This is a small market town in Wiltshire, England.

It has a dubious distinction of sending many soldiers to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.It also has a 'tradition' of parading the hearses of the dead soldiers through the main street when their bodies arrive back. This is supposed to be a typicallly dignified and solemn english ceremony where no one beats the chests or wails or sheds tears publicly as they do in the uncultured Asia or Africa.

Now an islamic organisation, called Islam4UK has stirred the hornet's nest by announcing it will take a march through the town calling the soldiers 'murderers' and rapists of Basra'.

The english dignity is deeply offended and there have been more than 400,000 entries on the Facebook demanding ban on the protest. The Home Secretary has assured the ban if the police request so [oh we are so correct!].

I think this nation, as others, needs to wake up to the ugly side of the wars it launches for no reason or rhyme and butchers innocents abroad.They have been doing so through the colonial era of 200 years. Marauders were awarded Queen's medals and deified as the best of the land.

Perceived offence is at the challenge to this 'tradition'. It has nothing to do with honouring the dead.

This is one of the most overused terms in India - grassroots.

All political parties, social organisations and the government swear to better the lot of the grassroots. They have been swearing so for the last 60 years. By now everyone should have ben middle-class in India had they delivered.The fact is that the Indian grassroots are growing at a faster pace like never before.By the latest estimate more than 800 million Indians barely survive on less than 25 pence or 35 cents a day.

It is equally difficult to sift the genuine grassroots workers and their organisations from the pretenders.

I was glad that I was able to make new acquaintances during my recent trip to India.Mainly three types of activists and their all India organisations have been interested in my work.

One is an organisation called Republican Panthers, working for the bottom-most stratum of the Indian society.People desparately poor and outcastes.
Another is Communist Party of India - Marxist-Leninist [yes we still have them]. This works more for landless labourers working in rural India.
Both are more or less vehement opponents of the mainstream including the government of India.
The third works for tribals in India whose land, forests and water are being taken over either by the government or the expanding industrial sector. This organisation fights for the rights of the tribals within the framework of the constitution of India and has managed to retrieve some chunks of land from the predators through litigation instead of resorting only to agitations which the government can easily suppress.

I had presentation of my web-site at a couple of gatherings of these people and was glad that my work was received well.

May be something I am missing but I do NOT understand the media fuss AND the readers' comments on this at all.

Media seem to assume it to be self-evident truth that everybody has to be monogamous once married. More so when you are a billionaire at 33. And black. And married to a white woman. The readers protest rather too much.

My guess is at least half the men who comment adversely would have done the very same thing themselves had they had a chance.
And half the women, pretending to be disgusted would have done the same thing themselves for the chance of being 'associated' with fame, money and power.

For both the media and the readers it is just a case of sour grapes.

We need to recheck our fraudulent concepts of morality.

Below is some of my earlier work submitted when I had only a few watchers.

I was wondering if you would like to have a look and leave a comment? It would help me a lot.

Media and us
[link]

i,me,mine
[link]

asking for the moon
[link]

Autumn 2001 [that is my very fiirst painting done in 2001, 8 years ago almost to date]
[link]

unstuck
[link]

Again, I will be grateful for your feed-back. Thanks.

Yesterday I was looking up the internet for some information on the Communist Party of America and thought it worth investigating if there was ever an alliance of blacks [esp the Black Panthers movement] and communists.

I found quite a bit of material going back to '20s and '30s until the witch-hunt of McCarthy era.[Even suggestions that Barack Obama has had connections in Chicago and is a creation of the KGB!!]

This alliance, though apparantly fragile has a striking parallel in India today.
Like blacks in America, the lowest caste people in the Indian society have been mostly deprived of opportunities of livelihood, education, decent living space, etc.A vast majority are forced to take up hard labour as land-less labourers generation after generation.With globalisation huge industrial establishments are coming up snatching big chunks of fertile land, further marginalising these sections. The number of these people easily runs into a few hundred millions.

A fraction of these have taken to arms and are now fighting the Indian State for land-reforms.The State instead of addressing the underlying economic problems is passing new draconian laws declaring these as 'terrorist organisations'.They are spreading fast in their reach though and a number of districts - a few hundred - have their presence.
Many times there are killings from either side - the government and the armed gangs.They have a number of factions but more or less all claim to operate under the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology.

My project would be to study the american history of blacks and how the government suppressed the communist movement, and where they stand today.

Luckily, the first publisher I talked to in India has enthusiastically welcomed the idea of a book on this topic.

I would like to know if you can suggest some reading.

thanks.