History is series of accidents Big events have no big causes! Marxists believe history has a pattern or lessons. Non-Marxists like Alan Taylor (who taught me history) thought history is a series of accidents. As Taylor had said many a time the first war was triggered because on the “fateful July 28 1914,all the six…
The internet revolution
With the two college kids, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the Google phenomenon came about and now, life is impossible without searching the Google everyday! It is just ten years the duo were students at Stanford Universe and in the ten years the world’s biggest and richest company had been created out of nowhere! Larry…
The Last Hurrah?
A letter to the President of India India as a liberal and open society? Recognize the transforming power of the individuals, institutions and the new technologies! India as it is, a liberal and open society? Not yet? Not fully yet. Our Constitution is a great document, it exceeds in its intrinsic qualities, its vision and…
Next Nobel Prize for Indian literature?
Which Indian language will have the distinction? Kannada or Bengali, Malayalam? Tamil has no chance! So too Hindi & others! As I finished writing on Tagore and Yeats my thoughts turned to contemporary Indian literature. The Indian language literature. One of my recent preoccupations has been to promote Tamil, my mother tongue, its current literature…
Gopal Krishna Gandhi
Governor,West Bengal An old acquaintance! I just read the recent convocation address of Mr.Gopal Krishna Gandhi,the Governor of West Bengal at the University of Burdwan. It makes interesting reading and also it kindled my meories of the days past when I got to know the current Governor in his young age,perhaps in his teens near…
English, yes, as a global language!
By David Crystal, Cambridge, pp 200,2003 A timely book for India, for educators as well as the general readers. English today is spoken by some 15 crore people world wide. English is a mother tongue in USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and in South Africa and several Carribean countries. Spanish is spoken in…
The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the discovery of India’s Past
By O.P. Kejriwal, pages 293, 1999, OUP This is a rare book. A history of the history books on India. A band of Englishmen who came to India as servants of the Empire, went on to make their names immortals, as discovers of the Sanskrit language, translators of Sakuntala, Bhagavad Gita, Rig Veda and other…
Employment guarantee bill
There are already reports in the newspapers that the Employment Guarantee Bill is watered down. There is also the letter of Aruna Roy and her colleagues in their letter to Sonia Gandhi on the Right to Information (RTI). There is a sort of old-fashioned orthodoxy surrounding the PM’s coterie, if we can so use the…