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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

[mukto-mona] Joy Bangla



President Michael Chilufya Sata of Zambia adresses in 67th
UN general assembly with 'Joy Bangla'
 NURUL HAQ-BACHCHU bachchuhaq@yahoo.com
জাতিসংঘে জাম্বিয়ার প্রেসিডেন্টের মুখে 'জয় বাংলা'
এনা, নিউইয়র্ক থেকে ॥ কৈশোরে একাত্তরে বাঙালীর মুক্তিযুদ্ধের কথা শুনে 'জয় বাংলা সেøাগান' রপ্ত করেছিলেন জাম্বিয়ার বর্ণাঢ্য এক রাজনৈতিক পরিবারের সন্তান মাইকেল চিলুসিয়া শাটা। সময়ের পরিক্রমায় সেই যুবকটি এখন জাম্বিয়ার প্রেসিডেন্ট হয়েছেন এবং জাতিসংঘের চলতি সাধারণ অধিবেশনে তিনি ঐ দেশের প্রতিনিধি দলের নেতা হিসেবে নিউইয়র্কে এসেছেন। ২৫ সেপ্টেম্বর জাতিসংঘ সদর দফতরে 'পিস বিল্ডিং এ ওয়ে ফরোয়ার্ড টুয়ার্ডস সাসটেইনেবল পিস এ্যান্ড সিকিউরিটি' শীর্ষক এক শীর্ষ বৈঠকে জয় বাংলা সেøাগান দিয়ে উপস্থিত ২৫ দেশের শীর্ষ নেতৃবৃন্দকে অবাক করে দেন। এর মাজেজা কেউ না বুঝেই অশুদ্ধভাবে তার সঙ্গে কণ্ঠ মেলান। পুরো অডিটরিয়ামে হাসির রোল পড়ে যায়। এ বৈঠকে সভাপতিত্ব করছিলেন বাংলাদেশের প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনা। তিনিও অবাক বিস্ময়ে জাম্বিয়ার প্রেসিডেন্টের আচরণ মুগ্ধ নয়নে অবলোকন করেন। এভাবেই বাংলাদেশের প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনার প্রতি শ্রদ্ধা ও ভালবাসা জানাচ্ছেন বিভিন্ন দেশের নেতারা। উচ্চ পর্যায়ের এ বৈঠকে সমাপনী বক্তব্য দেন জাতিসংঘ মহাসচিব বান কি মুন। এর আগে অস্ট্রেলিয়ার প্রধানমন্ত্রী, ক্রোয়েশিয়ার প্রধানমন্ত্রী এবং জাম্বিয়ার প্রেসিডেন্ট মঞ্চে আসন গ্রহন করেন। শেখ হাসিনা তার বক্তব্যে 'টেকসই শান্তি ও মজবুত নিরাপত্তা ব্যবস্থা'র আলোকে বক্তব্য পেশ করেন। ক. স্থায়ী শান্তি নিশ্চিতে কি কি করা উচিত তার অগ্রাধিকার তালিকা, খ. আঞ্চলিক সম্পর্ক জোরদার করা এবং গ. পরস্পরের সহায়তায় সকল কর্মকা-কে এগিয়ে নেয়া। এ ব্যাপারে সর্বসম্মত একটি সিদ্ধান্তও গৃহীত হয়েছে। এ সময় অনেকে উল্লেখ করেন যে, দাঙ্গা-হাঙ্গামা রোধে বাংলাদেশ শুধু শান্তি মিশনে সৈন্য সরবরাহই করছে না, তারা দাঙ্গার অবসান ঘটালে ঐসব দেশে স্থায়ী শান্তির জন্যও কাজ করছে। শেখ হাসিনা এ সময় বলেছেন যে, বেকারত্ব ঘোচাতে হবে শান্তিপূর্ণ সমাজ কাঠামো বিনির্মাণে। খাদ্য নিরাপত্তার জন্যে উৎপাদন বৃদ্ধির বিকল্প নেই। ঐ সময় প্রধানমন্ত্রীর সফরসঙ্গীরাও সেখানে ছিলেন।
শেখ হাসিনার সঙ্গে ২৫ সেপ্টেম্বর এক বৈঠকে মিলিত হয়ে মিসরের প্রেসিডেন্ট মোহাম্মেদ মরসী আইসা আল আয়াত বলেছেন, আমরাও গণতন্ত্র কায়েম করেছি। মিসরও বাংলাদেশের মতোই। বাংলাদেশ এবং মিসর ভাই ভাই, তাই আসুন আমরা দু'দেশের মধ্যে ব্যবসা-বিনিয়োগ এবং যাতায়াত ব্যবস্থা সুদৃঢ় করি এবং পাসপোর্ট-ভিসার প্রথা উঠিয়ে দেই। বাংলাদেশের প্রতি মিসরের এ আন্তরিকতার কারণ হচ্ছে, বাংলাদেশের উন্নয়ন-অগ্রগতি। তা মিসরীয়দের আকৃষ্ট করছে। আন্তর্জাতিক পরিম-লে বাংলাদেশের প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনার ইমেজ এভাবেই বিল্ড হয়েছে সামগ্রিক উন্নয়ন পরিক্রমা সুবিন্যস্ত হওয়ায়-দাবি করেন জাতিসংঘে বাংলাদেশের স্থায়ী প্রতিনিধি ড, এ কে এ মোমেন।






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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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Fw: Re: [mukto-mona] ‘A Man among men...’ -- Swami Vivekananda



I am not discounting the quality of some lopsided arguments. What I am saying is take them with grain of salt, at least initially. Gossip, literary plagiarism,  fiction or fantasy, etc. could lead to lopsided arguments. Therefore, in my opinion, we should approach such argument with skeptical mind.

 

I am not discarding any of those negative aspects about Vivekananda; I am taking them as facts. Yet, they don't change my view of Vivekananda. Whatever little knowledge I have about him, makes me think - he was way ahead of his contemporary thinkers. I have listened to his recorded speech at the world congress in Chicago on Sept. 11, 1893; it was quite a revolutionary idea. He proposed a religion for all mankind, called it the Religion of Human-being. His vision is scientific and revolutionary.

 

You may ask – if it is that good - why everybody is not adopting it. There are two reasons for that – 1) he did not live long enough to publicize his views, and 2) he did not have the resources to compete with the vicious campaigns of the organized religions.

 

Any other things we hear about Vivekananda are normal aberrations of human life. Einstein had mistress; should we – abandon all his works? Rabindra Nath had affairs; should we – discard all his divine literary works? So all these negative aspects of one's life make him/her more complete human being. None of those iconic figures were dropped out of the sky as Saints. It is good to know one's negatives along with positives to judge him/her with proper perspective.

 

Jiten Roy




--- On Tue, 9/25/12, Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tuesday, September 25, 2012, 10:10 PM

 
"Lopsided judgments" are to consider the qualities alone, and to forget the drawbacks.

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 8:03 AM, Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

Some people love antithesis; they are contrarians. To them Rabindra Nath, Bankim, Vivekananda, etc. are overblown figures and needed to be reevaluated. There is something wrong with this thought pattern.  These people are giving much more weight to the negatives than positives in the lives of those iconic figures. Such lopsided judgments should not be taken seriously.

Jiten Roy   
--- On Tue, 9/25/12, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:


From: Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com>

Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: "bangladesh-progressives@googlegroups.com" <bangladesh-progressives@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, September 25, 2012, 9:08 PM


 
So, who would you consider as not a overblown icon according to your criteria? Any name?
-SD

 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS

From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 1:18 AM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Rishi Bankim, however, irrelevant here, was not much more than another overblown icon.

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:
 
           Thanks for the mention of this important book.  I have not read the book, but I have heard Narasingha Shil present a pre-publication paper at the Bengal Studies Conference (held that year at SUNY) on Vivekananda which convincingly exploded all the myths surrounding this con-man god-man.  Narasingha is a great iconoclast, intelligent and funny, and a terrific 'adda-baj'. We became friends, and at another BS Conference he presented another hit at another Bengali icon -- Rishi Bankim.  I later told him that, unlike Vivekananda, Bankim did not consciously or dishonestly create his own Rishi image. His Rishi-ization and even the hinduization of Bande Mataram were done by communal politics long after his death. Narasingha accepted my explanations, and later, when he read my own completed article criticizing Gauri Vishwanathan book with evidences cited from Bankim, he praised it profusely in an e-mail,  and stopped criticizing Bankim.

               Farida Majid
        


To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
From: kamalctgu@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 07:45:37 +0600
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda


 
One should read "Vivekananda Reassessed" - Narasingha P. Shil [Susquehenna University Press] to have a better understanding of him.


On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Sudhir-Architect <ar_sudhirkumar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

120 years on, Swami Vivekananda's fiery speech at the Parliament of Religions is still fresh in
memory.This month marks the 120th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda's participation in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago.

It is appropriate to celebrate this great event through the month for a simple reason. While it is generally well-known that young Vivekananda had to sleep on a sidewalk in Chicago before being discovered and given a place to stay, what is less known is that his first lecture there on September 11, 1893, catapulted him to such a great stature that the organisers had to invite him to address the gathering every day during that fortnight!

A participant of that conference said, "When the audience was bored with the tedious eloquence of some other speakers and became restive, the president of the conference found that the best means to get them into order was to announce that Vivekananda would be the next speaker again!"

Among those present at that conference, Dr. Annie Besant later commented, "Off the platform, his figure was instinct with pride of country, pride of race – the representative of the oldest of living religions… India was not to be shamed before the hurrying arrogant West by this her envoy and her son. He brought her message, he spoke in her name, and the herald remembered the dignity of the royal land whence he came. Purposeful, virile, strong, he stood out, a man among men, able to hold his own. On the platform, another side came out. The dignity and the inborn sense of worth and power still were there, but all was subdued to the exquisite beauty of the spiritual message which he had brought, to the sublimity of that matchless truth of the East which is the heart and life of India…The huge multitude hung upon his words, not a syllable must be lost, not a cadence missed!"

Profound impact

An agnostic-turned-monk, Swami Vivekananda accomplished in a life span of 39 years what is probably not possible for anyone living even for a couple of centuries. His contribution was not obscurantist revival but rejuvenating renaissance of Hinduism and the Indian ethos. His deep sense of nationalism had a profound impact on the Freedom Struggle. His worldview and success in the Western world revived India's self esteem in the context of the depressed mood of enslavement. Suddenly, here was a new Indian spiritual leader known to the entire literate world.

His admirers included the likes of Leo Tolstoy and Max Mueller. Swamiji's personality combined the qualities of the Buddha, Mahavir, Adi Sankara, Ramanuja, and Chaitanya in a manner of syncretism. He was a great musician even as a teenager, attracting hundreds of people to his singing, a tradition which he continued all his life.

Even his religious ideas were radical. He once declared, "I do not know the 30 crore deities of our pantheon. But I know the millions of my suffering fellowmen who are my gods to be served." He epitomised this sentiment on the lines "Nara Seva is Narayana Seva" (Service to Man is Service to God). He did not believe in salvation by constantly running away from the world to meditate in caves; he believed that such enlightenment was only a means to serve his fellowmen. So he created an Order of Monks at the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, who are dedicated to the uplift of the downtrodden through education, health care and such other activities. He laid the foundation for communal and religious harmony, expanding on the principle his Guru had demonstrated.

The Tamil connection
How can anyone belonging to Tamil Nadu forget the unique relationship this part of the country had with a young Bengali saint who became the world-renowned Swami Vivekananda? It is well known that as a parivrajakacharya (wandering monk), Vivekananda reached Kanyakumari, swam across the sea, reached a rock and sat there in meditation for a few days. Although he had heard that a World Parliament of Religions was to take place in Chicago and a few people in Western India had suggested that he should participate, he could not make up his mind for long.

It was during his visit to Tamil Nadu that he decided to accept the challenge and proceed to America. Even then, he was debating with himself on whether he was genuinely interested in representing an ancient tradition of spirituality or was perhaps giving room to his ego to project himself. The enthusiasm of his disciples in Tamil Nadu led by Alasingar of Tiruvallikeni in Chennai helped him make up his mind.

The decision was clinched when a letter of blessings came from Sri Sarada Mata in Kolkata urging him to proceed to Chicago. The funds collected for his trip by his Tamil devotees became the nucleus which was strengthened by the generosity of the Maharaja of Ketri.

Half a century after the Chicago lecture, Rajaji said in simple words, "Swami Vivekananda saved Hinduism and saved India. But for him we would have lost our religion and would not have gained our freedom. We therefore owe everything to Swami Vivekananda. May his faith, his courage and his wisdom ever inspire us so that we may keep safe the treasure we have received from him!"

(Dr. S. Krishnaswamy is a documentary and television film maker and founder of the recently launched Tamil/English Heritage Channel, KRISHNA-TV.)

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/history-and-culture/article3917843.ece?homepage=true#.UFskBIOkrlI.email


Thanks & Regards,


Sudhir Srinivasan
B.Arch, MSc.CPM, Dip.ID, Dip.CAD, Dip.PM, Dip.LD
| Architect |












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Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration: 
Call For Articles:

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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[mukto-mona] John Pilger: Apartheid Never Died in South Africa [neither did the colonial spirit in Indian subcontinent]




<< The new black elite in South Africa, whose numbers and influence had been growing steadily during the latter racial apartheid years, understood the part they would play following "liberation." Their "historic mission," wrote Frantz Fanon in his prescient classic, The Wretched of the Earth, "has nothing to do with transforming the nation: it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism rampant though camouflaged."  >>

Apartheid Never Died in South Africa: It Inspired a World Order Upheld by Force and Illusion

Friday, 21 September 2012 11:40 By John Pilger, Truthout | Op-Ed
The murder of 34 miners by the South African police, most of them shot in the back, puts paid to the illusion of post-apartheid democracy and illuminates the new worldwide apartheid of which South Africa is both an historic and contemporary model.
In 1894, long before the infamous Afrikaans word foretold "separate development" for the majority people of South Africa, an Englishman, Cecil John Rhodes, oversaw the Glen Grey Act in what was then the Cape Colony. This was designed to force blacks from agriculture into an army of cheap labour, principally for the mining of newly discovered gold and other precious minerals. As a result of this social Darwinism, Rhodes' own De Beers company quickly developed into a world monopoly, making him fabulously rich. In keeping with liberalism in Britain and the United States, he was celebrated as a philanthropist supporting high-minded causes.
Today, the Rhodes scholarship at Oxford University is prized among liberal elites. Successful Rhodes scholars must demonstrate "moral force of character" and "sympathy for and protection of the weak, and unselfishness, kindliness and fellowship." The former president Bill Clinton is one, General Wesley Clark, who led the Nato attack on Yugoslavia, is another. The wall known as apartheid was built for the benefit of the few, not least the most ambitious of the bourgeoisie.
This was something of a taboo during the years of racial apartheid. South Africans of British descent could indulge an apparent opposition to the Boers' obsession with race, and their contempt for the Boers themselves, while providing the facades behind which an inhumane system guaranteed privileges based on race and, more importantly, on class.
The new black elite in South Africa, whose numbers and influence had been growing steadily during the latter racial apartheid years, understood the part they would play following "liberation." Their "historic mission," wrote Frantz Fanon in his prescient classic, The Wretched of the Earth, "has nothing to do with transforming the nation: it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism rampant though camouflaged."


This applied to leading figures in the African National Congress, such as Cyril Ramaphosa, head of the National Union of Mineworkers, now a corporate multimillionaire, who negotiated a power-sharing "deal" with the regime of de F.W. Klerk, and Nelson Mandela himself, whose devotion to an "historic compromise" meant that freedom for the majority from poverty and inequity was a freedom too far. This became clear as early as 1985 when a group of South African industrialists led by Gavin Reilly, chairman of the Anglo-American mining company, met prominent ANC officials in Zambia and both sides agreed, in effect, that racial apartheid would be replaced by economic apartheid, known as the "free market."
Secret meetings subsequently took place in a stately home in England, Mells Park House, at which a future president of liberated South Africa, Tabo Mbeki, supped malt whisky with the heads of corporations that had shored up racial apartheid. The British giant Consolidated Goldfields supplied the venue and the whisky. The aim was to divide the "moderates" -- the likes of Mbeki and Mandela -- from an increasingly revolutionary multitude in the townships who evoked memories of uprisings following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 and at Soweto in 1976 -- without ANC help.
Once Mandela was released from prison in 1990, the ANC's "unbreakable promise" to take over monopoly capital was seldom heard again. On his triumphant tour of the US, Mandela said in New York: "The ANC will reintroduce the market to South Africa." When I interviewed Mandela in 1997 -- he was then president -- and reminded him of the unbreakable promise, I was told in no uncertain terms that "the policy of the ANC is privatization."


Enveloped in the hot air of corporate-speak, the Mandela and Mbeki governments took their cues from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. While the gap between the majority living beneath tin roofs without running water and the newly wealthy black elite in their gated estates became a chasm, finance minister Trevor Manuel was lauded in Washington for his "macro-economic achievements." South Africa, noted George Soros in 2001, had been delivered into "the hands of international capital."
Shortly before the massacre of miners employed for a pittance in a dangerous, British-registered platinum mine, the erosion of South Africa's economic independence was demonstrated when the ANC government of Jacob Zuma stopped importing 42 percent of its oil from Iran under intense pressure from Washington. The price of petrol has already risen sharply, further impoverishing people.
This economic apartheid is now replicated across the world as poor countries comply with the demands of western "interests" as opposed to their own. The arrival of China as a contender for the resources of Africa, though without the economic and military threats of America, has provided further excuse for American military expansion, and the possibility of world war, as demonstrated by President Barack Obama's recent arms and military budget of $737.5 billion, the biggest ever. The first African-American president of the land of slavery presides over a perpetual war economy, mass unemployment and abandoned civil liberties: a system that has no objection to black or brown people as long as they serve the right class. Those who do not comply are likely to be incarcerated.
This is the South African and American way, of which Obama, son of Africa, is the embodiment. Liberal hysteria that the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is more extreme than Obama is no more than a familiar promotion of "lesser evilism" and changes nothing. Ironically, the election of Romney to the White House is likely to reawaken mass dissent in the US, whose demise is Obama's singular achievement.
Although Mandela and Obama cannot be compared -- one is a figure of personal strength and courage, the other a pseudo political creation -- the illusion that both beckoned a new world of social justice is similar. It belongs to a grand illusion that relegates all human endeavor to a material value, and confuses media with information and military conquest with humanitarian purpose. Only when we surrender these fantasies shall we begin to end apartheid across the world.


Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

           Here's a 'comment' worth reading:

S. Wolf Britain 5 days ago

"...Although Mandela and Obama cannot be compared -- one is a figure of personal strength and courage, the other a pseudo political creation -- the illusion that both beckoned a new world of social justice is similar. It belongs to a grand illusion that relegates all human endeavor to a material value, and confuses media with information and military conquest with humanitarian purpose. Only when we surrender these fantasies shall we begin to end apartheid across the world."


Yep, but these fantasies will N-E-V-E-R be abandoned short of the second coming of Jesus the Christ (meaning, literally; and no sarcasm intended whatsoever), as they are the intent of globalism and "United Nations" world government, under the new order that Bush One spoke of in his "world order" speech on 9-11-90, exactly eleven years to the day before the 9-11-2001 "inside job" terrorist attacks carried out by the Bush "al CIAdu(!)" international mob family and their cohorts in crime; also known as the "New World Order (NWO)".
I always had a nagging suspicion that Mandela was too good to be true, and that he wasn't to be completely trusted. The neoconservatives and neoliberals, all really part and parcel of the same neoliberal globalist international mob, though with some surface disagreements about style, nothing more, love having their (neo)liberal darlings, their Nelson Mandelas and Aung San Suu Kyis, to give "Congressional Medals of 'Freedom'" to, and parade before the world in order to make the globalist mass-murderers look like pillars of "humanitarianism". Thus, so too, I tend to think Aung San Suu Kyi is not to be fully trusted either, as her accepting an "honor" and "award" from the epitome of globalist mass-murder and enslavement the world-over, and puppet for the NWO, Barack "Insane" Obama, the complete FRAUD and traitor to America, is itself proof that she bows to globalization as Mandela does. Otherwise, she could not, on principal, have accepted such an "award" from such a global(ist) traitor to the U.S. and the world.
Look at what Aung San Suu Kyi is doing already: She is calling for the sanctions against the dictatorship in her country, Myanmar, to be lifted. Granted, lifting them would somewhat, undoubtedly benefit her people as a whole, but it would give license to the junta in Myanmar, and encourage them, as the globalists are all for, to continue the merciless stranglehold on, and the denial of liberty and freedom to, its people; their own form of apartheid not much different, if really different at all, from the apartheid of South Africa, Palestine and elsewhere. Keep the impoverished in poverty, and thereby relatively under control; or, throw them a bone or two now and then, and keep them relatively under control that way as well.
(Neo)Liberal globalists now and then show their true colors, such as when the "(neo)liberal" Clinton administration's Madeleine Albright infamously said that the deaths of 500,000 innocent babies and children under the eleven or twelve years of sanctions against Iraq [an act of war, and illegal under international law(s), not to mention completely illegal under the U.S. Constitution and other U.S. law(s)], from 1991 to 2003, were supposedly "worth it". They put on the appearance of representing global peace and prosperity for everyone; but, in truth, they really represent nothing less than global subjugation and "eugenocidal" mass-murder (eugenic genocide).



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Re: [mukto-mona] ‘A Man among men...’ -- Swami Vivekananda



Why not talk about how Vivekananda faced starvation right after his graduation from Calcutta University? Is that your own fantasy or you read that in somebody's fictional work?  Answer the question or get lost, you pos!
-SD

 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS

From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 10:07 PM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Read any standard biography on Vivekananda, and stop posting internet materials like a Muslim fundamentalist does in this forum.  Such writings are worth no more than toilet papers.  No saint sues his mother for a share in paternal property, as Vivekananda did.  But many follow his example of getting laid with female devotee.

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 
It sounds pretty odd to me that an newly graduated young man from an aristocratic family faced starvation because he could not find a suitable employment? Who has been feeding you with such information?
-SD


 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS

From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 1:33 AM

Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
"All doors were open to him when he graduated from Calcutta University."

 - Not really, he tried to find an employment, and didn't find any.  Starvation and other deprivation was a common experience to him.  He visited Dakshineswar to have a free meal.  Ultimately, he found out, no business is as good as the one with religion.  He wasn't much of a saint.  His relation with Sister Nivedita had been questioned during his lifetime by the monks of his own congregation.  Besides, he used to brag about relishing non-traditional food forbidden among his coreligionists.  Though there is no scope of avatar, according to the Veda, he declared Ramakrishna as the best of them.

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com> wrote:
Rishi Bankim, however, irrelevant here, was not much more than another overblown icon.


On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:
 
           Thanks for the mention of this important book.  I have not read the book, but I have heard Narasingha Shil present a pre-publication paper at the Bengal Studies Conference (held that year at SUNY) on Vivekananda which convincingly exploded all the myths surrounding this con-man god-man.  Narasingha is a great iconoclast, intelligent and funny, and a terrific 'adda-baj'. We became friends, and at another BS Conference he presented another hit at another Bengali icon -- Rishi Bankim.  I later told him that, unlike Vivekananda, Bankim did not consciously or dishonestly create his own Rishi image. His Rishi-ization and even the hinduization of Bande Mataram were done by communal politics long after his death. Narasingha accepted my explanations, and later, when he read my own completed article criticizing Gauri Vishwanathan book with evidences cited from Bankim, he praised it profusely in an e-mail,  and stopped criticizing Bankim.

               Farida Majid
        


To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
From: kamalctgu@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 07:45:37 +0600
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda


 
One should read "Vivekananda Reassessed" - Narasingha P. Shil [Susquehenna University Press] to have a better understanding of him.


On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Sudhir-Architect <ar_sudhirkumar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

120 years on, Swami Vivekananda's fiery speech at the Parliament of Religions is still fresh in
memory.This month marks the 120th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda's participation in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago.

It is appropriate to celebrate this great event through the month for a simple reason. While it is generally well-known that young Vivekananda had to sleep on a sidewalk in Chicago before being discovered and given a place to stay, what is less known is that his first lecture there on September 11, 1893, catapulted him to such a great stature that the organisers had to invite him to address the gathering every day during that fortnight!

A participant of that conference said, "When the audience was bored with the tedious eloquence of some other speakers and became restive, the president of the conference found that the best means to get them into order was to announce that Vivekananda would be the next speaker again!"

Among those present at that conference, Dr. Annie Besant later commented, "Off the platform, his figure was instinct with pride of country, pride of race – the representative of the oldest of living religions… India was not to be shamed before the hurrying arrogant West by this her envoy and her son. He brought her message, he spoke in her name, and the herald remembered the dignity of the royal land whence he came. Purposeful, virile, strong, he stood out, a man among men, able to hold his own. On the platform, another side came out. The dignity and the inborn sense of worth and power still were there, but all was subdued to the exquisite beauty of the spiritual message which he had brought, to the sublimity of that matchless truth of the East which is the heart and life of India…The huge multitude hung upon his words, not a syllable must be lost, not a cadence missed!"

Profound impact

An agnostic-turned-monk, Swami Vivekananda accomplished in a life span of 39 years what is probably not possible for anyone living even for a couple of centuries. His contribution was not obscurantist revival but rejuvenating renaissance of Hinduism and the Indian ethos. His deep sense of nationalism had a profound impact on the Freedom Struggle. His worldview and success in the Western world revived India's self esteem in the context of the depressed mood of enslavement. Suddenly, here was a new Indian spiritual leader known to the entire literate world.

His admirers included the likes of Leo Tolstoy and Max Mueller. Swamiji's personality combined the qualities of the Buddha, Mahavir, Adi Sankara, Ramanuja, and Chaitanya in a manner of syncretism. He was a great musician even as a teenager, attracting hundreds of people to his singing, a tradition which he continued all his life.

Even his religious ideas were radical. He once declared, "I do not know the 30 crore deities of our pantheon. But I know the millions of my suffering fellowmen who are my gods to be served." He epitomised this sentiment on the lines "Nara Seva is Narayana Seva" (Service to Man is Service to God). He did not believe in salvation by constantly running away from the world to meditate in caves; he believed that such enlightenment was only a means to serve his fellowmen. So he created an Order of Monks at the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, who are dedicated to the uplift of the downtrodden through education, health care and such other activities. He laid the foundation for communal and religious harmony, expanding on the principle his Guru had demonstrated.

The Tamil connection
How can anyone belonging to Tamil Nadu forget the unique relationship this part of the country had with a young Bengali saint who became the world-renowned Swami Vivekananda? It is well known that as a parivrajakacharya (wandering monk), Vivekananda reached Kanyakumari, swam across the sea, reached a rock and sat there in meditation for a few days. Although he had heard that a World Parliament of Religions was to take place in Chicago and a few people in Western India had suggested that he should participate, he could not make up his mind for long.

It was during his visit to Tamil Nadu that he decided to accept the challenge and proceed to America. Even then, he was debating with himself on whether he was genuinely interested in representing an ancient tradition of spirituality or was perhaps giving room to his ego to project himself. The enthusiasm of his disciples in Tamil Nadu led by Alasingar of Tiruvallikeni in Chennai helped him make up his mind.

The decision was clinched when a letter of blessings came from Sri Sarada Mata in Kolkata urging him to proceed to Chicago. The funds collected for his trip by his Tamil devotees became the nucleus which was strengthened by the generosity of the Maharaja of Ketri.

Half a century after the Chicago lecture, Rajaji said in simple words, "Swami Vivekananda saved Hinduism and saved India. But for him we would have lost our religion and would not have gained our freedom. We therefore owe everything to Swami Vivekananda. May his faith, his courage and his wisdom ever inspire us so that we may keep safe the treasure we have received from him!"

(Dr. S. Krishnaswamy is a documentary and television film maker and founder of the recently launched Tamil/English Heritage Channel, KRISHNA-TV.)

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/history-and-culture/article3917843.ece?homepage=true#.UFskBIOkrlI.email


Thanks & Regards,


Sudhir Srinivasan
B.Arch, MSc.CPM, Dip.ID, Dip.CAD, Dip.PM, Dip.LD
| Architect |















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Re: [mukto-mona] Getting offended on God’s behalf



You ask irrelevant questions without adding any thoughtful comments to any subject as far as I can see from your posts. The problem with you is that you need to read other people' work to comment any simple issue. No wonder why I find your posts are basically baloney and not to the point. When you can't deal with somebody's comments, you want to see whether dick is straight or crooked.
-SD

 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS

From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 9:37 PM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] Getting offended on God's behalf

 
The tree frog reacts again!  "Who is in the divine alcove?  - I didn't swallow the banana"  When Mr. Chakrabarty finds a fundamentalist, a closet fundamentalist, and even a Hindu liberal Muslims, had I not every reason to question his perception?

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 7:00 AM, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 
You sound like another Bangladeshi midget, Shahadat Hussaini, who is more interested to check people's dicks rather than focusing on the focal point of a discussion. What would be your problem if I were a Muslim, Hindu or a tree frog?
-SD  

 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS

From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 1:37 AM

Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] Getting offended on God's behalf

 
Mr. Chakrabarty, not every soul hiding under a Muslim name is a Muslim.  Be aware of that.  And not everyone has the same degree of 'secularism' in him/her.

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 7:18 AM, Subimal Chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com> wrote:
 
I see huge protests by moderate Muslims. They don't go and clash with the fanatic mob but they speak and write against them. Think about yourself, Farida apa, Mr. Q. Rahman, and many others even in this forum. I think Muslims like you are the majority. The article you have forwarded has been written by a Muslim. 
Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 23, 2012, at 6:47 PM, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:

 
It is rather a duty of majority (moderates) to stand up against the lunatics and show their place. That is not happening in Islamic countries. I have not seen any counter demonstration to denounce this BS violence on behalf of prophet. Only in Bengazi, Libya, people have evicted some thugs from their neighborhood. That is all! And, now, some idiots/leaders would like to have universal blasphemy law for their sacred people? I do not know who will be included in that list? It sounds pretty moronic to me.
-SD

 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS

From: Subimal Chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com>
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2012 9:32 AM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] Getting offended on God's behalf

 
It is really a good piece. The author is the daughter of a woman who has performed Hajj 12 times. Yet she will not get angry that she would go and kill 4 people. Shazia is right: it is always a minority group that gets angry. The majority even does not even know what is going on. This is the very minority that acts as the instigator and fishes in the troubled waters to materialize their political agenda. The other day I made exactly this comment in connection with Taslima to support Prof. Das's observation that initially Lajja did not have any repercussion. It was blown out of proportion by the propaganda and acts of a minority.  Sangh Parivar made it worse. 
As we can see, the short video is simply strengthening the hands of the fanatic and militant Islamists. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 22, 2012, at 5:34 PM, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:

 
Shazia Mirza is a great South Asian/English comedian! This will be a great material for her next stand-up. She is hilarious on stage!
-SD 


A video clip from Shazia's show in Stockholm. Introduction is in Swedish but rest of it in English.



Getting offended on God's behalf
Shazia Mirza | 8 hours ago
20
The alarm went off on Monday morning, the radio came on and all I heard was, "It's been described as the most serious insult to Islam ever! People have been killed, and protests are mounting."
I thought 'What's happened? Has Satanic Verses been turned into a cartoon?' I switched the TV on and heard people talking about a film.
I had to rush and get on the tube, as I walked into the carriage everyone was reading a newspaper with this same story on the front, I heard one man say to his friend, "They're offended again", his friend replied, "What's new?"
I watched the film, and it's the most serious insult to film making ever. It is a badly made, amateur pantomime of a film. Clearly a joke in itself.  But what is even more outrageous – is the reaction to it.
My mum is religious. Very religious, fanatical about her religion. She's done Hajj 12 times, prays all day and fasts even when it's not Ramazan. If she saw the film she wouldn't like it, but would she go and shoot four people because of it? No way. Because she is a rational, open-minded human being, and she's so religious she doesn't watch films, at least ones which don't include Omar Sharif.
God, whichever God you believe in, is all knowing, all forgiving, and all loving. God has seen it all, because he made it all. He made the blasphemers. God can't be attacked. So if you're offended on his behalf, you don't actually have enough faith in him.
It is fashionable to be offended, and predictable for certain people to be offended at anything from cartoons to films, jokes, books … what next? Food, hair colour?
Every idea, every belief has to be challenged because that's how the rational mind works. There has to be questioning and debate, and if your religion is strong enough, it will withstand that.
Blasphemy is important. If blasphemy laws ruled the world we'd still be living in caves, and we'd never had made any progress – some people still haven't. Blasphemy laws are the armour of the insecure. If you are unable to laugh at yourself as a religion or a culture, that culture is suffering from low self-esteem, and devolution. Blasphemy doesn't just apply to religion, but economically and socially as well.
Now, because of the way certain Muslims react to things that offend them, artists, writers, comedians, film makers all over the world are slowly being silenced because they are scared to say what they think; in case they end up dead. The East is taking away the West's democracy. I don't like the film, it is offensive and insulting, although the comments underneath it on YouTube are far more offensive, but if you truly believe in democracy you have to defend the right for it to be made.
It is always a minority that are offended, and they often react with irrational violence, some of them don't even know what they're reacting to; violence is all they know. It gives us all a bad name. And if they don't stop, I'll have to continue to get randomly searched at airports, being felt up by some strange woman, and not be able to take more than 100ml of moisturizer through customs.
I live in England. It is a democracy, not just because of the way we vote, but because of the way we think. A good working democracy treats minorities well, and has a view of religion that is accepting. Britain is a melting pot of many religions and cultures, which is what makes it so great.
The Muslim world needs to be open minded about religion; it is ridiculous, insulting in itself and anti-Islamic to call someone an infidel just because they don't agree with what you believe.
Murdering someone, anyone, is never justified but even more outrageous when over a flimsy book or a badly made film.
There is a war between the East and the West, the moderate and the extreme, the religious and the non-religious, the repressed and the free, the open minded and the closed minded. Ultimately the open minded will win. Those are the people, who are accepting and tolerant to other people's beliefs and opinions which is the fundamental basis of all religion and those are the right thinking, rational people you'd want to live next door to.
Don't kill me for writing this column; it's just an idea.
 

The author is an award winning stand-up comedian and writer. She has performed all over the world. A columnist for The Guardian UK, she was named Columnist of the Year at the prestigious PPA Awards. Find out more from her website.


 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS


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