Importance of Alternative Medicine

Over the past couple of years, ever since we have broadband internet with unlimited use, I often watch some YouTube video channels including lessons on cooking and about the use of specific software. I also like some channels on politics, health related issues, Indian classical music and dances.

One of health related channels which I often watch is Medlife Crisis by Dr Rohin Francis from UK. Recently, I came across one of his older videos, which was about "alternative medicine". In this video he had explained about the importance of evidence-based medicine and how this scientific approach ensures that we can truly understand the efficacy of treatments and make rational choices about medicines. The other aspect of his intervention was that alternative medicine lacks this evidence-based approach and thus for him it was mostly hogwash.

In his intro on this channel he also says that "There's a lot of bad science on YouTube, especially medicine, with quacks and clowns peddling garbage", which probably also refers to alternative medicine, apart from other conspiracy theorists and No-Vax groups. The image below shows a person receiving a traditional treatment in Mongolia.

In another tiny video titled "How does Homeopathy work?", he has a short no-nonsense answer to this question - "It doesn't".

Rohin Francis is not the only one who speaks out against wasting money on alternative medicine. Some of my other doctor friends have been very active against quacks and untrained persons masquerading as doctors in India. Some doctors on Twitter regularly rant against homeopathy and alternative medicine practitioners.

I understand from where all these persons are coming from. However, I do not agree with them that alternative medicine is all about non-evidence based quackery. In this post I want to share some personal experiences and some opinions regarding the role of alternative medicine in today's world.

Disclaimer: Quacks & Clowns Peddling Garbage

I know that there are persons who claim to have miracle-powers and who can cure all kinds of conditions. They prey on people when they are most vulnerable and psychologically fragile and they do it to earn money and gain power. Some of these frauds may be mentally ill and may actually believe in their supernatural powers. This post is not about justifying any of them. They do need care and treatment for their delusions and if needed, deserve law-suits and prisons.

I also do not wish to say that alternative medicine can cure everything such as conditions like high blood pressure or diabetes or cancer. People who give up their blood pressure or diabetes medicines because of their beliefs in alternative medicine, often end up with irreversible body damage to their vital organs like kidneys or eyes. Conventional (western) medicine is a better choice for most such persons.

Origins of Alternative Medicine

For thousands of years, ancient humans have tried looking for treatments for common health conditions. They did it mainly by looking for plant-based treatments. The plant-based medicines they identified, did not have the backing of double-blind studies on random samples of carefully chosen groups, but to call those "non-evidence based" would be a bit of stretch. Many of our common modern medicines from Aspirin to Quinine and Artemisia come from those traditional experiences. Guys looking for the next blockbuster drugs have often stolen the knowledge of plants and herbs from traditional healers. Scientists carry out experiments with synthetic derivatives based on those same plants and herbs and then do scientific trials to show their effectiveness. Many of them call as quacks the traditional healers in villages who are using those same herbs, simply because they base their knowledge on the oral transmission of experiences and tradional learning.

In countries like India, China and Mongolia, people practicing traditional medicine, study in their medical collages just like students studying modern medicine. For example, in Ayurvedic medical collages in India (I have visited 2 of them), students study for their medical degree for 6 years and their curriculum includes all the subjects such as anatomy, physiology, pathology and pharmacology, taught in conventional medical colleges.

However, a part of their studies is based on beliefs which modern science does not accept. For example - the Chinese beliefs about meridians running through the body with the energy points and the balancing of Yin and Yang forces; or the Indian beliefs about the three body humours (vayu, kaffa and pitta); or the homeopathy belief about using "like to counter like" and the power of dilutions of medicines. These beliefs do not fit with the understanding of modern science, because they do not follow the logical-thinking paradigm but follow some other esoteric or intuitive paradigms.

Shaping of Our Beliefs - Personal Experiences

Our beliefs are predominantly shaped by our own life experiences. Scientists say that our experiences are anecdotal evidence and are unreliable and usually biased. So we should only believe in what scientists and experts tell us. However, from personal experience I know that if I have experienced something, I may accept scientific opinions but I will also find a way to keep my own opinion based on my experience, even when the two are contradictory. This seems to be a common human trait.

Let me share a few experiences regarding alternative medicine, which have shaped my ideas on this theme.

My first experience with alternative medicine was with homeopathy in 1980s, when I was a community doctor. I had developed a strong pain in my left shoulder and had difficulty in lifting that arm. For many days I had taken anti-inflammatory and pain-killer medicines. In those days my paternal aunt had high blood pressure and I often visited her house for her check-ups. My aunt's husband, my uncle, had retired and taken up homeopathy as a hobby. He gave free homeopathic medicine to anyone who came to him. During one visit, after checking my aunt's blood pressure, I told my uncle about my shoulder pain and that I was tired of taking pain-killers as they were giving me gastric problems. He asked me numerous questions about the pain and then gave me a small dose of small sweet-tasting pills. He also wrapped in an old newspaper, two more doses of those pills and told me to take them after some hours. In less than 15 minutes after the first dose, my shoulder pain had disappeared and I had no difficulty in raising my arm. It was like a miracle and it changed completely how I felt about homeopathy.

My second experience of alternative medicine was more recent. In 2015, while living in Guwahati in India, I developed a severe knee pain. It became so bad that it curtailed my walking. I stopped going out for walks and took frequent anti-inflammatory and pain-killing tablets. In 2016, back in Italy, I went to an orthopaedic specialist for a few visits. A scan of my knees showed myxoid degeneration of Cruciate ligaments. I was given Hyaluronic acid injections in my knees, wore knee supports and took pain-killers. But nothing seemed to help me. After a few visits, the orthopaedic specialist told me that I had to learn to live with the pain as I was too young for knee replacement surgery. I was also told to reduce weight and do physiotherapy. I shared my scan results with an orthopaedist friend in USA and even his opinion was the same. Talking about it with a Catholic priest, who had become my friend in Guwahati, he suggested that I should try Ayruvedic treatment in a hospital in Kerala.

In January 2017, I went to the Ayurvedic hospital suggested by my friend for a one week of treatment. The treatment consisted of daily massages with oils containing different herbs. After a week's treatment, I was advised to rest for a few days. After that one week of treatment, my knees improved greatly and I could again walk without pain. I went back to that hospital for a week in 2018 and 2019. However, in 2020 and 2021, because of Covid-19, I have not been able to go there and lately, I have again started to have some knee-pain after walking for a few kilometres, though the situation is yet not as bad as it was in 2015. I am hoping to go back for this treatment later in 2022. The image below from 2019 shows Dr Vijayan, the chief Ayurvedic doctor of this hospital, together with his 3 students from the Ayurvedic Medical College who were doing internship with him.

A couple of years ago, I had talked to an orthopaedist friend to explain what had happened, to try to understand why I had responded to the Ayurvedic treatment. His answer was that it was possibly a placebo effect. According to him, another possibility was that the effect of medicines taken in Italy had arrived after a few months.

Perhaps it was indeed a placebo effect, but I would like to know why I didn't have this placebo effect after treatment in Italy and after the injections in my knees? Are traditional treatments likely to induce more placebo effects? If yes, why?

Finally, a friend from Mongolia told me about her experience with traditional Mongolian traditional medicine. We are working together for a project and communicate frequently. Last week she told me that her mother was very unwell due to Biliary colic caused by stones in her gall-bladder. Her mother is quite old and she was in a great deal of pain. However my friend was hesitating to take her to hospital due to Covid-19 fears, so she was visited at home by a doctor and was given pain-killers. He had suggested that if the pain would not pass, they might need to do surgery for removing the gall stones. After 3 days of injections, her conditions had continued to be serious, so the family invited a traditional healer to visit her. The traditional doctor visited her and wrote some herbal medicines. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, it was not easy to buy the traditional medicines but somehow they managed. That night, after taking the herbal medicine her mother slept well after many days of pain. The morning after, it was the day of Lunar new year, she woke up completely pain free - she got up from bed as if she had not been seriously ill till the previous evening. My friend who had been so worried was overjoyed. She said that it was like a miracle. Once again, I am sure that if we ask, most doctors in the hospital will explain it as placebo effect or some kind of psychological effect.

These are all anecdotal stories without any scientific value, they do not prove anything. But if any of these had happened to you, will you be able to forget them? Such experiences illustrate why so many persons, especially in traditional and rural societies, continue to go to traditional healers even when experts tell us that there is no proof regarding their usefulness.

For persons like me, strongly anchored in the Western Medical Paradigm, alternative medicine may not be the first line of treatment for any problem, but I will seek it if modern medicine are not able to resolve my health condition.

A Role for Traditional Medicine

Even for persons who feel that alternative medicine is not effective or is illogical, I feel that in today's world there are some functions for which it can be very suitable. For example, think of illnesses like flu and viral fevers. Doctors say that these should be given only some symptomatic treatment and not treated with antibiotics because they are not useful. Still a large number of people take antibiotics for such conditions. I think that taking alternative medicines for such illnesses is a good strategy to discourage the antibiotic abuse.

There are so many chronic non-infective conditions accompanied by pain, like the ones I had in my knees or in my shoulder, where long-term treatment with conventional medicines can have many side-effects. So if persons can feel better with alternative medicines, why not encourage them to try?

When modern medicines can do little because we have not found treatments for some conditions, I feel that people should be given the option of trying alternative medicines. The image below shows a modern pharmacy plant for making Ayurvedic medicines based on herbs and oils in India.

I know the situation in India - alternative medicine is usually cheaper and is much more accessible to persons. Unless it is a life-threatening condition, often alternative medicine can provide psychological support and even serve as placebo and reduce suffering. In many villages, traditional medicine is all they have because modern medicine is costlier and located far away.

I feel that demonising alternative medicine as fraud and quackery and to think of people preferring it as gullible or stupid, is not the right approach towards it.

(An earlier version of this post was first published on my blog in 2021)

Failures in Global Health?

Three years ago, in July 2019 Dr. Madhukar Pai, Associate Director, McGill International TB Centre in Canada wrote an article on "Failures of Global Health". In this article he had written:

In global health, we love to talk about success stories and publish interventions that seem to work. Eradication of smallpox, dramatic decline in polio incidence, reduction in child mortality, etc. But we also know global health deals with huge, complex, challenges. And involves several agencies and stakeholders with their own agendas and political instruments. So, failure is guaranteed. Failure is a powerful tool for learning, and we can always learn from failed interventions and projects.

Then Pai went on to list some of the major failures in Global Health: "I do not see a similar openness about failure in the global health arena. To be sure they are discussed in hushed tones in the corridors of global health agencies in Geneva, New York and Seattle, but not quite publicly, in a way that facilitates learning."

I think that Pai was a little superficial for at least 2 of the failures (leprosy elimination in India and the goal of health for all) on his list. I feel that it is simplistic to give summary judgements of success or failure without taking the time to go and study what had really happened and the documents from that period. IMO, such views could have been understandable in past but in the internet age, so much information is openly available, such a judgement from Pai is less defensible.

Background

During the 1990s and 2000s, I was active in the discussions about Global Health at international level, for example, in the People's Health Movement (PHM). In that period, I was collaborating regularly with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva. Around 2004-05, for a couple of years I was also the president of ILEP, the international federation of organisations fighting leprosy. Thus, I witnessed firsthand most of the things about "Health for All" and "Eliminartion of Leprosy", I am writing about in this post.

The Failure of Leprosy Elimination in India?

Point number 9 on Pai's list of Global Health failures is about leprosy control in India. He says that it was a failure because, "In 2005, India declared leprosy to be eliminated and scaled-back on its leprosy programmes. Today, according to WHO, India harbors 60 percent of the world’s cases, with more than 100,000 new diagnoses each year." He links his judgement on this point to an article from New York Times, "In India, a Renewed Fight Against Leprosy - Health workers thought they had vanquished the disease in 2005. But it lived on, cloaked in stigma and medical mystery."

I believe that this is an unjust and superficial judgement about the leprosy services in India and its achievements. The "failure" in this case, if we can call it that, should be attributed to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which had set up the "Leprosy Elimination Goal - to reduce the prevalence of leprosy to less than 1 per 10,000 population by the year 2000".

The WHO goal was actually for "reducing the leprosy burden" but it was called "elimination goal" for political reasons. In 2000, WHO had declared that the elimination goal had been reached at the global level, but India was not included as a success at that time. India had managed to reduce its leprosy burden to the level of WHO's elimination goal only in 2005.

Declaration of "Global Leprosy Elimination" did lead to premature closure of many leprosy programmes around the world, but fortunately not in India.

Instead of asking about the "failure of India's leprosy programme", we should be asking - "What is the impact of setting international disease-control targets and what can we learn from the experience of WHO's Leprosy elimination goal?" I want to answer that question in this post.

I am writing this post from my memory of the events, but a lot has already been written about it, as can be seen from a simple literature search.

WHO's Leprosy Elimination Goal

The goal of "Eliminating leprosy as a public health problem by the year 2000" was decided by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 1991. This goal was aimed at a reduction of leprosy-prevalence to less than 1 case per 10,000 population and was not aimed at reducing the incidence of leprosy (number of new cases). Thus, in this goal, the word "elimination" did not mean how ordinary people understand this term. Everyone involved in setting up the "elimination goal" knew that it was not possible to actually "eliminate" leprosy in the sense of "not having any new cases of the disease".

What was the rationale behind the decision of setting up this goal? The official reason was that if we could reduce the prevalence of leprosy in a population, the pool of infected persons would decrease and gradually the disease incidence will also decline. People and organisations working in leprosy control such as ILEP had opposed the "elimination goal" but were over-ruled (some of those discussions never really stopped and even today continue in some form on LML, 30 years after the decision of WHA).

Need for the Leprosy Elimination Goal

There was another reason, a more important one, for setting the Leprosy Elimination Goal. MDT, a new combination of drugs for treating leprosy was recommended by WHO Expert Committee in 1982. A review meeting organised by WHO on the progress in the implementation of MDT was held in Brazzaville (Congo) in 1990. It had shown that after 8 years of recommending and promoting MDT, globally less than 15% of the leprosy patients were being treated with it, while the remaining persons were still taking only Dapsone (in many endemic countries, the percentage was less than 5%).

I believe that this situation was linked to 2 other issues - (1) most of the leprosy programmes were being run by NGOs and missionaries, while the governments played little or no role in them; (2) the programme decisions were made by clinicians, who focused on individuals and not on the collectivity. Thus, while the WHO had been pushing for the adoption of MDT, doctors working in leprosy programmes felt that MDT administration needed their personal supervision and were hesitant to start it in rural areas where doctors were not available.

The "Elimination goal" was targeted at the governments, asking them to assume greater responsibility and, simplify and expand the use of MDT without requiring supervision of doctors and it achieved great success in reaching both these objectives - MDT coverage increased across the world and national governments took over the responsibilities for running their leprosy programmes from the NGOs and the missionaries.

International Pressure to Reach the Leprosy Elimination Goal

Fixing international targets and goals can motivate governments and people but it also has some side-effects. For example, for the leprosy elimination goal, once the  target was fixed, there was a lot of pressure on countries to reach the goal. If a country did not reach the goal then this meant that their programme was not good or their health staff were not working properly. On the other hand, there were insufficient discussions about the strategy itself, that reducing the numbers in high endemic areas within that period was not feasible because the other instruments to control leprosy (such as a simple serological test for diagnosis or a vaccine for its prevention) were missing.

When it became clear that many countries like India and Brazil would not reach the elimination goal by the year 2000, there were other effects. So, under the new WHO guidelines, treatment duration was reduced, active search for new cases was stopped and countries were encouraged to quickly integrate vertical leprosy programmes into their primary health care systems. All these measures helped in reducing the identification of new cases, the numbers decreased and India could reach the goal in 2005.

I remember the press-conference during WHA in Geneva in 2005, during which the announcement about "elimination of leprosy as a public health problem in India" was made as a triumph of the global health.

Impact of the Leprosy Elimination Goal

As explained above, the "elimination goal" was actually a "reducing the disease burden goal" and its objectives were to expand MDT and to improve government run leprosy control services. The elimination goal was successful in both these objectives. Expansion of MDT had a huge impact and millions of persons could be treated effectively and a large number of complications such as disabilities were prevented. Thanks to the goal and expansion of MDT, individuals affected with leprosy could be fully treated in 6-12 months and avoid most of the complications. Finally, for the health workers leprosy was like any other disease.

Once it achieved those results, ideally WHO should have clarified it and explained to the countries that we had not eliminated leprosy, we had only reduced the disease prevalence. However, that was not possible due to political reasons. Many persons involved with this issue in WHO had also started to believe that with reduction of disease burden, the disease transmission will be interrupted and the number of new cases will start deceasing, and were very optimistic. Unfortunately that did not happen and the fall in the number of new cases over the past 20 years has been much slower. The image below shows the participants in a WHO meeting in 2005 (Dr Lee, DG of WHO is in the centre, while I am the first on the left ) to talk about the leprosy elimination goal.

Reaching the "leprosy elimination goal" had consequences. Thus, in different countries across Asia, Africa and South America, reaching the goal led to many countries to scale-down their leprosy control programmes, even when they still had many new cases. Fortunately for countries like India, Indonesia and Brazil, their health professionals knew that leprosy was still a big issue and they could continue the leprosy programmes, but for many smaller countries, especially in Africa, achieving the elimination goal led to elimination of their leprosy programmes for many years.

This leads us to the question of the need for goal-setting and international pressure for reaching numerical targets. When your country is lagging behind in reaching an international target, what happens to its health workers? The answer is easy to guess - if they do not show the required impact on the disease condition in their work areas, they will be labelled as a bad workers and their programme will be called a badly-run programme, without looking at the real situation on the ground. So what are the options for them? In many leprosy programmes across the world, when their new cases did not decrease, many of them stopped registering new cases and therefore, manipulated their data.

For example, at the African Leprosy Congress held in Johannesburg in 2005, it had come out that Tanzania which had apparently reached the elimination goal in 2000, had actually manipulated its data for achieving the goal and the actual number of cases was still high. 

Unfortunately, the negative impact of the term "leprosy elimination" for this goal continues to create problems even today, because countries and health workers start beliving that do not have a significant leprosy problem.

For example, in 2016, I was involved in the evaluation of a leprosy programme in a couple of districts in central India. The evaluation showed that eleven years after reaching the WHO goal, district health officials were still confused about its meaning and many health workers complained that if they find "too many new cases" it created problems for them because the districts with higher number of new cases were seen as "bad districts".

Over the years, WHO keeps on finding new goals for the leprosy programme but the confusion created by "leprosy elimination programme" continues to exist and to create problems.

Let me now touch briefly on the "Impact of Health for All" goal of WHO. 

Failure of Alma Ata Declaration

Pai's list of failures of global health also includes the failure of the Alma Ata declaration and the goal of "Health for all by the year 2000". In his article, he had written that, "Failure to deliver on the Alma-Ata declaration: Despite the 1978 Alma Ata declaration on "Health For All by 2000", nearly half the world's population lacks access to essential health services."

Alma Ata declaration on the Primary Health Care in 1978 with its goal of "Health for All by the year 2000" was one of the biggest utopias which has motivated and mobilised the health activists all over the world for almost five decades. Even today, the echoes of that call continue to reverberate among us. I think that a summary judgement that the goal of Health for All was a failure, does not take into account the impact it had and continues to have even today, for example its influence on the discussions about the Universal Access to Health.

Fifteen years ago, I had some opportunities of talking about Alma Ata with Dr Halfdan Mahler, who was the director general of WHO during the Alma Ata conference and one of its main inspiring figures. Dr Mahler, originally from Denmark, had been working in the TB programme in India, before taking up the role with WHO (in the picture below, from left - Hani Sareg/Egypt, Armando/Brazil, I and Dr Mahler in Geneva during a World Health Assembly).

Some Achievements of Alma Ata Declaration

I think that Alma Ata declaration was an impossible dream but it was an important ideal at that time because it was so inspiring. I would not call it a failure, I think that it was and continues to be one of the most successful ideals of Global Health. It helped in achieving some important services - from my personal experience of working in international health programmes, three elements are mentioned below as an example:

(1) Alma Ata declaration and health for all was not a single goal. It had many elements in it, and many of them were implemented successfully. For example, the essential medicines and the programmes for fighting against different infectious diseases, both of which had a huge impact.

(2) For 30 years, I was involved in Community- based Rehabilitation (CBR) programmes (also known as Community-Based Inclusive Development or CBID) aimed at persons with disabilities in rural areas of lesser developed countries. The CBR approach was a part of the Alma Ata dream, which had developed independently because PHC approach was struggling for its own implementation. CBR also had a positive impact on thousands of lives of persons with disabilities and their families all over the world.

(3) Another related programme, which was inspired from Alma Ata and has been finally realised in the past couple of years is that of Priority Assistive Products list, which brings assistive technology to persons with disabilities and elderly persons.

I am sure that others can come up with many other examples of successful programmes which were inspired by the spirit of Alma Ata declaration. May be they were not fully achieved in 2000. Certainly, a large number of people still do not have access to essential health services, even in rich countries like USA. But a lot has been achieved since the Alma Ata declaration as shown by the evolution of global morbidity and mortality data across countries.

Impact of Other Factors

In terms of learnings from the Alma Ata declaration and the "Health for All by 2000" goal, for me a key take-away point is that health services and related goals can't be seen in isolation, they need to be looked at against the background of everything else happening in the world, including wars, famines and the role of international institutions.

I remember many discussions in People's Health Movement during which one reason had come up repeatedly for not having achieved a full primary health care (PHC) services approach across the countries - the decision by UNICEF to implement selected elements of child care because they felt that countries did not have sufficient resources for a full implementation of the PHC approach. Looking back, I don't think that UNICEF was to be blamed because in any case, the idea of providing free primary health care to everyone everywhere was an impossible dream in a world which was controlled by forces that did not see this as important or feasible.

During the debt crisis of the 1990s, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, by promoting austerity policies, had hammered a big nail in the PHC's coffin. Since then, over the last 30 years, looking at health services purely in terms of numerical calculations of costs-benefits, cost-cutting and privatisation across countries, including those which had a good model of universal health care such as UK and Italy, has further taken us away from the Alma Ata trajectory.

A second Alma Ata conference was held in October 2018, which agained called for universal health coverage and sustainable development goals. However, I doubt that it is going to stimulate the dreams of activists around the world like the Alma Ata declaration had done in 1977. This may be also because today we live in a different world, a world of climate change, AI and internet, where new goals are set and forgotten all the time. The Millennium Goals have gone by, the Sustainable Development Goals are coming and setting international goals is a business strategy and not an exercise in idealism.

Conclusions

Pai's list of "global health failure" provoked me to write this post. As my explanations about leprosy and Alma Ata show, each of these points can be subjects of debates, and the answers may not always be negative. I think that similar provocative statements can be very useful to stimulate us to go deeper, study what had happened and reflect on the lessons we can learn from those expereinces.

A key point of Pai's article was that we don't learn from our failures. I am not sure if it is true. I think that the professionals involved in each of these "failures" must have debated and reflected on what happened and why for a long time, like we did about leprosy elimination. However, as time passes, all those discussions are forgotten and unless one takes the trouble of going back and reading through different point of views, the lessons learned can be easily lost.

(Note: an earlier version of this article was published in my blog in October 2021)

The Kashmir Story

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been reading about the film “The Kashmir Files”, its box-office success, its impact and the heated discussions it has generated. Perhaps, after a few weeks, it might become available on some streaming platform and then I will be able to watch it, though I am not sure that I will – from what I have read, it has some very graphic violence and I have no stomach for watching violence.

However, reading about “The Kashmir Files” has reminded me of another film about Kashmir and the Kashmiri Pandits – the film was “I Am” (2010), and it was directed by Onir. I think that it was a good film that merited greater attention. I had translated its subtitles into Italian, when it was shown at the River-to-River film festival in Florence.

The Kashmir Story in “I Am”

“I Am” was an anthology of four short films, loosely connected with each other. Among those four stories, the Kashmir short film was the second story of the film. It had beautiful performances by Juhi Chawla as Megha, a Kashmiri Pandit, and Manisha Koirala as Rubina, as her childhood Kashmiri Muslim friend.

This part of the film started with Megha’s journey to Srinagar to sell her house. Rubina comes to the airport to pick her up and is happy to see her old friend. Megha is by turns, angry and anguished, at the memories the return has brought back. She is unwilling to give in to romantic nostalgia about the city, and maintains some distance from her friend.

During the 24 hours of Megha’s stay in Srinagar, there are only a few scattered moments of nostalgia for her childhood home. A visit to the ruins of her uncle’s home who was killed by neighbours, brings back the memories of her terror of those days when they had abandoned their home and ran away to the refugee camp.

An encounter with a group of youth on the road, brings out that the story of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits has been changed and retold by the locals. In this new retelling, they were the cowards and villains, who had run away from the valley.

At the same time, Megha’s dispersion of her father’s ashes in the river, brings out the attachment of older generations for Kashmir and their dreams about the day when they will return to their original homes.

Those 24 hours also show Rubina’s changed life in the Kashmir valley – she is lonely, living closed at home and is unmarried, while the guy she used to love has left India. Her brother, who had become a militant, has repented and come home, but is disabled and a shell of his former self. Police comes to their home frequently to check because they are a militant family. The city is divided by barbed wires and check-points, which gets deserted as the evening falls and people rush to their homes.

Megha’s righteous anger and resentment at the fate of Kashmiri Pandits, has one final moment of push back from Rubina. A brief exchange between the two friends, brings out the tragedy of changed lives of Kashmiri Muslims, especially those of the women and youth. The awareness that in the end there were no victors among the ordinary persons on the two sides plants a little seed of mutual understanding.
Impact of “I Am”

“I Am” was a film dealing with other difficult themes along with the Kashmir story. Perhaps that is why its Kashmiri section did not receive proper attention. It had a strong impact on me because in the process of doing its Italian subtitles, I had spent a lot of time with each of its scenes.

This part of the film gave precedence to the view-point a Kashmiri Pandit. It was shot in dark and drab colours. It showed a Srinagar of barbed wires, road-blocks and sad people, and not the romantic town of lake and gardens from 1980’s Bollywood.

The whole sequence of Megha visiting the ruins of her killed uncle’s house, had a very strong impact on me. Its background score was filled with the shouts of slogans by angry people asking all kaffirs to leave Kashmir or be killed. I could identify with her refusal of Rubina’s sympathy, when she responds, “Don’t worry, I am not going to cry”.

The film also shows the impact of the events on the other side, through Rubina’s family. They have also suffered and continue to suffer due to the militants on one hand and Indian army on the other. However, I felt that it was more difficult to empathise with them, because their pain was closely linked to issues related to militancy and its violence.

For example, there was a sequence when Megha is accompanied by Rubina’s mother to a neighbourhood shop for buying saffron. The elderly shop-owner remembers that he had accompanied Megha’s pregnant mother to the hospital when she was born. However, their discussion also brings out that it was that same person’s son who had killed Megha’s uncle and later, died as a militant. Megha comes back from the shop full of indignation – “You only had that shop to take me, whose son had killed my uncle?” she asks bitterly.

While I could see the dismay, regret and frustration on the faces of the local Kashmiris, I also had a feeling at the back of my mind that “it was their sons and families who did it”! I think that is the biggest difficulty when we look at victims of Islamic terror, that we are less willing to acknowledge the pain of its Muslim victims.

The Elephant in the Room

I remember talking to Onir in Florence about the Kashmir portion of the film, expressing my appreciation and saying that it was a great pity that this episode of our recent history had been allowed to be forgotten.

To write this post, I watched again the Kashmir portion of “I Am”. I think that there is an aspect of the Kashmir situation which had remained untouched in the film – the rise of more conservative Islam which was linked with militancy. Traditionally, the Kashmiri Islam has been moderate and open, and it had a history of a peaceful co-existence with Hinduism. Over the past couple of decades, the more conservative version of Islam has become more common, but its role and significance in the Kashmiri Pandits' exodus was never mentioned in the film.

Whose sufferings need acknowledgement?

As far as I understand about the events in Kashmir, the problems worsened with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979. To counter that the Americans started supplying money and arms to Mujahideen through Pakistan, which contributed to strengthening of the more conservative ideas of Islam in the region and reached Kashmir through Pakistani militants in the 1980s. Apart from the militants, it impacted different groups of persons, such as -Militants from Pakistan along with radicalised Kashmiri youth killed many Kashmiri Pandits and provoked their mass exodus in late 1980s and early 1990s.

Militants and hardliners from Pakistan along with their companions in Kashmir started killing moderate Kashmiri Muslims and those seen as sympathetic or collaborating with India, starting from early 1990s and continuing even now. Around 7000 Kashmiri “political opponents” have been killed, though some say that the Kashmiri victims have been many times more. They specifically target the intellectuals and they can abduct or rape their families.

Since the 1990s, Indian army has been fighting the Kashmiri separatists and militants and once again, a large number of victims have been reported, not only among the militants, but also among the civilians. The army rule has also affected general life.

Each of these groups have their own stories to share. I have read of Kashmiri Pandit families weeping at the shows of The Kashmir File - they are happy that finally their sufferings have been acknowledged through cinema. Onir’s film “I Am” did not show that violence directly, it focused on its aftermath.

I think that one of the good films about the impact of army in Kashmir was Shaurya (2008), which touched upon the human right abuses.

Stories about the situation in Kashmir involve different and complex issues. The views of the Islamic hardliners and militants may not be acceptable or understandable for most of us. However, I think that our cinema needs to explore these different areas and view-points so much more. For example, little is known about the violence against moderate Muslims in Kashmir and it would also benefit from a greater exploration in literature and cinema.

The Angry Indians

There are some persons on the Social Media, whom I call the "Angry Indians". They can be broadly divided into 2 main groups. One group is of persons who claim that they are trying to safeguard Indian culture and Hinduism. Often they have furious fights amongst themselves and some of them are full of hate. They often act in ways contrary to the beliefs they claim to defend.

The other group of that of persons who define themselves as progressives or liberals. They claim that they are trying to safeguard India's plurality and diversity. However, their main aim seems to be to counter BJP-Modi, and they are not really concerned about anything else. Like the first group, often they also act in ways contrary to the beliefs they claim to defend.

I call these 2 groups, the Hindu Cultural Warriors and the Progressive Cultural warriors. They are also co-dependent on each other, creating spaces for their fights and constantly, feeding-off each-other. Here are some recent examples of issues around which they fight.

India Versus South Asia

Recently the American vice-president Kamala Harris greeted the "South Asians" on the Holi festival and the Hindu Warriors erupted in protests. Don't you know that Holi is a festival only of Hindus of India, they asked. They don't like to be grouped together with India's neighbours, especially with Pakistan. On the other hand, Prograssive Warriors love using the term South Asia, I think mostly because Western progressives like it and even more, because they know that the other group hates it.

I need to confess that I am partial to Kamala Harris, since she has my mother's name, but my defense of the term "South Asian" has nothing to do with her name. I feel that the term "South Asian" acknowledges the common cultural identity of what was once known as Indian subcontinent. It is an identity which is shaped mostly by Indian culture, by its tradition of creating and accepting, even encouraging, blurred boundaries between the religions and its basic idea of "all the different paths lead to the same God".

All countries of South Asia have some Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhists - in India and Nepal as majorities and in other countries as minorities. So wishing "Happy Holi" to all the people of these countries, did not seem like a bad thing to me and I can't understand why the Hindu Warriors don't like the term South Asians.

I can understand if conservative persons of other religions in "South Asia" resent Harris' greetings, because that is happening in some parts of the world. For example, there are many persons in Europe who get offended if you wish them for festivals which do not belong to their religions (for example, some Muslims get offended by the widespread Christian symbols in public spaces around Christmas and Easter times. So they are coming out with ideas like hiding Christmas trees in private spaces and saying "Season's greetings" instead of "Happy Christmas").

However, in India, festivals of all the religions are holidays for everyone and I have grown up in an environment where we wished everyone for all the festivals. For example, we always said "Happy Eid" or "Happy Gurupurab" and not "Happy Eid to Muslims" and "Happy Gurupurab for the Sikhs". So, if Harris is treating all South Asians as "people who celebrate Holi", why should the Hindu Warriors get offended? They should be jumping with joy!

Indian Festivals

Another issue which often leaves me confused is when Hindu Warriors get offended if someone dares to say anything about an Indian festival. I can understand the irritation about the extreme positions of some Progressives, who may be motivated by virtue-signalling - for example, their calls for "water saving" at Holi or for not making bonfires on Lohri and Holi. I can also understand the irritation because Progressives seem to focus only on Hindu festivals. However, I don't see the need to feel offended if someone says that Deewali can be hazardous for environmental pollution or the Durga and Ganesh statues pollute our rivers and lakes - I think that we need to look at these seriously and search for solutions.

Compared to other religions, Hinduism is not bound by any one book or any one tradition, so it is easier for us to question our old cultural practices and start new ones. For example, over past decade, I have seen different variations about the way we celebrate Rakhi, the festival in which sisters tie a rakhi on their brothers' wrists. Now, for promoting greater inclusion, some of our family celebrates it by sisters tying rakhis on the wrists of both, their brothers and their wives; and, at Karvachauth, both husbands and wives together keep fast. If we can change our rituals and practices according to the changing times, it is good for us as a community, and is certainly better than to remain with outdated practices and ideas.

Therefore, if the fire-crackers of Deewali cause horrendous increases in pollution and problems for people with breathing difficulties, especially in the big cities, and there are calls to limit their use, why should that be seen as an attack on Hinduism? IMO, it does not matter that traffic or industry or crop-burning are more polluting. On Deewali evenings, even 30-40 years ago, when traffic and other kinds of pollution were much less than today, the doctors' clinics used to be full of people with asthma attacks and breathing difficulties. I can vouch for it because I practiced medicine in Delhi in the 1980s and saw it every year. So why can't we use this opportunity to find alternative joyful and fun ways to celebrate Deewali? BTW, even Europe has campaigns around Christmas and New Year to limit the use of fire-crackers.

If chemical-based colours used in Holi can cause skin allergies or dermatitis, they also end up in our sewage waters and rivers. Our rivers and lakes are usually in terrible shape at festival-times. Use of chemical colours painted on the Durga and Ganesh statues, are bad for our environment in the same way. The answer for Hindu Warriors should not be to shout about these as "attacks on Hinduism" but to think of how to promote a wider use of plant-based natural colours. If we can promote our local artisans and organic colours' and dyes' industries by doing that, it will be even better. It can become an economic opportunity and also in line with our scriptures, which ask for the respect of nature.

BTW, the fun of Holi and the joy of covering people's faces and clothes with colours is increasingly finding emulators in Europe. Vicenza, the provincial town near which I live, has been organising "Holi celebrations" during summers, where it is an opportunity for people to drink, dance and play with colours.

Hinduism - Hinduttva

Many of the Hindu Warriors are promoting a version of Hinduttva which seems to be inspired by the ultra-conservatives of Christianity and Islam. Progressive Warriors are their partners in this, they also agree that Hinduttva means only that and nothing else. In fact for Progressives, the word Hinduttva belongs only to BJP, so they are fighting against it (they also think that the colour saffron belongs only to BJP and it should not be used).

I personally think that the word "Hinduttva" or the "essence of Hinduism" can not be reduced to only one meaning. Hinduism has developed along thousands of streams of ideas and practices across different parts of India, which have a lot in common and at the same time, an incredible amount of variations. Thus, if our ideas about Hinduism are infinite, the meanings of Hinduttva should also be infinite. So, why do we accept to let the idea of Hinduttva be hijacked by these 2 groups?

IMO, a wide public debate on the meaning of Hinduttva would be beneficial to India. It might help us to understand which cultural values are shared by the majority of Hindus and by majority of Indians. Though I don't think that we shall ever reach a consensus, this discussion would be useful. Probably, this commonly shared idea of Hinduttva would be closer to the results of the PEW survey in 2021 on the Religions of India. This survey report had shown that in spite of different religions, most Indians hold similar common beliefs. The "common shared cultural values of India" should be valued and safeguarded. Such an understanding of Hinduttva will be forged by the encounters of different religions of India and it will acknowledge the blurred boundaries between the religions, as one of its key characteristics.

The more conservatives among the Hindu Warriors do not accept anything except their ideas about traditions of Hinduism. At the same time, the ideas of blurred religious boundaries and common traditions shared across religious diversities are increasingly non-acceptable also to Progressives. They often talk about India's past and how it gave a home to persecuted minorities of the world, to cry about the lost Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb and the lost traditions of accepting religious diversities in ancient India. However, for today's world they do not want to look at the norms and processes governing the acceptance of other religions in India's past. Instead, they would like to follow the ideas of secularism developed in the west, which are based on separation of religious identities. In India, the Progressive Warriors seem most concerned about how to safeguard the more conservative ideas of minority religions. I personally feel that the ideas of identity-politics developed in the west are problematic for a harmonious multi-cultural living in India because they destroy the blurred religious boundaries which has been a fundamental characteristics of Indian cultural world. For the same reason, Progressives defend maintaining separate specific laws for minority religions and fight the idea of common civil code.

Insulting Religions

Some of the Hindu Warriors are always looking for people insulting Hinduism, to fight with them. If you use a Sanskrit verse from a Veda in a rock-song or if you print the picture of a Hindu God on a bag or god-forbid, a pair of shoes or underwear, they are waiting to rise up and start a campaign to destroy you. The Progressive Warriors are willing to overlook all insults to Hinduism but are very careful in making sure that you do not insult the minority religions.

I think that the idea of "insulting God" is stupid because it does not fit in with the basic ideas of Hinduism, which include the belief that God is within each of us. "Aham Brahm asmi", "Aham Shivam asmi", "So Hum" - all mean "I am" or that "God is inside me". In Shrimad Bhagvad Geeta, Krishna shows his Virat Roopa to Arjuna to explain that he is there in every particle of this universe. These fundamental ideas should guide Hindus to the respect of nature and respect of every human being.

So, how can anyone justify killings in the name of Gods or religion if one believes in this teaching? If one believes that God is inside every being, how can anyone justify discrimination towards any person because of his caste or his religion? And, once you accept that God is there in every particle of the universe, how can anyone offend God?

Recently, I had read about people being killed in Punjab for "offending" the Sikh sacred book Guru Granth Sahib. I wondered if they had forgotten the story of Guru Nanak's travel to Mecca? The story says that some men complained that Guru Nanak was sleeping with his feet pointing towards Mecca and thus offending God. So, Guru Nanak told them, shift my feet towards another direction where there is no God. The story says that in which ever direction they shifted Guru Nanak's feet, Mecca appeared on that side. Therefore, the idea of Sikhs who get offended because someone disrespects their holy book and kill those persons, seems incomprehensible to me.

It is a pity that such messages of "offending God" are also spoken by people wearing saffron, who talk of beheadings and killings. Their saffron clothes should signify spirituality and learning. Yet, they can refuse the temple drinking water to a thirsty boy, because he belongs to another religion and say that they are defending Hinduism. How can they defend Hinduism if they do not believe in the ideas contained in the Veda and Upanishads?

IMO, Progressives have facilitated this rise in the Hindu chauvinism by closing their eyes to similar ideas and practices of conservatives of minority religions by suggesting that only the majority bigotry matters. Every time, there is violence or aggression involving persons of different religions, it seems that the Progressive speak out only if victims are from the minority religions.

In The End

The Hindu cultural warriors are convinced that if they don't save Hinduism then it is in great danger. The progressive cultural warriors believe that the problems lies only with the Hindu chauvinists and they are blameless. The thinking of both the groups is a problem.

Fortunately, in spite of everything, life goes on. I have great faith in common Indians, as shown by the findings of the PEW survey. I think that in spite of all the mutual hate expressed by the two groups, common Indians will find the right balance and a way to go forward.

Day before yesterday was 23rd March, the birthday of Doctor Saheb (Dr Ram Manohar Lohia), the iconic socialist leader, whose ideas had so much impact on me as a child. Today it is 25 March, the day on which papa had died 47 years ago at the age of 47. He was an associate of Doctor Saheb. If he was alive today, he would have been 94. Even after so many years, I miss him. I think that I would have loved to talk about the subject of this post to him and to Doctor Saheb - though I am not sure if they would have agreed with me!

River to River - Festival 2020

River to River (RtoR) film festival was started by Selvaggia Velo in Florence (Italy) in 2001. It was the first festival entirely dedicated to Indian films held outside India. For many years, while living in Bologna, which is not far from Florence, I regularly visited this festival. Some years ago, we shifted to Schio, about 350 km to the north of Florence, so participating in this festival became difficult for me. However, the December 2020 edition of RtoR was held online due to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic. This gave me an opportunity watch some of the festival films. (Below a still from "Berlin to Bombay", one of the films in the festival)

My main interest was in watching documentary and short films in the festival. Thus, I watched only one full-length feature film - Kadakh. This post is to share a few impressions about some of the films which I liked in this festival.

Kadakh

Kadakh was the opening film of the festival, directed by Rajat Kapoor. It is a black comedy centred around a dead body in an upper-middle class drawing room in Mumbai, which is full of guests for a Diwali party.

Sunil (Ranvir Shorey) is the owner of the house while the dead guy is Raghav, husband of his office colleague Chhaya, with whom he is having an affair. Raghav has discovered their affair and comes to talk to Sunil. He is trying to be mature about it, but continues to get too angry to control himself and during one such loss-of-control moments, shoots himself. Soon Sunil's wife (Manasi Multani) comes back home and finds her husband with Raghav's corpse in their drawing room. He confesses his affair but there is no time to deal with the marital infidelity as they know that soon their guests for the Diwali party are going to arrive. So the husband and wife hide the dead body in a box, cover it with tapestry and get ready to welcome the guests.

The guests include Chayya, the wife of the dead man. You can imagine the comic-horror kind of mixed tension which drives this film. The last part of the movie is its most cynical and damning part, with the whole gang of friends (except Chaya, who has left) helping Sunil in getting rid of the dead body. When the film was ending, I almost expected it to show the whole lot going to the chautha (funeral) ceremony of the poor guy and express condolences to the widow.

I do not like the genre of dark comedy, but the film is well made and well-acted. All the actors are good. I especially liked Manasi Multani, who plays Sunil's wife Malti and Palomi Ghosh, who plays Chhaya. I also thought the guy playing Raghav (Chandrachoor Rai) was good in his brief role.

The Newly Weds, short film (5 min.) by Prataya Saha

You can watch this short film on YouTube. The film has a young man (Mahesh Gowda) and his wife (Suvin Valson) and it looks at the way they relate to each other, mediated by technology. When together, they hardly talk to each other and their eyes are constantly on their mobile phones and laptop screens. At night, a laptop stays in the bed between them. However, they expresses their love in the messages they write to each other, in which they open their hearts.

The tiny film presents the role of tech in a young couple's life as a kind of caricature. I felt that it could have been more relatable as a depiction of a long-married couple who does not have much left to say to each other. It felt a bit unrealistic for a young newly married couple, because it seemed to ignore their need for physical touch and sex. Their messages express a yearning, which is inexplicably missing from their real lives.

Berlin to Bombay, documentary film, 51 min. by Marco Hulser

For me, Berlin to Bombay was the most enjoyable film of the festival. It is the story of an Indian origin boy Abu Chaka Khan, raised in Berlin (Germany) and his fascination for the world of Bollywood. Abu works in a restaurant but his dream is to go and act in Bollywood. He does not want to work in German films where he can only play Indian or Pakistani roles - he prefers the idea of Bollywood heroes with their songs and dances.

He makes and sends his videos for auditions to India but when they do not get him any offers, he goes to Mumbai. The film shows him trying to negotiate his way through the barriers surrounding its film world, full of people who are waiting for bakras like him, selling them dreams and taking their money. Abu pays but finds himself playing an extra in a film. After his dreams crash against the hard realities of the Bollywood, Abu comes back to Berlin and to his restaurant.

Though film's storyline is an old theme, Abu has an expressive face and he comes across very well with his ingenuity, hope and dreams.

While the film ended, I was thinking of today's YouTube and TikTok stars. Now, people with dreams of making it in Bollywood, have some alternative pathways to become famous, even if that fame does not last very long. I think that I would like to watch a similar documentary exploring the worlds of the YouTube-TikTok stars.

The GesheMa is Born, Documentary, 56 min., by Malati Rao

Geshe Ma is the title of a learned Buddhist nun who has reached the highest level of religious knowledge. Rao's documentary is a glimpse into the hidden world of Buddhist nuns. I liked it because it showed a world which was unfamiliar to me.

Though ancient Buddhism spoke of nuns, modern Buddhism did not have nuns. It was Dalai Lama who had established the first nuns' order some 40 years ago. He had also proposed allowing the nuns to study religious books. This idea was discussed in the international council of Buddhist leaders from different countries, but some countries were against the changes. Finally in 2012, it was accepted that the nuns could study to become the learned teachers (Geshe).

The film follows a group of nuns in a monastery in Nepal who became the first group of women admitted to the Buddhist theological studies. The film focuses on the story of Namdol Phuntsok, who had earned the top marks in these studies and received the title of Geshe Ma in 2016.

The film moves forward and backward in time, with some interviews and unobtrusive observation of the lives of the Buddhist nuns. They talk about the setting up of the first nunnery. It looks at their celibate lives, their shaving of heads and their determined animation during theological discussions, where a raised leg-movement and clapping of hands in stereotypical gestures, looked like a dance to me.

GesheMa Namdol talks about her childhood and her family's opposition to her idea of becoming a nun, her desire for studying the Buddhist religious texts and how they must argue and debate their ideas and defend them against questions. The film concludes with the group of the nuns holding the coveted yellow head-dresses in their hands, which are a visible sign of their learning, walking in the room full of monks. They all don those yellow head-dresses, signifying a new beginning of the role of the women leadership in Buddhism.

Buddha of the Chadar, 28 Min. by Jean Whitaker

This film can also be watched on internet. It is about a father and son from Ladakh making a long winter journey on the frozen Zanskar River - a route known as the Chadar. They carry a heavy gold-plated statue of Buddha, which they plan to offer to a Buddhist monastery located at the top of the hill near their village.

The film brings out the solitude and difficulties of the long journey on the frozen river surrounded by beautiful snow-covered mountains. It also shows the on-going construction of a new road by the Indian Border Road Organisation, so that in future, the Zanskar valley will also be connected through a road and it should be possible to complete that same journey in a vehicle.

The film has beautiful photography and makes you reflect on the human urge to choose a tough journey as a part of a spiritual quest.

Silence in the Wind, 13 min. by Gautam Baruah and Ballav Prajnyan

This short film is about a father remembering his son, his desire to see him married and his initial rejection when he discovers that his son is gay. His initial reaction is of rejection. Then he remembers the day when his young son had risked drowning in the river and his desperation. The memory of that desperation helps him to say to his son that he does not understand but he will accept.

It is a beautiful film.

The Ashram Children, 67 min., by Jonathan Ofek

India is seen as the land of spirituality. It has many famous gurus with their ashrams, and followers coming from all over the world to seek their guidance. This film shows a hidden aspect of this spiritual quest - the feelings of the expat children about those Gurus.

The director of this film, Jonathan is from Israel and he feels scarred by his childhood experiences in an ashram in India. He feels that it was a cult which had gripped his parents. His parents, especially his mother, do not take his complaints very seriously - for her, it was not a cult and she was only going to the ashram for some months every year.

She tells him that he could have told her that he did not want to go and she would not have forced him. However, Jonathan feels that saying no was not easy for him, because he had grown up inside that experience from early childhood. The whole issue of obedience to the Guru in the ashram was experienced by him as something absolute, he had learned to not question anything and was afraid to express himself.

During the film, Jonathan goes to look for other expatriate children that he had met and known in the ashram during his childhood. Most of them agree with him that their childhood experiences of the ashram were negative for them. Most of them, now grown-ups, try to hide this part of their past lives and do not talk about it. One of these guys also talks about the hypocrisy of the Guru, who taught the lessons of detachment and spirituality to his followers, but also loved wearing gold, luxury watches, and using costly perfumes.

This film forced me to see how the spirituality-and-guru industry of India can be perceived by young children who are pulled in to this experience by their parents. I had never thought about it before in these terms. For me, many of the ashrams and their jet setting Gurus, who run their spirituality businesses like money-making exercises, are persons who profit from human frailties. At the same time, I believe that some of the non-commercial persons can be great spiritual teachers.

Conclusions

There were some other short and documentary films from the festival which I had watched but they were similar in terms of themes and treatment to others that I had seen earlier, so I am not writing about those.

In the past RtoR festival had been an opportunity for me to meet and talk to persons from the world of Indian films - persons like Onir, Rahul Bose, Aparna Sen and even Amitabh Bachchan. That was no longer possible with an online festival. I hope that in future, after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, River to River festival will continue to offer the possibility of online participation.

Bonsai & the Life in the Plants

Last month I visited a Bonsai exhibition at the Jaquard gardens of Schio. The sight of tiny plants looking like a miniature version of full-grown trees reminded me of a nature-visit in Bologna some years ago. This post is about two different ways of thinking about the life-forces in the plants. At the same time, it is also a reflection about the relationship between humans and nature.

Indian Ideas About Nature

Let me start briefly with some of my ideas about nature, which are influenced by my growing up in India. Hinduism is full of Gods and Goddesses, each of whom is linked with an animal and a plant species. There are many mythological stories that teach one to respect all the beings as a part of the respect for the sacred.

There are different stories linked with plants in the Hindu mythology. Like the story of the sacred Tulsi plant (Indian Basil), which represents a pious prostitute. Thus, people believe that this plant should not be kept inside the house, but must be planted in the courtyard where the families can pray to it at dawn and sunset by lighting a lamp near it. The 1960's Hindi film Parakh had one of my all time favourite songs, Mere Man ke diye (The lamp of my heart), in which Sadhana lights a lamp and prays to Tulsi plant. According to Ayurveda, Tulsi is an important medicinal plant. Such myths and sacred stories, are ways to remind the communities about the importance of different species of plants and animals, and to safeguard the biodiversity.

I remember my grand-mother once telling me to not to pluck the leaves of a plant at night because "the plant was sleeping". I think that such a way of thinking illustrates the popular understandings of life in the plants among Indians. While in the cities, people have a more transactional ideas about nature (for example, that it is good for breathing and well-being, it is relaxing and stress-busting), in the smaller towns and villages of India, I feel that there is still a lot of respect and traditional knowledge about these ancient understandings of nature.

Bonsai Plants

Literally the term Bonsai means "planted in a vase". The aim of growing a Bonsai is to create a realistic representation of nature through a miniature tree.

An exhibition of Bonsai plants was held at the beautiful 19th century Jaquard garden in the centre of Schio. It is a small garden but is very beautiful, with an old theatre and a green-house. The exhibition presented the plants grown by the Bonsai students of Schio under their teacher Dr. Ennio Santacatterina.

I spoke to Ennio to understand about Bonsai. He explained that he had discovered his passion for Bonsai after his retirement. His school is a part of the Bonsai Art School and its classes are held in a local plant shop called Garden Schio.

Ennio sees Bonsai as a part of the Zen traditions from Japan, in which it is fundamental to understand kamae, the basic and essential nature and characteristics of each plant. He cites the Bonsai guru Aba Kurakichi and says, "We must conserve all the specificities of the nature of each plant because Bonsai is a life-art." This means that each plant will develop according to its own characteristics and the Bonsai-maker must know how to enhance its individuality and highlight its beauty by selecting the appropriate style, branches and spaces.

I think that it means that a Bonsai is not created but rather it is nurtured, grown and gently guided. It is an exercise in mindfulness, in which the Bonsai-maker searches for a connection with the plant through silence and meditation, to understand its nature and develops a vision of how it should grow. Then, with patience and mindfulness, the maker helps the plant to achieve that vision.

Free-Growing Nature

While Bonsai speaks the language of Zen, meditation and mindfulness for creating a connection with plants, it seems as if the plant is moulded into an idealised vision of how it should look. It reminded me of another encounter about plants - in 2011, I had an opportunity to meet Mr. Marco Colombari, a gardener and plant-lover from Bologna, who had some very radical ideas about the plants.

Marco had guided us in the discovery of a forest, talking to us about how to observe and "see" the plants. A century ago, this forest was an "aviculture centre", an area for developing and growing different species of birds. Then it had become a hunting laboratory and a honeybee cultivation centre. In the 1980s, surrounded by multi-story apartment buildings, this area was supposed to be used for building more condominiums. However, the local residents had started a campaign to save it as a natural area. It is now managed by an association called Oasi dei Saperi (The Knowledge Oasis), which promotes it as a site for the conservation of biodiversity. It is known as the Forest of St. Anna and is located in the Corticella area of Bologna.

Marco's point was that every plant is a living being and has its own characteristics. He felt that people decide about planting trees and plants without really thinking about those natural characteristics. Thus, every time we cut the branches of a tree for making it fit into our urban landscaping, it is like closing an animal or a bird inside a cage. In the forest, he had shown us parts of the trees where the branches had been cut, making us look at the seeping liquids from the cut surfaces and drawing parallels with injured animals.

Besides the natural forest, St. Anna Forest also has some other areas including a botanical garden for growing medicinal herbs, a small pond which was used in the past for jute production and a group of ash trees with old artificial nests which were used for keeping birds when it was an aviculture centre.

Some Reflections

Listening to Marco had a very strong impact on me. Reflecting on his words and coupled with the philosophy in the Indian sacred books of Upanishads, I feel that it is the same life-force flowing inside the trees and plants which flows in every living being.

How do I reconcile this understanding with our daily business of living? There is a proverb in Hindi which says "If the horse becomes the friend of the grass, what would it eat?" I think that this proverb sums up the basic dilemma of our life - the impossibility of avoiding violence, if we wish to live.

Thus, I think that all life in the world is inter-connected and there is no way we can avoid eating other life forms, till the time comes for us to die when we return back to the earth, turn into our basic elements and become a part of the never-ending cycle of life, death and decay. To me it means respecting nature and all forms of life, which I translate as avoiding giving unnecessary suffering to my fellow creatures. Thus, I feel that individuals can decide if they wish to eat meat or they prefer to be vegetarian or vegan - it is a matter of choice linked with personal convictions.

However, I think that keeping animals to be used for their meat (chicken, ducks, sheep and cows) in narrow spaces, which do not allow them to move, and making them eat food laced with hormones and antibiotics so that they can fatten quickly, or hurting them unnecessarily, are wrong.

It means being kind to the animals and birds that we keep as pets. It means, taking care of the nature so that our biodiversity is maintained and strengthened. It means that if we have a zoo or a circus, we shall ensure dignified spaces for keeping the animals and treat them with care. I think that zoos and wild-life parks can play an important role in saving species close to extinction and in teaching young people about the importance of safeguarding nature and biodiversity.

Some people would completely separate humans from other animals because they see all human-animal interactions as basically evil and unwelcome for the animals. They are against keeping pet animals, they don't like zoos, they do not want any experiments involving animals - I feel that it is an extreme view and does not help the animals or the nature.

I hope that science and technology would soon progress so that one day we can have all kinds of food, including meat and fish, grown in cell-cultures. In the meantime, I would like more humane conditions for the animals we keep for meat.

Conclusions

Coming back to the plants, does making the plants grow as miniaturised Bonsai trees means that the plants are being forced into unnecessary suffering? Probably Marco Colombari would say yes. I don't think so. I feel that Bonsai practice, by helping us to seek a connection with the plants through mindfulness and meditation, is another path to recognising the importance of nature.

The evolution has made different life-forms co-dependent on each other. We have biomes inside each of us, made of billions of bacteria and viruses - every time we are ill and take medicines, we are killing millions of them. Life, death and decay are a part of a never-ending cycle going around us all the time and there is no way we can say that we don't want to be a part of this cycle.

This reflection about the life in the plants, makes me think of Shiva, the Hindu God who controls the never-ending cycles of creation and destruction in the universe. I think that Shiva is a metaphor of the life and death which connects together all the organic and inorganic matter of the universe. It is the life-force moving the particles composing the atoms, which combine to make the molecules of different elements, the building-bricks of everything in the universe. Life and death are illusions, because those atoms and the forces moving their particles, they do not die and will continue to combine and create new forms all the time.

***

Merry Christmas Or Seasons' Greetings?

A few days ago, one morning I read two articles which made me reflect on the two different ways in which multi-cultural and multi-religious societies can look at inter-faith dialogue, respect and harmony.

In this post, I am going to talk about these 2 different ways of looking at religious differences and what we need to do for living with a diversity of beliefs.
The Two Articles

Let me start with the 2 articles which had stimulated this reflection. The first was an article in a recent issue of Readers' Digest magazine. Actually it was not an article but a snippet under the heading "Your True Stories". I am transcribing that snippet here:

Last December, a young lady ringing up my purchases greeted me with an enthusiastic Merry Christmas!” I was not offended, but I am a Muslim, and at the time I was wearing a beautiful headscarf in a manner identifying my spiritual convictions. I responded, “Happy birthday!” At first, she was taken aback, but then she nodded and laughed good-naturedly, acknowledging my point. I smiled back at her and said, “Merry Christmas to you.”

The second was an editorial in the Indian newspaper Hindustan Times, written by Mr. Rajmohan Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, under the title "In Memory of Frontier Gandhi, a Plea for Justice for Faisal Khan". It mentioned the story of Khan Abdul Gaffar from Peshawar, now in Pakistan, and his organisation called Khudai Khidmatgar, which worked for promoting Hindu and Muslim unity. Khan Abdul Gaffar was also known as Frontier Gandhi and I have memories of meeting him as a child in Delhi in early 1960s at the home of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, the charismatic leader of the India's Socialist Party. This article is about a person from Delhi, Mr. Faisal Khan, who has an organisation in India inspired from the ideals of Frontier Gandhi. It described Faisal with the following words:

Faisal Khan has striven without pause for two goals — communal harmony and relief for the neediest. He is also a wonderful singer of the Tulsi Ramayan. Hindus of all types, from venerated guru to college students, have been charmed by his rendering of the Ramayan’s verses. Keen, as part of his efforts towards harmony, to identify with the traditions of his Hindu friends, Khan, along with associates, recently performed the much-valued Braj Parikrama. On the last day of this 84-km yatra, they went to Mathura’s Nand Baba Mandir, where they were courteously received by the priest.
Reading these 2 articles, made me reflect about the two approaches to inter-faith harmony.

Multicultural Approach to Inter-faith Harmony

I think that first article represents the multi-cultural approach to inter-faith harmony, which arose in UK or perhaps in Western Europe. Now this approach seems to be common in the West (Europe, USA and Australia). It is slowly making inroads even in countries like India, at least among some academic and activist groups. It asks individuals to respect the diversity of religions of others, by not offending them by involving them in things related to other religions. Thus, if we are Christians, it says that we should not have overt signs celebrating Christmas or Easter in public spaces and schools. If we have to greet people we do not know, we should use generic terms like "seasons' greetings" and to not "merry Christmas", for not offending non-Christians. People who believe in this approach, talk of tolerance and respect for other religions.

If we believe in this approach to inter-religious relations for harmony, then if we are Muslims, we won't make Eid or Ramazan greetings to the non-Muslims and if we are Hindus, we would greet only other Hindus on our festivals.

Indian Approach to Inter-faith Harmony

When I grew up in India, our approach to diversity of religions was different. While in school, we had holidays for the festivals of all the religions. Since early childhood, I was used to meeting persons of different religions among neighbours, friends and in public spaces.

Over the years, we lived in different houses, where we had as neighbours families of different religions. Even at home, among the socialist friends of my father who visited us included persons of different religions. During our travels, I had stayed at the homes of family friends of different religions.

When I think of those years, it is remarkable that I can't remember ever thinking about the diversity of religions of all those encounters in India. I had been familiar with news of riots and religious riots, but somehow they had no real bearing with my relationships with persons of different religions. My first actual encounter with the underlining of and impact of diversity of religions happened in Italy, when a high school student asked me if I believed in Madonna. I had told him that I was a Hindu. He did not know any Hindu but he knew about protestants and that question was his way of reassuring himself that I did not deny the sacredness of Madonna. When I told him that I respected Madonna, he was reassured.

The basic understanding governing the multi-religious relationships in the India of my childhood was that all religions are about the one and the same God. Therefore, festivals of all the religions belonged to everyone. Having school holidays for all those festivals reinforced that feeling. So it meant, waking up at early morning to go out and stand on the side of the street to wait for Prabhat Pheri of the Sikh when they celebrated their Gurupurab. It meant wishing everyone Eid Mubarak and eating the sweet sewaiyan, that our neighbour Irene brought to our home. It meant going with my Catholic friend to the midnight mass in the Cathedral on the Christmas eve. It meant going into Buddhist temple to pray to Buddha. And, it meant, saying Happy Diwali to everyone and offering them sweets to celebrate the Hindu festivals.

In that India of my childhood, the idea of "tolerance" in reference to other religions, would have been kind of insulting, because we were expected to share the joy and sacredness of each religion and not just "tolerate" them

Which Approach Do You Prefer?

I think that with some exceptions, increasingly the modern world is going towards less orthodox religious beliefs. A large number of my friends and members of my extended family in India, do pray in temples and homes, but they are equally respectful of other religions. There are four inter-religious couples among my cousins' families. My own family is also inter-religious. With time, I expect that religious diversity in our family is only going to increase. This means that we shall have more occasions for celebrating festivals and also picking and choosing some aspects of ideas and practices of other religions in our daily lives. This seems to be in line with the ideas of inter-religious harmony with which I had grown up in India.

It is true however, that even in India, I feel that compared to my childhood, today many groups of persons are more polarised in terms of religions. Though a lot of persons continue to value respecting and sharing among persons of different religions, those with polarised thinking speak louder and dominate many forums. Fortunately, India continues to have a lot of mixed religious spaces formed by inter-mixing of persons of different religions.

I think that the ideas of multi-culturalism approach to inter-religious relations in Europe and America, which are focused on "not offending those of other religions", are a result of increased encounters after the second world war and due to a globalised world, between the more secularised and less religious populations in the West with more conservative minorities, often immigrants, who feel that they need to hold on to their specific identities, for not getting lost in their new lands. Thus, I feel that it is an expression of cultural anxiety.

In many ways, these inter-cultural encounters are also shaped by identity politics and ways of reading all relationships in terms of dominance and oppression. Perhaps historians can tell us from the experiences of the past, how such encounters between people of different cultures can evolve and resolve?

Which of these two approaches to inter-religious harmony do you prefer?

Conclusions

From the way I talk about the Indian way of looking at the diversity of religions, it must be obvious that I prefer this approach to inter-faith harmony. At the same time, after my travels across different countries and encounters with a diversity of religions and cultures, I must acknowledge that many persons feel threatened or at least uncomfortable if they have to accept close contact with other religions. I try to respect their diffidence, though I must confess that I can't really understand their anxieties.

I also try that I continue to deal with persons of different religions in my way. I go rarely to the mass in a church, but when I do, I am happy to bow my head and pray. I am not very religious, and while visiting temples, churches, gurudwaras and sufi dargahs, I try to feel the sacredness of their ambience and prayers. I also wish Eid Mubarak or Merry Christmas or Happy Deewali or Happy Navroz, to all my friends at the festival times without worrying if they are Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Christian or Sikh. However, if I know that a person does not appreciate receiving greetings for festivals of other religions, I try to be respectful of their choice.

I know that we live in polarised times. For whatever reasons, some people have become more aware of religious differences and at least some of them, do not wish to celebrate the festivals of others or to visit the others' prayer places. At the same time, I often find many persons who think about different religions like me, they are happy to listen to religious ideas of others and do not get offended by religious differences.

Personally, while each one of us is secure in his or her own religion, I would prefer a world of acceptance, respect and joy towards all religions. I know that it is an utopia, but I like utopias.

A final note about Mr. Faisal Khan mentioned above: I have read that Mr. Khan was arrested on 2nd November 2020 for offering namaz in the courtyard of a Hindu temple in India, though it was the temple priest who had suggested to Mr. Khan to pray there. I think that a Muslim singing Ramcharit Manas and praying in a Hindu temple can happen only in India because of this approach to inter-religious harmony that I am talking about. It is an embodiment of the Indic thinking which sees different religions as paths to the same God.

I hope and pray that better sense will prevail and Mr. Faisal Khan can be released.

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