Passionate About India

At 80, my father, Malay Chaudhuri, finally finished writing his dream book in which he presents a forceful argument for an exploitation free world with a maximum wage ratio of the highest paid to lowest paid worker at 3:1. The book by itself is no less than a revolution by itself. I genuinely believe that it has the potentiality of unleashing many an Arab Spring across the world. I am a proud son who just came back from London, where Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee launched his revolutionary book, What Marx Left Unsaid, A Theory of Economic Justice at the Power Brands Global - London International Forum for Equality. It's a pleasure, as a proud son and lifetime student of Malay Chaudhuri, to share my thoughts in this editorial on this amazing revolutionary theory of economic justice. I have grown up at home hearing from my father about his theory of production of skills by skills… literally from my early childhood; just like my son, who now has been hearing it from my father si...

Yogi Adityanath   as the   CM  of   UP  might have come as a rude shock to many. But it was always on the cards. Narendra Modi has been growing too big for RSS. And after becoming PM, he hadn’t once supported openly a single of the innumerable nonsense pelted out by RSS or its fringe groups. And make any analysis. Call the Congress anything, the Rahul-Akhilesh combine didn’t lose because Akhilesh was very bad and definitely not because of Rahul Gandhi. Akhilesh has been quite decent and speaks very well and keeping the memes aside Rahul Gandhi today speaks better than most of the BJP leaders who were campaigning in UP. He has worked hard on his communication.  In fact, the Congress won three of the five states irrespective of who formed the government. So, ‘Rahul Gandhi means no seats in states’, is a bogus theory and argument. What is happening the world over and in India right now is high voltage personality contests. Modi being the world-beating lead...

October 21, 1994. A phone call changed everybody’s life in our family forever. The call was to inform us that my brother – Aurobindo, then all of 19 years – had died in a road accident on the Gurgaon highway. A speeding bus hit the motorbike on which he was the pillion rider. Post his death, we set up the Aurobindo Chaudhuri Great Indian Dream Foundation, and have always had road safety concerns amongst our goals. So, I am most concerned about road safety especially on highways. No one, I am sure, can question that. Yet, I am against the recent ban on liquor shops on highways in India. I am actually against most moral bans. Bihar and Gujarat have put a ban on alcohol consumption. Controversies continue around it in Goa and Kerala and now the big blow has been the order to shut down liquor shops on all highways across India from April 1. Yet, just like we have a minimum age for getting married all over the world, minimum age for a driver’s licence and minimum age for voting, I believ...

Mark Twain famously said, “Religion was invented when the first fool met the first con man”. Nothing could be more spot on. In place of nations having their own laws to govern human   behaviour, some – perhaps well meaning and probably good – men found the use of a cooked up evidence-less concept called God and His will, a better way to make people behave the way they wanted to. From keeping control on women to making people fight against others to conquer their land, it served both the purposes well. Specially the purpose of keeping their women well behaved behind them as they went to loot, plunder and rape others from neighbouring land, as is evident from verses from each of the three major religions of the world, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. I quote from the Bible, Ephesians 5:22-24 “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submit...

First things first, Befikre is the best movie out of the current genre of films that have tried to redefine love with the 'premarital sex has nothing to do with love' message. While all the other films actually remained a film story and didn't focus on the message, in true YRF tradition, Befikre focuses and passes on the message. Subtly and classily. The typical male attitude of slut shaming is apologetically accepted by Ranveer 'as his lack of experience' that made him say that. And the opening credits have all kinds of couples in lip locks in all kinds of position with the song, 'Ishq labon ka karobar'. Almost as if the intention was to jolt Indians out of their irrational traditional mentality specially in these times of excessive moral policing sweeping across the nation. If Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi was Aditya Chopra's answer to the world as to why a modern woman can fall in love with a good and simple guy (in case people wondered how Rani Mukherjee fell ...

Supreme Court of India now officially extends support to the nationalist brigade of undemocratic and intolerant dimwit fascists. What a draconian order! A gigantic shame in the world's largest democracy! National Anthem to be played compulsorily in all cinema halls all over India. Way back in 1969 the Supreme Court of the USA had ruled that burning of the national flag was legal. And today after 47 years, the Supreme Court of India declares this. Absolutely shocked at the intelligence of people at the highest levels in this country. Indians now have to go through the pea brained act of proving their patriotism whenever they go to watch an item song! Hail Supreme Court! NB. I have some more suggestions for the Honorable court to ponder upon. Why just movies, they must think of making it mandatory before everything entertaining... because the logic it seems is we must stand up and show our respect to the nation before we are eligible to get entertained and feel happy. So I suggest ev...

I had decided to delay this month’s editorial for   The Sunday Indian   till 11/9 (writing 9th of November the American way) because i wanted to write the edit on the next American President. But as the jokes go, Modi decided to upstage the American excitement, at least in India! But before coming to Modi, let me finish writing on why Trump as POTUS makes me reasonably happy! I followed the elections in the US with maximum enthusiasm till Bernie lost. Have written earlier too that I wanted Bernie to get the Democratic nomination like no one else ever, including Obama! And had it been Bernie, today most likely, Democrats would have been the guys celebrating! Post Hillary getting the nomination, all excitement died. Yes, I would have loved to see a woman finally breaking the Presidential glass ceiling! But did that mean supporting Hillary? When Susan Sarandon was asked why wouldn’t she support Hillary when the man she supported – Bernie – wanted support for Hillary, she s...