Preface
The opening line of the Wikipedia entry on Indology reads thus:
Indology is a name given by indologists to the academic study of the history, languages, and cultures of South Asia.
Which only reinforces the India-as-South-East-Asia stereotype, a veil that serves very useful political purposes. Among others, it helps to keep people like Pankaj Mishra, Arundhati Roy, [...]
Recall this conversation from Sholay between Amitabh and Dharam dada, where they discuss their future life (post-Gabbar’s death), complete with verbal visualizations of kids, etc.
The dream remains a dream because Amitabh dies and Dharam dada whisks Hema away from Ramgarh. End of story.
Now picture this in say, Sholay Revisited: Dharam has a son who he [...]
The United Alliance of Clowns never ceases to entertain. We have a Puppet Minister who’s been repeatedly clobbered on the nuclear deal and insists on putting himself up for more clobbering.
His so-called junior Cabinet Ministers merrily do their audacious will: they’re accountable only to Madam. While the “white collar” ministers like the PM, Chidambaram, et [...]
Nitin is rather harsh on this venerable gentleman who went overboard probably in a fit, with his admiration for the thug next door. Here’s the gentleman in question, Mr. A.G. Noorani (courtesy, The Hindu):
Truly venerable-looking, isn’t he? You can forgive him if he grandiloquises on terrorists and dictators. It is purely a product of his [...]
Amil Imani has a nice piece on how useful idiots serve Islam’s cause by providing intellectual and moral justification for terrorism. He borrows Lenin’s coinage, and defines an Useful Idiot as
…as those who lived in liberal democracies and furthered the work of communism. This new generation of Useful Idiots also lives [...]
VERY interesting at that.
The 2002 Gujarat riots, the Ayodhya dispute and the 1984 Sikh carnage will be a part of the class XII curriculum for Political Science as the NCERT has decided to include in its texts events that influenced the political process in the country since Independence.
“You cannot teach Political Science to students sidestepping [...]
From the secular Indian Express.
Today, after 13,000 pages of evidence and 686 witnesses, it’s judgment day for the 123 accused in the Bombay Blasts Case of 1993. But a verdict already seems to have been passed on the Mumbai Muslim, targeted over and over again….
Yeah, the same refrain: all non-Muslims think all Muslims are terrorists [...]
Here’s more insanity in the European Union.
Companies in the European Union may legally refuse to hire smokers because EU anti-discrimination laws do not protect them, the European Commission said.
And here’s the bureaucratic explanation justifying the insanity.
“The commission is not against recruiting workers who smoke, but we have to stick to European legislation. Our anti-discrimination legislation [...]
Amardeep Singh has an interesting article that’s curiously titled the communalisation of censorship. I believe he also runs a blog, which I tune into on and off. The article begins quite engagingly, recounting recent and past incidents of censorship in India, what was done about it and so on, but runs into few problems starting [...]
Subscribe
Stray Thoughts on Indology: Part 2
Read Part 1
Sanskrit and Deliberate Distortion
I’ll repeat what it already superfluous: understanding Indian philosophy requires an advanced knowledge of Sanskrit because that was the language in which this most profound philosophy was laid down originally. I stress on advanced knowledge because a word in Sanskrit often doesn’t lend itself to its literal meaning but depends [...]