W’end Reading: Tracking your moves, ASI, Ajmer & Manmohanomics
Start your Sunday evening with It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know by Noam Cohen:
A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends
when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turn ed reporting these updates into a game.…But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his
whereabouts.The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin.
Next read Purushottam by Firoz Bakht Ahmed:
On behalf of all Muslims catering to the voice of reason and sanity in India and globally, I declare that the ASI affidavit (now withdrawn) was vitriolic, scathing, unfortunate and absolutely blasphemic — not only for the Hindus but for all those who cherish our pluralistic cultural heritage. By the way how can a government decide the veracity of a
figure like Ram?Therefore, it goes without saying that Ram and the Ramayan are central to both India’s social history and to our civilizational identity no matter to what religion we belong to. Denying Ram his place would mean falsifying with impunity, India’s civilizational character.
Hai  Ram  ke  wajood  pe  Hindostan  ko  naaz, Ahl-e-nazar samajhtey hain usko Imam-e-Hind.
Iqbal, the poet of the East has written a wonderful and moving poem on the authenticity of the existence of Ram.
Next read, History and faith are beyond law by Kanchan Gupta:
James Tod joined the Bengal Army as a cadet in 1799, presumably looking for a life of adventure in the heat and dust of India. He swiftly rose through the ranks and, as a Lieutenant-Colonel, provided valuable service to the East India Company. His uncanny ability to gather information helped the early colonisers smash the Maratha Confederacy.
Later, his assistance was sought during the Rajputana campaign. Colonel Tod, as he was known, was a natural scholar with an eye for detail and a curious mind. He was fascinated by the history of Rajputana and its antiquities as much as by its palace intrigues and the shifting loyalties of its rulers and their factotums. That fascination led to his penning two books that are still considered mandatory reading for anybody interested in the history of the Rajputs…
Thousands of people, Indians and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims, visit Ajmer every day to offer a chaadar at Dargah Sharif of Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, a shrine where all are welcome and every prayer is answered, or so the pious choose to believe. Many stay on to visit the other antiquities of Ajmer, among them a magnificent mosque complex which bears little or no resemblance to its name: Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra.
People gawk at the columns and the façade intricately carved with inscriptions from the Quran in Arabic. They pose for photographs or capture the mosque’s ‘beauty’ on video cameras and carry back memories of Islam’s munificence towards its followers. Don’t forget to visit Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra, they will later tell friends and relatives visiting Ajmer.
…let us return to Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra in Ajmer. Few who have seen and admired this mosque complex would be aware of Colonel Tod’s description of it in the first volume of Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: “The entire façade of this noble entrance . is covered with Arabic inscriptions . but in a small frieze over the apex of the arch is contained an inscription in Sanskrit.” And that oddity tells the real story of Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra.
And finally, Manmohanomics by Vivek Dehejia:
The truth is, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty have never really believed in liberal economic policy. Period. That is why no major reform has ever occurred under their watch. The original reforms in 1991 were launched, don’t forget, when the Gandhis were absent, and the next phase of reforms took place under non-Congress-led governments, most notably the BJP-led NDA.
The reasons for this could be manifold. Do they really believe in the socialism that their founder, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, espoused and then foisted on us after Independence? Possibly. Perhaps more likely, they see populism and patronage as political winners. That was certainly how the wily Mrs. Indira Gandhi operated, and her daughter-in-law seems to have taken a leaf from the same playbook.
Read it in full here. Enjoy the weekend. Stay safe and stay healthy… Past weekend readings are here.
To a Muslim it is a surprise that it is only the ‘parivar’ who has taken umbrage at this affidavit. ‘Aam’ Hindu is by and large silent on it. You will agree that unlike an ‘aam’ Hindu, the Muslims, en mass, would have risen in protest at such a blasphemy.
I completely agree with the above statement. The whole of Bharat would have come to a stand-still if something like this was said about Islam. The fact is muslims and the govt knows Hindu’s are weak and they don’t stand for anything. No wonder they play with our lives everyday. Mera Bharat Mahan
That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Emotions can’t be forced, leave alone religion.
Isn’t respect for life enough reason to preserve it? Does it need divine validation? I suppose no one’s going to be interesed in saving the Ram Sethu, if it wasn’t called just that.
Put a tika on a tree to save it?.. Sure, as long as it works.
Re. Ajmer, read, Chadar At Ajmer Sharif And Praises On Prithviraj Chauhan Cannot Go Hand-In-Hand; Chishti Blessed Ghori To Defeat Prithviraj, As Per His Biography at SwarajyaMag.com