The Military and Non-Violence

The launch of India's first nuclear-powered submarine, INS Arihant, reminded me of an embarrassing moment from the past. I was in a city outside Bombay and needed to meet a high ranking naval officer for some work. I spoke about him to a couple of acquaintances, both of whom immediately said, "Oh him, he's on the nuclear submarine project". As I sat making small talk with the officer a few hours later, I casually asked, "So how is the work on the nuclear submarine proceeding? Is it likely to be functional any time soon?" He looked flabbergasted. "Who told you I was working on that?" he asked. I realised that, not only was the project supposed to be a carefully guarded secret, but that, until that moment, the officer had believed his official position as overseer of certain civil contracts was taken seriously. I hemmed and hawed, mumbling I couldn't remember who, precisely, had mentioned the nuclear sub, and changed the subject.
I hope the officer was present at the commissioning of Arihant the other day.
Arihant means 'destroyer of enemies'. A fair enough name for a submarine, you would think. But there's a catch. The word is used in Jain tradition to refer to certain enlightened souls who have, to mix religious terminology a bit, triumphed in the Greater Jihad against hatred and personal egotism. Jainism happens to be the most militantly non-violent faith in the world, if that phrase isn't an oxymoron. In the past, when Jains became prime ministers or high officials, and had to get involved in warfare, they atoned for their sins by endowing temples. The lavish marble monuments of Mount Abu were constructed from these endowments. Jains, literally, would not hurt a fly. Many go out of their way to try and protect insects, wearing masks so as not breathe the critters in, and sweeping the ground before their feet with peacock feathers to brush off any unfortunate beetle who might be chilling in the danger zone.
Many Gujarati Jains, it must be said, have been less than true to their ideals during the reign of Narendra Modi, but that's a separate issue. The issue, right now, is INS Arihant, and Jains are displeased that their prophets have been associated with a machine of destruction.
It must be difficult for the military establishment to cope with all the pacifist traditions we have in our country, but sometimes the brass seem to miss obvious points of conflict. Like, India's first nuclear test, conducted in 1974, was codenamed The Smiling Buddha. A number of commentators have since suggested it was unwise to connect history's most profound teacher of non-violence with the most horrendously destructive device conceived by humankind.
Not that India admitted its interest in stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. The Smiling Buddha was classified as a Peaceful Nuclear Explosion. That seems like the oxymoron to end all oxymorons, but there's actually a treaty governing such tests, because at one time scientists believed nuclear weapons could be of help in building dams and canals. India's own military ambitions used that convenient cloak in 1974.
In 1998, the cloak was thrown off, all pretense came to an end. The Buddha smiled again, they said, of the five tests conducted that year. I doubt he did.

Kambakkht Ishq and Gabhricha Paus

Two days ago, I was stuck in town between meetings with nothing to do for three hours and the rain pouring down. There was no film playing at any of the multiplexes in the 1 to 2 pm slot, and so it happened that I bought a ticket for Kambakkht Ishq at Eros, and experienced the new low that Hindi cinema has plumbed.
I won't waste my time and yours saying much more about this piece of cinematic garbage, besides letting you in on a crucial plot detail. Kareena Kapoor, studying to be a surgeon in Los Angeles, operates on Akshay Kumar, a top Hollywood stuntman, and accidentally leaves her pendant watch inside his abdominal cavity while stitching him up. The watch sounds a periodic chime, a mantra, which must be magical because it travels through blood and guts to be audible at a distance of many meters from Akshay. Not able to figure out where the sound is coming from, the stuntman wrecks his house trying to find the source of the maddening chant. Much of the film involves Kareena trying to get Akshay back on the surgical bed in order to retrieve her watch.
Needless to say, the film is a hit.
The next evening, I watched Gabhricha Paus (The Damned Rain) at a theatre near my home, and a greater contrast from Kambakkht Ishq can hardly be imagined. While the Bollywood multi-starrer is set among the mansions and high rises of LA, the low-budget Marathi film concentrates on a village in Vidarbha where farmers are been driven to suicide by debt. It is praiseworthy that a film-maker has sought to bring to life the extraordinary difficulties farmers in India face, but unfortunately he has done so with no cinematic imagination. The story reads like a school lesson in the various ways in which farmers might lose their crop: the rain could fail; or, on the other hand, a flood could wipe out most of the crop. Pumps fixed to irrigate the land won't do their job because of power cuts. Procurement prices are low. The administration is corrupt. And so on. Each of these obstacles merits a scene or two. But nowhere do we feel the heat of central India before the rains or the pure joy of the first cloudburst. An old tree is spoken of as a brother, but merits no close-up. When it has to be sold for timber, we do not see the axe strike its base. Everything that could forge a bond between audience and characters is given short shrift.
Thinking back on the script I realise there's a black comedy there waiting to burst out of the drab happenings, but the director is clearly scared of gallows humour, and has strangled those bits through underplaying.
Needless to say, Gabhricha Paus has won a number of awards and citations on the festival circuit.

The Half-Blood Prince Movie

I found two reasons to like the Half-Blood Prince film and two to dislike it. To consider the good things first, the movie is a joy to look at. I could watch it again just to stare at individual scenes, ignoring the storyline while marveling at the seamless combination of camerawork, set design and digital effects. The classical pace allows one the luxury of absorbing some detail before frames are whisked away.
One's enjoyment is enhanced by some fine acting. The cream of British actors has appeared in this series, though not all of them performed as admirably as one would have hoped (Kenneth Branagh and his ex-wife Emma Thomson were notable disappointments. Helena Bonham Carter isn't great, but I believe she was over-rated in her early days anyway). In Half-Blood Prince, Jim Broadbent makes a brilliant addition to the cast as Professor Slughorn, Michael Gambon finally puts his stamp on the role of Professor Dumbledore and Hero Fiennes-Tiffin makes a sinister young Tom Riddle.
The downers? They involve the adaptation from book to screen. There's far too much time devoted to developing romances; those bits weren't much fun in the books and get really tedious in the film. The second peculiar decision is to leave out the final battle. The reasoning, apparently, is that the Battle of Hogwarts in the final episode would then seem like a repetition. That's an unbelievably stupid way of thinking. The fight at the end of HBP is tiny in scale compared to the final battle. It is important because it offers some tiny release after Dumbledore's death.
I've said I liked the film's pacing, but it desperately needed some action at the end.

A Nation of No

I wondered how long parliament would function before the BJP found an excuse to walk out. The question was answered yesterday, when the India-Pakistan joint statement issued on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement’s conference in Sharm al Sheikh in Egypt became the focus of strong criticism in both houses.
The joint statement is peculiar in that it reads more like a news report about the meeting between the Pakistani and Indian Prime Ministers than a cogent declaration. The two sentences in it that have raised hackles are: “Prime Minister Gilani mentioned that Pakistan has some information on threats in Balochistan and other areas;” and, “Action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed”.
Pundits are apprehensive that Pakistan has been given the go-ahead to blame India for terror attacks in Balochistan. The question is: has India been involved in such assaults? If it has, those were reprehensible acts and deserve condemnation. If on the other hand, as Manmohan Singh insists, we have nothing to hide, it ought to make no difference if Pakistan points fingers at us. It has been doing so for years. The vague sentence in the joint declaration contains no hint of an allegation against India.
The kerfuffle over delinking terrorism from dialogue is even stranger. For years India insisted that bilateral negotiations carry on independent of progress in solving the Kashmir dispute which is at the core of differences between the two neighbours. Why should action on terror be essential to the dialogue process if steps toward a Kashmir solution are not?
Accusations in the media that Manmohan Singh has sold out are symptomatic of a wide consensus in India that we ought not to make any concessions whatsoever in any bilateral or multilateral negotiation, no matter how pressing. We must refuse to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. We must hold up indefinitely any agreement at the World Trade Organisation. We must accept no responsibility for mitigating climate change. Finally, despite our intransigence, we must demand a permanent seat in the security council as our right.
I’m not suggesting we have no genuine grievances related to these international issues. There’s no doubt that Pakistan has sponsored a number of terrorist outrages within India; that the NPT is an asymmetric treaty; that the US itself has not ratified the CTBT and is therefore in no position to demand any other country’s signature; that rich nations pollute far more per capita than developing countries do, and ought to take most of the burden of reducing carbon emissions; that agricultural subsidies in the United States and Europe undermine free trade and hurt farmers in poor nations.
Even so, it is worrisome when the mulish stubbornness that former Commerce minister Kamal Nath displayed during WTO negotiations is praised while the current, more positive approach gets hammered in the press. Even worse are controversies over agreements which require no alteration of India’s stated objectives. The civil nuclear deal signed between India and the United States was an extraordinary step forward, ridding us of a slew of sanctions and opening the way for development of our uranium starved nuclear energy industry. Yet, the vehement reaction suggesting our sovereign rights had been compromised almost brought down the government.
I suggest we agree to sign the CTBT provided the United States, China and Pakistan ratify it; we commit to increasing the percentage of our energy requirements served by carbon neutral sources; and we stop holding up an accord at the WTO solely for fear it will hurt India if an unlikely scenario such as a sudden, massive increase in food prices comes to pass. Should an emergency occur, India always has the option of taking unusual unilateral measures, as nations have done during the current financial crisis.
As far as the composite dialogue is concerned, Pakistan, for all its backing of terrorists and reluctance to act against those within its borders who have targetted Indian civilians, has taken substantial steps to address outstanding problems between the two nations. General Musharraf made a series of radical suggestions to break the impasse over Kashmir; President Zardari has come clean about Pakistan’s past support for militancy, and promised to change direction. If we give absolutely nothing in return for such steps, it will only strengthen those within Pakistan who remain committed to a belligerent posture.

Ranking Harry Potter

To mark the release of the film version of the Half Blood Prince, here's my ranking of J.K. Rowling's seven volume series. I haven't looked at any of the books since reading the final line of The Deathly Hallows, and am putting these thoughts down without refreshing my memory.

Volume 1: The Philosopher's / Sorcerer's Stone.
Rank: 3
A fascinating new world is created, the ways of witches and wizards described for the first time, the pace is fast and the adventure exciting. What more could you ask from a kids' book?

Volume 2: The Chamber of Secrets.
Rank: 5
Surely Dumbledore or somebody else ought to have figured out there was a basilisk in the pipes.

Volume 3: The Prisoner of Azkaban
Rank: 1
For the first time, a hint that this is more than a really good series of novels for children. Darkness descends on Hogwarts thanks to the Ringwraiths, sorry, Dementors. There's real emotion, fear and joy, a connection forged between past and present. Supplementing the caricature Hagrid we get the complex Lupin. And the revelation that solves the mystery of Sirius Black's actions is excellent.

Volume 4: The Goblet of Fire
Rank: 4
J.K.Rowling turns self-indulgent, but because Harry is by now a global phenomenon, no editor is going to tell the author to cut out the flab. Quidditch is a silly game (the golden snitch too important to the outcome) and the prolonged description of the World Cup tedious. Patches of excellent writing, though, like the view Harry gets, through the pensieve, of his father harassing Snape. The mudblood and house slave controversies bring contemporary politics into the equation.

Volume 5: The Order of the Phoenix
Rank: 7
This massive book, the longest in the series, need not have been written at all. It adds virtually nothing to the plot. The publishers probably realised this one was a turkey, and created huge quantities of hype about the death of a character close to Harry.

Volume 6: The Half Blood Prince
Rank: 2
A wonderful return to form, from an adult's viewpoint. The horcruxes bring the plot back on track, while Dumbledore's past is fleshed out movingly.

Volume 7: The Deathly Hallows
Rank: 6
This might seem an unfair rank for a book that advances the action in so many directions and then brings all the narrative threads together. Nevertheless, the stakes at the end are always much greater than at the start, and Deathly Hallows does not rise to the expectations generated by years of waiting. The scenes in the countryside are dreary; Rowling, who had problems with battles earlier, doesn't improve during the attack of Hogwarts; and the climax involving a horcrux in the Room of Requirement is extremely disappointing for those enamoured of the mystery.

The World Series of Poker

For the past week, I've been tracking the Main Event of the World Series of Poker, highlight of the international poker tournament calendar. Anyone willing to shell out the 10,000 dollar entry fee can play the Main Event; about 6500 people did this year, meaning top prize will be over 8 million dollars. I'm excited because, with the field down to 27 after seven tough days of play, one of my favourite professionals, Phil Ivey, is still in the hunt, and among the chip leaders.
Poker has exploded in popularity in the past decade,thanks to three interlinked revolutions: the television revolution, the internet revolution and the Moneymaker revolution. The game comes in many variations but, in most of these, players are dealt two or more cards face down, and have to match them with community cards dealt face up to form a hand. Betting happens in stages, and at each stage players try to guess hands their opponents hold while disguising their own. The guessing and disguise is skill, but the cards dealt are a matter of luck. Poker is unique in being a form of gambling where skill can assure a player better than even chances of winning in the long run.
It was difficult for the game to develop into a spectator sport because most hands end without a showdown of cards. One player, convinced an opponent has a better hand, chooses to fold rather than call a bet. Till the late 1990s, viewers could only guess at the hole cards of the antagonists. This situation changed when cameras grew tiny enough to be embedded in tables and capture face down cards as players peeked at them.


Suddenly the art in every hand became manifest and sports channels began devoting hours to poker coverage, bringing new enthusiasts to the felt tables.
Not long after this, gaming became big on the Web. Poker sites drew thousands of novices eager to start with small stakes and graduate to the big league. The sites ran satellites offering entry to major live tournaments: put down 550 dollars and you could participate in an online tourney offering a Main Event package. If that was too steep, you could try your luck in a satellite to this satellite, and so on down to super super satellites where entry was just a couple of bucks.
In 2003, an Atlanta accountant with the portentous name Chris Moneymaker played a 39 dollar satellite on PokerStars, the most popular poker site in the world. He won a seat to a more expensive online tourney, and placed well enough in that to win a Main Event package. He went on to win the Main Event itself, turning his initial 40 buck investment into 2.5 million dollars.


News of his extraordinary ride sparked a new rush to poker sites, which meant fields for major live tournaments grew ever larger, the top prizes on offer juicier. By 2006, James Bond was playing poker in Casino Royale, instead of baccarat as in Ian Fleming's novel, and a Hollywood talent agent named Jamie Gold was winning 12 million dollars at the Main Event. It was a world away from the seedy backrooms described in Kenny Rogers' famous song, The Gambler: "You gotta know when to hold 'em / know when to fold 'em / know when to walk away / and know when to run".
For professionals, there was a significant upside to the poker boom: lots of mediocre players willing to gift their money ('fish', in poker parlance). On the other hand, navigating the waters of massive tournaments became difficult even for sharks: there were too many accidents waiting to happen between the first cry of "shuffle up and deal" and the crowning of a new champion. Those who'd gained entry through super satellites had little to lose and would frequently make crazy bets or calls and get lucky when the final community card was dealt. The Main Event became a professional's graveyard and the buzz went round that no top pro would ever win again.
The odds themselves told a different story. If one were to assume 200 well-known pros in a field of 6000, and give each pro three times the winning odds of an amateur, that would make for a top pro as champ once every ten years or so. Apart from the odds, grumblers also ignored the fact that many unknowns had built successful pro careers after a Main Event triumph, among them 2004 champ Greg Raymer, 2005's top man Joe Hachem, and last year's winner Peter Eastgate.
Chris Moneymaker, though, cannot be counted among those names. He has returned to the Main Event each year since 2003, but failed to make an impression. Back in his wonder year, he got very lucky late in the tourney against two pros, Humberto Brenes and Phil Ivey. In each case, Moneymaker was far behind when all the chips went in, and caught an unlikely card to come out on top. The brutal hand against Phil Ivey can be seen here. Moneymaker is a 6 to 1 underdog with a single card to come, but spikes an ace to send Ivey home in 10th place.
Perhaps that hand had something to do with Phil Ivey's attitude to the WSOP in the following years. After he burst on the scene in the early part of this decade, his aggression, ability to read opponents and, well, ethnicity, made him known as the Tiger Woods of poker. Over time he appeared to lose interest in tournaments and concentrated on high stakes cash games at the Bellagio in Vegas and online at the website Full Tilt.
2009 has been different. He appears to have realised that winning major tournaments grants a place in poker history, while cash games offer only cash (OK, that's not strictly true, cash games have their own history and Ivey made some of it when he took businessman Andy Beal for over 16 million dollars back in 2006). Ivey's won two subsidiary events already at this years world series, and is in a promising position as the Main Event reaches its temporary conclusion (once just nine entrants remain, play adjourns till November, by which time ESPN's weekly coverage will reach its climax, allowing for the final table to be broadcast live).
The Moneymaker revolution was excellent for poker in its time, but an Ivey win might be equally significant in the current situation. The United States has clamped down on gaming sites, and poker buffs are petitioning the government to exclude their favourite game from the purview of the legislation, arguing that poker is a game of skill rather than chance. Were a top professional to win the most prestigious prize in poker, their argument would be bolstered considerably.
Ending on a light note, here's an amusing commercial for the website Full Tilt, featuring Phil Ivey.

Update: Ivey made the final table, but has a short stack and will need a lot of luck to win in November.

Plant of the day

News stories frequently use anonymous sources; it's a necessary part of the trade, but easy to abuse. Like most media people, I read articles with one question always at the back of my mind: "Whose interest, if anybody's, does this piece serve?" I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Quite often, an article will appear balanced, quoting multiple viewpoints. Or else it will be a manifestly opinionated piece of editorialising, making no claims to neutrality.
But every day I come across articles which appear to be unbiased reportage, but are clearly of help to some individual or organisation. Take this piece by Laltendu Mishra in today's Hindustan Times, for instance:
The price war among airlines is now intensifying on the long-haul routes to London, Brazil and Malaysia.
Jet Airways in partnership with TAM Air is offering an all-inclusive economy class return fares to Brazil for Rs 76,000 via London and Rs 86,000 via New York.
Passengers can fly from Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai to Brazil’s Rio and Sao Paulo airports at these fares. This is comparatively cheaper than Emirates’ India-Brazil all-inclusive return fare of Rs 94,000, which industry executives say has been the cheapest going. Currently Emirates flies bulk of the passengers in the India-Brazil route through its hub in Dubai. On the eastern side, Singapore Airlines has introduced a special economy class fare in the India-Kuala Lumpur sector. An all-inclusive return ticket is priced at Rs 14,500. This is against Jet Airways’ Chennai-Kuala Lumpur all-inclusive return fare of Rs 14,715.
Jet is offering a Mumbai-Singapore return fare for Rs 11,428 in its lowest slab.
There is also intense competition in the Mumbai-London sector.
Air India is offering the cheapest basic return fare at Rs 8,900 (all inclusive Rs 27,922) as against British Airways’ Rs 11,990 (all inclusive Rs 28,390) and Jet’s Rs 11,990 (all inclusive Rs 18,390), according to information gathered from travel trade.
As traffic is declining due to various factors including slack economic growth worldwide, airlines are expected to make more attractive deals to stimulate flying, airline officials say.

In other words, Jet Airways offers the lowest priced tickets to Brazil. It also offers reasonable prices on the Mumbai - Singapore sector and nearly matches Singapore Airlines' special fare to Kuala Lumpur. Oh, and it beats the competition by 10 grand on the India-London route.
When I first read the piece, I felt it was a plant by Jet Airways. On digging deeper, I'm not so sure. As of today, the Jet Airways site offers no tickets to Brazil at all. On the Singapore route, I tried different dates but wasn't offered anything close to the lowest slab fare quoted in the article. As for the London price, it is a misprint: the actual total fare after adding taxes and a hefty surcharge (which all airlines tack on in India, cheating customers in the process because oil prices are no longer high enough to justify surcharges) is exactly the same as British Airways, Rs.28,390, not 18,390.
Anybody trying to book a ticket through the Jet Airways website on any of these sectors after reading the article is going to be disappointed and probably angry.

And now Tata

I contacted the Tata people, formerly VSNL, to provide me with a broadband connection, handing them a multi-month advance as demanded. For three days in a row they said they'd send men across and didn't. Finally, on the fourth day, the installers arrived. One was small-built, wore spectacles, and had just three fingers on each hand. The index and middle finger were fused together and twisted as were the ring and little finger. For some reason, I thought of the toes of a Cassowary, though I've never seen one of those birds. Great that the Tatas have maintained their commitment to the handicapped, I told myself, trying to shut out jokes about digital have-nots. The job, unfortunately, required a fair bit of manual dexterity. Eight thin, colour-coded wires had to be slipped into plastic connectors at both ends of a long cable. Cassowary's partner was a rookie who couldn't help because he knew nothing about electronics. He was the roof man. Tata Broadband uses Wimax technology, which involves placing a square antenna in an open space where it can receive a signal from one of the towers installed by the provider. The signal was weak at my first floor window, so we headed for the terrace.
"I hope this isn't like Tatasky TV", I muttered. "I don't want my connection failing every time it drizzles".
I was assured that wouldn't happen.
Roofman got to work, attaching the receptor pad to a rusty television antenna, and jumping down onto a wet ledge from where he lowered the cable to my window. Once Cassowary had finished checking signal strength and GPS coordinates, we headed down to drag the cable into my home and try out the brand new connection.
It did not work.
Roofman was told to move the square antenna this way and that to catch the signal better. He did not have a cellphone which made coordination between first floor and terrace less than efficient. Ultimately, I went upstairs and played interlocutor between the two using my mobile.
"I almost slipped while dangling that cable" Roofman said.
"The work looks really dangerous", I replied.
He’d spent the last few months installing dish antennas for Big TV. His beat was in an insalubrious part of town; most new Big TV clients there lived in shanties. His partner had put his leg through a sheet of corrugated metal the other day, requiring many stitches. The house owners fought with him for half an hour as he bled, insisting he owed them money for repairs. That’s when Roofman decided to switch companies. Broadband, he said, was used by good people in good homes.
It began to rain. After twenty minutes of instructing us to twist and turn the antenna, Cassowary gave up. The square pad was taken down, the cable disconnected and hauled up, bags packed.
"So, this means I can't get a broadband connection from you, right?"
"Right", Cassowary replied, downcast. Some weeks, he said, he'd visit ten houses and manage only one successful connection. The previous few days had been good, he'd been working mainly in Colaba, in high rises close to the sea where the signal was loud and clear.
I wouldn't have expected the Tatas to adopt such hit-and-miss technology. But then, I wouldn't have expected them to roll out a satellite television service which malfunctioned at the slightest hint of rain. They've done the brand few favours in recent years.
As for me, it is back yet again to square one: to MTNL and surfing in ten-minute bursts before having to unplug, replug and hope.

The budget and the market

Finance ministers delivering budget speeches are normally constrained by having to earn more or less what they dole out. So, when Pranab Mukherjee began listing dozens of programmes which were going to receive funding boosts of between 50 and 200%, I was thinking tax, tax, tax must follow spend, spend, spend. But that's not the way the world's working at the moment. We've already seen the Obama splurge, and now India's got its own stimulus special. The idea is that government handouts will boost demand which will boost growth which will boost revenues down the line. If India returns to a 9% GDP growth rate, it should be able to bring the deficit down to a reasonable level, but that's a big If. Meanwhile, Mukherjee must have enjoyed the chance to throw around the freebies.
The market, meanwhile, behaved like a guy determined to score on a first date, and unwilling to settle for anything short of the big bang his friend Mr. Media had hinted was coming his way. Unable to make it to the bedroom, he goes home convinced the episode was a disaster. Reflecting on the evening later, he thinks, "well, she obviously is into long-term stuff rather than one-night stands (reform is a process, not an event), the dinner was fun, if a bit pricey; the goodbye kiss wasn't bad (FBT scrapped, 10% surcharge on income tax out); and she seemed serious when she told me to call her".
Maybe the market will make that call a few days down the line, and it could be the start of a wonderful relationship.

Gay rights and religion

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code states, "Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years..." The same law is on the books in Singapore, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and has been interpreted differently in each of those nations.
In India, section 377 is used by the police to convict pedophiles and harass males interested in sex with fellow men. An activist group, the Naz Foundation, has filed suit in Delhi asking for the law to be read down so it no longer applies to voluntary intercourse between adults. As the time for a verdict draws closer, different arms of the government are speaking in contradictory voices. The first to break ranks and favour decriminalising gay sex was the former Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss His successor, Ghulam Nabi Azad, has been more circumspect. The law ministry had earlier backed the status quo, but the new man in charge, Veerappa Moily, gladdened liberal hearts by signalling a shift in position.
Moily has since backtracked. He now says his comments were misinterpreted, and that a decision will be taken only after consulting with religious groups. This is a ridiculous idea. The head of the Darul Uloom is hardly likely to emerge from such a consultation saying, "Homosexuals behave in accord with the Quran and Hadith and, besides, the ones I know are seriously cool dudes". The Shankaracharya of Puri is not about to preside over gay wedding ceremonies in his temple. The stance of religious groups is well known, and is broadly against any repeal or watering down of Section 377.
Why should the opinion of these luminaries count outside their sphere of influence? The Pope, who considers homosexuality a cardinal sin, also believes condoms ought to play no part in contraception and AIDS prevention. This hasn't stopped the Indian government from encouraging condom use, and producing zillions of rubbers in state factories. India didn't consult with Pentecostals before legalising abortion. We didn't do so because we are a secular republic. The law minister appears not to have read the constitution recently.
OK, so gay sex is haram. But so is eating pig and drinking alcohol, and I can enjoy both those things legally pretty much anywhere in India. We have laws against caste discrimination, against dowry, against child marriage, all of which were pushed through despite opposition from conservative Hindu circles. Religions may bless marriages between geriatric men and pre-pubescent girls while frowning of the love or lust between adult males, but liberal society thinks in exactly the opposite way and so should the state.
It is time India reclaimed its status as a liberal republic committed to progressive ideals. It's bad enough that my hometown appears to be ruled by an elephant-headed god and a seventeenth century monarch.