Kusum Choppra

The great clashes that no doubt happened at some ancient times between the proponents of Manu’s Smriti   and those of   Vatsyayan’s Kamasutra   (the two leading treatises on social mores) find   strange echoes in our times. On one hand we have the love-busting, honor killing, anti-valentine, love jihad types.   They move out in large gangs at any breach of what is deemed in those circles as … perhaps violation of their views of social mores?    (who gave them the right to decide for the rest of us?) Any marriage that cuts across gotra or caste or religious lines?   Bears any tinge of a more liberal acceptance of human differences and the right of the individual to personal choices that Hinduism in its vast repertoire offers?   On the other is the liberal attitude that wonders why two people who know and accept each other, cannot live together practicing and respecting the faiths they have followed since birth. It is a fact of lif...

Way into my 60s, my sympathies are with Gen.Next.  India’s become a tough place to live in:  no smiling, laughing, jokes, loving, drinking, no what not. Only Ram naam japna…... India from sadhudom to dogmatist capitalism. Two of our best-adjudged universities facing bigoted media trials. Take heart. It was not always like this. Nor will it remain so.   YOU guys need cool hearts and wits to achieve genuine Achhe Din.    Since Time Immemorial, the child has been the father of Man.   Across the world, huge changes have been rung in by Youth Brigades. Take the caste imbroglio.   Ask the powers-that-be to read the Satyanarayan katha aarti: a Raja outdone by a Bhil woodcutter in faith; a greedy bania coming to woe vs. cowherds’ devotion and more.    Even mythological tales speak of lower castes as better human beings.    Some twenty odd years ago, writing against the deification of the past, I mentioned Mahatma Gandhi’s “bania...