Book Review: Hinduism, doctrine and way of life

Hinduism, doctrine and way of life

by C Rajagopalachari (1878-1972)

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
 

“Hinduism, doctrine and way of life” is a wonderful book explaining the fundamental beliefs, doctrines, and way of life of Hindus, or practitioners of Sanatan Dharm. Like in his other books, the author has explained the concepts in such a simple yet scientific language which all of us can understand. “If a religion is contrary to the scientific findings, it makes itself nothing but hypocrisy”, he says. Vedanta, as he elaborated in most of the pages, is both scientifically proven and finds inspirations in so many other world religions. Is Sanyasa about renouncing Karma or attachment? What is the concept of Karma – the scientific law of cause and effect? What is Maya? What is Leela? Is God one? All these questions are answered in the book. Nowhere else, you can find such a wonderful compilation of world’s ageless wisdom which comes from the land of Bharat or India.
 

Basically, all of we living beings are like reflections of the One eternal soul – the Parmatma, over water-like Maya. Like the same sun is reflected in so many water drops and we can confuse if there are suns in every drop, similarly all of us are reflections of the same Paramatma over Maya. This is part of Vedanta. Also, a Vedantin would obey the rules or dharma which one is expected to because of his/her birth or place in society. And Karma, based on scientific cause-and-effect process, makes us think farther and beyond the confines of this body made of flesh and bones. Karma is also one concept which is a contribution of our land – and is common and unifies most of the religions and sects which developed in the holy land of India. Also, concepts like how Hinduism doesn’t preach fatalism but we believe in “vidhi” – law, and how free will is an ingredient in many concepts, are explained very well.
 

It was a wonderful experience of having read this book from a learned thinker and great politician like Rajaji, also popularly known as Chakravarti or C.R. I am looking forward to read it again.
 

This book is part of a series of books from Rajaji published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. It is a small size book of about 100 pages. If you are in Hyderabad and not finding it, one place is the bookshop of Birla Mandir. 

The Hype of Outsourcing Ban in the US

Very recently there is a heated debate going on in the USA and in India Inc too about the proposed ‘IT Outsourcing Ban’. This week only, Ohio in the US has banned outsourcing of jobs to countries like India for government departments. There is much hype being generated in the US, accusing Indian IT companies of ‘stealing’ jobs out of the hands of the Americans. I remember the current US president Barack Obama promising the ban during his political campaign and even after his election he has constantly spoken against outsourcing. In his recent move, he increased the visa fee immensely, affecting the profitability of Indian IT companies which send a lot of professionals to the US for onshore jobs. Now almost whole lot of Indian IT companies are opposing this ‘protectionism’ by the American government. (We also remember that at one time the US stood against protectionism in the business world and promoted developing economies to open-up!)
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Here, I have done a quick analysis. Let us see if Indian IT companies really come anywhere nearby the US behemoths:
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Revenue:
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IBM $103.630 billion (2009)
Microsoft $62.484 billion (2010)
Oracle Corp $26.82 billion (2010)
TCS $6.52 billion (2010)
Wipro $6.03 billion (March 2010)
Infosys $4.59 billion (2010)
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Data taken from Wikipedia articles of the respective companies.
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As is clear from the above tabling that the top three Indian IT companies don’t even make a mere 9% of the revenue of their top US counterparts!
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May be comparing the employment data would throw some relevant light; as the US political sphere is more concerned about the job losses than the revenues.
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Employees:
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IBM 399,409 (2009)
Microsoft 89,000 (2010)
Oracle Corp 105,000
TCS 160,429
Wipro 112,925 (June 2010)
Infosys 114,822 (2010)
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Data taken from Wikipedia articles of the respective companies.
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The data tells that the top 3 Indian IT companies employ about 65% of the employee base of their US counterparts; though the data doesn’t discriminate between employment in home countries and employment in BUs abroad. Let us see the populations of the two countries:
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Population:
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USA 310,216,000 (2010 estimate)
India 1,185,863,000 (2010 estimate)
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Data taken from Wikipedia articles of the respective countries.
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We see that the population of India is 3.8 times the population of the US! That makes it so evident that the responsibility and urgency of new job creations in India is not at all less important than in the US!
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The analysis makes it clear that while top-3 Indian IT firms make only less than 9% in revenue and employ only 65% of people resources as compared to the US; India’s population which is about 4 times that of the US tilts the case of ‘protectionism’ in India’s favor. It comes that it should be India which should be doing ‘protectionism’ not the US! Though I believe ‘protectionism’ is a matter of political ethics and no country should indulge in it unfairly.
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In my opinion, outsourcing ban or outsourcing job-losses has been made a debate in the US for political reasons. An example of the same was made evident in the Ohio ban; since Indian IT companies do very little work for the government departments anyway which the ban was intended to curb! The financial crisis which spread in 2008 was more due to some fundamental flaws in the US economic model than any ‘outside’ threat like India or China. And until the Americans address these core and real issues, the financial and economic crisis can’t be fixed by an outsourcing ban!
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- Rahul

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CWG and Nation’s priority towards Sports

‘India bashing’ is an old sport. And who can do it better than those with Indian genes themselves! I read the following article by Mihir Bose, published in The Independent, UK:

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Why India is a bit player in the world of sport
Deep-seated cultural attitudes may be to blame for the Commonwealth Games fiasco
By Mihir Bose
Thursday, 23 September 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/why-india-is-a-bit-player-in-the-world-of-sport-2087034.html

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Here is what I sent as a comment and feedback:
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We have organized Asian Games before, right? And many other individual games, without any such mess (like the one with CWG)! Has our ‘deep-seated cultural attitude’ changed over-night? I don’t think so. The fact is that these games have become a victim of “organized corruption”. Government officials, organizing committee, contractors and subcontractors - they have joined together to exploit the bulk of money that was to be spent on the games. And I hope once the games are over, we would probe the thing well and fix the blame.

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There is no need to go into extensive but misplaced self-criticism, as a nation.
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I agree that the sports position in the Indian society’s eye is not very high. But let us also look at their ‘point’. A scientist gives the world something different, an engineer makes our life more convenient, a doctor heals human misery, a priest gives us peace; but a sportsperson plays only for fame (for self/team/nation’s) and awards. His profession (definitely sports are a profession) doesn’t add anything new to the world at large. In fact sports are a natural activity - babies start playing from the time they are born. It’s like ‘eating’ as a natural activity; or ‘fighting’ as a natural activity too. And all such activities or inclinations should not be done in ‘over-dose’.

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For a nation which is building itself, there are some areas of focus. And it is very important that our society’s priorities should match the nation’s aspirations. When Japan went on the rise after WW-II, they didn’t start playing some new sports - they invested in science and technology! Today when Mr. Obama asks American kids to study hard to compete with Indian and Chinese science students, I don’t see a parallel when he had to ask Americans to play Cricket harder to leave India or Australia behind! In fact when it comes to ‘National Priority’, sports are poor laggard anywhere in the world. Let us accept this fact.
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Only when a nation has achieved its dearest aspirations, it starts to think about the new areas in which it can prove its excellence. But the same doesn’t go the other way round! (No nation which is great in a particular sport goes around building great companies and products) So I completely agree with our society’s view which doesn’t give sports a priority over other ‘career options’, even if there is enough money in sports today. It’s because sports don’t reach us ‘there’! And we don’t want to support our players too beyond a limit (We saw Jaspal Rana and Sania Mirza dumping us in a way, right?)

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Also, let us not compare our nation which some others which ‘depend’ on things like sports and tourism in order to run their economy. It would be erroneous to believe that they are doing that ‘by choice’. There are so many small (in size and GDP) nations which are great in many sports, but we haven’t heard any of their companies to match the might of our Tatas or Birlas or Mahindras.
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I repeat that CWG are not connected anyhow with our nation’s attitude towards sports. CWG was a sports event, organizing which was to be our nation’s pride. Otherwise we would not have agreed to organize CWG in the first place. And the Asian games that we had organized or other international events like World Cup never got us in such a soup!

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Still, I definitely appreciate the author’s willingness to evaluate and think 360 degrees on the issue. That is very much needed for any progressive society and the article has made some points very well.

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- Rahul

Judging?

I was watching a movie. The story revolved around a father searching for his abducted daughters. A gang of organized criminals used to traffic women and his daughters had fallen into their trap. The man was an ex-detective. The only thing he had to start his search with, was the voice sample of the abductors. He sent the sample to an expert, who, noticing the accent and choice of words, identified the criminals to belong to a particular nationality and origin. Now matching their ‘way of doing crime’, he guessed that they belonged to a particular gang (gangs were formed also on the basis of the area from which the members had migrated from). This gang was found to be more active at airports, so the man concluded that he would find the culprits there. And he was right! He laid a trap for the abductors to come out again and nabbed them.
 

What interests me is the fact that the detective’s predictions were based on some common traits existing in the communities and groups. If a particular suspect had a particular type of beard, he would be from a particular community. If he pronounced a certain word in a certain manner, his origins would be guessed with confidence. His choice of words and even body language would tell where he came from. And then detectives would go on their trail. But, all these seem to me in contrary to what we have been taught to practice, by our civilized society. Just because a person behaved in a certain inappropriate manner, it should not mean that he came from uneducated or uncultured parents. Just because a person’s language is derogatory, we should not judge about one’s upbringing. We are asked not to judge people – “judge not lest ye be judged” as they often quote. So are we really judging people by their actions, in instances like interrogation and detective services? And are we doing right?
 

The question may be answered in different ways. In my view, the question arrived in my mind because I got confused between ‘personal judgments’ and ‘speculations’ or ‘suppositions’.  To understand it we should go deeper into the way investigations are done. Many a time we really don’t have any other choice than to start with whatever smallest clues and evidences available. We make a story around it – we form hypotheses – and then we test the hypotheses. The hypothesis is a tentative theory provisionally made to explain certain facts. As we go along the investigation, we test our hypotheses. If the actual facts encountered during the course of investigation indicate our hypotheses to be wrong, we look along a different line. This way of forming and testing hypotheses is actually not the same as judging others. 
 

Therefore, in my opinion it is nothing wrong in the way the detective in the movie went about in his trail– guessing about the criminals based on their appearances and way of doing things. If the facts would contradict his hypotheses, he would have to take a different line. Judging is like concluding and making verdicts. If we make verdicts and judgments based on incomplete facts, we have high probability to commit mistakes. Therefore, let us not judge others; but at the same time nothing is wrong in forming a hypothesis when we are going to test it. 
 

What do you say?

What is Personal?

We often use the word ‘personal’, but at one time I wondered if there are things in our life which could be called ‘personal’ to us in real sense. I would start with the closest guess. Are our feelings really personal to us? There are people who can guess our feelings accurately by looking at our face or into our eyes. And then we by ourselves show our feelings in many ways, unconsciously. And then there would be people close to us who would feel a part of our own feelings – out of empathy. Our life itself is also not personal. There are interferences from our parents and friends which we can’t avoid. In fact if we look back into our life, we would realize that most of our life was shaped by external events and circumstances. What if my parents didn’t have money to fund my education? What if I was born into a remote location with no school? What if my wife said no to the marriage proposal? What if I missed that train to attend that interview on time? Our life is definitely not entirely in our hands. So what others can be our ‘personal’ in true sense? Any relationship that we share has different aspects and many stakeholders in it. The properties and assets we own really don’t amount to be counted in the personal list – they won’t be there if we don’t have finances to retain or maintain them. Our parents or our relationships with our parents are very close to our personal in the sense – but then they have other children apart from us; some others too call them papa and mom. 
 

But I think there is one thing which we can call entirely personal. And there won’t be any others to guess what it stands for us and no others to claim a stake in it. It’s the feeling of nostalgia. What you feel seeing that locality, or that design of chair, or the name of that school, or any mention of that teacher or person, no other in this world can feel it the same way. No other person knows about every memory behind our recollections at the moment and there are no stakeholders present today in the events of the past that make us feel nostalgia. I think our feeling of nostalgia is such a unique thing that it should qualify for our truly ‘personal’ by any definition…

True Spirits of Gandhism

The US president Barack Obama is a declared fan of Mahatma Gandhi and practitioner of non-violence. But I was surprised to read this piece of news where a teen-age has been banned from entering the USA, as a punishment for sending an abusive email to the President!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-11296303 (14 Sep 2010)

In the true spirits of Gandhism he should have remembered that “Hatred can’t be won by hatred.” Or in the spirits of what we popularly call Gandhigiri now a day thanks to the Munnabhai series of Bollywood movies, he should have called the boy to the White House and give him a warm hug (jadu ki jhapki). That is what would have healed the boy and would have made Obama great in the eyes of the masses. That would have been a far better message to the humanity too, sending ‘hope’ to the world that we can win over hatred by love. I wish he would have done something as peaceful and non-violent as that.

- Rahul

Indian IT – Boon or Bane for the US?

Here is a very interesting statistic. So far the US president has been victimizing Indian IT industry for job losses for the Americans. And he has gone far enough to support outsourcing bans or to tax the American companies which outsource to India. But as Indian Commerce Minister reveals now, the fact is that Indian IT industry has created about 2.5 lakh (two hundred fifty thousand) jobs in the last three years! In August 2010 alone, Indian IT firms created 7000 jobs in the US!

http://news.oneindia.in/2010/09/15/indian-it-creates-2-5-lakh-jobs-in-us.html

I hope this clears a lot of air.

- Rahul

India drops in Global Competitiveness Ranking

Here is a news which no Indian would be happy about:

“India has slipped by two places to 51st in the World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness rankings, while rival China has managed to improve its standing to 27th (from 29th a year ago).”

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/India-drops-to-51st-position-in-global-competitiveness-ranking/articleshow/6525751.cms

The first question which comes to our mind is: “Why?” Details of the news says that India has fared badly due to poorer performance in the social sectors like education, healthcare and infrastructure. And a startling statistics tells that life expectancy in India is 10 years shorter than in China and Brazil!

I agree with the report that India fares poor in areas like education, health and infrastructure. But these are merely symptoms or results rather than the root cause. I think the root cause in these cases is the rampant corruption in public services. Do our teachers attend our government schools regularly? Are the funds meant for public health schemes spent properly? How many infrastructure projects complete well in time and without corruption charges made against the contractors or the administrators? (remember murder of engineer Satyendra Dubey because he was honest?)

I hope government of India identifies and targets the root cause of our poor performances in global competitiveness. It is not impossible to weed out corruption. There are many ways to achieve it and the efforts should be multitired. Just as a pointer – increasing use of technology, IT and computers in public departments results in avoidance of corruption chances too. The simple reason is that systems make manipulation difficult or impossible. Historical data on the systems can be retrived easily and used to support systems like RTI. E-Governance is a transparent, fair and systematic system. Then there are so many other ways to simply deny any malpractice from happening.

I think the next five to ten years are very important for our nation’s progress. Not only the race among BRIC nations would be decided by then, the generation which witnessed economic reforms would be ready to nurture its subsiquent generation. And we can put a lot of hope on the youth…

- Rahul

Book Review: Short Life of Sri Ramakrishna

by Swami Tejasananda, Swami Mumukshananda
 

This is a very good biography of the divine saint. There are many incidents from his life which are beyond explanation by conventional ways. His experiences make him a unique person, a Guru which every one of us would long to have. There is so much to learn from him and his teachings. This is a very short biography, yet complete in some aspects.
 

I highly recommend this book to everyone.
 

- Rahul