Charpat Panjarika Stotram by Adi Shankara

‘Charpat Panjarika Stotram’ by Adi Shankara

Bhaja Govindam

Translation and analysis by B. Neelakar, B.P. Shashank Kalyan

Hindoology Books

ISBN 978-81-223-1074-0

Ancient Hindu texts like the Vedas deal with immense depths of philosophy and contain truths which are relevant for time immemorial. Because of difficult language it may not be possible for all to read and learn those evolved texts. Therefore it is very important that gist of those remarkable texts are presented for the younger generation in the simplest ways possible. Through this book which contains at least twelve shlokas from Adi Shankaracharya and many others from his disciples, one can get a good overview of the richest Hindu philosophies. The language of translation is clear and of very high quality. Each shloka contains immense wisdom and encourage us to seek the true purpose of our life.

I recommend this book highly to one and all.

We do Need Sedation Law but not Against Cartoonists

13 Sep 2012

You must be aware of the events unfolding during the last few days in which a cartoonist Aseem Trivedi was arrested on sedation charges and then released after a huge public outcry. He was arrested on the charges of having insulted national emblem and constitution, which was filed against him by a so called dalit activist in Mumbai. Government justified the arrest citing laws on sedation which prevent national symbols and emblem from being shown disrespect, while the media, public activists and so called liberalists used the opportunity to demand this law to be abolished altogether.

Political Aspects of this Case should not be ignored!

Let us analyze the news in slight detail. Firstly, the case has been filed now alleging that the cartoonist had put up banners mocking the Constitution during Anna Hazare's rally at the Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai in 2011 [Ref] This “event” happed in 2011 but the police case has been filed in now in 2012, which clearly puts doubts on the intention of the complainant. Police should not have immediately arrested the cartoonist as if one year old cartoons were going to explode now and do some great harm.

The fact is that the complainant Amit K. is a so called dalit activist and member of Republican Party of India (RPI) [Ref]. RPI is a political party which has tried to champion the cause of so called dalits and has huge vote banks in these communities. Recently RPI has come close to Shiv Sena and BJP and formed an alliance with these two political parties and even fought local elections together. Recently MNS has come closer to Shiv Sena too and there have been talks of both parties joining hands for the upcoming state assembly elections. It seems some political masterminds are trying to prevent formation of such a grand alliance of opposition parties in Maharashtra.

Recently RPI and MNS activists fought over a small issue [Ref]. Congress party always tries to bring Muslim and so called Dalit vote banks together to make a bigger vote banks which could ensure it victory on many seats. It seems the Congress govt in the state tried to widen the gap between RPI and other state parties and also to isolate RPI by forcing these parties hurt RPI’s political agenda and sentiments. This police complaint seems to have worked perfectly in creating a political situation which could be in advantage for the RPI and Congress to come closer while MNS, Shiv Sena and BJP to go further away from these. The success of this approach was evident when news came that Raj Thackeray supported Aseem Trivedi [Ref] and Bal Thackeray also publicly backed him [Ref] and criticized govt for arresting the cartoonist. It is anyone’s guess that RPI won’t have loved this support for the cartoonist from Shiv Sena and MNS.

This law should not have been applied on Assem Trivedi

The strongest argument to support Aseem Trivedi’s arrest and the police case was his cartoon on our National Emblem which is taken from Ashoka’s Lion Capital. In his cartoon, Trivedi had made the three front lions look like wolves with blood dripping from their tongue and instead of “Satyamev Jayate”, the cartoon mentioned “Bhrashtamev Jayate”. Supporters of state govt said that it was an insult to our national emblem. In my personal opinion, we should differentiate a cartoon from other forms of art.

This piece was a cartoonist’s expression to show the corruption in our system. At the same time, there was no attempt on his part to “appear realistic” in order to “confuse people with the actual national emblem”. His cartoon was not a “look-alike” of our national emblem. It was only a sketch and even a small kid in school would say that this was only a cartoon and not any realistic version of our national emblem. Therefore, Assem should not have been charged with the sedation laws.  

Media only concentrated on the law instead of its wrong application!

It is shocking to me that none of the media houses and TV news channels who feed on sensationalism even pointed towards the political connections which I tried to expose in the earlier parts of this article. Today, people of our country have to be very careful about the way we form opinions heavily relying on who wins the TV debates and whose side the TV channels are supporting. TV news channels and even print media heavily targeted only this sedation law.

Three laws were applied against Assem:

1. Indian Penal Code Section 124 (sedition)
2. Section 66 A of Information Technology Act
3. Section 2 of Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act

Under Section 66 A (Punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service, etc) and Section 2 of Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act (Whoever in any public place or in any other place within public view burns, mutilates, defaces, defiles, disfigures, destroys, tramples upon or otherwise shows disrespect to or brings into contempt (whether by words, either spoken or written, or by acts) the Indian National Flag or the Constitution of India or any part thereof) the accused faces a prison term of three years and/ or can be fined. [Ref]

When it came to discuss this whole episode, thinkers like Salil Tripathi also discussed only on the law [Ref] while controversial persons like Binayak Sen also supported repealing this act [Ref].

Of course all anti-nationals, terrorists and enemies of India would also love this law to be repealed. And tomorrow they will start burning our national flag and desecrating our national symbols at the fly. Do we want such a situation to happen? (It is already happening in J&K where separatists burn our national flag and to some extent happens in many places when sections of population waive Pakistani flags on Indian soil along with insulting our symbols.)

Also, it appears that the main argument why this law should be repealed has been put forward as “this in a colonial era law”. This argument is amusing: there are so many laws which have come from the British era and even stopped so many social evils; should all these laws be repealed now just for being “from colonial era”? Of course no! Then why “use” this case of “wrong application of law” to demand the law itself to be repealed?

My Conclusions:

1. Police case on the cartoonist seems to be filed because of political agenda (as explained in the article).
2. Sedation laws should not apply on the cartoonist Aseem Trivedi because there was no planned attempt on his part to insult our national emblem.
3. Media has so far campaigned only in support of the cartoonist and has used him to make a case to get the sedation laws to be repealed. Media should also have exposed the political games underlying the case and presented a balanced picture.
4. The sedation laws should not be repealed but should be applied more judicially.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization associated with the author. There is no attempt to hurt the feelings of readers and any unintended ones are regretted. You are welcome to share your own personal opinion on this article in the comments section.

Is it Worth to Quit for more Family time?

Kumar Rahul Tiwary; Sep 13, 2012

If you are not getting time even to change your password, may be it is time to change your login :) (Rahul) https://twitter.com/rahulbemba

When to quit your job? I think it is a million dollar question. Some of us even make it an answer – “I will quit my job only when I get new job with a million dollar salary.” Or make your estimate. Such professionals have only money in their mind. But I think we should wake up to the fact that there are more reasons to quit a job than only money.

Here are some more reasons why people would quit their jobs:

1. I don’t like my boss.
2. My boss dislikes me.
3. I don’t get promotions.
4. I have been forced into a promotion I don’t like.
5. I feel my salary is too low for the work.
6. I am getting better salary offer next door.
7. I need to relocate to other city for family reasons.
8. My company is forcing me to relocate to other city which I don’t like.
9. I don’t like my work.
10. I have done too badly at my work and appraisal is too bad too.
11. TYP… (take your pick and continue)

I think each of these reasons also impacts a professional of a certain age group. (Or even demography and other factors but we won’t get into those). Till certain age, money looks most important. After a certain age, it is money which brings more misery and we realize that our goals need to be reset. Family compulsions become more important. Many of us do give enough importance to such aspects. I think “family” matters are one reason why people higher the organizational ladder switch their jobs most, rather than the beginners. But some people feel guilty when they have to quit a job or change employments because of family reasons. How to deal with such guilt?

I think there is a certain novelty in “trying”. If you are facing some problems in personal or family life due to your job, first you should “try” to make things alright. Can you manage it? Can you think out-of-the-box to come out with a solution which would make you work around the problem and thereby you won’t have to quit your job? Many of us forget to think too hard to find a solution and take quitting as an easy escape. We should not do that.

The problems with family life Vs your job happens most of the time when both spouses are working. Therefore the problems can be solved only if both have equal understanding of the problem and are equally dedicated to solve the problem. If only one side makes a compromise which the other side didn’t understand or appreciate, it might create more problems in the long term.

After all out-of-the-box ideas fail to solve the problem (which has very less probability if we try intelligently), we should even take help from friends and colleagues who have had seen this phase we are going through. We should even discuss this with our boss and ask for suggestions. We should read books and articles to understand aspects we may be ignoring totally so far. May be we could solve our problem this way.

If everything fails and we are bound to make a decision to quit, I am sure we shall be more confident about our decision and we shall be happier while making the change. Ultimately we all do our jobs because we want to be happier. Money, more family time, etc, are all means for our happiness.

Happy quitting!

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization associated with the author. The incidents or examples mentioned in the article, or cases based on which article is based, are for illustration purpose and need not be from author’ real personal (work) experiences.

Do you do “Easy” Jobs?

Kumar Rahul Tiwary; Sep 12, 2012

When Ramesh joined the new project, he was given structured KT (knowledge transfer) for all the activities he was supposed to do. Since their team was based at multiple geographies, most of the KT sessions happened through telecom and desktop screen sharing. He was also given access to some KT documents describing the jobs and activities he was taking over. When Ramesh started taking over activities, he was a worried man. He soon realized that the KT sessions were not exhaustive and he was not able to perform the activities with the help of the documents. He could complain, but he thought not to be the “noise maker”. So he chose the difficult road ahead…

He spent extra working hours and put on a lot of efforts to perform the activities with best results. He also took help from others whenever they were available. For his own reference he also noted down and prepared documents with the correct, relevant and updated processes. He was good at his work and his dedication to come out of the clutter made him sharper day by day. Within 2 months, he was doing all the work assigned to him in minimum time and with best quality.

“But that is the easiest of the lot”, at first he couldn’t believe his ears. Then he got used to it. His team had come out with their own “explanation” for his exceptionally good performance. Since he was doing his work in the least time with best quality, they had concluded, to their own amusement perhaps, that his portion of work was the “easiest”. Ramesh was given more workload but he still maintained the same performance. But the rumors never died…

Have you come across such scenarios around you? What do you think should be the best method to dispel such hypothetical assumptions or assertions by Ramesh’s team? Should Ramesh ask to swap tasks with others in order to prove that he is best at whatever he does? Or should he talk to his team and explain how rigorously he has to work and how he came up with easer ways to do the same jobs? Of course these are options in front of him, but may be not following any of these would be the best?

I think an ultimate proof of your excellence is - whatever job you do comes to be known as “easy” work by others, over the time :) (Rahul)

My explanation of my today’s tweet :) Follow me at https://twitter.com/rahulbemba

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization associated with the author. The incidents or examples mentioned in the article, or cases based on which article is based, are for illustration purpose and need not be from author’ real personal (work) experiences.