Comments for || Satyameva Jayate ||

Comment on Dalit Muslims, Caste and Sociological Phenomenon by B Shantanu

B Shantanu — Sat, 25 May 2013 12:04:48 +0000

Placing this here for the record: Dalit Christians at CSI Madurai yet to see one of their own as Bishop by D. KARTHIKEYAN

It has been more than six decades and they form 60 per cent of the population, but still Dalit Christians of Church of South India (CSI) Madurai-Ramnad Diocese are unable to support and elect a member of their caste as Bishop.

Dalit Christians of the Diocese are fuming that caste prejudices still exist and one’s caste identity trumps the Christian faith. Elections held to choose the sixth Bishop of the diocese on December 20, 2012 saw a Dalit, Rt. Rev. Baninga Washburn, emerge winner in the first two rounds in which 13 candidates contested, and Rt. Rev. Joseph (member of intermediate caste) came second.

However, it has been five months since the elections were held and Rev. Washburn has not been officially announced as the winner by the Moderator of the Diocese. Previous elections show that the winner of the first two rounds was announced as winners, said a member of the Diocese who wanted to maintain anonymity.
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Dalit Christians who had been silent about the prevailing prejudices have finally come out to publicise this issue and take the struggle forward.
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N. J. Gnaniah, a Missiologist, in his paper titled Caste, Christianity, and Cross-Cultural Evangelism Revisted, says that caste is still an undeniable part of Christian society here.

Comment on “Use Your Mind to Change Your Brain” – Excerpts by priyam

priyam — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:25:37 +0000

DEAR SIR
I DONT KNOW HOW TO EXPRESS MY THOUGHTS ABOUT UR ARTICLES. JUST HAV FEW WORDS FOR THEM. THEY ARE ALWAYS “EYE OPENERS”. SIR ACTUALLY B’COZ OF OUR HILARIOUS EDUCATION SYSTEM. I’M NOT ABLE TO EXPRESS MY THOUGHTS IN ENGLISH OR HINDI PROPERLY. ITS A KIND OF HYBRID LANGUAGE HINGLISH. I WOULD LYK TO KNOW UR OPINION WID DIS. ITS A MAJOR ISSUE. WE R JUST HANGING BETWEEN HINDI AND ENGLISH.
SIR I NEED UR HELP WID ANOTHER MATTER. M ENGINEERING FINAL YEAR STUDENT. I WANT TO WORK FOR BUSINESS RELATED FIRM. ENGINEERING WAS REALLY A WRONG DECISION . I DONT HAV ANY IDEA ABOUT DIS BUSINESS KINDA THING. I DONT KNOW “KI MUJHE KYA KARNA CHAHIYE “. U HAV A GR8 EXPERINCE WID BOTH OF THESE ENGINEERING AS WELL AS BUSINESS RELATED THINGS. PLZZ SUGGEST ME !
I’LL BE V.THANKFULL TO YOU .
PRIYAM
(INDORE)

Comment on Is Sanskrit really a “Indo-European” language? by CC

CC — Sat, 25 May 2013 06:28:42 +0000

Yes Mr. Thomas some examples would have been nice to help readers here understand what you’re trying to say. I can’t just google random phrases you have strung together to sound like as if they are common knowledge or proven facts.

What exactly is verb and noun morphology? How are verbs and nouns equivalent in Sanskrit and English? Can you provide some examples? The word ‘come’ is a verb. The equivalent in Sanskrit is Agachcha and Vaa in Tamil. What kind of similarities are you talking about here that make Sanskrit IE???

And what proportion of Sanskrit is IE? That’s a really vague statement.

So yes, please provide some examples or better yet provide links to some articles that might explain this “morphology” you speak of.

Comment on Why India must support Tibet, courtesy Acorn by B Shantanu

B Shantanu — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:22:57 +0000

From Between the lines by Kuldip Nayar:

…I do not know whether people on both sides are really familiar with the border dispute between India and China. When the 1962 war ended with our defeat, China unilaterally ceased fire and then indicated the ceasefire line as the possible border. But the line, despite India wanting the delineation of a firm one, was not acceptable to China. It changed its mind and declared the actual line of control as the border and advanced its troops on its own.
This line violated the traditional border both in Ladakh and in the northeast, on the Arunachal side. Even these borders were not sacrosanct for Beijing. The Colombo Plan powers intervened after the 1962 war to ask both India and China to withdraw their forces by 26.5 meters behind the lines where they stood. India withdrew accordingly. But China did not. Even the lines its forces occupy at present are haphazard and favour it all the way.
Beijing’s intrusion (our PM prefers to call it an incident to keep tension down) at Daulat Beg Oldi sector in Ladakh is in the area that China has not allowed to be demarcated. In fact, it has treated the entire disputed area under its overall control without negotiating with New Delhi or even indicating specifically the area that belongs to it. Nor has China offered any explanation for staying in India’s territory (Despang) for 23 days and pitching tents inside India. Beijing wants to tell the world that it owes no explanation to anyone for going into its “own territory.”

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The real issue with China is Tibet. Beijing may not say so, but it links the border issue with the future of the Tibetans who have taken shelter in India in thousands under the leadership of the Dalai Lama. Beijing did raise the issue at the India and China conclaves, but kept quiet when it was told that the Dalai Lama was a religious leader, nothing more.
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Yet, one thing is clear ~ India will have to accelerate the economic growth, which is now 4.6 per cent as compared to a little over 9 per cent three years ago.
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Even if a war is ruled out, the pressure on India’s security forces will be immense. India need not treat the border as an obsession, but China has seen to it that New Delhi does so.
This is its weakness. India should talk to China about the Tibetans who are a millstone around China’s neck. Even otherwise, the word Tibet is a bugbear for Beijing. It is too late in the day to question its authority. It is under China because of its suzerainty over Tibet. But there is a difference between suzerainty and independence. However, the issue of Tibetans’ human rights is a point that India can take up. It is strange that none in the world has taken notice of dozens of Tibetans who have burnt themselves in the name of freedom and liberation.
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The enunciation that both sides would not attack each other is somewhat like what the late Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai told Prime Minister Nehru. Beijing never kept its word. There is no assurance that it would do so in future.

Comment on Ads, Taxpayers’ Money & The Dynasty by B Shantanu

B Shantanu — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:49:39 +0000

From A Multi-Crore Momento Mori by Sriranjani Datta, May 22, ’13:

..Yesterday – May 21, 2013 – was Rajiv Gandhi’s 22nd death anniversary. And various ministers and ministries from and of the UPA government put on display their skill at fanning the collective flame of political sycophancy.
Just so you know how well your taxpaying money has been used by the government, we did a quick calculation of the ad spend in the English newspapers in New Delhi. Here are some quick facts.
The ads were released through the Department of Audio Visual Publicity (DAVP).
The departments of the government who are reminding us of the “magical” powers of Rajiv Gandhi were the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Tourism, Human Resource Development, Social Justice and Empowerment, Power, Micro Small and Medium Industries, Information and Broadcasting, Steel, and the state governments of Haryana and Rajasthan and the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology.
65 advertisements were printed in 11 English dailies in Delhi.
Over 38 of these were full-page ads.
And how much did such a restrained display of remembrance cost us the taxpayer?
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And that adds up to a tidy sum of Rs 80 crore spent in just Delhi.
On the 19th death anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi, historian Ramachandra Guha in an editorial in The Telegraph had written: “A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that on May 21, 2010, perhaps Rs 60 or 70 crore were spent by the taxpayer — without his and her consent — on praising Rajiv Gandhi. Since the practice has been in place since 2005, the aggregate expenditure to date on this account is probably in excess of Rs 300 crore”.
Going by this year’s ad spend of Rs 80 crore in just Delhi, we’d say it’s safe to add a few more hundred crore to the figure calculated by Guha.