The following is a drawing from a Christmas card I co-authored 16 years ago with a buddy, Mike Harty (Mike is the artist; I threw ideas and food at him). In case you can't make out the words on the image below, here is a larger image to download. The set-up, from the…
I was recently discussing the Iraq war with a political lobbyist friend of mine when he mentioned something I had not previously considered: neocons and other law-and-order conservatives try to justify the Iraq invasion by saying that even though Saddam didn't have WMDs, he was defying UN-mandated inspections of Iraqi…
I recommend that we give this atheist (Ebonmuse, at Daylight Atheism) a chance to give sermons church pulpits across the country. Just be sure not to tell the congregations that he's an atheist. Instead, let them soak up his words. He'll have them weeping with inspiration. He'll rev them up…
In the December 14, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone, Paul Krugman takes Bush to task regarding the "biggest untold economic story of our time." The article is titled, "The Great Wealth Transfer." In sum, more and more of the wealth of this country is falling into fewer and fewer hands. …
“Name a person, living or dead, from the country India.”
If asked in the western world, the most common answer would be obvious: “Ghandi”. It is another matter that his name is “Gandhi”, and not “Ghandi”, to which he is commonly referred in the west, but nevertheless, this individual seems to have wielded such influence that India almost seems to be known as “the land of Ghandi” in the west. In India, he is also a well-known figure, often hailed as the “father of the nation.” It is unlikely that any individual living in India would not know of him. But whether most people from India know much beyond the name (for instance, that he was involved in India’s freedom struggle) is a matter of debate. His brand of non-violence was unknown to most Indians until recently.
A few months ago, a Hindi movie titled “Lage Raho Munnabhai” (Carry on Munnabhai) was released in India. It went on to become India’s biggest box office success in a long time. It tells the story of a gangster, named ‘Munnabhai’, who accidentally stumbles upon the work of Gandhi. Inspired by the writings, he begins practicing Gandhi’s tenets of non-violence and turns his life around.
When I first heard of the film’s plot, I winced. “Bollywood”, India’s equivalent of “Hollywood”, is obsessed with violence. Surely, a Bollywood film about Gandhi, I imagined, would butcher his philosophy. Worse yet, the film is a sequel to a mediocre movie. When I heard people saying that …