Religion is belief, they say.

All goodness and virtue,

Stifling rituals and customs,

traditions which I blindly carry on;

which have as many stories of origin

as the count of webs a spider may weave.

An idol, a statue, a name, a form,

a stone, a label, an obligation.

Do I believe in this belief?

Do I have faith in the chants,

the hymns and praises you sing of divinity?

Who witnessed the epic wars of right and wrong?

Who decides what my belief is?

Who defines my ideals and virtues?

Why should I submit to hearsay,

which turns stones into gods,

and humans into demons and

makes questioning blasphemous.

Gods who must be adored, adorned

praised and definitely feared,

but who live by a twisted unwritten code;

of pain and misery being a settling of old scores.

Why must I pacify and feed an unseen ego

tempted with empty promises of death

being better than life itself?

Why is any deviance branded sacrilege?

Why am I lesser human than prophets and godmen?

Why must I have a religion, why should I need a god?

Why must I abide by someone else’s beliefs

and not just the code of humanity?

Was Lucifer turned into satan- “evil”

because he refused to dress up with the halo and wings?

https://www.indiaspend.com/how-caste-impacts-migration-and-its-benefits/Caste and migration

Poverty and lack of opportunity in their hometowns drove 93 million Indians from disadvantaged castes and tribes in 2011 to migrate to other areas within their states in the hope of securing education or employment. However. they continue to face social segregation, labour market discrimination and barriers to accessing the most basic services, finds an analysis of Census data and research studies by India Migration Now, a Mumbai-based non-profit.

Internal migration, both within a state and across states in India, improves households’ socioeconomic status, and benefits both the region that people migrate to and where they migrate from, as IndiaSpend reported in August 2019. Remittances can help reduce poverty in the migrants’ places of origin.

But scheduled castes (SC)–castes considered ‘lower’ in the social hierarchy–and scheduled tribes (ST)–indigenous tribal populations–benefited less from migration as social discrimination continued to impact them in the places they migrated to, research shows.

via What is a “Review”?

5 tropes that the media should avoid using when reporting on hate motivated violence

In light of the attack on New Zealanders by terrorists, this is a very good read, about faith, our internalization of intolerance, and questionable narratives of consuming hatred. It applies hugely to India, Pakistan and Kashmir.

Media Diversified

Calling out the overt bias we see in reporting is just one form of resistance that consumers can take. Saeida Rouass shares five tropes to be aware of that often appear in panel discussions, op-eds and other formats that covertly subvert and undermine our ability to talk about the mainstreaming of the far right.

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Many media outlets have predictably chosen to report on the Christchurch terrorist attack in ways that conceal or mask the perpetrators Islamophobic motives. ‘New Zealand mosque attack,’ ‘mass shooter,’ ‘backpack shooter’ ‘blond baby’ and ‘angelic boy’ have all appeared in headlines to describe the perpetrator. Terrorist is a word that flies so easily into our headlines and news streams when the perpetrator is Muslim, but is approached with caution or disregarded entirely when the perpetrator is white.

Evidence of bias and Islamophobic reporting is not just anecdotal. It has been investigated and documented for decades and…

View original post 1,820 more words

Words are not merely words ever,
they are weapons and shields,
they are powerful instruments
to make sense of so much that goes seen and unseen.
They are nasty intrusions on silences but,
they are also the comforting extensions into frames of logic
with which we try to construe our realities and worlds beyond,
in music, in literature, in expressions, coherent or not.
Words are ramblings. Words are succor.
Words are embraces, words are audiences,
they are bridges and moats.
Words are innumerable and at times, not enough.
Words are what we seek, to assert, deny, debate, define, derive.
Words are a diet,
to keep the self from collapsing into a thoughtless,
formless parallel with a disconnect from the means and the end of existence.
Stop being guilted in seeking words, seeking sustenance.

“Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine…”
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

via Petition against the NRC

“On July 30, 2018, four million people were stripped of their citizenship. Overnight, four million people suddenly found themselves subject to the risk of statelessness and bare life. On one hand, they face fascist ethnonationalist violence and discrimination; on the other, they face legal, political, and bureaucratic institutions, which exercise the power to deport, detain, and incarcerate.

Early commentators, activists, and victims themselves, do not shy away from analogizing their present crisis with observable patterns of genocide and mass displacement. The process of listing, othering, separating, denaturalizing, detaining, and concentrating populations, which do not align with an imagined nationalist identity and concept of purity, has previously led to pogroms like the Bongal Kheda or the 1983 Nellie massacre. The ever-present dogwhistle of the “illegal Bangladeshi” serves to dehumanize and equate diverse and long-settled populations with abject religious, linguistic, and racial stereotypes.”

Objectification vs. empowerment

https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/04/empowered-vs-objectified/

Gifting does not always need occassion. Sadly, the gifting industry is commercialized and very expensive. What started as a hobby, has now, for me, turned into a signature gifting gig. I found ItsyBitsy, a fabulous chain, which has an evergrowing stock of supplies for all needs imaginable. I managed to find so many beautiful things, new things which prompted me to learn art like découpâge. I have a world of exploring to do, and so far all my friends and family have loved every little bit I have made for them. Here’s to more handmade stuff, more personalized gifts with the joy of crafting.

http://blog.itsybitsy.in/14018-2/Itsybitsy

Gifting does not always need occassion. Sadly, the gifting industry is commercialized and very expensive. What started as a hobby, has now, for me, turned into a signature gifting gig. I found ItsyBitsy, a fabulous chain, which has an evergrowing stock of supplies for all needs imaginable. I managed to find so many beautiful things, new things which prompted me to learn art like découpâge. I have a world of exploring to do, and so far all my friends and family have loved every little bit I have made for them. Here’s to more handmade stuff, more personalized gifts with the joy of crafting.

http://blog.itsybitsy.in/14018-2/Itsybitsy