Notes of Nagesh

MOHAN GURUSWAMY: Statehood for Gondwana: India’s Adivasi Homeland. The scion of the former Gond kings of Chandagarh or Chandrapur now in Maharashtra, Birshah Atram recently visited the Gond homelands in the former composite Adilabad district to meet his kinsmen in the various garhi’s in the region. Birshah Atram is descended from a line that was established in Chandrapur in the 13th century by Kandakya Balal Sah. The Gond kings ruled till 1751 when the British annexed it after the Raja of Nagpur died childless. Birshah who holds two PhD’s in English and Ancient Indian History has for long been seeking a solution to the vexed Adivasi problem, that has also morphed into the Telugu led Naxalite rebellion that enables the Central and State governments to turn it into a law and order issue, by highlighting the grievances of the Adivasi people. He believes that the Central Government needs to implement the constitutional provisions and promises made in the Constituent...

HENRY KISSINGER By Mohan Guruwamy Henry Kissinger died yesterday at the age of 100. He was active till almost the end giving his opinion on issues and lending weight to his causes. Over the years I met him a few times.  The first meeting was in November 1982 when I was in the Mass General Hospital in Boston for the excision of a soft tissue tumour in my head and neck area. On the second morning after surgery I was rolled in on a wheelchair into the solarium to cheer me up and deaden the pain a bit. There was one other person in the solarium, also on a wheelchair. It was Henry Kissinger recovering from open heart surgery. Our nurses rolled the wheelchairs close and took off for a coffee break. He was a much reviled man in Harvard for his role in the Nixon administration and his brand of cynical realpolitik.  I wished him and said I was a graduate student doing International Relations and Security courses at the Kennedy School that term. He responded with a self depr...

"#JULIUS___CAESAR". #SUMMARY  is a famous tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is set in ancient Rome and revolves around the political conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar, a powerful Roman leader. Here's a brief summary: The play begins with Caesar's triumphant return to Rome after defeating Pompey in a civil war. Many senators, including Cassius and Brutus, are concerned about Caesar's growing power and influence. They plot to assassinate him to prevent him from becoming a tyrant. Brutus, a close friend of Caesar, is convinced by Cassius and others that Caesar's ambition poses a threat to Rome's republican government. Despite his loyalty to Caesar, Brutus joins the conspiracy. They carry out the assassination on the Ides of March, stabbing Caesar to death in the Senate. After Caesar's murder, chaos ensues in Rome. Antony, Caesar's loyal friend, delivers a powerful funeral speech that turns public opinion against the conspirators. Civil ...

15 lessons from How To Deal With Idiots: (and stop being one yourself) by Robert I. Sutton: 1. Identify idiots early. The sooner you can identify an idiot, the sooner you can start to protect yourself from them. 2. Don't try to change idiots. Idiots are not going to change, so don't waste your time and energy trying to do so. 3. Don't take idiots personally. Idiots are not attacking you personally, they are just being idiots. 4. Set boundaries with idiots. Don't let idiots into your life if you don't have to. 5. Don't argue with idiots. It's a pointless exercise. 6. Don't try to explain yourself to idiots. They won't understand. 7. Don't try to reason with idiots. They are not reasonable people. 8. Don't try to please idiots. They are impossible to please. 9. Don't expect idiots to appreciate you. They don't have the capacity to do so. 10. Don't let idiots ruin your day. They are not worth it. 11. Don't become an i...

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James Manor has been studying and researching Indian politics and parties for almost half a century. There is little he doesn’t know or understand. He has a keen appreciation of India’s political processes. MG The ruination of the BJP’s organisation in 10 steps. An interesting checklist. By James Manor Emeritus Professor, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, UK This looks like a golden era for the BJP.  It is enjoying a decade in power at the Centre, it governs numerous states, and the Opposition is fragmented.  But a close look reveals serious degeneration that casts doubt on its long-term prospects.  This has been happening since 2014, but it worsened over the last year.   Despite the energetic creation of booth-level party committees as elections approach, the Modi-Shah management style has severely disempowered BJP activists and the party organisation can no longer link citizens with the government.          Ten steps are leading to th...

15 lessons from Malcolm Gladwell's book Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know: 1. We have a default to truth bias. This means that we assume that people are telling us the truth, even when they are not. 2. We are poor at detecting deception. This is because we rely on cues that are often unreliable, such as body language and eye contact. 3. We are susceptible to the illusion of transparency. This means that we believe that we can understand the thoughts and feelings of others, even when we cannot. 4. We are prone to confirmation bias. This means that we seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs, and we ignore information that contradicts them. 5. We are susceptible to the coupling effect. This means that we have a tendency to group people together based on their appearance, profession, or other superficial characteristics. This can lead us to make inaccurate judgments about individuals. 6. We are prone to the fundamental attribut...

MOHAN GURUSWAMY: Today is Rezangla Day. A day we must never forget. It's a day when the spirit of heroism and sacrifice reached for the skies. It's a pity the Indians in general, and the Indian Army in particular dont celebrate it in a more fitting manner. One of the bitter ironies of life is that the greatest acts of heroism and valor mostly happen when the odds are hopeless and death and defeat are inevitable. Throughout history nations have always glorified such episodes in their ballads and poems, by honoring the heroes and commemorating the event. It is the common perception of these few and far in between episodes in a people’s history that forge a sense of nationhood. Why else would we celebrate the deaths of a Prithviraj Chauhan or a Tipu Sultan? Or a Porus or a Shivaji who battled great armies with little more than a handful of brave comrades and immense courage? Of course we rejoice in the triumphs of an Ashoka or Chandragupta or even an Akbar but that is about greatn...

November 17, 2023, 12:48 PM IST  Dr. Chandan Yadav  in Voices ,  India , TOI   Dr. Chandan Yadav National Secretary, Indian National Congress https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/bjp-and-its-abcd-response-to-the-caste-census-demand/  The BJP’s response to the caste census and for a national socio economic survey based on caste has been one of graded hostility. As the clamour for a national level census on the lines of the Bihar government one grows louder with each passing day, the BJP escalates its efforts to reinforce its regressive social agenda. This graded response of the BJP can be termed an ABCD response – Avoid, Block, Confuse and Destruct. Avoid BJP has always avoided caste census which is not unnatural considering their right wing, conservative and religious revivalist ideology that upholds social inequalities and opposes social justice. Who can forget that the BJP took out Ram Rath Yatra during the Mandal movement and the implementation of...

Albert Einstein is widely regarded as one of the greatest physicists of all time, but he never received a Nobel Prize for his most famous contribution: the theory of relativity. Why is that?  Lack of sufficient experimental proof: When Einstein published his papers on special and general relativity in 1905 and 1915, respectively, there was not much empirical evidence to support his revolutionary ideas. It took some time before scientists confirmed the theory through experiments, such as the observation of the bending of starlight by the Sun’s gravity during a solar eclipse in 1919. Furthermore, relativity is a theory that is consistent with many models, some of which were still competing for validity at the time. Failure to understand relativity: Relativity is a complex and abstract theory that involves advanced mathematics and physics. Many members of the Nobel Committee, as well as other scientists, did not fully grasp the implications and significance of Einstein’s w...

The original conception of Bharat Mata is a work painted by the Indian painter Abanindranath Tagore in 1905. The work depicts a saffron clad woman, dressed like a sadhvi, holding a book, sheaves of paddy, a piece of white cloth and a rudraksha garland in her four hands. “Historian Sumathi Ramaswamy’s seminal book “The Goddess and the Nation, Mapping Mother India” shows how Bharat Mata has been reimagined over the years, going from a benign, giving figure or a tragedienne to a martyr and often an ultra-nationalist warrior. Among the first of these was the famous rendering by Abanindranath Tagore in 1905. His Bharat Mata is a four-armed woman dressed like a sadhvi with a beatific look on her face. But in mass-produced calendar images, as Ramaswamy points out, Mother India did not sport the ascetic look; instead, she wore vivid, flowing saris, often sported a jewelled crown, carried arms (cover image) and was flanked by roaring lions. A poster published around 1950...