MODI CALLS BIG B'S DETRACTORS TALIBAN
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
PTI
The Pioneer
http://www.dailypioneer.com
Monday, March 29, 2010
Ahmedabad - Lashing out at those objecting to Bollywood megastar
Amitabh Bachchan's presence at a government function in Mumbai,
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has dubbed them as "Talibans of
untouchability".
Writing on his blog, Modi described 67-year-old Bachchan as a great
artist with legendary humility and even taller achievements who has
chosen to celebrate the glorious heritage of Gujarat even while
facing a lot of criticism from many quarters. "This is inspiring", he
said yesterday.
A controversy erupted over Bachchan attending at a government
function in Mumbai where Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan was
also present. A section of Congress took objection to his presence as
he is the brand ambassador for BJP-ruled Gujarat.
The Bachchan-Congress row took a new twist yesterday with the
megastar claiming that his son Abhishek's posters were removed from
the venue of WWF's Earth Hour event in Delhi on Saturday evening
attended by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and saw a "pattern" behind
such acts.
Modi said the anti-Gujarat game plan behind the opposition and the
controversy over senior Bachchan stood exposed in broad daylight now.
"These 'Talibans of Untouchability' have lost all their sensibilities
in their pursuit of anti-Gujarat attitudes.
"They may well in future tell us not to eat even salt. They may even
ban the eating of Amul butter and milk and order our young people not
to wear denim jeans! And guess why? Because Gujarat produces these
things," he said.
"Friends, my heart is still unwilling to believe that these Talibans
are unaware of the damage they are causing to this nation and to our
society," said Modi.
The Gujarat Chief Minister also wrote about his marathon grilling by
the Supreme Court-appointed SIT in connection with a Gujarat riots
case.
"I have cooperated with the process of law and accepted its
supremacy. I heartily express my thankfulness to the people for their
support and prayers in this difficult moment," his blog entry read.
Modi was grilled for over nine hours on Saturday for his alleged role
in the Gulbarg Society massacre in which 69 people including former
Congress MP Ehsan Jafri were killed.
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Beautiful People with Nitin Gadkari Part 1 - 20/3/10
Watch Video
http://vodpod.com/watch/3274755-beautiful-people-with-nitin-gadkari-part-1-20310
Beautiful People with Nitin Gadkari Part 2 - 20/3/10
Watch Video
http://vodpod.com/watch/3274756-beautiful-people-with-nitin-gadkari-part-2-20310
MS - Believe in IK OANKAAR Member since:May 12, 2006
Total points:12001 (Level 6)
Resolved Question
How is team Nitin Gadkari?
So far I did not pay attention on his team but after reading comments
from Shotgun, I started reading and critically analyzing this national
counsel.
Karuna Shukla : niece of Mr. Atal Bihari Vajapayee
Varun Gandhi, Of course benefited because of his family background and
his provocative and controversial speeches.
Vasundhara Raje Scindia, daughter of late smt Rajmata Vijayaraje
Scindia, who else can trouble party leadership more than her.
Thavarchand Ghahlod, Vijay Goel both lost parliamentary elections and
Dharmendra Pradhan lost assembly elections, and all three general
secretory, but Yashwant Sinha missing from the list and Bihar
elections are approaching.
No general secretory from UP, only one member from Karnataka in team
Gadkari where BJP is in power.
Of course, Mr. Advani and RSS are never ignored in BJP.
From parliament to team Gadkari every where one can see, Mr. Advani's
team more than Mr. Gadkari's team, may it be leader of opposition, or
leader of NDA, or leader of BJP in Rajyasabha, or in team Gadkari
Anant Kumar, and Vasundhara Raje though Arun Shourie and Yashavant
Sinha did not find place.
And for RSS, Narendra Singh Tomar, Ram Lal, Varun Gandhi, Vinay
Katiyar, Thavar Chand Gahlot.
Mr. Gadkari had to leave out the deserving candidate like Shahnavaz
Husein from being General Secretory and accommodated as spokes person,
though he is three times MP and more deserving than many others.
And by the way there are 3 general secretaries from Lok Sabha and 6
from Rajya Sabha, and I am emphasizing more on general secretaries
because that position is considered as most important in BJP.
Now according to media news the Yuva morcha president will be Anurag
Thaukur, HP CM Prem Kumar Dhumal's son.
Yes lot of Young faces and more than 33% females in the team. A
positive sign, but I don't see lot of people with grassroots and mass
support.
What is your opinion on Team Gadkari? Would this team take BJP to Mr.
Gadkari's target to increase vote base to +10%? Did he keep his
promise that "People who work will be rewarded in BJP?"
2 weeks ago
Additional Details
Mr. Bull, I don't my question was how is team Gadkari as compared to
team Congress because that is already proven. But to answer your
question.
For your kind information, these just few examples, more you want, I
can produce a long list but I don't think that is the question here:
Late Madhavrao Scindia joined politics with Bharatiya Jan Sangh and he
was son of Late Rajmata Scindia. So it goes like this:
Late Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia
=======================
Daughter: Yashodhara Raje Scindia
Son: Madhavrao Scindia
Daughter: Vasundhara Raje
Grandson: Dushyant Singh
I already mentioned about Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's family, now see
few more:
Rajnath Singh:
===========
Son: Pankaj Singh
Jaswant Singh
===========
Son: Manvendra Singh
B. S. Yeddyurappa
===============
Son: B. Y. Raghavendra
Madan Lal Khurana
===============
Son: Vimal Khurana
Daughter In law: Vandana Khurana
2 weeks ago
by Vijay D Member since:February 15, 2007Total points:9900 (Level 5)
Best answer 11%2613 answers
Member Since: February 15, 2007
Total Points: 9900 (Level 5)
Points earned this week: 54
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker
This is team RSS with head quarters based in Nagpur. Full BJP has been
taken over by Marathi culture. The reason for fall of BJP in north
India is only because of the prevalent Marathi culture.
2 weeks ago
Asker's Rating:Asker's Comment:10/10
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100318173007AAvUPsH
A thought to ponder
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
“No true Muslim can kill a Hindu, no true Hindu can kill a Muslim.
Yet the pseudo-secularists insist on indentifying terrorists with
religion.
The state should be secular, the government should be secular but an
individual cannot be secular.”
sd/Nitin Gadkari
Life Sketch
A Visionary Performer
A visionary with great ideas and an innovative approach, an able
administrator who believes in attaining results , an iconic leader for
the party workers, a Leader of Opposition who keeps the government on
its toes when in opposition; a performer par excellence as a Minister
are the words that best bring about the profile of Nitin Gadkari. In
other words, here is a leader who has the ability to make democracy,
deliver!
For him politics was never confined to gaining power. He always looked
at it as an instrument for bringing about all round development of the
people. He believes that “Seva and Vikas”, (service and development)
lead the way for better public service, which in turn expands and
strengthens the base of the party, at the grass root level.
A Swayamsevak of the RSS to the core, for Mr Gadkari, social justice,
harmony and equality are matters of commitment. His skills in social
engineering , withstood the litmus test of electoral politics in the
recent Maharashtra assembly elections especially in the Nagpur
district.
His clear vision and perfect understanding of the needs of the masses,
has helped him to bring effective changes that have benefitted the
common man. In political as well as the social spheres Mr. Gadkari,
has always adopted an all encompassing approach. Antyodaya, (to reach
out to the last person on the social ladder) has always been the focus
of his development agenda. His willingness to accept suggestions and
implement the viable ones helped Mr. Gadkari to change the face and
functioning of the Public Works Department (PWD) of Maharashtra
Government during his very illustrious tenure as its Minister..
A Sincere Party Soldier
Mr. Gadkari began as a grass root level worker and has successfully
led from the front, several agitations and other programmes of the
BJP . He has worked in different capacities and has held varied
positions within the party, before taking up the post of Maharashtra
BJP President in 2004. As a true party soldier, he has all along
accepted whatever responsibility the party wanted him to shoulder and
has carried it out to the best of his abilities.
After taking over as Maharashtra BJP President in November 2004, Mr.
Gadkari visited almost every tehsil and knows countless party workers
by name. Due to his dynamism, development-oriented approach and
openness, the BJP has been able to bring various new sections of
society in its fold.
Early Days of Activism
Nitin Gadkari learned his initial lessons in nationalism and
patriotism at a very young age. He entered the political arena as a
student activist. He joined the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad
(ABVP) in 1976 and took active part in university elections. In 1979
he became the Secretary of Vidharbha region. Under his stewardship
ABVP won the elections for all positions in the Nagpur University
Students' Council. During his tenure he successfully organized the
28th National Convention of ABVP.
At the age of 24, he was elected as the Nagpur City President of
Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM). In 1985 he became secretary of BJP
Nagpur City and he worked relentlessly to strengthen the party
organization in urban and rural areas of the district.
At the age of 32, Nitin Gadkari successfully contested elections for
Maharashtra Legislative Council from Nagpur division Graduates
Constituency, spread over five districts, and became an M.L.C. He
repeated his successful performance four consecutive times in 1990,
1996, 2002 and 2008. Notably, he was elected unopposed in 2002.
Mr. Gadkari's success in the legislative politics runs parallel with
his organizational achievements in BJP. At the age of 35, he became
the General Secretary of BJP in Maharashtra. Under his leadership the
party organization spread its tentacles all over the state. The
party's spectacular victory in the Nagpur Municipal Corporation in
1992 elections, established his organization prowess beyond doubt. At
the age of 38, Mr. Gadkari was inducted in the Maharashtra Cabinet as
the Minister for Public Works. High level of result orientation and
performance marked his ministerial inning. He was Leader of Opposition
in Maharashtra Legislative Council at the age of 42. As a responsible
leader of opposition, he took up various important issues such as
farmer’s suicides and made the government listen to. He also came out
with out-of-box suggestions and viable solutions to address these
issues.
In 2004, Mr. Gadkari at the age of 47, became the President of BJP
Maharashtra State.
Mark on Governance:
Gadkari’s stint as Public Works Minister of Maharashtra (1995-99) made
him world-famous thanks to his resoluteness in swiftly completing mega
projects like the Mumbai-Pune Expressway or the network of 55 flyover
bridges in Mumbai at the costs way below the estimated expenditure.
During these four and a half years he left an indelible mark of his
style of governance on his department. He played a key role in shaping
the Prime Minister’s Gram Sadak Yojana. During the NDA rule, the
Central PWD was revamped as per his suggestions. Mr. Gadkari
transformed Nagpur, making it one of the most beautiful cities of
India. His lasting contribution is his work for uplifting the poor and
the deprived.
His thrust area always has remained the economic and social upliftment
of the have-nots. A case in point is his work for the educated
unemployed. When he was Minister, he launched a scheme for qualified
unemployed civil engineers. They were allowed to register with the PWD
and undertake its assignments, estimated to cost up to Rs.15 lakh. Mr.
Gadkari provided work to around 30000 engineers through this bold
initiative. At the same time, Gadkari started a campaign to reward the
employees doing good work and penalise those shirking their
responsibilities. Every year since, the State Governor distributes
awards to outstanding PWD engineers on the birth anniversary of Sir M.
Visvesvaraya. Such pioneering efforts instilled a confidence among the
PWD personnel. Under Mr. Gadkari, they completed several prestigious
assignments in record time.
Mr. Gadkari’s two achievements stand out in particular. He pioneered
the concept of Public-Private partnership (PPP) in infrastructure
development. The BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) model has the basis of
this concept. It is now implemented widely in India, thanks to this
initiative large budgetary funds were made available for rural road
development. The other is the up-gradation of norms for the
construction industry. Completion of mega projects in a time bound
frame, too, is his initiative. Establishment of a Maharashtra State
Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) was one of his innovative
initiatives through which funds were raised from open market for
infrastructure projects for the first time in India
One of the first tasks Mr. Gadkari planned was to provide all-weather
road connectivity to the 13736 villages in Maharashtra. He noted that
they had remained unconnected even after 50 years of independence. He
remarked that it would take 350 years to complete the work through
annual budgets. As finances could not become available from government
coffers, he persuaded NABARD officials and obtained a soft loan of Rs.
700 crore for rural connectivity. Mr. Gadkari approached Naxalite-
infested areas where no road work was allowed by Naxalites. He secured
the assistance of the Border Road Organisation (BRO) to construct
roads and bridges, thus providing the tribals with easy and permanent
road access.
As Guardian Minister for Nagpur District, Mr. Gadkari changed the
complexion of Nagpur and the district. Low cost housing schemes for
economically weaker sections, Markets for hawkers. Development and
beautification of prominent places like Deekshabhoomi, where Dr.
B.R.Ambedkar embraced Buddhism, were some of his noteworthy
achievements.
Social Outlook, Professional Approach
A successful entrepreneur, Mr. Gadkari tops the list of progressive
leaders who have profound concerns for socio-economic development and
environmental protection. His personality is a perfect mix of
entrepreneurship and social leadership. This has helped him in
creating organisations with social outlook and professional approach.
He has successfully utilized urban resources for creating employment
opportunities in rural areas. His sincere and deep interest in tapping
the conventional and non-conventional energy sources, to their
optimum, is visible through the various projects he has launched,
through his Purti Group of companies, in the region.
A co-operative supermarket competing with private malls and mega
markets; successful implementation of first private sector composite
2500TPD sugar factory in an area where even stalwarts rejected the
idea of starting a sugar factory; Ethanol plant of 1,20,000 ltrs; 26
MWT of Power Generation unit and Bio-fertiliser with the country's
first biodiesel pump are all examples of his commitment to implement
social schemes in a professional manner. His business group is also
running a solvent extraction Soyabean plant and a cogeneration power
plant of 8 mw capacity. Being an agriculturist, Mr Gadkari is the
first facilitator of solar fencing. He firmly believes in improving
the financial status of the farmers by increasing their purchasing
power, to bring about their all round development.
Mr. Gadkari has a taste for everything that is modern. He initiated a
process of setting up Software Technology Park in Central India. The
project of reusing the sewage water for Power Generation and
industrial use thereby saving clean water, speaks of his practical and
modern approach.
An Empathic Communicator
A powerful orator from his college days winning several awards has
evolved into communicator where he presents issues in a very point
wise logical fashion. He is perhaps the only politician who enthralls
lakhs of youth telling them importance of entrepreneurship and
development. Gadkari has established a record by attracting lakhs of
young people to watch his presentations on the theme of development.
Stadiums were overflowing with thousands of teenagers and youngsters
when he made public presentations on the potential of MIHAN
(Multimodal international cargo hub and airport at Nagpur) complex at
various places. There was not a word of politics in any of the
speeches or any appeal to instigate passions. On the other hand when
he is handling all important issues like fair prices for farm produce
he is very fierce and takes laks of farmers with him. The ability to
address diverse issues concerning to urban youth to the farmers to the
forest dwellers with same empathy and passion makes him very effective
in bonding with people at large..
A firm believer in Antyodaya :
Gadkari firmly believes in the concepts of Antyodaya, Integral
Humanism and trusteeship. More importantly, he has established that he
can walk the talk and make his commitment to the cause of people's
welfare reflect through his governance. It was under his leadership
that Maharashtra BJP contributed in the Annadata Sukhi Bhava Yojana of
a Voluntary Organisation and reached out to the widows of those
farmers who have committed suicides. Mr. Gadkari gave top priority to
constructing roads to tackle the problem of tribal malnutrition in
Melghat - Dharni belt of Amaravati district and provided all- weather
connectivity to the 91 remote villages of the belt. This connectivity
has changed the socio-economic profile of this belt with the incidence
of malnutrition coming down dramatically. It is his conviction that
each position and authority must have only one objective: welfare of
the public.
His Social Activities include
Adoption of 500 orphans of farmers who committed suicides due to
agrarian crises in the region.
Support for over 2000 BPL families for heart operations
Providing low cost housing for workers and the poor
A Globe Trotter
As someone who believes in learning things first hand, Mr. Gadkari has
traversed the globe in his quest to gain latest knowledge in varied
fields in which he is active. From water utilization in Israel to
water management in France, to sugar production in Brazil, to
infrastructure development in China, he has visited different
countries to understand the developmental processes going on in
different parts of the world. He has so far visited Israel, Italy,
France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan, China, Hong
Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, United States, Canada, Brazil and Sri
Lanka.
Personal
A sports enthusiast, Mr. Gadkari has particular interest in Cricket.
Married to Kanchan, the couple has three children – Nikhil, Sarang and
Ketaki.
Born - 27 May 1957 Nagpur, India.
Educational Qualification: - M. Com., L.L.B., D.B.M.
Positions Held in Public Sphere In Organisation :
1976-77 :Active member of ABVP and active participation in ABVP's anti-
Emergency work
1977 :Coordinator for Purogami Lokashahi Aghdadi's Vidarbha region
after Emergency was lifted.
1979 :Elected as Vidarbha region secretary of ABVP
1980 :Re-elected as Vidarbha region secretary of ABVP
1981 :Nagpur city unit President of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha
1985-86 :Nagpur city unit Secretary of Bharatiya Janata Party
1988-89 :General Secretary of Bharatiya Janata Party's Nagpur city
unit
1989 :Elected to the Maharashtra Legislative Council from Nagpur
graduate constituency.
1992-94 :General Secretary of the state unit of BJP
2004 :President of the BJP Maharashtra State unit
1995-99 :Government Cabinet Minister for Public Works Department of
Maharashtra State.
1999-2004 :Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislature Council.
1995-99 :Member of the High Power Committee for Privatization,
Government of Maharashtra.
1995-99 :Founder Chairman, Maharashtra State Road Development
Corporation Ltd.
1995-99 :Guardian Minister for Nagpur District, Govt. of Maharashtra.
1995-99 :Chairman, Mining Policy Implementation Committee, Govt. of
Maharashtra.
1995-99 :Chairman National Rural Road Development Committee, Govt. of
India. Chairman, Review Committee of CPWD, Govt. of India.
1995-99 : Chairman, Metropolis Beautification Committee, Govt. of
Maharashtra.
http://nitingadkari.org/lifeskectch.html
Youth leader
Nitin Gadkari was inspired to join the students’ movement by late
Dattaji Didolkar and Yashwantrao Kelkar, the two stalwarts who shaped
the avante garde students’ organization called Akhil Bharatiya
Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). As a fiery and sensitive youth leader, he
showed a typical aversion to injustice –be it in the form of fee hikes
or increasing political interference in education. His distaste for
lowering of standards of education and inertia of the youth became
visible during the various movements and agitations that he led, In
the very early stages of his political career, Gadkari exhibited his
capabilities to shoulder the higher responsibilities, which he would
be entrusted with in the future.
The young firebrand student leader made his foray into active politics
in the post Emergency era. He became the President of BJP Yuva Morcha
at the age of 26, which marked his entry into active politics. He
became the member of Maharashtra State Legislative Council at age of
32. And from here on, there has been no looking back. From the first
stint as a member of the Council in 1989 till date, Gadkari has left
an indelible mark on the politics of Maharashtra, his home state.
http://nitingadkari.org/youthleader.html
Minister
Driven since childhood by the philosophy of nationalism, Antyodaya and
concern for the underprivileged, Nitin Gadkari led various agitations
as a student leader in ABVP. He entered active politics after the
Emergency, which was imposed in 1975. In 1983 he was made president of
BJP Yuva Morcha. His attempt to enter the Maharashtra state Assembly
in 1985 was unsuccessful. He became the Member of Legislative Council
in 1989 and since then there has been no looking back.
Since 1989 till today, Mr. Gadkari has continued to be member of
Maharashtra Legislative Council, getting elected 5 times in a row from
the Graduate Constituency, comprising of over 2 lac voters, spread
across 5 revenue districts. He has worked his way up the ladder of
progress as State Secretary, PWD Minister, leader of Opposition, and
the State BJP President.
As PWD Minister for Maharashtra, from 1995-99, Gadkari left an
indelible mark on the development map of India. He was instrumental in
introducing and effectively implementing PPP (Public Private
Partnership) popularly known as BOT, by completing many development
projects. This unique concept, popular in western countries, but
frowned upon by Indian politicians, not only made the major artery
roads connecting cities better and well maintained, but also helped to
release huge amount of budget funds earmarked for such roads, to be
utilised for rural road development. The concept grew into what we see
today as “Golden Quadrilateral” and many more projects by NHAI on one
side and “Pantpradhan Gram Sadak Yojana” on the other.
In a lighter vein a politician is described as a person who promises
to build bridges in his pre-election speech and is able to convince
the people after 5 years why they could not be built. Far from all
this the most remarkable and outstanding feature of the tenure of
Nitin Gadkari as Minister for Public Works Department, in the
Government of Maharashtra, was that he delivered even those things
which he had never promised or rather he delivered much more than what
he had promised. He completed development works worth Rs 6000 crores
and provided employment to 10 lakh educated jobless youths of the
State.
Today lots of flyovers and bridges in Maharashtra stand testimony to
what Nitin Gadkari delivered through his vision and confidence by
completing all the projects within the deadline, with utmost adherence
to quality and standards., And he could achieve all this in the most
cost efficient manner. In a span of four years nearly 98% of the total
population in Maharashtra got road connectivity and many districts
completed the target of 100% road connectivity. He raised loans for
rural connectivity also. This aimed to connect 13736 remote villages
of the state, which had remained unconnected by road since
independence.
He took up the target of completing the “Sagari Marg” which was a long
awaited dream of the people of Konkan region. During the four years of
his regime, this dream became true and Konkan got the link of “Sagari
Marg” barring two large bridges in the sea creek.
He wanted fast track projects to be completed in a time bound manner.
He established Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation, (MSRDC)
a fully Govt. owned company. MSRDC went to the capital market and
raised Rs. 1180 crores. This was the first and the largest offering in
the capital market by any govt. owned corporation in those times. Thus
MSRDC could undertake large projects like constructing 55 flyovers in
Mumbai at a cost of Rs. 1500 crores, Mumbai Pune Expressway at a cost
of Rs.1500 crores and many other bridges, roads and bypass projects in
various parts of Maharashtra. The prestigious Worli-Bandra Sea Link
project, was initiated during his tenure as a minsiter,
Always open to and aggressive in adopting new technology, he undertook
complete computerisation programme for his department. P.W.D. was the
first governmental department to do so. Mr. Gadkari implemented a
scheme of self employment for the civil engineers. These unemployed
engineers were registered as contractors and PWD gave them work upto
Rs.15 lakh through tender along with an advance of Rs. 40,000/- .
Through this scheme 18000 civil engineers got the opportunity to work
independently. He promoted the concept of new technology in
construction field thereby, encouraging contractors to bring in state
of the art construction equipment, which improved the quality of work
as well as the economics.
http://nitingadkari.org/minister.html
Leader of Opposition
As a leader of Opposition in the Council, Nitin Gadkari was never
observed as lagging behind in raising the issues of public interest.
As a true democrat and fiery orator he made it a point to remain
present in the House and take part in the proceedings during the
business sessions. He was always proactive in exposing the lapses of
the government on various issues of public interest. He was corrective
and suggestive in his criticism and all his criticism was embedded in
profound concern for the welfare of the people. He raised as many as
over 5000 queries through starred and un-starred questions and call
attention motions in the House. He developed a style of taking all the
members of Opposition with him irrespective of party or ideological
affiliations in the House.
Nitin Gadkari has a magnetic personality. Even his adversaries on the
treasury benches appreciate his sincerity and commitment in a most
friendly manner. His book “Sabhapati Mahodaya” which depicts his
select speeches in the house reflects his concerns for issues cutting
across the wide spectrum of society.
A very alert and aggressive about injustice Mr. Gadkari keeps the
Government on his toes. He exposes number of irregularities and flows
in Government functioning and suggested practical solutions to rectify
it. Mr. Gadkari continues his zeal for infrastructure development
during his tenure of opposition leader. His tireless efforts for
getting development funds for needy and desirer areas are well
appreciated not only in Maharashtra but nearby states.
http://nitingadkari.org/oppositionleader.html
Party President - Maharashtra
Mr. Gadkari was elected as President of Maharashtra Pradesh Bharatiya
Janata Party in 2004 and was reelected in 2006, December. The faith,
which the party has reposed in him was due to his hard work and his
ability to keep the party workers spirited, active and united. He has
always guided the elected members effectively, so that they can act as
agents of change in their respective constituencies, by undertaking
SEWA (Service project) and VIKAS (development works).
He travels extensively to establish first hand contacts with the party
workers in the state. His personal touch to the relations, which he
has developed, has earned him the faith and goodwill of the party
workers all over Maharashtra.
In a span of thirteen days, Mr. Gadkari addressed 114 election
meetings in the nook and corner of the state, during the recently held
elections. This shows how much he was in demand to campaign for the
party candidates.. He is direct and straight forward in his approach
and never hesitates to launch a scathing attack on his opponents, but
his high level of maturity prevents him from launching personal
attacks. He is ruthless in exposing the divisive forces working within
the country. His oratory skills and clarity of purpose attract
students and youth.. His thorough understanding of public issues,
knowledge of facts and figures, and the skill of juxtaposing things in
an appealing manner, with humour and sarcasm laced in his election
speeches, make him a very popular leader of the masses.
During the Lok Sabha elections Nitin Gadkari addressed a total of 146
election meetings in Maharashtra and neighbouring states of Madhya
Pradesh and Chhatisgarh.
Nitin Gadkari was on Saturday, December 19th 2009, appointed the BJP
National president at a meeting of the Parliamentary Board of the
party.
http://nitingadkari.org/president.html
Links
Title Links
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© Copyright 2009 - 2010 Nitin Gadkari | All Rights Reserved.
BJP HISTORY : Its Birth and Early Growth
Bharatiya Janata Party is today the most prominent member of the
family of organisations known as the "Sangh Parivar". And RSS has
always been dubbed "communal", "reactionary" and what not by its
detractors. Sanghs of swayamsevaks have of course always shaken off
that criticism like so much water off a duck's back. They have never
had any doubt that the organisation is wedded to national unity,
national integrity, national identity and national strength through
individual character and national character. And today this
organisation is poised for a great leap forward. Even its long- time
detractors think and say that now BJP is "unstoppable".What is the
story of this national epic?
Bharatiya Janata Party is today the most prominent member of the
family of organisations known as the "Sangh Parivar". And RSS has
always been dubbed "communal", "reactionary" and what not by its
detractors. Sanghs of swayamsevaks have of course always shaken off
that criticism like so much water off a duck's back. They have never
had any doubt that the organisation is wedded to national unity,
national integrity, national identity and national strength through
individual character and national character. And today this
organisation is poised for a great leap forward. Even its long- time
detractors think and say that now BJP is "unstoppable".What is the
story of this national epic?
History is the philosophy of nations. And the Sangh Parivar has a very
clear and candid conception of Indian history. Here was a great
civilization whose glory spread from Sri Lanka to Java and Japan and
from Tibet and Mangolia to China and Siberia. While it weathered the
storms of Huns and Shakas and Greeks it wilted before the Islamic
storms of the Turks. However, a 1000-year resistance saw this country
bloodied but unbowed. Its civilization survived through the heroic
efforts of the Vijayanagar Empire and of Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru
Govind Singh and countless heroes and martyrs
In more recent times this torch was picked up by Swami Dayanand and
Swami Vivekanada. And in the present century the good work has been
carried on by Sri Aurobindo, Lokmanya Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and
others. The RSS, founded by Dr Hedgewar in 1925 and consolidated by
Shri Guruji after 1940, is the heir to this heroic, historic heritage.
It has nothing against Muslim Indians - as distinguished from Muslim
invaders. Its position on this issue has all along been: "Justice for
all and appeasement of none". But it has no doubt that we were and are
a Hindu nation; that change of faith cannot mean change of
nationality.
http://nitingadkari.org/bjpHistory.html
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
The RSS entirely agrees with Gandhiji's formulations that "There is in
Hinduism room enough for Jesus, as there is for Mohammed, Zoroster and
Moses" and that "majority of the Muslims of India are converts to that
faith from Hinduism through force of circumstances. They are still
Hindu in many essential ways and, in a free, prosperous, progressive
India, they would find it the most natural thing in the world to
revert to their ancient faith and ways of life."
Due to the British policy of "Divide and Rule" and the politicians'
proclivity to compromise and temporise the country suffered the trauma
of the partition. But the Sangh Parivar has no doubt that before very
long the unities, the varieties and the strengths of our ancient
civilization will prevail. RSS has been continuing the task of nation
building since its inception. It did it through the tumultuous period
of 1930s and 40s. But it was rudely shaken by Gandhiji's killing and
the Government's political exploitation of that national tragedy.
The RSS, along with millions of people, did not approve of Gandhiji's
Muslim appeasement policy - starting with support of the Khilafat
movement - but it had the greatest respect for the Mahatma. Indeed,
Gandhiji had visited the RSS winter camp in Wardha in December 1934 -
and addressed the Delhi RSS workers in Bhangi colony, in Spetember
1947. He had deeply appreciated the "noble sentiments" and
"astonishing discipline" of the RSS. He had never spoken even one word
of criticism of the RSS. But after his killing, 17000 RSS workers -
including Shri Guruji - were accused of "conspiracy of murder" the
Mahatma Gandhi and the RSS workers offered Satyagraha. But during all
this time not one MLA or MP raised the issue in any legislature. For
the RSS, it was the moment of truth. And this truth, as enunciated by
Gokhale, was that "What cuts deep in politics cuts deep all round" and
that unless the RSS grew political teeth and wings, it would always be
at the mercy of unscrupulous politicians. This was the context in
which Shri Guruji blessed the birth of Bhartiya Jana Sangh under the
leadership of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in 1951. And in the very
first General Elections the BJS emerged as one of the four nationally
recognised parties. The Party has never looked back since then.
http://nitingadkari.org/bjpHistory.html
The First Decade
The first decade was a period of steady growth organisationally and
policy evolution and elaboration ideologically. It took up the issues
of territorial integrity like Kashmir, Kutch and Berubari - and in the
process suffered the martyrdom of its founder-President Dr Mookerjee
in a Kashmir jail. It demanded cow protection as per Article 48 of the
Constitution and Gandhiji's declaration that "Cow protection is more
important than even Swarajya". It came out against Zamindari and
Jagirdari. It criticised permit- licence-quota Raj. And it came out
for the nuclear option to reinforce national defence. The 1962 China
war and 1965 Pakistan war put Sangh Parivar on the center-stage as the
conscience of the country. When the RSS Parivar was entrusted with
police duties in 1965, and it performed the same to the satisfaction
of all-even Muslims began to join Jana Sangh. Shri Guruji was
specially invited to the National Integration Council. General Kulwant
Singh said at the time: "Punjab is the sword arm of India and RSS is
the sword arm of Punjab."
In all countries, parties associated with the freedom movement enjoy
long years of power. So did the Congress - for 20 years. But the 1967
elections ended the Congress monopoly of power. From Punjab to Bengal
there were non-Congress coalitions everywhere. As a political wit put
it: "You could travel from Amritsar to Calcutta without setting foot
in Congress territory."
In most of the States Jana Sangh and the Communists worked together.
They seemed to be guided by the dictum: "We are all children of Bharat
mata and we are all products of the 20th century."
However, this was more than the monopolistic Congress could stand. It
used its vast money power and its capacity for intrigue to topple
government after state government.
But even so Jana Sangh did not lose heart. Under the leadership of Pt.
Deendayal Upadhyaya it held a tremendous session in Calicut. Here it
clarified its language policy of "All encouragement to all Indian
languages" to the delight of all linguistic groups. The Mathrubhumi,
leading Malayali daily, described the BJS session "the Ganga flowing
South."
However, within days of this historic session Deendayalji was found
murdered near Mugalsarai railway station. In good faith the BJS asked
for a CBI enquiry. But the way CBI drew blank made it clear that
Central Agency has been politicised and that it would never unravel
political crime.
Although the murder of Deendayalji was a stunning shock the BJS was
too big and too strong to be stopped in its tracks. Under the
leadership of Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee, it enthussiastically joined
the movement for the libera- tion of Bangladesh. Its agitation for a
higher procurement price for cereals gave the country food sufficiency
and food security. Its election manifesto for 1971 was titled "War on
Poverty". The Congress stole that slogan and hindi-ised it into
"Garibi hatao" and swept the 1971 and 1972 polls. But once again Jana
Sangh was too good and strong to be overwhelmed by the ebb and tide of
politics.
http://nitingadkari.org/bjpHistory.html
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Press Statement issued by BJP President Shri Nitin Gadkari at his
first press conference as National President of the BJP in New Delhi
February 17 at 9:32pm
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February 9 at 11:58pm
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Shashwat and Pratik like this.
Pranav Gupta Congress sympathy towards Terrorists comes clear when
they supported J&K Chief Minster stand to WELCOME BACK the terrorists
from Pakistan or Pakistan Occupied Kashmir . Home Minister of India
Mr. Chidambram in a Press conference in Jammu extends full party
support towards the issue ignoring the facts that these elements are
responsible for the ...
killing of thousands of people in state & other parts of India.
I will ask Mr. Chidambram, that he must go and visit the home of
people died in bomb attacks, open firing by these elements. Also go to
the houses of our GREAT COPS & ARMY MEN who sacrificed their lives to
safe guard the country from such anti national elements. WHY CONGRESS
IS PLAYING WITH THE SECURITY OF COUNTRY.
March 5 at 4:03pm
RECENT ACTIVITY
Nitin Gadkari changed his Location.
Nitin Gadkari edited his Country, Currently Running For and Website.
Contact Info
Email:resp...@nitingadkari.org
Phone:(0712) 2727127Cell:9821080522
Location:Gadkari Wada Upadhye Road Mahal
Nagpur, India, 440002
Nitin Gadkari indirectly targets Shatrughan Sinha
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari Friday asked
party leaders to raise any complaints about his choice of a new team
with him and not with the media.
"Those who have complaints about the new team should speak to me, not
the media," Gadkari told the NDTV news channel, a day after actor-
turned-party MP Shatrughan Sinha's remarks on the composition of the
new team of office-bearers announced Tuesday.
Sinha Thursday recited the lyrics of an old Hindi film song in answer
to a question about the new team. "Uff na karenge, lab see lenge,
aansu pee lenge (I will not sigh, will seal my lips and swallow my
tears)," he said, expressing disappointment that leaders like Yashwant
Sinha had been left out and the team had not been able to give a
message of dynamism.
"It's wrong to say that Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie were excluded
because they are Advani detractors... It's not possible to include
everyone on the team," Gadkari said.
The BJP president also justified the appointment of Nehru-Gandhi
family member Varun Gandhi as party secretary, saying: "Varun Gandhi
should be given a chance, why hold the past against him?"
The party had sought to distance itself from Varun Gandhi after he
allegedly made inflammatory remarks during the Lok Sabha election
campaign last year.
Date : 19/03/2010. News by Newsofap.com
Volume 25 - Issue 10 :: May. 10-23, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE STATES
Brief revolt
LYLA BAVADAM
The truce worked out in the Maharashtra BJP following Gopinath Munde’s
resignation drama may be temporary.
MANVENDER VASHIST/PTI
BJP president Rajnath Singh (second from left) with Nitin Gadkari,
Venkaiah Naidu and Gopinath Munde in a show of unity after a meeting
at his residence in New Delhi on April 22.
GOPINATH MUNDE took back his resignation as party general secretary.
The Mumbai unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a new chief.
The Shiv Sena-BJP partnership remains intact. And so, all seems well
with the Maharashtra BJP after four days of turmoil. But the truth is
that this is only a lull. Political observers predict trouble in the
run-up to the forthcoming elections.
The hostility, now much publicised, between Munde and Nitin Gadkari,
the BJP’s Maharashtra State unit chief, began four years ago when the
latter one-upped Munde to get to his present post. Since both were
leaders of some standing, the party never quite favoured one over the
other and the two men were left to sort out the rivalry on their own.
Over time, it grew worse and neither was prepared to give up. If Munde
could draw crowds in Marathwada, Gadkari could hold his own in
Vidarbha. If Munde could appeal to Other Backward Class (OBC) voters,
Gadkari could play on the regional pride of Vidarbha voters. It was
inevitable in this clash that factions would form, and faction-
fighting led to Munde’s resignation.
The nomination of a chief for the party’s Mumbai unit was pending for
a year. The outgoing chief, Prakash Mehta, should have stepped down
last year, but Munde was against the appointment of Madhu Chavan, who
was a nominee of Gadkari. Munde stood his ground despite the decision
of a committee comprising senior leaders Ram Naik, Ved Prakash Goyal
and Bal Apte favouring Chavan.
On April 19, the party’s prime ministerial candidate and Leader of the
Opposition in the Lok Sabha, L.K. Advani, was in Mumbai and Gadkari
informed him about the stalemate. Advani gave the go-ahead for
Chavan’s appointment. An enraged Munde submitted his resignation the
next day, saying he objected to the undemocratic manner in which the
appointment was carried out.
The post of the BJP’s Mumbai unit chief is a prestigious one. With the
upcoming elections, it is also a crucial post for the party. A party
source said, “The Mumbai party chief has to be a man with the ability
to motivate and mobilise workers. He can only do this if he has gained
their respect and if he is known to them.”
Munde’s recommendations were Kirit Somaiya, a former Member of
Parliament, and Raj Purohit and Prakash Mehta, both Members of the
Legislative Assembly, on account of their proven track record. Mehta
was also the outgoing chief.
The BJP has strong support among traders and the business community,
and Munde believed that these candidates would be able to connect well
with this section. Gadkari, it seems, backed Chavan because he is a
Maharashtrian, a factor that he thought would help cement relations
not only with the Shiv Sena but also with party workers. A party
source said, “When Chavan was named chief, Munde resigned since he saw
this as a win for his rival Gadkari.”
The first round in what surely is going to be an ongoing war has
definitely gone to Munde. Stunned by his resignation and the reaction
it provoked – 4,000 BJP workers reportedly quit their posts – the
party headquarters in Delhi moved immediately to repair the damage.
To win back a reportedly intractable Munde, the party offered him a
carte blanche with regard to nominations for key posts. The post of
the party’s Mumbai chief went to Gopal Shetty, another Gadkari
nominee, but Munde seemed placated enough to take back his
resignation.
Why did the BJP capitulate to Munde? Much weighed in his favour.
Practically the entire legislative wing backed him. The party’s major
city units in Mumbai, Pune, Nasik and Aurangabad stood by him.
Functionaries in the Latur, Beed and Sangli units also registered
their support for him. Munde, bolstered by the support he got, went
for the jugular.
It was a smart move on his part to go and meet Sena supremo Bal
Thackeray to “seek his blessings”. The message for the BJP was that
Munde was ready to raise his own flag and take the coalition partner
with him.
Thackeray had his own reasons to entertain Munde. His son Uddhav lacks
his charisma and political acumen, and nephew Raj’s breakaway party,
the Navnirman Sena, is eating into Sena territory by claiming the
Sena’s agenda as its own.
A visibly weakened Sena was certainly going to give its “blessings” to
Munde. In any case Thackeray had reason to be wary of Gadkari who had
been calling for a severing of ties between the Sena and the BJP.
Gadkari felt that the Sena and its errant ways were holding the party
back in Maharashtra.
However, the single most important factor that made the BJP buckle was
probably Munde’s status as an OBC leader. He has a wide mass base and
the party relies on him to mobilise the Bahujan votes.
One of the things that did not draw much comment during the fiasco was
Munde’s assertion that it was the lack of “democracy” in the party
that had made him resign. He seemed to have conveniently forgotten
that his own rise from a district politician to being a State-level
player was partially fuelled by his late brother-in-law, Pramod
Mahajan.
A knowledgeable source said that Munde “always had a chip on his
shoulder because he was overshadowed by Mahajan. It is true that
Pramodji was responsible in large part for pushing Munde forward but
it is not as if Munde was a baby in politics. Don’t forget he has had
his education in the [Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh] shakha. He knows
how to play the game and he would certainly have risen on his own. But
let us just say, he rose faster with Pramodji’s help.”
While Munde’s abilities cannot be denied, there is no doubt about the
role Mahajan played in his grooming. When Mahajan died, Munde’s career
was expected to “deflate”, an expression used by a BJP functionary at
the time. Two years later, Munde has shown that he can get along on
his own.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2510/stories/20080523251011100.htm
olume 21 - Issue 20, Sept. 25 - Oct. 08, 2004
India's National Magazine
from the publishers of THE HINDU
Election-eve patriotism
LYLA BAVADAM
in Vidarbha
The Uma Bharati-led Tiranga Yatra's six-day-long journey through
Maharashtra raising emotive issues fails to strike a chord among the
people despite the flaunting of the tricolour.
K. BHAGYA PRAKASH
Uma Bharati garlanding the statue of freedom fighter Kittoor Rani
Chennamma before she started the Tiranga Yatra.
DESPITE affirmations to the contrary, the Uma Bharati-led Hubli to
Jallianwalla Bagh Tiranga Yatra evidently formed the vanguard of the
Bharatiya Janata Party's campaign for the Assembly elections in
Maharashtra. During her six-day tour of the State, Uma Bharati
repeatedly said that the yatra was meant only to express her personal
beliefs that one should have pride in one's country and its flag and
that "all other outcomes of the yatra are God's gift". Importantly,
the Idgah controversy itself was not about disrespect to the national
flag, but about Uma Bharati and others disobeying prohibitory orders
issued by the Hubili police. That was the legal reason for her arrest.
At no point was the right to raise the flag questioned. `Disrespect to
the flag' is a convenient pre-election political ploy.
However, the yatra itself - the way it was organised and the issues it
raised - left no room for doubt regarding the BJP's intentions. The
bus used for the yatra was decorated with portraits of an array of
important figures, past and present: Atal Bihari Vajpayee, M. Venkaiah
Naidu, Bhagat Singh, V.D. Savarkar, Chandrashekar Azad, L.K. Advani,
Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Bal Gangadhar Tilak,
Ashfaqullah Khan, Shivaji, the Rani of Jhansi and Kittur Rani
Chennamma, a freedom fighter. Interestingly, the BJP preferred to
refer to the Idgah Maidan in Hubli as the Chennamma Maidan. This has
sparked a controversy with allegations that the BJP's insistence on
calling it Chennamma Maidan was meant to provoke another conflict.
If, as Uma Bharati said on numerous public occasions, the yatra was
meant to "satisfy personal beliefs and feelings about the tricolour"
why was it an official yatra of the BJP? If it were a yatra to defend
her right to raise the tricolour then why did her public speeches
invariably turn to issues such as water scarcity, power shortages and
unemployment, all election campaign points that the Democratic Front
government in Maharashtra might find difficult to counter. There were
exhortations at every public meeting to "cast your vote to topple the
Congress and bring back the BJP". Equally noteworthy was the fact that
the Tiranga Yatra in the State was organised by State BJP president
Gopinath Munde, Legislative Council leader Nitin Gadkari and party
leader Eknath Kadse, who together formed the core of the campaign
committee for the Lok Sabha elections.
At a public meeting in Akola, Uma Bharati reaffirmed her commitment to
build the Ram mandir at Ayodhya. Significantly, Akola has a history of
communal strife and a minor communal riot had occurred a few days
before Uma Bharati's arrival. The Muslim voter was directly addressed,
first by a warning not to be fooled by the "vote bank politics" of the
Congress and then to be reminded about the old points of dissent
between the community and Hindu fundamentalist parties - Family
planning, education levels and the singing of Vande Mataram. Also
raised were issues relating to Sonia Gandhi's "foreign origins". Uma
Bharati said: "Why do we have this foreigner craze? Marxism may have
been a new idea for Europe but our philosophers have been speaking of
the same ideals from as far back as the 12th century. Why not follow
them instead of Marx? This foreigner craze has resulted in us being
ruled by the Italian Mafia mind. And the minds that thought of making
Sonia the head of the party are also minds that are leftovers of
foreign thinking." Karnataka BJP president H.N. Ananth Kumar, who was
travelling with the yatra, defended its aims: "Any campaign is the
bouquet of many issues. This is not an election campaign. It is a
national yatra to show how the Congress is degrading the flag. It is a
yatra for national detoxification of secularism."
The Tiranga Yatra was a manoeuvre to position Uma Bharati, the BJP,
the saffron flag and the tricolour on the same platform. Projected as
a simple emotional device meant to touch people's hearts it was
actually a political platform to harp on the party's pet issues. But,
apparently, the intended message of the yatra did not quite get across
to the masses. While Uma Bharati alleged that the Congress had an
"unethical advantage" since its party flag bore a striking resemblance
to the tricolour, there is no doubt that one of the expected outcomes
of the yatra was to blur the distinction between the tricolour and the
saffron flag. Numerous attempts were made to link the tricolour to the
Hindu fundamentalist parties. At a public meeting in Risod in
Vidarbha, a local BJP leader said: Hindutva ka josh rashtra ka
tiranga, Dono ko saath leke bhagwa vapas aayega (the tricolour
expresses the strength of Hindutva. If the two march together it will
ensure the return of the saffron flag). In the Varvat Bakaal village
in Buldhana district, Uma Bharati advised the people to keep the
saffron flag, strength of spirit and the tricolour as their
priorities. Her message was not lost on a small section. At a roadside
reception in Washim, a small crowd presented Uma Bharati with a five-
foot high brass trishul on which a saffron ribbon bound together two
crossed tricolours.
However, indications are that the response of most of the people who
attended her public meetings ranged from mild confusion to anger at
being told that the national flag had to be respected. At a public
meeting in Risod, a policeman on duty said he and his colleagues had
been discussing the yatra and concluded that the BJP was trying to
appropriate the flag. He asked: "What else can we think? We cannot
figure out what Umaji is trying to prove with this yatra. Is she
saying we don't respect the flag? Every school going child salutes the
flag."
In any event, Maharashtra formed a focal point of Uma Bharati's yatra.
On her way to Hubli to surrender before a court that issued a non-
bailable warrant against her in the Idgah maidan case, she travelled
through the State by train addressing people on station platforms at
strategic places such as Pune, Sangli, Miraj and Daund in western
Maharashtra, a Nationalist Congress Party stronghold. On her return,
she undertook the Tiranga Yatra. Thus, she effectively covered the
crucial areas of western Maharashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha.
"Unprecedented response" was how Ananth Kumar described the reaction
of the people. However, the attendance was paltry when compared, for
example, to her earlier visit to Akola 15 years ago. In that sense,
the public's response was unprecedented, to the disappointment of the
BJP.
One reason for the poor turn out is the failure of a faction-ridden
State BJP to rally unitedly behind the yatra. At her point of entry
into Maharashtra Uma Bharati was met only by Gopinath Munde who
remained with her while she travelled in Marathwada. Then she was
accompanied by Nitin Gadkari, who has a strong support base in
Vidarbha, and later by Eknath Khadse. At no point was former Union
Minister and senior BJP leader Pramod Mahajan publicly involved with
the yatra. This is curious, considering his well-acknowledged
organisational abilities and his place in the party power structure.
The State BJP attributed the absence of many senior functionaries in
Uma Bharati's entourage to their preoccupation with the Assembly
elections. The explanation was unconvincing. The real reason,
according to some, was that it was too early to start the election
campaign and the party leaders were wary of overstepping the Election
Commission by bringing the national flag into the campaign.
Then why undertake the yatra when there is no consensus in the party
on the matter, especially in Maharashtra? The answer seems to lie
partially in the fact that Uma Bharati wishes to redeem herself with
the party's top leadership and regain her position in Madhya Pradesh.
When queried about this, she declined to reply saying: "I will not
answer anything pertaining to me, mine, myself. I am not important."
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2120/stories/20041008006200900.htm
Volume 26 - Issue 23 :: Nov. 07-20, 2009
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU
COVER STORY
Win by default
LYLA BAVADAM
in Mumbai
In Maharashtra, the Congress-NCP combine returns to power, thanks to a
weak and divided Opposition.
PTI
Chief Minister Ashok Chavan with Union Minister and former Chief
Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh (left) in Mumbai, on October 22.
AS Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan begins a new term in
office, one cannot help but contradict his claim that his government
returned to power on account of its achievements in the past year.
That the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) combine managed a
victory by default is something even staunch party supporters will
find difficult to dispute. The fact is that the victory was thanks to
a weak and divided Opposition.
The Congress-NCP coalition managed a hat-trick despite a strong anti-
incumbency sentiment brought on by a poor economy, staggering rise in
food prices, and absence of emphasis on strengthening security, a
drought-like situation, and various problems in the agricultural
sector including suicide by farmers.
Its main rival, the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was left
far behind; the latter conceded defeat even before the counting of
votes ended. The final results showed the Congress had come first with
82 seats, followed by the NCP with 62 seats. The BJP and the Shiv Sena
could manage only 46 and 44 seats respectively.
Noticeable features of the elections were the low-key campaign
compared with the robust electioneering that preceded earlier
elections, and the sidelining of major issues. It was as if the public
and the politicians were separate elements and the former was just
expected to be onlookers. Unmindful of the people they were to
represent, politicians haggled over seats and fitted the ‘right’
candidate into the ‘right’ constituency.
This time around too, dynastic politics, cronyism and dissidence were
on open display. Some secure seats were lost to parties as a result of
the free-for-all that followed ticket allocation. One significant
example is that of four-time BJP legislator Dr Vinay Natu, who had to
forgo his Guhagar seat in the Konkan region. The BJP had agreed to
part with the seat in order to get two more seats allocated to it as
part of its seat-sharing deal (169-119) with the Shiv Sena. Natu was
forced to give it to Sena man and Leader of the Opposition Ramdas
Kadam, whose Khed seat was amalgamated into Guhagar during
delimitation.
The decision caused an uproar in the region, especially from Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) supporters. Before Natu, his father Shridhar
Natu of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh had held the seat since 1972. The BJP,
however, extracted the Ghatkopar West seat in north Mumbai from the
Sena for the late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan’s daughter Poonam. Natu
and his supporters refused to support Kadam, and the Guhagar seat
slipped away from the saffron combine to the NCP. In Ghatkopar, Poonam
Mahajan, a political novice, lost to Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra
Navnirman Sena (MNS).
The issue also exposed the old feud between the BJP’s State chief
Nitin Gadkari and national secretary Gopinath Munde. Gadkari wanted
Natu to retain the seat, whereas Munde wanted to make the sacrifice in
exchange for the party ticket for Poonam, his niece. The latter also
ensured that his daughter, Pankaja Palve, won the ticket for Parli in
his home district of Beed. Another relative of his was given a seat in
a neighbouring district.
The most interesting case study, however, in the State elections is
that of Union Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. He has once again emerged
unscathed and is riding a wave. When he was unceremoniously removed
from chief ministership last year after terrorists attacked Mumbai,
some observers said it was the end of his career. Others, who had seen
him bounce back from sticky situations earlier, predicted he would do
so again. Vilasrao is now ensconced in Delhi as a Rajya Sabha member.
He worked aggressively to destabilise the NCP and quell the influence
of his arch enemy and NCP chief Sharad Pawar. His own ‘nest’ is safe.
His son, Amit, who had managed his campaigns earlier, contested from
Latur City and won.
Dynastic politics
SANTOSH HIRLEKAR/PTI
Congress workers celebrate the party's victory in the Assembly
elections, in Mumbai.
Amit Deshmukh is a symbol of Maharashtra’s new shift towards dynastic
politics. The others are Rajendrasingh Shekhawat, son of President
Pratibha Patil, who won on the Congress ticket from Amravati; Union
Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s daughter Praniti, who won from Solapur
City Central; Pankaja Palve, Munde’s daughter; and the Sena’s Om Raje
Nimbalkar, son of murdered Congress leader Pawan Raje Nimbalkar.
The Maharashtra Assembly will have two father-son duos representing
the NCP – Chhagan Bhujbal and Pankaj Bhujbal, and Ganesh Naik and
Sandeep Naik. Pankaj, who won from Nandgaon, and Sandeep, who won from
Airoli, are both first-time MLAs, and they fought from constituencies
adjacent to their parents’. Interestingly, Chhagan Bhujbal and Ganesh
Naik started their political careers in the Shiv Sena.
All offspring were not so lucky. Ashish Deshmukh, son of former
Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee chief Ranjeet Deshmukh; Shekhar
Shende, son of outgoing Deputy Speaker Pramod Shende; and Rahul
Pugalia, son of Naresh Pugalia, the former MP from Chandrapur, all
lost the elections.
PTI
NCP chief Sharad Pawar at an election rally in Thane.
Among the prominent losers were 12 State Ministers. Former Textile
Minister Satish Chaturvedi, Textile Minister in the outgoing
government Anees Ahmad, Food and Civil Supplies Minister Ramesh Bang,
and former Minister of State Dharamrao Baba Atram were among the big
losers from Vidarbha. Other Ministers and former Ministers who were
among the losers are Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil, Digvijay Khanvilkar, Dr
Sunil Deshmukh, Surupsinh Naik, Siddharam Mhetre, Ranajagjitsinh
Patil, Shobha Bacchav and Dr Nitin Raut. In Ulhasnagar, sitting MLA
Pappu Kalani, a former detenu under the Terrorist and Disruptive
Activities (Prevention) Act, was defeated by the BJP’s Uttamchand
Ailani. The gangster Arun Gawli, who contested from prison, also
lost.
The worst-affected party was Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena. Its seats
dropped from 62 in 2004 to 44 this time. The main reason for this was
the rise of the MNS. Headed by Bal Thackeray’s nephew Raj Thackeray,
the MNS won 13 seats in its maiden attempt to the Assembly. Sena’s
current chief and Bal Thackeray’s son Uddhav Thackeray’s lack of touch
with the grass roots also reportedly affected his party’s performance.
A shakha (unit) leader in South Mumbai remarked, “If Uddhavji had
concentrated on grassroots work, we would have retained our lead. It
is good he is trying corporate-style management techniques in the
party, but the fact is that the cadre want their leader to have more
josh [being street-savvy] and mingle with them.”
While Uddhav’s leadership may not be openly questioned, he has
definitely lost ground to his more experienced cousin. The MNS won six
of Mumbai’s 36 seats, and the party helped the Congress-NCP bag 20
seats in the city. The three-year-old MNS now has the largest number
of seats in Mumbai after the Congress and the NCP.
The Election Commission statistics showed that 23 per cent of Mumbai’s
votes went to the MNS. The party spoilt the chances of the Sena in
more than a dozen seats – the most notable being Mahim, a Sena
stronghold, where MNS candidate Nitin Sardesai beat Sena candidate
Adesh Bandekar as well as Sena rebel-turned-Congress candidate Sada
Sarvankar. The Sena’s mistake was in taking this seat away from
Sarvankar, who had held it. Bandekar, a novice in politics, was chosen
because he is a television personality.
The MNS seems to have expanded its support base in the six months
after the Lok Sabha elections. The difference was most visible in Pune
where the party got 1.5 lakh votes more than it polled in the Lok
Sabha elections. This is an indicator that the MNS may no longer be
just a spoiler; it has found its political niche. In Kasba Peth
constituency in Pune, a BJP stronghold, BJP candidate Girish Bapat
faced a stiff fight from the MNS candidate. Bapat, who had held the
seat for three terms, finally won by a margin of just 8,162 votes.
VIVEK BENDRE
Chhagan Bhujbal of the NCP, who became Deputy Chief Minister.
The results are bound to affect the Sena’s partnership with the BJP.
After one term in power, from 1995 to 2000, the alliance has not had a
fruitful political relationship. And now the Sena, with a lower seat
tally than the BJP, has had to relinquish the Leader of the Opposition
post.
The BJP, too, does not seem to have recovered from the loss of Pramod
Mahajan. Neither Munde nor Gadkari seems capable of providing
inspirational leadership. They are known for squabbling over party
policies. The turmoil in the party at the Centre has also left its
mark on the State unit.
The latest election has exposed a new phase in Maharashtra politics,
one in which strategic – but fluid – partnerships, coalition
governments and creation of dynasties are more important than issues.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2623/stories/20091120262301100.htm
Volume 17 - Issue 08, Apr. 15 - 28, 2000
India's National Magazine
from the publishers of THE HINDU
Maharashtra manoeuvres
Politics in the State has been on the boil for some weeks now, and the
Democratic Front Government is very much on the defensive.
LYLA BAVADAM
PRAVEEN SWAMI
in Mumbai
LATE last month, Bal Thackeray proclaimed that the Shiv Sena would be
back in power on Gudi Padwa day, the Maharashtrian New Year. At least
one of Deputy Chief Minister Chaggan Bhujbal's staff did not seem too
concerned. As a group of journalists discuss ed the Shiv Sena-
Bharatiya Janata Party strategy to come back into office, the
secretary listened quietly. Then he walked away from his chair,
humming a popular Hindi film tune which made clear just what he
thought of the Sena-BJP's chances. 'Sapne me in milti hai' (you'll
only get it in your dreams) - the line resonated through the office
long enough for even the most film-illiterate to get the point.
Indeed, on Gudi Padwa day, Shiv Sena leader and former Chief Minister
Narayan Rane quietly withdrew a cut motion his party had introduced in
the Assembly on the State Government's budgetary demands for the Food
and Civil Supplies Department. The decision to withdraw the motion
marked the end of the fourth Sena-BJP attempt to bring down the
Democratic Front Government. After a week of hectic lobbying, it had
become clear to Sena-BJP strategists that they simply did not have the
numbers. But the month-lon g political theatre that preceded Gudi
Padwa made clear that the Democratic Front alliance will soon have to
make hard political choices if it wants to keep its six-month long
government going.
MUCH of the recent political skirmishing had been on the Sena-BJP's
chosen terrain. Both parties have been attacking the Nationalist
Congress Party-Congress(I) on communal grounds, arguing that the
government has been compromised by Islamic fundamentalis ts. One major
component of the campaign has been allegations that Mumbai's Samajwadi
Party (S.P.) chief Abu Asim Azmi had made an anti-national speech at
Mastan Talao on February 24. A tape handed over to the State
government by the Sena-BJP records Azmi as proclaiming that if Islam
were to be attacked, he would not be bothered if India broke into
pieces. The Sena has long charged Azmi with having connections with
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), although he was
acquitted by the Supreme Cou rt of his alleged role in the Mumbai
serial bombings of 1993.
When the Assembly session began on March 13, however, Sena-BJP MLAs
brought proceedings to a halt with demands for Azmi's arrest. As their
party colleagues shouted slogans, Shiv Sena members led by former
Ministers Home Prabhakar More and Bala Nandgaonka r occupied the
podium with banners condemning the S.P. leader. They were joined by
Dinaz Patrawala, recently elected on the Shiv Sena ticket after the
Congress(I) denied her the ticket after the death of her husband
Marzaban Patrawala. Two days later, Se na-BJP MLAs blockaded the
Vidhan Bhavan. Violence began when Democratic Front MLAs pushed their
way inside. Eyewitness accounts of the fighting suggest that, for
once, the Sena got as good as it gave.
Matters snowballed outside the Assembly as well. Women Shiv Sena
members of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation assaulted S.P.
corporator Waqarunissa Ansari on March 16, some stripping her and
others trying to strangle her. Ansari, whose crime was a s peech she
made against Thackeray, only escaped serious hurt because of the
intervention of her party colleagues. In this violently anti-Muslim
political climate, Azmi responded with some maturity, insisting that
he had been quoted out of context and that the thrust of his speech
had been misrepresented. Even as a jittery Democratic Front government
initiated criminal proceedings against the S.P. leader at the J.J.
Marg police station, he issued a statement apologising if he "had
inadvertently hurt the f eelings of my countrymen".
It was left to Bhujbal, however, to point out the obvious. The
Democratic Front, he said, had no intention of shielding Azmi, and the
tape made available by the Sena had been sent for tests to establish
its authenticity. But peddling hate, Bhujbal pointe d out, was not an
S.P. monopoly. "Cases against Bal Thackeray for inciting communal
hatred," he says, "were not registered for five years, even though he
was found guilty of having made inflammatory speeches and punished by
the Election Commission." Thac keray was last year stripped of his
right to vote by the Election Commission for speeches he made asking
for votes on religious grounds. "I have called for the files, and will
take action," the Deputy Chief Minister told Frontline.
POSSIBLE legal action against Thackeray forms a second element of the
Sena-BJP campaign. The State government is internally divided over the
consequences of pushing ahead with implementing the recommendations of
the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry into the Mumbai
riots of 1992-1993. Although both the Congress (I) and the NCP are
committed to implementing its findings, which could mean Thackeray's
arrest for his well-documented role in the riots, elements in both
parties believe that this c ould lead to violence. It is clear,
however, that should ongoing proceedings in the Supreme Court result
in directions to the Maharashtra Government to act on Justice
Srikrishna's findings, this would provide adequate cover to begin
criminal proceedings against the top leadership of the Sena.
PUNIT PARANJPE
Former Chief Minister Narayan Rane along with Shiv Sena-BJP members
blockading the Vidhan Bhavan during the Assembly session on March 23.
Anticipating this eventuality, the Sena has been charging the
Democratic Front in general, and Bhujbal in particular, with weakening
security for Thackeray and his family. Surplus police personnel posted
with Thackeray were withdrawn on the basis of reco mmendations made by
a review panel led by Chief Secretary Arun Bongirwar. Protected
persons in the 'Z+' category are to be guarded by 43 personnel. The
Shiv Sena-BJP Government in the State had assigned Thackeray 206
personnel, 11 vehicles, a closed circ uit television system at his
residence, and a further 103 guards for his extended family.
Bongirwar's recommendations lowered Thackeray's security cover to 115
personnel and seven vehicles, far in excess of the 43 personnel and
three vehicles prescribed in the security manual.
It is unlikely, given the facts, that Thackeray's security was what
concerned the Sena. The issue in fact presented a political
opportunity. Sena leaders began to charge Bhujbal with ISI and mafia
links, a smear campaign of obvious utility in the event o f
Thackeray's arrest. In early February, as the Srikrishna Commission
issue had begun to re-emerge in political discourse in Maharashtra,
Leader of the Opposition Nitin Gadkari had charged Bhujbal with
meeting at his residence two of those accused of a r ole in the 1993
serial bombings. The meeting, Gadkari said, had been arranged by Azmi.
Gadkari is himself involved in ongoing criminal proceedings relating
to murder.
Perhaps to Gadkari's surprise, Bhujbal promptly accepted that the
meeting had indeed taken place. Eminent lawyer and Azmi's deputy in
the city unit of S.P., Majeed Memon, then delivered the coup de grace.
Former Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Mund e, Memon said, had led a
delegation along with him and the blast accused to meet Prime Minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee and Minister Pramod Mahajan. The Prime Minister
had indeed met the accused, who complained about a series of attacks
by the Rajendra Nikh alje group which had left dead people who were
under trial for their role in the bombings. The two accused had
demanded official security, and also complained about prolonged delays
in their trial. Vajpayee, Memon said, had promised action. "Why didn't
t he Opposition protest when I took these men to meet the Prime
Minister," Memon asks.
If the Sena-BJP leadership had an answer, it was not made public. An
unembarrassed Rane simply pretended that his party's case had not
crumbled. On March 10, he asserted that the Thackeray family had been
made an easy target for the underworld. "The Chho ta Shakeel and
Dawood Ibrahim gangs," he said, "had directed their guns at several
Sena leaders to take revenge for the numerous encounters that took
place when we were in office." The government's decision to scale down
Thackeray's security, he said, "l ends credence to allegations that it
had deliberately made the move."
A fortnight later he insisted that the Mumbai Police had evidence to
link Azmi to Dawood Ibrahim, a claim which left open the question of
why he as Chief Minister had not taken action against the S.P.
leader.
A FURIOUS Bhujbal did what he could, initiating defamation proceedings
against Rane. The State Police too was asked to compel the former
Chief Minister to make available what evidence he had. Rane refused to
do so, perhaps because he had none. These lega l proceedings are
certain to punctuate Maharashtra politics in the months, perhaps even
years, to come. But the Sena has achieved one useful objective through
its campaign of agitation. The Democratic Front has been pushed into a
defensive posture, and h as been able to do little to address
Maharashtra's crippling financial problems, which have been provoking
widespread discontent, particularly in the rural areas.
PUNIT PARANJPE
Shiv Sena leader Bal Nandgaonkar bars the entry of Democratic Front
MLAs into the Vidhan Bhavan.
The government owes dues to cotton and onion farmers, among the
State's most important crops. Procurements in several areas are made
directly by the state, and the Democratic Front faced a major
embarrassment in February when news broke that cheques issu ed to
cotton farmers had been bouncing. Bhujbal now says that the nearly-
bankrupt government, reeling from massive borrowing by the previous
government, has taken loans to clear its dues to farmers. Payments of
some Rs.3,700 crores have already been made , he says, and all cotton
growers covered by the State's procurement scheme will be paid by
early April. Onion farmers' dues will be met by the third week of
April.
This in itself may not be enough to contain discontent in the
countryside, and farmers are not the only ones who are angry. Workers
in Mumbai are protesting against the plans of the Brihanmumbai
Municipal Corporation to sell mill land. Massive illegal tr ansfers of
land have taken place over the years, and funds raised from sales to
private developers have seldom been pumped back to revive factories.
Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has announced that the sale of land
would be allowed in order to set up software businesses, a move that
will do little to meet the needs of workers who have not been paid for
years. Twenty-three mills were closed down during Shiv Sena rule, even
while rules designed to revive them were flouted with official
connivance. The Democratic Front seems hardly interested in protecting
the interests of tens of thousands of workers.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Front's plans to make job cuts to reduce the
fiscal deficit could provoke further unrest. In his recent Budget
speech, Finance Minister Jayant Patil described how the revenue
deficit had risen over the last four years from Rs.1, 591 crores to Rs.
9,484 crores. Patil said he planned to make the revenue balance
positive over a five-year period by reducing the revenue deficit by 20
per cent each year for the next five years. Curbs have been placed on
salary expenditure, and plans ar e on in several government
departments to review staff strengths. Five per cent of the posts in
the Finance and Planning Departments have been abolished. But
sustained cuts in expenditure will mean less money for development and
jobs, which in turn could provoke a backlash.
In the months to come, the Democratic Front will have to define a
clear economic agenda to undo the damage caused through five years of
Shiv Sena-BJP rule. Formulating an alternative agenda that does not
alienate farmers and workers may prove a difficult task. More
important, the alliance will have to find ways to engage with the Sena-
BJP's renewed communal onslaught. With the NCP busy expanding its
cadre strength in Maharashtra, and the Congress(I) becoming a victim
of the conflicts in its central lead ership, neither grouping appears
to have any clear understanding of how to bring about mass
mobilisation to challenge the Opposition. Bhujbal is perhaps the sole
important figure in the State government arguing for a clear offensive
strategy. The failure to create one could mean serious trouble for the
alliance.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1708/17080410.htm
Opinion - Leader Page Articles
Was Indian nationalism inclusive?
K.N. Panikkar
One of the weaknesses of the national movement was that it did not
have an effective programme to ensure the inclusion of the depressed
and socially excluded classes into the nation.
Inclusiveness is the catchword in the current political and economic
discourse, following the 11th Plan prescription to incorporate those
who have remained outside the margins into the mainstream of
development. This is a confession of the failure of democratic
governance, on the one hand, and of caste-class partisanship in the
process of nation building, on the other. It also testifies that a
substantial section has not yet come under the ‘benevolent' umbrella
of the nation. In a highly differentiated society, inclusiveness is
indeed a process which takes place in three ways: politically through
common struggles, socially by overcoming internal social barriers and
culturally by identifying a common past by invoking indigenous
cultural consciousness.
The attempt at inclusiveness is riven with internal contradictions,
which account for the complexity, weaknesses and limitations of the
inclusive process and tensions within nationalism. The concept of
nationalism, in the Indian colonial context, becomes meaningful only
when looked at beyond the overarching relationship between colonialism
and the people, and the mutual relationship among different segments
of society is taken into account. Overcoming these differences was
integral to nationalism.
Inclusiveness, therefore, is a necessary strategy of nationalism, even
with contradictory interests finding a place in it. The attempts to
resolve the secondary contradiction within the umbrella of nationalism
do not overlook the primary contradiction with colonialism. In this
sense, the aim of nationalism was not limited to the attainment of
freedom but, as Gandhiji envisaged, had to lead to the creation of a
qualitatively different society, devoid of caste and religious
antagonism. To a deputation of students in 1934, Gandhiji said: “The
two things — the social reordering and the fight for political swaraj
— must go hand in hand. There can be no question of precedence or
division into watertight compartments here.” Nationalism was thus
conceived as a combination of political freedom and social
emancipation.
What nationalism sought to achieve was togetherness. The very first
session of the Indian National Congress recognised it by identifying
its purpose as providing a platform for people to come together. What
brought people together were political struggles and public
agitations. The various streams within the movement with different
strategies and modes of struggles were efforts to ensure their
rightful inclusion in the nation. People, however, consisted of
diverse groups, castes, classes and religions with widely differing
interests. What was conceived as nationalism, therefore, was bringing
the people together, regardless of the differentiations. Although the
anti-colonial sentiment ironed out some of these differences and
interests, they were so diverse and sharp that the national movement,
functioning within a liberal framework, was not able to find an
effective solution. Therefore, India emerged not only impoverished due
to colonial exploitation but also socially divided.
That India was economically backward was not surprising, but the fact
that nationalism did not succeed in ushering in social and cultural
solidarity left a deep scar. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, architect of the
Constitution, underlined this failure in 1949: “We must make our
political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy
cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy… What
does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognises
liberty, equality and fraternity as the principle of life … On the
26th of January 1950 we are going to enter into a life of
contradiction. In politics we will have equality and in social and
economic life, we will have inequality.” While pointing out the
political success of the movement by which ‘people' became members of
a nation-state with democratic rights, Dr. Ambedkar was conscious that
nationalism did not succeed in creating inclusiveness in the social,
cultural and economic domains.
The roots of this failure can be traced to the early phase of national
awakening, which suffered from a disjunction between political and
socio-cultural struggles. To begin with, the renaissance which
prepared the ground for the emergence of nationalism dissociated
itself from political problems and, therefore, was unable to provide a
critique of colonialism which warped the nature of Indian modernity.
Most of the early renaissance leaders idealised development in the
West. Hence, their ability to envision an alternative was limited.
Later on, the national movement attributed primacy to political
struggles, despite Gandhiji's constructive programme and
untouchability campaign. Although both he and Tagore advocated the
importance of cultural politics, the national movement concentrated
its energies on political mobilisation.
Despite these early limitations, the importance of incorporating the
marginalised sections and thus creating an inclusive society was on
the agenda of nationalism. The different political formations which
participated in anti-colonial struggles with different programmes and
different social base were engaged in incorporating different sections
into the mainstream of national life through participation in the anti-
colonial struggles. Even when contradictions existed among them, they
were struggling for inclusiveness in the nation. The social and
cultural inclusiveness was sought through socio-cultural emancipation,
economic inclusiveness through class struggles and political
inclusiveness through political mobilisation. These three engagements
of the national movement cover the history of the liberation struggle
which was not limited to a direct confrontation with colonialism, but
also aimed at the modernisation and democratisation of society
although with limited success.
A major concern of the national movement was social inclusiveness. The
divisive and oppressive character of the Indian caste system was
antithetical to the spirit of nationalism and it was quite natural
that only social awakening could address this question. Gandhiji gave
equal, if not greater, importance to social issues and cultural
struggles. In Gandhian programme, therefore, abolition of
untouchability occupied a central concern. The ashrams Gandhiji set up
and lived in became a symbol of social equality and also meant a
subversion of the traditional, unequal social system.
The national movement was quite conscious of the importance of
inclusion of the traditionally deprived groups for the actual
realisation of the nation and initiated steps in social, economic and
cultural fields to create conditions conducive for them to identify
their interest with the nation. In pursuance of that, a series of
struggles was conducted covering social, cultural and economic lives.
Each one of them had the effect of creating a community, eventually
forming a part of the nation. Although these struggles increased their
social consciousness, none of them was sufficiently effective to
transform the life conditions of the marginalised, possibly because
these efforts were bridled by the interests of the ‘upper' castes and
classes. The marginalised sections, could not, therefore, identify
themselves with the nation. They were sceptical and distrustful.
The consequence of this marginality was the emergence of movements
among the traditionally subordinated groups fighting to gain their
rightful place in society. That happened in all parts of the country
and among all depressed communities. Satyasodak Samaj in Maharashtra
in the 19th century, the Dravida Kazhakam in Tamil Nadu, the Sadhu
Jana Paripalana Sabha in Kerala and, indeed, the movement led by Dr.
Ambedkar are some examples. Emerging out of the oppressed sections,
they did not subscribe to the ‘upper' caste urge for reform, of either
caste or religion, but stood for abolishing caste and superstitions
based on religious sanction. In the vision of Dr. Ambedkar, the
annihilation of caste was a necessary pre-requisite for social
inclusiveness.
One of the weaknesses of the national movement was that it did not
have an effective programme to ensure the inclusion of the depressed
and socially excluded classes into the nation. Whatever was attempted
in this field was very superficial inasmuch as it did not frontally
contest the power of the ‘upper' castes and classes, the legacy of
which continues even today. That anti-colonial Indian nationalism was
not sufficiently inclusive is possibly one of the reasons why a
substantial section of the population is still not a part of the
nation.
The making of the Indian nation, as Surendranath Banerji envisioned,
can be complete only when nationalism becomes inclusive on a
democratic, secular and socialist foundation. In post-independent
India, this has remained an unrealised dream. Given the capitalist
hegemony over society and middle-class control over administration,
the present urge for inclusion may yet end up as another popular
slogan.
(Based on the Foundation Day lecture delivered at Assam Central
University, Silchar. Author can be reached at knpan...@gmail.com)
Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 23, 2010
http://www.hindu.com/2010/02/23/stories/2010022355540800.htm
THe Lord’s Army: The Shiv Sena
Posted March 30th 2010 at 5:36 pm by Harry
"A burning bus? Perhaps over there."
There exists in Mumbai a nearsighted and rather unpleasant bunch of
radicals who revile my very existence within their beautiful city.
They are the Shiv Sena – Lord Shiva’s Army – a political group by
name, violently quarrelsome by nature.
It behooves a writer to remain apprised of the legal ramifications of
writing anything at all in India, because sedition laws are
arbitrarily enforced and rather ambiguously defined as anything that
“excites or attempts to excite hatred contempt or dissaffection“( -
Wikipedia)
If anyone reading this gets excited or feels a smidge of contempt,
then I’m going to jail for life – so please don’t. Sedition, in my
opinion, is the most dangerous law in India – for exposure of real
wrongs often leads detention or expulsion, as was the case with my
friend who wrote of the Dalit murders in Gujarat and was summarily
deported.
Let’s be mindful of that and carry on…
Bal Thackeray started the Shiv Sena and ran for a while a respectable
right-wing, religious political party concerned with supporting the
local Marathi people in whose state Mumbai stands. He was about
ensuring jobs, health systems, pensions and education exclusively to
Marathis, his ‘Sons of the Soil’.
They have a hard-line Hindu and regional agenda, and dislike all
things non-Marathi – including shop signs spelled in English.
The Shiv Sena love whacking day
Bal’s son Uddhav Thackeray took over the Shiv Sena which used to riot
against migrant workers from other states, bash North Indian rickshaw
drivers and the like, pelt stones at police headquarters, voice
support for accused Hindu terrorists, they’ve smashed shops and torn
down billboards and generally caused a ruckus in order to get in the
media, at which point they invariably react against the channel for
the negative coverage. It’s a wonderful self-perpetuating cycle.
The Shiv Sena started going mainstream to gain support from a larger
nationwide Hindu party, the BJP – which meant they had to stop bashing
migrants (but not necessarily Muslisms). As a result, Bal’s nephew Raj
Thackeray started a splinter organisation seeking more radical reforms
– they are called the ‘Marathi Manoos’ – the MNS.
So now there are two crews both seeking votes from the same people,
they attract attention to themselves by engaging in more and more
brazen public displays of brute power – often leading to in-fighting
between the two groups.
The BJP: Perhaps education should be higher on their agenda
Then the BJP lost a national election, probably because they were
corrupt and their policies were near-sighted and focused more on
oppressing Muslims than running the country…
So the BJP and the Shiv Sena rioted against Australians for being such
prejudiced and bigoted violent morons. They were helped along by the
Indian media, which much prefers to be spoon-fed its sensationalist
propaganda rather than doing real reporting.
Funny thing that only a few months before, the same group were beating
North Indians for migrating to Mumbai, and now they’re upset because
North Indians are being beaten in Australia. The group that revile
outsiders and assault newcomers are also angry when degenerate,
disorganised, drunk youths in Australia do exactly the same thing. Are
they scared their jobs have been outsourced?
Now they’re back to being racist: The Manoos want all us foreign
actors out of Bollywood – get this: Because we’re stealing Indian
jobs. I have not yet met an Indian that can do my job, because my job
is to be not Indian. I’m not a particularly exceptional actor, I’m not
wildly attractive, I’m not even that skilled, I don’t dance or sing.
I’m a single-threat: I’m just white. Who’s job do I steal?
Make up your minds, which do you despise: Racism or foreigners?
Their current claim is against Hazel Crowney because they claim she’s
dancing in a provocative way that Indian girls wouldn’t, and tugging
at the threads of Indian moral fibre. It’s clear that they know this
already, but you might not: Indian movies don’t show sexy white girls
flouncing about because Indian girls won’t do it, they show foreigners
because that’s what Indians like to watch. The women watch it and
think: “Ugh, sluts” and the men pitch pants tents – behaviour neither
gender like to associate with good Indian girls.
Indian girls will do a multitude of things to get their beautiful,
sensual bodies onto the big screen – and dancing provocatively
definitely comes under that broad and intentionally ambiguous banner.
Rakhi Sawant started the protest, but clearly her interests aren’t
value-based:
Hazel Crowney: They're calling for her head
Rakhi Sawant: Principled instigator
Tell me again – which Indian values were they protecting?
The Shiv Sena recently charged onto the set of a shoot for the film
‘Crooked’, and demanded to see employment visas from the 136
foreigners on the shoot. I know every Bollywood Gora that has a visa –
and there ain’t 136 of us. Bollywood runs on making its scenes exotic
and foreign with cheap tourist labour extras. It can’t run without
them.
These riots will serve to send more films overseas to shoot to avoid
them, taking money right out of the pockets of all Mumbaikars who
drive and light and serve chai and food to those who paint sets and
clothe Bollywood. Their campaign would be short-sighted and flawed, if
it were legitimately aimed at improving the lives of Marathis – but it
isn’t, it’s aimed at getting publicity – and it’s working.
I love this country – but sometimes it gives me the shits (pun
intended).
Perhaps it is me.
Perhaps my desire to become a part of the Indian fabric is mislaid. I
had always seen India’s best values were the welcoming and inclusive
nature of the people, how peaceful they are. I’d always felt that the
laid-back, near-enough’s good enough, slow life seemed more ecological
than ours – far more interested in things like a good laugh, an
engaging (and intrusive) conversation or even silent company. They’ll
stare, they’ll care, they’ll help even if they can’t.
This country holds the greatest potential of all on this earth. With
some tweaks to turn the knowledge based education system to teach
skills, a good corruption enema and a bit of cultural progression (in
terms of womens rights and that stuff) – it will be the next
superpower. Indians almost always speak more languages than you do,
speak English better than you do, they wrap their agile brains around
new languages, new concepts and new ideas with envy-inspiring speed,
they have open hearts and kind minds, and there are a billion of them.
That was what I thought India was about, generosity, hospitality and
intelligence – but apparently these guys are the last word on what’s
Indian and according to them it’s all about the violence, stupidity
and racism.
Perhaps it’s time for me to move on.
http://www.harrykey.com/blogs/the-lords-army-shiv-sena/
Congress and BJP in tussle over Big B as CWG brand ambassador
Congress too has started playing cheap political games. Amitabh
Bachchan is their target and all for the sin of getting some unasked
for BJP attention. Now Kalmadi has even dropped Amitabh as an option
for CWG brand ambassador.
CJ: Shubhra Prakash Tue, Mar 30, 2010 21:21:29 IST
Views: 13 Comments: 1Rate: 0.0 / 0 votes
KEEPING INTACT its posture of cold shouldering the Bachchans, the
Congress once again entered in a row with Amitabh Bachchan becoming a
brand ambassador of the up coming Common Wealth Games. Suresh Kalmadi,
Congress MP and the Chairman of Commonwealth Games Organizing
Committee said that they would need a young Brand Ambassador to
promote the game.
The decision came as a backlash when BJP leader and also the vice-
president of Indian Olympic Association suggested Bachchan's name as
an ambassador for the event in a letter to Kalmadi.
The 'Bachchan parivar' is under fire from Congress party leaders ever
since he came to inaugurate a lane on the Mumbai Sea Link. The matter
stretched up to a limit that on the Earth Hour Day in Delhi the video
carrying a message from Abhishek Bachchan was blacked out as also the
posters of the actor from the venue.
At both the events Congress party leaders like Ashok Chavan and Sheila
Dikshit were present maintaining a hush over the happenings. The state
of events has popped up in the backdrop of Amitabh Bachchan agreeing
to promote tourism for the BJP ruled Gujarat.
While the war of words is on between the Bachchan's led by BJP and
Congress. Manish Tiwari, a Congress MP has suggested that it is high
time that Amitabh Bachchan clears his stand on Modi and the Gujarat
government.
Posted comments (1) Mr. Kalmadi is absolutely right. Actually
government (Delhi/Center) needs to re-think about this, how an old man
could like Mr. Kalmadi/non-sports, declared as Commonwealth Games
Organizing Committee chairman. Not only in Commonwealth, but also we
don't need any oldies like Delhi's CM Mrs. Dixit, BCCI Chief Mr.
Power, and so on….
Will Dawood’s facing law be a favour? Congress asks BJP
By IANS
March 30th, 2010
NEW DELHI - The Congress Tuesday hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) for lauding Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s appearance
before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the 2002 Gujarat
riots, and asked if underworld fugitive Dawood Ibrahim will be doing a
favour by facing the law.
“The BJP is projecting it (Modi’s appearance before SIT) as if it is a
favour to the judicial system. If Dawood Ibrahim is brought before the
law, will he be doing a favour?” Congress spokesman Manish Tewari said
reporters here.
He said the BJP was talking in “an immature manner”.
Tewari said that Modi had to face the SIT because he had not followed
“rajdharam (his duty as a ruler)”.
On the BJP’s criticism over party president Sonia Gandhi having been
again made National Advisory Council chairperson, Tewari said that she
could have become prime minister in 2004 and 2009 but chose not to
take the high office.
“Her entire public life is characterised by one principle, that of
sacrifice,” he said.
Tewari noted that NAC had worked for some path-breaking legislations
during its previous term, among these the Right to Information Act,
the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Gram Nyayalaya
Act.
The BJP said Tuesday that Gandhi’s appointment as chairperson of the
NAC had created a “psuedo-constitutional power centre” which would
lead to “redundancy” of the post of the prime minister
Sonia to again head National Advisory Council (Second Lead)
By IANS
March 29th, 2010
NEW DELHI - Congress president Sonia Gandhi was Monday again named
chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC), four years after
she quit on being accused of holding an office of profit.
“She will hold the rank and status of union cabinet minister with
immediate effect. The salary, allowances and other terms and
conditions of the chairperson and members shall be such as the
government may specify from time to time,” an official statement
said.
Her term will begin from the date she assumes charge, it said.
“It will be co-terminus with the term of the NAC or until further
orders whichever is earlier. The chairperson shall be entitled to the
same salary, pay, allowances and other facilities to which a member of
the union council of ministers is entitled.”
According to the statement, the term of NAC members will be for one
year but this could be extended. They will draw salary and allowances
determined by the central government.
Gandhi had resigned from the NAC in March 2006 after the opposition
alleged that she had violated the office of profit principle requiring
MPs not to hold offices that carry wages, salaries or allowances
during their tenures. She had also resigned her Lok Sabha seat of Rae
Bareli but won it back in a re-election.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government subsequently came up
with a bill seeking to exempt 56 posts, including the NAC chairperson,
from being considered as office of profit. The bill was approved in
May 2006 by parliament amid opposition by the Bharatiya Janata Party-
led opposition.
The NAC was first formed during the earlier tenure of UPA government
and had played a role in the enactment of Right to Information Act,
Forest Rights Act and National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
The reconstituted NAC is expected to take up the food security bill
over which there are differences between social activists and the
government. The activists, some of whom were part of the previous NAC,
have differed with the government on draft food security bill cleared
by the cabinet, saying its provisions were “minimalist”.
The reconstituted NAC is also expected to keep a watch on the existing
flagship welfare schemes such as the rural employment guarantee
programme and scrutinise other proposed legislations dealing with
social sector.
BJP says people will make Sonia Gandhi resign as NAC chief
By ANI
March 30th, 2010
NEW DELHI - The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has cried foul over
Congress President Sonia Gandhi again taking charge as the head of the
National Advisory Council (NAC).
BJP spokesperson Tarun Vijay said this time the people of the country
would make Gandhi resign from her post.
“It has been a history of the Congress party to hold an office of
profit while being an MP. Last time, it was a show by Sonia Gandhi of
‘tyag’, but the fact is that under the pressure of whole country, she
had to resign,” said Vijay.
“This time also, the people of this country will make her resign from
this post,” he added.
The Union Government on Monday constituted the National Advisory
Council (NAC), which will be headed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi
as its Chairperson.
She will hold the rank and status of Union Cabinet Minister with
immediate effect.
The term of appointment of the Chairperson of the NAC will be with
effect from the date of assuming charge of the office as the
Chairperson.
It will be co-terminus with the term of the NAC or until further
orders which ever is earlier.
The term of the members of the NAC shall be for a period of one year
with effect from the date of their appointment, which may be extended.
The Chairperson of the NAC shall be entitled to the same salary, pay,
allowances and other facilities to which a member of the Union Council
of Minister is entitled.
Under the special provision for a Member of Parliament appointed as
the member of the NAC, it has been provided that the member shall not
be entitled to draw any remuneration, allowances or perks as such
member from the NAC other than the compensatory allowance as defined
in clause (a) of the section 2 of the Parliament (Prevention of
Disqualification) Act, 1959.
Sonia Gandhi quit the NAC in March 2006 after the BJP- led Opposition
alleged that she had violated the office of profit principle.
Gandhi had also resigned from her Lok Sabha seat. But later despite
winning the Rae Bareilly by poll, she kept herself away from the NAC.
(ANI)
BJP MLAs marshalled out of Delhi Assembly
By ANI
March 29th, 2010
NEW DELHI - Amidst high drama 22 Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs were
marshalled out of the Delhi Assembly on Monday, for trooping into the
Well and sloganeering against the price rise and demanding a roll back
of subsidy cut on LPG and increase in VAT on various items.
As soon as the House assembled, the Leader of Opposition V K Malhotra
raised the price rise issue.
He demanded a clarification from Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on the
use of water canons by police during a protest rally near the
Assembly.
Several BJP activists, including Municipal Council of Delhi (MCD)
members, were injured during the incident.
Soon, all the BJP MLAs started sloganeering and gathered before the
Speaker’s podium.
Speaker Yoganand Shastri had to adjourn the House for 15 minutes when
he failed to convince opposition members to calm down and resume their
seats.
When the House met again after 15 minutes, all BJP MLAs trooped to the
Well and sloganeered again.
Speaker Shastri tried to pacify the members, but when they continued
their protests, he asked marshals to remove senior BJP members H S
Balli, Karan Singh Tanwar, Ravindra Bansal, Subhash Sachdeva and Harsh
Vardhan from the House.
After their removal, BJP MLAs continued with their sloganeering
forcing Shastri to name the BJP MLAs one by one and ask marshals to
remove them from the House.
After all the MLAs had left, Malhotra said he was the only opposition
legislator present and asked that he be thrown out also.
The BJP members continued their protests outside the Assembly and
courted arrest. (ANI)
http://blog.taragana.com/politics/2010/03/29/bjp-mlas-marshalled-out-of-delhi-assembly-26024/
BJP warns against talks with Taliban
By IANSMarch 29th, 2010
NEW DELHI - The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Monday asked the
government to explain if India was planning to talk to the Taliban, as
suggested by some media reports, and warned against any compromise
with anti-India elements.
“If true, as the report suggests, the shift in Indias Afghan policy
must be explained to the people and the foreign minister must answer
the raison dtre of showing a willingness to have a dialogue with the
regressive elements, said Tarun Vijay, BJP spokesperson.
These elements, Vijay pointed out, have been working for Pakistan’s
Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and their anti-India operations
“have bled us for the last two years”.
Vijay was alluding to media reports which quoted government sources
saying that India wanted to reach out to Taliban leader Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami and keep its doors open in case of a
reconciliation effort by the Taliban.
Warning against the pitfalls of such a dialogue with blood thirsty
elements”, Vijay stressed: Talking to Taliban reverses all that India
has stood for so far.
“They are Osamas men, they push their women behind veils and stop them
from going to schools, their world is a world of darkness, far removed
from that of democracy and pluralism, bringing the society to medieval
ages.
“Indian strategy, if there exists one for Afghanistan and Pakistan
must be primarily to safeguard Indian interests and to ensure
annihilation of anti-Indian terror groups, he said.
Accusing the government of failure in getting access to David Coleman
Headley, an American-Pakistani accused of plotting the Mumbai attacks,
and pursuing a “meaningless dialogue” with Pakistan under US pressure,
Vijay contended that engaging the Taliban comes as another shocking
feature of UPA’s unending compromises with the anti-India elements”.
India has refused to recognise any distinction between the good and
bad Taliban, but has indicated that it could support reintegration of
the Taliban in the Afghan mainstream provided they agree to renounce
violence and abide by the Afghan constitution.
The Indian government is, however, opposed to any reconciliation with
the Taliban to bring them into the political structure. India had
agreed to go along with the reintegration proposal endorsed at the Jan
28 London conference, but is wary of any deal that could reinstall a
medieval and anti-New Delhi regime in Kabul.
http://blog.taragana.com/politics/2010/03/29/bjp-warns-against-talks-with-taliban-26014/
Modi’s Taliban comments a frustrated outburst: Congress
By IANS
March 29th, 2010
NEW DELHI - The Congress Monday hit back at Gujarat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi for his “Taliban” comments, saying it was a “frustrated”
outburst after his long questioning by the Special Investigation Team
(SIT) over the 2002 riots.
“Modi is feeling very frustrated because for the first time, a chief
minister was made to stand before the Special Investigating Team for
about 10 hours in a question and answer session,” Union Information
and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said on the sidelines of a
Congress Seva Dal function here.
Responding to questions about Modi describing those critical of
Amitabh Bachchan’s decision to be brand ambassador of Gujarat as
Talibans of public life in his blog, Soni said Modi should not use the
word Taliban in a “light and flippant manner” as those who had lived
under the rule of the fundamentalists know what it is like. She said
Modi should make statements only after due deliberation.
Modi wrote in his blog that “a great artist with legendary humility
and even taller achievements” like Amitabh Bachchan has “chosen to
celebrate the glorious heritage of Gujarat while facing a lot of
criticisms”.
“These people, while brandishing Mahatma Gandhi’s name are busy
creating a new viciousness in the flow of our public life. These
‘Talibans of Untouchability’ have lost all their sensibilities in
their pursuit of anti-Gujarat attitudes,” he said.
Congress leaders in Maharashtra had protested over the presence of
Bachchan at the inauguration of the Bandra-Worli seak link extension
function last week, saying they were upset over “his association with
Modi”.
Bachchan had accepted Modi’s offer to be the brand ambassador of the
state.
Chaos in Rajasthan Assembly over Rathore’s expulsion
By ANI
March 19th, 2010
JAIPUR - Chaos took place inside the Rajasthan Assembly on Friday when
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs got into a brawl with marshals
inside the House over the expulsion of BJP leader Rajendra Rathore.
At least three BJP leaders were injured in the incident, when they
clashed with the marshals attempting to control the situation.
They were protesting against Rathore’s expulsion. (ANI)
Varun targets Maya, Rahul, calls cow slaughter crime
By Sarwar Kashani, IANSMarch 29th, 2010
SAHARANPUR - Bharatiya Janata Party MP Varun Gandhi delivered a fiery
speech here Monday, calling for a ban on cow slaughter. He also
targeted Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati and his cousin Rahul
Gandhi whom he called a “handsome face”.
Hundreds of men, women and even children sweated it out to listen to
the 30-year-old Gandhi’s 20-minute high voltage speech at Gandhi Park
- his first public rally after being appointed the BJP secretary this
month.
The MP from Pilibhit called for a “more intense war” against cow
slaughter. “It is a social crime. It is a legal crime. Why don’t you
wake up and fight this more intense war against cow slaughter? It is
not for Hindus only, but for the nation’s pride,” he said.
“Jai shri ram” was his slogan. And the crowd of men, women and
children, some of whom had been waiting since 8 a.m., repeatedly
responded likewise.
“I know people in western Uttar Pradesh don’t compromise with self-
esteem. I am asking you, don’t stay calm, don’t tolerate. Wake up and
fight. I want warriors in my troupe, who can fight for your self-
esteem.”
Gandhi, who stirred a political storm with a communal speech during
the Lok Sabha election campaign last year, this time chose to weigh
his words carefully.
The young BJP leader thundered: “If somebody targets my mother, what
would I do? I will stand and save her, isn’t it? Likewise, you should
get up, gather and save our mother cow.”
He criticised Mayawati over her garlands of currency notes and said
the cash should have been used for the welfare of poor farmers and
unemployed youth of Uttar Pradesh instead.
“But don’t worry, two more years to go,” he said, pointing to the 2012
assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh which, he added, the BJP was
confident of winning.
“Then there is another party which has young handsome faces. They have
a mission, but don’t worry, we will win,” he said, referring clearly
to his estranged cousin Rahul Gandhi and the Congress.
“I know, I am also on this stage with my Gandhi surname. Had I been
Varun Chowdhury or Sharma, I would not have been here. But this name
comes with responsibility, responsibility towards the poor, towards
you,” he said.
Fighting for the poor of the nation is a long struggle that people
from “well-off families” are not interested in, he said. “I want to
produce at least one lakh Varun Gandhis who will fight that war,” he
said.
Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike elections: It's advantage BJP
Hemant Kumar / DNA
Wednesday, March 31, 2010 8:43 IST
Bangalore: The exit polls and the pre-poll surveys may have predicted
a hung house in the 198-seat BBMP council, but the BJP is not worried.
And they have a good reason to be happy. A tally of 96 seats is good
enough for the BJP to reach the magic figure of 125, while the
Congress, which is warming up to the JD(S), needs to score 108 to have
its man as the mayor.
With MLAs, MLCs and MPs from Bangalore being part of the BBMP council,
any aspirant for the mayor’s post would need at least 125 votes.
Sitting MLAs, MLCs and MPs from constituencies falling under the BBMP
jurisdiction have the voting right to elect a mayor in the BBMP
council. The BJP already has 29 such captive votes in the form of its
city MLAs, MLCs and MPs. So all it needs is just 96 seats to reach the
magic figure of 125 to grab the mayor’s post.
The JD(S) has just 4 captive votes. However, the Congress and JD(S)
together could spoil BJP’s plans. But it is a tall order as the
combine would have to bag at least 104 of the 198 seats. “We are
comfortably placed. Even under the worst situation of BJP winning just
about 88 or 90 seats, we can have our way as all that we need is the
support of just a few independents,” said BJP city unit spokesman S
Prakash.
Congress practising fascism: BJP
Special Correspondent
“Modi has proved his critics wrong”
“Congress only making half-hearted attempts to interrogate Headley”
NEW DELHI: The BJP on Sunday accused the Congress of practising
fascism by the kind of its attack against actor Amitabh Bachchan and
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
The Congress was increasingly betraying signs of frustration with each
of its attempt to tarnish the Opposition parties and leaders going in
vain, the BJP said.
The Congress was unabashedly practising untouchability and targeting
the Bachchan family only because it had differences with “one Congress
family,” BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said. “The entire party
and even its State governments are keen not even to be seen on one
platform with him.”
The the Bandra-Worli sea link belonged to people and not to “that
family” or the Congress. The withdrawal of invitation to Mr.
Bachchan's son by the Delhi Chief Minister and violence indulged by
Congressmen, tearing posters and banners, was condemnable, Ms.
Sitharaman said.
The country had not forgotten the way noted singer Kishore Kumar was
targeted during the Emergency when All India Radio banned his songs
for almost a whole year, she said.
Ms. Sitharaman charged the Congress with encouraging and rewarding Mr.
Modi's baiters in a bid to defame a duly elected Chief Minister. She
warned that this misplaced energies of the Congress would spell danger
to the country.
Mr. Modi had proved his critics wrong by displaying his responsibility
and cooperating with the SIT (Special Investigation Team) and
underlining his belief that the Constitution and the law of the land
were supreme, she said.
The Congress was only making half-hearted attempts to interrogate
Lashkar operative David Headley. No attempt was being made to
interrogate him and one attempt had even shamefully failed, she said.
The BJP accused the UPA of not showing any enthusiasm in implementing
the Supreme Court verdict on hanging Afzal Guru “though he is a proven
offender against India.”
http://www.thehindu.com/2010/03/29/stories/2010032955371300.htm
BJP govt protected anti-socials: Dhariwal
TNN, Mar 31, 2010, 05.14am IST
JAIPUR: Discussion on crime in the city rocked the House on Tuesday
when home minister Shanti Dhariwal, while answering a question,
alleged that the erstwhile BJP government had given protection to anti-
socials.
BJP whip Rajendra Rathore immediately registered a protest and was was
joined by deputy leader of Opposition Ghanshyam Tiwari and former home
minister Gulab Chand Kataria.
Claiming personal responsibility in the event the former BJP
government had protected any criminal Kataria said, "I was the home
minister then and if anyone was protected then I am responsibile but
can the home minister cite any example to prove his allegation or give
the names of such criminals."
Tiwari, on the other hand, blamed Dhariwal personally for the rising
incidents of crime in the city.
The hullabaloo arose after BJP MLA Nirmal Kumawat had inquired on the
number of cases registered in the state between January 2009 and
December 2009. Kumawat also wanted to know how many such cases were
registered in Phulera and if Jaipur had registered a rise in the
crime.
"The state has registered 1,66,565 cases between January 2009 and
December 2009, out of which in 9,5397 cases challans have been filed
in court," the minister said.
He added that Jaipur South had registered the maximum rise in crime
rate with 686 cases amounting to 12.62%. The zone, as compared to
5,435 cases in 2008, has seen 6,121 cases till December 2009. Next
came Jaipur North for which the figures for 2009 stands at 3,905
compared to 3,517 in 2008 ---- an increase of 11.03% with 388 cases.
Jaipur East recorded 6,762 cases in 2009 compared to 6,455 in 2008, an
increase of 307 cases at 4.76% while Jaipur rural has seen the least
increase at 0.01% with figures of 9,052 in 2009 as compared to 9051 in
2008.
"Therefore on an average Jaipur has registered an increase of 5.65%
while Rajasthan has seen a increase of 10.10% which is well below the
average of other states at 15.7 %," the minister said.
However, Kumawat, who had asked the question, stated if the negligible
rise in Jaipur rural is taken into account then Jaipur city has seen
10% rise in the crime rate.
Dhariwal explained the increase in crime figures are due to reasons
like an increase population ,in powers of the land mafia, tourism
mafia, Lapkas, unemployment, horizontal growth of the city, the
linking of Jaipur with the broad gauge rail lines, increase in land
prices, increase in the number of vehicles, immigration from other
states etc.
"In fact, it is because of the fact that the previous government had
given protection to criminals that such a situation has arisen today,"
he said.
That was enough to incite the Opposition and the blame game began.
While the BJP wanted the minister to table the names of such
criminals, Dhariwal continued with his allegations.
In another question related to rising crime in Jaipur, Dhariwal
claimed in comparison to 2007 crime had plunged in 2008. However, in
2009 there has again been a rise in the crime rate specially in cases
like attempted murder, loot, theft though cases like dacoity and armed
robbery has seen a decline.
But the minister refused to acknowledge that on the whole there has
been an increase in crime in the city.
"We're in the Money": Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/3bc67593a8a0ac5b#
Madam I 'm Adam: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/fbe56c67d373c696#
It's the Economy, Stupid: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/a46d86d4a3976279#
BRIC-a-BRAC: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/1d0dab2a874d0f26#
Big Bang: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/293ffa6b644467ef#
Indian Economic Survey: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/83574501e1c1ee72#
World's Baked Billionaires: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/42a9c3eca9882e80#
Below Poverty line, Line: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/097e4867b8baf22a#
Outsourcing Sorcery: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/topics?start=300&sa=N
Globalization Gobbledigook: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/bea6b5954e7332f4#
Indian Budget Bonanza: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/40cc05563d71e4a4#
Pranab Mukherjee, my Main Man: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/0ce38c4203700750#
...and I am Sid Harth
Sid Harth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thuggee (or tuggee, ठग्गी ṭhagī) (from Hindi ठग ṭhag ‘thief’, from
Sanskrit स्थग sthaga ‘cunning’, ‘sly’, ‘fraudulent’, ‘dishonest’,
‘scoundrel’, from स्थगति sthagati ‘he conceals’)[1] is the term for a
particular kind of murder and robbery of travellers in India.
Thuggery
The English word "thug" comes from the Hindi word "thag", meaning
"conman". It is one of many Indian words borrowed into English during
the British colonial period. The English connotation of 'thug' is
synonymous with terms like hoodlum and hooligan, indicating a person
(who may or may not be anti-social) who harasses others, usually for
hire.[citation needed] People regarded as thugs might commit assault
(or 'menace'), battery, even robbery and grievous bodily harm, but
they usually stop short of murder. Additionally, "thugs" usually
travel in pairs, though they can work alone or in groups of four to
six members, and are typically open about their presence (except to
law enforcement officials); while "Thuggee" were covert and operated
as members of a group, often called a "Thuggee cult" by the British.
Hence, the word "Thuggee" is capitalised while the word "thug" usually
is not; which enables distinction of a "Thug" (here, a short form of
"Thuggee") from a "thug".
In the heyday of Thuggee activity, travellers were typically part of a
travelling group, so the term Thuggee typically referred to killing of
a large number of people in a single operation. This aspect
distinguishes Thuggee from similar concept of dacoity, which means
simple armed robbery.
Dacoity has similarities with the terms brigand and bandit from
European and Latin American experience, but there appear to be no
exact Western parallels for Thuggee. Perhaps the closest concepts
would be the format of piracy, though this is solely maritime robbery
(usually with murder), and the earlier, but similar, format of raids
on coastal settlements by Viking seafarers. Some aspects, however, are
reminiscent of the Mafia group of organisations.
Between them, these classes of criminal activity illustrate some of
the mystique that attached to the Thugs and the complex mixture of
fear and dread of these murderous men that was felt by the ordinary
people who might well be their victims.
There is some question as to the extent of the religious dimension of
Thuggee. Most contemporary sources described Thuggee as being a
religious cult, but some modern sources feel it was merely a
specialized form of organized crime or paramilitary activity, with no
particular religious dimension beyond the normal piety of the
villagers from whom its members were recruited.
Time period
The concept of Thuggee is known from the 17th century, though the term
and/or activity possibly dates back as early as the 13th century.
Thuggee was actively practiced at least through the end of the 19th
century. If remnants of the Thuggee tradition survived into the 20th
and 21st centuries, they did so very covertly. The film Indiana Jones
and the Temple of Doom is based on the premise that Thuggee cults
survived covertly into the early 20th century.
Stern suppression by the British was important in reducing Thuggee
activity but more significant was the introduction of modern methods
of travel, in particular the displacement of travelling on foot or by
horse in groups by the railway, which effectively rendered Thuggee
obsolete.
The nature
The particular groups, as well as the general concept, were often
equally durable and would outlive the 'careers' of individual members
to develop into a crime family lasting generations. These groups
progressed from being simple gangs into becoming 'fraternities' or
even 'cults', featuring the initiation of new members, either through
the heredity of a criminal underclass, or through an apprenticeship,
such as normally associated with skilled or learned professions or the
training programs of elite military units. Other sources describe the
Thugs as a criminal 'tribe' or caste. Over the course of generations,
the secrets must be kept within the 'family'. The marriage of
offspring within the group both safeguards the secret knowledge,
allowing it to be imparted steadily to the children without the risk
of uninitiated neighbours overhearing, and reinforces the exclusive
and selective nature of the organisation. This preserves the mystique,
which is in itself part of the formula of success, and creates an
elite aura around it. At the moment of attack, the sudden revelation
of the identity of the assailants produces a shock that disables
defensive manoeuvres, at least for a few, vital moments, while the
reputation for invincibility engenders a defeatism that results in a
fait accompli.
The practice
Thugs were active all over the Bengal region of the Indian
subcontinent. Maps showing the possessions of the British East India
Company in 1765 and 1805Thuggee is described as a cult of people
engaged in the multiple murder and robbery of travelers. At the time,
most travelers in India would travel in caravan for mutual support and
security, since travel meant the crossing of difficult terrain before
the coming of metalled roads, the passing among different races,
religions and castes, at a period before police forces were formed. In
order to attempt the massacre of an entire caravan, the Thugs needed
to be numerous and well-coordinated. They also needed to be
sufficiently stealthy, at least in the early stages, to begin their
slaughter without rousing all at once. This required a high degree of
planning, organization – including props and patter – timing, teamwork
and discipline. With anything less than complete success a survivor
could escape to raise a hue and cry. These horrendous but
sophisticated operations lay somewhere between organized crime and
paramilitary activity and were far removed from the ordinary criminal
in the audacity, magnitude, and ruthlessness of the enterprise.
The modus operandi was to join a caravan and become accepted as bona-
fide travelers themselves. The Thugs would need to delay any attack
until their fellow travelers had dropped the initial wariness of the
newcomers and had been lulled into a false sense of security. The
Thugs first needed to befriend the travelers and win their trust. Once
the travelers had allowed the Thugs to join them and disperse amongst
them (a task which might sometimes, depending on the size of the
target group, require accompaniment for hundreds of miles), the Thugs
would wait for a suitable place and time before killing and robbing
them.
There were obviously variations on a theme. When tackling a large
group, a Thuggee band might disperse along a route and join a group in
stages, concealing their acquaintanceship, such that they could come
to outnumber their intended victims by small, non-threatening
increments. If the travelers had doubts about any one party, they
might confide their worries to another party of the same Thuggee band.
The trusted band would thus be the best placed to deal with these
members of the caravan at the appropriate time, but might also be able
to advise their colleagues to 'back off' or otherwise modify their
behavior, to allay suspicion.
The killing place would need to be remote from local observers and
suitable to prevent escape (e.g., backed against a river). Thugs
tended to develop favored places of execution, called beles. They knew
the geography of these places well—better than their victims. They
needed to, if they were to anticipate the likely escape routes and
hiding-places of the quicker-witted and more determined of the
travelers.
The timing might be at night or during a rest-break, when the
travelers would be busy with chores and when the background cries and
noise would mask any sounds of alarm. A quick and quiet method, which
left no stains and required no special weapons, was strangulation.
This method is particularly associated with Thuggee and led to the
Thugs also being referred to as the Phansigars, or "noose-operators",
and simply as "stranglers" by British troops. Usually two or three
Thugs would strangle one traveller. The Thugs would then need to
dispose of the bodies: they might bury them or might throw them into a
nearby well.[2].
The leader of a gang was called the 'jemadar': this is an ordinary
Indian word and is now used as the rank of an Army officer
(Lieutenant), who would command a similar number of men to a Thuggee
gang-leader. An English equivalent term might be 'the Boss' or 'the
Guv'nor' (Governor).
As with modern criminal gangs, each member of the group had his own
function: the equivalent of the 'hit-man,' 'the lookout,' and the
'getaway driver' would be those Thugs tasked with luring travelers
with charming words or acting as guardian to prevent escape of victims
while the killing took place.
They usually killed their victims in darkness while the thugs made
music or noise to escape discovery. If burying bodies close to a well-
traveled trade-route, they would need to disguise the 'earthworks' of
their graveyard as a camp-site, tamping down the covering mounds and
leaving some items of rubbish or remnants of a fire to 'explain' the
disturbances and obscure the burials.
One reason given for the Thuggee success in avoiding detection and
capture so often and over such long periods of time is a self-
discipline and restraint in avoiding groups of travelers on shorter
journeys, even if they seemed laden with suitable plunder. Choosing
only travelers far from home gave more time until the alarm was raised
and the distance made it less likely that colleagues would follow on
to investigate the disappearances. Another reason given is the high
degree of teamwork and co-ordination both during the infiltration
phase and at the moment of attack. This was a sophisticated criminal
elite that knew its business well and approached each 'operation' like
a military mission.
Use of garotte
The garotte is often depicted as the common weapon of the Thuggee. It
is sometimes described as a rumal (head covering or kerchief), or
translated as "yellow scarf". "Yellow" in this case may refer to a
natural cream or khaki colour rather than bright yellow. Most Indian
males in Central India or Hindustan would have a puggaree or head-
scarf, worn either as a turban or worn around a kullah and draped to
protect the back of the neck. Types of scarves were also worn as
cummerbunds, in place of a belt. Any of these items could have served
as strangling ligatures.
Religion and Thuggee
Thuggee groups might be Hindu, Sikh or Muslim, but Thuggee is
particularly associated with followers of the Hindu Goddess Kali (or
Durga), whom they often called Bhavani.[3][4][5] It was noted, even at
the time, that only a very small minority of the followers of Kali
were Thuggees. Many Thuggees worshipped Kali but most supporters of
Kali did not practise Thuggee.
Some Thuggee groups claimed descent from seven Muslim tribes[citation
needed], but the majority of Hindu followers only seem to be related
during the early periods of Islamic development through their
religious creed and staunch worship of Kali, one of the Hindu Tantric
Goddesses. At a time of political unrest, with changes from Hindu
Rajput rulers to Muslim Moghul emperors and viceroys, and possibly
back again, a wise group would display allegiance to both creeds, but
its ultimate loyalty was probably only to itself.
"There seem to have been very few Sikh Thugs. But Sahib Khan, the
Deccan strangler, 'knew Ram Sing Siek: he was a noted Thug leader - a
very shrewd man,' who also served with the Pindaris for a while and
was responsible for the assassination of the notorious Pindari leader
Sheikh Dulloo." Sleeman, Ramaseeana I, 239-40.
Some sources view the Thugs as a cult or sect. Given the extent of the
problem, in geographical scale and in the duration of time, it is
likely that many groups would wish to keep their secrets from betrayal
from within and from intrusion by outsiders and would have evolved
into secret criminal fraternities. It also follows that if they were
repeatedly successful, then they must have 'divine blessing' and would
wish to give thanks to, and worship, the deity to whom they ascribed
their support. In the West, as well, criminality and religious
observance are not always mutually incompatible.
Origin and recruitment
A group of thugs, ca. 1863The earliest recorded mention of the Thugs
as a special band or fraternity, rather than as ordinary thieves, is
found in the following passage of Ziau-d din Barni's History of Firoz
Shah (written about 1356):
In the reign of that sultan (about 1290), some Thugs were taken in
Delhi, and a man belonging to that fraternity was the means of about a
thousand being captured. But not one of these did the sultan have
killed. He gave orders for them to be put into boats and to be
conveyed into the lower country, to the neighbourhood of Lakhnauti,
where they were to be set free. The Thugs would thus have to dwell
about Lakhnauti and would not trouble the neighbourhood of Delhi any
more." (Sir HM Elliot's History of India, iii. 141).
Membership was sometimes passed from father to son, in what would now
be termed a criminal underclass. The leaders of long-established Thug
groups tended to come from these hereditary lines, as the gang
developed into a criminal 'tribe'. Other men would get to know a Thug
band and would hope to be recruited, in the way that one might aspire
to join an elite regiment or university: they were the best operators
in "the business" and, like a regiment or college fraternity, once in
the group, there was a camaraderie of numbers and shared experience.
The robbery became less a question of solving problems of poverty and
more a profession, like soldiering.
Sometimes the young children of the travelers would be spared and
groomed to become Thugs themselves, as the presence of children would
help allay suspicion. A fourth way of becoming a Thug was by training
with a guru, similar to an apprenticeship for a guild or profession,
during which the candidate could be assessed for reliability, courage,
discretion and discipline.[2]
The magnitude of the problem
Estimates of the total number of victims vary widely, depending on the
author's idea of the length of existence of the Thugs (for which there
are no reliable sources). According to the Guinness Book of Records
the Thuggee cult was responsible for approximately 2,000,000 deaths,
while British historian Dr. Mike Dash estimates that they killed
50,000 persons in total, based on his assumption that they only
started to exist 150 years before their eradication in the 1830s.
Yearly figures for the early 19th century are better documented, but
even they are inaccurate estimates. For example, gang leader Behram
has often been considered the world's most prolific serial killer,
blamed for 931 killings between 1790 and 1830. Reference to
contemporary manuscript sources, however, shows that Behram actually
gave inconsistent statements regarding the number of murders he had
committed. While he did state that he had "been present at" 931
killings committed by his gang of 25 to 50 men, elsewhere he admitted
that he had personally strangled "only" around 125 people. Having
turned King's Evidence and agreed to inform on his former companions,
furthermore, Behram never stood trial for any of the killings
attributed to him, the total of which must thus remain a matter of
dispute.[6]
Suppression
The Thuggee cult was suppressed by the British rulers of India in the
1830s.[2] The arrival of the British and their development of a
methodology to tackle crime meant the techniques of the Thugs had met
their match. Suddenly, the mysterious disappearances were mysteries no
longer and it became clear how even large caravans could be
infiltrated by apparently small groups, that were in fact acting in
concert. Once the techniques were known to all travellers, the element
of surprise was gone and the attacks became botched, until the hunters
became the hunted.
Civil servant William Henry Sleeman, superintendent, 'Thuggee and
Dacoity Dept.' in 1835, and later its Commissioner in 1839.Reasons for
British success included:
the dissemination of reports regarding Thuggee developments across
territorial borders, so that each administrator was made aware of new
techniques as soon as they were put in practice, so that travellers
could be warned and advised on possible counter-measures.
the use of King's evidence programmes gave an incentive for gang
members to inform on their peers to save their own lives. This
undermined the code of silence that protected members.
at a time when, even in Britain, policing was in its infancy, the
British set up a dedicated police force, the Thuggee Department, and
special tribunals that prevented local influence from affecting
criminal proceedings.
the police force applied the new detective methodologies to record the
locations of attacks, the time of day or circumstances of the attack,
the size of group, the approach to the victims and the behaviours
after the attacks. In this way, a single informant, belonging to one
gang in one region, might yield details that would be applicable to
most, or all, gangs in a region or indeed across all India.
The initiative of suppression was due largely to the efforts of the
civil servant William Sleeman, who started an extensive campaign
involving profiling and intelligence. A police organisation known as
the 'Thuggee and Dacoity Department' was established within the
Government of India, with William Sleeman appointed Superintendent of
the department in 1835. Thousands of men were either put in prison,
executed, or expelled from British India.[2] The campaign was heavily
based on informants recruited from captured thugs who were offered
protection on the condition that they told everything that they knew.
By the 1870s, the Thug cult was extinct, but it led to the
promulgation of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Although it was
repealed upon independence of India, the concept of 'criminal tribes'
and 'criminal castes' is still prevalent in India.[7][8] The
Department remained in existence until 1904, when it was replaced by
the Central Criminal Intelligence Department (CID).
Possible misinterpretation by the British and scepticism about the
existence
In her book The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and the Thugs
of India (2002), Martine van Woerkens suggests that evidence for the
existence of a Thuggee cult in the 19th century was in part the
product of "colonial imaginings" — British fear of the little-known
interior of India and limited understanding of the religious and
social practices of its inhabitants. For a comparison, see Juggernaut
and the Black Hole of Calcutta.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_of_Calcutta
Krishna Dutta, while reviewing the book Thug: the true story of
India's murderous cult by the British historian Dr. Mike Dash in The
Independent, argues:[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Independent
"In recent years, the revisionist view that thuggee was a British
invention, a means to tighten their hold in the country, has been
given credence in India, France and the US, but this well-researched
book objectively questions that assertion."
In his book, Dash rejects scepticism about the existence of a secret
network of groups with a modus operandi that was different from
highwaymen, such as dacoits. To prove his point Dash refers to the
excavated corpses in graves, of which the hidden locations were
revealed to Sleeman's team by thug informants. In addition, Dash
treats the extensive and thorough documentation that Sleeman made.
Dash rejects the colonial emphasis on the religious motivation for
robbing, but instead asserts that monetary gain was the main
motivation for Thuggee and that men sometimes became Thugs due to
extreme poverty. He further asserts that the Thugs were highly
superstitious and that they worshipped the Hindu goddess Kali, but
that their faith was not very different from their contemporary non-
thugs. He admits, though, that the thugs had certain group-specific
superstitions and rituals.
Aftermath
The discovery of the thuggee was one of the main reason why the
Criminal Tribes Act was created.
In popular culture
This "In popular culture" section may contain minor or trivial
references. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject's
impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances, and
remove trivial references. (November 2009)
In literature
The story of Thuggee was popularised by books such as Philip Meadows
Taylor's novel Confessions of a Thug, 1839, leading to the word "thug"
entering the English language. Ameer Ali, the protagonist of
Confessions of a Thug was said to be based on a real Thug called Syeed
Amir Ali.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Meadows_Taylor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Thug_(novel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagonist
John Masters' novel The Deceivers also deals with the subject. A more
recent book is George Bruce's The Stranglers: The cult of Thuggee and
its overthrow in British India (1968). Dan Simmons's Song of Kali,
1985, features a Thuggee cult.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Masters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Simmons
The 19th century American writer Mark Twain discusses the Thuggee
fairly extensively in chapters 9 and 10 of "Following the Equator:
Volume II", 1897, THE ECCO PRESS, ISBN 0-88001-519-5.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain
Christopher Moore's novel, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff,
Christ's Childhood Pal, describes a Thuggee ritual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb:_The_Gospel_According_to_Biff,_Christ%27s_Childhood_Pal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Moore_(author)
The 1976 science fiction novel Strangler's Moon by E.E. "Doc" Smith
and Stephen Goldin is based on the Thuggee (book #2 in the Family
D'Alembert series).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangler%27s_Moon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Smith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Goldin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_D%27Alembert
Sci-Fi/Fantasy author Glen Cook uses an India-like setting and Thuggee
as a plot vehicle in his books Shadow Games (June 1989), and Dreams of
Steel (April 1990). The books and later ones that continue the
storyline form part of Cook's Black Company series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Cook
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams_of_Steel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Company
The Serpent's Shadow by Mercedes Lackey has a Hindu villain, whose
minions are Thuggee, almost without exception.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_Lackey
Author William T. Vollmann draws upon Sleeman in his story The Yellow
Sugar, which is one of two tales in his collection The Rainbow Stories
dealing with the colour yellow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_T._Vollmann
In the pre-Holmes short story "The Mystery of Uncle Jeremy's
Household" (1887), Arthur Conan Doyle centres the narrative on a
beautiful female Thuggee in England who has "occasional fits of
fanaticism" and "horrible conceptions of religion".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle
Italian writer Emilio Salgari (1862–1911) wrote about thugs in I
Misteri della Jungla Nera (1895) and Le Due Tigri (1904) and other
short stories.
George Macdonald Fraser's novel Flashman in the Great Game (1975)
makes references to the "cult" of Thuggee, while the phrase: "pass the
tobacco" is used as a verbal signal for the killing to begin.
The DC Comics character Ravan is a Thuggee assassin who kills to delay
the return of Kali. He is the enemy of Kobra who seeks to bring about
her return.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Comics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravan_(comics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobra_(comics)
In the novel The Thirteenth Manifestation: the Song of Kali Ma (2006)
by Josephine Dunne, thuggees appear as assassins who operate from an
ancient subterranean Kali temple under the mountains between the
Pakistan and Indian line of control in Kashmir.
In film
The two most popular depictions of the cult in film are the 1939 film,
Gunga Din, and the 1984 film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The Indiana Jones movie is notable for Amrish Puri's villain, who is
shown chanting lines such as "maaro maaro sooar ko, chamdi nocho pee
lo khoon" - literally "Kill, Kill the pig, flay his skin, drink his
blood". Temple of Doom was temporarily banned in India for an
allegedly racist portrayal of Indians. Both films have the heroes
fighting secret revivals of the cult to prevent them from resuming
their reigns of terror, although Temple of Doom included features that
were never part of the Thuggee, such as cardiectomy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Temple_of_Doom
In the 1956 film Around the World in Eighty Days, starring David
Niven, Passepartout rescues a princess captured by the Thuggee and
sentenced to burn to death in the funeral pyre with her deceased
husband. (In the original Jules Verne novel, Thuggee are mentioned
only briefly, and not directly in connection with this princess.)[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_in_Eighty_Days_(1956_film)
In 1960 British horror studio Hammer Film Productions released The
Stranglers of Bombay. In the film, Guy Rolfe portrays an heroic
British officer battling institutional mismanagement by the British
East India Company, as well as Thuggee infiltration of Indian society,
in an attempt to bring the cultists to justice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_East_India_Company
The 1968 Bollywood film Sangharsh, based on a story by Jnanpith Award
winner, Mahasweta Devi, presented a fictionalised account of vendetta
within a Thuggee cult in the holy Indian town of Varanasi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunghursh_(1968_film)
The 1988 film version of The Deceivers, produced by Ismail Merchant
and starring Pierce Brosnan, is a fictionalised account of the initial
discovery and infiltration of the Thuggee sect by an imperial British
administrator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deceivers
The 1954 film I Misteri della Giungla Nera directed by Gian Paolo
Callegari and starring Lex Barker, where a group of religious fanatics
in India, the Thugs, prey upon European and natives alike by capturing
and offering them up in sacrifice to their frightful goddess, Kali
(from imdb.) Adapted from Emilio Salgari's book by the same name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilio_Salgari
The 1965 film Help! directed by Richard Lester and featuring The
Beatles parodies the thuggee as the cult that tries to steal Ringo's
sacrificial ring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help!_(film)
In television
In an episode of Highlander: The Series, "The Wrath of Kali", Duncan
MacLeod deals with immortal Kamir (played by Indian actor Kabir Bedi),
last of the Thuggee.
The fifth episode of the short-lived Clerks: The Animated Series
featured a plot twist where the Little League World Champions were
kidnapped by the Thuggee, where they were forced to chip rock away
from walls (much like the Thuggee in Temple of Doom).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_League
In the episode "The Yellow Scarf Affair" of the series The Man from
U.N.C.L.E., Agent Napoleon Solo uncovers a revival of the Thuggee cult
while investigating a plane crash in India.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_U.N.C.L.E.
On It Ain't Half Hot Mum series 2, episode 8, "The Night of the
Thugs", the concert party take refuge from a rainstorm in a ruined
Thuggee temple. NB - Rare unscripted "giggle" from Captain Ashwood
when Colonel Reynolds discuss stealing the ruby from the statue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodes_of_Highlander_(season_4)#The_Wrath_of_Kali
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Ain%27t_Half_Hot_Mum
See also
Highwayman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highwayman
Notes and references
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica,
Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
http://www.1902encyclopedia.com/T/THU/thugs.html
^ Thugs 1902 Encyclopædia Britannica'.Pali-sthag.
^ a b c d Dash, Mike Thug: the true story of India's murderous cult
ISBN 1-86207-604-9, 2005
^ Dash, pp. 284-286 in the Dutch translation of the book
^ Dash, pp. 247 in the Dutch translation of the book
^ Dash, page 329 of the UK edition - notes to Chapter 16
^ James Paton, 'Collections on Thuggee and Dacoitee', British Library
Add. Mss. 41300
^ "Thugs Traditional View" (shtml). BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/thugs.shtml.
Retrieved 2007-09-17.
^ Sinister sects: Thug, Mike Dash's investigation into the gangs who
preyed on travellers in 19th-century India by Kevin Rushby, The
Guardian, Saturday, June 11, 2005.
^ Dutta, Krishna (2005) The sacred slaughterers. Book review of Thug:
the true story of India's murderous cult by Mike Dash. In the
Independent (Published: 8 July 2005)text
^ Verne, Jules (August 18, 2005). Around The World in Eighty Days.
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=34998. See
page 38, where the Thuggee chief is mentioned, and page 46, where the
bride is referred to as a suttee.
Bibliography
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica,
Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_Eleventh_Edition
Dash, Mike Thug: the true story of India's murderous cult ISBN
1-86207-604-9, 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Dash
Dutta, Krishna (2005) The sacred slaughterers. Book review of Thug:
the true story of India's murderous cult by Mike Dash. In The
Independent (Published: 8 July 2005) text
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/thug-the-true-story-of-indias-murderous-cult-by-mike-dash-497902.html
Paton, James 'Collections on Thuggee and Dacoitee', British Library
Add. Mss. 41300
Woerkens, Martine van The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and
the Thugs of India (2002),
External links
Acting in the "Theatre of Anarchy": 'The Anti-Thug Campaign' and
Elaborations of Colonial Rule in Early-Nineteenth Century India by Tom
Lloyd (2006) in PDF file format
http://www.csas.ed.ac.uk/fichiers/LLOYD.pdf
Parama Roy: Discovering India, Imagining Thuggee. In: idem, Indian
Traffic. Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India.
University of California Press 1998. (in html format)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee"
Discovering India, Imagining Thuggee
Acknowledgments
This book owes a great deal to the critical perspicacity and
generosity of friends, colleagues, mentors, and institutions, whom I
am grateful to be able to name and thank. These pages would have been
impossible to bring to fruition without the encouragement and
intellectual support of Sandhya Shetty and Carole-Anne Tyler, who
consistently asked the difficult questions and who taught me through
the inspiration of their own scholarship. I am also grateful to
Lalitha Gopalan, who so often told me what I was thinking before I
knew it myself. I am grateful too to the many other friends and
colleagues who read the manuscript, either in full or in part, or who
responded to my work at conferences: Katherine Kinney, Joe Childers,
R. Radhakrishnan, Inderpal Grewal, Vincent Cheng, Daniel Boyarin, Kim
Devlin, Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, Bette London, Ron Inden, Robert
Goldman, Aditya Behl, Gayatri Spivak, Jennifer Brody, George Haggerty,
Lawrence Cohen, Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Foster. I am
indebted to the readers for the University of California Press,
especially Caren Kaplan and Sangeeta Ray, for their meticulous,
constructive, and sympathetic evaluation of the project. My editor,
Doris Kretschmer, has been unfailingly helpful and patient. I am also
grateful to Dore Brown and Diane Jagusiak of the University of
California Press, and to Sarah Myers, for their scrupulous editing. I
am indebted above all to my parents, Amalendu and Ramola Roy, as well
as to Bharat Trehan for (among other things) his recall of a youth
productively spent watching Bombay films.
This project has been funded by a University of California President’s
Research Fellowship in the Humanities in 1991–1992, a fellowship in
the University of California, Riverside’s Center for Ideas and Society
in the spring of 1994, and by two pretenure faculty-development awards
from the University of California, Riverside. I am grateful for this
support.
2. Discovering India, Imagining Thuggee
I am a Thug, my father and grandfather were Thugs, and I have thugged
with many. Let the government employ me and I will do its work.
He had met hundreds of other Deceivers, and the notes were a complete
tale of all he had seen and heard and done; of all the Deceivers who
had engaged in any action, with their descriptions, habits, and homes;
of each murder, and how it had gone, and how it might have been
prevented—or improved upon. The words could be read for either
purpose, according to the spirit of the reader.
At the time that Burton was impersonating Mirza Abdullah in the
bazaars of Sind, another important narrative of disguise,
surveillance, and racial crossing was being written in the
subcontinent, this one under the auspices of the Thuggee and Dacoity
Department of the East India Company’s government. This was the
narrative of the exposure and extirpation of a form of hereditary
criminality called thuggee; it was to form a significant constitutive
component of the authoritarian and interventionary reform of the 1830s
and 1840s and to contribute to the still-emerging project of
“discovering India.” “It was with the flourish of mystery unveiled and
mastered,” writes a contemporary historian, “that a group of officers
of the Political Department had lobbied for special operations against
[a] ‘murderous fraternity’ and for special laws to deal with it.” [1]
It is that tale of thuggee that this chapter will take up, at least in
part as a counterpoint to the Burtonian record of the Englishman as
native. It examines the phenomenon designated thuggee by colonial
authority in nineteenth-century India, a phenomenon whose emergence,
codification, and overthrow was to become perhaps the founding moment
for the study of indigenous criminality, as a problem of
impersonation, visibility, and the transactions of reading. I use the
example of thuggee to explore one of the various and often mutually
discontinuous kinds of identities that were created, fixed, or
rendered ambivalent for Indian colonial subjects. In approaching the
problematic of thuggee in the colonial context through the optic of
identity formation and subjection, I broach a nexus of concerns that
cohere around the epistemes of representation and knowledge: the
problematic of the formation of colonial knowledge, the contested,
changing, and uneven definitions of law, order, criminality, and
reform in early-nineteenth-century India, the theorization of colonial
identities (Indian and British), and the discursive problems
associated with generating the moral subject of the civilizing mission
of British colonialism.
This chapter has three sections, with significant amounts of overlap.
The first examines the official records of the Thuggee and Dacoity
Department (first established in the 1830s), a cluster of documents
that I have perhaps rather arbitrarily designated the thuggee archive.
This includes first and foremost the files on thuggee and dacoity in
the India Office Library and the National Archives of India. Also
incorporated in this thuggee archive are the works (Ramaseeana, or a
Vocabulary of the Peculiar Language Used by the Thugs [1836]; Report
on Budhuk Alias Bagree Dacoits and Other Gang Robbers by Hereditary
Profession [1849]; Report on the Depredations Committed by the Thug
Gangs [1840]) of William Henry Sleeman of thuggee fame, as well as of
other officials associated directly or indirectly with the antithug
campaign: James Sleeman, Thug, or A Million Murders (1920); Charles
Hervey, Some Records of Crime (1892); Edward Thornton, Illustrations
of the History and Practices of the Thugs (1837); and the anonymously
authored The Thugs or Phansigars of India (1839), an abridged version
of the Ramaseeana for an American audience. This inventory of thuggee
materials also includes a number of biographies, fictionalizations,
and nonofficial accounts of the “discovery” of the phenomenon and its
eradication: James Hutton, A Popular Account of the Thugs and Dacoits,
the Hereditary Garroters and Gang-Robbers of India (1857); A. J.
Wightman, No Friend for Travellers (1959); George Bruce, The
Stranglers: The Cult of Thuggee and Its Overthrow in British India
(1968); Francis Tuker, The Yellow Scarf (1961); and Philip Meadows
Taylor, Confessions of a Thug (1839). These are collectively
designated the archive in this chapter, despite the incommensurability
in their generic status; this has been done because there appears to
be very little significant difference between one text and another in
this collection. Each seems to repeat the others in an uncanny
fashion; each narrates the same incidents in almost exactly the same
rhetorical mode; and each looks to W. H. Sleeman’s productions as the
founding texts of the thuggee narrative. (Meadows Taylor’s novel
differs from these only in its focus on a single thug and its
accumulation of additional [fictional] detail.)
The second section focuses on the special juridical procedures that
had to be instituted in order to deal with some of the most
intractable problems associated with a bizarre and enigmatic variety
of criminality. The final section provides a reading of the 1952 work
on the thugs by John Masters, The Deceivers, a novel that was
popularized in the 1980s in a film of that name by Merchant Ivory.
What sets this novel apart from the rest of the archive is the turn it
gives to the always already familiar narrative of thuggee through its
focus on the tensions of the investigating subject and its interest in
the English impersonation of Indianness and Englishness. It allows us
a way of (re)visiting and (re)inflecting the thuggee archive through
its stress on the colonizing male’s desires and identifications, and
thus forms an apposite corollary to the accent on Indian impersonation
that informs the discourse of criminal law.
At this point I should add a note about the limits of the enterprise
undertaken in this chapter. In the first place, I do not wish to
furnish another account of thuggee or to enter the traffic in
competing narratives of what might have constituted a material thug
organization or practice. Nor am I interested in reinscribing the
practices of the thugs in the register of subaltern insurgency,
though, given that subalternity is most properly construed as a
relational rather than an essential category,[2] I am not unwilling to
grant the thugs’ subaltern status. I am certainly sympathetic to
Ranajit Guha’s model of reading subaltern insurgency (as a “turning
things upside down”) through the texts of counterinsurgency.[3] But,
given the exclusions listed earlier in this paragraph, for me to read
thuggee as resistive, anticolonial, protonationalist, or even
antistate may be philosophically not discontinuous with the reading
practices that produced the thug as a demonized and completely
irrational entity. My object here is not to recuperate a subaltern
consciousness, even one that is acknowledged to be ineluctably
discursive, “a theoretical fiction to entitle the project of
reading,” [4] though I concede that the question of “subaltern
consciousness” cannot be completely bypassed.
I shall confine myself instead to examining the performative
subjectivity of the thug, as it is constructed in the discourse of
thuggee, as a way of teasing out, extending, and transforming some of
the implications of representation, mimicry, and visibility in the
colonial context. What I will engage are the models of reading that
are provided by the thuggee archives—how they are formed,
consolidated, or (partially) interrupted. And what I do argue is that
the reading of the uncovering of thuggee as an enabling moment for the
colonial state in its quest for the consolidation of judicial power
needs to be, if not displaced, at least complicated, by the
acknowledgment that thuggee forms an especially intransigent moment
within the colonial construction of criminality; it is a moment that
confounds and unsettles the received wisdom about identity formation,
truth production, and meliorative possibilities in early-nineteenth-
century India. What I also argue is that the discourse on and around
thuggee can be instrumental in opening up our present understanding of
the theorization of colonial identity, especially as it engages
questions of familiarity, visibility, and reproducibility. The text of
thuggee provides, for instance, a point of entry into a wider range of
mimic desires, identifications, and positions than someone like Bhabha
explicitly engages[5]—for instance, the colonizer’s fascination with
going native, the English miming of Englishness, or the indigenous
miming of indigenous subject positions—as well as foregrounding
questions of class, gender, and sexuality.
• • •
The Thug
The first thugs were not arrested by the British until 1799, after the
defeat at Seringapatam of Tipu Sultan, one of the most potent threats
to the expansionist ambitions of the East India Company; it was not
evident to the British at the time, though, that the stranglers were
thugs or hereditary killers. The first mention of the law-and-order
problem posed by thugs occurs in 1810, in the commander-in-chief’s
instructions to sepoys proceeding on leave about the dangers of
traveling at night and carrying large sums of cash instead of bills of
exchange;[6] but thuggee as a significant social arrangement or
discursive formation does not feature in this caution to the sepoys.
Thornton reproduces some correspondence between British magistrates
and police officials of the Western Provinces in the years 1814–1816
on the subject of thugs; at this point knowledge about them appears
very fragmentary, with no reference to shared religious rituals or
language or an idiosyncratic form of murder. It appears that the
notion of thuggee as a system rather than a disarticulated set of
violent acts was first broached in 1816 by Dr. Richard Sherwood, who
wrote an essay detailing its genealogy, organization, and argot for
the Madras Literary Gazette.[7] It proved, however, enormously
difficult to compel belief in the existence of such a fraternity (this
was to remain a problem in the decades to come), even among British
political officers, magistrates, and law-enforcement officials.
Meadows Taylor describes the capture of large numbers of thugs in
Bundelkhand and Malwa in the 1820s, an event that failed to “[excite]
more than a passing share of public attention.” [8] It was not until
Captain W. H. Sleeman undertook the exercise of decoding and exposing
thuggee in 1830, after the unexpected confession of the captured
bandit Feringheea, that a grand narrative of thuggee began to emerge.
Despite this relatively recent discovery, however, thuggee as praxis
and as identity was always represented as being of almost
inconceivable antiquity, conceived in the precolonial past and
sanctioned by long duration and popular Hindu mythology, if not
textual doctrine. A. J. Wightman, echoing his nineteenth-century
predecessors, asserts that though evidence of the existence of thuggee
is first found in records of the late thirteenth century, “it is
obvious that they must have been well-established at a much earlier
date.” [9] Some writers, like Sherwood, traced its origins to the
Arab, Afghan, and Mughal conquests of India of several centuries
earlier; James Sleeman and others traced the thugs back to the times
of Herodotus. The thug Feringheea is said to have claimed that the
sculptures at Ellora, which included representations of all the
professions on earth, featured a depiction of a thug plying his deadly
trade.[10] All the reports without exception demonstrate a tenacious
need to generate a creation myth, to locate not just a point of
discovery but a point of origin, and to establish a precolonial
genealogy. But at the beginning, as Geoff Bennington has said about
national histories, is also the myth of a beginning; and the origins
of thuggee keep receding into a more and more distant historical/
mythological point of inauguration.[11] In fact, several of the
accounts end up locating its beginning in a Hindu myth of creation.
The thugs, as they are represented in nineteenth- and twentieth-
century colonial representations, were a cult of professional
stranglers who preyed on travelers—though never on Englishmen—as an
act of worship to the popular Hindu goddess Kali. They were
represented as hereditary killers drawn from all regions, religions,
classes, and castes, united by their devotion to Kali and the act of
strangulation, which was, in this reading, quite literally sacralized.
The thugs were bound to their calling—and to each other—by shared
signifying systems: a language, a belief in the divine origin of the
practice, and a dizzying array of minutely observed rituals,
prohibitions, and superstitions. The thuggee system functioned as a
quasi-religious fraternity that, paradoxically, would accommodate just
about every Indian. It was defined as a compelling and
characteristically Indian form of social (ir)rationality, and the
practice was represented as resting upon an interlocking network of
constitutive contradictions.
Though the thugs robbed their victims and the confessions usually
demonstrate a very lucid recall of the division of the plunder,
thuggee was not conceived as having any economic base, particularly
because those involved in it appeared to have fixed abodes, peaceful
occupations, and a respectable place in the social and caste
hierarchies during those times when they were not engaged in killing
and plunder. While Sherwood does speculate, albeit briefly and
unevenly, on the proximate material causes of thuggee, the question
becomes progressively leached out of subsequent, and more hegemonic,
exegeses of thuggee. All the writers on the subject are insistent, to
greater or lesser degrees, that the thugs must not be regarded as
exigent, dispossessed, or rebellious subjects; they are unlike the
bandits of folk myth in being devious, unmartial (“cowardly” is the
adjective most often used), and almost obscenely respectable.[12] They
are characterized instead as hereditary killers whose “joyous
occupation” was, paradoxically, not only a matter of caste duty and
therefore ontological necessity but also a prime instance of
unalienated labor. By the time we come to James Sleeman’s hagiographic
account of his grandfather’s exploits, the act of strangulation has
not only been uncoupled from the usual motives for murder but has
acquired a quasi-libidinal charge: “The taking of human life for the
sheer lust of killing was the Thugs’ main object: the plunder, however
pleasant, being a secondary consideration.…Here was no body of amateur
assassins, driven to crime by force of circumstance, but men of
seeming respectability and high intelligence, often occupying
positions of importance and responsibility in their normal lives,
secretly trained from boyhood to the highest degree of skill in
strangulation.” [13] Sleeman is not alone in this reading of the
combined erotic and religious investment in murder. Taylor, in
Confessions of a Thug, hints at the homoerotic subtext of a thug’s
murder of a handsome lad; and George MacMunn explicitly couples the
left-hand Tantrism (including exorbitant and unauthorized sexual acts)
of Kali worshipers with behaviors like thuggee and nationalist
violence:
The murder trials that have followed on the sedition and secret murder
cult in Bengal, and indeed throughout India, show in their records how
the Hindu student depraved and often injured by too early eroticism,
turns to the suggestiveness of the murder-monger, and worships the
nitro-glycerine bomb as the apotheosis of his goddess [Kali].…The
student and the assistant editor of the rag, that but exists to
inflame students and pays its way by advertising the potent
aphrodisiacs among them, are the nidus of the bomb-cult.[14]
Katherine Mayo also locates the worship of Kali, premature and
excessive sexual activity, and acts of anticolonial terrorism within a
single perceptual grid.[15] This confluence of violence, illegitimacy,
and homoerotic desire is to resurface in The Deceivers.
Some twentieth-century scholars of colonial history have sought to
posit alternative, materialist histories of the phenomenon called
thuggee. Hiralal Gupta traces the development of thuggee or banditry
in the early nineteenth century to the success of the East India
Company’s expansionist policy, speculating that a significant number
of people captured as thugs by the Thuggee and Dacoity Department in
the 1830s and 1840s were erstwhile soldiers or officials in the employ
of rulers whose states had recently come under British control. These
people were among those who had lost their employment or fallen from
favor as a result of the annexation or reconfiguration of the Indian
princely states.[16] Sandria Freitag on the other hand points to the
displacement of peripatetic groups as a result of the ousting of local
settled rulers who had traditionally provided some protection to such
groups and to the establishment of the land-revenue-based state as a
possible explanation for the instances of collective acts of violence.
She also glosses the violence of dacoits—as of similar groups—as bids
for power and upward social mobility that would have been acknowledged
as such and accommodated by precolonial Indian state formations.[17]
Stewart Gordon argues that the large number of marauding groups that
were jockeying for political power in Malwa (where most of the thugs
seemed to be based) in the late eighteenth century posed a threat to
the stable sources of revenue in the region and necessitated the
creation of external sources of revenue. Those designated thugs were
“locally recruited, locally based” marauders hired to plunder outside
the neighborhood, as it were, in order to make up for revenue that
might have been lost to larger marauding groups.[18]
As I have already mentioned, Englishmen were never targeted by the
thugs; a few of the written accounts attribute the unsolved murder of
a Lieutenant Maunsell (or Monsell) in 1812 to thugs (as does the film
version of The Deceivers [1987], which opens with that killing), but
most of the thuggee texts point to the fact that the British had no
personal investment in the problem. Almost unfailingly these accounts
point to the antithug campaigns as exemplary instances of the active
benevolence of British rule, so often unjustly maligned or compared
unfavorably with indigenous rule. James Sleeman, who is particularly
apoplectic on this issue, argues that twentieth-century Indian demands
for independence were in effect a call for a return to the days of
thuggee: “Had this small handful of British officials, scattered like
poppies in a corn-field, shown the slightest timidity in grappling
with this gigantic task, they would surely have fallen victims to the
Thugs at the outset, in which case millions of Indians alive to-day
would never have been born, including possibly those who now agitate
for a restoration of the conditions under which Thuggee thrived and
battened.” [19]
Colonial accounts thus represent thuggee as outside a realm of
political and economic rationality (since it is religiously
sanctioned, grounded in caste, and linked to exorbitant pleasures).
Nonetheless, as the obsessive invocations of the Mutiny of 1857 and of
the Bengal revolutionaries of the twentieth century indicate, thuggee
was simultaneously addressed (even if not overtly acknowledged) as a
peculiarly potent threat to the authority and benevolence of the
empire in India. “To the colonial regime,” writes David Arnold, “crime
and politics were almost inseparable: serious crime was an implicit
defiance of state authority and a possible prelude to rebellion;
political resistance was either a ‘crime’ or the likely occasion for
it.” [20] Freitag points to the departures of British police action
from those of their Mughal predecessors; while the Mughals delegated
responsibility for containing collective crime to local functionaries,
the British felt such corporate criminal behaviors were nothing other
than a defiance of the state itself.[21] She points to the fundamental
distinctions, in terms of both the allocation of resources and the
formulation of legal procedures, that the Raj made between crimes
committed by individuals (“ordinary crime”) and those committed by
collectivities (“extraordinary crime”):
Elaboration of legal codes and police establishments to deal with
individual crime conveyed the impression that “the rule of law” had
been introduced into British India; yet the annual compilation of
crime and police statistics makes clear the minimal state resources
committed to policing individual crime. Unless such crime grew
alarmingly in a short period, or its policing fell significantly short
of what came to be seen as the norms of efficiency (for an inefficient
force), the state did not reckon individual crime to be of great
importance. By contrast, however, the British perceived collectively
criminal actions to be either directed against, or weakening, the
authority of the state. As a consequence, the British repeatedly felt
the need to launch centralized police forces against “extraordinary”
crime and viewed their inefficacy as a measure of the Raj’s impotence.
[22]
The thuggee records (including the confessions of thug approvers)
endeavor to provide—through the dominant tropes of ritualized,
religiously ratified, and libidinally charged slaughter—a tightly
knit, seamless, and self-validating account of an exceptional Indian
criminal practice. Yet, even as the record invokes the unvarying
trademarks of thug practice, it inescapably registers the
provisionality of its own categorization. The thug’s signature—murder
by strangulation, using a (silk) handkerchief—does not appear in every
act labeled thuggee; swords and poison feature as agents of
destruction quite as much as the talismanic rumal (handkerchief). Such
wide variations along a continuum of criminal activity were to lead,
after the 1830s, to an expansion of the provenance of thuggee: the
term came to include all kinds of organized and corporate criminal
activity (including poisoning and the kidnapping of children) that was
understood to be hereditary and/or itinerant. The confessions also
seem to demonstrate that at least some thugs were initiated into
professional practice not in adolescence or early manhood by older
male family members but later in life, most typically in response to a
situation of financial exigency.
Not only was it difficult to isolate certain crimes as the acts of
thugs, it was never easy either to establish the exceptional and
profoundly aberrant character of thuggee. The common complaint in all
the thuggee accounts without exception is that the activity of the
thugs seemed to mesh with exasperating ease into existing indigenous
networks of wealth and power, since they were supported by zamindars
(landowners), Indian princes, law-enforcement officials, merchants,
and even ordinary people. As Freitag suggests, “among organized
criminals the thags may have been the group most thoroughly embedded
in local society.” [23] The worship of Kali (also called Devi, or
Bhawani) could not easily be coded as an eccentric religious practice
either. Though some narratives do interpret the thugs’ invocation of
the goddess on the scaffold as proof positive of guilt (“Their
invocation of Bhawani at the drop was a confession of their guilt, for
no one in such a situation invokes Bhawani but a Thug, and he invokes
no other deity in any situation, whatever may be his religion or sect”)
[24], they also point to the widespread adoration of Kali across
regions and religions, among those identified as law-abiding as well
as those constituted as criminal.[25] Finally, while Thug beliefs and
rituals, especially those enacted at the start of an expedition, were
elaborately detailed, it was also asserted that in India expeditions
in quest of plunder were qualitatively no different from expeditions
undertaken for territorial aggrandizement; rulers and robbers alike
took the auspices after the Dasehra festival, before setting out on
their badshashi kam (kingly work).
Hence at least two contesting readings emerge: one defines the thugs
as a community apart, existing in enmity against law-abiding,
scrutable, and locally anchored subjects; the other identifies them as
natural to indigenous society, aided and abetted by all, and mirroring
and reproducing that society’s values. The uneasy fit between the
contextualizing move and the essentializing one was productive of an
aporia, which could only be resolved by invoking that most powerful of
all Indological epistemes—that of caste.[26] All the contradictions
and the seemingly endless heterogeneity of the subject category of the
thug are subsumed within that category, which is reified as coherent
and inflexible and emptied of any possibility of subjective freedom.
Once thuggee as social alliance was taxonomized as homologous to, if
not identical with (and the slippage from homology to identity occurs
without any apparent discursive strain), a caste, the thug could
simultaneously inhabit what had earlier been discrepant subject
positions: he could simultaneously be an exceptional criminal and a
representative Hindu, or Indian, since in the colonial imaginary the
territory of Hinduism is often coextensive with that of India.[27]
Even this reconciliation was not without its tensions, of course,
since thuggee as a philosophical system and a social formation seemed
to work strongly against the grain of the received colonial view of
India as irrevocably fractured along the fault lines of caste and
religion.
Nor was the caste explanation completely adequate to the great and, as
it seemed, illogical hybridity of thuggee. As a socioreligious
formation thuggee seemed to colonial investigators to be aligned with
popular, indeed demotic, forms of Hinduism in its reverence for Kali,
except that it attracted a large number of Muslim adherents, who
seemed to pay homage quite unproblematically both to the goddess and
to the strictures of the Koran. Here it is important to point to the
varied, contingent, and often irreconcilable constructions of Hindu
tradition in colonial discourse; the representation of Hinduism in the
discourse of thuggee is, for instance, quite discontinuous with that
which is operative in the discourse on sati, which was formulated in a
roughly contemporaneous moment. In the case of sati, as Lata Mani has
argued, colonial officials made energetic and systematic attempts to
establish Hinduism as a religion of the book; and Brahmanical readings
and textual authorities were privileged over custom and local
religious and social practice.[28] But in the instance of thuggee,
Hinduism is defined entirely as and by custom. Moreover, at the
popular or subaltern level, Hindu and Muslim forms of worship and
systems of belief may well have been less distinct than they were to
become (especially for more elevated castes and classes) later in the
century. The whole question in fact of Hindu doctrine and praxis and
its relation to thug identity is notoriously murky and ill defined.
Further complicating this discursive construction of thuggee was the
fact that professional thugs cultivated the appearance of the most
civic-minded of citizens and were conscientious about the discharge of
familial, social, and religious obligations. The very characteristics
that made them successful con men—their polish, their social and
rhetorical skills, their extraordinary capacity for duplicating
identities—also ensured their immense respectability in civil society.
But what rendered thuggee particularly elusive and frustrating to
British observers was its relative invisibility, its skill at
camouflage, and the difficulty of establishing it as a pervasive yet
eccentric form of lawlessness. Thug murders were typically performed
without shedding blood and without using identifiable offensive
weapons of any kind: they were performed far from the victims’ homes,
and the bodies were carefully buried. Because of the care exercised in
the killing and the disposal of the corpses (victims were buried with
great dispatch, and their graves were filled with rocks to keep out
any marauding animals) and the hazards attendant upon travel in
nineteenth-century India, these murders generally failed to register
as murders. Local landowners, rulers, and policemen connived at these
murders for their own benefit, or because they were prompted, it was
argued, by the heavy demands of superstition; and the peasantry, we
are told, simply ignored the bodies that occasionally appeared in
fields and wells. This raised the question of how far the circuit of
criminality actually extended: if local officials and the police
tolerated and even encouraged thuggee and ordinary folk made no
complaint about it, who could be said to remain unimplicated in it?
Under the circumstances, everything and everyone was liable to
suspicion, since the system of thuggee was both remarkably inclusive
and remarkably discreet in its operations. Hence British thuggee
inspectors were in the discomfiting position of focusing on crimes
that no one else acknowledged, certainly not (from the evidence of
these writers) most Indian princes or zamindars or even common folk
and generally not even the majority of the British magistracy or the
civil service. British scholars of thuggee were thus involved in a
detective project hobbled by an almost-fatal lack of empirical detail.
All natives were potentially thugs, since the system of thuggee was
remarkably inclusive; and the most seemingly innocent objects, like
handkerchiefs or gur (unrefined sugar, ritually consumed at the
commencement of an expedition), could participate in a diabolical
signifying system. And while British ignorance of thuggee (at least
until the 1830s) might contrast favorably with Indian knowledge—and
therefore complicity—it was susceptible of more objectionable
interpretations; in Masters’s novel, there is the danger that British
“ignorance” of thuggee can be read by the natives in a particularly
unflattering light: “In the nine years of the English Company’s rule
nothing had been done against the Deceivers. But William realized now
that most Indians knew at least of the existence of the Deceivers;
and, knowing, they could not believe the English did not also know;
therefore the English officials too were sharing in the spoils; so
what was the use of informing?” [29] (In the film version, the Indians
have good reason to be suspicious: George Angelsmith, the exemplary
servant of the East India Company, has full knowledge of the
activities of the thugs and profits from it.) Here it is not simply
the natives who are the object of investigation, codification, and
supervision; an alternative modality of interpretation is imaginable,
in which colonial authority is itself open to variant readings,
including those it has not authorized.
All these factors made the retrieval of information and the policing
of thuggee particularly vexing. And creating an archive and
standardizing reader response was not easy either. Though each thuggee
expedition and each act of thuggee was performed by the book, attended
by minutely detailed rituals and scrupulously observed omens, and was
immediately identifiable as such to those who could read the signs, it
was not immediately visible as such to those who could not or did not
see thuggee as a semiosis. Even in the 1860s, when knowledge about
thuggee had been codified, circulated, and reproduced and was
underwritten by wide-ranging institutional and legal support, Charles
Hervey complained that his subordinates were yet imperfect readers of
the complex and mysterious text of thuggee,
some correctly recognizing Thuggee in instances which were palpably
the deed of experts, although death should not have taken place;
others only doing so where death had resulted; some classing certain
murders as cases of “Thuggee” without reference to the means resorted
to in the perpetration thereof; others who wholly pass by cases of
poisoning whether followed by death or not, although they bore
evidence of being the acts of class criminals; some who restrict their
notice to selected cases only of its occurrence, passing by other
similar instances; some who endeavour to distinguish between different
degrees of poisoning, some calling “murder by poison” Thugee [sic],
others not doing so[;]…others who lump all such kindred offences under
round numbers without any narration of the attendant circumstances,
contented only with quoting against them the sections of the Penal
Code under which they were triable or were tried.[30]
With all the discrepant valences of this discourse, one factor
remained crucial in the determination of thuggee: the idea of
hereditary criminality. This was not a particularly novel reading of
corporate criminal activity in colonial India; as far back as 1772,
the dacoits of Bengal were strenuously and repeatedly characterized
not as individual or collective subjects responding to socioeconomic
transformations engendered by the sudden ascendancy of the East India
Company or indeed to any other material circumstance, or even to
chance, but as fulfilling a hereditary calling, if not a genetic
predisposition.[31] And, as Sanjay Nigam has convincingly
demonstrated, the colonial reification of caste as coherent and
inflexible, combined with the received notion of hereditary
criminality (most fully exemplified in the instance of thuggee), was
to have a long and ominous history in colonial and postcolonial India;
the Criminal Tribes and Castes Act of 1872 was to designate (without
any possibility of appeal) a number of vagrant and impoverished
“communities” as “criminal by birth” and thus subject to surveillance,
control, and attempted rehabilitation.[32] I am struck here by the
considerable (though not complete) overlap of this discourse with
Michel Foucault’s description of the emergence of the homosexual as a
distinct ontological category in the nineteenth century:
The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case
history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life
form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and a mysterious
physiology. Nothing that went into his total composition was
unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him: at the
root of all his actions because it was their insidious and
indefinitely active principle; written immodestly on his face and body
because it was a secret that always gave itself away. It was
cosubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular
nature.…The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual
was now a species.[33]
Because thuggee was such a slippery issue, a kind of legal,
disciplinary, and discursive apparatus was brought to bear on it that
did not occur in the case for instance of sati, another retrograde and
horrific practice apparently authorized by Hinduism. This is not of
course to assert that sati as a discursive formation was unproblematic
for colonial administrators and reformers; Lata Mani has pointed that
the abolition of sati in colonial India was preceded by its
legalization and has drawn attention to the valorization of the
“voluntary” sati in colonial and nationalist discourses. But thuggee
was not so much spectacular—as sati was (at least until 1829)—as
invisible. As a result it was much more difficult to discursively
track its trajectory and to determine the success of the pacification.
Sati was abolished in 1829, and there are no official records after
that date of the practice; it was presumed that it had simply been
legislated out of existence. But in the instance of thuggee, such
faith in the efficacy of legislative sanction is much more uncertain.
In the juridical domain, thuggee was defined as an “exceptional case”
in the name of a colonial contingency, since thuggee by definition was
exorbitant to standard law-and-order discourse and marked at all
points by immoderation.[34] This enabled the establishment of a
discursive and juridical system that was entirely self-referential and
self-validating, in which it was sufficient to be identified as a thug
or “hereditary criminal” through an approver’s testimony, without
actually being convicted of a specific crime, to be liable to arrest,
trial, and, almost inevitably, conviction. I will return to this
shortly.
Knowledge of thuggee as an essence then had to be constructed,
crucially, around an absence; and all the confessions, all the subject
effects produced by the testimony of approvers, were a strenuous
effort to recover a “consciousness,” a consciousness that would
provide the foundation for the revelations that ratified the antithug
campaign. But if thuggee was as far-reaching and as subtle as W. H.
Sleeman and his associates insisted, and if thug ontology and practice
was determined by birth, how could an Englishman ever hope to know the
whole truth and nothing but the truth? How could one verify the
confessions of the approvers and establish checks over their control
of the official record? Thornton registers exasperation at the
contaminated nature of the confessions: “Few things are more difficult
to a native of India than to tell the truth, under any circumstances;
and the confessions of criminals, in all countries, may be expected to
contain a mixture of truth and falsehood. The deposition of Moklal is
not consistent with the rest; nor even with another statement made by
himself, made in conversation with Captain Sleeman.” [35] He also
cites (as do other accounts of thuggee) the instance of an approver
who functioned as a double agent, beguiling his English employer into
believing him committed to the capture of thugs while providing
information and English passes [documents authorizing unimpeded travel
within, and between, designated territories] to his criminal comrades.
[36]
While James Sleeman claims that W. H. Sleeman and his colleagues, in
the 1830s, “resolved that this trade of Thuggee should no longer be
any more a mystery than tailoring or carpentering, began to initiate
themselves into all the secrets of the craft, and were soon, in their
knowledge of the theory of the profession, little behind the
professors themselves,” [37] the “secrecy” of thuggee never
disappeared as a threat. W. H. Sleeman—speaking of course with the
superior wisdom of his newfound knowledge—records a state preceding
revelation with combined horror and incredulity:
While I was in the Civil charge of the district of Nursingpore…no
ordinary robbery or theft could be committed without my being
acquainted with it; nor was there a robber or a thief of the ordinary
kind in the district, with whose character I had not become acquainted
in the discharge of my duty as magistrate; and if any man had then
told me, that a gang of assassins by profession resided in the village
of Kandelee, not four hundred yards from my court, and that [in the]
extensive groves of the village of Mandesur, only one stage from me…
was one of the largest Beles, or places of murder in all India; and
that large gangs from Hindustan and the Deccan used to rendezvous in
these groves, remain in them for many days altogether every year, and
carry their dreadful trade along all the lines of road that pass by
and branch off them, with the knowledge and connivance of the two
landholders by whose ancestors these groves had been planted, I should
have thought him a fool or a mad man; and yet nothing could have been
more true.[38]
Indeed, the entire discourse of thuggee is troped by figures of
darkness, mystery, inscrutability, unpredictability, and unexpected
menace, even as W. H. Sleeman and his assistants are inserted into a
heroic narrative of battle against evil. “Secrecy is indispensable”
for thug ceremonies, and “[a]n impenetrable veil of darkness is thrown
over their atrocities”;[39] “danger was everywhere, unseen and
unexpected” [40] for the Englishmen involved in the anti-thuggee
enterprise (even though Englishmen were known never to be attacked by
thugs); they were like “men isolated in the midst of a dangerous,
trackless and gloomy jungle, without map or compass”;[41] and “[the]
old Thug Associations, which have been now effectually put down in all
parts of India,…would assuredly rise up again, and flourish under the
assurance of religious sanction,…were the strength of the special
police, employed in the suppression, hastily reduced, or its vigilance
relaxed.” [42] Once again, Foucault on the discourse of sex and
sexuality is apropos: “What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact,
is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they
dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting
it as the secret.” [43]
This very obscurity, this elusiveness that characterizes the thug as
discursive object, could and did function as an enabling moment for
the colonial law-and-order machine. Since it could never be decisively
established—given the terms of the discourse—that thuggee had been
extirpated, the need for endless vigilance was ratified. The moral
viability of the civilizing mission, indeed the very ground of its
possibility, is the never-satisfied, endlessly proliferating need for
reform. In the case of thuggee, colonial officials were confirmed in
their belief that the work of civilizing is never done. Thus many
writers warn repeatedly of the dangers of celebrating the demise of
thuggee prematurely; in 1893, Charles Hervey, successor to Colonel W.
H. Sleeman of thuggee fame, was still chasing after thugs. These
officers point not only to the hypnotic lure of thuggee for its
practitioners but also to the fact that native policemen and landlords
are only too anxious to conceal evidence of thug crimes from credulous
British officials overeager to congratulate themselves on the
cessation of this practice and overoptimistic about the all-
encompassing vigilance of colonial power. Thuggee never really goes
away as a present problem as sati might be said to do; it may almost
be said to function as a trope for all that is uncontrollable in the
law-and-order situation. In fact, the construction of hereditary,
pervasive, and socially or religiously sanctioned criminality
inaugurated in the discourse on thuggee reappears throughout the
nineteenth century in the discourse on dacoits, buddhuks, dhatoora
poisoners (all of whom came to occupy the same criminal category as
the thug), and specifically designated criminal tribes and castes.
How else might we understand this absence or unknowability that tropes
the discourse of thuggee? Certainly this simultaneous fear of and
pleasure in the duplicity and omnipresence of the thug deserves some
consideration, especially in light of the questions it raises about
the status of knowledge, subject positions, and representation in the
colonial state. Bhabha’s model of the emergence of shifty civil
subject of the colonial polity through mimicry can be extended here,
it seems to me, to some of the other possibilities of mimicry in the
colonial theater.[44] The situation of the thug is analogous to but
certainly not identical to that of the not quite/not white native—the
thug after all is not mimicking colonial ontology—though his capacity
for traffic in identities and positions is staggering. The instance of
thuggee intimates, I think, that the colonized subject’s mimicry need
not necessarily have the colonizer as its focus in order to function
as menace; mimicry, even if it is mimicry of indigenous subject
positions, frustrates the colonial desire for homogenized, duplicable,
and knowable native subjects in whom subalternity is sought to be
reproduced through the authorized version of mimicry. If there is one
thing that characterizes the thug of the archives, it is the
multiplicity and unpredictability of his manifestations. As we have
seen, it was what was perceived as this faculty for disguise and
invisibility that had to be criminalized by the laws designed to
convict thugs; theoretically there was no such entity as an honest
thug, and many so-called thugs were convicted who were, according to
the official records, engaged in “honest labour.” There is an ongoing
and strenuous endeavor in the discourse of thuggee to interpellate the
thug as an essence, a move which attests to the anxiety of rupture
that subtends the totalizing epistemologies of colonialism. Yet the
thug as discursive object is strikingly resistant to such fixity; he
is all things to all people. If native identity can be staged, can be
plural, then what are the implications for colonial authority and
colonialism’s project of information retrieval? Thuggee, I would
suggest, introduces a disturbance in the paradigm of information
retrieval that often seems dominant in texts like Kim and A Personal
Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, as well as the
notion of native authenticity and ontological purity that is a
governing trope of colonial discourse. The thug, through his capacity
for disguise and impersonation and his skill at negotiating multiple
and competing identities, usurps the colonizer’s privilege of complex
subjectivity and of movement between subject positions and thus can be
read to assume some control over both the construction and flow of
colonial knowledge. So he never becomes fully naturalized as the
disciplinary subject or, in other words, the knowable subject, of the
colonial polity. And thuggee, later rewritten as dacoity, continues to
function within the law-and-order context in the colonial and
postcolonial state formations as a trope for the unruly and
unreformable energies that cannot easily be accommodated to the needs
of the civilizing mission.[45]
• • •
The Law
The writings and reports of W. H. Sleeman, which form the core texts
around which the tale of thuggee is orchestrated, represent a
concerted and monumental effort to illuminate and classify the
obscurity of thuggee. Sleeman emerges, in both nineteenth- and
twentieth-century accounts of thuggee, as the hero of his own story.
Even those works, like George Bruce’s The Stranglers and James
Sleeman’s Thug, or A Million Murders, that purport to be histories of
the thugs rather than biographies, present the account of thuggee as
coextensive with the life of Sleeman. Sleeman emerges from these texts
(and his own, of course) as an exemplary figure in nineteenth-century
criminal and judicial procedures, who undertakes a self-appointed
messianic task of uncovering and reading. Nothing in his story happens
by chance. The discovery of the scope of thuggee as a result of
Feringheea’s confession is (re)written as an inevitability in the task
of reconstructing thuggee, and Sleeman’s anti-thuggee efforts traced
back to the moment of his arrival in India in 1809. All of Sleeman’s
life and work before 1830 is thus written as a prelude to the
climactic scenes of thug hunting and as a preparation for reading the
mysteries of this esoteric Indian cult. Sleeman above all is
transformed in this telling into an almost Saidean figure of
knowledge; he is the shikari (hunter) who, with his gift of languages,
long residence in India without being “Orientalized,” and experience
in war and in settling newly conquered territories, can present an
ideal model of the exegete. Though a crime like thuggee is quite
literally inconceivable to those “living under an efficient
government,” Sleeman is no Inspector Clouseau, no naive Englishman who
stumbles unaware upon a vast organized conspiracy. He knows what he is
looking for; indeed, Tuker’s biography imagines Sleeman becoming the
butt of his colleagues’ jokes during his early years in India because
of his eagerness to “discover” thuggee.[46] In this telling, thuggee
predates Sleeman; indeed, it is as old as India itself. Yet the text
of thuggee remains unread until Sleeman, the reader-as-savior,
provides the hermeneutic key to the mystery. He establishes the
exceptional quality of thuggee, distinguishing it from outlawry,
banditry, and other illegalities necessitated by privation; he
establishes the story of thuggee as a moral narrative and embeds it in
the culture of an Orientalist India.
The man whose ideal was, like that of a Sherlock Holmes, “to be
everywhere, and to see everything,” [47] proved phenomenally successful
—in his own terms—at cracking the code of thuggee. He showed a
remarkable capacity—far greater than that of Sherwood or even that of
the few officers who had harassed the thugs in the early decades of
the century—to globalize and codify discrete accounts of crimes in
different times and places into a metanarrative of hereditary crime.
On the evidence of approvers, he created gigantic and detailed “family
trees” of captured and uncaptured thugs that provided copious details
of each man’s crimes, place of origin, place in the caste hierarchy,
and personal and professional antecedents; he also mapped out all the
bhils (places of slaughter and burial) in central India. Every thug
could then be located on Sleeman’s gigantic grid, and information and
operations were centralized. The local knowledge of the approvers now
became part of a giant signifying chain. For the thug, there was no
escape: his history and his nature were always already known to the
all-seeing eyes of the colonial bureaucracy and criminal-justice
system; his experience formed a narrative even before he made his
confession and was in no way dependent on it. As Ameer Ali says in
Confessions of a Thug, “The man unfolded a roll of paper written in
Persian, and read a catalogue of crime, of murders, every one of which
I knew to be true; a faithful record it was of my past life, with but
few omissions.” [48] Sleeman also prepared a dictionary of Ramasee,
the secret language of the criminal fraternity, with a vocabulary made
up entirely of descriptions of criminal actions. This linguistic,
geographic, and genealogical grid left out little that was germane to
the needs of criminal justice in colonial India:
I have, I believe, entered in this vocabulary every thing to which
Thugs in any part of India have thought it necessary to assign a
peculiar term; and every term peculiar to their associations with
which I have yet become acquainted. I am satisfied that there is no
term, no rite, no ceremony, no opinion, no omen or usage that they
have intentionally concealed from me; and if any have been
accidentally omitted after the numerous narratives that I have had to
record, and cases to investigate, they can be but comparatively very
few and unimportant.[49]
The doctrine of thuggee was not simply a novel yet apposite way of
reading Indian criminality at a moment when the pressures to reform
the East India Company by reforming India were particularly marked.
The consequences of the discovery of thuggee were, in other words, not
simply a philosophical reconstellation of Indian criminality. Thuggee
also gave rise to a veritable cottage industry of policing and
surveillance techniques, as well as ethnographic documentation. Like
the system it purported to study, the discourse on thuggee was
totalizing in its scope. In the juridical domain, thuggee was defined
as an “exceptional case”; this enabled the establishment of a
radically new machinery of arrest, conviction, and punishment in thug
trials. The production of penal truth in thug trials proved, as we
have seen, notoriously difficult. Since thugs were peripatetic
operatives, who always committed their crimes far from home and
disposed of their plunder quickly, evidence was not only destroyed but
questions were raised about jurisdictional authority. Local
functionaries were not just uncooperative; many were allegedly bound
by a utilitarian calculus to thug gangs. In addition, the relatives of
the putative victims displayed no zeal in the punishment of crime or
the redress of wrongs; the vast majority refused to identify those
missing as murdered at all. This uncooperative behavior was attributed
to their fatalistic acceptance of all disasters (including,
apparently, cholera, poisonous snakes, and sudden death). Even when
thugs were captured, convicting them was rendered even more
troublesome by the fact that Muslim criminal law disallowed the
testimony of approvers.
The lack of independent witnesses, the unavailability in many cases of
both bodies and booty—the sheer paucity of positivist evidence, in
other words—could only be resolved in one way. The most important
criminal conspiracy of the century (of all time, some of the authors
claimed) could be adequately engaged only by a new conception of law.
Many of the tactics adopted by those spearheading the antithug drive
were not novel but had been pioneered earlier in Bengal; however, it
was the Thuggee and Dacoity Department’s use of these tactics that
proved not only successful but replicable.[50] Since the law as
currently defined made the complicity of individuals in particular
crimes almost impossible to establish, specific criminal acts were no
longer punishable as such. Instead, it was a subject position, or
rather, an ontology, that was criminalized. It was enough to be a
thug, without actually being convicted of a specific act of thuggee,
to be liable to the exorbitant measures of the Thuggee and Dacoity
Department. As Radhika Singha wrote, “The strangest feature of this
enactment was the use of a cant term ‘Thugs’ without explaining what
precisely the offence of ‘Thuggee’ was. That such a term was
acceptable at a time when a penal code upholding precision and
exactness was on the agenda is an indication of the success of a
publicist campaign in official circles.” [51] Act XXX of 1836 directed
that any person who was convicted of “having belonged to a gang of
Thugs, [was] liable to the penalty of imprisonment for life; and
[that] any person, accused of the offence, made punishable by the Act,
[was] liable to be tried by any Court, which would have been competent
to try him, if his offence had been committed within the district
where that Court sits.” [52] (Act XXIV of 1843 extended the punitive
sanctions of the thuggee laws to those found guilty of belonging to
dacoit gangs.) Act XXX also dispensed with the last vestiges of Muslim
criminal law (which is said to have provided greater protections for
the accused and greater clemency for the convicted than the Thuggee
and Dacoity Department thought advisable for those standing trial as
thugs) by doing away with the necessity for the fatwa (formal legal
opinion) of the Muslim law officer. It applied with retrospective
effect, and it established special courts for the trial of thugs—
including those captured outside company territory, within the
kingdoms of the Indian princes—often with special magistrates
appointed by the governor-general. It permitted the arrest of entire
families, including women and children, as legitimate means of
entrapping active (male) thugs; since thuggee was supposed to be a
family affair anyway, transmitted in the genes and passed on from
father to son, wives and children were also fit targets for the
colonial state’s punitive and corrective measures. The act admitted
the testimony of approvers in lieu of the testimony of independent
witnesses (which had been disallowed under Islamic law), a move which
created a remarkable mechanics of truth production and conviction.
(Act XIX of 1837, under the direction of Macaulay, did away with this
“dual standard of evidence” in criminal law by making the testimony of
approvers admissible in all courts of law, not just those prosecuting
cases of thuggee.)[53] Yet it is by no means to be assumed that
empiricism and observation were peripheral to the process, though it
was observation of a very carefully demarcated kind; there is in the
colonial archive an overwhelming weight given to the experiential
dimension of the knowledge of such canonical figures as Sleeman. All
disagreements encountered on the British side are attributed to
inexperience, to the lack of a proper interpretive framework within
which to place certain kinds of discoveries, or to a willful
ingenuousness about the success of British rule.
The definition of thuggee as a form of hereditary, corporate, and
religiously sanctioned identity allowed for no appeal by a thug
convicted under its special decrees; in theory—and in practice—there
was no such entity as an innocent thug. All those identified as thugs
by approvers’ testimony were automatically guilty, even if no specific
crimes could be proved against them and even if there was no (other)
evidence of their ever having associated with other thugs. Once the
thug hunts began, criminal activity was not always necessary for
arrest and conviction; even those “thugs” engaged in “honest
labour” (a theoretical impossibility, given the terms of the
discourse) were rounded up, tried, convicted, and imprisoned since the
compelling, hereditary lure of thuggee was always latent in the thug.
An overwhelmingly high proportion of those arrested were convicted, a
fact which validated, the Thuggee and Dacoity Department believed, the
thoroughness of its efforts and the justice of its cause.
Confessions were key to the discursive constitution of thuggee; not so
much at the actual thug trials as in the manifold accounts of thuggee
that were produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Meadows
Taylor’s novel, as far as structural organization is concerned, reads
not very differently from the nonfictional official accounts of
thuggee: a brief introduction followed by hundreds of pages of
confession, interspersed more and more intermittently by the
narrator’s moral commentary. The confessional mode lent itself nicely
to the narrative conventions and imperatives of the nineteenth-century
English novel, which encompassed both the Newgate novel and the
spiritual autobiography.
One of the best approvers, Bukhtawar, provided a confession (which I
quoted at the beginning of this chapter) that was a model for all thug
confessions: “I am a Thug, my father and grandfather were Thugs, and I
have thugged with many. Let the government employ me and I will do its
work.” [54] The confessions serve not to elicit what is not already
known but to authenticate and authorize official knowledge of thuggee
in general and specific crimes in particular, as well as to produce
the thug as (colonial) criminal subject. For Foucault, the confession
“transcend[s] all other evidence; an element in the calculation of the
truth, it [is] also the act by which the accused accept[s] the charge
and recognize[s] its truth; it transform[s] an investigation carried
out without him into a voluntary affirmation. Through the confession,
the accused himself [takes] part in the ritual of producing penal
truth.” [55] In the eyes of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department, a
failure to confess was evidence less of innocence than of hardihood
and an acquaintance with the byzantine ramifications of Indian
criminal law.
And yet these confessions that dominate and drive all accounts of
thuggee are not confessions as such, but approver’s testimonies; the
two, as Shahid Amin so appositely reminds us, are not identical. For
while the confession proper seeks to dilute the guilt of the
confessing subject, the approver’s testimony, to be fully credible in
the eyes of the law, must implicate its speaker as fully as possible
in the illegality being described.[56]
The fact that approvers’ testimony was “tainted” and that they might
either wittingly or unwittingly implicate the innocent was undeniably
an issue, though anxiety on the score was aired only to be promptly
shown up as unfounded. The thuggee records continually stress the ways
in which the truth of each approver’s testimony was tested against all
the others. But even in these official accounts, it does not escape
remark that the approvers’ testimony regarding dates and other details
do not always match,[57] though all discursive contradictions are
always sought to be smoothed away. Bruce, who is the only one to raise
overtly the possibility of the conviction of the innocent, blames not
the system but its most visible instruments, the approvers: “Were
innocent men convicted upon the evidence of revengeful informers?.…
Those Thugs who were no longer free to strangle on the roads may have
conspired together to send victims to the gallows instead, for by
killing in this way they could at once show Kali their continued
devotion and save their own lives.” [58] These testimonies were not
required, under Act XXX, to be matched against the reports of
independent witnesses or against the weight of circumstantial
evidence; and none of the accused had the benefit of counsel, so the
approvers were never cross-examined by anyone other than the officers
of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department.
Even though the approvers were indispensable for forming the text of
thuggee and for prosecuting thugs, their own status remained somewhat
nebulous. On making “a full and ingenuous confession,” an approver
would be eligible to have his sentence of hanging or transportation
commuted. But an approver could never be released, since the lure of
the rumal made him irreclaimable for honest society. It was also
necessary that all approvers be convicted (not just arrested) thugs,
since it was contrary to the nature of British justice to hold its
subjects indefinitely without trial. How, though, could the government
convict approvers when it had no evidence except for what they
provided? The solution was to advise approvers to plead guilty to the
general charge of being thugs, under the provisions of Act XXX, rather
than to plead guilty to the charge of committing specific capital
crimes (which could result in the death penalty); this would ensure
their conviction, and then they could be held for life without
questioning the authority that held them.[59] It was easier and more
useful to hold approvers than to hang them; and they needed to be held
forever in order to ensure the uninterrupted production of truths
about thuggee. The above proceeding did away with the necessity of a
regular trial (that is to say, one conducted under the special courts
established by Act XXX) by having one whose outcome was known in
advance; and it guaranteed that there would be no escape from the
government’s mercy.
Truth production and conviction was only part of the job of the
Thuggee and Dacoity Department. Rehabilitation was also part of the
program, though the official wisdom on rehabilitation was marked by
considerable ambivalence. To be a part of a moral narrative, the
antithug campaign could not be purely punitive in nature, especially
in the instance of those prisoners who had not been convicted of
particular capital crimes. At the same time, if thugs were hereditary
murderers who found the call to blood irresistible, they were not
reformable subjects. The government’s response to the problem of
identity and rehabilitation was, even in its own terms, a markedly
uneven and patently hierarchized one. Some of the most distinguished
among the thugs were recruited into the police force. Some others were
rewarded by W. H. Sleeman by being allowed to live near him with their
families and followers in his compound, an arrangement about which
Freitag observes: “The similarity between the spatial and
psychological configurations of his compound and those of thag-
landlord relations in a village is not coincidental.” [60] Other thug
approvers and prisoners and their families were settled in colonies
and put to manual labor; from being dishonest and itinerant, they were
compelled to be poor and settled. The focus of reform was the children
of the thugs: they were taught various skills, though not taught to
read and write (because it would make them dissatisfied with their
condition). The sexuality of the sons of the thugs was strictly
regulated; they were not allowed to marry and breed a new generation
of thugs. (A female thug was a rarity and was, presumably, a less
potent conduit of the genetic material of hereditary criminality than
was a male.)
Mature thugs, however, were less easily assimilable into a regime of
morality and normalcy. Even captured thugs and informers emerge in the
reports as notoriously impervious to all efforts at moral
transformation. They repudiate repentance and reform, ascribing their
cooperation entirely to pragmatic motives and describing their
activities in professional terms, without the obligatory change of
heart normally central to the confessional narrative. Not only that,
they understand their present circumstances in terms of their failure
to observe omens and follow proscriptions and to be fully professional
about their work; the official success against themselves is simply
the result of the East India Company’s iqbal (good fortune), not its
moral or religious superiority or even its greater strategic skill.
They seem to refuse in other words to be drawn into the moral
narrative of the civilizing mission (though it must always be
remembered that the production of the thug as unreformable subject was
not necessarily contrary to the aims of the discourse on thuggee). The
following is a typical exchange; the questioner is presumably W. H.
Sleeman, the respondents thug informers:
Q:
If Davey’s displeasure visits all who punish Thugs, how is it that you
all escape so well?
Moradun:
Davey’s anger visited us when we were seized. That was the effect of
her resentment; she cast us off then and takes no notice of us now.
Q:
And if you were to return to Thuggee, she would still guide and
protect you?
Moradun:
Yes, but what gang would now receive us?
Q:
And are you not afraid to assist in suppressing Thuggee?
Moradun:
No; we see God is assisting you, and that Davey has withdrawn her
protection on account of our transgressions. We have sadly neglected
her worship. God knows in what it will all end.
Q:
True, God only knows; but we hope it will end in the entire
suppression of this wicked and foolish system; and in the conviction
on your part that Davey has really nothing to do with it.
Nasir:
That Davey instituted Thuggee, and supported it as long as we attended
to her omens, and observed the rules framed by the wisdom of our
ancestors, nothing in the world can ever make us doubt.[61]
• • •
The Englishman
This section, on The Deceivers, John Masters’s novel about thuggee,
serves as a (deconstructive) supplement to the official narrative of
the thug, in taking up some of the questions and figures that occupy a
recessive status in that account. Here we see that if the thug of the
archive provides one (admittedly slippery and fixed at the same time)
model of staging identities, there is another model that is crucial
for a comprehension of the thug-English engagement. This model is the
obverse of the process that generates the mimic man of colonial
discourse; it is the lure of going native. The term here both
resonates with and fails to correspond to the mimetic model provided
by Burton in the last chapter.[62] The will to mimicry governs
(Indian) thug and Englishman alike, as we shall see in The Deceivers,
where the plot is driven—as is the thug archive—by a fascination with
the absent and never fully recuperable thug. In engaging this
scenario, the novel also recasts the paradigmatic narrative of
mimicry, in which the native may mimic the colonizer but without any
access to essential Englishness, while the colonizer can trade
identities freely, with no strings attached, without actually being
interpellated as a colonized subject. The Deceivers makes manifest the
precariousness of such self-possession.
The dialectical dependence of the fantasy of complete knowledge on the
paranoid fear of native inscrutability is staged in this novel, where
there is a suturing of the ostensibly antithetical figures of the
English policeman and the thug approver. This novel allows for an
examination of the tension between the received wisdom about thuggee
and some of the marginal issues located at the pressure points of the
official discourse. This novel tells the story of William Savage, a
mediocre and distinctly unheroic English magistrate. Wracked by sexual
and professional anxieties, an alienated subject of the British
colonial machine in India, and sneakingly sympathetic to such Indian
customs as sati, he transforms himself into the exemplary colonial
officer by taking on—albeit temporarily—the calling of the thug. At
the urging of his young wife, Mary, he initially takes on the persona
of the absent Gopal the weaver in order to save Gopal’s wife from
sati; he, however, meets the renegade thug Hussein and decides to
continue as Gopal in order to track down the thugs. Once he assumes
the role, he finds himself powerfully drawn to the practice and goes
on to become a noted thug leader. He does not continue as a thug, of
course—even though at one point Hussein suggests to Savage that the
East India Company become a sponsor of thugs, like the other rulers of
the land; with a little help from his newly (re)constructed
Englishness and his friends, he returns to propriety at the end. (The
Merchant Ivory film production is even more skeptical than the novel
is of the progressivist teleology of the civilizing mission, as well
as of its “success”: in the film, George Angelsmith is led off in
chains, but Savage, estranged from his wife and his Christian god and
unable to prevent the sati that he has actually made possible, is
destined to be perpetually haunted by Kali.)
The Deceivers considers the unspoken and unspeakable possibility that
subtends so much of colonial discourse: what if identity can be
unhinged from race and national origin? And if (racial/national)
identity is unstable and subject to negotiation with each crossing of
a frontier, then in the name of what telos or destiny does Englishness
speak? What if, as R. Radhakrishnan so compellingly asks, on the
subject of diasporic, transnational culture, “identities and
ethnicities are not a matter of fixed and stable selves but rather the
results and products of fortuitous travels and recontextualizations?…
Is ethnicity nothing but, to use the familiar formula, what ethnicity
does?” [63] In the more lurid enactments of this alternative history,
a Kurtz, representing the loftiest intellectual and ethical
possibilities of the Enlightenment, can “go native” in the Dark
Continent. But, closer to “home,” there were, as Arnold has revealed,
more troubling English subjects—those poor white orphans and vagrants
(who were to have their own moment of glory in Kim) who lived lives
not often distinguishable from those of lower-class Indians.[64]
William Savage, the protagonist of The Deceivers, is located somewhere
between these two subject positions.
Despite the putative restoration to wholeness, Englishness, and
legality of William Savage at the close of the story, the narrative
nonetheless opens up a space for investigating the “double and split
subject” of the colonial enunciation, for what Bhabha calls—in the
context of the nation’s fissured enunciation—“dissemi-nation”: “a
space that is internally marked by cultural difference and the
heterogeneous histories of contending peoples, antagonistic
authorities, and tense cultural locations.” [65] As in the case of so
many other Englishmen, Savage will have to turn to Indianness in order
to return to or consolidate or improve his English self; in doing so,
he will come back as a new and more English Englishman, but he will
also, temporarily at least, be transformed into a border subject,
changed by his experience of Indianness, surrendering illusions of
full autonomy and Englishness in the crossing of boundaries. Here I
invoke Burton again as a point of reference. Burton had an
occasionally vexed relationship with national identity: his ancestry
was partly Irish and Welsh, and he grew up on the Continent, only
coming to live in England in his late teens. Yet for him identity,
whatever guises it might assume and however far it might roam, is
usually more persuasively anchored than is that of Masters’s
protagonist in an imperial Englishness. Burton can be, at different
times, a West Asian merchant or a Muslim hajji, but his identities are
clearly hierarchized and more manipulable than Savage’s. While the
success of his passing is always, in a sense, conditional upon his
being a man from elsewhere/nowhere, he can also claim nativeness as
his own production, wrenching an (imaginary) autonomy from the
dominion of necessity. Savage passes through Indianness en route to
Englishness, but, unlike Burton, he cannot pass in and out without
constraint. Indianness, while indispensable to Englishness, must also
be violently cast out if Englishness is to be secure(d). In The
Deceivers, identity is the locus of strain and contradiction. For
Savage, identity cannot be expansive, assimilationist, and pluralist;
each new identity competes with and displaces the last. That is why
Savage can at the end afford to take no prisoners or recruit any
approvers from among his erstwhile comrades; the thugs whom he has led
and who are now pursuing him must be wiped out in an act of punitive
and frenzied brutality that not only precludes the need for approvers
but also does away with any witnesses against, and rem(a)inders of,
his own thug self.
The Deceivers stages, indeed foregrounds, the positionality and
politics of that ordinarily self-effacing hero of thug narration, the
investigator, and the plurality of determinations that produces him.
In this context, Gayatri Spivak’s cautionary reminders about the
urgent necessity of disallowing the neutrality of the intellectual or
investigator should be borne in mind. In “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
she proffers a critique of the sanctioned myopia of the Foucault and
Deleuze of “Intellectuals and Power,” who are unable or unwilling to
acknowledge the complicity of the intellectual in the mechanisms that
produce representations of subaltern subjects and groups and who fail
to recognize that subaltern subjects are constrained to fashion
themselves in terms of already scripted epistemologies.[66] Her
introduction to Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi” resonates with, and
provides another useful point of entry into, this problematic of
reading and engagement; the usefulness of deconstruction, she tells
us, lies in “the recognition,…of provisional and intractable starting
points in any investigative effort; its disclosure of complicities
where a will to knowledge would create oppositions; its insistence
that in disclosing complicities the critic-as-subject is herself
complicit with the object of her critique; its emphasis upon ‘history’
and upon the ethico-political as the ‘trace’ of that complicity—the
proof that we do not inhabit a clearly defined critical space free of
such traces.” [67] Where in the archives the English scribe was
progressively effaced from the scene of the crime as well as the scene
of writing, no such modesty is permitted the protagonist of Masters’s
novel. The novel accents above all his position of enunciation. He
cannot be, as in the normative thug account, the neutral conduit of
something clearly identified as a thug consciousness: the thug’s voice
cannot but inscribe Savage as both subject and object of his own
discourse.
The central aspect of Savage’s mission is not merely to bear witness;
he must above all produce a record, transform that irreducible
obscurity, that absence that is Indian corporate criminal activity,
into what Spivak terms an “interpretable text.” This of course was the
primary gift of Sleeman and his associates to the criminal justice
system in colonial India—to synthesize various and discrepant
occurrences as a semiosis under centralized control; against thuggee—
conceived of as a vast, well-articulated, and centralized conspiracy—
could be opposed the concentrated power/knowledge of the state. What
is required is a text and a model of reading that is reproducible in
the different temporalities and contexts of the colonial polity in
India. However, the novel intimates the limitations and complexities
of authorial intention. Savage produces his account in a condition of
profound subjective instability, opening his text up to multiple and
mutually contentious readings: “He had met hundreds of other
Deceivers, and the notes were a complete tale of all he had seen and
heard and done; of all the Deceivers who had engaged in any action,
with their descriptions, habits, and homes; of each murder, and how it
had gone, and how it might have been prevented—or improved upon. The
words could be read for either purpose, according to the spirit of the
reader” (p. 223). Above all, Savage’s account draws attention to the
transactional nature of reading. What ought to be a classic of
information retrieval and a master text on thuggee for colonial
authority is also a text for other thugs, a manual for reproducing
thug practice. Savage’s text (within the text of the Masters novel),
even though cast in the model of strict representational realism, is
susceptible of an Other reading; its meanings are ambushed, deflected,
and augmented en route to a destination it can never reach. The
Thuggee and Dacoity Department strove to produce, in its extensive
records on thug affiliation and activity, a text without nuances or
fissures, something that was not susceptible of any misreadings or
contesting interpretations. It sought, in its meticulous record
keeping and its attempts to square all the approvers’ testimonies with
each other and make them speak with one voice, to produce a record
that would have what was presumed to be the authority of material
fact. But for Savage, at least, it is impossible to engage in such an
enterprise without also inscribing his own complicity in his
testimonial. In this respect, he does approximate the classic approver
of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department, who cannot bear witness against
others without simultaneously bearing witness against himself.
While the novel insists that only impersonation can yield the truth,
it also illuminates the heterodox desires that underlie the exercise
of going native. Moreover, this impersonation is quite detached from
any agency on the part of William Savage and from any sense of
originary identity. Forced into the disguise of the Indian weaver
Gopal (by the patel [village headman] Chandra Sen) in an unwilling and
ultimately fruitless attempt to save a would-be sati, he is recognized
as an impostor by Hussein. Hussein is ideal material for an approver:
he has brains, courage, and resourcefulness, and he is remarkably
eager to undo the institution of thuggee, but his testimony alone is
not enough to compel belief in the practice. So he recruits an
Englishman to the anti-thuggee cause, knowing that only he can be
fully convincing as a figure of knowledge. And this knowledge can only
be acquired experientially, and by going outside the law as currently
constituted, as Savage learns when he follows the more conventional
methods of information retrieval. As Hussein says,
Several times some English official or other has got hold of
information about us. Then he has chased us out of his district, and
reported, I suppose. But they’ve never worked together, and it always
blew over. They’ll never destroy us until one of them finds out
everything, and forces the Lat Sahib [the governor-general] to believe
everything, and plans a campaign to cover all India. And that one who
finds out must fear Kali, or he will not understand her. But he must
not love her. (p. 208)
Unable to ignore the thugs as the other English functionaries are
ready to do, eager to discard the Englishness he so uncomfortably
inhabits, and pressured by Hussein and Mary, Savage decides to
continue as Gopal the weaver, who, as it turns out, is also Gopal the
thug. For an unsuccessful and insecure man like Savage, wracked by
anxieties about (heterosexual) masculinity and Englishness, it is the
very abdication of authority involved in playing a thug that is
peculiarly attractive; inhabiting the subject position of the most
criminalized and most scrutinized indigenous subject holds out the
promise of psychic satisfactions not ordinarily available to colonial
authority.
The novel dallies with the idea (as many crime fictions often do,
though less explicitly) of the fragility of the barriers that separate
the custodian of law and morality from the criminal. It actually makes
available the proposition (though it has to drop it at the end) that
Savage is at heart a thug and that his initiation into thuggee by
Hussein is no accident. He takes naturally to the trade, is attended
by good omens, and enjoys a facility of thought, speech, and action
that is alien to his English self. The idea of mimicry itself is
transformed in his performance of it and begins to assume to assume
the contours of possession, if not those of originary identity. There
is no difference for him between the mimicry of an identity and the
identity itself.
In order to pass for an Indian or a thug (ultimately these two
categories are collapsed, as we have seen in the other narratives of
thuggee) Savage must slough off certain normative aspects of
Englishness in the tropics—the militant Christianity, the revulsion
against disease and cruelty, the reforming impulse. He must instead
embrace what is described as the nondualistic moral economy of
Hinduism that sees both creation and destruction as suffused with the
divine. Needless to say, the psychic territory of “India” is always
coextensive with Hinduism, despite the fact that Muslims as well as
other religious groups are shown to practice thuggee as much as do
Hindus; and this Hinduism is consistently and exclusively fetishized
as blood lust and hyperbolic sexuality. As an Indian, and Hindu, and
thug, Savage must participate in a series of paradoxes. He must be
Indian, and thug, to return more securely to Englishness, and
legitimacy; he must allow evil to be done in order to do good; and,
since the contexts of legality are always shifting and are
particularly in need of redefinition in India, he must go outside the
law in order to uphold the law. Always relatively indifferent to the
finer points of legal procedure and defendants’ rights (here written
as an inaptitude for “paperwork”), the antithug drive allows him to
rethink the concepts of justice and legality in the colonial context,
where it is notoriously difficult to punish crime anyway:
“What does justice mean?”…“Fair trial, the rules of evidence, no
double hazard, no hearsay, and so on and so on? Or protection against
injustice, against violence? The means, or the end?.…Oh, I know we
have no evidence about them yet. That’s just what I mean. I tell you,
sir, they cannot be run down within our rule of law. Indians aren’t
English. “No man dies by the hand of man,” they think, so they won’t
give evidence because they are not angry with the murderers. They
think men who kill are driven by God to kill. And there are too many
jurisdictions, too far to go to give evidence, too long to wait. We’ve
got to go outside the law to catch them, to prevent more
murders.” (pp. 128–29)
Caught between a colonial government and an Indian populace unwilling,
for different reasons, to do what is necessary to end thuggee and
pressured, moreover, by Hussein, Savage becomes Gopal again, only more
completely in earnest this time. In his new role Savage discovers that
passing for a thug involves a radical (re)contextualization of his
once and future Englishness. Moreover, as Gopal he has to inhabit a
role and a history that is already in place. Impersonation involves
not freedom but strict adherence to a scripted identity; he cannot
start afresh, or make himself up as he goes along. He discovers that
as Gopal, he is already an expert strangler and strategist, destined
to be “the greatest the Deceivers have ever known” (p. 218). And once
he participates in the sacramental ritual of gur-sharing and tastes
the transubstantiated body of the goddess, his allegiance and destiny
are fixed. Savage is born to thuggee, as his comfort in his role of
thug demonstrates; indeed, his story undoes the usual weighting of
“self” and “role” in the Englishman’s subjectivity, since he is more
convincing (to himself, and apparently to Indians and Englishmen
alike) and comfortable as Indian and thug than as Englishman and
Christian. Hussein, who is more percipient than he about the
complexities of subject formation, reminds him that “free will” is an
adjunct (or an illusion) of Englishness alone. Savage must find out
that intentions guarantee nothing; not even the Englishman, once he
has decided to play the Indian, can escape the formulaic constraints
of Indian/thug ontology: “You are a Deceiver, from this dawn on for
ever. A strangler. Only stranglers may stand on the blanket: you stood
on it. Only stranglers may take the consecrated sugar of communion:
you took it. It doesn’t matter what a man thinks he is. When he eats
consecrated sugar, on the blanket, in front of the pick-axe, he is a
strangler, because Kali enters into him.” (p. 182)
Such a script also demands of course that he confront his double, the
original Gopal. In order to protect himself and in order to wrest some
autonomy for himself, Savage strangles Gopal and thus becomes Gopal
himself. But strangling the “real Gopal” only makes him more fully
Gopal, for he can now develop into his predestined role. From this
point on, all paradoxes are held in abeyance. From being complicit in
murder through inaction Savage proceeds to strangulation himself and
becomes, in an extraordinary take on the man-who-would-be-king vision
that tropes so much colonial discourse, a noted leader of thugs. Like
Burton the Muslim, Savage the thug is characterized not simply by
mastery but by an extraordinary surplus of subject effects. (Unlike
Burton, though, he is tempted, and he is corrupted—although not
irredeemably.)
The desire for Gopal, which is closely articulated with the desire to
be Gopal, is mediated, interestingly enough, through the figure of the
sati who frames the novel and who foregrounds the question of gender
that has been bypassed or placed under erasure in the thuggee
archives. I find the entry into thuggee through sati to be a
particularly productive conjuncture for the problematic of mimicry,
identity, and the colonizer’s desire. The sati, most obviously,
provides an occasion for access to Gopal. The sati has to be set up in
the beginning so that Savage can play Gopal; and then it has to be
deferred so that he can continue to play Gopal and go in search of
Gopal. Her presence in the novel displaces homoerotic desire and
returns Savage to heterosexuality. It also ensures his successful
miming of Indianness and Englishness. But the consolidation of
heterosexuality, masculinity, and Englishness demands not simply her
presence but her death. She is insistently narrativized as a voluntary
sati; she is a romanticized figure, whose sacrifice Savage has no
desire to thwart. He desires her, and his desire for her takes the
form of wanting her to die for him, which he ensures by killing Gopal.
In this way, he can enjoy the satisfactions of Indian as well as
English masculinity. As an Indian, he can have the woman die for him
(and deliver him of his sexual anxieties); but being fully Indian also
means that he himself must die, for the sati requires a dead husband.
As an Englishman, therefore, he can distance himself from the violent
implications of Indianness. The sati’s death releases him from the
exigent identity of the Indianness into which he had temporarily
descended and frees him to enact the rituals of Englishness with
greater plausibility. The most convincing Englishman—as indeed the
most expert thug—turns out to be the mimic man after all.
• • •
Afterword
Masters’s novel serves in many ways as the most apt of epilogues to
the colonial accounts of thuggee, given its excavation of the erotic/
affective and metaphysical seductions of that institution—and of the
thug—for English masculinity in the tropics and given its suggestion
that the lure of the thug for the Englishman may be as compelling as
that of thuggee for the (Indian) thug. It charges the project of
unveiling and chastisement with a profusion of guilty, even delirious,
appetites and obsessions that call for continual incitement and
consummation. It does not, of course, fail to play upon the received
colonial narrative of thuggee as timeless Indian duplicity; but it
also reconfigures it as an erotic tale of the fraternal, closeted, and
homicidal desire that drives Indian and English impersonation. Perhaps
most remarkably, it showcases the seamless self-referentiality of the
discourse on thuggee (as evidenced in an archive composed of
biographies, histories, novels, legal records, and rumors) by
collapsing the thug and the thug hunter into a single figure; with a
literalism quite unprecedented in any of the other texts it confirms
that wherever there is an Englishman there is a thug.
Notes
1. Radhika Singha, “‘Providential’ Circumstances: The Thuggee Campaign
of the 1830s and Legal Innovation,” Modern Asian Studies 27 (February
1993): 83.
2. Guha, “Historiography of Colonial India.”
3. Ranajit Guha, “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,” in Subaltern
Studies II: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit
Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983). Also see Ranajit
Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983).
4. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Deconstructing Historiography,” in In
Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York and London:
Routledge, 1987), 204.
5. This is not to suggest that Bhabha forecloses on any of these other
possibilities.
6. James Hutton, A Popular Account of the Thugs and Dacoits, the
Hereditary Garroters and Gang-Robbers of India (London: W. H. Allen,
1857), 90–91.
7. Reproduced in George Bruce, The Stranglers: The Cult of Thuggee and
Its Overthrow in British India (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1968), 13–26.
8. Philip Meadows Taylor, “Introduction,” in Confessions of a Thug
(London: Richard Bentley, 1858 [1839]), 5.
9. A. J. Wightman, No Friend for Travellers (London: Robert Hale,
1959), 15.
10. See Francis C. Tuker, The Yellow Scarf: The Story of the Life of
Thuggee Sleeman (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1961), 197–98.
11. Geoff Bennington, “Postal Politics and the Institution of the
Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London and New
York: Routledge, 1990).
12. Sandria Freitag argues that thugs were—in contrast to members of
criminal castes and tribes—regarded as “admirable and awesome
opponents.” See her “Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North
India,” Modern Asian Studies 25, no. 2 (1991): 227–61. While some of
this horrified admiration does inform Wightman and Meadows Taylor’s
representations, such admiration is more usually carefully repressed;
there is, in fact, an interesting tension between the awe-inspiring
(if damnable) thug of these texts and the contemptible figure that the
other texts strenuously accentuate.
13. James Sleeman, Thug, or A Million Murders (London: Sampson Low,
Marston, 1933 [1920]), 5.
14. Sir George MacMunn, The Religions and Hidden Cults of India
(London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1931), 172–73. See, too, Meadows
Taylor, “Introduction,” i:
At the present time it [the novel] may deserve a more attentive study;
recent events will have too well prepared the Reader’s mind for
implicit belief in all the systematic atrocities narrated.…It will
scarcely fail to be remarked, with what consummate art such numerous
bodies of men were organized, and for a long time kept absolutely
unknown, while committing acts of cruelty and rapine hardly
conceivable;…Captain Taylor’s Introduction…may…furnish some clue to
the successful concealment of a rebellion, in the existence of which
many of our oldest and most experienced officers, and men high in
authority, absolutely withheld belief, till too late and too cruelly
convinced of their fatal error.
15. Katherine Mayo, Mother India (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927).
16. Hiralal Gupta, “A Critical Study of the Thugs and Their
Activities,” Journal of Indian History, 37, part 2 (August 1959),
serial no. 110: 169–77.
17. Sandria B. Freitag, “Collective Crime and Authority in North
India,” in Crime and Criminality in British India, ed. Anand Yang
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), 158–61.
18. Stewart N. Gordon, “Scarf and Sword: Thugs, Marauders, and State-
Formation in 18th Century Malwa,” Indian Economic and Social History
Review 6 (December 1969): 403–29. It should be noted that Gordon does
not ascribe the activities of the marauding groups to “Oriental
anarchy” or oppose “marauders” to “states,” arguing that both entities
had the same ends in view and were using the same methods of
legitimation, though with differing degrees of success.
19. J. Sleeman, Thug, 108.
20. David Arnold, Police Power and Colonial Rule: Madras 1859–1947
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), 3. He notes the transformation
of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department into the Central Intelligence
Department in 1904; this body shifted its initial focus on wandering
gangs and criminals to “the collation of political intelligence,
relaying information about political leaders and organizations to the
various provinces concerned” (p. 187).
21. Freitag, “Collective Crime and Authority,” 142.
22. Freitag, “Crime in the Social Order,” 230.
23. Ibid., 234.
24. Fanny Parks, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque
(Karachi and London: Oxford University Press, 1975 [1850]), 1: 153.
25. Kali became a figure of increasing respectability in the
nineteenth century; before this she was a deity adored (in Bengal at
least) largely though not exclusively by tribal and other subaltern
subjects, including thugs and dacoits. It is not clear if Kali was
identical with other female deities addressed as Devi or Bhawani.
26. See, for instance, Nicholas B. Dirks, “Castes of Mind,”
Representations 37 (Winter 1992): 59: “It is increasingly clear that
colonialism in India produced new forms of society that have been
taken to be traditional, and that caste itself as we now know it is
not a residual survival of ancient India but a specifically colonial
form of civil society. As such it both justifies and maintains the
colonial vision of an India where religion transcends politics,
society resists change, and the state awaits its virgin birth in the
postcolonial era.”
27. This had not, of course, been entirely true for Burton, perhaps
because of his sojourn in Sind or his early studies in Arabic. As
might be expected, the particular discourse being engaged would
determine the Hinduness, or otherwise, of the territory designated
“India.”
28. Lata Mani, “Contentious Traditions,” in The Nature and Context of
Minority Discourse, ed. Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990).
29. John Masters, The Deceivers (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1952),
240. All further references to this novel will be incorporated
parenthetically into the text.
30. Charles Hervey, Some Records of Crime (Being the Diary of a Year,
Official and Particular, of an Officer of the Thuggee and Dacoitie
Police) (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1892), 1: 50–51.
31. Ranjit Sen, Social Banditry in Bengal: A Study in Primary
Resistance, 1757–1793 (Calcutta: Ratna Prakashan, 1988), 2–3.
32. Sanjay Nigam, “Disciplining and Policing the ‘Criminals by
Birth,’” Indian Economic and Social History Review 27, no. 2 (1990):
131–64; 27, no. 3 (1990): 259–87.
33. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley
(New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 1: 43.
34. Radhika Singha argues that “the introduction of laws dealing with
ill-defined ‘criminal communities’ introduced certain fissures into
the ideology of the equal, abstract and universal legal
subject” (“‘Providential’ Circumstances,” 86, n. 10).
35. Edward Thornton, Illustrations of the History and Practices of the
Thugs (London: W. H. Allen, 1837), 145–46. This frankness is
relatively rare in the writings on thuggee; the issue of the
genuineness of the confessions, though, is an issue in all, judging
from the unfailing vehemence with which the method of conviction
through approvers’ testimony is defended as just, if not
unexceptionable.
36. Ibid., 374.
37. J. Sleeman, Thug, 120.
38. William H. Sleeman, Ramaseeana, or a Vocabulary of the Peculiar
Language Used by the Thugs (Calcutta: G. H. Huttmann, Military Orphan
Press, 1836), 32–33.
39. Thornton, Illustrations, 70, 11.
40. Wightman, No Friend for Travellers, 112.
41. J. Sleeman, Thug, 106.
42. William H. Sleeman, Report on Budhuk Alias Bagree Dacoits and
Other Gang Robbers by Hereditary Profession (Calcutta: J. C. Sherriff,
Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1849), 2–3.
43. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1: 35.
44. Homi Bhabha, “Sly Civility” and “Of Mimicry and Man,” in The
Location of Culture.
45. See Mala Sen, India’s Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi
(New Delhi: Indus/HarperCollins, 1991) for an example of the way in
which the colonial discourse of thuggee (in this instance, Tukar’s
Yellow Scarf) continues, in contemporary India, to frame the way in
which certain forms of collective violence are understood by the law-
and-order machinery of the state.
46. Tuker, Yellow Scarf, 38.
47. William H. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian
Official, ed. Vincent A. Smith (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford
University Press, 1915), 555.
48. Taylor, Confessions of a Thug, 330.
49. W. H. Sleeman, Ramaseeana, 3.
50. Freitag, “Collective Crime and Authority,” 146.
51. Singha, “‘Providential’ Circumstances,” 84.
52. W. H. Sleeman, Report on Budhuk, 173. The thuggee act had the
following provisions:
1.Whoever shall be proved to have belonged, either before or after the
passing of this Act, to any gang of Thugs, either within or without
the Territories of the East India Company, shall be punished with
imprisonment for life, with hard labour.
2.And…every person accused of the offence…may be tried by any court,
which would have been competent to try him, if his offence had been
committed within the Zillah where that Court sits, any thing to the
contrary, in any Regulation contained, notwithstanding.
3.And…no Court shall, on a trial of any person accused of the offence…
require any Futwa from any Law Officer.
53. Singha, “‘Providential’ Circumstances,” 136–37.
54. J. Sleeman, Thug, 117.
55. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New
York: Vintage Books, 1979), 38.
56. Shahid Amin, “Approver’s Testimony, Judicial Discourse: The Case
of Chauri Chaura,” in Subaltern Studies V: Writings on South Asian
History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1987).
57. William H. Sleeman, Report on the Depredations Committed by the
Thug Gangs of Upper and Central India (Calcutta: G. H. Huttmann,
Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1840). [BACK]
58. Bruce, Stranglers, 154.
59. W. H. Sleeman, Report on Budhuk, 303–5.
60. Freitag, “Crime in the Social Order,” 236. It is said that thugs
had routinely existed in a symbiotic relationship with landlords,
providing military protection and supplying booty from expeditions in
return for land and respectability. [BACK]
61. W. H. Sleeman, Ramaseeana, 186–87.
62. I should add here that the phrase going native is vested in my
paper with a multiplicity of valences; for instance, it encompasses
both the colonialist desire to “pass for” the native and the condition
that signifies racial regression.
63. R. Radhakrishnan, “Ethnicity in an Age of Diaspora,” Transition 54
(1991): 106.
64. David Arnold, “European Orphans and Vagrants in India in the
Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 7,
no. 2 (1979): 104–27.
65. Homi K. Bhabha, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins
of the Modern Nations,” in Nation and Narration, 299.
66. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” See Michel Foucault,
“Intellectuals and Power: A Conversation between Michel Foucault and
Gilles Deleuze,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected
Essays and Interviews, by Michel Foucault, trans. Donald F. Bouchard
and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), 205–
17.
67. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Translator’s Foreword to ‘Draupadi,’
by Mahasweta Devi,” in In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics
(New York and London: Routledge, 1987), 180.
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8s20097j&chunk.id=ch2
turn of the century, is a highly unusual diary of one disciple’s
encounters with his guru and with other disciples over the last four
years (1882–1886) of Ramakrishna’s life. In this text, which is
written in Bengali, Ramakrishna is referred to as thakur, which is
both a common way of designating a Brahman as well as a word meaning
god; “M,” who was a schoolteacher, is called “master” in this work. In
the English translation of 1942 by Swami Nikhilananda, The Gospel of
Sri Ramakrishna (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1973
[1942]), “the Master” is the standard appellation for Ramakrishna;
this usage may have been popularized by Vivekananda.
3. Partha Chatterjee, “A Religion of Urban Domesticity: Sri
Ramakrishna and the Calcutta Middle Class,” Subaltern Studies VII:
Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. Partha Chatterjee and
Gyanendra Pandey (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), 65.
4. Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in
Nineteenth Century Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988),
219.
5. Quoted in ibid., 231. For further details, see Swami Saradananda,
Sri Ramakrishna: The Great Master, trans. Swami Jagadananda, 2 vols.
(Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1978 [1952]).
6. There were many references to the Paramhansa in Keshab’s journal,
the New Dispensation, and in the late 1870s Keshab published
Paramhanser Ukti, a ten-page Bengali booklet of Ramakrishna’s sayings.
7. Christopher Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (London:
Methuen, 1965), 141. [BACK]
8. Quoted in ibid., 124.
9. Cited in Brian K. Smith, “How Not to Be a Hindu: The Case of the
Ramakrishna Mission,” in Religion and Law in Independent India, ed.
Robert P. Baird (New Delhi: Manohar, 1993), 343–44.
10. Sumit Sarkar, “The Kathamrita as Text: Towards an Understanding of
Ramakrishna Paramhamsa,” Occasional Paper 22 (New Delhi: Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library, 1985), 21 and passim. Also, see Sumit
Sarkar, “‘Kaliyuga,’ ‘Chakri’ and ‘Bhakti’: Ramakrishna and His
Times,” Economic and Political Weekly, 18 July 1992, 1543–66.
Ramakrishna’s disciples claimed that he had gone through his “Muslim”
and “Christian” phases before he met Keshab; please note that all the
dates in Ramakrishna’s life are culled from accounts by devotees and
admirers.
11. The term heterosexuality is here used catachrestically, since
Ramakrishna seems to be obviously outside the formations within which
we would situate “modern” Indian subjects, including Vivekananda. The
very terms homosexuality/heterosexuality (and, indeed, transsexuality,
which may also be said to resonate for Ramakrishna) are too western
and modern to be completely adequate to the task of analysis. I use
them very provisionally, in the absence of another vocabulary and
epistemology that might enable me to understand premodern, Indian/
Hindu conceptualizations of sexuality. In this context, I am reminded
of Diana Fuss’s generous and sensitive reading of Fanon’s claim (in
Black Skin, White Masks) that there is no (male) homosexuality in the
Antilles (“Interior Colonies,” 33):
Fanon’s insistence that there is no homosexuality in the Antilles may
convey a more trenchant meaning than the one he in fact intended: if
by ‘homosexuality’ one understands the culturally specific social
formations of same-sex desire as they are articulated in the West,
then they are indeed foreign to the Antilles.…Can one generalize from
the particular forms sexuality takes under Western capitalism to
sexuality as such? What kinds of colonizations do such discursive
translations perform on ‘other’ traditions of sexual differences?
Such a caution must be borne in mind, even as one cannot but deploy,
however hesitantly, the idioms of modern western sexualities. See
Jeffrey Kripal, Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life
and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 1995) for a careful and fascinating reading of the
relationship of Ramakrishna’s “homosexuality” to his mysticism. I
regret that I have not been able to make fuller use of the Kripal
text, which was published after this chapter was written.
12. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity”, 60–61.
13. S. Sarkar, “Kathamrita as Text,” 50–71.
14. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity”, 45. Sumit Sarkar
claims, moreover, that the period of Ramakrishna’s popularity
coincided with a “kind of hiatus in bhadralok history,” when dreams of
social reform had been frustrated, official racism was marked, and
liberation through the overthrow of British rule not really
conceivable (“‘Kaliyuga,’ ‘Chakri’ and ‘Bhakti,’” 1547).
15. It is interesting to note that the disciples of Ramakrishna,
notably Vivekananda, preferred the term kamkanchan, “lust-and-gold,”
over the Master’s kaminikanchan and went to great lengths to explain
that the sage’s “symbolic” use of the term did not imply any
misogyny.
16. Nikhilananda, Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, 701. All subsequent
references will be incorporated parenthetically into the text.
17. This insight derives in a general way from Carole-Anne Tyler’s
reading of the ambivalent politics of gay drag (“Boys Will Be Girls:
The Politics of Gay Drag,” in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay
Theories, ed. Diana Fuss [New York: Routledge, 1990]) as well from
Kaja Silverman’s account of the mastery permitted by T. E. Lawrence’s
reflexive masochism (“White Skin, Brown Masks”). In The Inner World: A
Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1978), 103, Sudhir Kakar characterizes Hindu
transvestism thus: “Rituals such as these represent not only the boy’s
attempt to identify with his mother but also the man’s effort to free
himself from her domination. By trying to be like women—wearing their
clothes, acquiring their organs, giving birth—these men are also
saying that they do not need women (mothers) any longer.” For a
sympathetic psychoanalytic reading of Ramakrishna’s assumption of
femininity, see Kakar, “Ramakrishna and the Mystical Experience,” in
The Analyst and the Mystic: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Religion and
Mysticism (New Delhi: Viking, 1991), 1–40.
18. Cited in S. Sarkar, “Kathamrita as Text,” 9.
19. D. S. Sarma, Studies in the Renaissance of Hinduism in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Benares: Benares Hindu University,
1944), 237.
20. I am grateful to Gayatri Spivak for pointing out to me the
numerous, and discontinuous, ways in which the English term woman
translates into Bengali (and/or Sanskrit). Even so, it is interesting
to note how often other forms of femininity threaten for Ramakrishna
to collapse into the figure of the kamini. Hence his warning to one of
his young male disciples to beware of women who claim to be actuated
by maternal feelings towards him.
21. Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples, 113.
22. I put this term in quotation marks to indicate that is placed
under erasure. One cannot assume that transvestism was inflected in
the same way for a nineteenth-century (straight?) Hindu male as it
might be for, say, a contemporary straight North American male. One
has to concede that his masculinity might have been constituted
differently, and in a different relationship to femininity, than might
be the case for our hypothetical North American male.
23. I am thinking here of N. T. Rama Rao’s assumption of feminine
attire, makeup, and jewelry, on one-half of his body in the days of
his chief ministership of Andhra Pradesh, apparently in a bid to
consolidate his political/spiritual power. Philip Spratt also provides
detailed anthropological evidence of religious transvestic ceremonies
all over India (Hindu Culture and Personality [Bombay: Manaktalas,
1966]). See, too, Kathryn Hansen’s splendid essay, “Making Women
Visible: Female Impersonators and Actresses on the Parsi Stage and in
Silent Cinema” (unpublished manuscript).
24. Ashis Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and
Culture (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 38.
25. Wendy Doniger, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 319.
26. Ibid., 331.
27. Women could, on occasion, function as gurus; the Bhairavi
Brahmani, for instance, was Ramakrishna’s first guru. Other historical
and contemporary figures like Andal, Mahadeviakka, Mirabai, and
Anandamoyi Ma come to mind as well. Sharada Devi (Ramakrishna’s wife)
herself had several (female and male) disciples. I do not think,
however, that this militates against my understanding of the guru-
disciple relationship as functioning for the most part for and among
males nor against my reading of its gendered significance in early
nationalism.
28. I am obliged to Sandhya Shetty for pointing this out to me. The
gurudakshina (the gift to the guru) is situated outside (economic)
exchange and functions in a symbolic capacity only. The instance of
Drona the archer and his low-caste disciple Eklavya, who had to
sacrifice his thumb to ensure the superiority of the guru’s favorite
pupil Arjuna, only demonstrates that in the guru-shishya configuration
what is offered by the disciple is incommensurable with what is given
by the guru.
29. Life of Sri Ramakrishna, Compiled from Various Authentic Sources
(Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1964), 296.
30. Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works, ed.
Swami Nikhilananda (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1953),
13.
31. There is no “secular,” critical biography of Ramakrishna except
that by Max Mueller, Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899). While this inveighs against the
miraculizing tendencies of Ramakrishna’s disciples, not excepting
Vivekananda, and refuses to take Ramakrishna’s avatarhood seriously,
it is nonetheless entirely reverential about the man himself.
32. Life of Sri Ramakrishna, 117.
33. Ibid., 144–45.
34. Ibid., 294.
35. Swami Chetanananda, ed. Ramakrishna as We Saw Him (St. Louis, Mo.:
Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 1990), 110.
36. Sumit Sarkar notes: “Girish Ghosh confessed that seeing
Ramakrishna ‘playing’ with a young disciple made him recall a
‘terrible canard’ that he had once heard about the saint” (“Kathamrita
as Text,” 103).
37. Sister Nivedita [Margaret E. Noble], The Master as I Saw Him
(Calcutta: Udbodhan Office, 1910), 64.
38. Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples, 204.
39. This is not, of course, to assert that the conflicts were unique
to Naren; as we have seen, in terms of class position and intellectual
training he appears to have been no different from the majority of the
disciples. The others, however, appear to have been less outspoken in
their skepticism than he was. I hardly need add that the memory and
the narrative of these conflicts is overdetermined; if Naren had not
become Vivekananda, we would probably have heard far less of his
interactions with his guru. As it is, in The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
his iconoclasticism is not as evident as that of, say, Bankim or Dr.
Mahendralal Sarkar (neither of whom was a disciple). Nonetheless, he
does seem to have been the unequivocal favorite of Ramakrishna. And it
also seems clear that he was accorded a degree of freedom of speech
and behavior not permitted most of the other disciples. (Girish Ghosh,
who was notorious for his drinking, patronage of prostitutes, and
occasional foul-mouthed invectives against the guru, was one of the
very few others who was granted such a license.)
40. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity.” Sumit Sarkar
emphasizes the saint’s determined pursuit of bhadralok disciples as
well as his reticence about religious practices (of the Baul,
Kartabhaja, and vamachari Tantric varieties) that might have offended
their sensibilities (“The Kathamrita as Text,” 36).
41. Chetanananda, Ramakrishna as We Saw Him, 385–90.
42. My thanks to Inderpal Grewal for suggesting this possibility to
me.
43. Hervey De Witt Griswold, Insights into Modern Hinduism (New York:
Henry Holt, 1934), 58.
44. Nationalism’s dependence on colonialism has been extensively
documented, to some degree by Nandy, Intimate Enemy, but most notably
by Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought. Certainly nationalism-and-
colonialism seems to function as one category for Vivekananda.
45. Not all Brahmos were as skeptical as Shibnath Shastri, who, much
though he admired Ramakrishna, believed that the saint’s austerities
at the beginning of his spiritual career had had deleterious effects
on his mental state; Keshab for one seems to have been less
incredulous of the spiritual nature of the saint’s trances. Sumit
Sarkar points out, interestingly, that while Ramakrishna’s family and
neighbors in Kamarpukur and Dakshineshwar attributed the trances to
madness or “possession,” his bhadralok disciples and admirers
described them as the samadhi state extolled by high Hindu doctrine.
46. Ramakrishna himself made conflicting assertions about his own
avatarhood; at points he dismissed the possibility derisively, while
at other times he claimed to be an avatar of Krishna, Chaitanya, and/
or Kali.
47. Swami Nikhilananda, Vivekananda: A Biography (New York:
Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1953), 42.
48. It is not possible to establish whether any of the swami’s
supporters were simply admirers or actually disciples. It is not
inconceivable that they may have become disciples retroactively,
following Vivekananda’s success in the west.
49. Sankari Prasad Basu and Sunil Bihari Ghosh, eds., Vivekananda in
Indian Newspapers 1893–1902 (Calcutta: Dineshchandra Basu
Bhattacharya, 1969), 9.
50. It should be noted that the swami’s Indian reputation was—to some
degree, at least—induced by himself, as a defensive measure no doubt
against the criticisms he encountered not only from Christian
ministers in the United States but also from members of the Brahmo
Samaj and perhaps the Theosophical Society as well. His early letters
to his disciples in Madras were full of exhortations to them to hold a
meeting in his honor and to proclaim him to the west as a true
spokesperson of Hinduism. He was also careful to keep them informed
about favorable reviews in the U.S. press.
51. Rakhal Chandra Nath, The New Hindu Movement 1886–1911 (Calcutta:
Minerva, 1982), 126.
52. Ibid., 129.
53. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity.”
54. Nath, New Hindu Movement, 115.
55. Vivekananda was rarely consistent in this view; this was typical
of him. At times he deployed the rhetoric of free trade to imply
mutual and equal advantage to east and west; at other times he
insisted that Indians were superior to the west in their indifference
to material things and that in fact the west called out for spiritual
conquest by an “aggressive Hinduism.” In this vacillation Vivekananda
was not untypical of the bourgeois neo-Hindu nationalists of his time.
[BACK]
56. He also enjoined his brother monks in India not to insist on the
acceptance of Ramakrishna’s avatarhood in would-be devotees and
disciples of the new order.
57. Harold W. French, The Swan’s Wide Waters: Ramakrishna and Western
Culture (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1974), 58.
58. Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, 230.
59. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity.”
60. Nath, New Hindu Movement, 114.
61. Ibid., 17. Note that Bankim’s novel was undoubtedly the product of
a distinctly westward-looking nationalism. Nath describes Aurobindo’s
“Bhawani Mandir” as derived from Anandmath (and remarkably similar to
Vivekananda’s own cult of the warlike monk) in its emphasis on
manliness and in its devotion to Kali. [BACK]
62. Chatterjee, “Religion of Urban Domesticity,” 61.
63. Vivekananda, Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works, 151.
64. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s cult of physical fitness and
martial arts training has a great deal in common with Vivekananda’s
endorsement of “beef, biceps, and Bhagavad-Gita.”
65. Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, by His Eastern and Western
Admirers (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1964 [1961]), 347.
66. At this point in Indian history, bourgeois and Hindu nationalisms—
the first represented by “moderates” in the Congress Party calling for
secular and constitutional reforms, the latter by Tilak, Bankim, and
others—have assumed the status of two distinct categories, though
quite often they function as one. I bear in mind also Sudipta
Kaviraj’s important caveat against the conflation of distinct
nationalisms (his own concern is with “early” and “mature”
nationalisms), which must be seen as disjunct rather than articulated
phenomena in Indian history; see Sudipta Kaviraj, “The Imaginary
Institution of India,” in Subaltern Studies VII: Writings on South
Asian History and Society, ed. Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991).
67. Basu and Ghosh, Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers, 27.
68. Nivedita, The Master as I Saw Him, 231.
69. Ibid., 388 (emphases in the original). [
70. Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, 252. The speaker in this
instance was a woman, Constance Towne.
71. Marie Louise Burke, Swami Vivekananda in America: New Discoveries
(Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1958), 16.
72. Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, 14.
73. Swami Vivekananda and His Guru (London and Madras: Christian
Literature Society for India, 1897), iv.
74. There is, to the uninstructed viewer, little if anything of the
disarrangement of limbs or clothing that normally marked the sage’s
experience of samadhi.
75. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “A Literary Representation of the
Subaltern,” in In Other Worlds (London and New York: Routledge, 1987),
264.
76. Nivedita functions here as a type of the western female disciple.
77. Mary Ann Doane, “Dark Continents: Epistemologies of Racial and
Sexual Difference in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema,” in Femmes
Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (New York and London:
Routledge, 1991), 244.
78. Marie Louise Burke, Swami Vivekananda: His Second Visit to the
West; New Discoveries (Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1973).
79. Kakar, Inner World, 160.
80. See, for instance, Romila Thapar: “[The ascetic] is celibate and
yet, at the same time, the most virile of men. The ascetic’s
demonstration of sexual prowess is not a contradiction in terms: it is
in fact a demonstration of his complete control over body functions,
since ideally the emission of semen is prohibited to
him” (“Renunciation: The Making of a Counter-Culture?” in Ancient
Indian Social History: Some Interpretations [Delhi: n.p., 1978], 94).
Also see Joseph Alter: “The whole purpose of brahmacharya [celibacy]
is to build up a resilient store of semen so that the body—in a
holistic, psychosomatic sense—radiates an aura of vitality and
strength” (“Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Gender into
Nationalism in North India,” Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 1
[1994]: 51).
81. Steve Neale, “Masculinity as Spectacle,” in The Sexual Subject: A
Screen Reader in Sexuality (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 277–
87.
82. Ibid., 286.
83. Swami Vivekananda, “The Future of India,” in Lectures from Colombo
to Almora (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1956), 267.
84. Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda, 196. Sister Christine
(Christine Greenstidel) goes on to remark on the companionship of
Sadananda and Vivekananda on their North Indian pilgrimage: “Both were
artistic, both were poets by nature, both were attractive in
appearance. Artists raved about them.”
Nivedita also confesses, though far more discreetly, that she was
drawn to the swami by his “personality” rather his philosophy, which
she initially found unoriginal. Her “biography” of him, The Master as
I Saw Him, is remarkable for its reticence about his corporeality.
85. That such a construction of femininity was not necessarily
exclusive to Hindu reformers/revivalists is borne out by Faisal
Fatehali Devji: “[Muslim] reformist literature replaces the aggressive
sexual woman with the pathetic or suffering woman-as-mother” (“Gender
and the Politics of Space: The Movement for Women’s Reform in Muslim
India, 1857–1900,” South Asia, 14, no. 1 [1991], 151).
86. Partha Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s
Question,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed.
Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers
University Press, 1990), 237.
87. Sister Nivedita, The Web of Indian Life (London: William
Heinemann, 1904), 32–45.
88. See, among others, Lata Mani, “Contentious Traditions: The Debate
on Sati in Colonial India,” in The Nature and Context of Minority
Discourse, ed. Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd (Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990); Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds.,
Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990); Chatterjee, Nation and Its
Fragments; and Madhu Kishwar, “Gandhi on Women,” Economic and
Political Weekly, 5 October 1985, 1691–1702.
89. Monier Monier-Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India (New
Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1974 [1883]), 184–85. Also
see David R. Kinsley, “Kali: Blood and Death Out of Place,” in Devi:
Goddesses of India, ed. John S. Hawley and Donna M. Wulff (Berkeley
and London: University of California Press, 1996); and Ajit Mookerjee,
Kali: The Feminine Force (New York: Destiny Books, 1988).
90. Sumanta Banerjee, “Marginalization of Women’s Popular Culture in
Nineteenth Century Bengal,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian
Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 158.
91. Ramakrishna was married at the age of twenty-three to Sharadamoni
Debi, a child-bride of five. According to custom, she remained in her
natal home, while Ramakrishna continued his spiritual disciplines at
Dakshineshwar, forgetful of her existence. At eighteen she sought him
out at Dakshineshwar and acceded to his request that their marriage
remain unconsummated. Over the remaining decade and a half of
Ramakrishna’s life, she spent extended periods at Dakshineshwar, doing
his housekeeping and cooking and (usually) living in a separate
building in the temple complex. [BACK]
92. Nivedita, The Master as I Saw Him, 65.
93. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “A Literary Representation of the
Subaltern,” in In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York
and London: Routledge, 1987), 244. [BACK]
94. Nivedita, The Master as I Saw Him, 83.
95. Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, 242.
96. Swami Vivekananda, Letters of Swami Vivekananda (Calcutta: Advaita
Ashrama, 1964), 167–68.
97. Pandita Ramabai Saraswati (1858–1922) was a notable scholar and a
Hindu widow who converted to Christianity during a visit to England
and dedicated her life to the uplift of young Hindu widows. Her book,
The High-Caste Hindu Woman (London: George Bell and Sons, 1888), as
well as her travels in England and the United States, gained her
sympathy from feminists as well as Christian missionaries abroad and
censure from Hindu conservatives at home. Her shelter for widows, the
Sharda Sadan in Pune, was supported in large part by funds raised by
Ramabai Circles in the United States and England. Her travels in the
United States in the 1880s received extensive coverage in the U.S.
press.
98. Basu and Ghosh, Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers, 421–68.
99. This is necessarily a simplification of Vivekananda’s very
complicated responses to the issues of (gender and other) reform,
nationalism, and colonialism. The split was not simply between
“home” (where reform had to endorsed) and abroad (where Hinduism had
to be defended); even at “home” he had decidedly mixed responses to
reform and (religious and social) orthodoxy.
100. The phrase is Nivedita’s (The Master as I Saw Him, 124). In an
interesting departure from the hagiographical tradition in which
accounts of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda are produced (and in which
tradition Nivedita’s own work uneasily belongs), she emphasizes not
the continuity of their respective “gospels” but their distinctness
from each other. She does this, besides, in a fashion that highlights
the swami’s struggles and doubts: “Sri Ramakrishna had been, as the
Swami himself said once of him, ‘like a flower,’ living apart in the
garden of a temple, simple, half-naked, orthodox, the ideal of the old
time in India, suddenly burst into bloom, in a world that had thought
to dismiss its very memory. It was at one the greatness and the
tragedy of my own Master’s life that he was not of this type. His was
the modern mind in its completeness.…His hope could not pass by
unheeded,…the hope of men of the nineteenth century” (The Master as I
Saw Him, 124–25).
101. Chatterjee, “Nationalist Resolution,” 237–38.
102. She was not, however, recognizably a nineteenth-century British
feminist—at least from the evidence of her early writings—even though
much has been made in the biographies of her feminism and other
“excesses.” Apparently Vivekananda himself made fun of her putative
feminism.
103. Quoted in Barbara Foxe, Long Journey Home: A Biography of
Margaret Noble (Nivedita) (London: Rider, 1975), 32–33.
104. Quoted in Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and
History (London and New York: Verso, 1992), 121.
105. Sharada Devi seems to have been a figure who was not
unequivocally reverenced by the followers of Ramakrishna. Many
devotees visited her at Jayrambati and Kamarpukur, and she initiated
several people into discipleship. She was sometimes spoken of as an
avatar—like her husband—and the heiress to his spiritual kingdom. But
she was also often accused of being excessively worldly. Ramakrishna’s
most prominent disciples visited her only rarely; Swami Nikhilananda
says that this was because they hesitated to “[make] a display of
their spiritual fervour.” See his Holy Mother: Being the Life of Sri
Sarada Devi, Wife of Sri Ramakrishna and Helpmate in His Mission
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962). Spivak speaks of the way in
which her official biographer, Swami Gambhirananda, staged her as “a
counter-echo to what he perceived as the strong voice of the Western
Narcissus” (“Asked to Talk about Myself…,” Third Text 19 [Summer
1992]: 17). I would argue that this could only happen retrospectively,
and at a later moment from the one that Vivekananda inhabits.
106. See, for instance, Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women
in Bengal, 1849–1905 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1984), esp. chaps. 8 and 9; Ghulam Murshid, Reluctant Debutante:
Response of Bengali Women to Modernization, 1849–1905 (Rajshashi,
Bangladesh: Sahitya Samsad, 1983); and Kumar, History of Doing, esp.
chaps. 2 and 3.
107. The Indian woman was, obviously, recast in the nationalist moment—
as was the Indian man; but recast and fixed, with little room for
negotiation after the recasting had been effected. For an analysis of
a nationalist woman’s struggles with gendered identities in
nationalism, see chapter 5.
108. Romain Rolland, The Life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel,
trans. E. F. Malcolm-Smith (Mayavati, India: Advaita Ashrama, 1947),
152, n. 2.
109. Nivedita, The Master as I Saw Him, 136–37.
110. Quoted in Pravrajika Atmaprana, Sister Nivedita of Ramakrishna-
Vivekananda (Calcutta: Sister Nivedita Girls’ School, 1961), 30.
111. Foxe, Long Journey Home, 128.
112. Rakhal Nath maintains that the Ramakrishna Mission was the only
non-political body to come out of the “New Hindu” or Hindu revivalist
movement (Nath, New Hindu Movement). [BACK]
113. Foxe, Long Journey Home, 136.
114. Ibid., 150–51.
115. Barbara N. Ramusack, “Cultural Missionaries, Maternal
Imperialists, Feminist Allies: British Women Activists in India, 1865–
1945,” in Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance,
ed. Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), 130.
116. S. B. Mookherjee, “Nivedita and Indian Womanhood,” in Nivedita
Commemoration Volume, ed. Amiya Kumar Majumdar (Calcutta: Dhiraj Basu,
1968), 244.
117. She met Gandhi briefly in Calcutta, in the early years of the
century. Gandhi (who in so many ways would grow to resemble the figure
of Ramakrishna) admired her Hindu partisanship but was unable to agree
with her on nationalist politics. The Congress Party under Gandhi had
a profoundly uneasy relationship with militant nationalist women like
Nivedita and the Rani of Jhansi.
118. Lizelle Reymond’s The Dedicated: A Biography of Nivedita (New
York: John Day, 1953) also helped disseminate this image, though its
factual claims have since been contested. Kumari Jayawardena’s chapter
on Nivedita (“Irish Rebellion and ‘Muscular Hinduism,’” in White
Woman’s Other Burden) describes the contradictory ways in which the
disciple of Vivekananda is remembered.
119. My thanks to Carole-Anne Tyler for sensitizing me to this
possibility. [BACK]
120. Foxe’s biography, Long Journey Home, is particularly derisive in
this regard. What had been admirable “manliness” in Vivekananda was
forwardness in the female disciple. [BACK]
121. Ibid., 205. [BACK]
More to follow...
"We're in the Money": Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/3bc67593a8a0ac5b#
Madam I 'm Adam: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/fbe56c67d373c696#
It's the Economy, Stupid: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/a46d86d4a3976279#
BRIC-a-BRAC: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/1d0dab2a874d0f26#
Big Bang: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/293ffa6b644467ef#
Indian Economic Survey: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/83574501e1c1ee72#
World's Baked Billionaires: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/42a9c3eca9882e80#
Below Poverty line, Line: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/097e4867b8baf22a#
Outsourcing Sorcery: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/topics?start=300&sa=N
Globalization Gobbledigook: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/bea6b5954e7332f4#
Indian Budget Bonanza: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/40cc05563d71e4a4#
Pranab Mukherjee, my Main Man: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/0ce38c4203700750#
...and I am Sid Harth
chhotemianinshallah
Socio-economic Engineering – an Electoral roadmap for the Center Right
Social Engineering is commonly understood to mean:
efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large
scale, whether by governments or private groups.
Within the Indian political discouse, Social Engineering has been used
to refer to the calculus of caste in electoral politics. More
specifically to the political art of striking the right combination of
caste based entitlements or quotas for electoral succes.
Together with religion based Vote bank politics, caste based Social
Engineering has come to represent conventional political wisdom in
India on which most electoral strategy is formulated.
The common assumption underlying both religion based Vote bank
politics and caste based Social Engineering, is that members will
largely vote with the group in anticipation of group entitlements or
quotas unmindful of individual socio-economic interests.
This assumption has largely held true for the first six decades of
electoral politics in India.
But then the decade gone by has induced a new dynamic into this
calculus of the group. A growing economy has created new avenues and
opportunities where the socio-economic calculus for the Individual is
not necessarily in alignment with the erstwhile politics of the group.
While group entitlements offer the Individual’s family a safety net,
economic aspirations are taking the Individual beyond the comfort zone
of community, village and district.
The cognitive dissonance between
settling for the least common denominator within the group
and
personal advancement by seeking opportunities outside and beyond the
group
may not be a significant factor today, with the false comfort of the
security blanket offered by the Congress Party’s Liberal Left policies
like NREGA, Food Security etc.
But this cognitive dissonance is bound to grow with the passage of
time as the economy rebounds and grows.
It wont be long before this cognitive dissonance reaches a threshold
beyond which it starts to have a bearing on electoral politics.
Unlike Social Engineering, Socio-Economic Engineering is not a well
defined discipline of Political Science.
The Center Right movement in India can give it meaning with a focus on
this latent cognitive dissonance.
Socio Economic engineering could come to mean challenging the
conventional political wisdom on the calculus of vote bank and caste.
to be defined as the act of influencing Individuals to break away from
the group (religious Minority voting block, caste) in making electoral
choices.
Back in December of 2008, Offstumped had dissected the electoral
landscape in Uttar Pradesh from a socio-economic standpoint with the
2002 Census Household Income data as the basis. The key takeaway from
this analysis was the strong correlation between dominant income level
within a district and the dominant political players in that district.
(More details on the analysis below).
This correlation between household income and electoral preferences
gives a basis for the target demographic of Socio-Economic
engineering.
A starting point for the Center Right in electoral politics would be
to identify that Voter with cross-over economic aspirations who can
potentially break away from his or her group.
Socio-Economic engineering by the Center Right would then come to mean
targeting the Individual with cross-over economic aspirations by
#1 creating incentives to break away from the group
#2 emphasizing discincentives in voting with the group.
Summary of Analysis on UP income levels and voting patterns
In this analysis household income was classified into 5 buckets
a) less than 250
b) between 250 and 500
c) between 500 and 1500
d) between 1500 and 2500
e) greater than 2500
While the districts in Uttar Pradesh where classified within six
levels – Level 0 to Level 5
Level 0 – districts where households with income less than 500
outnumber all other income groups
Level 1 – districts where households with income between 500-1500 are
the highest but also have more people with income less than 500 than
those with income greater than 1500 (more poorest of poor than middle
income or rich).
Level 2 – districts where households with income between 500-1500 are
not just the highest but also outnumber the poorest of poor and the
rich by a wide margin. (middle income districts where both the poor
and the relatively well to do are a minority)
Level 3 – districts where households with income between 500-1500 are
the highest but the relatively rich (income greater 1500) outnumber
the poor (income less than 500) consistent with the overall
characteristics of the state
Level 4 – districts where households with income greater than 1500
outnumber households with income between 500-1500
Level 5 – districts where 1500-2500 is the highest income group
overall in the state
At the aggregate state level it was also interesting to note that
Uttar Pradesh not only has the highest number rural households in the
middle income group of 500-1500 with 71 lakhs but more interestingly
the number of households with income greater than 1500 (60 lakhs) far
outnumbers the number of households with income less than 500 (30
lakhs).
An interesting insight from the analysis was the strong correlation
between dominant income level within a District and the nature of
electoral contest in the assembly seats within that the District in
the 2007 assembly elections.
3 Responses
sridhar krishna says:
March 25, 2010 at 8:53 am
A good effort. Just to indicate how big the gulf is – look at the
income levels used. Though you have not indicated the periodicity it
would be safe to assume it is per month.
on the other hand the income of the top percentile (or so) per day
would be more. These are the group that are active on the internet and
talk of “State of Union” address or “health Bill”. Shades of Marie
Antoinette.
Though i dont want to be alarmist like Arundati roy and talk of
revolution the gap is certainly not shrinking but widening. unless
this is addressed as a priority nothing else would work in the long
run
rgds / sridhar
Ladder of Opportunity versus Safety of the Net « Offstumped – Center
Right Indian Politics says:
March 27, 2010 at 6:01 am
[...] Older » [...]
Pub Chick says:
March 27, 2010 at 1:04 pm
“with the false comfort of the security blanket offered by the
Congress Party’s Liberal Left policies like NREGA, Food Security etc.”
So you admit this NREGA gives a sense of comfort — true or false —
that being the case what’s the rationale for your following post
quoting Surjit Bhalla? I am really curious to know. You can’t have it
both ways — you either say it’s a fiscally ruinous scheme which lulls
people into false sense of security or say it’s not working on the
ground in any way at all. One excludes the other.
March 27, 2010 • 6:00 am
Ladder of Opportunity versus Safety of the Net
Part 2 of series on Socio Economic Engineering – an electoral roadmap
for the Center Right
Eminent economist Dr. Surjit Bhalla writing in the Business Standard
had this to say of the UPA’s flagship program – National Rural
Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA/NREGS/MNREG)
Despite tall claims, the NREGA programme is just a dud as most other
“in the name of the poor” expenditures – and as much of a dud as
predicted by Rajiv Gandhi
Despite repeated evidence for the last 20 years that “in the name of
the poor programmes” reach everybody but the poor, the well-meaning
socialist but not-so-realist Congress party renamed and expanded
existing food for work programmes under its own Congress brand as
NREGA, and now MREGA. (Ironically, but poetic-justice style, the
latter acronym also means “to die”!). It spends Rs 8,823 crore on the
programme in 2006-07 (and Rs 39,000 crore in 2009-10) and is able to
actually deliver only 14.7 per cent (Rs 1,270 crore) to the targeted
audience?!
Dr. Bhalla is being very charitable in his description of the Congress
Party but his pithy remarks on NREGA highlight the false sense of
security and comfort underlying the Liberal Left policies of the UPA.
Social Engineering of the communal variety receieved a boost this week
with the Supreme Court’s interim order upholding Muslim Reservations
in Andhra. This is just the beginning, more can be expected if this
reaction from Abhishek Singhvi is anything to go by. It is clear that
the Congress Party wants to further its Liberal Left agenda by
expanding group entitlements or quotas on religious grounds.
This brings us back to the fundamental challenge for Socio-economic
Engineering -
how must it capture popular imagination of the aspirational voter to
motivate him or her to cross-over ?
If the core premise behind Social Engineering and Left Liberalism was
to convince the voter to settle for the least common denominator
within his or her group on the pretext of having the security of a
safety net
then the core premise behind Socio-Economic Engineering must be
to motivate the voter that there is no reason to settle for the least
common denominator within the group for even the highest of
aspirations will be within reach by climbing on to the Ladder of
Opportunity
There maybe merit in framing the popular debate between the Liberal
Left policies of the Congress and the policy of prescriptions of the
Center Right as a choice between the Ladder and the Net.
The Net may offer safety but then there is no getting out of the Net
once trapped.
There is nothing progressive about the Net for there is no avenue to
progress.
The Net only weighs you down as it gets burdened with more and more to
support
The metaphorical Ladder on the other hand is
by design progressive with opportunities to rise in each and every
step.
by design inclusive and non-discriminatory for with every step an
individual takes to rise, an opportunity is created for the next to
rise and occupy
Pragmatism and realism would suggest that the Ladder of Opportunity
cannot stand alone without the Safety of the Net, leading one to ask
where lies the distinction between Socio-economic Engineering and
Social Engineering ?
That distinction will have to be made by emphasizing the primacy of
the Ladder over the Net
for if there was no ladder there would be no need to cast a wide net
for safety
It may also be asked how different is the metaphor of “Ladder plus
Net”for Socio-Economic Engineering from the “Growth with Distribution”
model touted by Rahul Gandhi.
More on that in the third and concluding part in this series on Socio-
economic Engineering.
37 Responses
Pub Chick says:
March 27, 2010 at 10:00 am
Surjit Bhalla is a money manager (and not a very good one if his
returns are to be taken into account). Since when did money managers
become eminent economists?
And you or your eminence seem to ignore the basic function of a social
net: to be a net that’s only purpose is to exist, regardless of its
efficiency. Simply because its existence encourages risk and growth in
other aspects of the economy.
cynicalcount says:
March 27, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Pubchick
How did you arrive at the conclusion that Surjit bhalla is a money
manager? Kindly educate us poor folks on how you concluded what bhalla
is?
Pub Chick says:
March 27, 2010 at 12:37 pm
That’s he calls himself. It’s not even my definition. In case you did
not know, he owns and runs an investment firm called Oxus Investments
(www.oxusinvestments.com ). Apart from being a money manager, he
writes for the Business Standard and has a talk show on TV. These
things don’t make anyone an Economist.
Pub Chick says:
March 27, 2010 at 12:54 pm
And by the way, why would you question something as obvious as Surjit
Bhalla’s occupation? I mean he says that every time he writes a column
or makes one of those annoying appearances on TV.
What’s with the overall hostile tone, darling? Don’t you like this
blog author being questioned or do you dislike my dislike for ugly
men?
iHindu007 says:
March 28, 2010 at 5:14 am
“Since when did money managers become eminent economists?”
Since when did pub chicks become political analysts?
Pub Chick says:
March 28, 2010 at 8:00 am
Dearest horny boy, it takes no political analysis to say people who
are not economists by profession and have no eminence to show for that
profession which they don’t claim to practice are not eminent
economists.
iHindu007 says:
March 29, 2010 at 12:30 pm
About NREGA
Sreelatha Menon: Caderisation of rural India
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/sreelatha-menon-caderisationrural-india/00/31/388513/
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has converted many
villagers in India into card-holders, who will get a minimum of 100
days work every year. Since that is not happening so easily, the
strategy devised by civil society leaders is to unite the villagers
into cadres, on the lines of trade unions.
The drive, led by top activists, will create many a local Joan of Arc
who can at a moment’s notice get entire villages to take to the
streets, file petitions in courts and make it difficult for the state
to ignore their concerns.
MUCH MUCH MORE IN THE ARTICLE.
Pub Chick says:
March 29, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Yes yes, can you please stop pasting someone else’s opinion/ source
and actually do your own analysis?
Or tell me why Surjit Bhalla is an eminent economist or how this post
of the blog author squares with his previous post? The author seems to
contradict himself and none of the horny boys seem to notice.
It’s not enough to criticize something darlings, you should at the
very least have the courage to be consistent within that framework —
and not pick two criticisms which contradict each other.
Mala says:
March 29, 2010 at 2:17 pm
@Pubchick – I suppose you have lot of time on your hands as you post
so regularly and frequently. I have a small doubt, if you find every
reader of this blog as ugly and horny, why are you here? I mean doesnt
it make better sense to go to some blog where handsome hunks post
messages and the author of the blog is always consistent? My IQ is
much lower than an eminent personality like you who I am sure will be
remembered as the next Albert Einstein in times to come but will be
obliged if you can reply your purpose of coming to his blog and
calling everyone names. Does calling others ugly make you feel happy
in life?
Pub Chick says:
March 29, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Mala, assume it does make me happy.
Now, will you explain the contradictions of blog author? And explain
why someone is an eminent economist or how the NREGA can’t fail and
succeed at the same time?
BabuJadhav(Jai Shri Ram) says:
March 29, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Surjit S. Bhalla is managing director of Oxus Research and
Investments, a New Delhi-based economic research, asset management,
and emerging-markets advisory firm. He taught at the Delhi School of
Economics and worked at the Rand Corporation, the Brookings
Institution, and at both the research and _treasury departments of the
World Bank. He has also worked at Goldman Sachs (1992-94) and Deutsche
Bank (1994-96). He is author of Imagine There’s No Country: Poverty,
Inequality, and Growth in the Era of Globalization(2002). His research
interests are fiscal policy (flat tax?), economic history (do
institutions cause growth?), and macroeconomic policy (the role of
exchange rates in economic development). He has been a member of
several government of India committees on economic policy, most
recently the committee on capital account convertibility. He is on the
board of India’s largest think tank and is an appointed member of the
National Statistical Commission of India. He is also a regular
contributor to
newspapers and magazines on economics, politics, and cricket.
And Karvy calls him “Dr. Bhalla is a well known and respected
economist” source:http://www.karvy.com/face2face/surjitbhalla.htm
Now Pub Chick, tell us why you think he shouldn’t be considered an
economist ?
———————————————————————————————————————————–
On why NREGA is a failure, because :-
1) It wasting away hard earned money most of which ends up with Babus,
you Google away on this. I think PubChick lives on Babus kala dhan
that is why she supports NREGA scam.
2) And for thousands of crores it is wasting away, It provides only
TEMPORARY jobs for only 100 days, tell me Pub Chick will these people
and their children go into hibernation for the rest of 265 days ?
3) Money and effort is being used for silly things like planting
tress, rather than in construction of lakhs of schools delivering
skill development courses.
4) These people’s life and employment is dependent on continuous
supply of lakhs of cores. Once the money stop, they lose their job and
many would lose their life,
5) It is hampering the growth of Industry which is lot more
sustainable than NREGA(dependent of lakhs of cores of tax money) which
can provide employment to masses by artificially inflating the cost of
labor and making them less competitive than Vietnam China etc.
6) This money is doing NOTHING in terms of skill and entrepreneurial
development which is the need of hour. With their current skill set
the are simply unemployable in anything other than Agriculture which
we cannot reply upon.
So rather than teaching them how to fish, we are giving them fish for
100 days only.
I guess those 100 days are enough to make the poor vote for the same
people, and keep elites like Pub Chick in power.
While rest of 265 days the poor can contemplate killing themselves and
their children, at least our Pub Chick can drown on tequila.
———————————————————————————————————————————-
On Pub Chick’s use of words like “horny” “ugly” :-
These are clearly a sign of Freudian Projection. Which is defined
as :- “is the unconscious act of denial of a person’s own attributes,
thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world,
such as to the weather, the government, a tool, or to other people.
Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those
feelings.”
So IMHO Pub Chick suffers from some inferiority complex related to her
physical appearance, you know feels “ugly” due social isolation
“horny”.
If feel sad and also concerned for her, because I have seen other
people on Internet who had similar trollish behaviour and would create
a cocoon of lies around themselves related to their physical
appearance and would taunt other random people calling them ugly and
whore etc.
She is obviously trying to project “ugliness” “hornyness” to make
herself feel better, to feel like she is not alone and there might be
people uglier and with more fetishes than her. She does that on
Internet because peoples true appearance is hidden and such Freudian
Projection in real life with real people with result into cognitive
dissonance
But sadly, the trolls cannot keep up with lies. Often their true
pictures and videos would leak and reveal their true identity. I
remember a girl who tried to commit suicide when this happened to her.
So Pub Chick, for your own good please consult a good psychiatrist.
And remember you must not give up on life. And also no matter what the
world says, you must remain confident and believe that there is some
good inside you.
What is outside is irrelevant.
And you can always fall back on your pub and drown in tequila to
forget about these sad things, also you can always come here and troll
random people.
Pub Chick says:
March 29, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Karvy calls him an Economist? What’s next? Rediff? Or that RSS thing
called Organizer? He is not an eminent economist because he is not a
professional economist anymore and has no papers of any repute to
claim at any time. He is now a money manager because he calls himself
that.
And whatever makes you think I claim NREGA is a success? I don’t have
the data to claim either way. I had just pointed out this blog’s
author had made contradicting criticism which can’t both be right. One
can’t claim no money is being spent and also claim it’s fiscally
ruinous. That takes no googling even.
Regarding your Freudian analysis, I suspect Wren & Martin may be more
offended than Freud. That’s alright, we shall work on that.
drummasala says:
March 29, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Jadhav Saheb,
This Pubchick has little IQ. She does not know what BP stands for? i.e
Blood Pressure.
She has negative attraction or fetish towards what she thinks are ugly
men. I think she had earlier fallen in love with one ugly man, who
dumped her. Thats why she has some grudge and thinks every man is
ugly. She definitely needs a psychiatrist.
way2go says:
March 29, 2010 at 11:35 pm
Hey People..just chyll…….. PUBCHIC is just drunk so no need to argue.
She should better find out Why Barkha Datt was awarded and what made
her an eminent journalist?
Maybe Barkha can explain her while both can enjoy in the Pub at the
same time.
offstumped says:
March 30, 2010 at 12:38 am
Dear Pub Chick
Dont know who is sponsoring you but thanks for keeping the comments on
this blog alive.
As far as Surjit S Bhalla’s economic credentials go a simple search on
Google Scholar would have settled the issue.
As far as your other comments on NREGA go
Observation #1 NREGA is a disaster by SS Bhalla’s yardstick because it
doesnt deliver on its promise
Observation #2 NREGA gives a false hope of safety
are distinct and unrrelated.
The first is an objective assessment of the scheme against its
promised goals.
The second is a subjective assessment of voter’s attitude towards NREA
from a electoral politics standpoint.
Hope that settles the issue for you.
Keep them coming.
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 5:44 am
If you think those two observations are actually unreLated, what can I
say. Except to say I offer to draw a tautology cheat sheet for you.
And thanks for reinforcing the lack of eminence of our Bhalla with
that scholar link. There is not a dingle paper there worth the
mention. If I did miss something, let me know.
Targeting Middle India – Socio-economic Engineering Part 3 «
Offstumped – Center Right Indian Politics says:
March 30, 2010 at 6:27 am
[...] Targeting Middle India – Socio-economic Engineering Part 3 Third
and Concluding part of series on Socio-Economic Engineering (Part 1 &
Part 2) [...]
offstumped says:
March 30, 2010 at 6:56 am
Please enlighten with tautology and on your yardstick on “worthy of
mention”
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 7:16 am
Sure, will do that when I get to a computer. But I must say it’s
rather astonishing that you state an obvious tautology with a straight
face and call it unrelated.
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 10:31 am
Your observation #1 is dependent on actual disbursement and
utilization of the funds. Bhalla is basically saying NREGA is a
failure because it is not even good enough to use the fund it’s
allotted. He also throws some random Rajiv quotes on efficiency in the
middle of the original column — as I remember reading it in the print
version of his column.
Now your Observation #2 says it gives false hope and safety. In your
original post you even claim this is visible on the ground and even
credit this policy of changing electoral outcomes. For a policy to
actually translate to the hope and safety you claim, however false
they may be, observation #1 has to essentially be false. Since the
disbursement of the funds in some sense is what gives the false hope/
change. It is perfectly reasonable to assume those who do get that
sense are not the kind of people who read the entire legislative
paperwork or the latest story on this by The Economist (the one last
week). And your own post accepts to this reality.
So, unless observation #1 is absolutely false, observation #2 cannot
stand. And vice-versa. Now, please pick one of the above and not both
to criticize the NREGA.
Coming to our man Bhalla, I think the established way of ascertaining
someone’s eminence in a modern academic discipline is to hunt for
their citations and the h-index. On that, Bhalla scores a near 0. So,
it’s fair to say he is not an eminent economist. But I think the
looking into his research productivity and citation is meaningless
when he himself does not call him an economist! Forget an eminent one.
That should be your biggest hint.
Jai71 says:
March 30, 2010 at 11:39 am
Pub Chick,
You are IMO driving a logical argument – but not willing to look
beyond the words used per se. And also trying to be simplistic i feel.
A. NREGA is a failure because it did not meet / is not meeting the
goals it had for itself – low disbursement could be one of the issues
B. But NREGA has affected electoral outcomes – there are two aspects
you should look at:
a. To affect electoral outcomes, it is not necessary for NREGA to
actually be implemented FULLY. Implementation to the tune of the vote
swing should be sufficient (am sure you are aware how close the
electoral race is – and what % of votes the winner actually needs)
b. “Poor villager (NREGA recipient) being happy about NREGA” does NOT
mean NREGA SUCCESS! – Some of NREGA goals may have been met, but then
I hope a give away of this size also has some other goals!!
*** Disclaimer – I have only limited knowledge about NREGA and its
goals…
Cheers!
Jai
Mala says:
March 30, 2010 at 11:47 am
@Pubchick – I dont see the purpose of u logging to this blog except to
show your arguementative powers. Perhaps you have memorized wren and
martin as a child but why exhibit that talent here. Is this a forum to
show your language skills? Also be kind enough to show us some link
where Bhalla calls himself a money manager.
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Jai,
I think your larger disclaimer must have been about your ignorance of
the electoral sample space and significance parameters of variables. I
am ignorant on those aspects as well. Which is why I took this blog
authors’ assertion at face value for the purpose of this argument.
I have no idea of NREGA and its merits on the ground. My only point is
that this author was being intellectually dishonest by using two
contradictory criticisms.
Mala, I don’t know where you live. But I am sure Business Standard is
available in some form. Please buy a copy on a Sunday and read
Bhalla’s byline. And, why would I shy away from showing my
argumentative powers if I think this blog author is being self-
contradictory?
Jai71 says:
March 30, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Pub Chick,
You are unbelievable – so your ignorance is better than mine… wow!
What logic & argument!!
And as for intellectual dishonesty – please re-read my post.
Bottomline: NREGA affects electoral outcome (positively for Congress)
_IS_NOT_EQUAL_ to NREGA is a failure.
if you still dont get it – pl stop acting like you are some guru of
logical reasoning…
Cheers!
Jai
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Jai, I am sorry I actually thought you were non-ugly.
Jai71 says:
March 30, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Hey Pub Chick!
I like what you are thinking…
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Excellent.
Now get back to argumentation and ignore the argument.
cynicalcount says:
March 30, 2010 at 2:02 pm
I remember a year or two ago there was this troll called “Balaji” who
used to act in a fashion similar to this newbie troll “Pubchick”.
Maybe, Balaji has changed his gender. Good thing about them is they
keep the debates going with light/fun postings which are can provide
laughter for sometime atleast.
-Pubchick – Do you have a blog somewhere? I would like to get my daily
laughter quota from there if you dont mind.
BabuJadhav(Jai Shri Ram) says:
March 30, 2010 at 5:23 pm
>Now your Observation #2 says it gives false hope and safety. In your original post you even claim this is visible on the ground and even credit this policy of changing electoral outcomes.
Electoral gains can be cause of many reasons, one must remember that
those who handle the process of elections also handle the process of
disbursement of NREGA’s money.
And one mustn’t underestimate our Babudom’s capability to squeeze out
some honey for Buccha logs, may be PapaPub chick brings a lot of honey
or Daru for our PubChick to drown her depression and self
loathing ??
And whichever party helps to increase under the table and over the
table income, will get Officialdom’s protection
At the same time, some chillad can be thrown to the needy the same way
they are given chicken and daru before voting for our eminent Mannu.
And let us not underestimate ignorance of the masses, who votes simply
on the basis of promises made, especially when those are for Jaat and
Minorities.
>For a policy to actually translate to the hope and safety you claim, however false they may be, observation #1 has to essentially be false. Since the disbursement of the funds in some sense is what gives the false hope/ change. It is perfectly reasonable to assume those who do get that sense are not the kind of people who read the entire legislative paperwork or the latest story on this by The Economist (the one last week). And your own post accepts to this reality.
Can’t help your ignorance or maybe daru that makes you see world in
black ‘n white, But lets work on it (you won’t need daru if only you
world work on your mental illness and physical situation).
The poor can get false sense of hope thanks to promises by Babus-Baba-
Mannu-Amma(s), that if they lose their current job or if agriculture
isn’t enough to drown the hunger that they can fall back on 100 days
of GUARANTEED job.
At the same time, there MANY who managed to get job for only few days
and not 100 and many more didn’t get paid for work. So even those who
are getting work right now, may not get work in future or many not get
paid. So they are also libing on flase sense of hope
And lastly, this schme in not certainly not sustainable and might get
cancelled of amended in future, hence again it gives false sense of
hope to poor.
But at least our Pub Chick is getting her daru, right. ??
Now was it so hard to figure it out on your own ??, of course it was
but we will work on it Pub Chick and make your feel smart and Pretty.
So lets do a mantra because certainly this is too much work for your
sad brain, :-
Repeat following 20 times every 6 hours or when you feel very sad :-
“I am smarty, I am pretty, not horny, not ugly, THE WORLD is HORNY,
THE WORLD IS UGLY, but I am PRETTY”
>So, unless observation #1 is absolutely false, observation #2 cannot stand. And vice-versa. Now, please pick one of the above and not both to criticize the NREGA.
Experience cognitive dissonance ? Just do as your Psychologist told
you to do when this happens, don’t accept the reality and kindly
continue with your self righteous journey through your ass.
>Coming to our man Bhalla, I think the established way of ascertaining someone’s eminence in a modern academic discipline
Since when was Economics was limited to “academic discipline” ?? Sure
there is need to teach and further its development, but this is done
with objective to apply this knowledge.
And Bhalla is involved in its application, his work requires the
knowledge of functioning if economies and how it can be exploited for
better returns.
So your way is simply the daru doing the thinking, it is certainly not
the established way. The established way of ascertaining eminence on
an individual is by the recognition of their knowledge ans skills by
their peers and recognized institution in the said field.
> is to hunt for their citations and the h-index. On that, Bhalla scores a near 0. So, it’s fair to say he is not an eminent economist.
Let me say that this is a big hint for everyone that Pub Chick is a
retard or simply ignorant.
>But I think the looking into his research productivity and citation is meaningless when he himself does not call him an economist! Forget an eminent one.
Did he tell you personally that he is not an economist ?, and what do
you call people who have studied and apply the knowledge of economics
in different feild ?
His firm is involved in “economic research”, yet you are still spewing
our this drivel.
Lets see what his firm which is involved in economic research says
about Bhalla :-
“Dr. Surjit S. Bhalla is the Chairman of Oxus Investments. His profile
provides Oxus with a powerful mix of fund management, and applied
economic and policy research. His experience with premier policy
institutes such as the Rand Corporation, the Brookings Institution and
the World Bank offers useful input in formulating global macro
strategies.
Since 1991, Dr. Bhalla has been directly engaged in financial markets.
Prior to establishing Oxus, he was Director and Chief Global
Strategist, Emerging Markets Deutsche Bank; Vice President and
Proprietary Trader Goldman Sachs; and Chief Investment Officer, World
Bank. He has been a consultant/advisor to Warburg Pincus since 1998.
He is on the board of a major think tank (NCAER), as well as Gargi
College, Delhi University. He has been a member of the Change and
Prosperity program at The Aspen Institute since 2002. He is also a
frequent contributor to media on issues related to government policy
and financial markets. He is also the author of a widely read
fortnightly column in leading financial newspapers.
___Dr. Bhalla holds a PhD in Economics from Princeton University____,
a Masters degree in Public Policy and International Affairs from the
Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University and a Bachelors degree in
Electrical Engineering from Purdue University”.
——————————————————————————————————————————
So he have studied Economics and that do at one of the best
institution in the world, those who can use Google Scholar certainly
won’t be acting like a retard, in his work he applies his knowledge in
Economic research, recognized institution in field of economics like
Delhi School of Economics,Rand Corporation, World Bank,Goldman
Sachs,Deutsche Bank have recognized him and hence he is an EMINENT
ECONOMIST.
Also he have written various papers, studies and books in the same
field.
This is obvious enough for anyone who is endowed with even average
mental faculties, but certainly it is too much stress for a Pub Chik.
>That should be your biggest hint.
It is a hint that our Pub Chick is suffering from some serious disease
preventing her/him the use of more than few brain cells.
I know how you feel Pub Chick, no worries there is more to the world
that Sex and Knowledge and Love. There is Daru.
And yes those Hindu Sri Ram Sena guys who left you high and dry and
ignored you as if you were some kind of stool even when you were
trying hard to lure even a blind to show some love.
They did this because they were Ugly and Horny and into Ugly and Horny
girls.
They couldn’t see the pretty in you.
But the Psecular Zakhir Naik sees the Pretty in you, so what he ues
the faciliy of bown paper bag. He is into Pubchik. Hes loves your.
And yes YOU ARE PRETTY, and you don’t need to devour those sleeiping
pills because there is someone who can see pretty in you.
And then there is always Daru, that you can fall back on.
Just repeat the mantra I taught you.
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 7:44 pm
This is awesome. BabuJhadhav, I now nominate you my first project. I
take upon myself the task of making you non-ugly and non-stupid.
6 months.
Ashok says:
March 30, 2010 at 8:05 pm
Pub Chick seems to be paid by Congis to act as their full time
supporter on the web. They may have hired lot of others too. After
controlling TV and news paper media, now they want to control the web
too. Unless these “ugly” creatures are blocked, we cannot have
sensible discussion here.
BabuJadhav(Jai Shri Ram) says:
March 30, 2010 at 8:14 pm
@Pub Chick
Yup that is the attitude you need to survive in this hard environment,
especially with your physical _situation_
And yes the world is ugly and you are pretty,
In fact we need a internalBeauty Contest for Special People to remind
that there exist some internal beauty in people of your kind.
BTW, I can see noticeable difference in your behavior so it seems that
Daru and Zakir Naiks Brown bag therapy is working you.
And are you chaning the “I am Pretty and the rest Ugly” mantra ??
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Ashok, who is Congis? I really would like to get paid for this though
— that would make for a novel that many many white boys will fawn
over.
drummasala says:
March 30, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Because of pubchik, Offstumped has become very interesting. People
relieves their day to day tensions by reading pubchick’s posts. Keep
them coming.
BabuJadhav(Jai Shri Ram) says:
March 30, 2010 at 8:42 pm
@Pub Chick
You should stop the use of word “ugly” “horny”, remember you need to
do this to feel good about yourself.
And you need to feel good about yourself so that you don’t drastic
description to end your harsh life by cutting your wrist and such.
==========================================
Guys make Pub Chick feel comfortable, by doing this you are doing
social service by helping an emo.
Therefore help make Pub Chick feel pretty, as far as her rest of the
drivel is concerned please ignore it as she is not in proper state of
mind to use more than fe brain cells.
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Babu boy, here is first lesson. Stop speaking to others assuming
intellect over them. Now this mostly makes you non-ugly.
But it’s easier said than done. Watch me.
drummasala says:
March 30, 2010 at 10:21 pm
Pubchick, do you know any pubs for ugly horny men? I think you might
know lot of those.
http://offstumped.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/ladder-of-opportunity-versus-safety-of-the-net/
March 30, 2010 • 6:27 am
Targeting Middle India – Socio-economic Engineering Part 3
Third and Concluding part of series on Socio-Economic Engineering
(Part 1 & Part 2)
Duetsche Bank Research released a report on February 15th 2010 titled
The Middle Class in India – Issues and Opportunities
Some highlights extracted from this report that are of relevance to
this discussion on Socio-Economic Engineering and targeting Middle
India.
#1 -While there is no official definition of the middle class,
estimates range from 30 million to approximately 300 million people.
#2 Even using the most generous estimates of the group‟s size, the
middle class comprises less than 30 percent of the population
#3 The importance of the middle class lies in the fact that it is the
fastest growing segment of the population
#4 while the total population will increase almost 30% between 2005
and 2025, the middle class population will increase approximately 10
times or almost 1000% during this period
#5 the middle class might see less of a link between their priorities
(the CLSA survey found the number one political priority for the
middle class over the next 12 months was employment) and a new
government vs. the poor (who are typically more concerned with things
such as basic healthcare infrastructure or farm loan waivers that are
more directly linked to the government).
#6 A stronger political drive in the middle class would force or
enable the government to also focus on issues that are of concern to
them.
The report also puts into perspective why the flawed Liberal Left
agenda of the Congress is meeting with electoral success
#1 The Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality where 100 = high
levels of inequality and 0 equals no inequality in an economy) is
rather low for India overall compared to other EMs at less than 35 but
has been increasing since economic liberalisation
#2 although the poverty rate has been reduced, the rich continue to
get richer in comparison
#3 As the middle class remains apathetic towards political
participation as is currently thought, then the trend of focusing on
poorer (often rural) voters to win elections could remain the dominant
political paradigm in India.
The Liberal Left agenda of the Congress has benefited from the twin
factors of Middle Class apathy and Demographic advantage by
simultaneously targeting the poor and the elite rich.
This simultaneous targeting of a Demographic majority by the Congress
can be best appreciated when viewed through the prism of what Rahul
Gandhi calls “Growth with distribution”.
“Growth with distribution” is not just about targeting the poor with
entitlements but it also about keeping the elite rich in power through
this unholy nexus between Crony Capitalism and Politicians.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writing in the Indian Express today (clicking on
this link may lead to virus infection), alerts us once again to the
Congress’ strategy to consolidate power.
The Congress is widening its target demographic base by giving a new
definition to the Poverty Line to expand Entitlements and is giving a
religious twist to Backwardness to increase Quotas.
But then as Pratap Bhanu Mehta puts it hubris and complacency can
still trip the Congress but it will take bold imagination for an
alternative agenda to succeed.
Where is the Opportunity
As the Duetsche Bank Report says
#1 The growth of the middle class and the economic growth of India are
in a virtuous cycle.
#2 As the middle class grows and continues to increase domestic
demand, the economy will also continue to grow
#4 The growth of the middle class will force more businesses to expand
and also force new business to take root
The opportunity for the Center Right agenda lies in what the Deutsche
Bank Report calls
the key point in ensuring that the link between middle class growth
and economic growth continues to strengthen
And that is in
providing the right education and skills to the middle class and
creating enough opportunities in society to absorb these
Conclusion
Socio Economic Engineering could be the vehicle for the Center Right
movement to target Middle India with a “bold and imaginative” agenda.
A beginning must be made by
Step#1 – Giving a new broad definition to this fast growing
demographic segment called the “Middle Class”
Step#2 – Micro-targeting based on issues that directly relate to
economic priorities of the various sub-segments that make up this
broad Middle Class
Step#3 – Structuring an electoral agenda around the “Ladder of
Opportunites plus Safety Net” paradigm to address those priorities
22 Responses
Umesh says:
March 30, 2010 at 7:34 am
Yossarin,
A moot point. Your views are very well taken. But, the problem is
that, u need to articulate the same in much more simplified fashion.
The Bottomline of ur argument deals with economics. But, this blog
attracts mostly Ideological people.
if you want to attract a different segment , you might need to write
in a much more lucid and simpler language.
Bottomline is, india understands money. You could write this in a
language ur ordinary IT professional or a simple trader in a
stationary shop understands better.
have to say, that ur comments are very incisive.
offstumped says:
March 30, 2010 at 7:38 am
Umeshji – point well taken, all debate is work in progress, will
refine the points over time with contextual examples.
arjun says:
March 30, 2010 at 11:26 am
BJP has to do the following;
1) Hold the base i.e 18% of the vote share.
2) Increase voteshare among SCs STs. Even a gain of 2-3% voteshare
would reduce Congress voteshare by the same amount. This ca be done by
consistently reaching out to SCs/STs and giving them prominent
position in the organisation.
3) Alliances with regional parties in key states to consolidate anti
Congress votes.
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 12:42 pm
arjun,
why are you worried about the BJP? Does the BJP worry about you? But
if you ugly or horny, no one will. The answer, my boy, is Unilever. Or
some other company that produces skincare products.
Maybe we should make the global CEO of Unilever India’s Prime Minister
by default. That will solve bad politics and ugly people. Two birds,
one stone.
Though, horniness might remain yet.
cynicalcount says:
March 30, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Pubchick – Why are you worried about Arjun or anyone else being ugly
or horny? Does the ugly or horny people worry about you? The answer my
boy or my girl is a good counsellor. Or some good reputed mental
asylum.
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Worry not darling, I shall help you too.
cynicalcount says:
March 30, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Unfortunately I would have to decline your offer Pubchick. Kindly
continue your rantings here. Good fun they are.
Pub Chick says:
March 30, 2010 at 2:41 pm
I am the one ranting? Okay!
BabuJadhav(Jai Shri Ram) says:
March 30, 2010 at 6:50 pm
@Pub Chick
You are still carrying around the grudge, that certainly isn’t good
for you.
You know how that affects your diet and BP and in turn your physical
appearance.
This is a vicious cycle that you must come out of.
Repeat after me :-
“Sri Ram sena boys neglected me not because I am ugly even when I was
trying hard to lure them, but because _they_ are ugly and horny and
are into ugly and horny girls”
Say that :-
“I am Pub Chick, and I have inner beauty that my love Pseculars like
Zakir Naik can see”
Also :-
“My Daru loves me and makes me feel good about myself”
——————————————————–
Guys let us sympathize with people with mental illness, lets make her
feel better about herself. Otherwise who knows she might give up and
devour sleeping pills leaving behind one ugly world that continuously
reminded her of her external appearance.
She compensates for lack of love and self confidence with use of
perverted word and indulges in Freudian Projection.
Poor PubChick, I think it is time for your Daru therapy. Remember
world is ugly, but you have inner beauty.
Fanatic_Hiindu says:
March 30, 2010 at 10:45 pm
Awright,
If pubchick responds this will be fun . Incidentally, we Hindu
fanatics are enjoy our drink too along with a spice of Pink floyd.
Too bad the Christmas carols with the Paedophiliac touch does not
enthuse us well enough.
Jingle the bell , Pussy’s[Pun completely unintended] in the well
Where are you, My sweet[pinch of salt] little Pubby queen?
BabuJadhav(Jai Shri Ram) says:
March 31, 2010 at 12:28 am
@Fanatic_Hiindu
She may call you horny and ugly, but trust me bro you attention has
given her a new life.
After the attack by the Boys of Sri Ram Sena, she was heart broken
that every one ignored her as if she didn’t exist.
What you have done is a pure social serivice, might have even saved a
life.
Aapne Punya ka kaam Kiya hai.
I think at least today she don’t need to resort to intoxicant to put
her self to rest.
Sweet dreams, remember at least Fanatic_Hiindu likes you.
And yes chant your mantra.
BabuJadhav(Jai Shri Ram) says:
March 31, 2010 at 12:29 am
[Sweet dreams, remember at least Fanatic_Hiindu likes you.
And yes chant your mantra.]( <<<<<< Meant for dear Pub Chick)
Ketan says:
March 31, 2010 at 2:51 am
My suspicion is that Pub Chick and Babu are the same people, just what
while posting her comments as Babu, Pub Chick is making more typos
than usual to distract others.
Can any eminent impostorologist prove that Pub Chick and Babu are not
the same people?
psecular says:
March 31, 2010 at 4:04 am
Guys IGNORE pube-chic,the gender bender. It has hired someone to write
English paragraphs with some heavy words and is happily inserting
“ugly”, “horny” in between the sentences to show them off as her own.
Its plagiarizing shamelessly. Nevertheless, I observe that pube chics
obsession for Indians (fox & the sour grapes) and its fear of a
stronger India are real
Pub Chick says:
March 31, 2010 at 8:35 am
I am quite insulted that you think I am some random guy who can’t even
type. Plus, I am also flattered you think I plagiarize.
On balance, I guess I am.
Fanatic_Hiindu says:
March 31, 2010 at 10:03 am
ok, if anybody thinks I like pubchick, all I say is that, forget it.
I’ve much better taste.
Secondly, Pubchick thinks that he/she is the ulra-cool lady and us
Hindu extremists dont have a sense of Humour, so, I’m giving him/her a
taste of his/her own medicine.
It is interesting that he/she chose not to respond to me. Shows how
scared he/she is.
Other guys, Dont take it seriously. Let us wait and see if Pubchick
responds. I bet that he/she is too scared to do so, since, he/she met
someone of him/her own size who can beat him/her in him/her own game.
Cheers
Ketan says:
March 31, 2010 at 11:15 am
Oh dear Pub Chick, please don’t feel insulted. And even if you did,
that was not the intent. It was implicit in my previous comment that
those typos were deliberate on your part.
To plagiarize would be to not just copy, but also claim that work to
be originally one’s own?
And why has Babu not yet responded expressing his feeling of shock/
jubilation at finally being recognized for what he is?
Fanatic_Hiindu says:
March 31, 2010 at 12:48 pm
I’m coming around to your view, Ketan. You might be right. Good
deduction. Cheers
BabuJadhav(Jai Shri Ram) says:
March 31, 2010 at 1:11 pm
@Fanatic_Hiindu @Ketan
Biraders, ugly folks like you and me cannot be as beautiful like our
Pub Chick. I doubt if you fully appreciate the beauty of Pub Chick.
May be you need some daru or some paper bag(for pub chick) to see her
Prettiness.
rightnow I am busy and tired of typing from mobile phone. I will be
remind you of contrasting differences in beauty of ugky folks like us
hindus and beautiful people like Osama Zakir Naik and Pub Chick.
Ketan says:
March 31, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Babu,
Now I have become even more convinced that you are Pub Chick
masquerading (hope, I got the spelling right!) as Babu.
The more you try to convince me otherwise, deeper will my suspicion
get.
Fanatic_Hindu,
Just a few days back Babu/Pub Chick and I had reached this conclusion
that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder (at least Pub Chick did
not contest this maxim).
Truth is elective (not a typo). And, Pub Chick is spectacular.
cynicalcount says:
March 31, 2010 at 3:59 pm
@ketan – Please stop trivialising. I didnt expect this from you. Let
us all stop talking about this pubchick and discuss the issues related
to the topic of this post by Offstumped. It is better to laugh at
posts by pubchick rather than giving him/her any importance. Its like
how media gives importance to non-entities and makes them larger than
life. He/She is not worth even talking about and my request to you is
to stop mentioning that nick. Thanks.
BabuJadhav(Jai Shri Ram) says:
March 31, 2010 at 7:28 pm
Bhaiyon Naam Main Kya Rakha Hai, Bhavnao Ko Samjho.
I am certainly not worthy enough to be compared to Pub Chik.
===================================================
Okay now, even I am tired of trolling a troll. And cynicalcount is
right, this tool is not deserving of any more of our attention. Sadly
I must admit my mistake for feeding this POS Pub Shit, I thought I
will keep this character busy but this really affected the process of
dialogue and debate.
Centre-right shouldn’t be trivialized by such nonsensical exchange of
intellectual excrete.
I am sorry.
========================================================
@Pub Shit Hoe, before you work on me kindly work on your own arguments
that were raised by you regarding.(Silence was pretty deafening and
was an expose of your unmatched intellectual vanity) :-
1) Why do you think that Bhalla is not an economist when _Dr._ Bhalla
holds a PhD in Economics from _Princeton_ University.
2) Why do you think he is not an _eminent_ economist, with his
illustrious educational credentials :-
” Dr. Bhalla holds a PhD in Economics from Princeton University____, a
Masters degree in Public Policy and International Affairs from the
Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University and a Bachelors degree in
Electrical Engineering from Purdue University”.”
========Occupational achievement :-=====================
“”Dr. Surjit S. Bhalla is the Chairman of Oxus Investments. His
profile provides Oxus with a powerful mix of fund management, and
applied economic and policy research. His experience with premier
policy institutes such as the Rand Corporation, the Brookings
Institution and the World Bank offers useful input in formulating
global macro strategies.
Since 1991, Dr. Bhalla has been directly engaged in financial markets.
Prior to establishing Oxus, he was Director and Chief Global
Strategist, Emerging Markets Deutsche Bank; Vice President and
Proprietary Trader Goldman Sachs; and Chief Investment Officer, World
Bank. He has been a consultant/advisor to Warburg Pincus since 1998.”
========His contribution to academia :-==================
“He is on the board of a major think tank (NCAER), as well as Gargi
College, Delhi University. He has been a member of the Change and
Prosperity program at The Aspen Institute since 2002. He is also a
frequent contributor to media on issues related to government policy
and financial markets. He is also the author of a widely read
fortnightly column in leading financial newspapers.”
Other than the numerous and well cited papers and books he have
written, (learn to use Google Scholar and comprehend what comes on the
screen before you. And please don’t blame the poor computer and the
world, because the problem lies between your keyboard and the chair.)
And lastly he is recognized by Media, Economic Institutions,
Educational Institutions and Governmental Insinuations(and that to the
very best / big / global ones at that)
3) Alleged contradictions in post regarding NREGA
Your fallacy have been well contradicted, either prove the refutation
wrong or accept that you are a well established retard deserving of no
attention.
4) By your own measure of ascertaining ones eminence in particular
field, Bhalla is very much eminent. You must agree that this
establishes your lack of intellect.
5) Why IYO is an Economist only limited to academic activities, why
cannot IYO a person be considered eminent for expertise/work/
achievement in the field of application of economics (which you are
too ignorant to know that this field exist and is really the objective
for the knowledge R&D by academia)
6) You said something about his skills and how he is not very good at
what he does, FYI in last 5 years his investments had higher returns
than say HDFC/Reliance Growth/DSPBR/IDFC/Birla Sun life/Fiedelity
Equity/ICICI Prudential/Tata Grown.
Hell returning as good as the index is considered to be a very good
investment (according to Buffet), but ROI on his investment were ~50%
better than index.
Hence in light of the stated facts it is very obvious that your
contribution to this blog is :- SHUNYA, in fact a 10 year old kid can
come up with better observations.
So take my advise, but yourself out of misery as you are trying to
hard to get attention in this world. Any further direct indirect
requests for hand-holding and attention will be ignored.
You can ask for attention from Psecs like Zakir Nalaiks and Osamas of
the world who will join you in the mission of psecular eradication of
ugly and horny non Psecular an non EvanJihadi-Psemitics.
Ram Ram
http://offstumped.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/targeting-middle-india-socio-economic-engineering-part-3/
Posted: Wed, Mar 31 2010. 9:56 PM IST
Bachchan meets the worldThe actor is actually available for all kinds
of things, from interviews with rookie journalists to launching books
to becoming part of public service campaignsSidharth Bhatia
A huge picture on his blog shows Amitabh Bachchan with his mouth open,
in what looks like a roar, with a tiger in the background. This is
Bachchan expressing his support for the Save the Tiger campaign, but
it could be a double metaphor: his anger at his critics and his
proximity to Bal Thackeray, whose party symbol is the roaring tiger.
Such a misinterpretation would confirm Bachchan’s fears that many are
out to malign his good name. Recently, he has been criticized by Raj
Thackeray, the Congress and the media. On Twitter, people are
expressing their distaste for his support to various controversial
politicians and causes. Not surprisingly, Bachchan is feeling hounded
and is now hitting back on his blog.
When he went to attend a function on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link in
Mumbai last week, the local Congress objected to Bachchan’s
association with Gujarat as its tourism brand ambassador. How could a
Congress chief minister sit on the same dais with a man who was ready
to help the Bharatiya Janata Party, that too someone like Narendra
Modi? Chief minister Ashok Chavan, always on the lookout for ways to
please his Delhi bosses, tried to distance himself from Bachchan till
it was pointed out that the star had been officially invited.
Local political machinations were behind this so-called controversy.
Chavan is under siege from his coalition partner Nationalist Congress
Party and also from local Congress party bosses. A day or two later, a
recorded speech by Abhishek Bachchan on the occasion of Earth Day was
pulled out hours before Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit landed at
a function.
Bachchan is wondering if there is a “pattern” in all this. It would be
naive to think there isn’t, given the vehemence with which Congress
spokesperson Manish Tiwari went after the actor on television
channels. A bit rich this, considering that Bachchan became a Congress
member of Parliament after the 1984 elections in the wake of the anti-
Sikh riots in Delhi and elsewhere.
Bachchan’s other bête noire is the media which, for him, is
incompetent, arrogant, unprofessional and, most of all, against him
and his family. He regularly takes digs at journalists, sometimes by
name, and is at war with a large newspaper group whose tabloid paper
carried a report about Aishwarya Rai Bachchan being afflicted with an
illness that prevented her from getting pregnant.
So what does all of this make Bachchan? A crotchety old uncle, an
angry ageing man, an arrogant star who can’t stand being criticized?
The irony is that Bachchan is one of the most accessible stars in
Mumbai. His office never fails to reply to a message or a request, and
he is available for all kinds of things, from interviews with rookie
journalists to launching books to becoming part of public service
campaigns. So what gives with this newfound aggression? The truth is
that Bachchan has discovered that he can now access his fans directly.
His blog is popular, and he writes it every night. That has been an
empowering experience and he is encouraged by the response he gets
when he hits back.
But there is also little doubt that he has become touchy at being
questioned about his choice of friends—Amar Singh, Bal Thackeray,
Mulayam Singh Yadav and now Narendra Modi: This is, by any token, not
a guest list any man in public life would like to associate with.
By taking on the media and cohabiting with the likes of Thackeray and
Modi, Bachchan has won no friends. But the pettiness and hypocrisy of
the Congress has gone too far. On his part, Bachchan would do well by
shrugging off adverse comments instead of choosing to react to
everything. He has the right to speak out, but we expect more from our
greatest movie icon.
Sidharth Bhatia is a Mumbai-based senior journalist. Comment at
other...@livemint.com
http://www.livemint.com/2010/03/31215657/Bachchan-meets-the-world.html?h=B
BJP-Sena to roll out big guns for AMC polls
Syed Rizwanullah, TNN, Apr 1, 2010, 05.57am IST
AURANGABAD: The Shiv Sena-BJP combine is all set to rope in national-
level party leaders to campaign for its candidates for the April 11
Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).
The Sena is also planning to introduce Aditya Thackeray, son of the
party's executive president Uddhav Thackeray, in the town by
organising his road show in the run-up to the polls.
Speaking to reporters here on Wednesday, Sena deputy leader and MP
Chandrakant Khaire and state BJP unit vice-president Haribhau Bagade
announced the list of big names being brought in to campaign. The BJP
big guns include its national president Nitin Gadkari and senior
leaders Gopinath Munde, Eknath Khadse, Vinod Tawde, Smriti Irani,
Poonam Mahajan and Sudheer Mungantiwar. The Sena list includes Uddhav
Thackeray, his son Aditya, Manohar Joshi, Subhash Desai, Anant Gite,
Anand Adsul and Vishwanath Nerurkar.
Congress candidate Abdul Sajed has already been declared elected
unopposed. Of the remaining 98 wards, the saffron combine is
contesting from 88 wards the Shiv Sena from 55 and the BJP from 33.
The duo has also declared that a strong warning has been issued to
rebels who have filed their nominations from crucial wards to withdraw
within two days and support the official nominees. If they fail to do
so, they will be sacked from the respective parties, the alliance
said.
Some Sena rebels have been using pictures of the party's leaders in
their election material. "We will lodge complaints with the Election
Commission (EC) against such people," Khaire said.
The Sena-BJP leaders have also accused Congress leaders including
guardian minister Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, industries minister
Rajendra Darda and minister of state for civic supplies Abdul Sattar
of misusing government machinery to influence voters and candidates.
"They have also lured many of our workers by offering them tickets,"
Khaire said.
Specifically naming Abdul Sattar, who had assaulted a Congress
activist following a row over party tickets, Khaire alleged, "He is
threatening many of our workers and also misusing the police machinery
for this purpose. We will approach the EC and draw its attention to
ministers' meddling in the election process."
"The combine is sure to retain its hold on the AMC by bagging at least
55 seats," district Sena unit president Ambadas Danve said.
Dismal conviction rate in rape cases in Maharashtra
Umesh Isalkar & Mihir Tanksale, TNN, Mar 31, 2010, 06.06am IST
PUNE: The poor annual rate of conviction in rape cases in Maharashtra
— barely 15-16 per cent as per statistics recently published by the
state criminal investigation department (CID) — has raised the hackles
of human rights activists in the city.
On an average, as many as 1,400 rape cases were registered each year
in the state between 2006 and 2009. While the conviction in these
cases has been pathetic, conviction in related areas like sexual
harassment and molestation is equally dismal even as these offences
are only rising every year, the report says.
Dilip Bhujbal, superintendent of police (law and research) of the CID,
told TOI on Monday that crimes against women in Maharashtra have been
on the rise over the last three years. He said the state government
has initiated measures to ensure more convictions in these cases. “A
comprehensive sensitisation programme for police officers is regularly
conducted at the Centre for Police Research (CPR) in Pune.
Besides, NGOs working against human trafficking and other crimes have
been roped in to train police officials,” he said.
Training in methods of collecting evidence to help victims during
trials, leading to conviction, is imparted during these programmes,
Bhujbal said.
According to the CID report, the state registered 1,500 cases of rape
in 2006, 1,452 in 2007 and 1,558 cases in 2008.
Human rights activists in the city have expressed serious concern over
the situation. According to an analysis done by Asim Sarode, who is
working on criminal justice reforms, the percentage of conviction in
all rape cases was 16.21 in 2006, 16.69 in 2007 and 15.25 in 2008.
On the reasons for the low conviction rate, Sarode said, “Sexual abuse
that does not amount to penile penetration should be included as a
crime. Rape victims must be given interim compensation when there is
prima facie evidence and final compensation after conviction.”
According to Sarode, only 8.43%, 5.95% and 7.37% cases of rape,
molestation and sexual harassment respectively were tried in 2008.
Private schools to face penalty for violating RTE: SIbal
PTI, Apr 1, 2010, 02.40pm IST
NEW DELHI: All private and minority schools have to reserve 25 percent
seats in elementary education for underprivileged children, and any
breach of the Right to Education act will fetch punishment, human
resource development minister Kapil Sibal said on Thursday.
Sibal told Times Now television that it was obligatory to set aside a
quarter of all seats for poor children from classes 1 to 8 but added
that the reservation would start in Class 1 only from 2011.
It would take eight years by the time the reservation extends to Class
8, he pointed out.
Asked if there will be penalty for not complying with the legislation,
the minister said: "It is now law, it can be statutorily enforced."
He said both aided and non-aided schools across the country have to
follow the legislation.
Sibal warned that schools will not be allowed to segregate students
from the disadvantage community in any form. "That is not acceptable
to us," he said.
The minister clarified that minority schools were not exempt from the
act.
"We believe every minority institution would itself like to (go for
the reservation). There are disadvantaged sections in minority
communities too. The minorities will be part of the national
endeavour."
The government, he said, was "committed to root out the capitation
fee" from the education system. "I will not spare anybody who indulges
in this educational malpractice."
The minister said the legislation would succeed only if all the
stakeholders join hands. "(Educating the child) is a community effort.
We are not doing this ourselves. We are doing this for the unborn
child".
The Right to Education act came into force on Thursday as a
fundamental right.
From today, every child has a right to education
PTI, Apr 1, 2010, 09.48am IST
Children of India are our future: Manmohan SinghNEW DELHI: Nearly
eight years after the Constitution was amended to make education a
fundamental right, the government today implemented a historic law to
provide free and compulsory education to all children in age group of
6-14 years.
The 86th Constitutional amendment making education a fundamental right
was passed by Parliament in 2002. The Right of Children to Free and
Compulsory Education Act, a law to enable the implementation of the
fundamental right, was passed by Parliament last year. Both the
Constitutional amendment and the new law came into force from today.
The new law makes it obligatory on part of the state governments and
local bodies to ensure that every child gets education in a school in
the neighbourhood.
Its implementation will directly benefit close to one crore children
who do not go to schools at present. These children, who have either
dropped out from schools or have never been to any educational
institution, will be enrolled in schools.
The Right To Education is being touted by the UPA government as
another major achievement after Right To Information Act and National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
At present, there are nearly 22 crore children in the relevant age
group. However, 4.6 per cent of these children (nearly 92 lakh) are
out of school, a ministry official said.
The school management committee or the local authority will identify
the drop-outs or out of school children above six years of age and
admit them in classes appropriate to their age after giving special
training.
The Act makes it a right of every child to get education. The Act
makes it obligatory for the appropriate governments to ensure that
every child gets free elementary education.
The Act mandates that even private educational institutions have to
reserve 25 per cent seats for children from weaker sections.
Certain schools have already challenged the law in the Supreme Court
as being "unconstitutional" and violating fundamental rights of
unaided private educational institutions. However, HRD Minister Kapil
Sibal has said that legal process would not affect the implementation
of law.
The Finance Commission has provided Rs 25,000 crore to the states for
implementation of the Act.
As per the government's estimate, there will be a requirement of Rs
1.71 lakh crore in the next five years for implementation of the Act.
Sibal said that the government has arranged the required funds for
implementing the law.
The Act says no school can deny admission to a student and all schools
need to have trained teachers. In case of schools not having trained
teachers, they will have to comply with the provision within three
years.
As per the new law, the schools need to have certain minimum
facilities like adequate teachers, playground and infrastructure. The
government will evolve some mechanism to help marginalised schools
comply with the provisions of the Act.
The government has already prepared model rules which have been
circulated to the states for preparing their own rules for
implementation of the Act. The Centre has also prepared separate rules
for the Union Territories which will be notified by the Law Ministry
next week.
As per the Model rules, the local bodies and the state governments
will undertake household surveys and neighbourhood school mapping to
ensure that all children are sent to school.
The rules say that the state governments or local authorities will
determine the neighbourhood schools by undertaking school mapping.
Such agencies shall ensure that no child is subjected to caste, class,
religious or gender abuse in the school.
The local authority will conduct a household survey and maintain a
record of all children in its jurisdiction. The record will contain
detailed information about the child and the parents and will specify
whether the child belongs to the weaker section or disadvantaged group
or having any disability.
The state government or local authorities will identify children with
disabilities and children from disadvantaged groups every year.
Unaided and private schools shall ensure that children from weaker
sections and disadvantaged groups shall not be segregated from the
other children in the classrooms nor shall their classes be held at
places and timings different from the classes held for the other
children.
The new law will ensure that quality education is provided to children
of all community, including minorities and backward classes.
However, the reservation for weaker section will not be implemented
from this year as the admission season is almost over. It will be
implemented from 2011-12.
The state government and local authorities will establish primary
schools within walking distance of one km of the neighbourhood. In
case of children for Class VI to VIII, the school should be within a
walking distance of three km of the neighbourhood.
The government has prepared a short film on the new law which would be
aired on TV channels to create awareness.
I am what I am today because of education: PM
PTI, Apr 1, 2010, 09.55am IST
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the government was
committed to ensuring that all children irrespective of gender and
social category have access to education and fund constraints would
not be allowed to hamper implementation of the Right to Education
Act.
Addressing the nation as the Right to Education Act went into force on
Thursday, he said "the government is committed to ensuring that all
children irrespective of gender and social category, have access to
education."
"Our government, in partnership with state governments, will ensure
that financial constraints do not hamper the implementation of the
Right to Education Act" he said.
Adding a personal touch to the importance of education, the Prime
Minister recalled his own childhood days as someone born in a family
of modest means who had to walk a long distance to go to school. "I
read under the dim light of a kerosene lamp. I am what I am today
because of education," he said.
"I want every Indian child, girl and boy, to be so touched by the
light of education. I want every Indian to dream of a better future
and live that dream", Singh said.
Recalling the desire of Gopal Krishna Gokhale about 100 years ago when
he had urged the Imperial Assembly to confer on the Indian people the
Right to Education, Singh said about 90 years later the Constitution
was amended to enshrine the Right to Education as a fundamental
right.
"Today, our government comes before you to redeem the pledge of giving
all our children the right to elementary education," Singh said adding
"this demonstrates our national commitment to the education of our
children and to the future of India ".
Pointing out that India is a country of young people, he said "it is
the belief of our government that if we nurture our children and young
people with the right education, India's future as a strong and
prosperous country is secure."
Singh said the government at the Centre, in states and union
territories and authorities at district and village levels must work
together as part of a common national endeavour to realise the Right
to Education and asked the states to join in this national effort with
"full resolve and determination".
Noting that success of any educational endeavour was based on the
ability and motivation of teachers and the implementation of the Right
to Education is no exception, he asked the teachers across the country
to become partners in this effort.
At the same time, Singh said it was also incumbent upon all to work
together to improve the working conditions of teachers and enable them
to teach with dignity, giving full expression to their talent and
creativity.
Parents and guardians too have a critical role to play having been
assigned school management responsibilities under the Act, he said
adding "the needs of every disadvantaged section of our society,
particularly girls, Dalits, adivasis and minorities must be of
particular focus as we implement this Act."
QnA: Will the bill help eradicate illiteracy in the decades
Right to Education: HRD frames model rules for states
Akshaya Mukul, TNN, Jan 21, 2010, 02.57am IST
NEW DELHI: In a significant step towards notification of the Right to
Education Act, HRD ministry has finalised the model rules for states
for implementation of the new law.
The model rules finally define the concept of neighbourhood schools
and make it clear that there will no discrimination against the 25%
children from weaker and disadvantaged groups who will get
reservation.
Also, the minimum qualification for teachers can be relaxed only by
the Centre and the period should not exceed three years. The
relaxation has to take place within five years of the commencement of
the Act. Each state will have to set up a state commission for the
protection of child rights and in the interim period they can have a
Right to Education Protection Authority. A State Advisory Council will
be the highest body to oversee RTE's implementation.
There has been considerable confusion about what neighbourhood schools
mean. As per the model rules finalised now, a neighbourhood school for
class I to V means an institution that exists within one kilometre.
For class VI to VIII, neighbourhood schools will be within three
kilometres. The rules also ask the states to upgrade the existing
class I-V schools to include classes VI-VIII.
The model rules also make it clear that in case there is no school
within the prescribed distance, the state government will make
arrangement for free transportation and residential facilities. States
have been asked to carry out a detailed school mapping for
establishing neighbourhood schools.
While reiterating that no discrimination on the basis of caste, class,
religion or gender be carried out by the states, especially against
the 25% reserved children, the model rules say that reimbursement to
be paid to schools for reserved students should only consist of
expenditure on students.
The model rules also state that the period of admission can be
extended six months from the date of commencement of the academic
year. Only schools run by a society, not-for-profit trusts and open to
government inspection can be given recognition. The schools should not
be used for commercial or residential purpose except for employees.
The important school management committee in all government-aided
schools should be reconstituted every two years. Seventy-five per cent
of the members consist of parents. Of the remaining 25%, one-third
will be elected members of local authorities, one-third teachers and
one-third local educationists. The committee will see the annual
accounts of expenditure and also bring to light deviation from the
right of the child, mental, physical harassment of children, denial of
admission and timely reimbursements to the children.
The rules also say that a three-year School Development Plan will be
chalked out about classwise enrolment, requirment of teachers and
physical requirement of infrastructure as well as additional financial
requirement.
Why has Amitabh become persona non-grata?
Nikhat Kazmi, 29 March 2010, 09:54 PM IST
And I wonder. Am I hallucinating, or is there a pattern in all
this!!!?? This is the pertinent query that a much agitated Mr Amitabh
Bachchan poses in his blog on day 705. The cause for his agitation?
Sundry. The brand ambassadorship of Gujarat as a tourist destination
followed by a photo-op and handshake with Narendra Modi, the
salutation to Bal Thackeray in the midst of the MNS-MNIK face-off, the
The Worli Sea link controversy with the Congress, the Earth hour
blackout of Abhishek Bachchan….Yes, Amitabh Bachchan ko gussa phir
aata hai!
So why has the famous angry young man on celluloid during the golden
1970s turned into the angry old man, in real life, in 2010? That's
because the erstwhile superstar suddenly sees himself becoming persona
non-grata in certain circles which not only pertain to the political
sphere? Before Mr Bachchan decodes the `pattern' in this social
distancing and sudden alienation, he must answer the paramount
question: Is there a connection between art and politics or is an
artist above politics and political divides?
Ideal situation? Let's visualize a scenario where today, the actor
anchors a short film that sings paeans to Narendra Modi and his
contributions to Gujarat, blanking out the events of 2002. Tomorrow,
he hobnobs with Bal Thackeray and wins the title of a `true
Hindustani' from him, irrespective of the divisive politics of the MNS
and Thackeray's relentless politically insensitive rhetoric. Then, he
gets co-opted by the BJP who wants to promote him as the brand
ambassador for the Commonwealth Games. Later, he sashays with the Left
Parties as the mascot for Kerala tourism and shares the platform with
Bhai Amar Singh as he floats his new party or joins back the SP. And
finally, someday, he recites Nehru's tryst-with-destiny speech in his
famous baritone for a promotional film on the Congress centenary on
the behest of Sonia Gandhi. Maybe, someday, he'd even be a guest of
Shibu Soren who wants him to put the state of Jharkand center-stage on
the map of India or Mayawati, who wants him to garland her statute
with a garland of currency.
In our hypothetical ideal state, nobody would have a problem with
Bachchan's changing loyalties, because hey, he's representing himself
as a public personae rather than a political person who kowtows a
particular political ideology. He's representing himself as an artist
who spawns across four decades of Indian cinema with an iconic
filmography that stretches from Vijay Verma (the hero of most of his
blockbusters in the 1970s) to Auro, the 13-year-old hero of Paa. Does
anybody care what his personal political ideology is all about?
Sadly, life, art and society aren't about ideal states at all. They
never have been. Israel still follows an unofficial ban on the music
maestro Richard Wagner because he was supposedly an inspiration for
Adolf Hitler. This despite the fact that Hitler was born six years
after Wagner died. But, for many Israelis, the images conjured up by
Tristen and Isolde, Parcifal and other Wagner compositions are not of
operas alone. Instead, they are reminiscent of the Nazi leader's
progrom against the Jews. In a seminal article on Wagner's influence
on Hitler, the New Yorker asks the million dollar question: "Should an
artist be punished because he happened to fascinate a lunatic who was
born six years after he dies?" Rationally, no. Emotionally, maybe.
So, here's a lesson for Amitabh Bachchan. Before people begin to doubt
his ideological leanings with his `I-just-accept-invitations' rhetoric
and his fan following begins to diminish, he needs to enunciate his
politics. What are you, Mr Bachchan? Right-wing, centrist,
communalist, regionalist or are you liberal, secular, progressive?
Honestly, some of your hobnobbing does seem to have created dismay
amongst those who admire your art. And much as we'd like to believe
your `I'm just an actor' tirade, the lines have begun to blur.
Give us back our Vijay of yore: 'messiah of the underdog'. And we
promise to give you back our unquestioning respect.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/pulpfriction/entry/why-has-amitabh-become-persona
Atheism is the best worshipJug Suraiya, 29 March 2010, 10:50 AM IST
In the British comedy Bedazzled there is a scene where the Devil,
played by Peter Cook, comes to earth and meets Dudley Moore, your
average man-on-the-street. Moore asks the Devil, “Why did you revolt
against God.”
“Come, I’ll show you,” says the Devil. He perches himself atop a
pillar box and tells Moore to kneel at its base. “Now, start
grovelling and praising me,” says the Devil.
Moore starts grovelling and singing the Devil’s praises. When he shows
signs of flagging the Devil goads him into grovelling more
obsequiously, praising him even more loudly.
After a while Moore says: “Hey, this is getting boring. Can’t we
change places for a while.”
“Exactly,” says the Devil. “That answers your question as to why I
walked out on God: worshipping Him is boring.”
God-worship is not just boring; it is the ultimate in trivialisation.
It infinitely trivialises the boundlessness of the cosmos that lies,
seamlessly, both outside and within us. God-worship reduces the
Creator – the First Principle, the Big Bang, the Singularity, whatever
you want to call whatever it is that started it all – to a Lalaji who
likes to surround himself with sycophantic yes-men, forever extolling
his virtues. Is the Force that created everything, from the gossamer
glow of the endless galaxies to the rainbow sheen of the dragonfly’s
wings, no more than that, a petty bossman who thrives on the most
undiluted flattery? God help us, and the universe, if he is.
And what does God-worship make of us, the devotees? In public, we say
that when we pray, when we petition God for a boon, it is for all
humankind, for all creation. We say we pray for world peace, for a
cure for cancer, for a solution to global warming and climate change.
And perhaps we do.
In the privacy of our innermost desires, however, our prayers are
almost invariably personal: Oh, God, help me to pass my exam, get a
good job, find someone suitable to marry, get my green card, win the
lottery of life.
There is absolutely nothing wrong in wishing for any or all of these
things. Indeed, they’re all good things which any sensible person
would wish for. But why make it God’s job to get you what you want?
Why give up your responsibility to make of your life what you can and
what you will?
A French sociologist has likened personal prayer and the giving of
votive offerings to bribery. He has noted that in countries where the
tradition of personalised God-worship is most entrenched –as in India,
and in Roman Catholic Italy – the incidence of bribery in everyday
life is also proportionately high. If God himself is a Babu who can be
bribed to do your bidding with a prayer and a few diyas or candles,
where’s the harm in slipping some currency notes to a bureaucrat or
politician or policeman to do what you want done? Doesn’t God himself
teach us to bribe? In which case, how can bribery and corruption be
bad things, if they’re God-given?
The atheist not only lives according to a higher code of ethics than
that sanctioned by a bribable God, but also inhabits a higher plane of
spirituality. This is far from being a paradox. God-worship, in which
typically the devotee seeks to get personal desires granted,
inevitably reinforces and entrenches the sense of self, of one’s
individual ego which is special and separate from all other created
beings and forms. God-worship is really self-worship, a deification
of one’s ego, and as such the hardest obstacle to overcome in the
journey of spiritual liberation.
The atheist realises that God did not create humankind in his image;
humankind created God in its own image: selfish, gullible and by
nature susceptible to flattery and bribes. Rather than pay lip service
to such a God, the atheist chooses to disown God and God-worship. And
in doing so, the atheist takes the first step on the path to freedom
from the silken bonds of maya.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/jugglebandhi/entry/atheism-is-the-best-worship
BJP demands judicial probe in Hyderabad communal clashes
2010-03-31 22:30:00
Last Updated: 2010-04-01 04:08:59
Hyderabad: BJP on Wednesday demanded that the Andhra Pradesh
government order a judicial inquiry into the communal clashes in the
city.
"We should know the truth about the clashes in the old city. BJP
demands a judicial probe into the incident to bring out the truth. We
feel the investigation should be conducted by a sitting judge of the
High Court," State BJP president and MLA G Kishan Reddy told reporters
here.
Shoot-at-sight orders issued in Hyderabad as riots spread
He recalled that some Congress leaders had suspected that the clashes
could be an attempt to create trouble for Chief Minister K Rosaiah.
Asked about reports in a section of media that a minister from a
neighbouring state could be behind the incident, Reddy said a judicial
inquiry should bring out the truth.
He demanded that the government control the communal clashes with an
iron hand.
On the reported allegation of Congress MP L Rajagopal that the BJP
could be behind the communal incidents to safeguard its existence,
Reddy asserted that his party did not require any certificate from
someone like Rajagopal.
Hyderabad peaceful, curfew to be relaxed on Thursday
Sharply attacking the city-based Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), he
said the party violated laws freely several times in the past few
years.
"MIM leaders openly abused and attacked Taslima Nasreen. They also
attacked government officials and were also involved in several other
such incidents. No concrete action has been taken against them," Reddy
said.
Shoot-at-sight orders issued in Hyderabad as riots spread
Hyderabad: Communal riots spread to new areas in Hyderabad on Tuesday
even as shoot-at-sight orders were issued in the old city and curfew
was imposed in the areas under eight more police stations.
While curfew continued the old city without any relaxation, it was
imposed in new areas following fresh clashes. Hyderabad police
Commissioner A.K. Khan said on Tuesday evening that indefinite curfew
would be in force in Afzalgunz, Begumbazar, Shahinathgunz,
Tappachaputra, Asifnagar, Mangalhat, Kulsumpura and Habibnagar police
stations.
Fresh violence in Hyderabad; 8 hurt
Image: Security personnel patrol a street in curfew bound old city of
Hyderabad on March 30, 2010.
Text: IANS
Images: PTI
Shoot-at-sight orders issued in Hyderabad as riots spread
He also imposed prohibitory orders banning processions and rallies
across this Andhra Pradesh capital after clashes in new areas.
The indefinite curfew in the riot-hit old city of Hyderabad continued
on Tuesday without relaxation. All 17 police stations under the south
zone were brought under curfew on Monday night to control the
situation.
The communal violence, which was so far confined to the old city,
spread to other areas in the city, triggering tension. Groups
belonging to two different communities clashed in Musheerabad,
Bholakpur and Rani Gunj and other areas in central Hyderabad and its
twin city Secunderabad.
Curfew continues in tense Hyderabad
Image: Security personnel at the gate of Charminar while enforcing
curfew in the old city of Hyderabad on March 30, 2010
IANS
Hyderabad peaceful, curfew to be relaxed on Thursday
2010-03-31 22:50:00
Last Updated: 2010-04-01 04:11:21
Hyderabad: The situation in riot-hit parts of Hyderabad remained
peaceful on Wednesday and the police decided to relax curfew for two
hours on Thursday in some areas.
No untoward incident was reported from any of the curfew-bound or
other areas of the city since Wednesday night.
Shoot-at-sight orders issued in Hyderabad as riots spread
Police Commissioner A.K. Khan told reporters that curfew would be
relaxed for two hours in 17 police stations of the old city where
curfew was imposed Monday night following communal clashes.
'Only women and men over the age of 50 will be allowed to come out
during the relaxation,' said Khan.
However, there will be no relaxation in eight police station areas
where the curfew was clamped Tuesday night.
Stating that there would be no relaxation in any area on Friday, the
police chief appealed to people in the old city to buy essential
commodities for two days.
Stray incidents of violence were reported from some curfew-bound areas
adjoining the worst-hit old city but police and paramilitary forces
acted swiftly to bring the situation under control.
Khan appealed to people not to believe rumours being spread through
SMSes and warned that strong action would be taken against those
involved in circulating such SMSes.
The commissioner said those who created trouble during the Hanuman
Jayanti procession Wednesday were being identified through video
footage and they would be arrested soon.
BJP demands judicial probe in Hyderabad communal clashes
'The police have so far booked 67 cases and arrested 136 persons in
connection with various incidents of violence,' Khan said.
There was an eerie silence in the centuries-old markets around the
historic Charminar, which teem with thousands of shoppers and tourists
on any normal day. Only the sirens of police vehicles sporadically
broke the uneasy calm in the area, famous for pearls, jewellery,
bangles, bridal wear, garments and eateries.
Charminar, Mecca Masjid, Chowmahalla Palace and other monuments in the
old city wore a deserted look. Salar Jung Museum, which houses the
world's largest collection of artefacts by one man, was also shut.
On the other side of Musi River, Begumbazar, a major commercial hub
for wholesale grain markets and consumer goods, was also deserted.
Sporadic incidents of violence continued till late Tuesday even after
police brought eight more police station areas under curfew following
clashes in new city localities while police top brass issued shoot-at-
sight orders to policemen in the old city.
The communal clashes since Saturday has claimed two lives and left
over 150 people injured.
March 28, 2010 • 9:56 am
Day after Narendra Modi’s SIT deposition
Narendra Modi’s marathon 9 hour deposition before the Supreme Court
appointed Special Investigation Team, SIT is unprecedented.
Whether you are a diehard Modi advocate or a self-proclaimed
conscientious Modi detractor, the highly anticipated deposition has
set a new benchmark by which many an elected leader shall be judged in
the years to come.
The Congress Party justifiably can be expected score political points,
but it would be missing the deeper implications to its favored
dynasty’s much blotted record when in elected office, some of which
has never been put to Trial nor been subjected to reparations.
The politics apart, the day after the SIT deposition has revealed many
an aspect of what this non-trial has come to be.
A non-trial because no charges have been filed, not even a criminal
case has been made out, yet much of the public debate proceeds on the
presumption of guilt, principles of Justice be damned.
First is this online petition by Ehsan Jaffrey’s children which has
now started to make headlines – calling on the Chief Justice of Indian
Supreme Court not to a share a dias with Narendra Modi at an official
State function in honor of the visting Chief Justice of Zimbabwe.
No amount of empathy or sympathy can erase the loss suffered by Ehsan
Jaffrey’s family. Their ordeal demands justice and no civil society or
modern democracy should settle for anything less.
But this petition is not about Justice, it is about something much
else.
If this petition was about Justice it would not be prejudging the
outcome of a yet to be conceived Judicial process against Narendra
Modi.
The Jaffrey’s may have deep personal animosity towards Mr. Modi, they
may also have low confidence in the overall delivery of Justice for
2002 riot victims. But to conflate those sentiments and emotions and
to make demands on what those holding Constitutional Offices must do
and not do reflects a motivated campaign blinded by vengeance and
retribution.
This is by no means a pursuit for Justice.
Back in 2007, Offstumped had observed that on Narendra Modi the
politcal maxim had become – “Why beat him when you can bait him” ?
The same must be said of this campaign for retribution – “Why try him
when you can trip him” ?
A glimpse of this campaign can also be seen in this supposedly news
analysis piece by Manoj Mitta in the Times Of India taking his cue
from highly discredited Teesta Setalvaad to suggest that the SIT
itself lacks credibility.
In closing it must be said that Salil Tripathi’s piece gave hope that
there can be a basis for reconciliation and closure, but this game of
baiting and tripping far from bringing justice and closure will only
widen the chasm.
15 Responses
sridhar krishna says:
March 28, 2010 at 11:01 am
The online petition is poorly drafted with many bloomers.
1. “Not long ago, the Supreme Court of India had called the Chief
Minister Narendra Modi a modern day ‘Hero’.” should have been Nero.
2. “An association of the chief justices of India and Zimbabwe with a
person who is being examined for his role in killing of innocent
people, under the directives of the Supreme Court will send out wrong
signals and undermine the process of justice in Gujarat.”
killing of innocent people, under the directives of supreme court –
sends a wrong message. It should have been examined under the
directives of the supreme court for his role in killing of innocent
people.
It is not just about mistakes in English. When the Gujarat High Court
reprimanded Teesta Setalvad in the best bakery case she went to
Supreme Court to remove the obnoxious comments. The Supreme Court
quoted Justice Gajendragadkar while striking down the words and ruled
that the Judges should not make comments. This Judgement would
squarely apply to the wrongly quoted “Nero/Hero” comment.
It is unfortunate that in this country
1) a ruling prime minister had lost her election related case and
found her rule illegitimate but went on to declare emergency.
2) she again sought to impose an election (Assam) when nobody wanted
and this resulted in a gory murder of 3,000 muslims in Nellie.
3) another dynasty rigged elections in an already troubled state and
we are still feeling the ramifications.
4) another prime minister (in waiting) pointed to a random flight
during an election campaign and said that is the flight in which the
sitting PM was running away with the loot.
5) there were scores of politicians who were indicted in the Jain
diaries.
6) a minister’s house was raided and the toilet was overflowing with –
of all things – money.
7) lakhubhai pathak’s case – Shri PVN
PVN’s acse of buying Sibhu Soren.
the lsit is endless. the president’s chair and the CEC is also not
beyond the specter of such accusations.
we are a Nation who get cheap thrill in the excesses of our leaders.
under these circumsatnces one lone voice against Modi loses its Moral
value.
one can laud that voice if it is the first of such voices against all
simillar cases. would the same group look into the accusations against
the president and the CEC.
all said and done, they are doing a decent job of at least trying to
set right one scar on the face of india. hope somebody has it in them
to tackle the rest.
rgds/sridhar
Pub Chick says:
March 28, 2010 at 11:21 am
Sridhar, Bloomers? That explains all else.
abir says:
March 28, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Since Mr Modi has appeared before the SIT now Sajjan kumar and Jagdish
Tytler (accused in the anti-Sikh riots) also should be brought to
justice
Jyotindra Khandwalla says:
March 28, 2010 at 4:53 pm
A disturbing report in Economic Times today states the road for filing
FIR against Modi would open after SIT probe.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/After-SIT-will-FIR-be-filed-against-Narendra-Modi/articleshow/5733732.cms
Pub Chick says:
March 28, 2010 at 5:26 pm
abir, are you saying legal action against people accused of other
crimes is contingent upon Modi facing legal action? Watch what you
wish for etc.
Prashanth says:
March 28, 2010 at 7:25 pm
Offstumped, please remove this pubchick, which is such a big nuisance.
She is just trying to divert all serious discussions. After having all
media for themselves, these pseudos are trying to infiltrate rightist
blogs as well.
Pub Chick says:
March 28, 2010 at 8:05 pm
Prashanth, you also seem insecure apart from being ugly and horny.
That’s alright. We shall work on it.
psecular says:
March 28, 2010 at 10:26 pm
@prashant
pubechick is a gender bender, it keeps typing “ugly”, “horny” in its
sentences in various compbinations. Ignore it.
@abir
True, now that a bench mark of 9hr questioning marathon for riot
probes has been set, will the 1984 culprits who are alive (Rajiv is
dead anyways) be brought to attend such probes.
@offstumped,
Why is Teesta “aatank”vaad being allowed to fester anti-Indian
elements. Am I missing some development or is it intentional ?. Why is
she roaming free in civilized society in spite of getting caught red-
handed for perjury and manipulation of witness statements in crucial
cases ?. She is the queen of the colony where anti-indian elements,
thoughts and practices are being spawned and sheltered. Is Gujarat
govt or some citizens for real justice doing something to fix the
meance of teesta “aatank”vaad
Ketan says:
March 29, 2010 at 12:54 am
Pub Chick,
After reading many of your comments, it seems you don’t use “ugly” &
“horny” in their conventional sense.
By “ugly” you seem to mean someone taking a leap of faith, or in other
words, reaching inferences not led to by the available data; missing a
link in chain of reasoning, etc.
Or am I reading too much into your comments?
And I could not gather at all what you mean by “horny”.
Offstumped,
Firstly, what’s strange is that the list of Jaffrey’s petition does
not seem to contain name of any person actually present in the mob
that had killed the 68 people in her bungalow. She might have her
grievances with the office bearers, but in all her TV appearances, she
has hardly expressed anger at those who had actually committed the
crime. This dogged obsession with Narendra Modi to the exclusion of
those who actually committed the crime is, to repeat, strange.
The conjectural allegation that the entire judicial process’ fairness
is lost if the CJI shares dais with Modi is too imaginative to be
taken seriously.
The event was convocation of law students in a University in Gujarat,
so the choice of guests was quite apt – chief minister (representative
of the state where college is located) and the CJI (representative of
the judiciary with who the graduates were to get associated).
Independence of Judiciary is not compromised upon simply because both
Modi & CJI I had attended the same function in official capacities.
Moreover, it is not the CJI who is currently sitting over any of the
cases involving Modi. To imply that CJI by sharing dais with Modi will
influence his juniors who might hear cases involving Modi, is actually
a serious charge.
Applying that logic, the President of India who has historically been
aligned with the political adversary of Modi should not share dais
with any of the judges! Because promotions & appointments of certain
judges are carried out by the the CJI in consultation with the
president. That can influence the independence of the judiciary. Also,
none of the politicians must ever share stage with anyone from the
judiciary – you never know when someone from a political party will
commit a crime!
Raghavan was looking visibly irritated by enquiries about allegations
of Teesta against SIT’s fairness….
iHindu007 says:
March 29, 2010 at 12:54 am
I second Prashanth’s proposal. Can somebody show me what positive
content she has added to this site?
Ketan says:
March 29, 2010 at 12:55 am
…I don’t know if it matters, but Teesta is alienating many people, not
in the least, the CJI. This gives the impression that she does not
hope much from the final outcome of the entire judicial process, but
wants to gain as much victimhood as possible by making as many
allegations of unfairness & automatic victimization as possible.
Petitioning an official & trying to tell him how to spend time outside
his office is pretty gross.
Ketan says:
March 29, 2010 at 1:12 am
Offstumped, particularly, & others,
I have a small conflict of interest here in that I am finding a few
comments by Pub Chick very logical & pertinent to the agenda set by
Offstumped, though I must confess they have been numerically far in
between.
I urge Pub chick to desist from making personal remarks that would not
have relation to the blog post. This I am urging with the idea that
the pot can indeed objectively call a kettle black, ideally without
being sanctimonious about it.
To others, I can only urge that though difficult, please do not
respond to the personal aspects of Pub Chick’s comments.
Of course, eventually choice is Offstumped’s as to what to do.
Thanks!
Anon says:
March 29, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Manoj Mitta is a usual name.
You must read Sunday’s M u m b a i M i r r o r to see how Teesta’s
press release made to the first page
Pub Chick says:
March 29, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Ketan,
What I’d want explained really is what this Prashanth means by calling
me pseudos. What does that mean? I must assure him through you that I
am real and I am spectacular.
Ketan says:
March 29, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Pub Chick,
I find you spectacular.
But I can’t be your interloctor
Or interloctator
Or whatever!
[see, I rhymed so well ]
To find you spectacular, Prashanth’s vision will have to get deranged
to the same degree as mine (as beauty lies in the eye of the beholder;
though spectacle lies just outside it).
And though consistency is desired, I can try but, may not be able to
maintain it. Our opinions should change or at least the strength of
conviction behind them should each time we come across a new piece of
information.
http://offstumped.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/day-after-narendra-modis-sit-deposition/
March 31, 2010 • 5:00 am
Narendra Modi for PM – Lazy op-ed by Sadanand Dhume
Sadananad Dhume, a columnist for the WSJ Asia, usually makes sound
arguments but this latest one by him on Narendra Modi can at best be
characterized as lazy.
It relies on Liberal Left cliches to make its point without offering
anything new by way of insight or analysis.
Dhume’s core point being
#1 – It will be difficult for BJP to attract allies willing to be
associated with Mr. Modi’s anti-Muslim image
#2 – India cannot afford to be led by someone who appears to believe
that only Hindus can be authentically Indian
#3 – The last thing India needs is a question mark over its reputation
as an oasis of secular democracy in a tough neighborhood
#4 - Leaders should also be free of even the slightest hint of blood
on their hands.
Now if Mr. Dhume had done a little more homework he would have
discovered that
#1 There is no substance to the canard that Mr. Modi believes only
Hindus can be authentically Indian. In fact if Mr. Dhume had paid any
attention to the media coverage of the 2007 elections the only kind of
identity Mr. Modi invoked was Gujarati pride.
#2 The campaign to deny Mr. Modi a visa was sponsored by those in the
United States with overt and covert links to Chicago’s Pakistani
Muslim Community. (Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)
Sadanand Dhume’s column comes at the same time as the Congress Party
scoring self goals by likening Mr. Modi to Dawood Ibrahim and by
treating Amitabh Bacchan as a pariah and as an untouchable for being a
brand ambassador for Gujarat.
Mr. Dhume does have a point on the steep challenge Mr. Modi faces on
his acceptability gap visa-vis the Nehru-Gandhis.
But the rate at which Congress spokesperson like Manish Tiwari are
scoring self goals, Mr. Dhume may very will have to eat his words on
the immortality of that acceptability gap.
The litmus test for Leaders suggested by Mr. Dhume
“leaders should be free of even the slightest blood on their hands”
is disingenuous to say the least.
If we were to apply Mr. Dhume’s yardstick and hold other leaders
accountable for the failure of their Governments to protect, then Dr.
Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi would also end up with blood on their
hands on account of the 13 attacks of Mass Terror between 2005 and
2008.
Incidentally Mr. Dhume did write an op-ed on Islamist Terror in India
a couple of weeks back in which he says
when elected politicians pander to fundamentalist Muslim leaders—as
is common in large parts of the country—the bureaucracy, the courts
and the press must hold them accountable
before stopping short of either taking names of either Politicians or
Parties or suggesting that one must carry the taint for life for
pandering to Islamists.
It is an open question at this time whether Mr. Modi has firm Prime
Ministerial ambitions or if the BJP intends to project him.
However Sadanand Dhume’s litmus test for disbarring him even before
the contest has begun rests on disingenuous logic.
This makes his case against Narendra Modi for Prime Minister both
shallow and prejudiced.
6 Responses
Jyotindra Khandwalla says:
March 31, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Modi has always preferred himseld to be CM – Common Man – and devoted
to development of Gujarat. He has always said his life is governed by
mission and not ambition. Until and unless he is given clean chit of
bill by SC, he would not allow himself to be persuaded by his peers in
the party and coalition to think of becoming PM.
In his yesterday’s blog, his You-tube video of his Gujarati address on
Doordarshan next day after Godhra incident speaks volume of his
courage and character. This video is by-lined in English and English
transcript is available of his Gujarati speech.
chetan sharma says:
March 31, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Modi has implemented his final solution, hopefully for the last time,
in Gujarat. The people of India do not wish to see that taint spread
through the rest of the country. It is better that he stays as the CM
– Con Man – of Gujarat and continue trying to evade justice until he
his finally brought to trial for his crimes against humanity.
It will be a cold day in hell and a sorry day for India if and when
Modi represents this great country.
Ketan says:
March 31, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Offstumped,
I could not access the full article, guess, it requires subscription.
From the points you have quoted, I found only the first one of some
merit.
But I also believe, Modi has largely remained silent knowing whatever
he would have spoken would be distorted and only selectively reported
by the media. But as penetration of twitter and blogs is increasing,
it is becoming increasingly difficult for the media to continue to
distort. Probably, that is why now he has started coming out with
refutations of all the charges one by one. And needless to say, law is
taking its own course concurrently, which might totally absolve him of
guilt. There might come a time, when those accusing Modi will not be
taken seriously owing to lack of substance, & then fewer alliance
partners would want to distance themselves from Modi citing his
complicity/involvement in 2002 riots. I just hope media will report
these happening faithfully.
But one thing I fail to understand is why did you choose to address
points raised in an article that would be read by very few Indians and
which arguably does not have anything new to offer.
Chetan Sharma,
Which country are you referring to as “great”? And could you please
enlist a few criteria for greatness met by the said country? It would
also be nice if you could elaborate on the “taint”, the spread of
which you are afraid of.
Thanks in advance!
SlimShadee says:
March 31, 2010 at 10:02 pm
I love reading some of your posts and you come across as a fairly
intelligent person. So it’s rather surprising that you want to believe
that Modi was not involved in the 2002 genocide of Muslims. There were
lots of murmurs about his direct involvement immediately after the
incidents endorsed by many NGOs and certain people who were part of
the Gujarat administration. ( Read this to know what I am talking
about: http://www.twocircles.net/2008jul19/ex_dgp_rb_sreekumar_who_took_gujarat_govt_protect_law_and_human_rights.html)
And after the Tehelka sting operation everything was out in the open
about who was behind this dastardly act. Hardliners from the Sangh
Parivar are quick to say that these are all fabricated evidence which
is laughable really. There are hard facts my dear friend that
“Narendra bhai” not only let these killers loose, he also played with
the judicial system so that they went scot-free after the carnage. And
this by itself blots out all his other achievements, if any.
arjun says:
April 1, 2010 at 12:53 am
The same things can be said about Rajiv Gandhi and Sikh riots in 84.
But some people are selectively righteous and focus only on Gujarat.
Probably because Modi belongs to ideologically different political
thought.
This kind of intellectual dishonesty people can see through and that
is why Modi has so much support.
It is upto the people of Gujarat to decide whether Modi is a con man
or not. Not upto NGOs whose agenda and leanings are not above
suspicion.
psecular says:
April 1, 2010 at 1:38 pm
@arjun
also kashmir & kashmir pandits, I see no one talking about them. More
these anti-nationals get unreasonably vociferous about Gujarat and
Modi, more will they create awareness in Hindus about the hatred the
minorities have for Hinduism and force Hinduism to become radical like
the minority religions.
http://offstumped.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/lazy-op-ed-by-sadanand-dhume/
April 1, 2010 • 5:00 am
Right To Education – BJP missing in action
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed the nation today as the Right
to Education Bill came in to law.
It was surprising to note that there was no response from the
principal political opposition to the Prime Minister’s speech.
In fact on the whole subject of the “Right to Education” it was
surprising to note that there was no policy paper or point of view
published by the BJP on its website.
All one gets to find on the BJP’s website on the subject of “Right to
Education” are passing remarks in a press conference in 2009 and some
cursory references in a Rajya Sabha debate.
Its a different matter that the original bill – “The Free and
Compulsory Education Bill tabled of 2003″, was tabled by a BJP lead
government.
The BJP has been missing in action on the policy debate ever since
neither having reviewed its policy stance from 2003 nor having offered
a credible alternative to the Congress sponsored legislation of 2009.
The Center for Civil Society, CCS has a comprehensive portal on
education tracing the debate on “Right to Education” from the 2003
bill through subsequent versions of legislation that eventually got
passed in 2009.
In fact Parth Shah of the CCS has a blistering article in the Mint
today on how the Right to Education act is the wrong way to go to
school.
Parth Shah’s critique of RTE centers mainly on three issues
#1 It is a massive takeover of education by the Government at the
expense of private institutions
#2 It essentially has morphed into a Right to Employment act for
Teachers with no direct accountability to Parents/School Management
and wide latitude to to Teachers Unions and unspecified School
Tribunals
#3 The legislation is half baked in that the model rules of
enforcement have not even been framed and left to the state
governments
It is surprising that the BJP that is seeking to reinvent itself as a
credible alternative to the Congress has failed to put up a policy
challenge to differentiate itself from the Congress on what is
essentially a Liberal Left sellout to lobbies and special interests
based on vast expansion of Government role in education including in
Private Schools.
The surprise is profound for the Sangh Parivar runs a large string of
private schools called “Sishu Mandirs” targeting the rural and urban
poor.
The lack of depth in its policy focus is one of many reasons the BJP
has failed to drive a sharp differentiation from the Congress leading
many to conclude that it is merely a B-team of the Congress.
As much as the BJP is critical of the Congress’ National Advisory
Council it must acknowledge the fact that the Congress has atleast
created a formal avenue to engage with outside policy experts even if
they are of the Liberal Left persuasion.
The absence of a similar forum within the BJP to engage with policy
experts is reflected in the poor quality of its political responses to
policy issues.
Engaging tired and retired journalists and bureaucrats (with the
notable exception of few eminent voices) is no substitute for a sound
body of policy research, knowledge and experise.
In fact the BJP’s policy incoherence must be directly attributed to
its failure to nurture Policy Institutions in its 6 years in office to
advance an alternative philosophy of governance and to create a body
of policy knowledge.
This entire episode highlights once again the fallacy of using
Identity as an Ideological label.
For political Hindutva of the 1990s neither offers a basis to
articulate the BJP’s position on the Right to Education Bill nor does
it help the BJP differentiate itself from the Congress on the Right to
Education Bill.
BJP’s claim that Integral Humanism is its guiding philosophy is also
shallow.
For example Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay in his remarks on Integral
Humanism says that
When the state-acquires all powers, both political and economic, the
result is a decline of Dharma. In this way if the state has unlimited
powers, the whole society looks towards the state, for everything.
Officers of the government neglect their duties and acquire vested
interests. These are all signs of the preponderance of the powers of
state.
Yet the BJP has no policy position on what must be called the largest
acquisition of political and economic power on Education by the State.
The reality is that the BJP has not even bothered to revisit Integral
Humanism since the 1960s nor has it attempted to make Integral
Humanism current and relevant .
This goes to highlight the damage political Hindutva has done to
intellectual faculties within the Party.
The result is the present state of the BJP where there is no coherent
ideological framework within the Party based on which policies can be
formulated.
What is worse Hindutva has become a Litmus Test of sorts
#1 causing the Party to narrowly look within its ranks for Policy
formulation
#2 preventing the Party from engaging a wider pool of Professional
experts who are ideologically opposed to Left Liberalism but are not
necessarily of the saffron hue
As Mr. Nitin Gadkari looks beyond his political A-team he must
seriously consider constituting a Policy Advisory Council by seeking
participation from a wide pool of Policy Experts who are broadly
opposed to the Left Liberal prescriptions of the Congress.
4 Responses
Pilid says:
April 1, 2010 at 6:08 am
1. Agree with your critique about the BJP’s lack of engagement but I
am mystified why you are so upset about it since the problem is hardly
new or novel. On how many other issues, particularly domestic ones
affecting the general public, has the BJP offered coherent, well
considered, alternative policy positions or come out with policy
papers? I cannot recall many. Not price rise, not on the healthcare
bill, not on GM crops…On the WRB, it was engaged but offered no
alternative at all.
Since the BJP is prone to swinging to the Leftist drumbeat on many an
occasion, I am not sure whether the BJP is being a B-team of the
Congress or the Left.
The party would do well to take a leaf out of the CPM’s handbook and
come out with cogent proposals made from a right-of-center
perspective. But it would have to clear the profound ideological
confusion within ranks before there can be any prospect of such
change. Policy experts can only opine; their political backers have to
be supportive of the effort for it to succeed.
2. I don’t see the RTE act as govt. takeover. Takeover would mean
govt. also taking responsibility for running the schools but here it
does nothing of the sort. RTE Act gives govt. power to intervene
without the commensurate responsibility but this is hardly new. We
have seen this before in professional colleges and the same thing is
being extended now to schools.
3. Others have commented as well on the need for teachers’
accountability. The government is empowered to enforce accountability
under the Act; whether it will do so still remains to be seen. Since
implementation has only begun, the last word has not yet been said.
Teachers are held to account based on their service rules which could
mean that private schools will continue to have the autonomy to follow
their own accountability & disciplinary methods (which is probably a
good thing).
4. Agree that model rules are half baked which is the cause of all the
litigation but because of that, it might get resolved more quickly
than otherwise.
drummasala says:
April 1, 2010 at 6:26 am
Offstumped is right in saying this about BJP. I have one question
though, if BJP does all the things you mentioned:
1) Will this things reach to aam admi taking hostile media into
account?
2) Even if it reaches, how many people will understand this taking lot
of illiterate population.
3) Even if people understand, will they vote for BJP?
I don’t believe. People will vote based on caste or good looking
candidates like prince charming (pub chick is one of the voter in this
category).
If people could not vote out CON party even after 26/11, I don’t see
any chances even if BJP brings these things on RTI.
Umesh says:
April 1, 2010 at 9:01 am
If BJP needs to capture the Intellectual space. Then they need to be
involved in the debate.
I propose the following strategy.
a) Be gracious and accept that RTE is a good step.
b) Make the point that due to lack of resources 10 years back we could
not do it. Hopefully, things are better now.
c) Attack the flaws in the Bill
i) How is financing for the 25% quota come across. The Bill seems to
be clueless on this. State Govt’s are already crying foul. I dont seen
an allocation like MNREGA being mentioned here.
Without financial allocation this will be just pure paper, No action.
My two pence.
Yossarinji,
Please comment on this..
Sudhir says:
April 1, 2010 at 4:21 pm
@drummasala – I don’t think media not taking it up or illetrate
population not caring, should be reason enough for BJP not to explain
positions in detail.
There is a large chunk of literate audience out there, who can be
influeced too. I agree with Yoss on the broad point – BJP needs to
have an alternative view point on many of such cases – merely
accepting the government’s proposal or shouting rhetoric from the roof
top will not help.
- Sudhir
Real Time Commentary via Twitter
No Sachar or Mishra prescription can make a difference to this
backwardness perpetuated by competitive ghetto politics Offstumped on
Twitter 7 hours ago
This is the second instance where Muslim factional politics has lead
to power projection on the streets and ended up provoking riots
Offstumped on Twitter 7 hours ago
Hyderabad Riots and Muslim factional politics RT @ssudhirkumar best
accounts of why the riots actually happened. http://bit.ly/aIA5R
Offstumped on Twitter 7 hours ago
Looks like Social Engineering will trip politics of Muslim vote bank
consolidation thanks to caste/class divide within Indian Muslims
Offstumped on Twitter 7 hours ago
Vidya Subramaniams reality check on Muslim quota
http://bit.ly/cYUS7Z
oped in Indian express confirms Muslim divide
http://bit.ly/cVvD
MY Offstumped on Twitter 7 hours ago
And here is the real reason for avoiding Parliament
http://bit.ly/c8KlRv Offstumped on Twitter 8 hours ago
RT @PRSLegislative 5 positions @ PRS PRS is looking for 5 motivated
individuals to join its team. For further details
http://bit.ly/dmSRlt Offstumped on Twitter 8 hours ago
Why have the Parliament at all if debate is going to subverted to suit
the convenience of the Party in Government
http://bit.ly/9G7FPp Offstumped on Twitter 8 hours ago
Syed Saleem Shahzad writes on Culture too
http://bit.ly/akEl74
no it's not an April Fools day joke Offstumped on Twitter 9 hours ago
On Right To Education BJP is missing in action:
http://wp.me/ptnDV-Ft Offstumped on Twitter 11 hours ago
If the BJP cannot differentiate itself from the Congress on half baked
legislations like RTE then it is no better than a B-Team of Congress
Offstumped on Twitter 16 hours ago
Surprised how the BJP allowed such a massive government takeover of
Education without the semblance of debate or challenge Offstumped on
Twitter 16 hours ago
Blistering critique from @ParthJShah RTE has become "Right to
Employment" to Teachers
http://bit.ly/9qoF8g Offstumped on Twitter 16 hours ago
Must read @PrathJShah on Right To Education - The wrong way to school
http://www.livemint.com/2010/03/31215740/The-wrong-way-to-school.html
Offstumped on Twitter 16 hours ago
As much as BJP mocks the National Advisory Council time it put in
place a Policy Advisory Council of outside experts
http://is.gd/b8nOm Offstumped on Twitter 19 hours ago
More details on the 100 hours of Community Service for Youth here
http://is.gd/b8jIY Offstumped on Twitter 20 hours ago
Speaking of Education Just got an email from Narendra Mod's Portal on
"Vanche Gujarat" a Community initiative of 100 hrs to promote Reading
Offstumped on Twitter 20 hours ago
CCS has a comprehensive portal on Right To Education starting with
2003 bill http://is.gd/b8j4l least BJP can do is co-opt policy experts
Offstumped on Twitter 20 hours ago
http://offstumped.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/right-to-education-bjp-missing-in-action/
Gadkari blames UPA’s bad governance for price rise
By IANS
March 31st, 2010
KOLKATA - Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari
Wednesday blamed “bad governance” of the United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) government for the spiralling prices of essential items.
History tells us that whenever the Congress is in power, prices go up,
Gadkari said at a party convention here.
The BJP chief said unless the present government is ousted, prices
would remain high.
“The commoners are facing serious problems due to skyrocketing prices.
This is due to bad governance of the UPA government,” he said.
BJP amends party constitution, to have more office-bearers
By IANS
February 18th, 2010
INDORE - The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has amended its constitution
to increase the number of posts of central office-bearers and simplify
the process of organisational elections.
The resolution to amend the constitution was moved by party vice-
president Balasaheb Apte at the meeting of the party’s national
council here Thursday, party sources said.
The move to increase the number of its office-bearers follows the
party’s decision to keep one-third posts at all levels for women.
Party sources said that following the amendment, the strength of
central office-bearers will go up from 29 to 37.
The party will now have nine general secretaries (seven earlier), 12
vice-presidents (nine earlier), and 15 secretaries (twelve earlier),
apart from a treasurer.
The national executive will now have 120 members, the sources said.
New BJP office bearers to meet April 2
By IANS
March 24th, 2010
NEW DELHI - Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari will
meet his new office bearers on April 2 to chalk out the strategy for
the party’s campaign against rising prices.
“The April 2 meeting of office-bearers will discuss BJP’s anti-price
rise agitation and preparations for the April 21 rally in Delhi,” BJP
headquarters in-charge Shyam Jaju told IANS.
This will be the first meeting of party office bearers after Gadkari
announced his team March 16.
The meeting will be attended by senior party leader L.K. Advani,
Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and Leader of
Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, among others.
The BJP has planned a big rally in the capital against price rise
April 21 and the meeting is expected to discuss efforts to mobilise
people for it.
The meeting will also chalk out programmes for the future, a party
official said adding that Gadkari would distribute work among new
office bearers only after meeting them.
The announcement of the new team had led to criticism about its
composition from some party leaders from Bihar including Shatrughan
Sinha and C.P. Thakur. Gadkari told them not to raise their grievances
in the media.
Gadkari’s new team has 12 general secretaries, 11 vice-presidents (two
posts are vacant) and 15 secretaries. Women have been given 33 percent
representation in the national executive committee.
http://blog.taragana.com/politics/2010/03/24/new-bjp-office-bearers-to-meet-april-2-25056/
Horseplay in Harappa: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/f9b738e079fef9fb/29e89ff9c3ac525d
Troubled Tribal: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/e728acc31e0d52d7#
Indian Morality Meltdown: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/ec479835613abd41#
Hindus'Tantrum: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/8a1efe054a3bf157#
I Write, Therefore I am: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/4cb1ce65c9d8f4c5#
Indian Morality Meltdown: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/37334fb34fbe6d7c#
Sex and CD Scandal: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/3f5e2a3be4798e7d#
Not Required Indian, NRI: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/672c3ae8cc9b567c#
Why 'Marathi'?
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/4be9d2a2e20ab43f#
Telangana Tempest: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/b7da74ebd932a5fa#
Of States and Statesmanship: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/73c89074ecfe9966#
Sa for Sanskrit Pop: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/9f6d369c7793990f#
Black Money Monster: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/109aa8a66442ca6d#
Superpower Syndrome: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/85f8a222fd275c15#
Indian Power-Pow-Wow, Wow!: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/54cba427083f4e4f#
26/11 Saga Continues: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/20d42cd9546b852b#
Superpower Syndrome: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/008ed3e81dbcd9cc#
Of Justice and Injustice: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/dc3ba7935f641e60#
Sangh Parivar Pageant: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/a91a817395e54639#
Stop this terroristic activities of Shiv Sena
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/93908482518b9228#
BJP RIP: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/20def0d930fc511f#
Superpower Syndrome: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/b6aa5a8a1b675046#
Sangh Parivar Pageant: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/9c4ff65e38c4b924#
Sudharma, Sanskrit Newspaper: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/51f22c78acbc72b1#
Hindu Worldview: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/c8a515cc34f18a5a#
Shimla Shenanigans: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/64bddaf4fb04bac5#
Sid Harth
Version]
Published on: 1/19/2010 Last Visited: 1/19/2010
Dr. Srinivasan Kalyanaraman
hindurenaissance.com/index.php?option=com_magazine&func - [Cached
Version]
Published on: 10/5/2007 Last Visited: 1/4/2008
Dr. S. Kalyanaraman was a senior executive in the Asian Development
Bank for 18 years until 1995.He was responsible for disbursing a
portfolio of US Dollars 60 Billion for over 650 development projects
in 29 countries.He also introduced a world-wide information network
for managing the assets of the bank.He has travelled widely in Bharat,
and has visited many countries around the world.Earlier to 1978, he
was Chief Controller of Accounts, Karnataka Electricity Board and as
member of Indian Railway Accounts Service, a financial advisor on the
Railways, for 17 years.He has also worked in the Accountant General's
Office, Bangalore for 4 years from 1958 to 1961.He was involved in the
introduction of the first computers on the Railways in 1965, as a
member of a Task Force set up by the Electronics Commission of
India.He has a Ph.D. in Public Administration and his two volume work,
Public Administration in Asia has been published which is a
comparative study of development administration in six Asian
countries.His graduate degree is in Economics and Statistics.He was
born in 1939 in Tanjore district.He is well-versed in Kannada, Telugu,
Tamil, Hindi and Sanskrit languages.He took voluntary retirement from
the Bank and returned to Bharat, to devote himself to his life-
activity of researches on River Sarasvati and Bharatiya
Civilization.He directs the Sarasvati Research Centre which is
affiliated with Akhil Bharatiya Itihasa Sankalana Yojana.He has done
researches on the discovery of the courses of Vedic River Sarasvati
and the possibility of this river flowing again as part of a national
network of rivers.He has been involved in promoting the National Water
Grid to ensure water for everyone for several generations to come and
to take the nation to a developed country status by the year 2010.He
has set up a website with over 30,000 files on River Sarasvati and
Civilization at http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati The site includes
his multi-lingual dictionary for over 25 ancient languages of Bharat,
Rigveda rica-s and translation into English based on Sa yana Bhaashya
The Indiancivilization internet group set up by him has over 750
active members from all parts of the world, discussing Bharatiya
Civilization issues..His 1100-page volume on Sarasvati was published
from Bangalore in 2001.His 7-volume encyclopaedic work on Sarasvati
Civilization was published in 2004.The 7 volumes are: Sarasvati:
Civilization; Sarasvati: Rigveda; Sarasvati: River; Sarasvati:
Bharati; Sarasvati: Technology; Sarasvati: Language; Sarasvati:
Epigraphs.He has cracked the code of Sarasvati hieroglyphs as artisan
guilds' activities related to minerals, metals, furnaces and artifacts
of metals in a transition from chalcolithic to alloy (bronze/brass)
phase of civilization.He presented his research findings on Sarasvati
in the World Sanskrit Conference held in Bangalore in 1996.He is a
recipient of the prestigious Vakankar Award in the year 2000.He is
President of the World Association of Vedic Studies in Bharat, and is
associated with many research and non-governmental voluntary
organizations including Rashtrotthana Research and Communications
Centre in Bangalore, India.S. Kalyanaraman20 August
2005ka...@gmail.com
http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati
Exploring Religious Conflicts? RAND as New Religious Media (NRM)
By: Dr S Kalyanaraman
August 23, 2005
Views expressed here are author’s own and not of this website. Full
disclaimer is at the bottom.
The author is Former Sr. Exec., Asian Development Bank. Director of
Sarasvati Research Centre, Chennai
Gregory F. Treverton[1], Heather S. Gregg, Daniel Gibran, Charles W.
Yost have authored a RAND Corporation report titled “Exploring
Religious Conflict”. The “new” finding of this report, is an acronym
“NRM” denoting “New Religious Movement”, which, according to the
authors, threaten to develop like tumors into violent organizations
(think “Al Qaida”), threatening the USA and the rest of the world.
Apparently this was the product of a 3-day Worskhop of ‘intelligence
analysts and religious experts’ on religious conflict, hosted by RAND
corporation (estimated cost to the US taxpayer: $100,000). This report
is interesting primarily because it either plumbs depths of
incompetence hitherto unreached by the American “Strategic Affairs”
community, or caters to a strange combination of Marxist Communist
and extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalist propaganda. It appears
that RAND has “found” religion and joined another “NRM”: New Religious
Media
What is cited as the intellectual foundation of the report is
(University of California leftist academic ) Mark Juergensmeyer’s
concept of “Cosmic War”. Is this just an attempt to go one better on
Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”? Hard to tell, but the
reader is welcome to try:
“This concept refers to the metaphysical battle between the forces of
Good and Evil that enlivens the religious imagination and compels
violent action. Cosmic war has roots in the theology of most
religions. In the three monotheistic religions, it is the Day of
Judgment, the cosmic battle between Good and Evil, and the realization
of God’s ultimate purpose for His creation. In Hinduism and Buddhism,
it is the perennial struggle to exit the Wheel of Existences with its
continuous cycle of rebirths in order to return to Brahman or achieve
Nirvana. Cosmic war ensues when this inner conflict between Good and
Evil becomes manifest – physical, not metaphysical.”
If that doesn’t give pause to the reader who thought RAND was a
professional organization, the methodology, data, analysis and
conclusions of the RAND report certainly will. According to Treverton
et al,
"NRMs (New Religious Movements) can be found in Hinduism – the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, Israel (Gush Emunim), Christianity
(the US-based Identity Movement) and Islam, including Al-Qaeda, a
global network with a transcendant vision that draws support in the
defence of Islam." And added, “…Al-Qaeda cannot be defeated by force,
but only by reaching out to its roots in religion and promoting
convergence of Christianity and Islam.”
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had a succinct term: “weasel words”
to describe the contortions of left-wing “analysts” and Saudi-owned
American politicians to argue for appeasement of terrorism. For those
who might depend on RAND for information, let us point out that Al
Qaeda is considered to be a 1992 or 1996 invention. The timing
coincided with the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when
the Pakistani ISI, funded by the unwitting American taxpayer through
the largesse of “experts” like RAND’s, helped to turn weapons,
training and the surviving hordes of Islamic extremists brainwashed in
the madarssas of Pakistan, against the Infidels of the West – viz,
America. Now let us examine RAND’s list of “New Religious Movements”
that Treverton et al try to club with Al Qaeda – both for what it
includes, and what it omits.
The report’s contribution is a false generalization on metaphysical,
co(s)mic war, flippant comparisons unrelated to cultural or
civilizational contexts. There is little evidence of analytical rigor
and virtually no empirical basis. Lacking original thought or
evidence, the report trivializes the threat of terror with the
arbitrary choice of 'New Religious Movements' (NRMs) cited as examples
of a new innovative category.
The report appears to whitewash Al Qaeda, with its proclaimed mission
of jihad against the world, by clubbing it with a mishmash of socio-
political entities and obscure movements. For instance, “Gush Emunim”
is an organization of Israeli Settlers in the Middle East, with no
evidence of any axe to grind against anyone except those who try to
oust them from their homes. The “Christian Identity Movement” is a
superset of weekend warriors in America who don camouflage and prance
around the pine forests of Alabama or Idaho, imagining a world of
“Aryan Domination”. And with these is RAND’s amazing classification of
the Indian “RSS” (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh”) as a “NEW” Religious
Movement! The RSS, just to give Treverton and his gang of Einsteins a
hint, was formed in 1925. That, per the calendar normally followed
even in California, was 80 years ago. It predates RAND and Treverton
by a long way. It may even predate the American entities such as the
Neo Conservative Movement, the Moral Majority, and the Jubilee Mission
Baptist Church. The RSS is the world’s largest volunteer organization,
with over 12 million volunteers. How RAND came to the conclusion that
the RSS is “new” and poses a threat to the rest of the world, is a
question that the US taxpayers who funded this “Workshop” and “Report”
may well ask.
Is RAND trying to deflect the focus of American lawmakers from the
focus on war on terror? It was not too long ago that RAND’s Parachini
noted:
"Given the thousands of Jihadists trained in Afghanistan, the struggle
with al Qaeda is liable to last for a decade or more."
The principal author of the present RAND report, Treverton, seemed to
have different ideas:
"Al Qaeda may eventually be contained, but new threats are likely to
emerge. So the task is to contain terrorism; it cannot be rooted out.
That task sometimes requires military instruments, as in Afghanistan,
but most of the time it is a matter of patient, multilateral police
and intelligence work."
Both quotes from a symposium held in 2003 by RAND jointly with
Frontpage Magazine.
Garbage in, garbage out is the adage of the information age. Treverton
clarifies what he meant in the above quote, with his new statement in
the present report. Here is an example of terse observations and
profound policy recommendations in the present report:
"…Al-Qaeda cannot be defeated by force, but only by reaching out to
its roots in religion and promoting convergence of Christianity and
Islam."
Such a policy prescription of Christian-Islam religious convergence
has, unfortunately, NOT been backed up by evidence and critical
analysis of the underlying causes and patterns of Islamist terror.
After all, almost all major terror events, recorded so far, have
emanated only from Taliban (that is, madarasa students) or traceable
only to terrorists trained in or with links to non-democratic,
Islamist countries of Pakistan and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. What does
‘convergence of Christianity and Islam’ mean? Should Christianity
adopt Islamist jihad as a central doctrine?
When they take a break from hallucinating on ‘cosmic wars’, RAND
thinkers might consider introspecting on the Hindu response to jihad
in India for nearly 8 centuries. They may find it useful to refer to
Andrew Bostom, 2005, 'The Legacy of Jihad - Islamic Holy War and the
Fate of Non-muslims,' Prometheus Books. Al Qaeda is not another NRM,
it provides the justification for all the terror activities the world
has witnessed so far, be it in New York, Thailand, London or Ayodhya.
See also Andrew Bostom's 'Legacy of Jihad in India', July 2005 in the
American Thinker.
"Rarely understood, let alone acknowledged, however, is the history of
brutal jihad conquest, Muslim colonization, and the imposition of
dhimmitude shared by the Jews of historical Palestine, and the Hindus
of the Indian subcontinent. Moreover, both peoples and nations also
have in common, a subsequent, albeit much briefer British colonial
legacy, which despite its own abuses, abrogated the system of
dhimmitude (permanently for Israel and India, if not, sadly, for their
contemporary Muslim neighboring states), and created the nascent
institutions upon which thriving democratic societies have been
constructed."
Dhimmitude: the Islamic system of governing populations conquered by
jihad wars, encompassing all of the demographic, ethnic, and religious
aspects of the political system. The word "dhimmitude" as a historical
concept, was coined by Bat Ye'or in 1983 to describe the legal and
social conditions of Jews and Christians subjected to Islamic rule.
The word "dhimmitude" comes from dhimmi, an Arabic word meaning
"protected". Dhimmi was the name applied by the Arab-Muslim conquerors
to indigenous non-Muslim populations who surrendered by a treaty
(dhimma) to Muslim domination.
We note that the project was funded by the CIA's Directorate of
Intelligence – the same people who did not see any threat in Mohammed
Atta and Co. as they watched them enter the US and “learn to fly” in
2001. One wonders why the CIA Directorate of Intelligence would fund a
public-release report, especially with such a contortion of logic. Is
this to impress the taxpayer with the forward-looking attitude at the
top levels of the new US Intelligence Administration? Does the new CIA
operate through public conferences and reports to do its intelligence-
gathering? Perhaps the more relevant link to this report is from the
creation in January 2001 of a White House Office of Faith-Based and
Community Initiatives.
Religious Motivation of RAND’s Expertise
Many, including the present author, believed RAND to be a secular,
objective think-tank. We were clearly mistaken. The experts who
participated in the workshop that led to Treverton’s Report have very
clear ideas on how Christianity should spread over the globe. Some
quotes from their works may be apposite. RAND should clearly be
considered to be a New Religious Medium of modern-day crusaders,
producing a denominational newsletter. The Jubliee Mission Baptist
Church would be proud. Let us look at some of the Workshop
participants.
Philip Jenkins, who claims to provide an alternative analytical
framework opposing Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations,
notes:
Moreover, conversions will swell the Christian share of world
population. Meanwhile, historically low birthrates in the
traditionally Christian states of Europe mean that their populations
are declining or stagnant…Christianity should enjoy a worldwide boom
in the new century, but the vast majority of believers will be neither
white nor European, nor Euro-American…But far from Islam being the
world's largest religion by 2020 or so, as Huntington suggests,
Christianity will still have a massive lead, and will maintain its
position into the foreseeable future. By 2050, there should still be
about three Christians for every two Muslims worldwide…I dispute
Huntington's assertion that "Christianity spreads primarily by
conversion, Islam by conversion and reproduction…No less than
Christians, Muslims will be transformed by the epochal demographic
events of the coming decades, the shift of gravity of population to
the Two-Thirds World. Muslim and Christian nations will expand
adjacent to each other, and, often, Muslim and Christian communities
will both grow within the same country."
Jack Miles is best known for his Website: Author of: God: A biography,
Christ: A crisis in the Life of God. He is the author of: 'Ringing
the firebell for freedom of religion - keynote address: 'March of
theocrats' Rally and Teach-in' (LA, June 2005). Quote:
"We are not alone, friends, but many who are our natural allies are
asleep, and it falls to us to awaken them."
Ian Lustick’s views are recorded at this website . Guru that he is,
Lustick comes up with some novel little ideas about big world
problems, like:
"I supported the war [in Afghanistan] but I warned that we needed a
Goldilocks outcome and we didn't get it."
"I think about terrorism in terms of popcorn. You can't tell which
kernels are popcorn and which are not, but you assume you'll always
have some kernels that are going to pop."
According to a book review by Joshua Sinai, Ph.D., which appears on
homelanddefense.org:
"Lustick dismisses the concept of terrorism as a valid conceptual
term. Instead, he embraces what he terms an 'extensive', as opposed to
an 'intensive', definition of terrorism that is not bound by any
limiting 'conditions'. This, he claims, enables one to classify
activities as 'terrorist' if they encompass any violent 'actions and
threats' by governmental militaries and even 'tax collectors', as well
as insurgents."
(source: (1) URL1, URL3
Thus RAND’s new authorities on terrorism appear to such theologians or
Jesuit seminarians with their fire-and-brimstone orations of bigotry.
RAND is therefore appropriately branded as an extension of a seminary
and an entity not unlike the Seventh Day Adventists or Jubilee
Mission. A New Religious Medium.
A splendid exception is Juan Cole who wrote his piece 'Can ethnic
cleansing bring back Jesus?' on May 20, 2004. Juan cites Rick
Perlstein's piece in the Village Voice with admiration.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/perlstein.php
"The gem in the article is the account of how Iran-Contra criminal
mastermind and current National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams tried
to reassure the Christian Zionists that an Israeli "withdrawal" from
Gaza will not interfere with Jesus coming back because it wasn't part
of ancient Israel. Actually, this is right. Gaza was in Philistia, not
Judah, which was to its east. But for that matter, when the kingdoms
split, the West Bank wasn't in "Israel" either, it was in Judah... It
has for some time been obvious to me that the Bush foreign policy in
the Middle East is driven by irrational and often puzzling
considerations. But I hadn't stopped to consider, until Perlstein's
excellent piece, that the White House is trying to bring about an
apocalypse that would hasten Christ's return. And a damn fine job
they're doing of it, if that's what they are up to. Why, the place is
more apocalyptic every day." (Source: Anti war website)
The RAND report said: "NRMs (New Religious Movements) can be found in
Hinduism - the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, Israel (Gush
Emunim), Christianity (the US-based Identity Movement) and Islam,
including Al-Qaeda, a global network with a transcendant vision that
draws support in the defence of Islam." And added, "…Al-Qaeda cannot
be defeated by force, but only by reaching out to its roots in
religion and promoting convergence of Christianity and Islam."
Convergence of Christianity and Islam? A breath-taking prognosis,
indeed. RAND should consider a larger workshop on this issue in the
context of jihad as anti-terror. Sure, dancing with the devil is an
option when all other options are not on the table. Seriously, does
RAND endorse this recommendation to counter jihad?
This innovation of a new definition for a 'New Religious Movement'
which identifies RSS, Gush Emunim, Identity Movement and Al-Qaeda is,
to put it mildly, ridiculous, reducing the cosmic war of Mark to a
comic war.
The US taxpayer might have saved a lot of money by getting Treverton
instead to read to the CIA the report long-since published by Indian
tank ORF (Observer Research Foundation. They might have learned more
about the true nature of Al Qaeda and a vivid scan of religious
conflicts. Indeed, any academic worth his/her salt would have known
the conclusion:
"Al Qaeda is a revanchist organisation, which holds the West in
general and the US in particular responsible for all the evils
afflicting the Islamic world and for the decline of the political
power of Islam since the end of the Ottoman Empire. It wants to avenge
the wrongs allegedly committed against the Muslims since the end of
the Ottoman Empire, re-write history and restore an Islamic Caliphate
from which Western influence would be totally excluded. It is
comparable to the Nazis of Germany in its revanchist ideas and
actions. The Nazis blamed the rest of the Western world for the
decline of Germany since the First World War and for all the evils
afflicting Germany. They wanted to restore the pre-eminent position of
Germany in the world. If the world leaders of that time had said "Let
us address the root causes of Nazism first, before we fight the Nazis
and Adolf Hitler", where would the world be today?
The call to address the root causes of the Al Qaeda today is as short-
sighted as a call to first address the root causes of Nazism would
have been in the early 1940s… The conventional wisdom relating to
terrorism attributes the rise of terrorism to political, economic and
social factors such as perceptions of social injustice, violations of
human rights, suppression of the democratic rights of the people, lack
of economic development resulting in poverty and unemployment etc. It,
therefore, holds that if these so-called root causes are addressed,
terrorism will wither away. Does this theory apply to the Al Qaeda?
No, it does not. If this theory is correct, there should be no
activities of the Jemaah Islamiya (JI) in Malaysia and Singapore, the
two most prosperous and progressive states of South-East Asia. There
should be no Al Qaeda activities in Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Turkey
where there is greater prosperity than in many other countries of Asia
and Africa. There should be no Al Qaeda activities in West Europe
where there is economic prosperity, greater social justice and better
observance of human rights than in many countries of Asia and Africa.
There should have been less terrorism in Pakistan because of its
impressive economic growth since 9/11, but its economic gains have had
no impact on its jihadi terrorists. The Al Qaeda is not fighting for
democratic rights for the Muslims. On the contrary, it is fighting
against the principles of liberal democracy on the ground that they
are anti-Islam…The world has much to learn from India. How to continue
to keep India such an oasis? That is one of the questions we have to
address, while drawing lessons for the future. We cannot afford to be
complacent that India does not provide a fertile soil for the Al
Qaeda. The Al Qaeda may not be active in India, but many of the
Pakistani members of the International Islamic Front are. They could
turn out to be the Trojan Horse of the Al Qaeda. The success of the
Indian example is due to the success of its democracy, its non-
military approach to counter-terrorism, the role of the leaders of
different communities in countering tendencies towards religious or
ideological extremism and the cultural unity in the midst of religious
and linguistic diversity in India."
Source: see link See also: Symposium of RAND and Frontpage: Diagnosing
Al Qaeda "Given the thousands of Jihadists trained in Afghanistan, the
struggle with al Qaeda is liable to last for a decade or more." (John
Parachini)
Naming the US-based Identity Movement in this category is also amusing
and seems to be only for effect, just to show that the RAND report is
unbiased and dares to include a christist movement also in the New
Religious Movement category. A fair appraisal of christist activities
through various denominations in various parts of the globe as
baptizing missions, proselytizers, evangelists would clearly have
demonstrated the core causes of religious conflicts created by such
activities. That such large numbers of christist organizations are
left out is indeed strange considering that the inspiration is drawn
from the concept of 'cosmic wars' between 'good and evil'. If
christism is not a battle between Good and Evil, what other religious
movement, with the exception of Islamism, is? This mysterious,
unidentified 'Identity Movement' has been left undefined in the RAND
report, leaving it to the readers, congressmen, and policy makers to
draw their own conclusions.
We would agree with Nicole Nichols: make the outlaws accountable and
would add: don't give them a cosmic wacko status. Source: See link:
link Has RAND noted the involvement of a Pakistani Hamas leader in the
bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma city?
The absurdity of Juergensmeyer's analysis would have been apparent to
any student of theology, but since Mark wears at least three hats, of
sociology, of global conflict and of religious studies, his work
presents the potential for becoming the basis for any drastic
conclusions and plans of action by the intelligence community. His
postulation should have naturally led to the identification of Dalai
Lama's Tibetan Lama groups as a 'New Religious Movement' entering into
physical conflicts. That the report does not categorize these groups
is indeed surprising. It is also surprising that Mark does not even
refer to sanatana dharma or dhammo sanantano in the context of
'Brahman or Nirvana.' as 'exits'. We will not digress by exposing the
ridiculous nature of analysis by Mark referring to 'exits'.
Unfortunately, Mark has not provided any evidence for this 'exit'
postulation.
The logical application of Juergensmeyer's profound analysis of cosmic
wars and exits should have led to the identification of all the
adherents of Bauddha (aka Buddhism) and Dharma (Sanatana dharma or
Hindu dharma or dhammo sanantano) as prone to violence, manifesting
evil in physical terms, dramatically descending (by some unknown
processes) from the metaphysical levels.
Such a framework should have normally led to the identification of the
entire spectrum of those seeking return to 'Brahman or achieve
Nirvana' as a cult. Unfortunately, this would be absurd because the
'cults' cannot be declared as 'new' since both groups pre-date the
arrival of Christ and certainly Mohammed.
Why Does RAND Squirm When Exposed?
When the principal author, Greg Treverton was asked for
clarifications, he waffled with statements such as:
“The press story is basically accurate, but its headline is not. The
headline implies we somehow link RSS and Al Qaeda. In fact, what we
say, and the story has accurately, is that many religious traditions
have spawned "new" religious movements, and we cite RSS as an example
from Hinduism, along with AlQaeda as one from Islam, along with Jewish
and Christian examples. We also say, and the story quotes, that almost
all of these new movements are non-violent. There is nothing to imply
any connection at all between RSS and Al Qaeda. Do have a look at the
study.”
Apparently it had still not occurred to this uber-genius that the RSS
was created before he was born. When asked for detailed information
on the workshop and papers if any, presented, the response of Greg
Treverton was equally elusive:
"Thank you for your note. You have the report, which has all the
details about the workshops."
Unfortunately, the Report authored by Treveton DOES NOT provide the
details, and he certainly implied that the RSS was not only new, but
was likely to become a threat to US security (what the taxpayer paid
RAND to explore). So much for the way RAND deals with comments
provided in response to the Report, even though the Report proclaims:
"Comments are welcome." So much for transparency in dealing with
issues dealt with in Terrorism and Homeland Security Research Area.
See: Rand.org
We agree with Greg Treverton who said in another context:
"In a world in which everyone is dependent on information processors,
(the CIA) should think of themselves as the shapers and verifiers of
all that information," says Treverton, now an analyst at Rand Corp.
See: link
It is therefore not surprising that the RAND has little information,
logic or evidence of intelligent information processing. The intent
appears to be that the RAND name and the CIA sponsorship label are
enough to propagate the authors’ personal religious agendas.
So DID RAND “Explore Religious Conflicts”?
We would have expected RAND to address the most serious issue of
Religious Conflicts with a careful evaluation of facts and figures. We
find neither facts nor figures in the Report. Here are samples of
statements made and opinions expressed, sans evidence:
"Are there potential NRMs, even violent ones, apart from those spawned
by Islamic radicalism? The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in India,
an ultra-Hindu nationalist movement, is one such organization."
"…the movement was banned for a few years by the Indian government
because of its acts of violence and terrorism and its exhortation to
followers to resort to terrorist methods in the promulgation of its
religious ideas."
"…the RSS continued to gain momentum and was engaged in violence,
particularly against what it viewed to be threats against the Hindu
state, namely Muslims and Christians. Their religious view, with its
cosmic dimension, remains a threat to the idea of India as a secular
state."
"The RSS is largely middle class, as is the BJP."
That RSS has nothing to do with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
and that it was a movement born during the fight for independence of
India from the British colonial regime, has been recognized by courts
of law in India ; to cite Wikipedia, which is apparently beyond the
means of RAND to have looked up:
"In 1925, Dr. Balasaheb Hedgewar, a Nagpur doctor formed the Rashtriya
Swayemsevak Sangh. The word "Rashtriya" means "National," and the word
"Sangh" means "Union". The word "Swayemsevak" may be translated to
mean a self-reliant servant of the people and country, a volunteer in
spirit and patriot in action…The RSS fought alongside the Congress for
national independence…the RSS opposed the partition of the country,
and is widely associated with anti-Muslim riots and the assassination
of Mahatma Gandhi, it had in fact performed important work by serving
the millions of Hindu and Sikh refugees coming out of Pakistan,
escaping bloody violence and leaving behind ancestral homes in terror.
Although there was no link whatsoever between the RSS and Gandhi's
assassins…" Source: Wikipedia
See what Jack Miles, an expert who participated in the workshop had to
say in another context:
"'Thus, in India, those who want to respond to Islamist terrorism
originating in Pakistan by reasserting the secularity of the Indian
state have steadily been losing power to Hindu religious nationalists
of India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 'Muslims are cancer to this
country', BJP leader Bal Thackeray said in a speech quoted in a recent
issue of The New Yorker; 'Cancer is an incurable disease. Its only
cure is operation. O Hindus, take weapons in your hands and remove
this cancer from the roots'. ' (Larissa MacFarq1uhar, "Letter from
India. The Strongman", The New Yorker, 26 May 2003, pp. 50-57)."
Jack Miles of course did not check, or did not honestly cite, the
facts; Bal Thackeray is not a leader of the BJP. Nor is he associated
with RSS.
Has Jack Miles checked out the figures of fatalities of terror attacks
in the Northeast and in Jammu and Kashmir, caused principally by
christist and Islamist terrorists?
If RSS, an independence movement is categorized as a 'New Religious
Movement', shouldn’t the almost-as new George Washington and his band
who desired to create 'One nation under God' also get categorized as
'New Religious Movement' under the Mark Jurgensmeyer's mythical theme
of metaphysical transforming into physical? What about the Daughters
of the American Revolution? By Mark Jurgensmeyer's definition,
shouldn’t Protestant movement also get categorized as a 'New
Religious Movement'?
RAND appears to be incapable of distinguishing between the Al Qaeda,
out to create a global Caliphate of one religion, from Israeli
movements created in self-defence against terrorists who would not
hesitate to kill even innocent children.
In the face of sustained terror attacks by intolerant Islamists
governed by only hatred as their credo, two democracies, Israel and
India have repulsed the terror attacks despite repeated casualties
suffered by them. Israeli movements to defend their land and the
Indian attempts to counter the terror attacks have been remarkably
restrained, facts which should also have been noted by the RAND
'intelligence analysts and religious experts'.
RAND should ask the 'intelligence analysts and religious experts' to
substantiate these bland statements by evidence.
Some questions which need to be asked and answered by these analysts
and experts are:
-- Were these experts named the only participants in the 'day-long
workshops'? What are the days when the workshops were conducted?
-- Were there any other participants?
-- Does the report represent the consensus conclusions and
recommendations of the workshop?
-- Were there any dissenting opinions?
-- Did the participants submit any written papers? (We have read
through the report again and have noted the bibliographical references
to books and monographs of earlier years appended to the report after
end notes). Were any other evidences and databases used for the
serious conclusions drawn in the report? It is important that all the
papers be made available so that the evidence used to reach the
conclusions of the report can be evaluated. Hopefully, CIA which has
funded the RAND project will seek answers to these questions.
Does RAND Allow Data to Affect It’s Conclusions?
In the face of terror emanating from Pakistan and Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia, it is indeed surprising that RAND tries to invent phantoms of
'New Religious Movements' based on a wacko thesis of 'cosmic wars' and
exits to Brahman and Nirvana. There is no iota of evidence produced by
Greg Treverton's reporting of conversations, to show that the
proponents of Brahman and Nirvana have contributed to the acts of
terror.
Have the fatalities of terror caused by religious conflicts in all
parts of the globe, been taken into account, for example, in just one
country:
1994-2005: Jammu and Kashmir (Islamist violence): 31782 Northeast
(christist violence): 13933 Naxal violence: 5041 Punjab: 175 Others: 6
Total: 50937
Note: Are Naxals (Communist gangs) considered a cult or an NRM? RAND
should answer this question.
US policy makers should take a fresh look at the problem in the
context of the "objective compilation from reports by credible human
rights groups of the genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, and
Islamist laws that Hindus have faced in parts of South Asia where they
are minorities." Source: HAF "The human rights violations that are
occurring against Hindus must no longer be ignored without
reprobation," said Rep. Ros-Lehtinen after reviewing the HAF report.
"Hindus have a history of being peaceful, pluralistic and
understanding of other faiths and peoples, yet minority Hindus have
endured decades of pain and suffering without the attention of the
world." See HAF Release. RAND experts should review and evaluate the
190 attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh from January 1, 2004 to November
30, 2004 detailed in the Appendix of the Hindu Human Rights report
2004: (page 38). RAND experts should also explain the cosmic war
category which will explain these atrocities in Bangladesh against a
minority community called the Hindu in that state.
Are the experts of the workshop conducted by RAND aware that there are
a billion people in India? And, have they computed the numbers of
fatalities caused by 'religious conflicts' worldwide and seen the
fatalities of 50,937 in the last 11 years in India? Have the group
studied the Terrorism Whitepaper brought out by Govt. of India in
2002? Or, reviewed the conflicts detailed in South Asia Terrorism
Portal?
In Buddha nirvana country, Thailand,
"a current wave of jihadi terrorist violence in the three Muslim
majority southern provinces, which started in January last year, has
already cost over 800 lives of Government servants, innocent civilians
and suspected Muslim militants. This is directly linked with the
presence of nearly a thousand Pattanis (that is, muslims of Thailand
so called in Pakistan and Bangladesh) in Pakistan madarasas.” Source:
SAAG.org (15 August 2005).
There is no evidence in the Report on the conflicts resulting from
'conversion' activities by Christian groups. 'Conversions' categorized
as 'propagation of the Gospel', 'baptizing all nations',
'proselytization', 'evangelisation' followed by threat of
'condemnation' of those who do not so spread the Gospel or the
salvific nature of Jesus. Such an exclusion of a whole range of
conflicts which resulted in the phenomenon of East Timor, certainly
draws critical questions on objectivity of the RAND report.
Without an analysis of the impact of 'religious conflicts', the RAND
report reads like a kindergarten account. Some remedial steps are
called for by naming the culprit experts and releasing their 'papers'
presented at the workshop and subjecting those 'papers' to critical,
peer reviews. After all, we are dealing with a serious issue of
homeland security and there can be no compromise with half-baked,
opinionated reports based on absurd, unfalsifiable, ridiculous cosmic
fantasies.
Conclusions
RAND should seriously review the 'scholarly' or 'expert' nature of the
Report in question and examine if it is consistent with RAND’s vision,
aspirations, and advertised credentials and standards.
It is, indeed, shocking that RAND has recommend appeasement of the
Islamist terrorists.
This report clearly shows RAND to be peddling a narrow, bigoted
religious agenda. That this is purported to be a preview of United
States Government policy in the future is indeed scary for those who
believe in the Constitution of the United States.
The ludicrous nature of the report poses serious questions about
RAND’s quality controls, especially since the principal author is
cited as being a “Professor” at RAND’s “university”.
So it is, RAND has become the New Religious Media.
Dr S Kalyanaraman
[1] Gregory F. Treverton, Heather S. Gregg, Daniel Gibran, Charles W.
Yost, Principal author, Gregory F Treverton, 2005, Exploring Religious
Conflicts, RAND Corporation, USA http://www.rand.org/publications/CF/CF211/index.html
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http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_050823.htm
Aryan Tourist Theory (TM)
By: Dr. S. Kalyanaraman
December 24, 2005
Views expressed here are author’s own and not of this website. Full
disclaimer is at the bottom.
The title of this article is borrowed from Rajeev Srinivasan’s
trademark ATT (Aryan Tourist Theory) as a counter to the Aryan Influx
(Invasion) Theory being promoted by indologist creationists who
believe in the creation of the universe in 4004 BC, following the
Biblical tradition.
Close on the heels of this report published on December 20, 2005, on
IVarta.com Harvard's scandal & Hindu conspiracy the renowned
newsmagazine, The Economist of London, has been recruited as of
December 21, 2005, as a co-conspirator in this global Hindu
conspiracy.
The title of the cover story is: The long march of everyman.
Since the information is premium content, only excerpts can be
provided. Coded contents using DNA/Genetic code words and the cypher
will be revealed only to privileged clients such as the Harvard
University group led by Witzel.
The scoop is that Rajeev Srinivasan has trademarked a new version of
AIT and calls it "Aryan Tourist Theory". Congratulations to Rajeev on
this invention which could have far-reaching implications for bringing
the Harvard international scandal to the desired outcome. Romila
Thapar, Michael Witzel have to contend with discovery of tourist visas
used by 'Aryans' as they influxed into Bharatam.
Since the prestige of Harvard University is at stake, new methods have
to be evolved to perpetuate the possibility of Aryan tourist entry
into India in 1500 BCE. One method being contemplated, informed
sources report, is to say that this is another hindutva plot to
humiliate the prestigious Harvard University which alone has the right
to teach Hindu children a lesson. A larger task lies ahead of the
Harvard group led by Witzel: to educate the international community of
parents on what hindutva means. (Hindu conspirators claim that this
means the essence of being hindu in dharma-dhamma-veda-bauddha-jaina
continuum of bharatiya tradition; clearly a tough continuum to contend
with in sixth grade classrooms). Yet the job has to be done; the
prestige of Harvard University is on the line.
Fwd. with thanks, a precise note from Rajeev Srinivasan (Dec. 20,
2005).
[quote]
I'm afraid this link is premium content, but it clearly states that
the evidence from genetics precludes an 'aryan' invasion of India in
1500 BCE. the first human migration to India is around 60,000 years
ago, and europe was populated much later.
however, there are elements of 'conquest' still in the theories about
India, see end of the excerpts below about female and male dna. this
sounds like 'aryan tourist theory' (trademarked by me) warmed over,
and I am sceptical about it. southerners ki jai :-)
TM 'aryan tourist theory': white guys go live in other countries on
tourist visas, marry local women and settle down. thus their genes
appear in the local population.
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_VNJJNDJ
excerpts only, to protect the economist's copyright. it has a great
chart too.
Detail, however is not the same as consensus, and there are two
schools of thought about how people left Africa in the first place.
Appropriately, some of their main protagonists are at the rival
English universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The Oxford school,
championed by Stephen Oppenheimer, believes that the descendants of a
single emigration some 85,000 years ago, across the strait of Bab el
Mandeb at the southern end of the Red Sea, are responsible for
populating the rest of the world. The Cambridge school, championed by
Robert Foley and Marta Mirazón Lahr, agrees that there was, indeed, a
migration across this strait, though probably nearer to 60,000 years
ago. However, it argues that many non-Africans are the descendants of
at least one subsequent exodus.
Both schools agree that the Bab el Mandebites spread rapidly along the
coast of southern Arabia and thence along the south coast of Asia to
Australia, though Dr Oppenheimer has them turning inland, too, once
they crossed the strait of Hormuz. But it is in describing what
happened next that the two versions really part company, for it is
here that the descendants of the Oxford migration run into the
eruption of Toba.
That Toba devastated South and South-East Asia is not in doubt. Thick
layers of ash from the eruption have been found as far afield as
northern Pakistan. The question is whether there were people in Asia
at the time. One of the most important pieces of evidence for Dr
Oppenheimer's version of events is some stone tools in the ash layer
in Malaysia, which he thinks were made by Homo sapiens. Molecular
clocks have a regrettable margin of error, but radioactive dating is a
lot more accurate. If he is right, modern humans must have left Africa
before the eruption. The tools might, however, have been crafted by an
earlier species of human that lived there before Homo sapiens. For Dr
Oppenheimer, the eruption was a crucial event, dividing the nascent
human population of Asia into two disconnected parts, which then
recolonised the intermediate ground. In the Cambridge version, Homo
sapiens was still confined to Africa 74,000 years ago, and would
merely have suffered the equivalent of a nuclear winter, not an ash-
fall of up to five metres—though Dr Ambrose and his colleagues think
even that would have done the population no good. The Cambridge
version is far more gentle. The descendants of its subsequent exodus
expanded north-eastwards into central Asia, and thence scattered
north, south, east and west—though in a spirit of open-mindedness,
Sacha Jones, a research student in Dr Foley's department, is looking
in the ash layer in India to see what she can find there.
Both also agree that Europe received two waves of migration. The
ancestors of the bulk of modern Europeans came via central Asia about
35,000 years ago, though some people in the Balkans and other parts of
southern Europe trace their lines back to an earlier migration from
the Middle East. But the spread of agriculture from its Middle Eastern
cradle into the farthest reaches of Europe does not, as some
researchers once thought, seem to have been accompanied by a mass
movement of Middle Eastern farmers.
The coming together of two groups of humans can be seen in modern
India, too. In the south of the subcontinent, people have Y-
chromosomes derived almost exclusively from what the Cambridge school
would interpret as being northern folk (and the Oxford school as the
western survivors of Toba). However, more than 20% of their
mitochondria arrived in Asia with the first migration from Africa (or,
according to taste, clung on along the south-eastern fringes of the
ash plume).
That discovery speaks volumes about what happened when the two groups
met. It suggests that many modern south Indians are descended from
southern-fringe women, but few from southern-fringe men—implying a
comprehensive conquest of the southerners by the northerners, who won
extra southern wives.
[unquote]
Another co-conspirator has emerged surprisingly from down-under.
Now for the breath-taking ice age footsteps. This is the decisive blow
to the creationist indologists who believe in AIT (Aryan Influx
Theory) because the universe according to the Bible was created only
in 4004 BC. Any evidence prior to this date is a scientific hoax if
the indologists are to be believed. When will the indologists learn to
respect science?
See the photo at http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/ap/syd80112220055.hmedium.jpg
In this photo released by the Environment Ministry, a footprint
believed to be that of a man is shown in the Willandra Lakes district
in western New South Wales of Australia. Michael Amendolia / AP “The
prints were made in moist clay near the Willandra Lakes 19,000 to
23,000 years ago, the newspaper reported ahead of archeologists'
report on the find to be published in the Journal of Human Evolution.”
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10566347/
Dr. S. Kalyanaraman
The author is Director, Sarasvati Research Centre. Email:
kaly...@gmail.com
Copyright and Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and not of
this website. The author is solely responsible for the contents of
this article. This website does not represent or endorse the accuracy,
completeness or reliability of any opinion, statement, appeal, advice
or any other information in the article. Our readers are free to
forward this page URL to anyone. This column may NOT be transmitted or
distributed by others in any manner whatsoever (other than forwarding
or weblisting page URL) without the prior permission from us and the
author.
http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_051224.htm
Indian scholar deciphers Indus scriptAuthor
Indian
Date Created
19 Jan 2006
Date Edited19 Jan 2006 08:09:31 PMRatingCurrent rating: 6LicenseThis
work is in the public domain. 1/16/2006 7:28:44 AM HK Correspondent
CHENNAI: The Indus valley script, an enigma for scholars for over 130
years, has been deciphered by Dr S Kalyanaraman, a Chennai based
scholar. Ever since the first Indus seal with script was discovered in
1870 by Alexander Cunningham, efforts were on to decipher the
script."The decipherment of the script is central to unraveling the
true chronology and history of Indian civilization and culture," Dr
Kalyanaraman told Haindava Keralam.
Dr Kalyanaraman, a former senior executive with the Asian Development
Bank at Manila quit his job to devote full time for the research on
Inter-linking of Indian rivers and deciphering the script of the Indus
seal. Over the last 26 years, Dr Kalyanaraman has compiled a multi-
lingual comparative dictionary for over 25 ancient Indian languages
with about half-a-million words and has put it up on the internet.
It was a journey in a Pakistan International Airlines flight which
made Dr Kalyanaraman to quit his high paying ADB job. "I was presented
with replicas of two seals, really paper-weights, by the PIA sincve I
was travelkling by the first class on that day," said Dr Kalyanaraman.
Curiosity forced Dr Kalyanaraman to ask the PIA staff about the
replicas. He was literally shocked by the reply gioven by them. "They
said that the seals were from Mohenjodaro and it established the 5,000-
year old history of the civilization of Pakistan. They kept silent
when I pointed out to them that ther was no Pakistan at that time," Dr
Kalyanaraman explained.
"About 5000 years ago, there was only Bharat mentioned in the Rigveda.
Visvamitra, a Rigveda rishi, refers to the people of Bharat as
Bharatam Janam (that is, people of the nation of Bharata),"pointed out
Dr Kalyanaraman, author of a major book "Saraswathi".
He pointed out that the word Bharatiyo in Gujarati means 'caster of
metals' and goes on to present an array of evidence from about 4000
epigraphs on a variety of objects from what he calls "Sarasvati
Civilization". The epigraphs appear on seals, tablets, potsherds,
ivory rods, copper plates, even on metallic weapons.
The breakthrough in confirming his decipherment has come from two
sources: 1. the presence of Sarasvati hieroglyphs on two pure tin
ingots discovered in a ship-wreck in Haifa, Israel; and the presence
of Sarasvati hieroglyphs on artefacts in archaeological sites of
Jiroft (Iran) and Adichanallur (Tirunelveli, South India).
According to Dr Kalyanaraman, the glyphs are pictorials connoting
homonyms (similar sounding words which could be depicted pictorially)
of metals, minerals, alloys and furnaces. "For example, a jar with a
rim, an antelope, an elephant, a rhinoceros, a heifer (bull-calf) can
be depicted pictorially. The words related to these glyphs are
homonymous with words for varieties of minerals, metals, alloys and
furnaces," Dr Kalyanaraman explained.
Dr Kalyanaraman, claims that the code of the script or writing system
has been decoded simply as representation of the repertoire of smiths,
smithy, mines, and metal workshops. The artefacts are gathered from
many sites; there are about 2,000 archaeological sites on the banks of
a desiccated River Sarasvati (representing about 80% of the 2600 total
archaeological sites of the civilization dated to between 3500 to 1900
Before Common Era, BCE).
Some of the sites are: Rakhigarhi (near Delhi), Kunal, Kalibangan,
Banawali, Ropar (near Kurukshetra, Chandigarh), Dholavira, Lothal,
Surkotada, Prabhas Patan, Dwaraka (Gujarat) and of course,
Mohenjodaro, Harappa (Pakistan), Mehergarh (Afghanistan). A woman's
burial found at Mehergarh contained ornaments including a wide bangle
made of s'ankha; the surprise was that this burial was dated to 6500
BCE. The s'ankha industry continues even today in Tiruchendur, near
Gulf of Mannar, South Indian coastline where West Bengal handicraft
corporation obtains s'ankha to make bangles which are a must for every
Bengali bride to wear during marriage. A remarkable continuity of
culture and an industry unbroken for the last 8500 years !
He quotes profusely from the great Indian epics to substantiate his
claims. "The language of the epigraphs is said to be mleccha (Meluhha,
mentioned in cuneiform records of Mesopotamia). Vatsyayana refers to
cipher writing as mlecchita-vikalpa ( alternative representation by
copper workers)," according to Dr Kalyanaraman.
Mleccha is also referred to as a spoken language in Mahabharata;
Yudhishthira and Vidura converse in Mleccha about the shellac palace
(lakshagriha) constructed to trap the Pandavas with metallic and non-
metallic killer devices. An example of mleccha is 'helava, helava'
comparable to the 'elo,elo' boatmen's song by seafaring and river-
faring navigators who navigate hugging the coastline and along rivers
which were the highways of ancient times, enabling long-distance trade
over very long distances exceeding 3,000 kms., making the Sarasvati
civilization the most extensive civilization of its times.
"Languages of present-day India can be explained from a common source
and the theory is called 'Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory', "says Dr
Kalyanaraman.
These claims could have a significant effect on the study of languages
and contribute to historical studies emphasizing the essential
continuity and unity of Indian civilization and culture as a continuum
from 6500 BCE to the present-day.
haindavakeralam.org/PageModule.aspx
See also: spaces.msn.com/members/sarasvati97
protovedic.blogspot.com (S.Kalyanaraman and Mayuresh Kelkar)
www.hindunet.org/saraswati
kalyan97-AT-gmail.com
haindavakeralam.org/PageModule.aspx
PS: svastika is satthiya in Punjabi; rebus zasta, satthiya
'zinc' (Hindi)
TEHRAN, July 12 (MNA) -- The discovery of a number of shards bearing a
swastika motif astonished a team of Iranian archaeologists working at
Sabz Tepe in the Elamite site of Arjan, Khuzestan Province, the
director of the team said on Tuesday.
"Our team found the shards during operations conducted to save the
site from being destroyed by farming activities," Mahnaz Sharifi
added.
Located 10 kilometers north of Behbahan in eastern Khuzestan Province,
Arjan contains many ancient mounds which are believed to be various
sections of an Elamite city.
"Farmers plow the ground in Arjan, destroying the ancient site. A
cluster of shards bearing unique motifs and inscriptions can be seen
scattered on the ground," Behbahan Cultural Heritage and Tourism
Office expert Farzad Mesbah said.
Agricultural officials of Behbahan gave the land to the farmers.
"The farmers have said that they will continue working on the land,
but Khuzestan cultural officials have filed a lawsuit against the
farmers, in an attempt to solve the problem through the judicial
process," said Saeid Mohammadpur, an official of the Khuzestan
Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department.
In 1983, the first bronze coffin ever found in Iran, was discovered in
Arjan. The U-shaped coffin contained a large inscribed golden ring, 98
bracteate coins, a dagger, some textile fragments, and a
silver rod, which came from the treasury of the Elamite king Kidin-
Hutran.
Archaeologists plan to conduct additional research on the newly
discovered shards in order to learn why the swastika motif was used.
The origin of the swastika symbol is unknown. For thousands of years,
it has been used as a symbol of the revolving sun, fire, infinity, or
continuing recreation, as well as a decorative motif in the Americas,
China, Egypt, Greece, and Scandinavia. Swastikas have been found in
the catacombs of Rome, on textiles of the Inca period, and on relics
unearthed at the site of Troy. The swastika has also been important in
Eastern religions; to Buddhists, it represents resignation; to Jains,
it represents their seventh saint; and to Hindus, a swastika with arms
bent to the left represents night, magic, and the
destructive goddess Kali.
In the mid-20th century in Germany, a swastika with arms bent to the
right became the symbol of the Nazi Party. Some members of the German
Free Corps, who later formed the nucleus of the early Nazi Party, are
believed to have brought the swastika to Germany from Finland and
Estonia, where it had been an official and decorative emblem.
From March 1933, a few weeks after the ascent of Adolf Hitler to power
in Germany, the swastika flag flew side by side with the German
national colors. From September 1935 until the downfall of the Nazi
regime in 1945, the swastika flag was the official flag of the Third
Reich and was prominently displayed. The swastika is still used as a
symbol by supremacist and separatist hate groups.
www.mehrnews.ir/en/Archive.aspx
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/11807/index.php
Ancient Indian History, Distortions, Misrepresentations about India,
Indian History
Placeholder for Saraswati-Sindhu script
5 July 2009 87
This is a placeholder post for various references and resources
related to Saraswati-Sindhu Script.
Dr Kalyanaraman-ji’s work:
http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/mlecchitavikalpa
http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/indus-script
http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/a-new-decipherment-paradigm
http://sarasvati97.blogspot.com/
Varnam’s posts and research:
http://varnam.org/blog/2009/05/undeciphered-scripts/
http://varnam.org/blog/2009/04/indus-script-a-formal-language/
http://varnam.org/blog/2009/05/hostile-reactions/
http://varnam.org/blog/2009/05/indian-history-carnival-17/
Asko Parpola’s works:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~aparpola/
Please feel free to add any other links (to articles/documents) that
you may be aware of – using the comments form below.
Thanks.
Related Post: Breaking the code: the Sarasvati-Sindhu Script
*** UPDATE ***
I am traveling until the 10th of July with very limited internet
access. There will be some delay before I am able to respond to (and
moderate) comments.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
***
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comment, it is very likely to get stuck in the moderation/spam queue.
To avoid this, pl. enter a valid email address OR use this email
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. 14 Comments »
1. B Shantanu said:
Some of you will find this interesting:
Can Computers Decipher a 5,000-Year-Old Language? by David Zax
.20 July 2009
2. B Shantanu said:
In a paper which renders the issue of ‘illiteracy’ moot or of little
practical value, Kalyanaraman has claimed that the script was used for
smith guild tokens encoding speech repertoire of smiths and that the
legacy of the writing system continued in mints which issued punch-
marked coins during the historical periods using Indus script glyphs.
The paper also reiterates that the critique of Massimo Vidale has not
so far been answered by the ‘Harappan illiteracy’ proponents.
The paper can also be downloaded from here
.5 August 2009
3. B Shantanu (author) said:
Some more research from Dr Kalyanaraman:
Decoding Indus Script – Mleccha, mlecchita vikalpa in Sarasvati
hieroglyphs
Monograph
Ppt slides
Abstract of Lecture at Rojah Muthiah Library at 5 PM on 26 February
2009 by S. Kalyanaraman
Script is decoded as sarasvati hieroglyphs composed of all pictorial
motifs — over 100 — and signs — over 400 – and read rebus in mleccha
vācas (as distinct from arya vācas — Manu). The context is: miners’
and smiths’ repertoire (not unlike the viśwakarma working on utsava
bera in Swamimalai following the cire perdue technique of Sarasvati
civilization bronzes or asur/agaria working in iron ore smelters in
Ganga basin of 18th century BCE).
Sarasvati hieroglyphs are in mleccha, mlecchita vikalpa (Vatsyayana).
Hypothesis posited: Language X + Proto-Munda = Proto-mleccha (with
borrowings in Sarasvati Linguistic Area).
Rebus readings of almost all glyphs (pictorial motifs as well as
signs) relate to mine workers’ and metalsmiths’ repertoire. The
writing system is a vikalpa (alternative representation) of their
vernacular, mleccha, cognate: meluhha. Presented in 15 e-books at
http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97
In view of the essentially pictographic nature of the writing system,
the presentation is made in three parts:
a. monograph on vernacular (deśī), the linguistic area and the
continuity of proto-mleccha vernacular; structure and semantics of
hieroglyphs of mlecchita vikalpa, the decoded writing system;
b. powerpoint slides with selected glyphs and readings; and
c. Epigraphica Sarasvati of about 4000 inscribed epigraphs on photo
albums. http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/epigraphica-sarasvati
Two fundamental questions should be researched further:
1. the continuity of the civilization evidenced by cultural markers
all over India and the neighbouring regions;
2. the formation and evolution of languages in a linguistic area of
the Sarasvati civilization continuum in India, proved by the decoding
of the Indus script (Sarasvati hieroglyphs).
***
Separately from a blog post by Jayasree :
…This finding makes me recall some instances from the past. One is
from Valmiki Ramayana wherein Hanuman debates within himself on what
language he could speak to Sita who was languishing in the Ashoka
vana. Should I speak in the language of the learned persons (in
Sanskrit) or speak in the language of common persons, Hanuman asked
himself.
Sanskrit was the language of education and was used in discourses on
intellectual stuff. This existed in written form. But the dialect
spoken by people was different and it was not given a written form. We
come to know from Megasthanes that transactions were done orally.
There was no habit of recording or writing anything in trade. It was
because people adhered to word of mouth and rarely indulged in
cheating. Wherever writing was done it was done in Sanskrit. But the
common dialect that people spoke was not given a written form.
This had existed till the times of onset of Jain and Buddha culture.
The Jains were the forerunners in giving written form to spoken
language of the commoner. In a scenario dominated by Sanskrit based
Vedic religion, the Jains wanted to reach out to the common man. They
could reach him easily only by speaking his language and making him
read their views in the language they speak.
The earliest books written in language other than Sanskrit were by
Jains. They were in Prakrith. The earliest Jain book of astrology is
‘Surya Pragnapti’ which was an adaptation of Lagadha’s Rig Jyothisha.
This was in ‘Arthamagadhi Prakrith’. Lagadha’s Jyothisha was written
when the sun entered Dhanishta in uttarayana. Jain’s Surya pragnapthi
has the sun entering Abhijit in uttarayana!
That means this book of the Jains was written when Abhijith was still
part of the sky. Abhijit is placed in between Utthradam and ThiruvONam
(shravaNa). Abhijit was part of the sky until Mahabharatha times. Even
if we want to discount the existence of abhijith for lack of evidence
now astronomically, we can still enumerate the period of this book.
This book was written when the sun entered uttarayana at a point left
of Shravana star. Today the sun enters uttarayana in Moola star. The
time gap can be ascertained and it is possible to find the time of
Surya pragnapti from this. That time is when the spoken language of
the people of most of Bharatham was given a written form.
From Prakrit, other Indian languages sprang with a written libi.
But Tamil was a case apart from all these.
When Mahabharatha war happened, Tamil was already there in written
form supported by the sophistry of a well developed Grammar. A verse
on the praise of the Cheran king who supplied food to the armies
engaged in Mahabharatha war is found in PurananUru. Another verse is
about the Pandyan king who lived in the now- submerged landmass, south
of present day Kanyakumari. Tamil was referred to as “Agastheeyam” in
one of Srivaishnava books (Acharya Hrudhayam) Agastheeyam is said to
be a grammar work of Tamil done by sage Agasthya. This sage is also
said to have given a written form to Tamil.
That means Tamil had once existed as a spoken language among the
masses. There are however many Sanskrit terms in Tamil (eg daanam,
thavam) as part and parcel of Tamil language itself. Unless Tamil had
co-existed along with Sanskrit, this can not have happened. The aiding
tool for this combination is Hindu dharma or Sanatana Dharma as it was
the only dharma prevalent everywhere in those days. Since the Tamil
lands were stretched far down the South and were part of a huge
landmass connecting Africa and Australia, my guess is that Tamil was a
spoken language in that part of the world.
Coming to the findings of Dr S.Kalyanaraman, he has pointed out an
interesting similarity in the writing on metallurgy and of artisans of
India in those days. The cast for making statues (utsava bhEra)
recovered from Harappan sites (Saraswathy sites) are the same as what
the Vishwakarmas settled near Swamimalai in Tamil nadu do today! It
was because there was a single cult of Vishwakarma, a single cult of
Maya followed by artisans all through the Ithihasic and Puranic times.
As such, these informations are not news to me! Without even going
into research of this kind, we can say everything about the antiquity
and unanimity of Bharatheeya culture just from our arm chairs with the
help of Ithihasas, Puranas, Samhitas and a host of other texts given
by Maharishis.
.14 August 2009
4. K. Harapriya said:
“Since Tamil lands stretched far down south and were a part of a huge
landmass connecting Africa and Australia”
This statement is an anachronism. The continental drift that split the
various land masses from the one large continent called pangea
happened some 400 million years ago.
India split from the southern portion of what is now Africa around 55
million years ago. (This is known by the dating of the Himalayas).
However , man , as a species separate from other primates has only
existed on this earth around one million years. Of this, civilization
existed only for the last 10,000 years. So the contention that Tamil
was a language spoken in the entire southern hemisphere is inaccurate
to say the least.
Secondly, Tamil’s borrowings from Sanskrit as evidence of them
coexisting at the same time and/or originating at the same time. That
is like saying English originated at the same time as Latin since
there are so many latin terms in it. One interesting note is that
while Tamil has many sanskrit words, the reverse is not true–we do not
find Tamil words in Sanskrit very often.
Let us look at what the facts tell us. The oldest literature in Tamil
(of the Sangam period) dates back two thousand years–approximately the
beginning of the common era (exact dates betw. 3rd Century BCE and 3rd
Century A.D). Since the language was highly developed, it is assumed
that it had a longer history.
In comparison, the Rg Veda originates, even when conservatively dated,
1500 BCE. Even by conservative estimates, that is at least a 1000
years before the appearance of Tamil literature. Since the literature
of the Vedas is also highly developed we have to assume an older
history for the language. If we use the internal evidence of the Rg
Veda (i.e cosmology, astromical positions of stars), the Rg Veda can
even be dated anywhere from 5000 to 10,000 years old (depending on the
scholar).
It is almost a truism accepted in India that Tamil is the oldest
language. But is it really true?
Here is an article on the dating of the Mahabharata War by a fairly
respected scholar.
http://www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/MahabharataII.pdf
.19 August 2009
5. gajanan said:
Markov model of the Indus script
Rajesh P. N. Raoa,1, Nisha Yadavb,c, Mayank N. Vahiab,c, Hrishikesh
Joglekard, R. Adhikarie, and Iravatham Mahadevanf
aDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, University of
Washington, Seattle, WA 98195; bDepartment of Astronomy and
Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai 400005,
India; cCentre for Excellence in Basic Sciences, Mumbai 400098, India;
d14, Dhus Wadi, Laxminiketan, Thakurdwar, Mumbai 400002, India;
eInstitute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai 600113, India; and fIndus
Research Centre, Roja Muthiah Research Library,
Chennai 600113, India
Abstract.
Although no historical information exists about the Indus civilization
(flourished ca. 2600–1900 B.C.), archaeologists have uncovered about
3,800 short samples of a script that was used throughout the
civilization. The script remains undeciphered, despite a large number
of attempts and claimed decipherments over the past 80 years. Here, we
propose the use of probabilistic models to analyze the structure of
the Indus script. The goal is to reveal,
through probabilistic analysis, syntactic patterns that could point
the way to eventual decipherment. We illustrate the approach using a
simple Markov chain model to capture sequential dependencies between
signs in the Indus script. The trained model allows new sample texts
to be generated, revealing recurring patterns of signs that could
potentially form functional subunits of a possible
underlying language. The model also provides a quantitative way of
testing whether a particular string belongs to the putative language
as captured by the Markov model. Application of this test to Indus
seals found in Mesopotamia and other sites in West Asia reveals that
the script may have been used to express different content in these
regions or unreadable signs on damaged objects can be filled in with
most likely predictions from the model. Taken together, our results
indicate that the Indus script exhibits rich synactic structure and
the ability to represent diverse content. both of which are suggestive
of a linguistic writing system rather than a nonlinguistic symbol
system.
Published in Proceedings in National Academy of Sciences 2009. USA.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0906237106
This is very good science, if you can go thru this site above. It is
very difficult to understand for those not conversant with Markov
maths. They recently published in the journal Science and some more is
probably in the offing.
.19 August 2009
6. B Shantanu (author) said:
Harapriya and Gajanan: Thanks for the links and comment.
Harapriya: Interesting question about Tamil. I don’t know. Perhaps
other readers would wish to comment?
.21 August 2009
7. K. Harapriya said:
Here is a good link on the latest archaeological findings.
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/
.22 August 2009
8. B Shantanu (author) said:
Pl. read Varnam’s latest post The Markov Model of Indus Script
.14 September 2009
9. B Shantanu (author) said:
From an email sent by Dr Kalyanaraman:
Source: http://www.harappa.com/indus2/index.html Slide 142 reports the
discovery in 1998 of a four-sided molded tablet — ca. 2450-2200 BCE.
“Molded tablets from Trench 11 sometimes have impressions on one, two,
three or four sides. This group of molded tablets shows the complete
set of motifs. One side is comprised entirely of script and has six
(five?) characters, the first of which (on the very top) appears to be
some sort of animal. A second side shows a human figure grappling with
a short horned bull. A small plant with at least six branches is
discernible behind the individual. The third panel portrays a figure
seated on a charpoy or throne in a yogic position, with arms resting
on the knees. Both arms are covered with bangles, and traces of a
horned headdress and long hair are visible on some of the impressions.
A second individual, also with long hair and wearing bangles, is
seated on a short stool to the proper left of the individual on the
“throne.” The fourth panel shows a deity standing with both feet on
the ground and wearing a horned headdress. A branch with three pipal
leaves projects from the center of the headdress. Bangles seen on both
arms.”
This is decoded as a professional calling card of a smiths’ artisan
guild, as may be seen from the homonyms of all glyptic elements (both
signs and pictorial motifs) — presented on two slides.
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/11869632/Slide-142-harappa
Addendum: man.d.a ‘twig, branch’ (Te.); rebus: man.d.a_ ‘warehouse,
workshop’ (Kon.)
namaskaram. kalyanaraman
.25 September 2009
10. B Shantanu (author) said:
Those of you with an interest in this topic will enjoy Varnam’s
excellent post on this from last week: The Harappan Volumetric System
.7 December 2009
11. Shaan said:
@Harapriya, @Jayasree
There is no proof that Tamil lands would have stretched too much
southwards. Tamil literature talks about Kumari kandam and the
incident of it submerging in sea but it may have been a small area
beyond kanyakumari. Regarding Udhiyan Cheralathan there is an
explanation that the nootruvar(100 men) given in the poem are actually
Satavahanas. But Mahabharatha itself mentions that Pandyas, Cheras and
Cholas were fighting alongside Pandavas and against the Kauravas.
When it is debatable that whether Tamil as old as Sanskrit, atleast in
written form it must have been in written form before Sanksrit. There
is a term ‘ezhuthaa kiLavi’ in Tamil denoting Sanskrit. It literally
means ‘the language that is not written’. Earlier it was believed that
Tamil Brahmi was created after Ashoka era Brahmi script was introduced
in the South. But the latest discoveries point that Tamil Brahmi was
in existence even before Ashoka’s time.
.14 December 2009
12. I Gege Putrayasa said:
I found the sincere and trusted work on Indus-Sarasvati script
decipherment by Dr. Natwar Jha. Please follow the link below. I hope
that more scientists will continue and expand the work that had been
done by Dr. Jha as been shown by NS. Rajaram.
http://placelife.com/timeline/sarasvati-indus/sarasvati-script/natwarjhabyrajaram.html
.23 January 2010
13. I Gege Putrayasa said:
Forgot to include in my previous post. Here’s another link of Natwar
Jha and NS. Rajaram work on book reviewed by IndiaStar:
http://www.indiastar.com/wallia27.htm
.23 January 2010
14. B Shantanu (author) said:
Thank you. I will have a look at the links.
.24 January 2010
http://satyameva-jayate.org/2009/07/05/saraswati-sindhu-script/
Dr. S. Kalyanaraman using the Doe Library in University of California,
Berkeley (June 22, 1998); he acknowledges gratefully the use of
indological resources of this library, the Green Library in Stanford
University, Library of Congress, University of the Philippines Library
System, Manila, Adyar Library and Connemara Library, Chennai, National
Museum, Delhi, National Library, Calcutta and the British Library,
London, apart from the resources available on the web.
From Indology to Reviving City Waterways:
From "The Hindu" - 29-09-1997.
Despite his pre-occupation with high profile activities, Dr. S.
Kalyanaraman, former senior executive of the ADB, has varied interests
including matters mundane. He shares them with T. Ramakrishnan.
A paperweight may be a routine dull object for most people, but it can
trigger unexpected reactions among some: such as a deep desire to take
up Indological studies.
One such scholar eventually went on to do a unique work of writing a
multilingual dictionary of the Dravidian, Aryan and Mundarica language
families.
The author of the dictionary, Dr. S. Kalyanaraman (58), started on his
voyage of discovery in the office of his boss, Dr. Trujillo from the
U.S., while working in the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The
paperweight, given to him by the officer, was a brass replica of an
Indus seal depicting a short-horned bull and some Indus script as an
inscription.
In the meantime, an Indologist wrote a letter to Dr. Kalayanaraman
asking for comments on the former's decipherment of a script. The
paperweight and this letter led him to embark on studies on the
subject.
At present, he is working on the `mythical' Sarasvathi river which can
be revived by tapping groundwater resources and making the Thar desert
in Rajasthan bloom. His study is centered on providing leads for
resolving the decipherment problem of the Indus script.
Dr. Kalayanaraman has interest in a variety of subjects. A graduate in
economics and statistics from the Annamalai University, he became a
Member of the Indian Railway Accounts Service in 1962. He secured his
doctorate from the University of Philippines in 1982 and his Ph.D.
thesis was a comparative study of development administration in six
Asian countries.
In the '70s, the Indologist's performance on coal accounting for and
the drawing up the Railways' perspective plan for information
technology (IT) came in for praise and subsequently, he was deputed to
the ADB. Dr. Kalayanaraman helped establish the Bank's IT network with
2,500 workstations. He administered loan disbursements on a multi-
currency portfolio of equivalent US $60 billions on 600 development
projects in the Asia-Pacific region.
Despite his high-profile activities, the ADB's former senior executive
has not lost sight of the more "mundane" things. The beautification of
the city waterways is one of his pet subjects. "The waterways are, in
a way, a blessing for the city. Otherwise, the situation will be worse
when Chennai receives heavy rainfall."
His suggestion is that as a demonstration project, the Cooum can be
taken up first. The execution of its improvement should be split into
different segments, which can be entrusted to different contractors.
In addition to desludging the waterway, a series of checkdams can be
built along the Cooum for regulating the discharge of water. Tanks,
located on the outskirts of the city and functioning as sources for
the waterway, have to be renovated.
For improving the water supply network for the southern suburbs of
Chennai, Dr. Kalayanaraman says the aquifer of the Palar river can be
tapped. He wants the Government to act strongly against those who
pollute the river.
As the senior ADB executive, he had exposure to the Chinese system of
governance. "China has made rapid strides, particularly in the area of
local self-governance. It is not just because it's a communist country
but its rulers have immense faith in decentralisation".
One lesson that can be drawn from the Chinese, he says, is to grant
more powers to the Chennai Mayor. In Beijing, the Mayor is the focal
point of all activities and has the authority to mobilise resources
and personnel from various agencies and departments for improving the
state of affairs in the Metro.
The same thing is possible here as the 74th Constitutional amendment
has made it mandatory that the Metropolitan Planning Committee and
other local bodies falling within the Metro to take up responsibility
to prepare and implement urban development schemes. The existing
mechanism for utilising financial and personnel resources should also
undergo suitable changes.
Moreover, this amendment can be used for strengthening urban local
bodies and bringing about a revolutionary change in their functioning
and administration, Dr. Kalyanaraman feels.
As his presentation to mark the golden jubilee of Independence, Dr.
Kalyanaraman has created a website running to 2,500 pages of
information on India at www.investindia.com. As his social obligation,
he offers his Internet access at the domain address http://www.investindia.com
free of cost to the younger generation with the goal of preparing them
intellectually and academically.
See also the Sarasvati River Website: http://www.probys.com/sarasvati
Indian Alchemy: Soma in the Rigveda (in press, Delhi, Munshiram
Manoharlal)
His email: kaly...@netscape.net
http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/sarasvati/html/hindu29091997.html
Sanatana Dharma Foundation Honors Dr Subramanian Swamy and Dr S.
Kalyanaraman for their Courageous Effort in Protecting the Historic
Rama Sethu
Sanatana Dharma Foundation, Dallas, Texas organized its first Hindu
Unity Day, at the DFW Hindu Temple, in Dallas on the 19th and 20th of
July, 2008. Symbolizing Hindu Unity, Representatives of Dallas
Chapters of several organizations like the Art of living Foundation,
Ammachi Satsang, Hare Krishna ISCKON group, Gayatri Parivar,
Brahmakumaris, Carribbean Mandir, Chinmaya Mission, Hanuman Temple,
Sathya Sai groups, Datta Yoga Peetam and other prominent Hindu
personalities from the local Dallas-Fort Worth community in Texas,
were present at this unique event. Dr Subramanian Swamy's latest book
"Rama Sethu Symbol of National Unity" was released and distributed at
the Event, to key members of these organizations and other prominent
members of the community.
Rama Sethu Symbol of National Unity
Hindu Dharma Rakshaka Kshatriya Award
This award, a first of its kind, has been instituted to honor and
celebrate the 'Kshatriya Spirit', specifically the courage shown by
Hindus in taking risks and standing up to fight for the protection and
preservation of Dharma. The word Kshatriya is a Sanskrit word that
refers to the royal and noble class of Hindus who historically
defended their nation, and the Dharma of the land.
Rama Sethu Symbol of National Unity
Dallas, Texas (PRWEB) July 26, 2008 -- Dr Subramanian Swamy, PhD,
visiting professor of Economics, Harvard University and former Union
Law Minister of India, and Dr S. Kalyanaraman, Director, Saraswati
River Research Center, and President of Sri Rameshwaram Rama Sethu
Raksha Manch, received awards in Dallas, Texas for their courageous
effort in protecting the historic Rama Sethu, from being destroyed by
the Government of India in the name of a development project.
NASA Photograph of Rama Sethu
Rama Sethu is the original Sanskrit name given to a bridge built by
the legendary King Rama, who crossed over to Sri Lanka from India to
fight the King of Lanka, Ravana, recover his wife Sita, and restore
Dharma (Order) in the land of India. While it is difficult to
establish the exact historical age of these events, the bridge is
thought to be at least 5000 years old, if not much older, making it
the oldest causeway built across an ocean channel. The Rama Sethu is
referred to in numerous ancient Sanskrit texts and scriptures, as a
man made structure, and in recent times, it has been vividly
photographed by both NASA and Indian Satellites.
When India fell under Colonial rule, the British renamed this
construction as "Adam's Bridge". The Government of India, in recent
years, has been trying to establish a Shipping Channel between India
and Sri Lanka, by breaking and destroying the continuity of this
ancient structure. Hindus in India and around the world have been
protesting and fighting this decision of the Government of India, and
have demanded that the Rama Sethu be declared a monument of historic
importance and a world heritage site. On May 8th, 2008, the Supreme
Court of India directed the Government of India to go back to the
drawing board to see if it can create an alternate shipping route, and
at the same time, study the Rama Sethu as a monument of historic
importance. It is yet to be seen if the Government of India will
comply with the Court's direction, and thereby uphold due
constitutional process, or continue on its path of destroying the Rama
Sethu, dis-regarding the Supreme court's direction.
Sanatana Dharma Foundation, (www.sdfglobal.org) a Dallas based Non-
Profit organization inspired by the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha,
(www.acharyasabha.org) the apex body of Hindus in India, presented the
"Hindu Dharma Rakshaka Kshatriya Award" to Dr Subramanian Swamy & Dr
S. Kalyanaraman on the occassion of the Hindu Unity Day organized at
the DFW Hindu Temple in Dallas, Texas on July 19, 2008. Speaking on
the occasion, the President of Sanatana Dharma Foundation, Kalyan
Viswanathan, said that "This award, a first of its kind, has been
instituted to honor and celebrate the 'Kshatriya Spirit', specifically
the courage shown by Hindus in taking risks and standing up to fight
for the protection and preservation of Dharma. The word Kshatriya is a
Sanskrit word that refers to the royal and noble class of Hindus who
historically defended their nation, and the Dharma of the land."
The Highlight of the Hindu Unity Day Event was the speech by Dr
Subramanian Swamy on his personal experiences during his defense of
Rama Sethu in the Supreme Court of India, which was greeted by a
spontaneous standing ovation. In presenting the "Hindu Dharma Rakshaka
Kshatriya" Award, his fearless defense in the Supreme Court of India,
getting a critical and timely stay order, the subsequent withdrawal of
the Government of India's petition, and the later Verdict of the
Supreme Court were all highlighted.
Dr S. Kalyanaraman made a scholarly presentation on the River
Saraswati, highlighting the recent research findings, the origins of
the Vedic civilization on the banks of River Saraswati and the fact
that it holds the central "Key" to the re-writing of the history of
India and re-establishing the real historicity of the Vedas. While
presenting the Award, his dedicated research in supporting the
struggle of the Rama Sethu, and his pioneering contributions in
researching and resurfacing the River Saraswati were lauded.
Symbolizing Hindu Unity, Representatives of Dallas Chapters of several
organizations like the Art of living Foundation, Ammachi Satsang, Hare
Krishna ISCKON group, Gayatri Parivar, Brahmakumaris, Carribbean
Mandir, Chinmaya Mission, Hanuman Temple, Sathya Sai groups and other
prominent Hindu personalities from the local Dallas-Fort Worth
community in Texas, were present at this unique event. Dr Subramanian
Swamy's latest book "Rama Sethu Symbol of National Unity" was released
and distributed at the Event, to key members of these organizations
and other prominent members of the community.
Smt. Ranna Jani, President, DFW Hindu Temple in Texas speaking on the
occassion on behalf of the Temple, thanked both Dr Subramaniam Swamy &
Dr S. Kalyanaraman for coming to Dallas and sharing their experiences
with the participants. On the second day, a workshop was organized,
where challenges facing Hinduism today, were discussed. Presentations
on the state of Hindu Temples in India, challenges posed by
Christianity and Islam were also discussed. The session was very
interactive, and educational, as per the feedback received.
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The challenge of terrorism
S. KALYANARAMAN
ON 23 December 1929, a bomb planted by Indian revolutionaries exploded
under the Viceroy’s special train but without causing any serious
injury to Lord Irwin. At the Lahore session of the Indian National
Congress held the very next week, Mahatma Gandhi pushed through a
resolution ‘condemning the cowardly deed of the misguided youth.’
Though he urged that the resolution be passed unanimously, a reluctant
Congress did so by a thin majority of 81 in a house numbering 1713.
Subsequently, Gandhi wrote an article in Young India titled ‘The Cult
of the Bomb’, in which he dismissed bomb-throwing as nothing but
‘froth coming to the surface in an agitated liquid.’ At the same time,
he warned that it is an ‘easy, natural step’ from violence done to the
foreign ruler ‘to violence to our own people whom we may consider to
be obstructing the country’s progress.’
To rebut Gandhi’s condemnation, Bhagawati Charan, in consultation with
Chandra Shekhar Azad, drafted a manifesto in 1930 titled ‘The
Philosophy of the Bomb’. Terrorism, the manifesto asserted, is a
‘necessary’ and ‘inevitable’ phase of the revolution. ‘Terrorism
instils fear in the hearts of the oppressors, it brings hopes of
revenge and redemption to the oppressed masses, it gives courage and
self-confidence to the wavering, it shatters the spell of the
superiority of the ruling class and raises the status of the subject
race in the eyes of the world, because it is the most convincing proof
of a nation’s hunger for freedom.’ The manifesto went on to note that
it is reason and conscience which force the revolutionary to ‘risk his
life’. And it concluded by proclaiming that the revolutionaries will
take ‘a people’s righteous revenge on the tyrant’ and that theirs is
‘a war to the end – to victory or death.’
This episode is indicative of the divide that exists between the idea
that terrorists are freedom fighters and martyrs, the characterisation
of terrorist attacks as cowardly and dastardly, and the in-between
view that while terrorism is indeed unjustifiable, the genuine
grievances that drive terrorists cannot also be overlooked. In
addition, the debate on terrorism has also thrown up the question of
‘state terrorism’. After all, the origins of the modern usage of the
word terrorism lie in the ‘state terror’ unleashed by the French
revolutionary regime to intimidate those opposed to the revolution or
otherwise sympathetic to or nostalgic about the ancien régime.
Moreover, states also deliberately target civilians and non-combatants
in the course of wars and internal conflicts.
Are we to therefore simply conclude that terrorism is a relative term
best defined as ‘violence that I don’t support?’ To chart a path
through the minefield that is the debate on defining terrorism and how
to address this phenomenon, one approach is to look at terrorism as a
strategy, a means to achieve an objective. A strategy adopted by a
political group in which civilians and non-combatants are deliberately
targeted to generate terror as well as to highlight the cause. The
objective is to undermine the foundations of the state, its
legitimacy, and its ability to command the people’s compliance.
Terrorist actions are conceived as either ends in themselves or
designed to be precursors to a mass uprising. Terrorism is thus a
subset of political violence.
Terrorism, however, needs to be distinguished from other forms of
political violence employed by armed rebel groups. This is
particularly the case with guerrilla warfare (or insurgency) with
which terrorism is often confused and conflated. True, guerrilla
warfare, like terrorism, is a weapon of the weak, employed precisely
because weakness precludes a rebel group from engaging in regular war
against organised state forces. Notwithstanding this surface
similarity, the two strategies proceed along very different paths.
Guerrillas (or insurgents) primarily target state forces, mobilise
people and acquire popular support, establish a parallel government in
‘liberated zones’, and over time seek to expand control over
surrounding territories and transform their ragtag forces into a
regular army. Guerrillas, in Mao’s famous formulation, are the fish
and people the water.
In contrast, the people have become the target of terrorist violence,
especially since the 1970s. Gandhi’s prophetic words about the ‘easy,
natural step’ from violence done to the oppressor to violence
inflicted on non-cooperative or unresponsive compatriots, have indeed
become a reality. The deliberate targeting of innocent civilians is a
hallmark particularly of the contemporary avatar of terrorism. This
was not the case in the historical practice of terrorism, which
largely involved targeting the symbols of political authority – heads
of state, viceroys and proconsuls, ministers, civilian and military
officials, leading political figures, among others. These attacks were
intended as ‘propaganda by deed’ in an era when terrorism was
considered the ultima ratio, the final resort. But the ‘new’ terrorism
does not discriminate in its choice of victims and its motto is,
‘there are no innocents.’
Further, while the earlier practice of terrorism was largely directed
against tyrannical or despotic regimes and colonial or imperial
authorities, democracies have emerged as principal targets of the
contemporary exercise in terrorism. Thus, from ultima ratio terrorism
seems to be becoming the prima ratio of political protest. Another
significant difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’ terrorism is state
support for and sponsorship of terrorist groups. While the earlier
breed of terrorists by and large operated on their own, the employment
of terrorism as an instrument of statecraft (a cost-effective means of
destabilising adversaries) is a key feature of latter-day terrorism.
Terrorism has acquired a pejorative connotation over the last few
decades precisely because of these changes.
There have been various hues of armed rebellion in India since
independence. Telangana and Naxalbari were insurrections. The Maoist
groups operating across many states are engaged in a classic
insurgency. Most armed political groups in the North East also began
as separatist or autonomist insurgencies. But, over the years, some
have become mere extortion rackets, while others like the United
Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) in particular have taken to terrorism.
Terrorism, the deliberate targeting of civilians, was first practised
by separatist groups in Punjab. In the 1990s, this practice also
became prevalent as part of the separatist struggle in Jammu and
Kashmir. The involvement of Pakistani and transnational groups in the
so-called jihad in Kashmir has contributed to the further expansion of
the terror campaign to the hinterland.
The most significant terrorist group in the North East today is ULFA.
Founded in 1979 with the aim of establishing a ‘sovereign socialist
Assam through armed struggle’, it built up its armed strength and ran
a parallel government in Assam in the latter half of the 1980s. When
it initiated armed action in the 1990s, targets were limited to the
security forces, railway lines, the oil pipeline, and political
opponents. However, after the group was expelled from Bhutan in 2003
and it relocated its base areas in Bangladesh, ULFA has initiated a
terror campaign inside Assam. Most targets struck since then have been
civilian.
The August 2004 bombing in Dhemaji town, which killed 17 people,
mostly children, has come to be seen as the turning point in this
regard. 73 bomb explosions were triggered in 2005, 59 in 2006, 54 in
2007, and 10 in 2008 – all in public places. ULFA has also been
targeting Hindi-speaking migrant labourers over the last couple of
years. Its turn towards terrorism seems to have coincided with its
linkages and dependence upon the intelligence agencies of Bangladesh
and Pakistan. The support it receives includes arms training, safe
havens, funds and weaponry. ULFA is also known to have links with the
Bangladeshi jihadi group, Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islami.
In Punjab, competitive politics led to the emergence of a religious
extremist like Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as a key figure. Inspired by
the vision of leading the Sikhs to ‘ultimate purity’ and an
independent Khalistan, Bhindranwale started an incipient campaign of
violence against his political opponents in the early 1980s. But a
full-blown terrorist movement emerged only in the aftermath of
Operation Bluestar, the consequent assassination of Indira Gandhi and
the anti-Sikh riots that followed. The terror campaign unleashed by
the various groups was indiscriminate in nature and saw the killing of
political leaders, officials, journalists, businessmen, and the common
people at large, both Sikh and Hindu.
K.P.S. Gill notes that in the peak years of 1990 and 1991, 1702 and
1851 Sikhs, respectively, were killed by the terrorists. The number of
non-Sikhs killed in these two years was 765 and 740. One of the worst
massacres was the mid-air bombing of the Kanishka in 1985, killing all
passengers and crew on board. Bombs were also placed in public
transport in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir. In all,
11,500 civilians were killed in Punjab between 1981 when the terrorist
violence first manifested itself and 1993 when the back of the
terrorist movement was broken. About 1750 security forces personnel
also died during the same period. A significant factor in the greater
intensity of violence was Pakistan’s provision of sophisticated
weaponry and explosives as well as training to the terrorist groups.
Punjab, in many ways, was a training ground for Pakistan’s sponsorship
of cross-border terrorism against India in Jammu and Kashmir. An armed
separatist movement arose in the state in the wake of the fraudulent
elections of 1987. Some 20,000 youth crossed the border into Pakistan
for military training by the mid-1990s. The pro-independence Jammu and
Kashmir Liberation Front stood at the forefront of this movement in
the initial years. But Pakistan threw its weight behind the Hizbul
Mujahideen, which favoured Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan. When India
gained the upper hand against the separatists in the next few years,
Pakistan began to funnel its own citizens and other ‘graduates of the
Afghan war’ into Jammu and Kashmir.
With groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Ansar, and Harkat-ul-
Mujahideen assuming a greater role, what was hitherto an internal
rebellion, albeit with considerable support from Pakistan, degenerated
into cross-border terrorism. Mass killings, especially of minorities,
began with the introduction of transnational jihadists. Neither have
they spared Kashmiri Muslims, in whose name they wage their so-called
jihad. Overall, between 1988 when the violence first began and 2008,
some 14,500 civilians have been killed in terrorist violence in the
state. In addition, more than 5,800 security forces personnel have
also lost their lives during this period.
Involving foreign jihadists has provided a lever for Pakistan to
scuttle any movement towards peace in the state, as demonstrated
during the short-lived Ramzan ceasefire between Indian security forces
and the Hizbul Mujahideen in the year 2000. When Pakistan’s Kargil
misadventure failed to revive the flagging interest for the struggle
within the state and in the world at large, transnational groups began
to engage in fidayeen attacks against security forces. Subsequently,
this campaign was extended to other parts of India as well. The first
target to be attacked was the Red Fort in Delhi in December 2000. A
year later, it was the turn of the Indian Parliament. India’s threat
of war against this grave provocation, combined with international
condemnation and pressure, forced Pakistan to lower the intensity of
operations being carried out by terrorist groups based on its
territory. But even as infiltration from Pakistan into Jammu and
Kashmir showed a decline in the succeeding years, a terror campaign
targeting India’s hinterland began to unfold.
Links between Indian citizens engaged in this new wave of urban
terrorism and their friends, if not masters, in Pakistan are gradually
unravelling. The shameful tragedy of Gujarat 2002 and the earlier
demolition of the Babri Masjid served as catalysts for a handful of
youth to travel to Pakistan, acquire training in arms, and forge links
with the Establishment as well as transnational groups there. These
men have come together under the banner of Indian Mujahideen. The
group is a diffuse network spread across several states. Its aim
appears to include causing maximum casualties and mayhem by targeting
places where people congregate, arousing communal passions by
targeting mosques and temples, and disrupting the economy by targeting
important sectors like tourism and information technology.
Thus, seven bombs were placed on Mumbai suburban trains in July 2006,
killing 209 people and injuring over 700; the Sankatmochan Temple in
Varanasi was bombed in March 2006 and the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad in
May 2007; and, Jaipur and Bengaluru were targeted in May and July
2008, respectively. According to the email claiming responsibility for
the multiple bomb blasts in the markets of Delhi in September 2008,
the group’s aim was to ‘stop the heart of India from beating.’ Other
places that have been targeted as part of this terror campaign include
Ahmedabad, Faizabad, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Surat and Varanasi.
A significant feature of the Indian Mujahideen’s tactics is the use of
the widely available fertilizer ammonium nitrate as explosive. The
group has also demonstrated its coordination capabilities by carrying
out serial bomb blasts on successive days in more than one place – the
July 2008 attacks in Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and the bombs that failed to
detonate in Surat. Their use of email to claim responsibility, the
manner in which emails were sent from hacked wi-fi connections, and
the ability to vary the intensity of the explosions in Bengaluru and
Ahmedabad, all point to the group’s technological capabilities.
Even as Indian agencies were attempting to piece together the Indian
Mujahideen puzzle, 10 well-armed and well-trained Lashkar-e-Taiba
terrorists landed in Mumbai and launched a commando-style operation
against the maximum city’s symbols. 164 people and security forces
personnel died in this assault, including 26 foreign nationals. The
trail led to Pakistani territory and Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist
commanders and many in India suspected the role of elements within the
Pakistani establishment. The reasoning was that the attack was meant
to divert the incoming Obama administration’s central focus from the
Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier towards the India-Pakistan border.
Coincidentally, unidentified militants in Pakistan targeted American
and NATO military supplies meant for their war efforts in Afghanistan,
seemingly to remind the West about its vulnerabilities. It is not
clear what kind of a grand bargain was being hinted at. But the
Machiavellian strategy came to nought because of the restraint shown
by India in the face of such an enormous provocation. However,
Pakistan’s conviction that terrorist groups serve as ‘strategic
assets’ in its foreign policy repertoire is likely to continue,
notwithstanding ongoing American efforts to force a change in
thinking.
Each of the above challenges necessitates a distinct policy approach.
Separatist groups have to be dealt with through a policy of political
accommodation and concessions backed by counter-insurgency and counter-
terror measures. In the case of Pakistan-based terrorist groups,
domestic counter-terror measures have to be accompanied by diplomatic
and covert intelligence campaigns to disrupt and dismantle the
terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan. And dealing with domestic urban
terror groups would involve counter-terror measures, including the
strengthening of laws, police and intelligence efforts to trace and
neutralise terrorist cells and leadership, and mobilising communities
and the people at large against subversives living in our midst.
India’s counterinsurgency strategy has been dealt with elsewhere in
these pages. Suffice it to note here that since the 1950s India has
followed a consistent and successful policy of using minimum force to
deal with separatist groups and bringing them into the political
mainstream through accommodation and concessions. While this approach
is likely to prove useful in dealing with ULFA in Assam, it is
inadequate for dealing with the situation in Jammu and Kashmir where
the principal indigenous group, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, has become
inextricably intertwined with Pakistani and transnational terrorist
groups under the umbrella of the United Jihad Council.
Any attempt by the Hizb to seek a separate peace is likely to result
in the whittling down of Pakistani support (as happened in the case of
the JKLF) and consequent marginalisation and irrelevance. Under the
circumstances, the security efforts in Jammu and Kashmir need to be
supplemented by measures to force Pakistan to cease support for
terrorist groups targeting India as well as measures to disrupt and
dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in that country.
At the diplomatic level India’s leverage vis-a-vis Pakistan is
limited, especially at this juncture when the state of affairs in that
country is delicately poised and when more powerful actors are engaged
in attempting to save it from itself. All that can be done at the
diplomatic level is to continually highlight Pakistan’s continuing use
of terrorism as an instrument of policy and sustain international
pressure to force Islamabad to take meaningful action against
terrorist groups targeting India. At the same time, military measures
aimed at either coercing the Pakistani establishment or disrupting the
infrastructure of the terrorist groups would also be ill-advised. As
seen during the crises of 2002, military coercion of the Pakistan
government on one hand and leveraging military tensions for
international diplomatic support on the other can yield only limited
dividends.
It was also realised at that time that military strikes against
terrorist camps would have only limited impact on the terror
infrastructure. Moreover, military action would aggravate bilateral
tensions, strengthen hawkish elements, and generally provide Pakistan
an excuse for not taking action against terrorist groups which it
continues to perceive as ‘strategic assets’. Instead of overt military
strikes, India should adopt covert measures to both raise the cost to
Islamabad as well as to degrade the terrorist leadership and
infrastructure on Pakistani territory. A good example in this regard
was India’s response in the late 1980s to the support Pakistan
provided for Khalistan groups.
At the same time, India also needs to focus on domestic counter-terror
measures, which have indeed received a fillip in the wake of the
Mumbai attack. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act has been
legislated to provide the legal framework for counter-terrorism, and
the National Investigation Agency has been established to investigate
and prosecute terrorist offences. In addition, a number of measures
have been taken to raise ‘the level of preparedness’ and enhance ‘the
speed and decisiveness’ in responding to terrorist attacks or threats.
These include a fresh mandate to the Multi Agency Centre and its
subsidiaries to smoothen the collation and sharing of intelligence,
and the establishment of National Security Guard hubs in different
parts of the country to enable a quicker response to terrorist
attacks.
However useful these institutions and mechanisms prove to be in the
coming years, the key to counter-terrorism is the police force which
falls within the purview of state governments. Until such time state
governments shed their apathy and begin to appreciate the imperative
of modernising and de-politicising their police forces, India’s
counter-terrorism efforts are likely to remain ineffective.
http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/599/599_s_kalyanaraman.htm
Sarasvati (7 Vols-Set)
S. Kalyanaraman, Baba Saheb, 2003, 2044 p, 7 Vols, figs, plates, maps,
ISBN : 81-901126-1-0 (Vol. I); 81-901126-2-0 (Vol. II); 81-901126-3-0
(Vol. III); 81-901126-4-0 (Vol. IV); 81-901126-5-0 (Vol. V);
81-901126-6-0 (Vol. VI); 81-901126-7-0 (Vol. VII)., $231.00 (Includes
free airmail shipping)
Contents: Vol. I: Civilization: 1. New light on Sarasvati
civilization. 2. Sarasvati: discovery and rebirth. 3. River Sarasvati:
archaeology, culture and heritage tourism. 4. Ecology, River Sarasvati
and roots of civilization of Bharat. 5. Revival of River Sarasvati
begins. 6. River Sarasvati: archaeology, tradition and water
resources. 7. Bharati, Sarasvati. 8. Vidya_devi Sarasvati. 9. Dilmun,
Magan, and sea-faring merchants of Meluhha. 10. From Sarasvati to
Haraquaiti. 11. Mleccha, Mlecchita vikalpa: language and writing
system. 12. Hieroglyphs of Sarasvati Civilization. 13. S'ankha,
Bhairava, Man.d.ala. 14. Sculptural tradition. 15. Bead-making
tradition. 16. Archery tradition. 17. Mahabharata as the sheet-anchor
of Bharatiya Itihasa. 18. Sarasvati Civilization. Index.
Vol. II: R.gveda: 1. R.gveda and Sarasvati. 2. Vedic roots of early
metallurgy. 3. Soma. 4. Vedic Ratha. Index. End notes.
Vol. III: River: 1. River Indo-brahm, River Sarasvati of quaternary
periods. 2. Riverine traditions of Bharat. 3. Maritime traditions of
Bharat. 4. Seafaring artisans of Meluhha. 5. Settlements and forts. 6.
Kot., fortified settlements in Sarasvati Sindhu River Basins. 7.
Sarasvati Civilization. 8. Archaeological sites. Bibliography. Index.
End notes.
Vol. IV: Bharati: 1. Westward migrations out of Bharat. 2. Veneration
of ancestors. 3. Bha_ratam Janam. 4. Vra_tya and building a ra_s.t.ra.
5. Maritime, riverine trade in Vedic times. 6. Vedic and Avestan
people. 7. Vedic and Avestan. 8. Defence. 9. Roots of civilization.
10. Evolution of traditions of the civilization. 11. Contacts. 12.
Sarasvati Civilization. Index. End notes.
Vol. V: Technology: 1. Metallurgy tradition. 2. Natural resource map
of ancient Bharat. 3. Tin from Meluhha. 4. Ancient trade in Tin. 5.
Copper hoard weapons: autochthonous evolution and links with Sarasvati
Civilization. 6. The cultural markers of legacy of the civilization.
7. Words for copper. 8. Tradition of sacred weapons. 9. Bronze age
artifacts in areas neighbouring Sarasvati Civilization. 10. Bharat,
Hurrian, Mitanni. 11. Harappan spoked wheel. Index. End notes.
Vol. VI: Language: 1. Lingua Franca. 2. Linguistic area of Bharat,
circa 5500 years before present. 3. IE homeland. 4. Language and
archaeology. 5. Desi_, bha_s.a_: substrate. 6. Silver ingot with
Hittite (?) hieroglyphs. 7. Rim (karn.aka, kan-) of a jar, kan,
'copper'. 8. Svastika, endless-knot and other glyphs. 9. On Siddham
and other symbols used in Bharatiya inscriptions. 10. Tiger, three
ligatured tigers, tiger looking back. 11. Human-faced markhor and
other glyphs. 12. Orthography of the one-horned bull (ibex, urus) and
the standard device. 13. List of possessions: copper ingot merchant,
metal furnace. 14. Squirrel and glyphs on weapons. 15. Dholavira sign
board. 16. Inscribed weapons. 17. Glyphs on Gundestrup Cauldron and
parallels with Sarasvati hieroglyphs. 18. Sarasvati Civilization.
Index. End notes.
Vol. VII: Epigraphs: 1. Sarasvati hieroglyphs: Mlecchita Vikalpa. 2.
Method to decode sets or categories of inscribed objects. 3.
Hieroglyph sign list (after Mahadevan). 4. Discovery sites. 5. Writing
system: structure, form and function. 6. Speculations on the functions
of the script. 7. Mlecchita Vikalpa: minerals, metals and furnaces. 8.
Tools-of-trade and property possessions of artisans depicted in
epigraphs. 9. Bastion, kottala, trough. 10. Smithy, pasra. 11.
Mineral, stone. 12. Tin, Pewter. 13. Iron, ib. 14. Bronze. 15. Alloy:
brass and bell-metal or bharan. 16. Metal ingot, trade. 17. Gold,
mint. 18. An alloy of five metals. 19. Erka, era, 'copper'. 20.
Duplicated and paired glyphs. 21. Person (woman) seated on a tree
branch, a spy, eraka. 22. Portable stove of a goldsmith, ban:gala. 23.
Fire-pit, furnace, kulme. 24. Smith, karma_ra. 25. Copper work. 26.
Smelting furnace, bat.i. 27. Smelting furnace, kut.hi. 28. Goldsmith's
tool, saw. 29. Standard device. 30. Dotted circles. 31. Rosetta
stones. 32. Dotted circles and standard. 33. Double-axe. 34. Glyph
ligatures. 35. Fish and lizard. 36. Standing person glyph. 37. Tree
glyphs. 38. Fish glyph. 39. Sarasvati Civilization. Index. End notes.
From the foreword: "This septet constitutes a fitting homage to
Babasaheb (Uma_ka_nt kes'av) Apte, particularly in the wake of the
centenary celebrations planned for 2003 in memory of this patriot who
wanted a presentation of the history of Bha_rata from a Bha_rati_ya
socio-cultural perspective.
"The dream of the late Padmashri Vakankar, archaeologist is also
partly fulfilled with the delineation of the peoples' lives over 5,000
years on the banks of the Rivers Sarasvati and Sindhu.
"The Sarasvati Nadi Shodh Prakalp which is headed by Dr. Kalyanaraman
under the guidance of Shri Haribhau Vaze, All-India Organizing
Secretary, Akhila Bharateeya Itihaasa Sankalana Yojana should be
complimented for bringing to successful completion this important
phase of writing of the history of ancient Bha-rata.
"The River Sarasvati has not only been established as ground-truth
(bhu_mi satyam), but the vibrant civilization which was nurtured on
the banks of this river has been exquisitely unraveled in the five
volumes, covering virtually all aspects of the lives of the pitr.-s,
many of whose a_s'rama-s are venerated even today in many parts of
Bha_rata.
"The seven volumes provide a framework for understanding the writing
system evolved ca. 5,300 years ago to record the possessions and items
traded by metal- and fire- workers, the bharata-s. The language spoken
by the people is also becoming clearer, with the existence of a
linguistic area on the banks of the two rivers - the substrata and ad-
strata lexemes which seem to match the glyphs of inscribed objects are
a testimony to this discovery. This calls for a paradigm shift in the
study of languages of Bha_rata with particular reference to the
essential semantic unity of all the language families, thanks to
intense socio-economic and cultural interactions across the length and
breadth of Bha_rata.
"Hopefully, this work should generate many more research studies of
this kind to further study the impact of the civilization on the
cultural unity of the nation."
https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no34694.htm
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Jul 4 2009, 8:44 pm
From: use...@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
Date: Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:44:47 GMT
Local: Sat, Jul 4 2009 8:44 pm
Subject: WITZEL, HARVARD PROFESSOR LAUNCHES ANTI-HINDU CRUSADE
Forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Witzel, Harvard professor launches anti-Hindu Crusade
Dr. Srinivasan Kalyanaraman
Quiz #1:
"Hindus in the USA are lost or abandoned people!"
"NRI stands for Non-Returning Indians!"
"Indians in the USA do not invest in the higher education of their
children!"
Who in the USA do you think would have made derogatory statements to
this effect?
A. A Ku Klux Klansman
B. A Bible thumping fundamentalist from Alabama
C. A Xenophobe who is paranoid about immigrants settling in the USA
D. A Harvard Sanskrit professor
Correct answer: D.
I am sure none of you scored right on this. So, read on and get
informed.
Harvard professor disparages Hindus
Recently, in a Communist-leaning political list better known for its
uncritical beliefs in myths like Aryan Invasion and its negation of
historical facts, Harvard professor Michael Witzel made some
startling claims about Hindu immigrants to the USA. One of his
acolytes invented the acronym HINA for Hindus in North America.
Witzel disingenuously and infamously transliterated it as "hiina"and
translated it as "lost" or "abandoned." This Sanskrit word has many
other derogatory meanings such as "inferior," "insecure," "lowly" and
"defective."
It caught my attention that Witzel had described Hindus using the
very same phrase -- "lost people" -- which a rabid Christian
fundamentalist and anti-Semite had used to describe the Jews a few
years ago.
Rev. Bailey Smith, then-president of the Southern Baptists, had
infamously declared:
"God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew" and added, "without
Jesus Christ, they [the Jews] are lost." [1]
One does not know whether, or to what extant, Witzel shares Smith's
fanatical and bigoted beliefs. But Witzel was instrumental in urging
activism against the Hindu initiative, as a result of which his
cosignatory urged a Hindu-bashing Christian fundamentalist to
mobilize a show of strength against the Hindus of California, as we
will see later. Witzel also makes fun of the Hindu custom of
cremating their dead:
"[Hindus immigrants to the USA] have begun -- as an old, very
conservative US Brahmin friend pointed out to me already in 1994—
building crematoria as well." [2]
Witzel also makes fun of Hindu Gods, rituals and second generation
American Hindus:
"Second generation [Hindu] people just understand [Hinduism] as
"boaring rituals" (puja, etc.), temple visits and Indian
(mythological) comic books ... All such items add to the heady brew
that we have seen emerging here..." [3]
Considering that our Harvard professor has specifically enclosed the
words "boaring rituals" within quotes, one cannot but assume that it
was intended to make fun of the Hindu God Vishnu, who incarnated as a
boar.
Background
Some of the proposed textbooks for grade six of the State of
California portrayed Hinduism in the most derogatory manner. A
textbook described Goddess Kali as "bloodthirsty" and, while talking
about the Ramayana and Lord Hanuman, asked the students to look
around and see if there was a monkey in the classroom. Another
textbook claimed that Hinduism taught that women were inferior. Yet
another textbook repeated the long discredited racist theory, which
contrasted the supposedly tall, blond and blue-eyed invading Aryans
with the supposedly curly-haired, snub-nosed native Dravidians.
Naturally, Hindus in California were offended by this offensive
treatment of their religion and culture. So, they worked with the
State Board of Education, understood the procedures and submitted a
list of proposed changes with due explanation. Perhaps, Max Muller,
the 19 th century German racist and Christian fundamentalist, who had
stated very clearly that Hindus as a race are inferior to the Whites
but superior to the Blacks, [4]would not have countenanced such
audacious gestures from erstwhile colonial slaves seeking parity with
other religionists according to rules. A section of Eurocentric
academics that faithfully propagate Muller's racist theory and
chronology of Indian history too did not tolerate such a gesture from
the Hindus.
'Rev.' Witzel launches anti-Hindu Crusade
Witzel and some of his cosignatories admitted that they knew nothing
about the nature of the changes proposed . But, in the same breath,
they concluded that this is an unacceptable Hindutva initiative,
which must be opposed tooth and nail. On Sunday, November 06, 2005
9:46 AM Steve Farmer [a cosignatory and originator of Witzel et al's
protest petition] wrote:
"There is little time to research and respond to exactly what is
happening in California, since we only learned about organized
Hindutva challenges to California history textbooks yesterday. ...
The final School Board meeting on this will apparently occur in
Sacramento (the state capital) in three days. Even given the short
time, a collective response of some nature by internationally known
S. Asianists is certainly in order. At a minimum, the Board should be
made aware in some way of the religious and political nature of the
attacks, be provided with a quick overview of similar attacks on
textbooks in S. Asia in the last decade, and be given notice of the
opposition of the vast majority of S. Asian researchers to such
changes. Given the short time frame, the response may have to be
largely symbolic, but a letter endorsed by a dozen or more
internationally known S. Asianists from every continent might still
have some effect."[5]
Witzel, on behalf of another 46 signatories, petitioned the State
Board of Education [SBE] against the proposed changes [the nature of
which he and his cosignatories were unaware]. He launched an ad
hominem and slanderous attack on the Hindus who had proposed the
changes.
The petition, like Lallu Prasad's election campaign, provided a
"balanced" mix of ignorance, slander and comic relief. Jonathan Mark
Kenoyer, whose parents were Christian missionaries in Asia, was one
of the signatories on the petition. He is also the author of the
proposed textbook from the Oxford University Press. California Hindus
had reviewed the OUP textbook and suggested changes in a meeting with
OUP officials. The OUP officials informed in writing that Kenoyer
agreed with the suggestions. Should one then suspect the inclusion of
Kenoyer's name in the petition or was Kenoyer filled with the Holy
Spirit and began speaking in tongues [The New Testament, Acts 19:6]?
Sometime back, in a review of Edwin Bryant's 2001 book, The Quest for
the Origins of Vedic Culture -- the Indo-Aryan Migration Debate,
Witzel wrote:
"[Bryant's book is] A balanced description and evaluation of the two
century old debate dealing with the origins of the Indo-Aryan
speaking peoples of South Asia. [Bryant] presents both sides of the
issue, that is the traditional western, linguistic and philological
consensus of immigration from Central Asia, and the more recent
Indian position that denies any immigration and that asserts an
indigenous South Asian origin."
Now, the same Witzel calls it Hindu Nationalistic propagandawhen
California Hindus say the same! Perhaps, he is filled with the Holy
Spirit and speaking in tongues!
The SBE of California capitulates
In 1850 CE, when the Harvard Medical School admitted three black men
and a white woman, racists protested against the move. The school
capitulated. [6] Just like those racists offered no substantive
arguments for throwing out the blacks and the woman, this time too,
the infamous petitioners offered no substantive reason for
campaigning against the changes suggested by Hindus. Still, the SBE
capitulated. One wonders if the SBE wanted to emulate the Harvard of
1850 CE.
The SBE went a step further. It appointed two of the signatories --
Michael Witzel and Stanley Wolpert -- and James Heitzman, who
protested at the venue repeating Witzel's ad hominem attack to review
the suggested changes. Is not appointing a petitioner to review
suggested changes tantamount to conflict of interest?
On the other hand, the SBE is not known to have acted on a letter
signed by over 30 distinguished experts that included world's
foremost archeologists who have been working on the IVC and its
script for decades. These signatories cited many references showing
why Aryan Invasion is merely an unsubstantiated myth.
The above said letter was sent on November 21, 2005. The SBE, for
reasons unknown, did not accord it the same respect it accorded
Witzel's defamatory petition.
Crusaders form an axis of protestors
Witzel made it clear that he was a political activist. On November
26, 2005 17:26, he wrote his fellow petitioners:
"There will be a meeting with California Dept. of Education [...]
Please note that on Dec. 1/2 a higher body than last time, the
Curriculum Commission, is scheduled to take up this issue in the
morning on December 2 (note all times are tentative—if they move
through the agenda faster than expected, things will happen earlier).
This is not a public hearing. But all that means is that there is no
official published time for the public to speak before the
commissioners take action . Nonetheless, each meeting has a time for
"public comment" and people will be allowed to come up and speak.
(Thus, we have to be present).
If they follow the order of the published agenda, public comment
comes after the actual vote. They will only hear Tom Adam's (CA Dept.
of Education) report on the earlier (Hindutva-inspired) and our
(Wolpert, Heitzman, Witzel) findings.
But if they see the huge Hindutva crowd expected and decide to let
them speak first, it is possible votes will be swayed back the other
way simply because no political person likes to say no, in public, to
an unhappy minority group seeking redress of grievances.
It also appears that in the afternoon of December 1, the day before
the vote, the History-Social Science subcommittee will hear reports
about recent events in the adoption of the text books. This should
not involve any discussion of the "Hindu" issue. But the Hindu groups
might show up for that discussion too. Public comment is allowed and
it will give them a chance to speak to some of the commissioners
before the vote the next day.
SO PLEASE TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION: Alert your friends in California
to attend!" [7]
How appropriate is it for a reviewer on contract with the SBE who is
expected to be neutral, to indulge in political activism, falsely
label California Hindus as of a political persuasion and seek
unethical mobilization of support? How appropriate is it for the SBE
to hire such politicized academics to review school textbooks?
In any case, Lars Martin Fosse, a cosignatory on the petition and a
collaborator of Witzel, wrote John Dayal and Amarjit Singh, citing
Witzel's letter:
"It would probably be an advantage if Dalits were present and could
demonstrate that the Hindutvavadins do not speak for all Indians. I
have been reluctant to announce this on the Dalit lists because we
don't know if they are infiltrated, we therefore turn to you for
advice and help. Is there a way to (discretely) mobilize Dalits in
California and elsewhere in this matter? Could you get some support
from Afro-American organizations here?We don't want to create the
impression that only a few outsiders are against the Hindutva version
of history." [8]
Please note that Fosse uses the word "WE," clearly indicating that he
is writing on behalf of a group while seeking mobilization of
protestors. The only group one could think of in this situation is
the list of cosignatories on the petition whom Witzel had addressed
in his email. So, who are these people -- John Dayal and Amarjit
Singh -- whom Fosse writes? P.N. Benjamin, a distinguished Christian
scholar and the coordinator of Bangalore Initiative for Religious
Dialogue [BIRD], says of John Dayal:
"[John Dayal] opens his mouth and wields his pen only to spew venom
on the Hindu community." [9]
Benjamin then goes on to expose the kind of lies that the likes of
Dayal perpetrate when they invent stories of Hindu rape of Christian
nuns and propagate those abroad with the sole intent of discrediting
the Hindus. John Dayal is also infamous for ardently supporting Benny
Hinn, who defrauds the poorest illiterates in the Third World by
promising them "miracle healing." [10]
According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal [SATP], Amarjit Singh is
closely associated with the banned terror organization International
Sikh Youth Federation [ISYF]. [11] Many countries such as the USA
[12] and the UK [13] have designated ISYF as a terrorist
organization. Singh also heads the Khalistan Affairs Centre [KAC]. I
am not implying that KAC is connected with Khalistani terrorism as I
have no means to judge that but it is a well-known fact that
Khalistani terrorists have massacred 21,000 innocent civilian Hindus
and Sikhs, and have committed untold crimes such as rape of countless
Sikh women. [14] A US State department notification states:
"Sikh terrorism is sponsored by expatriate and Indian Sikh groups who
want to carve out an independent Sikh state called Khalistan (Land of
the Pure) from Indian territory." [15]
Khalistani terrorists were also tried for the bombing of the Air
India civilian aircraft"Kanishka" in 1985, killing hundreds of
innocent passengers. [16] Amarjit Singh is an advocate of Khalistan
ideology.
There is no indication that Witzel or any other signatory on the
petition condemned Fosse [himself a signatory] for unethically
mobilizing political support and that too, by instigating highly
controversial persons. It is beyond my comprehension how an academic
could join hands with a rabid Christian fundamentalist and a
proponent of the lethal Khalistan ideology. What kind of academics
would sign the petition but remain silent and not condemn unethically
seeking support from such controversial individuals?
Quiz #2:
"The miraculously undecayed body of Saint Francis Xavier is still on
public view in a glass coffin at the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa."
Who in the USA do you think would have made a statement to this
effect?
A. A pre-school child visiting Goa for the first time
B. A Bible thumping Catholic Christian fundamentalist
C. A Creation scientist
D. A U C Davis history professor
Correct answer: D.
I am sure you got this too wrong. So, read on and get informed.
An SBE appointed reviewer advertises Christian miracles
James Heitzman, professor of history at U C Davis, is one of the
three reviewers appointed by the SBE. It does not seem as if he
accepts that mummified bodies do not decay. [17] He is wonderstruck
that it is a miracle that the mummified body of the infamous St.
Francis Xavier, who sought the terrible Inquisition of Goa, [18]
which persecuted Hindus, Indian Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslims
in the most vicious manner, should be preserved for five centuries.
Someone needs to direct our distinguished professor to any museum of
natural history, where Egyptian mummies are preserved. Of course, one
cannot guarantee that Heitzman will return scientifically informed.
He may see the hand of miracle in their preservation too!
It seems as if Heitzman strongly believes that history should be
supplanted with false propaganda if it suits the proselytizing
efforts of the Christian Church. He writes:
"Christianity, represented by almost all denominations, traces its
history in India back to the time of the apostles and counted 19.6
million members in India in 1991." [19]
Numerous scholars have refuted this dangerous fiction, which falsely
painted the Brahmin ethnic minority as Thomas-killers, and resulted
in their demonization and persecution, just as the false myth of the
Jews as Jesus-killers resulted in their historic persecution. The
Vatican itself has declared that this is an unverified claim.
Numerous distinguished academics such as E.J. Rapson, Sylvain Levi,
K.S. Latourette, Fr. H.Heras etc, to name a few, have refuted that
St. Thomas ever came to India. [20] It seems as if Heitzman prefers
dangerous Christian fiction to facts.
Heitzman believes in revelations
Heitzman unquestioningly accepts revelations. He writes:
"Muhammad received visions in which the Archangel Gabriel revealed
the word of God to him . After 620 he publicly preached the message
of these visions, stressing the oneness of God (Allah), denouncing
the polytheism of his fellow Arabs, and calling for moral uplift of
the population." [21]
Since Heitzman is mesmerized by revelations, he is unimpressed by the
inquiries into the truth, a common feature of Hindu philosophy, which
he dismisses as speculations. He writes:
"Some of the later hymns of the Rig Veda contain speculations that
form the basis for much of Indian religious and philosophical
thought." [22]
Heitzman, while discussing Hindu festivals, calls Hindus cross-
dressers:
"Major Hindu events include Ramanavami, the birthday of Ram in the
month of Chaitra (March-April), and Holi, celebrated at the end of
the month of Phalguna (February-March), when people engage in cross-
dressing, play tricks on each other, and squirt colored water or
powder on each other." [23]
How can the SBE nominate an academic, who believes in miracles and
fits history to suit Christian propaganda, to review contents
relating to Hinduism in school textbooks, especially when he is also
a signatory on Witzel's petition? Does the SBE agree with Heitzman's
uncharitable remarks on Hinduism and Hindus?
Quiz #3:
"The most important invasion in all of India's history, since the
Aryans brought with their Caucasian genes [is Aryan invasion]."
Who in the USA do you think would have made a statement to this
effect?
A. A Ku Klux Klansman
B. A eugenics advocate
C. A White Supremacist
D. A U C Los Angeles history professor
Correct answer: D.
I am sure you got this too wrong, unless you have by now learnt that
only Western historians can make such statements. Anyway, read on.
Wolpert celebrates the Caucasian gene
While discussing Aryan invasion theory [AIT], Stanley Wolpert, a UCLA
historian writes:
"This was the most important invasion in all of India's history,
since the Aryans brought with their Caucasian genes a new language --
Sanskrit -- and a new pantheon of gods…"[24]
It seems that to our UCLA professor the importance of an invasion
depends on whether it involved the inflow of Caucasian genes! Hey,
what is next? The most important invasion in all of Americas' history
is the 16 th century invasion of Europeans because it brought in
Caucasian genes? Thank god, African Americans, who do not possess
Caucasian genes, did not invade Americas!
I could not but think of the 18th century racist Benjamin Rush's
writings on "Lovely White"skin contrasted with the Black skin as I
read Wolpert wax eloquent on the importance of coming in of the
Caucasian genes. Benjamin Rush, a medical doctor, attributed Black
skin to leprosy and advocated "curing" African-Americans by bleeding
and purging. [25]
Not to be outdone by Heitzman, Wolpert also repeats the dangerous
Christian propaganda of the imagined visit of St. Thomas to India. He
writes:
"A small but influential group of Syrian Christians in Kerala persist
in claiming that their sect was founded by St. Thomas, who may have
sailed to Malabar in the first century and who was supposedly
martyred at Mylapore , a suburb of modern Madras, in A.D. 68. The
tiny Jewish community of Cochin also claims to have been founded in
the first century, but no clear historical evidence of such early
Jewish settlement in Malabar has as yet been discovered." [26]
The reference of Mylapore is to the mythical killing of St. Thomas by
a peaceful and scholarly ethnic minority of Tamil Brahmins. A
rational person might be at a loss to understand how St. Thomas, who
did not even visit India, could have been killed there. But, Wolpert
has no compunctions in repeating this perniciously false propaganda,
which, since the Portuguese colonial period, has resulted in the most
terrible persecution of Brahmins. Is anything acceptable if it helps
demonize Hindus and help perpetuate Christianity?
Why is the SBE nominating such a biased academic, who is also a
signatory on Witzel's petition, to review contents relating to
Hinduism?
Conclusion
1. I have shown that the SBE capitulated to political pressure
by nominating a trio of academics who have indulged in the most
despicable form of political activism, disparaged Hinduism or
collaborated with controversial elements.
2. The SBE did not accord any respect to the scholars who
supported the Hindu initiative by presenting solid references.
3. One of these academics has also expressed his admiration for
Christian miracles, while another has propagated falsified [over 80
years ago!] Christian propaganda.
4. Is it not a clear violation of guidelines, and law, to
subject Hinduism and Hindus to such treatment? Does the SBE want
Hindu children of California to be indoctrinated in false propaganda?
5. It is heartening to note that the Commission constituted by
the SBE dismissed virtually all demands made by this trio -- Witzel,
Wolpert and Heitzman -- with the contempt they deserved. According to
a report of December 4, 2005 by the HPI, Heitzman unsuccessfully
pleaded to replace Aryan Invasion Theory [AIT] with Aryan Migration
Theory [AMT]. But Commissioner Metzenberg, a biologist, objected on
scientific grounds. He said:
"I've read the DNA research and there was no Aryan migration. I
believe the hard evidence of DNA more than I believe historians."
It was finally agreed to say, "Some historians believe in the
theory of an Aryan migration."
This shows how false theories motivated by racist politics never
stand scientific scrutiny. Of course, there is no justification even
in retaining AMT, which is merely a belief, and not supported by
facts. Hindus must meet the SBE to ensure that theories which are not
scientifically substantiated be removed altogether.
6. Heitzman, apparently frustrated that his advocacies failed
the test of scientific evidence, said to the Commission:
"I advise you to err on the side of conservatism and be very careful
about adopting any of these changes."
Commissioner Metzenberg replied pointedly:
"On the contrary, to err on the side of conservatism, we should use
the Hindu suggestions. After all, it's their religion."
7. Metzenberg also felt a comment by Witzel's panel on one edit
was "insensitive."The edit was to fix the incorrect statement that
the Ramayana was written later than the Mahabharata. Witzel's group
wrote condescendingly:
"Who in Sixth Grade cares which epic was 'written' first?"
Metzenberg observed that "it obviously matters to Hindus."
8. Hindus must also make it very clear to the SBE that no
academic that is known to be inimical to Hinduism or known to have
distorted facts to fit pet beliefs be not allowed to have any say in
the process of reviewing and amending textbooks. As such, the trio of
reviewers was admitted into the process without justification. I have
presented solid evidence that they indulged in political activism
contrary to the spirit of their contract with the SBE. Hindus must
demand that the SBE should terminate their contract right away.
9. Hindus must demand that the SBE does not entertain any of
the signatories of Witzel's petition in the textbook review and
adoption process as I have already demonstrated that they are biased
and politically motivated.
10. Witzel has ridiculed the most sacred of the Hindu mantras or
sacred chants. He writes:
"Many short mantras (the later biija mantras) like oM have humble
origins the Veda. Him (hiM) is used in the Veda to call your goat ..
and your wife." [27]
Steve Farmer's [who initiated the petition] and also signed on
Witzel's petition declared, in pathetic attempt at humor, that he
would try this mantra on his girlfriend. [28] Hindus must demand that
academics with a history of disparaging Hinduism cannot influence
what goes into textbooks meant for children.
11. Finally, only academics and experts on religion with a non-
controversial record should be nominated to influence the process of
textbook adoption. Academics that are accused of having used
unethical means of scholarship should not be used for this purpose.
Prof. B.B. Lal, the world's foremost archeologist and expert on Indus
Valley Civilization, in his most recent publication,The Homeland of
the Aryans -- Evidence of Rigvedic Flora and Fauna & Archaeology, pp.
85-89 (New Delhi, 2005) writes that Dr. Witzel unethically and
willfully assigned two opposite meanings to two occurrences of the
same Sanskrit word to artificially make the verse support Aryan
migration into India, whereas the verse actually makes it very clear
that Aryans migrated in two branches, one to the West and another to
the East, from northwestern India.
It was a very sad day for Sanskrit scholarship in general, and
Harvard in particular when one of its academics was accused of and
disgraced for willfully and unethically mistranslating a verse. When
the error was pointed to him in the past, Witzel conveniently blamed
it on the editor of the relevant publication concerned, despite the
fact that the same mistranslation has been printed by him in many
other publications of his.
12. Even in the petition he sent the SBE, Witzel claims that one of
the signatories, S. Palaniappan as: "S. Palaniappan, PhD, Indology,
Texas." It must be pointed out that Palaniappan, who works for the
Minute Maid Company in Texas, is not an Indologist by any stretch of
that word. Certainly, he is not a Ph.D. in Indology as Witzel
misleads in his petition. Palaniappan received his doctorate in
engineering. Should one then infer that Palaniappan is a 'made in a
minute' instant Indologist? Did Witzel use Heitzman's miracle to
transform engineer Palaniappan into an Indologist?
Dr. Srinivasan Kalyanaraman, a former Sr. Exec. of Asian Development
Bank, is a Hindu. His two grandchildren, US citizens, study in US
schools. His email id is kalya...@gmail.com
[1] http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_chrr.htm
[2] Vide message number 2300 at Yahoo groups Indo-Eurasian_research
[3] In the above message
[4] Muller, M.: History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, page 294.
Also see, a paper presented by Arvind Kumar at the SBE
hearing:
http://jitnasa.india-forum.com/Docs/ProAryanInvasionTheoryargumentspr...
[5] Vide message number 2225 Yahoo groups Indo-Eurasian_research
[6] Takaki, R.T.: Iron Cages -- Race and Culture in 19th Century
America, p. 137
[7] This email was posted vide message number 8893 at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bahujan/message/8893
[8] Cited from the abovementioned email
[9] Benjamin, P.N .: When Intolerance Begets Loss Of Reason.
Available at http://www.hvk.org/articles/0905/43.html
[10] http://www.rickross.com/reference/hinn/hinn32.html
[11] http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/kpsgill/security/04Feb21Pio.htm
[12] http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/1999report/appb.html
andhttp://japan.usembassy.gov/e/p/tp-20040430-33.html
[13] http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/security/terrorism-and-the-law/terrorism...
[14] Bruce Hoffman "Holy Terror": The Implications Of Terrorism
Motivated By A Religious Imperative RAND Paper P-7834, 1993
http://www.nwcitizen.com/publicgood/reports/holywar3.htm#endn39
cf. Komerath, N:
http://www.geocities.com/charcha_2000/essays/Lashkar-e-Pinocchio.html...
[15] http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/1999report/appb.html
[16] http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/punjab/backgroun...
[17] Heitzman, J. and Worden, R.L.: A Country Study: India, Chapter 3
-- Religious Life by James Heitzman (section: Other Minority
Religions -- Christianity), Library of Congress Call Number DS407.
cf. a paper presented by Arvind Kumar at the SBE hearing:
http://jitnasa.india-forum.com/Docs/ProAryanInvasionTheoryargumentspr...
[18] Priolkar, A.K.: The Terrible Tribunal for the East -- The Goa
Inquisition. In a letter dated May 16, 2005, St. Xavier writing D.
Joao III, king of Portugal, demanded Inquisition against the Jews and
Muslims of Goa. Even though the wise king turned down the demand,
ultimately, due to intense pressure from the Catholic Church, the
most terrible Inquisition would be unleashed, first on the Jews of
India, then the Muslims and finally, in a most oppressive manner, on
the Hindus.
[19] Heitzman, J. and Worden, R.L.: A Country Study: India, Chapter 3
-- Religious Life, Library of Congress Call Number DS407 .I4465 1996,
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/intoc.html
cf. a paper presented by Arvind Kumar at the SBE hearing:
http://jitnasa.india-forum.com/Docs/ProAryanInvasionTheoryargumentspr...
[20] For an excellent discussion, see Sharan, I.:The Myth of Saint
Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple, p. 73
[21] Heitzman, J. and Worden, R.L.: A Country Study: India, Chapter 3
-- Religious Life by James Heitzman (section: Islam -- Origins and
Tenets), Library of Congress Call Number DS407 .I4465 1996,
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/intoc.html
cf. a paper presented by Arvind Kumar at the SBE hearing:
http://jitnasa.india-forum.com/Docs/ProAryanInvasionTheoryargumentspr...
[22] Heitzman, J. and Worden, R.L.: A Country Study: India, Chapter 3
-- Religious Life by James Heitzman (section: The Roots of Indian
Religion -- The Vedas and Polytheism), Library of Congress Call
Number DS407 .I4465 1996,
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/intoc.html
cf. a paper presented by Arvind Kumar at the SBE hearing:
http://jitnasa.india-forum.com/Docs/ProAryanInvasionTheoryargumentspr...
[23] Heitzman, J. and Worden, R.L.: A Country Study: India, Chapter 3
-- Religious Life by James Heitzman (section: The Ceremonies of
Hinduism -- Public Worship -- Festivals), Library of Congress Call
Number DS407 .I4465 1996,
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/intoc.html
cf. a paper presented by Arvind Kumar at the SBE hearing:
http://jitnasa.india-forum.com/Docs/ProAryanInvasionTheoryargumentspr...
[24] Wolpert, S.: A New History of India, Fifth Edition, page 27 cf.
a paper presented by Arvind Kumar at the SBE hearing:
http://jitnasa.india-forum.com/Docs/ProAryanInvasionTheoryargumentspr...
[25] Takaki, R.T .: Iron Cages -- Race and Culture in 19th Century
America, pp. 28-32
[26] Wolpert, S.: A New History of India, Fifth Edition, page 84.
[27] Vide message number 2133 at Yahoo groups Indo-Eurasian_research
[28] Vide message number 2164 at Yahoo groups Indo-Eurasian_research
A REFRESHER -- DOWN "MEMORY LANE"!
http://tinyurl.com/c3f4b
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian/msg/41fb7e5f908af736?
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian/search?q=S.+Kalyanaraman+&start=0&
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/19684779/lalumanagementguru
http://sanskritdocuments.org/doc_z_misc_navagraha/mangala108.itx
http://www.hindubooks.org/history/sarasvati/sarasvati_1.html
http://newstodaynet.com/printer.php?id=18010
chhotemianinshallah
Hiroshi KUMAMOTO
University of Tokyo
January 21, 1998
These files are based on the DOS text on the diskette accompanying RIG
VEDA, A METRICALLY RESTORED TEXT, edited by Barend A. van Nooten and
Gary B. Holland, Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. 50, Harvard UP, 1994.
The only difference is that the character 160 (A0h) for "a acute" is
replaced by 225 (E1h) throughout. This is necessary because A0h is
reserved by MS-WORD for "Nonbreaking space".
In order to use these WORD files, the truetype font SANSKR.TTF must be
installed. This font is designed according to the "International
Codepage for Sanskrit diacritics (including the special characters
used in the metrical version of the RV). See the last page of the
"Contents of the diskette" by van Nooten. Here again for the reason
stated above "a acute" appears at 225 (E1h).
Since the lower part of this Codepage is the DOS codepage 437, and not
the "Windows Character Set" (thus "n tilde" is 164, not 241), the
Windows users will have to reassign most of the shortcut keys for the
accented and umlauted characters when using this font.
The main reason for preparing these WORD files and SANSKR.TTF has been
to facilitate the use of the important electronic text on the
computers running the Japanese OS. The original DOS text of van Nooten
and Holland has been practically unusable for the average users (of
DOS, WINDOWS or MAC) here because much of the upper half of the
codepage is reserved for the Japanese characters. The text with font
attribute can be an answer to the problem.
It is hoped that italic, bold, bold-italic styles of SANSKR.TTF will
be ready in the near future.
Needless to say, these files are for non-commercial use only. Users
are allowed to download and use the text for their personal use,
provided that refrence is made to the HOS edition.
At the suggestion of Professor Michael Witzel, the editor of the
Series, I have withdrawn "for the moment" the new metrical text, and
replaced it by the Samhita Text, which is traditionally used and still
of use.
Click HERE to download. ftp://gengo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pub/Rigveda/
FTP directory /pub/Rigveda/ at gengo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp
To view this FTP site in Windows Explorer, click Page, and then click
Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer.
Welcome to the Department of Linguistics FTP Server.
Up to higher level directory
01/22/1998 12:00AM 2,256 readme.txt
01/22/1998 12:00AM 808,927 samhita.zip
ftp://gengo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pub/Rigveda/
http://www.gengo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~hkum/rigveda.html
http://www.oocities.com/tikakar/navara.html
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Full text of "Faust im Bilde von den ersten Anfängen bis zum
Erscheinen des goetheschen Fragments"
Rudolf Payer von Thum
Faust im Bilde von den
ersten Anfängen bis zum Erscheinen
des Goetheschen Fragments.
FAUST IM BILDE
von den ersten Anfangen bis zum Er-
scheinen des Goetheschen Fragments
von Dr. Rudolf Payer von Thurn.,
Mit 22 Tafeln in Folio.
Ais XXX, XXXI. und XXXII, Band der »Chronik des Witner Go.the-
Vereins*.
Wien 1919.
Verlag des Wiener Goethe -Vereins.
Zur Einführung.
Die vorliegende Arbeit, die zum erstenmal im Juni 1917 als
Vereinsgabe
der Wiener Bibliophilen-Gesellschaft für das Jahr 1916 zur Ausgabe
gelangt und
von der Kritik durchwegs zustimmend aufgenommen worden ist, [Berliner
Tage-
blatt V. 11. Juli 1917, Morgen-Ausg. — Wiener Abendpost v. 24. Juli
1917
(Alex. V. Weilen) — Kunstchronik N. F , XXVIII. Jahrg., Nr. 40, Sp.
469 (Hans
Hetze) — X. Fr. Pr. Nr. 19046 v 30. Aug. 1917 (Hermine Cloeter) —
Zeit-
schrift für Bücherfreunde, Nov.-Dez. 1917, Sp. 427 (Georg Witkowski) —
Studien
u Skizzen zur Gemäkiekunde, III. Band, S. 115 (Th. v. Frimmel) —
Mitteilungen
der Gesellschaft für vervielfältigende Kunst, Beilage der ,,
Graphischen Künste"
1918, Nr. 4, S 61 (Arpäd Weixelgärtner)] erscheint nun auf Grund einer
sciner-
zeitigen Vereinbarung mit dem Vorstande der genannten Gesellschaft
zum
zweitenmal in äußerlich etwas weniger prächtigem Gewände, inhaltlich
aber
erweiterter Form, um den Mitsliedern des Wiener Goethe-Vereins die
bisher nicht
erschienenen Bände XXX, XXXI und XXXII der „Chronik des Wiener
Goelhe-
X'ereins" zu ersetzen.
An den Ergebnissen der Untersuchung brauchte nichts geändert zu
werden.
Abgesehen von einigen kleinen, durch die geänderten Verhältnisse
notwendig
j;ewordenen stilistischen Änderungen wurde zunächst die Anzahl der
aufgezählten
Klätter aus den besprochenen Porträtserien durch einige inzwischen neu
auf-
L^etauchte Bilder vermehrt. Zwei wichtige Ergänzungen, und zwar den
Hinweis
auf das Bild von Rembrandts Vater »bei Bredius im Haag (S. 8) und auf
den
Zusammenhang des van Sichemschen Stiches mit dem Titelholzschnitt des
Volks-
buches von 1588 (S. 13) verdanke ich unserem um die Ikonographie des
Goethe-
schen Faust hochverdienten Obmann-Stellvertreter Professor Dr. R. F.
Arnold.
Neu hinzugekommen ist ferner das mit dem „Faust'' des Moncornet
identische
Bild von Archimedes (Rückseite von Tafel 22 unten, Text S. 12) und die
lustige
Zusammenstellung des Faustkopfes aus Steyr mit den beiden Bischöfen
(Rückseite
von Tafel 22, Text S. 14). Da das Papier für die Lichtdrucke nicht
mehr zu be-
schaffen war, konnte die Anzahl der Tafeln nicht vermehrt werden, es
mußte
zu dem Auskunftsmittel gegriffen werden, die Rückseiten der Tafein 2,
3, 15 u.
-2 zu bedrucken.
Unserer Graphischen Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, ihrem hochverdienten
Direktor
Hofrat Prof. Dr. L M. Eder und den bewährten Lehrkräften, vor allem
den Herren
Professoren .A.ugust Albert und Karl Broum sowie Herrn Fachlehrer
Alois Pillarz,
die das Zustandekommen auch dieser zweiten Ausgabe in selbstlosester
Weise
ermöglicht haben, gebührt auch diesmal wieder unser wärmster Dank.
Wien, im April 1919.
Dr. Rudoll Payer von Thurn.
Verzeichnis dor Tafeln.
Doctor FaVstvs. Stich nus dem Verla{>c von Fran^oi^
I^ngloit dit de Ciartre». Paris, zwischen 1633 und
1647. Or. : \X*icn, Familien-FideikomiuiU-Bibliothck.
Bfiste eines niederblickenden Greises.
Rail. v.in Jan Joris van Vlict. Bartsch 25. Or. : Wien.
AV
Rück
Unten: i' h i 1 o n le J u i f . !• . I . I» < uirtrcs
excndit. K. H. van Kyn tnv.
Hat über tKembrandts Vater. Ölbild im Fer-
dinandcura in Innsbruck (verkleinert), daneben
Radierung van Vliets nach diesem Bilde.
Baste eines Offiziers. Radierung von Jan
Joriü van Viiet: Bartsch 26. Or. : Wien, Albertina.
Rückseite :
Unten : Rembrandts Vate r.ölb. v.Rembrandt,
im Bes. von Dr. A. Bredius im Haag.
Dat über : Radierung Rembrandts nach
diesem Bilde und (zum Vergleiche von Tafel 2
wiederholt Büste eines niederbückenden Alten (verkl.).
Ruhe der heiligen Familie auf der
Flucht nach Ägypten. Ölbild von Rembrandt.
(Or. : Downton-Castle. England. A . R. Boughton
Knight.) Nach einer Heliogravüre von Fillon et Hcuse.
Judas bringt die Silberlinge zurück.
Ölbild von Rembrandt. Or. : Faiis. Baron A. von
Schickler. Nach einer Heliogravüre von Braun. Cle-
ment et Co. Dabei : „Heraclit* aus dem Verlage :
a; von l*ierre Aubiy in Stratiburg ; b) Remondini in
bassano. Or. : Wien, Familien-Fideikommiß-Bibliothek.
Doctor Faustus. Stich aus dem Verlage von Aubry.
Or.: Wien, Familien-Fideikommiß-Bibliothek.
Faustbuch des Christlich Meynenden.
Frankfurt u. Leipzig. 1725. Or. : Erlangen, Univ.-Bibl.
Doctor Faustus. Titclkupfer zum Fünften Stück der
Bibliothcca, Acta et Scripta Magica, Lemgo, 1739.
a« Doctor Faustus. Steindruck, Titelbild zu:
Doktor Faustos. Tragödie von Christoph Marlowe.
Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Wilhelm Müller.
Mit einer Vorrede von Ludwig Achim von Arnim.
Berlin, l8i8.0r.: Wien, Sammlung Hofrat Hugo Thimig.
Doctor Faustus nach Rembrandt. Steindruck.
Titelbild: Das Kloster. Von J. Scheible. 2. Band,
Stattgart. 1846.
10. a> Doktor Faust. (Nach Rembrandt.) Holz-
schnitt aus J. J. Webers xyl. Anstalt in Leipzig.
(Deutfche Männer. Bilder aus der Geschichte des
deutschen Volkes von Hermann dem Cherusker bis
auf unsere Tage von Manuel Rascbke, Leipzig und
Tcüchen, 1868, S. 41.) Or. : Wien, Hofbibliothek.
Doctor Johann Faust. I'ortriit nach
Rembrandt. Anon. Holzschnitt aus: Carl
Engel, Das Volksscbauspiel Doctor Johann Faust,
Oldenburg, 1874.
Zenon I'hilosophe. Stich von Daamont in Paris.
18. Jahrb. Or.: Wien, Familien-Fideikommiß-Bibliothek.
Faust, ölminiatur der Ambraser Sammlung. Or. : Wien,
Knnsthistorische Sammlungen.
l.e Doctevr Favste Philosophe Alcinand etc. .Such
von B. Moncoroet. Or. : Wien, Familien- Kideikom-
miü-Bibliothek.
b) Büste eines bartlosen Mannes. Rad. von
Rembrandt. 16 jl, Bartsch 307. Or.: Wien. Hufbibl.
c) N i e d e r b 1 i c k e n d e r K a h 1 k t> p f. R adicruog
von Rembrandt, 1631. Bartsch 296. Or. : Ebenda.
d) Marc Agripe Philosophe Alcmand. Stich von B.
Moncornet. Or.: Wien, Familien-Fideikommiü-Uibl.
14. a) Greis in weitem Samtmantcl. Radierung
von Rembrandt, um 1632. Bartsch 262. (Verkleinert.)
b) J)ivinus Plato. Stich aus dem Verlage von F. Lang-
lois. (Verkl.) Or.: Wien, Familien-Fidcikommiß-Bibl.
Faust in seinem Laboratorium. Rad. von
Rembrandt. 2. Plattenzustand. Bartsch 270. Or. :
Wien, Hof|)ib iothck.
Rückseite: Fran^ois Langlois dit de Char-
t r e s. Marchand Libraire-Imager ä Paris en I645.
Ant. van Dyck Pinxit, J. Pesne Sculp.
Faust in seinem Laboratorium. Stich von
J. H. Lips nach Rembrandt. Or. : Wien, Samm-
lung Felix Schwab.
17. a) Mcphostü phi les-Joan Faustus. Stich von
Christoph van Sichern 1066. Or. : Wien. Albertina,
b) D a s s e 1 b e. Nachstich aus Arnims Zeitung für Ein-
siedler (Trösteinsamkeit), Nr. 3 vom 6. April 1808
18 De Historie van Doctor Johannes Faustus. 1747. Or. :
Wien. Sammlung A. J..ÖW, Bibliothek der Stadt Wien.
IQ. De Historie van Docter Johannes Faustus o. 1. Or. :
Wien, Sammlung A. i.,öw, Bibliothek der Stadt Wien.
20. a) Histoire Prodigicuse et Lamentable de Jean Faust.
Cologne, Chez les Hi-ritiers de Pierre Marteau. 1712:
Or.: Sammlung A. Low, Bibliothek der Stadt Wien.
b) Histor e van Doctor Jan Faustus, Amsterdam, By
Hismanius van de Rumpel, o. I. Or. : Ebenda:
21. a) Doct. Faust, berühmter Schwarzkünstler.
Holz.schnitt einer undatierten Ausgabe des Faust-
buches des Christlich Meynenden. Or. : Wien, Samm-
lung A. Low. Bibliothek der Stadt Witn.
Desgleichen: Or. : Frankfurt a. M., Fr. D. Hocbstitt.
Jakob Herbrand. Professor der Theologie in
Tübingen 1578. Or. : Wien, Familien-Fideikommiß-
Bibliothek.
d) Georg W einrieb, Professor der Theologie in
Leipzig, f 1617. Or. : Ebenda.
Bemalte Terracotta- Büste des 16. Jahrh.
Or. : Wien. Kunsthist. Sammlungen.
Rückseite :
Oben : D o k t o r Faust. Gedruckt in diesem Jahr.
Or. : Histor. Museum der Stadt Steyr; links:
Melchior Otto Voit von Salzburg,
Bischof von Bamberg (1642- 1653); rechts:
Johann Philipp, Freih. v. Schönborn,
Erzbischof von Mainz, f 1673.
Unten: links: Archimedes Siracus, rechts:
Le Docteur FAUSTE PHILOSOPHE Alemaod
(zum Vergleiche wiederholt von Tafel 13 a!.
22.
Sämlli
Alilnlitiinpcii inii Ausnalimp lier Tafeln 4. t. 14 ?1 I) iincl 22
Sind in ( )rli'rM.-ili>Tip|',p «•iit)crjjcRct>cn.
» A^'^ denen bekannten elenden Tragoedien von
*'^* Ihm. hat es Gott lob! ein Ende, da man end-
lich solche einfältige Vorurtheile abgelegt hat, und ver-
nünftigere Vorstellungen liebt. Faust hat es nunmehr
lediglich Rembrandten zu danken, daß seiner noch ge-
dacht wird« — mit diesen Worten schloß einer der
berühmtesten Ärzte des Aufklärungszeitalters, der
spätere Leibarzt Friedrich des Großen Johann Carl
Wilhelm M o e h s e n, das Kapitel >Faust« in seinem
Buch, das im Geschmacke der Zeit den umständlichen
Titel führt: »Verzeichnis einer Sammlung von Bild-
nissen, größtentheils berühmter Ärzte; so wohl in
Kupferstichen, schwarzer Kunst und Holzschnitten, als
auch in einigen Handzeichnungen: diesem sind ver-
schiedene Nachrichten und Anmerkungen vorgesetzt,
die so wohl zur Geschichte der Arzneygelahrtheit, als
vornehmlich zur Geschichte der Künste gehören.«
Gerade über dieser Stelle des verdienstvollen
Buches hat das Schicksal die volle Schale der Ironie
ausgegossen: das Buch ist erschienen bei Christian
Friedrich Himburg in Berlin, demselben Himburg, der
ein paar Jahre später als der erste deutsche Verleger
auf den Gedanken gekommen ist. Alles, was bis dahin
von dem rasch berühmt gewordenen Verfasser des Götz
und des Werther im Druck erschienen war. in drei
Bänden gesammelt dem deutschen Publikum vorzu-
legen. Und zwei Jahre nach dem Erscheinen dieses
Buches konnte Gotter seine poetische Antwort auf
eine derb-lustige Epistel, mit der Goethe ihm im
Juni 1773 den eben erschienenen »Götz« übersendet,
mit den Worten schließen:
»Schick mir dafür den .Doctor Faust*
Sobald Dein Kopf ihn ausgebraust!«'
In der Tat hat sich für den Helden der deutschen
Volksbücher und der Puppenspiele ein ganz bestimmter,
eigenartiger Porträt-Typus herausgebildet, der um die
Mitte des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts — merkwürdig
genug in Paris — entstanden und bis über die Mitte
des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts hinaus in Geltung ge-
blieben ist.
Wie aber kam Rembrandt zu Faust?
Von den großen Malern und Stechern seiner Zeit,
den Dürer und Holbein, den Lukas Cranach und Lucas
von Leyden ebenso wie von ihren minder hervor-
ragenden Kunstverwandten hat uns keiner das Bild
des landfahrenden Gauklers überliefert, dazu schien
er seinen Zeitgenossen viel zu unbedeutend. Erst in
der Zeit von 1634 bis 1647 tauchte in dem damals so
blühenden Kupferstichhandel ein Porträt auf, das über
dem Kopfe des Dargestellten die Bezeichnung »Doctor
Favslvs«, in der linken oberen Ecke vom Beschauer)
die Künstler-Signatur »HRinbrandt Inuentor«, in der
rechten die Verleger-Adresse »F. L. D. Ciartres e.xcudJt«
trägt (Tafel V . Mit diesem Blatte hat sich die Forschung
in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten oft und eingehend be-
schäftigt-). Wenn es ihr trotzdem nicht gelungen ist,
das Dunkel völlig aufzuhellen, das über der Entstehung
desselben lagert, so ist die Ursache darin zu suchen,
daß offenbar allen Abdrücken des sehr seltenen Blattes,
die zum Vergleiche herangezogen worden sind, ein
Merkmal fehlte, das in dem vorzüglich erhaltenen
Exemplar der Habsburg-Lothringischen Familien-Fidei-
kommiß-Bibliothek, das unserer Reproduktion zu
Grunde liegt, zum Ausdruck kommt.
Es ist dies die Nummer 36, die rechts oben dicht
über der Verleger-Adresse mit der kalten Nadel leicht
eingerissen ist. Sie macht uns darauf aufmerksam,
daß wir das Blatt nicht für sich allein, wie dies bis-
her geschehen ist, zu betrachten haben, sondern als
einzelnes Glied einer größeren Serie. Erst wenn es
uns gelungen sein wird, diese Serie ganz oder wenig-
stens zum größeren Teile wieder zusammenzustellen
und die einzelnen Bildnisse mit ihren Urbildern zu
vergleichen, wird auch ein Licht auf unseren Faustkopf
fallen.
Das war nur möglich in der Porträtsammlung der
Familien-Fideikommiß-Bibliothek mit ihrer hier und da
belächelten, etwas altvaterischen Einteilung in »Stände«.
Zu unserem Blatte, das wie die übrigen später zu be-
sprechenden Faust-Bilder in der Abteilung »Ärzte« lag,
vermerkt der Katalog als Stecher den Namen H. David.
Unter den Arbeiten des um 1605 in Paris gebornen
und bis 1670 tätigen Zeichners und Kupferstechers
J^röme (Hieronymus) David verzeichnet nun Le Blanc*^
eine Folge von 36 Blättern: ttTetes de Phihiopha*.
Unser »Faust« trägt eben die Nummer 36! Ich ging
also die Abteilung »Philosophen» durch und fand in
ganz gleicher Plattengröße und Ausführung mit der
Verlegerfirma F. L. D. Ciartres e.xcudit versehen noch
folgende Blätter:
EwpedocUi Philo^ophti^ . . . \'r /S
.■Irchimtdes Siracus
Diogenes .... -/
Divinus Plato .'2
Socrates i"*
-' •
Thomas Morus . j'i
Philon le Juij .
Democritus \' ;
_2 Chronik des Wiener Goethe -Vereins XXX., XXXI. u. XXXII. Bd.
Außerdem ohne Nummer: sich nun eine Reihe von Radierungen, die die \
I'/iunufH* ii* la h' V lagen für folgende Porträts der Serie des
Ciat ,
J/trtiittttis. bildet haben: Fol. 89 {i: llunuqut ,it la Ktyi.
Makffmtt. Jates), Fol. 90 (Philon), Fol. 91 {.X/ahomef), Fe
Ammaeus StHfta mios. Stntiti {Arisfottlo), Fol. 93 {//eraililus), Fol.
94 {Dtn4o, .
und In der Hofbibliothek : Keines dieser Blätter, die durchwegs aus
den Jahren 1 u ^
Aristoteles. Und 1634 datiert sind, trägt jedoch den Namen des Dirge
Diese Folge von 36 Porträtköpfen scheint aber stellten. Auf
RembrandtischeOriglnal-RadierunKcn
doch keineswegs auf »Philosophen« beschränkt ge- gehen nur zwei
Blätter zurück: »Plato« auf den Un-
wesen zu sein, denn in ganz gleicher Plattengroße im weiten
Sammtmantel (Klassiker der Kunst VII:
und Ausführung fanden sich unter den »Königen«: S. 136) und »Thomas
Morus« auf den ersten Orier:
Geoffroy a la Grand Dent de Lusignan . . Nr. 2 talenkopf (Ebenda S.
238). Für die vier restliche;
Dionisius Tirannus Siracusa [sie] »6 Blätter läßt sich nicht eine R a
d i er u n g Rembrandt
Barbaroussa Rex Algerii Insignis Pirata . . » 8 oder van Vliets,
sondern je ein Ölbild Remhrandts
Magnus Tamerlanus »9 als Vorlage nachweisen, und zwar für »Diogenes«
das
Cirus Pers. Rex »13 Bildnis eines alten Mannes (König Saul?) im
Besitze
Atabalipa Rex Peruviae . » 16 von Quincy A. Shaw in Boston (Klassiker
der Kunst
II Re de Fez et Marocco . » 17 II. S. 363), für »Gaston de Foix« das
Bildnis eines
Solimannus Turcarum Imperator »24 jungen Mannes bei Charles Sedelmeyer
in Paris. (Eben-
Saladinus Suitanus »25 da S. 145). für »Democrit« das Selbstbildnis im
Haager
Scandrebec Roy d'albanie »29 Museum (Ebenda S. 26) und für den
Kämmerer der
Gasto Foisseivs »30 Königin Candace die Selbstbildnisse in Cassel und
und ohne Nummer: Gotha. (Ebenda S. 27). Lediglich bei unserem »Faus'
Athila Flagellum Dei, und bei »Heraclit« gestaltet sich das Verhältnis
zum
II Gran Mogor, und Rembrandtischen Original ein wenig anders, wie wir
Paracouissi Rex Plattae. weiter unten sehen werden.
Auf diese Weise wäre es uns gelungen, von den Die Platten der Vorlagen
sind durchwegs größer,
36 Blättern, aus denen die Serie bestehen soll, 27 zu- als das
einheitliche Format der Platten in der Serie
sammenzubringen. des Ciartres. Diese wieder verhalten sich zu ihren
Fünf: Geoffroy de Lusignan, Barbaroussa, Ata- Vorlagen »en contre-
partie«, d. h., der Stecher, der die
balipa, Socrates und Saladlnus weisen die Stecher- van Vlietischen
Vorlagen kopierte, hatte natürlich einen
Signatur I David F. auf. Abdruck vor sich; wenn er denselben Strich
für
Genau ein Dutzend davon geht in letzter Linie Strich auf der unter
seiner Hand liegenden Kupfer-
auf Remb-andtische Originale zurück. Dieser Umstand platte
nachbildete, kam der Abdrock von seiner
ist — mit einer einzigen Ausnahme (bei »Plato«) — P'a^te natürlich
verkehrt heraus. Wenn ein Kopf bei
in der linken oberen Ecke des Blattes durch die Sig- van Vliet nach
rechts sah, so sah er in der Nach-
natur IRinbrandt Inuentot, oder IR inuent. ausgedrückt, blldung nach
links und umgekehrt.
Es sind dies: Aristoteles, Dioi^enes, Plato, Thomas Monis. Die Serie
des Ciartres scheint bei den Zeitgenossen
Philan. Demochhu, L'Eunuqiu de la Keyne de Candaces, Beifall gefunden
ZU haben, denn sie wurde bald in Italien
lleracliius, Mahomet . Scatidrebeg. Gasto Foisseins und nachgedruckt.
Vor mir Hegt eine Reihe von Blättern
/•atut. Die Hälfte davon ist jedoch nicht direkt nach in etwas
abweichender Plattengröße (237:170 mm)
Rembrandtischen Originalen hergestellt, sondern nach und bedeutend
roherer Ausführung des Kupferstiches
Blättern, die Rembrandts Schüler van Vliet nach Origi- mit
italienischer Namensform und einigen italienischen
naien seines Meisters radiert hat. Jan Georg üoris) Versen unter dem
Bilde, welche die Persönlichkeit des
van Vliet ist angeblich um 1610 zu Delft geboren. Dargestellten zu
charakterisieren suchen. Einzelne der-
arbeitete 1631 noch in Leiden in Rembrandts Atelier selben tragen am
unteren Plattenrande die Stecher-
nach dessen Zeichnungen, und seine Blätter sind, so Signatur Cio :
Suiuro /uit und die Verleger-Adresse
lange er unter Rembrandts Leitung stand, von größter »/« Passano per
il Rtmondiui.*'')
Feinheit und kaum von den Radierungen des Meisters Von dieser
Italienischen Serie besitzt die Familien-
zu unterscheiden. Seine späteren Arbeiten tragen jedoch Fideikommiß-
Bibliothek eine größere Anzahl von
eine Brutalität zur Schau, die eine vollständige künst- Blättern.
Außer den auch bei Ciartres vorkommenden
leiische und psychische Dekadenz vermuten läßt«) »Philosophen«
Democritus, Heraclitus, Mahomet
In dem Bande »van Vliet« der Hofbibliothek findet und den Königen und
Feldherren Dionisius. Gasi
Chronik des Wiener Goethe -Vereins XXX., XXXI. u. XXXII. Bd.
Fosseio (dieser sogar von zwei verschiedenen Platten),
Barbaroussa, Cirus, Atabatipa und Paracou-
issi finden sich hier noch die in unserem offenbar
unvollständigen Exemplar der Ciartres-Serie nicht ver-
tretenen, in vollständigen E.xemplaren aber doch wohl
vorhandenen »Philosophen« Crate Filosofo, Deme-
trlo Falereo, Esopo Frigio, Pytagoras und die
Könige« Gotofridus Bullionius Rex Jerusalem.
Nangazachi Rex Japo"', II GRN Nogay di
Persia, M. Cham Rex Tartarie und schließlich
ein Blatt mit der etwas rätselhaft klingenden Über-
schrift Josef Justs, das aber, wie aus den Versen
darunter hervorgeht, offenbar niemanden anderen als
den ägyptischen Josef darstellen soll. Dadurch erhöht
sich die Zahl der aus der französischen Serie festge-
stellten Porträts auf 36. Dasjenige Porträt aber, das
uns hier am meisten interessieren würde, unser »Faust«,
findet sich, wenigstens in unserer Sammlung, leider
nicht darunter. Den Weg über die Alpen scheint der
nordische Wanderer nicht gefunden zu haben.
Diese italienischen Blätter verhalten sich zu ihren
Vorlagen, den Blättern des Ciartres, naturgemäß wieder
»en contre-partie«, sehen also wieder nach derselben
Richtung, wie die van Vlietischen Originale,
Außerdem sind mir noch einzelne Blätter, z. B.
Scanderbec und Thomas Morus — wieder von anderen
Platten — mit lateinischer Legende untergekommen,
ja sogar zwei der Köpfe iDemocrit und Heradit) auf
einer Platte vereinigt mit englischen Versen darunter
und der Stecher-Signatur ly. Hollar sc. und der Ver-
leger-Adresse 'Sou/J hy John Querton, Newgate.^
Bevor wir nun auf dasjenige Blatt näher ein-
gehen, um dessen Willen wir die ganze Serie wieder-
herzustellen versucht haben, müssen wir die Person
des Verlegers, dem die ursprüngliche Serie ihre Ent-
stehung und Benennung verdankt, etwas näher ins
Auge fassen.
Fran^ois Langlois dit Ciartres war am
12. Mai 1588 zu Chartres, der Hauptstadt des Herzog-
tums Orleans geboren. Er reiste in Frankreich, Eng-
land, Italien, etablierte sich 1633 in Paris und war
bald ein vielbeschäftigter Kunsthändler und Agent
König Karl I. Auch als ausübender Musiker scheint
er sich einen Namen erworben zu haben '^^). Am
14. Jänner 1647 verzeichnet die Pfarr-Matrik von
St. Benoit in Paris: »Fran^ois Langlois, dit de Chartres,
inourut en son logis rue St. Jacques, pr^s le Mathurins,
vivant marchand de taille douce«^). Kein Geringerer
als Anton van Dyk hat uns sein Porträt, und zwar
in der Verkleidung eines dudelsackspielenden Savo-
yarden überliefert*). (Vgl. die Rückseite von Tafel 15).
Die Renaissance mit ihrem Ku't der Persönlichkeit
hat im Laufe des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, begünstigt
durch die fortschreitende Entwicklung und Verbreitung
des Kupferstiches, eine Reihe von Porttätwerken ge-
schaffen. In deren Mittelpunkt naturgemäß die viel-
bewunderten und nachgeahmten griechischen Philo-
sophen standen. Diesen angereiht zu werden, war eine
der größten Auszeichnungen, die einem Zeitgenossen
widerfahren konnte. Welche Verbreitung und welche
Bedeutung die Faustsage im Bewußtsein der mittel-
europäischen Kulturwelt innerhalb eines Jahrhunderts
gewonnen hat, geht wohl am besten daraus hervor,
daß der landfahrende Geselle, über den seine Zeit-
genossen in Deutschland sich durchwegs mit unver-
hohlener Geringschätzung äußern, etwa ein Jahrhundert
nach seinem Tode in die Gesellschaft von Königen
und Weisen Eingang gefunden hat. Und daß dies
weit über den Grenzen seines deutschen Vaterlandes,
im tonangebenden Paris, geschehen ist, erhöht die
Bedeutung dieser Auszeichnung.
Woher aber nahm der rührige Pariser Verleger
ein Bild des deutschen Doktors?
An Stelle der veralteten und vergriffenen Porträt-
serien des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts wollte Langlois
dem Publikum seiner Zeit eine neue vorlegen, die
sowohl in Bezug auf die künstlerische Ausführung
wie auf die Wahl der darzustellenden Persönlichkeiten
dem veränderten Zeitgeschmacke entgegenkommen
sollte. Wie ging er zu diesem Zwecke bei der Aus-
wahl seiner Originale vor? Merkwürdig genug! Er
nahm einfach eine Anzahl jener radierten Studienköpfe,
die ihm damals der Kunsthandel aus den Niederlanden
zuführte, und ließ sie durch seinen Stecher auf ein
einheitliches Plattenformat übertragen. Eine Reihe von
ehrwürdigen Greisenköpfen mit langen Barten konnte
ganz gut für die griechischen Weltweisen passieren
Ohne Bedenken schrieb unser Mann also flott über
den einen Kopf den Namen Empedocles, über einen
anderen Socrates, Plato, usw. Ein Kopf der — aller-
dings recht widerlich — lachte, war natürlich der
lachende Democrit, und mit Grazie so fort. Wenn wir
unserem rührigen Verleger auf dem van Dykschen
Porträt in sein schalkhaft blinzelndes Mephisto-Gesicht
sehen, möchten wir ihm solch eine kecke Mystifikation
seiner Zeitgenossen ganz wohl zutrauen.
Und doch war das, was er getan hat, im letzten
Grunde eigentlich nichts als ein allerdings recht ver-
späteter Ausläufer mittelalterlicher Geschichtsauffab-
sung, die das Individuelle vollständig übersah und
nur auf das Typische ausging. Ein klassisches Beispiel
hiefür bietet uns Harlmann Schedels >Buch der Croniken
und geschichten mit figuren und pildnussen von anbegin
der weit bis auf dise unsere zeit«, Nürnberg 1493, das
Dürers Lehrer Michael Wohlgemuth mit prächtigen
Holzschnitten geziert hat, und aus dem noch ein Jahr-
Chronik des Wiener Goeme-vereins XXX-, XXXI. u. XXXII. Bd.
hundert später der Verfasser des Spiesischen Faust-
buches seine historischen und geographischen Kennt-
nisse geschöpft hat. Der Herausgeber bringt, seinem
weitausgreifenden Programm gemäß, eine zahllose
Menge von historischen Porträts aus allen Epochen
der Weltgeschichte, verfügt aber nur über eine ganz
beschränkte Anzahl von Holzstöcken. Wie hilft er sich
nun aus dieser Klemme? Er verwendet einfach ein
und dasselbe Klischee für alle möglichen Leute: Das-
selbe Bild, das auf S. XXXVI! als Paris von Troja
bezeichnet ist, begegnet uns auf S. XLIX als der
Prophet Micheas, auf S. LX als Epimenides. auf S.LXIX
als Neemias, und so fort, ein anderes Klischee muß
für Agamemnon, Blas, Sokrates, Demosthenes und
Graf Albrecht zu Babenberg gelten. Nicht anders geht
noch fast ein Jahrhundert später Heinrich Pantaleon
in seinen >Teutscher Nation Warhafften Helden«,
Basel 1568-1578, vor.
^ Die Vorlagen, die Ciartres sich für seine Portät-
köpfe wählte, tragen keinerlei Bezeichnung der dar-
gestellten Person, sie sind lediglich Studienköpfe. Sie
sind, wie eingangs erwähnt, durchwegs größer als die
Nachstiche des Ciartres mit zwei Ausnahmen: den
Vorlagen für »Stan,/tyfieg Kay if Albaniet (Tafel 3) und
für unseren »Faust« (Tafel 2). Diese beiden Blätter
stehen einander in jeder Beziehung am nächsten. Sie
sind von genau gleicher Plattengröße und weisen auch
in der Technik die innigste Verwandtschaft auf. In
den Katalogen wurden sie seit jeher unmittelbar neben
einander angeführt'), aber nur der älteste Katalog von
Amade de Burgy (1755) bezeichnet p. 24 unser Blatt
unter Nr. 178 als >Het Portret van Doctor /'aiistus met
<fn kanl Hoofj eii een Mantel om*. Pierre Yver beschreibt
"S in selneni ^Supplement Au Catalogue Raisonn'. de J/_
' Gersaint, Helle et Ghmy, De Toutes Les Pieces Qti
prment r Oeuvre de Rimbrandtn (Amsterdam 1756), 5.123
mit folgenden Worten : »^v. idQ. 'Ute de l'iuilard en
BmsU, vu* de face et rega*dent vers le bat. E'le est chaitve
"f ptrtie, tt Porte une grande moustacke sur la levre sii-
rieure, avec un fetit tollet h ftntour du ctl. Set deux
oreillts sont dicouvtrttt , et le corps est enveloppe d'un
mamleau. ouvert par devamt. Presque dans la haut de la
•^oitt de FEstampe, on voit ecrit Rt, in. Ce Morceau parte
Nmees 6 tignes de haut^ sur 4 pouces lO lignes de large ■
■ OH prittnd en Hollande, que c'est le Portrait du Dictiur
Faustus. Pour moi Je eroit que M. de Burgy s'est tromp:,
lorsqu'il a plate ce Moreeau au rang des Ouvrages de la
main de Rembrandt, parct qu'il me paroit gravi par van
Vliet. Jl y a une Ccpie de ce Morceau en contre partie de
rOrginal, matt heaueoup plus grande, oü Fon voit icrit
au dessus de la tite, Doctor Faustus, Dans le coin
du htut de la droite om lit Remhrandt inventor , et a
gauche F. L. D. Ciartres exeud. Sa hauteur est de ~ pouces
sn hrnri ft <a iargeur de 6 pouces Q tignes.*
Die Bezeichnung dieses Blattes als Doktor Faustus
beruht also, wie schon Szamat<')lski, S. XXllI, Anm. 2,
ausgesprochen hat, auf einer Rückwirkung des Nach-
stiches von Ciartres. Später verschwindet sie aus den
Katalogen volständig'").
Die ausführlichste Beschreibung der einzelnen
Plattenzustände dieser beiden van Vlietischen Studien-
köpfe enthält ein Aufsatz von J. F. Linck in Robert
Naumanns Archiv für die zeichnenden Künste, 5. Jahr-
gang, 1859: Bemerkungen und Zusätze zu dem Ver-
zeichnisse von Bartsch über die Radierungen des Jan
Georg van Vliet, S. 289:
»B. 25. Brustbild eines niederblickenden Alten [d. i.
das Urbild unseres , Faust-]. Nach Rembrandt
I. Weniger bearbeitet und vor der Adresse. Selten.
II. Ebenfalls vor der Adresse, aber in den Haaren,
den beiden Ohren, sowie der rechten Seite des
Gesichtes und des Mantels bedeutend mit dem
Grabstichel retuschiert.
III. Mit der Adresse des J. de Ram.
B. 26. Brustbild eines Offiziers [d. i. .Scanderbeg' des
Ciartres]. Nach Rembrandt.
I. Vor aller Adresse. Selten.
II. Mit der Adresse von J. de Ram.
III. Die Künstlernamen und die Adresse sind be-
seitigt und die Platte retuschiert worden. Man
liest außerhalb derselben, 9 Linien vom unteren
Rande entfernt, den mit großen lateinischen
Lettern gedruckten Namen: Georgius Ragocy.
Selten.
IV. Die gedruckte Unterschrift ist der Platte näher
und nur 4 Linien von derselben entfernt; man
liest jetzt: Georgius Ragocy, Dei gratiae Prin-
ceps Transilvaniae, Partium Regni Hungariae
Dominum, et Siculorum Comes etc. t'Amster-
dam. Gedruckt by Hugo Allardt, in de Kalver-
straet in de Werelt-Kaert. Die Abdrücke der
Kupferplatte sind sehr schwach.^
Der Verfasser unterläßt es leider anzugeben, w o
er die einzelnen Abdrücke gesehen hat. Aus anderen
Quellen wissen wir, daß sich solche in Wien (Alber-
tina, Hofbibliothek, 1. Zustand), Berlin i'Kgl. Kupfer-
stichkabinett), Amsterdam und im Britischen Museum "i
finden. Ob die Pariser Nationalbibliothek das Blatt
besitzt, läßt sich bei den unzulänglichen Angaben im
Kataloge von Georges Duplessis (Teil III, S. 350: -En
buste, de face. Grav. au burin anonyme«) nicht ent-
scheiden. Außerdem dürfte es noch in anderen öffent-
lichen und Privatsammlungen vorkommen '-). Ein Ab-
druck unseres Faustkopfes mit" der Adresse von J. de
Ram (um 1680 in Holland geboren) ist mir nicht be-
kannt geworden.
Aus den Angaben Lincks sehen wir, daß ein und
dasselbe Original von dem einen Verleger als eine
Chronik des Wiener Goethe -Vereins XXX., XXXI. u. XXXII. Bd.
ganz bestimmte historische Persönlichkeit ausgegeben
wird, was aber einen andern durchaus nicht hindert,
demselben Blatte eine ganz andere Bezeichnung bei-
zulegen. Den zwei Bezeichnungen als »Ragocy« stehen
drei als »Scanderbeg« (bei Ciartres, in der italienischen
Serie des Remondini und in einer Serie mit lateinischem
Te.xt) gegenüber. Der von der ungarischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften in der Sammlung Magyar Törteneti
Eletrajzok »Ungarische historische Lebensbeschrei-
bunger.) herausgegebenen Biographie Georg I. Rdköczys
von Ale.xander Szilägyi (Budapest 1893 ist unsere
Radierung als wirkungsvolles Titelbild beigegeben.
Im Anhange auf S. 421 findet sich ein kleiner Exkurs
Qber das Bild, in welchem nicht der leiseste Zweifel
an der Identität der dargestellten Person laut wird.
So ausgerüstet, können wir nun an die einge-
hendere Befrachtung unseres Faustbildes, und zwar
zunächst in dem Archetypus der van Viietischen Ra-
dierung, herantreten.
In dem umfangreichen Werke Rembrandts, das
der Russe Dmitri Rovinski mit großer Sorgfalt ge-
sammelt und verzeichnet hat, finden sich mehrere
kleine radierte Skizzen, die niederblickende Greisen-
köpfe mit schütterem Haupt- und Barthaar darstellen,
keiner darunter aber kann als die Vorlage unseres
Faustbildes angesprochen werden"). Erweckt dieser
Umstand schon von Haus aus ein gewisses Mißtrauen
gegen die Signatur Rt. in., so wird dieses noch ver-
stärkt, wenn wir den unbeholfenen Zug der Buch-
staben schärfer ins Auge fassen und mit der charakte-
ristischen eigenhändigen Signatur van Vliets auf der
Ragocy^- oder »Scanderbeg«-Platte vergleichen, die
in gleicher oder ähnlicher Form auf allen Blättern des
Künstlers wiederkehrt. Diese Beobachtung zwingt uns
zur Annahme, daß die ursprüngliche Signatur von der
Platte abgeschliffen und viel später durch die gegen-
wärtige ersetzt worden ist, ein Vorgang, den Linck ja
auch an der »Ragocyc-Platte festgestellt hat.
Daß das Blatt von der Hand van Vliets herrührt,
dafür haben wir, solange nicht ein Abdruck mit der
Signatur auftaucht, keinen anderen Beweis als die
genaue Übereinstimmung mit der deutlich signierten
»Ragocy«-Platte.
Was wir bisher von der Entstehung der ganzen
Serie und der Art, wie die einzelnen Köpfe zu ihren
Benennungen gekommen sind, ermitteln konnten,
mahnt uns also von vornherein zur äußersten Vorsicht,
und doch treffen gerade auf unseren Faustkopf einige
Merkmale zu, die eine gewisse Verbindung mit dem
Volksbuche herzustellen scheinen.
Von dem Titanengeiste, der da >name an sich
Adlers Flügel, wolte alle Grund am Himmel vnd Erden
erforschen«, ist in dem verhärmten Gesichte allerdings
nicht eine Spur zu entdecken. »Der tief zwischen den
abfallenden Schultern sitzende rundliche Kopf, das
runzlige Gesicht und die hoffnungslos, ausdruckslos
starrenden Augen, der spärliche Schnurrbart, kurz das
ganze kleinliche Alltagsgesicht, der schlichte Radmantel
und die kümmerliche, gefältelte Halskrause, das alles
stimmt eher zum Mitleid mit der traurigen Gestalt als
zur Bewunderung oder auch nur zur Teilnahme für
ihren Kummer. Das spärliche Haar, das schon fast
ganz kahle Vorderhaupt verstärken den Eindruck eher
noch. An einem Übermaß an Freuden leidet dieser
Griesgram sicher nicht; aber diese Furchen sind nicht
beim verzweifelten Grübeln über die Lösung des
Weltenrätsels entstanden. Vielleicht entstammen sie
einer wüsten Jugend, vielleicht jahrelangem Verdruß
über das Mißgeschick des Lebens.« ")
»Dieser Mann mit dem furchtsamen Ausdruck
auf der Oberlippe würde nie mit dem Bösen einen
Pakt geschlossen haben oder doch fünf Minuten spätem
von der Abmachung zurückgetreten sein, und mit
dieser dünnen, heiseren Stimme gesprochen, wären
die Worte, welche die Pforten der Hölle zu erschüttern
vermögen, nicht sehr eindrucksvoll gewesen'*).«
Steht somit der Gesamteindruck des Bildes ge-
radezu im direkten Widerspruch gegen die Vorstellung
von dem verwegenen Abenteurer, die uns das Volks-
buch vermittelt, so erfordert doch die folgende Tat-
sache eine ernste Erwägung:
Über die äußere Erscheinung Fausts enthalten
die Volksbücher keine Andeutung, mit einer einzigen
Ausnahme: In der Bearbeitung des Spiesischen Volks-
buches durch den Schwaben Rudolf Widmann (1599)
lautet eine Stelle im 21. Kapitel, »Doctor Faustus
erscheint nach seinem Tode*, folgendermaßen:
»So sahen auch die Nachbarn herumb den Geist des
Doct. Fausti bey nacht offtmals in seiner behausung
an dem fenster liegen, vnd sonderlich wann der Mond
schien. Er gieng in seiner behausung gantz leibhafftig.
wie er auff Erden gegangen war, mit allerley gestaldt
vnd kleydung. Dann Doctor Faustus war ein hock-
ruckerigs Männlein, eine dürre Person, habend ein
kleines grauwes bärtlein . . .**)«.
Interessant ist, daß diese Stelle n u r in der ver-
hältnismäßig sehr seltenen Widmannischen Bearbeitung,
und weder früher in der ursprünglichen Spiesischen
Ausgabe, noch später in der Pfitzerischen Bearbeitung,
durch die Widmanns Buch bald abgelöst wurde, mehr
vorkommt. Sie wurde zuerst von Erich Schmidt mit
unserem Bilde in Verbindung gebracht in der weite
kultur- und literaturgeschichtliche Ausblicke eröff-
nenden Abhandlung >Faust und das 16. Jahrhundert«^
die seither in die »Charakteristiken« aufgenommen
worden ist.
Chronik des Wiener Goethe- Vereins XXX, XXXI. u. XXXU. Bd.
»Anders«, heilit es dort, »gibt sich das zweite
Blatt, und so mag der historische Faust (der nach
Widmans Schiußcapitel dem Famulus Waiger als ein
.hochruckerigs Männlein, eine dürre Person, habend
ein kleines grawes Bärtlein' erschien) wohl ungefähr
ausgesehen haben: eine derbe, untersetzte Figur^
deren Kopf in den Schultern steckt, denn dei kurze
Hals wird ganz von dem Spitzenkragen verdeckt, mit
spärlichem getirgelten Haar, Schnurr- und Knebelbart
und einem confiscirten Gesicht, aus welchem ein
paar schelmische Augen gar durchtrieben in die Welt
gucken*. Sowet Erich Schmidt. Man könnte sogar
noch einen Schritt weiter gehen und behaupten, der
etwas sonderbar anmutende dreieckige Umriß und der
gesenkte Kopf sei dadurch entstanden, daß Faust
dargestellt ist, wie er nach der Angabe Widmanns^
mit beiden Ellbogen auf das Fensterbrett gestützt (an
dem Fenster liegend), auf die Straße hinabsieht.
Die schelmischen Augen, die gar durchtrieben in
die Welt gucken, finden sich allerdings auf unserem
Bilde rieht, es iit e4ier ein melancholischer Blick, mit
dem Urs dieser armselige Wicht anglotzt. Als Erich
Schmidt diesen Salz niederschrieb (1882 im 3. Bande
des Goethe-Jahrbuches, S. 96), hatte noch kein Faust-
Forscher dieses angeblich Rembrandtische Original
gesehen, das Szamatölski erst 1891 ans Licht gezogen
hat. Schmidts Bemerkung kann sich also nur auf eine
der zahlreichen Nachbildungen des neunzehnten Jahr-
hunderts, etwa die zu Karikaturen verzerrten Kopien
bei Scheible oder Engel beziehen (Tafel 9 und 10).
Außer dieser Stelle findet sich aber bei Widmann,
und wieder n u r bei ihm, noch eine zweite indirekte
Schilderung des äußeren Menschen Fausts. die die
früher angezogene btelle ergänzt tnd bestätigt. Au
diese hat zuerst Kiesewetter in seinem seltsamen Buche
»Faust in der Geschichte und Tradition«, Leipzig 1893,
S. 60, aufmerksam gemacht. Ich zitiere sie hier voll-
ständiger als Kiesewetter, und zwar nach dem Ab-
drucke in Scheibles »Kloster«, II, S. 521 f., weil sie noch
ein zweites Moment enthält, das hier in Betracht kommt:
»Als er nun auff solchem platz [in der Reichs-
stadt Schwäbisch Hall] auff vnd nieder spatzieren
gieng, sein etliche Sieder fürOber gangen, vnd sint
auff das gehengk, so vber das wasser gemacht worden,
gestiegen, vnd atda Stil gestanden, den Faustum an-
gesehen vnd jhr gespött getrieben, denn es ist vmb
die Sieder ein solches voick, wie in solcher Stadt ein
sprichwordt ist, das, wenn Christus Selbsten solt durch
das Hall gehen, er ohn gespött oder unbeschissen
nicht daruon kommen würd, also wiederfuhr es dem
D. Fausto auch, denn einer sagt, wer jst dieser klein
hockendt Mann, der ander antwortet, es ist der Esopus,
der dritte sagt, es ist der Bandelstrobel . . .«
Die Vorstellung des Buckeligen wird hier noch
verstärkt durch den Vergleich mit dem griechischen
Fabeldichter Aesop, dessen Werk durch die Bearbei-
tungen des Ulmer Stadtarztes Heinrich Stainhoewel
1 1475^1 und des ehemaligen Franziskaners Burkhard
Waldis (1548") im sechzehnten Jahrhundert In Deutsch-
land verbreitet war. Auf dem Titelholzschnitte des
»Buch und Leben des hochberühmten Fabeldichters
Aesop« von Stainhoewel (Ulm, Johannes Zainer, 1475 ,
ist der Dichter nach der mittelalterlichen, auf Maximus
Planudes zurückgehenden Überlieferung als buckliger
Zwerg dargestellt").
Wenn wir diese allerdings etwas dürftigen An-
deutungen über Fausts äußere Erscheinung zusammen-
fassen und auf unser radiertes Blältchen zu über-
tragen suchen, möchte es uns fast bedünken, als ob
gerade in diesem Falle der gute Ciartre's etwas ge-
wissenhafter als bei den übrigen Blättern seiner Serie
zu Werke gegangen wäre und etwas wie eine wirk-
liche Charakteristik der darzustellenden Persönlichkeit
angestrebt hätte. Freilich steht dieser Annahme ent-
gegen, daß zu seiner Zeit wohl das Spiesische Volks-
buch, nicht aber die Widmannische Bearbeitung des-
selben in französischer und holländischer Übersetzung
vorlag.
Ein ganz anderes Ansehen erhält die Sache je-
doch, wenn wir die Berechtigung der Signatur *Rt in.^
eingehender prüfen und das Rembrandtische Original
festzustellen suchen, das Joris van Vliet als Vorlage für
seine Radierung benutzt hat. Unter den selbständigen
Porträt- und Studienköpfen Rembrandts in Öl oder in
Radierung findet sich kein einziger, der ohneweiters
als identisch mit unserem »Faust« bezeichnet werden
könnte, dagegen stimmt Form und Ausdruck des
Gesichtes, vor allem aber die merkwürdige, unver-
ständliche Haltung des Körpers genau mit der Gestalt
des Närrvaters Joseph auf dem in englischem Privat-
besitz befindlichen, auf Eichenholz gemalten, 0765 m
hohen und 0*640 m breiten Bilde Rembrandts »Ruhe
der heiligen Familie auf der Flucht nach Ägypten«
überein. Leider kann ich das Bild auf Tafel 4 nur
nach der Heliogravüre von Fillon et Heuse in Wilhelm
Bodes und C. Hofstede de Groots großem Rembrandt-
Werk in Lichtdruck vorlegen und den van Vtietischen
Studienkopf in entsprechender Verkleinerung und Um-
kehrung danebenstelien'*). Wäre heute nicht jede Ver-
bindung mit England abgeschnitten, würde ich gern
einen Ausschnitt aus dem Bilde, nämlich die Büste
des heiligen Joseph, in Originalgröße wiedergeben.
Vielleicht ist übrigens die Zeit doch nicht mehr gar zu
ferne, in der ein Austausch geistiger Interessen unter
den Völkern, die sich noch bis vor kurzem auf Tod
und Leben bekämpften, wieder möglich sein wird.
Chronik des Wiener Goethe -Vereins XXX., XXXI. u. XXXII. Bd
Dann soll der Versuch gemacht werden, den Besitzern
der vorliegenden Mappe diese Tafel nachzuliefern. Aus
ihr würde sich höchstwahrscheinlich ergeben, was sich
vorläufig nur durch eine auf ur zu verlässige Messungen
an der Reproduktion gegründete Proportion erschließen
läßt: daß der van Vlietische Studienkopf mit dem
Kopf'des heiligen Joseph auf dem Bilde sogar in der
Gröüe übereinstimmt. Daß er nach links gewendet ist,
während er auf dem Bilde nach rechts sieht, kann nach
dem, was wir auf S. 2 über die Nachbildungen in
Kupferstich erfahren haben, die Annahme der Ab-
hängigkeit nur bekräftigen.
Auch die Zeitfolge bietet keine Schwierigkeit,
denn die Flucht nach Ägypten ist nach Bode um 1630
entstanden, während der angebliche »Ragocy« oder
»Scanderbeg« van Vliets, der das Gegenstück zu dem
undatierten »Faust« bildet und also doch wohl gleich-
zeitig entstanden ist, auf der Originalplatte Tafel 3)
die Jahreszahl 1632 trägt.
Jetzt wird auf den ersten Blick so manches klar,
was bis dahin unerklärlich schien: das kummervolle
Antlitz des Nährvaters, der die Seinigen nur durch
rasche Flucht dem drohenden Verderben zu entziehen
vermag, der gesenkte Blick, denn er liest in einem
Buche, und die einseitige Haltung, denn er stützt seinen
linken Arm auf einen Felsblock, der gleichzeitig der
Gottesmutter zum Sitze dient.
Wenn ungeachtet der zahlreichen Obereinstim-
mungen noch ein Zweifel übrigbleiben sollte, ob Joseph
wirklich das Urbild des sogenannten »Faust« abge-
geben hat, so wird dieser Zweifel durch die Tatsache
zerstreut, daß der sonderbare Vorgang, den wir hier
beobachtet haben, durchaus nicht ganz vereinzelt da-
steht, sondern sich zur selben Zeit unter ganz gleichen
Verhältnissen wiederholt hat: aus demRembrandtischen
Bilde »Judas bringt die Silberlinge zurück« ist die
Gestalt des Judas in ihrer ungemein charakteristischen
Körperhaltung auf dem Umwege über van Vliet in die
Porträtserie des Ciartres und in jene des Aubry über-
gegangen. Hier aber muß sie den »weinenden Philo-
sophen« Heraklit (im Gegensatze zum »lachenden«
Demokrit' darstellen (Tafel 5)!")
In dem dritten Falle dagegen, in welchem ein
einzelner Kopf aus einem größeren Bilde Rembrandts
herauskopiert wurde, ist die Bezeichnung der darge-
stellten Person beibehalten worden: aus dem Bilde:
Joseph, seine Träume erzählend (in der Galerie Six
zu Amsterdam, Klassiker der Kunst, II, S. 175) Ist der
Kopf des Joseph in seiner vornübergehängten Haltung
in die Serie des Ciartres und von da in die italienische
des Romandini übergegangen.
Nun wird uns erst ein Ausspruch Goethes in der
Abhandlung »Über Leonard da Vincis Abendmahl«")
in seiner vollen Bedeutung klar: »Man bediente sich
mancher Figuren zu ganz anderm Zweck, als sie der
erste Urheber bestimmt hatte. Weltliche Gegenstände
wurden durch einige Zutaten in geistliche verwandelt;
heidnische Götter und Helden mußten sich bequemen,
Märtyrer und Evangelisten zu sein. Oft auch hatte der
Künstler zu eigner Belehrung und Übung irgend eine
Figur aus einem berühmten Werk kopiert und setzte
nun etwas von seiner Erfindung hinzu, um ein ver-
käufliches Bild daraus zu machen. Zuletzt darf man
auch wohl der Entdeckung und dem Mißbrauch der
Kupferstiche einenTeil des Kunstverderbens zuschreiben,
welche den Dutzendmalern fremde Erfindungen häufig
zubrachten, so daß niemand mehr studierte und die
Malerei zuletzt so weit verfiel, daß sie mit mechanischen
Arbeiten vermischt ward. Waren doch die Kupferstiche
selbst schon von den Originalen verschieden, und wer
sie kopierte, vervielfachte die Veränderung nach eigener
und fremder Überzeugung oder Grille.« Was dabei
für unser Faustbild herauskam, werden die folgenden
Tafeln zeigen.
Wenn wir den Nachstich aus dem Verlage des
Ciartres (Tafel 1) neben seine Vorlage, die van
Vlietische Radierung (Tafel 2), legen, springen die
Abweichungen sofort in die Augen: »Der Kupferstich
verändert die Radierung an sich nicht unbedeutend
aber die Abweichungen gehen über das Technische
hinaus. Die sorgfältigere Ausführung läßt den Stoff
des Mantels feiner erscheinen. Da das Licht von
einem etwas tieferen Punkte einfällt, so erscheint der
Kopf nicht ganz so gebückt. Die Züge sind etwas
verjüngt, das Gesicht hat einen fast schlauen Ausdruck
bekommen und besitzt in seiner Seibstbescheidung
etwas Entschlossenes. Dieser geriebene Herr nimmt
es schon eher mit dem Teufel auf. Seine Stimme mag
dünn sein, aber sie mag dabei etwas scharf Durch-
dringendes haben. Beim Abschließen des Vertrages
wird er sich schon vorsehen, daß er nicht zu kurz
kommt. Aus dem Fünfundsechzigjährigen ist ein
Fünfziger geworden ").«
Nachdem es uns auf diese Weise gelungen ist,
die bildliche Abstammung des Faust-Bildnisses
bis in dritte Generation zurückzuverfolgen, wollen
wir uns nun mit der gebotenen Vorsicht an den Ver-
such heranwagen, ob es nicht vielleicht möglich wäre,
einen Schritt weiter zu gelangen und bis zu dem
lebenden Urbilde vorzudringen.
Der Kopf des grämlichen Greises, der auf so
seltsamen Wegen und Umwegen zum Doktor Faust
geworden ist, blickt uns nämlich in verändertem KostOfh
und veränderter Haltung, aber mit denselben Gesichto-
zügen aus mehreren Bildern Rembrandt's entgegen,
Chronik des Wiener Goethe- Vereins XXX , XXXI. u. XXXII. Bd.
er ist also nicht frei erfunden, sondern einem lebenden
Modelle nachgebildet, das in unzähligen Variationer.
auf den Bildern Rembrandt's und seines Schülers
Gerard Dou wiederkehrt. Vor allem in einer Form und
Haltung, die ganz auffallend an unser Blatt erinnert,
und zwar so sehr, daß die Radierung van Vliet's
nach diesem Bilde im Kunsthandel des achtzehnten
Jahrhunderts ohneweiters als »Faust« bezeichnet
wurde. Lediglich das Kostüm ist verändert : den
kahlen Scheitel bedeckt eine turbanartig von einem
Tuche umwundene Pelzmütze, die uns auch auf
anderen Bildern Rembrandt's und Dou's begegnet,
und an die Stelle des dürftigen, geflickten Bettler-
mantels ist ein üppiger Pelzkragen getreten. Diesmal
liegt aber nicht ein Ausschnitt aus einem größeren
Bilde Rembrandt's zu Grunde, sondern ein selb-
ständiger Porträt- oder Studienkopf, dessen Original
sich Im Ferdinandeum zu Innsbruck befindet (Rück-
seite von Tafel 2, oben». Eine gute alte Kopie dieses
Bildes — früher Gerard Dou zugeschrieben — findet
sich auf Schloß Pommersfelden bei Bamberg
Klassiker der Kunst, XXIV, S. 26, 1801 Der ein-
gangs zitierte Moehsen beschreibt die Radierung,
die das kleine Bild in Originalgröße wiedergibt,
S. 14 folgendermaßen: >Man hat ein Blatt von van
Vliet, so einen Mann vorstellt, der in der Gesichts-
bildung mit diesem [d. i. dem Faust des Ciartres]
übereinkommt, außer daß er ein wenig älter aussieht
Den Kopf bedeckt eine ungeheure rauhe Mütze, die-
unterwärts mit einem gestreiften Tuche, zweimal um-
gebunden ist. Er ist hier in einem Pelze mit einem
breiten rauhen Ausschlag bekleidet, anstatt daß jener
einen offen stehenden Mantel, und einen weißen
Halskragen um hat. Zur rechten des Kopfes ist:
Ht ran Ryn in. Gleich darunter in einem Mono-
gramme: IG. van Vliet fuit /ög^. Ich habe dieses
Blatt sowohl neulich aus einer holländischen Ver-
steigerung unter dem Titel des Doctor Faust, als auch
1760 aus der Frobesischen Auktion zu Helmstädt er-
halten, woselbst es im Catalogo P. 2. p. 3%. n. 579
unter eben diesem Titel vorgekommen "). Gersaint
und Yver haben zwar, ersterer S. 291 u. f. und
letzterer S. 176 einige Blätter angeführet, die van Vliet
nach Rembrandt radirt hat, es kommt aber dieses
Blatt mit keinem der daselbst beschriebenen überein,
es müßte denn das zweyte bey dem Gersaint seyn,
welches er, ich weiß nicht warum, le Porträt de
Philo le Juif nennet.« Warum, w ird uns sofort
klar, wenn wir die Zusammenstellung auf der Rück-
seite von Tafel 2 überblicken und mit Tafel 1 ver-
gleichen: dieses Bild hat nämlich genau denselben
Weg wie der »Faust« zurückgelegt vom Rem-
brandtischen Ölbilde über die Radierung van Vliefs
in die Serie des Ciartres, wo es genau unter den -
selben Umständen wie der heilige Joseph zum
»Faust«, zu dem Namen »Philon le Juif« gekommen
jst. Zug um Zu^, Linie für Linie stimmt hier das
Gesicht mit dem »Faust« überein. Man beachte vor
allem die offenbar durch Hautfalten stufenweise ge-
gliederte Backenlinie mit den hohen Bartstoppeln,
dann Form und Lage der Ohren, besonders aber
die Mundpartie. Lediglich der spitzbübische Ausdruck
der Augen, der recht gat zu dem Bilde des durch-
triebenen Erz-Zauberers paßt, ist — gewollt oder un-
gewollt — durch tiefere Ausarbeitung der Augenpartie
ernster geworden und hat sich so unwillkürlich mehr
der Vorstellung von dem tiefen Denker genähert, der,
ein Zeitgenosse Christi, den Begriff des Logos als
Vermittlers zwischen dem Menschen und der Gottheit
philosophisch begründet hat.
In dasselbe kummerdurchfurchte Antlitz
blicken wir auf dem Rembrandt-Bilde auf der Rück-
seite von Tafel 3, auf das mich Professor Dr.
R. F. Arnold aufmerksam macht (Bode I Nr. 30,
Original in der Sammlung Dr. A. Bredius im Haag).
Wenn wir dieses Bild neben die van Vliet'sche Ra-
dierung, die hier zum Vergleiche wiederholt ist, legen,
wird wohl kaum ein Zweifel daran aufkommen, daß
es ein und derselbe Mensch ist, der auf diesen
beiden Blättern dargestellt ist. Er ist nur noch um
einige Jahre älter geworden, und Kummer und Sorge
haben noch tiefere Runen in sein Gesicht gegraben.
Der Blick ist nach aufwärts gerichtet, aber es sind
dieselben melancholischen Augen, mit denen unse;
»Faust« nach abwärts blickt.
In derselben Wendung, mit demselben Pelz und
demselben niederen Käppchen bekleidet ist dieser
Kopf dann nach dem Ö. bilde Rembrandt's (Klassiker
der Kunst II S. 40, 43), und der nach dem-
selben ausgeführten eigenhändigen Radierung des
Meisters (Klassiker der Kunst VIII S. 238. hier als
»erster Orientalenkopf bezeichnet) in die Serie des
Ciartres, und, wie ich vjrausgreifend erwähnen muß,
in jene des Peter Aubry übergegangen. Weil er aber
eine goldene Halskette mit einem Medaillon daran
trägt (die wir auf manchem anderen Rembrandt-
Bilde wieder erkennen), hat er hier den Namen
Thomas Morus erhalten.
Philo, der jüdische Philosoph aus der Zeit
Christi, der »weitbeschreite Zauberer und Schwarz-
künstler«, D. Johann Faust, und Thomas Moore, der
Großkanzler von England, der berühmte Verfasser
der »Utopia«, drei Persönlichkeiten, wie sie ver-
schiedener kaum gedacht werden können, finden wir
also in unserer Porträt-Serie durch drei Bilder Rem-
brandt's dargestellt, die alle drei auf ein und dasselbe
Chronik des Wiener Goethe -Vereins XXX., XXXI. u. XXXII. Bd.
lebende Modell zurückgehen. Dieses Modell aber, das
uns auch auf noch zahlreichen anderen Studien-
kOpfen Rembrandl's begegnet, ist, wie die neuere
Forschung annimmt und in der Benennung der Bilder
zum Ausdruck bringt, niemand anderer als — Rem-
brandl's Vater, der Leydener MQIIermeister Härmen
Geritszoon van Rijn.
♦ * *
Und nun gilt es, die zahlreiche, zum Teil recht
entartete Nachkommenschaft zu verfolgen, die dieses
unter so seltsamen Umständen zum Doktor Faust
gewordene Bild von Rembrandt's Vater im Laufe von
zwei Jahrhunderten gezeugt hat.
Das folgende Blatt, das auf Tafel 6 nach dem
Originale der Familien-Fideikommiß-Bibliothek wieder-
gegeben ist, war bisher gänzlich UQbekannt. Es rührt
von einem Landsmann und Zeitgenossen des Ciartres
her, der ihn um zwanzig Jahre überlebt hat. Pierre
Aubry (1596-1667) stammte aus der Champagne und
ließ sich in dem damals noch deutschen Straßburg
nieder, wo er ein paar hundert Porträts berühmter
Zeitgenossen in Kupfer stach, mit denen er ganz
Europa überschwemmte"». Außer dem -Doktor
Faust< finden sich in ganz gleichem ovalen Rahmen
In unserer Sammlung noch folgende »Porträts« nach
denselben van Vlietischen Studienköpfen, die auch
Ciartres benützt hat: Heradites, Democritus, Thomas
Morus. Keines dieser Blätter trägt eine Stecher-
Signatur oder Verleger-Adresse. Sollte Aubry vielleicht
doch Bedenken getragen haben, diese kühnen Be-
nennungen mit seinem Namen zu decken und auf
diese Weise die Glaubwürdigkeit seiner übr gen
historischen Porträts in Frage zu stellen ? Unsere
Abdrücke sind allerdings so stark zugeschnitten, daß
kein Plattenrand zu erkennen ist, aber die Oberein-
stimmung in dem Format und vor allem die Gleich-
heit der Buchstabenformen der Unterschriften mit
jenen auf Blättern, die ausdrücklich die Firma des
Pierre Aubry tragen, lassen keinen Zweifel daran
aufkommen, daß auch diese vier Porträts aus seiner
Fabrik stammen.
Dieses Blatt scheint die Vorlage für eine spätere
Zeichnung gebildet zu haben, die Alexander Tille
a. a. O., S. 548, folgendermaßen beschreibt: »Ein
Tuschblatt, dessen Vorbild und Entstehung' noch
nicht bekannt geworden ist, macht den Kopf noch
jünger, noch runder und gibt der Gestalt eine Art
Gürtel, .^us dem Fünfziger ist ein Vierziger geworden,
der das Leben mit Wein utid Weib genossen hat.
Die Falten der Stirn und der untern rechten Wange
sind geblieben. Aus dem Gesicht spricht die Be-
kümmernis, daß der Bauch nich' mehr fähig ist, noch
etwas aufzunehmen. Das Blatt ist unterzeichnet
Doctor Faustus und darunter steht von einer Hand
um 17(j0 vermerkt : Natus in comitatu anhaltino etc.
Aus der Vorlage dieses Blattes ist das Titelblatt des
dritten deutschen Volksbuches von Faust abgeleitet.
des sogenannten Faustbuches des Christlich
Meynenden. dessen älteste bisher bekannt gewordene
Ausgabe aus dem Jahre 1725 stammt. Es macht auf
seinem vergröbernden Holzschnitt den Doktor zum
Dreißiger. Das Haar ergänzt es ihm freilich nicht,
'.ber die Runzeln tilgt es ihm. Seine feisten Backen
und glotzigen Augen verraten, daß sein Gott der
Bauch ist. Für sein Lieblingsmahl oder den Wein
seines Herzens möchte et sich doch wohl dem Teufel
übergeben, für so wenig mutig man ihn auch sonst
hält. Es ist Faust der Fresser, der Schlemmer, nicht
mehr der Faust, der aus Wissensdurst wider Gott
kriegen wollte.«
Dieses Titelbild ist auf Tafel 7 wiedergegeben.
Den geistreichen Schlußfolgerungen Tilles vermag ich
aber nicht unbedingt zuzustimmen. Wer je in einer
größeren Sammlung von Kupferstich- und Holzschnitt-
Porträts gearbeitet und dabei in einzelnen Fällen die
Veränderungen verfolgt hat. die das Bild ein und der-
selben Persönlichkeit erleidet, wenn jedes folgende
vom vorausgehenden kopiert wird, der wird in den
Veränderungen nicht eine ^energisch durchgeführte
Charakteristik^ *•), sondern nur das Unvermögen des
reproduzierenden »Künstlers« erblicken. Alle Stiche
und Holzschnitte aus dritter und vierter Hand weisen
rundere, vollere Gesichter auf, denen in der Regel
jede Modellierung mangelt.
Während dieser Holzschnitt vor der Editio
princeps des »Christlich Meynenden« sich mit den
verschiedenen Auflagen des Volksbuches fast bis gegen
Ende des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts erhalten hat, ist
eine neue Nachbildung in Kupferstich entstanden, auf
die fast alle Wiederholungen des Bildes im neun-
zehnten Jahrhundert zurückgehen (Tafel 8). Sie findet
sich als Titelbild vor dem fünften Stück der »Biblio-
theca. Acta et Scripta Magica. Gründliche Nachrichten
und Urtheile von solchen Büchern und Handlungen,
Welche die Macht des Teufels in leiblichen Dingen
betreffen. Zur Ehre Gottes, und dem Dienst der
Menschen heraus gegeben von D. Erhard David
Hauber, Hochgräfl. Schauenburg- und Lippischen Super-
intendenten, der Kayserlichen Leopold-Carolinischen
Academie und der Königl. Preuss. Gesellschaft der
Wissenschaften Mit-Genossen.« Lemgo 1739.
Eberhard David Hauber ,1695— 1765\ ein
Pfarrersohn aus Hohenhaßloch in Württemberg, wurde
1725 Superintendent zu Stadthagen und 1746 Pastor«
der deutschen St. Petrigemeinde in Kopenhagen.
Neben rein theologischen Arbeiten hat er sich vie
10
Chronik des Wiener Goethe-Vereins XXX., XXXI. u. XXXII. Bd.
mit geographischen Studien und mit biblischer
Archäologie beschäftigt • ). Seine Bibliotheca Magica,
die im großen und ganzen auf einem freisinnigen
Standpunkte steht, wurde begonnen in einer Zeit,
da der unter dem Namen der Jenaischen Christnacnts-
Tragödie bekannte Versuch einer Teufelsbeschwörung,
bei der mehrere Teilnehmer durch Kohlenoxydgas-
vergiftung ums Leben kamen, noch immer die Gemüter
erregte und die Federn der Gelehrten beschäftigte *")
Sogar der berühmteste Arzt jener Zeit, der Hallenser
Professor Friedrich Hoff mann, der schon 1706 in einer Ab-
handlung >De potentia diaboli in corpora« durchaus
nicht jeden Einfluß des Teufels schlechtweg geleugnet
hatte, und sein Schüler Johann Heinrich Schulze
haben damals in aufklärendem Sinne in den Streit
eingegriffen.
Auf einer Studienreise nach Holland, die er 1728
mit Unterstützung des Grafen Friedrich Christian
zu Schaumburg-Lippe unternahm, dürfte Hauber die
van Vlietische Radierung kennen gelernt oder er-
woiben haben. Zu dem unbeholfenen Nachstich, der
geradezu eine Karrikatur des holländischen Studien-
kopfes darstellt, gibt er auf S. 356 *") folgende : »An-
merkung zu dem Titul-Kupffer. Doctor Faust ist in
der Historie der Würckungen des Teufels, und der
Zauberey, ein so berühmter Name, daß sein Bildniß
auch billig einen Platz in unserer Bibliothec fordert.
Da mir nun schon vor geraumer Zelt ein von einem
guten Meister gezeichnetes, und in Kupffer gestochenes
Bild desselben zu Händen gekommen, so habe ich
solches diesem Stück vorsetzen wollen. Nun kann
ich zwar nicht sagen, daß Doctor Faust würcklich
also, wie das Bild zeiget, ausgesehen habe ; Da aber
doch solches Bild würcklich und schon vor vielen
Jahren in Kupffer gestochen worden, so wird es
unsern Lesern vermuthlich angenehm seyn, eine copie
davon zu sehen und zu haben.«
Der Rezensent der Allgemeinen Deutschen Biblio-
thek, 107, S. 529»';. urteilt über dieses Bild : »Das
mag nun acht seyn oder nicht, so hat es doch so
viel dem vermuthlichen Charakter eines solchen
Menschen entsprechendes, daß sich selbst mit Lavatern
ein paar Worte darüber jeden ließen, denn obgleich
die Physiognomie, eben keine Schwarzkünstlerische
Bosheit bezeichnet, so hat sie doch viel taschen-
spielerische Schalkheit und schadenfrohe Lauer-
samkeit«
Auf diesen Hauberischen Stich gehen die Nach-
bildungen zurück, die der Faustkopf in der ersten
Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts gefunden hat
(Tafel 9). Mit einer gewissen Selbständigkeit und
nicht ohne Geschick ist die Steinzeichnung behandelt,
die Wilhelm Müller und Ludwig Achim von Arnim 1818
hrer Übersetzung des Marloweschen Doktor Faustus
als Titelbild vorangestellt haben. Störend wirkt nui
die ganz unmotivierte Fältelung des Mantels. Wie
armselig nimmt sich daneben der Steindruck im fünften
Bande von Scheibie's »Kloster«, 1845, aus! Das wirre
Haar vermag der ungeschickte Zeichner nicht anders
darzustellen als dadurch, daß er den einen Teil sich
nach vorne, den andern nach rückwärts kräuseln läßt,
wodurch der Umriß des Schädels in Form einer scharf
gezeichneten Linie zum Ausdruck kommt, ein Vor-
gang, der schon an dem Hauberischen Stich zu be-
obachten ist.
Tafel 10 bringt zwei Nachbildungen aus der
zweiten Hälfte des vorigen Jahrhunderts. Die erste
ein Holzschnitt aus »Deutsche Männer. Bilder aus der
Geschichte des deutschen Volkes von Hermann dem
Cherusker bis auf unsere Tage von Manuel Raschke«
(Leipzig 1868), S, 41, geht, wie der Vergleich mit den
vorausgehenden Tafeln zeigt, offenbar direkt auf das
sehr selten gewordene Blatt des Ciartres zurück und
sucht diese Vorlage möglichst getreu wiederzugeben.
Die zweite dagegen, das Titelbild zu Karl Engels
ominösem »Volksschauspiel« ^Oldenburg 1876;, nimmt
sich wieder allerlei Freiheiten heraus: der ganz leicht
gefältelte Leinerkragen des Originals wird zu einer
Art Mühlsteinkragen, wie er zu Anfang des siebzehnten
Jahrhunderts getragen wurde, und die besonders scharf
gezeichneten und kühn geschwungenen Brauen machen
aus dem Faust einen Mephisto.
Und nun noch einmal aus Deutschland zurück
nach Paris, aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert zurück
ins achtzehnte !
Mit Erstaunen erkennen wir auf Tafel 11 unseren
Faustkopf wieder. Aber welche Veränderung ist mit
ihm vor sich gegangen ! Er scheint bereits den Hexen-
trank im Leibe zu haben, denn die zahllosen Runzeln
und Fältchen, die Zeugen kummervoll durchwachter
Nächte, sind geglättet, das dünne, wirre Haar ist
durch einen üppigen, in der Mitte ein wenig kokett
gescheitelten Schopf ersetzt, aber Schnurrbart, Kragen
und Mantel ist derselbe, kein Zweifel, daß wir ein
Abbild von demselben Urbild vor uns haben. Unser
Erstaunen wird nicht geringer, weim wir auf dem
Rahmen, der das Porträt umgibt, lesen: »Zenon Philo-
sophe Natif de l'lsle de Cypre mort a 98 ans.« Das
Blatt stammt wieder aus einer Serie von Philosophen,
der Pariser Verleger derselben aber, »Daumont rue
St. Martin«, ist derselbe, der sich innerhalb dieser
Serie das Stückchen geleistet hat, ein historisch be-
glaubigtes Porträt Rene I. von Anjou, Königs von
Neapel, geboren 1409, gestorben 1480, der nach einem
wechselreichen Leben sich den schönen Künsten
widmete, die Dichtungen der Troubadours sammelte
Chronik des Wiener Goethe-Vereins XXX., XXXI. u. XXXU. Bd.
11
und selbst dichterisch tätig war, seinen Zeitgenossen
als »Benoist Spinoza fameux Philosophe« vor-
zulegen "" .
Während die bisher besprochenen Nachbildungen
in Kupferstich und Steindruck im großen und ganzen
doch immer das Bestreben gezeigt haben, die Vorlage
getreu wiederzugeben, nimmt das auf Tafel 12 in der
Größe und in der unwahrscheinlich grellen Farben -
Wirkung des Orignals getreu wiedergegebene Ö 1-
bildchen, das bisher völlig unbekannt war, in Bezug
auf Technik, Auffassung und vor allem Herkunft^
eine ganz besondere Stellung ein. Im Gegensatze zu
den bisher besprochenen Nachbildungen weist es
eine starke Umbildung ins Dämonische auf, und was
das MerkwQdigste daran ist, es stammt vom Hofe in
Innsbruck und aus einer Sammlung, deren Grund-
stock aus Bildnissen von Personen des sechzehnten
Jahrhunderts besteht.
Faust am Hofe zu Innsbruck! Als ich zum
erstenmale in der erst seit wenigen Jahren der
öffentlichen Besichtigung zugänglichen Porträtsamm-
lung, die gegenwärtig die Wände der Münz- und
Medaillen-Sammlung im kunsthistorischen Museum
ziert, meinen Faust erkannte, da schien sich mir
plötzlich ein unendlich weiter Ausblick zu eröffnen.
Meine Freude wurde jedoch bald herabgestimmt, als
ich mich mit der Geschichte des sogenannten Rem-
brandtischen Faust-Bildes einerseits und mit der Ge-
schichte der Ambraser Porträtsammlung andererseits
eingehender zu beschäftigen begann.
»Den am wenigsten bekannten Bestandteil des
großen Kunstbesitzes, der vormals im Schlosse Ambras
vereinigt war, bildet eine Sammlung kleiner Bildnisse
von regierenden Fürsten des fünfzehnten und
sechzehnten Jahrhunderts und ihren Ahnen, von Feld-
herren, Staatsmännern, Gelehrten, Künstlern und
Dichtern derselben Zeit und aus verschiedenen Ländern
Europas, unter denen Deutschland und Italien obenan
stehen. Man pflegt sie als Porträt-Sammlung des
Erzherzogs Ferdinand von Tirol (f 1595) zu be-
zeichnen, was in der Hauptsacha richtig ist. Doch
finden sich in ihr auch Bildnisse aus dem siebzehnten
Jahrhunderte bis zum Ende desselben. Diese zeigen,
daß deren auch noch später in einer, wenngleich
nicht großen Zahl, nach Ambras gekommen sind,
also zwischen einem alten Bestände und späteren
Erwerbungen unterschieden werden muß« *°). Die
Gruppe, welcher unser »Faust« angehört, schildert
Kenner mit folgenden Worten : »Die andere Reihe (41
dagegen ist wohl älter, (als die im vorausgehenden
Abschnitte besprochene Serie von Miniaturen des
siebzehnten Jahrhunderts), a'^er auch sehr unter-
geordnet. Sie umfaßt 46 gleich große, auf Leinwand
skizzenhaft gemalte, wohl meist erfundene Porträte
die durch den braunen Ton, der fast wie Untermalung
aussieht, und durch ein gelbliches, mit Weiß gehöhtes
Inkarnat auffallen. Als eine geschlossene Folge für
sich, scheinen sie von jeher wie ein Anhang der
Sammlung betrachtet und, was sie in der Tat ver-
dienen, wenig gewürdigt worden zu sein.«
Wenn wir die ganze Reihe sorgfältig durch-
gehen, können wir feststellen, daß unser »Faust« In
dieser Umgebung nicht allein steht, sondern einen
guten Teil der illustren Gesellschaft, in die ihn Ciarlres
seinerzeit gestellt, mit sich genommen hat. Bei ge-
nauem Zusehen erkennen wir unter Nummer 43
Herodes, 45 Dionysius, 48 Mahomet, 49 II Gran
Nogaj, 50Cirus, 52Archrimedes,53Esop, 54 Pythagoras.
56 Aristoteles, 57 Thomas Morus, 59 Chaireddin Barba-
rossa, 63 Mahomet, 67 den ägyptischen Josef.
Die Entstehung dieser Bilder läßt sich wohl nur so
erklären, daß der Maier, der den Auftrag erhielt, die
Sam.mlung zu vervollständigen, sich allerdings die
Blätter der Ciartres-Serie oder jener von Pierre Aubry
zum Vorbild genommen, die einzelnen Bildnisse aber
absichtlich aus seiner Phantasie heraus umgestaltet
hat, um die Abhängigkeit von seinen Vorlagen
weniger deutlich in die Augen springen zu lassen.
* *
Mehr als zwei Jahrhunderte haben wir in unserer
bisherigen Betrachtung durchmessen. Diesen langen
Zeitraum hindurch hat sich der aus holländischem
Boden hervorgewachsene, in der windigen Pariser
Großstadtluft umgetaufte Studienkopf als das be-
glaubigte Bildnis des geschichtlichen Faust mit merk-
würdiger Zähigkeit gerade in Deutschland am Leben
erhalten. Aber welche Wandlungen hat er durch-
machen müssen 1 Der Rembrandtische Lichtstrahl, der
von rechts oben über das Gesicht fällt, ist allmählich
verglommen, der gebeugte Kopf hat sich immer mehr
aufgerichtet, der gesenkte Blick gehoben, die Züge
haben sich von Stufe zu Stufe vergröbert, bis uns
schließlich das gramdurchfurchte Antlitz des Nähr-
vaters, zur mephistophelischen Fratze verzerrt, aus
der Bildfläche entgegenstarrt.
Daneben ist allerdings wiederholt der Versuch
unternommen worden, den einen oder anderen künst-
lerisch zum mindesten gleich hochstehenden Typus
als Faust einzuführen, keiner dieser Versuche hat
jedoch durchzudringen vermocht. Wir können uns
daher im folgenden darauf beschränken, die um der
Vollständigkeit willen gebrachten Abbildungen mit
kurzen Erläuterungen zu begleiten.
Tafel 13 bringt zunächst ein bartloses Gesichf
mit formloser Mütze in ovalem Rahmen mit der
Unterschrift : LE DOCTEVR FAVSTE PHILOSOPHE
12
Chronik des Wiener Goethe -Vereins XXX., XXXI. u. XXXII. Bd.
ALEMAND etc. Es geht zurQck auf einen kleinen
radierten Studienkopf von Rembrandt, der, wie ich
glaube, das Modell zu einer Figur des sogenannten
großen Ecce Homo (Ölbild : Klassiker der Kunst, II,
S. 157, Radierung, ebenda, VIII, S. 195) darstellt, und
zwar zu jenem bartlosen Gesicht, das — hier von
Leidenschaft verzerrt — der abwehrend ausgestreckten
Hand des Pilatus gerade gegenübersteht. Das Porträt
stammt aus dem Verlage des Kupferstechers Balthasar
Moncornet, der, um 1615 zu Rouen geboren und nach
1670 gestorben, in seiner »boutique au fauburg Saint*
Marcel. dans la rue des Gobelins« zu Paris eine ähn-
liche Fabrik historischer Porträts betrieben hat, wie
seine älteren Zeitgenossen Langlois und Aubry **)■
Sein Faust-Porträt ist offenbar auf genau dieselbe
Weise zustandegekommen, wie das seines Zeit-
genossen Ciartres. Das ergibt sich am besten aus der
Zusammenstellung mit dem angeblichen Porträt des
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Fausl's
ungleich höher stehendem Zeitgenossen, der als
Doktor alier vier Fakultäten das berühmte Buch
Dt $miertttudin( et vanita/e omnitim SiUntiaiutn (t
artinm, das das Gehirn des Knaben Wolfgang Goethe
eine Zeitlang in ziemliche Verwirrung setzte »*), ge-
schrieben und gar manchen Charakterzug zum Bilde
des Goethischen Faust beigesteuert hat^')-
Auf Tafel 14 erkennen wir zunächst in ver-
kleinerter Nachbildung denselben Kopf in der Serie
des Ciartres, hier trägt er aber zur Abwechslung die
Bezeichnung Divinus Plato und überdies in der
linken oberen Ecke die Künstler-Signatur hPadoanus
Inuentor ! Durch die Gegenüberstellung mit der Rem-
brandtischen Originalradierung, die einen Amster-
damer Rabbiner darstellt, wird die völlige Halt-
losigkeit beider Benennungen offenbar. Das Bild des
Agrippa, wie es vor den älteren Ausgaben seiner
Schriften steht, sieht ganz anders aus.
Diese beiden Bildnisse stammen gleichfalls aus
einer Serie, deren Titel ich hier nur aus sekundärer
Quelle wiedergeben kann : Tabitau historiijue, ou nombre
tit I>i.'XLIlJ plamkes ou sont gravis en tailU-Joute Us
illtistrtt Francois tt Strängen de tun et Fautre text,
remar^uahUs far Itur naissante ou leur Jot tum, doctriue,
////«', (hargt tt iniflois; avtt leurs ihges et leurs
armoiries gravits far Pietre Daret, Louis ßoissevin (f
B. Montcrnet. Paris /fJSy2 — 56 **>,
Derselbe Rembrandtische Sludienkopf, der bei
Moncornet als »Le Doctevr Favste Philo-
so phe A II e m a n d etc.« bezeichnet ist, begegnet
uns in der Serie des Pietre Aubry, der, wie wir er-
fahren haben, seinen Faust schon hatte, als Archi-
medes Siracus (Tafel 22. Daß dieses Blatt zur selben
Serie gehört, wie der Doctor Faustus auf Tafel 6,
ergibt sich aus der übereinstimmenden Größe des
Ovals, der gleichen horizontalen Schraffierung des
Hintergrundes und dem gleichen Buchstabencharakter
der Unterschrift. Ein genauer Vergleich mit dem zu
diesem Zwecke hier wiederholten Docteur Favste des
Moncornet zeigt, daß der Kopf in dem Oval viel
weiter nach rechts geschoben ist, daß die Falten der
Mütze und der Pelzkragen viel schärfer heraus-
gearbeitet, die Züge des Gesichte« stark vergröbert
sind und die Mundpartie im tiefschwarzen Schatten
der sich kreuzenden Strichlagen nahezu völlig unter-
gegangen ist.
Vielleicht war eine gewisse Ähnlichkeit mit dem
bekanntesten und berühmtesten Faust-Bilde, Faust in
seinem Laboratorium (Tafel 15), dafür ausschlag-
gebend, daß man gerade diesen Rembrandtischen
Studienkopf für Faust ausgegeben hat. Aber auch bei
dieser größeren Radierung steht es durchaus nicht
einwandfrei fest, daß Rembrandt selbst hier einen
Faust darstellen wollte. »Nicht Erstaunen, nicht Ent-
setzen steht auf diesem runden, glattrasierten Gesicht,
sondern die Behaglichkeit im Beschauen des Selbst-
verständlichen. Die ganze Gestalt macht einen selbst-
sicheren, behäbigen und wohlgenährten Eindruck.
Seelische Erregungen sind ihr ganz fremd. Sie scheint
sich eher die Einzelheiten der Erscheinung einprägen
zu wollen, als daß sie darüber entsetzt wäre.^*) Ver-
hältnismäßig spät wird in der Literatur die Be-
zeichnung > Faust« - überdies durch einen garstigen
Druckfehler entstellt — zuni ersten Male auf dieses
Blatt angewendet in dem 1751 zu Paris erschienenen
Rembrandt-Katalog von Gersaint, Helle und Glomy-
Dort beginnt S. 195, Nr. 250, der diesem Blatt ge-
widmete Abschnitt unter der Überschrift J'autrieui
mit den Worten : J-t Portrait tfun PhHoso/he, ou Aleiecin,
coritiu en I/ollaniie sous to nont i/u /)octeur Fautrieus.
Diesen Katalog hat Goethe gekannt; am 3. Juli
1780 schreibt er an Merck, der selbst ein gründlicher
Rembrandt-Kenner und -Sammler war: >wenn du die
schöne Jahreszeit über den Gersaint entbehren kanst
mit dem Supplemente, so schick mir ihn mit.« Wozu
er ihn brauchte, geht aus einer späteren Briefstelle
(ll. Oktober 1780) hervor: >Sei doch so gut und
schreib mir, wie man es am gescheutsten macht,
eine Kupferstichsammlung zu rangiren ... Es ist dies
ein Auftrag, den mir der Herzog gegeben hat, und an
dem ihm viel gelegen ist.« Goethes Interesse für
Rembrandt ist jedoch keineswegs erst durch Merck
angeregt worden, er brachte es schon aus dem Vater-
hause nach Weimar mit Unter den Frankfurter
Malern, die Rat Goethe beschäftigte, war auch Johann
Georg Trautmann (1713—1769), »der sich den Rem-
brandt zum Muster genommen und es in ein-
Chronik des Wiener Goethe -Vereins XXX, XXXI. u. XXXII. Bd.
13
geschlossenen Lichtern und Widerscheinen, nicht
weniger in effectvollen Feuersbrünsten weit gebracht
hatte, so daß er einstens aufgefordert wurde, einen
Pendant zu einem Rembrandtischen Bilde zu
malen«" . Ende August 1775, unmittelbar vor seinem
Abgang nach Weimar, schreibt Goethe an Johanna
Fahimer: »ich zeichne, künstle p. Und lebe ganz
mit Rembiandt« Dieses
Interesse für Rembrandt
hat ihn bis in das späteste
Alter begleitet : Am 23.
März 1829, drei Jahre vor
seinem Tode, schreibt er
an Rauch: »Vor einiger
Zeit erhielt ich unver-
muthet eine Capitalzeich-
nung von Rembrandt, wo-
ran ich schon einige
Wochen zehre, bey dieser
Gelegenheit andere Werke
dieses unvergleichlichen
Meisters hervorsuche und
in sein Verdienst einzu-
dringen mirzurAngelegen-
heit mache.' Von diesem
Blatte besaß ereinen guten
Abdruck^ .Als es sich bei
Veranstaltung der ersten
rechtmäßigen Gesamtaus-
gabe seiner Schriften im
Jahrel788darum handelte,
ein Titelkupfer für den 7.
Band, der das Faust-Frag-
ment enthalten sollte, aus-
zuwählen, ließ er noch in
Rom^*) durch den Kupfer-
stecher Joh. Heinrich Lips
diese Rembrandtische Ra-
dierung in Kupfer stechen
(Tafel 16 . Weiche Verän-
derungen Lips beim Nach-
stich vorgenommen hat,
ergibt sich aus einem Ver-
gleich der beiden Blätter. Die ältesten Ausgaben des
Volksbuches sind noch ohne jeden bildlichen Schmuck-
Erst ein 1588 ohne Angabe des Ortes erschienener Nach-
druck von Zarncke, Goethe-Schriften, S. 261 als a' be-
zeichnet), dessen Titelblatt hier nach dem Katalog der
Frankfurter Faust-Ausstellung wiedergegeben ist, weist
einen kleinen Holzschnitt iu\, der gewissermaßen das
Ende des Faust-Romans an den Anfang anknüpft, in-
dem er im Vordergrunde den Abschluß des Paktes, im
Hintergrunde die Höllenfahrt Fausts darstellt. Dem
yaubcrcr t)n ©c^ivarl^f ütifKcr / ® ie
er (ic^ gegen txm Xtu^d niiff eine bmanbtc
ytlt vetfd^titben I XOas tt {yU^wi^düttx für frl^^C
Äbcnrbf »rr g^fc^jen/frlbÄ an^ttiitnl vnx> grrvUt
btnibi^tttntU^ frfncn ooloerDUtM
cen t,9\)n empfangco.
5J?c^rcrtci(^ au£^ fcttieti cfgcticn l^ixu
Den/f6ttt>tt5fg<n rnö ©ottloff n inrnpl?«« jijm fdijercf«
Kf^ert ^ey fpid/ obrd^i»?l(c^rn (Srrmprl/vnD rtCQ»(^
OfgecXP^cnunct jufamrmn gebogen / xa^
in JDcucf vrrferrrgrr.
II.D. ixxxviii;
Zeichner hat dabei offenbar der Anfang des 5. Kapitels
vorgeschwebt, wo Faust dem Mephistopheles auf-
erlegt, >daß, so oft er jn forderte, er jm in gestalt
und Kleydung eines Franciscaner Münchs, mit einem
Glöcklin erscheinen solte. vnd zuvor etliche Zeichen
geben, damit er am Geläut könnte wissen, wenn er
daher komme.« Diese primitive Darstellung hat, wie
Professor Dr. F. Arnold zu-
erst bemerkt hat, zweifel-
los auf den künstlerisch
bedeutenden Kupferstich
eingewirkt, der auf Tafel
17 wiedergegeben ist. Man
beachte vor allem die Lage
des Glöckleins und des
Rosenkranzes bei Mephi-
stopheles, und die Haltung
der Hände der beiden Fi-
guren. Der Stich rührt von
Christoph vanSichem
her, dem II. dieses Namens,
einem Schüler des H. Golt-
zius, angeblich um 1580
zu Delft geboren und 1648
noch tätig, der hauptsäch-
lich biblische Stoffe nach
Dürer, Lukas von Leyden,
Holbein, Heremskerk und
H. Goltzius in Holz ge-
schnitten und in Kupfer ge-
stochen hat").Auch dieses
Blatt stammt aus einer
Serie von Bildnissen, aber
die Gesellschaft, in der
Faust hier auftritt, ist von
jener, in der ihn Ciartres
zum ersten Male einge-
führt hat, von Grund auf
verschieden. Im Jahre 1608
war in Amsterdam zum
1 . Male eineSammlung von
18 Bildnissen berühmter
Ketzer von Christoph van
Sichern erschienen. Sie enthält u. a. die Bildnisse
von Johann Beuckels von Leyden, Diederick Snyder,
Johann Mathys von Harleem, Bernhard Knipper-
dollinck, Cornelis van Dordrecht. Als im Jahre 1666
bei Wilhelm Goeree in Middelburgh eine neue Auflage
unter dem Titel »Het Tooneel der Hooft-Ketteren, Be-
stände in verscheyde Afbeeltsels van Valsche Pro-
pheten, Naeckt-Ioopers, Geest-dryvt rs, Sectarisen ei»
Duyvels-konstenaren. By een vergadert, en in't
Coper gesneeden, Door C V. Sichem« erschien, wurde
14
Chronik des Wiener Goethe-Vereins XXX., XXXI u. XXXII. Bd.
Faust und Wagnar als Tafel 19 und 20 hinzugefügt**).
Gegenübergestellt ist auf derselben Tafel ein Nachstich
aus Arnims Zeitung für Einsiedler vom April 1808.
Das Bild gehört hier zu einer Anmerkung des Heraus-
gebers zu den »Denksprüchen aus einer Friedens-
predigt an Deutschland von Jean Paul Fr. Richter«,
die heute niemand ohne Bewegung wird lesen können .
Die beiden folgenden Tafeln geben eine Aus-
wahl aus den rohen Holzschnitt-B Idern zweier
holländischer Obersetzungen des Spiesischsn Volks-
buches. In der Faust-Gestalt des einen (Tafel 18)
glaube ich den Einfluß van Sichems erkennen zu
können. Tafel 20 zeigt als Titelkupfer zu der von
Victor Palma Cayet herrührenden französischen Über-
setzung des Spiesischen Faust-Buches einen Faust
mit baltlosem Gesicht im Talar und Barett eines
französischen Baccalaureus während derBeschwörungs-
szene im Walde, umgeben von den Gestalten der
Teufel. In stark vergröberndem Holzschnitt erscheint
dasselbe Bild vor der undatierten holländischen Aus-
gabe von Hismans van di Rumpel in Amsterdam.
Tafel 21 gibt die beiden Faust-Bilder einer Gruppe
von undatierten Ausgaben des »Christich-Meynen-
den« wieder, deren Eigenheit, abgesehen von der
Neigung zur Verdeutschung der vielen Fremdwörter,
hauptsächlich in der Ausmerzung konfessionell an-
stößiger Motive besteht"). In dem ersten — Faust
neben einem Tische mit brennender Kerze stehend,
einen Brief in der Hand — glauben wir trotz der
Haarfülle noch immer die Züge des Rembrandt-
Vlietischen Typus wieder zu erkennen. Ganz anders
gestaltet sich dagegen die Auffassung in dem zweiten
Bilde. Offenbar beeinflußt durch die Darstellungen im
Puppenspiel, wählte der Zeichner das Bild eines
»greisen Dutzendgelehrten mit pedantischen Zügen,
Sein Haar ist ebenso sorgfältig gebürstet, wie die
Schubfächer seines Geistes in Ordnung gehalten
werden . . . auf seinen bebenden Lippen scheint
eher eine Genusregel als ein Zauberbann zu
schweben . . .« *'). Wie in den früheren Fällen ist
jedoch auch hier keine Spur einer gewollten
Charakteristik zu entdecken: Der Formschneider hat-
wie der Vergleich mit dem aufs Geratewohl heraus-
gegriffenen Bilde des Tübinger Professors Jakob
Heerbrand aus dem Jahre 1578 zeigt, einfach das
typische Porträt eines protestantischen Theologen des
sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, das ihm der Zufall in die
Hand spielte, für seine Zwecke umgestaltet, indem
er die ornamentale Umrahmung aus dem Renaissance-
in den Rokoko-Stil übersetzte und den ovalen
Rahmen, der in seiner Vorlage durch eine Umschrift
ausgefüllt ist, schraffierte. »So geht es durch nahezu
all die Ausgaben des vierten Faust-Buches, mehrfach
neu in Holz geschnitten, aber in seinen Wsentlichen
Zügen unverändert.«
Das Lustigste an der ganzen Sache aber ist, daß
es durchaus nicht der einzige Fall war, in dem ein
ehrwürdiger Gottesgelahrter sich in den verrufenen
Erz-Schwarzkünstler und TeufelsbQndler verwandeln
mußte: In Auerbachs Keller in L-ipzig hing eingerahmt
am Mittelpfeiler des oberen Kellers ein Holzschnitt,
unter dem die Namansunterschrift offenbar wegge-
schnitten ist, dafür ist auf das Blatt, auf dem das
Bild aufgeklebt ist (von alter Hand?) geschrieben
»Faust 1713«. -Tief sitzt der Kopf drin im Pelzmantel J.
und in der Halskrause. Spitzbart und Schnurrbart sind T
arg struppig. Die Muskelpartien des Gesichts verraten
große Tatkraft.« Wenn nun Tille angesichts dieses
Bildes den Zweifel nicht unterdrücken kann: »Aber
ein echter Faust ist auch er nicht« '■'), so können wir
darauf erwidern: Allerdings nicht, denn waswirhier
vor uns haben, ist das authentische Porträt des Leip-
ziger Theologen Georg Weinrich (1554—1617), der seit
1586 an der Thomaskirche tätig war, im Jahre 1600
als Rektor der Universität fungierte, sechsmal Dekan
seiner Fakultät war und eine stattliche Reihe theolo-
gischer Schriften und Predigten hinterlassen hat ** .
Hatte man auf diese Weise in dem protestan
tischen Sachsen das typische Porträt eines evange
lischen Theologen des 16. Jahrhunderts kurzerhand
jn einen »Faust« verwandelt, so griff mm in dem
katholischen Oesterreich ohne Bedenken zu dem
Bilde eines katholischen Kirchenfürsten aus dem
17. Jahrhundert. »Im Jahre 17S1«, berichtet Tille, a.
a. O. S. 551, »hatte der preußische Referendar Hcr-
klots in der „Preußischen Blumenlese" ein Gedicht
Doktor Faust veröffentlicht, das, unter dem Einfluß
der Hölty-Bürgerschen Balladendichtung und der über
den Teufelsglauben hinausgewachsenen Zeitanschauung
stehend, in freiem, schalkhaftem Tone den Schwank
behandelt, wie Faust die Nasen seiner Gäste scheinbar
in Trauben verwandelt. Ein steirischer Verleger griff
das Lied auf und sandte es stark verkürzt als fliegendes
Blatt hinaus in die Welt, nicht ohne ihm ein Faust-
bild mit auf den Weg zu geben. Er benutzte dazu
einen alten Druckstock des 17. Jahrhunderts.« Dieser
Druckstock kann nun ganz gut, wie unsere Zusammen-
stellung auf der Rückseite von Tafel 22 zeigt, das
Bild eines katholischen Kirchenfürsten des 17. Jahr-
hunderts sein, er kann aber ebensogut von einem
fliegenden Blatt aus der Zeit des oberösterreichischen
Bauernkrieges herrühren und etwa den »Studenten«
oder Stefan Fadinger darstellen.
So sehr verschieden die bisher besprochenen
Faustbilder sich erwiesen haben, so haben sie doch
eines gemeinsam: daß es durchwegs graphische Dar-
Chronik des Wiener Goelhe-Vereins XXX , XXXi. u. XXXII. Od.
15
Stellungen sind. Unbekannt war bisher, daß es auch
ein plastisches Werk gibt, das offenbar auf die-
selbe Weise wie die übrigen zu der Bezeichnung »Faust«
gekommen Ist. Es wurde gelegentlich einer Ausstellung
von Potträtbüsten im Oesterreichischen Museum von
der »Kunst-Chronik« (2. Jahrgang, 1867, S.8) als Faust-
Zum Schlüsse mag hK-r noch das Bild einer
Teufelsbeschwörung Platz finden aus der Zeit, da
der leibhaftige Johann oder Georg Faust noch auf
Erden sein Wesen trieb. Es stammt aus einer deut-
schen Übersetzung von Petrarcas aszetischer Schrift
,De remediis utriusque fortunae (1358— 1366', die unter
^6 LV.Capüci/^ottcrfmbungctncefc^at^*
CoHigeihcfäuros quosnuIU erugo pcrtdU, Nee tinc£^cc quos für nuhin
äbnpict.
Xhnh {unfl i(?cu>rtr fd>äQ gtrtbcn/ t>a Ißem bkh ff tlt/tdn fdjob
tfetbcthtf
6u4?( 646 it |c^Q im bymcl babm» tEbo boe/fo baf? bn gtoiß gut orcrbr.
bOste bezeichnet. Die Provenienz dieser Büste Ist eben-
so unbekannt wie der Künstler, der sie gemacht hat.
Die Entstehungszeit möchte etwa 1520 — 30 zu setzen
sein, *') Im Jahre 1909 ist sie von der Hofbibliothek
an das Kunsthistorische Museum abgegeben worden
(Tafel 22). Der dreieckige Umriß, der auseinander-
fallende Mantel hat offenbar die Anregung zu dieser
Benennung gegeben. Die Charakteristik, die der Re-
ferent der Kunst-Chronik aus der Büste herausliest»
würde eher auf einen Mephis^opheles als auf einen
Faust zutreffen.
dem Titel „Das Glücksbuch" zuerst 1532 bei Heinrich
Steiner in Augsburg erschienen ist. Die „viel zierlichen
und wunderlustparlichen Figuren, so nach visirlicher
Angebung des Hochgelehrten Doctors Sebastiani
Brandt seeligen auf jegliches Capitel gestellt sind'*,
rühren von Hans Weiditz her*"). Dieses Bild hat
Goethe kennen gelernt, freilich erst zu einer Zeit, als
das Faust-Fragment längst erschienen war. Es hat
sich aber in anderer Weise für sein Schaffen frucht-*
bar erwiesen, denn es bildet, wie Düntzer zuerst nach-
gewiesen hat, die Quelle zum „Schatzgräbei"«*).
16
Chronik des Wiener Goethe -Vereins XXX., XXXI. u. XXXIl. BJ
*) Gr&f H. G.. Goethe über te
II. Te«, 2. Band. S. 12.
') Szamat61»ki Siegfried, Das Fanstbuch
de« Christlich Mcynrnden nach dem Druck von 1725
[= Deutsche IJteraturdenkmale des 18. und IQ. Jahrhun-
derts, Nr. 39] Stuttgart, i81>l, S. XIX— XXVI. —
Kiese Wetter Carl, Kaust in der Geschichte und
Tradition, Leipzif». 1893, S. 60. — Tille Alexander,
The arlistic treatment of tbe Faust legend. Publications of
ihe English (ioethr Society No. VII. London, 1893, S. l65f.
— Derselbe, Doktor Faust auf alten Bildem. Vom
Fels zaro Meer, 18. Jahrgang. 26. Heft (i. September 1899),
S. 542 — 551. — Derselbe, Bilderverzeichnis der Bode-
Tilleschen Faust-Galerie. Köln, 1899, S. XV— XIX.
*) L e B 1 a n c M. Gh., Mannel de L'Amiteur d'Est-
anspes, Paris, 1856, II, 490.
*)"Wurrbach Alfred von, Niederländisches
Künstlei-L'xikon, Wien, I910, II, 805.
*) Vgl. Giuseppe Jacopo Ferrazzi, Di Bassano e
dei Bassanesi illustii, Bassano 1847, S. 164fr. — Der
Kupferstecher Johann Schweizer (Schwyzer), nach Naglcr 16,
136 aus Zürich, nach anderen ein Hesse von Geburt, ar-
beitete uiti 1645 und starb 1679.
•) Wurzbach, III, 56.
', Herluison H, Actes d'dtat civil d'aitistes
fran9ais OrUan«, 1873,8. 208. Na hweis Dr. Ulrich T h i e m e.
•)Schaeffer Emil. Van Dyck, S. 2I<).
•) Tille Alex., Die Faustsplit er in der Literatur
des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts, Weimar, 1898, S. 610 f.,
Splitter 2C6, S. 614 f., Spliiter 270, S. 673, Splitter 282.
'**) Bartsch Adam. Catalogue Kaisono^ Wien,
• 797, II. S. 78, Nr. 25. — Dutuit Eugene, Manuel
de r amateur d' estampes. £coles Flamaude et Hollandaise,
III, 547. — Le B 1 a n c. Manuel, IV, 145, Nr. 26. —
Kovinski Dmitri, L'ccuvre grav^ des ^l(^ves de
Rembrandt et des maittes qui out gravc dans son goüt,
St. Petersbarg, 1894, Spalte 46.
") Szamatölski, S. XXI. — Rovinski, Sp. 46.
'*) K i e s e w e 1 1 e r, S. 60.
") Einer derselben auf Tafel 13 zur Raumausfüllang.
") T i 1 1 e, Faust auf alten Bildern. S. 548.
•'') Tille, The aitistic treatement. S. 165.
'*) Ich zitiere nach dem (bisher einzigen) Neudru<k
in Scbeiblcs Kloster. II. Band. S. 795. — Der Original-
drock bat, wie mir Prof. Dr. Otto Heuer mitteilt,
hockruckerigs. während Frich Schmidt (Goethe-
Jahrbu. h, III, 96) hochruckerigs zitiert.
'■) K. k. Hofbibliothek. Katalog der Buchkunsl-
Antttellong, Wien, 1916, S. 31, Nr. 99.
'•) Rembrandt von Wilhelm Bode. Paris.
1879, I, Fand, S. I9. Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der Ge-
mälde I, Nr. 37 (S. 106). In einem Buche lesend hat Rem-
brandt den Nährvater noch zweimal dargestellt. (Klassiker der
Kunst, VIII. S. 80. 138). Vgl. darüber Goethe, ,,Nach
Falconet und über Falconet" (Jub.-Ausg. 33. Band, S. 40) :
„es ist alles düster, außer einem Lümpchen, das dem Vater
leuchtet, der mit einem Büchelchcn dasitzt un<l Matien
einige Gebete vorzulesen scheint." An einer anderen Stelle
,Der Sammler und die Seinigen", Ebenda, S. 192; läßt
er es einen Pedanten als Anachronismus vermerken, ,,daQ
der heilige Joseph in einem gebundenen Buche lese". Der
Ausdiuck der Verdrossenheit, den Alexander Tilles scharfer
Blick ans dem van Vlietischen Sludienkopf richtig heraus-
gelesen hat, bildet einen charakteristischen Ztig an der
Gestalt des Nährvaters: Goethe hat das zweimal ausgespro-
chtn. einmal scherzhaft in dem Epigramm ,,Heilige Familie"
Anmerkungen.
Dichtungen, (Jub.-Ausg., i. Band. S. 252), das andere Mal in „Kunst
und Altertum" (Jub- Au.sg., 3f;. Ban<l, S. 304): „Auf den
heiligen Joseph überhaupt haben es die Künsll^jr abgesehen.
Die Byzantiner, denen man nicht nachsagen kann daü
sie überflüssigen Humor anbrächten, stellen bei der Geburt
den Heiligen immer verdrießlich vor."
'») Eben la, Text T. 6 f.. Beschreibendes Verzeichnis
Nr. IG, S. 52 - Das Modell des Judas glaube ich i»
dem Studienkopf in der Kgl. Galerie in Kassel (Kla.ssikei
der Kunst, IT, S. 356) zu erkennen.
*••) J u b. - A usgabe, 35. Band S. 44.
") Tille, Faust auf alten Bildern, S. 548.
") Bibliotheca Jo Nicolai Frobesii Matheniat. A(
Physices Professoris Quondam Helnnsfadiensis Pars II Bibüo-
thccam Pbysicam, Medicam, Mathemathicam Et Litterariam
Compleclcüs. Publicx Auctionis Lege Distrahelur Helmstadii
Die XV. M. Septembris es sqq. A. MDCCLX p. 396
Tille, Faustsplitter, No. 282, S. 673)
*') S i t z m a n n Ed., Dictionnaire de biographie des
hommes celcbrts de l'Alsace, Rixheim, I909, I, 66. Über
seine Beziehungen zu Moscherosch vgl. Artur Bechtold
Zeitschr. f. Bücherfreunde, N. F., 6., S. 270 f., 8., S. 230 ff.
*') Szamatölski, a. o. O., S. XXIV.
**) Allg. Deutsche B i o g r., Ji. Bd , S. 36 1.
»«) Tille, Faustsplitter, S. 189 ff.
") Die aber in der Tat S. 348 ist.
'") Nach C. B 1 ü m 1 e i n. Faustanalekten, in den Be-
richten des Fr. Deutschen Hochstiftes in Frankfurt a. M.,
N. F., Xn. (1896), S. 190. In der Allg. Deutschen Bibliothek
ist diese Stelle am angegebenen Orte nicht zu fmden.
") A 1 1 k i r c h Spinoza im Porträt, Jena. I913, 72 f.
'**) Kenner F., Die Porträtsammlung des Erzherzogs
Ferdinand von Tirol : Jahrbuch der Kunsthistor. Samm-
lungen des AI erh. Kaiserhauses, XIV. Band (1893). S. 37 ff,
") NouvelleBiogr. g^n^rale, 35.Bd.,S 953.
") Dichtung und Wahrheit, Jub.-Ausg..
22. Band, S. 190, 289.
*') R e i c h 1 A.. Euphorion, 4. Band (1897), S. 287 ff.
— Ritter G., Preuß. Jahrb , 141. Bd. (1910), S. 300 ff.|
'♦) Aberlc Carl, Grabdenkmal, Schädel und Ab-
bildungen des Theophrastus Paracelsus, Salzburg, 1891.
S. 292. Faust stehen in dieser Serie am nächsten dif
gleichfalls auf Rembrandt zurückgehenden Bildnisse von
Raimundus Lullus und Nicolas Favel.
»*) Tille, Faust auf alten Bildern, S. 547.
") Dichtung und Wahrheit, a. a. O., S. 29 f. — Vgl
auch Brandt Hermann, Goethe und die graphischen
Künste Heidelberg, 1913, S. 66 f.
*') Schuchardt Chr. Goethes Kunstsammlungen ,
Jena, 1848, I. Teil. S. 177, Nr. 322.
'*• An Göschen am 6. Februar 1788.
•p Wurzbach, a. a. O., I, 620.
*') Ausstellung von Handschriften, Druckwerken-,
Bildern und Tonwerken zur Faustsage und Faustdichtung
veranstaltet vom Freien Deutschen Hochstift. 28. Augus».
— 10. November 1893. Frankfurt a. M.. 1893, S. 107.
♦») Szamatölski, a. «>. O., S. XV. XXV (Klasss i).
") Tille, Bilderverzeichnis, S. XVIH.
**) Ebenda, S. XIX.
**) Allg. Deutsche B i o g r. 41. Band, S. 514 ff.
•*> Nachweis meines Kollegen Johann Jureczek.
**) R ö 1 1 i n ge r, Hans Weiditz, der Petrarkameister
Strasburg, 1904. Nr. 24 (S. 27 — 75).
*^Düntzer Heinrich, Goethos lyrische Ge-
dichte. Erläutert. 3. Anfl., Leipzig, X896, .S. 248.
Verlan des Wiener Goeihe-\'erein>. — Druck von Josef Roller & Co.
(unter verantw. Leitung von Josef VokD in Wita
In Kommiastoo bei Alfred llAlde'', Hol- und Universilltsbuciihindler
1., RoihenihurmfiraSe 2t.
Dniveriity of Torooto
Library
Acme Llbraiy Card Pocket
Und« Pau "Ref. lad« FU«**
Mad«l7 LIBRARY TIUREAU
http://www.archive.org/stream/faustimbildevond00payeuoft/faustimbildevond00payeuoft_djvu.txt
Sid Harth
Kolkata, April 1
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari Thursday ducked a
question on the return of Uma Bharti into the party, saying the
leadership will spell out its stand on the issue after she approached
it.
"We will finalise our stand when she tells me or some other leader,"
Gadkari said at a media meet here.
However, he was categorical that so far the leadership has not
initiated any dialogue with the firebrand Hindutva leader about her
return.
Uma Bharti last week resigned as president of the Bharatiya Jan Shakti
(BJS), a party she floated four years ago following her expulsion from
the BJP.
She was a senior leader of the BJP and a central minister who had
openly revolted against L.K. Advani in 2004, triggering her temporary
expulsion and a show cause notice.
Her expulsion was revoked later, but in 2005 she was sacked again when
she opposed the appointment of Shivraj Singh Chauhan as the chief
minister of Madhya Pradesh.
In 2006, Uma Bharti floated the BJS, saying she would revive the Hindu
movement in India. However, she received a severe drubbing in the
assembly election from her home turf in Madhya Pradesh's Tikamgarh
constituency.
Last updated on Apr 1st, 2010 at 20:55 pm IST--IANS
http://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a125478.html
.Once Uma approaches us, BJP will take stand: Gadkari
Kolkata, April 1
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari Thursday ducked a
question on the return of Uma Bharti into the party, saying the
leadership will spell out its stand on the issue after she approached
it.
"We will finalise our stand when she tells me or some other leader,"
Gadkari said at a media meet here.
However, he was categorical that so far the leadership has not
initiated any dialogue with the firebrand Hindutva leader about her
return.
Uma Bharti last week resigned as president of the Bharatiya Jan Shakti
(BJS), a party she floated four years ago following her expulsion from
the BJP.
She was a senior leader of the BJP and a central minister who had
openly revolted against L.K. Advani in 2004, triggering her temporary
expulsion and a show cause notice.
Her expulsion was revoked later, but in 2005 she was sacked again when
she opposed the appointment of Shivraj Singh Chauhan as the chief
minister of Madhya Pradesh.
In 2006, Uma Bharti floated the BJS, saying she would revive the Hindu
movement in India. However, she received a severe drubbing in the
assembly election from her home turf in Madhya Pradesh's Tikamgarh
constituency.
Last updated on Apr 1st, 2010 at 20:55 pm IST--IANS
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•BJP has not forgotten Ram temple: Gadkari (April 1)
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http://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a125475.html
BJP has not forgotten Ram temple: Gadkari
Kolkata, April 1
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president Nitin Gadkari Thursday
said his party has not "forgotten" the Ayodhya Ram temple issue.
Addressing the media here, Gadkari said: "Just because the (party)
president has changed, it does not imply that the policy has also
changed."
Gadkari was replying to a query as to whether the party has forgotten
the temple in Ayodhya as it was only talking about economic policies
and issues like price rise.
Last updated on Apr 1st, 2010 at 20:02 pm IST
http://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a125455.html
Gadkari flays Congress for 'blacklisting' Amitabh
Kolkata, April 1
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari Thursday
criticised the Congress for "blacklisting" Bollywood superstar Amitabh
Bachchan.
"Amitabh is a great actor of our country. He has enhanced India's
reputation worldwide. Just because madam (Sonia Gandhi) and
'rajkumar' (Rahul Gandhi) do not like him, Bachchan is being
blacklisted. This is shameful for Indian democracy," Gadkari said,
referring to the Congress criticism of the actor's presence at the
opening of the Bandra-Worli sealink.
"Is this the tolerance Jawaharlal Nehru preached? Is Amitabh a Dawood
Ibrahim?" Gadkari said.
Gadkari's reacted differently when asked about the resignation of the
vice chancellor of the Devi Ahilya University in Indore for inviting
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi to a programme.
"These two incidents should not be compared. University is meant for
education. Politicians should not be invited there.
"Yesterday, they invited Rahul. Tomorrow they will invite me and
education will suffer," he said.
Last updated on Apr 1st, 2010 at 20:40 pm IST--IANS
http://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a125475.html
Indians on death row in UAE: Badal seeks PM's help
Chandigarh, April 1
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal Thursday sought help from
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh regarding 17 Indian youth, including 16
from Punjab, sentenced to death by a court in the United Arab Emirates
(UAE) on charges of murdering a Pakistani national.
In a letter to the prime minister Thursday, Badal urged him to
intervene immediately with the UAE government to ensure justice for
the youth.
Badal pointed that 17 people had been convicted for a single murder
and it looked out of place.
"Therefore, we have to be more cautious to see that there was no
miscarriage of justice," Badal said.
The chief minister also requested the prime minister to advise the
external affairs ministry to provide necessary legal aid to the youth.
Badal pointed out that labourers and skilled workers from Punjab had
worked day and night during last 25 years for infrastructure
development in the UAE and other Middle East countries.
He said that all these Punjabi youth were the sole breadwinners of
their respective families and most of them had mortgaged their small
land-holdings to arrange for their visa and visit to the UAE.
Last updated on Apr 1st, 2010 at 22:43 pm IST--IANS
http://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a125498.html
One killed in shootout in Delhi
New Delhi, April 1
One person was killed in a shootout between two groups in Delhi,
police said Thursday.
“The shootout took place in the early hours of Wednesday in Bhajanpura
area in north-east Delhi. The deceased has been identified as Ajay,
who also had a criminal background,” a police officer told media
persons Thursday evening.
“Ajay was rushed to the G.T.B. Hospital where he was declared brought
dead,” the officer said.
“Five live cartridges have been recovered from the spot,” added the
officer.
Ajay was recently released from jail, and lived in Seelampur area.
“He was a member of a gang led by Lallu Pehlwan. The deceased had
committed several crimes in Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh as well,”
added the officer.
But the police officials did not say how the shootout began, adding
further details were being investigated.
Last updated on Apr 1st, 2010 at 22:32 pm IST--IANS
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•Robbers loot cash, jewellery from house in east Delhi (March 22)
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Six Pakistani LeT terrorists killed in Kashmir (Third Lead)
Jammu, April 1
The Indian Army and the Jammu and Kashmir police Thursday achieved a
major success, killing six Pakistani terrorists belonging to the
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in a four-hour long gun battle in Rajouri
district of the state.
The army had to use its paratroopers to neutralise the terrorists,
hiding in forests of Baghla in in Kalakote area of the district, 200
km north of Jammu.
A police spokesman said that the gunfight broke out around 1 p.m.
after the militants, asked to surrender, opened fire on the security
forces.
"The terrorists also lobbed grenades at the security personnel. The
fire was returned," he said.
Rajouri Senior Superintendent of Police Shafkat Watali told IANS over
phone that the killing of six terrorists is a "big success for the
security forces and a big blow to the LeT".
The six terrorists are suspected to be part of a group of infiltrators
that had crossed over to India early this week.
This was the second gun battle with the militants in Kalakote area in
the past three days. Four terrorists and three soldiers were killed
Wednesday after an 18-hour gun battle, which started Tuesday evening
in Kandi area in the forests of Rajouri.
Last updated on Apr 1st, 2010 at 22:43 pm IST--IANS
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•One militant killed in Jammu and Kashmir gunbattle (April 1)
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Kanu Sanyal, soldier of Naxalbari, dead -- old foes mourn (Lead)
Siliguri (West Bengal), March 23
Kanu Sanyal, who spearheaded the Naxalbari uprising in 1967 giving
birth to a Maoist movement that now threatens the Indian state, was
Tuesday found hanging in his humble home here. He was 78, an ailing
bachelor and a virtual pauper.
One of the founding members of the Left extremist movement in India,
no one could say why Sanyal killed himself. But police officers
maintained it was suicide.
His thatched home is located in the Siliguri sub-division of
Darjeeling district, where Sanyal and a select few made history over
four decades ago when they launched a violent peasant uprising in
Naxalbari village.
After endorsement of the bloody tactics by Mao's Communists, Naxalbari
became a household word in India and beyond, unleashing a violent
movement that continues to haunt the country.
Guided by Charu Mazumdar, a maverick who gave ideological shape to
that peasant movement, Sanyal helped found the Communist Party of
India-Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML), whose adherants came to be dubbed
Naxalites.
The CPI-ML, which quickly won recognition from Beijing, was born after
a crippling split in the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M). It
unleashed violence across the length and breadth of India that left
many thousands -- Maoists, security personnel and civilians -- dead.
By the time the Indian state cracked down hard on the CPI-ML and its
general secretary Mazumdar died in Kolkata's Presidency Jail in July
1972, Sanyal was a broken man.
Although he distanced himself from Mazumdar's advocacy of annihilation
of "class enemies", Sanyal remained wedded to Maoist ideology - but
minus its gory past.
A graduate from Siliguri's A.C. College, Sanyal suffered repeated
imprisonment before he decided, in the 1980s, to reorganise the
scattered Indian Maoists.
The experiment was a failure although by now he was ready to take part
in the "bourgeois democracy" he had once denounced. However candidates
he put up lost badly in the hills of West Bengal.
All that disappointed him. Over the years, he not only suffered from
poor health but he was disgusted with the violent tactics of the
present lot of Indian Maoists, who incidentally consider Mazumdar as
their god.
Although an iconic figure in and around the village of Naxalbari, he
led a spartan life, keeping mostly to himself.
When the police entered his home Tuesday, they found few possessions
-- apart from his books, clothes and utensils and some framed black
and white photographs of leaders from the Communist pantheon.
In one of his last interviews, Sanyal said: "I was popular once. I
have lost my popularity. I am unwell. That is the reason I cannot
organise the masses any more."
Azizul Haq, one of his contemporaries from the Naxalbari era, shed
tears in Kolkata as he paid an emotive homage to his former comrade.
"Sanyal will be remembered as one of the best leaders of the Naxalite
movement," Haq told IANS. "Although he was ailing, he never took
treatment from any government hospital. His argument was he could not
approach the state when he was fighting it."
It was in the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI) that Sanyal
began his political career decades ago before switching over to the
breakaway CPI-M in 1964. Once he joined CPI-ML, the Naxalite leader
denounced both the CPI and CPI-M as revisionists.
But on Tuesday, his former ideological foes hailed him.
"He was a very popular leader in the early days of Naxalbari," CPI's
S. Sudhakar Reddy told IANS. "Although we disagree with his Maoist
ideology, he contributed greatly to the communist movement."
CPI-M politburo member Sitaram Yechury said Sanyal's death was "very
unfortunate" and added that the Naxal leader had been critical of the
line adopted by the present Maoist guerrillas.
"After Nandigram and Lalgarh (in West Bengal), Sanyal had been saying
that the line adopted by Maoists do not conform to the revolutionary
understanding adopted when the Naxalite movement started," Yechury
added.
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http://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a123389.html
•Goa MP wants ban on Sanatan Sanstha (March 19)
http://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a122552.html
•Jailed legislator ready to mediate with Maoists (March 9)
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•Congress wants minister sacked for Maoist links (March 11)
http://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a120669.html
http://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a123389.html
CPI, CPI-M condole death of Kanu Sanyal
New Delhi, March 23
The Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India-
Marxist (CPI-M) Tuesday condoled the death of Naxalite leader Kanu
Sanyal, who once violently opposed both parties.
Although they disagreed with their ideology for years, both the CPI
and CPI-M said that Sanyal contributed to the growth of the communist
movement in the country.
"He was a very popular leader in the early days of the Naxalbari
movement," CPI deputy general secretary S. Sudhakar Reddy told IANS.
"Although we disagree with his ideology of armed struggle, he had
contributed greatly to the communist movement."
Reddy said Sanyal had differences with the present Maoist movement,
led by the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist.
Sanyal was Tuesday found hanging at his house Siliguri in West Bengal.
He was 78. According to police, Sanyal had committed suicide.
He was one of the protagonists of the 1967 peasant uprising in
Naxalbari village that gave birth to the Maoist movement in India.
CPI-M politburo member Sitaram Yechury said Sanyal's death was "very
unfortunate" and added that the Naxal leader had been critical of the
line adopted by the present Maoist guerrillas.
"After Nandigram and Lalgarh (in West Bengal), Sanyal had been saying
that the line adopted by Maoists do not conform to the revolutionary
understanding adopted when the Naxalite movement started," Yechury
added.
Last updated on Mar 23rd, 2010 at 18:35 pm IST--IANS
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Maoists abduct five Jharkhand officials, free all (Second Lead)
Ranchi, March 20
Maoist rebels abducted five government officials, including an
additional district magistrate, at gun point from Latehar district in
Jharkhand Saturday noon, but released them a few hours later, police
said.
Latehar Superintendent of Police Kuldip Dewadi said more than five
armed Communist Party of India-Maoist rebels abducted the five
officials, including ADM Shrawan Soya, at gun point.
Others abducted were PWD officer H. Bhengra, assistant engineer Adish
Sayru Ram, dairy officer Vinod Sinha and driver Kiran Singh from
Bandhua village under Manika block of Lather district, the police
official said.
However, the rebels freed the men after five hours.
"The Maoists were afraid of the vigorous anti-Naxal (Maoist) offensive
launched by the police, and released all the abducted officials after
five hours," Dewadi said later.
The prompt action of the police forced the rebels to release all the
abducted men, he said.
The rebels Saturday also released four other workers, including junior
engineer Ranjeet Kumar, in Simdega district whom they had kidnapped
Thursday night. More than 15 Maoist rebels from the 'Hill Panther'
group abducted the four men working for the Ram Rekha Dam and looted
35 mobile phones, Rs.2 lakh in cash and one gun from the site, said a
police official.
Anti-Maoist operations are going on in five places in Jharkhand - West
Singhbhum, East Singhbhum, Bokaro, Hazaribagh and Seraikela districts.
“An inter-state operation has been launched against the extremists
simultaneously in seven-eight districts of Jharkhand and West Bengal,”
Neyaz Ahmad, Jharkhand director general of police, told reporters.
The operations are on mainly in the bordering districts of Jharkhand.
The West Bengal police are mounting vigil along the border to check
Maoist infiltration.
In Jharkhand, out of the 24 districts, Maoist rebels are active in 21.
About 1,900 people, including 350 security personnel, have been killed
in Maoist-related violence in the past few years.
Last updated on Mar 20th, 2010 at 18:17 pm IST--IANS
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Web
.Maoists abduct five Jharkhand officials, free all (Second Lead)
Ranchi, March 20
Maoist rebels abducted five government officials, including an
additional district magistrate, at gun point from Latehar district in
Jharkhand Saturday noon, but released them a few hours later, police
said.
Latehar Superintendent of Police Kuldip Dewadi said more than five
armed Communist Party of India-Maoist rebels abducted the five
officials, including ADM Shrawan Soya, at gun point.
Others abducted were PWD officer H. Bhengra, assistant engineer Adish
Sayru Ram, dairy officer Vinod Sinha and driver Kiran Singh from
Bandhua village under Manika block of Lather district, the police
official said.
However, the rebels freed the men after five hours.
"The Maoists were afraid of the vigorous anti-Naxal (Maoist) offensive
launched by the police, and released all the abducted officials after
five hours," Dewadi said later.
The prompt action of the police forced the rebels to release all the
abducted men, he said.
The rebels Saturday also released four other workers, including junior
engineer Ranjeet Kumar, in Simdega district whom they had kidnapped
Thursday night. More than 15 Maoist rebels from the 'Hill Panther'
group abducted the four men working for the Ram Rekha Dam and looted
35 mobile phones, Rs.2 lakh in cash and one gun from the site, said a
police official.
Anti-Maoist operations are going on in five places in Jharkhand - West
Singhbhum, East Singhbhum, Bokaro, Hazaribagh and Seraikela districts.
“An inter-state operation has been launched against the extremists
simultaneously in seven-eight districts of Jharkhand and West Bengal,”
Neyaz Ahmad, Jharkhand director general of police, told reporters.
The operations are on mainly in the bordering districts of Jharkhand.
The West Bengal police are mounting vigil along the border to check
Maoist infiltration.
In Jharkhand, out of the 24 districts, Maoist rebels are active in 21.
About 1,900 people, including 350 security personnel, have been killed
in Maoist-related violence in the past few years.
Last updated on Mar 20th, 2010 at 18:17 pm IST--IANS
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Gafoor to head Maharashtra's anti-corruption bureau
Mumbai, Feb, 26
Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Hasan Gafoor, who served as city
police chief during the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, was Friday
appointed director general of the state Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB).
Gafoor is at present the managing director of the Maharashtra State
Housing & Welfare Corporation. He will be succeeded in that post by
P.P. Shrivastava, who has been promoted to the rank of DGP.
The post of ACB chief was laying vacant after A.N. Roy was appointed
the state police chief.
Another senior officer, Sanjeev Dayal, will be the new DGP (Special
Operations) - a crucial post which was lying vacant since Jan 1 after
Jayant Umranikar retired. In the post, Dayal will oversee the working
of three critical units - the state Intelligence Department, Anti-
Terrorism Squad and Anti-Naxal Operations.
Gafoor was shunted out as DGP (Housing), after the 26/11 attacks. The
Pradhan-Balachandran Vommittee which enquired into the various aspects
of the terror attacks, indicted him, saying Gafoor failed to provide
"visible and overt leadership". However, the state government did not
accept this.
A few days before the first anniversary of the terror attacks last
year, Gafoor, in an interview to a newsweekly, blamed four city police
officials for not responding to the call of duty.
The comments kicked up a major controversy, prompting the state
government to seek an explanation from him.
Last updated on Feb 26th, 2010 at 21:05 pm IST--IANS
http://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a118004.html
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Friday, April 02, 2010
BJP asks Indian govt to seek Headley’s extradition
* Party spokesman says US wants to protect ISI by resisting
interrogation of the terror suspect in India
NEW DELHI: The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday asked the
Indian government to formally seek the extradition of terror suspect
David Headley from the US.
The opposition party demanded the government to follow the extradition
treaty and the mutual legal assistance treaty it has with US to bring
Headley to India. “He must be tried in India for the massacre of so
many innocent people and be given the death penalty. India must never
miss this historic opportunity to establish once for all that Pakistan
indeed is the epicentre of international terror,” BJP chief spokesman
Ravi Shankar Prasad told a press conference. He asserted that the
bargain plea agreement between Headley and the US prosecutors was not
binding on India at all. Prasad said India should also implement two
UN resolutions-1373 and 1267, under which every country was obliged to
support the other country in the investigation and trial of terror
related offences.
Protecting ISI: Commenting on why the US was resisting Headley’s
extradition and interrogation by Indian officials, Prasad suspected
that the US might want to protect the ISI, as its involvement in
terror attacks on Indian soil would be exposed and said the Americans
should be reminded that the war against terrorism was being fought by
the whole world and not by a single country. The BJP spokesman
regretted that the judgement of the Mumbai attacks case, which would
be announced on May 3, would only punish Ajmal Kasab, Fahim Ansari and
Salahuddin Ahmad, without nabbing the main planners and financiers of
the attacks who were based in Pakistan. “Even the prosecution did not
dispute that the three who were tried for the Mumbai attacks,
including Kasab were only secondary players,” he said. Prasad said
that the trial of Kasab and others had highlighted the role of
Pakistan-based Laskhar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) in the Mumbai attacks but
expressed optimism that Islamabad would prosecute LeT chief Hafiz
Saeed and others despite the fact that India provided evidence against
them in a dozen dossiers, which were handed over to Pakistan. “The
reason is obvious. Many of the key conspirators behind the Mumbai
terror attacks have been the blue-eyed boys of the ISI and any fair
trial would expose the real face of the intelligence agency,” he
said.
Prasad said India must not lose any opportunity to get him back into
India, subject him to custodial interrogation, expose the entire
conspiracy including the fact that there is no difference between
state and non-state actors in Pakistan. The BJP spokesman said much of
the planning, conspiracy and logistical coordination was done by David
Headley before the terror attacks in Mumbai but saved himself from the
death penalty by entering into a plea bargain agreement in a Chicago
court. iftikhar gilani
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C04%5C02%5Cstory_2-4-2010_pg7_38
Saturday, March 27, 2010 Praful Bidwai Is the Bharatiya Janata Party
obsessed with proving itself the sectarian, confrontationist oddball
of Indian politics? Last fortnight's developments suggest so. Take the
shenanigans of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. A Special
Investigation Team appointed by the Supreme Court to probe the 2002
Gujarat pogrom summoned him to question him about his role in the
killings. Many questions had been raised about his role by former
Gujarat Director General of Police RB Sreekumar, countless victims,
independent inquiries, and sting-operation disclosures by...
NEW DELHI, April 2, 2010 CBI must file appeal in Lalu assets case: BJP
Neena Vyas
Share · print · T+ With the Supreme Court on Thursday
rejecting the Bihar government's right to appeal against the acquittal
of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad in the disproportionate
assets case, the Bharatiya Janata Party demanded that the Central
Bureau of Investigation file an appeal.
Party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said: “We do not want to
comment on the Supreme Court. However, we do feel that the trial
court's judgment of acquittal in the case was most vulnerable in law
and the CBI must appeal against it.”
He said the CBI had, in fact, wanted to appeal against the trial court
verdict, but “some legal advisers in Delhi” were against the appeal,
and, therefore, no appeal was filed.
It was only because the CBI did not appeal against the acquittal
verdict that the Bihar government decided to appeal in the Patna High
Court. The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the State government
did not have the right to appeal.
The Apex Court's ruling comes just months ahead of crucial Assembly
polls in Bihar. The BJP fears that the ruling coalition in the State,
of which it is a part along with the Janata Dal (United), will not be
able to exploit the assets case politically during the election.
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article365029.ece
NEW DELHI, April 2, 2010 Vested interest in U.S. will scuttle access
to Headley: BJP
Special Correspondent
Share · print · T+ The United States' commitment to fight
terrorism globally is being tested, as also India's strategic
partnership with America, on the issue of David Coleman Headley's
extradition to India and his custodial interrogation by Indian
agencies, the Bharatiya Janata Party said on Thursday.
Spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad's charge against the U.S. was that
the case of Headley, who pleaded guilty of being part of the 26/11
terror plot, gave the impression that America was “soft” on terror
when India was the target.
Referring to some reports that Headley might have been a double agent,
Mr. Prasad said that possibly vested interests in the U.S.
establishment did not want his role to be fully exposed. However, for
India and the world, it was crucial that the role of Lashkar-e-Taiba
operatives in Pakistan and the involvement of the Inter Services
Intelligence and Pakistan's Army in the Mumbai attack plot was
exposed.
Headley's was a “copybook case for extradition,” Mr. Prasad said. The
extradition agreement between the U.S. and India apart, two United
Nations resolutions (1373 and 1267) obligated every country to support
others in the investigation and trial of terror suspects.
The BJP demanded that the government take immediate steps to secure
Headley's extradition and ensure that he faced trial in India for the
death of 166 innocent victims of the 26/11 attacks. It would be in the
interest of the global fight against terrorism to expose the Lahore
and Karachi angle of the conspiracy.
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article365039.ece
NEW DELHI, April 2, 2010 Child rights panel to monitor RTE
implementation
Aarti Dhar
Share · print · T+ The National Commission for Protection of
Child Rights (NCPCR) has been mandated to monitor the implementation
of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
A special division within the panel will undertake this task in the
coming months and a special toll-free helpline to register complaints
will be set up.
The NCPCR has invited all civil society groups, students, teachers,
administrators, artists, government officials, legislators and members
of the judiciary apart from all other stakeholders to join hands and
work together to build a movement to ensure that every child of this
country is in school and gets at least 8 years of quality education.
The Right to Education Act, 2009 — that became effective from Thursday
— makes elementary education a fundamental right under Article 21 (A)
of the Constitution. Every child in the age group of 6-14 will be
provided elementary education in the age-appropriate classroom in the
vicinity of his/her neighbourhood. Any cost that prevents a child from
accessing school will be borne by the State which shall have the
responsibility of enrolling the child as well as ensuring attendance
and completion of eight years of schooling. No child will be denied
admission for want of documents, no child will be turned away if the
admission cycle in the school is over and no child will be asked to
take an admission test.
Into the mainstream
Children with disabilities will also be educated in the mainstream
schools. Further, all private schools shall be required to enrol
children from weaker sections and disadvantaged communities in their
incoming class to the extent of 25 per cent of their enrolment, by
simple random selection. No seats in this quota will be left vacant.
These children will be treated on a par with all other children in the
school and subsidised by the State at the rate of average per learner
costs in the government schools.
All schools will have to follow norms and standards laid out in the
Act and all private schools will have to apply for recognition,
failing which they will be penalised to the tune of Rs. 1 lakh and if
they still continue to function, they will be liable to pay Rs. 10,000
per day as fine.
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article365043.ece
KAITHAL, April 2, 2010 Villages still in trauma after ‘honour-killing'
verdict
Vrinda Sharma
Share · Comment · print · T+
A FATHER'S PAIN: Har Krishan, whose son Ved Pal was killed for
marrying a girl from a neighbouring village. Photo: Vrinda Sharma
Related
TOPICS
India
Haryana
Two days after five people were given the capital punishment by a
court for the so-called honour-killing of a young couple here in
Haryana, the family members of the victims are more tense than they
are relieved. “The verdict has done justice to my son's death, but it
has not changed the way the village works,” says Chandrapati Berwal
who fought the legal battle.
She is the mother of Manoj, who along with Babli was murdered three
years ago by Babli's relatives on the orders of a ‘khap panchayat' for
having married within the same gotra. But Tuesday's landmark verdict
seems to have made little difference to the minds of the votaries of
the system of ‘khap panchayats', which are caste-based.
“The panchayat only intended to bring about a moral balance and
inculcate honour in youngsters, although its method was perhaps a bit
too harsh,” said a resident of the village, who refused to reveal his
name. Asked about the verdict, he said: “The panchayat killed two
persons and the court will kill five. At the end of it all the village
has lost seven lives. I don't see justice in any of the verdicts.”
“The villagers, who have boycotted us socially and financially, will
not change their mindset. The verdict has given a milder form of
punishment to the actual instigator, sarpanch Ganaga Raj,” said Ms.
Chandrapati. She alleged that panchayats could get away with giving
such harsh orders and executing them only owing to political backing
and the inefficiency of the police. For the last three years one
police constable has been guarding her doors, but since the verdict on
Tuesday the police presence around her house in Kerora village has
increased.
“Earlier there was one man, now there are two jeeps. But I and my
daughter are as unsafe as we ever were. The police could do nothing
when a few goons went after my son and his wife. What will the police
do if all of them barge into my house at once?”
A tense calm prevails in the dusty village. Nobody will publicly
discuss the matter, and except in Ms. Chandrapati's house none dares
to talk about it even indoors. Village sarpanch Karambeer Singh
refused even to come out of his house. The street where Babli once
lived wears a pall of gloom. The women in Babli's maternal house sit
with stony expressions and refuse to identify themselves or talk to
anyone, especially mediapersons, who are often seen as the villains
who exaggerated the issue.
“They tried to hide their sin from us, and then they tried to
threaten, boycott and even bribe us so that we keep quiet. My son will
not return but they will bear the pain of their wrongs so that such
inhuman decisions are never taken by anyone,” she said.
A few kilometres from Ms. Chandrapati's village, in Matour village,
Hari Krishan cries with his son's photographs in his hands. His hope
is that a similar judgment would come in his case as well: his 23-year-
old son was lynched by a crowd for marrying a girl from the
neighbouring village. Ved Pal and his wife Sonia's marriage was
accepted by both the families as they were of the same caste although
the gotras differed. But later the ‘khap panchayat' instigated Sonia's
family to forcibly marry the 17-year-old to a 50-year-old man and
later kill Ved Pal.
“My son was killed by a mob because a panchayat felt that marrying a
girl from the neighbouring village was ‘incest'. And I was expected to
make peace with this explanation? After this verdict I feel that
unlike the politicians and the police, the law is not going to be
unjust to us. But the sarpanch [Ganga Raj] should have been given the
death penalty as he was the root cause of the trouble,” said Mr. Hari
Krishan.
Mr. Hari Krishan, who has cancer, said he too was approached by the
sarpanch of Sonia village for a compromise. “They offered me Rs.25
lakh. They think a father can forgive his son's murderer just because
he is poor. I will fight this case till the last drop of blood.”
This father then cried out aloud, and asked: “Because of the khap so
many families have lost their breadwinners. Why didn't they let them
live? What honour comes from giving widows and orphans to homes that
were otherwise happy?”
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article364946.ece
Ahmedabad, April 1, 2010 Order against summoning Modi not final:
Nanavati
Manas Dasgupta
Share · print · T+
AP Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi gestures during a function in
Gandhinagar on March 28, 2010. The Nanavati panel has told the Gujarat
High Court that the option to summon Mr. Modi in connection with post-
Godhra riots is still open. Related
NEWS
SIT completes Modi interrogation
Fully satisfied with questioning of Narendra Modi, says SIT chief
Modi says he recalled the events eights years back
SIT acting on Zakia Jaffrey's petition raising questions of state
complicity
TOPICS
India
Gujarat
crime, law and justice
inquiry
unrest, conflicts and war
riots
The G.T. Nanavati-Akshay Mehta judicial inquiry commission probing the
Godhra train carnage and the post-Godhra communal riots in 2002 told
the Gujarat High Court on Thursday that its September 18, 2009 order
rejecting the plea of the Jansangharsh Manch to summon Chief Minister
Narendra Modi for cross-examination was “not a final order.”
A letter written by the commission secretary was submitted to the High
Court by Advocate-General Kamal Trivedi. The court had not opened the
sealed cover and ordered that it be kept in the records until further
orders. But, a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice S.J.
Mukhopadhyaya and Justice Akil Kureshi told the Manch's counsel that
the commission had not taken a “final” decision on not summoning Mr.
Modi. The next hearing on the Manch petition seeking a direction to
the commission to summon the Chief Minister was posted for June 17.
The commission's letter was in response to the March 22 court
directive seeking a clarification on its stand on the Manch plea for
summoning Mr. Modi.
Manch petition
Manch advocate Mukul Sinha had filed the petition following the
commission's September 2009 order in which it had ignored its plea to
summon Mr. Modi but had asked only three of his personal secretaries
to submit details of mobile phone calls during the 2002 communal
riots.
Besides Mr Modi, the Manch, in its application to the commission on
August 31, 2007, also demanded summoning of the then Minister of State
for Home Gordhan Jhadaphia, the then Health Minister and presently
Speaker Ashok Bhatt, and the then Deputy Commissioner of Police in
charge of the affected areas R.J. Savani, among others.
The commission rejected the plea saying it did not find the demand for
cross-examining Mr. Modi and others justified, following which the
Manch filed the petition in the High Court. A single judge Bench had
earlier rejected the Manch petition.
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article360551.ece
Gandhinagar, March 28, 2010 Modi says he recalled the events eights
years back
PTI
Share · print · T+ When the mediapersons pointed out that he
had been in the dock for the last 8 years over the riots, Mr. Modi
shotback with a smile, "You have still kept me in the dock."
Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who was questioned in two marathon
sessions by the Supreme Court-appointed SIT in a Gujarat riots case,
has said he recalled to the extent possible the sequence of events
that had taken place eight years ago.
Claiming that his quizzing, the first since the communal violence of
2002, has concluded, he declined to go into the details of his
questioning, saying that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) has to
submit its report to the apex court.
“I have been told by SIT that your work is over”, 59-year-old Mr. Modi
said at 0100 hours on Sunday emerging from the second round of his
questioning at the SIT office at the old secretariat building.
Mr. Modi claimed he had answered all questions put by the SIT and that
he had recalled to the extent possible the sequence of events that had
taken place eight years ago.
The Chief Minister said his statement was recorded by the SIT
investigators after which he signed it.
Asked what sort of questions he was asked, Mr. Modi said, “I cannot
share that with you because the SIT has to submit its report to the
Supreme Court.”
Though there was no official word on the questioning, Mr. Modi is said
to have replied to 62 of the 68 questions put to him in the five-hour-
long first session that had begun at noon on Saturday.
Mr. Modi returned to the SIT office at 9 pm and faced a second round
of questioning for four hours as he was keen that the entire exercise
be completed in one day.
The BJP leader is facing allegations of omission and commission with
regard to the mob attack on a housing society in which a former
Congress MP Ehsan Jafri and 68 others were killed. He was questioned
by a team of officers headed by A K Malhotra, a former CBI DIG.
When pointed out that he had been in the dock for the last eight years
over the riots, a smiling Mr. Modi said, “You have still kept me in
the dock.”
“Vistaar se batcheet ki (we spoke in detail),” he said, adding, “Under
the Indian Constitution, the law is supreme. As a common man, CM, I am
bound by the Indian Constitution and the law. No one can be above the
law.”
SIT chairman R. K. Raghavan was not present in his office when Mr.
Modi appeared in the first session in response to the panel’s summons.
“This was the first time in eight years that someone wanted to speak
to me on the issue and I attended that”, Mr. Modi said.
Taking a dig at his critics, he said, “God give good sense to those
who said I have not spoken for eight years.
“I hope that today’s happening will give good sense to those who are
keen to spread misinformation and those who spread lies”, the Chief
Minister said.
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article318173.ece
NEW DELHI, March 28, 2010 Modi is law-abiding: BJP
Neena Vyas
Share · Comment · print · T+ Gujarat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi's declaration that he was committed to the Constitution
of India and the rule of law was on Saturday held up by the Bharatiya
Janata Party as a shining example for all.
“Mr. Modi has always declared he will abide by the law. He has high
regard for the Special Investigation Team appointed by the Supreme
Court and on Saturday he appeared before it. He answered questions put
to him by the SIT and what he said is now between him and the SIT,”
BJP chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told The Hindu over
telephone from Patna.
He said it was true the party had reservations about “certain
activists” who have revelled in “Modi-baiting” and were silent about
victims of terror attacks and naxal violence. “Is it that those
victims do not need justice,” Mr. Prasad asked.
Mr. Modi's first round of questioning by the SIT lasted five hours
ending at around 5.30 p.m.
Party spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman, who held up Mr. Modi as an
honourable law-abiding man, lashed out at the media for wrongly
reporting that he had been summoned by the SIT to appear before it on
March 21 when the truth was that he had been asked to accept a
mutually acceptable date in the week starting March 21. It was then
agreed that he would appear before the SIT on March 27 and he did.
She said the media was holding a trial of its own and was assuming
guilt when there was none. “He had only gone to assist the SIT and
cooperate with it,” she said. “The BJP respects the SIT and other
institutions and we work within the framework of law,” she said.
However, she did admit that the SIT was set up because the Supreme
Court was not satisfied by the manner in which the cases flowing from
the 2002 riots were being handled by the Gujarat police and the
Gujarat courts.
At some levels in the party, questions have begun to be asked whether
the BJP would treat Mr. Modi differently from how it has treated other
leaders. It was recalled that Madan Lal Khurana was forced to resign
as the Delhi Chief Minister as soon as his name figured in the
‘hawala' scandal although there was no formal charge sheet. Uma
Bharati was forced to resign as Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister after an
old case related to hoisting of the national flag in Karnataka came
up. The question that is being asked is whether Mr. Modi will be asked
by the party to put in his papers if an FIR were to be filed against
him.
Ms. Sitharaman on Saturday found fault with a reported statement by
the Law Minister advising Mr. Modi to cooperate with the SIT. “Such
advice is unacceptable,” she said.
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article317800.ece
NEW DELHI, March 28, 2010 SIT acting on Zakia Jaffrey's petition
raising questions of state complicity
Special Correspondent
Share · Comment · print · T+ The Special Investigation
Team, which interrogated Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on
Saturday, is acting on a petition filed by Zakia Jaffrey and the
Citizens for Justice and Peace. That petition alleged the involvement
of Mr. Modi and 61 other senior politicians, police officers and
bureaucrats from the State in the mass killing of Muslims in Gujarat
following the Godhra incident of February 27, 2002.
Among the questions the petition raised were:
— Why were there no minutes of the meeting which Mr. Modi held with
senior officers for a review of the situation arising out of the
Godhra train burning incident?
— There are some State intelligence reports of a Vishwa Hindu Parishad
meeting held at 4 p.m. at Ahmedabad on February 27, 2002. Who attended
this meting? Were any elected members of the Gujarat legislature and
the State Cabinet present?
— Why were the bodies of the victims of the Godhra train carnage
brought to Ahmedabad, and why were they paraded in streets? Who took
that decision? Did senior police officials or the DGP report to the
Chief Minister or higher officers in writing about the likely
repercussions of parading the bodies?
— Why was no preventive action taken when a bandh call had already
been given by VHP?
— Why was the Army not called out immediately and why was there a
delay in the deployment of the Army when it reached Ahmedabad?
— Why was there a delay in the declaration of curfew in Ahmedabad on
February 28, 2002 when curfew in other cities was declared
immediately?
— Despite rules for this, why was there no arrangement for videography
of the violence by mobs in all districts of the State?
— Why were more Muslims killed in police firing during riots when it
is well known that Muslims were the target of the mob violence?
— Why was the response to distress calls from prominent Muslims like
Ehsan Jafri delayed?
— Why was there no monitoring of the instructions of senior officials,
including Chief Secretary, officials of the Home Department and the
DGP?
— Why was there no action against officials who failed to register
FIRs and why was there no adequate response to the complaints of riot
victims?
— Why was no action taken against supervisory officers, from district
superintendents of police to the level of police commissioners and
DGP, who violated the Gujarat Police Manual by not properly
supervising the investigations of serious riot-related crimes and
thereby committing culpable omission and grave misconduct?
— Why was no action taken on the supervisory officers whose negligent
supervision of the Bilkis Bano and Best Bakery mass massacre cases led
to those trials being transferred by the Supreme Court to Maharashtra?
— Why has there been no further investigation of the depositions of
IPS officer Rahul Sharma before the Nanavati Commission, to reveal the
location of BJP leaders and senior officers of police during the
riots?
— Many calls were made to Modi, his Cabinet Ministers, the then
Ahmedabad Police Commissioner, P.C. Pandey, and the then DGP, K.
Chakravarti, during the riots. Their phone records must be examined to
unearth the facts.
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/article317971.ece
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Sonia-Rahul not anti-Bachchan: Amar Singh
IANS, Apr 1, 2010, 04.56pm IST
Amitabh BachchanThe Congress' attacks on mega star Amitabh Bachchan
over being brand ambassador of Gujarat have not been at the behest of
party president Sonia Gandhi or her MP son Rahul Gandhi, expelled
Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh said Thursday.
"Personally, I have full faith that this whole act (the Congress'
statements) could not have been done at the level of Sonia Gandhi and
Rahul Gandhi," Amar Singh, a close friend of Bachchan, said in the
latest post on his blog. Amar Singh said he had interacted many times
with the top leadership of the Congress on political issues but had
not found any streak of vindictiveness in them.
The Congress had asked Bachchan to clarify whether he, as brand
ambassador for Gujarat, endorsed the 2002 riots in the state even as
Chief Minister Narendra Modi himself is being questioned in the matter
by a Supreme Court appointed investigation team.
But referring to the Gandhi family, Singh said: "The family, whose
daughter is sensitive to the killer of her father, the family which
has piety even for those who had committed this detestable act, their
heart cannot be so harsh to the family of Dr Harivansh Rai Bachchan
and Teji Bachchan, leave Amitabh."
He said proof of this was that Bachchan's daughter-in-law Aishwarya
Rai got the Padma Shri award during the United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) government's rule and Bachchan was given the best actor award.
He said some of his associates feel the "unnecessary propaganda" has
been started by a person "who wanted me to make anti-Congress remarks
in my love for Bachchan".
While Singh has openly criticised Bachchan's wife Jaya Bachchan for
staying put in the Samajwadi Party, he defended the mega star over his
acceptance of Modi's offer to be brand ambassador of Gujarat. Singh
said: "Leave Modi to the Supreme Court and the Bachchan family to its
art and culture." Recounting that he and Bachchan shared the dais at
Pune Tuesday, Singh also took a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party's
(BJP) "sudden love" for the actor. Singh added BJP leader L.K. Advani
and the late Pramod Mahajan had rejected Bachchan's plea to take steps
to prevent disruption of the world beauty pageant in Bangalore in
1996. "Today, BJP has suddenly realised the actor in Amitabh.
Whichever the party, honour and dishonour of an artist should have
permanence and should not be based on political self-interest," he
said.
Asserting that there was a vast difference between the "communal
politics" of Modi and promoting tourism in Gujarat, Singh said film
director "Yash Chopra and actor Shah Rukh Khan had made films on BJP
leader and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and they
continued to be close to parties opposed to the BJP as well". He said
actor Salman Khan too has canvassed for his friends both in the BJP
and the Congress.
ABVP calls for Bihar bandh
News Desk - March 31, 2010 PATLIPUTRA —
Elaborate security arrangements have been made for the state-wide
bandh called by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthy Parishad (ABVP) tomorrow to
protest against police lathicharge on its activists at the secretariat
police station on March 29.
State police headquarters sources said all the police stations have
been put on a maximum alert and patrolling was intensified to ensure
normal movement of trains and vehicular traffic.
Police personnel would be posted at the universities and colleges, the
sources said.
ABVP General Secretary Amritanshu said the VHP and Bajrang Dal
extended their support for tomorrow’s shutdown.
He said the strike has also been called to protest against Nitish
Kumar government’s move to set up a unit of the Aligarh Muslim
University at Kishanganj in Bihar.
- AGENCIES
6 Responses to “ABVP calls for Bihar bandh”
i do understand the apprehension of A.B.V.P but having said that i
also believe that empowerment of MUSLIMS should be given utmost
priority otherwise the community would remain laggard for years to
come. The AMU at kisanganj should spearhead a revolution in the
empowerment of Muslims and bring it closer to the mainstream INDIA.
NISHANT KUMAR April 1st, 2010 4:52 pm
I think setting up AMU central university branch is good move.
Sandip April 1st, 2010 3:03 pm
thanks guys for ur voice against abvp…that’s completely true that they
never initiated their step to bring central university in bihar and
now when somebody needs their appreciation they r protesting..shame on
abvp…
i don’t think anybody of them has truly been a vidyarthi,just dirty
politician..baba come out of politics and go earn ur livelihood,u r no
more needed in the politics of bihar..
i appeal to biharis to come together against this kind of unwanted
strike,pls let bihar grow with its current speed….
ghazanfar April 1st, 2010 12:46 pm
I condemn the protest of AVBP. They are doing it for cheap popularity.
I appriciate the police lathi charge on AVBP activist.
JAI BIHAR!
Acha Bihari Banye
Raman Gopal April 1st, 2010 9:42 am
BJP or ABVP doesn’nt set-up any university or college in Bihar . Now
when AMU is being set-up they are creating ruckus and theories to
oppose the educatinal development in bihar.
Creating educational institues will mobilise Biharis youth on the
right path of education . nitihs kumar should open more instituion in
Bihar , Muslim colleges, Christian college, Buddhist coleges , jain
colleges all is welcome to start in Bihar .
Jai bihar !! All is well !! Jai Buddha !!
BJP Goes cheap April 1st, 2010 4:55 am
Hey what happened to thakrey’s support. That will be really great .
ABVP should have requested Bjp for that.
Where was abvp when no central university was in Bihar, just to make
some noise…. Good work abvp…. No wonder bjp is going down
Krishna April 1st, 2010 2:47 am
http://jaibihar.com/abvp-calls-for-bihar-bandh-tomorrow/201018633.html
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Basics about Tantra
By Cory Silverberg, About.com Guide
Updated January 19, 2009
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the
Medical Review Board
.See More About:tantratantric sexspiritual sex
Sex is exciting, but it’s nothing new. It’s possible that for as long
as we’ve had sex, we’ve had people who wrote about sex and thought
about what it means and what might make it more meaningful. Tantric
sex and teaching about Tantric sexuality represent one of the oldest
examples of a philosophy of spiritual sexuality that continues to be
practiced today.
What is Tantra?
One translation of the word Tantra is "tools for expansion." Tantra is
over 1500 years old, and like yoga it originated in India. It is a set
of teachings and practices that are specifically designed to help us
feel more, to increase our awareness of our own energy and the energy
around us. The path that Tantra uses to these ends is the exploration
of sexual energy.
The goal of Tantric sex is to allow us to experience more depth and
breadth in our sexuality. The goal is not necessarily orgasm, but
rather enriching the whole sexual experience.
Is Tantra a Religion?
While traditional Tantric teachings refer to concepts such as
“universal energy” or “higher power” the teachings are, in many cases,
not about stubbornly sticking to one set of beliefs or rules. If you
are interested in the idea of sexual expression bringing you closer to
a higher power, you will find much in Tantra that speaks to you. If
you are looking for a way to enhance or deepen your sexual connection
with your partner, Tantra can offer many wonderful opportunities
without requiring that you follow any specific set of beliefs.
Who is Tantric Sex Good For?
Many of the teachings are about desire and the experience of sexual
energy. Unlike western approaches to improving your sex life, Tantra
teachings do not focus on external evaluations of what our body looks
like, what kind of car we drive, how we wear our hair. In this way
Tantric sex teaching are open to anyone who is interested in exploring
a new path to sexual fulfillment.
Incorporating ideas of Tantra into your sex life can be something
anyone does, regardless of age, sexual orientation, and what your body
looks, like, how it feels, how it moves, etc…
What are Chakras?
Tantra distinguishes many different energy systems within us. One of
these that you might have already read about is chakras; energy
centers in the body between the pelvis and the top of the head. In
this system of thought, there is the idea that the smooth flow of
energy in our bodies can get stuck somewhere in the system blocked
from moving freely or depleted for a variety of reasons. Tantric
practice works toward keeping energy flowing through us smoothly and
naturally.
What is Tantric Sex Like?
Tantra is different from western ideas about sex in some other
important ways. The western concept of sex is like a story with a
clear beginning (sexual excitement), middle (penetration), and end
(orgasm). This is the way it’s supposed to be and if you don’t follow
the story, something is wrong. Sex without penetration is often viewed
as being "not real” or “merely” foreplay.
In Tantric sex the point of sex is not orgasm, the point is to feel.
There is no clear cut beginning middle or end. Most of the exercises
related to Tantric sex involve slowing things down, trying not to
focus on our external body, or orgasm, or anything outside of our
experience of the moment.
Without a focus on orgasm, the goal becomes increased awareness
leading to greater understanding of ourselves, which eventually leads
to enlightenment. There is no pressure to "get over the top". This
doesn't mean that orgasm doesn't exist in Tantra, it just isn't the be
all and end all. The spiritual practice and the good sexual feelings
are inter-related, each leading back to, and improving the other.
What Tantric sex “looks like” will be different for different people.
Tantra is taught by many teachers around the world, who have their own
take on it, influenced by the cultures they grew up in. Certainly a
key feature of Tantric sex is the importance of breathing, and slowing
down sexual behavior compared to the hectic, orgasm-focused North
American approach. [h4]Recommended Reading[/h4]
http://sexuality.about.com/od/spiritualsex/a/tantra101.htm
Cory Silverberg
About.com Guide to Sexuality
Email MeMy BlogMy Forum.Cory Silverberg is an AASECT certified
sexuality educator, author, media contributor and researcher.
Experience:
Since discovering his passion for talking and teaching about sex, Cory
Silverberg has worked in as many areas of sexuality as he can find
time for. He is a sexuality media consultant, a founding member of a
worker co-operative sex store, a sex educator, a frequent contributor
to national media, and the co-author of The Ultimate Guide to Sex and
Disability. He also has conducted workshops across North America on
the topic of sex and technology, sex toys, sexual communication, and
sexuality and disability.
Education:
Cory received an honors BA in psychology from York University and a
Masters degree in counseling psychology from The Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education at The University of Toronto. His area of
research in both degrees was human sexuality.
From Cory Silverberg:
"Sexuality is the best and most interesting way for me to understand
the world and the people around me. On this site you will find
friendly, non-judgmental, and accessible information, encouragement,
and advice that will try to get you to think about sex in different
ways."
References:
•American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and
Therapists
Cory has been certified by AASECT as a sex educator.
http://sexuality.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=sexuality&cdn=health&tm=124&gps=263_264_918_510&f=20&tt=17&bt=1&bts=1&st=24&zu=http%3A//www.aasect.org/
•The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability
The most recent book Cory co-authored focusing on sexuality and
disability.
http://sexuality.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=sexuality&cdn=health&tm=158&gps=220_302_918_510&f=20&tt=17&bt=1&bts=1&st=24&zu=http%3A//www.cleispress.com/book_page.php%3Fbook_id%3D227
•Come As You Are
Cory is a founding member of this co-operatively owned, education
based sex toy store.
•Internet Sexuality Information Services (ISIS)
Cory sits on the board of this non-profit that works in sexual health
and technology
Thanks for visiting sexuality.about.com. Most of the questions people
email me already have answers (or suggestions for where you can find
the answers) on the site. If you can't find what you're looking for,
if you have suggestions about ways to improve this site, or if you
have a comment that you don't think would fit into the forums, feel
free to email me. I may not always have an answer, but I'm happy to
try. Unfortunately it takes me some time to get to all the emails, so
I can't promise an immediate response. You can email me at
sexuali...@about.com
Thanks again for visiting Sexuality at About.com
http://sexuality.about.com/contact/Cory-Silverberg-17133.htm
Sexuality Blog
By Cory Silverberg, About.com Guide to Sexuality
Monday March 29, 2010
CREA, http://web.creaworld.org/ the feminist human rights organization
based in the global South and led by women from the global South.
which developed and ran this
http://sexuality.about.com/b/2009/11/19/new-online-course-on-sexuality-disability-and-rights.htm
online course on sexuality, disability, and rights, is accepting
applications for their 4th Global Sexuality, Gender and Rights
Institute, happening in Istanbul from June 12-19. From their site:
http://web.creaworld.org/home.asp
The Sexuality, Gender and Rights Institute is an annual, week-long,
residential course that focuses on a conceptual study of sexuality. It
examines the links between sexuality, rights, gender, and health and
their interface with socio-cultural and legal issues. Participants
will critically analyze policy, research and program interventions
using a rights-based approach.
The content of the course sounds great, and the list of participating
faculty is crush worthy (in a very thoughtful, academic, kind of way,
of course).
The deadline for applications is April 18th. More information and
applications are available on their website.
What's the Difference Between Lasting Longer for Sex, and Sex that
Lasts Longer?
Friday March 26, 2010
"Please. I want to last longer."
Every week I receive a few emails with variations of this request. The
emails are usually from people identifying themselves as male who are
most often having sex with women. The rarely offer up details about
the sex they are having. The emails are brief and polite. The emailer
wants to provide more pleasure for his partner, and believes that
being able to last longer will solve their problem.
I have a different problem. I need to know what they want to last
longer at. You may think it's obvious; that everyone wants to make
intercourse last longer. But that's not obvious to me. I have the
benefit of talking with thousands of people a year about their sex
lives so I know that sex is more than intercourse. If you're someone
for whom sex has always been all about intercourse, it makes sense
that you'd think that your ability to maintain an erection during
intercourse defines your value as a sexual partner. It's hard to learn
about what other people's sex lives are really like. More often we end
up reading statistics on average frequency of sex, or how long sex
lasts. But statistics have a white washing effect, and they don't
always reflect individual experience.
So I usually start with a few questions of my own. When they respond
(most don't, by the way) I can usually offer a few answers or
resources, or at the very least, a different way of thinking about it.
Read the full article - Questions for Those Who Want to Last Longer
Sex Tips for the Rest of Us - Stop and Go Sex Play
Wednesday March 24, 2010
Most sex tips I read don't apply to me at all. They assume too much,
about my body, about my gender, about what I want from sex. I could go
on, and on. But instead, over the years, I've been compiling sex ideas
that try not to assume or expect too much. I call them sex tips for
the rest of us.
This week's sex tip suggests a playful way to teach your partner what
kinds of sexual touch are working for you and what kinds are, not so
much. Nothing in our sexual response is set in stone, our bodies and
desires change over time, so don't think of this as writing the
definitive story on what you like. It's more of a way to open up a
line of communication often shut down by embarrassment and fear.
The Set
There are so many things we don't share with our partners about our
sexual feelings. We might be embarrassed to disclose a sexual desire
for fear of being rejected, laughed at, or told we're perverted. We
might not tell a partner that we prefer one kind of touch or activity
to another for fear of hurting their feelings. We all do this at
times. Not telling a partner that you'd rather them go faster or
slower, a little to the left or a little to the right, isn't the end
of the world. But it's a silence where we all lose out. If you're in a
long term relationship and have established patterns of being sexual
with each other, it can seem especially hard to break that pattern by
saying you do or don't like something new. This sex tip offers a fun
way to do just that.
The Exercise
The exercise is simple. Pick a time when you have (ideally) a few
hours of uninterrupted time and privacy. Pick a place you're both
comfortable physically and a setting where you can both get as naked
as you want to be. You're going to take turns touching each other. You
begin by touching any part of your partner's body. Stroke their hair,
offer a back massage, move in right for a handjob, whatever. Your
partner takes a minute or two to feel your touch and then has to say
one of six words: "stop," "slower," "faster," "softer," "harder," or
"keep going". If they say stop, then you switch and your partner
begins to touch you. If they say any of the other words, you need to
do what they ask. You go for five minutes, and then switch (yes, even
if you're almost "there", you must switch at five minutes!)
The point of this sex tip isn't to help you find each others "perfect"
way of being touched. There's no such thing as a touch that's always
perfect. It might be frustrating that you only have four words to
choose from, but the game is designed to make you more aware of the
limits you put on yourself and your mutual sexual pleasure by not
talking at all. It's also meant to make the mechanics of sexual touch
more like a game, just for the time being.
Try to do this for at least three turns each. Once you're done, you
may want to keep having sex. Whether you do or don't, at some point
later on, talk about how it felt both to give such structured feedback
to your partner and also to hear the feedback. Did you feel bad when
you're partner said stop? We're you surprised at the times when they
wanted faster or slower touch? Are there things you learned doing this
that you think will change the way you both give and receive sexual
touch?
As always, try to have fun!
Read all Sex Tips for the Rest of Us
http://sexuality.about.com/od/humpdaysextips/Sex_Tips_for_the_Rest_of_Us.htm
Taking One Step Forward and Two Steps Back in the Sex Toy Industry
Monday March 22, 2010
It's a time of great change in the sex toy industry. On the one hand
an industry that has been, for almost 60 years, controlled by a small
number of big players, is seeing increasing competition from small and
medium sized manufacturers who are bringing basic business sense to a
product category that has thrived often in spite of itself. On the
other, the "big players" are in danger of being eclipsed by much
bigger players, huge multinational corporations (such as SSL, Church
and Dwight, and most recently, Phillips) moving into the sex toy
market, wide eyed with excitement over huge profit margins and, what
often seems like, an easy sell.
If you believe that capitalism is good, then you could say that the
ultimate winner in all this is the consumer. Partly because I'm not
sure about capitalism, and partly because I'm more interested in
education than commerce, I'm skeptical that a more sophisticated
commercialization of sexual desire is in fact any better than what we
currently have.
In any case, because I'm a sex toy industry nerd I follow all of this
with great interest. I want the industry to continue developing. And
while I have high hopes, often I'm reminded that evolution,
particularly when sex is involved, can take time. Take two recent
business pieces on the sex toy industry. JimmyJane was given a start
up profile in Reuters small business news. The piece is interesting,
and refreshingly it's written just as it would be for any other start
up. But the vision of the company, and particularly it's founder,
Ethan Imboden, is undercut by the fact that most of it's backers are
unwilling to associate themselves with the investment. In the article
one investor chalks this up to puritanism in Silicon Valley.
This may or may not be a problem, but it's interesting to think about
how, as sexual pleasure products become less stigmatized and more
investors flock to this highly profitable category, this
quintessentially American relationship to sex will play out in a
purely capitalist arena. Once the shareholders of WalMart see the
writing on the wall, will they be able to say no to a sexual pleasure
section in their stores? And what happens if it turns out, as Phillips
may have discovered, that the way to make the most money is to be
explicit about the products you sell?
A different kind of conflict is seen in this marketing profile of
Lovehoney. Lovehoney is a UK based online sex toy retailer, and one of
the hardest working adult websites in the world. Creative, flexible,
and tenacious, there isn't a marketing approach Lovehoney hasn't
tried, and they have been ahead of the curve among online adult
retailers on a number of fronts. Which is partly why this interview
with company co-founder Neal Slateford was so disappointing. Where the
Reuters piece was good because it treated Jimmyjane like any other
business, the Econsultancy profile throws lobs at Lovehoney and seems
to think that reprinting a company press release is enough if the
company sells sex toys. Can you imagine any other marketing profile
where we would learn nothing about the companies market share, their
strategies, or their vision of the future of the industry? To be fair,
this isn't actually journalism, it's a profile on a organizations
website. But the step backward here is still worth noting. Lovehoney's
reticence to talk about the industry, to step ahead and know that
while others may follow, you can't break through if you're hiding in
the shadows, feels like a particularly old sex toy industry way of
doing business.
Most Fun Sex Survey. Ever.
Friday March 19, 2010
I often complain about quantitative social science research in this
blog. But I had the most fun I've had filling out boxes in a long time
with this adorable and frankly long overdue survey from Dr. Debby
Herbenick at Indiana University. The survey is called Sexual Intimacy
and Expression: A Survey of Men and Women Who Live With Pets and true
to it's name it's all about the impact of your dogs and cats on your
sex life.
I laughed, I cried (from laughing), I had the chance to express some
of my most conflicted and creative thoughts about having a dog who
pretty much ALWAYS wants to be the center of attention.
If you've got a pet, check it out. If you know someone who does, pass
it along. It's all in the name of science.
Take the survey - Sexual Intimacy and Expression: A Survey of Men and
Women Who Live With Pets
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JL7THLB
Erection Fretting (or Why We're Dying to Talk About Sex)
Wednesday March 17, 2010
We fret about erections. Those whose erections figure large in their
sex lives fret if they stop getting them, or if the ones they have now
are different than the ones they had before. Those who rely on the
erections of others for sex play fret if their partners lack of
erection is a sign of lack of interest, lack of love, lack of lust.
Sex educators, desperately trying to derail unrealistic and narrowly
conceived sexual norms, fret about how much everyone frets about
erections. Forget the erections, we're sometimes heard shouting over
the ramparts. There are more tools in heaven and earth that can
arouse. And some of them come with multiple speeds, if you hadn't
noticed.
But toys, fingers, and other body parts aren't actually substitutes
for penises. They may at times be more pleasure producing, but
suggesting they are the same thing seems pig headed.
And as a recent German study points out, there may be more reasons
than a crisis of virility for men and their partners to stand at
attention when their erections aren't. From a prepared release:
Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a strong predictor of death from all
causes and of heart attack, stroke and heart failure in men with
cardiovascular disease (CVD), German researchers reported in
Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
In the first study to show that ED is predictive of death and
cardiovascular outcomes, researchers found that men with CVD and ED
(compared to those without ED) were twice as likely to suffer death
from all causes and 1.6 times more likely to suffer the composite of
cardiovascular death, heart attack, stroke and heart failure
hospitalization.
This isn't the first research to point out that erections (sensitive
as they are to the waxing and waning fortunes of circulation) are
something of a canary in a coal mine when it comes to heart health.
The researchers of the most recent study are calling on men to think
about heart disease if they are noticing a change in their erections
and calling on doctors to ask routinely about erectile functioning. I
guess there's an argument that this is good, anything that gets us
talking more about sexual health is positive. But in the absence of
proper sexual health training for doctors and in the context of a
health care system that never gives physicians and patients time to
talk about tricky subjects, it's hard to know if the kinds of
conversations that may happen as a result of this research and the
media coverage of it, will do anyone any good.
Also it would be nice if just once we didn't have to wait to be told
we might DIE before we start talking about sex.
Read more - LA Times: Erectile dysfunction is strong predictor of
fatal heart ailments, study finds
Related - Erectile Dysfunction: Prevalence and Risk Factors in the
U.S. ; Possible Treatment for Erectile Dysfunction Resulting from
Priapism ; Consumer Reports Takes on Erectile Dysfunction Ads
http://sexuality.about.com/od/anatomyresponse/a/erectiledysfunc.htm
http://sexuality.about.com/b/2009/11/03/possible-treatment-for-erectile-dysfunction-resulting-from-priapism.htm
http://sexuality.about.com/b/2008/06/17/consumer-reports-takes-on-erectile-dysfunction-ads.htm
Is God Your Sexual Co-Pilot?
Monday March 15, 2010
A recent study in the journal Sociology of Religion looks at
American's beliefs about divine intervention in their daily lives.
Based on two large surveys of Americans (one of which was nationally
representative) the paper reports on how much or little people believe
God is involved and influencing the events and activities of their
daily lives. Among the findings, the study documented that:
•82% of participants say they depend on God for help and guidance in
making decisions
•71 per cent believe that when good or bad things happen, these
occurrences are simply part of God's plan for them
•61 per cent believe that God has determined the direction and course
of their lives
•32 per cent agree with the statement: "There is no sense in planning
a lot because ultimately my fate is in God's hands."
There are all sorts of critical questions to ask about what these
numbers mean, especially since, if I understood the paper correctly,
participants responded to questions whether or not they actually
believed in God (so they were asked to report what they thought God
was like, even if they didn't believe in God).
But that's not why I'm sharing this information. Even if these numbers
are off, and they are much lower, it got me thinking. If you believe
that God is at all involved in your daily life, if you believe there
is a God who is making decisions or has a plan, and exerts an
influence on your path, do you believe that God is involved in your
sex life? Is it God who influences your choice of sexual partners?
What does God have to say about how much you like sex, or the kind of
sex you like?
I know a little bit about the various positions organized religions
take on sexuality (positions that are never uniform, even within one
religious faith or practice). I also know that there's a whole
Christian sex self-help industry. But what I'd like to know more about
is whether people who feel God's presence in their daily lives also
feel that presence in their sex lives.
I talk with lots of people about sex every day. And thinking on this
question I'm aware that sex is usually compartmentalized off from
other kinds of God-ish experiences.
So there are people who engage in specific kinds of sexual practices
that they call spiritual (things like Tantric and Taoist sexual
practices). And they often talk about feeling as if sexual activities
are a form of worship, that sex makes them feel closer to God. But I
don't hear those people talking so much about God outside of their
sexual practice.
And then there are people who (as this study suggests) feel as if God
is influencing their daily lives, but those folks don't talk so much
about sex.
This may or may not be the best place to ask (and for goodness sake,
if you're going to leave a comment below please be kind) but it seems
to me that there must be all sorts of voices missing from these
conversations, and I'm genuinely curious. If you do believe that God
is involved in your everyday life, how much do you think about that
when you think about sex and sexuality?
Read more - Schieman, S. "Socioeconomic Status and Beliefs about God's
Influence in Everyday Life" Sociology of Religion. Volume 71, No. 1
(2010): 25-51. Accessed March 11, 2010.
CNBC Confuses Porn Actors With Little Children
Friday March 12, 2010
It wasn't their intention, I'm sure, but this obnoxious and
condescending CNBC piece about porn actors retiring reads like a
special interest story about 6-year-old Timmy who got is very own bank
account. Who could have imagined that porn actors do things like think
about their careers, invest their savings, and plan for their futures?
Isn't it darling the way they talk about retirement and take on other
sorts of work? It's almost like they're real grown ups!
Business media outlets should cover sex work and the people who do it,
just like they do workers in almost every other industry. I only wish
they made even the slightest attempt to keep their sex bias in check,
and did a little thinking before they wrote. I'd like to hear how
Marketplace would cover sex workers. Somehow I feel it would be way
less annoying.
CNBC.com: Life After Porn: The Retirement Challenge
Heart Sex
Tuesday March 9, 2010
The mind may be our greatest sexual organ, but without the heart, our
sex lives, just like the rest of our lives, wouldn't exist. Until you,
or someone you're having sex with, has a heart attack or is diagnosed
with heart disease, you probably won't think too much about the
relationship between your heart and your sex life. But the
relationship is intimate, and having a basic understanding of both
sexual health and heart health is an important way to minimize your
risk and maximize your health and pleasure.
http://sexuality.about.com/od/sexualhealthqanda/a/sex_heart_attack_disease.htm
Read more - About Sex and Your Heart
Tipping the Scales on Sex Addiction
Monday March 8, 2010
Since the DSM working group began announcing their proposals for new
sexual diagnoses, I've been slowly making my way through the research
that their proposals are based on, trying to glean some idea of how
they arrived at what sometimes seem like fantastical proposals for the
next twenty years of psychiatric intervention in our sex lives.
In the meantime the media's fascination with sex addiction has
increased, thanks to the latest celebrity sex news (I'm waiting for
someone to call Mo'Nique's husband a sex addict and Mo'Nique herself
an enabler based on her refreshing honesty in an interview with
Barbara Walters about her marriage).
You don't need me to point you to articles that misunderstand and
misrepresent sex addiction. That's most of them. I thought I'd point
out two three articles in the past two months that try to do the
opposite.
Marty Klein - Our Addiction to Tiger Woods' "Sex Addiction"
Michael Bader - Sex Addiction: A B.S. Excuse for Not Thinking
Raymond Lawrence - America's Sexual Burlesque: The Brave New World of
Sexual Addiction
Related - What Is Sex Addiction? ; Am I A Sex Addict? ; What's Wrong
with Sex Addiction?
http://sexuality.about.com/od/sexual_worries/a/sex_addict.htm
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....and I am Sid Harth