01-03-2008, 12:31 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-03-2008, 12:42 AM by Shambhu.)
http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HkPage.aspx?PageID=4281
Vedas: Q and A
"Quoran and Bible are not true Vedas as its followers claim but they are incompetent primitive translations of some Brahmana scriptures which contains some Vedic hymns and its commentary."
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<!--QuoteBegin-dhu+Dec 8 2007, 02:15 PM-->QUOTE(dhu @ Dec 8 2007, 02:15 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->But in India, we were exposed to the Version 2 of Islam much before the Version 1 of Christianity. Theoretically, this should automatically lead to a de-dhimmification just as the antidote is often a more dilute version of the poison. [right][snapback]75908[/snapback][/right]
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Sorry this is a wrong statement. Islam prepared the groundwork for the British mental colonization of Indian civilization.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b> We need a new destiny </b>
Pioneer.com
Jagmohan
India has been let down by its people and leaders
What happened in Parliament on July 22 and in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Surat a few days later and what is now happening in Jammu show the direction in which our democracy has been moving during the last 61 years. Things are truly falling apart, and no one seems to know how to collect the unraveled threads of national fabric and reweave them into a strong and soothing texture.
<b>In fact, the journey of independence itself commenced on a false note. "At the stroke of mid-night when the world sleeps, India will wake to life and freedom." These historic words, spoken by Jawaharlal Nehru on the midnight of August 14-15, 1947, have their own fascination. They sparkle with passion and enthrall Indians even today. </b>
But were these words true? <b>Was the world sleeping or watching India? And did we wake up fully? In fact, most Indians slept in the darkness of their homes. Some were awake because they were trembling in fear with blood-thirsty mobs on the rampage. The main architect of India's freedom, Mahatma Gandhi, looked lonely and forlorn. His "heart was burning" and he felt as if he had been "thrown into a fire-pit".</b>
The light of freedom about which Nehru spoke so eloquently was too weak to pierce through the darkness created by the long period of India's social and cultural degeneration. Standing on a pedestal under glittering artificial lights, it was easy to declare, "We will create a mighty India -- mighty in thought, mighty in deeds, mighty in culture and mighty in service to humanity." But no one seemed to know, or even cared to know, how that 'might' would be created and the darkness dispelled.
<b>In any case, what was that 'destiny' that was referred to so passionately? The 'appointed day' -- the day appointed by destiny -- as Nehru called it, was also the day which was preceded by a tragedy caused by the acts of commission and omission of those whom 'destiny' had put at the helm of affairs -- the tragedy that led to India's partition which witnessed riots, rape, plunder and loss of life and property on an unprecedented scale.</b>
"It is a fateful moment for us in India," said Nehru in the same speech. Undoubtedly, it was so. But it demanded more than idealism; it demanded 'resolute practicality' to inject meaning and content in that idealism. Nehru could provide the inspiration; but this inspiration had to be accompanied by strong and sustained action.
For declarations to get translated into realities, a leadership with extraordinary courage and commitment was needed not only in the arena of politics but also in the intellectual, social, cultural and spiritual spheres. Regrettably, at a momentous period of India's history, this was not forthcoming.
It was a comparatively easy task to provide, by way of a liberal and democratic Constitution, a pattern of polity whose aims and objectives were to create both purity and productivity in public life. But it was difficult to inject the ethos of purity and productivity into the system. There was no one to undertake this task.
The clay of the people who had to run the system and the social and cultural environment in which it had to function essentially remained the same as before. And it did not take long for a fairly sound Constitution to look like a grammar of democratic anarchy in practice.
From the very first day of our independence, the people in general and the national leadership in particular have developed a propensity to keep aside the hard crusts of problems and remain content with breaking softer grounds. Even now, while chronic problems, we continue to nurse illusions and derive satisfaction from short-term gains and outward glitter.
These days, one often hears about India's impressive foreign exchange reserves, its outstanding performance in the information technology sector, its rising volume of trade and high rate of savings and investments. But comparatively little is said or done about the ever-widening income gap between the rich and the poor, worsening problems of unemployment and under-employment, continuance of acute poverty and malnutrition, rapid increase in the number of slum-dwellers and sharp deterioration in both rural and urban environment.
<b>Let me provide you with an insight into the reality after 61 years of our 'tryst with destiny'. India today has the largest number of poor, the largest number of illiterate and the largest number of malnourished people in the world. More than 250 million men, women and children go to bed hungry every day. One out of three women is underweight. About 40 per cent of the total low birth weight children below five in the world are Indians; 57 million children of this age are undernourished, their percentage (48) is higher than that of Ethiopia (47 per cent). Six out of seven Indian women are illiterate.
In the cities, slums have been proliferating, growing 250 per cent faster than the overall population. Mumbai, with about 12 million living in such settlements, has become the global capital of slums. India is still reckoned as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Terrorism, subversion and Maoist violence have brutalised the atmosphere. While the problems of internal security are mounting, the efficacy of governance has been declining.</b>
The inconvenient reality is that India has been let down by its people and leaders. The Indian mind and soul are getting drier by the day. No wonder the super-structure erected upon this mind and soul has developed cracks, which are ominously wide and dangerous. India's 'tryst with destiny' has turned out to be a fantasy. Our nation must re-visualise its destiny and fix a new tryst with it.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The idea of India </b>
Pioneer.com
Rekha Chakravarthi
We need vision to emerge as a powerful nation
On September 6, 2008, sixteen years after the 1992 decision to adopt full-scope safeguards, the Nuclear Suppliers Group decided to lift the embargo it had placed on India by granting a waiver to conduct nuclear trade with a country that is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The waiver is described as significant because India can now engage in high-tech nuclear commerce while its nuclear weapons programme remains unaffected -- a right that is enjoyed only by the P-5.
The decision by the NSG is being hailed as the end of the 'nuclear isolation' faced by India since Pokhran I. It is historic because India chose to climb its way up the world ladder as a player that objected to the nuclear framework it considered discriminatory, but objected honourably and strove to succeed without breaking the rules of the game. While there is celebration all around, the real work starts now.
In an anarchic international system, nothing succeeds like staying successful. The NSG waiver is a diplomatic success; it is, however, the time to evaluate how India has performed on this deal domestically. One cannot refute that no other foreign policy issue has been debated more vociferously, at all levels, as this one; yet it leaves our decision-making skills on foreign policy exposed. A good player is one that not only aims to be a global power or believes in its ability to lead, but also knows what kind of power it seeks in the emerging world order and what it wants to do with that power. More than anything else, the nuclear deal offers important lessons in this direction.
It is in India's interest to calculate its gains beyond immediate benefits. Yes, the nuclear deal will enable us to access fuel for our reactors, and thereby contribute to the energy mix that India is crucially short of. <b>But, is that it? Why did the United States offer this deal to India? Is it because of India's impeccable non-proliferation record, American commercial interests, or to contain China? The answer lies in all of these, but above all, it reflects a long-term foreign policy about how America sees itself and its national interests in the coming decades. What we need is a vision, an idea of what India is and what India will be. </b>
One of the many steps in that direction is to make a fresh beginning on how we are going to conduct ourselves vis-Ã -vis foreign policy matters. We begin with China. If India considers China's rise as anything but peaceful, then why should anyone see India's rise as benign? We realise that we are cooperating and competing with China; we understand that we are an emerging power, so can we start interacting with China like two powers ought to? India should look beyond the boundary dispute with China and its apathy to support India's bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. The world has come around to acknowledge our position as the emerging power. In time, the world will endorse our bid for a permanent seat at the UNSC and get us into the G-8, too.
However, more power means more responsibility and India will definitely not be given a free ride to the global power club. India will be expected to take positions on international issues such as Iran, for example. India has to know what it wants with respect to Iran -- a nuclear Iran is definitely not in India's interest and it cannot afford to camouflage its position on Iran. Here is where diplomacy comes in. Voting against Iran does not mean the end of ties with Iran just as China's voting against India would not have meant the end of the India-China relationship. India has to build on its diplomatic expertise to successfully play both sides.
On the domestic front, the Government should take foreign policy matters to the common man. The Government played the energy security card to explain the importance of the nuclear deal, but in the end it placed greater reliance on the numbers game in Parliament. It is the Government's business to explain to its people the importance of every domestic and foreign policy issue and how these policies contribute to the 'idea of India'. The claimed success at Vienna by securing the NSG waiver is only the first step in realising this idea.
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The lady hasnt read the Pranab Mukherjee interview with Rajdeep Sardesai. He states that UPA has frozenthe nukes at the level of the NDA left. Ty have not decreased or inclreased and we know NDA was jsut begining to build up. And Bush has certified this fact tot US Congress as part of getting the 123 going. So cap has been accomplished.
09-16-2008, 10:25 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-16-2008, 10:26 PM by Capt M Kumar.)
<!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo--> A delegation of Punjabi and Hindu Biradari (PHB) met Soren Monday and requested him to accept the invitation to burn the effigy of Ravana at Morabadi ground on Vijay Dashmi.
"Soren declined to accept the invitation terming Ravana as Kulguru," said Chandra Mohan Kapoor, PHB chairman.
He said quoting Soren: "How can one burn the effigy of Kulguru who is worshipped?"
Since the creation of the state in November 2000, there was a tradition in Jharkhand that the chief minister sets the Ravana effigy on fire.
The Dusshera festival will start early next month.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/P...how/3489340.cms
X-posted from Future scenarios thread... See how he realtes the past to the future.
<!--QuoteBegin-"brihaspati"+-->QUOTE("brihaspati")<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Current scenario in India can perhaps best be characterized as a phase of extreme and accelerating diversity. Historically, India shows alternate periods of extreme diversity and then a counterreaction towards extreme unification and homegenization followed by a counterreaction again of moving towards extreme diversity. During the diversity phase, concomitants are the presence, intrusion or activity of "foreign" elements in society and ideology.</b>
<b>We can identify such phases in expansion of the Persians into the western provinces of India circa 500-600 BCE, which is followed by attempts at political and ideological consolidation in the Magadhan empire.</b> The <b>process deepens with the advent of the Greeks, followed by political and ideological consolidation in the Mauryan empire. Same happens with the fall of the Mauryas, and the phase leading up to the Kushan consolidation and corresponding consolidation in the south. The phenomenon repeats with the period of the Guptas, and more spectacularly illustrated in the follow up to the Islamic invasions with the rise of Shankara school of thought. The later phase under Sultanate is of coures more well documented and we can identify the patterns more clearly, right up to the advent and eventual formal expulsion of the British.</b>
The average human mind is perhaps limited in the number of models it can maintain of abstract entities with corresponding associated concrete rules of behaviour. <b>So too much diversity means too many models a single individual has to keep in mind while deciding how to react in a given situation. Eventually a time comes, when that threshold of capacity is crossed and people become open to suggestions of homogenization and unification that simplifies and reduces the number of different models. Indians have prehaps been subjected historically to many more such episodes of diversification that has acted as stimulus to increase the threshold compared to other societies which started out later on the path towards complexity. This slightly increased capacity is reflected in the easier acceptance and tolerance of diversity as reflected in the ideological history quite prominently, as compared to say European society.</b>
But still even this increased threshold is reached eventually, even in India. <b>At the moment we are fracturing our society and ideology at an accelerating pace. The more this happens the quicker we approach the point when the majority of the population will reach their threshold and be looking for a simpler, homeogenizing, unifying framework.</b> Is that going to be the Abrahamic? Unlikely, for they are "too simple" for the level of complexity that the Indian mind has become used to. Can it be the vacccum ideology as maintained and promoted by the "secularist" Congress+Left position? That leaves too much to opportunistic thinking and individual decisions relying on their self-interest only - something the general Indic mind is not comfortable with over the long term.
<b>Are we ready to think towards an alternative? Whether we like it or not, we will have to face this question, and it is intimately linked with the geo-political scenario for the next few generations in India.</b>
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06-19-2009, 03:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-19-2009, 11:51 PM by Husky.)
Why is it that people from the frenemy forum always have a signature thought-pattern that is instantly recognisable as coming from said forum?
Their mindset and hence thought patterns are all obviously from the same pool, the uniform forum - analogy: like some genetic inbreeding - (and so always thinking within thought pool's boundaries). And this is what acts as a distinguishable watermark, I think.
Else why have I so far always won at the private game of Guess whether individual x is from/has been at Frenemy's?
Here's another pattern:
Hindu Dharma > Nationalism > 'nationalism' > secularism > psecularism (christoconditionng) > christianisation > christoislamicommunazism.
06-19-2009, 08:53 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-19-2009, 11:49 PM by Husky.)
Frenemy = slang (from at least a decade ago?) which - as I understand it - is short for something like "who needs enemies when you have friends like these". But of course you'd have heard this term before I did - if you live in the US - as it's Americans who in all likelihood invented it.
Husky, which forum are you calling as the frenermy forum?
Someone cared to study our pet peeve!!!!!
Nandini Chatterjee, "The Making of Indian Secularism: Empire, Law and Christianity, 1830-1960"
Palgrave Macmillan | 2011-03-01 | ISBN: 0230220053 | 320 pages |
Quote:This book examines religion in India under British rule and the immediate postcolonial years, from an unusual angle, placing Indian Christians at the centre of the story. It addresses legal developments regarding religion and its practice during British imperial rule in India, and the political emergence of Indian Christians as a community in this context.
[quote name='dhu' date='20 June 2009 - 01:39 AM' timestamp='1245479519' post='98976']
Husky, which forum are you calling as the frenermy forum?
[/quote]
BRF.
^^
That's an interesting take by Husky -- frenemy forum.
Husky, why do you characterise BRF as a frenemy forum?
[I bet the reply will be thought-provoking, at least for me <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='  ' />]
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