The Discovery of India

In this classic by Nehru, he's trying to understand the basis for Indian culture. He is amazed by the Indus valley excavations and the revelations that the seeds for the Indian culture were probably sown more than five thousand years ago.

He tries to explain the strength of the culture in various ways. He has interesting insights, nevertheless, paragraphs are littered with "I really don't know what gives the culture its strength to withstand and assimilate so many foreign influxes."

I found one particular insight very interesting. He calls it the "Acceptance and Negation of Life" - complete acceptance and celebration of life in every sphere and every manner while at the same time, possessing this detachment with the material world in a subtle but very predominant way.

I let this thought be with me for a few months, and the idea has only grown on me.

Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks

Stealing is a crime.

Misappropriating ownership rights is also patently wrong.

Such clear-cut statements are, however, not possible while dealing with intellectual property.

Recently, according to newspaper reports, there have been attempts to claim ownership rights over yoga. Ridiculous as it may sound, the case requires analysis and is not an open-and-shut case.

For, Bikram (the person claiming rights) isn't claiming rights over yoga in toto, as has been made out by some reports, but only over a specific sequence of poses in a high temperature room. He claims ownership and regulatory rights over usage of this specific sequence of poses, which he calls "Bikram Yoga".

He has two arguments in favour of his case. One, he has created something new out of the existing common knowledge. And according to U.S. copyright laws, a sufficiently creative compilation of common knowledge can be given a copyright. He uses a powerful analogy - Do, Re, Mi, Fa are a part of common knowledge, but a song created out of them is not a part of public property and can be given a copyright. Similarly, using yogic postures to create something new can be given a copyright. According to him, he doesn't want what has happened to Pilates to happen to Yoga.

His second argument is that a holistic health process like the one he has created, needs a regulatory mechanism and arbitrary copying can be dangerous. Just as doctors need certification, anyone teaching his sequence needs his certification.

Analogies can be quite deceptive, and his first argument seems very fishy. By equating yogic postures to mere musical notes and his creation to a song, he has deliberately reduced the status of the postures per se. Yogic postures are, however, much more than notes, they are like compositions in themselves. Can we get a copyright over a sequence of Bach and Mozart compositions? Especially when such compilations are predicted to be of significant public and commercial interest? How is a court supposed to determine his creativity in putting the poses in a sequence and judge the sequence in relation to actual poses themselves? Shouldn't the court lean towards not granting a copyright? How much the name "Bikram Yoga" is benefiting from the word "Yoga" has to be understood clearly.

His second argument, once again, isn't easy to judge. How can one who hasn't experienced his sequence judge the need for its regulation? Does it really need his regulation, given the fact that the basic elements have been in use for millenia?

"Art of Living Foundation" also has a trademark (not copyright) over "Sudarshan Kriya". Many will vouch for the strong effect "Kriya" has and need for proper regulation (and hence a trademark) over who teaches the breathing technique.

So it seems that courts and litigations are not the proper means of settling these issues. At least the basic statutes governing the issues need to be reworked completely, giving enough weight to spreading knowledge. Since the knowledge is cultural, cultural aspects need to given sufficient weight. Someone versed only in legal technicalities is not competent to judge the case.

Positive Portrayal of Women

We live in an unequal society. Sometimes the inequalities are overt, sometimes subtle, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. We attempt to correct these inequalities in many ways, some ways are acquiesced to as legitimate (public distribution systems etc) and others are fought against (reservations etc).

In the past few months, I have noticed an expression of male-female inequality in "The Hindu" newspaper. See the attached pictures from the newspaper. They are all part of various education-related articles in the newspaper. The articles themselves talk about various topics like higher education, entrance-exam preparation, career opportunities etc. While the topics themselves are not related to women per se, the newspaper has chosen to portray women in a majority of the pictures.

The pictures are unrepresentative and if an alien were to understand our society via just these clippings, it would assume that men are a minority in India's education system. Some of the pictures are pretty comic too, with the photographer obviously having asked the students to bury their heads in books.

My friends reacted to this in various individual ways including crying foul (along with me), laughing it away saying poor-you-men, explaining it as a systemic correction to centuries of oppression, questioning the adequacy of the data and so on.

While not probing the merit of those interpretations, it seems that this positive portrayal of women is one of the least abrasive methods of affirmative action for the betterment of women. It is entirely possible that these images give a sense of confidence and potential to other women, while not taking away anything tangible from men. At some level, all these images convey that it is "cool" to be a career-woman. And that sense of romanticism associated with work could encourage more number of women to pursue higher education steadfastly.

That media can have a subtle influence on the choices we make in our lives is not new at all. Curbs on on-screen smoking are meant to prevent youngsters from getting influenced by their idols. Freedom of expression is relegated to the back benches in view of these subtle influences.

But now the question is, is this what "The Hindu" intended? We should hope so.