காசு சம்பளம் வாங்காம பேர் மட்டும் வாங்கிருந்தான்னா, அதுவும் கம்பெனி சி.இ.ஓ ஆற மாதிரித்தான். ஆனா இப்பல்லாம் பொண்கள் வெளி வேலைலதான் பேர் வாங்க வேண்டிருக்கு – சந்தோஷம். அதெல்லாம் இருக்கட்டும். முக்கியமா இன்னொரு விஷயம் உங்கிட்ட சொல்லணும்னு நினைக்கறேன்.

இந்தியாவில ஸ்கூல் காலேஜ் போன ஒர்த்தர் அமெரிக்காவுக்குப் போய் இன்னும் படிச்சு, ப்ரசித்தியான கூகிள் கம்பெனில வேலைக்குச் சேந்து,  அங்க வேலை பண்ற வெள்ளக்காராளுக்கும் மேல எழும்பி, சி.இ.ஓ ஆகறதுங்கறது இந்தியாக்காராளுக்கு – மத்தவாளுக்கும்தான் - பிரமிப்பான விஷயம். நீ தமிழன்கறதுனால தமிழ்நாட்டுலேர்ந்து வந்தவா உன்னை இன்னும் விசேஷமாப் பார்ப்பா. ஆனா கொஞ்சம் யோசிச்சுப் பாருப்பா – இது ஒன்னோட தனிப்பட்ட மஹா வெற்றியா மட்டும்தான் இப்ப இருக்கு.  இதுக்குக் கொஞ்சம் மெருகு சேத்து, இந்தியாக்காரா உன்னோட வளர்ச்சியை ப்ரமிப்பா மட்டும் பாக்காம பெருமையாவும் நினைக்கறா மாதிரி பண்ணமுடியுமான்னு பாரேன். எந்த அர்த்தத்துல சொல்றேன்னா, இப்ப உன் பெரிய படிப்பும் அதிக சம்பாத்தியமும் உனக்கு மட்டும்தான் பிரயாஜனப் படறது.  அது தப்புல்லதான்.  ஆனா அதுல பெருமையும் இல்லையேப்பா!

இந்த நிலைமைக்கு வர நீ எவ்வளவு கஷ்டப்பட்டிருப்பயோ அதுல அரைக்கால் பங்குக்கும் குறைவா கஷ்டத்தை எத்துண்டா போதும் – உனக்கு உண்டான பெருமை ஓடி வரும். உதாரணமா, இந்தியாவுல படிக்க வசதி வாய்ப்பில்லாத குழந்தைகளுக்கு நீ எந்த வகைல, எந்த இடங்கள்ள, எந்த அளவுக்கு வழி பண்ண முடியும்னு யோசிக்கலாம். அல்லது இந்தியாவுல பண்றதுக்கு வேற நல்ல காரியங்களும் உனக்கே தோணலாம் – இங்கதான் பரோபகாரத்துலயே ஜனங்கள் வாழற அளவுக்கு அரசாங்கம் குறட்டை விட்டிண்டிருக்கே! இன்னொண்ணு - கூகிள், மைக்ரொஸாஃப்ட் மாதிரி கம்பெனிகள்ள ஷேர் வச்சிருக்கற முதலாளிகள் அளவுக்கு உனக்கு வருமானம் கிடையாதுதான். இருந்தாலும், இந்தியாவில நீ அணில் அளவுக்குப் பண்ணினாலும் உனக்குக் கோடு விழும். ஏற்கனவே நீ எதாவது பண்ணிண்டிருக்கையா, அதக் கொஞ்சம் சாமர்த்தியமா பிரபல்யப் படுத்தறது நல்லது.

சில பேர் கேக்கலாம்; ”வெளி நாட்டுக்குப் போய் வண்டி வண்டியா சம்பாதிக்கும் போது, தான தருமம் பண்ணினாத்தான் என்ன?” ன்னு. அப்டிக் கேக்கறவாள்ள முக்கால்வாசிப் பேர் சோம்பேறிகள், பாக்கிப் பேர் வறட்டு மனசுக்காரா. அந்த மாதிரி நினைப்பு எனக்குக் கொஞ்சம் கூட இல்லாதது பகவான் கிருபை.

 

பாரு, மத்தவாளுக்குப் பிரயோஜனம் ஏற்படுத்தினாத்தான் அவா மனசுலேர்ந்து மதிப்பும் மரியாதையும் கலந்து உனக்குப் பெருமையா வந்து சேரும். அது உன்னைச் சேரணும்னு நினைக்கறேன். கூகிள் கம்பெனி சி.இ.ஓ-ன்னு ஒரு மகுடம் கிடைச்சதுக்கு அப்பறம் நீ பரோபகாரம் பண்ணும்போது அந்த நல்ல காரியத்துக்கு ஒளி அதிகமாக் கிடைக்கும். கூகிள் தன்னோட காரியங்களைச் செய்யறா மாதிரி, நீயும் பண்ண முடிஞ்ச உபகாரத்தை சரியானதா தேர்ந்தெடுத்து, அதைப் பேஷா நல்ல விதமாப் பண்ணணும்னு உனக்கு யாரும் சொல்லவேண்டாம். 

  நீ கைங்கர்யமா நல்ல காரியம் பண்றேன்னு பரவலா தெரிஞ்சதுன்னா, உன் அளவுக்கு சம்பாத்தியத்துல முன்னுக்கு வந்த அல்லது வரப்போற இந்தியாக்காராளும் உன்னைப் பாத்து அதிகமா நல்ல காரியங்கள் பண்ணலாம். இந்த விஷயத்துல நீ தலைக் காவேரியா இருக்கலாம்.  பிரவாகம் பின்னால மெள்ள மெள்ள சேரட்டும்.  பாட்டி வேற என்ன சொல்ல முடியும்?

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