[sacw] SACW | 23 Dec. 00

Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr
Sat, 23 Dec 2000 01:44:01 +0100


SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WIRE -
23 December 2000
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)

#1. India / Pakistan / Nepal: Two deaths, three nations and a war
#2. Pakistan: Website on Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan (1914-1999)
#3. India: A Critique of NCERT's Curriculum Framework for School Education
#4. India: MPs see `National Curriculum' as part of ideological-political
agenda of Hindu Right
#5. India's Agitated academia
#6. India: Mad about Holy cows: RSS begins bovine "national arousal
campaign" (sic)
#7. India: In Ram's Absence, Ramar will do

--------

#1.

Himal South Asian
December 2000

Two deaths, three nations and a war

An Indian Gorkha officer dies in Kashmir while trying to rescue his Nepali
comrade. His grieving parents want to dedicate their lives to set up a
Peace Park in the world=92s highest battlefield.

by Kunda Dixit

Lt. Nawang Kapadia=92s death along the India-Pakistan line of control in
Kashmir on 11 November would perhaps have been just another statistic in
that endless and costly Himalayan war. But two things made it different:
Nawang was the son of renowned Bombay-based mountaineer, explorer and
writer, Harish Kapadia. And he died while trying to rescue one of the
Nepali soldiers under his command, Havaldar Chitra Bahadur Thapa of
Besisahar, Lamjung.

Nawang belonged to the 4th Battalion of the 3rd Gorkha Rifles, was
commissioned only in Sep-tember this year and had just joined the platoon
under his command in Kupwara near the Kashmiri capital of Srinagar two
weeks before he was killed. The 4th Battalion had been involved in
operations to stop infiltration across the line of control, and had
pre-viously taken casualties from the battle-hardened Afghans of the Al
Omar Tanzeem group. On 10 November, the battalion received information
about a large-scale incursion across the border nearby, and Nawang led his
platoon on a search-and-destroy mission. The soldiers came under fire from
a dozen or so Afghans hiding in a nearby forest. Chitra Bahadur was
advancing towards the gun positions when he was hit in the stomach. Nawang
ordered covering fire and went in with his own guns blazing for the rescue.
He slung Chitra Bahadur over his shoulder and had started rushing back when
he was hit in the face and got killed instantly.

The attackers were all killed, and identified as belonging to a mercenary
band of Afghans. Chitra Bahadur was taken by helicopter to a hospital in
Srinagar, but died on the way. Chitra Bahadur was Nawang=92s "Guruji", an
older Gor-kha soldier whose responsibi-lity it is to teach every new Gorkha
officer the nuances of being Nepali: cus-toms, cooking, songs and language.
Recalls his father, Harish: "When he last called, Nawang told us everything
was fine, he was missing fish, but he was enjoying dal-bhat and even
practised a few Nepali words."

When Harish and his wife Geeta came to Kathmandu they had planned to
proceed onwards to Besisahar to meet the family of Chitra Bahadur. But when
they contacted the Indian embassy here and were told it could not be
verified if Chitra Bahadur's family had been notified or not, they deci-ded
to postpone it for some months as they did not want to be the ones to break
the sad news.

The tragic deaths in Kashmir have once more brought home to Nepal the
uncomfortable truth that its citizens are fighting in the army of a SAARC
nation that is arrayed against that of another SAARC country. There are
seven Gorkha regiments in the Indian Army, and another 3,000 Nepali troops
serving under the British flag. Another 4,000 more serve in the Sultan of
Brunei=92s guards and in the Singapore Police. In the 1962 India-China war,
Indian Gorkha regiments were deployed against the Chinese. In 1989, Nepali
soldiers fought Tamil Tiger rebels on behalf of Sri Lanka as part of the
Indian Peace-Keeping Force. In last year=92s Kargil conflict between India
and Pakistan, 13 Indian Gorkhas were killed. And today, in an ironic twist,
Nepalis are once more killing and getting killed by Afghans=97170 years aft=
er
the British Afghan campaign and the disastrous retreat from Kabul in 1842.

Harish Kapadia is an accom-plished mountaineer who has climbed and explored
with Dave Wilkinson, Chris Bonnington and others. "It was very unusual for
a Gujarati cloth merchant from Bombay to be interested in moun-tains, and
they thought I was crazy," he says. And a near-fatal crevasse fall in the
Himalaya 20 years ago in which he broke his hip confirmed their views.
Harish learnt rock-climbing and took the basic course at the Himalayan
Mountaineering Institute in Darjee-ling in 1964 under famous Sherpa
climbers like Tenzing Norgay, Nawang Gombu and Sardar Wangdi.

The Kapadias named their sons after famous Sherpas: first Sonam, and then
his younger brother Nawang. And it was natural that virtually from the
moment they learnt to walk the Kapadia brothers were hiking and trekking
with their parents. Nawang was the adven-turous one; from a very early age
he was reading up on military matters and was especially fascinated by
Nepal's Gorkha soldiers who earned a reputation for valour first in the
Anglo-Nepal war of 1814-16, and later in the British and Indian armies.
Nawang=92s friends in Bom-bay say his happiest moments were when he joined
the Officers=92 Training Academy in Madras at the age of 24 and when he
passed out to join the 3rd Gorkha Rifles. "His dream was always to serve in
a Gorkha regiment," says Harish with a sad smile.

Since the fighting in Siachen started in 1984, nearly 4,000 people have
died and more than 10,000 injured on the Indian side alone. It costs India
USD 2 million a day to keep the fighting going on at altitudes of more than
6,000 metres. For Harish, it is an uphill battle convincing the defence
establish-ments to give up the senseless fighting, but he says there are
more and more people who are fed up with the war. He has climbed and
explored in the Siachen Glacier (Siachen means "rose" in the Balti
language) and says the only face-saving way out for both sides may be to
agree to declare it a trans-boundary Peace Park. He says: "The only
solution to save this great wilderness is to stop the war. As a mountaineer
and a lover of this glacier I can only pray that the powers that be will
listen to the anguish of the glacier and the soldiers serving in it." With
their son's death, the Kapadias are pur-suing the Peace Park proposal with
new energy and passion.

(Reproduced from Himal South Asian's sister publication, Nepali Times.)

_____

#2.

The Asian Studies WWW Monitor: late Dec 2000, Vol. 7, No. 132
---------------------------------------------
21 Dec 2000

Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan (1914-1999)

8M.com, Orem, UT, USA

Self-description "Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan was the founder of the Orangi
Pilot Project [OPP] in Pakistan and also the Comilla Rural Academy in East
Pakistan (now Bangladesh). He was born into a cultured family in 1914 and
died on Oct 09, 1999. Dr. Khan [...] devoted his life to the uplifting of p=
oor
Pakistanis. [...] Dr. Khan was a recipient of the Nishan-i-Imtiaz,
Hilal-e-Pakistan, Sitra-i-Pakistan, and Magsaysay Awards. [...] He was
awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Michigan State University in the USA
and an Honorary DLtt degree by Karachi University in Pakistan."

Site content: Photographs and Biographical data; Links (Dr. Khan's books,
articles, speeches, etc. Orangi Pilot Project (OPP), Comilla Rural Academy,
numerous sites with information about Dr. Khan.)

[The site offers a valuable 'Mediawatch' section - ed.]

URL http://akhtar-hameed-khan.8m.com

_____

#3.

A Critique of NCERT's Curriculum Framework for School Education

by V.K.Tripathi (*)

The National Council of Educational Research and Training has recently
released its National Curriculum Framework for School Education. It claims
that nearly all the sectors and sections of the Indian society have made
contributions to this document in a big way. If it were so one would wonder
how could water venders, rikshaw pullers, sweepers, maid servants, landless
laborers or farmers indulge in self glorification, through the
glorification of the past, and then meekly adjust themselves to
globalization as done in this document. How could they be silent about
their burning realities, viz., acute exploitation, unemployment,
discrimination, and violence? I am afraid the document is an alien exercise
meant to provide an ideological cover for globalization, the advanced form
of capitalism. It has absolutely no input from-and no concern for-the
masses of the country.

It comes at a time when year book India 2000 reveals a startling fact that
the enrollment in primary and junior high schools, as a percentage of
school age population, has declined considerably during 1993-98, despite
growth in affluence of the country. The document is silent on such a vital
issue. It produces no thinking on how to bring 70 % children, who quit
education at or before 8th grade, into the main stream of education, how to
develop professional skills in them, how to develop an understanding in
them of their economic and social problems. Its talk of value education,
unconnected to these issues and those of inequality and exploitation, is a
farce. So is the facade of value education being propagated by MHRD in
higher education. Document's repeated emphasis on national identity and
national pride, through glorifying scriptures and heroes, is misplaced. It
can only breed arrogance, not self realization or understanding of truth,
unless one learns the realities of living of the masses, their oppression,
exploitation and historical struggles. Since pre-independence days emphasis
on dogmatic religion (where scriptures and traditions are glorified to
claim ones superiority but their real message is ignored) has been a ploy
of the elite classes to oppose forces of freedom and equality. The same
garb is being advanced in school education. Needless to say, religion in
its right spirit has relevance to spiritual pursuits of an individual, but
then it means sublimating ones ego through identifying oneself with the
poor and resisting oppression and exploitation. Gandhi rose to great
spiritual heights through fighting colonialism and laying his life
resisting communalism. Such an education can be imparted only through
dialogue and personal behavior by the parents and teachers. For learning
religious philosophies, interested ones can go to religious institutions
and shrines, so much in abundance in India. The document lacks sense for
history. In its preamble it says, "As per British documents, even the early
nineteenth century India had an extensive education system, free from caste
and religious discrimination, and almost all the villages had schools." If
it were so India would not need, a few decades later, Himalayan efforts by
people, from Jyotiba Phule to Gandhi, to gain entry for untouchables into
schools. In socio-cultural context it says, "traditionally India has been
perceived as a source of fulfillment-material, sensuous and spiritual=8A A
sizeable segment of the contemporary Indian society, seems to have
distanced itself from the religio-philosophic ethos, the awareness of the
social design, and the understanding of the heritage of the past". This
flowery picture of our past can pride only the arrogant. It does not
generate any sensitivity towards the masses who have suffered for ages
under caste discrimination, feudal oppression and economic exploitation.
Gandhi saw India's past in its totality, its bright side as well as dark
side, and mobilized millions to fight these evils besides the British Raj.
He never projected a superfluous picture of India, still he could inculcate
unprecedented self confidence and heroism in common people. Nothing is more
powerful than truth.

The document rightly points out merits of an agrarian society and family
values associated with it. However, the dominant factor responsible for
their decay has not been the British system of education as pointed out in
the document but industrialization and market forces. Education is merely
subservient to the elite classes. It is astonishing that the document does
not utter a word on demerits of globalization and liberalization and wants
education to be subservient to it. To make this bitter pill swallow it
talks of value education. "People must realize who they are and what is the
purpose of human life. Self recognition would come to them through proper
value education that would facilitate their spiritual march from
sub-consciousness to that of super-consciousness through the different
intermediary stages. Value based education would help the nation fight
against all kinds of fanaticism, ill will, violence, fanaticism,
dishonesty, avarice, corruption, exploitation and drug abuse." There is no
mention of what exploitation is, who is exploited, what is the process of
exploitation, what forces would resist it? This is blatant lack of concern.
The first step in spirituality is sensitivity (agony for the suffering
masses). Step by step, by observing the movements of mind and living a life
of struggle and seva one realizes truth. Concerns like "our children know
about Newton, they do not know about Aryabhatta, they do know about
computers but do not know asbout the advent of zero or decimal system" and
emphasis on developing appreciation of the contributions of Indian
mathematicians and scientists, and encouraging Vedic Mathematics only
emerge through gross ignorance of ground realities. In most government
schools in outer skirts of Delhi high school result is between 3% to 20%
and most students fail in mathematics. The understanding of basic laws and
scientific concepts is extremely poor. We need to put in our enire efforts
in developing such an understanding rather than glorifying the discoverers,
to whom only a passing reference should suffice. Every stream of education
is a common endeavor of entire human race and so are the treasures of
religion and philosophies. No one is preferred to draw any special pride in
them. Document mentions "nothing short of excellence in every aspect of
school education is the first imperative for meeting the multifarious
challenges of today and tomorrow", and "special education for gifted
children" but does not examine its implications for students at large and
its impact on class disparities.

At junior high school and high school levels the subjects are too many.
There should be two languages, maths, science and social science. The third
language, work education, art education and health and physical education
must be scrapped. Instead, after junior high school there should be two
streams of two years duration, 1) Professional stream, 2) Formal stream.
The former would impart professional and technical training to enable a
student to stand on his own if he can not afford education beyond that.
After completing the first stream, students should be eligible to return to
formal stream at 11th grade if they like, with one or two make up courses.
A minimal level of learning for every child must be recognized as 8 years
of formal education and two years of technical training. This would cost
3.5% of GDP, hence total budget of education must be raised to 6% of GDP.

The idea of a mathematics counter in a science lab is interesting, however,
it would be better to introduce projects. The science and technology
section lacks depth. It fails to notice even obvious flaws in current
science curriculum, e.g., class X scince syllabus is irrelevant to
understanding of science. The document says that science must open itself
to issues like gender, culture, language, poverty, etc. but has no work
plan for it.

The document recommends a foundation course comprising language, work
education and health and physical education and reserves 40% of instruction
time for it at the higher secondary level. Some elements of the course like
health and social awareness are useful but it does not deserve more than
10% of instruction time, that too when emphasis on religion and self
glorification has been removed. The language will be taught in electives
any way. The section on vocational stream after 10th grade is vague and
devoid of science education. This stream must come after 8th grade.

The document trivialises secularism by calling it sarva dharma sambhav
(equal respect for all religions). Secularism implies clarity of perception
and burning fire to resist prejudice, discrimination, and violence against
any person irrespective of his religion. For this our teachers and students
must see the distinction between masses and the ruling classes and never
impose the images of past rulers on our poverty stricken masses.
Communalism is a mighty political force in our country today. Many votaries
of sarva dharma sambhav have played devastating roles in recent years. In
this context it is highly apprehensive that the life style, value education
and national identity propagated in this document are derived solely from
Hindu scriptures and traditions. However, equally profound are the life
styles, philosophies and moral values revealed in Qoran, Bible, Granth
Sahib and other scriptures and followed by millions of our brothren. One
must have freedom to follow any life style. By bringing religious
orientation to education this document appears forcing every student to
follow Hindu way. It is a different story that this approach will neither
help a Hindu or a non-Hindu in spiritual enlightenment.

NCERT must reverse its approach and bring masses into the focus of
education, instead of focusing on past glory. Every text book should be
written in simple language and every lesson be related to people's lives.
Teachers to student ration be improved from 1:48 to 1:30. Every class must
have a teacher which is not so in 66% schools at present. Teachers
indifference should be overcome. Efforts be made to pull more teachers from
less privileged sections to bridge class difference between the teachers
and the students.

( * Sadbhav Mission, 5 C-Street, IIT, New Delhi 110016, India)

_____

#4.

The Hindu
23 December 2000

Vidhya Bharati in a new form?

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, DEC. 22. The Opposition parties are preparing themselves to
question the direction and substance of the ``clandestine and surreptitious
manner in which the present Government is seeking to make fundamental
changes in the National Policy on Education.''

The Centre has convened a meeting of State Education Ministers to discuss
its recently prepared `National Curriculum Framework for School Education.'

Eleven Rajya Sabha members, belonging to different parties, have written a
letter to all the Chief Ministers to alert them on the nature of changes
being proposed in the curriculum framework.

It appears that the Vajpayee Government may have a fight on its hands
similar to one it faced when it tried, two years ago, to introduce ``a
sectarian agenda'', prepared by an RSS affiliate, Vidhya Bharati Shiksha
Sansthan.

Mr. Eduardo Faleiro (Congress), Mrs. Chandra Kala Pandey (CPI-M), Mr. V.
Dhammaviriya and Mr. Ram Deo Bhandary (RJD), Mr. Gandhi Azad (BSP), Mr.
Mirza Abdul Rashid (National Conference), Mr. H.K.J. Gowda (Janata Dal),
Mr. V. Raghavan and Dr. Biplab Dasgupta (CPI), Mr. R.S. Gavai (RPI) and Mr.
R. Margabandhu (AIADMK), have alleged that the National Curriculum is an
attempt to `circumvent the authority of Parliament'.

The MPs see the `National Curriculum' as part of the strategy of the
Government `which has converted all the educational bodies coming under the
purview of the Ministry of Human Resource Development into instruments of
implementing the ideological-political agenda of the Sangh Parivar.'

``It is a reflection of the major departure which the present Government
is relentlessly pursuing in the content and process of education by giving
it a sectarian, and chauvinistic orientation in the name of value
education, spiritual education, indigenous education, education about
religions, etc=8A'' they say.

Elitist, racist=8A

The MPs also have another basic objection to the philosophy behind the
Curriculum. ``It is elitist and possibly racist,'' they say.

``The curriculum introduces new elements of inequality by what it says
about the education of the gifted and talented children and contrary to all
educational norms the identification of the gifted and talented is to begin
from the earliest stage of education,'' they inform the Chief Ministers.

The National Curriculum document, `talks of assessing their emotional and
spiritual quotient.

Thus every child according to the philosophy of this document is born with
not only a fixed quantum of intelligence but also a fixed quantum of
emotion and spirituality, which will be measured.'

The overall impact would be `further inequalities in education as well as
elitism which it is mixed with obscurantism in the name of spirituality.'

The MPs invite the Chief Ministers to raise their collective voice to have
the document rejected.

While the Congress and the Left Front Governments (West Bengal and Kerala)
are expected to oppose the curriculum, the response of the Governments in
Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh would be significant.

______

#5.

The Hindu
22 December 2000
Op-Ed.

Agitated academia

By Harsh Sethi

WITH THE Union Human Resources Minister, Mr. Murli Manohar Joshi, publicly
questioning the academic credentials of the JNU historian, Prof. K. N.
Pannikar, more specifically expressing reservations over his appointment
as Vice-Chancellor of a university in Kerala, `official' denigration of
academia has touched a new low. The signal from the mandarins of Shastri
Bhavan is now clear: protests by the teaching community about assaults on
their dignity or for demanding superior working conditions will be given a
short shrift.

Take another example. Mr. V. A. Pai Panandikar, president of the
widely-respected think-tank, Centre for Policy Research, is currently
embroiled in an unseemly court case. The charge: that he `unfairly'
dismissed a fellow colleague, Mr. Brahma Chellaney, from the faculty. And
this at a time when he had crossed the official age of superannuation.
Whatever the legal merits on either side of the divide, what is disturbing
is the `reported' role of the Ministry and the Indian Council of Social
Science Research, the body partially supporting the CPR, in seeking to
denigrate the reputation of the research institute and thereby undermine
its autonomy, ostensibly with the object of taking it over.

Coming as this does in the wake of earlier efforts to shut off funding to
the Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi, and the saffron takeover of
the ICSSR, the ICHR, the IGNCA, and the Indian Institute of Advance
Studies, Shimla, among others-it is apparent, even to the uninitiated,
that the days of an autonomous and vibrant academia seem numbered.

The above may appear as minor instances, partly because the numbers of
those directly involved are small. In these days of quick-fix analyses and
sound-byte wisdom, those who ought to be concerned about the health of our
academic institutions, the `dreaming about affluence' middle-classes have
little patience for putting together small trends to construct a larger
picture. But even they ought to have been disturbed by the continuing
agitation of college and university teachers demanding implimentation of
previous MHRD and UGC notifications relating to their Career Advancement
Scheme and payment of arrears arising out of the recommendations of the
Fifth Pay Commission.

Equally, little cognisance seems to have been taken of the threat by the
major teachers' unions-the Federation of Central Universities' Teachers'
Association, the All-India Federation of University and College Teachers'
Associations, and the All-India Federation of University Teachers'
Association-to go on indefinite strike in the new year.

Not that the demands of the teachers' unions are new. In the mid-1990s,
universities and colleges across the country were shut down for nearly
four months demanding better working conditions. After hard bargaining,
both the Ministry and the UGC finally conceded a merit promotion scheme
such that lecturers could hope to rise to the level of professors, at
least in university departments. A few more agitations and the scheme was
extended to cover college teachers.

Whatever the intrinsic merit or otherwise of the merit promotion
scheme-and there are many, including this writer, who are uneasy about an
automatic promotion of every teacher to the level of a Professor-surely
since the teaching fraternity is denied the advantage of a running grade,
it is unfair not to structure a proper career advancement scheme. Even
more arbitrary, once it is conceded and notified, is to withdraw it with a
bland announcement that the earlier `concession' was ill-thought.

One reason why the mandarins in Shastri Bhavan may have decided to retract
their earlier assurance is financial. With the Fifth Pay Commission
substantially hiking up the salaries and perks of the teachers, both the
Ministry and the UGC find it near impossible to meet the escalated salary
bill. Though a pinch, they might squeeze out the needed moneys to satisfy
the University teachers, an extension of the same to colleges would
completely cripple them. Let us not forget that most States are completely
cash strapped, and Shastri Bhavan or the UGC does not assume the
responsibility for the non-plan, recurring expenditures. Also that the
numbers involved (229 university level institutions in 1997, and 11089
colleges in 1999) are not insignificant.

And yet, even the financial scarcity argument wears a bit thin in the face
of a continuing populist expansion in the number of universities and
colleges, or research institutes. There seems no restraint of wasteful
expenditures in highly publicised, though of low academic worth,
jamboories or in committing scarce resources to chairs on Indian culture
abroad. After all, if a tightening of the belt is called for, why should
only the teachers in existing institutions bear the brunt of expenditure
cuts?

There is, one suspects, a deeper reason behind the disregard of teachers'
ire and agitations. Many in the administration see college and university
teachers as relatively pampered, ill-deserving of a better deal.
Unfortunately, this negative perception of the teaching community is
shared by many in the middle class, in particular the media. Routinely we
are subjected to stories about teacher absenteeism, of their moonlighting
and doing other jobs, of being more concerned about private tutorials than
classroom teaching. Worse, that whatever their qualifications at the point
of entry, they have over time lost their academic edge and are no longer
equipped to train the young to meet the challenges of the time.

The fact that, barring rare exceptions, most colleges and universities are
run-down and ill-equipped-be it classrooms, laboratories or libraries-or
that most teachers do not even have lockers what to speak of cubicles, is
glossed over. No credit is ever given to those, admittedly a minority,
who, despite adverse conditions, continue to struggle with their teaching,
research and publications. Unfortunately, teachers' unions too contribute
to this negative image, being more active in struggles for material
advancement than in stretching limited resources to better use. It was only
in the year 2000 that the Delhi University Teachers' Association formally
recognised the problem of teacher absenteeism and decided to monitor its
members for performance.

This negative perception about the teaching community fits well into the
larger project of state withdrawal from and privatisation of higher
education. The treating of higher education as a non-merit good, thus
undeserving of subsidies, an all round hike in student fees, cutback on
fresh recruitment and escalation of teaching loads is all part of this
framework. As is the plan of leaving future expansion to the private
sector, little realising that ill-considered privatisation without proper
norms of working and monitoring for content and performance only adds to
the pool of sub-standard institutions.

A society with low regard for its teachers and a distorted perception of
the value of higher education-reflected in the starving of existing
institutions, placing curbs on their autonomy, seeking to ideologically
re-orient curricula, and relying for expansion on the vagaries of private
capital-is only playing with its future. But maybe one should not expect
better from those who seek salvation in Vedic Mathematics and a promotion
of Hindu culture.

______

#6.

Tehelka.com

Holy cow syndrome: RSS begins bovine protest

The RSS has listed a host of reasons, both scientific and far-fetched, on
why the protection of the cow should be part of the fundamental rights of
the Constitution, reports Prerna

Lucknow, December 19

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in its month-long "national arousal
campaign" (sic), has demanded an unequivocal ban on cow
slaughter. More than half of its 22-page booklet, Hindu Sanskriti and
Paryawaran (Hindu Culture and Environment), is devoted to the cow, and
reels out the bovine ilk's advantages.

With unerring electoral instinct, the RSS is once again demanding that
unconditional protection for cows be included in the Fundamental Rights of
the Constitution and that just its inclusion in the Directive Principles of
State Police was not good enough. The RSS also wants the cow's protection
to be included in the Union List of the Constitution, and if that was not
possible, then it should form part of the Concurrent list so that both the
centre and also the states are responsible for it. The
RSS feels that the central government could do this easily through a
recommendation by the present Constitution Review Commission.

According to the RSS, there are quotations from the Vedas on the importance
of cow. Krishna got all the essence of the Gita during his cowherd days.
The RSS booklet says "we all know the forefather of Ram, Maharaja
Dilipnandani, prayed and respected cows. Once he stopped a lion from
devouring a cow. God, who had taken the form of the lion, was so impressed
with the maharaja's devotion towards the cow that he blessed him with the
birth of a son. The genealogical line continued and that is how "We were
blessed with Lord Rama."

The booklet blames the British for their support for cow slaughter and
causing a divide between Muslims and Hindus. The booklet tries to impress
that cows and bulls have been worshipped all over the world and that the
animal is respected in many religions. Like the Hindus, Parsees are also
devoted towards the bull. Even the Egyptians pyramid has sketches of the
cow. In India, coins have had cows etched on them from the sixth century BC
and the practice has continued after Independence. The booklet also talks
of the importance given to cows by Tulsidas, Mahatma Namdev and the Sikh
Guru Govind Singh. It says that Gautam Buddha attained enlightenment after
having kheer. Jesus had said that killing one ox was the equivalent of
killing a human being. Swami Dayanand Saraswati has said that in its
lifetime, a living cow can provide food for 4,10,440 persons whereas the
meat of one cow could feed at the most 80 persons.

The booklet also quotes Balganagdhar Tilak, Rajendra Prasad, Devraha Baba,
Hamuman Prasad Poddar and Jayaprakash Narayan, who have all written in
support of the ban on cow slaughter.

The booklet also lists the many scientific uses of milk, cow dung and
urine. Milk is helpful in reducing atomic radiation (according to
Shirowich, a Russian scientist), the cows milk is always pure, houses
covered with cow dung are protected from radiation, milk prevents heart
attacks and improves memory, the cow's moos helps humans get rid
of mental infirmities, cow dung can cure stomach upsets, and that the smell
of cow's excretions kill tuberculosis germs.

[...] .

______

#7.

The Telegraph
23 December 2000

IN RAM'S ABSENCE, RAMAR WILL DO =
=20
=
=20
FROM T.N. GOPALAN=20=20=20=20

Chennai, Dec. 22: Till the Ram temple is finished, another Ram will be
enough to keep the Sangh fired up.

The RSS has acquired the rights to the "miraculous" herbal fuel "invented"
by Ramar Pillai. The promoter of Hindutva is applying for a patent and
will eventually produce as well as peddle the petrol from plants.

Scepticism and a CBI chargesheet had greeted Ramar when he announced the
invention. He was also arrested in March this year. But pained at the scorn
being heaped on the swadeshi 'wonder' fuel, the RSS commissioned two
scientists from the Nagpur-based Go Vigyan Anusandhan Kendra to conduct
"rigorous tests".

The scientists have found in Pillai's concoction "a satisfactory and cheap
fuel" and decided to join hands with the Sangh in commercial production as
soon as patent was obtained, RSS' Chennai district president S.
Sampathkumar said today.

He also released a letter from the two scientists, Jyotishi and Jamphekar,
endorsing Pillai's claim that it was very much a herbal fuel with low
levels of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons.

The RSS leader is confident that patent will be granted. Sampathkumar
dismissed the CBI chargesheet which had accused the "inventor" of using
benzene and toluene in churning out his fuel and siphoning off the
chemicals from a local petroleum refinery.

"That's a cock-and-bull story. We're convinced it is genuine. I am
authorised by the highest echelons of the RSS to engage in this
pathbreaking venture," he said.

The reason for the enterprise: "The RSS has always been motivated by the
highest of considerations. It is interested in the nation's welfare and
progress. We'll do whatever we think is right and proper in this regard."

Ramar has approached the RSS on his own and there was no consideration in
the transfer of rights, Sampathkumar said.

Ramar, who is on bail now, said he had had enough of his fuel. "Vested
interests" had sabotaged his efforts so much that he was giving it up to
the RSS. He claimed that he continued to receive threats.

Sampathkumar said once production started and they began to earn profits,
Ramar's debts with various dealers would be settled. "We don't intend to
cheat anyone," he said.

When everyone seemed to have lost interest in him the RSS has sprung a
surprise.

Never in the past five years that Pillai has been going around hawking his
product has the RSS bothered to raise its voice in his support.

Only a maverick Tamil nationalist called Nagai Mugan was championing his
cause and he, too, seems to have lost interest after Pillai's arrest.

______________________________________________
SACW is an informal, independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since 1996.
Dispatch archive from 1998 can be accessed
at http://www.egroups.com/messages/act/
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Disclaimer: opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily correspond to views of SACW compilers.