Book folder

[Guest]

An assortment of writings of Arun Shourie are now available via the

webpage



[url="http://shourie.bharatvani.org/"]http://shourie.bharatvani.org/[/url]

[Guest]

A book on the Rg Veda



Title: Rig Veda Darsana (Sanskrit & English) Vol 1

Price: $25



In USA,some sources:



[url="http://users.erols.com/nataraj/VEDAS.html"]http://users.erols.com/nataraj/VEDAS.html[/url]



[url="http://www.geocities.com/bookloversindia/hinduism.html"]http://www.geocities.com/bookloversindia/hinduism.html[/url]

[Guest]

[url="http://www.urday.com"]http://www.urday.com[/url]

has some stuff on Vedas, Pranas, Upanishads etc (check menu on left)

[Guest]

[url="http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=318710"]Now, a tapori retells the Ramayana![/url]

[Guest]

[quote name='rajesh_g' date='Oct 8 2003, 06:00 AM'] [url="http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=318710"]Now, a tapori retells the Ramayana![/url] [/quote]

I haven't read book, but from the review and the excerpts, what Banker attempted is a fantasy in the genre of LotR or Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series but with a some John Varley and Nick Carter thrown in. But JRR Tolkien and Robert Jordan are excellent writers with imaginations that is not plagiarized - not much in any case, neither do they use gratuitous profanity, sex and violence.



It could have been mildly entertaining had he changed the names of people and places.



As an aside, in Telugu, there is a rendering of Ramayana called Ramayana Vishavruksham by Muppala Ranganayakamma. Muppala has an open leftist-marxist agenda which she pushes in the book. She may not have done a faithful rendering of the epic, but at least she is honest about her agenda.

[Guest]

Fernand Braudels three volume work on



[url="http://dannyreviews.com/h/Civilization_and_Capitalism.html"]Civilization and Capitalism[/url]



is reviewed here.



Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century

1: The Structures of Everyday Life

2: The Wheels of Commerce

3: The Perspective of the World

Fernand Braudel

[translated from the French by Siân Reynolds]

HarperCollins 1985



More on Fernand Braudel to be found [url="http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/braudel/"]here[/url]

[Guest]

Update on Yvette Rosser-crossposted from Indian civlization



Yvette Rosser Medical Fund: Renewed Appeal





A few days ago I had notified list members that Hanuman Bhakta,

benefactor of India and friend of Hindus Dr. Yvette Rosser, Ramarani,

met with a nearly fatal accident. Thanks to the mercy of Paramatman,

she is recovering steadily and more quickly than any doctor that has

seen her expected. However, her hospital/medical bills are mounting.

To assist her, VHP-A has set up an account. Any contributions to

this fund may be tax-exempt to the extent allowed by law. From this

account, hospital and medical expenses will be paid on her behalf. To

date, contributions have not been very encouraging and meet only a

small fraction of her expenses, which she is in no state to bear

herself in their entirety. NRI Hindus are requested to redouble their

efforts to help her.



I am glad to announce however, that a generous donor, who wishes to

remain anonymous, has offered to match contributions from others,

dollar for dollar, up to a limit of $4000. This means that if we

collect $4000 amongst ourselves, he will contribute an additional

$4000. Let us make good of this opportunity and send funds to help a

Bhakta.



The check should be made payable to ' VHP of America', and it should

have 'RamRani Medical Fund' written in the Memo area. It should be

mailed to "RamRani Medical Fund, c/o Mrs. Beth Kulkarni, 10472

Hammerly Blvd., Houston, TX 77043-2103".



For those who do not know Ramraniji, some of her writings can be

accessed via the following URL's, which speak for her love for India,

Indians and Hindus, and the troubles she has had to undergo for us.





[url="http://www.mssc.edu/projectsouthasia/tsa/VIN1/Rosser.htm"]http://www.mssc.edu/projectsouthasia/tsa/V...VIN1/Rosser.htm[/url]

[url="http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/society_essays_frameset.htm"]http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/...ys_frameset.htm[/url]

[url="http://www.bharatvani.org/indology.html"]http://www.bharatvani.org/indology.html[/url]



The Narada Purana (purvakhanda, adhyaaya 5) declares "tadbhakta

vishnobhaktaascha, tey vai bhaagvatottamaah" (they are indeed the

best devotees of God, who are devoted to the welfare of other

devotees as well".Helping Ramraniji, a good and devoted Hindu who is

indeed our sister, is to help ourselves. Let us contribute generously

without delay.

[Guest]

[url="http://hkchital.tripod.com/Roses_in_December.htm"]"Roses in December An Autobiography" by M. C. Chagla, Published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan[/url]

[Hauma Hamiddha]

Important book, needs further detailed examination



The Dravidian Languages by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti; Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge (South Asian edition), 2003; pages

545+xxvii, £70.



THIS survey of comparative historical research on Dravidian languages

is published in the Cambridge Language Surveys Series, a dozen years

after the survey of Indo-Aryan languages by Colin Masica in the same

Series. The academic field of Dravidian linguistics, opened by Robert

Caldwell in 1856, reached a watershed in 1961 with the publication of

A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary by Thomas Burrow and Murray B.

Emeneau. This resource book was the culmination of previous research

on Dravidian languages, literary and oral, and was the initiator of

new research. The new reference book by the leading Indian linguist,

Bh. Krishnamurti, synthesises all previous research and presents the

broad consensus in a comprehensive and competent manner. His academic

leadership in the field of Dravidian linguistics for more than 40

years makes this work authoritative.



The adjective Dravidian defines a family of languages differentiating

it from other families of languages in India, which are Indo-Aryan,

Munda and Tibeto-Burman, though it is commonly opposed with the

first. It also denotes a group of people who share cultural practices

and values. Its designation for a people with common political

interests is of colonial origin. The political meaning of the term

does not extend to the entire language family; it does not cover, for

example, the tribal Dravidian languages, particularly those in

central and northern India. The antecedents of the term Dravidian

like dramila, dramida and dravida found in Sanskrit sources had

varying designates historically referring to people, region or

language of the whole of the South or a part of it, that is, Tamil.

This ambivalence continues up to the modern times in cultural and

political domains. The term is used unambiguously in the present to

include the entire family when it refers to language, as is the case

in this book.



The goal of research in Dravidian linguistics is to reconstruct the

parent of the contemporary Dravidian languages from their shared

native words and grammatical features, which show regular patterns of

correspondence across languages. The scientifically reconstructed

parent is the proto-language called Proto-Dravidian. Krishnamurti

gives a picture of the Proto-Dravidian language, which, given our

current knowledge, is complete in its sound (phonological) structure,

detailed in its word (morphological) structure and suggestive in its

sentence (syntactic) structure. One would get a feel of the language

if a sample running text had been reconstructed and presented in the

book. The book describes the structures in individual languages also,

from which the reconstruction is done. There are 26 languages by the

current count, of which 25 are spoken in India and one (Brahui) is

spoken in Baluchistan on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The

reconstruction of the proto-language is preceded by a classification

of the individual languages into sub-groups based on closer

regularity and transparency of patterns. There are three sub-groups -

south, central and north Dravidian - indicating the correlation

between geography and shared linguistic features, which are

independent developments, called innovations, in each sub-group. It

is the author's contribution that the south Dravidian further

sub-divides into two with Telugu standing apart from the other three

literary languages.



The question when did the sub-groups separate from the parent

language and when did the members of each sub-group become

distinctive individual languages is an interesting and important one,

but the answer is imprecise, and often unreliable. This is a question

about the languages as spoken, not about when they came to be written

in inscriptions or in literature. Writing is a later development in

the distinction of a language, which emerges as spoken in the

beginning. Many Dravidian languages remain spoken to date. The time

depth calculated from the ratio of words retained from the parent

language out of 100 `basic' words (for example, ca 3000 BCE

determined by some scholars for Brahui to have become a separate

language) is unreliable because of the pitfalls in the methodology.

Krishnamurti, based on mention in Sanskrit works from 700 BCE on to

some currently identifiable south Dravidian tribes and speeches,

conjectures that the south Dravidian languages as a group might have

become distinctive around 1100 BCE. The emergence of individual

languages of this group, including Tamil and Telugu, must then be

later.



The south Dravidian languages, notably the literary ones, retain some

features of the parent language that are lost in all others. This

could be because the historically older language data in them are

available in their preserved written texts, which are, in addition,

conservative with regard to change in the spoken language. Of these

languages, Tamil, particularly old Tamil, and to a great extent

modern high Tamil, is most conservative; it retains a high percentage

of cognates (native words shared with the parent language and between

sister languages), retains the phonological inventory of the parent

language (presence of aaytam and zh and absence of voiced stop sounds

(g, b, etc.), for example), its structure of syllables, a good number

of phonological pairs of verbs to express transitivity (tanvinai and

piRavinai) and so on. This conservative nature of high Tamil aids the

political construction of the popular belief that Tamil is the mother

of all Dravidian languages, making Tamil and Proto-Dravidian

coalesce. Tamil in fact, as the book demonstrates, has lost some

features of the parent language (for example, word initial c- as in

cii- > ii- `to give', cup- > up-pu `salt' (related to cuv-ai `taste')

and added some (for example, avaL `she' as a pronoun separate from

atu `it').



The origin of the parent Dravidian language and its speakers is a

question that defies consensus among scholars. To know about the

origin, one would like to know the languages that are not Dravidian,

but are related to Dravidian in a distant past. Among the living

languages, genetic relationship has been suggested with far-flung

languages like Basque in Europe, Japanese in Asia and Wolof in

Africa. Their comparison with Tamil, not with Proto-Dravidian

(indicating the mistaken coalescence mentioned above in the scholarly

world also), is methodologically faulty given the time scale of any

possible relationship. There are typological and probabilistic

similarities between languages, which do not argue for a genetic

relationship. Dravidian languages have such similarities with many

languages of the world. The origin question is tied to the question

whether the Proto-Dravidian language speakers were indigenous

inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent or migrants to it in

pre-historic times. In the absence of contrary evidence to nativity,

Krishnamurti is inclined to believe that they were native to India;

if they came from another region in Asia or Europe, their migration

was earlier to that of the speakers of the parent Aryan language.

Given the widely held theory of human origin in Africa and human

migration 70,000 years ago from there to Europe and Asia in stages,

both Dravidians and Aryans came from outside India. We shall perhaps

know whether they came by the same route or different routes from

Africa when the ongoing research on correlation between specific gene

spread and language spread advances.



Reconstructing culture from the language may run into speculation

when there is no corroborating archaeological evidence. Krishnamurti

tries to give a glimpse of the way of life and the ecology of the

Proto-Dravidians from the reconstructed meanings of words in the

parent language. The Dravidians were engaged in settled agriculture

in wet and dry lands and used domesticated animals and birds (ox,

cow, sheep, pig, donkey, dog, cat, chicken) and metal implements

(plough, pick-axe, crowbar). They grew and ate grains (rice, millet),

lentils (red gram, black gram, green gram), greens, fruits (banana,

mango, wood apple), root and other vegetables (onion, ginger, yam,

radish, brinjal), and other foods and spices (sugarcane, mushroom,

sesame, black pepper, cardamom, areca nut). Some of these must have

grown wild and gathered for food, as there were wild animals

(elephant, tiger, cheetah, bear, wolf, jackal, porcupine, buffalo,

deer, hare, baboon, monkey, mongoose and iguana) and birds (peacock,

pigeon, parrot, crane, crow, sparrow, owl, eagle and vulture) in the

jungles. There were reptiles (snakes, cobra, scorpion, chameleon,

lizard) and insects (mosquito) on the ground, and amphibian and

aquatic species (frog, crab, tortoise, crocodile, shark, prawn and

fishes) in water the people frequented for hunting and fishing. There

was trade, and commodities were transported by head load and shoulder

slings. The wheeled cart was used in transport as well as in battle.

People knew navigation and used boats and floats. The metals iron,

copper, silver and gold were used for building implements and making

ornaments.



Families lived in individual houses, thatched or tiled. The

implements used for making food included mortar, pestle, grinding

stone and winnowing basket. Food was cooked in utensils by boiling in

water, roasting in fire and frying in oil. Milk was cultured into

buttermilk and butter. Clothes were made from cotton. The kin formed

an elaborate and close-knit structure as the foundation of the

society. The common word for the female sibling of the father, spouse

of the male sibling of the mother and mother-in-law and another

common word for their spouses indicate cross-cousin marriage and, by

extension, other matriarchal features. The occupations practised

besides farming were weaving, pot making, smithy and toddy tapping.

Herbal medicines (mar-am (tree) and mar-untu (medicine) are

etymologically related) were used to treat diseases (that included

small pox, measles and insanity). There was deafness and blindness

(including cataract). The internal organs of the body (brain, heart,

lungs, liver, intestine, bone, bone marrow, nerves), known from

hunted animals, were perhaps part of the knowledge of human anatomy.



The settlement of people was protected by a chieftain, who was paid

tribute and whose strong men fought adversaries using swords, clubs

and bows. God was the king (koo) and the spirit (pee-y) and was

worshipped by sacrificing animals to get wishes granted. Seeing and

counting were knowing (teri - `to be visible, to know') and thinking

(eN - `to count, to think'). Knowledge was considered pure (teL - `to

become clear, to understand') and white (veL - `to be white, to

know'). The counting system was well developed, perhaps to aid trade.

The celestial bodies (sun, moon and stars) were crucial to the life

cycle of the people and the time was divided into year, month and day

based on their movement.



The above description of the life of Proto-Dravidians is necessarily

in broad strokes (not very different from the contemporary rural

Dravidian life) and it is incomplete. Absence of words for some

concepts in the language may not suggest absence of those concepts in

the culture, but may be suggestive of coding those concepts by

expressions larger than words and of loss of the native words by

replacement with words from another language in contact. Any

description of Dravidian languages and culture will be inadequate

without considering the influences of other languages and cultures

they came into contact with along the path of migration or in the

settled area. The reconstruction of the Proto-Dravidian language and

Proto-Dravidian culture will be an abstraction of reality in this

sense, since the language and culture might be interacting with

others of their times and be influenced by them. That languages

rarely function in isolation presents the truism that the past is not

necessarily pristine. Krishnamurti briefly describes the influence

between the Dravidian and other languages, primarily classical

Sanskrit. Such mutual influences make India one linguistic area with

many languages.



This book tells everything we know linguistically to date about the

history and nature of Dravidian languages as a family. It is meant

for scholars in the field, but provides authentic information for

interested lay persons also. Anyone who is interested in the

Dravidian languages for whatever purpose must read this book to know

the scientific linguistic facts about them.



E. Annamalai is former Director, Central Institute of Indian

Languages, Mysore.

[acharya]

The academic field of Dravidian linguistics, opened by Robert

Caldwell in 1856, reached a watershed in 1961 with the publication of

A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary by Thomas Burrow and Murray B.

Emeneau.



Is this not interesting that the publication of a dravidian langauage speciality book came in 1961 just when the dravidian movement for separatism was at the peak even though research was started in 1856.

[Guest]

In Search of The Cradle of Civilization- George Feuerstein, Subhash Kak & David Frawley.



In this path-breaking book, the authors challenge the schoolbook notion of Sumer as the cradle of civilization. Sifting through the latest archaeological, geological, and linguistic evidence, they call for a complete re-visioning of ancient history. The authors show that the ancient Indians were no primitives but possessed a high spiritual culture, which not only influenced the evolution of the Western world in decisive ways but which still has much to teach us today. Indian's archaic spirituality is codified in the rich symbols, metaphors, and myths of the magnificent Rig-Veda, which is shown to be much older than has been widely assumed by scholars. The present book also unravels the astonishing mathematical and astronomical code hidden in the Vedic hymns.



Anyone interested in ancient cultural history, India, archaeo-astronomy, or spirituality will find this well-researched and cross-cultural work spellbinding and enriching.



"In Search of the Cradle of Civilization . . . is truly groundbreaking. It suggests nothing more and nothing less than that India is the cradle of the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Sumeria, and Babylonia. It marshals massive evidence for this truly revolutionary thesis . . . The substance on which the theory of an East-West migration of civilization, beginning in Northwestern India, is built cannot be denied. The methods used by the authors to interpret the evidence are often radically new, but appear convincing . . . No doubt the work will provoke vigorous debate. In the course of further research and further refinement of the methodologies the authors may modify some of the results suggested here, but the thesis is likely to stand. In my estimate this is a landmark book and the foundation for the rewriting of human history since 6000 B.C.E."—Klaus K. Klostermaier, Ph.D, Professor of Religion, University of Manitoba

[Guest]

[url="http://www.hiddenmysteries.com/delucia/index.html"]Books by Dean Dominic de Lucia[/url]

[Guest]

This is not a new book but was written before Talageri wrote the one on the Rig veda. But it was Talageri who exposed the reasons why the leftists and anti-Indics choose to support the AIT and he does so very emphatically in this book. This is an excellent reference with a wealth of ammunition to counter those who would choose to obfuscate the issue. It is available o nline at Bharatvani.org

Aryan Invasion Theory And Indian Nationalism
Shrikant Talageri
Voice of India
Reviewed by the late Sita Ram Goel

[Guest]

I thought we had a book review folder in almost all forums?

The Man Who Made India
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>(I thought Sardar Patel was the one who made India - but what do I know)</span>

<i>Diplomat Shashi Tharoor reviews the mixed legacy of Nehru, India's other founding father </i>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->My grandfather never met Mohandas Gandhi, but he did the next best thing. A photograph taken in the 1950s, which hung in a room in his mansion, showed him bashfully stepping forward to place a garland around the neck of Jawaharlal Nehru, the man Gandhi chose to lead India after independence from Britain. If Gandhi is India's founding saint, for those of my grandfather's generation, Nehru, their first Prime Minister, was only a shade removed. They called him the "architect of the nation" and believed he would heal India's divisions and transform their impoverished country into a proud and independent world power.

Modern Indians regard Nehru with more ambivalence. As novelist Shashi Tharoor points out in his new biography, Nehru: The Invention of India, the architect of modern India turned his country into a democracy and an industrial giant but also shackled it to a heavily regulated socialist economy. If Nehru managed to fuse a disparate jumble of regions and principalities into a united nation, he also bequeathed India its most serious political problem, the insurgency in Kashmir. Although Tharoor's biography lacks the exhaustiveness and depth of some of its predecessors, its attitude is perfect for the times. Writes Tharoor, "What we are today, both for good and for ill, we owe in great measure to one man."

Some Indians were never happy with Nehru. A Hindu-nationalist leader once accused him of being "English by education, Muslim by culture and Hindu by accident." The son of one of colonial India's most famous lawyers, the young Jawaharlal had British tutors and was educated at two of England's most élite establishments, Harrow and Cambridge. Gandhi's example transformed a mediocre Anglophile lawyer into a nationalist hero, but the two men's visions were hardly alike: Gandhi believed India's future lay in self-sufficient villages, but Nehru, influenced by Soviet socialism, wanted to urbanize and industrialize, filling India with steel mills, hydroelectric dams and engineering colleges. And Nehru's vision won out.


One belief, though, was common to both men: a conviction that India would be no home for bigots. Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by a Hindu fanatic who claimed that Gandhi was making too many concessions to Muslims; Nehru offered shelter in his house for Muslims during the riots that followed India's independence. Islam, in Nehru's view, was a fundamental part of India's culture. His great treatise on his nation's history, The Discovery of India, written when he was put in jail by the British, describes the mind-boggling diversity of religions, cultures, kingdoms and empires that have coexisted in India as facets of a single timeless civilization that had lain dormant under British rule but was about to awaken with terrific force. His ability to convey this mystical vision of a great, united, democratic India to his poor countrymen gave him a sway over their loyalties that no Prime Minister has duplicated: they swept him into power three times. Although often indecisive and too willing to trust aides of dubious merit, Nehru never lost the gift of inspiring his fellow Indians. The phrase he used to describe his nation's independence—it was, he said, India's "tryst with destiny"—still haunts his countrymen with a sense of their potential for greatness; the speech in which he used the phrase, his midnight address to the nation at the moment of independence, is India's equivalent of the Gettysburg Address.

But, as Tharoor points out, even during Nehru's own lifetime, his halo began to fade. His concentration on industrialization, rather than reforming the primitive agricultural sector, led to food shortages by the late 1950s. The state-controlled economy bred corruption and stagnation. Kashmir was another growing problem; as Tharoor notes, most Indian commentators blame Nehru for his decision to take the Kashmir dispute to the United Nations, thereby turning it from a domestic matter into an international issue. (Tharoor's day job is as an under secretary-general of the U.N.) Then, in 1962, the Chinese invaded India—a crushing humiliation for Nehru, whose reputation as a world leader collapsed overnight.

A good part of Nehru's India, Tharoor notes, is gone already. Socialism is being slowly dismantled. The result has been a rapid acceleration in growth and prosperity—ammunition for those who would like to dismiss Nehru's legacy altogether. But religious fundamentalists have also launched an attack on two other Nehruvian institutions—religious tolerance and pluralist democracy—that have repeatedly demonstrated their value in holding India together. As Tharoor writes, "India's challenge today is both to depart from [Nehru's] legacy and to build on it."
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

received via email:

<b>A tragic backroom schemer?</b>
John Pomfret
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://www.newindpress.com/sunday/sundayit...erature&rLink=0

A new, critical biography of China's beloved premier, Zhou Enlai, has captivated the upper echelons of the country's academic and political world with its charges that dictator Mao Zedong denied Zhou critical health care that could have put off his death and set off firecrackers on the day he died in 1976.

Chinese authorities have banned the book, Zhou Enlai's Later Years, and people found possessing it are disciplined at work, academics said. 

Published in Hong Kong, the 615-page work is based on internal Communist Party documents and interviews with senior party officials. The author is Gao Wenqian, who worked for 13 years as a senior researcher in the Communist Party’s Central Documents Office before immigrating to the US in 1993. He depicts Zhou as a tragic backroom schemer, a puppet of his master Mao, and a man who was so imbued with a Confucian sense of duty that he did almost everything Mao asked him — including signing the arrest orders for his own brother and a goddaughter.

The book challenges the view that Zhou tried his best to save hundreds of purged officials during the Cultural Revolution, portraying him instead as an eager  participant in the ultra-leftist campaign during which hundreds of thousands of people were dispatched to the Chinese gulag. “Party documents show that Zhou only protected people after first checking with Mao, his wife Jiang Qing, Mao’s no. 2 Lin Biao and others,” Gao wrote. “If Zhou sensed any opposition to protecting someone, he would drop his protection.”

Even though Zhou died 27 years ago, criticism of him is taboo in China because, officially, he never made a mistake. “In a society troubled with corruption and facing a moral vacuum, Zhou is the last good Communist,” said Gao.

“This book takes him off his pedestal. I criticised what should never be criticised.”

Indeed, the government has already acknowledged that serious mistakes were
committed by Mao, founder of the communist state. It concocted a formula in
1980 that stated he was 70 percent correct and 30 percent mistaken — for
his disastrous economic policies and for unleashing the madness of the
Cultural Revolution.

The next greatest leader, Deng Xiaoping, spearheaded the movement in the 1950s to purge the party of “rightists,” ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of lawyers and other professionals, officials acknowledge. Deng also ordered the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square. 

China does not have a tradition of independent historical scholarship. In imperial China, historians worked for the emperor and wrote history to justify his rule. That tradition has endured during the Communist era and was bolstered by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Officials here say Moscow’s fate was sealed in part when then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev allowed Russian historians freedom to report on the excesses of Stalinism. 

“A book like this is sure to be banned in China,” said a senior party theoretician familiar with Gao’s work. “Can you imagine what the young people would feel if they read it? What the old people would feel if they read it?”

Everything Zhou did, according to Communist lore, was “for the people.” He was good-looking, brilliant, a master diplomat and a selfless struggler for the  communist state. Works about Zhou in China are heavily censored and every hint of criticism is removed. A compendium of articles from “The Second International Symposium on Zhou Enlai Studies,” published in 1999, was censored three times before it was published, sources said. 

Gao wrote most of the book during a fellowship at Harvard University. Chinese authorities got wind of Gao’s work and dispatched several officials to pressure Harvard to cut its support for him, Gao and others said. Among the officials were Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, deputy chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, and Liu Ji, an adviser to then-President Jiang Zemin, Gao said.

Officials also contacted Gao in the United States and hinted that his elderly mother could be hurt if the book was published, he said. Gao dedicated the book to his mother, who was jailed for seven years during the Cultural Revolution as a “counterrevolutionary.” She died before the book was published.

The book, which is only available in Chinese, was published last March and is considered a huge success. About 25,000 copies have been sold in eight printings
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

I lost all respect for Zhou immediately after 1962. He was a scheming SOB if ever there was one. The alacrity with which he courted TSP and Nepal immediately after the failure of the talks with Nehru, indicates that the Chinese leadership had planned lining up all their ducks vis a vis india long before 1962.

I have often blamed Nehru for his naivete in dealing with the chinese, his propensity to give gratuitous advise to world leaders like Zhou and Nasser, his excessive faith in British advisers to the exclusion of his own military generals, but the sins of Nehru pale in comparison to those of the Chinese leadership. They were quite simply a lying bunch of thugs and bandits, whose sole concern was to perpetuate their rule over China. The Chinese people have paid dearly , with the loss of over 30 million during the 'Great ' revolution and the treks to the Gulag. I hope Indian leaders have learned their lesson well. There are no permanent friends among nation states, only permanent interests. Only the weak minded defer to considerations of 'log kya kahenge'.

[acharya]

Kaushal,
Can you give us some idea of how the atmosphere was in the 50s and 60s. We guys born after that have no idea.

The general aggressiveness of Ayub and ZAB, and the scemeing Chinese must have kept Nehru/Menon/Shastri on their tows.

You need to write a small document on that period from a big picture point of view.

[Guest]

<b>History of India : A New Approach</b>/Kittu Reddy
Contents: I: Foreword/Kireet Joshi. Introduction. 1. The study of history. 2. Origins of Indian history. 3. The Vedas. 4. The Upanishads. 5. Mohenjadaro and Harappa. 6. The great epics. 7. The Indian social system. 8. The coming of the Buddha. 9. The first invasions. 10. Chanakya. 11. Ancient Indian polity – part 1. 12. Ancient Indian polity – part 2. 13. The Mauryan Empire. 14. The later empires. 15. South Indian kingdoms. 16. Shankaracharya, Madhavacharya and Ramanuja. 17. The Muslim invasions. 18. The Hindu revival – part 1. 19. The Hindu revival – part 2. 20. Summary and retrospect. 21. The Moghul Empire – part 1. 22. The Moghul Empire – part 2. 23. Shivaji. 24. The coming of the British. 25. The economic exploitation. 26. Tipu Sultan. 27. Ranjit Singh. 28. The Indian renaissance. II: 1. The Sepoy mutiny. 2. Indian National Congress. 3. The partition of Bengal. 4. The Surat Congress. 5. The early revolutionaries. 6. Minto-Morley reforms. 7. The home rule movement. 8. The non-cooperation movement – part 1. 9. The non-cooperation movement – part 2. 10. The civil disobedience movement – part 1. 11. The civil disobedience movement – part 2. 12. Two revolutionaries. 13. The Government of India Act – 1935. 14. The Quit India Movement and the Cripps proposals. 15. A divided freedom. 16. Summary and conclusion. 17. Appendix.

"History, as it has generally been conceived and written in modern times, has limited itself to the outer narration and interpretation of events and ignored the psychological forces and factors that affect human life. This predominance of external events has been so great that most modern historians and political thinkers have concluded that objective necessities are by law of nature, the only really determining forces; all else is result or superficial accidents of these forces. Scientific history has been conceived as if it must be a record and appreciation of the environmental motives of political action of the play of economic forces and developments and the course of institutional evolution.

"Indian history in particular loses all its true significance when looked from this purely external viewpoint. For the Indian mind and temperament is naturally inward looking. This book is an attempt to look at Indian history from the psychological and inner angle. It is an attempt to place in proper perspective, the deeper psychological and spiritual elements even in the outer life of the Indian nation. It starts from the pulsating spiritual beginnings of the Vedic and Upanishadic times and traces the evolution of India to the building of empires; it is followed by a description of the invasions both Muslim and English and the psychological impact that they had on the people of India. Next there is a detailed description of the freedom movement with special emphasis on the psychological forces that were in play till the attainment of independence in 1947. Finally it concludes with a vision for the future of India.

"We hope that this book will give a greater insight and lead to a true understanding of Indian culture and civilization. This book is particularly aimed at the young, not only to those who are young in body but also in the heart." (jacket)

[Guest]

Kaushal, acharya, HH, others

Please recommend "top two" books that covers Indus civilization/Indian history.

I'm assuming that your recommendations will be free of secular and leftist bias (which by the way makes it automatically objective history reference <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> ).

From Kaushal's Bharatnirbhaya group file section I have the following:

> The History and Culture of the Indian People(HCIP) by R.C. Majumdar

> A comprehensive History of India , Calcutta, 1957 by K.A. Nilakanta Sastri et al

I don't know if you guys would consider the above books as "top two" on Indian history/civilization.

Please also recommend good translated version of Arthshastra in English or Gujarati. Also other literature on Chanakya himself, any biography or well researched book on the man himself.

Thanks in advance, I'll be going to India so want to buy them.

[acharya]

Start with www.bharatvani.org

Get some of those books.

*Resource Wars by Michael Klare (Author);
*Chomsky Papers – Noam Chomsky
*Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda (Open Media Series) by Noam Chomsky *Middle East Illusions by Noam Chomsky
*Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky by Noam Chomsky
*For Reasons of State. by Noam Chomsky
*Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World by Noam Chomsky

*The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power by Daniel Yergin
*Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich by Kevin Phillips
* The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk
* War and Diplomacy in Kashmir by J N Dixit
* Clash of Civilization by Sam Huntington
* The Bear Trap by Mark Adkin (Contributor), Brig. Mohammed Yousaf
* Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban by Larry P. Goodson
*Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile
*Global Disorder: America and the Threat of World Conflict by Robert Harvey
* The Arabists by Robert Kaplan
* Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan
* Warrior Politics by Robert Kaplan
* The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and it's geo-strategic imperatives by Zbigniew K. Brzezinski
* FDR meets Ibn Saud by William Eddy
* The Seven Pillar of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence
* War in Desert A soldier with the Arabs by J. B. Globb
* Exodus by Leon Uris
* Shame by Salman Rushdie
* REAPING THE WHIRLWIND: THE TALIBAN MOVEMENT IN AFGHANISTAN by Michael Griffin
* TALIBAN: MILITANT ISLAM, OIL, AND FUNDAMENTALISM by Ahmed Rashid
* HOLY WAR INC. By Strmecki, Marin J.
* See No Evil by Robert Baer
* Saddam's Bombmaker by Khidhir Hamza
* THE MONSTROUS FACE OF THE ISI By Bhure Lal
* PAKISTAN'S ISI: NETWORK OF TERROR IN INDIA by SK Ghosh
* Every Spy a Prince by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman
* Israel Undercover by Steve Posner
* Israel's Secret Wars by Ian Black and Benny Morris
* Silent Soldier by
* The Ties That Bind by Des Ball and Jeffrey T. Richelson
* Agents of Innocence by David Ignatius
*The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens

*India Britannica: A Vivid Introduction to the History of British India by Geoffrey Moorhouse
*Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World by Mike Davis
* India: A History by John Keay
*India's Silent Revolution by Christophe Jaffrelot
*The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925-1994: Social and Political Strategies
by Christophe Jaffrelot
*The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India by Christophe Jaffrelot

*Crisis in Islam by Bernard Lewis
*Islam in History by Bernard Lewis
*House of Saud by Robert Baer
*Islam and the West by Bernard Lewis
*What Went Wrong? : The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis
*The Middle East by Bernard Lewis
*The Muslim Discovery of Europe by Bernard Lewis
*History of civilization by William Durrant Volume I and II
*The Shaping of the Modern Middle East by Bernard Lewis
*A Modern History of the Islamic World by Reinhard Schulze

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/05/lewis.htm - Islam and Christianity - Bernard Lewis
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/kaplan.htm - R Kaplan - Looking the World in the Eye

*Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power
by Niall Ferguson, Neil Ferguson
*The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland by Karl Ernest Meyer
*The Rise of the Western World : A New Economic History by Douglass C. North (Author), Robert Paul Thomas (Author)
*End of History and the Last Man By Francis Fukuyama
*Special Providence - American Foreign Policy By Walter Mead
*Grey Dawn How the coming age wave will transform America and The World By Peter G.Peterson
*Death of the West By Pat Bucchanan
*Tribes: How Race, Religion, and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy by Joel Kotkin

*A History of Pakistan and Its Origins (Anthem South Asian Studies)
by Christophe Jaffrelot (Editor), Gillian Beaumont (Translator), Christoph Jaffrelot (Editor)
*Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism by Dore Gold
*Islam in History By Bernard Lewis
*Hinduism and Islam in India From antiquity to modern times by S V Desika Char
*My White House Years by Henry Kissinger
*Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger
*Does America Need a Foreign Policy?: Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century by Henry Kissinger

*Guns, germs and Steel By Jared Diamond
*The Soldier and the State by Sam Huntington
*The Tragedy of Great Power Politics by John J. Mearsheimer
*The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad by Fareed Zakaria
*Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order by Robert Kagan
* The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century
by Charles A. Kupchan
*Battle for Gods by Karen Armstrong

*Red Dragon Raising Communist China'a military threat to America
by Edward Timperlake & William Triplett II
*The New Chinese Empire: And What It Means for the United States by Ross Terrill
*India's nuclear Bomb by G Perkovich
*The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders
*SCRATCHES ON OUR MINDS: AMERICAN IMAGES OF CHINA AND INDIA BY Harold R. Isaacs

*http://www.mssc.edu/projectsouthasia/international_affairs/other/CIAReport--GlobalTrends2015.htm
*http://web.pdx.edu/~kinsella/papers/isamw97.pdf Study of Symbols of power in India (1997)
*A History of Arab Peoples - Albert Hourani
*Nuclear weapons and Indian security - Bharat Karnad.
*Saffron swastika, The notion of Hindu Fascism – K Elst
*Indian Muslims Who are they – KS Lal
*Ancient Civilizations by Hugh Bowden
*Project for New American Century : http://www.newamericancentury.org/
*Distortions in Indian History – NS Rajaram: http://www.bharatvani.org/books/dist/ch2.htm#8
* Discovery of India Jawaharlal Nehru
*Sub Altern studies and bibliography : http://www.history.upenn.edu/hist085/subaltframeset.htm
http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/ind/subalter.htm
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/s...ern/ssallau.htm - Entire library index


http://indiastar.com/venkat1.html A Critical Review of Romila Thapar's Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 By Kalavai Venkat
http://india.medinf.com/society/
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/tlmr/ The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India K.S. Lal
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/imwat/ Indian Muslims Who Are They K S Lal
http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/homepage_docs/pu.../S&P_Fa-94.html Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/Ayodhyaandmedia.html The article deals how the English media of India (and following them, the western media) distort news relating to the Ayodhya issue without any ethical or moral compunctions. The focus on the article is the news items pertaining to the recent court ordered excavations going on at the disputed site currently
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/...ys_frameset.htm

http://www.thescotties.pwp.blueyonder.co...mary-3.htm - SOUTH ASIA - PRIMARY SOURCES Islam's impact - 950 to 1740s


http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/reports/pe...42303.html