Zia Haider Rahman’s debut novel wins James Tait Black prize 2015

Bangladesh novelist Zia Haider Rahman has won James Tait Black award 2015, UK’s oldest literary prize for his first novel, In the Light of What We Know. His debut novel’s story is based on an investment banker in a lead role who receives a visit from an old friend and addresses a whole range of issues including Afghanistan war, the rise of Muslim fundamentalism and global banking crisis. He received this prize at the 2015 Edinburgh international book festival along with Richard Benson who had won this award for his novel The Valley: A Hundred Years in the Life of a Yorkshire Family in the biography category. Rahman was born in the Sylhet region of rural Bangladesh. Later he had migrated to United Kingdom. Prior to shifting to writing career, he had worked as an investment banker and a human rights lawyer. About James Tait Black award It is annual literary award bestowed on person for literature written in the English language in UK and is oldest literary award in the country. Establish: It was instituted in 1919 in memory James Tait Black. It is given in three categories viz. Fiction, Biography and Drama (introduced in 2012) by the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The award carries monetary prize of 10000 British pounds.

Conviction rates up, but not for rape

Despite an increase in the number of cognisable crimes in India during 2014, the rate of conviction rose as well.

There were over 9.4 lakh cases under the IPC pending investigation at the end of 2013 (over a third from Assam, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu alone), to which 28 lakh cases registered during 2014 were added.

Cause for concern

While theft accounted for the largest number of pending cases, rash driving added the most new cases in 2014. In over one lakh cases, the final police report found the complaints false; these included over 2,500 rape cases and nearly 10,000 abduction cases.

However, the largest number of cases deemed false were of cheating. At the end of 2014, the number of cases pending investigation had grown to over 10 lakh.

In all, the police filed charge sheets in nearly 80 per cent of all IPC cases deemed true. Charge-sheeting rates were high for rape (95.6 per cent) and low for theft (35.6 per cent). Among the States, the rates were the highest in Kerala (96.7 per cent), Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, and the lowest in Manipur (9.9 per cent), Assam and Meghalaya. They were also high for special laws, but particularly low in the cases of the Electricity Act and the Railways Act.

At the level of courts, nearly 80 lakh cases under the IPC were pending at the end of 2013, to which 20 lakh cases were added and sent to trial during 2014. Trials were completed in over 13 lakh of these cases during 2014.

The conviction rates for the cases under the IPC rose to 45.1 % in 2014 from 40.2 % the previous year. They tend to be the highest for rash and negligent driving, and low for cruelty by husband and his relatives; attempt to rape and rape, too, have low conviction rates, which have not risen since 2013.

“You have to examine the type of cases that come before us,” an additional sessions judge in a Delhi court told The Hindu. “There may be some biased judges, but the majority would not be able to convict for the rape cases that come before us. Even in the higher courts, the acquittal is upheld,” the judge said.

Mizoram and Kerala have high conviction rates, while Bihar and West Bengal have the lowest conviction rates, at just over 10 per cent.

Even as the number of registered crimes against the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes rose by nearly 20 per cent, the rate of conviction under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act remained low, at under 16 per cent.

the speaking tree - We Really Need Love

RADHANATH SWAMI





We sometimes think: why are we so greedy for land and property , why are we motivated by political desires? Sometimes it's hard to love like this. We should not detest those who are different because all living creatures are connected with one another. If we cannot love the violent, cruel-hearted, hateful and the envious, then we cannot love anyone.People are ruining their lives because their pure consciousness is obscured by illusion and ignorance. Ignorance is due to darkness, but as soon as the sun rises, everything is revealed as it is. Similarly , when the light within us is allowed to shine, all ignorance is dispelled. When there are dark clouds, you cannot see the sun.
So, the cloud of ignorance, which is the root disease that creates all the symptoms in the form of unwanted activities and thoughts, is covering the pure light of the Divine within us.
The supreme occupation of all humanity is to give light to the world, not to contribute to the darkness. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. It is the duty of each one of us -it is the highest expression of love -to purify our own hearts. If you do not have something, how can you give it to others?
What we need is love. If we do not have love, what can we give? We will simply remain a part of the problem. When we purify our hearts, we transcend all boundaries of sectarianism, all boundaries of selfishness, and we can be the true servant, well-wisher and friend of every living being.

the speaking tree - Making Existence Meaningful Through Opposites

P Rammohan





The idea of duality in life is a deeply illuminating philosophical discourse. Duality, in common parlance, means for every earthly life pattern, an opposing or contradicting phenomenon exists. Duality consists of contrasting opposites: the good and the evil, darkness and light, summer and winter, joy and sorrow, birth and death and so forth. In Chinese philosophy, the concept of Yin and Yang describes the above situations. Joy, sorrow, good and bad are relative observations reflecting our “perspectives“. Contrarily, natural phenomena of light (day) and dark (night) are “axioms“, which require no proof of evaluation.By our preconception of an experience as “good“, we perceive some other experience as “bad“. Both experiences may reflect the truth; however, by judging one with a better comfort level as “good“ we perceive an uncomfortable experience as its opposite “bad“. It is a state of the mind which controls the perception creating opposite observations correlating with a benchmark. Without knowledge of a “good“, the “bad“ would also be absent. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu describes this: “When the people of the Earth all know beauty as beautyThere arises (the recognition of) ugliness ...“
The cactus and the rose may offer an analogy. The cactus flowers in the desert and thrives in the otherwise barren landscape; on the contrary, the rose plant grows in normal terrain. The aesthetic value of a rose, by perspective, is considered to be superior. The cactus, by adapting itself to the desert ecosystem exemplifies privation and remains stoical. For those inhabiting the desert, a cactus flower may appear beautiful until the visual experience of a rose alters their incipient perspective. Therefore, the mind or the veil of perspective creates knowledge of opposites.
Human experiences, likewise, are also a product of antithetical “perspectives“ ­ happiness and melancholy, hope and despair, birth and death and so forth. In the realm of everyday life, we may experience all these states in equal proportions. With the mind repulsing unpleasant states, awareness of the interdependence of the states will inculcate equanimity besides lending dynamism to existence. Like the seasonal changes of summer and winter, all experiences are therefore contrasting.
Extreme situations apportion our lives with more discernible and fulfilling experiences.
Insight into the shrouding limita tions of life as well as abounding happiness are both imbued. The experience of the searing heat of summer acquiesces the mind to the chillness of winter. Al Mustafa, the protagonist in Khalil Gibran's `The Prophet', delves into this homily while reflecting on joy and sorrow: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? “ Gibran enlightens the complementary nature of opposites, exhorting that without being sensitised to the experience of sorrow one cannot have the pleasure of joy. The poet articulates the alternating situations with the analogy of the painful experience of the cup and the lute and the concomitant pleasure they give despite being stricken with extreme agony. The cup is inanimate; however, with the poetic corollary of the pain it undergoes to hold the wine, to give joy, the poet connects the issues beautifully.
By understanding the dualities of life, awareness is gained that every proposition has a flip side. By refusing to be overawed by perspectives, we remain in balance and in control of our lives.

The politics of an assassination: Who killed Gandhi and why?

On January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi fell to his assassin Nathuram Vinayak Godse’s bullets during an evening prayer ceremony at Birla House in Delhi. Perched atop a gate of Birla House, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru announced to the world the “light has gone out of our lives”.
 
Eight men were convicted in the murder trial inside Red Fort by a special court, constituted by an order of the central government. Godse and co-conspirator Narayan Apte were hanged for the murder of the Father of the Nation on November 15, 1949. 
 
Historians and scholars have written extensively on “who killed Gandhi and why?” and the answer, obviously, doesn’t end with Godse. What Godse told the court in an attempt to explain why he chose to pump three bullets into Gandhi’s chest at point-blank range provides a glimpse into the politics of the assassination.
 
Why Godse killed Gandhi
 
“I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus,” Godse told the court.
 
He added: “I bear no ill will towards anyone individually, but I do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy, which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi.”
 
Godse had been an active member of the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha and ran a nationalist newspaper called Hindu Rashtra. Political psychologist and social theorist Ashis Nandy wrote in his book “At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture” that Godse did not find the RSS militant enough, and in the Hindu Mahasabha “he found a more legitimate expression of the Hindu search for political potency”.

Another section in Godse’s speech in court states: “To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom and well-being of all India, one fifth of the human race.”
 
In the speech, Godse also accused Gandhi of dividing the country into India and Pakistan. 
 
Columnist Aakar Patel, writing in Outlook magazine earlier this year, countered Godse’s arguments. “There is a problem with Godse's argument and it is this. He thinks Gandhi was enthusiastic about dividing India when everything in history tells us the case was the opposite.”
 
Godse’s speech, Patel concluded, was illogical. 
 
“Little of what Nathuram says makes sense by way of logic. It was his (Godse’s) hatred of the secular ideology of Gandhi, the true Hindu spirit that he is finally opposed to, having been brainwashed thoroughly by the RSS.”
 
Godse was not alone: The larger conspiracy
 
Extensive research by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre for their book “Freedom at Midnight” detailed how exactly the conspiracy to kill Gandhi was hatched. 
 
The book, published to critical acclaim in 1975, laid bare facts which prove that Gandhi’s assassination was the outcome of a larger conspiracy by Hindu fundamentalists to eliminate Gandhi from the political scene. Collins and Lapierre made full use of the access they had to critical police and intelligence records and even interviewed people who played key roles in the conspiracy, such as Nathuram’s brother Gopal Godse, Vishnu Karkare (who assisted Apte in hatching the plan) and Madanlal Pahwa, who unsuccessfully attempted to kill Gandhi ten days before he was shot dead. 
 
In recent times, scholars and historians like AG Noorani have relentlessly written about how Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the Hindutva ideologue and former president of the Hindu Mahasabha, was involved in the conspiracy but was acquitted only because independent witnesses could not corroborate approver Digamber Badge’s testimony against him in the court.
 
However, after Savarkar died, his bodyguard Apte Ramchandra Kasar and his secretary Gajanan Vishnu Damlewhen corroborated Badge’s testimony to the Justice JL Kapur Commission, which was formed to look into the Gandhi assassination conspiracy in 1966.
 
“Had the bodyguard and the secretary but testified in court, Savarkar would have been convicted,” Noorani noted in his essay “Savarkar and Gandhi’s murder” in The Frontline magazine in 2012.
 
In the essay, Noorani cited letters written by then home minister Vallabhbhai Patel, who wrote to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1948 that it was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that “(hatched) the conspiracy and saw it through”.
 
Noorani also quoted correspondence between Patel and Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, in which Patel writes, “...our reports do confirm that, as a result of the activities of these two bodies (RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha), particularly the former, an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy became possible. There is no doubt in my mind that the extreme section of the Hindu Mahasabha was involved in this conspiracy. The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of government and the state.”
 
In 2003, the NDA government installed a portrait of Savarkar in the parliament’s central hall alongside, ironically, those of Gandhi and Nehru.
 
The ideology that killed Gandhi: Where do we stand today?
 
As we celebrate the 69th anniversary of our freedom from colonial rule, it is perhaps worthwhile to ponder on what the politics of Gandhi’s assassination means in today’s socio-political context. 
 
“There are two main understandings of Indian nationalism, one which considers Hinduism to be its central feature and the other which does not have such a neat definition but considers everyone who identifies with and adopts India to be Indian. Savarkar was the one who put the final seal to the ideology India as a Hindu nation. Gandhi, Nehru and others opposed this,” said Aniket Alam, executive editor of the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW).
 
Majoritarian Hindu fundamentalism and similar ideologies which were pivotal in the politics of Gandhi’s assassination are doing the rounds even today. But it would be incorrect to say that it was only the Hindu extremist political parties which were opposed to Gandhi’s principles.
 
As Alam pointed out, the Left parties and revolutionaries, BR Ambedkar and his followers, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League were extremely critical of Gandhi’s politics.
 
“Thus when we say that Hindutvawadis attack Gandhi and despise Gandhi, we should not forget that he was intensely disliked by many others and some of these traditions continue in India today. They were not complicit in his murder but they would be equally happy to destroy his historical reputation and his political legacy,” said Alam.
 
Nonetheless, some historians say the Hindu extremist ideology which killed Gandhi is the same as the one which threatens India today.
 
“The communal forces and their divisive ideology which killed Gandhi were same as the ones we see today in the form of the Ghar Wapsi and Love Jihad campaigns,” said Mridula Mukherjee, professor of history at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.
 
“The main objective of communal forces is to increase antagonism between communities. It’s their aim to promote the idea that religious identities must be at loggerheads with each other. The vicious atmosphere that was created by them at the time of Gandhi’s assassination is the same as it is today.

BIMARU States: the shoe fits even now

In a speech in Gaya on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that while Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh were no longer “BIMARU” states, Bihar continued to suffer this fate. So which are India’s real BIMARU states?

The term BIMARU – an abbreviation for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh – was coined in 1980 by the demographer Ashish Bose in a paper he wrote in the early 1980s. Mr. Bose examined a range of demographic indicators to conclude that these states, home to 40 per cent of the country’s population, lagged significantly behind the southern states, and were contributing the most to India’s population explosion. He also looked at five additional indicators including per capita income.

In May this year, economist Vinita Sharma recalculated Mr. Bose’s indicators, updated for 2011, after adding in the newly carved out states of Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Uttarakhand, in a paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly. She found that while the states had made individual progress, on the whole, BIMARU states had not converged with the national average; in fact on half of the 13 indicators, they had diverged. While none of the states had been able to move out of the grouping, among them, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh showed a greater degree of improvement than Bihar, Ms. Sharma found.

On several other indicators of backwardness, The Hindu found, these states continue to rank well below the national average. On the key demographic indicator – the Total Fertility Rate – there are now two distinct Indias, one on the road to achieving replacement levels, and one still a long distance off. In 2013, for instance, the states with a TFR higher than the national average were (in descending order): Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

Similarly on per capita income, while the poorer states led by Bihar have grown faster year on year than richer states, the gulf between them remains wider than ever. In 1980–81, the average per capita income of the four states was 74% of the all-India figure, but in 2010–11 it declined to 59% of it, Ms. Sharma found. As of 2014-15, The Hindu found, the richest among the BIMARU states was Rajasthan, with a per capita income of Rs 65,974, but this was still less than half that of richer states like Haryana.

In 2013, a committee constituted under the chairmanship of Raghuram Rajan, then Chief Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Finance, developed an index of backwardness to compare states with ten sub-components including per capita expenditure, the poverty rate and urbanisation rate. On that ranking, Odisha ranked the lowest followed by Bihar and Madhya Pradesh at joint second from last. Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh were also tied at the same rank.

Economist Bibek Debroy says that questions over convergence and divergence have been “done to death”, adding that these are his personal views and not that of the Niti Aayog, of which he is a member. “Of course there is a difference between base levels and increments, but as increments go, there is no question that some historically backward states – in particular Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – are growing fast,” he said. Additionally, from a public policy perpective, large variations within states meant that looking at the 70 or so most backward districts of the country was a better idea, Mr. Debroy said.

Data compiled by The Hindu

Keywords: BIMARU states, Hindi belt, backward states, Total Fertility Rate, population explosion

This book can save lives

Each pull-out page of the “Drinkable Book” contains nanoparticles of silver that can kill waterborne bacteria and purify up to 100 litres of water. In trials, the paper successfully removed more than 99% of bacteria. The research is being presented at this week’s American Chemical Society’s national meeting.

According to the World Health Organization, 3.4 million people die each year due to health issues stemming from unsanitary water.

The “Drinkable Book” is the brainchild of Theresa Dankovich, from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who was researching a simple, inexpensive way to sanitize water.

She developed “pAge drinking paper,” which is a sturdy sheet of paper loaded with silver and copper nanoparticles that kill dangerous microbes living in dirty water.

Since 400 BC, silver has has been used as an antimicrobial. Herodotus accounts that no Persian king would drink water that was not transported in silver containers, which kept the water fresh for years.

Hippocrates used silver preparations for the treatment of ulcers and to promote the healing of wounds.