...The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 Rabindranath Tagore Tagore and His India by Amartya Sen* Voice of Bengal Rabindranath Tagore, who died in 1941 at the age of eighty, is a towering figure in the millennium-old literature of Bengal. Anyone who becomes familiar with this large and flourishing tradition will be impressed by the power of Tagore's presence in Bangladesh and in India. His poetry as well as his novels, short stories, and essays are very widely read, and the songs he composed reverberate around the eastern part of India and throughout In contrast, in the rest of the world, especially in Europe and America, the excitement that Tagore's writings created in the early years of the twentieth century has largely vanished. The enthusiasm with which his work was once greeted was quite remarkable. Gitanjali, a selection of his poetry for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, was published in English translation in London in March of that year, and had been reprinted ten times by November, when the award was announced. But he is not much read now in the West, and already by 1937, Graham Greene was able to say: "As for Rabindranath Tagore, I cannot believe that anyone but Mr. Yeats can still take his poems very seriously." The Mystic The contrast between Tagore's commanding presence in Bengali literature and culture, and his near-total eclipse in the rest of the world, is perhaps less interesting than the distinction between the view of Tagore...
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...1. LETTER TO ADDITIONAL SECRETARY, HOME DEPARTMENT, GOVERNMENT OF INDIA DETENTION C AMP, January 27, 1944 ADDITIONAL S ECRETARY TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA (HOME DEPARTMENT) NEW DELHI SIR, Some days ago Shri Kasturba Gandhi told the Inspector-General of prisons and Col. Shah that Dr. Dinshaw Mehta of Poona be invited to assist in her treatment. Nothing seems to have come out of her request. She has become insistent now and asked me if I had written to the Government in the matter. I, therefore, ask for immediate permission to bring in Dr. Mehta. She has also told me and my son that she would like to have some Ayurvedic physician to see her. 1 I suggest that the I.G.P. be authorized to permit such assistance when requested. 2. I have no reply as yet to my request2 that Shri Kanu Gandhi, who is being permitted to visit the patient every alternate day, be allowed to remain in the camp as a whole-time nurse. The patient shows no signs of recovery and night-nursing is becoming more and more exacting. Kanu Gandhi is an ideal nurse, having nursed the patient before. And what is more, he can soothe her by giving her instrumental music and by singing bhajans. I request early relief to relieve the existing pressure. The matter may be treated as very urgent. 3. The Superintendent of the camp informs me that when visitors come, one nurse only can be present. Hitherto more than one nurse has attended when necessary. The Superintendent used his discretion as to the necessity. But when...
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...Critique of Nonviolent Politics From Mahatma Gandhi to the Anti-Nuclear Movement by Howard Ryan (howard@netwood.net) Preface 2 Part I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Problems of Nonviolent Theory Nonviolent Philosophy 6 Moral View: Violence Itself Is Wrong 9 Practical View: Violence Begets Violence 13 Nonviolent Theory of Power 21 Voluntary Suffering 24 Common Nonviolent Arguments 34 A Class Perspective 49 Part II 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Gandhi: A Critical History Father of Nonviolence 56 Satyagraha in South Africa 59 Textile Strike 66 Noncooperation Movement 1919-22 70 Religious Conflicts 80 Salt Satyagraha 87 Congress Ministries 97 The War Years 101 Independence and Bloodshed 111 Part III 17 18 19 20 Nonviolence in the Anti-Nuclear Movement Nonviolent Direct Action 120 Consensus Decision Making 123 Open, Friendly, and Respectful 136 Civil Disobedience 142 Epilogue 151 Notes 154 ©2002 by Howard Ryan. All rights reserved. Readers have my permission to use and distribute for non-profit and educational purposes. Critique of Nonviolent Politics 2 Preface (2002) Critique of Nonviolent Politics may be the only comprehensive critique of nonviolent theory that has been written. I wrote it between 1980 and 1984, while living in Berkeley, California. Since 1977, I had been active in the movement against nuclear power and weapons which, in California, focused its protests at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant near San Luis Obispo, and at the University of California's Lawrence Livermore Labs where...
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...Introduction The right to expression of views, including dissent, through public demonstrations and social mobilization is a democratic right enshrined in international law and practiced throughout the world -- from demonstrating against multilateral trade regimes, to rallying for the protection of the environment, to protesting against illegitimate regimes. The voicing of differing views and political debate over policies is a healthy feature of any modern democracy. As the Human Development Report 2002 notes: Changes in the world have shifted human development priorities and made political freedom, participation and collective action much more important as public policy issues.... Open space for free political debate and the diverse ways in which people can express their views are the essence democratic life and are what make decision making work in democracies In this context, the right to call ‘a hartal’ -- a particular form of protest used in Bangladesh and in other parts of South Asia -- could be viewed is a legitimate democratic right. However, when this right impinges on the rights of individuals to earn a living and to go about their daily lives in peace and security, a situation of ‘conflict of competing rights’ arises. Hartals are often called in ‘the name of the people’, but it is ordinary people whose movements are restricted, property endangered, and progress curbed. Children miss school, the sick miss treatment, and business miss targets. In addition,...
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...PAPER 28 THE HISTORY OF THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT FROM THE LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY READING LIST: 2012-13 C. A. Bayly cab1002@cam.ac.uk 1 The History of The Indian Subcontinent From The Late Eighteenth Century To The Present Day A fifth of the world's population lives in the Indian subcontinent. While today the region’s place in the global world order is widely recognised, this is in fact only the most recent chapter in a longer history. This paper offers an understanding of the part played by the Indian subcontinent role and its people in the making of the modern world. From the decline of the great empire of the Mughals and the rise of British hegemony, to the rise of nationalism, the coming of independence and partition, the consolidation of new nation states despite regional wars and conflicts, and the emergence of India as the largest democracy in the world, this paper is a comprehensive and analytical survey of the subcontinent's modern history. The dynamic and complex relationships between changing forms of political power and religious identities, economic transformations, and social and cultural change are studied in the period from 1757 to 2007. In normal circumstances students will be given 6 supervisions in groups of 1 or 2. Key themes and brief overview: The paper begins by examining the rise of British power in the context of economic developments indigenous to southern Asia; it analyses the role played by Indian polities and social groups...
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...INDIA 38 Cultivation has been in existence in India from ancient times – since Indus valley civilisation, it is the belief of the people that it is a part of their cultural pride. At present, they adopt agriculture not because it is profitable but because they have no other alternative and they can feed themselves at least for a few months from the yield they are getting.1 Economic experts (pandits) also agree that the kisan goes for cultivation knowing fully well that he has to suffer losses. This fact is also stated and agreed upon in the “Statutory Report on Agricultural Credit” by the Reserve Bank of India. If anybody wants profit in his business, the cost of the manufacturing material (goods) should be cheaper. The system of exploiting their labour also is an extra burden for the farmers.2 The process of proletarianisation of agricultural labourers has increased during the last few decades and they are more dependent on wage labour while losing the extraeconomic relations with their employers which govern the conditions of their work and life. Barrington Moore Jr. in his celebrated work Social Origins Dictatorship and Democracy; Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world questions the revolutionary potential of the Indian peasantry. He observes that the landed upper classes and the peasants played an important role in the bourgeois revolutions leading to capitalist societies in England and France, the abortive bourgeois revolutions leading to fascism in the Germany...
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...Ideology of Pakistan The ideology of Pakistan took shape through an evolutionary process. Historical experience provided the base; Allama Iqbal gave it a philosophical explanation; Quaid-i-Azam translated it into a political reality; and the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, by passing Objectives Resolution in March 1949, gave it legal sanction. It was due to the realization of the Muslims of South Asia that they are different from the Hindus that they demanded separate electorates. However when they realized that their future in a ‘Democratic India’ dominated by Hindu majority was not safe, they changed their demand to a separate state. The ideology of Pakistan stemmed from the instinct of the Muslim community of South Asia to maintain their individuality in the Hindu society. The Muslims believed that Islam and Hinduism are not only two religions, but are two social orders that produced two distinct cultures. There is no compatibility between the two. A deep study of the history of this land proves that the differences between Hindus and Muslims are not confined to the struggle for political supremacy but are also manifested in the clash of two social orders. Despite living together for more than one thousand years, they continue to develop different cultures and traditions. Their eating habits, music, architecture and script, all are poles apart. The basis of the Muslim nationhood was neither territorial nor racial or linguistic or ethnic rather they were a nation...
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...Anil to Tina Munim in Bombay. In January 1991, just prior to the explosion in car ownership that in later winters kept the midday warmth trapped in a throat-tearing haze overnight, it was bitterly cold most of the time in Delhi. Our furniture had still not arrived-a day of negotiations about the duty payable lay ahead at the Delhi customs office where the container was broken open and inspected-and we camped on office chairs and fold-up beds, wrapped in blankets. The Indian story was also in a state of suspension, waiting for something to happen. The Gulf War, which we watched at a big hotel on this new thing called satellite television, was under- cutting many of the assumptions on which the Congress Party’s family dynasty, the Nehrus and Gandhis, had built up the Indian state. The Americans were unleashing a new generation of weap- ons on a Third World regime to which New Delhi had been close; its Soviet friends were standing by, even agreeing with the Americans. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwalt had pushed up oil prices and forced the Indian Government to evacuate some three million of its citizens working in the Gulf. The extra half-billion dollars all this cost India was pushing the country close to default on its foreign debt. Officials from the Ministry of Finance were already negotiating a bail-out from the IMF in Washington; the IMF...
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...Anil to Tina Munim in Bombay. In January 1991, just prior to the explosion in car ownership that in later winters kept the midday warmth trapped in a throat-tearing haze overnight, it was bitterly cold most of the time in Delhi. Our furniture had still not arrived-a day of negotiations about the duty payable lay ahead at the Delhi customs office where the container was broken open and inspected-and we camped on office chairs and fold-up beds, wrapped in blankets. The Indian story was also in a state of suspension, waiting for something to happen. The Gulf War, which we watched at a big hotel on this new thing called satellite television, was under- cutting many of the assumptions on which the Congress Party’s family dynasty, the Nehrus and Gandhis, had built up the Indian state. The Americans were unleashing a new generation of weap- ons on a Third World regime to which New Delhi had been close; its Soviet friends were standing by, even agreeing with the Americans. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwalt had pushed up oil prices and forced the Indian Government to evacuate some three million of its citizens working in the Gulf. The extra half-billion dollars all this cost India was pushing the country close to default on its foreign debt. Officials from the Ministry of Finance were already negotiating a bail-out from the IMF in Washington; the IMF...
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...Books by Saul Alinsky John L. Lewis, An Unauthorized Biography Reveille for Radicals The Professional Radical (with Marian Sanders) Rules for Radicals RULES FOR RADICALS A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals SAUL D. ALINSKY RANDOM HOUSE New York Acknowledgments This chapter "Of Means and Ends" was presented in the Auburn Lecture Series at Union Theological Seminary. Some of the other sections of this book were delivered in part in lectures before the Leaders of America series at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California; Yale Political Union, New Haven, Connecticut, April, 1970; The Willis D. Wood Fellowship Lecture, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, May, 1969; American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, D.C., 1968; U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C.; March, 1968; A.F. of L.-C.I.O. Labor Press Association, Miami, Florida, December, 1967; American Whig-Cliosophic Society, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, 1967; Centennial Address, Episcopal Theological Seminary, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968; Harvard Medical Conference, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 Copyright © 1971 by Saul D. Alinsky All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. ISBN: 0-394-44341-1 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 70-117651 ...
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...FRONTLINE JANUA RY 1 3, 2 012 WWW.FRONTLINE.IN INDIA’S NATIONAL MAGAZINE RS.25 WORLD AFFAIRS IRAQ FOOD SECURITY PDS CLIMATE CHANGE DURBAN Exit America 49 What people say 96 Uncertain stand 114 Remembering TAGORE On his 150th birth anniversary VOLUME 28 NUMBER 27 TH E STAT E S Fiery trap in Kolkata 41 SC IE NCE Higgs signal? 44 WOR L D A F F A I R S Iraq: Exit America War crimes in the trash Russia: December Revolution Pakistan: Volatile state India & China: Troubled equations DECEMBER 31, 2011 - JANUARY 13, 2012 C O V ER S T O RY 49 52 ISSN 0970-1710 Timeless Tagore As an activist, thinker, poet and rural reconstructionist, Rabindranath Tagore continues to be relevant. A tribute on the 150th anniversary of his birth. 4 WWW.FRONTLINE.IN Jayati Ghosh: Mess in eurozone R.K. Raghavan: A lost battle? 108 118 BOOKS LE TTE R S 73 127 54 57 61 TR AVE L Jungles of Borneo 64 AR T Achuthan Kudallur’s journey 85 H ISTOR Y Of Quit India, Nehru & Communist split 89 FOOD SEC UR I T Y Understanding the PDS Kerala: Power of literacy Bihar: Coupon fiasco Jharkhand: Strong revival Chhattisgarh: Loud no to cash E CONOM Y Losing momentum Interview: C. Rangarajan, Chairman, PMEAC CL IM A TE C H A N G E Uncertain stand in Durban CONTR OV E R S Y Mullaperiyar dispute: Deep distrust Fallout of fear OBITU A R Y Humble genius: Mario Miranda Korea’s...
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...Downloaded from www.lifebooks4all.blogspot.com e press How to use Downloaded from www.lifebooks4all.blogspot.com How to use this eBook Presents WINGS OF FIRE Published by Copyright © 2003 Distributed by UNIVERSITIES PRESS (INDIA) PRIVATE LIMITED UNIVERSITIES PRESS (INDIA) PRIVATE LIMITED You are viewing this eBook in the Full Screen mode. Press the Page-Down button to browse to the other pages. Press the Escape (Esc) button to exit this Full Screen view. You will then be able to see the document with all the regular Acrobat Reader features. You can return to the Full Screen view through the menu path View > Full Screen. You can also use ‘Control+L’ (Ctrl+L) to get the Full Screen view. This eBook allows you to do the following: Print any number of pages (use the print icon) Adjust the view of the document (use the zoom-in and zoom-out icons) Navigate in multiple ways (use the next page, first page and last page icons) For Help, use the menu path Help > Reader Help to get more details. You can also write to epress@sulekha.net for any clarifications or doubts. We love to hear from customers like you. All Rights Reserved Sulekha Epress e press Sulekha, Sulekha.com, Epress, Sulekha Epress, Epress logo and Sulekha logo are trademarks of Smart Information Worldwide Inc. NOTICE: This eBook is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution to any person via email, floppy disk, network, print out, or any other means is a violation of International...
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...e press How to use How to use this eBook Presents WINGS OF FIRE Published by UNIVERSITIES PRESS (INDIA) PRIVATE LIMITED Copyright © 2003 UNIVERSITIES PRESS (INDIA) PRIVATE LIMITED All Rights Reserved Distributed by Sulekha Epress e press Sulekha, Sulekha.com, Epress, Sulekha Epress, Epress logo and Sulekha logo are trademarks of Smart Information Worldwide Inc. NOTICE: This eBook is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution to any person via email, floppy disk, network, print out, or any other means is a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. This book cannot be legally lent or given to others without the written permission of Sulekha. CONTACT US: Sulekha, 4926 Spicewood Springs Road, Suite 101 Austin, TX 78759, USA Sulekha, 96 Dr Radhakrishnan Salai, 2nd Floor Chennai, 600 004, India epress@sulekha.net You are viewing this eBook in the Full Screen mode. Press the Page-Down button to browse to the other pages. Press the Escape (Esc) button to exit this Full Screen view. You will then be able to see the document with all the regular Acrobat Reader features. You can return to the Full Screen view through the menu path View > Full Screen. You can also use ‘Control+L’ (Ctrl+L) to get the Full Screen view. This eBook allows you to do the following: Print any number of pages (use the print icon) Adjust the view of the document (use the...
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... Washington’s commanding presence and oratory deeply moved his contemporaries. His writings continue to influence readers today. Although Washington claimed his autobiography was “a simple, straightforward story, with no attempt at embellishment,” readers for nearly a century have found it richly rewarding. Today, Up From Slavery appeals to a wide audience from early adolescence through adulthood. More important, however, is the inspiration his story of hard work and positive goals gives to all readers. His life is an example providing hope to all. The complexity and contradictions of his life make his autobiography intellectually intriguing for advanced readers. To some he was known as the Sage of Tuskegee or the Black Moses. One of his prominent biographers, Louis R. Harlan, called him the “Wizard of the Tuskegee Machine.” Others acknowledged him to be a complicated person and public figure. Students of American social and political history have come to see that Washington lived a double life. Publicly he appeased the white establishment by remaining cautious in his charges and demands. Privately he worked tirelessly to undo the effects of institutional and cultural racism. Although he seemed to have made a grand compromise, first with the white south and then with white America, he worked in deepest secret to undermine the compromise and advance the social and economic position of blacks. No doubt exists as to his greatness....
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...MOSS KANTER, professor at Harvard Business School, author of Confidence and SuperCorp “An informative, well-researched book on the power of quietness and the 3/929 virtues of having a rich inner life. It dispels the myth that you have to be extroverted to be happy and successful.” —JUDITH ORLOFF, M.D., author of Emotional Freedom “In this engaging and beautifully written book, Susan Cain makes a powerful case for the wisdom of introspection. She also warns us ably about the downside to our culture’s noisiness, including all that it risks drowning out. Above the din, Susan’s own voice remains a compelling presence—thoughtful, generous, calm, and eloquent. Quiet deserves a very large readership.” —CHRISTOPHER LANE, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness 4/929 “Susan Cain’s quest to understand introversion, a beautifully wrought journey from the lab bench to the motivational speaker’s hall, offers convincing evidence for valuing substance over style, steak over sizzle, and qualities that are, in America, often derided. This book is brilliant, profound, full of feeling and brimming with insights.” —SHERI FINK, M.D., author of War Hospital “Brilliant, illuminating, empowering! Quiet gives not only a voice, but a path to homecoming for so many who’ve walked through the better part of their lives thinking the way they engage with the world is something in need of fixing.” 5/929 —JONATHAN FIELDS, author of Uncertainty:...
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