Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

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Atri
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Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Atri »

Link to last page of earlier iteration of this thread - http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... start=6400
Prem
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/busin ... .html?_r=0
ATNAGIRI DISTRICT, India — When the cashew harvest starts here, the orchards clinging to the lush, wrinkled hills are blanketed by a brilliant yellow, orange and red carpet, created after farmers pluck the nut and toss its stem to the ground. There, the cashew apples, as the stems are known, quickly rot, except for a few used to brew a local spirit called feni that is popular in neighboring Goa.This season, however, the carpet will be thinner because Pepsi is betting that the tangy, sweet juice from cashew apples can be the next coconut water or açaí juice.“Coconut, pomegranate and lime juices are popular, but affordability is becoming a major issue,” said V. D. Sarma, vice president for global procurement at PepsiCo India. “So we are always looking for new juices sources that are locally produced to help bring prices down for us and for consumers.”Quinoa, a nutty, protein-dense grain that was a staple of the pre-Colombian diet in the Andes, is now in short supply, :( thanks to the voracious appetite of global consumers. Chia, a seed rich in omega-3 fatty acids, can be found in everything from smoothies to muffins.“We can tell a story around it,” said Anshul Khanna, senior manager of juice and juice drinks at PepsiCo India. “The cashew apple is exotic and appealing, and we think it is a premium product.”Cashew juice also shows up in various local products around the world like Cashewy in Thailand, which is promoted by its producer as “the beverage of gods.” Nutrition and health websites extol its high vitamin C content, and there are even claims that it helps burn fat and enhances sexual performance.
The Portuguese introduced cashew trees in the 16th century in the region around Goa, hoping to stem the erosion of rich topsoil that was being washed away by heavy rains. Now India is one of the world’s largest cashew producers. Some three-quarters of the roughly 660,000 tons of nuts grown here come from small farmers with orchards of one to two hectares, or 2.5 to 5 acres.
Farmers in the program attended a two-day workshop, where they were introduced to the Vengurla 4 and Vengurla 7, two new, more productive varieties of cashew trees that were developed by Indian government researchers. They also learned techniques and practices to help increase the yields of existing trees, many of which are native varieties. Farmers can, for instance, dig trenches around their trees and create terraces to help trap and distribute monsoon rains that would otherwise simply run down the hills.
Hari Seldon
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Hari Seldon »

Before every election, these mysterious fires gutting sensitive files happens like clockwork. Can something systemic be done to circumvent this dark ritual?

Fire at Haryana govt office, records, equipment gutted
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by ramana »

x-post....

An old but interesting article.

The Indian Jews
Jakob De Roover wrote:Social science debate in India has been hijacked by the struggle between secularism and Hindutva for decades now. Usually the Sangh Parivar is blamed for this turn of events. However, it could well be argued that the Hindutva ideologues simply adopted the stance of the secularists. Perhaps the best illustration is the case of anti-Brahminism.

To be against "Brahminism" is part and parcel of the political correctness of progressive scholars in twenty-first-century India, much like being against Muslims is part of the message of their Hindutva colleagues. This indicates that something is very wrong with the Indian academic debate. Promotion of animosity towards a religious tradition or its followers is not acceptable today, but it becomes truly perverse when the intelligentsia endorses it.

In Europe, it took horrendous events to put an end to the propaganda of anti-Semitism, which had penetrated the media and intelligentsia. It required decades of incessant campaigning before anti-Semitism was relegated to the realm of intellectual and political bankruptcy. In India, anti-Brahminism is still the proud slogan of many political parties and the credential of the radical intellectual.

Some may find this parallel between anti-Brahminism and anti-Semitism ill-advised. Nevertheless, it has strong grounds.

First, there are striking similarities between the stereotypes about Brahmins in India and those about Jews in the West. Jews have been described as devious connivers, who would do anything for personal gain. They were said to be secretive and untrustworthy, manipulating politics and the economy. In India, Brahmins are all too often characterised in the same way.

Second, the stereotypes about the Jews were part of a larger story about a historical conspiracy in which they had supposedly exploited European societies. To this day, the stories about a Jewish conspiracy against humanity prevail. The anti-Brahminical stories sound much the same, but have the Brahmins plotting against the oppressed classes in Indian society.

In both cases, historians have claimed to produce "evidence" that cannot be considered so by any standard. Typical of the ideologues of anti-Brahminism is the addition of ad hoc ploys whenever their stories are challenged by facts. When it is pointed out that the Brahmins have not been all that powerful in most parts of the country, or that they were poor in many regions, one reverts to the image of the Brahmin manipulating kings and politicians behind the scene. We cannot find empirical evidence, it is said, because of the secretive way in which Brahminism works.

Third, both in anti-Semitic Europe and anti-Brahminical India, this goes together with the interpretation of contemporary events in terms of these stories. One does not really analyse social tragedies and injustices, but approaches them as confirmations of the ideological stories. All that goes wrong in society is blamed on the minority in question. Violence against Muslims? It must be the "Brahmins" of the Sangh Parivar. Opposition against Christian missionaries and the approval of anti-conversion laws? "Ah, the Brahmins fear that Christianity will empower the lower castes." Members of a scheduled caste are killed? "The Brahmin wants to show the Dalit his true place in the caste hierarchy." An OBC member loses his job; a lower caste girl is raped? "The upper castes must be behind it." So the story goes.

This leads to a fourth parallel: in both cases, resentment against the minority in question is systematically created and reinforced among the majority. The Jews were accused of sucking all riches out of European societies. In the decades before the second World War, more and more people began to believe that it was time "to take back what was rightfully theirs." In India also, movements have come into being that want to set right "the historical injustices of Brahminical oppression." Some have even begun to call upon their followers to "exterminate the Brahmins."

In Europe, state policies were implemented that expressed the discrimination against Jews. For a very long time, they could not hold certain jobs and participate in many social and economic activities. In India, one seems to be going this way with policies that claim to correct "the historical exploitation by the upper castes." It is becoming increasingly difficult for Brahmins to get access to certain jobs. In both cases, these policies have been justified in terms of a flawed ideological story that passes for social science.

The fifth parallel is that both anti-Semitism and anti-Brahminism have deep roots in Christian theology. In the case of Judaism, its continuing vitality as a tradition was a threat to Christianity's claim to be the fulfilment of the Jewish prophecies about the Messiah. The refusal of Jews to join the religion of Christ (the true Messiah, according to Christians) was seen as an unacceptable denial of the truth of Christianity. Saint Augustine even wrote that the Jews had to continue to exist, but only to show that Christians had not fabricated the prophesies about Christ and to confirm that some would not follow Christ and be damned for it.

The contemporary stereotypes about Brahmins and the story about Brahminism also originate in Christian theology. They reproduce Protestant images of the priests of false religion. When European missionaries and merchants began to travel to India in great numbers, they held two certainties that came from Christian theology: false religion would exist in India; and false religion revolved around evil priests who had fabricated all kinds of laws, doctrines and rites in order to bully the innocent believers into submission. In this way, the priests of the devil abused religion for worldly goals. The European story about Brahminism and the caste system simply reproduced this Protestant image of false religion. The colonials identified the Brahmins as the priests and Brahminism as the foundation of false religion in India. This is how the dominant image of "the Hindu religion" came into being.

The sixth parallel lies in the fact that Christian theology penetrated and shaped the "secular" discourse about Judaism and Brahminism. The theological criticism became part of common sense and was reproduced as scientific truth. In India, this continues unto this day. Social scientists still talk about "Brahminism" as the worst thing that ever happened to humanity.

Perhaps the most tragic similarity is that some members of the minority community have internalised these stories about themselves. Some Jews began to believe that they were to blame for what happened during the Holocaust; many educated Brahmins now feel that they are guilty of historical atrocities against other groups. In some cases, this has led to a kind of identity crisis in which they vilify "Brahminism" in English-language academic debate, but continue their traditions. In other cases, the desire to "defend" these same traditions has inspired Brahmins to aggressively support Hindutva.

In twentieth-century Europe, we have seen how dangerous anti-Semitism was and what consequences it could have in society. Tragically, unimaginable suffering was needed before it was relegated to the realm of unacceptable positions. In India, anti-Brahminism was adopted from Protestant missionaries by colonial scholars who then passed it on to the secularists and Dalit intellectuals. They created the climate which allowed the Sangh Parivar to continue hijacking the social sciences for petty political purposes.

The question that India has to raise in the twenty-first century is this: Do we need bloodshed, before we will realise that the reproduction of anti-Brahminism is as harmful as anti-Muslim propaganda? What is needed to realise that the Hindutva movement has simply taken its cue from the secularists? Do we need a new victory of fascism, before we will admit that pernicious ideologies should not be sold as social science?
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Nikhil T »

SaiK wrote: Ebola is a deadly virus, which has claimed about 932 lives so far. Of this, 300 are CRPF personnel deployed in Liberia for UN peacekeeping operations.

The Minister said that at least 500 Indians were in the Republic of Guinea, 3000 in Liberia and 1200 in Sierra Leone (from where the maximum cases have been reported). Nigeria has a much larger presence of nearly 40000 Indian citizens. “If the situation worsens, there is a possibility of these people returning home,” Vardhan said. WHO has reported 1,603 cases and 887 deaths till August 4 in four countries — Guinea (485 and 358), Liberia (468 and 255), Sierra Leone (646 and 273) and Nigeria (4 and 1).

http://www.niticentral.com/2014/08/08/e ... 35463.html
devesh wrote:^^^

this is serious. and the first I'm hearing of it. so Indian soldiers are sacrificing themselves to keep peace African countries f***** by the West, and there is not even a peep of it in the Western media...

Thank you Niticentral.
Niticentral is wrong. We haven't lost 300 CRPF jawans to ebola. Here is the Reuters report with Minister's original statement:
Of the 4,700 Indians in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, 300 are Central Reserve Police Force personnel - comprising largely women – serving as U.N. peacekeepers in Liberia. Nigeria has nearly 40,000 Indian citizen
Agnimitra
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Agnimitra »

Circulate this:

ISI plans to use US, UN to tar Modi
Pakistan's spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, in a series of meetings held in late July and early August, decided to "fire on the shoulders of the US and the UN" to tarnish the reputation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sources within London, New York and Geneva say that the plan is to ensure the further penetration by the ISI, and its auxiliary elements, of groups which will be used to paint India as a semi-fascist state. The aim is to convince the international community that Government of India is intolerant and neglectful of minorities, women and Dalits. The ISI is trying to ensure that the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva begins discussion on a complaint, which the Pakistan agency expects will get filed this year. The complaint will be by the US-based Coalition Against Genocide (CAG) and will contain strictures against the Modi government. According to a Washington-based expert, "16 of the 47 key NGOs (forming the CAG) have received partial or complete funding from the ISI", directly or through channels in the Gulf Cooperation Council and friendly contacts in western countries. "Nine of the CAG's key NGOs have extensive linkages with the Pakistan-American community, which is riddled with ISI sympathisers." These NGOs are leading the charge against India.
A key official in Geneva warns that "since 26 May 2014, individuals across India are being located by ISI cutouts". These are those willing to present "black" (i.e. manufactured) testimony on the three human rights issues mentioned earlier. Another source from the same location claimed that "a mass grave relating to the Khalistan insurgency, which contained more than 50 bodies had been discovered in 2011 in Haryana" but that "the US administration had ensured that this be suppressed, as it did not want to embarrass the Congress Party", which was in power in both the state as well as at the national level (when the incident was alleged to have taken place). Systematic efforts spread over years to discover mass graves of Muslims in Gujarat were abandoned in 2011 as futile, clearly because none existed.
According to a London-based source, through its global network "the ISI has funded the travel of 247 individuals from India to Washington, Geneva and other capitals from 2007 to 2011". The purpose of such travel was to ensure that "testimony created and vetted in advance by ISI-linked individuals was given by such Indian nationals in the US Congress, the European Parliament and the UN Human Rights Council. Such assertions, the ISI colonels expect, will intensify already ongoing efforts to "depict India as a fascist state killing minorities and the disadvantaged in a systematic manner".
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by devesh »

So what the hell was Congress doing all this time while Pak was jumping from one conspiracy a after another to undermine Hindus? One gets the feeling that Indira, wherever she is, would be disgusted for bringing the foreigner into her home. Her legacy has essentially been hijacked by Sonia.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by devesh »

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 102918.cms

PM Narendra Modi slams Pakistan for waging 'proxy war' against India

____________________________________________________


it is good to see the PM speaking truth again. for 10 years we had Moron Mohan Singh claiming Pak was a "victim" of terror....disgusting.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Rony »

Excellent speech by Yogi Adityanath on Communal Violence bill

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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e0ce2850-198d ... z3AOYdOco8
India’s ancient cave monasteries
By William Dalrymple
To the north of Pune lie rock-cut complexes as startling as Petra but completely overlooked by tourists
Bhaja is usually described as a cave temple but it is really more like sculpture on an epic scale: an entire range of monastic buildings hewn out of the rock and elaborately decorated with sculpted trompe l’oeil. Carved window frames, blind arches and tiers of fretwork mouldings give way to bamboo railings and balconies out of which half-naked Satavahana men and women peer, as if gazing out arm in arm from the terrace of their apartment block, surveying the valley below. These carvings mimic long-lost multi-storeyed wooden buildings, all physical traces of which vanished millennia ago.And that is, in a sense, the point: as one inscription puts it, these chaitya halls were made to endure a kalpa – an entire cosmic age. The dedication in a neighbouring Deccan cave complex gives an indication of the motives of the patrons who paid for this work: “Realizing that life, youth, wealth and happiness are transitory,” it reads, Varahadeva, prime minister to the great emperor Harisena, “made this dwelling to be occupied by the best of ascetics. It resembles the palaces of the Lord of the Gods, clothed in the brilliance of Indra’s crown. As long as the sun shines this spotless cave may be enjoyed!”
Flanking the chaitya hall lies a vihara, once used for community discussions and theological debates; beyond extend the monastic living quarters. One cave whose roof is still black with petrified soot was presumably a kitchen; to one side, meals were eaten on a long, low platform in the centre of what was clearly the refectory. Beyond that are the lines of austere dormitory cells, each with two stone beds crowned with stone pillows. Carved into each is a bookshelf for holy texts, a rod on which to hang monastic robes, and a wall niche for an oil lamp. The monks could have vacated yesterday, and equipped with a sleeping mat to roll out, could move back tomorrow.
At the end of the halls and cells is the jagged roofline of a natural cave which shelters a cluster of 14 circular stupas, containing the ashes of the monastery’s saints and abbots, ranging from the 3rd century BC to the 2nd century AD. Beyond is carved a magnificent frieze of the heavens, full of restless, churning energy. Some believe it shows the Sun God Surya in his four-horse chariot, with two female attendants and an escort of armed guards, trampling underfoot the coils of the demon of darkness.These cells and monastic debating halls were already 200 years old when Augustus started the rebuilding of Rome, or when Jesus of Nazareth led his first disciples into the fastness of the Judaean hills. Yet while the more famous of the Deccan rock monasteries – Ajanta and Ellora – are on a few itineraries, these remarkable buildings, representing some of the deepest roots of Indian art, are now quite overlooked except for the occasional visit from specialist art historians and archaeologists. On a 10-day journey around them, I saw barely a handful of other visitors, and they were all curious locals.
These amazing masterworks of early Buddhist art and architecture are the prototypes of the forms that would later spread over the Himalayas to Afghanistan, China and Japan, or by sea to Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and the rest of southeast Asia. The roots of all this lie scattered around these stark Maharashtrian hills, alone among the precipices and dragon’s back peaks, apparently forgotten and ignored by all.“You cannot travel on the path,” said the Buddha, “unless you become the path itself.” His last words to his disciples told them: “Walk on!” It is probable that the Buddha envisaged his monks as leading a permanently peripatetic life – the life of the wandering scholar and thinker that he himself led. Yet by the 2nd century BC, Buddhist monks had already begun to turn away from the road to embrace, instead, the more sedentary life of the hermit in his cell.These monastic halls were already 200 years old when Jesus led his first disciples into the Judaean hills
The rock-cut cave monasteries of western India predate almost all the surviving written texts of Buddhism, and all we know about them comes from the Sanskrit and Pali inscriptions left on the rock walls by the monks, their patrons and their lay devotees. The great monasteries at this period were as powerful as those in medieval Europe, often had their own mints and owned vast landed estates, some of which were worked by slaves. The inscriptions show how surprisingly middle-class and mercantile early Buddhism was: not only were the monasteries built along trade routes but the patrons of these early monks were often merchants or bankers.The 2nd century BC was a period of great expansion of international trade, and these monasteries, remote as they may seem to us, were built on the trade routes of their time. The valleys they crown once saw the frequent passage of the caravans of the great merchant houses bringing luxury goods – ebony, teak and sandalwood, elephant tusks and translucent Indian textiles, pepper and cinnamon – to the coast where they would be shipped by Egyptian Jews and Greek middle men to the Red Sea and hence, via Alexandria, to Antioch and Rome.
All this led to a dramatic drain of western gold and silver to India, something that both Pliny and Strabo comment on with some anxiety in their writings. At the peak of the trade, during the reign of Nero, a south Indian embassy was sent to Rome to discuss the latter’s balance of payments problems. It was this lucrative Indian export traffic that paid for these elaborate monastic excavations.There are many hints of such long-distance connections in the art decorating these now isolated shrines. The far side of the same spine of mountains that shelters Bhaja also contains another spectacular rock-cut monastery, Bedsa. This is a slightly younger complex than Bhaja, and more remotely situated, high on a narrow ledge up an even more inaccessible valley. The first thing you see at the top of the winding mountain path is the rotunda of a stone stupa containing the remains, according to a Pali inscription, of “Gobhuti, a forest-dweller, a mendicant monk, who lived on Mara’s Peak, and raised by his pupil, the devoted monk Asalamita.”
Nothing about this modest memorial prepares you for what lies a few metres away, deeper into the same rock-cut terrace. For if you squeeze through a narrow cut in the rock to your right, you find, hidden away along a narrow passageway – as surprising as the façade of the great pink treasury at Petra – a magnificent rock-cut chaitya portico 12m high, conceived and sculpted on the grandest scale. Here the capitals are decorated with royal couples riding winged beasts – horses, gryphons, buffalo and elephants – that are clearly distant Indian cousins of those in the great imperial Persian capital of Persepolis. Is it possible that after the fall of the Persian empire, some Persian sculptors found their way here?In the eyes of the monks who lived here, in other words, this was completely appropriate decoration, notwithstanding the postcoital languor of the couples, naked but for their jewels, girdles, and in the case of one woman, an elaborate proto-monokini: Karle could provide more than enough material for some future PhD on the changing fashions in ancient Indian lingerie.
A few hours’ drive across the Deccan plateau near Aurangabad are the caves of Ajanta and Ellora, both Unesco world heritage sites. Ajanta contains probably the greatest picture gallery to survive from the ancient world – wall after wall of fabulous murals of the Jataka stories of the Lives of the Buddha – while Ellora is home to India’s greatest collection of Hindu sculpture. But both of these sites are busy, bustling places and I decided on this occasion to turn my back on these more celebrated centres and head, instead, to the remotest monastery of all: Pitalkhora, two hours’ drive to the north of Aurangabad.Here the monastery, believed by scholars to be the oldest after Bhaja, lies in a spectacularly wild ravine. Plunging cliffs fall to a narrow terrace where a group of chaitya halls have been burrowed into the rock face, hanging like a swallow’s nest high above an arid plateau.It is a fabulously resonant spot; yet as with Bedsa it was once clearly a place of great sophistication, connected to the metropolitan centres of its day. Two inscriptions record donations by merchants from Pratisthana, modern Paithan, once the great port of the west coast, the Mumbai of its day. It was these merchant patrons who paid for artists to come and paint the murals: saintly-looking orange robed monks standing, almost levitating, on pink lotuses; Bodhisattva figures of otherworldly compassion and calm attending meditating Buddhas. Lying scattered around the site are sculptures of musicians, flowers and foliage, loving mithuna couples embowered in lotus and honeysuckle motifs, Persian winged gryphons and lines of stately elephants.
Sadly, though, Pitalkhora is now in an advanced state of disintegration. In recent years several of the halls have collapsed. Most tragic of all is the loss of one of the two star sculptures at the site, a life-size dvarapala guardian figure in the form of an Indo-Greek soldier, whose mailed Ionian fringed tunic is offset by his very Indian serpentine earrings, knotted turban and rather homely Gandhi-like dhoti. The figure, one of the great masterpieces of early Buddhist sculpture, was smashed to pieces 15 years ago. As there was no custodian, the culprits were never found.
If the great pleasure of visiting remote sites in India is the sensation of arriving at some forgotten wonder, with all the excitement of being one of the few to see these lost masterpieces, then the fate of Pitalkhora shows the other side of that coin: neglected archaeological sites of the greatest importance left to rot through lack of funding and interest. Perhaps there is also a cultural factor here at work: as one conservationist once told me with a sad shrug: “You must understand,” he said, “that we Hindus burn our dead.”
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Manish_Sharma »

devesh wrote:So what the hell was Congress doing all this time while Pak was jumping from one conspiracy a after another to undermine Hindus? One gets the feeling that Indira, wherever she is, would be disgusted for bringing the foreigner into her home. Her legacy has essentially been hijacked by Sonia.
That maimuna begum the nawaasi of mughal gayaasuddin gazi was no less anti hindu:
Natwar Singh’s profile of Indira Gandhi is embarrassing in its praise. She is described as a “graceful, sparkling, engaging human being”, a “caring humanist” endowed with “charm”, “elegance” and “good taste”.

But even this flood of adjectives is not preparation enough for what follows. Describing a drive in Afghanistan with Indira Gandhi to see Babur’s resting place, Natwar Singh writes: “The Prime Minister of India stood there, with head slightly bowed, paying her homage. I was a couple of feet behind her. It was a moment to cherish, recall and remember. At that moment the centuries seemed to blend and blur.

“After a minute she stepped back and said, ‘We have had our brush with history’. I said, ‘I have had two.’ ‘What do you mean'’ ‘To pay one’s respects to Babur was itself an occasion,’ I said, ‘but to do so in the company of Indira Gandhi was the rarest of privileges’.”


http://www.telegraphindia.com/1030418/a ... 882419.asp
Prem
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis ... lebrate-it
Do not ignore India’s past, celebrate it
Jawaharlal Nehru apparently agreed with his teachers in England that the ancient past of India was a myth.Ram Setu: ‘The Sri Lankan government would be willing to join in such a re-creation of the past, in view of the immense goodwill that an extension of Rama’s trail to Sri Lanka across the Ram Setu would generate in India.’visitor to Europe would not fail to be struck by the pride that is shown in showcasing the past. In Vienna, a favourite of tourist guides is a dwelling designed by an architect who disliked flat surfaces, and so ensured that the floors of each room sported a clutch of small and big mounds, thereby making it a trifle less easy to walk on. In Paris, museums show sketches of Leonardo da Vinci and other greats from the past, some of which seemed somewhat unimpressive. No matter. They were each lovingly cared for, as much so as a mound of rocks an hour's train ride from London, Stonehenge, which is showcased as a major tourist attraction dating back to the days of the druids. Schoolbooks in Europe are filled with page after page of illustrious sons and daughters of EU countries, all presented in the context of the history of the world as seen through the eyes of Europe.
In contrast, India is a country where much of history has been rubbished as myth, to such a degree that for those passing through the school system, this is a country that in effect was born on 15 August 1947, much like Pakistan a day earlier. There is chapter after chapter in school textbooks on a very few "heroes of the freedom struggle", with most of the space being devoted to the Nehrus and Mahatma Gandhi.Jawaharlal Nehru apparently agreed with his teachers in England that the ancient past of India was a myth, and that therefore the heroes and heroines celebrated in ancient epics were just characters in a novel. While Greeks may be proud of the Iliad and the Odyssey, in India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have been banished from histories of India as "myth", thereby constricting the history of the country in a way that would be sacrilegious in Greece or in Italy, where the exploits of Julius Caesar are celebrated to this day.This columnist believes that the Ramayana and the Mahabharata described real life situations, and that Rama and Sita existed in flesh and blood during a time erased on the excuse of myth by colonial-era historians.
The Chinese Communist Party rebuilt much of the Great Wall of China, and what is needed to be done in India is to re-discover the truth of the epics. Were, for example, a tourist trail to be created that would retrace the journey of Rama to Lanka and back, the same would not only generate an awareness of the awesome past of this country, but also attract tens of millions of tourists and pilgrims from across the globe.Certainly t
he Sri Lankan government would be willing to join in such a re-creation of the past, in view of the immense goodwill that an extension of Rama's trail to Sri Lanka across the Ram Setu would generate in India.While a re-creation of Rama's path to Lanka on the lines of the Great Wall would be a joint enterprise between Sri Lanka and India, an authentic rendering of the life and travels of the Buddha would be a joint effort between India and Nepal, while re-creating the deeds of Guru Nanak would necessitate the cooperation of Pakistan, where several locations associated with the founder of Sikhism exist, whereas a rendition of events in the life of Mahavira could possibly be carried out entirely within this country.Apart from a greater realisation in our people of what A.L. Basham saw as the wonder that is India as well as greater tourism, a spinoff of this effort would be a better atmosphere between India and its neighbours.Also included would be a deepening of the understanding that cooperation between the countries of South Asia (including Afghanistan and Myanmar) is essential if a deadly common enemy, poverty, is to be eliminated.It needs to be said at this point that those who seek to appropriate Rama and Sita to Hindus alone are doing an immense disservice to the memories of this illustrious pair, for they are the cultural treasure of every citizen of India and not just of those belonging to a single faith, just as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the Panchatantra and the Jataka tales, not to mention so many other treasures from the past, are the heritage of every citizen of India, and indeed of the world, and ought not to be either promoted or rejected on the grounds of religion.What is needed is faith in India, and this can only develop to the levels seen in the US, the UK, Japan and China if the ancient past of our country is celebrated rather than put away as myth. ( The very reason JLNRNIseculars atack this)
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Ashok Sarraff »

This news could go in multiple threads, but I guess this is the most appropriate thread as if this is true, such actions are against Indian Interest. The fist issue is the banning of Hindi movies in Manipur (not sure how true is that, may be someone from the region can comment) and second is the success of the Nehruvian education on the columnist is quite apparent from the title and the comment below.


http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/stop ... 70321.html
Stop whining! Manipur has banned all Hindi films, not just Mary Kom
It's a side effect of the Indian population being home to one of the widest gene pools in the world.
While Chopra's genes connect her to the ancestral North Indian group, Kom, a Manipuri, has Central Asian features. This is why Sanjay Leela Bhansali has foreign make up artists and a special effects team. The hope is that these two will do what genetics makes impossible: give Chopra a flat nose and epicanthic folds over her eyelids.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

[youtube]sPxsf_Ib7gs&sns=em[/youtube]
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

High demand for ‘non-violent’ Durga idols this Puja

Toilet
[quoteOLKATA: This Durga Puja, don't be stumped if you can't spot the Mahishasura. Or if you see the Goddess holding flowers in her hands instead of weapons. While Puja organizers are aggressively trying to go one up on their rivals, the idols are turning 'non-violent' at several popular venues. And in keeping with themes, the version of Ma Durga in your para could well be ghagra-clad or have shades of Ajanta-Ellora."With changing times, we too are bringing in subtle changes to our art. Earlier we had earthen platforms but now, to boost stability of the idol, we are using plywood. The focus of most Puja organizers today is on glitter, so our work trends too are getting modernized in keeping with the demand," Uttam Pal, a Kumartuli idol-maker. "Today, almost all major Pujas have themes. But as artists, we always prefer traditional idols. Theme is plain business while the traditional is pure art. So we try to maintain a balance. Many people get retouched photos and ask us to replicate them," said Subhankar Pal, another artisan.

"Since the last few Pujas, we are getting more requests for certain changes in position of the smaller idols. Mahishasura is falling out of favour. While there were specific instructions on the look of the demon, in many cases now we have only the head of the 'mahish'. In a traditional Puja, Ma Durga has weapons in her 10 hands but more and more people are coming in asking them to be replaced by flowers," said Subhankar. He pointed out to an idol he is giving the final touches to. "You can see here that Mahishasura, instead of trying to attack the Goddess, is worshipping her," he added.But a Durga idol will invariably have the same face and features of the Goddess. "Not necessarily," said Sanatan 'Khoka' Pal, as he dug his hand into the clay that will be used on a huge idol he is currently working on. "This idol is inspired by Ajanta-Ellora. You can see the face is much different from the traditional. Also, we have had to break away from the traditional shapes and sizes as most people want a big Ma Durga but smaller Kartik, Ganesh, Lakshmi and Saraswati idols. Most idols we have made so far don't have Mahishasura but only the head of a giant buffalo. We have to keep in mind the size of the pandal, its theme, and several other factors, which wasn't the case even 10 years back. But we haven't got any outrageous requests. People are willing to experiment and innovate but they don't want to stretch it too far," said Khoka.Tarun Pal, who had made idols of footballers like Neymar during the World Cup, too, said unlike previous years, where requests were sent to make Mahishasura look like Osama bin Laden to Veerappan, this time the demon is missing in many of his idols. "The focus is entirely on Ma Durga. So you might see a Durga idol in Rajasthani attire. Or in ghagra. A lot of experimentation is being done on the dresses," he added.][/quote]
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

After 157 years, mortal remains of 282 Indian soldiers leave for final journey
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 842664.cms
AJNALA: Only a handful of office-bearers of Gurdwara Shaheed Ganj Shaheedan Wala Khu, Ajnala, and a few curious children were there to prepare the caravan of vehicles to carry the mortal remains of 282 soldiers — who were martyred in 1857 during India's first struggle for freedom — for their last rites in Haridwar, Uttarakhand. Remains of these brave soldiers will be immersed in river Ganga 157 years after they were captured and killed by the British for raising their voice against their colonial masters."For us, it is a matter of pride to immerse the mortal remains of our soldiers in Ganga and be a part of the history. But I don't know why nobody, especially politicians and the administration, is interested," said Amarjit Singh Sarkaria, president of Shaheeg Ganj gurdwara, who along with his associates, including Parveen Sareen, was busy shifting boxes of remains of soldiers to a truck at 5.20am for their final sojourn."We have taken the responsibility and will deliver the remains even if no one comes forward to support us," said Sareen.istorian Surinder Kochhar, who had taken up the issue of excavating martyrs' remains with the government, received the cavalcade from Ajnala at Bhandari Bridge, Amritsar. He informed that on Sunday, remains of the soldiers would be immersed in Ganga after performing the Vedic rituals.
MARTYRS' STORY
According to historians, after the news of freedom struggle in Meerut and Delhi broke out, the 26th Native Infantry Regiment posted at Mian Mir, near Lahore, was disarmed on May 13, 1857, and placed under surveillance. On July 30 then, soldiers of the regiment, led by Parkash Pandey, had killed a British major and sergeant major while moving towards Ajnala. Acting on a tip-off, the then deputy commissioner of Amritsar, Fredric Cooper, had ordered that all of them be put in a cage-like room of the Old Tehsil. While 200 soldiers had died of asphyxiation in that confined space, the remaining were shot the next morning and their bodies dragged and thrown into a well ? which later came to be known as Kalian Wala Khu.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Agnimitra »

Could save us billions in ME oil imports:

"Ethanol-fuelled buses hit the road in Nagpur" -

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/in ... ur/1281687
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

The Depth of Indian Culture - Sadhguru

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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

"Iss desh ka sabandh Hanuman se hai... Humayun se nahin.." Y. Adityanath
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by kmkraoind »

Govt issues show-cause notice to Al Jazeera for allegedly showing wrong India map

Posting in full. At last a Govt that has guts to show middle finger to Gelf lobby.
NEW DELHI: A leading international channel has been slapped with a show-cause notice by the information and broadcasting ministry for allegedly depicting a wrong map of India in its news reports.

Sources told PTI that the I&B ministry has in its showcause notice to the Al Jazeera TV channel said that it had come to its attention that on more than one occasion last year, a wrong map of India had been shown in its news broadcasts wherein parts of the country were shown outside the border, and sought the channel's response.

"It had come to the notice of the ministry that in some of the news reports shown by the channel in 2013 related to various incidents, parts of J&K were shown in territory outside India. The ministry took the matter with the office of Surveyor General of India.

"After a report was received from the office of Surveyor General of India, a show-cause notice has been issued to the channel," a source said.

As per the Cable TV Network Rules, 1994 it is laid down that no programme should be carried in the cable service which contains anything affecting the integrity of a nation.

TV channels are required to follow the prescribed norms including programme code and advertisement code under the relevant Acts and Rules, they said.

Officials said that the ministry of I&B has powers conferred under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 as per which if the central government thinks it necessary or expedient in the interest of the sovereignty or integrity of India or security of India, it may by order regulate or prohibit the transmission or retransmission of any channel or programme.

"The I&B ministry has issued a show cause notice to Al Jazeera channel and sought its reply on the matter," a source said.

Repeated attempts made to get the channel's version did not fructify.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by ramana »

Hindu Op-Ed

Nothing Vedic about Vedic Maths
Nothing Vedic in ‘Vedic Maths’

C. K. Raju



Illustration by Satwik Gade.

The Hindu Illustration by Satwik Gade.




Advocating ‘Vedic mathematics’ as a replacement for traditional Indian arithmetic is hardly an act of nationalism; it only shows ignorance of the history of mathematics

Gujarat has made it compulsory for school students to read the texts of Dinanath Batra, endorsed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to news reports, Mr. Batra has now proposed a non-governmental education commission which will Indianise education through, for instance, Vedic mathematics. The Minister for Education has also mentioned Vedic mathematics as part of her agenda.

Ignorant of tradition

One appreciates the desire of these people to work for Indian traditions. But where in the Vedas is “Vedic mathematics” to be found? Nowhere. Vedic mathematics has no relation whatsoever to the Vedas. It actually originates from a book misleadingly titled Vedic Mathematics by Bharati Krishna Tirtha. The book admits on its first page that its title is misleading and that the (elementary arithmetic) algorithms expounded in the book have nothing to do with the Vedas. This is repeated on p. xxxv: “Obviously these formulas are not to be found in the present recensions of Atharvaveda.” I have been pointing this out since 1998. Regrettably, the advocates of “Vedic mathematics,” though they claim to champion Indian tradition, are ignorant of the actual tradition in the Vedas. Second, they do not even know what is stated in the book — the real source of “Vedic mathematics.” Third, they are unaware of scholarly writing on the subject. When education policy is decided by such ignorant people, they only end up making a laughing stock of themselves and the Vedas, and thus do a great disservice to the very tradition which they claim to champion.

Everyone learns how to add, subtract, multiply and divide in school. Why should we replace those algorithms with “Vedic mathematics”? Will that Indianise education? No. The standard arithmetic algorithms actually originated in India, where they were known by various names such as patiganita (slate arithmetic). However, the word “algorithm” comes from “algorithmus”: the Latinised name of al Khwarizmi of the 9th century House of Wisdom in Baghdad. He wrote an expository book on Indian arithmetic called Hisab al Hind. Gerbert d’Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II), the leading European mathematician of the 10th century, imported these arithmetic techniques from the Umayyad Khilafat of Córdoba. He did so because the primitive Greek and Roman system of arithmetic (tied to the abacus), then prevailing in Europe, was no match for Indian arithmetic. However, accustomed to the abacus (on which he wrote a tome), Gerbert was perplexed by algorithms based on the place-value system, and foolishly got a special abacus (apices) constructed for these “Arabic numerals” in 976 CE. Hence the name “Arabic numerals” — because a learned pope amusingly thought there was some magic in the shape of the numerals which made arithmetic efficient.

Later, Florentine merchants realised that efficient Indian arithmetic algorithms conferred a competitive advantage in commerce. Fibonacci, who traded across Islamic Africa, translated al Khwarizmi’s work, as did many others, which is why they came to be known as algorithms. Eventually, after 600 years, Indian algorithms displaced the European abacus and were introduced in the Jesuit syllabus as “practical mathematics” circa 1570 by Christoph Clavius. These algorithms are found in many early Indian texts, such as the Patiganita of Sridhar or the Ganita Sara Sangraha of Mahavira, or the Lilavati of Bhaskara II. So, advocating “Vedic mathematics” as a replacement for traditional Indian arithmetic is hardly an act of nationalism. On the contrary, it only shows ignorance of the history of mathematics. Spreading this ignorance among future generations will weaken the nation, not strengthen it.

The techniques of “Vedic mathematics” are designed for mental arithmetic, traditionally used by lower caste artisans such as carpenters or by people like Shakuntala Devi. There are many other such systems of mental arithmetic today. If that is what we intend to promote, we should first do a systematic comparison. We should also be honest and refrain from using the misleading label “Vedic” which is the main selling point of Bharti Krishna Tirtha’s system, and which attracts gullible people who infer value just from the wrapper.

Suppressing real Mathematics

Promoting the wrongly labelled “Vedic mathematics” suppresses the mathematics that really does exist in the Vedas. For example, Yajurveda 17.2 elaborates on the decimal place value system (the basis of Indian algorithms) and some of those names for numbers are still in use, though terms such as arab (arbudam) have changed meaning. That passage shows that the place value system extends back to Vedic times, and it was a late acquisition only in mathematically backward Europe.

Likewise, the theory of permutations and combinations is built into the Vedic metre (and Indian music in general), as explained in various texts from Pingala’s Chandahsutra to Bhaskar’s Lilavati. The aksa sukta of the Rgveda gives a beautiful account of the game of dice, which is the foundation of the theory of probability. The romantic story of Nala and Damayanti in the Mahabharata further relates dice to sampling theory (to count the number of fruits in a tree).

More details are in my article on “Probability in Ancient India” available online and published in the Elsevier Handbook of the Philosophy of Statistics.
However, all these scholarly efforts are jeopardised, for they too are viewed with suspicion.

We need to change the Western and colonial education system, especially with regard to mathematics. Traditional Indian ganita has much to offer in this process, but “Vedic mathematics” is definitely not the right way.

Wrong solutions like “Vedic mathematics” persist because an insecure political dispensation values the politically loyal over the learned who are loyal to the truth. (“Merit” apparently is important only in the context of reservations.) Such political processes are historically known to damage real traditions.

As I wrote over a decade ago in my book The Eleven Pictures of Time, those who attain or retain state power through religion are the worst enemies of that religion, whatever be the religion they claim to represent: Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism.

(C.K. Raju is author of Cultural Foundations of Mathematics. He was professor of mathematics, and Editorial Fellow of the Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture.)
Lots of nuggets mixed with bile.

I submit Smriti Irani is trying to raise awareness of the Hindu roots of maths, just as CK Raju was also trying. very trying!
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

http://thediplomat.com/2014/09/rebalanc ... lomat+RSS)
Rebalancing India’s Maritime Posture in the Indo-Pacific
Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s successful visit to Japan, New Delhi and Tokyo have upgraded their relationship to a “Special Strategic and Global Partnership.” For India, the visit has, indeed, been quite “special.” With Japan committing to increase its investment in India’s economy and formally declaring its intention to transfer equipment technology to the Indian defense sector, the takeaways for New Delhi have been substantial. An agreement to accelerate talks on the possible sale of the US-2 amphibious aircraft is poised to make the Indian Navy the beneficiary of Japan’s first overseas military sale in nearly 50 years.The deepening of defense relations has also raised hopes of a stronger maritime partnership. If the media reports of the various interactions and press-briefings at Tokyo are anything to go by, India and Japan could soon be in a strategic maritime embrace. Both countries reportedly committed themselves to increasing their maritime interaction and reaffirmed support for the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force’s continued participation in the annual Indo-U.S. MALABAR maritime exercises. In a veiled mention of China, Modi even spoke of “expansionism” and “maritime encroachment” – issues that resonate with the Japanese masses – even as he recognized India’s “shared interest” with Japan in ensuring common maritime security.Yet, expectations that the two countries’ maritime forces will be patrolling the sea lanes of the Pacific together are unlikely to be fulfilled any time soon – ironically, because of the very symbolism of deeper strategic cooperation that promises to give each side a broader security role.The paradox is reflected in recent maritime discussions in India. Following last month’s commissioning of two indigenous warships – Kolkata and Kamorta – most commentary in the Indian media focused on the Indian Navy’s role as “protector” of India’s economic interests in the Indian Ocean. The generous references to the navy’s contribution in ensuring the safety of maritime trade and the protection of India’s offshore energy interests, seemed driven by a deep concern for the security of the sea-lines of communication (SLOCs) in the IOR.
The growing emphasis on the Indian Navy’s economic-security role, though well-intentioned, appeared to detract from the Navy’s larger role in defending India’s strategic equities in the Indo-Pacific region. A navy is, after all, a military arm primarily meant for use in traditional conflict scenarios involving a clash of broader strategic interests. By first principles, it is a weapon of defense in situations where the nation’s strategic stakes are threatened by a rival maritime power.The proponents of the Indian Navy’s economic role are buoyed by views expressed on the subject by Narendra Modi himself. As he commissioned INS Kolkata a few days ago, Modi stressed the Navy’s role in securing the sea lanes, drawing attention to the “inextricable connection between maritime power and national growth story” and “the Indian navy’s potential to inspire confidence among those involved in maritime trade.” His observations, though legitimate from an economic-security perspective, highlight a deeper reality: popularly elected governments today increasingly look upon maritime forces to protect national economic interests, sometimes at the cost of other strategic functions. Having been elected into office on a plank of economic renewal, the NDA government too is likely to pursue a maritime policy aimed at supporting domestic growth. As a corollary – and regardless of the political warmth between India and Japan – New Delhi will not do anything to antagonize Beijing. If anything, its maritime policy will be built around the twin principles of strategic risk avoidance, and robust multilateral engagement.This, interestingly, marks a curious continuity with the previous UPA government’s approach to maritime security, which largely restricted the Indian navy to cooperative endeavors in the Indian Ocean. New Delhi’s central argument, for some time, has been that the Indian Ocean and Pacific are two strategically diverse theaters and that any conceptual framework that treats them as a single coherent strategic space is fundamentally flawed. A majority of India’s policy elite believe that the principal threats in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) are of the irregular kind and must be dealt through a process of region-wide consensus building and multilateral collaboration. The Pacific, on the other hand, is seen as a “strategic swamp” – a domain of political dissonances and an intractable conflict, which hasn’t been able to extricate itself from the morass of military brinkmanship, diplomatic posturing, and alliance politics.Unfortunately, this line of reasoning doesn’t hold up to scrutiny in a larger strategic context – especially if one were to consider the real reason why the Indian Ocean lacks a strategic dialectic. One doesn’t need deep nautical insight to detect that the Indian Ocean Region’s (IOR) relatively peaceful status is mainly a result of India’s prominent maritime status in the region. Not only is the Indian Navy the most powerful in South Asia, it is also a principal security provider in the central Indian Ocean. With no real challenge to its strategic primacy in the IOR, it has had the luxury of focusing on humanitarian relief and irregular threats.
India cannot, however, be assured that the strategic scenario that exists in the Indian Ocean today will remain unchanged in the future. China’s economic interests in the region have been growing rapidly. In time, as the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA-N) gears up for a larger role in the IOR, India’s policy elite are bound to come up against an acute security dilemma: cooperate with China on Beijing’s terms, or prepare to take on its superior naval might in the Indian Ocean region. In the event, there are no guarantees that the Indian Ocean’s future strategic dynamic would be any less adversarial than the one that attends the Pacific today.While there is no imminent threat to India’s Indian Ocean stakes presently, the situation could change dramatically once the PLA-N succeeds in establishing a more durable presence in the region. The Maritime Silk Route (MSR), which Beijing is actively promoting, heralds the beginning of that process. From developing maritime infrastructure in Gwadar, Hambantota and Chittagong in South Asia, to building and revitalizing port facilities in Mombasa, Dar-e-Salam and Bagamoyo on the East Coast of Africa, Beijing appears intent on creating a Chinese trade-corridor in the Indian Ocean.The latest to join the list of Chinese port development projects is the Kenyan port city of Lamu. A Chinese firm recently signed a nearly $500 million deal to construct three berths at Lamu. The project is part of the Kenya-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport, or LAPSSET corridor, with a potentially defining role in the Africa-section of the MSR. Maritime watchers worry that at some stage China’s expanding naval footprint in the Indian Ocean would come into conflict with India’s sphere of strategic influence, triggering a chain of events that could eventually lead a larger strategic confrontation.
For the moment, India is rightly wary of countervailing China’s maritime power in the Indo-Pacific. New Delhi neither has the naval capability at its disposal, nor the political capital to resist China’s broader nautical endeavors in maritime-Asia. But it needs to search for an answer to end its strategic predicament. For one thing, in the larger contest for regional dominance, New Delhi will need the Indian Navy to deliver on its principal mandate of defending national stakes by remedying power asymmetries that undermine regional stability. For this, it must consider playing the role of a gentle “stabilizer” in the Indo-Pacific.As opposed to an active China containment strategy, a stabilizing role would only entail a discreet commitment by New Delhi to oppose any unilateral military means that could potentially cause conflict. As a corollary, India would need to increase its involvement in political discussions concerning maritime security in the Pacific. This would mean taking active part in the deliberations of the ARF, the East Asia Summit, ADMM plus and the Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum (EAMF). It also implies India would need to articulate its stand on maritime security matters clearly in forums such as the Shangri-La dialogue. As a supporting strategy, New Delhi will have to reinvigorate its trilateral diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific. Tripartite discussions have a unique quality of conferring legitimacy and sense of urgency to shared security concerns; India would need to leverage this feature to its advantage.While the Indian Navy has participated in a series of engagements in the Pacific recently – including an interaction with the PLA-N at Qingdao, the U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, and the U.S.-India MALABAR exercises (also joined by Japan this year) – it has tended to treat all its maritime engagements as isolated and unconnected events, thereby hindering the creation of a coherent strategic picture. With all emerging narratives canceling each other out, no clear strategic message has been effectively conveyed to any of its partners.The Navy’s operational managers will know well that in the absence of a cogent and considered strategy of graded engagement, all maritime cooperation is a largely pointless endeavor. While the Indian Navy is entitled to engage with all its strategic partners, the need for the “balance of narrative” to point in a single direction is acute.Far from translating into an anti-China coalition, a comprehensive maritime partnership with Japan has the potential to provide substantive security in the broader Indo-Pacific. After the re-interpretation of Article 9 of its Constitution in July this year, Japan is well placed to be a potent military partner. More importantly, a maritime relationship with Japan will provide the Indian Navy with the opportunity to redefine its strategic posture in the Indo-Pacific.Ultimately, if India needs its navy to play a defining role in safeguarding national equities, it must not only be a “protector” of SLOCs in the Indian Ocean but also a “defender” of its strategic stakes. The Indian Navy could play an instrumental part in maintaining a stable geopolitical equilibrium, but the strategic messaging for that will need to be as effectively directed, as it is well-honed.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinio ... kistan/99/
Boxed in by Pakistan
Written by Raja Menon |
Five years after the nuclear tests, India published its doctrine, which spoke of “no first use”, minimum credible deterrence and implied a massive retaliatory strike if attacked with nuclear weapons. Although Pakistan’s doctrine is still unwritten, there is no ambiguity in New Delhi that Pakistan intends its nuclear arsenal to deter India’s conventional forces by nuclear first use. Since 1998, there have been three Indo-Pak crises in what might be called a nuclear environment. They are the Kargil conflict, the post-Parliament attack mobilisation and the attack on Mumbai in 2008. It was, however, Operation Parakram after the Parliament attack scenario that led to much theorising on the salience of nuclear weapons. The inability to mobilise the Indian army’s strike corps quickly enough led to talk of a “cold start” as a possible course of punitive action. Although cause and effect can only be speculated upon, Pakistan in 2012 deployed short-range nuclear-tipped missiles that could be used as battlefield nuclear weapons.Between 2002, when Operation Parakram was executed, and 2012, an argument has been conducted in a shadowboxing kind of manner between India and Pakistan. The Indians have held that Pakistan’s ongoing strategy of abetting terrorism in India will lead to reprisal using India’s conventional superiority, and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons will not deter it. Delhi and the three Indian armed forces did nothing, however, to implement any change in strategy or hardware to execute this punitive reprisal, apart from what had already been designed for a regular state-to-state conflict. Words such as “war below the nuclear threshold”, “space for conventional war below the nuclear threshold” and “full spectrum deterrence to close the threshold gap” were used. Normally countries that rely on nuclear deterrence resort to what is called “nuclear signalling” to convey nuclear intentions to the other side. Signalling should, over time, create stability, thereby avoiding nuclear crises. In South Asia, Pakistan has resorted to more and not always measured nuclear signalling, while India has been over-reticent in conveying nuclear intentions. The result is that there is deep nuclear instability in the Indo-Pak relationship, which unfortunately resembles no other bilateral nuclear relationship of the Cold War. There are no precedents to go by, particularly in the use of terrorists by Pakistan as an instrument of state policy, along with nuclear weapons.The result is that there is a tactical imperative on India to resort to a conventional punitive strike which, in a stable nuclear environment, would be hazardous. A couple of army chiefs who declared that India has the ability to wage a conventional war below the nuclear threshold were silenced by an obstructive defence minister, signalling Indian confusion to the Pakistanis. Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) have been seen by India as a signal that the window for a conventional strike has been closed, thereby boxing India in between terror and TNWs.
India needs to respond, either practically or by signalling. The establishment has so far preferred to do nothing, implying that India’s nuclear doctrine is meant to perpetually signal its intentions of massive nuclear retaliation. The BJP manifesto speaks of “revisiting” the nuclear doctrine. This is eminently sensible after 16 years because the circumstances have altered. What options does India have? The first is to adhere to the existing doctrine and signal that intention as India’s response to Pakistan’s changed inventory. It is important that India disregard Pakistan’s nuclear threshold in its determination to punish it for a major terror strike by resorting to an overland armoured strike. This option is better than doing nothing, because a reinforced nuclear signal is sent that we consider the doctrine to be adequate against Pakistan’s TNWs. A second option is to remove all references to “massive”, substituting it with “punitive”. This is of huge consequence. First, it reinforces India’s intention to punish terror with conventional war. Second, it deters the use of TNWs at the perceived nuclear threshold to fight “past” it. Third, it signals the readiness to fight an escalatory nuclear war and therefore the threat not to go there. The second option certainly has advantages over the first.
A third option is to signal readiness to punish terror by “means not necessarily limited to army action”. This option requires much homework by the navy and air force, which have to provide better answers than normal attritional warfare. War-gaming is called for. The government should also hasten the setting up of a long-overdue, strong special operations command. A fourth option is to threaten to fight “through” TNWs by overtly preparing to fight an armoured battle “through” a nuclear attack which, incidentally, has already been gamed by the Americans as producing negligible tank casualties. Appropriate nuclear signalling is also required. So getting out of the box is not difficult, with many options available to India in facing simultaneous threats from terror and TNWs.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by member_28638 »

India can learn from this:

==================================
US corruption is the price of Empire

Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com

Sep 8, 2014

A New York Times investigation into the influence of foreign money on American thinktanks is causing a Twitter-storm as I write this, and with good reason. In one particularly egregious example, the report details an explicit agreement, signed by the principals, between the Center for Global Development (CGD) and the government of Norway for the former to propagandize on behalf of doubling a foreign aid program to Norway in exchange for a $5 million donation.

Aside from the brazen corruption of the CGD/Norway relationship, the report focuses on three other Washington DC biggies: the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, all of which receive substantial chunks of cash from rich overseas donors, primarily from the Middle East, Europe, and the Far East. For example, the Times notes:

"The United Arab Emirates, a major supporter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), quietly provided a donation of more than $1 million to help build the center’s gleaming new glass and steel headquarters not far from the White House. Qatar, the small but wealthy Middle East nation, agreed last year to make a $14.8 million, four-year donation to Brookings, which has helped fund a Brookings affiliate in Qatar and a project on United States relations with the Islamic world."

CSIS was a major supporter of the Iraq war (both of them), as were the Gulf sheikdoms that have been funneling money into it: CSIS has also been a major bulwark of the War Party when it comes to Iran.

Brookings, the grand old man of Washington thinktanks, denies all that cash has any meaning as far as its "product" is concerned, but it’s hard to take this seriously when it publishes papers like this and sponsors events like this one, where Qatar’s funding of extremist groups like ISIS and other radical Syrian rebel factions is downplayed in favor of putting the onus on Kuwait. Qatar has been a major backer of the decidedly non-"moderate" wing of the Syrian rebel movement, and while Brookings has published writers skeptical of the idea of arming and/or funding them, a bit of research shows that their overwhelming bias has been pro-rebel, e.g. "Arm the Syrian Rebels. Now."

Brookings has also been a major source of pro-Israel propaganda in the United States via their Saban Center for Middle East Policy. Funded by Haim Saban, an Israeli-American television and film producer – originator of the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" – whose wealth is estimated at $3 billion, the Saban Center has consistently supported the Israeli party line and acted as a "nonpartisan" complement to AIPAC’s Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Quite naturally, the Saban Center’s Kenneth Pollack was a major supporter of the Iraq war amongst the policy wonk crowd.

Dual Israeli-American citizen Saban makes no bones about the goal of his giving: he has said that his number one priority in giving money to thinktanks like Brookings is to "strengthen the US-Israeli relationship." As a New Yorker profile of Saban put it, he counts "three ways to be influential in American politics": "make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets." Saban owns Univision and has repeatedly tried to buy the Los Angeles Times. He is also one of the top donors to the Democratic party, and will no doubt be a major contributor to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

At a recent Brookings Institution dinner, Saban engaged in a "two-cheeked kiss" with Qatari Prime Minister Jaber Al Thani. What unites these two somewhat disparate figures is their fulsome financial support for Brookings, which – like any whore – sells its services to the highest bidder.

While Brookings, one of Washington’s most established courtesans, charges higher prices, and thus relies on high-rollers like Qatar and Saban, the relatively new Atlantic Council takes the quantitative approach: the Times reports the Council has accepted donations from at least 25 countries since 2008." Among the donors: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Hungary, the Czechs, the Slovaks, Sweden, Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom. This donor list isn’t surprising: the Atlantic Council, as befits its name, is NATO’s unofficial lobbyist in Washington. It has been particularly militant around the Ukraine issue, pushing the NATO-crat party line that the fascist coup leaders in Kiev are really Jeffersonian democrats and stoking the embers of the cold war.

CSIS, long a mainstay of interventionist policymaking, actually posted a list of the governments that have filled its coffers, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, NATO – and the United States of America! Yes, your tax dollars are going to fund the efforts of CSIS co-director and senior fellow Thomas Sanderson and CSIS "Transnational Threats" head honcho Arnaud de Borchgrave in their efforts to torpedo a possible peace agreement with Iran. We don’t know how much Uncle Sam doles out to CSIS because they refuse to divulge specific amounts – and of course we peons have no right to know.

The extent of the problem of foreign governments buying up American thinktanks like house flippers buy up foreclosures is bigger than even I imagined. As the Times puts it:

"The scope of foreign financing for American think tanks is difficult to determine. But since 2011, at least 64 foreign governments, state-controlled entities or government officials have contributed to a group of 28 major United States-based research organizations, according to disclosures by the institutions and government documents.

What little information the organizations volunteer about their donors, along with public records and lobbying reports filed with American officials by foreign representatives, indicates a minimum of $92 million in contributions or commitments from overseas government interests over the last four years. The total is certainly more."

As Todd Moss, COO of CGD, said "after being shown dozens of pages of emails between his organization and the government of Norway": "Yikes"!

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires foreign lobbyists to register and report their activities to the federal government, has never been enforced except selectively: US allies are given a free pass, and the "foreign aid" gravy train flows freely and fast. This makes perfect sense, given our status as a global empire on which the sun never sets: our foreign clients and protectorates are constantly begging for handouts, intervention against their enemies, and special economic privileges of one sort or another, and the government would no more shut down this profitable industry than it would voluntarily dismantle the Empire itself.

NATO’s eastern European members want US troops and bases on their soil, ostensibly to "protect" against the nonexistent threat of a Russian invasion – and it’s only natural for them to go running to the Atlantic Council to lobby on their behalf. Qatar wants US aid to Syria’s extremist rebels – and off they go to their bought-and-paid-for "scholars" at Brookings to write policy papers and sponsor events pushing US intervention in the Syrian snake-pit.

Corruption – there is no other word for the buying of America’s thinktanks by rich foreigners – is part of the price we pay for our empire. It won’t stop until we return to our roots as a republic that "seeks honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none."
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Arjun »

Can't believe we have had such morons in our judiciary !! Seems to me he is batting for a 'blasphemy' law in India that would make India the same as the Talibanic lands to our West: Nariman wants Government to stop hate speeches

If a pronouncement cannot be prosecuted under current 'hate speech' regulations that Nariman and his ilk have themselves had a hand in defining - clearly it does not qualify as 'hate speech' !! If it CAN however be prosecuted under current laws - then the concerned parties should go ahead and prosecute. Where does the government come into the picture ??

He also makes the point that 'Hinduism is somehow changing its benign face'. As a Parsi - he should be the first to recognize that India has always shown a benign face to people of his ilk, to the Jews, to Syrian Christians and to Tibetan Buddhists and will continue to do so in the future. Parsis lost their motherland to Islam - and within a short span of 100 years of Islam's arrival were forced to turn tail and flee to India. Some among them seem to not have learnt any lessons from this massive tragedy.

There is a reason why the Parsis lost Persia within 100 years while the Hindus have still managed to hold on to much of their motherland after more than a millennia - I would only request the eminent jurist to reflect on why this is the case.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Manny »

How does digestion of Hinduism by Christianity works

The short version.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=147676145424557

The longer version: Rajiv Malhotra's Lecture on U-Turn Theory at Lady Sri Ram College, Delhi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RSu4ymCgp4
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

[youtube]FgSINZO_VuI&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

Bharath Khanda Bharath Varsha
Prem
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

Components of Bharath Varsha
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

http://ghatotkacha-nair.blogspot.ca/200 ... -lady.html
SECOND JIHAD AGAINST HINDUS OF MALABAR - PART 2
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Pratyush »

Arjun wrote:Can't believe we have had such morons in our judiciary !! Seems to me he is batting for a 'blasphemy' law in India that would make India the same as the Talibanic lands to our West: Nariman wants Government to stop hate speeches

SNIP.....
For some people, truth is an expression of hatred.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Ardeshir »

Al-Guardian has a negative view on India polluting the world.
Is Narendra Modi a climate sceptic?
India’s PM used to call climate action a moral duty, now he tells students ‘climate has not changed, we have changed’

But the real problem could be the fast rising pace of India’s emissions. In the past few months, the other giant emitters – China and America – have taken steps to reduce carbon pollution.

Projections from the Energy Information Administration show China’s emissions could start levelling off in 2030. India’s? They are due to rise by 60% between 2020 and 2040.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by schinnas »

Dhananjay wrote:
devesh wrote:So what the hell was Congress doing all this time while Pak was jumping from one conspiracy a after another to undermine Hindus? One gets the feeling that Indira, wherever she is, would be disgusted for bringing the foreigner into her home. Her legacy has essentially been hijacked by Sonia.
That maimuna begum the nawaasi of mughal gayaasuddin gazi was no less anti hindu:
Natwar Singh’s profile of Indira Gandhi is embarrassing in its praise. She is described as a “graceful, sparkling, engaging human being”, a “caring humanist” endowed with “charm”, “elegance” and “good taste”.

But even this flood of adjectives is not preparation enough for what follows. Describing a drive in Afghanistan with Indira Gandhi to see Babur’s resting place, Natwar Singh writes: “The Prime Minister of India stood there, with head slightly bowed, paying her homage. I was a couple of feet behind her. It was a moment to cherish, recall and remember. At that moment the centuries seemed to blend and blur.

“After a minute she stepped back and said, ‘We have had our brush with history’. I said, ‘I have had two.’ ‘What do you mean'’ ‘To pay one’s respects to Babur was itself an occasion,’ I said, ‘but to do so in the company of Indira Gandhi was the rarest of privileges’.”


http://www.telegraphindia.com/1030418/a ... 882419.asp
What do you expect a PM on a state visit to Afghanistan to do? Spit on Babur's grave? Besides no body claimed Indira Gandhi was a great student of history. If Indira can be called anti-Hindu and anti-Indian then I wonder who is the true patriot. A country that does not respect its true leaders will not get true leaders.

What next? Do we call NaMo as a closet anti-hindu based on some third person's version of an act by NaMo without fully knowing the context?
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by member_19686 »

schinnas wrote:What do you expect a PM on a state visit to Afghanistan to do? Spit on Babur's grave? Besides no body claimed Indira Gandhi was a great student of history. If Indira can be called anti-Hindu and anti-Indian then I wonder who is the true patriot. A country that does not respect its true leaders will not get true leaders.

What next? Do we call NaMo as a closet anti-hindu based on some third person's version of an act by NaMo without fully knowing the context?
How about simply refraining from paying respects to invading mass murdering Jihadis or is that too much to ask?

The poster didn't say she should have spat upon the tomb, that is your own straw man. Just because you are in Afghanistan doesn't mean you have to go worship Babur's tomb. The Afghans certainly didn't ask for it.

Indira was of course anti Hindu and secular (it was in fact under her that the word secular was inserted into the constitution) just like her father. May also want to look up what happened to the education under her with leftist "historians". You are free to respect her based on hagiography but stop preaching about who the country should respect.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by schinnas »

Surasena wrote:
schinnas wrote:What do you expect a PM on a state visit to Afghanistan to do? Spit on Babur's grave? Besides no body claimed Indira Gandhi was a great student of history. If Indira can be called anti-Hindu and anti-Indian then I wonder who is the true patriot. A country that does not respect its true leaders will not get true leaders.

What next? Do we call NaMo as a closet anti-hindu based on some third person's version of an act by NaMo without fully knowing the context?
How about simply refraining from paying respects to invading mass murdering Jihadis or is that too much to ask?

The poster didn't say she should have spat upon the tomb, that is your own straw man. Just because you are in Afghanistan doesn't mean you have to go worship Babur's tomb. The Afghans certainly didn't ask for it.

Indira was of course anti Hindu and secular (it was in fact under her that the word secular was inserted into the constitution) just like her father. May also want to look up what happened to the education under her with leftist "historians". You are free to respect her based on hagiography but stop preaching about who the country should respect.
:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Impressed at your reasoning that Indira payed "respects" to Babur and hence anti-Hindu! Wow. Nobody other than Indira-ji would know what was on her mind when she visited that place. Till today, Indiraji remains the only Indian PM who has done the most for India and debunked Jinnah's two nation theory. If Indira is anti-hindu, who is pro-hindu? My wish is that Modiji proves to be as strong and as good as Indiraji. Read the book Kaoboys of RAW to get some glimpses of what Indiraji has accomplished for India in strategic sphere.

Are you the authority to issue certificate on who is pro hindu or anti-hindu? Who certified you?
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by SandeepA »

To me inserting the word 'secular' into our constitution must rank as the most anti-India act ever.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by fanne »

what can be inserted can also be taken out.
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Shanmukh »

schinnas wrote:Till today, Indiraji remains the only Indian PM who has done the most for India and debunked Jinnah's two nation theory.
And how did it help the Hindus? Hindus were still chased out of Bangladesh, and those Hindus who escaped from Bangladesh are treated like dirt, living on scraps in Assam and West Bengal, mostly. On the other hand, Muslims of Bangladesh were welcomed into Assam by Indira Gandhi's government - see the moves of CMs of Assam like Fakruddin Ali Ahmed and Anowara Taimur. Rabhas were marginalised in Goalpara, the Tiwa in Nagaon. Bodos didn't suffer that fate only because they are much more militant. Squatters on the Brahmaputra islands were welcomed with refugee camps, blankets and food, while Bangladeshi Hindus were abandoned to the same scum who created Pakistan. In fact, way back in the early 80s, the Indira Congress was even selling the line that the Bengali Muslims of Bangladesh in Assam were a good hedge against the `unreliable, separatist Assamese Hindus'. Indira Gandhi even gave away the 90,000 prisoners without getting a fig in return. You call all that `a victory for Hindus'?
If Indira is anti-hindu, who is pro-hindu?
Apart from Surasena-ji already mentioning the insertion of the word `secular' into the preamble of the constitution during the emergency when all opposition leaders were locked up, I am sure that the hapless sadhus who died in November 1966 at the hands of Indira Gandhi's thugs will be heartened to hear that their butcher has been granted the stature of a great Hindu leader posthumously. All the secular distortians - sorry, historians - were promoted under her reign. Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Jha - hmm, reads like a laundry list of those who were desperate to teach Indians to be ashamed of their Hindu heritage - were promoted by her administration for partisan political purposes. All because Indira was a great Hindu leader, I am sure.
My wish is that Modiji proves to be as strong and as good as Indiraji.
I will express the hope that he proves to be at least a touch wiser than Indira, and certainly a lot more communal than her.
Are you the authority to issue certificate on who is pro hindu or anti-hindu? Who certified you?
Well, considering the reckless abandon with which you are handing Hindutva certificates to Indira, maybe others should be qualified hand out certificates, secular and communal, too?
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Re: Indian Interests (09-08-2014)

Post by Prem »

http://www.indiafacts.co.in/proselytisa ... ign=buffer
THE PROSELYTISATION DEBATE: HINDUISM VS PROSELYTIZING RELIGIONS IN THE MARKET OF IDEAS

( its interesting read)
By privileging the Semitic moral world order, the Indian state sowed the seeds of violent conflict. The perceived protection of the state via preferential treatment in terms of personal laws, religious institutions, educational establishments, and the outright legal bias (think Shah Bano or the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill) instigates communities against each other and against the Nehruvian state. As Roover eloquently states, “the seeds of religious violence are sown by the liberal state; however, it is the communities that harvest them.” Source: Firstpost
Abhinandan Sekhri of News Laundry made a sincere attempt to debunk it. Then Sandeep chimed in with a fine rebuttal on India Facts. Which was then rebutted again. Meanwhile, Scroll.In carried a piece by Shoiab Daniyal summarizing the states that have regulated conversions and explaining Rev Stanislaus vs State of Madhya Pradesh. Sekrhi, Daniyal, and dare I say the majority of our educated middle class share the following view. A proselytization ban is the paranoid and insecure Hindu using his numbers to weasel out of competing in the free marketplace of religions. Some nuggests from their articles.
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