Jan

29

The Most ‘Nobel’ Teacher of Them All

January 29, 2005 posted by indiatime | 3 Comments

During the recently concluded NRI conference in Mumbai, president Kalam, in his speech, mentioned Dr. Subramaniam Chandrashekhar, perhaps the most accomplished Indian physicist of our times.

Five years ago, NASA named its premier space observatory ‘Chandra’ in honor of Dr. S. Chandrashekhar. Many suggestions poured into NASA’s contest to name the great observatory that would stand 200 times higher than the Hubble telescope. The name ‘Chandra’ won over several other suggestions such as ‘Marie Curie’, ‘Asimov’, ‘Millenium’ etc.

Dr. Chandra’s main claim to fame was his discovery of the upper limit to the mass of a ‘white dwarf’ - the final stage in the evolution of a star. He showed that beyond a certain mass, the star must explode or become a black hole. His insights and discoveries in modern astrophysics have built a foundation of much of our understanding of the universe today.

In 1983, Dr. Chandra became the second Indian to be awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his studies on the evolution of stars.

But nobody has paid a better tribute to Dr. Chandra than his own students. Dr. Chandra holds the distinction of being the only Nobel laureate and university teacher in the world whose entire class can boast of winning the Nobel prize. At the University of Chicago’s physics department, Dr. Chandra once took a class teaching only two students one summer. He drove almost two hours from his home to teach just these two chinese students. But Dr. Tsung-Dao Lee and Dr. Chen Ning Yang won Nobel prizes in Physics themselves, thus making their guru the nobelest of them all.

About Chandra
Subramaniam Chandrashekhar

Jan

27

The annual religious pilgrimage to Mandhardev temples (about a 150 miles southeast of Mumbai) is an event that fetches large crowds and thousands of devotees every year. During last several years however, some social activists have been trying to expose the sacrificial killings of animals that go on here in the name of pilgrimage and religion.

India’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (1960) has to date not deterred or entirely eliminated the sacrificial animal killings in the name of religion. The National Cattle Commission recently put the blame sqarely on the apathetic law enforcement and the corruption inside the governmental corridors.

Two days ago, the stampede at Mandhardev mountains killed close to 500. The 500 human sacrifices might possibly attract the government’s attention to the inhuman and inanimal practices and traditions that have plagued India for hundreds of years.

A Beef With India - Satya
Must Gods Test Us So Often?

Jan

26

The Grateful and The Dead

January 26, 2005 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

“….On 26 January 1950, India would be a democratic country in the sense that India from that day would have a government of the people, by the people and for the people….What would happen to her democratic constitution? Will she be able to maintain it or will she lose it again?….

If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in my judgement we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. There methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.

The second thing we must do is observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all who are interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not ‘to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions’. There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered life-long services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness. As has been well said by the Irish patriot Daniel O’Connell, no man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty. This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country. For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude, by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship in a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship….”

- Dr BR Ambedkar (Author of India’s constitution) on November 26, 1949

India Becomes A Republic
Dr Ambedkar

Jan

24

The third Indian revered in China

January 24, 2005 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

The latest news reports describe India & China entering into a new phase of bilateral cooperation and friendship. After a bitter border war in 1962, the relations between the Himalayan neighbors have never shown this much warmth so far.

But no single Indian has done more to bridge the Indo-Chinese relationships than a doctor from the southern Maharashtra city of Solapur. In 1938, Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis joined a medical mission to help the Chinese army. In the middle of mortars and gunshots, the brave Indian doctor served the mobile clinics helping the wounded chineses soldiers. He fell in love with and married a Chinese woman, Kuo Ching Lan. A short illness ended his life in 1942, but Dr Kotnis became an icon, a hero of the nation of China.

Bollywood memorialised Dr Kotnis in the 1946 movie ‘Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani’. China has its own dedication to Dr Kotnis in the 1982 movie ‘Dr DS Kotnis’.

In 1982, the Chinese government released 2 stamps on the 40th death anniversary of the doctor’s death, and then again in 1992 on the 50th death aniversary.

When Zhou-En-Lai visited India in 1950, he came and visited the Kotnis family in Mumbai. In 1996, when the Chinese premier Jiang Zemin visited India, he sent flowers to the Kotnis family. In 2001, the former Chinese premier Li Peng visited and paid respects to the Kotnis family in Mumbai.

In the northern Chinese province of Hebei, there is a city called Shijiazhuang. One of the famous attractions in Shijiazhuang is the Martyr’s Memorial park (lieshi lingyuan). The north and south side of the park is dedicated to the veterans of the Korean and the Japanese wars. The west side is dedicated to Norman Bethune, a Canadian who fought with the Chinese. The entire south side of the memorial is dedicated to the Indian doctor - Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis.

Before Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis, only two Indians had made their mark on China. Gautam Buddha - the founder of his religion, and Bodhidharma, the monk who had brought martial arts to China. All three have left a legacy that can be built upon to bring eternal peace in the shadows of the Himalayas.

Beijing Rally to Commemorate Indian Doctor
Li Pend to Meet With Kotnis Family
The Martyr’s Memorial
Dr Kotnis stamps - China

Jan

22

The Forest of Joy

January 22, 2005 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

Born with a silver spoon, he had a perfect childhood. At 14, he hunted boar and deer with his own gun. He was a movie reviewer for ‘The Picture Goer’ and built a correspondence with Hollywood celebirites like Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer. He became a successful lawyer and spent his weekends on the 500-acre family farm. A successful law practice, family wealth, a happy marriage to Sadhana Guleshastri….Murlidhar aka Baba Amte had the world in his hands. But he really had something else up his sleeves.

The day he got married, Baba Amte gave up his wealth, his law practice, and literally any and every connection to his previous life as almost a prince. And then this unsual couple embarked on a highly unusual journey in the late 1940s. They started working for the downtrodden, the have-nots, the social outcasts. Seeing an advanced-stage leprosy patient dying on a street one evening, Baba Amte brought the patient home, trying to nurse him back to health.

Over the next 50 years, the Amte family and their children built the uniqemost place of shelter for leprosy patients and their families. Their small family is now an extended family with several thousands who lived in the ‘Forest of Joy’ as patients or caregivers. Never mindful of showers of accolades and praises from all over, the Amtes and their volunteer army converted a barren piece of land into one of the eco-friendliest places on the globe. A place aptly named ‘The Forest of Joy’.

Fearless Minds
The Miracle Worker
Maharogi Sewa Samiti

Jan

20

When Hitler Invaded India

January 20, 2005 posted by indiatime | 7 Comments

A few weeks ago, Britain’s young prince was found wearing a ‘Swastika’ symbol on his jacket while attending a costume party. Though few in the world expect common sensical things from the British monarchy, the wearing of the ‘Nazi’ symbol by a ‘royal’ has brought the Swastika in the news agin.

The Swastika was adopted as his party’s logo by Hitler around 1920. Since then, it has come to symbolize oppression, genocide, injustice and most of all, a reminder of the the horrors of the holocaust.

Few people in the west know however, that Swastika is originally an ancient Indian symbol. Originally a sanskrit word, ‘Swastik’ means ‘to be well’. Appearing first in Vedas, the ancient Indian scriptures, Swastiks are found all over India in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temples, streets, religious gatherings, ceremonies and festivities. Many Indian households still decorate their frontyards with Swastik patterns everyday.

Hitler stole, subverted, plagiarised and maligned the Swastik by using it as a symbol of their oppression. In doing that, he disgraced, vilified and shamed one of Hinduism’s most auspicious symbols. Without setting foot in India, he almost succeeded in destroying a five thousand year old Hindu tradition.

Swastika
Swastika
The Sign of the Swastika

Jan

14

The Saturday Oil Pressers of India

January 14, 2005 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

More than 2000 years ago, a shipwreck off the western coast of India landed a group of jews near Navgaon, a small village south of Mumbai. Having lost their belongings and unable to travel anywhere else, the group assimilated with the local Marathi population. They specialized in oil pressing and took a day off on Saturday - the day of Sabbath. Their profession and their special weekly holiday gave them a name in the local community - The Saturday Oil Pressers. This group’s descendants became known as the Bene Israeli Jewish comunity in India, one of India’s three main Jewish groups.

There were about 70,000 of these Saturday Oil Pressers in or around Mumbai until very recently. After the state of Israel was formed however, many of the Saturday Oil Pressers chose to migrate to Israel. But even today, thousands of them still live in Mumbai, speak Marathi, have last names ending with ‘kar’ thus hardly giving a clue to their Jewish origins. DNA tests on these descendants have recently revealed that they most probably originated from Israelite priests called Cohanims.

Christianity came to India around 50 AD, and Islam came several hundred centuries later. But the Saturday Oil Pressers are a living proof that Judaism was probably the first outside religion that tested the hospitality of the deeply religious ancient India. On that fateful night 2 milleniums ago, the poor villagers of Navgaon opened up their hearts and proved a point about India. A point that is often understated, ignored, neglected or just genuinely missed.

Jews of India
India’s children of Israel

Jan

12

Vivekananda and Wireless

January 12, 2005 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

In the early 1890s, one of the greatest scientists of the western world worked on a challenge thrown at him by one of greatest Indian philosophers. Nikola Tesla, the extraordinary inventor and father of electricity as we know it today, met with Swami Vivekananda - one of the greatest spiritualists of Hinduism. The Indian Swami offered him a treasure trove of Vedic wisdom about the matters of energy and matter, about how the vedic science considered the universe to be charged. Tesla promised the Swami that he would mathematically demonstrate that force and matter could be equated to potential energy in some fashion. Unfortunately, Tesla wasn’t able to show the mathematical correlation. It was another ten years before Albert Einstein made public his theory of relativity and solved the riddle, proving the Swami’s point.

Vivekakanda is well known for his secular and brotherly views towards all the world religions. Like Nikola Tesla and Sara Bernhardt, thousands of westerners accepted him to be their spiritual teacher. But his greatest contribution may have been his hints to the then leaders of the science frontier.

In 1943, US Supreme Court ruled on an appeal about the US patent on the phenomenon of wireless transmission. The ruling made it clear that the inventor of the miraculous phenomenon of wirelesss transmission was not the Italian Marconi, but the Hunagarian-American Nikola Tesla, Swami Vivekananda’s friend and disciple.

The Influence of Vedic Philosophy on Tesla
Vivekananda and Einstein

Jan

8

The American face of Bollywood

January 8, 2005 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

There is a lot of talk about new Indian faces gracing the Hollywood screen. But an American face has been gracing the Bollywood screen since before Bollywood was called Bollywood.

Son of an American Presbyterian Church missionary couple in North India, Tom Alter has made a name for himself in India’s film and stage scene. Acting in about 200 Hindi movies over last 30 years. Tom has played a variety of characters, a British army officer, a helicopter pilot, a villain, an Indian freedom fighter. Born and brought up in the Himalayan resort town of Mussorie, Alter is fluent in Indian languages. He is also a writer. And a Cricket commentator as well.

Alter family has a long history with India. Alter’s grandfather was a pricipal of Mussorie’s Woodstock School in the 1940s. His uncle Bob was principal of the same school in the 1970s. His cousin sister Carol is one of the founders of the American School in Mumbai. His cousin brother Stephen a writer-in-residence at MIT was also born and raised in Mussorie.

Tom Alter, an American by heritage, has now spent last 50-plus years in India. Interestingly, that’s way more than most Indians in the USA have spent in India.

Tom of All Trades
The Sensational Six - by Tom Alter
God and I - by Tom Alter
Time to Alter an old image!
Organization, support, and administration of mission schools in India - D. Emmet Alter
Stephen Alter

Jan

7

Dr Bose, I presume….?

January 7, 2005 posted by indiatime | 3 Comments

Dr JC Bose, a Cambridge graduate and later professor of Physics at the Presidency College in Calcutta (Kolkata) was the first human being to successfully demonstrate that signals can be transmitted wirelsessly across a distance. His public demonstration of electromagnetic waves in 1895 happens to precede the more famous Marconi’s wireless signalling experiments by almost more than a year. Neville Mott, a Physics Nobel laureate once described Dr JC Bose as being at least 60 years ahead of his time. Some of Dr Bose’s theories such as the existence of solar electromagnetic radiation were proved right almost 50 years after he put them on paper.

One of Dr JC Bose’s students, Dr Satyendranath Bose became a professor of Physics himself. In the early 1920s, one of his scientific papers found a famous admirer - Albert Einstein, who went on to translate Dr Bose’s article in German. Within a year, Dr Bose was in Europe, in the company of the Einstein, Schrodinger and Heisenberg, some of the greatest physicists of all times. His statistical principles about radiation behavior have become famous as ‘Bose-Einstein statistics’. And physical particles with this type of behavior have become known to physics as ‘Bosons’.

In the early 1900s, Nani Gopal Bose immigrated to USA to escape persecution at the hands of the British. His son Amar grew up liking physics, studied at MIT, eventually becoming a professor at MIT. For several years, Dr Amar Bose worked on building the ideal speaker technology that would deliver the undiluted and true sound. In 1964 founded the Bose corporation. The rest, as they say, is history.

The most famous Bose from Calcutta, however, happens to be Subhash Chandra Bose, the extraordinary freedom fighter, referred to indians as ‘Netaji’ (the Leader).

The Work of Jagdish Chandra Bose - D. T. Emerson
Dr Satyendranath Bose
SN Bose, Legend
Amar Bose

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