Stray Thoughts

The period of Navaratri has just ended with Ramnavami. In the hills of Uttarakhand where I stay now, the period is marked by a period of fasting, praying and singing. Our valley resounded with prayers from all directions alternately reverberating and damped by the mountainsides and forests. On Ram Navami the Bhagwat Katha and Kirtans or prayers ended with the bhandara or the communal feast. Women wearing their best clothes with their children straggling behind them or skipping ahead, went up and down the road above our house, going to or returning from the Bhagwat further up. In the evening the sound of hudka , a local handheld drum, marked the jagar or prayers to the local god by the dancing shaman that went late into the night. Our participation in the ritual festivities was limited to having the puri, chole and halwa that our neighbour brought us. It was a dignified, peaceful and happy nine-day celebration of the new year here in our village. Elsewhere the news around the cel

A few days ago I was struck by a news item that the Supreme Court had dismissed a PIL which sought the renaming of hundreds of place names, because they celebrate ‘barbaric foreign invaders’ and the setting up of a Renaming Commission of India. While dismissing the petition the judges noted that ‘ a country cannot remain a prisoner of the past’ and emphasised that the ‘the golden principle of fraternity, again enshrined in Preamble, is of greatest importance.’ I was surprised to read that the principle of fraternity was invoked by the courts. I had been discussing the idea with some associates just two days before that and we felt that fraternity remained limited to a being a ‘good’ principle because no other article of the Constitution or any other law backed it up. It was not justiciable. On doing a casual internet search I learnt that the Supreme Court had asserted that fraternity is a guiding principle for us as a country and without fraternity different communities could not liv