Hey, eat your words!

He had heard of it all. At every corner, the naysayers were there. They were free with unsolicited advice that he should not forget where he came from, that the pinky would only grow to the size of the thumb, and that a sparrow should not dream of flying majestically like an eagle. 

As if the road ahead was not uncertain enough, these doomsday philosophers jumped on the bandwagon to sow the seeds of doubt. Already in turmoil, trying to pull oneself by the bootstraps, the negative vibes are the last that anyone wants to hear. But they yak on...

He was raised in an environment where he was told to respect others and not to tell somebody off on the face; he would just smile it off. 

The element of doubt still lingered, however. The quandary was whether he was indeed doomed to fail. With perceived divine guidance, he persevered. He had the grace of his family as well.

The answer to his doubt must have been answered finally. Not only has he proved his critics wrong, but he now has proof of the whole world’s accreditation to show. All the naysayers can now eat humble pie. The journey to the pinnacle had been fraud with shrapnels and heartbreaks, but what the heck. Hoisting the trophy was all that worth it.

GOPIO, Global Organization of People of Indian Origin, in its continued journey to open cooperation among the people of the diaspora, during its annual conference, honoured POI icons from various industries - security, logistics, telecommunications, etc., from the world over. 

Dato M. S. Murthi
GOPIO International Business Excellence Award 2023
Legal Practice

                         

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

When they were kings!

Jalal Uddin al-Afghani (1839-97)

Imagine you are living in the late 19th century, and you have been brought up in an Orthodox Islamic environment. How would you, through an ultra-Islamic lens, look at the world around you?

You have read and been told that within the century after its introduction, the influence of Islam was seen in all four corners of the world. India was run over by a series of opulent dynasties upon dynasties of flamboyant Islamic rulers. In the 18th century, India was the wealthiest nation in the world. Islamic traders had introduced the religion to the shores where they traded.

After defeating the Crusaders, the Islamic rulers steadfastly asserted Allah's law on Earth. At its pinnacle, the Ottoman Empire controlled most of southeastern Europe to the gates of Vienna, the Balkans, Ukraine, parts of the Middle East and North Africa. 

Al-Afghani saw the time that passed as the most glorious days of Islam. Right in front of his eyes, he saw the reign of leaders who use Islam as their selling point slowly crumbling. The British were making inroads into dismantling the wealthiest Muslim Empire. The Ottomans were getting sicker by the day with ineffective leaders and widespread unholy practices. The schisms within the fold also made it easier for its enemies to hoodwink them, using their weaknesses to their benefit. 

Just who is this Al-Afghani? How is he of relevance today? 

Jalal al-Din al-Afghani was an elusive character and a wanderer who was either embraced or shooed by the countries in which he sojourned at different times of his life. Probably born to a Shiite family in Persia, Afghanis insist he was born in Afghanistan. At 18, he was in India and performed his Haj soon afterwards. He became a scholar of religion and would be called upon to impart his knowledge. He went to Iran, Turkey, Egypt and the United Kingdom. His idea of modernisation without Westernisation was popular among the masses but not with elites and clerics. He promoted being meagre, which did not excite the leaders. He suggested a pan-Islamic movement and is said to be the first Modern Muslim who used the shield of Islam in his political appeal.

He had his hand in France, Russia, and India and left a long trail of people who were angry with him. At one time, he was even inducted into Freemasonry. Flitting between his Shiite background and Sunni knowledge, he still failed to unite both denominations. At one time, he gave a scathing opposition to Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution' but later rescinded that animals do evolve but can never be human.

He died of mandibular cancer in 1897 but remains a prominent figure amongst Muslim scholars who like to see the so-called golden era of Islam make a comeback here on Earth. Unity within
the ummah, he never achieved, but at least when it comes to threats to their own kind, they flock together. Like a swarm of bees, seemingly buzzing around haphazardly, perhaps appearing to bump into each other, they fall into formation to protect their hive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Not an all-or-none rule!

Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai 

(a.k.a. Bandaa; A Common Man, Hindi; 2023)
Director: Apoorv Singh Karki

It is not about being religious or anti-religious, especially when it comes to a crime committed by a godman. Just because one utters something in favour of the accused does not mean he condones the accused's actions. Conversely, saying something against the victim does not indicate victim-blaming. 

This point becomes very relevant in the present-day context when we discuss the Hamas versus Israeli issue. Many join the increasing bandwagon and assert that if one does not condemn the Israeli retaliation (defence), one does not empathise with the Palestinian course but supports the Israeli killing of civilians and children. Never mind that Hamas is a terrorist group; they drew first blood (this time around) and used civilian human shields to defend themselves. Never mind that Israelites have to protect themselves, too. Life is not straightforward.

The film is based on a true event. A revered holy man is accused of rape by a minor. Whilst the public sentiments are that such a man of high esteem would not stoop so low as to commit such heinous crimes, his supporters are quick to employ scare tactics to threaten and even harm the prosecutor's witnesses.  

Getting the case off the ground proved to be a Herculean task. The parents of the victim soon discover that the assigned prosecutor was trying to sell his case. That is how P.C. Solanki, the effable Jodhpur lawyer, comes to the picture on a pro-bono basis.

The case gets dilly-dallied over five years. The accused attempted and failed repeatedly to get bail and spent the whole duration under custody. Solanki came face-to-face with many famous men of law in the courts of Jodhpur and Delhi. Somewhere along the way, even the flamboyant Dr Subramaniam Swamy had to eat humble pie when his attempts at getting the holy man out on bail failed on technicalities. Before this episode, Swamy had boasted of not losing any bail cases.

While the filmmakers managed to grasp the viewers' attention through creative storytelling and excellent acting, the clincher came when the prosecution made his closing statement. He tries to justify his hounding of the man of God through the Hindu scriptures itself. This is akin to fighting fire with fire. Not that Solanki was a non-believer. He was regular with his salutations to Lord Shiva. 

Solanki invoked Ravana's antic of impersonating a sage to abduct Sita as an unforgivable sin. Preying on helpless people's trust for self-interest is unforgivable. 

In his understanding, in a conversation that happened between Parvathi and Shiva, Parvathi asked why Shiva refused to forgive Ravana. After all, Ravana had been his ardent baktha (worshipper). In defence, Lord Shiva allegedly reiterated, “There are three types of sons. One which is made inadvertently and can be forgiven. Next, there will be atrocities, which, some punishment, things resolve. Then, there is a category of unforgivable sin, where a person assumes a place to trust and the trust is used to wrong the person who trusts him!”

In my opinion, this edict can be exploited in our contemporary living as such. The society puts so much trust in people in certain positions. They go to meet them to solve their problems when society sanctions them to do so. A teacher, a doctor, a leader, and a priest are all people who hold certain esteemed positions in our hearts. When these professionals cross the Rubicon by misusing their position, their punishment must be harsh. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Biggest man-made disaster?

The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984 (miniseries; 2023)
Director: Shiv Rawail

I have come to know of a few people who were working on the Malaysian Railway Lines (Keretapi Tanah Melayu, KTM). They were working at a time when owning a car was a luxury, and interstate travel meant travelling on the train. So much responsibility fell on the shoulders of the Station Master of a railway station. Much like the captain of a ship, the Station Master would take care of his station like a baby. The post carried such pride in the community that people would have forgotten his name. They would just address him as Station Master, much like how one would address a Doctor or Pastor, not by name.

Amongst our family circle lived a distant relative who was the Station Master of the Bukit Mertajam Railway Station. The job was a prestigious one, and it carried much prestige. Bukit Mertajam was an essential and busy station. Even though his name was Jaganathan, everyone referred to his family as the 'Station Master's' family. My sisters and I call him 'Train Tata' (Train Grandfather). Train Tata was married to his job, besides having ten children. He would personally be present at the station every time a train stopped there. His pride and joy were his sparkling and shiny railway shifters.  

I never had the opportunity to have an up-and-personal conversation with Train Tata about his job. The main character in this miniseries, Iftekaar Siddiqui, reminded me a lot of him.

The tragic industrial accident in Bhopal hit our shores back in 1983. From the occasional glimpses we got from the foreign news section of the national TV, we understood the devastation it caused. Later in my working life, I did encounter people who were right smack in the heat of things, doing medicine in Bhopal, albeit a few years after the biggest man-made disaster in history. As its death toll exceeded 15,000, after taking the long-term damages that it caused, it is said to have been a greater disaster than Chornobyl or Twin Towers. 

Watching the fiasco unfold on Netflix, we get a better understanding of the background of it all. The blast in the Union Carbide chemical factory was a volcano waiting to explode, as described by an independent journalist after his friend died in a minor industrial accident three years previously. The whole thing was hushed. 

Working with suboptimal pieces of machinery and ill-trained staff, even the owners of the pesticide-making company, who is credited for making the atomic bomb, knew they were sitting on a disaster. An independent assessor even remarked that the methyl isocyanate (MIC) the factory stores were storing was at risk of leakage. The faulty cooling system, substandard safety measures, and defective pressure gauges could potentially release poisonous cyanide into the environment. Antidote was known by a few, but this information was deliberately kept away from the public and even the administrative agencies. Very few workers were cognisant of the standard operative procedure in case of a catastrophic gas leak. 

Minor blemishes did happen but were kept under wraps. The disaster occurred on December 2, 1984, when the system overheated and poisonous gas leaked into the atmosphere. 

The miniseries tells of how the railway men of Bhopal station and the GM of railways tirelessly went out of their way to render their services to help people affected by the gas leak. Even though the account of events that happened that night is told in a dramatic fashion, the essential characters in the series did exist, but with different names. Unfortunately, the film failed to mention the names of these unsung heroes at the credit in a way to show appreciation.

Iftekaar Siddiqui, the Station master character, could be Ghulam Destagir, who protected passengers and arranged a safe passage out of Bhopal Junction. The selfless investigative journalist named Jagmohan Kulwant here is Rajkumar Deswani in real life. He went on to win many journalistic awards. There was indeed a railway inspector who was on a surprise visit to Jhansi when the incident happened. He was Gauri Shanker, the General Manager of the Northern Railways. In the series, he was known as Rati Pandey.

The moviemakers decided to spice up the story by including bits about the Sikh witchhunt, as Indira Gandhi had been assassinated a month prior. The part about governmental cover-up is probably not stretching the truth. There were reports of hushing about the severity of the mishap, malaise on the part of rescue efforts and protection of its foreign owners.  

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Be ordinary?

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Documentary, 2023)

Director: Nathan Price

Based on the book of the same name by Mark Manson (2016)

I have seen this book staring with sad eyes at me numerous times, pleading to be picked up. I always gave it a pass. Firstly, with profanity flashed on its cover, I thought the target readers must be Gen-Ys or millennials. They may find a reason to seek a book on self-help or, perhaps, perfect the art of not giving a damn about anything or whatever. I, on the other hand, was beyond help.

When a trailer bearing the same title appeared on Netflix, curiosity got the better of me.

After going through the documentary, I find that the content is more profound than its low-brow title. There is much philosophy to learn, as narrated from the life and times of the author, Mark Manson, by himself. 

He started his teenage years on the wrong footing. Caught with drugs in his locker, he got into the wrong side of the law. His parents divorced afterwards. He drifted through his late teenage years and early adulthood in a daze, experiencing the death of a close friend and unfaithful girlfriend. Somewhere along the way, he received a sort of epiphany that made him question the purpose of life. That soul-searching gave birth to the book and, now, the documentary.

What I gathered from this presentation is this: The modern society feels that the purpose of life is to experience happiness. It constantly tries to avoid pain and anything that stirs the psyche and raises anxiety. Pain and tragedy are bad words that must be avoided at all costs. Through his personal life experiences, the author posits that pain and tragedy are the necessary evils that strengthen us. We become resilient to whatever curveballs that life throws. Like what Nietzsche said,  probably parroting Vedanta's teachings, events in life are cyclical. Things get better and turn for a dip every so often.

The current Western teaching where happiness is the be-all and end-all of everything, we end up feeling entitled. We demand nothing else but to be satisfied. We want to be in control all the time.

The author thinks that a nihilistic outlook on life leads to more contentment. We should realise that we do not control anything. Everything is beyond our control. We should be humble enough to know we are mortal, just waiting to die. Being cocksure about something may lead to our downfall, exemplified by the example of  Lt. Hiroo Onoda, the last Japanese WW2 soldier to leave the Philippines in 1974. He spent a good 29 years in the jungle, convinced that Japan was still at war. Despite numerous attempts at bringing him back, he was confident that the whole exercise was fake news. What a waste of fruitful years of life?

Be ordinary; that is what he is saying.

You are nobody. You are not unique, which contradicts what the psychological community and management gurus say. The modern world tells each of us that we are entitled, and the rest can just go to hell. The 'me' as the centre of reference disappoints us when things do not go our way because, in our mind, we are special.

Many may not agree with his rhetoric. People need to think outside the box. Society needs mad people who can push the boundaries and would not stop at any extent to prove their point; civilisation needs them.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Beyond strengthening ties?

Under the guise of surveillance, imperial powers went to all four corners of the world. Their true intentions, as was eventually discovered by the locals, were reconnaissance work to ascertain terrains and landscapes for economic potentials and geopolitical purposes, not for the development of mankind. Neither was it to garner scientific facts to explore our civilisation. It was business. The icing on the cake was exploring how natives could eventually be 'civilised' via Western education and the introduction of The Book.

From the 18th century onwards, the Western world was excited, discovering new exotic lands with wealth beyond belief. Pretty soon, no combative teams started scouting new lands in Africa, India, China and various other parts of Asia. Under the guise of doing land surveying, whites were seen around Afghanistan, Siberia, the Middle East and the Far East. When geopolitical turmoils embroiled in these regions, the armies of the imperial forces suddenly found their knowledge of the area useful to usurp lands. Their understanding of the region's economic potential was also instrumental in concentrating their meddling efforts. Think Lawrence of Arabia, the Britishers' strange relationship with the Saud family and finds of petroleum. Think of Alexender Burnes and the subsequent Kabul Expedition.

Hence, there grew a faction of Caucasians who knew more about the Orientals, the Indians or the Aztecs than the natives themselves. They essentially taught the natives who they were and what their ancestors thought and lived. They rewrote their histories to suit the day's narrative, with the imperialists appearing as saviours.

Students at Beijing Foreign Studies University
©tamilculture.com

So naturally, when Tamil-speaking Chinese appeared on the vernacular radio, specifically on the RTM Minnal network, to be interviewed, many Tamil-speaking Malaysian Indians were on cloud nine, proud of their mother tongue, happy seeing it going places. I remained sceptical.

In July 2023, Kuala Lumpur hosted the 11th International Tamil Conference. Tamil scholars from all over the world gathered to sing praises of one of the oldest surviving languages in the world. Delegates immerse themselves in the language's beauty, richness, glitter and exquisiteness. The Tamil language does not stand alone as a mode of communication. Tamil history, ethics, devotion, literature, and recipes for a meaningful life are intertwined with the language.

For many years, TikTok and YouTube have showcased many snippets of Chinese people conversing proficiently in accented Tamil. They show many of their colleagues indulging in Tamil foods, mouthing traditional Tamil poems and recitals, all dressed in traditional Indian costumes. Beijing University even provides space for learning Tamil and other Indian languages at the undergraduate level.  

Is it for the love of the culture, or are they pursuing a tongue-rolling challenge when the Chinese students signed up for these courses? Is there another sinister master plan by the powers that be?

With the regular redrawing of its borders and standing tall, not answerable to international courts, their intentions may be anything but altruistic. History has proven that even gifts-bearing well wishes who turn up at one's land have no noble intentions. Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zambia can bear witness to all the business wranglings and hand sleigh movements that got them into a mess.

Take the example of the Spratly Islands in the middle of the South China Sea. Even though for years, that spread of uninhabitable islands was disputed amongst Vietnam, the Philipines, and Malaysia, one starry night, China decided that they wanted to occupy it. And that is how it has been since. China just kept building mammoth structures in the no man's land at its disputed border with India till one day, it was found to have brought its warriors there.

There is no smoke without fire if lessons from past events were anything to go by. The keenness to acquire knowledge in other people's languages and cultures may belie underlying private intentions. It may not be just a foreign diplomacy. Everybody likes to think they have a genuine interest in learning each others' culture and language so that all can hold hands and sing Kumbayah. Maybe that is the truth. On the one hand, we demand that others respect our language, culture, and way of life. In the same breath, we become suspicious when they do. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.