The Right Perspective

This article first appeared in IndiaFacts . Cow-related violence and lynching have been making the media headlines world over in the recent past, especially since the now 4-year old Modi government of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) took office in 2014. What we have seen and heard in such reportage is that a person (or persons) belonging to a minority community (Muslims) is  lynched  for the suspicion of being a cow thief or smuggler. However, when this recent  news  about the killing of sadhus (or holy men) broke out, it shifted the focus ever so cursorily, at least in the Indian English language media, to a different element of this cow issue. According to reports, these sadhus were killed for reporting cow smugglers to the local police administration. Why Cows are Important To understand this issue of cow, we need to dig a litter deeper on this issue. One of the earliest dictionary/ thesaurus type of meaning of cow is provided by Yaska. Yaska, the 9 th  century BCE (accord

This article first appeared in Daily O . When the news broke out that PM Narendra Modi’s government had invited US President Donald Trump to be chief guest at India’s Republic Day parade in Delhi in 2019, reactions were on expected lines. Sceptics and optimists alike debated the merit of such an invitation. The timing of this invite, in light of the ensuing Lok Sabha elections, has also been questioned. As things stand now, according to the White House Press Secretary Sara Sanders, “the invitation has been extended”, but no final decision has been made on part of the US administration. The matter will come up and will be discussed during Secretary of Defence James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to India in the next few weeks,  said  Sanders. Despite some initial enthusiasm in the US-India relationship, it saw a lull in recent months. When Donald Trump was elected US president in 2016, many India watchers had high expectations. Trump’s victory was seen as an ext

This article first appeared in Daily O   No, Mata Sita was not a  test tube baby . Nor did the internet exist during the war of the  Mahabharata   . There is no evidence either of a "Pushpak Viman" crisscrossing the ancient Indian skies.  Beep, beep: Biplab got caught in a Web. [Credit: Twitter] So, let’s get that out of the way first. When the Indian Prime Minister Narendra  Modi mentioned Lord Ganesha and plastic surgery in the same sentence , he wasn’t referring to the grafting of the head of an elephant onto the body of a man to create a 'hybrid' man – such a thought would be preposterous. Reimagining India's past. [Credit: PTI photo] However, we all know that rhinoplasty surgery  is  described in the  Sushruta Samhita . The  Samhita  is a book written by the physician Sushruta in 600 BCE. Similarly,  Dr Harsh Vardhan , India’s minister for science and technology, claiming the science behind the Pythagorean theorem could have originated in Indi

This article first appeared in MyIndMakers . Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born on August 17, 1932.  Affectionately known as ‘Vidia’, Naipaul’s grandfather was an indentured laborer from India.  He was brought to Trinidad by the British farm owners to work on sugar plantation.  The system of an indentured laborer, in those days, was a way to circumvent the newly enacted anti-slavery law.   From toiling on the sugar plantation as a slave to being knighted (1990) by the same colonial masters, this journey of two generations is a remarkable one.  Vidia grew up in Chaguanas, Central Trinidad.  His parents never abandoned their ancestry and it became an integral part of his life journey.  His family raised Vidia as a Hindu.  He grew up in a house built by his grandfather who “ignored every colonial style he might have found in Trinidad and put up a heavy, flat-roofed oddity”.  Vidia was a good student.  He won a full scholarship to enroll in a Commonwealth university of his ch

This article first appeared in MyIndMakers . Another year and another National Spelling Bee won by a contestant of Indian origin.  This year’s winner Karthik Nemmani just became the 19 th Indian American to win the Bee since Balu Natarajan became the first to win it in 1985.  Sameer Mishra started the current remarkable streak of 11 consecutive wins by contestants of Indian origin in 2008. Indian Americans immigrants learn the art science of spelling fast.  When you have a ‘funny’ or ‘strange’ sounding non Judeo-Christian name in the US, as most Indians do, you get asked to spell your name a lot.  Whether one is at a doctor’s office or talking to a customer service agent over the phone, most of the time you have to spell your name –“N as in Nancy, S as in Sam” and so on and so forth.  As Anuradha Mitra admits in her Journal of South Asian Literature essay, “For all I know, it’s because of the consistent efforts of these well-intentioned people that I know how to spell  eleemosyna

This article appeared in MyIndMakers . Rituals, in their most simplistic form, are characterized by a series of actions or types of behavior regularly and invariably followed by individuals or by groups. Rituals are part of human social existence and as such they highlight some of the most integral, emotive, and elaborative practices of human life. However, the rituals of the followers of Hindu faith are considered by many, including many Hindus themselves, irrational and unnecessary. There isn’t a day goes by when one can’t find someone railing and outraging in media as well as in academic circles against Hindu rituals, be it  Karwa Chauth ,  Yagyopavit , or something else. When we think of rituals we usually associate them with some ‘primitive’ or ‘mystic’ activities.  We also associate rituals mostly with religion.  Rituals, however, are associated with all aspects of human experience – from secular to religious and from sacred to profane.  Most basketball players, for examp