Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

A Review of Dipesh Chakrabarty's "Provincializing Europe" by Amit Chaudhuri (London Review of Books)

Debashish — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:03:00 -0800

(recycled): Dipesh Chakrabarty's book "Provincializing Europe" is an important theoretical study of colonialism and its legacies in India. While [many] works outline the atrocities and dleterious effects of colonialism abound, Chakrabarti, one of the founder-members of the Subaltern Studies movement in Indian (and world) history tells the story from the lesser known side of the strategies used by Indians (in colonial Kolkata) for making an "alternate habitation" of modernity - i.e. adapting it to their own uses. In doing this, he also makes a number of important theoretical points about cultural situatedness and conditions for effective cross-cultural dialog. This review, taken from the London Review of Books is by Amit Chaudhuri, a well-known younger Indian novelist and commentator.

Arundati Roy on sham Democracy in India

Rich — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:38:00 -0700

In a country where one can be arrested for writing a book because it offends the sentiments of religious devotees or criticizing or for criticizing the judiciary this interview with Arundati Roy addresses sham democracy in India. One has to confront Arundati one by one on the issues she raises for social justice that are wide ranging and concern Maoist in Orissa, armed occupation in Kashmir, the ever latent potential for genocide within the power regimes couched within Hindu or Islamic fundamentalist movements or even more to the point, the model of Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism for ethnic cleansing that is being adapted by the Home Minister (and former Enron lawyer) India's new neo-liberal elite, its global corporations to move 85% of the population from the villages and countryside into mega-city slums, appropriating the lands of indigenous peoples, to harvest for themselves India's last remaining natural mineral resources, such as bauxite....

Integral Psychology – Theorizing its Disciplinary Boundaries

Debashish — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:11:00 -0700

The following is a revised transcript of a talk given by me at the Cultural Integration Fellowship, San Francisco in 2008 and carried in the current edition of Sraddha, a journal of the Sri Aurobindo Bhavan, Kolkata.

In this, I bring into dialog the epistemic boundaries of the western academic discipline of Psychology and Sri Aurobindo's formulation of Integral Yoga, so as to reflect on the disciplinary formation of a field of Integral Psychology. What would such a field hold out and how would it impact the existing assumptions of both Psychology and Yoga? The insertion of such a discipline into the academy is not a trivial task. It is a project fraught with danger and possibility, which needs to be carefully negotiated. - db

The Myth of the New India by Pankaj Mishra

Debashish — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:24:00 -0700

In this article, Pankaj Mishra considers contemporary India's middle class myth of emerging economic superstardom. Is this a reality or a make-believe narrative swallowed as part of neo-liberal globalization with its own convenient interests? According to Mishra, "Many serious problems confront India. They are unlikely to be solved as long as the wealthy, both inside and outside the country, choose to believe their own complacent myths."

Towards a Postcolonial Modernity: AsiaSource Interview with Partha Chatterjee

Debashish — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:50:00 -0700

Partha Chatterjee, founding member of the Subaltern Studies editorial collective, is director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and visiting professor of anthropology at Columbia University. Chatterjee's interests are diverse and include Bengali theater. He has acted in Mira Nair's adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's story The Namesake.

Chatterjee's work on anticolonial and postcolonial nationalism has left a definitive mark on contemporary scholarship. He has grappled with the problem of an Euro-American modernity politically institutionalized by the nation-state, in its implementations in terms of resistant cultural nationalisms among non-western and colonized peoples and their imagined communities.

The present inflection of his work moves towards postcolonial governmentality and the grassroots cultural politics of claiming identities within its categoric specifciations.

Chatterjee points out how the standard secular form of post-Enlightenment nationalism has been adapted in attempts to arrive at alternate forms within non-western cultures, yet how such adaptations have been marked by serious ambiguity, becoming co-opted by the forms they have sought to resist, rendered impotent or transformed into fascict ideologies. He calls for a continuous popular/communitarian creativity in understanding and dealing with such transformations, though his voice in this matter, judging by India's postcolonial history, tends towards pessimism.

For example, this is what he has to say about the moibilization of religion in its anti-colonial adaptations:

The innovations in nationalist thinking and nationalist mobilizations which have occurred in the postcolonial world have tended to get repressed by the emergence of fairly standardized forms of governance. Many of these innovations were actually repressed because they were not seen to be consistent with the known forms of the modern state. For instance, if you had movements or parties which were largely based on religion, this was seen to be somehow inconsistent with the idea of a modern constitutional state. Therefore, there was always this problem of what to do with such movements. Yet, those movements have been very influential and powerful in terms of mobilizing people against colonial rule.

So, once the objective of decolonization and transfer of power to a new nationalist elite had been met, the question was how to contain or manage these forces that had been released in the course of the national movement. That is where many of these tensions remained unresolved. If you look at the case of post-independence India, this whole debate about the "secular" state and what the secular state must do and what it means, in a sense, reflected this unresolved tension. In the historical process of the emergence of that state, a great deal of the mobilization had used religion, had depended on extremely powerful religious reform movements, of actually shaping what were seen to be religious beliefs and religious practices but changing them, reformulating them, in order to conform to what were seen to be the new challenges of the modern world.

So these religious reform movements were often completely part of the broader set of social changes that brought about nationalism, that brought about the new state, that brought about new political formations. They were integrally tied with many of those movements and yet the requirements of the secular state presumably forbade religion in public places or public life, or forbade political parties based on religion, because these were somehow inconsistent with a modern nation-state. Very often, there were all kinds of shortcuts or repressive ways of keeping those things under cover, as it were. Many of the tensions around secularism, for instance, and the kinds of challenges that emerged later on, in the case of India's Hindu right-wing in the 1980s for instance, were very much part of these unresolved questions from within the national movement. What the Hindu right then appealed to was not to say that nationalism was all wrong; they said, in fact, that they were the "true" nationalists. The reason why that could be said persuasively was because of a great deal of religious-based rhetoric and the presence, as I said, of these powerful religious reform movements, which were always part and parcel of nationalism.

So these remained unresolved problems. The overall frames remained derivative, almost imitations of forms of the state as developed in the West, but in actual practice what had to be done was to find completely innovative practices at the localized level. The real problem occurred when many of these local adaptations and innovations required a new translation into the larger frame.

Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Sarod Virtuoso, Dies at 87

Debashish — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:51:00 -0700

Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, the foremost virtuoso of the lutelike sarod, whose dazzling technique and gift for melodic invention, often on display in concert with his brother-in-law Ravi Shankar, helped popularize North Indian classical music in the West, died on Thursday at his home in San Anselmo, Calif. He was 87. In this obituary from the New York Times, William Grimes provides an outline of this most extraordinary musician.

Tariq Ali: the Duel (Pakistan on the Flight Path of America Power)

Rich — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:12:00 -0700

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Once again, Pakistan is in crisis, with Waziristan the newest "most dangerous place" in the world. Islamabad can't control the escalating conflict, and the government is again run by an unpopular, incompetent and nepotistic civilian administration.

And again, Pakistan is going hat in hand to the IMF, Saudi Arabia and China to face off oil prices, food inflation, dwindling foreign exchange and declining terms of trade.

Tariq Ali has been warning of Pakistan's collapse for four decades. For those sins, his books have often been banned there, and "generals, corrupt politicians and bearded lunatics" dislike him in equal measure. In The Duel, Ali provides a gossip-filled, witty and polemical history, revealing, with perspicacity and verve, the flight into the abyss. ...

• India and Europe by Wilhelm Halbfass

Debashish — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:38:00 -0700

With the ascendency to Indian politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a plethora of literature has appeared paying serious attention to the phenomenon of "Neo-Hinduism" in India, and by and large relating it to fascist possibilities. This postcolonial literature, swelling the shelves over the last five years, has piggybacked onto a larger more international body of postmodern writing on nationalism and its dangers that has been growing in stridency ever since the pseudo-religion ...

Neo-Liberalism as Doxa and India Discourse on Globalization by, Rohit Chopra [Full paper added by ron]

Rich — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:45:00 -0700

This paper assesses, on the basis of key arguments from Pierre Bourdieu's work, how and why a consensus about the positive effects of globalization and liberalization could have established itself as a dominant discourse across Indian social space. Describing the discourse that validates globalization and economic liberalization as a particular worldview, which he terms 'neoliberalism', Bourdieu describes how neoliberalism establishes itself as a doxa ...

Congress Wins (The Guardian)

Rich — Sat, 16 May 2009 10:36:00 -0700

The Congress party delivered its best performance for decades, and while it will still need the support of regional parties outside its United Progressive Alliance (UPA), it was expected to form a considerably more powerful government that it did in 2004, and one more able to push through an ambitious reforming programme.

Prana, Kratu, Jazz II: Ali Ahmad Hoosain, Hasan Haider, Ahmad Abbas and Subhen Chatterjee at UC Irvine, May 10, 2009 by Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:15:00 -0700

Grizzled shehnai ustad Ali Ahmad Hoosain laid out the cross-cultural and cross-epochal sonic landscapes along with his two sons and his tabla accompanist Subhen Chatterjee at U of California, Irvine. Prana, Kratu and Jazz commingled once more.

Representing Swami Vivekananda: Some Issues and Debates By Makarand Paranjape

Debashish — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 10:05:00 -0800

Controversy surrounding the representation of a "nationalized" Indian mystic comes late to Sri Aurobindo. Pre-dating the latter in personal chronology as in nationalism and the modern articulation of a global Vedantic spirituality, Vivekananda precedes also in the matter of contemporary debates on representation. In the present 2005 piece by Makarand Paranjape, some of the recent histories of representation and the all too familiar stakes are rehearsed and can be instructive to our consideration of the present controversy raging around "The Lives of Sri Aurobindo." Who gets to authorize the representation? What are the relative uses of hagiographny and biography? Are not both of these varieties of fiction? What purposes do they serve? Where does cultural tradition come in? What is the place of hermeneutics in all this? Paranjape's reflections and call for a balanced realism is much needed for us to heed and reflect on in these times of myth-making and madness.

9 is not 11 by Arundhati Roy (TomDispatch)

Rich — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:13:00 -0800

The single omnipresent historical reference in the American media immediately in the wake of September 11, 2001, was, of course,”Pearl Harbor”-- and those code words for it, "infamy" and "day of infamy," splashed in mile-high letters across the front pages of papers. What we had experienced, it was commonly said then, was "the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century." And with that image of the Japanese attack that began the Second World War for the United States went powerful, if only half-conscious, memories of how that war ended, of nuclear holocaust, and so the place where the World Trade Center towers went down was promptly dubbed "Ground Zero," previously a term reserved for the spot where an atomic blast took place.

Naturally, the idea that 9/11 was an "act of war," and that we were "at war," quickly and heavily promoted by the Bush administration, followed; and all of this would have been appropriate to a surprise attack by a nuclear-armed state, but not to an assault by 19 terrorists backed by a ragtag organization spread from Hamburg, Germany, to the backlands of Afghanistan. That the framework for taking in what had happened that day was so thoroughly askew mattered not a whit to most Americans at that time; and the rest, including the President's "Global War on Terror," came easily, if disastrously, in its wake. Now, "9/11" has become the "Pearl Harbor" of the twenty-first century, the antecedent and analogy of choice, and so, not surprisingly, it was on all but a few media lips, during the recent massacre and siege in Mumbai, India.

Arundhati Roy, the Indian activist and author of the prize-winning novel The God of Small Things was one of the earliest, strongest, sanest voices on this planet of ours to take on George W. Bush and his Global War on Terror. "The freshest voice on Earth," I called her back in 2003. She was an inspiration. Now, she turns to the events in her own country, in Mumbai, and explains just why using 9/11 as the analogy of choice there, as we once used "Pearl Harbor" here, will lead in no less terrible directions. ....

An Indian Patriot Act post-Mumbai? by Kanishk Tharoor (Open Democracy)

Rich — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:57:00 -0800

The juxtaposition is what creates the magic

— Suketu Mehta

Our recommended links represent some of the best resources we have found on the web for integrating global perspectives with critical reflections....

Open Democracy and Global Voices (who it seems C.N.N has just discovered) move along complimentary liminal pathways in the cybersphere of global journalism to engage important perspectives left out in the corporatist Media-net

Kanishk Tharoor is an assistant editor of Open Democracy and he raises an interesting question regards the agenda post-Mumbai for a similar Patriot Act in India as in the States post 9/11.

Madhubala: Teri Mehfil Mein Qismat Aazmakar from Mughal-e-Azam:

Rich — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:44:00 -0800

Madhubala: Teri Mehfil Mein Qismat Aazmakar from Mughal-e-Azam:

Going Crazy in India by Rosemary Dinnage (NYRB)

Rich — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:52:00 -0800

This article from the New York review although a bit dated (1981) I find fascinating, not only because its includes a perspective in Indian Psychology that is located in the work of Sri Aurobindo, but because of its continuing relevance for cross cultural studies, ethnography, psychology, especially in the work of Matthijs and the Indian Psychology Institute in Pondicherry.

Some facts stated by the author in the article have surely changed for instance:
“When India gained independence, there were about fifty psychiatrists in the country, many of them army doctors; now the number is estimated at only about 500 for India's 640 million people; others—perhaps too many—leave India to practice abroad. “

“ a seminar led in India by Erik Erikson presents a picture of increasingly prevalent anomie, Eastern-style. In it the associate director of the BM Institute argues that there is an "identity vacuum" for Indians at the present time: values that are appropriate in an uncompetitive agrarian society break down under modern pressures; traditions and established roles are threatened by the mass media.”

No doubt India has changed and the outsourcing of IT jobs makes it no longer so dependent on agrarian economics. It is also certainly much more infiltrated by western medicine and practices of psycho-therapy, but aside for such obvious changes in the society I find much of the article still relevant for the current day.

For example, I would think much of the critique of the article regards the questionable appropriation of Western psychotherapy to Indian society is still valid -although as India accepts many of the urban values of the West, along with its neurosis perhaps that is changing a bit as well-. But it also speaks to such intellectual imperialism of its spiritual tradition by folks like Jeff Kripal who reduce complex Indian spiritual practices and questions of alterity to concerns of Freudian analysis

As an example of just how different psychology is treated in Indian spirituality I will also post a paper from Vladamir in which he considers and quotes extensively from one of my favorite chapters of Sri Aurobino namely, chapter 8 of his commentary on the Kena Upanishads, that demonstrates a radical discontinuity with Western theorizing of the phenomena of Mind. No matter how many times I read this chapter I take away something new. In this reading its last sentence sheds some light on the ontology of the imagination In researching this I also came across a correspondence between Mathiis to a sponsor of his project for a renaissance of Indian psychology in which he draws some interesting conclusions. I will post these as well with some comment I find applicable. rc...

Going to India from the West is like stepping onto another planet; but is having a mental illness in India any different from having it in Manhattan? Is treatment similar—if it is available? Do you get ill as often there, or less, or more? Do poverty and overwork leave any time for mental illness, is it a side effect of affluence—or do the hardships of a poor country provide all the more cause for disintegration? Are there differences in the Indian character structure itself that make mental illness and its treatment take different forms from those in the West? And does a third world country, obviously so much less well equipped with psychiatric and psychotherapeutic services than affluent societies, need more mental health care—or does greater provision for illness conjure up the illness to meet it, as new roads bring out more traffic?....

South to Pondicherry, ceded to India by the French in 1954, home of the Aurobindo ashram. It was here that the distinguished psychiatrist N.C. Surya came when he threw up his job as director of the National Institute of Mental Health at Bangalore. Trained in Europe and the US, formerly a Marxist, he was following an Indian tradition of abandoning the world for spiritual concerns when the moment is right; Aurobindo, founder of the ashram, did the same when he gave up his fight for Indian independence and retreated to Pondicherry. While outside Pondicherry steams in the sun, the ashram library is all greenery, coolness, and hush. Dr. Surya comes out of the library carrying the rolled umbrella (against the sun) that, like an Englishman, he seldom opens.

Course on the Vedas by SCIY Editor Vladimir Yatsenko

Debashish — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:41:00 -0700

SCIY Editor Vladimir Yatsenko will teach an online course in the Vedas starting in October 2008. We carry the details here as well as a link to one of the lecture transcripts posted earlier in SCIY.

Sri Aurobindo and the Future of Humanity

Debashish — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:36:00 -0700

This article attempts to sketch out Sri Aurobindo's contribution to the future of humanity as carried in his major texts. In doing so, it also tries to underline the cross-cultural nature of these texts and the disciplinary redefinitions implicit in them.

Tata and Vivekananda (India Now)

Rich — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:46:00 -0700

The birth of the country's foremost scientific research institute – the Indian Institute of Science – can be traced to a chance encounter between two of the leading lights of 19th century India. The "Empress of India" was sailing from Yokohama in Japan to Vancouver in Canada in 1893.

Aboard the vessel were Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata and Swami Vivekananda, the eminent philosopher: both were headed to Chicago. The former to attend the World's Columbian Exposition (also called Chicago World's Fair), to mark the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, and the latter to participate in the World's Parliament of Religions, where he made his historic speech...

• Review of Sri Aurobindo and his Contemporary Thinkers

Debashish — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:32:00 -0700

Following the publication of “Understanding Thoughts of Sri Aurobindo,” Indrani Sanyal and Krishna Roy of the Centre for Sri Aurobindo Studies, Calcutta have complied a set of eighteen scholarly essays on Sri Aurobindo and his contemporaries in the ideational context of what has been called the Bengal Renaissance. Sri Aurobindo’s physical involvement in the politics and culture of early Bengal nationalism was of relatively short duration (1905-1910), albeit an intense and all-sided participation which internalized the entire regional history of the movement and left a powerful creative impress in the milieu of its time and space. Moreover, the discursive background of this involvement continued to develop organically and find voice throughout his life in his subjective articulation just as his own situated contribution continued to resonate in later Indian nationalism. Thus this collection of considered interpretive contemplation fills an important need in our historical understanding. But more importantly, it is the post-colonial legacy of these engagements which draws us today by their fertile and future-gazing content, inviting reflection not merely for India’s but the world’s re-generation at a time of global ferment.

Hybrid power systems for rural Gujarat [and Auroville]

Ron — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:00:00 -0700

...The Gujarat Energy Development Agency (GEDA) has already received expression of interest from 12 players, which include Supernova, Unitron Energy, Auroville and Vistar Electronics.

The capacity of these aero-generators is 2 Kwh to 10 Kwh and is in the ratio of 60:40, i.e., if the total capacity is 10 Kwh, 6 kwh will be generated by wind while 4 kwh by solar energy. -- These aero generators can be installed on rooftops and they work on solar energy during daytime and on wind at night. ...

When luxury [in India] is not a six-figure sum

Ron — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:00:00 -0700

...Everyone has their own view of what constitutes luxury. My definition—and this is hardly original—is this: Luxury is time, customization and discreet luxe. The reason I like my definition of luxury is because it appeals to the egalitarian in me. These three things—time, customization and discreet luxe—can be experienced at every price point. Customization, for instance, be it bespoke clothing or a customized pair of shoes, is easily had in India, what with our embarrassment of riches with respect to craftspeople, artisans, and traditional handicrafts. -- At Good Earth homes, an eco-community outside Bangalore, I came across a wonderful way to customize architecture. Instead of grids, their windows have whimsical metal sculptures of animals created by indigenous Bastar tribals. It supported local artisans, served its purpose of being a window grid and was laugh-out-loud playful. ...

Tibet is one thing, but India and China tensions spell bigger disaster

Ron — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:39:00 -0700

...Few of his contemporaries think of George Walker Bush as a visionary American president, unless they are using the term to imply a touch of madness. Yet early in his second term Bush launched a bold initiative to try to establish closer American ties with India, the world’s biggest democracy, in what may eventually be judged by historians as a move of great strategic importance and imagination...

Bush... has managed to cast aside 40 years of hostility and suspicion between America and India – and even agreed to start collaborating over nuclear energy – in the hope of strengthening India and its economy. And all for a special reason: the rise of China. ...

Tata Unveils the World's Cheapest Car

Ron — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:48:00 -0800

It's called the Nano, for its high technology and small size. It's cute, compact, and contemporary. It's a complete four-door car with a 623-cc gas engine, gets 50 miles to the gallon, and seats up to five. It meets domestic emissions norms and will soon comply with European standards. It's 8% smaller in outer length than its closest rival, Suzuki's Maruti 800, but has 21% more volume inside. And at $2,500 before taxes (value-added taxes increase the price by about $300), it is the most inexpensive car in the world. Starting this fall, the Nano will roll off the assembly lines at a Tata Motors (TTM) plant in Singur, Bengal, and navigate India's potholed roads.

The Nano, also known as the People's Car, is Ratan Tata's dream come true, and is India's contribution to changing the global auto industry. "The car has put India on the global map," says Fionna Prims, head of business development for Segment Y, a Goa-based automotive consultant for emerging markets. "Tata has done in four years what the Japanese took 30 years to do. It will change the whole industry." Even rivals are gushing. "It's a red letter day for Indian industry, a day India should be proud of," says Venu Srinivasan, chairman of motorcycle maker TVS Motors. "Ratan Tata has the vision to create a new business model and all the naysayers are looking at it with concern. The Nano is a path breaker." ...

One Laptop Per Child Versus Intel--Who Speaks for India and China?

Ron — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:48:00 -0800

Here's an interesting article re the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Project. I disagree with the article's conclusion (it omits the vast online support to be provided to olpc students), but I think it deserves further discussion here on SCIY. What do you think?

At the Consumer Electronic Show this week, the One Laptop Per Child foundation was supposed to make two announcements—the number of computers it sold under the Give One, Get One holiday program and a new olpc machine made jointly with Intel. But now Intel has pulled out or been pushed out of the project with olpc, depending on who you believe. It’s a mess and a mess of huge dimensions that encompasses a conversation of profit vs. nonprofit, nationalism vs. colonialism, technology vs. pedagogy, rote vs. experiential learning, Western design vs. Eastern design, good intentions vs. bad intentions. It doesn’t get bigger, or nastier. ...

India's President to Visit Auroville

Ron — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:50:00 -0800

Thaindian News

New Delhi, Dec 20 (ANI): President Pratibha Devisingh Patil will pay an official visit to Andhra Pradesh from December 21 to January 6.

On Friday, President Patil will visit Puducherry where she will attend the inaugural function of the 34th Jawahar Lal Nehru National Science Exhibition for Children-2007.

The President will also visit the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Auroville on Saturday.

During her visit, President will tour the Andaman and Nicobar Islands from December 26 to 28 where she will be visit the rehabilitation work sites in the Tsunami affected areas and interact with the islanders.

In Hyderabad, she will attend various programmes organised by the State Government and the Ministry of Defence, including Defence Research Establishments and the Air Force Training Institute. (ANI)

"Code Name God" – Science Could Support Spiritual Beliefs

Ron — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:33:00 -0800

Dr. Mani Bhaumik is the co-inventor of the laser technology that made Lasik eye surgery possible. His contributions to science merited the rare dual election as a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, while his successes won him a spot on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Eventually he discovered that :happiness is an inside job," and immersed himself in study of the hidden relationship between science and spirituality and the integration of mind and matter. He has published over fifty papers in professional journals and maintains a lively correspondence with other physicists around the world. His alma mater, Indian Institute of Technology, bestowed him with an honorary D.Sc. degree for lifetime academic achievements. Dr. Bhaumik is the founder of the Mani Bhaumik Educational Foundation, which currently provides full scholarships to sixty seven extremely bright but underprivileged Indian young men and women to enable them to earn a university degree in science, engineering or medicine. His US Foundation, Cosmogenics, is set up to foster research in consciousness and healing as well as mind/body integration. ...

Buried in the Sands of Time: The Gospel according to Thomas

Ron — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 02:00:00 -0800

The following article is from Vol 1, No 2 (2007) of SCIY Editor Ulrich J. Mohroff's superb new journal: Anti-Matters, which I'll introduce in the next SCIY article. ~ ronjon

The question we have to consider in this essay is whether Jesus, regarded as the founder of the Christian religion, actually believed in the God of the Jews or in any God in Heaven and thus divided reality into two worlds. The writers of the four gospels seem to think he did, and the churches both Catholic and Protestant, deriving their doctrines largely from these gospels, follow this view. The gospel writers were naturally influenced by the popular Jewish religious sentiment of the time as well as by prevalent pagan Greek and Egyptian eschatological beliefs. Their writings reflect the feelings and mirror the beliefs of the ordinary man the soldier, merchant, artisan, slave living in a world of differentiation, division, hostility and discord. To the simple man whose mental capacities denied him a wider, more penetrating vision, this division was the reality, the truth. Did Jesus also subscribe to this idea of the world, or is there proof to the contrary? Was he a dualist, a believer in two realities and two worlds: this one here, and another above or was he a monist, a man to whom reality was one unitary, organic whole?

...Most Christians are acquainted with those sayings in John's gospel which explain reality from a monistic point of view, such as the famous John 17:22: "And the glory (of oneness) which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, as we are one." But in addition to these famous words there is a whole collection of monistic sayings of Jesus which the church literally dropped under the table. What kind of work is this Gospel according to Thomas, which is officially regarded as "apocryphal," unauthentic, not admitted to the New Testament canon? ...

Auroville's development work with the 40 surrounding villages

Ron — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:59:00 -0800

Auroville's development is inextricably intertwined with the surrounding villages, which are classified as part of a "most backward area in need of development" by the Tamil Nadu Government. There are 13 villages in the immediate area of Auroville, comprising about 40,000 people, and altogether 40 villages in the bioregional area. Some 350 people from the surrounding villages have joined or been born in Auroville.

Almost 5,000 local people are employed by Auroville, from sweepers to engineers; most of them have been trained in Auroville to improve their qualifications and skills. Most important is that Auroville provides for the young of this rural area a real and viable alternative to the migration to the cities and urban centers, which is so often the only option for those seeking self improvement and employment. ...

China to become biggest carbon polluter this year

Ron — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 23:11:00 -0800

China will become the world’s biggest carbon polluter this year, overtaking the United States, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a bleak forecast of soaring global demand for fossil fuels. The rapid growth of the Chinese and Indian economies will raise global energy demand by 50 per cent by 2030, the agency said in its annual World Energy Outlook. India and China alone will account for almost half of the increase.

The agency pointed a finger at soaring coal demand, which threatens to upset carbon reduction targets, as it painted an alarming picture of a future of energy insecurity, soaring oil prices and a massive increase in carbon emissions. The dash towards prosperity in Asia will be fuelled by hydrocarbons - and mainly by increased burning of coal – with an inexorable rise in carbon emissions, hastening climate change.

Accelerating demand for oil, which will reach 116 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2030, up 32 per cent, will require huge investments to keep pace, the IEA said, and the sums are increasing. Inflation has taken its toll, and the agency reckons that $5.4 trillion (£2.6 trillion) must be spent to raise capacity, up a quarter from the estimate last year. It gives warning that plans to raise output from new projects may not compensate for the decline in existing fields.

“A supply-side crunch in the period to 2014, involving an abrupt escalation in oil prices, cannot be ruled out,” the IEA said in its report. ...

India supports digital access for all, thanks UNESCO for its support of Auroville

Ron — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 01:16:00 -0700

Shri Arjun Singh, Minister of Human Resource Development (HRD) has said that the Government of India is committed towards Education For All (EFA) and has been making strenuous efforts to increase domestic funding of its core programmes. Addressing the 34th session of the General Conference of UNESO, the Minister has said that the General Conference must set the tone for the discussions of the High Level Group on EFA in December 2007. He said, "We are targeting to increase Gross Enrollment Ratio for higher education from the present 10% to at least 15% in the next five years. We are also working towards increasing the public expenditure on education to the level of 6% of GDP over this period. We have in recent years taken several affirmative actions to extend the benefits of education to the underprivileged and deprived sections of the society..."

[He also said] "May I thank UNESCO and its Executive Board for the support it has given to India’s initiative to strengthen UNESCO’s association with Auroville in the context of the commemoration of its 40th Anniversary. UNESCO has been involved from the very inception with Auroville, including the founding ceremony in February 1968, when youth of 124 Member States participated in this ceremony by depositing soils from their countries in the foundation urn to symbolize the coming together of the nations of the World. ..."

Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience, by David Pogue, NYT

Ron — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:52:00 -0700

Wearing a new hat in Galadima, a hamlet in Abuja, Nigeria [photo added by ronjon]

In November, you’ll be able to buy a new laptop that’s spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. It’s fanless, it’s silent and it weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.

And this laptop will cost $200... It’s an effort by One Laptop Per Child (laptop.org) to develop a very low-cost, high-potential, extremely rugged computer for the two billion educationally underserved children in poor countries...

OLPC slightly turned its strategy when it decided to offer the machine for sale to the public in the industrialized world — for a period of two weeks, in November. The program is called “Give 1, Get 1,” and it works like this. You pay $400 (www.xogiving.org). One XO laptop (and a tax deduction) comes to you by Christmas, and a second is sent to a student in a poor country. ...

Nearly 80 percent of India lives on half dollar a day

Ron — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 11:29:00 -0700

Seventy-seven percent of Indians -- about 836 million people -- live on less than half a dollar a day in one of the world's hottest economies, a government report said.

The state-run National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS) said most of those living on below 20 rupees (50 US cents) per day were from the informal labor sector with no job or social security, living in abject poverty.

"For most of them, conditions of work are utterly deplorable and livelihood options extremely few," said the report, entitled "Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganized Sector" ...

Karan Singh says "Pavilion of India has an active role to play in Auroville activities"

Ron — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:42:00 -0700

Chairman of the Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation Karan Singh said on Sunday that the Pavilion of India had an active role to play in cultural and integration activities of Auroville.

Speaking after performing the ‘bhoomi pooja’ for a housing complex and Swagatham, a VIP guest house, Dr. Karan Singh said there were many groups working towards their goals and they could work on various topics.

He said there was a very high concentration of creativity in Auroville and added that the residents were pursuing a collective yoga. “People of different religions, castes, creeds and communities are living together. There will be some inter-personal conflicts in such a situation but they have to live and work together to create a sense of community.” ...

Pitroda calls for 1,000 community radio stations in a year

Ron — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:07:00 -0700

Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission Sam Pitroda has called for at least 1,000 community radio stations to be set up in the country in a year's time. -- In a video message to participants at a media workshop in Auroville here, Pitroda also called for greater awareness of radio's usefulness.

Expressing concern over the ban on news and current events under India's radio policy, Pitroda said he believed that "the community radio can fulfil its objectives to facilitate exchange and bring out more information on events of local importance". -- He emphasised the "need for accessible and affordable technology to enable a larger number of CR (community radio) stations".

Is community radio working in India? Not really, if participants at the workshop are to be heard. -- It is much easier to get a commercial license for an FM station than a license for community radio, activists said at a two-day workshop here, pointing out that India's current radio regulation is heavily tilted against community radio.

• Beyond Man by Georges Van Vrekhem

Ron — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:35:00 -0700

Originally published in Dutch, an English version of Beyond Man was brought out by HarperCollins in 1997. The present edition is an exact (and perhaps photographic) reprint. Some spelling mistakes have been set right. Ten years ago it was very refreshing to read Van Vrekhem’s child-like approach to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The same holds true today as we turn the pages steadily to learn about these two brilliances who brought back the Vedic spirit of exploration to our days with the promise that life on Earth can definitely be transformed into the life divine. ...

As an Aurobindonian poet wrote at that time: “A light is lit in everyone, and those/ emblazon the Living Flame.” The Aurobindonian yoga being a collective yoga, this conclusion is inevitable. Having listed the questions, Beyond Man signs off with the seal of faith: “The Great Change in evolution is happening around us and within us, whether we want it or not.” For a world caught in despair and defeatism, this is nectarean hope.

Bio-dynamised water from Auroville to hit Indian market

Ron — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:17:00 -0700

Bio-dynamised water, believed to cure various ailments including diabetes and heart problems, is set to hit Indian markets with a research centre at Auroville township near here commercially launching the equipment to produce it.

Aqua Dyn, the centre that has developed commercially viable equipment to carry out the "bio-dynamising" technique developed in France in the early 20th century, has been selling the processed water within the township for the past five years...

"Bio-dynamised water helps remove toxins from the body and has proven properties to heal diseases, including arthritis, diabetes, skin cancer and heart ailments," he said. ...

'On Education Reform,' by Rod Hemsell (Univ. of Human Unity)

Ron — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:00:00 -0700

Re our current discussion re integral education, this is an article posted on the 'University of Human Unity' website, by Rod Hemsell. - ron

... If India’s educational reforms continue to move in this direction, then we in Auroville may find our efforts reflected in a more general awakening to what the Mother originally envisioned as the best type of reform in education. Then a meaningful, dynamic and productive interaction on all fronts - local, regional and national – might result in mutually beneficial exchanges. This is one of the hopes that is inspiring a few schools in Auroville to begin to explore affiliation with CBSE and NCERT, and the possibility of providing more teacher training opportunities in Auroville in association with these organizations.

A modern guide to India and Hindutva

Ron — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:35:00 -0700

Imo, this review of the book Understanding India: Relevance of Hinduism, provides some relevant background on the SCIY discussion re "What is Hindutva?," begun by Mr. Yeshwant Sane.

...In the ninth part, Abhaya Kashyap, Consultant, IBM and Infotech, feels that any meaningful debate on any aspect of Hindu identity or Hinduism runs the risk of either being perceived as a “rightist Hindutva propaganda or a liberal secular attempt to dilute the core values of Hinduism and its understanding.” He objects to the use of Hinduism for political purposes, “whether they claim to represent Hindutva or claim to be secular. It is our attempt to depoliticise the issue and develop a non-partisan paradigm whereby Hinduism can be understood as a potent force impacting India’s cultural, political and economic image.” ...

Primrose School of Pondicherry: An experiment in integral education

Ron — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:14:00 -0700

Primrose School, inaugurated in June 1999 in the former French colony of Pondicherry, is a pioneering effort in India to utilise Dr. Glenn Doman’s teaching methods as the basis for a full program of pre-school, primary and secondary education.

The Mother's Service Society, Pondicherry, has been in the field of social development for a quarter of a century now and has been recognised as a "Scientific and Cultural Research Institution" by the Central Government for three decades. The Society has longed believed that new methods of education can transform India into a leading knowledge society and fulfill Sri Aurobindo's dream of India becoming the Jagat guru of the world. Primrose School was founded for this purpose, and after discovering the wonderful educational insights of Dr. Glenn Doman, they have taken them and creatively adapted them to suit Indian conditions.

Most of us believe that geniuses are a very rare breed and only a few children are born with that potential. The truth is, many children have the potential of developing genius. Every child has far more potential than comes to the surface under normal circumstances. The secret is to create conditions that enable the child to discover and express their full potential.

Dr. Doman has shown decisively that young children have an incredible capacity for learning. They can learn to read multiple languages with ease at a very young age, even before entering school. They can imbibe a wide range of general knowledge just as a form of recreation. Children can learn at least twice as fast as they normally do in traditional schools without homework, cramming or strain of any type. ... -- The Mother's Service Society believes that this method could revolutionalise education in India. ...

Patil elected first woman president of India

Rich — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 09:43:00 -0700

NEW DELHI: Pratibha Devisingh Patil was declared elected the 12th President on Saturday evening. On July 25, she will become the first woman to head the Indian Republic. ...

Oxford prof documents India's math contribution

Ron — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 01:00:00 -0700

Thanks to RY Deshpande for referring this article.

Indians' contribution to the development of mathematics has largely been swept under the carpet in global history books. But a BBC crew, led by an Oxford professor, was in the country last week to film a documentary revealing Indians created some of the most fundamental mathematical theories.

The West has always believed that Sir Isaac Newton, famous for developing the laws of gravity and motion, was the brainbox behind key branches of maths such as calculus.

In The Story of Maths, Dr Marcus Du Sautoy, a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford, claims Indians made many of these breakthroughs before Newton was born. ...

Modern humans reached India early (≥ 74,000 years ago)

Ron — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 01:39:00 -0700

Thanks to RYD for suggesting this article.

In the course of archaeological excavations at Jwalapuram in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh, an international team of scientists has found evidence that anatomically modern humans are likely to have reached India before a massive volcanic eruption in what is today Indonesia occurred tens of thousands of years ago.

The "super-eruption" of the Toba volcano in Sumatra some 74,000 years ago was the largest volcanic event to have occurred in the last two million years and the ash thrown up high into the atmosphere by that cataclysmic explosion reached India too, said Ravi Korisettar of the Department of History and Archaeology at Karnatak University in Dharwad, Karnataka.

During five years of excavations at Jwalapuram, Indian, British, and Australians scientists unearthed fine stone flakes that had been turned into tools for various purposes. -- The stone tools were to be found in layers of earth above as well as below the fine ash from the Toba super-eruption, the scientists noted in a paper published in the latest issue of the journal Science. ...

What is Hindutva?

Ron — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 02:45:00 -0700

'Hindutva' has been described and defined by many. The first definition has come from Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923, in his pamphlet entitled" who is a Hindu?" to describe movements advocating Hindu Nationalism. Thereafter, a spate of definitions and interpretations have arisen, but none of them carries the full Import of the struggles of the Hindu life on this Earth.

Firstly, all the previous efforts in defining it were rooted in some type of a Social or Religious motivations (all religions in their present status are materialistic in practice - and not truly Spiritual), or Political motivations. Now, presently the effort is for gaining a lost self-identification motivation.

Secondly, in view of the laws of 'the spiritual evolution', eternally functional and in operation in the universe, the human cognitive limits have always failed to realize fully the true agenda of their life. Vedic knowledge is the only guide available to the struggling human mind; and Hindus have inherited and attempted to follow this wisdom to a large extent. Therefore, the concepts or definitions of organized religions, Natural Sciences and even 'Spirituality' 'Dharma' are all in the crucible. ...

Minority Institutions: Examining the Foundations (Sri Aurobindo Ashram School)

Ron — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 23:09:00 -0700

The Minority institutions [in India] that were typically envisaged to enjoy the state’s protection were those which would actually serve to preserve minority languages, customs and traditions but the question is, are they fulfilling their mandate? ...

Let me end with an example from my own life. I studied in a school run by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The Ashram management in no sense of the term attempted to” convert” any one to Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy but in every turn and gesture, they indicated in word and deed, that they cherished Sri Aurobindo and his successor, The Mother and their teaching wasn’t just lip service for them. Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy is not easy to understand, but in the school assembly where his teachings were unabashedly taught, the school principal and other speakers made every effort to present them with passion and reverence and the atmosphere was live and electric and Sri Aurobindo’s thinking and influence was every where and it wasn’t phony.

My Ashram school of course wasn’t a minority institution, but to me it represents all that a minority institution should be. Its mandate was to promote the teachings and ideas of Sri Aurobindo and it did so earnestly and with compassion and grace. In the same way, the definition of what is a minority institution is not to be determined by who owns a piece of property or who sits in the board room but by the larger question ---- is the institution fulfilling its mandate? ...

India: On the quest of its destiny

Ron — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 04:00:00 -0700

...Man is not final, says Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian mystic. Man is a transitional being, he says. Beyond him awaits the “divine race, the superman”, with super-consciousness. Aurobindo sees a progressive divination of the human race.

We are actors in this cosmic drama that is unfolding before us, not mere onlookers. The Gita says: Ceaseless action is the lot of man! -- But the ways of the world differ. Europe has chosen one way, we Hindus have chosen another and the Muslims have their own way. Each has its merits. They must be left free to seek their different ends. We must not force on the world one way as the Christians and Muslims are trying to do. ...

The two ways are not hostile to each other. They are in fact complementary. ...

ICPR, Dr. Kireet Joshi & the Auroville Foundation

Ron — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:00:00 -0700

The Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR) is a unique institution, possibly one of its kind in the world... It started functioning [in]1981, thanks to the foresight and initiative of Smt. Indira Gandhi... The main argument in favor of the ICPR is that among various pursuits and disciplines of knowledge that came to be developed during the course of the long history of India, philosophy stands out as the single most outstanding endeavor. The classical Indian contributions in philosophy rival the very best any where in the world. If there is one single area of Indian excellence which would command respect and attraction from the contemporary world, it would be none other than the profound wisdom that is contained in Indian thought. So, it was felt that philosophy deserved to have a special agency in the country to help move it forward to new heights of excellence... Conceived as a crucible for molding thoughtful minds generating ideas needed for India’s development consistent with its national ethos, funded generously by the Government of India and led effectively by a series of outstanding scholars, today, the ICPR stands out as a beacon of light illuminating the intellectual landscape of the nation...

Dr. Kireet Joshi was the Chairman of ICPR from 2000-06. He was also its Member - Secretary for (1981-1990) 10 years. He was Chairman of Auroville Foundation and vice-Chairman of Maharshi Sandipani Rashtria Veda Vidya Pratisthan. He was formerly Educational Adviser to the Government of India and Special Secretary in the Ministry of HRD during 1976 to 1988. He has authored and edited a number of books in the areas of Value-Oriented Education, Indian Culture, Yoga, Sri Aurobindo and Mother. ...

The Internet Sacred Text Archive, ref. by Yatanti

Ron — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:18:00 -0700

Thanks to Yatanti for referring us to this site re "The Works of Rabindranath Tagore" and other sacred texts. ~ ron
_________________

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali poet, philosopher, artist, playwright, composer and novelist. India's first Nobel laureate, Tagore won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature. He composed the text of both India's and Bangladesh's respective national anthems. Tagore travelled widely and was friends with many notable 20th century figures such as William Butler Yeats, H.G. Wells, Ezra Pound, and Albert Einstein. While he supported Indian Independence, he often had tactical disagreements with Gandhi (at one point talking him out of a fast to the death). His body of literature is deeply sympathetic for the poor and upholds universal humanistic values. His poetry drew from traditional Vaisnava folk lyrics and was often deeply mystical.

LAST night I dreamt that I was the same boy that I had been before my mother died. She sat in a room in a garden house on the bank of the Ganges. I carelessly passed by without paying attention to her, when all of a sudden it flashed through my mind with an unutterable longing that my mother was there. At once I stopped and went back to her and bowing low touched her feet with my head. She held my hand, looked into my face, and said: "You have come!"

In this great world we carelessly pass by the room where Mother sits. Her storeroom is open when we want our food, our bed is ready when we must sleep. Only that touch and that voice are wanting. We are moving about, but never coming close to the personal presence, to be held by the hand and greeted: "You have come!" ...

The Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilization

Ron — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:23:00 -0700

A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture is evident in the Indus Valley Civilization. The quality of municipal town planning suggests knowledge of urban planning and efficient municipal governments which placed a high priority on hygiene. The streets of major cities such as Mohenjo-daro or Harappa were laid out in perfect grid patterns. The houses were protected from noise, odors, and thieves.

As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and the recently discovered Rakhigarhi, this urban plan included the world's first urban sanitation systems. Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells. From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes. The house-building in some villages in the region still resembles in some respects the house-building of the Harappans.[26] The ancient Indus systems of sewerage and drainage that were developed and used in cities throughout the Indus Empire, were far more advanced than any found in contemporary urban sites in the Middle East and even more efficient than those in some areas of Pakistan and India today. The advanced architecture of the Harappans is shown by their impressive dockyards, granaries, warehouses, brick platforms and protective walls. The massive citadels of Indus cities, that protected the Harappans from floods and attackers, were larger than most Mesopotamian ziggurats...

Although some houses were larger than others, Indus Civilization cities were remarkable for their apparent egalitarianism. All the houses had access to water and drainage facilities. This gives the impression of a society with low wealth concentration. ...

Is India headed the right way?, by Francois Gautier

Ron — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:35:00 -0800

Thanks to Koantum for suggesting this article by Aurovillian Francois Gautier.
_______________________________________________________________
Today, there is a sense of deep satisfaction, of gloating even, in India... we see a much more dynamic and self-confident India, galvanised by the liberalisation taking place at this very moment.

But if one looks closer at what is happening here, one is bound to feel a little unsettled. For what we see today is an India veering blindly, without restraint, towards total globalisation and Westernisation. — Yes, there are great values in the Western world: Freedom, democracy, equality (not always though), respect for the environment, less corruption. And India must, and has already borrowed from these qualities. — But since the last two, three years, it seems the Indian political and intellectual mind is pushing these qualities to an illogical extreme, as if it wants to prove to the West that 'we are as democratic, as liberal, as free as you are.' — Thus, democracy in India has been hijacked. It takes a fortune to be elected. Politicians, elected by and for the people, once they are locked in the ivory tower that is Delhi, forget all about the people.

This process of copying the West to the point of aping it has, of course, already happened many times in the developing world. And it killed the soul of many countries, making them just another replica of the West -- with a youth that wears the latest Calvin Klein jeans, knows the No 1 bestseller on the Time list, can quote a few lines from Dante, reads The Times of India, but knows nothing about pranayama, has never read a verse from Kalidasa and does not know who Sri Aurobindo is. ...

Clean air or TV: Where will Asia find more energy?

Ron — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:50:00 -0800

A toxic purple haze of diesel exhaust hangs over the rice and jute fields here in northeastern India, and bird songs are frequently drowned out by the chug-a-chug-a-chug of diesel generators. — Across the developing world, cheap diesel generators from China have become a favorite way to provide electricity. — They power everything from irrigation pumps to television sets, allowing growing numbers of rural villages in many poor countries to grow more crops and connect to the wider world. — But as the demand increases for the electricity that makes those advances possible, it is often being met through the dirtiest, most inefficient means, creating pollution in many remote areas that used to have pristine air and negligible emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases...

Another popular approach being tried in India and elsewhere -- using solar energy to recharge lanterns by day -- has run into difficulty even as diesel prices would seem to make it more competitive. — The problem is that prices for photovoltaic panels for solar energy have surged as governments in industrialized countries, especially Germany, have encouraged greater use of renewable energy, said Hemant Lamba, the coordinator of Aurore, a renewable energy service company in Auroville, India. — "It's harder to do any solar energy projects in India," he said. ...

Biovillage approach represents the greening of development

Ron — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:14:00 -0800

Selvi Alagappan rises early each day to tend to her small patch of crossandra and jasmine flowers in the rural Indian village of Mangalam, in the Union of Pondicherry. These and the mushrooms she cultivates in a nearby shack bring in a monthly income that, while still below the poverty line, keeps her large family from going hungry. — Two years ago, however, starvation was very much a reality for Selvi and her family. But like many other participants of the Biovillage Project, a collaborative development programme described by its authors as "pro-nature, pro-women, pro-poor", Selvi was given the tools and technical assistance to increase her household income and get her back on her feet again.

The project is run by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, a local non-governmental organization in Chennai, with funding and technical assistance from the Government of India and international agencies including FAO, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The project began in 1992 with 42 participants in three villages. It now operates in 19 villages with a team of 24 project specialists. ...

Chennai Declaration: UN urged to help achieve hunger-free world

Ron — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:05:00 -0800

The United Nations (UN) has been recommended to set up a Statutory Body comprising G8 and G20 nations to provide political oversight to the global and national efforts to achieve the goal of a hunger-free world by 2015. — The recommendation was made in the Chennai Declaration that was adopted yesterday on the concluding day of the three-day international workshop on "Food Security: A Great Threat to Human Security" held at the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSRRF) in Chennai in India.

"The goal should be eradication of hunger by 2015, and not halving the proportion or the number of the hungry in relation to any chosen base year," the declaration recommended. — It said all the member states of the UN should make the right to a balance diet, clean drinking water, environmental sanitation, primary health care and primary education a basic human right...

The programme will be completed today (Thursday) through visiting Biovillage and Auroville, a MSSRF project in Pondicherry. ...

Discovering new life (The Hindu)

Ron — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 18:43:00 -0800

Thanks to RY Deshpande for referring this article.

The thrilling discovery of 52 species of animals and plants from the equatorial island of Borneo in just one year is proof that the task of cataloguing all life on earth deserves the highest priority. A treasure trove of species, which includes a miniature fish that lives in highly acidic peat swamps, six Siamese fighting fish, a tree frog with bright green eyes, and 16 new ginger plants, has been found in a mountainous area described as the "heart of Borneo." Indexing biodiversity is a discipline with a deadline. Continuing deforestation, habitat loss, the spread of invasive species, and the annexation of resource-rich areas to feed mass consumption leave insufficient time to classify everything. ...

"Response to my critics," by Meera Nanda

Ron — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 22:11:00 -0800

"Prophets Facing Backward," my book under discussion here, claims that the cluster of social constructivist, feminist and postcolonial theories that deny any cognitive distinctions between warranted knowledge and collectively accepted beliefs ... have provided philosophical justifications for [a] kind of populist interpretive flexibility ...

Set against the backdrop of the rise of Hindu nationalism in India, the book argues that the relentless debunking the very idea of universally valid, bias-free facts has received in the hands of its many academic critics, has added to a culture of doublethink where truth has becomes infinitely malleable, open to all kinds of nativist, pseudo-scientific and faith-based interpretations.

Intellectuals, whose job it is to challenge such mystifications, I argue, have betrayed their calling by condemning the very possibility of impartial and universally valid truth that can cut through cultural and national boundaries. This betrayal has made it easier for the religious right to present itself as the defender of the tradition, dressed up as “alternative science”, which it claims has been unfairly rejected and willfully suppressed by the secular elite. The logic of deconstruction of modern science simultaneously provides the logic for the construction of “sacred sciences” by the resurgent religious-political movements that have sprung up among the Hindus, Christian and Muslims alike.

It is indeed high time for science studies to get engaged in the thorny issues raised by the attempt of religious extremists to take on the prestige of science for their objectively false and outdated cosmologies. It is gratifying to note that the debate I began in the "Prophets" has now been joined. My colleagues from science studies and postcolonial studies have done me the honor of critically engaging with the concerns I have raised regarding the political dangers of epistemic multiculturalism in this age of religious fundamentalisms. In this essay, I will respond at length to the issues my critics have raised in their readings of the "Prophets." ...

"Prophets Facing Backward," by Meera Nanda

Ron — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 21:26:00 -0800

The leading voices in science studies have argued that modern science reflects dominant social interests of Western society. Following this logic, postmodern scholars have urged postcolonial societies to develop their own "alternative sciences" as a step towards "mental decolonization". These ideas have found a warm welcome among Hindu nationalists who came to power in India in the early 1990s. In this passionate and highly original study, Indian-born author Meera Nanda reveals how these well-meaning but ultimately misguided ideas are enabling Hindu ideologues to propagate religious myths in the guise of science and secularism.

At the heart of Hindu supremacist ideology, Nanda argues, lies a postmodernist assumption: that each society has its own norms of reasonableness, logic, rules of evidence, and conception of truth, and that there is no non-arbitrary, culture-independent way to choose among these alternatives. What is being celebrated as "difference" by postmodernists, however, has more often than not been the source of mental bondage and authoritarianism in non-Western cultures. The "Vedic sciences" currently endorsed in Indian schools, colleges, and the mass media promotes the same elements of orthodox Hinduism that have for centuries deprived the vast majority of Indian people of their full humanity.

By denouncing science and secularization, the left was unwittingly contributing to what Nanda calls "reactionary modernism." ...

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) to deliver first 5 million units this year

Ron — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 13:19:00 -0800

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Initiative unveiled its final industrial prototype of the XO - a laptop computer with a toylike look. But to say it's a toy is misleading. The device is intended to bring the most isolated tribal village into the Information Age, with the ultimate goal of offering one to every child on the planet. [Except for India, whose education bureaucracy vetoed OLPC participation last year.]

By keeping the price low, the OLPC initiative hopes that governments in the developing world will be able to afford them. Already, Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, Uruguay, and, most recently, Rwanda have committed to participate in the program. Rwanda hopes to have laptops for all of its schoolchildren within five years. ...

The Mother reading 'Savitri'

Ron — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:11:00 -0800

Thanks to RY Deshpande for this wonderful link!

Audio recordings of The Mother reading Savitri, compiled by Narad.

Cavaet: Listening to these recordings could change your life ...

One Vision: The home of David Ulansey (CIIS Prof.)

Ron — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:16:00 -0800

My name is David Ulansey. I am a Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and before I came to CIIS I taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Boston University, Barnard College (Columbia University), the University of Vermont, and Princeton University. My specialty is the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world, especially the ancient Mystery religions, Gnosticism, ancient cosmology, and early Christianity.

My publications have focused on the ancient mystery religion of Mithraism. ...

"Two myths that keep the world poor," by Vandana Shiva

Ron — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:53:00 -0800

...Jeffrey Sachs...is not a simply a do-gooder but one of the world’s leading economists, head of the Earth Institute and in charge of a UN panel set up to promote rapid development. So when he launched his book The End of Poverty, people everywhere took notice. Time magazine even made it into a cover story.
But, there is a problem with Sachs’ how-to-end poverty prescriptions. He simply doesn’t understand where poverty comes from. He seems to view it as the original sin. “A few generations ago, almost everybody was poor,” he writes, then adding: “The Industrial Revolution led to new riches, but much of the world was left far behind.”
This is a totally false history of poverty. The poor are not those who have been “left behind”; they are the ones who have been robbed. The wealth accumulated by Europe and North America are largely based on riches taken from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Without the destruction of India’s rich textile industry, without the takeover of the spice trade, without the genocide of the native American tribes, without African slavery, the Industrial Revolution would not have resulted in new riches for Europe or North America. It was this violent takeover of Third World resources and markets that created wealth in the North and poverty in the South. ...

The Buddha on Meditation & States of Consciousness, Part II

Ron — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 11:17:00 -0800

There is inevitable great difficulty in translating from noumenal experience to the realm of discourse, from raw reality to abstract concept. Experience is the forerunner of all spiritual teachings, though similar experiences may come to be articulated differently; the Vedas say, "The Truth is one, only the sages call it by different names." In any given exploration of higher states of consciousness, the version set down in words is of necessity an arbitrary, and perhaps nebulous, delimitation of states, their characteristics, and their bounds...
... the Tibetans recognize two levels of religious doctrine and practice: "The Expedient Teaching" and "The Final Teaching." The Expedient Teachings are the multitude of world religions, each shaped by and for the people who adhere to it; the variance among faiths is accounted for by these shaping factors. But the Final Teaching at the (often esoteric) core of all faiths is essentially one and the same. The typology of techniques which follows here is aimed at the level of Final Teaching, where doctrinal differences fall away, the unity of practice coming into focus. Religious systems differ by virtue of accident of time and place, but the experience that is precursor to religion is everywhere the same. The unity in Final Teaching underlying the various techniques is inevitable: all men are alike in nervous system, and it is at this level that the laws governing Final Teaching operate. ...

The Buddha on Meditation & States of Consciousness, Part I, by Daniel Goleman

Ron — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:06:00 -0800

As Suzuki (1958) points out, in every religion it has been the core experience of an altered state which has preceded and been foundation for the subsequent structures of institution and theology. Too often it is the latter that have survived rather than the former; thus the modern crisis of the established churches might be seen in terms of the disappearance in our age of personally experienced transcendental states, the "living spirit" which is the common base of all religions. Still, for each being who enters these states without a guide, it is as though he were discoverng them for all the world for the first time. A biographer of Sri Aurobindo, for example, notes (Satprem, 1970, p. 256):
"One may imagine that Sri Aurobindo was the first to be baffled by his own experience and that it took him some years to understand exactly what had happened. We have described the ... experience ... as though the stages had been linked very carefully, each with its explanatory label, but the explanations came long afterwards, at that moment he had no guiding landmarks."
This paper begins in Part I with a detailed discussion of the 'Visuddhimagga' account of Gotama Buddha's teachings on meditation and higher states of consciousness––perhaps the most detailed and extensive report extant of one being's explorations within the mind. ...

The MIT Media Lab's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project: a New Prototype for Philanthropy?

Ron — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 13:28:00 -0800

...The concept behind the project, which Negroponte unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, less than two years ago, is as simple as its name: give all children in the developing world laptop computers of their own. If we achieved that, he believes, we could bridge what's usually termed the "digital divide." The laptops would offer children everywhere the opportunity to benefit from the Internet and would enable them to work with and learn from each other in new ways. OLPC, the nonprofit organization that Negroponte set up to manage the project, has taken responsibility for designing the computer and engaging an outside manufacturer to produce it. But the nonprofit is not going to buy the computers. That, at least for now, is the responsibility of governments, ...

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Program Surges Ahead; India backed out

Ron — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 12:55:00 -0800

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program has just taken another step forward by shipping the first 10 computers from the manufacturer in Taiwan, to the US State Department for testing. This is the first batch of the $100 laptops for children in poor countries such as Nigeria, China, Brazil, Egypt and Thailand who have already placed an order for 1 million laptops... India was part of the program initially until Indian Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee reversed the decision to back the OLPC project. ...

"Ecology and Auroville’s Development Planning," by Rod Hemsell

Ron — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:05:00 -0800

... India’s current level of consumption (ecological footprint) is .8 gha (global hectares per capita) - already double India’s biocapacity of .4 gha, although it is significantly below humanity’s consumption level of 2.2 gha, which is 25% above the planet’s biocapacity of 1.18 gha. At India’s current level of exponential economic growth (7.5%) and population growth (1.7%), its economy will quadruple and its population will double by 2050. If Auroville doesn’t take this situation seriously and manifest a viable alternative infrastructure and economy that works, its real reason for existing, along with humanity’s as a whole, may never be realized. ...

Question for Debashish re "Introductory Notes to Hinduism"

Ron — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 11:08:00 -0800

Hi Debashish, -- How would you relate your discussion of the historical development of Hinduism with the following commentary by Sri Aurobindo?

...The sages of the Veda and Vedanta relied entirely upon intuition and spiritual experience. It is by an error that scholars sometimes speak of great debates or discussions in the Upanishad. Wherever there is the appearance of a controversy, it is not by discussion, by dialectics or the use of logical reasoning that it proceeds, but by a comparison of intuitions and experiences in which the less luminous gives place to the more luminous, the narrower, faultier or less essential to the more comprehensive, more perfect, more essential. ..."

"The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge," by Sri Aurobindo (Chap. VIII of "The Life Divine")

Ron — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:33:00 -0800

This is the text of Chapter VIII of "The Life Divine," by Sri Aurobindo, copyright © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1990-2023.

BUT what then is the working of this Sachchidananda in the world and by what process of things are the relations between itself and the ego which figures it first formed, then led to their consummation? For on those relations and on the process they follow depend the whole philosophy and practice of a divine life for man. ...

Introductory Notes to "Hinduism"

Debashish — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:19:00 -0800

These Introductory Notes on "Hinduism" (a body of Indian religious and spiritual systems which follow the primacy of the Vedas) by Debashish Banerji attempts a cross-cultural description of this complex field seen as an unified discourse. Aspects covered include productive dualities within Hinduism, textual history of Hinduism, major Puranic gods, Hindu practices and the Hindu temple.

Comments on "Reflections on Sri Aurobindo's THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY" (cont.)

Ron — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:10:00 -0700

I've taken the liberty of re-posting here all of the comments ("Replies") to Debashish's earlier posting: "Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji." -- My reasons:

1) The set of responses in this thread was getting so large that we were starting to experience some oddities in BlogHarbor's reply functions.
2) I was concerned that we could delete the entire thread due to some technical or human error, thus losing this fascinating & important discussion.
3) By posting all of the comments as this article, we can go back in and re-format them if we wish; e.g., correcting typos & adding italics for quoted passages.

PLEASE CONTINUE OUR REPLIES ON THIS TOPIC HERE, IN THIS ARTICLE, NOT IN THE PREVIOUSLY POSTED ONE.

Thanks,
~ ron

China’s New Leftist (The NYT Magazine)

Ron — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:30:00 -0700

... At our last meeting, Wang also spoke more about a subject Cui had brought up with me: how the rise of China and India throws up new challenges and possibilities with profound implications for the world at large. “Western societies have been on top for the last two centuries and shaped the world with the decisions they made,” he said. “China and India will now play equally crucial roles in the new century. But what will they be? I think it is very important for Chinese and Indian intellectuals not just to imitate the West. They have to explore alternatives to the Western model of modernity. Otherwise, the ‘consumer nationalists’ are already saying, ‘America was on top; now we are on top.”’ -- Wang laughed, and added, “This is not interesting.”

Phenomenology of Non-Factual Intersubjective Practice - Translation Exercise by Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 01:20:00 -0700

This translation of an excerpt from Abanindranath Tagore's Apan Katha (Self-Story) presents an example of the artist's worlding - a willed disposition to experience by which we make for ourselves a home in the world through creative relationship. ...

An Officer's Diary: Getting to Know Auroville (ChennaiOnline)

Ron — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 16:19:00 -0700

... Some years ago an inscription was found on the wall of an ancient temple in Auroville saying something like this: ‘Once upon a time this dry and arid place was a tropical forest. It would again become lush and green when people from different parts of the world will come here and work together’. I am sure ‘Mother’ would have known about this inscription when she conceptualised Auroville. -- The prophesy in the inscription has come true. Today Auroville has representatives from almost all parts of the world. It is truly an ‘International City’. The ‘Mother’s’ dream has come true. ...

Libya signs up for "One Laptop per Child." Will provide 1.2 million laptops for its students

Ron — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 15:44:00 -0700

The fifth developing country has signed up for MIT's "One Laptop per Child" program. This is the open-source project that India recently opted out of, reportedly because of fears of losing control of the education of their children.

The government of Libya is reported to have agreed to provide its 1.2m school children with a cheap durable laptop computer by June 2008. -- The laptops offer internet access and are powered by a wind-up crank. They cost $100 and manufacturing begins next year, says [the non-profit organization located at MIT's Media Lab] One Laptop per Child. -- The non-profit association's chairman, Nicholas Negroponte, said the deal was reached on Tuesday in Libya.

Two Poems on Durga By Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 01:26:00 -0700

Durga is the Divine Mother's aspect of luminous Power. She is known for the slaying of the Buffallo Demon, Mahisasura. She (and her companion aspects of the Divine Mother) are particularly active at this time of the year. In these two poems, I contemplate Durga as she has been realized in stone at two ancient Goddess worship sites of India - Mamallapuram, near Pondicherry in South India and Ellora, in the hills of the western Deccan.

Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:33:00 -0700

In these last chapters of The Ideal of Human Unity, Sri Aurobindo draws together the threads that he has introduced earlier in the work, leading to his conclusion. Though Jan Smuts was yet to coin the word "Holism" to encapsulate the idea that a directed tendency towards the formation of ever-larger aggregates is observable in Nature, each such distinct stage marked by the presence of an identity and properties exceeding those of the sum of their parts, Sri Aurobindo's model of History follows this course. Indeed, this teleology follows naturally from Sri Aurobindo's master-idea of the progressive manifestation of intrinsic spiritual Oneness in Time, expressing itself politically as the drive towards world-union.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet

Ron — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 13:38:00 -0700

This is the official website of the Dalai Lama.

His Holiness’ first commitment is the promotion of human values such as compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment and self-discipline. All human beings are the same. We all want happiness and do not want suffering. Even people who do not believe in religion recognize the importance of these human values in making their life happier. His Holiness refers to these human values as secular ethics. He remains committed to talk about the importance of these human values and share them with everyone he meets. ...

Google Literacy Project, Bollywood Style

Ron — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 14:42:00 -0700

Google has asked literacy groups around the world to upload video segments to Google's new online Literacy Project explaining and demonstrating their successful teaching programs. Among the first few hundred to be posted is a same-language subtitle project from India that uses Bollywood films to teach reading. ...

Delhi may declare dengue as epidemic

Ron — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 12:01:00 -0700

NEW DELHI: With scores of dengue cases being reported in the national capital and Uttar Pradesh, authorities have stepped up efforts to contain the outbreak that has claimed at least 13 lives. Eleven people, including a student of the prestigious AIIMS, have died of dengue in Delhi while two deaths were reported from Uttar Pradesh. ...

Karl Grobl, Humanitarian Photojournalist

Ron — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 12:25:00 -0700

From an early age, my parents instilled in me, a desire to explore and learn first hand, about the world around me. Our family vacations and weekend excursions were general education courses disguised as fun. Knowingly or unknowingly they set me on course for a journey that today, I feel, is still just beginning.

The ongoing quest to document the world's people and the global events that shape our common humanity, has for me, been instrumental in breaking down stereotypes, preconceptions and prejudices. I believe that the more of the world we see and experience, the more we understand. It seems, people everywhere, share similar goals, aspirations, hopes and desires.

It is with a strong sense of obligation that I share, through photographs, the people, places and events that have profoundly shaped my vision of our world. By sharing these experiences with you, I hope to make a small, positive contribution to a heightened sense of world community.

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." -Gandhi-

Dharmasphere: -> Auroville

Ron — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:42:00 -0700

Dharmasphere is an interesting blog. You can get a sense of it by checking out this article on Auroville, which I think is a good, though short, summary of AV, with some great photos. ...

President of India re Tamil Nadu Mediation & Conciliation Centre

Ron — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 17:58:00 -0700

...It is indeed a noble cause to find an effective method to find a solution to a long standing dispute and create harmony among people especially the family members. Many times, a court case results out of misunderstanding and lack of effective communication between parties. When an objective mediator facilitates removal of misunderstanding between the parties without going into the legal rigour and corresponding expenditure, there is a fair chance of early settlement of the cases as a win-win situation. I would like to talk on the topic "Innovations in Justice Delivery". ...

Hansdehar - The first knowledge village of India

Ron — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 17:38:00 -0700

India is moving towards a Knowledge Based Society (KBS) with the help of Information Technology (IT). IT enablement of the villages is critical for empowering the rural India and to bring about eR-Commerce. The villagers of Hansdehar have taken this initiative to bridge the gap between the Government and the Citizens through this web interface for all the stakeholders involved in the development and upliftment of the village. This initiative is not a government initiative and is purely an effort of the village community to create itself an 'Empowered Knowledge Village' which can escalate its problems to the stakeholders through the IT.

A Nation of Guinea Pigs

Kim — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:34:00 -0700

There’s a new outsourcing boom in South Asia - and a billion people are jockeying for the jobs. How India became the global hot spot for drug trials.

...As many as half of all clinical trials are already conducted in locations far from the pharmaceutical companies' home base, in countries like India, China, and Brazil. And many industry analysts expect the market to skyrocket, particularly as expanding libraries of genetic information increase the number of drugs coming out of the lab. The consulting firm McKinsey calculates that the market in India for outsourced trials will hit $1.5 billion by 2010.

Enticed by numbers like these, developing countries have been scrambling to catch Big Pharma's eye - India most aggressively of all. Like high tech call centers and software farms, which were meant to transform India's computer industry by creating skilled workers and a stockpile of modern equipment, drug trial outsourcing is seen as the fast route to economic and scientific growth - a money train that the country can't afford to miss. ...

Young Auroville girl stars in Bollywood blockbuster "Black"

Ron — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 12:00:00 -0700

CHENNAI: Ayesha Kapoor, who shot into limelight with her laurel-winning performance as a deaf, mute and blind girl in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's bollywood blockbuster "Black", is more keen to become a writer than an actress.

Ayesha, who received the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) award recently for the best supporting artiste for her role in the film, says she had acted only in a few school plays prior to landing the role in "Black". ...

The Impact of Maine's One-to-One Laptop Program

Ron — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:00:00 -0700

Here are the official reports on the impact of the "One-to-One Laptop Program" that has been underway in the USA state of Maine for the past several years. -- Imho, the actual measured results cast serious doubt on the veracity of India's educational bureaucracy's justification ("...there weren't any proved benefits of providing children with their own laptops.") of their recent rejection of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) initiative ...

Nigeria supporting $100 laptop concept: One million bought already

Ron — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 13:27:00 -0700

All is not yet lost ...

The OLPC (One Laptop per Child) initiative for the developing world, the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte, is gaining ground in Africa, with Nigeria announcing the acquisition of one million laptops.

The OLPC, however, has a competitor: a consortium led by Microsoft and Intel. ...

India Blocks The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC)

Ron — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:58:00 -0700

Well, India has just dealt itself out of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project, a real mistake in my opinion. ...

The government of India's previous plans of buying laptop computers developed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project have been abandoned. The reason: the project is "pedagogically suspect". -- According to the Kaumudi newspaper, India's Ministry of Human Resource Development said there weren't any proved benefits of providing children with their own laptops. Therefore, such a costly expense could not be justified, as other education-related issues were also in need of attention. ...

The "Anything into Oil" thermal conversion process breakthrough ... Clean up India, at a profit?

Ron — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 12:00:00 -0700

I wonder if this now proven process could be used to help clean up India -- at a profit!

... Three tanker trucks arrive here on peak production days, loading up with 500 barrels of oil made from 270 tons of turkey guts and 20 tons of pig fat. Most of what cannot be converted into fuel oil becomes high-grade fertilizer; the rest is water clean enough to discharge into a municipal wastewater system. ...
The thermal conversion process can take material more plentiful and troublesome than straw—slaughterhouse waste, municipal sewage, old tires, mixed plastics, virtually all the wretched detritus of modern life—and make it something the world needs much more than gold: high-quality oil. ...

"What is suffering?" - Quoted from Shantaram

Ron — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 12:00:00 -0700

I'm slowly working my way through Shantaram, the remarkable book by Gregory David Roberts I referred to in a previous post. Here's another sample of Robert's evocative writing. The setting is a discussion group of men, all of whom are leaders of the Bombay "mafia." These weekly discussions are organized and led by Khaderbhai, the charismatic "Godfather" of Bombay's officially tolerated organized crime scene.

Khaderbhai has invited a new guest to this week's session. He is known as Linbaba, a cover identity being used by the book's namesake, "Shantaram," when he arrived in Bombay after escaping from prison in his native Australia.

As is the custom in the group, Khaderbhai calls on the new guest to suggest the topic of discussion ...

Pondy set to drop French tag: Pondicherry to become "Puducherry" ?

Ron — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 11:52:00 -0700

Calcutta sheds Raj baggage, becomes Kolkata. Madras reverts to flavours of home, turns Chennai. Upmarket Bombay gives a thumbs up to amchi Mumbai. Blue chip Bangalore is lucky. It is yet to become Bengaluru. And now Pondicherry wants to snap its French link in favour of Puducherry. ...

'Shantaram', the first two pages

Ron — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 02:34:00 -0700

I started reading Kim's copy of Shantaram tonight, which she was inspired to read by Rich's book review posted a few months ago.

Wow! I'm so inspired that I couldn't resist typing and posting the first couple of pages here. What a delicious treat this level of writing is. –– Thanks Rich!

Securing Shelter: Hope for Mumbai's Slums

Ron — Tue, 30 May 2006 15:35:00 -0700

This article describes one of the many NGO organizations now working to support the increasing number of slum dwellers around the world. SPARC originally focused on Mumbai, and is now branching out to network with other similarly-oriented NGO's working in other cities. This networking, mutual support and learning is supported by their increasingly sophisticated use of telecommunications technologies.

I think we need another term to describe these positive uses of telecom/computer technologies; e.g., their ability to facilitate the networking and empowerment of previously disempowered groups, ranging from computer programmers (Open Source movement) to slum dwellers. It's the other side of the coin from the "virtual class" types Rich so rightly critiques.

Half of the 14 million people in Mumbai, India's commercial capital, live in slums. A number of non-governmental organisations ( NGOs ) are working to help these communities but one NGO that stands out for its work with slum and pavement dwellers is the Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC). ...

planet of slums: Bangalore (the garden city)

Rich — Sat, 27 May 2006 13:13:00 -0700

My own take on the Indian economic boom in information technology is that it represents a form of neo-colonialist exploitation of the huge “standing reserve” (Heidegger) of the available talented engineers in Indian society. While there maybe some trickle down to a portion of the non-participatory population from the information economy, the overall the quality of life conditions for the teeming masses of India is almost unaffected. I believe a parallel can be made between ...

"Sri Aurobindo’s Vision and the 20th Century", a new essay by Rod Hemsell

Ron — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 20:58:00 -0700

It is perhaps inevitable, then, that we rewrite Sri Aurobindo, that we revision and rethink his vision as the background of this passing age of scientific and technological hubris, and that we narrate the necessary emergence of the trans-human. ...

Wikipedia re Hindutva

Ron — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 02:14:00 -0800

The term "Hindutva" (sometimes spelled "Hinduvta") has been used in some recent SCIY posts. I just looked it up in Wikipedia and discovered how little I knew about its history, provenance, and relation to past and current Indian politics. Here's the full text, including many informative links: ...

Rajiv Malhotra and the Infinity Foundation

Ron — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 02:59:00 -0800

Rajiv Malhotra "... is a former telecom entrepreneur who took early retirement to pursue a wide range of spiritual and intellectual interests, including rediscovery and direct experiences as per the Hindu-Buddhist traditions. He is also interested in facilitating an expansion of the American education system to incorporate non-Western wisdom and culture so as to bring about a truly global renaissance for all humanity. "The Infinity Foundation, based in Princeton, New Jersey, is engaged in making grants in the areas of compassion and wisdom. ..."

Boloji.com, a multimedia, multi-editor weblog about Indian culture

Ron — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 22:18:00 -0800

I've just come across a good example, imo, of the kind of multimedia magazine, multi-editor weblog, that we're moving SCIY toward. It's called Boloji, and describes itself as:

Boloji.com.. is a website dedicated to study India in particular and expressions on the diversity of life. We welcome articles relating to any section specified under "Channels". We also welcome Photo Essays..

Here's a sample of the writing of one of their columnists, which includes several Sri Aurobindo quotes relevant to, e.g., the "Virtual Class" discussion we've been having: ...

Interview: Dr Karan Singh re India Center in D.C., Talk re "The Auroville Experiment"

Ron — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:51:00 -0800

Dr Karan Singh, Deputy Leader of the Congress Party in the Rajya Sabha and the new president of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, is optimistic that during his tenure, the much-talked about India Center in Washington will finally become a reality. ... Dr Singh, who also currently serves as chairman of the Auroville Foundation -- a UNESCO-sponsored international community in South Asia where residents from over 30 countries and many states of India are trying a 'hands-on' experiment in spiritual and ecological harmony -- also delivered a lecture at the Asia Society in New York on 'An Alternative Approach to Resolving Sectarian and Communal Conflict: The Auroville Experiment.' He spoke to Managing Editor Aziz Haniffa recently..

"Dr Karan Singh honored with Chinmoy award" (India Post News Service)

Ron — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 22:59:00 -0800

NEW YORK: Dr. Karan Singh, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), now on a visit to United States, was honored with Shri Chinmoy Award on October 27 in New York in recognition of his life long contribution to world peace and harmony. ...