Saturday, August 16, 2008

Nalanda International University dream close to realisation?

Nalanda was one of the world's first residential universities which drew scholars from all over the world for nearly 800 years starting from the 5th century. In its heyday it accommodated over 10,000 students and 2,000 teachers. The university was considered an architectural masterpiece, and was marked by a lofty wall and one gate.

But nearly 800 years after its founding, Nalanda was destroyed burned by Turkish Muslim invaders under Bakhtiyar Khilji in 1197 A.D. The Persian historian Minhaz, in his chronicle the Tabaquat-I-Nasiri, reported that thousands of monks were burned alive and thousands beheaded, the burning of the library contin­ued for several months and smoke from the burning manuscripts hung for days like a dark pall over the low hills..

Now, it seems that we would be able to see the revival of this great centre of education as a International University. Dr. Abdul Kalam mooted the idea to revive this university while addressing the both houses of Bihar Assembly. Japan and Singapore have shown interest in investing about Rs.4.5 billion ($100 million) in the university. Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama has offered to donate Buddhist artifacts to the proposed university.

Amartya Sen isn't averse to the idea of taking a break from Harvard and lecturing at Nalanda International University in the heart of Bihar. The PM Manmohan Singh is expected to take along a resolution on the university to the 4th East Asia Summit in Bangkok and once adopted, Parliament would enact the concept as a law. It is expected that the university will start taking shape by February 2009 and teaching in some form should begin in 2010

Great Move, However, Lets keep our fingers crosses in these secular times

Ahmedabad blasts Cracked - Shocking response from "certain group of netizens"




Gujarat police today claimed to have cracked the Ahmedabad bombings as well as "almost unravelled" the past terror bombings in other Indian cities in which the banned Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) had a "deep involvement".

Gujarat Director General Police P C Pandey, addressing media persons, said that the Ahmedabad crime branch and the State Anti Terrorist Squad, along with local intelligence, had "nearly solved" the serial bombings in Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Bangalore, Hyderabad and in Maharashtra.

Kudos to Gujarat Police for such a major success. I am sure every Indian would be Heaving a sigh of relief, finally.

However, I found response of certain group of netizens to this news really disturbing. I was going thru the readers responses of this news in TOI and found a vertical divide between the response of Hindus and Muslims. Most of the Hindus were ecstatic. While all of muslim who commented were sckeptic!

The responses ranged from

"all these arrests are fake arrest , this is only to safe face of Mr modi"
to

Another bunch of lies brought by the police against SIMI but people r sure about these lies & they will not beleave it, because until now they have arrested from all over INDIA to harass only muslims.

One of them even went to the extend of saying

Wake up Indians govt. administration seems involved in these blasts and I don't think Muslism arrest would stop these activities. I think Muslims should unite and do something about it
Blame for this skepticism completely goes to our messiah's of secularism and so called human right activists. Whether it was killing of Lashkar activist Ishrat or bringing to books the culprits responsible for attack on parliament, It was these self styled activists who were in forefront in sowing the seeds of doubt in the minds of minority community.

Even after the tragedy of Ahmedabad, the human right activists were in forefront protesting the arrests of people from minority community.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Which Independence Day is it anyway?





Which Independence day is it? is it 62nd as claimed by NDTV or 61st( 61nd as per Indian Express)?
I guess since NDTV is closest to the UPA Govt. I guess it would be 62nd!!