The Curious Case of a Birthday for Sherlock - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com
Sherlock Holmes has captured the imagination of the English reading world for well over a century now. It is but natural that several clubs honor and cherish the adventures as much as the first time reader. In fact, even in Bangalore you have a couple of societies or chapters of larger societies celebrating Sherlock Holmes.
Arthur Conan Doyle can never be thanked enough for giving us this wonderful detective.
I did not know till I read this interesting post that Sherlock Holmes has a birthday celebration every year. And the date? January 6th or Twelfth night.
Read the interesting post to understand why this date was chosen.
I like the editions illustrated wonderfully by Sidney Paget as published in the Strand Magazine. Others just don't cut it.
And about the actors, I think Jeremy Brett portrayed Holmes best. Did you know that Roger Moore ("My name is Holmes, Sherlock Holmes") and Christopher Lee (and Saruman the white) have played Sherlock Holmes? Basil Rathbone was a favorite of Americans of the black and white generation. There were quite a few non-Conan-Doyle stories that featured Rathbone as Holmes. Personally, I have not read a non-Conan-Doyle Holmes and I don't think I will try to either.
I finish this post with a quiz: Which adventures of Sherlock Holmes have a number in their names? (No cheating...)
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Monday, January 05, 2009
Nepal's Pashupatinath and de-culturing
Nepal priests to conduct worship at Pashupatinath-South Asia-World-The Times of India
Nepal was the only country in the world that proclaimed Hindu Dharma as its state religion. Soon after Prachanda and his cohorts took up power in Nepal, one of the first things they did was to remove the word "Hindu" from the country's constitution. Hindus the world over felt a twinge of discomfort when they read about it (this blogger included).
Karl Marx had this to say about religion, amongst other things - "It is the opium of the people." Whether his view was more nuanced than what this quote implies is a different topic. But as far as his followers are concerned, this statement pretty much sums it up. Religion and pre-communist tradition are something that have to be shunned. Atheism, nay, a form of nihilism and communism go together, that way.
Back to Nepal, the Pashupatinath temple is a very old and sacred centre of religion. Legend has it that Sri Shankaracharya instituted worship in this temple and appointed a lineage of priests (called ravals) from Karnataka. This tradition has gone on for centuries. When monarchy reigned in Nepal, Hindus and Hindu institutions flourished. That the pontiffs of the Kanchi Matha were held in high esteem by the king of Nepal is well known.
Communists, completely supported by the Chinese, started their activities within Nepal long ago. With bloodshed and rivalry within the royal family, their ascent to power accelerated. And finally, Prachanda got democratically elected as the prime minister. He belongs to the Communist Party (Maoist) of Nepal. The fact that he owes much to China can be seen from the name of his party as well as by his act of traveling first to China instead of India, as was the norm. The cold shoulder to India is quite evident here. It may not be long before Indian citizens need a passport and visa to visit Nepal, just like everybody else. India might need to worry about open borders with Nepal - but that is a separate issue.
The ascension to power by Prachanda was marked by the abolition of monarchy. Beginning with that, a systematic change of traditions instituted by the royal family has started. The change of the rawals is but a marker in the process of this "deculturing".
Monolithic religion-ideologies such as Islam, Communism and Christianity have one thing common amongst them. Wherever one of these has risen to power, the clock on history and culture is reset - as if there was no history and culture in these lands before the advent of these ideologies. Pakistan is an example in point. Textbooks are full of glorification of everything Islamic and condemnation of all else. Two generations of readers of such text books are all it takes to obliterate a country's indigenous traditions. Harappa is still in Pakistan, but from those textbooks, its achievements pale in front of those of a Ghauri or a Ghaznavi as Mohenjodaro et al were pre-Islamic sites and therefore jAhil. Mao's cultural revolution is similar.
A similar effort seems to be afoot in Nepal. Textbooks will, in all likelihood, be the next target if not already targeted. And it will be decreed in them that Nepal was under continued oppression till they were "liberated" by Chairman Mao's ideology, whose able representative is Chairman Prachanda. Whatever good remains will be credited to the new ideology and all things bad will be cast as the relics of a forgettable past.
The following quote by an American author sums it up quite well -
“Only when the war propaganda of the victors is entered into the history books of the vanquished, (and this is also believed by succeeding generations), only then will our reeducation have succeeded”
Nepal was the only country in the world that proclaimed Hindu Dharma as its state religion. Soon after Prachanda and his cohorts took up power in Nepal, one of the first things they did was to remove the word "Hindu" from the country's constitution. Hindus the world over felt a twinge of discomfort when they read about it (this blogger included).
Karl Marx had this to say about religion, amongst other things - "It is the opium of the people." Whether his view was more nuanced than what this quote implies is a different topic. But as far as his followers are concerned, this statement pretty much sums it up. Religion and pre-communist tradition are something that have to be shunned. Atheism, nay, a form of nihilism and communism go together, that way.
Back to Nepal, the Pashupatinath temple is a very old and sacred centre of religion. Legend has it that Sri Shankaracharya instituted worship in this temple and appointed a lineage of priests (called ravals) from Karnataka. This tradition has gone on for centuries. When monarchy reigned in Nepal, Hindus and Hindu institutions flourished. That the pontiffs of the Kanchi Matha were held in high esteem by the king of Nepal is well known.
Communists, completely supported by the Chinese, started their activities within Nepal long ago. With bloodshed and rivalry within the royal family, their ascent to power accelerated. And finally, Prachanda got democratically elected as the prime minister. He belongs to the Communist Party (Maoist) of Nepal. The fact that he owes much to China can be seen from the name of his party as well as by his act of traveling first to China instead of India, as was the norm. The cold shoulder to India is quite evident here. It may not be long before Indian citizens need a passport and visa to visit Nepal, just like everybody else. India might need to worry about open borders with Nepal - but that is a separate issue.
The ascension to power by Prachanda was marked by the abolition of monarchy. Beginning with that, a systematic change of traditions instituted by the royal family has started. The change of the rawals is but a marker in the process of this "deculturing".
Monolithic religion-ideologies such as Islam, Communism and Christianity have one thing common amongst them. Wherever one of these has risen to power, the clock on history and culture is reset - as if there was no history and culture in these lands before the advent of these ideologies. Pakistan is an example in point. Textbooks are full of glorification of everything Islamic and condemnation of all else. Two generations of readers of such text books are all it takes to obliterate a country's indigenous traditions. Harappa is still in Pakistan, but from those textbooks, its achievements pale in front of those of a Ghauri or a Ghaznavi as Mohenjodaro et al were pre-Islamic sites and therefore jAhil. Mao's cultural revolution is similar.
A similar effort seems to be afoot in Nepal. Textbooks will, in all likelihood, be the next target if not already targeted. And it will be decreed in them that Nepal was under continued oppression till they were "liberated" by Chairman Mao's ideology, whose able representative is Chairman Prachanda. Whatever good remains will be credited to the new ideology and all things bad will be cast as the relics of a forgettable past.
The following quote by an American author sums it up quite well -
“Only when the war propaganda of the victors is entered into the history books of the vanquished, (and this is also believed by succeeding generations), only then will our reeducation have succeeded”
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
An absolute treasure - Shri Dharampal's works online!
DHARAMPAL's India
Shri Dharampal has written several illuminating works on Indian history and science and this was the real stuff.
The website above has a bunch of his important works online. Other ones like "The Beautiful Tree" will be online very soon.
Enjoy - it should be an eye-opening read.
Shri Dharampal has written several illuminating works on Indian history and science and this was the real stuff.
The website above has a bunch of his important works online. Other ones like "The Beautiful Tree" will be online very soon.
Enjoy - it should be an eye-opening read.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Daniel Pipes, MJ Akbar and the T-word
Still Asleep After Mumbai :: Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes is a known expert on the Middle East and the Islamic world. In this piece he has chillingly assessed the aftermath of the Mumbai carnage.
This piece caught my attention. (Please read the full piece though, it is as informative as it is alarming).
My feeling about the T-word is the same. (My thoughts on this from 2005 can be found here and I have not changed my stance). International pressure builds on the direct and indirect perpetrators of such acts when strong words are used. Pussy-footing is what our government had done earlier by using words like "militants" and "miscreants" to refer to terrorists in Kashmir.
The Indian government has worked itself into a corner. If it refers to certain acts as terrorism, it assumes that it is accusing the minority community. This is basically insinuating that all the minorities in India are anti-national and hence sponsors of terrorism. Minority leaders should actually take exception at the government's not referring to the killers by the T-word.
In the present world, the importance of media presence cannot be over-emphasized. It will do the government a lot of good if it can use its media handlers more effectively to convey the gravity of the situation.
As the acts have become increasingly heinous, the Indian media has finally started using the T-word. Oh wait, not yet. This link from this leftist TV channel still uses the word militant. Militant does give a more harmless connotation and that is why we need to use the strongest possible words to describe the killers. When Pipes takes the international media to task for using "militant", here are our guys - still stuck with militant.
HonestReporting had this to say when castigating AP's treatment of Hamas - militant or terrorist, while commending NY Times for using the right word. And this was in 2006.
Concluding this post, I wonder if our esteemed PM Dr. Manmohan Singh gets enough sleep at the thought of poverty in the Indian Muslim community. A recent post by MJ Akbar reports that a whopping zero percent of the money allotted to minority development was spent in Maharashtra. Rather than be too sensitive about perceived slights that a community might take offense to or not, it would be far more useful to uplift and educate minorities and bring them to the national mainstream. But then, who would re-elect these politicians?
Daniel Pipes is a known expert on the Middle East and the Islamic world. In this piece he has chillingly assessed the aftermath of the Mumbai carnage.
This piece caught my attention. (Please read the full piece though, it is as informative as it is alarming).
Nomenclature lays bare this denial. When a sole jihadist strikes, politicians, law enforcement, and media join forces to deny even the fact of terrorism; and when all must concede the terrorist nature of an attack, as in Mumbai, a pedantic establishment twists itself into knots to avoid blaming terrorists.The following is exactly what MJ Akbar, the premier journalist, says on his blog (www.mjakbar.org) in a piece called "Biting the BBC bullet". These are the words he wrote to the BBC when they did not use the T-word.
I documented this avoidance by listing the twenty (!) euphemisms the press unearthed to describe Islamists who attacked a school in Beslan in 2004: activists, assailants, attackers, bombers, captors, commandos, criminals, extremists, fighters, group, guerrillas, gunmen, hostage-takers, insurgents, kidnappers, militants, perpetrators, radicals, rebels, and separatists – anything but terrorists.
"I am appalled, astonished, livid at your inability to describe the events in Mumbai as the work of terrorists. You have called them 'gunmen', as if they were hired security guards on a night out. When Britain finds a group of men plotting in a home laboratory your government has no hesitation in creating an international storm, and the BBC has no hesitation in calling them terrorists. When nearly two hundred Indian lives are lost, you cannot find a word in your dictionary more persuasive than 'gunmen'. You are not only pathetic, but you have become utterly biased in your reporting…Shame on you and your kind."Kudos to Akbar for his forthright expression of indignation.
My feeling about the T-word is the same. (My thoughts on this from 2005 can be found here and I have not changed my stance). International pressure builds on the direct and indirect perpetrators of such acts when strong words are used. Pussy-footing is what our government had done earlier by using words like "militants" and "miscreants" to refer to terrorists in Kashmir.
The Indian government has worked itself into a corner. If it refers to certain acts as terrorism, it assumes that it is accusing the minority community. This is basically insinuating that all the minorities in India are anti-national and hence sponsors of terrorism. Minority leaders should actually take exception at the government's not referring to the killers by the T-word.
In the present world, the importance of media presence cannot be over-emphasized. It will do the government a lot of good if it can use its media handlers more effectively to convey the gravity of the situation.
As the acts have become increasingly heinous, the Indian media has finally started using the T-word. Oh wait, not yet. This link from this leftist TV channel still uses the word militant. Militant does give a more harmless connotation and that is why we need to use the strongest possible words to describe the killers. When Pipes takes the international media to task for using "militant", here are our guys - still stuck with militant.
HonestReporting had this to say when castigating AP's treatment of Hamas - militant or terrorist, while commending NY Times for using the right word. And this was in 2006.
The Associated Press actually used the words "terror network." What is surprising is that they use the phrase to label Al-Qaida, while referring to Hamas as a more neutral "militant group".Can I hope that our media folks will look at such subtle but important distinctions while reporting? MJ Akbar, it looks like nobody from NDTV has looked at your blog or that of Pipes or HonestReporting. Or is it something else with these people?
Concluding this post, I wonder if our esteemed PM Dr. Manmohan Singh gets enough sleep at the thought of poverty in the Indian Muslim community. A recent post by MJ Akbar reports that a whopping zero percent of the money allotted to minority development was spent in Maharashtra. Rather than be too sensitive about perceived slights that a community might take offense to or not, it would be far more useful to uplift and educate minorities and bring them to the national mainstream. But then, who would re-elect these politicians?
Friday, December 19, 2008
Terror in the ministry
UPA proud of my Karkare remark: Antulay
Now that we have terror everywhere, it makes sense to consult the dictionary to understand what the actual meaning of the word is. The Merriam-Webster's online dictionary has this to say:
Terror
1 : a state of intense fear
2 a: one that inspires fear : scourge
b: a frightening aspectterrors of invasion>
c: a cause of anxiety : worry
d: an appalling person or thing
Looking at this definition, the perpetrators of the horrific Mumbai carnage were not terrorists to the UPA government as it was neither fear inspiring - given that Rahul Gandhi, the heir-apparent, partied all night when commandos were still engaged at the Taj. It was neither appalling nor a cause of anxiety. Apparently, our honourable PM did not lose sleep over this as much as he lost over the condition of a mother of a bomber. Even if the nation was terrorized, the UPA government was probably not.
However, the current event is terror inspiring to the UPA. Abdul Rahman Antulay is a terror not only to his party comrades, but also to his co-religionists and all Indians.
By his parrot-like repetition of an ill-conceived conspiracy theory the likes of which are often repeated (recall the canard of a CIA-Zionist plot of 9/11 that is claimed as gospel truth in a large part of the Muslim world), Abdul Rahman might have endeared himself to Islamist fanatics and the sensationalizing aspect of Pakistani media - but has become a political hot potato now.
His wayward comment about Karkare's death not being at the hands of terrorists is not only irresponsible but also downright malicious. In an exercise that Goebbels would have been proud of, a Pakistani channel and Abdul Rahman mutually reinforced one another. Now each will have the other's word as evidence. How convenient!
If we look back at the events that transpired, we had a few people, incidentally Hindus, investigated in the Malegaon blasts. The fact that the Indian media took this up with undisguised glee and projected this as the Hindu counterpart of the global threat of Islamic terrorism is indeed deplorable.
When the Mumbai events unfolded, the world saw the unprecedented horror occurring before it. Even so, Somini Sengupta in the New York Times in her report of the Mumbai events had to have a footnote on "Hindu Terrorism" - which, even if this Sadhvi character is proved to have committed, would amount to less than a drop in the whole Arabian sea.
I read somewhere that India now is a dubious statistic of being the second worst terror-affected country after Iraq (which is under civil war!) in the last five years. How much of this loss is due to "Hindu" terror?
When I read Somini Sengupta's piece that mentioned this "Hindu" terror in the same piece in her Mumbai report - as the events were transpiring - I squirmed in my seat. What blatantly misleading information was being fed here! Luckily, due to more sensible media houses in the west - who were on the ground and not dependent on their Indian agencies, the extent of the damage as well as clear information on the origin of the perpetrators was conveyed to the world.
The public has a short term memory. Three weeks later, people are just normal - of course - we don't want people to continue to be terrorized. Politicians are back to their quibbling ways. However, several common people have been really shaken by the events and they are taking to the streets in protest.
There are welcome changes occurring too - though I don't know how many of these will be effective in the long run. The first one is the refusal of the Waqf body to conduct an Islamic burial for the slain terrorists. Till now, all slain terrorists, be it in Akshardham or in J&K were apparently handed over to some Islamic body which would then bury them in Indian soil. Now this will not happen. I am so glad that the Muslim community has come out in strong protest.
The second one - in smaller measure - is the red gun salute given by Naxalites in memory of the Mumbai victims. This was unprecedented. If the trained Naxalites were to fight the LeT-types... I continue to dream.
The third one is the support - diplomatic and logistic - that India is getting (finally!) from the US, UK and Israel. Not that this was not done earlier - but there is a feeling of increased solidarity against terror.
Fourth, new guidelines about crisis coverage have been instituted by the news broadcast association. This should hopefully trickle down to lessened sensationalism in other spheres as well.
Fifth, a national body to counter terror, curiously labeled NIA (they liked the CIA acronym?) has been set up. This should hopefully increase intelligence dissemination among government agencies.
Coming back to Antulay and the UPA, I would at least hope that the UPA has enough sense to boot him out of the party and make him a political pariah. But this could be a double-game by the UPA. By retaining Antulay, it can retain the vote bank of insecure minorities while pandering to the majority at large by effecting ineffective changes such as mere legislations and ministerial resignations. Why am I such a cynic?
Whatever happens, I hope the haunting images of smoke billowing out of the Taj and of that gun-toting criminal walking through the CST looking for his next kill never fail to awaken righteous indignation amongst all Indians.
Now that we have terror everywhere, it makes sense to consult the dictionary to understand what the actual meaning of the word is. The Merriam-Webster's online dictionary has this to say:
Terror
1 : a state of intense fear
2 a: one that inspires fear : scourge
b: a frightening aspect
c: a cause of anxiety : worry
d: an appalling person or thing
Looking at this definition, the perpetrators of the horrific Mumbai carnage were not terrorists to the UPA government as it was neither fear inspiring - given that Rahul Gandhi, the heir-apparent, partied all night when commandos were still engaged at the Taj. It was neither appalling nor a cause of anxiety. Apparently, our honourable PM did not lose sleep over this as much as he lost over the condition of a mother of a bomber. Even if the nation was terrorized, the UPA government was probably not.
However, the current event is terror inspiring to the UPA. Abdul Rahman Antulay is a terror not only to his party comrades, but also to his co-religionists and all Indians.
By his parrot-like repetition of an ill-conceived conspiracy theory the likes of which are often repeated (recall the canard of a CIA-Zionist plot of 9/11 that is claimed as gospel truth in a large part of the Muslim world), Abdul Rahman might have endeared himself to Islamist fanatics and the sensationalizing aspect of Pakistani media - but has become a political hot potato now.
His wayward comment about Karkare's death not being at the hands of terrorists is not only irresponsible but also downright malicious. In an exercise that Goebbels would have been proud of, a Pakistani channel and Abdul Rahman mutually reinforced one another. Now each will have the other's word as evidence. How convenient!
If we look back at the events that transpired, we had a few people, incidentally Hindus, investigated in the Malegaon blasts. The fact that the Indian media took this up with undisguised glee and projected this as the Hindu counterpart of the global threat of Islamic terrorism is indeed deplorable.
When the Mumbai events unfolded, the world saw the unprecedented horror occurring before it. Even so, Somini Sengupta in the New York Times in her report of the Mumbai events had to have a footnote on "Hindu Terrorism" - which, even if this Sadhvi character is proved to have committed, would amount to less than a drop in the whole Arabian sea.
I read somewhere that India now is a dubious statistic of being the second worst terror-affected country after Iraq (which is under civil war!) in the last five years. How much of this loss is due to "Hindu" terror?
When I read Somini Sengupta's piece that mentioned this "Hindu" terror in the same piece in her Mumbai report - as the events were transpiring - I squirmed in my seat. What blatantly misleading information was being fed here! Luckily, due to more sensible media houses in the west - who were on the ground and not dependent on their Indian agencies, the extent of the damage as well as clear information on the origin of the perpetrators was conveyed to the world.
The public has a short term memory. Three weeks later, people are just normal - of course - we don't want people to continue to be terrorized. Politicians are back to their quibbling ways. However, several common people have been really shaken by the events and they are taking to the streets in protest.
There are welcome changes occurring too - though I don't know how many of these will be effective in the long run. The first one is the refusal of the Waqf body to conduct an Islamic burial for the slain terrorists. Till now, all slain terrorists, be it in Akshardham or in J&K were apparently handed over to some Islamic body which would then bury them in Indian soil. Now this will not happen. I am so glad that the Muslim community has come out in strong protest.
The second one - in smaller measure - is the red gun salute given by Naxalites in memory of the Mumbai victims. This was unprecedented. If the trained Naxalites were to fight the LeT-types... I continue to dream.
The third one is the support - diplomatic and logistic - that India is getting (finally!) from the US, UK and Israel. Not that this was not done earlier - but there is a feeling of increased solidarity against terror.
Fourth, new guidelines about crisis coverage have been instituted by the news broadcast association. This should hopefully trickle down to lessened sensationalism in other spheres as well.
Fifth, a national body to counter terror, curiously labeled NIA (they liked the CIA acronym?) has been set up. This should hopefully increase intelligence dissemination among government agencies.
Coming back to Antulay and the UPA, I would at least hope that the UPA has enough sense to boot him out of the party and make him a political pariah. But this could be a double-game by the UPA. By retaining Antulay, it can retain the vote bank of insecure minorities while pandering to the majority at large by effecting ineffective changes such as mere legislations and ministerial resignations. Why am I such a cynic?
Whatever happens, I hope the haunting images of smoke billowing out of the Taj and of that gun-toting criminal walking through the CST looking for his next kill never fail to awaken righteous indignation amongst all Indians.
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