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Greed, Religion and Political Violence
Theoretically, religion is for personal salvation and it is concerned with morality and ethics for believers. Standards of morality and ethics are not same for personal salvation and political management of the state. A prudent mature civil society develops a political process such as secular democracy to keep the two separated.Courage is to recognize betrayal by those we had expected better from. Courage is to restrict religion to influence individuals seeking personal salvation and not allow m...
| K Bhatia |
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Flawed Democracies
A discussion is presented of the principles of democracy and how political process in European and American versions of democracies is influenced by religious beliefs and identities. Pakistan with a diffused Islamic ideology is an evolving democracy and the article traces a history of past three plus decades to show how fragile its constitution is. It suits successive dictators and elected rulers to conform to the political Islam imbedded in the Islamic trilogy of scripture/literature - Quran, H...
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How rural India is gradually changing?
We visited 91 year old Nanaji, a frail man, now in poor health, but mentally very alert and very involved to the self-reliance campaign he introduced to guide all developmental activities at DRI Chitrakoot. A dedicated group of volunteers is now working hard under leadership of a husband and wife team of Dr. Bharat Pathak and Mrs. (Dr.) Nandita Pathak. They are following in foot steps of their mentor to continuously add more developmental projects to build up on Nanajis legacy.Our visit coincide...
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Cultures and Wars
With passion one can learn to solve many problems. Wars of 21st century cant be won by posturing on moral and ethical high grounds presented by Rajiv Malhotra in Gita on Fighting Terrorism. Passion and an appeal to a brand of moral and ethical high grounds are not sufficient for victory against a determined enemy. For a winning strategy in todays global environment a nation must have necessary second-to-none economic and military power to confront any enemy, a realistic strategy based on current...
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One Hundred Million Extremist Muslims?
Presence of an estimated one hundred million extremist Muslims in the Ummah is a constant reminder of the psychological terrorism faced by the non-Islamic world. Politicized Generals of many Muslim majority nations and non-state (al Qaeda) members of the Islamic Ummah routinely exploit terrorism for personal and political gains. With rising levels of Muslims killing Muslims several Islamic nations in last five years have been destabilized; the law and order has deteriorated and the writ of the g...
| K Bhatia |
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Satvic Rural Development Ideas
As a yatri I had planned to visit about 25 villages in seven states in seven weeks.As one of a 30 member NRI team called RILJ (Rural India Learning Journey) we visited (December 14 - 21, 2007) more than thirteen villages in Tamil Nadu (TN). A three member team visited additional one dozen villages within 80 km radius of Mysore, KA (Dec. 22 - 24) and Pune, MH (Dec. 25 - 29). A fourth NRI joined the team for Pune area yatra.Two members visited additional five to ten villages in Haryana (Jan 5 - 9)...
| K Bhatia |
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Hybrid Rural Development Model
In archives there is a photograph showing Rabindranath Tagore listening to the woes of a distressed and disturbed Gandhi. It was then that Tagore told him: “If they dont follow you, walk alone.”IntroductionIndia has very ambitious social sector programmes — in areas of employment, health, education, infrastructure development, etc and the outlays on them have been increased. But so far the results have been less than desirable. Why? Two words: failed systems.Indias planners have developed well-c...
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Diwali, Modern Sciences and Technologies
Diwali or Deepavali as its known in Sanskrit, is celebrated differently in various parts of India and has different origins for Hindus, Sikhs and Jains.For Hindus Diwali day symbolizes the return of Lord Rama to Ayodhya after 14-years exile during which he defeated the demon Ravana. The people welcomed him by lighting rows of lamps called diyas. It also is associated with the goddess Kalis defeat of demons Ahiravan and Mahiravan.For Sikhs the return of sixth guru, Guru Hargobindji, from captivit...
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Development in rural India
The conference was attended by more than 80 highly motivated NRIs. The NRI age ranged from 30 to 70+. In my estimation each had 10 to 50 years experience in various fields. As a group they represented an estimated 2000+ years of cumulative experience in humanities, business, engineering, medical and scientific fields. Most were seeking clues: how to help solve India’s problems?...
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Technology Impact on Social Engineering
The principle of absolute certainty violates Heisenbergs principle of uncertainty, theory of relativity and quantum mechanics responsible for 20th century advances in technology offering solutions to problems created by population explosion. Not only economic growth and aspirations of over 75% of global population but also economic and military might of major powers depends on modern technology. Technology is stealthily instigating social engineering of all societies and Muslims using modern con...
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Enabling Rural India"s Economic Growth
For sustainable survival marginal farmers have to unite under a leadership of a business manager cum dedicated community leader and improve farming practices to enhance productivity by an order of magnitude. For improving personal income, some marginal farmers have choices other than farming.A marginal farmer is generally functionally illiterate or ignorant of modern means of improving farm productivity on his limited land holdings. He also has inadequate additional capital and knowledge to make...
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Neutralizing Jihadists
A vast majority of 57 Muslim-majority nations of OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference) have autocratic rulers. In a ranking of 177 nations on the Failed State Index (2007), 20 of top 40 failing states are members of OIC. Muslim-majority countries top 24 most corrupt countries of the world. Islamic Asharite philosophy of submission to authority of scriptures as interpreted by muftis (lawyers-clerics) and feudal warlords advocates reliance on authority as the sole route to truth, which benefits...
| K Bhatia |
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Hindu Vedic Culture: Power of Knowledge
Vedic culture is characterized by its power of knowledge developed starting about five millenniums ago and it flourished in India except for about a millennium from 950 to 1947. Hindus, Buddhist, Sikhs and Jains are direct and Christians and Muslims are indirect beneficiaries of Vedic knowledge (see C. K. Raju, “The Eleven Pictures of Time,” The physics, Philosophy and Politics of Time Beliefs, SAGE Publications, New Delhi and London (2003)). Vedic people had social, cultural and commercial tie...
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Profoundly Politically Incorrect Islam
I dedicate this essay to memory of the Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorist in Pakistan five years ago.Before Daniel was beheaded he recorded a message, My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish-American from Encino, California. My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish. I am Jewish....
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Science and Cultural Dilemma
This article discusses how three dominant global cultures - Vedic, Christianity and Islam - accept scientific truths. Christianity used to preach a dogma - Christian beliefs supersede scientific facts. They experienced reforms – starting with the renaissance era that changed Christianity for better. Not so with Islam. Vedic culture predates both C...
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