A nation can ignore its minorities only at its peril

Excerpt from the speech of Home Minister P. Chidambaram

"A nation can ignore its minorities only at its peril. The golden rule in a democracy is that it is the duty of the majority to protect the minority, be it religious, racial or linguistic. It is a self-evident rule. It is a rule that is firmly rooted in the universality of human rights," Chidambaram said at the conference being organised by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind.

He condemned all manifestations of communalism and said: "The worst kind of communalism is unleashing communal violence. Violence and violent means to achieve any objective is the antithesis of a civilised society governed by the rule of law.

కౌముది నవంబర్ 2009

Caste in a new mould

The Other Side | Mrinal Pande

The usual definition of caste oppression can no longer explain emerging patterns of dominance

Actually, the traditional characteristics and power of the Brahmins in the traditional upper caste hierarchy (high learning, arrogance and clever use of a certain elite language to build firewalls around knowledge and information to keep it away from the commoners) are now much more visible among India’s upper middle-class professionals, whatever their caste. Whether backward, Dalit or forward, successful children of the new dominant classes no longer acquire their basic knowledge, skills and networking abilities in Brahminical Sanskrit, but in English. Likewise, the power of the old-style, landowning Thakur (Kshatriya), who killed a thousand tigers and routinely torched Dalit huts, has been usurped by today’s political class, who ride lal batti cars with similar disregard for laws, sirens blaring and black cat commandos in tow. They hold power dialogues with neighbouring warlords, make and break treaties—not the princes and nawabs who, if they have not become penniless, have turned hoteliers and protectors of wildlife. The traditional merchant class, thanks to family-based businesses, may have retained some part of their old glory, but in the global arena they are now heavily dependent on the neo-Brahmin: the Indian Institute of Management-trained, multinationalized manager, banker and expat consultant, who strides the global village and carries vital knowledge in his laptop, as a Brahmin once carried in his almanac.

All caste systems need a cleaning class. They are today the invisible and unorganized freelancers. Moving from job to job, they help mop up the night soil of the global village and provide the paymasters with linguistic bridges into the vernacular heartland, where the markets are also the votes.

Excerpt from Mrinal Pande's column

Was it corruption that destroyed India from within in the past?

Mother India

Atanu Dey on India's Development ...

9 October 2009

Will Durant (1885 - 1981) was an American historian, writer and philosopher. His most famous work is the 11-volume “The Story of Civilization”, published between 1935 and 1975. In a 1931 work, “The Case for India“, he had this to say about India.

India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.
[Wikiquote]

It is hard to reconcile today’s India with the great civilization that India once was. Something must have gone wrong. Durant wrote, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

Was it corruption that destroyed India from within in the past? And is it now in its final phase being totally destroyed by corruption?

Religion is a constitutional necessity of the human mind

Religion is a constitutional necessity of the human mind. The proof of one religion depends on the proof of all the rest. For instance, if I have six fingers, and no one else has, you may well say that is abnormal. The same reasoning may be applied to the argument that only one religion is true and all others false. One religion only, like one set of six fingers in the world, would be unnatural. We see, therefore, that if one religion is true, all others must be true. There are differences in the non-essentials, but in essentials they are all one.

Talk given at Unity Hall, Hartford (Connecticut), USA, on March 8, 1895,
as reported in "Hartford Times" (March 11, 1895). Complete Works, 1.318.

A perfect sannyāsin

I am a disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a perfect sannyāsin whose influence and ideas I fell under. This great sannyāsin never assumed the negative or critical attitude towards other religions, but showed their positive side--how they could be carried into life and practiced. To fight, to assume the antagonistic attitude, is the exact contrary of his teaching, which dwells on the truth that the world is moved by love.

Interview. London, 1896. Complete Works, 5.190.

కౌముది అక్టొబర్ 2009

DNA Survey of Indian Heritage

Indian ancestry revealed in massive study

IANS
First Published : 25 Sep 2009 03:19:58 PM IST
Last Updated : 25 Sep 2009 03:58:48 PM IST

LONDON: The largest ever DNA survey of Indian heritage has revealed that the population of India was founded on just two ancient groups that are as genetically distinct from each other as they are from other Asians.

The findings of the study, conducted by a group of top international geneticists, have strong implications for health and medicine, and reveal important new information on caste in India.

The study shows that most Indian populations are genetic admixtures of two ancient but genetically divergent groups, which each contributed around 40-60 percent of the DNA to most present-day Indians, Nature magazine reported Wednesday.

One ancestral lineage - genetically similar to Middle Eastern, Central Asian and European populations - was higher in upper-caste individuals and speakers of Indo-European languages such as Hindi, the researchers found.

The other lineage was not close to any group outside the Indian subcontinent, and was most common in people indigenous to the Andaman islands, says the study conducted by a team led by David Reich of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Lalji Singh of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India.

Nature said that although India makes up around one-sixth of the world's population, it has been "sorely under-represented" in genome-wide studies of human genetic variation.

The Indian Genome Variation database, launched in 2003 to fill the gap, has so far studied only 420 DNA-letter differences, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), in 75 genes.

In sharp contrast, the study reported by Nature has probed more than 560,000 SNPs across the genomes of 132 Indian individuals from 25 diverse ethnic and tribal groups dotted all over India.

The researchers also found that Indian populations were much more highly subdivided than European populations. But whereas European ancestry is mostly carved up by geography, Indian segregation was driven largely by caste.

"There are populations that have lived in the same town and same village for thousands of years without exchanging genes," said Reich.

The authors of the study said the new genetic evidence refutes the claim that the Indian caste structure was a modern invention of British colonialism.

"This idea that caste is thousands of years old is a big deal," said Nicole Boivin, an Oxford University archaeologist.

"To say that endogamy (the practice of marrying within a caste, community or tribe) goes back so far, and that genetics shows it, is going to be controversial to many anthropologists.

"The study also suggests that Indian populations, although currently huge in number, were founded by relatively small bands of individuals - a finding that has clinical implications.

"There will be a lot of recessive diseases in India that will be different in each population and that can be searched for and mapped genetically," Reich said.

"That will be important for health in India."

The Man Of The Mass-Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy

"Don't count the years you want to live. Ask yourself how much you have done for society at large with whatever opportunities the Almighty has provided you", are the words of Dr.Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. The dynamic political leader who proved the worth of his words with his undying spirit of service especially for the downtrodden, met a sad death in a helicopter crash on top of Rudrakonda Hill, 40 nautical miles from Kurnool.

Read the rest of the story by Priya Devi R

కౌముది సెప్టెంబర్ 2009

If life is so purposeless, do you feel that it's worth living?

PLAYBOY: If life is so purposeless, do you feel that it’s worth living?

KUBRICK: Yes, for those of us manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their idealism – and their assumption of immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong – and lucky – he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan. Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death – however mutable man may be able to make then – our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

Excerpt from : "Stanley Kubrick: interviews By Stanley Kubrick, Gene D. Phillips"

I claim no supernatural authority ....

My teaching is my own interpretation of our ancient books, in the light which my Master shed upon them. I claim no supernatural authority. Whatever in my teaching may appeal to the highest intelligence and be accepted by thinking people, the adoption of that will be my reward.

Interview, October 23, 1895. Complete Works, 5.186.

All religions have for their object the teaching either of devotion, knowledge, or yoga, in a concrete form. Now, the philosophy of Vedanta is the abstract science which embraces all these methods, this it is that I teach, leaving each one to apply it to their own concrete forms. I refer each individual to their own experiences, and where reference is made to books, the latter are procurable, and may be studied by anyone. Above all, I teach no authority proceeding from hidden beings speaking through visible agents, any more than I claim learning from hidden books or manuscripts. I am not an exponent of any occult society, nor do I believe that good can come of such bodies. Truth stands on its own authority, and truth can bear the light of day.

Interview, October 23, 1895. Complete Works, 5.186-87.

I had a deep interest in religion and philosophy from my childhood, and our books teach renunciation as the highest ideal to which we can aspire. It only needed the meeting with a great Teacher--Ramakrishna Paramahamsa--to kindle in me the final determination to follow the path he himself had trod, as in him I found my highest ideal realized.

Interview, October 23, 1895. Complete Works, 5: 186

Concentrating the powers of the mind is the only way to knowledge. In external science, concentrating the mind is--putting it on something external; and in the internal science, it is--drawing towards one's Self. This concentration of mind we call Yoga.

Conversation at Harvard, 1896. Complete Works, 5.299.

All morality can be divided into the positive and the negative elements. It says either "Do this" or "Do not do this." When it says, "Do not," it is evident that it is a check to a certain desires which would make us slaves. When it says, "Do," its scope is to show the way to freedom and to the breaking down of a certain degradation which has already seized the human heart.

Written in answer to a question put by a Western Disciple. Complete Works, 8.147.

Those who depend upon the world for enjoyment are the "bound" (tāmasika). Then there are the "egotistical" (rājasika), who always talk about "I," "I," "I." They do great work sometimes and may become spiritual. But the highest are the "introspective" (sāttvika), who live only in the Ātman.

Retreat given at the Thousand Island Park, USA. June 25, 1895. Complete Works, 7.12.

When you give something to a man and expect nothing--do not even expect the man to be grateful--his ingratitude will not affect you, because you never expected anything, never thought you had any right to anything in the way of return. You gave him what he deserved. His own karma got it for him, your karma made you the carrier thereof. Why should you be proud of having given away something? You are the porter that carried the money or other kind of gift, and the world deserved it by its own karma. Where is then the reason for pride in you? There is nothing very great in what you give to the world.

Class on Karma Yoga. New York, January 3, 1896. Complete Works, 1.90.

కౌముది ఆగస్ట్ 2009

కౌముది జూలై 2009

Truth and Sannyasa

Truth is of two kinds: (1) that which is known through the five ordinary senses and by reasoning based thereon; (2) that which is known through the subtle, supersensuous power of yoga.

Knowledge acquired by the first means is called science; and knowledge acquired by the second is called the Vedas.

From "Hinduism and Sri Ramakrishna," originally written in Bengali. Complete Works, 6.181.

Sannyāsa is recognized in the Vedas without making any distinction between men and women. Do you remember how Yājñavalkya was questioned at the court of King Janaka? His principal examiner was Vācaknavī, the maiden orator--Brahmāvadinī, as the word of the day was. "Like two shining arrows in the hand of the skilled archer," she says, "are my questions." Her gender is not even commented upon. Again, could anything be more complete than the equality of boys and girls in our old forest universities? Read our Sanskrit dramas--read the story of Śakuntalā, and see if Tennyson's "Princess" has anything to teach us!

Interview in the Prabuddha Bharata. December 1898. Complete Works, 5.230.