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