March 7
Jesus Yoga - the website
Ravi shares a link.
March 7
My new blog - THE HIJACKING OF WHARTON
I just tweeted this new blog. (Given the controversial nature of my
blog, it took them 2 days to finally accept it completely unchanged.) ..
Karthik comments:
"... In a Daily Pennsylvanian report, Toorjo Ghose, one of the U
Penn humanities sepoys who led the campaign to disinvite Modi, has sought to
justify his position as not being contrary to free expression:
"Ghose said he did not believe it was a free speech
issue because Modi had been invited as an honored, plenary speaker and this
position was tantamount to the conference endorsing his development ideas.We are under no obligation as an institution to endorse his
brand of politics and that's exactly what we would have done had the
invitation gone through, Ghose said."
In fact, Ghose is lying, and U Penn had every obligation to
let the Wharton students' invitation stand. By inviting Modi to speak at their
conference, the student organizers of the Wharton India Economic Forum had
expressed their intention to do exactly this: facilitate a distinguished guest
who represents certain ideas of development and a certain brand of politics.
The WIEF conference is organized by students of the Wharton School, and should
they choose to endorse certain ideas of development by association with the
guests they invite, it is entirely within their rights of open expression,
guaranteed by the University of Pennsylvania itself, to do so.
See the Provosts' Guidelines for Open Expression, as listed
on the U Penn website:
Of particular relevance here is:
"D. In case of conflict between the principles of the
Guidelines on Open Expression and other University policies, the principles of
the Guidelines shall take precedence."
...
The rank hypocrisy of Ghose, who himself availed of
constitutional free speech guarantees by participating in the Occupy
Philadelphia movement, stands vivdly illuminated. Apparently, open expression
is fine as long as it happens to serve his own political proclivities. Political positions in opposition to his own
are to be silenced by any means necessary; blackmail, activism and thought
policing are perfectly acceptable when it comes to obviating the WIEF student
organizers' right to open expression. "
Rajiv's response: "This is why I am glad to see that Kartik and many others have posted their comments on Huffpost. This is how ideas spread, not through private whispering. Thanks to Kartik and others..."
Karthik further adds:
"It's
an astonishing volte-face. The shrill Sepoys who relentlessly castigate
Modi on allegations of human rights abuse, invariably respond with
deafening silence to the Pakistani genocide in Bangladesh. In fact, some
of them actually transform into David Duke-calibre Holocaust Deniers on
that subject. One particularly nasty specimen is Sarmila Bose, who has
crafted an entire "scholarly" career out of systematically minimizing
the scale of Pakistan's atrocities. In a curious inversion of the usual
Sepoy propensity to cite overblown atrocity-lit, Bose has actually
deflated the well documented figures of three million murders and
ten million displaced by the Pakistani army, to arrive at merely
"thousands" of victims.
... In Bose's case, the Hidden White Hand accidentally showed
itself by clicking "Reply All" on a certain e-mail chain. The
encouraging words of the Woodrow Wilson Institute's William B Milam,
urging Bose to simply ignore those who questioned her credibility, were
inadvertently sent to everyone who had been included on that chain...
including her questioners! .....
Here is an article by Naheem Mohaiemen, a Bangladesh history scholar, which lays out a devastating critique of Bose's thesis. The debate continues, with Bose's response answered by a crippling rejoinder from Mohaiemen:
Hope the above references are useful."
March 9
An encounter with Jehovah's Witnesses
I just wanted to post a note about about my recent encounter with Jehovah's Witnesses. It was Saturday and while I had better things to do I started on fixing ...
...They started on the idea of "being saved". I asked, "saved from what"?
"Oh, don't you know, we are all born sinners", said the JW. I then asked why I was a sinner and the reply was exactly along the lines Rajiv Ji talks about - Adam/Eve and Original Sin, Virgin Birth blah blah blah. And therefore, he concluded that we must accept Jesus as our savior. I
gave him a small talk about my birth being divine and God being within myself and the notion of God realization etc. Then I asked him if he (the JW) would pay for my sin. He said No, but that Jesus would. I pointed out the fact that either he unwilling to do what JC would do and
therefore somewhat hypocritical, or expected another person to pay for his faults including any sin he commits. A blank stare ensued and by now they were a tad uncomfortable. Seeing his weakness I had to nuke now, so
I asked rather innocently "Does Jesus believe in the Original Sin"? He frantically searched his copy of the Bible and merely muttered, Umm, Jesus believed in the Old Testament ... and so must be... Was time for them to leave. [But I myself do not know if JC himself
believed in the original sin]...."
March 9
Universities in US & China are getting lessons on human values from
Universities in US & China are getting lessons on human values from the great epic - Ramayana ...
AHMEDABAD: Students at universities in China are getting lessons on human values from the great Hindu epic - Ramayana.
Wise sayings from Valmiki's text are being adapted by the universities teaching Hindi in China and are being made relevant to the current world situations.
At least six leading universities in China including the prestigious Peking University, the Beijing Foreign Studies University as well as colleges in different parts of China are teaching Hindi, which has become a popular foreign language in China.
"We are taught verses from Ramayana as part of literature classes at the university," said Eric Huidram, a student-turned Chinese translator and interpreter from Manipur.
Several universities in the US have included reading the Ramayana as part of comparative humanities and literature sessions on Asia.
It was through the efforts of Chinese indologist Ji Xianlin that many Chinese learnt the language of Sanskrit and the epic Ramayana. Ji, who founded the Department of Eastern Languages at Peking University, translated Ramayana from the original Sanskrit to Chinese in poetry form. Ji's translated work of Ramayana and Mahabharata will be displayed at the culture park being planned at Kailash Mansarovar by India China Economic and Cultural Council (ICEC)..."
[
Sandeep's 'Rediscovery of India' is among the very best, if not the best blog whose content if filled with original Indian thought]
March 9
Fwd: [TheBecoming] Fwd: How Wharton Scored a Huge Self-Goal by dis-i
JP shares: How Wharton Scored a Huge Self-Goal March 5, 2013 By Sandeep Balakrishna
[
We will create a separate webpage for the collection of Rajiv's links below and display it on the right of the blog]
March 11
My Wikipedia entry is obsolete, misleading
".... fix the Wikipedia entry on me.
- It
gives too much importance to wendy doniger as though i have nothing
useful or original of my own to say, and i am some sort of heckler
bothering her.
- even in the context of doniger it does not lead
the reader to my extensive articles at Sulekha (at least half a dozen
large ones) on the whole freudian psychoanalysis issue.
- there is
no mention of BI or BD- each even deserves its own page. There is
abundant material available on these books at their respective web
sites, and other places like the hitchhiker's guide.
- no mention of my YouTubes
- No mention of my writings on Huffington Post, FirstPost, Niti Central, Patheos, Beliefnet and lots of other places.
With all due respects may I point out that our folks often tend to suffer from:
- Paralysis
by analysis: this means going on and on with planning, analyzing some
very large scale project that becomes too unwieldy to ever happen,
rather than DOING something manageable quickly which can be extended
later.....
....
specific
examples of changes to my Wiki entry that I feel would be fair. Here are
some that come shouting out:
- Most references given are NOT
my work but the works of opponents being promoted, or completely
irrelevant items. So delete references to Kurien, Campbell, Prothero,
Wilberg, Hinnells, Block. Frankly I had no idea of such things until I
saw Wiki. What a bunch of rubbish to define me in those terms.
- The
Youtube seems to have been just added. But the direct Youtube site
gives scattered and unorganized videos, often part 1 and part 2 of same
item show up unrelated. Better is to have "Videos - Being Different" and "Videos - Breaking India"
- Beliefnet, Firstpost, Sulekha home pages for me should get added.
- http://beingdifferentbook.com/blogs/ also has many of my blogs
- http://beingdifferentbook.com/articles/ contains some excellent works by third parties on my ideas
- http://beingdifferentbook.com/downloads/ has several pdfs that give useful summaries, such as the first one in 8 pages
- http://beingdifferentbook.com/faqs/ has useful FAQs
- The hot link to my book Breaking India should be given: http://www.breakingindia.com/
- http://invadingthesacred.com/ is the link to a site on Invading the Sacred maintained by Ravi and friend
- Why only one sulekha article listed with hot link? There are a few dozen that should be individually listed. See them at:
- Speakingtree - http://www.speakingtree.in/rajivmalhotra/profile
- Each
individual item in Sulekha one has to click and see if its my blog and
if so, add it. (The have revised their presentation so many times and
messed up so bad that I stopped writing there. But old writings are
precious and must get salvaged.) Go to the list of many, many pages at: http://rivr.sulekha.com/rajiv-malhotra_225884
- Rediff has a
home page with old articles I did many of which say things that were
ahead of their time: http://www.rediff.com/news/malhotra.htm
- A
precious old debate I had online with Vijay Prashad, head sepoy of FOIL.
See home page: http://www.outlookindia.com/taghome3.aspx?tag=102635
- More debate: http://creative.sulekha.com/follow-up-on-manusmriti-to-my-article-in-outlook-india_135208_blog
- UChicago
magazine (home of Doniger and Nussbaum) does a balanced interview with
me: http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0412/features/index.shtml
- Even
the links to Infinity Foundation's projects go to the wrong places. For
instance, a project at Columbia has a link to Columbia's general home
page which has nothing to do with us. it should go to the specific page
at Infinityfoundation.com dealing with that project - see:
- The
Mandala site stopped being updated but was the single most popular
source of research works on these subjects for a decade. it deserves a
listing:
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/indic_mandala_frameset.htm
- The
Global Renaissance Conference was the first large scale conf of 4 days
done by us. The papers are available online and (still) in the process
of being edited by volunteers for publication. The entire conference
site is at:
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/s_pr/s_pr_GRC_frameset.htm
- Our
HIST project (History of Indian Science and technology) has produced 8
pioneering volumes and is the ONLY such project on India. Has continued
for 12 years. Why no mention of it. Pls include:
http://www.indianscience.org/index.html
