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November      Last updated: Nov 20,  5:00 p.m.

World Window

The child killer of Colombia

Atul Rawat

ONE of the worst cases of serial killing of children has appeared in Colombia in Latin America. It may well be counted as too much of coincidence that the Guinness Book of Records lists another Colombian with the highest number of murders recorded. The person in question in the recent killing is a handyman Luis Alfredo Garavito, aged 42. He used to lure poor street children or beggar children to long lonely walks. Once tired, he would tie them with a nylone rope and kill them chillingly with a knife. Preliminary investigations reveal that he has killed at least 140 children in a span of last seven years. Probably like other serial killers, he is also mentally sick and disguises himself like a saint. But that can hardly be a reason to be softon such a person. But more chilling aspect of the sad episode is that two worst serial killers known have both been from this unfortunate Latin American country Colombia. The other Pedro Armando Lopez had allegedly murdered 300 young girls was also a Colombian.

Colombia has, even otherwise, the highest rate of murders in Latin America. Last year 25,000 murders were reported out of which 4,000 are blamed on long running war with the leftist guerrillas and their terrorist activities. The rest are blamed upon free- lance criminals and killing 21,000 is no mean job at that even for the unorganised crime in a country where people have become so much accustomed to crime that disappearance of such a large number of people is not given due attention.

The major crisis at a macro level for the whole of Latin America is that culturally it is a part of European and American consumerist civilization while economically and materially it belongs to the third world. Latin America is a grim reminder of what the western system of consumerism can do to people not living in plenty of natural resources. Such high crime rate is a direct outcome of that. Interestingly a system like our Hindu family system backed up with solidarity at social level can provide relief to such unfortunate lands. 

Media MNCs vs the Nation State

How much dangerous can it be when Press, one of the basic institutions of the democracy, goes off in the hands of the foreigners? Quite dangerously multinationals are also emerging in the newspaper business and the nation state is threatened by their advancement. A constantly shrinking world provides these multinational newspaper owners with an opportunity as well as logic to interfere in the internal affairs of nations specially the poor and third world nations. The most recent example of a media baron intervening in the internal affairs of a nation is that of Fiji where none less than the Prime Minister Shri Mahendra Chaudhary had to warn the Fiji Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch, the great media baron who is presently an American citizen of Australian origin. Shri Chaudhary claimed that the Fiji Times is engaged in conspiring with subversive political elements to bring down his government. Warning the only foreign owned newspaper in Fiji the Prime Minister accused it of fanning the fires of sedition and communalism by giving undue prominence to stories that are really non-stories.

Looking at our own experience with the foreign media depicting India in negative light in general and distorting Indian image, the agony of Fijian Prime Minister can be understood. If the foreign influenced media in India can create so much of trouble, what the foreign owned media can do, one can only imagine. Actually the developing world will have to come up with emergence of such positive institutions which can counter the negative effects of rise of media multinationals in context of the shrinking world. The nation state has to respond to this challenge posed by the media owned by multinational corporations.

Deepavali reaches the nation of shopkeepers

Though the Hindus abroad celebrate Deepavali with the same enthusiasm as their brethren do back home in India, this year the Deepavali celebrations in London had a special feature. The British Prime Minister Tony Blair was the Chief Guest at a major Deepavali function. The event was dedicated to "tolerance and multi-cultural understanding." The Prime Minister's wife Cherie Blair was, of course, the main attraction of the event as she came in traditional Indian attire. The whole event gave the appearance of green forest in memory of fourteen years of Lord Rama's vanavasa.

Deepavali has been becoming more and more popular even with non-Hindus in Britain. The reasons are more mundane than spiritual. Even local councils of a few cities have begun to decorate city centres though such a step would be blasphemous for secular fundamentalists in India. Since the business registers unusual growth various departmental stores also celebrate Deepavali by organizing sales. Deepavali cards are not novelty anymore and are available in London.

It is not only business but politics also. It is not only Labour party's leader and PM Tony Blair who went to the Deepavali celebrations, Conservative party leader William Hague also visited the Swami Narayan Temple on Deepavali . Many politicians have supported the Hindu demand for a holiday on Deepavali . Their logic is that there is no public holiday between August and December and Deepavali may fill the bill. Moreover, the nation of shopkeepers does need a festival to mark reverence for commerce as noted by a journalist spicily.

Another side of Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton was as controversial as he was brilliant. It remains true even till this day about the greatest scientist that Great Britain has ever produced. Recently it has been announced that Newton's collected works are being put on the internet. It is a huge amount of material by any standards--some ten million words covering religion, science, history, church and hosts of other subjects. It was possible for a knowledgeable man during Newton's time to understand the main body of information in many fields. Actually, the high level of specialization and creeping in of mystification of the same are only twentieth century phenomenon.

Newton was an enlightened man and great critic of ill practices of Christianity particularly Catholicism. He was branded anti-Catholic in his own time itself. Despite his reputation as father of modern western physics, about 90 per cent of his writings between 1665 and 1696 are on early church history. He believed that the "true religion" had been corrupted by the Catholic church. He has in particular taken Athanasius, the founder of Monastic order among Christians, to task. He has not spared the relations between the nuns and monks either. He, it is reported recently in some western papers, wrote angrily, why should monks torture themselves with "their frequent visions of naked women." Newton did not spare nuns either whom he calles "little more than concubines for monks." The Newton papers, it is reported, approve of the Vandals stringing nuns and torturing them with "heated plates of iron..."

The internet archive will bring more information not only about Newton but also about his views of the society in which he lived. It will once again rake up lot of controversy as it will open up a lot of new knowledge to the whole world that was captive in a few hands till now.