Hi Barua:
I didn't quite understand. Your qualm is against which - Hindi, English, or
India's being a united country.
What do you suggest as a solution? All states should balkanize and use their
regional language as the official language? Fine.
What will be the official language for Assam then? Assamese or Bodo or any
other language that are spoken in different parts of the state? Even for
Assamese, would it be the upper-Assamese or the lower-Assamese version of it?
Trust all is well with you all.
Regards,
-Alpana
“In order to make spiritual progress you must be patient like a tree and humble
like a blade of grass”
- Lakshmana
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:50:21 -0700From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [EMAIL
PROTECTED]: Re: [Assam] Book review : India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
First you said - "to get into the elite, one must learn english". I gave you
the example of Laloo. There are many others like him.
Next you said - "indian unity is because of english".
In India, more than 30% are native speakers of Hindi and a total of between 65
and 75% read, write and understand/speak the language. That includes many
southern speakers as well.
Compare that to English - less than 1.5% of the population actually have
proficiency in it.
English is there not because it is necessary to enforce unity but because it
helps us get business and do business with most of the outside world. How you
apply it is upto you. Remember I mentioned "business" and "admin". "Admin"
doesnt necessarily mean government administration only.
So how can I aggree with your conclusions??
Rgds,
SD
----- Original Message ----From: barua25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: A Mailing list
for people interested in Assam from around the world <assam@assamnet.org>Sent:
Thursday, September 27, 2007 11:31:36 PMSubject: Re: [Assam] Book review :
India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
>now it is a situational demand. With 14+ official languages, English is
>naturally the language of choice for business and admin.
Thanks for supporting my point. I was not referring to any demand to learn
English but it is a situation demand in India to learn English today.
In the ancient India, it was also a situational demand to learn Sanskrit to
get into the elite. Now it is English. That was my point.
So you should start by saying, 'I agree' instead.
Thanks
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: SANDIP DUTTA
To: A Mailing list for people interested in Assam from around the world
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 11:53 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review : India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
I disaggee - Earlier it could have been a problem of compulsion but now it is a
situational demand. With 14+ official languages, English is naturally the
language of choice for business and admin.
Also it depends if you really are insistent on defining "elite" in the manner
you do.
Taking the earlier example of Laloo - he is not exceptionally good with English
but he is still in the elite class by virtue of being minister. His recent
successes in reforming IR have now made him unofficial management consultant as
well.
Hope that makes sense.
Rgds,
Sandip
----- Original Message ----From: barua25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: A Mailing list
for people interested in Assam from around the world <assam@assamnet.org>Sent:
Thursday, September 27, 2007 9:37:37 AMSubject: Re: [Assam] Book review : India
After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
>I myself know an IRS officer now posted in Coorg district of Karnataka. He is
>from UP and from a very lower middle class background. However >after 15 years
>in the services, his english is as good as anyone else's and he has good
>working knowledge of Kannada.
If the guy knows good English, it actually proves my original point that in
India in ancient when one had to learn Sanskrit to be in the elite class, now
one has to be good in English to be in the elite class.
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: SANDIP DUTTA
To: A Mailing list for people interested in Assam from around the world
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 10:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review : India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
Rather than coming to conclusions about whether this attributes to dictatorship
- why not involve someone from that state in this discussion to see if he
concurs with this view.
Ditto for IAS/IPS officers coming from vernacular mediums. Contrary to belief,
such officers actually have very good (if not excellent) knowledge of English
and at times local languages wherever they are posted.
I myself know an IRS officer now posted in Coorg district of Karnataka. He is
from UP and from a very lower middle class background. However after 15 years
in the services, his english is as good as anyone else's and he has good
working knowledge of Kannada.
No wonder we see most of the demands for sovereignity and seperation from
foreign settled people who have got disconnected with the way this country
works (and still works).
Rgds,
Sandip
----- Original Message ----From: barua25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: [EMAIL
PROTECTED]; A Mailing list for people interested in Assam from around the world
<assam@assamnet.org>Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 8:00:10 AMSubject: Re:
[Assam] Book review : India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
>a nexus prevents anyone from voting against the "party" or else face
>ex-communication a-la erstwhile Pope's rule in Europe in medieval times ->as
>per a Bengali researcher
This is in fact what is called 'elected dictatorship' going on in West bengal
in name of democracy.
Rajenda
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: A Mailing list for people interested in Assam from around the world
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 11:52 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review : India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
Rajen-daGood example of India-Shining rhetoric. But just becos there is peace
(despite armed militancy in 25% of India's districts- NE, Kashmir, Bihar,
Central India, LTTE South India etc etc) and not many are dying of starvation
and voting not by reading election manifestos but by recognizing cartoons
(election symbols) of political parties . Even democratically elected communist
govt (an anamoly) of West Bengal is allegedly in power for past 25 years
non-stop since a nexus prevents anyone from voting against the "party" or
else face ex-communication a-la erstwhile Pope's rule in Europe in medieval
times -as per a Bengali researcher .But ofcourse noone can deny that despite is
shortcomings the India that is Bharat is growing - despite spoofs like
Hollywood's "Borat" movie (Bharat ??) from Kazakhstan (Rajasthan???)UmeshRajen
& Ajanta Barua <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Following may be added from another review about the book:
India is the country that was never expected to ever be a country. In the late
19th century, Sir John Strachey, a senior British official, grandly opined that
the territory's diverse states simply could not possess any sort of unity,
physical, political, social or religious. Strachey, clearly, was wrong: India
today is a unified entity and a rising global power. Even so, it continues to
defy explanation. India's existence, says Guha, an internationally known
scholar (Environmentalism: A Global History), has also been an anomaly for
academic political science, according to whose axioms cultural heterogeneity
and poverty do not make a nation, still less a democratic one. Yet India
continues to exist. Guha's aim in this startlingly ambitious political,
cultural and social survey is to explain why and how. He cheerfully concludes
that India's continuing existence results from its unique diversity and its
refusal to be pigeonholed into such conventional political models as
Anglo-American liberalism, French republicanism, atheistic communism or
Islamist theocracy. India is proudly sui generis, and with August 15, 2007,
being the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, Guha's magisterial history
of India since that day comes not a moment too soon. 32 pages of b&w illus., 8
maps.
----- Original Message -----
From: Rajen & Ajanta Barua
To: assam@assamnet.org
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 10:42 PM
Subject: [Assam] Book review : India After Gandhi
Good review of a grand 900 page book on India recently published:
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy by Ramachandra
Guha From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.comReviewed by
George Perkovich
A toast to India on its 60th birthday: No country has more heroically pursued
the promise of democracy. Against the odds of staggering poverty, conflicting
religious passions, linguistic pluralism, regional separatism, caste injustice
and natural resource scarcity, Indians have lifted themselves largely by their
own sandal straps to become a stalwart democracy and emerging global power.
India has risen with epic drama -- a nonviolent struggle for independence
followed by mass mayhem and bloodletting, dynastic succession and
assassination, military victory and defeat, starvation succeeded by green
revolution, political leaders as saints, sinners and sexual ascetics. And yet,
the Indian story rarely has been told and is practically unknown to Americans.
India After Gandhi masterfully fills the void. India needs a wise and judicious
narrator to convey its scale, diversity and chaos -- to describe the whirlwind
without getting lost in it. It needs a biographer neither besotted by love nor
enraged by disappointment. Ramachandra Guha, a historian who has taught at
Stanford and Yale and now lives in Bangalore, has given democratic India the
rich, well-paced history it deserves.
Much will be new to American readers. Large-scale conflicts in India's
northeast between tribal groups and the center have been as enduring, and in
some ways as important, as the more familiar violence in Kashmir. The framing
of India's constitution from 1946 through 1949 should induce awe, especially in
light of Iraq's post-Saddam experience.
In the midst of Hindu-Muslim bloodshed, a flood of 8 million refugees,
starvation, and other profound conflicts, Indian representatives worked out
constitutional provisions to protect minorities, keep religion out of state
power, correct thousands of years of caste discrimination and redistribute
power and wealth accumulated by still-regnant princely states. This was done
with no external guidance or pressure. The drafting committee was chaired by an
"untouchable," B.R. Ambedkar -- analogies are inexact, but imagine if James
Madison at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention had been a freed slave.
Specialists will quicken over insights from the private papers of Indira
Gandhi's confidant, P.N. Haksar, who gave his papers to Guha. These documents
reveal, among other things, that it was the Soviet Union that proposed the 1971
treaty of cooperation and friendship between the two countries, and that
suspicion of China motivated both nations more than was appreciated at the time.
Miniature biographies of grassroots leaders and movements also enliven Guha's
storytelling. Jay Aprakash Narayan -- "JP" -- plays a leading role. A onetime
friend of Nehru who became the bête noir of his daughter, Indira Gandhi, JP led
a massive movement for radical governmental reform in 1974-75, which moved
Indira Gandhi to declare a national emergency and suspend democracy.
Some themes go under-explored: For example, why has the Indian Army abstained
from interfering in politics, unlike the military in many other developing
countries? And why has India given short shrift to primary education, even as
it has developed technological institutes that rival M.I.T?
Many chapters begin or end with India's future in doubt. "India is almost
infinitely depressing," Aldous Huxley wrote in 1961, "for there seems to be no
solution to its problems in any way that any of us [in the West] regard as
acceptable." He predicted that "when Nehru goes, the government will become a
military dictatorship." Guha records that "ever since the country was formed
there have also been many Indians who have seen the survival of India as being
on the line, some (the patriots) speaking or writing in fear, others (the
secessionists or revolutionaries) with anticipation."
Yet, marvelously, India's survival as a democracy seems more assured than ever.
Less clear is the nature of its relationship with America. Since 2005, the U.S.
and Indian governments have moved toward nuclear cooperation, reversing 30
years of U.S. policy against nuclear assistance to countries that refuse to
sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Washington clearly views India as a counterbalance to China's strategic power.
But Guha records an important historical parallel.
In 1962, China crossed disputed boundaries in the northwest and northeast of
India. A shocked Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru abandoned nonalignment and
pleaded for emergency U.S. military assistance. Ambassador John Kenneth
Galbraith wrote to President Kennedy: "The only Asian country which really
stands in [China's] way is India and pari passu the only Western country that
is assuming responsibility is the United States. . . . We should expect to make
use of India's political position, geographical position, political power and
manpower or anyhow ask."
Four decades later, another Harvard professor-cum-American ambassador to India,
Robert Blackwill, championed the proposed nuclear deal with similar reasoning.
As different as the presidents they served, Blackwill and Galbraith were
tempted by strategic abstraction and a desire to raise "their" country -- India
-- in American priorities. Yet supplying arms to India in 1962 did not make
India any more deferential to U.S. foreign policy. Washington will delude
itself again if it thinks that nuclear India will be a pliant instrument in its
geostrategy. As long as India is a democracy, it will go its own way.
To comprehend India's achievement, imagine if Mexico became the 51st of the
United States, followed by Brazil, Argentina and the rest of Central and South
America. Add Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to give this union the Sunni-Shia
mix of India. The population then represented in Congress would still be
smaller and less diverse linguistically, religiously, culturally and
economically than India's. If such a state could democratically manage the
interests and conflicts swirling within it, and not threaten its neighbors, the
world should ask little else from it. If we were such a state, we would feel
that our humane progress contributes so much to global well-being that smaller,
richer, easier-to-manage states should not presume to tell us what to do.
Sixty years after Gandhi, India has earned greater appreciation than we give it.
_______________________________________________assam mailing [EMAIL
PROTECTED]://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org_______________________________________________assam
mailing [EMAIL
PROTECTED]://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.orgUmesh
SharmaWashington D.C. 1-202-215-4328 [Cell]Ed.M. - International Education
PolicyHarvard Graduate School of Education,Harvard University,Class of
2005http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)http://hbswk.hbs.edu/
(Management Info)www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used
)http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
For ideas on reducing your carbon footprint visit Yahoo! For Good this month.
_______________________________________________assam mailing [EMAIL
PROTECTED]://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
Luggage? GPS? Comic books? Check out fitting gifts for grads at Yahoo! Search.
_______________________________________________assam mailing [EMAIL
PROTECTED]://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
Looking for a deal? Find great prices on flights and hotels with Yahoo!
FareChase.
_______________________________________________assam mailing [EMAIL
PROTECTED]://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
Yahoo! oneSearch: Finally, mobile search that gives answers, not web links.
_________________________________________________________________
Discover the new Windows Vista
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=windows+vista&mkt=en-US&form=QBRE
_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
assam@assamnet.org
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
