Civility, decency, compassion, and humanity

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

My column in @ttindia on why this is the most important general election since 1977. 
As I write: “Authoritarianism crushes the spirit; majoritarianism poisons the mind and the heart. The hate and bigotry it engenders spread like a cancer through the body politic, robbing individuals and society of civility, decency, compassion, of humanity itself. That is why its rise must be checked, by such democratic means as are still available to us.”
telegraphindia.com/opinion/1977-r…

https://twitter.com/Ram_Guha/status/1781528999035801811?t=THOoCzwtSdQ8VigzuilWaA&s=19

Beyond Words: Girish Karnad’s Friendship With A.K. Ramanujan

https://twitter.com/sanjayuvacha/status/1781713756671656140?t=Sf2Mo0TwkRRkfmUjxATLFA&s=19

1. The Left uses colonial constructs in its seeming ‘progressive’ and liberationist view of humanity. Therefore Hinduism is evil because of caste system, superstition, and India’s poverty. Whatever differences may exist in the western political spectrum, they do not translate 2. into opposing views when looking at India and Hinduism. Indeed if not one and the same, they overlap at various levels.

The Guardian may style itself as a liberal mouthpiece and the Daily Mail as that of conservatism (unlike in the 1930s when its owner Lord Rothermere 3. was proud to back the British Union of Fascists, and be photographed with Hitler). So when it comes to Hindus, this Left-Right divide fails to have any significance.

The Right it must be remembered has been the traditional haunt of those who espouse racism, xenophobia, 4. imperial glories, values of Little England, the sanctity of the British Empire,  white supremacy, racism, eugenics, anti-Semitism, Christian values, and the belief that only under British rule was India civilised. 5. Opposed as they may be to the trendy latte sipping bohemian types that read the Guardian, that does not make them any less guilty of Hindu-baiting.

https://twitter.com/RanbirS11414092/status/1780576161107509442?t=BnUgj5y2GGxIeJ-EQAf9WQ&s=19

When Shri Ram Swarup Ji maps all enemy ideologies on the Yogic Chitta bhumis is where he gives us the brahmastra of destroying the source of our enemy ideologies. 

This is why 'Hindu View of Christianity and Islam' is the most seminal work from Hindus in past 150 years.

https://twitter.com/PankajSaxena84/status/1781550391035060606?t=5MQ6R9qZyK8uRzhp3JBeAw&s=19

India's Rebirth is a compilation of quotations from Sri Aurobindo's writings but was not published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram. This mischievous book has corrupted minds of countless readers. Sri Aurobindo: The Life and Teachings of a Revolutionary Philosopher by Roshen Dalal is good.

https://twitter.com/SavitriEra/status/1781601992781287750?t=kVLWCvOefz7byuboPmRq0Q&s=19

Aurobindo diagnosed as Hindus' worst problem the decline of their thought power. Still is. Note the welcome given by the BJP to Woke values (e.g. quota), now joined by esteemed Hindu thinkers whenever they pontificate on the West.

https://twitter.com/ElstKoenraad/status/1780620846958096551?t=D8QWaKJoI3BaBTqZOoMMdw&s=19

Like many braindead (cfr. Aurobindo) Hindu parrots here, & like the FBI, you are just copying hard-Leftist discourse,-- which uses for the now largely imaginary "white supremacism" similar swearwords & conspiracy theories as for Hindutva. /1

https://twitter.com/ElstKoenraad/status/1780933078967373888?t=FOx_gKzYcaUIuCCTwcYyJA&s=19

Aurobindo understood that the Empire will remain even after all the people manning the Empire will die. So he realized the only way to destroy the Empire is to destroy it at the level of consciousness.

https://twitter.com/vakibs/status/1781541809946034534?t=ePyA-y0h-fcrxriHkC1x2w&s=19

National god of India? The Hindutva project of building a homogenous India

R Sen - The Round Table, 2024

… of civil society who disagree with the Hindutva way of life have been jailed … Hindutva Nationalism is an exclusive form of Hinduism that believes that the territory of India only belongs to those Hindus who identify it as their ‘holy land’. However …

Another India: the making of the world's largest minority 1947–77: by Pratinav Anil, London, Hurst, 2023, 438 pp.,£ 25 (hardback), ISBN 9781787388086

M Nazir-Ali - 2024

… The author is clearly a protagonist of a secular post-independence India, making his writing challenging for both Hindutva nationalists and those Muslims who wish to maintain an imperium in imperio presence in India, based on a continuing …

India and China

KA Sharma

In the middle of 2019, Ms. Satvinder Kaur from Springer met me and asked me to write a book on higher education. As the President of the South Asian University, I was more than busy at that time. I requested her to wait, if possible, until I finished …

[PDF] The Rise of Authoritarian Civilizational Populism in Turkey, India, Russia and China

I Yilmaz, N Morieson

What is it about the current phase of globalization that feeds on and is fed by the populist zeitgeist? In what follows I will tie the discussion of populism to the changing character of globalization, sometimes called the “new” globalization …

Development of Code-Mixed Marathi-English Dataset for Hate Speech Detection

P Joshi, V Pathak - 2024 International Conference on Emerging Smart …, 2024

… OBC Hindutva is different and Brahmin Hindutva is different This comment means different groups and individuals may have various interpretations and perspectives on the concepts of OBC Hinduism and Brahmin Hinduism. Some annotators may …

Twenty Years of ICPVTR at RSIS: A Continually Evolving–and Still Relevant–Research Agenda

K Ramakrishna

This article explores the threat trends and patterns which have shaped and defined ICPVTR’s research agenda over the past two decades, including the increasing role of women and youth in terrorism, the emergence of so-called salad bar ideologies …

Decolonizing Impact Through the Culture-Centered Approach to Health Communication: Mobilizing Communities to Transform the Structural Determinants of Health

MJ Dutta, S Kaur-Gill, S Metuamate - Health Communication, 2024

In this issue, we outline the central tenets of the culture-centered approach to health communication. What does the culture-centered approach address when suggesting the co-creation of voice infrastructures? What is the theory’s methodological …

Dalit Migrants

AK Pankaj

Labor migration in all its heterogeneity is a multidirectional and contentious process in India. It is intrinsically related to diverse forms of encounters with different people, ethnicities, spaces, cultures, temporalities, and materiality. A prominent scholar of …

Beginning AWS Security

T Penwell

… Prediction 1: Security Will Be Integral to Everything That Organizations Do .....120 Prediction 2: Diversity Will Help Address the Continued … Ravi also practices Indian yoga, meditation, and pranayama on a regular basis. You can connect with him on …

[PDF] el Whispering Clouds, Echoing Mountains: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Gonzalo Ariza's Lyrical Landscapes

P Carbonell - H-ART. Revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte, 2024

This essay reevaluates the art of Gonzalo Ariza, a twentieth-century Colombian painter renowned for landscapes that merge Eastern and Western traditions. Challenging simplistic categorizations of his oeuvre as an “appropriated Japanese …

[HTML] A Longitudinal Mixed Methods Case Study Investigation of the Academic, Athletic, Psychosocial and Psychological Impacts of Being of a Sport School Student Athlete

F Thompson, F Rongen, I Cowburn, K Till - Sports Medicine, 2024

… Sport schools are a key environment for DC development in many countries and are considered an increasingly integral part of a nations’ elite sport performance strategy [7]. Sport schools aim to combine sport and education to offer student …

[PDF] Ayahuasca ceremonies, relationality, and inner-outer transformations to sustainability. Evidence from Takiwasi Center in Peru

D Manuel-Navarrete, S DeLuca, F Friso, M Politi - Ecosystems and People, 2024

The use of psychedelic substances is increasingly associated with nature-relatedness. We explore whether entheogenic uses of ayahuasca in settings co-produced between Indigenous and Western knowledges may also foster relationality and …

[PDF] Bhakti Blossoms: Tamil Poetry's Journey into Spiritual Depths, Unraveling Devotion and Cultural Significance

R Srinivasan, PS Aithal

… Three primary types of sadhanas exist; Karma yoga, Bhakti yoga and Jnana yoga— representing Selfless Work, devotion, to God and … Their teachings and compositions became integral to the development of Bhakti literature in Tamil. The …

[PDF] The Highest Good in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Bhagavad Gita: Knowledge, Happiness, and Freedom

R Majithia - 2024

… In the twentieth century, the text is at the center of a rallying cry for freedom from colonial rule from traditional quarters as well as from western educated ones such as Gandhi and Aurobindo.Thus both these texts seem to have a profound impact on …

ophy, school of social sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru university. Her main interests are in the areas of contemporary Indian philosophy and political philosophy. Puri has …

B Puri - Gandhi for the 21st Century

The book consists of six chapters—three by Bindu Puri and the other three by me. Our styles are different—the result perhaps of the different kinds of training we had received as students. But our interests coincide and frequently our arguments: Puri’s …

How did humanity emerge? Theories of the deep past have shaped our history and present, says The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence and Our Obsession with Human Origins by Stefanos Geroulanos. And these theories are self-serving fictions... Because so little is known or knowable, prehistory is more a narcissistic fantasy than a field of inquiry

https://timesofindia-indiatimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/our-prehistory-is-made-to-order-theories-about-early-humans-are-reflections-of-current-biases-agendas/?amp_js_v=0.1&amp_gsa=1#webview=1

Delegitimisation of all non-State institutions

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

Anniversary of Sri Aurobindo's arrival in Pondicherry - the significance of 4th April Matrimandir.

The special opening allows the first ray of the rising sun to penetrate directly into the crystal at Matrimandir, an event that happens only once a year in this day. 

#Auroville

https://twitter.com/JayantiRavi/status/1775766211177197775?t=9_grEKDoek1xygOhJGd46w&s=19

"This little door on the eastern side of Matrimandir beholds a sacred memory for all those who love Sri Aurobindo. Only on the 4th of April, every year, this door opens during the sunrise. Every other day of the year, the door remains shut;.."  

#Auroville #SriAurobindo

https://twitter.com/JayantiRavi/status/1775766125265178763?t=l8sBtISQXCdTk8YcPswECw&s=19

If you live in a country and can freely call its government a dictatorship, it is certainly not a dictatorship.

https://twitter.com/MisraNityanand/status/1775101767027745110?t=QzQyjh6vGnwWgixeR6DRiw&s=19

While limited FoE is one feature of dictatorships, the two are not one and the same. 

What defines dictatorship is not the FoE, but the concentration of powers to one autocratic person or group, with weakened institutional constraints to what they can do. Even if they rule by the people’s popular choice.

As I said they are related but not one and the same. 

Totalitarianism and Dictatorship - related but not the same.

https://twitter.com/bhAratenduH/status/1775408081658052700?t=RXa0uyILxdNG9xpTZeRybw&s=19

Indeed, Totalitarianism emerges in an atomised society and acquires the shade of the prevalent political system. The most common form of totalitarianism in effect today is democratic totalitarianism.

Your view goes contrary to every single word I have read on the subject. Either we are talking about different things or you have something new to say on the subject that scholars have missed for a century.

Hannah Arendt, Alexis Tocqueville, J.L. Talmon, Tomislav Sunic to name a few. Diversity is not the symptom of an atomised society. I insist that we are talking about different things.

The totalitarian tendency is agnostic to ethnic composition because the breakdown of communities can and has happened in all kinds of societies.

https://twitter.com/infinitchy/status/1775438824308638113?t=TLeDyZLxaP8S3L8v5RuNwA&s=19

The route to totalitarianism need not necessarily be violent. It can be achieved through peaceful and perfectly legal means. The least talked about deleterious consequence of modern liberal democracy is delegitimisation of all non-State institutions. Democratic exceptionalism abhors any intermediary between the State and citizen. To explain, the State in a modern democratic polity is considered as 'the representative' of all citizens. Implicitly, it is expected that the citizens' primary and predominant loyalty should be to the State alone, making all non-State institutions illegitimate unless expressly sanctioned by the State. That is to say, all institutions exist upon the sufferance of the State. The constitutional and jurisprudential neglect of family which is the fundamental building block of any society is rather deliberate. For, the democratic State perceives family as a barrier in its direct equation with, nay control of citizens. No wonder that across all modern liberal democracies the institution of the family became the first casualty. The atomised and the disintegrating Western societies are living examples of the destruction wrought by the democratic statism. And democratic exceptionalism precedes democratic totalitarianism.

https://twitter.com/MNageswarRaoIPS/status/1775537337553801384?t=NcaXSFWQGyRPryctII2WkQ&s=19

Nice explanation but blaming democracy looks a bit harsh since in spirituality too the family can be a victim. Of course these are theoretical positions for in reality such neat detachment may not be possible. Further spiritual grounding provides multi-layered checks and balances. 

https://twitter.com/SavitriEra/status/1775588929292685521?t=cgML-dLtexVnQX-ax7EKmw&s=19

How do autorickshaw drivers (in Kolkata) perceive sexual harassment on public transport? Scroll.in

https://scroll.in/article/1065774/how-do-autorickshaw-drivers-in-kolkata-perceive-sexual-harassment-on-public-transport

[HTML] Society with Indian Characteristics: Caste, Class, and Species in Contemporary Retellings of the Rāmāyaṇa

JP Oliveira - Journal of Dharma Studies, 2024

This paper analyzes the construction of Indian society in retellings of the Rāmāyaṇa published in India between 2010 and 2020. I focus on the concepts of caste, class, and mythological species. Through discourse analysis of a corpus of retellings … 

[PDF] Mapping Campus Theatre Traditions: Shift from Colonial to Desi on the University of Delhi Campus1

K Singh

The University Campus, as a space, had always been an epicentre of cultural praxis. The inherent diversity in this space allows for vibrant debates about the processes of cultural production and consumption. What is the kind of theatre practice that forms …

[PDF] Theorising Decolonial Queerness: Connections, Definitions, Articulations

S BAKSHI - Essays on Decoloniality: Volume, 2024

The labour in addressing the meaning of decolonising knowledge calls forth an honest and thorough critical appraisal of the standardised canon of knowledge without eliding critical questions of privilege in terms of race, gender, sexuality, and …

[HTML] Islands and Beaches in Science and Technology Studies

W Anderson - Science, Technology, & Human Values, 2024

… My pragmatism, or perhaps equivocation, would prove controversial, especially among South Asian scholars understandably sensitive to fascist assertions of Hindutva. Some of them took me to task for mentioning alternative modernities (Abraham …

[HTML] India's Civilizational Imagination of Southeast Asia

U Das

… For instance, the state in India has so far oscillated between a Nehruvian and a Hindutva understanding of the Indian civilization (Chatterjee & Das, 2023). While both these imaginations agree on India’s civilizational greatness reserving a rightful …

Clip the blue bird: Discursive strategies of Hindutva digital mobilization against Twitter in India

KV Bhatia, P Arora - The Information Society, 2024

… 9) argument that online followers and supporters of the Hindutva ideology are diverse and “range from … Hindutva ideology will help unpack how they generate more participation, create diverse networks of followers, appeal to different …

INDIAN PANDEMIC ENTERTAINMENT AESTHETICS AND INFRASTRUCTURE

DS Mini - Media Industries in Crisis: What COVID Unmasked, 2024

The pandemic and quarantine restrictions following the COVID lockdown in India gave way to uncertainty, but also innovative media productions that mark the moment. Short films, diaristic accounts, public service announcements, and films used mobile …

Killing with Kindness: Can a Plague Cure a Plague?

ML Budde - Put Away Your Sword: Gospel Nonviolence in a Violent …, 2024

The world’s been a mess for so long that it’s understandable if you missed or have forgotten about one atrocity among others. On November 27, a report was made public—it spoke of the near-complete slaughter of a religious minority population yet …

[PDF] An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal

R MISTRY

The present research paper is undertaken to explore the diasporic sensibility in the fictional world of Rohinton Mistry. Consequently, the aim of this research is to probe into his works and discover the contemporary new world that unveiled up for the …

Indian Citizenship Revisited

M Majumdar - Social Change, 2024

… evidence-based arguments presented by the authors in these volumes, that recent changes in citizenship laws need to be understood in the light of their ideological and political embedding within a larger field of power, watered carefully …

Book review: Arkotong Longkumer, The Greater India Experiment: Hindutva and the Northeast

S Misra - 2024

… He identifies the prime cultural sites for Hindutva’s operations: the placing of Northeastern India and its indigenous ‘tribal’ religions within the ‘imaginative geography’ of Akhand Bharat, Hindutva’s interface with Christianity and Rani …

Bodies that Dance: Critical Frames of Reference

U Sarkar Munsi - Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India, 2024

Bodies are repositories—whether we like it or not. I, for one Aesthetics , exist in a body that hardly remembers a time when it did not carry any signature dance training. I am told I expressed the desire to enter a dance school when I was three years old …

The Modern and the Contemporary in the Context of Dance in India

U Sarkar Munsi - Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India, 2024

This chapter of the book wants to make identifiable the forms that exist and share the contemporary times, together with reference to the same geography—either in-situ or from some distant locations. Without aspiring to describe all forms that identified …

[PDF] Inter-faith Rituals: Rebuilding the Secular Nation state from the Margins

ナタラジャンマヒマ - 創価大学大学院紀要= The bulletin of the Graduate …, 2024

Is it possible to sustain secular character of a secular nation-state when the union government consciously weaponizes religion for its majoritarian and electoral politics? The present study explores how people positioned at the margins of a nation-state …

The Ups and Downs of Competing Power Rituals

UWE SKODA

With reference to Dasarā rituals in Nepal, Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka (1998, 577) proposes that “power rituals” in complex sociopolitical orders “express and dramatize social realities, but also... organize social groups by relating them with …

[PDF] The Indian Administration

BR Chinnala - Economic & Political Weekly, 2024

… These developments include (i) the Mandal assertion—a demand of reservations for the socially and economically backward communities in public institutions/ resources; (ii) the Mandir assertion— the Ram Rath Yatra led by powerful Hindutva …

[PDF] Rise of Hindu Nationalism Amongst Some Educated Middle Class Hindu Indians

メーラトュリカ - 創価大学大学院紀要= The bulletin of the Graduate …, 2024

This research discusses the history, and evolution of Hindu nationalism in India, while attempting to understand the different factors and processes leading to its rise. Using the process of Othering as its theoretical framework, this study explores how …

[HTML] Religion, Ecology and Hindu Nationalism in India

E Tomalin - Religion and Development, 2024

In this paper I examine the construction of Hinduism as inherently “environmentally friendly” within religions and ecology discourses and how this construction has been appropriated by the Hindu nationalist movement in India to serve ends that are at …

We're generally overconfident

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

Saddened to hear about the passing of Daniel Kahneman. A Nobel Laureate, his insights on randomness, luck, and the workings of the mind have had a profound impact on many, including myself. His book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" is a masterpiece that has touched the lives of countless individuals interested in psychology, economics, and spirituality. Rest in peace, Daniel Kahneman. Your legacy will continue to inspire generations to come. #DanielKahneman #ThinkingFastAndSlow

https://twitter.com/nidhinvalsanips/status/1773566597212594486?t=bZOYjxJwRP9jScCX1cxIgQ&s=19

@nobelprize_org winner Kahneman's book Thinking Fast Slow absolutely blew my mind and changed my understanding of how humans think. It is necessary reading for all. The world is a less intelligent place without this man. #bookrecommendations #book #bookreview #books #nonfiction

https://twitter.com/1_davidhill/status/1773662165423071464?t=8-rU-U25nwG0FSG1PGOUBw&s=19

In 2016, we hosted Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman in our lab. His encouragement to pursue real-life problems through science and ask high-risk questions continues to inspire us. RIP, scientific giant!

https://twitter.com/AviSchroeder/status/1773678650681905389?t=JrM_9pm2DvrcIuh8WkS8UQ&s=19

Daniel Kahneman, who changed psychology and economics forever, dies at 90.

Thanks for everything.

We remember him in 10 great quotes:

We're blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We're not designed to know how little we know. We're generally overconfident in our opinions and our impressions and judgments. So your emotional state really has a lot to do with what you're thinking about and what you're paying attention to.

https://twitter.com/wisdom_theory/status/1773016425394782555?t=blq1ZlCn6GmdduDjjM2qMA&s=19

If you also haven’t read Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” and don’t want to read a whole book, read his 2003 “Maps of Bounded Rationality” instead. It’s a publication that summarizes the same ideas in his own words. The book, of course, goes into much more detail and tells more stories about how this is relevant to your own life. I highly recommend reading the full book, but if you definitely don't intend to, then go read this paper.

https://twitter.com/AnnaLeptikon/status/1773420839028871646?t=MF96azE-ReuaicrQtKa3QA&s=19

Daniel Kahneman passed away at age 90

His work in Behavioral Finance changed the world 

The Human Side of Decision Making is a must read. Read the entire document here:

https://twitter.com/QCompounding/status/1773459791408472324?t=SeT63ktMEwV-BYE1QGas-Q&s=19

10 lessons from Thinking Fast and Slow:

https://twitter.com/QCompounding/status/1773637437555720643?t=edFvGu5VV4MIvliAoPQlhg&s=19

This man died 2 days ago. Daniel Kahneman. An intellectual giant of the 20th century. Along with Amon Tversky he literally changed the world. I would recommend reading The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis. It will make you question everything and change the way you think…..

https://twitter.com/TurloughDonnell/status/1773673597346664530?t=H2-o_zNEGjmFmYvyJsFcAQ&s=19

Danny Kahneman

One of the things I loved most about Danny was his power of observation, and ability to reason about how we all make decisions.  He had a way to describe an element of how we think, that made is so clear and intuitive, that I could not understand how it was possible that I did not see things his way all along.

#DanielKahneman

https://twitter.com/danariely/status/1773682927248806250?t=aMH2EYMRTucLWNmJFNrBWQ&s=19 

Today, we have lost one of the greatest contemporary thinkers. 

Daniel Kahneman shattered the glass palace of science and became famous worldwide in 2011 with the publication of "Thinking, Fast and Slow”, in which he popularized the dual-process theory. This theory suggests that human decisions arise from a complex interplay between two cognitive systems: one more intuitive and the other more deliberative. Despite many critiques and refinements, this theory remains one of the main reference points for scholars studying human decisions. 

But this was not Kahneman's only contribution. His 1979 paper in Econometrica, introducing prospect theory, is one of the most cited articles in economics and is one of the main reasons he, a psychologist, was able to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. In this paper, Kahneman and Tversky introduce a utility function aimed at explaining how people make decisions under risk. Personally, I found this article to be one of the most inspiring I have ever read. The day I read it, I understood that human behavior could be captured through a mathematical formula. I was a pure mathematician at the time, now I study human decisions. 

In another article from 1986, Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler introduced an economic game that later became known as the “dictator game”, which has become the official measure of human altruism. The game is very simple: you have 10 dollars and the recipient has nothing. You can give any amount to the receiver, ranging from 0 to 10. The recipient is passive and only gets what you decide to give. How much would you give?

But this is not even the tip of the iceberg. Any summary of his work would inevitably be incomplete. I have just gone on his Google Scholar page. His work has more than half a million citations! He reshaped psychology and economics by inventing entirely new fields of research.

https://twitter.com/ValerioCapraro/status/1773037951049495005?t=KcD46NxPquqTWUZW9O4FXQ&s=19

Empathy. “A healed femur is the earliest sign of civilization.” —Margaret Mead. #poster #posterdesign #empathy #margaretmead #GraphicDesign

https://twitter.com/codeswitchtweet/status/1762164141572178402?t=tthG82SM6_iJxsxoWmTkmw&s=19

Margaret Mead was once asked, ‘Do you think that a single individual can make a difference?’ And she pointed out it’s the only thing that ever has made a difference. All people have to do is to change their minds. 

Roger Payne, A Life Among Whales

prismatic sky 

aliveonallchan.

https://twitter.com/op109/status/1762079356187254985?t=Quci9RCeN4malvfSY-KvsQ&s=19

Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (October 10, 1873 – December 30, 1962) - The Great Chain of Being (1936)

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) - The Call of Cthulhu (1928)

James Ephraim Lovelock (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) - The Quest for Gaia (1975)

#SELFsince2005

https://twitter.com/SavitriEra/status/1773392429452071108?t=CYhD37KI4SyAb6ebde87GA&s=19

Reading diverse authors is part of intellectual development but it's only by reading Sri Aurobindo that one acquires a balanced worldview. It's not necessary to agree with him but the emphasis on unseen forces and interconnectedness helps to understand ourselves and world better.

https://twitter.com/SavitriEra/status/1773596172952670602?t=bSCu3GQR-Yty2xL4MhQmDw&s=19

Stand up for what is right

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

In the past, BR Ambedkar had observed:

"Indeed, the ideal Hindu must be like a rat living in his own hole, refusing to have any contact with others. There is an utter lack among the Hindus of what the sociologists call ‘consciousness of kind.’ There is no Hindu consciousness of kind. In every Hindu, the consciousness that exists is the consciousness of his caste. That is the reason why the Hindus cannot be said to form a society or a nation.”

The BJP-RSS’s broad-based approach during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement has repudiated Ambedkar’s scintillating thesis, remaking Indian politics and, more crucially, Hindu society.

This heroic mission drew from every part of Hindudom, arranging each Hindu shoulder to shoulder, chanting the same cries, and exalting them all as equal devotees of their Lord Ram.

In this great yajna of a new era, all Hindus were tasked as participants in a sacrifice for the ages.

From: theemissary.co/in-rams-name-a…

https://twitter.com/TheEmissaryCo/status/1771017868039090535?t=Oe8NXS7kXc5e9Ze9Wy-q0w&s=19

I don’t think the Indian middle class has suddenly become communal. It has always harboured religious bigotry but it needed a push to throw off its cloak of tolerance and secular views. With its blatant communal bias, the ruling BJP has encouraged the middle class to be itself. Being bigoted is no longer a shame in new India; it is rather cool. #BJP #Modi #RSS

https://twitter.com/tnrags/status/1771376851904012680?t=euHuk7prL8sP5pUMLaPW5w&s=19

Anyone who compares India with China has at least zero understanding of one of them. India is a hellhole. You have thousand times more freedoms in China than you have in India.

https://twitter.com/JayantBhandari5/status/1771418718460915845?t=uhI_1gfbfYzkNo625MX1UQ&s=19

India ranks among the top countries in being stressed. That is what you get when you are irrational and morally relativistic, which lead to an existential crisis, atomized people and no-trust.

https://twitter.com/JayantBhandari5/status/1770644373711081641?t=44p_59z50TzKP9-QJ6TOSg&s=19

Hindu majoritarianism finds its roots in envy a segment of them have for the community spirit that Sikhs and Muslims have. But nothing makes them feel more inferior than Christianity. As the leaders have worsened so has the feeling of inferiority.

efe.com/en/other-news/….

https://twitter.com/JayantBhandari5/status/1770275574298132560?t=GPgf9KftuofWuXE3152yaw&s=19

Ironically, this is true. Hinduism can encompass any value. That, alas, leaves it with no value that it values. Its effect on the mind is making all moral values relative and failing to comprehend the differences in degrees and the very concept of objectivity.

https://twitter.com/JayantBhandari5/status/1769665887856922670?t=pUFy2_vvYwwnFtAy9JUc9g&s=19

Political correctness has made people of European ethnicity culturally blind, at least in how they vote. When the honor culture is gone, which was a pillar of Western civilization, "satan" will rule the roost. There is no shortage of evil characters. What you need for civilization is people who are prepared to stand up for what is right. That is increasingly gone. The US is a lovely place, perhaps the best in the world. But its foundations are more gone than that of any other Western country. Political correctness is the US approach. The British can still be very politically incorrect. China is improving rapidly, but I don't think China is ready to take over world leadership. Ruthless meritocracy, however, must be reimposed in the West.

https://twitter.com/JayantBhandari5/status/1769175167471624408?t=LvU8Dd75j8mIi_YXa9E4nw&s=19

Auroville criminal nexus - This video explains the land mafia nexus, economic offences, modus operandi of hiding corruption so far, attacking people & ruling over them. @EduMinOfIndia

@AmitShahOffice @CVCIndia @PMOIndia @dpradhanbjp @rajbhavan_tn

https://twitter.com/VikramRamTweets/status/1771365936806912495?t=oxUGEkACxkwqtwfZF7W5oQ&s=19

Director of Aurobindo Pharma, Sarath Reddy, gets arrested in Delhi liquor scam. He turns approver.

Aurobindo Pharma donates Rs 55 cr to BJP through electoral bonds as exposed by the SC order.

Arvind Kejriwal gets arrested in Delhi liquor scam. These are unrelated events!

https://twitter.com/mkvenu1/status/1771394765151748334?t=U-aVuBVQshAtj-tyhvC1Zg&s=19 

What @ArvindKejriwal has done is to muddy the ground forever for any other educated person who genuinely wants to get into politics for public service, with his lies, nautanki, autocratic behaviour and blatant corruption!

https://twitter.com/ShefVaidya/status/1771122183710064993?t=T-x6IiERnKw6oUZCutQvhw&s=19

@ShefVaidya mam he is a true gentlemen infact a gem that no one wants to wear not bcz of expensiveness but it will harm the same hand that adore him.

What wrong has he done apart from being pursue all the characteristics of a good politician at the lightening speed like speak lies with confidence, whingering, breach of trust, promote lawlessness, flipping ideologies like costumes, appeasement of muslims, sympathize with destructive forces (Khalistanis), alluring public by announcing freebies and criticize HINDUISM every now and then.  

He is a blessing in disguise.

https://twitter.com/MyMarshal10/status/1771130015767494993?t=4_7hxlY135J1YXn20dICgQ&s=19 

I think Bharat should do away with the colonial, feudal practice of addressing judges as ‘your honour’ ‘milord’ or ‘your lordship’. It is a practice that dates back to the British Raj and reeks deeply of slavery and white supremacy over the ‘unwashed natives’ of India. Let’s start referring to judges as ‘महोदय’ or simply, ‘judge’. If you agree, please repost. #NoMoreMilord #MahodayNotMilord

Not our problem what the British do anymore. They can call their judges anything they want, fact is, in India it WAS a white supremacist thing historically.

https://twitter.com/ShefVaidya/status/1769919340542124298?t=v0tMsxFqm3clGUV4ynQD4g&s=19

Duh, how is calling some paid public servant in a black robe ‘your honour’ or ‘my lord’ ‘a mark of obedience to the rule of law’? Are you SURE you are a ‘senior fellow at ICSSR’? Do they have such shockingly low standards?

Not really. The judge is simply a person paid to do his job, which is to interpret the law. No one is ‘Maay baap’ or shouldn’t be in a democracy!

https://twitter.com/ShefVaidya/status/1770010783185011147?t=PlZO3Th3DLWOfvHaiP6o4g&s=19

You don’t understand the nuances, a judge in not just an individual, he represents law, the court and a system 

He is not “simply a person“ he represents knowledge character morality sense of fairness and justice that’s why he is respected in some courts lawyers begin their arguments with “this court …..” 

https://twitter.com/BoregowdaShivar/status/1770011995485393010?t=i3vhTfhuSuAgd9MV-5ueMw&s=19

Bring back standards. Bring back TABOOS. Bring back exclusive clubs that are almost impossible to join. Blurring all boundaries has been a disaster for the human race. Bring back the moral compass, severe judgements, a theological sense of right and wrong

https://twitter.com/oldbooksguy/status/1770852281719664899?t=HDZJQYlJ8UEqU6rrhHtb8A&s=19

know this gonna be unpopular but i so totally prefer the book—which instead of questioning its own mythology, chooses instead to question spectacle, heroism, and whether even the perfect human should still be king—to this perfectly spectacular, heroic, kingly movie when you do that hollywood thing of staging your own leftist self-criticism so you can defy it with a soaring affirmation of the mythology of divine rule, you are, i think, missing the whole point of dune

which doesn’t question if the mythology is real (it is) but if it’s *good* the movie does what hollywood’s done since demille 100 years ago: stage a conflict between secular rationalism and divine mythology as a conflict between west and east, coming down hard on orientalist tropes of the simple, intuitive, mystical men of the desert

the book does not.

https://twitter.com/divine_economy/status/1764365203800486052?t=ZXWivloIx0Cc8qD8e2xngg&s=19

My brain has been whirring since discovering the actual premise of dune : even if you have an amazing king, should we still have rulers in the first place ? 

In a nutshell this is why crypto is a rebellion - we replace rulers with smart contracts changeable by consensus

As long as we have diversity and live in a collective I believe we'll have need for rules

Since 2 people can both be extremely evolved and still have very different opinions on what we should do, so there has to always be a mechanism for deciding which way to go

And where you have rules, you have need for their enforcement

And where you need enforcement, you need rulers

Smart contracts are what helps us break out of this vicious cycle, like @ErikVoorhees pointed out at permissionless

twitter.com/Permissionless…

https://twitter.com/TheDevanshMehta/status/1769422875289919693?t=rNgpBBKId9VGQYbMz0h_Ow&s=19

In an ideal state of true 'self'-governance, even rules don't exist, as the evolution of a Higher Consciousness in every human discards d need for external regulation. Auroville city in India was an audacious attempt at this in d 60s. Lng way 2 go, until then, rules over rulers!

https://twitter.com/NidhiHarihar/status/1769429525363057058?t=9HY9uMFvHRjY-saqRFwOCg&s=19

Stop weaponizing historical suffering

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

I used to wonder how people could deny the Holocaust. Now that I see people denying the best documented massacre in history that happened just a few months ago, I no longer have to wonder. There's just one thing I don't understand: is this mental illness or pure evil?

https://twitter.com/VerminusM/status/1768083722081882622?t=qcI2XDmNRgd5elXmOOcprQ&s=19

Took me a while, at least a decade to understand how in the digital age of photographs, videos, telephone, newspapers and witness testimonies, the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits and rational Muslims was denied by the "Jagmohan" canard spread by intellectuals, journalists and civil society. 

The pattern never changed. It's always the ones who make a career out of social justice.

https://twitter.com/arshiaunis/status/1768136918212980885?t=jbDxdLz8FuwghTOXZF6AOw&s=19

Historical atrocities like the holocaust should be approached with reverence and a commitment to truth. 

The Holocaust represents one of the darkest chapters in human history, and its unique horror should not be diminished or likened to other events lightly, especially ones that have been fabricated. 

Stop weaponizing historical suffering to evade scrutiny for being shitty.

Eventually, the world will know anyway.

https://twitter.com/MChase00/status/1768104283713495126?t=OJ8Gbg2ko6gyGFhlm1tjKQ&s=19

Nobody knows what Jesus said.

All we have is texts written centuries later. 

Nobody knows what Siddhartha Gautama said.

All we have is texts written centuries later.

Nobody knows what Muhammad heard.

All we have is texts written centuries later.

https://twitter.com/devduttmyth/status/1767790226603168071?t=tyCm8e23Wlk1ghirjhzypg&s=19

To make vegetarians happy, I wrote this factual article.

Eat your jackfruit and read....

https://twitter.com/devduttmyth/status/1767816726924742910?t=XE9neB2l0h4Lg13ypxu-GA&s=19

Right now, new history is being written for Indians. Based on astronomical information from ancient texts,... This, however, is not unique to India, or to the 21st century. In the 19th century, some Europeans argued that the Bible was real history,... In China, there is a movement to prove that the Bible is not a Western text,... Imagined history has always served ideologies. Colonial powers have sought to present pre-colonial states as barbaric and savage to justify their imperial outreach... In India today, the rising tide of Hindutva ideology needs to show that all that happened before its arrival was colonial, Western, and anti-Hindu. Only that will establish the new rulers of the land as saviours, and justify their acts of dismantling institutions.

Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/devdutt-pattanaik-it-is-not-just-hindus-who-love-an-imagined-past-2934318 

One thing all education ministers under Nehru aimed to do—make Indians doubt ancient values

3 days ago — The Nehruvian Consensus which moved the Indian nation-state for almost 40 years, shattered and demolished the ideas of the Civilisational ...In any case, the academic curriculum was manoeuvred to showcase the medieval period in a positive light. On the other hand, the ancient period—when most of the Indian literature was written and arts, culture and science flourished—was deliberately sidelined. The sultans of Delhi were portrayed as the emperors of India though there were many big and independent states flourishing in different parts of India at the same time.