The EPIC Channel’s Assault on India

Among the shows airing on the new EPIC channel the scurrilous sitcom Yam Kise Se Kam Nahin sitcom  is not exceptional. Other shows are also offensive and some are historically misleading.

One feature length movie, Shaheed Udham Singh, tells of the communist Sikh revolutionary who, in revenge for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, assassinated Michael O’Dwyer in London in 1940. The movie creates the impression that O'Dwyer was the man who commanded the troops at Jallianwalla when he was, in fact, the administrator of the district. (The man who led the troops was Reginald Dyer; he died peacefully in bed.)

The day before the assassination Udham Singh is shown celebrating in a London bar, doing the bhangra holding aloft three mugs of beer. At one point in the movie he derides the value of freedom to the poor of India. (Anyone inclined to agree should look at the ascent of Indian life expectancy after independence.) The show has several dumps on Mahatma Gandhi and one character refers scornfully to “Gandhi-priya” Indians. The producer is Iqbal Dhillon.

Dharmakshetra (26 episodes), is touted as going “beyond” the Mahabharata. The EPIC web site says “Well known characters from the epic” will be “questioned in a divine court where they explain their side of the story.”

In the episode I saw bits of costumed dramatization were interspersed with commentary by the host of the show, a woman whose name I could not decipher in the fast rolling credits. (Probably as a result of my identifying the producer of Yam Kise Se Kam Nahin, the credits on EPIC were – at this writing – either too blurred or rolled too fast to be read. A number had “Produced by” but no name. One had “Produced by R.”)

The show’s producer displays an extremely blunt understanding of Hindu scripture. At one point, Sri Krishna tells Arjuna “I am satya and also asatya,” a stunning statement nowhere in the Gita. The scriptwriter was either carried away by a misreading of the grand eloquence of Chapter 10 of the Gita or is engaging in a traditional missionary distortion.

Krishna is also shown saying that no one knows the mystery of life and death! As I have pointed out previously, the Katha Upanishad is focused entirely on that issue, and Krishna explicitly repeats the teaching in the Bhagavad Gita.

Some of the host’s interactions with "experts" chosen to provide illuminating commentary on the Mahabharata reinforce the impression that she and the producer are completely at sea about Hinduism. For example, she asks at one point, "Krishna could have stopped the war but did not. Why?”

The reply: “He didn’t want to stop the war because it was necessary to destroy adharma.”

Both question and answer are ignorant.

 Her question is based on the incorrect premise that India shares with ancient Greece and the Semitic/Western tradition, the deus ex machina concept of divinity (ie gods capable of magically transforming human narratives). The Indian concept, laid out at some length in the Gita and in common lore, is that Karma (causality) is a binding and universal law inherent in godhood itself.

The answer to her question is also stupendously wrong. The war did not destroy adharma; the Pandavas won but at a huge moral cost. The war augured the Kali Yuga when adharma is dominant.

In a more mundane take on “history,” EPIC provides brief bits on ten warrior heroes. In those I saw, Prithiviraj Chauhan is represented as killing Mohammad Ghori after he is captured and blinded by the invader.

The piece on Tipu Sultan gives the French credit for developing the rocket technology that Indian forces used with devastating effect against the British; in fact, it was entirely unknown in Europe. Bangalore techies built the weapon the British later incorporated into their own army and used against George Washington’s forces (the American national anthem's reference to “the rocket’s red glare, bombs bursting in air” recalls the vivid impact).

A more respectable contribution to the history genre is “The First Heroes of the R&A Wing.” Eleven episodes will tell of the exploits of Indian intelligence agents. The first episode dealt with the role of Indian intelligence in helping Bangladesh to independence. The credits absolutely whizzed by so I could get no details about who produced it.

The show was strictly factual and made no move to follow the Western track of glamorizing intelligence operations; but the Indian political establishment must keep careful watch to prevent mischief.

Britain has traditionally glamorized intelligence operations as a way of diverting attention from its frequently thuggish and criminal pursuit of elite interests. The James Bond novels and movies, casting a serial killer as a hero, are a case in point.  

The United States offers a cautionary example that India should take to heart. After Churchill launched the Cold War in alliance with the American military-industrial complex in 1946, the nascent CIA (and FBI in cahoots with the mafia), took on the “license to kill” ethic of the British., In effect that subverted American democracy and ushered in an unprecedented era of high level assassinations and human rights abuses. Things have got so bad that hit men and mafiosi have become the stuff of romance and comedy in Hollywood films, neutering the outrage that should be the democratic response to such fascism.

Another of EPIC’s historical contributions was on the excellence of ancient Indian steel production; it noted, very briefly and sotto voce, that the British had killed that technology.

Most of the rest of EPIC programming is either utter nonsense or incredibly boring.

The episode of Daanav Hunters that I saw presented an endlessly repetitive battle against blood-sucking demons with occasional detours, one to ridicule a Tamil fan of superstar Rajnikant and another to present an NRI woman scientist’s view of India as a “strange country.” It should be noted that blood sucking demons and the living dead are not part of Indian folklore the way Vampires and Zombies are in the West (where they reflect the creative artistic response to the realities of the colonial and industrial eras). It remains to be seen if 20 episodes of Daanav Hunters will change that.

If the lugubrious Mughal era costume drama Siyaasat has a plot it escaped me, probably because the love story of crown prince Salim and Meherunissa will drag out over a staggering 42 episodes. 

By way of travelogue a lanky long haired host (whose name I did not catch), walked in slow motion around the overgrown crumbling ruins of Ross Island, where the British once lived in the Andamans. He is set to do the same in 10 other shows on “abandoned places” in India.

Another host, Jaaved Jaffrey, mocked at interminable length the plot of a golden oldie film, Victoria #203. He is set to do the same with a lineup of other popular old Hindi movies. This is the opposite of nostalgia; it is “feel-bad” programming.

All in all, the proof of the pudding so far is unavoidable: EPIC presents in its shoddy line up of shows a view of India that is confused, misleading, and in its political content, indistinguishable from British propaganda.

So who are the people responsible for all this?

In operational charge of EPIC is Mahesh Samat, who quit in 2012 as Managing Director of Disney India. The head of Development is Ravina Kohli, formerly of Yash Raj Television and Sony Entertainment.

Some 20 production houses are reported to be contributing content. They include Balaji Telefilms, Green Light Productions, Bolt Media, A Bellyful of Dreams, Rose Audio, Face Entertainment and Rangrez Media.

It is obviously in these production houses, under the watch of Samat and Kohli that
the offensive content of EPIC is planned and produced. To be fair, much that I have pointed out was probably under the radar of the executives at EPIC.

But there is no denying malign intent. The question is, where is it coming from?

The promoters of the channel are India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, Anand Mahindra, head of a $16.5 billion industrial conglomerate, and Rohit Khattar, a biggie in the hospitality business who headed Mumbai Mantra Media Ltd, the communications wing of the Mahindra Group.

As none of these figures has any reason for shaping the kind of content EPIC is airing, we have to look elsewhere: to EPIC’s almost sole advertiser, Aquaguard water purifiers.

Aquaguard is a product of Eureka Forbes, which is part of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, the largest single holder of stock in the TATA Group. To fill out the picture: Cyrus Mistry, who took over from Ratan Tata, is a scion of the Shapoorji Pallonji family; his billionaire father (living in Mumbai) has traded his Indian citizenship for that of Ireland.

Both Shapoorji Pallonji Group and TATA have long-standing and strong British ties. I think that somewhere in their nexus of interests is hidden the directive British element of EPIC.

If the programming does not change course as a result of what I have written, we should expect the British propaganda element in EPIC programming to become more overt.

In closing it is necessary to note that with the enormous clout of EPIC’s promoters the channel could be a major force for India’s intellectual decolonization. It is tragic that on its current tack it will only becloud our national awareness and extend the colonial mind-set.

Britain & Hinduism 10: Soul Science

“The worlds to which a man goes by sacrificing barren cows are surely without blessings,” says the teenager at the sacrifice his father is conducting to win heavenly fortune.

Shamed and angered, the father commits all he has to the sacrifice.

The boy thinks himself included in that offering, and asks, “Dear Father, to whom are you giving me?”

Three times, he asks, until his enraged father bursts out, “I give you to Yama!”

Yama is not at home when the boy arrives in the underworld, and for three days he waits in the house of Death without the least hospitality, not even water.

When Yama returns, he apologizes for that treatment and offers a boon to compensate for each day of waiting.

The boy asks, first, that his father be no longer angry with him.

Then he asks to be taught the Fire Sacrifice that transports one to heaven where there is no fear of death.

For the third, he wants to know what happens to a person after death.

Yama grants the first two wishes but is reluctant with the third. “On this point even the gods are in doubt,” he says; “it is not easy to understand. That subject is subtle. Choose another boon!”

The boy insists. “Surely no other boon is like this, with you as the teacher on a matter the gods themselves doubt!”

“Choose sons and grandsons who live a hundred years, herds of cattle, elephants, gold, and horses,” pleads Death. “Live yourself as many harvests as you want. Be king of the wide earth, enjoy all you desire, fair maidens, chariots, music, anything ... but do not ask me about dying.”

The boy remains adamant. “All these things last till tomorrow, O Death, for they wear out the vigor of all the senses. Life is short. Keep thou thy horses, keep dance and song for thyself. No man can be made happy by wealth. What shall we possess when we see thee? Shall we live, as long as you rule? What mortal, slowly decaying here below would delight in a long life, after pondering the pleasures from beauty and love? O Death, I do not choose another boon but that which enters into the hidden world.”

Thus begins the Katha Upanishad (with some tweaking on my part to clarify the initial the father-son interaction.)

The story of Naciketas, the boy who pried out Death's secret, has gripped the Indian imagination for many millenniums; it continues with Yama acceding to the third boon.

He begins by praising Naciketas for so firmly rejecting all objects of desire.

The paths of knowledge and desire begin in the same human heart but diverge enormously, he says.

Those who pursue their desires have no escape from the endless cycle of births and deaths.

“The path to truth is as difficult to cross as a razor’s edge, but one who travels it discovers the Self within, the Soul that never dies.”

When death takes the body, the magical Self lives on, "smaller than small, greater than great, hidden in the heart of every creature." Those aware of it can sit still yet travel far, be lying down but go everywhere. "Knowing the Self to be bodiless within bodies, changeless amidst transformations, great and omnipresent,” they do not grieve at death

“Knowledge of the Self cannot be gained from the Veda, nor by understanding, nor by much learning; it comes only to to those who have turned away from wickedness, possess a tranquil mind, and are chosen by the Universal Self.”

The solemn reality Yama unfolds is the polar opposite of the mechanistic world of Science. It is a Universe imbued with divine will and moral purpose, actively supportive of the powers of regeneration, growth and good.

During the colonial era Europeans came to look down on that Indian sense of reality as irrational, other-worldly and superstitious. Many still do, for they have not adjusted to two sets of scientific advances in the 20th Century that quietly validated the greater part of the Hindu perspective.

If we take those advances into account the immortal soul and its governing concept of karma become entirely rational and undeniable.

The Two Advances

The first scientific advance began with the laboratory observation that light exists simultaneously as both wave and particle. It led to the conclusion that energy and matter meld into each other at the sub-atomic level and, more surprisingly, that neither can be destroyed: they can only be turned into each other. (Hence Einstein's E=MC2.)

The second advance led to the discovery of the genetic code, the blueprint imprinted on the nucleus of the first cell at the moment of conception that determines the mature person in physical detail and potential.

Put these discoveries in the same frame and we can define the soul as an indestructible piece of unique code that determines identity.

When a person dies, his or her material body deteriorates, but the indestructible energy version of the code – the soul – floats free.

Just as a radio wave carrying the human voice can reproduce it at an antenna tuned to the right frequency, so the “soul wave” carries the imprint of the whole being to a new body at the moment of conception.

The Implications

Scientists have not focused on any of this as yet. When they do, it is only a matter of time before they find out the logistics for the transmission of the soul; and once that happens, it will clarify how karma works.

We can surmise that Karma has the same role as radio frequency in determining which new body will be able to receive a particular incoming soul. It makes a moral match between the new and old life form.

It will not be easy to adjust to the idea of one’s immortal soul as a scientific fact rather than a religious concept. For one thing, it will extend each thinking person's time-horizon far beyond his/her individual life, shriveling many petty considerations that might now loom large. On the other hand, people will be forced to take themselves very seriously indeed when considering the ever present choice: to ascend morally, enjoy the ride down, or coast and be at the mercy of others.

If most people determine to be actively good, it will transform society.

Consider the impact if large numbers of Indians begin spontaneously to take care of problems around them.

This is what Gandhi meant when he said “Be the change,” and it offers the only sure and swift way out of the current Kali Yuga.

We are at a critical juncture in our national and global development, and the positive engagement of ordinary people will be decisive in shaping the future.


********
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

Intimations of Immortality

One of my classmates at Columbia Journalism School died recently after a long illness. He was the second to go in the space of a few weeks.

Although we are still in our sixties (“the new 40s”), our cohort is at a stage when it must begin to face the fact that death has become a personal rather than a philosophical interest.

Shored up as I am by the Indian expectation that the soul will go from one discarded body to another, this issue is somewhat easier for me than for most Westerners who, if they believe in the reality set out by their religions, face Judgment Day. If they do not believe, death can only be a final extinction, an equally imponderable end.

But how real is my expectation of many more lives to come (my spiritual status being far from the dispassionate stillness required for moksha)?

It’s very real, and not because I have blind faith in what the Bhagavad Gita says: Science has crept in all around the concept of an eternal soul and now makes it impossible to believe in anything else.

Two scientific advances in particular have validated the concept of the soul. One is the recognition of the matter-energy continuum set out in Einstein’s E=MC2. Matter and Energy are indestructible; they can only be converted into each other.

The discovery of the genetic code is the other major step Science took towards the soul. Its importance lies in the recognition that each of us is a piece of code: complex and only dimly understood as yet, but essentially, each individual is a piece of software that takes material form at the moment of conception.

Put the two concepts together, and we have an individualized code destructible in its material manifestation as DNA but not in its Energy persona. When the material body dies, our individual wave pattern survives, and as with the human voice carried by radio waves, it can vibrate another receptor: a new body at the moment of conception.

As with the radio wave, our individualized genetic pattern will only vibrate a receptor tuned to the right frequency. That’s where the concept of karma comes in. Every action, every thought we have affects our DNA, which contains information coded at the molecular level. At death, the code that floats free of the body is a permanent record of the sum total of our actions. It can only take a new material form consonant with that code.

So, those with good karma find bodies that resonate with virtue, others degenerate into lower forms of life.

QED.