RMF Summary: Week of April 4 - 10, 2013

Going forward, each weekly summary will contain a brief synopsis of the content, which will highlight some of the key points and takeaways. Anybody interested in co-authoring and supporting this blog to keep it productive, and make it more relevant and useful, send me a tweet.
 
Synoposis
We share Rajiv ji's latest interview (below). A key takeaway for me from this interview is that Rajiv's focus is not as much on the 20% "staunch" Hindus or the 20% anti-Hindu, but the middle 60% who are confused. It appears that the efforts of many well-wishers of Hinduism are either in the form of preaching to those 20% who already cherish Dharma, or to the other 20% who couldn't care less. Reaching out to this middle 60% segment of the Indian population is critical to maintaining the integral unity of India.

The Hindi version of 'Being Different' will be out within a few months (Ati Uttam!). Then there are two articles relating to 'Breaking India':
1. activities in the House of Lords

2. Gospel mischief in India, and egroup members getting spammed by Evangelist group World Vision.

3. Finally, a new and interesting thread on the 'Romanization of Sanskrit' was posted, that appears to be an attempt to digest Sanskrit by doing away with Devanagiri altogether!


April 5
Rajiv Malhotra's interview on Sudarshan News channel (in Hindi)



Devendra comments:
The only way to make real impact is to work unwaveringly for a long period of time on a single goal. Many people dig small holes in many places in their lives,but never forcefully enough with single-minded effort and with a plan to be able to dig out water. Rajiv Malhotra Ji's work is a guiding lesson for Hindus who want to be a part of sustaining and strengthening Hindu culture.

Hindi version of his books Being Different and Breaking India would be published this year. Hindi version of Being Different will be available in July...
People can write me off line to place their orders of Hindi version of Being Different

April 6
Breaking India work in progress in UK House of Lords
Ashok posts: Dear Rajiv I am attaching a transcript of discussion in British House of Lords last week. I have also attached my angry response as you predicted we always do....

Prakash adds:

Members may be interested in this comment in relation to developments on caste and the Equality Act in the UK: 

April 7
Criticism and debate on BD in another forum
... After reading the review, make sure to read the 100+ comments that debate the review. You might enjoy reading and participating there. Its informative for people to find out how the world of discourse is stacked up today...


[this clumsy review in Eurasiareview has been covered in a prior post a while back].

April 7
What is the indian language word for Evangelism? 
BVK asks: is there a technically correct indian language word - any one/ sanskrit or other languages / singular or constructed word to properly translate the church-word ' evangelism'?


April 9
Romanization of Sanskrit
Aditya shares: I came across a website learnsanskrit.org and was excited about what it has to offer. On the whole the idea of creating a learners guide for English speakers

who would like to learn Sanskrit seems a noble Idea. However as I went through the website certain issues came to my attention which were not quite palatable to me. Two primary issues I had were:- 1) The Introduction section which mentions the whole question of "Origin or Sanskrit" and other arguments without enough references thus making all kinds of now controversial claims about the so called "dravidian" people being pushed south etc. 2) A claim that Devanagari script can take a significant amount of time to learn so it starts off with IAST (Romanized transliteration) along with an apologetic statement "Western scholars of Sanskrit tend to prefer it to Devanagari, which is OK; after all, Sanskrit has never really had a script of its own, and the tradition of using Devanagari instead of other scripts is actually quite recent." Now the author of the lessons does make a statement initially that "Generally, all material after Starting Out will use Devanagari. For that reason, I strongly encourage you to learn Devanagari. The next unit includes Devanagari lessons, which you can use to learn and practice with the script." But lessons on Indic Devanagari script is relegated to the references section. ... What I found most interesting was that in the beta version of this site due to be launched as the next version, Devanagari script was relegated to an optional section with the statement "This material is optional and is not required to use the guide." I am quite aware that romanization of many language has been done as a sort of International Standard. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian have all been romanization. But these are to make it easy to introduce words from those langauges into english texts. I don't not know if any language is taught in the world without the need to learn its original script. Now it is true that sevaral Indic script have been used for Sanskrit not just Devnagari but then so have many scripts been used for Japanese. Kanji, Katakana, Hiragana are learned and used in Japanese. Japanese has consumed roman alphabets by including Romaji but to learn Japanese you cant use romanized transliterations you need to learn Japanese scripts. It is a hard job but it has to be done. So how can Sanskrit be learned usefully without learning the script(s) also; that is something to ponder.

Ajay responds:
"A few months back I had also gone to that site.  It's good you pointed out. Just to recall where I see the issue:

1) in History of Sanskrit.

2) at De-linking of Sanskrit from Devanagari script.

One more thing, even in India many books are there which teach Sanskrit but without teaching the Devnagari
script.

.... Though Sanskrit teaching in other scripts might look good as it will become easier to teach initially. But long term result of not learning Devangari are
1) Losing the relationship between Sanskrit and Devnagari script. I can't imagine to loose this relationship; like, the 'OM' word (symbol) in Devanagari looks majestic.
2) Not able to read original Sanskrit text as it is...."

April 9
From "Gospel for Asia"
Ravi shares: In 2008, I had circulated two online-newspaper articles (from "The Telegraph", an India-based newspaper and "The Peninsula", a Qatar-based newspaper) on a "DalitFreedomNetwork" google-group, drawing their members' attention to the two newspaper articles' details on the alleged financial finagling by Gospel For Asia's founder (K.P.Yohannan, who is Kerala-born-and-raised, but now settled in Dallas, TX, USA).

Within 24 hours of sending my email, I had received this detailed reply (email below) from GFA's COO (David Carrol,..... who is also based in Dallas, TX, USA. 

... the alacrity with which I got their beguiling response is interesting and points to the efficiency and tenacity of this global network.

And here's a quick look at the GFA's NGO registration details that shows how the Indian and Western destablisers brainstorm, synergise and work closely together at their eventual goal of Breaking India:

April 10
World Vision
I am not sure if this is sheer coincidence. But ever since I started posting messages in this discussion group, I have started to receive emails from "World Vision" ...
(yes, it seems many in the group have been spammed. even Rajiv ji :)