Move on to where Mr Prime Minister?

Remarkable! That's the least one can say about Dr Manmohan Singh's espousal of the wisdom of 'forgive and forget' in connection with the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 which saw over 3,000 people killed in Delhi alone. Speaking at Toronto, after paying homage to the victims of 1985 Kanishka bombing, the PM, while admitting that the anti-Sikh riots should have never happened, advised the Sikh community to "move on"! Dr. Singh's counsel has caused great consternation amongst people and groups who have been crusading for justice for the victims of the 1984 carnage. Wonder where to Dr Singh is asking the victims to move on to? Move on from the hope that the culprits will ever be brought to book? Move on from the fact that 26 years have lapsed and not a single accused has been punished? Move on from the faith that justice, as in the case of Bhopal victims, will ever rise above party politics?
Does the PM realise that he is inadvertently using time as a ruse to deny justice to the Sikhs and in the process giving his political opponents enough reasons to use the "move on" refrain to justify the man slaughter in Godhra? Does it occur to the PM that he is leaving the people of his country with festering sores of rage and hatered forevermore? Does it strike him that in doing so he is creating new communal fissures in an already fragmented society thereby providing a new playing field to politics of religion and region? Why is the PM trivialising the pain and loss of the victims of 1984 by asking them to compromise on justice? The answers perhaps will come - politically correct, insipid and worthless.
Going by the the PM's logic even the families of Kanishka bombing victims should have been advised to move on, but guess, the suggestion was witheld considering it was the Canadian government's head that was on the anvil.
Strange country and stranger still it's leaders who value so little that which means so much to their people. However,it's indeed the time to move on Dr Singh from being the representative of a political party to being the PM of the people of India.

God, sex and surrogacy

Whoa!Hold the horses Rev. Mar Varkey Vithayathil! For Christ's sake don't decry scientific evolution to uphold a lopsided moral injunction. The Assisted Reproductive Technologies Bill (RTB), 2010, which intends to legalise surrogacy, has evidently send shivers down the spine of the Archbishop of the Syro Malabar Church (Catholic). Cardinal Vithayathil has accorded the Bill apocalyptic proportions with regard to moral and social fabric of our nation.
He views surrogacy as a direct challenge to God Almighty's exclusive right over procreation - "We shall not play God and opt for fabrications of humans at our own designs." Good Lord, Archbishop you make surrogacy sound akin to a factory for manufacturing synthetic beings designed to resemble humans. It's still the fusion of God given good old sperm and ova, isn't it? What is it that is worrying Rev. Vithayathil? The absence of sex to facilitate the fusion or the borrowed womb wherein the embryo is finally lodged? The former seems to be of paramount concern to the Archbishop. "One can have a child without any relation to sex and one can have sex without any relation to procreation. This separation will play havoc with biological system and create a permissive society." Ahem! If this be the case then surrogacy sure is sounding the death knell of sex and procreation just as condoms are jeoperdising the perpetuation of human race! 'Sex for procreation' is a very, very striking spiritual slogan but it's practical application is negligible amongst the majority of population. 'As far as procreation through sex only' is concerned, wonder what solution Cardinal Vithayathil has for couples who for some biological snags are unable to beget children according to the process legitimised by the Lord? "To have a child one cannot take recourse to any means and technology possible," asserts the Cardinal. Hmmmm... well this poses a serious question on the divine legitimacy of life saving advances made in the field of medical science - organ transplant, reconstructive surgery, blood tranfusion, artificial replacement of joints etc.- as most involve extensive use of means and technology developed by man to alter an undesirable God given condition.
As far as dangers of surrogacy encouraging sexual permisiveness are concerned, I am unable to find a plausible explanation for the alarm, until there is be an oblique reference to homosexual couples. If this be the case, the assertion is no less amusing. Homosexual couples might use surrogacy to have a child but it certainly will not tempt people to go gay!
The Church's concern over the RTB dealing a blow to the institution of marriage and concept of family ties, is, however, not altogather misfounded. But it should be borne in mind that the use or abuse of best human advancements rests solely with human conscience. Unlike Cardinal Vithayathil I don't label such attempts as "playing God with science" but moving closer to 'God through science'.

Injustice upheld

I am ashamed, embarrassed and bewildered at the blatant, government abetted mockery of the Indian judicial system. The lapse of 25 long years has, perhaps, reduced the status of the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy to inconsequential stastics and numbers in the eyes of the Indian Government. The local court's verdict awarding the 7 accused a jail term of 2 years and a fine of Rs 1 lakh for the world's worst industrial disaster, which killed 15,134 and maimed 5.7 lakh people, was a stinging slap on the faces of those who had hoped that justice delayed wouldn't translate into justice denied.
As skeletons in the government cupboard begin to rattle, the fact that justice has been violated wilfully by those occupying the highest echelons of power, leaves one thunderstruck. PM Narasimha Rao's government's express orders to the CBI not to press for the extradition of Warren Anderson, CEO of the Union Carbide (UC), who was bailed out within six hours of his arrest and flown out of India, the paltry compensation of Rs 705 crore, reached after much haggling over the number of actual victims, the rejection of victms' plea to the welfare commissioner of Bhopal for payment of compensation as per the value of dollar in 1989... seems a concerted and premeditated effort to ensure that justice was never done to the dead as well as the survivors of this disaster.
The newspapers are replete with grotesque pictures of the 1984 tragedy, whose proportion has been described akin to a 'chemical warfare' by veteran photographer Raghu Rai in a leading English daily. Going by the reports, death came to the more fortunate. For most of the survivors, afflicted with indescribable physical deformities, life became a perfect hell. Birth defects, resulting from the methyl isocyanate leakage, continue till this day serving as a callous reminder of the havoc wreaked by the carelessness of UCL officials on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984.
Ninety-year-old Warren Anderson lives in plush mansion in the Swish Long Island neighbourhood of Bridegehampton, seccure that he will never be called to face justice in a human court of law. The United States only worry is that the Bhopal case might undo it's carefully nurtured ties with India. So, the accused is safe and sound in his country and the victims remain victims forever in their land, justice never died a more ignominous death.