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…
Indians should know
What British colonial histories said of India was not true! Ethnology and travel in Renaissance Europe visitors to South India 1250 – 1625 This is a very important publication for all Indians who are interested to know the India as it evolved in the last 700 years. The development of knowledge in Europe as arose…
Modern Tamil poetry
Much of the modern Tamil poetry is written by middle class professions, mostly Tamil pundits or other lowly job holders. You don’t have a Tagore today. Or there are poets as revolutionaries either! It is a laid-back, confused society! Our revolution talk seems to be mere bravado! Either out of inferiority complex, or mere helplessness!…
Nobel Prize for Tamil?
Tamil writers and scholars would be driven to silence if you ask them why no major literary prizes are coming to their literature! I have been asking these questions lately in many forums. I am surprised such thoughts haven’t come to the Tamil minds. They are all so self-absorbed, operating in many narrow factions and…
Use English to promote Tamil literature
We live in a world where English had become a much powerful force and in the globalised world, translations of our literature into English assume critical importance. How to expose the modern Tamil literature and poetry in particular to the international audience. We have to promote translation projects, run translation courses in our language departments,…
Amartya Sen and the New Millennium freedoms
Today, there are many complex issues that impact on modern man Prof.Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winner for economics, a friend from my Santiniketan days had explored the theme of human freedom in many of his books. Sen, in my opinion, had taken our knowledge of human freedoms to new heights. There are also the…