How much do people need to be paid to leave the Hindu fold?

According to Hinutva argument, I regret to say, they do not need to be paid very much at all.

As Mr. Vidya Bhushan Rawat put it in his article, " Equity of Faith in Secular India ?":
"For Hindutva, everybody who is dissatisfied with their faith has been paid a handsome amount of money to convert. Unfortunately, that is where the problem lies, as most of the converts are still much below the poverty line. If conversion had fetched good money and good life in monetary terms, I am sure the Brahmins, Banias and other upper caste Hindus would have been the first to grab the opportunity".

In fact, people who turn away from Hindu oppression are "rewarded" with social ostracism, discriminated against for employment, and are even beaten, raped or murdered. And yet people continue to leave the Hindu/ Brahminist fold in their thousands!

Many millions more would do so if only they dared. But, as Hindutva raises the stakes and makes it clear to what lengths it is prepared to go to preserve brahmindom, the people are becoming more and more willing to face the goons of the RSS and its allies.

So Hindutva needs to face the fact that its time in history is past. India has become irrevocably a secular state. The majority of Indians (composed, whether one likes it or not, of Dalits and OBCs) are much more likely to remain Hindus if they see a sensible Hindu community rather than the sort of power-crazed, proto-Nazi Hindutva groups that have been on view for the last few years.

The greatest enemy of the Hindus today are the Hindutva groups, just as the greatest enemies of Islam are the fundamentilist Al Qaeda and their ilk. Sphere: Related Content

Announcing an International Essay Competition (Fantasy Literature)

Do indulge a parent:

Sought After Media LLC (USA) has announced, in co-operation with Starbloom Ltd. (Ireland) and Nivedit Good Books Ltd (India), an international essay competition, based on the internationally acclaimed novel, Conspiracy of Calaspia, by my teenaged twins.

Entrants must have been born on or after January 1, 1982.

There are no other qualifications.

Essays can be up to 1,000 words.

Creativity and originality are the criteria on the basis of which an international panel of eminent judges will adjudge the top ten entries - totally independent of the writers, the publisher, the organisers and their families or employees. The panel of International Judges will be announced soon.

The ten winning essayists will be taken from their respective international airport for a 10-day literary tour of the UK, with the opportunity to have a partial-scholarship for the triennial Summer Institute of the C. S. Lewis Foundation from July 27-August 9, (a week each in Oxford and Cambridge).

There are one hundred runner-up prizes.

Recognising that the prize will tend to favour youngsters from privileged homes, the organisers have arranged for specific prizes for young people from Dalit ("outcaste"), inner-city, and other such backgrounds.

Information on the twins, the novel, the critical and popular acclaim are at: http://www.twins.guptara.net/

Information on the novel itself is at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy of Calaspia

Full details of the competition are at: http://www.calaspia-competition.com/


For your general information: the Italian-language translation of Conspiracy of Calaspia is on contract to be published next Spring from the largest Italian-language publisher, Mondadori, and the German-language and translation is due to be published by one of the oldest German-language publishers, Rowohlt, also next Spring Rowohlt has also selected Conspiracy of Calaspia as its lead novel for young adults for their 100th anniversary next year.

In fact, Mondadori and Rowohlt have signed up for the first THREE novels from the twins (I am not sure that I would have enough confidence in ANY 18-year olds to pay them solid money in anticipation of their producing work good enough to publish!). The twins are due to deliver the 2nd novel to them by the end of September this year and July 2008 respectively.

Conspiracy of Calaspia rose to number 2 on the overall Indian best-seller list (behind Kiran Desai's Booker Prize Winning novel!), and was therefore THE India best-seller for the fantasy section... Sphere: Related Content

When and where has the public trusted governments

Journalist Li Daton's article "Beijing baozi and public trust" in the latest issue of Open Democracy (http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/beijing_baozi#100) provides plenty of material for thought.

He writes:
"... in matters of public safety, public confidence in the government has been seriously eroded. People would rather believe rumours spread by their family and friends than announcements by the government. They have good reason. During the Sars epidemic, the government denied there was a problem; when the Songhua river disaster led to water supplies being cut off in the city of Harbin, the government claimed it was "fixing water pipes". Indeed, even officials from the state council information office admitted on 13 July 2007 that local governments "cover up 90% of negative news stories" and leave uncovered "less than 10%". In such a climate, it is hard for the public to entrust the government with its safety. This real and widespread public feeling is becoming a source of opposition to the government. But if the sentiment continues to build, it is not just the government that will be damaged: public safety too will be threatened - for safety cannot be built on rumours. It is self-evident that the key to solving the problem is political reform. A government that is not accountable to the public, not controlled by its vote, not forced by a free press to tell the truth, will inevitably find itself in a crisis of governance. In the end, both those in power and the public pay a heavy price."

Well, all I can say is that I hope political reform will come to Communist China but that is up to the elites in China.

The question that Li Daton's comments raises for me is: have governments always or never had public trust? Clearly neither. 100% is a difficult if not impossible to achieve in either direction, but 80% should be possible, or at least 60%. And yet as one surveys history and geography, it is astonishing how rarely people have trusted their government. There is a direct relationship between the behaviour of the rulers/elits and the degree to which the people trust them. Though there were individual kings or specific elites who acted on widely-agreed public service ideals, such individuals/ groups were few and far between.

The first systematic attempts to create systems and structures for clean and trustworthy government were attempted by the Hebrew people under the inspiration of their prophets - in other words, as far as I can discover, the Hebrews were the first people to go beyond general exhortation (such as is found in Buddhist, Hindu and other teaching around the world) and actually put into practice structural means of limiting the power of the king or elites and of holding them accountable.

However, that progress in human history went on the back burner, so to speak, as the Hebrew kingdoms disappeared after David and Solomon.

It was not till the 12th century rediscovery of the Hebrew principles in Europe, which led eventually to the Magisterial Reformations of Calvin and Cromwell, Zwingli and Hus and Luther and the rest, that these principles were put into effect again. Then of course, under the influence of the Radical Reformation, these Hebrew principles were put even more systematically into effect in the states that united to form the USA.

It was specifically due to the implementation of these Hebrew ideas that Europe and the USA arose from being some of the poorest areas of the world, to becoming some of the richest parts of the world.

Today, it is these Hebrew principles that are being universalised as globalisation marches on, leading to a conflict between the traditional exploitative ways of kings and elites in most of the world through history, and the new Hebrew-style expectations around the world. That is why traditional societies have to choose between their traditional ways of doing things and "modern" (i.e. ancient Hebrew) principles of governance and transparency and confession and reparation and repentance and so on.

It is not only China that has to choose but most of the rest of the world as well. That is one of the unseen and unrecognised drivers of world conflict today. Sphere: Related Content

Gideon's Tongue

The story of Gideon, found in the Biblical book of Judges chapter 7 is quite extraordinary. I don't mean the bit about his 300 men beating an army many times their size, "no more to be counted than the sand on the seashore".

Rather I mean the bit about the selection procedure for Gideon's band of 300. You know the story, Gideon marches 10,000 men to a spring and orders them to drink the water. Some of them kneel down to drink, while 300 "lap with their hands to their mouths...like a dog". These are the ones who are chosen.

Now I don't know when was the last time you had to drink from a spring. Kneeling down and putting your mouth directly to the water (which is what the majority of Gideon's lot apparently did) is not my idea of fun. In other words, I too would have bunched my fingers and my palm and scooped the water up to my mouth. But then I would have half-sucked and half-poured the water into my mouth.

In fact, I have tried to lap like a dog to check out the Gideon story, and I can tell you that you can't get much water into your system by that method.

So I can only surmise that the construction of the tongues of the humans of that time must have been rather like a dog's - and therefore rather different from mine (I can't speak for the rest of humanity on this point, as I am not a regular examiner of tongues and of their "lapping capability").

In any case, I regret that I would not have been of much use to Gideon. Sphere: Related Content

Dumbing down: the FT?

I am not sure how current the phrase "dumbing down" is outside the UK. But this British expression refers to the lowering of standards, specifically intellectual and linguistic ones.

Dumbing down is no doubt sometimes deliberate, but is usually the accidental by-product of structural changes, ownership, incentive systems, and so on.

This phenomenon started with British TV, which used to tower head and shoulders above TV in the rest of the world. BBC TV resisted valiantly for some years. Then standards at BBC Radio started crumbling and finally even atthe BBC World Service (Radio) - even though the latter channel continues to be the best in the world, its standards have certainly fallen from its heyday in the Sixties. Commercial interests continue to hammer and chip at this at the whole of the BBC.

In a sort of parallel movement, standards started falling at British newspapers. The great newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian (whatever one might have thought of their politics) slowly succumbed. The Independent has provided some challenge to that trend. However, I don't keep up with any of them, now that I have lived outside the UK for some 12 years.

But I do keep up with the FT, whose standards also started declining some years ago. I recollect writing to the Editor of the FT when I first noticed this trend, asking what the colour of someone's clothes had to do with the content of the particular front-page story, and whether such frivolity could be expected to continue.

No answer of course.

Now things have come to such a sorry pass that we find the following headline in today's edition (on the Net): "Pessimism manifests itself very effectively to produce the status of monetary liquidity, the driving force for a return to growth". This is not English. Rather, it is some kind of gibberish.

BTW, FT.com has also gone increasingly for advertisements on its site, presumably in order to make money. In principle, I have no objection to advertisements. They can be informative. They can even be entertaining. However, in their search for returns, the chiefs at FT.com have now started letting in advertising with kinetic content. This slows the site so much that reading FT.com is becoming a substantial waste of time. Sphere: Related Content

Should governments fund religious institutions?

I see that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has demanded an end to the Indian government's funding of madarsas (institutions where Muslim children are taught their religious basics - but institutions where religious extremism, it is alleged, is also sometimes inculcated).

The Indian government has become gradually less non-transparent over the years, but there is still a lot of non-transparency left.

It will certainly be very helpful to Indian voters to see the extent to which the Indian government subsidises not only Muslim religious institutions (which are the 2nd most numerous in the country) but also Hindu religious institutions (which are the most numerous). Also of course, the smaller or "minority" religious institutions run, in order of size, by Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and others (as applicable).

Indian voters can then decide whether to continue, or to discontinue, subsidies to religious institutions.

Naturally, such a question applies not only to India. Similar questions can be asked in other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and other Muslim countries, or Sri Lanka and other Buddhist countries, and so on.

In the United States, a helpful distinction is drawn between (a) religious institutions themselves (such as churches) which are primarily for worship and religious instruction, and (b) the services provided by religious groups to society as a whole regardless of religious commitment or orientation - such as schools, universities, soup kitchens and so on which serve everyone.

The government does not fund the former, but is happy to support financially the latter in certain specified ways.

Naturally, there are vigorous debates and even court cases about where exactly to draw the line between (a) and (b), but the distinction is a good one to draw in principle.

Even more naturally, in a democratic country with a dominant religion (e.g. the USA with Christianity), there is no reason why the citizens of that country should not decide to fund the religious institutions (i.e. category (a)). But it is a mark of the political maturity of the USA that its citizens do not do so and choose only to fund categry (b).

Other countries, such as India, would do well to follow that distinction - even though I predict that it will be harder to maintain the distinction between (a) and (b) in countries such as India where corruption is widespread, and specifically where religious corruption is endemic. Sphere: Related Content

My response to Ross Mahoney's post on Professorships of War

Ross Mahoney wrote: "You can not make such a comparison between war and Hitler. That is to misunderstand the whole purpose of these Profersorship. We have for too long ignored the subject of war in academia. It has been vilified as the realm of the military and in doing this academic history has ignored the most important aspect of human history, war. To understand this is to try and grasp human nature itself. Is this not a cause worth understanding then I am not sure there is much else to bother with. War encompases all aspects of human history, therefore, it is right that these chairs are established to further our understanding. "

My response is:

1. Clearly all comparisons are by their very nature improper. That is, all comparisons are made for particular purposes. My purpose was to illustrate that focusing on a particular subject, by the very act of so focusing, enhances the status of that subject. I do not see that Mr Mahoney disagrees with me on this point.

2. However, Mr Mahoney asserts that the PURPOSE of having "professorships of war" is to "try and grasp human nature". This is a most interesting point, and were this to be so, I would expect the Professorship concerned to be titled something like "Professorship of Human Nature" with some suitable sub-title indicating that how this Professorship of Human Nature differed from (for example) psychological and sociological Professorships was that this one focused on examining war for this purpose.

3. In what I have read of the work of such Professors, I have not found a particular emphasis on understanding human nature. In all likelihood, this is simply my lack of suitable guides in the field, and I will be grateful to Mr Mahoney for drawing my attention to suitable works that do focus on this area.

4. It is a moot point whether "war encompasses all aspects of human history" or vice versa.

5. I have some experience of academia, in various capacities, since 1965. I am unaware of any ignoring or vilification of the subject of war or the military in academia. Again, this probably reveals the extent of my ignorance or unawareness, and I will be glad to have my attention drawn to any evidence of this. Studies of war have had a place in academia at least as long as acedemics has existed.

The list of writing on the subject is historically and geographically extensive, and would not have survived without at least minimal patronage from the elite (including the academic elite) - The Jewish Bible, the Koran, Kautilya, Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Frontinus, Gaius Julius Caesar, Renatus, and even Machiavelli (not The Prince but The Seven Books on the Art of War), de Saxe, Frederick the Great, Bonaparte, von Clausewitz, Jomini, Mahan, von Moltke, and so on, down to Mao, Che Guevara, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Schwarzkofp, Weinberger, Powell and so on, down to the present. Sphere: Related Content

_ivan's response to my post "Training, Coaching, Mentoring":

Ivan's comment was as follows:

"You base your final distinction partly on your definition of the word "coach". But this definition is largely an ethymological one. Ergo, you hinder the development of the language on historical grounds.I would do the same, but I find people countering me saying that the language has evolved, and that "coaching" and "mentoring" mean the same now. Are there any official guidelines that specify whether the meaning of words are that of their origines or that of the majority?"

As someone who accepts neither Darwin's theory of evolution at the macro level (I do accept it on the micro level), nor the idea that all "progress" is good, I naturally resist attempts to foist new words and new meanings simply because they are new. Old words and meanings are sometimes more accurate and therefore more serviceable than new ones.

The whole point of my piece was to argue that there is a sensible distinction to be made between the content suggested by the word "coach" and the content suggested by the word "mentor", and that it is therefore right for us to make that distinction.

However, to answer your specific question: No, there are no "official guidelines" - because there is no official body concerned.

Moreover, in these matters, where official bodies exist (e.g. the Academy in France), they have seemed to fight a losing battle - linguistic ignorance and misuse swell like the sea, without regard for linguists and Academies.

Nevertheless, at least some of us should be thinking about these things and encouraging the right use of words. Without linguistic and grammatical discipline in general (or at least agreement between two parties in dialogue), communication becomes impossible. Sphere: Related Content

Pierre Schlomo Presley's comment on my post "On Corporate Sustainabilty Reports and the Guidelines from the Global Reporting Initiative":

Pierre Schlomo Presley wrote:

"I imagine the simple answer has to be that it doesn't affect their short-term stock price. Economics has failed us in the sense that we rely heavily on a system of attributing value that seems unable to, in a nod to Rumsfeld, price "known unknowns", much less "unknown unknowns" into the costs of doing business. Will it take a tragedy on the scale of the Stein report to give us some "knowns" that will incite us to focus on the long-term?" Sphere: Related Content

Response by Anh Khoi Do, to my post "Iran Nuclear Intentions Revealed":

Apologies to Mr Anh Khoi Do!

I had somehow overlooked his response to my above-named post. Here is his comment:

"The West might also fear Iran, because it has reached the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. Even though the Iranian president affirms that this program is solely meant for pacific purposes, let it be said that Iran doesn't recognize Israel as a country. Furthermore, by being able to produce nuclear weapons, Iran, one of the countries that sponsor the Hezbollah, might also provide the Hezbollah with this kind of weapons. " Sphere: Related Content

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel

Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,496003,00.html

I was kicked out of India during the days of the Emergency for, among other reasons, publishing (in the University newsmagazine I was resonsible for at the time) Solzhenitsyns' Nobel Prize Winning Speech, "One Word of Freedom".

So I have always had a sort of highly personal interest in Solzhenitsyn's work.

This interview with him is the most recent that is available, and reveals his latest thinking.

Though I think he is fundamentally (but understandably) mistaken about the concept of Russia about the Orthodox Church, about Putin, and many other topics, there is no doubt of his honesty, his commitment to truth, his moral courage, and his literary achievement (which is also an achievement in terms of historical and political discourse). Sphere: Related Content

Professors of the History of War, Of Nazism, of Hitler...

There has been an ancient interest in War Studies (under one rubric or another).

However, I find that at least THREE universities now have a "Professor of the History of War" (Boston University in the USA, Oxford University in the UK, and the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands).

I have mixed feelings about this development.

On the one hand, in theory, it should be possible to study all kinds of subjects, even the worst kinds of evil.

On the other hand, the very act of studying anything enhances its status.

Especially if a Professorship is involved at an eminent university.

To illustrate: if we had a Professorship of Hitler Studies, would that not rather inflate the eminence of Hitler?

I know that such a Professorship exists in a certain novel, not sure if one or more of these exists in fact.

I do know that there are Professors of Nazi Studies (and cognate matters), and I am extremely uneasy about those too.

Professors of German Studies (or some such) are fine, even if they focus on Nazi Germany or on Hitler, because that puts the evil in a historical and geographical context, without raising the evil to eminence on its own.

Similarly, while we need to study War, I should have thought it better always to put war in the context of politics and international relations and so on, rather than focusing on war on its own and thus giving it needless and inapporpriate importance .

Conclusion: abolish Professorships relating to War and rename the relevant Professorships. Sphere: Related Content

Priestly sex abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church

So the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has paid for $660 million to some 500 people who claimed to have been sexually abused.

Regretfully, this is often the way with big corporations, and with states however big or small (and, the Roman Church, which claims to be divine, is an interesting mixture of corporation and bureaucracy).

Organisations will usually do anything and everything to find scapegoats while hindering public scrutiny of the organisation.

What of secular virtues such as transparency? Accountability?

What of "religious" virtues such as confession and repentance?

What of organisational common sense - analysis of what is wrong with the organisation that it has produced such massive allegation of wrong-doing in so many countries, so that what is systemically wrong can be remedied?

Don't ask.

Because if you did, you might have to examine some curious pagan ideas (celibacy, an elite priesthood, an infallible CEO) which have been ensconced in this Church for centuries. Sphere: Related Content

Executions in China

A couple of days ago the Wall Street Journal reported that, following the execution of Zheng Xiaoyu the former head of China's food and drug safety agency, there has been a lot of discussion about the number of executions in China.

Even though "execution numbers are murky", it says that apparently China carries out more executions than the rest of the world combined.

However, in a gnomic final aside, it says that "there is evidence that China's rate of executions, which is high, is dropping". It would be interesting to know what the evidence is and, if the overall picture is "murky", how anyone can conclude anything at all from whatever evidence exists.

But there is something in the human mind that yearns to make sense of everything around us, because of which we tend to believe whatever we hope or fear might be the case.

It would be much better to call on the Chinese government to make all the facts available - then we would have at least something like a proper factual basis for coming to some unarguable conclusions. Sphere: Related Content

4.4 billion people moved by airports in 2006

That's the news from the Geneva-based Airports Council International (ACI), which has 1,640 airports operated by its members from 178 countries. Presumably at least a few airports are not members, so the number must be larger in fact....

But even if we take the figure provided by the ACI, it means that, on average last year, something like one out of every two people in the world took a flight somewhere.

I don't know if you have noticed, but the era of cheap air travel seems to be coming to an end. The airlines are trying their hardest to keep it cheap, but they do have to make money. And even when they offer a particular flight for nearly zero cost to the customer, fuel surcharges alone are higher now than the complete flight used to be not long ago.

My guess is that most people are still flying (1) because they feel they have to - e.g. on business;(2) because they have relatives that they feel they *must* visit - e.g. at a wedding or the birth of a child or a funeral; and (3) because they are not yet used to the idea of flying being too expensive - e.g. for holidays.

As the price of flights, but even more important now the *inconvenience* of flying because of flight delays and security measures, comes to rest in people's consciousness, more and more people are expressing a distaste with the idea of flying - though that does not seem to have dented the willingness of these folk to travel (I think that applies to me too, except in the case of holidays, when I have started to avoid travelling if at all possible).

Might we expect that, sooner rather than later, the love of flying (and the love of motor cars, which is associated) will drop dramatically?

Logically, one should think so. Yet there is a prophecy in the Bible that as the world speeds towards its end, travel will only increase and increase. Is it the case that people will refuse to adapt? Or that newer forms of travel will become possible technologically, due to which travel will become even cheaper, more hassle free and (extremely important) environmentally friendly?

I don't know. But I wouldn't bet against any prophecy in the Bible. It seems to have been proved too right over too many hundreds of years to tangle with it.

So I wait to see how this conundrum is resolved, between on the one hand the Biblical prediction that world travel will increase and increase, and on the other hand the reality of flights becoming more and more expensive, frustrating and (at least in the awareness of an increasing number of people) environmentally unacceptable. Sphere: Related Content

The Case of Shambo, the Temple Bull in Wales

The facts of this case are sufficiently in the public realm for me to not have to retail them in this Blog.

But I thought I ought to make public the fact that I have today written to the relevant Minister in the Welsh Government as follows:

"Dear Minister

I understand that your Government has decided to appeal against the judgment provided by His Honour Judge Hickinbottom on 16 July 2007.

His Honour's judement notes that Swami Suryananda's interpretation of Hindu beliefs maintains that "there is a spark of divinity in all animals". However, it seems to have failed his notice that "all animals", in the Indian tradition, includes not only include cows and bullocks, dogs and cats, and so on, but also bacteria and bacillii.

Given the grounds on which the judgment is provided (the protection of the rights of these sorts Hindus in Britain), it would be improper to destroy not only bulls and cows who might be suffering from dangerous diseases, but also bacteria and bacillii themselves, whether of tuberclosis or of any other variety.

In other words, it becomes entirely impossible to fight infectious diseases.

This idiotic interpretation of Hindu belief is rejected by most thinking Hindus today, whether in Britain, in India, or in other countries.

I therefore wish to express my support to your Government for appealing against this Judgment. " Sphere: Related Content

Christian gullibility?

Most christians are probably as gullible as the rest of the population.

From yesterday, some well-meaning friends started drawing my attention to various posts to the effect that "A report in Sunday Express magazine quotes a British Secret Service,MI6, report that some 200 million Christians in 60 countries aroundthe world are at risk of suffering persecution."

However, I cannot find the original report anywhere! So is this a hoax?

I started searching for the original report because:
- "MI6" is journalistic misnomer for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, the correct abbreviation for which is "SIS"
- the role of SIS is to provide the British Government with a global covert capability to promote and defend the national security and economic well-being of the United Kingdom. What is happening to Christians around the world is no concern to the government of the UK (except incidentally), and is therefore no concern of the SIS. The SIS operates world-wide to collect secret foreign intelligence in support of the British Government's policies and objectives, which do *not* include the promotion or protection of christianity - Britain is in fact a secular state with atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims in top positions in government, industry and society.. As far as I know, the sorts of subjects on which the SIS focuses are: regional instability, terrorism, weapons proliferation and illegal narcotics.

However, there is no particular reason to doubt the scale of the problem. The figure of "200 million Christians in 60 countries around the world at risk of suffering persecution" may well be accurate.

The curious thing is that people are always at risk of being legally or illegally persecuted or suffering ostracism or calumny or mockery for becoming christians. Yet they continue to become christians in such large numbers. Shoorely shomething rong hir?

As a follower of Jesus I regret the continuing massive confusion caused by the propoganda machines of the various christian churches between becoming christians on the one hand (an external and ritual-oriented matter) and the internal matter of following Jesus the Lord with the consequences that has in one's life and relationships. Sphere: Related Content

The terrible things that British missionaries did in India during the days of the Raj

A friend draws my attention to the following site, which consists of (very) short stories taken from the published memoirs of a man who used to be a missionary in India.

One's worst suspicions are confirmed by the on-line book, QUITTING INDIA Short Stories from the British Raj: http://www.brow.on.ca/Books/QuittingIndia/QuittingIntro.htm Sphere: Related Content