18/D-3 FEB 05, 2014 12:12 AM | Jaykumar Ahmedabad, India Again here you are exposing ignorance by not quoting my next few lines. You still have not understood why I asked you to check well-known facts before expressing uneducated opinions. |
17/D-109 FEB 04, 2014 06:24 PM | Getting you folks out of the jumble is the intriguing question as to whether or not Nehru's Indian National Congress hijacked the Indian freedom struggle from Neta Subhash Chandra Bose. We will perhaps know the answer only after the Indian National Congress is banished from the Indian political horizon. |
16/D-80 FEB 04, 2014 12:39 PM | Only the fools and the ignorant make up stories and believe in conspiracy theory. DC NEW YORK, United States Why you bucket others also in your category?Just becuase you are one.. |
15/D-78 FEB 04, 2014 12:35 PM | " It is difficult to speculate why he chose Japanese forces for help or why he formed a small army of ex-soldiers of British India despite impractibilities of winning against a stronger and more resourceful British force. It could be rule of heart over head or could be sheer romanticism." -- I am not so sure about how one can make such a judgment on Bose. But first to note that he approached the Germans and the Japanese for sourcing weapons and ammunitions to build up the fighting potential of the INA. I would have thought that would be the first thing for some one to undertake who wishes to overthrow a formidable power. Of course, it would have been futile for the INA to launch a frontal attack on the British Army in a military sense. Bose was not a fool not to realize that. Britain was the super power of that era just the US is at present. In fact, with modern day technology the US is far more powerful in the present day world than Britain was in pre WW II era. And then what do the present political events teach us - hasn't the Taliban delivered a thrashing to the US forces in Afghanistan where the US is soundly defeated and is compelled to leave ? Or for that matter, wasn't another super power, the Soviet Union, had tp pack up and leave Afghanistan mauled by the rag-tag army of Mujaheedin supplied with arms from the US ? Armed insurgency is not the same as a miltary clash, and the outcome depends on political factors, not on military fire power. To recall, Britain shifted the capital of the Raj from Calcutta to Delhi in early 1900s hollowing a spate of sabotages and terror strikes by the freedom fighters in Bengal. In my understanding Bose was on right tracks and did rattle the rulers as has been explained in the book "India's Unfought Wars" by Saigal. |
14/D-64 FEB 04, 2014 09:31 AM | Mahatma gandhi is undoubtedly one of greatest leaders of India and did a lot of good but 3 of his big mistakes were: * Appeasing the British for too long before finding it (too late) that it helped no one. * Refusing to realise that partition was inevitable and thus not preparing the nation for same and * Giving too much importance to Nehru family and thus ignoring the need for great leaders like SC Bose in building India post independence. |
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Emilie, sahadharmini of Subhas. Congress leaders spread calumny about Netaji -- Madhuri Bose
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Sonia Gandhi keeps poker face -- Paki view. Keeps a card up her sleeve: Priyanka to cobble a coalition
Shahzad Raza TFT Issue: 07 Feb 2014 The Congress leader has two cards up her sleeve
Shahzad Raza names only one card, Priyanka. The second card up SoniaG's sleeve is a joker.
In the run-up to the Indian elections scheduled in April, ties with Pakistan do not feature significantly in the election campaigns of the two major political parties.
The popularity of the ruling Congress party is declining fast against the controversial BJP firebrand Narendra Modi. Modi is having whirlwind tours across the country attracting massive crowds. An official of Indian External Affairs ministry claimed such crowds were last seen when Indra Gandhi dominated the fray in 1980s. But neither him nor Congress leader Rahul Gandhi have resorted to Pakistan-bashing.
“It is a pleasant change in the attitude of the Indian leadership. The reason may not be a sudden likeness for Pakistan. They are just stuck in whole lot of domestic issues,” said senior Indian journalist Sheila Bhatt.
Analysts in New Delhi believe a victory of the BJP or Modi would augur well for bilateral relations between India and Pakistan. Modi will try to go an extra mile to develop goodwill with a Muslim neighbor.
Modi will go an extra mile to develop goodwill with a Muslim neighbor
On count of developing better ties with Pakistan, the Congress leadership fell short of expectations. The Mumbai terrorist attacks eclipsed all peace efforts and Congress preferred not to make any unpopular decision vis-à-vis Pakistan in the final years of its rule.
Former President Asif Ali Zardari’s peace overtures to India received a cold response. The election manifestos of BJP and Congress make no specific mention of Pakistan. They generally talk about developing good relations with neighbors.
Indian Forign Minister Salman Khurshid said India was ready to discuss with Pakistan every outstanding issues including Jammu and Kashmir. This resolve has never become practical. He did not say whether Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would visit Pakistan before the general elections.
The Indian establishment believes such a visit would be a waste of time since Pakistan would not take Singh seriously a month before his tenure ends.
Secondly, the Indian prime minister himself would avoid any negative publicity just before the general elections.
Foreign secretary Sujhata Singh said India had solid evidence that terror networks were still operating from Pakistan to carry out terrorism inside India or against Indian interests.
Perhaps the most interesting character to recently emerge on the Indian political scene is Arvind Kejeriwal, the chief minister of New Delhi. He defeated senior politician Sheila Dixit in what many believe are the most unprecedented election results in Indian history.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of Mr Kejeriwal was short of the required seats to form government. The Congress volunteered to help him form a coalition. He did, but has so far acted against the expectations of the Congress.
Recently, Mr Kejeriwal issued a list of “most corrupt politicians” that included the name of Rahul Gandhi. The Congress was expecting that the AAP would be its ally in the general elections. That is not happening at all. Instead, the APP is trying to end the political career of several veteran Congress candidates.
“The AAP will not be able to secure a significant win. However, it will play the role of big spoiler. And the Congress might be its worst victim,” said veteran journalist C Mohanraja.
In a conversation with me at his office, Mr Kejeriwal said he would root out corruption from Indian politics, though he failed to spell out specific plan and strategies on how would go ahead with such an ambitious agenda.
Critics said several of his initiatives were impractical. For instance, he announced to cut the power bills of the residents of New Delhi by 50 percent. The state government had no clue where it would fill the deficit from. Secondly, he came under strong criticism for launching street protest against New Delhi police. Congress leaders called him an “anarchist”.
Opinion polls show the BJP candidate, Narendra Modi, is taking a remarkable lead against Rahul Gandhi.
Asked why the Congress did not announce its prime ministerial candidate, a senior official said it was a smart move by Sonia Gandhi that would secure the political interests of the Gandhi dynasty.
“If Congress loses, then entire party would share the blame. And if, somehow, it wins the elections, Rahul Gandhi is certainly going to be the prime minister,” he explained.
Ms Gandhi is holding two cards close to her chest. One is, of course, Rahul Gandhi, to be used if things go well. The second, and probably the trump card, is her daughter Priyanka Gandhi.
Depending on the election results, Ms Gandhi may field the daughter to cobble a coalition government.
Whatever the case may be, political pundits in India are convinced it is going to be yet another hung Parliament with a lot of give and take and an excruciating process of political wheeling and dealing.
Shahzhad Raza is an Islamabad-based journalist
Twitter: @Shahzadrez
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Third Front mirage: Minhaz Merchant. All parties should demand: revert to paper ballot to prevent EVM tampering.
Good read. But one catch. IF SC mandate of printout is not introduced by EC for all booths, will there be two systems of voting? Danger !!! Is it not illegal to have two systems of voting? One transparent and another tamperable? All parties should demand all booths with printouts or revert to paper ballot. Extreme prudence and diligence is called for, else the lurking danger of EVM tampering is present and real in a system where Constitution has been subverted day-in and day-out.
All parties should watch out! All it takes is EVM tampering in 100 constituencies to shatter popular mandate.
Don't forget what happened in 2009 Lok Sabha polls. There are credible reports which were not investigated effectively that EVMs were rigged apparently in select about 100 constituencies.
Tell SC that if constitutional mandate of transparency is not enforced with printouts for ALL EVMs, EC should revert to paper ballot for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Eternal vigilance is the price for safeguarding the nation and integrity of the sovereign will exercised through the most sacred election process which should be seen to be free and without tampering. Please, please do not disappoint the nation which has set high hopes for true Swarajyam.
Kalyanaraman
Third Front mirage: Why the numbers don’t add up
Minhaz Merchant07 February 2014, 03:36 PM IST
Ten political parties met on Wednesday, February 5, to stitch together a “non-Congress, non-BJP” front ahead of the 2014 general election. The parties represented at the meeting – though not all by their top leaders – were the JD(U), SP, AIADMK, BJD, JD(S), AGP and the four Left parties. The JVM, though invited, did not turn up.
These 10 parties currently have 94 MPs in the Lok Sabha. What are their prospects for 2014? According to recent opinion polls, the projected numbers for the 10 Third Front (TF) members are: AIADMK: 25; JD(U): 5; JD(S): 2; AGP: 0; SP: 15; BJD: 12; Left (4 parties): 25; Total: 84
Mayawati’s BSP cannot be part of the TF due to Mulayam’s presence. Ditto Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar (though Lalu will anyway hitch his wagon to the Congress).
Mamata Banerjee’s TMC cannot join the TF because of its bête noire, the Left. The DMK will stay away owing to Jayalalithaa. (Her trial on income-tax cases will commence shortly. The Supreme Court has ordered that the trial must be completed in four months – ie, just after the Lok Sabha results are out, putting her in an extremely vulnerable position.)
A TF with 84 Lok Sabha MPs in May 2014 is not something that will unduly frighten the BJP or the Congress. But of course, the equation is TF+Congres+AAP – the latter two propping up the hopeful TF government in a bid to stop Narendra Modi. Will it work? The hard numbers suggest it won’t. Here’s why.
The most optimistic opinion poll projections give the Congress 80-90 seats and AAP 10-20 seats. Taking the midpoint, Congress + AAP will hover around 100 seats. If they prop up 84 TF MPs, the total will still be only 184 seats in the next Lok Sabha. Can succour be found by scavenging among the UPA’s vanishing allies?
Consider the NCP, NC and DMK. Together they could pull in a projected 15 Lok Sabha MPs in 2014, taking the TF+Congress+AAP to a precarious 199 seats.
Add convict Lalu’s RJD and the total rises to around 210 seats. How about the TRS and YSR Congress? If the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh does not take place before the Lok Sabha poll, the TRS will not merge with the Congress. That could have given it 8-10 extra Lok Sabha seats – a reason in these frugal times why the Congress is so keen to get the Telangana bill passed in this session of parliament.
Even if it does succeed in doing so, the TF (84) + Congress (85) + AAP (15) + UPA allies (15) + RJD (11) + TRS (10) will take this eclectic grouping of 17 parties to 220 Lok Sabha MPs.
Still short by 52 seats of forming a stable government, there ironically will be no shortage of prime ministerial aspirants – Jaya, Mulayam, Nitish, perhaps even the anodyne Naveen. But 220 Lok Sabha MPs across 17 parties does not a government make.
And the alternative? The BJP is projected by opinion polls to win between180 and 220 seats. Again take the midpoint of 200. Add pre-poll allies Shiv Sena, Shiromani Akali Dal, Telegu Desam and others totalling around 40 MPs, taking the pre-poll NDA to 240 seats. Where would the balance post-poll allies with 32 MPs, to enable the NDA to hit the 272 mark, come from? There could be around 12 independents, the YSR Congress with 15 seats and 5 from a UPA breakaway.
Crucially, therefore, the NDA could get to 272 without Mamata, Mayawati or Jayalalithaa and with the BJP winning just 200 seats on its own.
But how plausible is even 200 in a fractious election? Consider the BJP’s projections state-wise averaged out over recent opinion polls:
Gujarat: 23
MP: 25
Rajasthan 21
Maharashtra: 18
Chhattisgarh: 8
Karnataka: 15
Uttar Pradesh: 45
Bihar: 20
Jharkhand: 7
Uttarakhand: 4
Himachal Pradesh: 3
Assam: 3
Jammu & Kashmir: 2
Haryana: 4
Punjab: 3
Goa: 2
Daman & Diu: 1
Nagar Haveli: 1
Odisha: 1
Total: 206
To this add Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh/Telangana and Kerala, where the number of seats for the BJP is difficult to estimate at this stage in the campaign, and 200 seats seems a reasonable estimate – perhaps an underestimate.
There is a good reason why the TF + Congress + AAP + shrunken UPA + RJD + TRS (if Telangana is formed) will fail. Despite much huffing and puffing by 17 parties, four PM aspirants and plenty of machinations, it probably won’t get past 220 MPs.
In 1996, the United Front government had 191 MPs and was supported by the Congress with 141 MPs – 332 in all. In 2014, even for 17 parties, stapled together by cold-blooded expediency, that number is unlikely to be more than 220 MPs, making a comparision with 1996 invalid.
Those who prefer a stable government over a “khichdi” government cooked in a Machiavellian kitchen will lose little sleep over the TF’s chimeric prospects.
Follow @minhazmerchant on twitter
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/headon/entry/third-front-mirage-why-the-numbers-don-t-add-up
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SoniaG Agusta VVIP chopper scam: Court hearings
Link: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2014/02/sonia-gandhi-ahmed-patels-corruption.html
Sonia Gandhi & Ahmed Patel's corruption featured in Italian newspaper
Defence lawyers in VVIP chopper case: Witness is mistaken, Tyagi did not come to Italy, Major did
Written by Manu Pubby | New Delhi | February 7, 2014 10:03 am
Sonia Gandhi & Ahmed Patel's corruption featured in Italian newspaper
Defence lawyers in VVIP chopper case: Witness is mistaken, Tyagi did not come to Italy, Major didWritten by Manu Pubby | New Delhi | February 7, 2014 10:03 am
SUMMARY
The defence lawyers in the VVIP chopper deal case said that the witness confused Tyagi with his successor Major.
Insisting that the meeting between Tyagi and Orsi is a figment of imagination, the defence argued that Saponaro was confused and had mistaken the facts of the case.
The defence lawyers in the VVIP chopper deal corruption scandal that is being heard in an Italian court have said that a top former official of AgustaWestland who had claimed in the court on Tuesday that then Air Chief SP Tyagi had been hosted by the company in Milan is mistaken and that he confused Tyagi with his successor FH Major who had come on an official tour to Italy in 2008.
In the ongoing court procedures in Italy, the defence team of Giuseppe Orsi – the former CEO of AgustaWestland who is on trial for facilitating kickbacks worth 51 million euros to swing the bribe – has debunked the argument of the prosecution that Tyagi – and accused in the case – had been hosted by the company while he was serving as the Air Chief in 2007.
Arguing that Orsi could not have met Tyagi in 2007 in Milan as was claimed by Agusta’s former senior vice president for international business, Giacomo Saponaro in the court on Tuesday, the defending team has said that the Indian officer (who has been named in a CBI FIR into the matter) had not been to Italy.
Insisting that the meeting between Tyagi and Orsi is a figment of imagination, the defence argued that Saponaro was confused and had mistaken the facts of the case. According to the lawyers, Tyagi has never been in Italy and contended that Saponaro was confusing the official visit of his successor, FH Major to Italy that took place in January 2008.
The matter has come a surprise to the prosecution as they had even produced a photograph of SP tyago at the court hearings and Saponaro had identified him as the man who had been hosted by Agusta in 2007.
As reported by the Indian Express, the former top official told the Italian court that Orsi took Tyagi to a fancy theatre performance and also hosted an expensive dinner for him in early 2007.
Saponaro told the court that Orsi took the then IAF chief to the Teotro alla Scala, one of the most famous opera houses in the world located in Milan. After the performance, Saponaro claimed Tyagi was taken for a fancy dinner at the restaurant of the opera house, the Biffi Scala. Saponaro had claimed the expenses for the evening were borne by the Anglo-Italian company.
Published on Feb 4, 2014
Manu Pubby explains his latest exclusive story for The Indian Express on the AgustaWestland VVIP Chopper deal. On February, 2014, The Indian Express published a report by him showing how a note that Italian prosecutors produced in court to show the vital role played by middleman Christian Michel in fixing the VVIP chopper deal, has the British 'consultant' telling top AgustaWestland officials to 'target' the closest advisers for UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi for the contract.
Full story http://iexp.in/wod62358
Full story http://iexp.in/wod62358
Choppergate: Antony says, authenticity of deal notes 'not proved'
PTI [ Updated 05 Feb 2014, 18:28:01 ]
New Delhi: Defence Minister AK Antony today said certain notes have come to light suggesting that middlemen in the VVIP chopper deal were trying to target certain Indian leaders but their authenticity is “not proved”.
He was making a suo motu statement in Rajya Sabha on the AgustaWestland chopper scam after a note received from Italy suggested that one of the middlemen Christian Michel had written to an AgustaWestland official in India to ask a ‘High Commissioner’ to target UPA chairman Sonia Gandhi and her close advisers Ahmed Patel, Pranab Mukherjee, Veerappa Moily.
“There is another unsigned document purported to be written by Mr Christian to the attention of one Mr Peter Hullet for High Commissioner to target certain Indian leaders. The authenticity of these documents is not proved. The case is presently in Italian court,” Antony said.
On the hearings in an Italian court, he said one unsigned handwritten paper has been produced which has headings “AF, BUR, POL (under which AP is recorded), FAM etc and Guido Hashcke, from whom this document has been recovered, has been cross-examined on this.”
He was making a suo motu statement in Rajya Sabha on the AgustaWestland chopper scam after a note received from Italy suggested that one of the middlemen Christian Michel had written to an AgustaWestland official in India to ask a ‘High Commissioner’ to target UPA chairman Sonia Gandhi and her close advisers Ahmed Patel, Pranab Mukherjee, Veerappa Moily.
“There is another unsigned document purported to be written by Mr Christian to the attention of one Mr Peter Hullet for High Commissioner to target certain Indian leaders. The authenticity of these documents is not proved. The case is presently in Italian court,” Antony said.
On the hearings in an Italian court, he said one unsigned handwritten paper has been produced which has headings “AF, BUR, POL (under which AP is recorded), FAM etc and Guido Hashcke, from whom this document has been recovered, has been cross-examined on this.”
Agence France-Presse February 7, 2014 6:18pm
Arms makers left frustrated as India awaits elections
Global arms makers gathered in New Delhi for India's biggest defence show face further frustrating delays as they await a new Indian government which they hope can speed up procurement.
Big French, British, Russian, US and other arms groups at Defexpo, which runs until Sunday, are competing to offer their wares to India, the largest global importer of conventional weapons.
The country, with regional rival Pakistan to the west and growing China to the north, is in the midst of a stuttering $100-billion defence modernisation programme to replace Soviet-era planes and tanks.
But hopes New Delhi might sign any big deals at the show were dashed Thursday by Defence Minister A.K. Antony, who said on the sidelines of India's Defexpo that "there is no money left" in the defence budget for this year.
"Almost all the budget has been spent. Many other projects are also in the pipeline," he said.
Speaking on the sidelines of the four-day event at which over 600 companies are exhibiting, he added that firms would have to wait until a new government takes office after elections due by May.
His left-leaning Congress party, in power since 2004, is headed for a resounding defeat according to polls, with a new coalition led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party forecast to take its place.
But the next government will also face spending constraints, with economic growth faltering and the country running a large fiscal deficit at a time when investors are pressuring emerging market currencies.
A long backlog
Among the major contracts on hold is a $12-billion deal for 126 Rafale fighter jets which has been under exclusive negotiation by France's Dassault Aviation since January 2012.
Successive deadlines to complete one of the world's biggest defence contracts -- including one for the end of this financial year in March -- have slipped by.
Under the proposed deal, New Delhi would buy outright 18 fighters manufactured in France and then make the rest under licence in India.
European missile maker MBDA is another waiting to complete the sale of up to 2,000 short-range surface-to-air missiles.
The contract was announced during a visit by French President Francois Hollande to India in February 2013 but the deal still needs final approval by the Indian government.
Head of the group in India, Loïc Piedevache, told AFP he was still hopeful of signing the contract "in the coming months".
The missiles are due to be produced by the Indian industrial group Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL) but the European firm would still get a substantive share of the contract.
Another deal on the anvil is for 197 reconnaissance helicopters for which Eurocopter, now known as Airbus Helicopters, and the Russian group Kamov have been competing since 2009.
"The need is there," said Olivier Lambert, senior vice president in charge of global Airbus Helicopters sales.
The helicopters are intended to replace the Indian army's decades-old Cheetah and Chetak choppers, while new artillery procurement has long been another priority for the generals.
Bureaucratic hold-ups and corruption
Experts and military planners agree that acquiring new equipment is a priority for India.
The army "has not been able to induct artillery since the last was purchased in 1980s", says Laxman Kumar Behera, analyst at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA ).
The land army has "deficiency in basic requirements such as bullet proof jackets, night vision devices, assault rifles", Behera told AFP.
India's defence ministry has long been demanding that the armed forces wean themselves off their dependence on foreign equipment, but the local industry remains weak.
India still imports 70 percent of its military equipment despite the country's insistence that foreign manufacturers tie up with local partners and transfer technology.
"India's ambitions to be a self-reliant defence producer remains, but much soul searching needs to be done in order to make this ambition a reality," said Deba R. Mohanty, head of research firm Indicia.
Corruption cases, logjams in the decision-making chain and a lack of local research and development have also slowed the modernisation of the armed forces.
India cancelled last month a 556-million-euro ($753-million) contract with Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland to buy luxury helicopters for VIPs amid bribery allegations.
Industry insiders say that fear of being accused of corruption -- which has scuppered numerous contracts in the past -- has led many civil servants to sit on files and delay making decisions.
"Indian defence procurement process is such a complex administrative web that the process gets stuck in its own complexities," Mohanty told AFP.
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Wendy's NPR interview (full transcript) and Penguin's statement (full text): Contempt for Indian law.
Consider the following full texts; these are arrogant statements from Doniger and the Penguin, with gross contempt for Indian law.
a) Both claim that Indian law is wrong
d) Penguin INTENDS TO IMPORT 1000 books with the SAME CONTENT as what was deemed offensive, into India -- through electronic and other means.
In my view, these are clear and actionable evidences of Bad Faith and Contempt for Indian Law.
For Hindus, Rama is a divinity. Ramayana is sacred text. The author and the publisher should be made accountable, legally liable with punitive damages, for desecration of Hinduism. (Note: the Ayodhya temple has been proved (pace Allahabad High Court judgement); Ram Setu geography as described in the Ramayana fits geological data from aeons ago).
Kalyanaraman
February 15, 2014
Updated: February 16, 2014 03:22 IST
Penguin India's statement on 'The Hindus' by Wendy Doniger
Penguin Books India believes, and has always believed, in every individual’s right to freedom of thought and expression, a right explicitly codified in the Indian Constitution. This commitment informs Penguin’s approach to publishing in every territory of the world...
PENGUIN INDIA’S STATEMENT ON ‘THE HINDUS’ BY WENDY DONIGER
Feb 2014
Penguin Books India believes, and has always believed, in every individual’s right to freedom of thought and expression, a right explicitly codified in the Indian Constitution. This commitment informs Penguin’s approach to publishing in every territory of the world, and we have never been shy about testing that commitment in court when appropriate. At the same time, a publishing company has the same obligation as any other organisation to respect the laws of the land in which it operates, however intolerant and restrictive those laws may be. We also have a moral responsibility to protect our employees against threats and harassment where we can. The settlement reached this week brings to a close a four year legal process in which Penguin has defended the publication of the Indian edition of The Hindus by Wendy Doniger. We have published, in succession, hardcover, paperback and e-book editions of the title. International editions of the book remain available physically and digitally to Indian readers who still wish to purchase it. We stand by our original decision to publish The Hindus, just as we stand by the decision to publish other books that we know may cause offence to some segments of our readership. We believe, however, that the Indian Penal Code, and in particular section 295A of that code, will make it increasingly difficult for any Indian publisher to uphold international standards of free expression without deliberately placing itself outside the law. This is, we believe, an issue of great significance not just for the protection of creative freedoms in India but also for the defence of fundamental human rights.
Author of book yanked in India says move has backfired
February 14, 2014 4:00 PM
Copyright ©2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Professor Wendy Doniger's 2009, an 800-page book on Hinduism was intended to be un-orthodox. The full title is "The Hindus: An Alternative History." The University of Chicago scholar is familiar with angry reactions to her work. A few years ago, during a lecture in London, an audience member who differed with the sexual thrust of her interpretation of a sacred text threw an egg at her. He threw eggs at other scholars, as well.
This time it's not an egg but the withdrawal of her book from India, where the head of a Hindu educational organization brought a court challenge against the publisher. The lawsuit claims that the book: Has hurt the religious feelings of millions of Hindus and therefore violates Indian law. Penguin Books India has settled that lawsuit and agreed to withdraw copies of it from the country.
Wendy Doniger joins us from Chicago to talk about this. Welcome.
WENDY DONIGER: I'm glad to be here.
SIEGEL: And I confess that I've I only been trying to read bits of the book online today. But your nemesis here, a man named Dina Nath Batra, raises the charge that your work was preoccupied with sexuality, riddled with heresies and inaccuracies. What button did you press in this book or - and it's a big book - how many buttons did you press to arouse such anger?
DONIGER: It wasn't inaccuracies. All books have some and this doesn't have any more than the others. The parts of the book that he and his cronies singled out were things that are, as the other part of the lawsuit says: That offended the feelings of Hindus. So one passage, for instance, in the lawsuit says: That millions of Hindus are offended when they read - and he quoted - "The Ramayana is a work of fiction."
So there's nothing very sexy about that nor is it inaccurate. We scholars believe that "The Ramayana" was composed in or about the 2nd century BC, et cetera, et cetera. But it offended him to say so and therefore I broke a law by saying something that offended a Hindu. That's the problem - it's a crazy law.
SIEGEL: He told Time magazine, she - that is you - is insulting our gods and goddesses and religious leaders and text, and even our freedom fighters; I don't have any objection to sex and neither does our religion, as long as it's within the parameters of religion. How much of this is about sexuality, by the way?
DONIGER: There are very few passages in the book. Remember as teenagers, you'd find the dirty passage in a whole big, long book by John O'Hara? There's nothing about sex really in the whole book. There are references to women. And one of the agendas of the book, in its defense of Hinduism, is that although the text - the Sanskrit text - are all written by upper caste men, I argue that the voices of women in the lower caste are really there in the text, if you look for them.
And so, I looked for passages where you can see positive attitudes toward women and positive attitudes toward lower caste, and sometimes the voices of women. So I would say there is some gender in the book but sex in the sense of exciting interactions between human beings, no.
SIEGEL: Your publisher Penguin Books India issued a statement saying that it fought for the book four years, but ultimately it has to obey the law of the land where it publishes. And, in this case, there's a section of the Indian penal code that it's in violation of. Can you accept that position?
DONIGER: I think one has to. What should happen is that the law should be changed. When I tried to say in my own statement was that it was not the fault of Penguin; that Penguin did more than any other publisher in Indiana has done for any author - four years to fight a lawsuit.
SIEGEL: So you don't feel let down or sold out at all by the publisher here...
DONIGER: I absolutely do not. I'm sorry this has happened but I've expected it to happen for while. It was quite clear that this lawsuit was going on and on and that it had become a criminal case. When I'm delighted that is that the book is sold like hotcakes everywhere in the world, that Penguin New York is considering sending several thousand copies to India, because there's no law against Penguin USA selling the book - just Penguin India selling the book. Copies are circulating in India and Kindle is available in India.
If the purpose of these gentlemen was to keep people from buying my book and reading it, it has backfired quite wonderfully.
SIEGEL: Well, Wendy Doniger, thank you very much for talking with us today.
DONIGER: Thanks for asking me good questions. Bye-bye.
SIEGEL: Wendy Doniger, professor at The University of Chicago Divinity School and author of the book "The Hindus: An Alternative History."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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Nuclear-atomic overlap for the isotope thorium-229 -- Joint Quantum Institute
Nuclear-atomic overlap for the isotope thorium-229
February 17th, 2014 in Physics / General PhysicsThe dense spectral line structure of neutral thorium (Th I) as seen in a hollow cathode lamp observed with an echelle spectrograph. This is a doublespectrum in which the visible spectrum is cut into horizontal strips to expand the wavelength range. Credit: Observatoire de Haute-Provence, France.
More than 99.9% of the mass of any atom is concentrated into a quadrillionth of its volume, the part occupied by the nucleus. Unimaginably small, dense and energetic, atomic nuclei are governed by laws quite distinct from those that regulate atomic electrons, which constitute the outer part of atoms and which are immediately responsible for light, chemistry and thus life. Yet there are sporadic regions of contact between these disparate realms. JQI Adjunct Fellow Marianna Safronova and her collaborators (1) have been exploring one area of nuclear-atomic overlap for the isotope thorium-229. This isotope is a candidate for a new type of atomic clock and quantum information processor.
A ticking time bomb
The quantum states of atomic nuclei are usually separated in energy by thousands or millions of electron volts (eV), compared to the few-electron-volt energy range characteristic of atomic electrons. This is reflected in the "megatons of TNT" scale for nuclear vs. chemical explosions, and the radiation associated with jumps between nuclear quantum states lying in the x-ray or gamma-ray regions of the spectrum, in contrast to the optical realm of electronic transitions.
By some strange accident of nuclear physics, there is one nucleus, thorium-229, which possesses a nuclear excited state (isomer) that lies just a few eV above the ground state. That is, for Th-229 there exists a nuclear transition that looks more like an atomic transition. This isomer has not yet been detected directly, but the state is known to have a lifetime of about six hours. This may not sound like much—-not even a full season of "Downton Abbey"—-but the lifetime of the "clock" state of the recently-announced world's most accurate clock state is about two minutes (1). The lifetime of the clock state is a key factor in the performance of atomic clocks—-the longer, the better—-and the tiny size of nuclear isomers suggests that they may be far less susceptible than electronic clock states to stray fields, blackbody radiation, and other environmental effects that degrade accuracy and stability.
Solitary confinement
Indeed, the remarkable isolation of the isomers is reflected in the poor state of knowledge of their properties. The work of Safronova et al. has resulted in a new determination of the magnetic and electric moments of the thorium-229 nuclear ground state. This work shows that previous measurements, which were most demanding, were in error by up to 25%.
There are thousands of spectral lines in the visible spectrum of thorium – indeed, the spectrum is so dense that thorium lamps are often used as wavelengthcalibration standards for solar and stellar astronomy.
To reduce the complexity of this system, Safronova et al. treated the much simpler spectrum of the ion Th3+ (Th IV), an ion with only one electron outside a closed shell. This ion had previously been laser-cooled and trapped by Campbell et al. (3). The wavelengths of its emission lines depend weakly upon themagnetic moment and the electric quadrupole moment of the nucleus, a phenomenon commonly called "hyperfine structure". By performing precise, first principles calculations of electronic states of thorium, Safronova et al. were able to extract the values of the nuclear magnetic and electric moments from the experimentally-measured wavelengths.
Accurate knowledge of this data is critical to building an "electronic bridge" (4) that would facilitate laser control of nuclear states. Proposals for such a bridge involve engineering the intrinsic coupling between electrons and nuclei so that laser control of electronic states can be extended to nuclear states.
- See more at: http://jqi.umd.edu/news/solitary-confinement#sthash.Vw8hqT28.dpuf
More information: M. S. Safronova, U. I. Safronova, A. G. Radnaev, C. J. Campbell, and A. Kuzmich, "Magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole moments of the 229Th nucleus", Phys. Rev. A 88, 060501(R) (2013)
B. J. Bloom, et al. "An optical lattice clock with accuracy and stability at the 10−18 level", Nature 506, 71-75 (2014). - See more at: jqi.umd.edu/news/solitary-confinement#sthash.ccGJ8GX7.dpuf
C. J. Campbell, A. G. Radnaev, and A. Kuzmich, "Wigner Crystals of 229Th for Optical Excitation of the Nuclear Isomer", Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 223001 (2011).
E. Peik and C. Tamm, "Nuclear laser spectroscopy of the 3.5 eV transition in Th-229", Europhys. Lett. 61, 181 (2003).
Provided by Joint Quantum Institute
"Nuclear-atomic overlap for the isotope thorium-229." February 17th, 2014. http://phys.org/news/2014-02-nuclear-atomic-overlap-isotope-thorium-.html
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Wendy's porno is a civil rights issue in USA, Mount a lobby on Capitol Hill.
To call Wendy's porno a free speech issue is a diversionary tactic by psecularatti and by the folks who follow the money.
Hindu tradition has lived with cārvāka darśana and lokāyata. So, no problem whatsoever with freedom of expression enshrined in Constitution of India that is Bharat.
There are limits to such freedom as spelt out by the criminal code. Whether this should be an international standard code is debatable because laws are the product of culture and history and world views of people who have organized themselves into a state. Are we satisfied with the way the Western academe is engaged in Hindu studies?
Aren't there dangers that young impressionable minds may get poisoned with ivory tower academics abusing the positions they occupy? Else, where is the need for Provosts in Universities? Students have a choice but how do they choose an institution for Hindu studies? Shouldn't there be a rating system and flagging of various talents bordering on porno? Is porno part of the unfettered freedom of expression? Or, is sex sacred as per our sanātana dharma?
Note that the court trial and out of court settlement with Penguin do NOT constitute a ban. It is a voluntary acceptance of the law of the land where the aliens seek to operate. So, the freedom of expression is not the issue here. The author and publisher have voluntarily agreed to restrain themselves to find public expression through pulp fiction.
I think the issue in USA is within the rubric of civil rights and the justification for setting up an office of faith in Whitehouse.
So, I suggest the promotion of a lobbying effort on Capitol Hill to harmonize dharma and US Penal code in the context of re-evaluation of Hindu studies in western academe, in US academe in particular.
Kalyanaraman
February 18, 2014
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Wendy porno: 'When westerners make fun of our gods, they're instigating trouble' - Rajiv Malhotra
Rajiv Malhotra, a staunch advocate of Hindu civil rights provides an overview on the key issues Wendy porno poses, in an extensive interview.
I hope the debate will be joined on the Capitol Hill and also in the western academe.
Congratulations to Rajiv Malhotra for championing the Hindu cause with precise articulation of the issues.
Thanks, Rajiv.
Kalyan
February 17, 2014 10:43 IST
'When Westerners make fun of our gods, they're instigating trouble'
Arthur J Pais
'In theory, yes, Hindus are very open. I'm one of them. I've coined the phrase 'open architecture'.'
'But I think the Wendy Doniger group is not allowing open architecture. They are closing this architecture.'
'They are bringing a point of view in such a heavy-handed way that it tends to dominate and it tends to suppress the alternative points of view. So some kind of counteraction is necessary and using the law is a decent thing to do.'
Rajiv Malhotra, one of Wendy Doniger's most vociferous critics, speaks toRediff.com's Arthur J Pais about the prejudices created by American scholars about Hindu gods and Hinduism.
Rajiv Malhotra, left, a constant critic of Wendy Doniger and what he calls her Chicago school of writers and thinkers, retired at age 44 some 20 years ago and put his money into the Infinity Foundation, an one-man think-tank.
The Indian-American writer of books on India has devoted himself, for more than a decade-and-a- half, he says, to "clarifying the many misperceptions about Indic traditions in America and among Indians."
When did the fight against the book start? How did it go through?
My involvement with this started in the year 2000. My kids went to Princeton Day School and one day the teacher asked me for information on Vedanta, (Swami) Vivekananda and Ramakrishna (Paramhamsa) because in their teaching of world religions they wanted to have knowledge of Hinduism.
One of the teachers told me that he has been advised by some American scholar not to teach Vivekananda and Ramakrishna because the parents would object to this. When I asked why the parents would object, he said it has been declared that Ramakrishna had a relationship with Vivekananda.
I have never heard of such a thing. We started investigating this and asked which scholar had said this and that is how I discovered a whole genre of scholarship which has this kind of view that Wendy Doniger and her students came up with. So, they used Freudian psychoanalysis to psychoanalyse (Hinduism).
Which book has talked about Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna Paramhamsa?
A book called Kali's Child by Jeffrey J Kripal. Then I found Paul Courtright, one of Wendy's students, had a similar book called Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings. They had this very vulgar kind of view.
So, I tried to take this around to the religious, Hindu community and they did not want to touch it. Many of the Hindu leaders in this country (America) maybe were too arrogant, too cocky, or too embarrassed or too scared to talk about it. They did not think it important to take any action.
So I took it upon myself to start writing articles expressing that these are not correct interpretations...
This issue has nothing to do with Christianity versus Hinduism, because most of these people are Jewish, anyway. They are using a Marxist lens, a Leftist lens, a Freudian lens. The kind of theories they are using are completely inapplicable to the Indian way of life.
Then, I started attending the conferences of religion to see why this is happening. It was very strange. All religions had people represented from within.
You would see rabbis from Judaism, Buddhist monks, imams talking about Islam. In the case of Hinduism, there was hardly any practising Hindu speaking for it. It was entirely non-Hindus who felt that they have understood the text, learnt Sanskrit and they were able to interpret it. So, I felt that this is a huge untold story.
I started writing articles. These articles created a huge stir. And, this is the situation with these people. We compiled these arguments in a book called Invading the Sacred that came out in 2007, and since then I have come out with three more books that are not on Wendy but other issues related to Indian civilisation and Indian philosophy and thought and so on.
I personally moved on beyond Wendy Doniger. But I have created a huge awareness and awakening among the Diaspora and among people in India. So many other groups started getting immersed and started taking up my cause and they are the ones who started litigating on Doniger and her book and so on in India.
There has been quite a bit of criticism against the group that filed the case against Doniger's book.
The person who filed the case is a woman called Monika Arora. She is a very reputed Supreme Court lawyer in Delhi. She filed this case.
Some people are trying to portray the Hindus involved in this case as some kind of savages, violent people and all of that. The point is that the Hindus who filed this case used the rule of law; they used the courts. There is no hint of any violence. They are very cultured, sophisticated people. They went to the court and filed a case.
The case has been going on for over two years. There was never a hint of any violence or anything indecent. It was a let's go to court and fight. So, the Hindu site put out a petition in the court citing many, many instances of errors in the book, citing page numbers. Some of these are not matters of interpretation, but factual errors and these are available online.
There is a petition that lists many, many pages of errors and so the opposing side of Penguin gave Wendy Doniger's point-by-point response. This went back and forth several times.
It was not like it was an uncivilised mob. It was a very civilised legal due process going on.
I'm not privy to what was the thought process of the Penguin side. But they must have concluded that they have the risk of losing. So, they reached an out-of-court settlement to withdraw the book.
Now, somehow, the Western scholars are making it sound like some kind of a Hindu mob pushed them and forced them with violence. There is no evidence of such thing; on the contrary, the entire evidence is that it was a legal due process by which a civilised country manages disputes.
'I basically lit the fire in the beginning'
Were you part of the litigation?
I deliberately decided that this should run its course through the legal system. I do not want any part of it. I'm available as a scholar. My criticisms of the writings are very publicly available. I've always said anybody can quote them freely, but I don't want to be drawn into a legal matter myself.
The reason being that Wendy is one of the issues that I have raised, you know, Wendy and her whole lineage. But I'm a scholar with many things to write about. That is not the only thing I'm concerned about.
I'm writing about Indian history of science and technology; I'm writing about comparative philosophy; I'm writing about India as a nation and what are its narratives.
I'm writing on many topics and I don't want to get stuck in one issue that will exhaust me. I realised that I should not personally get involved and I therefore decided to stay behind.
How else did you support the case?
I did not support them in any tangible way, but they have my ideas. They are pretty self-sufficient in how they funded it; the group has funded it, got the lawyers, and done the whole thing on their own. I basically lit the fire in the beginning by highlighting that these are issues.
I also hope to create a process in which Hinduism is properly interpreted and presented not only to Hindus, but to anyone.
The thing is that every religion gets criticised. But other religions are where they are producing people who are very qualified to represent their own religions and therefore these seminary products become scholars and they get launched in different universities for support. For Hindus, they never set up a seminary. So, I am a kind of a one-man show. I can only do so much.
Given the number of Hindus in the world, there are a thousand people like me who are standing there to study this, represent it, debate it, go and argue and be available to the media. But, right now, there aren't that many Hindus who are really well read, highly sophisticated and being able to represent because we don't have seminaries.
So, the real solution to all this is that Hindus should use seminaries which can produce a high calibre of leaders and then these leaders can go out there to take a stand.
A good education system should respect the non-Western culture, be it India, China, Japan, the Middle East -- whoever. They should respect those people because Americans will be trading with them, having partnerships with them, having different relationships with them.
It will be good for America to train the next generation of Americans to be really appreciative of various cultures.
'What Hindus are now doing is possible only because of the Internet'
February 17, 2014 10:43 IST
What kind of education did you have in India?
I went to a Catholic school from kindergarten to the end of high school. I went to St Columbus School, a Catholic school, and I got a very good education from there. I have many Christian friends and now some of my closest friends are Christians.
I feel that the Western mischief of intervening and creating disruption inside India is a sad thing because Indians have had a long history of being able to get along in a very pluralistic society.
When these Westerners get in and start making fun of gods and goddesses -- all these vulgar writings about gods and goddess, all the vulgar writings about many of the symbols, the festivals, making fun of the gurus -- obviously, they are instigating trouble. I see it in that way.
I see it as a very sophisticated form of intervention that causes internal problems in India and then they can blame it on Indians, as the British used to do.
Have you tried to engage with American scholars?
I have always told the American Academy that for each religion you should always have certain people who are insiders at the table. The American Academy of Religion has 12,000 members at their annual conference.
You go to the panel on Hinduism, they should have a few Hindus able to represent their faith: Teachers, preachers, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, there are people from the Ramakrishna Mission, the well-known old-established organisations.
When they are describing something about Hinduism, they can bring in many kinds of people. But right now they do not bring outsiders of the academy. They only bring people who are qualified academics.
These qualified academics have very Western training and have a very narrow point of view on other religions because they are relying only on the texts.
Hinduism is not a religion of the book where you can learn everything by reading a text. You have to also understand how it is practised and how the people who practise it, see it and interpret it.
The proper way to learn Hinduism is not only to read the text as seen by outsiders but also what is the insider practitioners' perspective. I've suggested to them that every time there are four speakers, three of them could be the normal American academic types; but one of them could be a practitioner who is brought in as a voice of the Hindu community -- who will kind of represent their point of view. But they have never accepted this.
There is a kind of a power, arrogance and a sense of 'We know more than you guys know about your own religion'. This kind of colonial hangover continues. I think these problems that we are now noticing are examples of things getting out of hand because people feel very insulted.
So many Hindu parents complain that when their kids go to school, they are made fun of because they are asked all these kinds of questions: Do you worship a monkey, why do you have this dot on your head, and so on. So these kids are vulnerable and are embarrassed.
I've become a kind of clearing house for these Hindus. People bring their problems to me and I refer them to somebody who can help. I get approached for advice by Indian students in colleges who write to me that they are facing a certain issue and then I get involved.
But one man cannot do this. This should not just be my job. So I organise this representation of people who are interested in this.
Was there any other way to deal with the Doniger book instead of asking for its withdrawal?
If Penguin had said that we are going to issue a new edition, thank you for telling us, sometimes books have an error issue, I think that would have made things OK.
But, my feeling is that Wendy Doniger, as a matter of principle and arrogance, did not want to change a single word.
Her books have been printed and stored in airport shops. Some Indian group in Mumbai also gave her awards. These awards were given by businessmen and industrialists who do not know anything about religion.
I know she has a good lobby firm. She gets her students to promote her work worldwide: In the US and the Indian press. She has all of us who have given her a privileged position where she is beyond criticism.
And so what has happened is because she enjoys this high prestige, it is not acceptable to her that all of a sudden -- in the last 10 years -- a lot of Hindus have started complaining about her.
But this is the reality of the Internet. And, what I have done and what Hindus are now doing about this was only possible because of the Internet. On the Internet, because of social media, people creating blogs, people tweeting.
In the last 24 hours, I've been tweeting, a lot of people have been re-tweeting and it has become a huge thing.
So, if it had not been for the Internet, they would have simply ignored us and continued and said who are you, we won't bother about you. Now, they cannot ignore. I think that is a big part of it.
'Personally, I am not in favour of banning any book'
Several people from Princeton University and elsewhere in America, including devout Hindus, said they like the book.
I personally am not in favour of banning any book. I have never called for a book ban in my life. I will never do that. I'm more interested that my counter-position should get an equal voice.
My complaint is that they have banned me from all academic forums. The same Western people when discussing religions of south Asia, they do not include me in their reviews, in their panels, in their conferences.
The academic presses will not publish me; the literary festivals in India are so controlled by Wendy Doniger's wavelength and fan club that people like me who represent an alternative point of view are not allowed.
So, there is a frustration that one side controls the forums. Their people control: They are on the editorial boards, they are on the selection committees, and their particular point of view gets in and the opposing voice does not.
It's not a free market of ideas. It's a market controlled by certain monopolistic ideas and the opposing ideas are not given a fair share.
I can write and sell to my Hindu followers. But they will not allow my books into the academy; they will not allow my books to be read in the courses and even in the mainstream media.
So what is happening is that as a matter of practical reality, one side is being represented in the mainstream channels of communication and the other side is blocked.
The argument is that Hinduism is an open-minded faith and so are Hindus. It doesn't reflect well on Hindus.
Mahatma Gandhi was also using satyagraha against a big empire because they had too much control and power. And he was disrupting them and bringing them down. I consider what I'm doing is a kind of satyagraha against a very corrupt system of knowledge because it is misrepresenting knowledge: They control the printing presses, they control the academic presses, they control the journals, their friends are running the media.
So, their ideology is the one that gets in and therefore that is a kind of a monopoly that has to be broken.
If there was a similar monopoly in business, it would be an anti-trust case. In the business of the humanities and knowledge, you can (have) a monopoly and there's no anti-trust law that covers that. So, that is an issue.
In theory, yes, Hindus are very open. I'm one of them. I've coined the phrase 'open architecture'. I fully support it.
My new book is called Hindu Open Architecture. It says it is an open architecture, people are welcome to join, all kinds of different points of view are invited, we can criticise one another, we are evolving, we are not fixed in time, all that is fine.
But I think the Wendy Doniger group is not allowing open architecture. They are closing this architecture.
They are bringing a point of view in such a heavy-handed way that it tends to dominate and it tends to suppress the alternative points of view.
So some kind of counteraction is necessary and using the law is a decent thing to do.
'To bring the book down is more of a moral victory'
Could the withdrawal of the book create more demand for it? People could be reading it for the first time.
I think that is always the case. But both sides will get something out of it. The people on the other side will play victim, that the Hindus are bad people, they banned us; they are bad guys, so they will try to get some sympathy.
But, on the other hand, the Hindu side will also get mileage by saying we know our fight... We can win. It will give more publicity.
More people now want to reprint my books because they want to understand what exactly was the criticism about Wendy Doniger. So, people on both sides will be interested in the published materials.
Some people will get interested in what Wendy Doniger is about because she is controversial; she always was. More people will also be interested in what I have to say. I keep getting calls from people in the last 48 hours wanting to get more of my stuff out.
It is more a matter of principle; we're trying to make a statement. I don't think that they're expecting that the book will disappear because certainly you can buy it as an e-book.
The point is that the book has been out for so many years, a lot of people have bought it and it has done very well.
Penguin has made it into a bestseller. To bring the book down is more of a moral victory.
It's not a victory in a practical sense that will make a difference. It makes a moral statement that we have a point against this very iconic author and we are able to make this point in a legal forum.
And we are able to make it so effectively that even the publisher agrees with that.
Arundhati Roy has talked about a fascist government coming to power and has suggested it was a factor that made Penguin withdraw the book.
I think that's stupid. I think people are trying to link too many things. These are overdone. These are people trying to over-sensationalise. Everything you can link with Narendra Modi and fascism, you can try to get headlines.
I would not even waste time with her because that is stupid. Arundhati Roy is not a scholar of religion. She has not read either Wendy Doniger or critics of Wendy Doniger. They are just trying to get some quick mileage out of it.
None of the people who are criticising this move have actually read the petition and seen what the complaint was in the first place.
They are just trying to link all these petitions as some kind of Hindu goals and Hindu terrorists and fascists and Taliban and so on.
I know that these people are decent people. They are regular professionals and they have hired a very well-known, prestigious Supreme Court lawyer who has filed this in a very legal, correct way. They prepared an argument and they got counter-arguments back and forth and so this is how Penguin decided to settle it.
Penguin is interested in big deals and they would not have bowed down. I don't think they would have settled for this kind of reason. They have many other titles that are very controversial. They have titles against Modi. They are not withdrawing those... So why would they withdraw only this one title?
Interview on Penguin's controversial book withdrawal
Follow me on Twitter: @RajivMessage
Most of you know of the recent media controversy over Penguin's decision to withdraw Wendy Doniger's book, "The Hindus". Almost daily there have been extensive TV and major print media discusions in India. In the USA, NPR, CNN, New York Times, New Yorker and various other media majors have featured this story in a big way.
Rediff recently interviewed me because I was the one who first started this debate around the year 2000 in a series of articles. (Article-1. Article-2)
Soon after my initial articles, Wendy Doniger's own University of Chicago Magazine interviewed me and did a large and balanced coverage. It was their leading story. (Read)
The debate quickly ignited the Indian diaspora and the American academy for a few years, with numerous mobilizations and accusations from both sides. This fight was one of the defining moments in the awakening of Hindu thinkers about the way their discourse was controlled and distorted by others. The academic study of Hinduism has not been the same since.
The drama quickly intensified. With the help of her hordes of powerfully placed students, Doniger fought back furiously. She arranged a front page article in the Washington Post and another feature article in the New York Times. Unlike the magazine of her university, these were PR jobs tilted in her favor.
The theater widened across the academic and litarary circles of Europe, North America and India. More players join in on both sides.
Martha Nussbaum, the prominent feminist and University of Chicago colleague of Doniger, wrote a scathing book against Hindus with a whole chapter dedicated to me - without bothering to interview me even though that was suggested to her. She and Doniger have consistently ignored my requets for a live debate in public.
In response to what I felt was a one-sided portrayal of the events, I compiled a new book, titled, Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America", and it was published in 2007. Its launch video gives a good idea of our side of the story. (Video) And so does its web site.
The fallout of all this was very significant:
Wendy Doniger lost her clout in the American academy, and being on the defensive, she lost most of the students who earlier thronged at her doorstep for PhDs in Hinduism.
The American academy made numerous changes (still not enough) to become sensitive to Hindus' views concerning Hinduism, or at least these academics become less blatant in their denigration of Hinduism.
The most significant change was that there emerged a new appreciation among Hindus and a new mobilization of their leaders. It became widely accepted that it was a bad idea to outsource the study of our tradition to scholars whose lenses were programmed with Judeo-Christian and Marxist premises. In fact, no other major world faith is studied by outsiders with the same authority and power as Hinduism is.
A brilliant compilation of these debates and controversies has recently been turned into a web site for those who want to get an good overview. (Read)
Meanwhile, I moved on to many other projects of research and publishing, pretty much forgetting Wendy Doniger as a closed chapter. But the story does not end here.
Some years back, Doniger struck a new alliance to help her make a dramatic comeback: She positioned herself with the Indian Left as their "expert on criticizing Hinduism". Since Indian secularists are uneducated in Sanskrit and only superficially informed about religious studies, Doniger was a useful ally to supply them "masala" which they could use.
In turn, the well-connected Indian secularist/leftist media and writers helped reposition Doniger in India as a great authority on Hinduism. Soon she was winning awards in India, even though back home in USA her own academic colleagues had distanced themselves because she was seen as a tained scholar with a bad reputation.
Then yet another new chapter began. Some Hindus in India decided to contest her relatively recent book. They filed a lawsuit in Delhi alleging that it was biased and insulting to Hindus.
After four years, an out of court settlement was recently reached under which Penguin agreed to withdraw the book from India. But the terms agreed to, do not ban electronic copies or foreign editions from being sold in India. Doniger's massive PR machinery went to work overtime to put the matter into the limelight. The largely ignorant Indian media and its love for sensationalism served her needs. As a result, her book is once againt selling in India even though the Indian edition is withdrawn.
Bottom line: I have mixed feelings about the effectiveness of the litigation and settlement. My own approach had been entirely through a scholarly debate. This takes a lot more hard work, rigor and creativity. Undoubtedly Doniger and her followers had retreated. But now she has made a comeback, ironically using the withdrawal of her book, to position herself as a victim.
The recent interview appearing in Rediff.com is the first time I have spoken on this development over the past month. I wish to give my 15 years of perspective on this issue.
I hope you will read it with an open mind and form your own views.
Regards,
Rajiv
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Amartya Sen threatens to quit Nalanda univ over funds queries -- Pranab Dhal Samanta
Amartya Sen threatens to quit Nalanda univ over funds queries
Written by Pranab Dhal Samanta | New Delhi | February 18, 2014 2:48 am
The university is yet to begin functioning fully, and its campus is still under constructionin Rajgir. PTI
The government’s dream Nalanda University project has run into trouble with Chancellor Amartya Sen threatening to resign after the financeministry raised pointed queries on the financial management of this mega revival plan.
The crisis, which has been simmering for a while, is believed to have turned ugly just before general elections are to be announced.
At its crux is a massive Rs 2,727 crore financial support package to the university over a period of 12 years. The finance ministry’s Department of Expenditure has asked the Ministry of External Affairs, the nodal ministry for the project, the reasons why government rules should not apply to the project.
The university is yet to begin functioning fully, and its campus is still under construction in Rajgir. It has a small office in Delhi for the vice-chancellor and faculty members and aims to start its academic session this year.
The provocation for the crisis, sources said, was the huge expenditure being incurred on maintaining the governing body of the university, known earlier as the Nalanda Mentor Group, as well as the tax-free salaries to the tune of $80,000 dollars per year to some of the top functionaries of the university.
Faculty salary packages range around $50,000-55,000 per year.
Upset by these queries, Sen – who is part of the 12-member governing body – conveyed to the MEA at the highest levels that he would resign if such objections were not opposed and quashed, source said.
He is learnt to have given a similar message to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Planning Commission.
Taken aback, the government is said to be looking at some of the amendments to the Nalanda University Act that could possibly grant full financial autonomy and also a permanent tenure to the university top brass.
The university’s argument has been that full autonomy must mean complete financial independence. But since the government is putting much of the money, the finance ministry feels there has to be oversight and accountability – a view that has takers even in the MEA.
A high-level meeting was planned Monday to resolve this issue, but was called off at the last moment leading to further speculation.
The Nalanda University (Amendment Bill), 2013 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha last September by the Ministry of External Affairs. The amendments seek to provide for the Government of India to meet the university’s capital and recurring expenditure to the extent required and also to ensure that the university attains a truly international stature and is able to attract eminent academics from across the world.
However, there have been concerns raised – among others by the Parliamentary Standing Committee – about the immunities and privileges being extended to the university. More recently, President Pranab Mukherjee wrote to the Ministry of External Affairs asking them to speed up processes related to the university, appoint a CEO and shift staff operating from Delhi to the campus in Rajgir in Bihar.
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/amartya-sen-threatens-to-quit-nalanda-univ-over-funds-queries/
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Foreign hands fill the Congress's coffers -- A Surya Prakash
FOREIGN HANDS FILL THE CONGRESS’S COFFERS
Tuesday, 18 February 2014 |
While we still do not know if there are any VVIP passengers on the AgustaWestland gravy train, there’s certainly evidence to show that the Congress has taken the ‘foreign route' to raise funds since the 1980s
Allegations of bribery and commissions in arms deals and such other huge international contracts surface as a matter of routine whenever the Congress is in power at the Centre. The latest scandal pertains to kickbacks in the Rs 3,700 crore deal with the Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland to buy 12 VVIP helicopters for the Indian Air force.
Italian investigators who are probing the bribery and commissions angle in the deal have found a note written by the firm’s consultant to key middleman Guido Hashke which says Ms Sonia Gandhi is “the driving force” behind the deal. He provides a list of persons to be contacted and says the British High Commissioner in New Delhi must target people close to Ms Gandhi. The Union Government has since cancelled the deal, but questions relating to kickbacks — estimated at Rs 360 crore — remain. On the Indian side, the investigations are being carried out by the Central Bureau of Investigation, which has thus far named a former Air Force Chief, his brother and a few others in the First Information Report. We still do not know if there are any VVIP passengers on the AgustaWestland gravy train but we certainly have substantial evidence to show that the Congress has taken the ‘foreign route’ to raise funds since the return of Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister in 1980.
BG Deshmukh, who was Cabinet Secretary when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister, provides us valuable insights into the way the Nehru-Gandhis relied more on foreign sources, both for party funds and their own security. In his book A Cabinet Secretary Looks Back, Deshmukh talks of the Bofors payoffs scandal and says that its genesis could be traced to the practice initiated by Indira Gandhi to collect funds for the Congress. In his view, collection of funds for the party was more transparent during the days of Jawaharlal Nehru when business houses were permitted to make open donations.
When Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister, she realised that she was “in dire need of funds to fight elections to establish herself as the undisputed leader of the Congress Party”. In Maharashtra, she depended heavily on Rajni Patel and Vasantrao Naik to raise funds “and they did this by literally selling sheets of sea water in the Nariman Point area”. However, Indira Gandhi changed the way she collected funds for her party after she returned to power in 1980. According to Deshmukh, “She decided that a far better way to collect funds for the party was through claiming cuts from foreign deals”. He heard from his colleagues that “trusted senior officers” were posted in the Defence Ministry and the Department of Defence Production. Further, he was told that Sanjay Gandhi had summoned senior officers from certain ministries and instructed them on certain deals.
Indira Gandhi’s new method of collecting party funds from foreign sources has been corroborated by two other persons who have held high office in the country — R Venkataraman, who was President, and BK Nehru, former Governor of Assam, Jammu & Kashmir, and Gujarat, and Indian Ambassador to the United States. In his book, My Presidential Years, Venkataraman refers to a conversation he had with JRD Tata after Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s statement in Parliament that neither he (Rajiv Gandhi) nor any member of his family had received any consideration for the Bofors deal. Tata told the President that while Mr Gandhi’s statement could be true, “it would be difficult to deny the receipt of commissions by the Congress Party”. Venkataraman said, “He (Tata) felt that since 1980, industrialists had not been approached for political contributions and that the general feeling among them was that the party was financed by commissions on (foreign) deals”.
BK Nehru, in his autobiography, refers to a conversation he had with Rajiv Gandhi after Sanjay Gandhi’s demise. He quotes Rajiv Gandhi as having said that “crores and unaccounted crores” had been collected for the party. But, Rajiv Gandhi was a changed man when he assumed office. Mr AP Mukherjee, former CBI Director, substantially corroborates the opinions of Deshmukh and Tata in his book Unknown facets of Rajiv Gandhi, Jyoti Basu and Indrajit Gupta. He recollects his conversation with Rajiv Gandhi at the Prime Minister’s residence in June 1989, at the height of the Bofors scandal, during which Rajiv Gandhi told him that a big all-India party like the Congress needed “substantial amounts of money” just for its routine administration and this requirement “assumes a huge proportion” on the eve of Assembly and/or parliamentary elections. “This leads to massive fund collections by important party functionaries, ministers and businessmen”. He discussed this problem with his colleagues and advisers and they said that commissions to middlemen should be banned “but the commissions to be given as a matter of routine practice by the suppliers of major defence materials could be pooled under the care of some non-Government entity which could be utilised solely for the purpose of meeting the inescapable expenses of the party”.
Rajiv Gandhi further told Mr Mukherjee that such a step would prevent the collusive nexus between the middlemen, ministers, bureaucrats and also help the Government “do away with the quid pro quo relationship with some unscrupulous businessmen and equally unscrupulous politicians and bureaucrats.” Hence, he (Rajiv Gandhi) endorsed the same. Mr Mukherjee was Additional Director of CBI when this conversation took place. He became Director on October 31 that year, but was shifted out by the Janata Dal Government headed by VP Singh a few months hence. Later, the CBI acquired evidence to show that Bofors had remitted US$ 7.3 million to the Swiss Bank account of Maria and Ottavio Quattrocchi, close friends of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi.
Last year, Wikileaks exposed a sensational telegram from the US Embassy in New Delhi to Washington, DC in October 1975, when India was under the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi. This telegram said that US diplomats heard from their Swedish counterparts that Rajiv Gandhi was the middleman through whom the Swedes were trying to sell India the fighter aircraft made by Saab-Scania. The British Jaguar eventually won the deal, but Wikileaks’ allegation was that Rajiv Gandhi was an arms middleman before he became Prime Minister.
With so much evidence, is it any surprise that consultants operating on behalf of AgustaWestland were advising middlemen to ‘target’ persons close to Ms Sonia Gandhi? The Congress president may well succeed, via the Union Government and its ‘caged parrot’ in containing investigations in India, but there are investigators and prosecutors in her land of birth who are in hot pursuit of the truth. What an irony!
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/foreign-hands-fill-the-congresss-coffers.html
Tuesday, 18 February 2014 |
A Surya Prakash
While we still do not know if there are any VVIP passengers on the AgustaWestland gravy train, there’s certainly evidence to show that the Congress has taken the ‘foreign route' to raise funds since the 1980s
Allegations of bribery and commissions in arms deals and such other huge international contracts surface as a matter of routine whenever the Congress is in power at the Centre. The latest scandal pertains to kickbacks in the Rs 3,700 crore deal with the Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland to buy 12 VVIP helicopters for the Indian Air force.
Italian investigators who are probing the bribery and commissions angle in the deal have found a note written by the firm’s consultant to key middleman Guido Hashke which says Ms Sonia Gandhi is “the driving force” behind the deal. He provides a list of persons to be contacted and says the British High Commissioner in New Delhi must target people close to Ms Gandhi. The Union Government has since cancelled the deal, but questions relating to kickbacks — estimated at Rs 360 crore — remain. On the Indian side, the investigations are being carried out by the Central Bureau of Investigation, which has thus far named a former Air Force Chief, his brother and a few others in the First Information Report. We still do not know if there are any VVIP passengers on the AgustaWestland gravy train but we certainly have substantial evidence to show that the Congress has taken the ‘foreign route’ to raise funds since the return of Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister in 1980.
BG Deshmukh, who was Cabinet Secretary when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister, provides us valuable insights into the way the Nehru-Gandhis relied more on foreign sources, both for party funds and their own security. In his book A Cabinet Secretary Looks Back, Deshmukh talks of the Bofors payoffs scandal and says that its genesis could be traced to the practice initiated by Indira Gandhi to collect funds for the Congress. In his view, collection of funds for the party was more transparent during the days of Jawaharlal Nehru when business houses were permitted to make open donations.
When Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister, she realised that she was “in dire need of funds to fight elections to establish herself as the undisputed leader of the Congress Party”. In Maharashtra, she depended heavily on Rajni Patel and Vasantrao Naik to raise funds “and they did this by literally selling sheets of sea water in the Nariman Point area”. However, Indira Gandhi changed the way she collected funds for her party after she returned to power in 1980. According to Deshmukh, “She decided that a far better way to collect funds for the party was through claiming cuts from foreign deals”. He heard from his colleagues that “trusted senior officers” were posted in the Defence Ministry and the Department of Defence Production. Further, he was told that Sanjay Gandhi had summoned senior officers from certain ministries and instructed them on certain deals.
Indira Gandhi’s new method of collecting party funds from foreign sources has been corroborated by two other persons who have held high office in the country — R Venkataraman, who was President, and BK Nehru, former Governor of Assam, Jammu & Kashmir, and Gujarat, and Indian Ambassador to the United States. In his book, My Presidential Years, Venkataraman refers to a conversation he had with JRD Tata after Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s statement in Parliament that neither he (Rajiv Gandhi) nor any member of his family had received any consideration for the Bofors deal. Tata told the President that while Mr Gandhi’s statement could be true, “it would be difficult to deny the receipt of commissions by the Congress Party”. Venkataraman said, “He (Tata) felt that since 1980, industrialists had not been approached for political contributions and that the general feeling among them was that the party was financed by commissions on (foreign) deals”.
BK Nehru, in his autobiography, refers to a conversation he had with Rajiv Gandhi after Sanjay Gandhi’s demise. He quotes Rajiv Gandhi as having said that “crores and unaccounted crores” had been collected for the party. But, Rajiv Gandhi was a changed man when he assumed office. Mr AP Mukherjee, former CBI Director, substantially corroborates the opinions of Deshmukh and Tata in his book Unknown facets of Rajiv Gandhi, Jyoti Basu and Indrajit Gupta. He recollects his conversation with Rajiv Gandhi at the Prime Minister’s residence in June 1989, at the height of the Bofors scandal, during which Rajiv Gandhi told him that a big all-India party like the Congress needed “substantial amounts of money” just for its routine administration and this requirement “assumes a huge proportion” on the eve of Assembly and/or parliamentary elections. “This leads to massive fund collections by important party functionaries, ministers and businessmen”. He discussed this problem with his colleagues and advisers and they said that commissions to middlemen should be banned “but the commissions to be given as a matter of routine practice by the suppliers of major defence materials could be pooled under the care of some non-Government entity which could be utilised solely for the purpose of meeting the inescapable expenses of the party”.
Rajiv Gandhi further told Mr Mukherjee that such a step would prevent the collusive nexus between the middlemen, ministers, bureaucrats and also help the Government “do away with the quid pro quo relationship with some unscrupulous businessmen and equally unscrupulous politicians and bureaucrats.” Hence, he (Rajiv Gandhi) endorsed the same. Mr Mukherjee was Additional Director of CBI when this conversation took place. He became Director on October 31 that year, but was shifted out by the Janata Dal Government headed by VP Singh a few months hence. Later, the CBI acquired evidence to show that Bofors had remitted US$ 7.3 million to the Swiss Bank account of Maria and Ottavio Quattrocchi, close friends of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi.
Last year, Wikileaks exposed a sensational telegram from the US Embassy in New Delhi to Washington, DC in October 1975, when India was under the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi. This telegram said that US diplomats heard from their Swedish counterparts that Rajiv Gandhi was the middleman through whom the Swedes were trying to sell India the fighter aircraft made by Saab-Scania. The British Jaguar eventually won the deal, but Wikileaks’ allegation was that Rajiv Gandhi was an arms middleman before he became Prime Minister.
With so much evidence, is it any surprise that consultants operating on behalf of AgustaWestland were advising middlemen to ‘target’ persons close to Ms Sonia Gandhi? The Congress president may well succeed, via the Union Government and its ‘caged parrot’ in containing investigations in India, but there are investigators and prosecutors in her land of birth who are in hot pursuit of the truth. What an irony!
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/foreign-hands-fill-the-congresss-coffers.html
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Wendy Doniger, Mr Lewd and Ms Prude -- TCA Srinivasa Raghavan
Kalyanaraman
Wendy Doniger, Mr Lewd and Ms Prude Liberalism can lead to paradoxical outcomes which leave everyone unhappy.
February 14, 2014 Last Updated at 22:44 IST
T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan
The Wendy Doniger affair has once again brought an old issue to the fore, namely, the paradox of liberalism. One aspect of it concerns the obsessions of liberals that only what they certify as liberal is liberal. In that sense, it is their certification and not a fair outcome that becomes the yardstick by which to measure.
So for decades now Western intellectuals have debated the paradoxically illiberal mindset of the liberals, the insistence that only their interpretation is valid and all other interpretations are invalid. Millions of words of have been written about it by some outstanding scholars.
ALSO READ: Penguin India breaks silence, blames Indian laws for book recall
The debate has now come to India, occasioned by the occasional ban on, or withdrawal of, a book either from the market or a syllabus. Each time this happens, the liberals start weepily sighing that the end of Indian democracy is very near, which it is not, of course.
Exaggeration in, and the merits of, the argument aside, I think it is time people paused for a moment before they wrote or spoke. All sorts of people sound off, from actors to activists and writers to wanglers.
ALSO READ: India Censored
A moment of reflection before spouting forth will -- if nothing else -- ensure that they do not make fools of themselves. Far better intellects than theirs have been grappling, that too for more than half a century, with the problem that arises when personal and social preferences collide and then require someone to lay down a rule to avoid such collisions or at least minimise the damage that such collisions can cause.
Sen’s sense
Possibly the most famous and erudite analysis of the problem came from our own Amartya Sen who, in 1970, wrote a now largely forgotten paper called “The Impossibility of the Paretian Liberal” in which he demonstrated the central logical paradox of liberalism.
He postulated that two members of society called, say, Mr Lewd and Ms Prude, collide when considering the only issue before them, namely, that only one of them can read the only book that exists. The third alternative is that it must be pulped.
Now, said Sen, imagine that Mr Lewd wants to read it but would be absolutely overjoyed if Ms Prude were forced to read it. Schadenfreude has its uses, too.
Ms Prude, on the other hand, would prefer it to be pulped without anyone reading it. However, if it can’t be pulped, she thinks it is better that she reads it even if she is disgusted by it rather than someone actually enjoying reading it.
What, asked Sen, should the government do in order to rank these outcomes in terms of their social impact? It has three choices before it – give it to Mr Lewd, give it to Ms Prude or pulp.
The paradox
The government decides that the most liberal policy will be to respect individual preferences over things that concern only them – thus pulping is better than Ms Prude having to read the book, since in a liberal society Ms Prude should not be forced to do anything she doesn’t want to and Mr Lewd’s wish to read the book is better than pulping because a liberal society would not block his wish to do so.
Thus the liberal government judges that Mr Lewd should get to read the book, while Ms Prude is saved the discomfort of reading it -- and the book is not pulped.
Sounds fine, said Sen, except that this solution makes society worse off because both individuals prefer that Ms Prude read the book to the actually chosen outcome that Mr Lewd read it.
The point Sen was making is this: If social benefit was not measured expressly in individual freedoms, this would not happen.
Let me explain this further in the way Allan Gibbard, a philosopher, explained it. Suppose two neighbours, who hate each other with an all-consuming intensity, have divergent colour preferences for their houses. One prefers red and detests blue. The other prefers yellow and detests green.
Gibbard showed how, following the liberal principle if each of them were to choose the colour of their houses, they would choose colours for their houses merely in order to annoy their neighbour. This would leave both hugely annoyed because they hate each other to such an extent that each will prefer the wrong colour for his house.
In short, liberalism can lead to inconsistent choices when strong preferences are highly polarised, which is what happens with religions and especially so when religion becomes a factor in public policy.
Silence can be useful, too
To conclude, I must also refer readers to what a commentator on the The Hoot, a media website noted, namely, that Penguin as private entity is at perfect liberty to do as it wishes to with its products. And, howsoever obnoxious it may be, the fringe groups also do have a right to feel just as offended as do the liberals by them. The problem arises when such rights are imposed on others.
Net-net: Our liberals should think before they speak because it is not only the illiberal people who hold illiterate opinions.
http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/t-c-a-srinivasa-raghavan-wendy-doniger-mr-lewd-and-ms-prude-114021400613_1.html
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Kalyanaraman theorem: impossibility of individual freedoms as a measure of social benefit
Arrow’s impossibility theorem
The theory states that no rank-order voting system can be designed to satisfy three fairness criteria:
- If every voter prefers alternative X over alternative Y, then the group prefers X over Y.
- If every voter preference between X and Y remains unchanged, then the group’s preference between X and Y will remain unchanged.
- There is no ‘dictator’ with the power to determine the group’s preference.
Gibbard-Satterthware theorem
The theorem extends Arrow’s impossibility theorem and holds that for three or more candidates, one of the following three things must hold for every voting rule:
1. The rule is dictatorial (i.e., there is a single individual who can choose the winner), or
2. There is some candidate who can never win, under the rule, or
3. The rule is susceptible to tactical voting, in the sense that there are conditions under which a voter with full knowledge of how the other voters are to vote and of the rule being used would have an incentive to vote in a manner that does not reflect his or her preferences.
Kalyanaraman theorem to resolve the liberal paradox of impossibility of individual freedoms as a measure of social benefit
Extending these theorems to the Wendy porno problem posited as liberalism vs. measuring social benefit, Kalyanaraman theorem posits:
- Individual freedoms do not add up to social benefit
- Social benefit is measured by an ethical order (like dharma in Hindu studies context)
- This dharma is a cosmic-consciousness global ethical order, inviolate, dictatorial always resulting in net measurable social benefit.
In this positing, dharma is defined as net social benefit which irons out individual pluses and minuses. If such ironing out results in a positive outcome, that is a measure of abhyudayam (social welfare). This is the ethical principle which is the underlying tenet of Hindu studies for millennia.
This is NOT an original formulation. This is just a translation of a Hindu tradition: dharmo rakshati rakshitah‘dharma protects those who protect (dharma)’.
The formulation is simple: the measure of a social value system is the measure suggested by pitr-s (ancestors) whose contributions to the social order have resulted in today's social order.
There is nothing like an absolute freedom as a right. This freedom is the result of performance of absolute responsibility by every individual who makes up the social order.
The impossibility theorem thus gets resolved by positing responsibilities (or duties) as the obverse of the rights 'coin'. This is exemplified in Vietnam Constitution.
S. Kalyanaraman
Sarasvati Research Center
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Prez cracks the whip on Nalanda Univ. Will Amartya Sen quit after Rs. 2727 crore ghotala?
Sources say the Comptroller and Auditor General has raised objection on payments to vice chancellor Gopa Sabharwal and senior official Anjana Sharma. Sabharwal, meanwhile dismissed the President's letter as "routine."
http://www.newindianexpress.com/thesundaystandard/Prez-Cracks-The-Whip-on-Nalanda-University-To-Get-It-Moving-Fast/2014/02/16/article2059349.ece
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Wendy porno: Debate on CNN London on freedom to lie
Some major names of the literary world are speaking out after Penguin India's decision to recall a book. "The Hindus: An Alternative History" chronicles the rise of one of the world's oldest religions. Its author, Wendy Doniger, is respected, and American academic -- a respected American academic. But right-wing Hindu groups say the book contains heresies. CNN's Sumnima Udas has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SUMNIMA UDAS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a book that many here in India had never even heard of, but Penguin Book India's decision to withdraw the American historian Wendy Doniger's book called "The Hindus: An Alternative History" from the Indian market has outraged many writers and literary groups here.
Author Arundhati Roy of the Booker Prize-winning "The God of Small Things," wrote a scathing open letter to Penguin, also her publisher, saying, quote, "Even if there was no fatwa, no ban, not even a court order, you have not only caved in, you have humiliated yourself abjectly before a fly-by-night outfit."
She's referring to the Hindu Nationalist group which filed a civil suit against Penguin claiming the book was riddled with heresies and factual inaccuracies and deliberately intending to outrage religious sentiments.
After a four-year legal process, Penguin reached an out-of-court settlement to withdraw the book from India. The publishing giant defends it decision, saying it has an obligation to, quote, "respect the laws of the land in which it operates, however intolerant and restrictive those laws may be."
Doniger blames Indian laws, which guarantees freedom of speech and expression, but at the same time, it makes it a crime to offend religious sentiment in spoken or written words. Proponents of India's penal code, though, say in a country with a history of religious violence, these laws may perhaps be needed.
Sumnima Udas, CNN, New Delhi.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, earlier I spoke with British historian and writer William Dalrymple. He's a vocal critic of the decision to destroy copies of "The Hindus" in India. I began by asking him why Wendy Doniger's book is so controversial amongst some Hindus.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR: It's a clash of two cultures, really. Wendy's a child of the 60s. She does Freudian analysis of Hindu myths. She's a profound and great scholar of Sanskrit, but a Freudian interpretation of these myths often causes upset among very traditional Hindus who are not used to hearing their myths interpreted in any but in a faith context.
And she's a woman who is in love with Hinduism, who has dedicated her life to the Hindu myths, but whose style of interpretation and criticism of them doesn't sit easily with some Diaspora Hindus who are used to hearing it only in the context of the temple and in the way they're used to hearing their myths interpreted, and she's run into a lot of opposition over the years.
She's hugely respected among other scholars. But her style of exposition riles some people up in the Hindu community, particularly among the Diaspora.
FOSTER: And is that a minority, would you say? This is not the general view of Indians in regard to the religious impact of literature?
DALRYMPLE: Well, I think a scholar like Wendy writing for a -- is writing for an audience of intellectuals. And these two worlds don't often meet each other, and it's a clash of two different styles of talking about mythology.
Just like a modern Biblical scholar at a university doing textual analysis of the Gospels will see the Gospels in a different way to an evangelical Christian in a Midwest church. They're two different species, and when the two come into conflict, then they will all come into contact, obviously there's going to be some dissonance.
FOSTER: So, what are your views on Penguin recalling and destroying the copies of the book?
DALRYMPLE: It's become clear that Penguin in fact fought a four-year campaign against this lawsuit, and Wendy herself has made clear what I know personally to be true, that the Indian legal code still has on the statute books, particularly -- a particular statue called 295 A, which makes it a criminal offense to in any way cause offense to anyone else's religion.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, "The Hindus" is just the latest book to court controversy. We went to pick some of the other examples of well-known disputed books here in London, for example, and the publication of Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf," the manifesto prohibited in Germany, although many libraries have a copy for academic research.
There's also Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses." This book caused outrage amongst some Muslims when it was published and led to a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death.
And an older example, D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover." The uncensored version of the book was actually banned for several decades in the UK, Canada, and Australia. It was deemed to be obscene because of its explicit language and sex scenes.
Well, for more on the recall of "The Hindus" in India, I'm joined now by Madhava Turumella. He's the vice president of the Hindu Forum of Great Britain. Thank you very much for joining us.
MADHAVA TURUMELLA, VICE PRESIDENT, HINDU FORUM OF GREAT BRITAIN: Thanks for having me.
FOSTER: And you're rather pleased with Penguin's decision today. You're not agreeing with some of these authors who think it's a terrible idea.
TURUMELLA: I am happy that Penguin has done it, but at the same time, Hindus' view is that we are very liberal and it is not right to say that we don't encourage freedom of speech. It's not correct. Because it is not that easy to ban a book in India, and India is a particular country.
FOSTER: And your point is that this book hasn't been banned in India.
TURUMELLA: It's not banned at all, yes.
FOSTER: And you wouldn't want it to be banned?
TURUMELLA: No, I don't want it to be banned. But at the same time, I want Wendy to come out and to say clear-cut, point-by-point, raised by Hindus, refute them. But actually, Wendy has this ability to just write whatever she wants to write, and then shoot and scoot. And then she runs away.
So for example, it's not new. Wendy has done -- she wrote an essay on Encarta Encyclopedia, Microsoft Encarta. And Hindus made a lot of inaccuracies, factual inaccuracies. When we raised these points, Wendy never bothered to answer, and Microsoft withdrew that they said factual inaccuracies.
FOSTER: But --
TURUMELLA: Even in this book, by the way.
FOSTER: But would you -- but her full body of work, would you agree that -- you've got a particular issue with this one book, but her full body of work is actually a more solid foundation on which to critique Hinduism?
TURUMELLA: What is her work? Her work, actually it's -- I'm actually brought up in tradition, I'm a priest, I studied with her.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: I would say her work, she just translated the Rig Veda, that's all her academic work. The rest of them were, perhaps, she was making commentaries. And those were actually her fantasies or -- I mean, I think that --
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: -- they are her views.
FOSTER: Away from that, we know that there's a difference of opinion from you and her supporters.
TURUMELLA: Yes.
FOSTER: But this issue that Penguin has got caught up in --
TURUMELLA: Right.
FOSTER: -- your view is that you shouldn't ban the book, but you don't necessarily want it -- you like the fact that it's been taken off the market. Shouldn't you be allowing the public to decide --
TURUMELLA: Exactly.
FOSTER: -- what they think of the book rather than --
TURUMELLA: This is -- yes.
FOSTER: -- saying that they shouldn't even have a right to see the book.
TURUMELLA: This is our problem. We Hindus have been extremely liberal. As a result, we Hindus have been taken for task and these, whatever little, for example, in page 36, Wendy made a comment saying -- a very strong observation saying Hindus do not allow women to study Vedas.
But Vedas -- the Veda, Rig Veda, which she translated, Vedas are 29 -- Vishishtadvaita and our leaders are there. And then, the chapter that claimed the lady wrote 13 hymns. I --
FOSTER: But we're talking here about what lots of people see as freedom of speech. You say you're not against freedom of speech.
TURUMELLA: No, we are not.
FOSTER: But you don't want the book --
(CROSSTALK)
TURUMELLA: I want her to --
FOSTER: -- on the market.
TURUMELLA: I want her to -- no, we're not actually saying that. What I --
FOSTER: But you like the fact that's come off the market.
TURUMELLA: I -- you're not seeing. There is a difference the way that you put it, in a sense, face-saving method, by whoever it is. See, it is not that easy. It was actually out-of-court settlement. It should have done -- my wish was it should have gone through the court --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: And ended up with the supreme court.
TURUMELLA: -- entire. It has to go through the entire law process. But then, why did they wait to drop? Because the law that factually it contains a lot of inaccuracies.
FOSTER: Well, there you're in agreement with everyone on this issue, because a lot of people who disagree with you wish it had gone to the supreme court and hadn't been dealt with outside court so it could have been dealt with as a national issue.
TURUMELLA: Hindus have been vindicated if this case had gone to the supreme court. Because see, your freedom of expression should not become our insult. We have tolerated enough, and I was saying --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: But you want to --
TURUMELLA: -- these pages --
FOSTER: But the case in the court was to take it out of circulation, really, wasn't it? And you --
TURUMELLA: It is not the court which said -- Penguin Publisher said it.
FOSTER: I know, but ultimately, that's what you wanted them to do.
TURUMELLA: No. Ultimately, we wanted the truth to come out. The truth has to come out. Let's debate. Let's go to the --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: We can't have a debate if the book isn't out --
TURUMELLA: No, actually --
FOSTER: -- and people can't even read it.
TURUMELLA: So, you want us to go out onto the streets like some Salman Rushdie? What happened to Salman Rushdie and that? So, we don't want to go onto the streets. We went through the legal process. Is that wrong? India is a legal country. It's a secular country. You have the freedom of expression, but you are --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: But freedom of expression is a multitude of views, and that view has been taken out of the market.
TURUMELLA: No, it has not. They have taken it out. We wanted it to continue. They have taken it out. Who wanted them to take it out? And they have taken -- their legal experts said no, take it out. Factual inaccuracies, that is what we're saying. Please don't try to bring inaccuracies into -- and say that this is your history.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: Who are you to say this is our history? We are Hindus. I'm brought up in tradition. I'm not agreeing with you. Come, let's fight about it legally. Let's fight about it and let's come to a table and talk about it. And I challenge -- and there are so many inaccuracies there.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: So, this is the problem with that.
FOSTER: Well, like you say, you didn't get that opportunity, because it was settled out of court.
TURUMELLA: She was --
FOSTER: Thank you very much, indeed, for joining us here.
TURUMELLA: Thank you for having me.
FOSTER: There's been a lot of reaction to this story on our Facebook page, as you can imagine. Here's a sample of what you've had to say from viewers on both sides of the debate.
One viewer says, "India is claiming itself as the world's biggest democracy, and we all know that freedom of speech is a fundamental of democracy. India should not ban it."
On the other side of the debate is this viewer, who said, "So, you can publish a book that may be factually incorrect and claim that it should be allowed to prove freedom of expression? We don't reject only to someone hurting our sentiments, but also the sentiments of those practicing other religions."
The team at CNN CONNECT THE WORLD want to hear from you. What do you think about Penguin India's decision to recall "The Hindus"? Is it right to move to avoid possible unrest, or is it an attack on freedom of expression or speech? Well, facebook.com/CNNconnect is where you can have your say. You can also tweet me @MaxFosterCNN, your thought please, @MaxFosterCNN.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1402/14/ctw.01.html
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SUMNIMA UDAS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a book that many here in India had never even heard of, but Penguin Book India's decision to withdraw the American historian Wendy Doniger's book called "The Hindus: An Alternative History" from the Indian market has outraged many writers and literary groups here.
Author Arundhati Roy of the Booker Prize-winning "The God of Small Things," wrote a scathing open letter to Penguin, also her publisher, saying, quote, "Even if there was no fatwa, no ban, not even a court order, you have not only caved in, you have humiliated yourself abjectly before a fly-by-night outfit."
She's referring to the Hindu Nationalist group which filed a civil suit against Penguin claiming the book was riddled with heresies and factual inaccuracies and deliberately intending to outrage religious sentiments.
After a four-year legal process, Penguin reached an out-of-court settlement to withdraw the book from India. The publishing giant defends it decision, saying it has an obligation to, quote, "respect the laws of the land in which it operates, however intolerant and restrictive those laws may be."
Doniger blames Indian laws, which guarantees freedom of speech and expression, but at the same time, it makes it a crime to offend religious sentiment in spoken or written words. Proponents of India's penal code, though, say in a country with a history of religious violence, these laws may perhaps be needed.
Sumnima Udas, CNN, New Delhi.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, earlier I spoke with British historian and writer William Dalrymple. He's a vocal critic of the decision to destroy copies of "The Hindus" in India. I began by asking him why Wendy Doniger's book is so controversial amongst some Hindus.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR: It's a clash of two cultures, really. Wendy's a child of the 60s. She does Freudian analysis of Hindu myths. She's a profound and great scholar of Sanskrit, but a Freudian interpretation of these myths often causes upset among very traditional Hindus who are not used to hearing their myths interpreted in any but in a faith context.
And she's a woman who is in love with Hinduism, who has dedicated her life to the Hindu myths, but whose style of interpretation and criticism of them doesn't sit easily with some Diaspora Hindus who are used to hearing it only in the context of the temple and in the way they're used to hearing their myths interpreted, and she's run into a lot of opposition over the years.
She's hugely respected among other scholars. But her style of exposition riles some people up in the Hindu community, particularly among the Diaspora.
FOSTER: And is that a minority, would you say? This is not the general view of Indians in regard to the religious impact of literature?
DALRYMPLE: Well, I think a scholar like Wendy writing for a -- is writing for an audience of intellectuals. And these two worlds don't often meet each other, and it's a clash of two different styles of talking about mythology.
Just like a modern Biblical scholar at a university doing textual analysis of the Gospels will see the Gospels in a different way to an evangelical Christian in a Midwest church. They're two different species, and when the two come into conflict, then they will all come into contact, obviously there's going to be some dissonance.
FOSTER: So, what are your views on Penguin recalling and destroying the copies of the book?
DALRYMPLE: It's become clear that Penguin in fact fought a four-year campaign against this lawsuit, and Wendy herself has made clear what I know personally to be true, that the Indian legal code still has on the statute books, particularly -- a particular statue called 295 A, which makes it a criminal offense to in any way cause offense to anyone else's religion.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, "The Hindus" is just the latest book to court controversy. We went to pick some of the other examples of well-known disputed books here in London, for example, and the publication of Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf," the manifesto prohibited in Germany, although many libraries have a copy for academic research.
There's also Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses." This book caused outrage amongst some Muslims when it was published and led to a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death.
And an older example, D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover." The uncensored version of the book was actually banned for several decades in the UK, Canada, and Australia. It was deemed to be obscene because of its explicit language and sex scenes.
Well, for more on the recall of "The Hindus" in India, I'm joined now by Madhava Turumella. He's the vice president of the Hindu Forum of Great Britain. Thank you very much for joining us.
MADHAVA TURUMELLA, VICE PRESIDENT, HINDU FORUM OF GREAT BRITAIN: Thanks for having me.
FOSTER: And you're rather pleased with Penguin's decision today. You're not agreeing with some of these authors who think it's a terrible idea.
TURUMELLA: I am happy that Penguin has done it, but at the same time, Hindus' view is that we are very liberal and it is not right to say that we don't encourage freedom of speech. It's not correct. Because it is not that easy to ban a book in India, and India is a particular country.
FOSTER: And your point is that this book hasn't been banned in India.
TURUMELLA: It's not banned at all, yes.
FOSTER: And you wouldn't want it to be banned?
TURUMELLA: No, I don't want it to be banned. But at the same time, I want Wendy to come out and to say clear-cut, point-by-point, raised by Hindus, refute them. But actually, Wendy has this ability to just write whatever she wants to write, and then shoot and scoot. And then she runs away.
So for example, it's not new. Wendy has done -- she wrote an essay on Encarta Encyclopedia, Microsoft Encarta. And Hindus made a lot of inaccuracies, factual inaccuracies. When we raised these points, Wendy never bothered to answer, and Microsoft withdrew that they said factual inaccuracies.
FOSTER: But --
TURUMELLA: Even in this book, by the way.
FOSTER: But would you -- but her full body of work, would you agree that -- you've got a particular issue with this one book, but her full body of work is actually a more solid foundation on which to critique Hinduism?
TURUMELLA: What is her work? Her work, actually it's -- I'm actually brought up in tradition, I'm a priest, I studied with her.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: I would say her work, she just translated the Rig Veda, that's all her academic work. The rest of them were, perhaps, she was making commentaries. And those were actually her fantasies or -- I mean, I think that --
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: -- they are her views.
FOSTER: Away from that, we know that there's a difference of opinion from you and her supporters.
TURUMELLA: Yes.
FOSTER: But this issue that Penguin has got caught up in --
TURUMELLA: Right.
FOSTER: -- your view is that you shouldn't ban the book, but you don't necessarily want it -- you like the fact that it's been taken off the market. Shouldn't you be allowing the public to decide --
TURUMELLA: Exactly.
FOSTER: -- what they think of the book rather than --
TURUMELLA: This is -- yes.
FOSTER: -- saying that they shouldn't even have a right to see the book.
TURUMELLA: This is our problem. We Hindus have been extremely liberal. As a result, we Hindus have been taken for task and these, whatever little, for example, in page 36, Wendy made a comment saying -- a very strong observation saying Hindus do not allow women to study Vedas.
But Vedas -- the Veda, Rig Veda, which she translated, Vedas are 29 -- Vishishtadvaita and our leaders are there. And then, the chapter that claimed the lady wrote 13 hymns. I --
FOSTER: But we're talking here about what lots of people see as freedom of speech. You say you're not against freedom of speech.
TURUMELLA: No, we are not.
FOSTER: But you don't want the book --
(CROSSTALK)
TURUMELLA: I want her to --
FOSTER: -- on the market.
TURUMELLA: I want her to -- no, we're not actually saying that. What I --
FOSTER: But you like the fact that's come off the market.
TURUMELLA: I -- you're not seeing. There is a difference the way that you put it, in a sense, face-saving method, by whoever it is. See, it is not that easy. It was actually out-of-court settlement. It should have done -- my wish was it should have gone through the court --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: And ended up with the supreme court.
TURUMELLA: -- entire. It has to go through the entire law process. But then, why did they wait to drop? Because the law that factually it contains a lot of inaccuracies.
FOSTER: Well, there you're in agreement with everyone on this issue, because a lot of people who disagree with you wish it had gone to the supreme court and hadn't been dealt with outside court so it could have been dealt with as a national issue.
TURUMELLA: Hindus have been vindicated if this case had gone to the supreme court. Because see, your freedom of expression should not become our insult. We have tolerated enough, and I was saying --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: But you want to --
TURUMELLA: -- these pages --
FOSTER: But the case in the court was to take it out of circulation, really, wasn't it? And you --
TURUMELLA: It is not the court which said -- Penguin Publisher said it.
FOSTER: I know, but ultimately, that's what you wanted them to do.
TURUMELLA: No. Ultimately, we wanted the truth to come out. The truth has to come out. Let's debate. Let's go to the --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: We can't have a debate if the book isn't out --
TURUMELLA: No, actually --
FOSTER: -- and people can't even read it.
TURUMELLA: So, you want us to go out onto the streets like some Salman Rushdie? What happened to Salman Rushdie and that? So, we don't want to go onto the streets. We went through the legal process. Is that wrong? India is a legal country. It's a secular country. You have the freedom of expression, but you are --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: But freedom of expression is a multitude of views, and that view has been taken out of the market.
TURUMELLA: No, it has not. They have taken it out. We wanted it to continue. They have taken it out. Who wanted them to take it out? And they have taken -- their legal experts said no, take it out. Factual inaccuracies, that is what we're saying. Please don't try to bring inaccuracies into -- and say that this is your history.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: Who are you to say this is our history? We are Hindus. I'm brought up in tradition. I'm not agreeing with you. Come, let's fight about it legally. Let's fight about it and let's come to a table and talk about it. And I challenge -- and there are so many inaccuracies there.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: So, this is the problem with that.
FOSTER: Well, like you say, you didn't get that opportunity, because it was settled out of court.
TURUMELLA: She was --
FOSTER: Thank you very much, indeed, for joining us here.
TURUMELLA: Thank you for having me.
FOSTER: There's been a lot of reaction to this story on our Facebook page, as you can imagine. Here's a sample of what you've had to say from viewers on both sides of the debate.
One viewer says, "India is claiming itself as the world's biggest democracy, and we all know that freedom of speech is a fundamental of democracy. India should not ban it."
On the other side of the debate is this viewer, who said, "So, you can publish a book that may be factually incorrect and claim that it should be allowed to prove freedom of expression? We don't reject only to someone hurting our sentiments, but also the sentiments of those practicing other religions."
The team at CNN CONNECT THE WORLD want to hear from you. What do you think about Penguin India's decision to recall "The Hindus"? Is it right to move to avoid possible unrest, or is it an attack on freedom of expression or speech? Well, facebook.com/CNNconnect is where you can have your say. You can also tweet me @MaxFosterCNN, your thought please, @MaxFosterCNN.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1402/14/ctw.01.html
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Dear 'Hard Working' FM, sorry, but the cake stinks -- An open letter to FM
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Dear ‘Hard Working’ FM, sorry, but the cake stinks
Dear FM, I graduated around the same time when UPA came into power first time, in 2004.Despite belonging to middle class strata of society and from a tier-3 city with no higher education or qualified degree I raised the ladder of financial market world as commodity & currency trader. Even I manage to get work in some of the great cities of our country and even abroad and earning well enough to spend and enjoy my life at leisure. I even survive the financial crisis of 2008-09, but thanks to your various steps taken in last two years and
apathy towards FCRA bill and commodity market specific (read your never ending love towards ‘P’ note driven equity market) careers of many become cropper in the last few years. But I am not here to discuss on those issues, after all we are very small constituency for taken as a vote influence. But your vote of account does not romance during this valentine month with me even after sops.
Image Courtesy : Google |
I have a few points to make which I discuss later in brief here point by point. But before that I must applaud you for all the juggling of numbers and mockery of statistics in broad daylight and able to pretend selling comb in bald houses.
A) In your interim budget you propose excise duty cut in automobiles sector specially in small segment car by 4% .i.e roughly 10-17k rupees discount in that segment, we all know the automobile sector specifically small car segment is bleeding and facing its toughest time in last decade but mere 4% cut in this segment while giving larger sop to SUV market to 6%,which is anyway growing far more than other segment, is a complete wash hog in my view, people like me are not buying cars because inflation eating up my household budgets, job uncertainty does not pursue me for opting car loans and thanks to govt borrowing, interest rate, EMI remain a constant factor in slumping car sales, take this on face why would I go to buy car for a mere discount of some few more thousands rupees where my concern lies more to do with other things. Dear FM you need to fix other things first before you ask me to buy car.
B) You are bailing out Air India but have no future plan for our shrinking public transport system facility. Subsides numbers are so exotic that I prefer to leave it for economist to tell you the reality. However Rs.2, 600 cr subsidy as moratorium on student loan is not what exactly me, my colleague or my brother will be looking for, on contrary fact is jobs shrinking as hell as degrees are being produced in our shattered education system, instead of doing that Dear FM if you could help those students to get a fairly paid job,than they will take care of principal and interest themselves, also again this is discrimination against those who paid the same on time. Dear FM fact is UPA 1 & 2 failed to fill the gap of degrees and job offer in a huge numbers.
C) By reducing 2% excise duty on consumer and capital goods you are laughing on our inflation hitting household budgets misery, but yes by doing so you have reduce the prospect of filling fiscal deficit gap for next govt, when food inflation and rising cost of living is a day to day threat to existence for many, buying AC will be least on the priority. And smartly you handout dole of cheap mobile handset by few bucks, but your recent auction bill(to foot your extravagant spending on flagship schemes) will definitely increase my mobile bill by more than 10-15% as per various reports in media and my own estimation. So who is putting cherry on a half-baked cake?
D) Dear FM, you specifically mentioned that your mother and faculty at Harvard taught hard work, but sir, no one taught us, but we are forced to do hard work in our daily chorus to remain exist in these tough times. Thanks to financial crisis sir, the hot money in name of QE and various stimulus packages from developedcountries keep your FX reserve full so that you can take credit for all the goodies in parliament and make mockery of hard work initiatives. The fact is Dear FM, $15B rise in FX reserve is nothing but just adding more debt on your books, as recently by FCNRA bond programme RBI raised $35B and fill the bag which caught naked after FED announce to take back its ‘QE Hot money’ from emerging markets, as you must be remembering how tough the year was for our domestic currency. You pat yourself for manufacturing and export sales rise with huge numbers, but you must admit this one tiny fact that a small country formed in 1971 is exporting far more garments in the volume of the world. The reality is rupee depreciation just ensures some healthy competition in pricing for them and discount billing ensures they increase their volume. However, you did very little to discourage import in various sectors except hitting hard on Gold & curbing currency trading to inflate your currency, CAD comes down heavily because many imports become impractical to do business, our Gold import curbed by whopping 77% YoY basis and yet Mr.FM you and yourgovt must be appreciated for all the good numbers and steps you have taken in the last ten years to revive economic growth and ensure large scale ‘development’.
Thanks, but no thanks your cake in the last hours of your inning is stinking for me, I did better prefer for new cookies in coming time.
P.S – Neither I am Amartya Sen or Jean Dreze, or even an economist to say, I was just a small trader who is waiting for nextgovt in hopes of employment opportunity by real reforms.
I end my painful letter to you of this simple quote, hope you may like this.
“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.” –Mark Twain
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'Ambiguous & unreliable' SoniaG UPA: Italy recalls envoy on marines under trial for murder of Indian fishermen.
Marines case fallout: Italy recalls its envoy to India over ‘unacceptable delay’ by SC
Express News Service | New Delhi | February 18, 2014 4:43 pm
SUMMARY
Delay proved that India was "incapable of handling this situation": Foreign Minister Emma Bonino.
Italy's foreign minister said that the country's main priority was to bring the two marines home.
In a further strain in the diplomatic ties over the marines issue, Italy on Tuesday recalled its Ambassador to India Daniele Mancini for consultations over delay in decision on trying two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen in 2012.
In a statement, the Italy Foreign Ministry condemned the delay saying: “a new and unacceptable delay by the Indian Supreme Court” in a case has heightened tensions between the two countries.
Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Emma Bonino said in a statement that this “latest unacceptable’” delay proved that India was “incapable of handling this situation.” She said Italy’s main priority was to bring the two marines home and that she was recalling Ambassador Daniele Mancini for consultations.
Italy also asserted it will decide to deal with the situation of “ambiguous and unreliable” behaviour by Indian authorities.
“The Italian government has ordered the immediate recall of its Ambassador in India, Daniele Mancini, for consultations,” Bonino said after the Supreme Court in New Delhi postponed till February 24 the hearing involving marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, facing murder charges.
The hearing was earlier scheduled for today.
Meanwhile, in New Delhi, official sources said Ministry of External Affairs have not been informed by Italy about the move. “There is no need for the Italian government to inform MEA, if they are calling their Ambassador for consultations.”
Justifying Ambassador’s “recall”, Italian Defence Minister Mario Mauro said, “The decision of the Italian government to recall the Ambassador to Italy is not only justified but unavoidable and reflects the sentiment of our people.”
The marines Marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, who were on-board Italian vessel ‘Enrica Lexie’, shot dead two fishermen off the Kerala coast in February 2012, sparking diplomatic tensions between India and Italy.
The two, who are lodged in New Delhi’s Italian Embassy premises, have said they mistook the fishermen for pirates. The marines are on bail pending trial.
The Indian authorities have given their nod to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the matter, to prosecute the marines under the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Maritime Navigation And Fixed Platforms on Continental Shelf Act (SUA). The SUA carries death penalty.
Italy has registered strong protest against India for slapping the provisions of the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Maritime Navigation and Fixed Platforms on Continental Shelf (SUA) Act against the marines asserting that these provisions are slapped against pirates and its marines are not pirates.
India last week removed the possibility of a death penalty but insisted that the marines would still be prosecuted under the anti-piracy law.
Now, they face up to 10 years in jail. Italy said use of the anti-terror law equates it with being a terrorist state.
Last week, the Supreme Court had set February 18 for hearing arguments from both.
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How Modi Survived the 5/9 Conspiracy -- PR Ramesh
An expose on how Central Ministers, Congress leaders and certain CBI officials conspired to book Narendra Modi in Ishrat Jahan case.
Kalyanaraman
22 February 2014
How Modi Survived the 5/9 Conspiracy
PR Ramesh
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↧
Lower House in India passes bill to create a 29th state. Effigies of Sushma, Advani, Sonia burnt. Great company for BJP who will get zero vote in Telangana.
Lower House In India Passes Bill to Create A 29th State
By ELLEN BARRYFEB. 18, 2014
NEW DELHI — Few questions in Indian politics have generated as much raw emotion, pro and con, as the proposed creation of Telangana, a 29th state, out of an inland slice of south India largely covered with cornfields and rice paddies.
Passion over the issue has driven some young people to suicide, inspired hunger strikes and, just last week, prompted a member of India’s Parliament opposed to Telangana to unload pepper spray on fellow lawmakers.
After more than 40 years of dispute, a bill on Telangana finally reached the lower house on Tuesday afternoon and was passed unanimously. Critics said the burst of progress was driven by major political parties, hoping to consolidate regional support before general elections in May.
More than a dozen lawmakers, all opposed to the new state, were excluded from the vote for disciplinary reasons after the pepper spray incident.
The vote set off delirious celebrations and protests. Jayaprakash Narayan, a legislator from Andhra Pradesh State, which would be divided to create Telangana, said the process had created deep divisions that would take years to heal.
“I am sure that in the years to come in political science faculties, people will study how terribly this was bungled,” Mr. Narayan said in a telephone interview from Hyderabad. “You cannot create, in a large, federalist country with primordial loyalties, a group of winners and a much larger group of losers.”
When India gained independence in 1947, giant states were created along linguistic lines. As the country’s population ballooned, so did identity-based movements based on religion, caste, region and ethnicity. Three new states were created in 2000, bringing the total to 28 states and seven territories, and the governing party, Indian National Congress, promised to create a commission to review existing borders, though it never materialized.
The Telangana initiative made it clear how divisive such movements are. While residents of the inland part of Andhra Pradesh desperately want statehood, the state’s remaining population opposes it with equal passion. One reason is that both groups want the revenue from the state’s booming capital city, Hyderabad, a major technology hub and host to multinationals like Dell and Motorola.
If the bill is passed by the upper house, Hyderabad will remain the capital of both states for 10 years.
Congress will most likely benefit from the gratitude of politicians who favored the new state, and critics described the bill’s sudden passage as a cynical bid for votes. But that was of little concern for supporters, who danced in the streets of Hyderabad, surrounded by the pink banners of the main pro-statehood party.
Bulli Konda Ramulu, 45, had stripped down to a loincloth, slogans in pink scrawled across his body.
“Our first step to a golden future has been taken,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard above beating drums. He heaped praise on K. Chandrasekhar Rao, a politician made famous by his 16-day hunger strike in favor of Telangana. “K.C.R. is our god, Sonia Gandhi is our goddess,” he said, referring to the president of Congress. “I worship them.”
Manmohan Reddy, 24, said the real celebrations would begin on Wednesday, when Congress’s leaders returned to their home districts. “Today, we are just happy roaming on the road, shouting slogans,” he said. “We are happy. We are free. At last.”
Amid the happy crowds were people from Seemandhra, the coastal region where most have opposed the new state’s creation. As they made their way home from work, some looked shellshocked. “In less than 25 minutes, Parliament, without a debate, passed a law to divide our state,” Rama Rao, 36, said. “We have fears. We are shocked.”
Moments before the vote, as the authorities braced for unrest, the live television feed from Parliament went dead, further fueling complaints that the process had not been transparent or democratic. Officials said the blackout had been caused by technical problems.
Leaders from Seemandhra declared a statewide strike beginningWednesday morning, and pointed to the television blackout as evidence that the vote had been deeply flawed.
“Today, democracy has come to a standstill,” said Dinesh Trivedi, a member of Parliament who opposed the creation of a new state. “The spirit of democracy has been killed.”
Correction: February 18, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/world/asia/indias-lower-house-passes-bill-to-create-29th-state.html?_r=0
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Wendy's porno: is a crime committed under US Penal Code
Let us assume that there is an international standard comparable to Indian Penal Code which was cited in the out of court settlement with Penguin for pulping Wendy's book.
Let us also assume that US Penal Code Chapter 43 on Crime against Public Order and Public Decency is close to an 'international standard'.
I submit that the cover page on Wendy's book is enough to prosecute the author, publisher and employer of the author, Univ. of Chicago under US Penal Code.
Here is an excursus on Indian criminal code compared with US case laws in particular reference to Lady Chatterly's Lover.
The book of Wendy Doniger is more indecent and more devastating to public order since there is a danger that it may arouse prurient interests in minors, particularly Hindu minors in USA. Hence, a complaint is warranted for further action under due process under US Laws.
http://indconlawphil.wordpress.com/tag/obscenity/
The crux of the argument in the suggested complaint is that the book as a whole and the cover page in particular are violative of Section 43.24 of US Penal Code (Chapter 43) and constitutes a crime.
Let us also assume that US Penal Code Chapter 43 on Crime against Public Order and Public Decency is close to an 'international standard'.
I submit that the cover page on Wendy's book is enough to prosecute the author, publisher and employer of the author, Univ. of Chicago under US Penal Code.
Here is an excursus on Indian criminal code compared with US case laws in particular reference to Lady Chatterly's Lover.
The book of Wendy Doniger is more indecent and more devastating to public order since there is a danger that it may arouse prurient interests in minors, particularly Hindu minors in USA. Hence, a complaint is warranted for further action under due process under US Laws.
http://indconlawphil.wordpress.com/tag/obscenity/
The crux of the argument in the suggested complaint is that the book as a whole and the cover page in particular are violative of Section 43.24 of US Penal Code (Chapter 43) and constitutes a crime.
Chapter 43 Crimes against public order and public decency
Sec. 43.24. SALE, DISTRIBUTION, OR DISPLAY OF HARMFUL MATERIAL TO MINOR. (a) For purposes of this section:
(1) "Minor" means an individual younger than 18 years.
(2) "Harmful material" means material whose dominant theme taken as a whole:
(A) appeals to the prurient interest of a minor, in sex, nudity, or excretion;
(B) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for minors; and
(C) is utterly without redeeming social value for minors.
(b) A person commits an offense if, knowing that the material is harmful:
(1) and knowing the person is a minor, he sells, distributes, exhibits, or possesses for sale, distribution, or exhibition to a minor harmful material;
(2) he displays harmful material and is reckless about whether a minor is present who will be offended or alarmed by the display; or
(3) he hires, employs, or uses a minor to do or accomplish or assist in doing or accomplishing any of the acts prohibited in Subsection (b)(1) or (b)(2).
(c) It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that the sale, distribution, or exhibition was by a person having scientific, educational, governmental, or other similar justification.
(c-1) It is a defense to prosecution under this section that the actor was the spouse of the minor at the time of the offense.
(d) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor unless it is committed under Subsection (b)(3) in which event it is a felony of the third degree.
Acts 1973, 63rd Leg., p. 883, ch. 399, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1974. Amended by Acts 1993, 73rd Leg., ch. 900, Sec. 1.01, eff. Sept. 1, 1994.
Amended by:
Acts 2011, 82nd Leg., R.S., Ch. 497, Sec. 1, eff. September 1, 2011.
Kalyanaraman
Reviews on Indological and South Asian Studies | ||
External links are marked with an asterisk (*). | ||
General | ||
BOOK: Invading The Sacred Edited by Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee (pdf online) 565 pages | ||
"Eminent Historians of India" by Arun Shourie | ||
(*) Edmund Leach on Racism & Indology by Subhash Kak | ||
Historians Versus History (Chapter 6 of �Hindu Temples, What Happened to Them�, Vol. I) by Ram Swarup | ||
Western Indology versus the Indic Cultures (Chapter II.7 of the book �Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations) by David Frawley | ||
(*) The Axis of Neo-colonialism by Rajiv Malhotra | ||
(*)The Uses (and Misuses) of Psychoanalysis in South Asian Studies by Alan Roland | ||
(*)Could the Emperor be Just Buck Naked? by V. Chandrasekhar | ||
(*) RISA Lila by Rajiv Malhotra | ||
(*) The Groan: Loss of Scholarship and High Drama in South Asian Studies by Yvette R. Rosser | ||
(*) Women and Hinduism in U.S. Textbooks by Dave Freedholm | ||
Aryans and Ideology by Koenraad Elst | ||
Tortured Souls Create Twisted History by Navaratna Rajaram | ||
What is the Aryan Migration Theory by Vishal Agarwal | ||
(*) Taking Back Hindu Studies by Dr. Shrinivas Tilak http://www.voiceofdharma.com/indology.html |
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Brother Ahmed, now tell us about Sonia -- MD Nalapat
Brother Ahmed, now tell us about Sonia
MD Nalapat 18 Feb 2014
Hand it to Ahmed Patel, he has never hankered for a ‘lal batti’ or the army of flunkeys that accompanies a Minister, preferring the raw reality of power to the glittering excess of the form of pseudo-power that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, for example, revels in. Despite the fact that this writer has not been widely perceived as an admirer of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and that indeed more than one uncharitable soul has insinuated that he has “something personal” against the charming mother of Rahul and Priyanka, Ahmed Patel has been friendly and courteous on the rare occasions when we have met.
Perhaps he accepted my explanation that the assessments of Sonia were not based on personal pique, but came from a belief that her leadership would ultimately turn out to be a disaster both for India as well as for the party that her family owns. In 1995, when this was first expressed in print (in the editorial pages of the Times of India), the landscape of those negative about a person who is admittedly very charming when she chooses to be was as denuded of people as a landscape. Since around 2010 (a long wait, it must be admitted), the ‘desert’ has filled up rapidly, so that these days, it would appear that there are far more detractors of the Congress president than there are admirers. It has been an amusing sight to watch those who used to hector and even avoid the present writer for his refusal to join the Sonia bandwagon now search for the most uncomplimentary of phrases to describe her.
There are no two people more in thrall to Sonia Gandhi than AK Antony and Ahmed Patel, and it must be painful in the extreme for them to see their idol being excoriated daily, publicly by the BJP leaders (including those who helped her immensely during the six years when A B Vajpayee was PM) and privately by an increasing number of worthies within her own party. Which is why it is surprising that the most potent arrow in the Sonia quiver is as yet unmentioned, much less unused. This is the fact that it is not simply Narendra Modi who came from an underprivileged background, but Sonia Gandhi herself. Friends in Italy confirm that the lady’s family was in dire economic straits in the 1960s, when she met and married Rajiv Gandhi. Since then, especially during the 1980s, the fortunes of the Maino family have soared, no doubt because of their commitment to hard work and to professional excellence. It would be churlish in the extreme to attribute their financial success to Ottavio Quatrocchi or to the many business deals that this middleman was instrumental in securing. Although neither Sonia nor her two sisters managed to get past high school, all three are clearly possessed of loads of brainpower. In a way, their trajectory is equivalent to that followed by Bill Gates, who developed Microsoft despite being a college dropout.
Ahmed Patel has wisely remained silent throughout much of his political career. However, this lack of loquacity has deserted him these days, as witness the fact that he has joined the ranks of the swelling number of scholars who are biographers of Narendra Modi. This columnist admits to himself writing, in the Sunday Guardian, that Modi’s “first job was to be a tea boy, his second the Chief Ministership of Gujarat and the third is likely to be the Prime Minister of India”.
This was after meeting a fair amount of people in Gujarat who each – and independently of each other – claimed that their CM had once made tea and sold it in earthen pots, usually along with his father. There are some who are so politically correct that they wish not to offend manual workers by calling them such. They are the ones who changed the designation of “peon” into “office attender” and next perhaps “domestic servant” into “Assistant Household Manager”. The manager would, of course, be the lady of the house or the master, in case he is at that point in time a bachelor. It is probably to spare Narendra Modi the pain of recalling his underprivileged past that Ahmed Patel decided to re-designate the job of tea boy into the far more grandiose title of “canteen contractor”. Ahmed always attempts to be helpful to friend and critic alike, which probably explains this foray into the arcane world of historiography. Now that he is a certified biographer, hopefully well on the way towards his first book, it is time that Ahmed Patel did his party a favour by reminding the voters of this country that Modi is not the only VVIP who springs from humble origins. He needs to reveal to voters the financial situation in the Maino household when Stefano’s young daughter went to the UK in order to make her fortune. Thus far, there is only silence about what exactly was the condition of the Maino family. There are, of course, those who claim that the man was a close second to the Agnelli family in the matter of wealth, but this is not entirely credible. Only a very cruel millionaire of a father would banish his daughter to distant shores to work when she had little education to speak of.
http://www.niticentral.com/2014/02/18/brother-ahmed-now-tell-us-about-sonia-191246.html
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