Modi happened in Election 2014

This Lok Sabha election was a structural break for India as its voters comprehensively rejected their Nehru-Gandhi past.

 Written by Surjit S Bhalla | May 20, 2014 8:49 am



Essentially, the Indian polity has called the Congress’s bluff,
seen it for the calculating set of politicians they have been.

Just what happened on May 16? In a word, Modi. Of course, there are several other factors that determined the contours of Election 2014, but the defining characteristic was the PM-designate, Narendra Modi. Can one individual define an election? Possible, if that individual rightly senses the mood of the country, and its changing sense of direction. Recall what happened in that other defining election, albeit of a lower seismic magnitude — Barack Obama in 2008. The parallels are close — a black man winning the presidency in a country where the blacks obtained civil rights just 50 years ago; a lower caste OBC winning in a country where caste matters a lot. Post the 2008 election in the US, one found out that maybe white Americans are not that racist after all; post-May 16, India has found out that caste has ceased to occupy an important place in the minds of voters.

So what did happen in India? Several myths abound as to what explains Modi’s record-breaking win — 336 seats for the NDA, and the highest ever seat per vote recorded for any alliance or party in India, that is, nine seats for every 1 per cent of the vote. In the record-setting 1984 election, the Congress obtained 8.5 seats for each per cent vote. A partial listing of the myths:

Myth 1: The Congress lost because it operated a corruption and scam infested regime: Commonwealth Games, Coalgate, 2G, etc. As if UPA 1, and all governments before, have not been corrupt. Corruption is one of the factors affecting voters’ choice, but not a very important factor. Else, why would all opinion and exit polls suggest that corruption was one of the least important determinants of voters’ choice? And just look at the results for the Aam Aadmi Party, which ran exclusively against crony capitalism and corruption — and managed to win only four of the 432 seats it contested, and lost its deposit in 413, another record.

Myth 2: The Congress lost because of a weak economy — high inflation and low growth. I am a card-carrying member of the club that believes that economic performance determines voting behaviour. But this election was not an average election, to which average explanations are applicable. By itself, the weak economy and corruption would mean that the Congress and UPA would lose seats. But to lose 200 seats is a black swan event. In 2009, with the best economy ever, the UPA gained “only” 54 seats, and the NDA lost “only” 26 seats. So, with the worst economy ever, one might have expected the NDA and UPA to go back to approximately their 2004 levels, that is, around 200 for both the UPA and NDA. Indeed, according to the CNN-IBN tracker poll, both alliances were in a near neck-to-neck battle as late as August 2013.

Myth 3: Anti-incumbency, voter fatigue after 10 years of UPA rule resulted in the Modi win. When all else fails, indulge in an anti-incumbency explanation. Too many counter examples exist. Remember 2009, when the incumbent UPA got elected. Or Madhya Pradesh 2003, when Digvijaya Singh, and the Congress, got unceremoniously voted out after 10 years in power. Or Modi’s Gujarat, or Chouhan’s MP, returned for a third and second consecutive term, respectively.

Myth 4: The weak leadership of Rahul Gandhi affected the Congress’s performance. Imagine that any individual but Modi was the leader of the BJP — say, L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj or Shivraj Chouhan. No one was betting that any of these individuals would offer a large difference with respect to the UPA leadership. The common refrain of many, including myself, has been that there isn’t a naya paisa’s worth of difference between the UPA and NDA. And there hasn’t been — till Modi came along.

So what explains the Modi win? The UPA campaign offered two all important “reasons” to vote for the UPA. Vote for us because we do so much for you, and don’t vote for Modi because he is evil.

Look what the Congress guaranteed to the Indian citizen, especially the poor. A jobs guarantee programme, so that the poor had jobs. A food security bill, so that two-thirds of the population was guaranteed food at throwaway prices. A land acquisition bill, so that the poor got a fair price. A right to information act, and a Lokpal bill, so that corrupt government officials could be caught red-handed. And yet, the Congress managed to win only 44 out of 543 seats, about half of what the BJP got in only its second election in 1989.
 
Modi is evil, we are not: An important fact about the recent election, and possibly related to the overwhelming beyond-expectations majority that Narendra Modi obtained, is that, to the best of my knowledge, no individual in Indian or world history has been unjustly vilified as much as Modi has been. This vilification continues even to this day, especially by the “sickular” parties and their left-intellectual storm troopers. I am choosing my words wisely, because the condemnation campaign has almost universally invoked images of the Nazi and Fascist European regimes of the 1930s.

What is most informative, and disturbing, about these storm troopers (among whom are many domestic and foreign journalists), is that they invariably belong to the Congress party and/or have been its sympathisers until recently. Let me make my position clear, possibly for the umpteenth time. Narendra Modi was chief minister at the time the Gujarat riots happened just as Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister of India at the time the Delhi pogrom against Sikhs occurred. Both have to assume responsibility for what happened under their watch. All I am asking is whether the Congress storm-troopers, or Modi-baiters, have ever condemned Rajiv Gandhi and/ or the Congress party with the same language and allusions to Hitler as they have done, and continue to do, about Modi?

Morality and philosophy aside, an election is not an absolute choice but rather a choice between individuals. So, especially in the case of the Congress versus Modi, the issue of 2002 versus 1984 is irrelevant, that is, individuals who are upset by Modi should be equally (if not more) upset by the Congress.

Strategic Voting by Muslims — backfired: In the Muslim and Yadav states of UP and Bihar, the turnout was higher by about 12 percentage points. Did the UPA whizkids consider that their strategy of concentrated Muslim and Yadav voting against Modi might engineer a counter-strategy — for every one Muslim and Yadav (MY) that indulged in strategic voting, there were probably four non-MY voters ensuring that the negative strategy (sic) did not succeed.

Essentially, the Indian polity has called the Congress’s bluff, seen it for the calculating set of politicians they have been. Their governance demanded not only change, but wholesale rejection. The Indian polity has elected a leader. The “historical low” losers contend that all Modi has done is package a dream, a dream that will not last, a dream that will soon become a nightmare. The losers, and Congress apologists, believe that Modi will soon crash to earth. I have no doubt that the expectations of the Modi government are sky high, and that it is impossible for the transformed reality to be an equal match to the expectations. Equally, I have no doubt that the Modi-led government will make a strong effort to match a large fraction of these expectations — and that they will largely succeed.

The writer is chairman of Oxus Investments, an emerging market advisory firm, and a senior advisor to Zyfin, a leading financial information company.

Source: The Indian Express

Why It’s So Hard for Men to See Misogyny

Men were surprised by #YesAllWomen because men don’t see what women experience.

By Amanda Hess

When Santa Barbara police arrived at Elliot Rodger’s apartment last month—after Rodger’s mother alerted authorities to her son’s YouTube videos, where he expressed his resentment of women who don’t have sex with him, aired his jealousy of the men they do choose, and stated his intentions to remedy this “injustice” through a display of his own “magnificence and power”—they left with the impression that he was a “perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human.” Then Rodger killed six people and himself on Friday night, leaving a manifesto that spelled out his virulent hatred for women in more explicit terms, and Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown deemed him a “madman.”
Amanda Hess Amanda Hess

Amanda Hess is a Slate staff writer. Email her at amanda.hess@slate.com, or follow her on Twitter.

Another rude awakening played out on social media this weekend as news of Rodger’s attack spread around the world. When women took to Twitter to share their own everyday experiences with men who had reduced them to sexual conquests and threatened them with violence for failing to comply—filing their anecdotes under the hashtag #YesAllWomen—some men joined in to express surprise at these revelations, which amassed more quickly than observers could digest. How can some men manage to appear polite, kind, even “wonderful” in public while perpetuating sexism under the radar of other men’s notice? And how could this dynamic be so obvious to so many women, yet completely foreign to the men in their lives? Some #YesAllWomen contributors suggested that men simply aren’t paying attention to misogyny. Others claimed that they deliberately ignore it. There could also be a performative aspect to this public outpouring of male shock—a man who expresses his own lack of awareness of sexism implicitly absolves himself of his own contributions to it.

But there are other, more insidious hurdles that prevent male bystanders from helping to fight violence against women. Among men, misogyny hides in plain sight, and not just because most men are oblivious to the problem or callous toward its impact. Men who objectify and threaten women often strategically obscure their actions from other men, taking care to harass women when other men aren’t around.

Placating these men is a rational choice, a form of self-defense to protect against setting off an aggressor.

The night after the murders, I was at a backyard party in New York, talking with a female friend, when a drunk man stepped right between us. “I was thinking the exact same thing,” he said. As we had been discussing pay discrepancies between male and female journalists, we informed him that this was unlikely. But we politely endured him as he dominated our conversation, insisted on hugging me, and talked too long about his obsession with my friend’s hair. I escaped inside, and my friend followed a few minutes later. The guy had asked for her phone number, and she had declined, informing him that she was married and, by the way, her husband was at the party. “Why did I say that? I wouldn’t have been interested in him even if I weren’t married,” she told me. “Being married was, like, the sixth most pressing reason you weren’t into him,” I said. We agreed that she had said this because aggressive men are more likely to defer to another man’s domain than to accept a woman’s autonomous rejection of him.

A week before the murders, I experienced a similar dynamic when I went for a jog in Palm Springs, California. It was early on a weekend morning, and the streets that had been full of pedestrians the night before were now quiet. When I paused outside a convenience store to stretch, a man sitting at a bus stop across the street from me began yelling obscene comments about my body. When my boyfriend came out of the convenience store, he shut up.

These are forms of male aggression that only women see. But even when men are afforded a front seat to harassment, they don’t always have the correct vantage point for recognizing the subtlety of its operation. Four years before the murders, I was sitting in a bar in Washington, D.C. with a male friend. Another young woman was alone at the bar when an older man scooted next to her. He was aggressive, wasted, and sitting too close, but she smiled curtly at his ramblings and laughed softly at his jokes as she patiently downed her drink. “Why is she humoring him?” my friend asked me. “You would never do that.” I was too embarrassed to say: “Because he looks scary” and “I do it all the time.”

Women who have experienced this can recognize that placating these men is a rational choice, a form of self-defense to protect against setting off an aggressor. But to male bystanders, it often looks like a warm welcome, and that helps to shift blame in the public eye from the harasser and onto his target, who’s failed to respond with the type of masculine bravado that men more easily recognize. Two weeks before the murders, Louis C.K.—who has always recognized pervasive male violence against women in his stand-up—spelled out how this works in an episode of Louie, where he recalls watching a man and a woman walking together on a date. “He goes to kiss her, and she does an amazing thing that women somehow learn how to do—she hugged him very warmly. Men think this is affection, but what this is is a boxing maneuver.” Women “are better at rejecting us than we are,” C.K. said. “They have the skills to reject men in the way that we can then not kill them.”

When Elliot Rodger finally snapped, he drove to a Santa Barbara sorority house as part of his plan to give the “female gender one last chance to provide me with the pleasures I deserved from them,” and killed two women who were walking outside. Before he hit the sorority house, he stabbed three men in his apartment; after he left the sorority, he killed another man who was entering a nearby convenience store. In the course of the attack, he wounded 13 more people. Rodger hated all the women who did not provide him sex, but he also resented the men he felt had been standing in the way of his conquests, though they were never made aware of this belief. (Many men die of domestic-violence-related murders this way, killed by ex-boyfriends, ex-husbands, and family members of the women in their lives.) Some men are using this death count to claim that Rodger’s killings were not motivated by misogyny, but that is a simplistic account of how misogyny operates in a society that privately abides the hatred of women unless it’s expressed in its most obvious forms.

Source: Slate

Amanda Hess is a Slate staff writer. Email her at amanda.hess@slate.com, or follow her on Twitter.

Door by Door, India Strives to Know More About Death

 By MALAVIKA VYAWAHAREMAY 22, 2014















The New York TimesMAGADI, India — M. R. Gundappa, 60, died the way most Indians do: with no doctor present, no monitors beeping by his side and no written record. The only person present was his wife, Sushilamma, 48, who spent the day of his death trying to get him admitted to a government hospital where he could be treated for abdominal pain.

On a recent afternoon, Sushilamma spent an hour trying to retrieve her memories of the fateful day in 2013 for an official from the Office of the Registrar General of India, who sifted through her story for clues to what had caused her husband’s death.

Nearly 70 percent of deaths in India, five million in all each year, take place in the absence of medical supervision, according to the office, which is responsible for registering births and deaths.

To fill this gap, a new survey, the Million Death Study, is trying to turn the clock back on a million premature deaths that took place between 2001 and 2014, sifting through evidence provided by families and caregivers. By assigning causes to these deaths, based on the accounts of witnesses, the study hopes to identify the major causes of premature death in India.

“The idea is to show, with evidence, that many of these deaths are preventable,” said Prabhat Jha, a professor at the University of Toronto, who conceived of the project.

While full results are not expected for four to five years, some preliminary findings have been released, and those have stirred controversy. The survey’s estimate of total malaria deaths in India is more than 10 times the World Health Organization’s. Its figure for deaths related to H.I.V. infections is significantly lower than what the United Nations predicted, and the Indian government, which has spent heavily to control the spread of the disease, may take that into account as it settles on future medical priorities.

Approaching strangers to ask about the deaths of their loved ones is no simple endeavor in India, a fact that was brought home to Ashok Kumar, a registrar official, when he knocked on a door in the town of Magadi, in the southern state of Karnataka, on a recent day.

Seeing his credentials, Sushilamma opened the door, allowing him to settle into the cramped living room, under the watch of a pantheon of family gods perched on the pale walls. A garlanded photograph of her husband was a recent addition, and her eyes were drawn to the photograph as she discussed the details of his death with the visitor.

Then the neighbors came, to watch, to listen, to offer sympathy and sometimes to fill in some gaps when her account faltered.

As the interview stretched and Mr. Kumar went into the details of the death, her answers became vague as his questions became more pointed.

“Did he have a pain in his heart?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” she replied.

“Are you sure? Was there any pain in this region?” he asked, gesturing to his chest.

No. No, she insisted.

“Try and remember,” he said.

“I really don’t remember,” she said in an apologetic tone, shaking her head, a weariness creeping in.

Mr. Kumar’s questioning was part of an unusual form of medical investigation, a verbal autopsy, that traces its roots to 17th-century London, a city haunted by epidemics, where “death searchers” regularly showed up at homes after someone died.

In India, two pioneering studies were conducted in the 1950s and ’60s, but were more limited in scope.

“We are literally chasing down death in millions of homes over a decade now,” said Suresh Rathi, a senior researcher who manages the project. “Where would we find the doctors for that?”

Twice a year, senior registrar officials like Mr. Kumar visit households across India that reported deaths in the previous six months, carrying verbal autopsy forms. Scans of the completed forms are shared with the Bangalore office of the Center for Global Health Research, an international nonprofit group that is collaborating with the registrar’s office on the project.

Each verbal autopsy form is sent to two doctors from a pool of about 300, who independently assign a probable cause of death. If their verdicts match, the cause of death is made final. Otherwise, a senior doctor is asked to arbitrate and make a decision.

This part is completed fairly quickly, Professor Jha said. The real challenge is getting the verbal autopsies.

In urban areas, Mr. Kumar said, “we may be welcomed into homes, but are not always welcome to discuss details of a loved one’s death.”

Village residents are more willing to share their stories, according to Professor Jha. “It is almost cathartic,” he said. “For many it is a chance to vent about the treatment or the lack of it at government and even private hospitals.”

Language poses an additional obstacle: Autopsy narratives are recorded in regional languages, and though the project employs doctors fluent in 18 of India’s 20 officially recognized languages, 2,000 verbal autopsies have had to be thrown out because they were incomprehensible.

Some 42,000 autopsies have been gathered and analyzed, each on a paper form. Because of the study’s reliance on paper, it could take anywhere from four to five years before the final results are available. That reservoir of information will be valuable to public health specialists, but will probably bring little to the families who were its subjects. The results will never be shared with them, and the deaths will remain unexplained.

Still, the researchers persist. On a hot afternoon in the village of Uragahalli, Mr. Kumar was trying to obtain an account of the death of a girl who had survived barely an hour after her birth.

The girl’s mother had lost consciousness after the delivery, and remembered very little. So Mr. Kumar relied on the baby’s aging grandparents, who struggled to put what happened into words.

“What’s the use talking about this now?” the grandmother asked in the local Kannada language, her irritation clear.

The interview with Sushilamma, the widow, was equally exhausting. The end of the interview had the quality of a bandage being slowly unwrapped from an open wound: She described many hours of pleading with doctors to tell her what was wrong with her husband.

“The worst part is I still don’t know what happened,” she said, her voice tinged with something more than grief.

Source: The New York Times

Assets of 165 re-elected Lok Sabha MPs shoot up by 137 per cent

PTI | May 22, 2014, 18.05 pm IST

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shatrughan Sinha and
Telugu Desam chief Chandrababu Naidu (Photo: PTI/DC)

New Delhi: The assets of 165 MPs re-elected to the 16th Lok Sabha have on an average risen by a whopping 137 per cent between 2009 and 2014, and the highest increase in assets among them was that of BJP's Shatrughan Sinha.

According to a report of Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), the assets of the actor-turned politician who was re-elected from Patna Sahib seat in Bihar, grew by a whopping 778 per cent in the span of five years.

Sinha's assets jumped from Rs 15 crore in 2009 to Rs 131.74 crore in 2014, which is an increase of Rs 116.73 crore.

Second on the list is BJD MP from Puri constituency of Odisha, Pinaki Mishra whose assets increased from Rs 29.69 crores in 2009 to Rs 137.09 crores in 2014.

Former Union minister and NCP leader Sharad Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule, who won from Baramati constituency in Maharashtra, is on the third position with her assets increasing from Rs 51.53 crores in 2009 to Rs 113.90 crores in 2014, a rise of Rs 62.37 crore.

The civil society group, ADR have analysed the affidavits of 165 out of 168 re-elected MPs.

The rest of the MPs were not analysed due to unclear or incomplete affidavits uploaded on the ECI website, ADR said.

"The average asset growth for these 165 re-elected MPs, between the Lok Sabha Elections of 2009 and 2014 is Rs 7.40 crores which is an increase of Rs 137 per cent," the ADR report said.

The report reveals that the average assets of these 165 re-elected MPs fielded by various parties in 2009 was Rs 5.38 crore. Their average assets in 2014 have grown to Rs 12.78

crore which is a rise of Rs 7.40 crores.

When it comes to parties, the highest rise in assets was registered by the re-elected MPs of Shiromani Akali Dal whose assets rose from Rs 31.75 crore to Rs 58.88 crore.

This was followed by Jaganmohan Reddy's YSR Congress whose candidates' assets grew from 18.53 crore to 29.06 crore. Third on the list is Biju Janta Dal (BJD).

Assets of the party MPs grew from Rs 7.09 crore to Rs 24.15 crore.

N. Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is fourth on the list with its MPs' assets growing from Rs 4.44 crore to Rs 17.03 crore. They were followed on the fifth position by MPs of Samajwadi Party. Assets of SP MPs rose from Rs 3.94 crore to Rs 15.5 crore.

The assets of SP MP Dimple Yadav grew by 210 per cent while her father-in-law and SP supreme Mulayam Singh Yadav's properties grew by 613 per cent.

The two major national parties, BJP and Congress were on number sixth and seventh on the list.

While assets of BJP's MP s grew from Rs 5.11 crore to Rs 12.6 crore, properties of Congress MPs rose from Rs 5.66 crore to Rs 11.57 crore.

A total of 78 MPs were re-elected from the BJP whose assets grew by around Rs 7 crore on an average, a rise of 146 per cent. There average assets in 2009 were around Rs five crore which grew to more than Rs 12 crore in 2014.

Twenty nine Congress MPS managed to stage a comeback to the Parliament. Their average assets rose by around Rs 5.90 crore during the last five years. The average assets of these MPs in 2009 were around Rs 5.55 crore which swelled to Rs 11.57 crore in 2014.

Among the other prominent leaders whose assets grew exponentially are Gopinath Munde, Varun Gandhi, Maneka Gandhi, Dimple Yadav, Jytiraditya Scindia and Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Gopinath Munde, who won on a BJP ticket from Beed, Maharashtra saw his assets rising from Rs 6 crore in 2009 to Rs 38 crore in 2014, a hike of 511 per cent.

Assets of BJP MP Varun Gandhi, who won from Sultanpur, grew by Rs 30 crore, a whopping 625 per cent. He had declared assets worth Rs 4 crore in 2009 while in 2014 he declared that he has properties worth Rs 35 crore.

His mother and BJP MP from Pilibhit, Maneka Gandhi, saw her assets increase by 105 per cent.

Assets of Congress MP from Guna Jyotiraditya Scindia grew by 122 per cent during the last five years and he has bene ranked eighteenth on the list. His assets in 2009 were Rs 14 crore which grew to Rs 33 crore in 2014, a rise of Rs 18 crore.

Source: Deccan Chronicle

Top Official Decries 'Colonial Mindset' in Governance

By Express News Service - HYDERABAD    |    Published: 15th May 2014 09:55 AM
Last Updated: 15th May 2014 09:58 AM

Despite the efforts of the government to remove bottlenecks by adapting new technologies, governance in the country still smacks of a ‘colonial mindset’ where the government is mistrustful of its citizens, Sanjay Kothari, secretary, Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, has said.

Delivering the fourth foundation day lecture of the Centre for Innovations in Public Systems (CIPS), at the Administrative Staff College of India here on Wednesday, he said, “This trust deficit has resulted in major bureaucratic hurdles like numerous affidavits and need for a gazetted officer’s signature that a citizen has to obtain before receiving a certificate from the concerned official.”

Expressing concern over red tape in governance, he said, “Although the fact remains that we are an independent nation for more than 60 years, even today we still use archaic tools of governance. In a nutshell, we are a modern government still using the circulars of 1950s-style, or rather 1850s-style. The time has come to bring a sea change and simplify the governance and keep it citizen-centric.”

Further, he called for re-engineering in issuing caste, income and residential certificates. “One does not understand the insistence of the government to know the income of a person before giving him an income certificate because for the large section of poor who remain in unorganised sector, it is difficult to assess their own income. Even the officials know this, but continue to do it. Similarly, efforts should be made to provide caste and domicile certificates at school level through the headmaster,” he explained.

Listing out initiatives the Centre is likely to take up, he lamented Class-I officers of All India Services remaining aloof to the issues on the ground.

Source: The New Indian Express

___________________________________________________________________

Blogger's opinion:

It is about time Indian Administration Service chastises Government to discontinue practice of submitting income, caste and domicile certificates issued by Karnam, Munsubdar and Tehsildar. In Villages get a certificate from Karnam, it is then countersigned by Munsubdar. Take it to Tehsil's office, now called Mandal, and get Tehsildar's signature. Then only it is official for admission to institutions of higher education, fee concessions (FC, BC, Other, SC, ST), applying welfare scholarships etc.,

Income, caste and domicile information exists already in School Leaving Certificates. Why do we need a certificate from local officials? This is duplication of process and it is about time for Government to repeal.
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The New Age Nuptial Solution

By Suhas Yellapantula - HYDERABAD    |    Published: 15th May 2014 09:56 AM
Last Updated: 15th May 2014 09:57 AM

‘I’m an artist and I’m not unemployed’, ‘I’m a man and I love to cook’, ‘We are from South India and we are not Madrasis’ – these are only a few examples from #Breaking Stereotypes, a social campaign by a matrimonial website that has taken the web world viral.

Catchy in their concept and to the point, the campaign had many youngsters share a knowing smile before they went ahead and shared the post. As urban India looks to break away from the shackles of traditional notions of society, what has made the campaign pick up so fast is the freedom of expression it affords youngsters.

“When we started this website, we wanted to be different from the traditional matrimonial websites and we wanted to target people from the age-group of 22 to 27. As we started to speak to more people, we realised that youngsters today are not looking for caste or sub-caste or religion for marrying a person, they just want to connect with the other person. That’s when we decided to start #Breaking Stereotypes,” shares Hitesh Dhingra, co-founder of Trulymadly.com that launched the campaign.

Explaining the process, Hitesh, one of three co-founders at the company, says “We reached out to around 50 people through our friends and family. These are real people with real stories. So we decided to click their pictures and post them on Facebook.”

The campaign, which started on April 9, has received over 90,000 shares in a little over a month. Hitesh admits that they had never imagined it to be such an overwhelming success. “We never expected it to go this viral! It clearly suggests that there is a complete shift in the mindset of youngsters. Not just children, but even parents are slowly opening up to the idea and prefer their child to choose their own partners,” added the 34-year-old.

When 42-year-old Rajesh Dudeja from New Delhi was one of the first people to share the the campaign on Facebook, little did he know that it would become a trending topic on social media.

Within four days, the album had received 3,750 shares and Dudeja himself received 128 friend requests from people who thought he was the fountainhead behind the idea and wanted to be a part of the album.

“I happened to come across this offbeat matrimony site which had posted these in their blog. I really liked their concept, and thought it would be a great share on Facebook as there are many liberal youth out there who are trying to break free from the chains of tradition, dogma and stereotyping,” said Dudeja.

One of the reasons for the campaign going viral was the fact that it was easy to relate to as many youngsters could see the story of their lives through these pictures. “One picture shows a man holding a placard which reads ‘I studied electrical engineering and I design clothes’. It’s the story of my life really – when I decided to design clothes after completing my engineering, people laughed at me. Even my parents were not very supportive but I went ahead and followed my passion. I’m  sure there are a lot of people out there with similar stories and I’m glad this campaign is creating awareness,” expresses city-lad Uday Bhaskar.

Messages from the campaign

I have a degree in science and I’m a make-up artist

I am a doctor and I have good handwriting

I run an NGO but I still love my H&M blazer My best friend is a guy and I’m not sleeping with him

I am a Punjabi and I don’t like Yo Yo Honey Singh

Source: The New Indian Express

Chennai is a Telugu word, nothing Tamil about it: Historian

M T Saju,TNN | May 4, 2014, 05.08 PM IST

CHENNAI: What does Chennai mean? The question troubled Paris-based historian J B P More quite a lot. After painstaking research, he found the answer.

In his recently released book, titled 'Origin and Foundation of Madras', More says, "Chinapatnam and Chennapatnam were the other names for Madras used by Tamil and Telugu settlers in the area. Chennapatnam was 'Tamilised' as Chennai but the word didn't mean anything in Tamil. It's undoubtedly a Telugu word."

Madraspatnam was derived from Medu Rasa Patnam, said More, who was in Chennai on Saturday to release his book. "When Nayak Venkatappa (a local chieftain) issued a grant (a portion of the area where subsequently Fort St George came up) in favour of the English in 1639, only Madraspatnam was mentioned in it. But during the 1640s, two new names for Madraspatnam or for the area inhabited by Tamils and Telugus around Fort St George seems to have come into existence. They were Chinapatnam and Chennapatnam," he said.

Chinapatnam would have been the first name that would have come into existence in the Tamil-Telugu quarters to signify the Black Town of Madraspatnam. "'Chenna' in Telugu means fair and is not to be confused with the Tamil 'Chinna', which means small. In Tamil, 'Chenna' is meaningless," said More.

He said in the Tamil Lexicon, the Tamil word 'Cennai' has been mentioned which would signify 'a drum announcing religious procession of an idol'. More said there was no reference in documents and literature of the period to 'Chennai' as a drum.

"In the document of Beri Timanna, we find 'Chenna' written as 'Chennai'. Thus Chenna Kesava Perumal became Chennai Kesava Perumal and Chennapatnam became Chennai Pattanam.

This seems to be purely the work of a translator of the 19th century who had preferred to Tamilise the Telugu word 'Chenna' into 'Chennai' so it sounded more Tamil," said More. "The word 'Chennai' seems to have been born to designate Madras town. Its origin is Telugu. There is nothing Tamil in it," he added.

Source: Times of India

       

శ్రీ కౌముది మే 2014

Homemade' at a Store

By Rajitha S - HYDERABAD

Published: 14th April 2014 09:25 AM

Last Updated: 14th April 2014 11:26 AM

In summer, ladies of the house preparing mango pieces for making Avakaya (pickle) was a common household tradition that was passed down. However, today, hardly anyone from the latest generation even know what goes into making pickle, let alone do it at home.

With many shops specialising in ‘homemade’ pickles and other traditional foods like vadiyams and other pindi vantellu (flour-based deep-fried snacks), summer has lost the charm and aroma that usually envelops the house.

Says Sudhani Nalini, a home-maker, “I have never made these items in my life. It has been 25 years since my mother stopped making them. Owing to the space constraint in an apartment complex and other factors that need to be catered like want of sunlight, it becomes impractical.”

While making pickle requires at three days in the sun, with no moisture around, boiled rice flour needs to be laid out in the sun to dry to make vadiyams. With terraces becoming a luxury, and balconies shrinking by the day, hardly any home prefers to go through the extra care, especially when you can just pick these off the rack at a store.

But there are some who still cherish the summer season for the excitement of these pindi vantellu.

Sudhani Ahalya, a 75 year-old, has been making these summer delicacies for 30 years now and recalls how she learnt them from her grand mother.

“My grand mother would make all the ingredients from scratch, starting from selecting chillis that would be ground for the chilli powder,” she shared.

Mustard powder, the basic ingredient for mango pickle, was also ground at home back then. However, over the years, plenty of lifestyle changes have diluted the tradition of making these summer delicacies.

Today, Ahalya picks up the basic ingredients from stores but insists on still making the pickle at home. “Everything is available, and the grounding process needs special grinding stones. There is no place where I can dry these ingredients before hand. That is why I opt for readymade ingredients,” she explains.

Other preparations were also made at home, much to the excitement of the rest of the family.

“Vadiyalu were made from Bombay rava, rice flour, pumpkin, rice, sago and potato. The most sought after variety then was the ones that are made out of milk from wheat. We don’t make them anymore as it needs to be soaked for three days and then dried,” she laments, adding that she makes some for her children as well who haven’t picked up the cooking technique.

“They probably will buy the readymade pickles and vadiyams that are available in the market since all of them are working professionals,” she says.

In the market, the options have exploded from just the typical recipes to everything under the sun – bittergourd, mixed vegetable, amla, chicken, prawns, fish and what not! These are also a favourite among those who currently live abroad. Companies like Swagruha Foods, Joshi Pickles and Vellanki foods all owe their market to this community.

G Subhadra, branch in-charge of Vellanki foods in Madura Nagar, Ameerpet tells us that there are 180 orders on an average every month that are couriered to UK, USA and Canada from a single branch. They have four branches in total in the city. “We have tied up with DHL courier service. People from these countries can order online and we deliver within two to three days,” she informs.

Source: The New Indian Express

It's Heartbleed Everywhere

By Kota Saumya - HYDERABAD

Published: 14th April 2014 09:25 AM

Last Updated: 14th April 2014 09:25 AM

Most of us take the necessary precaution when it comes to keeping our personal computers safe with the usual anti-virus softwares available. And keeping up-to-date with the latest troublemakers is part of that. However, for two years, the Heartbleed bug has gone undetected and yet has affected millions of websites, wreaking havoc.

Actually a loophole in the programme OpenSSL software version 1.1, the open-source encryption standard used by the most of the websites, hackers across the world have been using this vulnerability to access personal information uploaded by users on to these sites.

Google’s security researcher and security firm Codenomicon discovered the culprit last week, by which time most popular websites that use this encryption software like Facebook, Instagram and Dropbox and Gmail were affected, including certain bank transactions.

Now in damage control mode, code experts are working overnight to reign in the bug. While word is some of these sites have managed to mitigate the problem, there isn’t any official confirmation yet.

What makes this such a deadly vulnerability is the rather late wake up call.

Explaining the issue, Kiran Chandra, general secretary, Free Software Movement of India, says, “Websites use this to transmit data which users want to keep secure. The encryption comes into play by making the information appear unreadable for anyone except the intended person. It helps provide a secure connection when one is chatting on Gmail or using any other application, working from point to point.”

So when one computer wants to check if there’s still a computer at the end of its secure connection it will send out what’s known as a ‘heartbeat,’ a small packet of data that asks for a response. The twist in the story comes here: researchers at Google and Codenomicon found that one can send a well-disguised packet of data which looks like this heartbeat to trick a computer at the other end into divulging data stored in its memory.

“Due to this loophole, hackers can access information like usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, etc, that are stored on servers. Hackers have been able to access encryption keys of websites which turn the unreadable information into valuable information,” adds Kiran. With encryption keys at their disposal, hackers can access the information from the site’s server and read it without establishing a secure connection. Unless websites change their encryption codes, users and the future traffic will continue to remain affected, he opines.

Most popular sites are powered by the Open SSL inlcuding Twitter, Tumblr, Yahoo, GoDaddy and Minecraft to name a few more. While sites try and secure their users information in the mean time, you can check if you are still vulnerable by taking the Heartbleed test on to http://filippo.io/Heartbleed.

Source: The New Indian Express

శ్రీ కౌముది ఏప్రిల్ 2014

Evolution is not an Illusion

By Shri Shri Nimishananda - HYDERABAD | Published: 22nd March 2014 09:15 AM
Last Updated: 22nd March 2014 09:15 AM

Existence is not a fluke, a random creation by nobody, a thing that unaccountably happened to be. It carries in itself the world of god, it is full of a hidden Divine Presence. Existence is not a blind machine that somehow came and started a set ignoble motion without object or sense or purpose. Existence is a Truth of things unfolding by a gradual process of manifestation, an evolution of its own involved Reality.

Existence is not an illusion, a Maya that had no reason, no business to exist, could not exist, does not exist but only seems to be. A mighty Reality manifests in itself this marvellous universe.

All that is is the manifestation of a Divine Infinite. The universe has no other reason for existence.

There is an eternal manifestation and there is a temporal manifestation; both are without end or beginning even as That which manifests is without end or beginning. Time and its creations are for ever. The temporal manifestation is cast partly in a graduation of enduring types; partly it moves through a long unrolling series of vicissitudes of change and new formation and is evolutionary in its process.

The typal worlds do not change. In his own world a god is always a god, the Asura always an Asura, the demon always a demon. To change they must either migrate into an evolutionary body or else die entirely to themselves that they may be new born into other Nature.

All that is is the manifestation, even as all that is not is the self-reservation, of a Supreme, an Infinite who veils himself in the play of impersonal forces, in the recesses of a mysterious Inconscience and will at last rediscover here his most intimate presence, his most integral power, light, beauty, Ananda and all vast and ineffable being through a growing illumination of the still ignorant consciousness now evolving in Matter, a consciousness of which Man is only one stage, at once the summit of an ascent that is finished and the starting point of a far greater ascension that is still only preparing its commencement.

All manifestation that is not evolution is a play and self-formulation of the One Infinite in one term or another of his existence, consciousness-force, Ananda, his self-knowledge, self-power, self-delight, for the glory, joy and beauty of the play and for no other reason.

All evolution is the progressive self-revelation of the One to himself in the terms of the Many out of the Inconscience through the Ignorance towards self-conscient perfection.The evolution has a purpose, but it is a purpose in a circle.There is no beginning or end of the Universe in space or time; for the universe is the manifestation of the Eternal and Infinite. Manifestation is not an episode of the Eternal. It is his face and body of glory that is imperishable, it is the movement of his joy and power that needs not to sleep or rest as do finite things from their labour.In the beginning, it is said, was the Eternal, the Infinite, the One. In the middle, it is said, is the finite, the transient, the many. In the end, it is said, shall be the One, the Infinite, the Eternal. For when was the beginning? At no moment in Time, for the beginning is at every moment; the beginning always was, always is and always shall be. The divine beginning is before Time and in Time and beyond Time for ever. The Eternal Infinite and One is an endless beginning. And where is the middle? There is no middle; for the middle is only the junction of the perpetual end and the eternal beginning; it is the sign of a creation which is new at every moment.

The article has been taken from the book ‘Essays Divine and Human’ by Shri Shri Nimishananda

Source: The New Indian Express

1940లో తిరిగి కొనుక్కుందామనుకున్నారు

Published at: 13-03-2014 00:35 AM

దాదాపు 250 ఏళ్ల క్రితం కోస్తా ఆంధ్ర, రాయలసీమ ప్రాంతాలు నిజాం పాలనలో ఉండేవని, ఆ తర్వాత వాటిని నిజాం రాజులు బ్రిటిష్ వారికి అప్పగించారని ఇప్పుడు తెలుగువాళ్లందరికీ తెలుసు. అయితే1940లో మళ్లీ వాటిని హైదరాబాద్ స్టేట్‌లోకి తిరిగి తీసుకురావడానికి ఒక ప్రయత్నం జరిగిందనేది ఎక్కువ మందికి తెలియకపోవచ్చు. ఈ ప్రయత్నంలో ఎంఐఎం వ్యవస్థాపకుడు బహదూర్ యార్ జంగ్ చాలా కీలక పాత్ర పోషించారు. చారిత్రక ప్రాధాన్యమున్న ఆ ఘట్టాన్ని- 'ద ఫాల్ అండ్ రైజ్ ఆఫ్ తెలంగాణ' పుస్తకంలో- ప్రముఖ జర్నలిస్టు గౌతమ్ పింగ్లే వివరించారు.

చరిత్రను జాగ్రత్తగా తరచి చూస్తే- రెండు వేర్వేరు ప్రాంతాలను విలీనం చేయాలనే కోరిక వెనక అనేక ఉద్దేశాలు కనబడతాయి. హైదరాబాద్‌కు సంబంధించి- 'ఫమ్ ఆటోక్రసీ టు ఇంటిగ్రేషన్- పొలిటికల్ డెవలప్‌మెంట్స్ ఇన్ హైదరాబాద్ స్టేట్' అనే పుస్తకంలో ల్యూసిియా డి. బెనిచో ఈ అంశాలను చాలా నిష్పాక్షికంగా పేర్కొంటాడు. నవాబ్ బహదూర్ యార్ జంగ్ 1929లో ఎంఐఎంను స్థాపించాడు. ఆయన ఎంతో ఉత్సాహవంతుడు, ధైర్యవంతుడు. ఏడవ నిజాంతోనే కాకుండా కాంగ్రెస్‌కు చెందిన ఎం.నరసింగరావుతోను, హిందుమహాసభకు చెందిన ఇతర ప్రముఖులతోను నేరుగా చర్చలు జరపగలిగిన సామర్థ్యం ఉన్నవాడు. నాటి హైదారాబాద్ రాజకీయాలలో నిజాం, బహదూర్ జంగ్‌లిద్దరే ప్రధాన పాత్రధారులు. వీరిద్దరి జుగల్‌బందీ- 1944, జూన్ 25వ తేదీన జంగ్ హఠాత్తుగా మరణించేదాకా సాగింది. జంగ్ మరణించే సమయానికి అతని వయస్సు 39 సంవత్సరాలే. గతంలో నిజాం వద్ద ఉండి, ఆ తర్వాత బ్రిటిష్ వారి అధీనంలోకి వెళ్లిన ప్రాంతాలను తిరిగి కలిపేసుకోవాలని ఎంఐఎం కోరుకొనేది. 1766, 1778లో రెండో నిజాం తన అధీనంలో ఉన్న ఉత్తర సర్కారును (ప్రస్తుత కోస్తా ఆంధ్రప్రదేశ్‌ను) ఈస్ట్ ఇండియా కంపెనీకి ఏడాది ఐదు లక్షల రూపాయలకు అద్దెకు ఇచ్చాడు. 1800లో రాయలసీమ ప్రాంతాన్ని కూడా బ్రిటిష్ వారికి అప్పగించాడు. (అందుకే ఈ ప్రాంతాన్ని ఇప్పటికీ సీడెడ్ అని పిలుస్తారు). 55 ఏళ్ల తర్వాత మూడో నిజాంకు డబ్బు అవసరమొచ్చి కోస్తా జిల్లాలను ఈస్ట్ ఇండియా కంపెనీకి 1.6 కోట్ల రూపాయలకు విక్రయించాడు.
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1940 సెప్టెంబర్‌లో బహదూర్ జంగ్ ఈ ఒప్పందాలన్నింటినీ తిరగదోడాలని ప్రతిపాదించాడు. సర్కారు జిల్లాలను, సీడెడ్‌ను హైదరాబాద్ రాష్ట్రానికి తిరిగి అప్పచెబితే- బ్రిటిష్‌వారికి 4 కోట్ల పౌండ్లను చెల్లిస్తామని ప్రతిపాదించాడు. కోస్తా ఆంధ్ర, రాయలసీమలలో ఉన్న స్థానిక ముస్లిములు ఈ ప్రతిపాదనకు సమ్మతి తెలిపారు కాని తెలుగు మాట్లాడే హిందువులు మాత్రం ఈ ప్రతిపాదనను వ్యతిరేకించారు. ఆ సమయంలో బ్రిటిష్ వారికి డబ్బు అవసరం చాలా ఉంది. అప్పుడు బ్రిటన్‌ను జర్మన్ వాయుసేనలు చుట్టుముట్టి లండన్ వంటి నగరాలపై బాంబులు కురిపిస్తున్నాయి. జర్మనీ బ్రిటన్‌ను ఆక్రమించుకుంటుందనే వార్తలు కూడా వినిపిస్తున్నాయి. అందువల్ల ఈ ప్రతిపాదన వారు అంగీకరించే అవకాశం ఉందనుకున్నారు. ఆ సమయంలో 1940 అక్టోబర్‌లో 'ది స్టేట్స్ పీపుల్' అనే కాంగ్రెస్ పత్రిక- 'ఆంధ్రదేశం ఫుట్‌బాల్‌కాదు ఎక్కడికి పడితే అక్కడికి తన్నటానికి. కొనుగోలు పేరుతో లేదా బహుమతి పేరుతో జరిగే ఈ బదిలీ చిన్న విషయం కాదు. 1.8 కోట్ల మంది ఆంధ్ర ప్రజల స్వేచ్ఛకు, వారి జీవితాలకు సంబంధించిన అంశం. ఒక్క రోజులో వారందరినీ ఒక చోట నుంచి పెకలించి, ప్రజాస్వామ్య జలాలతో తడవని బీడు నేలలలో పాతలేరు..' అని వ్యాఖ్యానించింది.
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బహదూర్ జంగ్‌కు, నిజాంకు ఇది భూమికి సంబంధించిన క్రయవిక్రయం మాత్రమే. 150 ఏళ్ల క్రితం నిజాం పూర్వీకులు ఈ ప్రాంతాలను ఈస్ట్ ఇండియా కంపెనీకి విక్రయించినప్పుడు ఎలా ప్రజల ఆకాంక్షలను పరిగణనలోకి తీసుకోలేదో ఇప్పుడూ అంతే. బ్రిటన్ చేస్తున్న యుద్ధానికి ఏడో నిజాం అప్పటికే భారీగా విరాళాలు ఇచ్చాడు. శత్రు సేనలను ఛిన్నాభిన్నం చేయటానికి ఒక యుద్ధ నౌకను (డిస్ట్రాయర్) అందించాడు (దీనికి హెచ్ఎంఏఎస్ నిజాం అని పేరు పెట్టారు). హైదరాబాద్ స్టేట్ నుంచి 50 వేల పౌండ్లు, తాను వ్యక్తిగతంగా మరో 5 లక్షల రూపాయలను కూడా విరాళంగా ఇచ్చాడు. నిజాం దగ్గర ధనం ఉంది. బ్రిటిష్ వారికి అది అవసరం.
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1942, జనవరి ఒకటవ తేదీన జాల్నాలో జరిగిన ఎంఐఎం 13వ వార్షిక సమావేశాలలో బహదూర్ జంగ్ 15 వేల మంది ప్రతినిధుల ముందు ఈ డిమాండ్‌ను మరొక సారి పునరుద్ఘాటించాడు. ఫిబ్రవరి 1వ తేదీన మద్రాసు నుంచి వెలువడే డక్కన్ టైమ్స్- 'బహదూర్ జంగ్ డిమాండ్‌ల పట్ల బ్రిటిష్ ప్రభుత్వం సానుకూలంగా ఉంది. ఈ మేరకు ఒక నోటిఫికేషన్ అతి త్వరలోనే వెలువడుతుంది' అని పేర్కొంది. ఈ సమయంలోనే (1942లో) మచిలీపట్నం జర్నలిస్టుల అసోసియేషన్- 'ఉత్తర సర్కారు జిల్లాల్లో భాగంగా ఉన్న మచిలీపట్నంలోని ఏ ప్రాంతాన్ని కూడా నిజాంకు ఎటువంటి పరిస్థితుల్లోను తిరిగి ఇవ్వకూడదు..' అని తీర్మానం చేసింది. ఈలోగా బ్రిటిష్ పాలకులే కోస్తా, రాయలసీమ ప్రాంతాలను హైదరాబాద్ స్టేట్‌కు తిరిగి ఇవ్వటానికి నిరాకరించటంతో ఆ వివాదం అంతటితో ఆగిపోయింది. బహదూర్ జంగ్ ప్రతిపాదనను- తెలుగు వారందరినీ ఒకే ప్రభుత్వం కిందకు తేవాలనే ప్రయత్నంగా కూడా మనం చూడవచ్చు. కాని 1939-42 మధ్య కాలంలో అది కోస్తా ఆంధ్ర, రాయలసీమ ప్రజలకు ఆమోదయోగ్యం కాలేదు. అయితే పదేళ్ల తర్వాత నిజాం తన రాజ్యాన్ని కోల్పోయిన తర్వాత- వీరే తెలంగాణాలో తమ ప్రాంతాల్ని విలీనం చేయటానికి ఉత్సాహంగా ముందుకొచ్చారు.

Source: ఆంధ్రజ్యోతి

Safeguarding the many histories of India

Opinion » Op-Ed    March 8, 2014
Updated: March 8, 2014 01:27 IST

Chapal Mehra

Wendy Doniger’s book was Penguin’s to protect but freedom of expression is ours to safeguard; our responsibility is collective and so should be our response

It’s hard to tell the truth, harder still to accept it. The truth by its very nature is neither polite nor palatable. But for a country that equates the truth with victory, we seem to be increasingly intolerant of it. A growing conservatism seems to be upon us with the intention to reduce our ability to debate, argue and differ. The recent out-of-court-settlement between Penguin India and a right wing Hindu outfit that resulted in the decision to pulp a scholarly work on Hinduism by Wendy Doniger signals the growing dominance of a conservative and intolerant section of Indian society.

This conservatism can be traced as far back as the ban on Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. The ban is significant because it provided political legitimacy to intolerance and censorship. The fundamentalists were quick to realise the need to manufacture intolerance and attack our diversity and freedom of expression, their arch enemies, on the basis of religion. Not surprisingly, since then, the attacks on our cultural freedoms have only increased.

A quick skim through recent acts of cultural intimidation is revealing. Oxford University Press, a leading academic publisher, buckled rapidly under pressure and withdrew an excellent academic book on Shivaji because it hurt regional sentiments. India’s noted painter M.F. Hussain lived and died in exile, hounded by fundamentalists because of what he painted decades ago. But the most recent and shameful act was when India’s celebrated poet academic A.K. Ramanujan’s work on the Ramayana was removed from the Delhi University syllabus and later withdrawn from print by OUP.
Disallowing diversity

What do we learn from these arbitrary acts of censorship, cultural intimidation and bullying? That most institutions charged with protecting our diversity of thought and freedoms of expression are buckling under this conservatism. How can a leading publisher acquiesce so easily to bullying or the possibility of an adverse court ruling? By choosing to pulp or withdraw their books they seem to agree that an alternative narrative cannot exist. Clearly, they have abandoned their role as guardians of ideas and the written word.

Yet, is the publisher alone to blame? The courts of late seem strangely inclined towards conservatism. Politicians, across the board, lead this conservatism. They want to regulate the media, censor books and ban movies. But most disturbingly, we as a people seem least interested in the truth and comfortably numb in our pursuit of attainment and entertainment. What should we as a liberal, secular and tolerant India do?

Protest. This book was Penguin’s to protect but the freedom of expression is ours to safeguard. Our responsibility here is collective and so should be our response. Authors and writers have already urged Penguin to take this matter to a higher court. This settlement and every other act of oppression should be challenged in court and outside to assert our identity as a diverse and tolerant people who celebrate not silence but alternative histories and perspectives.

Groups like Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti must be made to realise that this form of cultural bullying or censorship is acutely un-Indian and will not be tolerated. In India, we have always had many histories. Far from being a source of conflict, these have strengthened our diversity and philosophical thinking. Where others see conflict, we have seen interdependence and tolerance — an idea deeply embedded in the Indian nation.

These groups, who also misrepresent Hinduism, must be made to realise that their action is also deeply un-Hindu. The religion has within itself sufficient conflicting history, ideology and philosophy. While there are commonalities, no single deity, book or idea defines Hinduism. Hence, there can never be one Hindu way or one Hindu history. To try and reduce the religion to a single history is to insult Hinduism itself. Every Hindu must speak up to defend the plurality and inclusiveness of this religion.
Defence against offense

Finally, to ban or withdraw any book, without sufficient discussion or dissent, is to diminish and offend the reader. Such an action seems to suggest that either the Indian reader does not have the capacity to handle diverse ideas of religious history or should not have access to diverse and alternative histories. We must protest to defend our right to read and independently judge the truth and merit of each argument because our right to ideas is the most fundamental freedom any civilised society offers.

This conservatism that arm-twisted Penguin into pulping this book must be made to realise that India’s diversity is non-negotiable. If we don’t fight this, our ability to debate and argue will slowly vanish. We will then be left with only one version of history and a broken idea of Indianness, because it’s not about Hinduism or Doniger but what we represent as a people. If we cannot exist with tolerance and diversity, what else defines being Indian?

(Chapal Mehra is an independent New Delhi-based writer.)

Source: The Hindu

శ్రీ కౌముది మార్చి 2014