Cartoon, Insensitivity, and Violence

The media and the western leaders have successfully projected the cartoon issue as a conflict between the great quality of western democracies, free speech, and the dogmatism of islamic society, intolerance. The violence that followed should be condemned in strongest terms possible. At the same time, why has the dialogue to evaluate the responsibilities of free speech not been initiated by media as well as by the rhetorical speech of western leaders. The insight into the reasons for lack of such dialogues within western society might possibly unveil the true nature of free speech as practised by western countries.

Cartoon controversy - Few questions

The cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) were first published by Danish newspaper. Several European newspapers have caused outrage in the Muslim world by republishing them in support of the vague concept, freedom of press. Two issues involved here are depiction itself and its offensive content. Let us just ask few questions first - only questions.

1. How do you draw a line between "freedom of press" and "civic responsibility"?
2. Do we understand the difference between "freedom of power" and "freedom of expression"?
3. Can racially, or otherwise, offending abuses be justified in the name of freedom of expression?
4. Is creating fear is the only way through which abuses can be stopped?
5. Why do people, who say they are deeply hurt seeing their national flags burnt, are not able to see the hurt caused to the people by their "freedom of expression"?
6. In our society where symbols have an extraordinary sense of importance and meaning, do media have enough maturity to glorify and/or demean those symbols?
7. Why do we accept a societal model where innocents suffer?
8. Does scientific outlook, whatever that means, have anything to contribute constructively in the above issues?

This or that? - 1

Once a person, whose name is This-or-that, went to a Quiz programme.

This-or-that now remembers only this question: Who is the prime minister of India?

Everyone answered this question correctly except one who put up a brave face saying his answer was right. The answer he told was Sonia and maintained that the principle of division-of-labor was at work. His name, This-or-that forgot, was some Man-moiety Singh or Mater-mohan Singh or something like that.

PS: This-or-that now reads a book written by an economist on how to do an obedient somersault before natives and native-foreigners.

Feynman lectures

Few links for those who would like to see Feynman in action:

1. Feynman's New Zealand lecture (streaming video in four parts), is available here.
http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8

2. What did he think of beauty, prize, and lack of knowledge? Three video clips are available here. Don't miss to see the extra glow on his face when he speaks of his father in the second clip.
http://www.basicfeynman.com/interviews.html

3. Here is the link to view the special programme organized to remember Feynman. His daughter Michelle is also in the discussion panel.
www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3013

M.S. Subbulakshmi - 017

M.S. Subbulakshmi

(September 16, 1916 - December 11, 2004)

The wonderful MS artwork is done by Maniam Selvan for the cover of Kalki, the weekly Tamil magazine (the latest issue dated December 18, 2005). There is also an article on MS by N. Vijay Siva in that issue. Click here for a tribute by Vatsala Vedantam. The links for other posts on MS in this blog are available here.

Manmohan Singh smiles...

I could imagine our PM's sarcastic countenance when he reads the following statement (emphasis added) issued by AICC spokesman, Abhishek Manu Singhvi. I too had a hearty laugh reading this.

The Prime Minister has to decide on the continuation of Natwar Singh as Minister without portfolio.

So long as ....

The words written in the past often acquire a life of their own in the present. The shadow that befalls our understanding will linger long in our minds creating imageries of the past, unveiling the present, and constructing the hope for the future.

The following is the author's preface from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, translated by Charles E. Wilbour:

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilisation, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age- the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night- are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.

Hauteville House, 1862.

Inertia

The book Systems Thinking by Jamshid Gharajedaghi begins with the following quote from the unpublished internal report The Raveled Knot: An Examination of the Time-to-Market Issue at Analog's Semi-conductor Division by Charles Hampden-Turner and Linda Arc:

The most stubborn habits which resist change with the greatest tenacity are those which worked well for a space of time and led to the practitioner being rewarded for those behaviors. If you suddenly tell such persons that their recipe for success is no longer viable, their personal experience belies your diagnosis. The road to convincing them is hard. It is the stuff of classic tragedy.

National Portal of India

The Government of India has launched a website today with the objective of providing a single window access to the information and services for the citizens and other stakeholders.

From the website's About the portal:

This is the Official Portal of the Indian Government, designed, developed and hosted by National Informatics Centre (NIC), the premier ICT Organisation of the Government of India under the aegis of Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology.

An attempt has been made through this Portal to provide comprehensive, accurate, reliable and one stop source of information about India and its various facets. Links at various places, too, have been provided to other Indian Government Portals/websites.

Theories on Theories

The Aryan invasion theory has led to many controversies, frictions, and heartburns. No one seems to know better than to put oneself on the desired side. The political dimension of those theories, in India, is too big for ordinary mortals to understand; extraordinary mortals do not care.

BBC writes:

One of the most controversial ideas about Hindu history is the Aryan invasion theory. This theory, originally devised by F. Max Muller in 1848, traces the history of Hinduism to the invasion of India's indigenous people by lighter skinned Aryans around 1500 BCE. The theory was reinforced by other research over the next 120 years, and became the accepted history of Hinduism, not only in the West but in India. There is now ample evidence to show that Muller, and those who followed him, were wrong.

Trying to understand through social theories is a risky business, and has many shades of meaning. Ignorance seems to be one of them. Any more theories on these?