Saturday, January 2, 2010

It's an odd world out there: Rediff.com News

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    • The flip side of life often goes unnoticed. They say a mark of a good photograph is its ability to convey not just the message but also its various hues.

      rediff.com has listed some odd moments captured through 2009.


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Celebrating New Year, the Telangana way!: Rediff.com News

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    • In Hyderabad, the Bharatiya Janata Party also organised a torchlight rally on the Tank Bund. It was led by the state BJP president Bandaru Dattatreya.

      On the other hand, the traditional New Year Celebrations were held at five star hotels, clubs and resorts under the shadows of tight security as some organisations had threatened to disturb them. However, the occasion passed without any disturbances.


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Vedic village’s tryst with IT

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    • Govind Krishnan V
    • Briggs, who compared its grammar with that of the computer, came to a startling conclusion: Sanskrit, which ceased to be a living tongue millennia ago, had such a logical meaning-structure that it could be a rich mining field for AI.
    • Had their trip happened today, those experts would have taken Bangalore as nothing more than a stopover. From the Garden City, they would’ve taken a bus and travelled seven hours north to meet the residents of Mattur. In this village, Sanskrit isn’t dead. The language leads an existence — perhaps beleaguered, but tenacious — among its 2,000-odd people. Critically, Briggs and company would have also have witnessed the beginnings of this near-Vedic village’s strange tryst with Hindustan’s nascent IT revolution: the village has produced around 150 software engineers!
    • The journey back to its Vedic roots started for the village in 1981 when Sanskrita Bharati, an organisation that promotes the classical language, conducted a Sanskrit workshop in Mattur. It was attended, among others, by the pontiff of the Pejawar Mutt in nearby Udupi.
    • Sanskrit is reputedly a tough nut to crack, but is it that different from picking up any other language? In some rather important ways, it seems it is. When Shantarama leaves for school and says “Aham vidyalayam gachhami” (I am going to school), he will know that gachhami is very much like gamanam — which means movement. Both words come from the root class gam, from which a fluent Sanskrit speaker can dig up words for all kinds of movements and for things that move. Like gau for cows and khagah for birds. But khagah is not merely something that moves. It is that which it moves in khagam (sky). From a few basic classes (root words), Sanskrit creates an endless chain of words — all linked to each other.
    • How to keep a language alive

       

      If one man can be said to be responsible for Mattur’s Sanskrit revolution, it would be Srinidhi, a stocky, bullet-headed man with an enthusiasm that belies his forties. Srinidhi heads Sanskritha Bhavan, a Sanskrit-teaching institute that has taken upon itself a job that to many would seem quixotic, the task of taking the language out of textbooks and literature and bringing it back to life on the streets of Mattur. Among the many things the institute does, the primary one is the language support it gives to the local school. Sanskrit is the first language in the Sharada Vidyapeeth, a private school managed by the villagers that educates the village’s children at little more than Rs 80 a month. Sanskrita Bharati organises spoken Sanskrit courses every few months to make sure that nothing is learnt by rote and forgotten. These Sanskrita Shibirams (Sanskrit camps), where learners brush up on their speaking skills see all kinds — men, women, Brahmins, Harijans, college students, middle-aged farmers. And the discussions, Srinidhi says, are very lively. The enthusiast, however, admits that the occasional old-timer who grumbles “Sanskrit? At my age?” is not uncommon.

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Mappilas: The first Muslims of India | TwoCircles.net

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    • By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net
    • Mappilas and Malabar enjoyed a peaceful and prosperous lifestyle until the sixteenth century. At this time the Portuguese arrived in India and their piracy on the Indian Ocean disrupted the long established trade routes on the water. This, and the brief rule of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan created the environment of distrust between the communities which further escalated under the British.
    • Khateebs in Malabar deliver khutba with a sword in hand, this one captured from the Portuguese.
    • Mappilas in north Kerala, who were associated with the agricultural economy, revolted against their Hindu landlords and the British rule. The colonial masters termed the economic revolt "communal violence." Not unlike the Muslims of North India, distrust of the British was responsible for the Malabari Muslims falling behind in education and missing out on new economic opportunities.

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1st January, 1818: ‘The Battle Of Bhima Koregaon’

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    • By Pardeep Singh Attri
    • This battle took place on January 1st, 1818, near the banks of Bhima River in Koregaon (north-west of Pune) between small forces of ‘500 untouchables’ (Mahars) soldiers of 2nd Battalion, 1st regiment of ‘Bombay Native Light Infantry’ and Peshwa soldiers. ‘Bombay Native Light Infantry’ was headed by ‘Caption Francis Staunton’. Compared to the ‘500 untouchables soldiers’ Brahmin Peshwa Rao’s force was large in numbers, they were more than 20,000 horsemen and 8,000 infantry soldiers. After walking down more than 27Miles distance from Shirur to Bhima Koregaon without rest or reprieve, without food or water ‘500 untouchables’ fought so bravely for 12 hours and won the battle. Battle ended not only with ‘victory’ over Peshwa but it become responsible for the end of ‘Peshwai’ in Maharashtra.
    • Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar used to visit Bhima Koregaon (Shaurya Bhomi) every year on 1st January to pay homage to great Mahar soldiers of The Bhima Koregaon Battle.

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Google and India Test the Limits of Liberty - WSJ.com

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    • The rules of political speech on the Internet are usually pretty simple. In America, almost anything goes. In places like China, the censors call the shots. But in India -- a boisterous democracy that's riven by religious and ethnic tension -- the game is far trickier, as Google is discovering.

      In September, lawyers at Google Inc.'s New Delhi office got a tip from an Internet user about alarming content on the company's social networking site, Orkut. People had posted offensive comments about the chief minister of India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh, who had died just a few days earlier in a helicopter crash.

      Google's response: It removed not just the material but also the entire user group that contained it, a person familiar with the matter says. The Internet giant feared the comments could heighten tensions at a time when thousands of mourners of the popular politician were emptying into the street.


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Buddhist monks on hunger strike for control over Bodh Gaya temple

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    • A group of Buddhist monks are on a hunger strike to demand control over Bodh Gaya’s 1,500-year-old Mahabodhi temple, days after Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswan backed the move and sought the amendment of an act relating to the shrine.
      The monks began their fast Friday near the office of the temple management committee at Bodh Gaya, some 110 km from here, where the Buddha attained enlightenment 2,550 years ago.

      “It is time we sacrifice our lives for Buddhist control of the temple,” Bhante Budh Saran, one of the monks on fast said, adding that many monks from abroad will also join them in their cause.

    Bodh Gaya

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Video : 15 year old Hindu girl kidnapped & force Married, Indian Court Nods to Sharia Law

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv1jsS_WJTI

Class action - India - The Times of India

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    • Avijit Ghosh,
    • On a summer night in 1992, life changed suddenly for Bhanwar Meghwanshi. Devoted to the Ramjanambhoomi movement, the Dalit teenager had prepared
    • kheer and puri for some VHP sadhus invited to his home in south Rajasthan's Bhilwara district. The sadhus arrived in a tearing hurry, didn't eat, but got the food packed. A day later, a friend took Meghwanshi to a place outside the village where they had thrown the food. "I learnt later that they ate their dinner at a brahmin's house, about 3 km from my village. And I realised that while I was ready to die for Ayodhya, they were not even willing to eat at my place," he recalls. He wrote an article in a local newspaper, 'Why I don't want to be a Hindu', and shut the Hindutva door forever.
    • Meghwanshi's first big battle as an activist happened at Suliya village, near Bhilwara. The 1,000-year-old Chamunda Mata temple was traditionally supervised by a Dalit priest, but in Oct 2006, Gujjars threw him out, and stopped Dalits from going in. The three month-long movement to reclaim the temple ended with 5,000 Dalits, including many women, entering its premises.

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Communal riots 2009 | TwoCircles.net

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    • By Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer,
    • The year 2009 also did not witness major riots and this pattern is continuing since Gujarat riots of 2002.
    • It is interesting to note that since Mumbai riots of 1992-93 there was no major communal riot until Gujarat riots in 2002
    • M.P. is another sensitive state since BJP has taken over. On 11th March communal violence broke out in Mahidpur of Ujjain district which has considerable Muslim population. Some Muslims returning after the Prophet Day’s procession were asked to avoid a route where Ramayana recitation was going on but they insisted on taking that route and communal violence broke out in which one person was killed and 17 persons were injured. The police had resorted to firing and one person was killed in police firing. About 24 persons were arrested.

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Kashmiri Hindus Exodus Led To Babri Demolition….? | Asian Tribune

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    • By J. N. Raina
    • The report should have mentioned about the mass exodus of five lakh Kashmiri Hindus from the valley when Pakistan-sponsored militancy erupted in 1990, aided and abetted by Kashmiri Muslim fundamentalists. Several hundred Hindus were killed, most of them brutally, and women were raped. The beleaguered Pandit community suffered a lot. As a consequence, the silent majority Hindu community in the rest of India reacted sharply.

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Indian Army chief to visit Nepal

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    • ndian Army chief Gen Deepak Kapoor will be visiting the Himalayan republic this month to be decorated with the honorary title of general of the Nepal Army.

      Gen Kapoor, who assumed office in 2007 and kicked up a controversy last month by opposing the induction of Nepal’s former Maoist guerrillas into the Nepal Army, will resume the tradition of Indian army chiefs visiting Nepal to receive the honour after four years.

    • The Indian general will arrive on a four-day visit starting Jan 31, highly placed Nepal Army sources told IANS. He is coming at the invitation of his Nepali counterpart, Gen Chhatraman Singh Gurung, who visited India last month.
    • Now Kapoor’s visit to Kathmandu will further cement ties between the two armies. The visit, however, is expected to trigger protests by the former Maoist guerrillas, who were angered by his statement in New Delhi last month opposing the merger of the Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with the national army, saying it would lead to the politicisation of the army.
    • The Maoists have also warned of an indefinite general strike nationwide from Jan 24 over their protracted feud with the government over the army.

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