Musings on the Human Condition

I finally watched my first Hindi movie in a very long while. ROCKET SINGH is a very special film. This moving picture presents what is arguably the most wholesome Sikh protagonist ever created by Bollywood. The lead character, played admirably by Ranbir "Singh" Kapoor, is not that of a military man (Border), or a hothead (Sat Sri Akal, Singh Is King), or a martyr (various Bhagat Singh movies). Instead, refreshingly, this hero is an honest, hardworking and enterprising man -- a largely underplayed aspect of the Sikh ethos. Kudos to the entire team that gave us this gem of a movie!

I was a youngster living in Delhi during the horrendous Sikh massacres of 1984 that followed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards. Indira's assassins were avenging the Indian army's invasion and occupation of the holiest Sikh shrine earlier in the year. The army was called out and stationed near our house at IIT's Student Activity Center. However, the massacres in Delhi (and elsewhere in India) were allowed to continue uninterrupted for several days before the army was finally deployed. My family and I had readied our revolver and discussed a plan for tackling the rioters. Luckily, the students never allowed the mobs to enter the campus.

The current issue of Outlook contains Chander Suta Dogra's excellent article on the age old and continuously fascinating question of what constitutes religious identity in general and Sikh identity in particular. The article is particularly topical given that today marks the 20th anniversary of the fatwa declared by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses.