Bibek Debroy has translated the Bhagavad Gita and is well aware that most people have not read it thoroughly. Through the book he explains the text, dispelling myths along the way and taking the tone of a mentora tone which translates between the pages with the requisite personalisation.

He points out that the Gita is part of the Mahabharata and belongs to the smriti tradition of Sanskrit texts; a smriti text, he explains, is one that is handed down in writing and as a result may vary from generation to generation. Thus, nothing in the Bhagavad Gita is cast in stone.

Chapter by chapter, Debroy takes the reader on a voyage of exploration that includes Sanskrit grammar and the nuances of words and metre, covering the anustubh chhanda that became the seminal form of the shloka, though other variations also followed as poets found themselves requiring some creative liberty. He explains the shlokas that most people know, punctiliously setting them in their context and putting out that meanings can depend on whether the text is divorced from the main body of...

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Karma, Akarma And Us - Outlook India

As per an official statement, the number of competency-based questions for the classes 10 and 12 students will be increased by 10 percent every year in phases, along with introducing improvement exams from 2021 onwards.

Photo Credits: (PTI)

The CBSE board exams are getting closer, day by day. CBSE will conduct the board exams from May 4, 2021, to June 10, 2021. Practical exams for the same will start from March 1, 2021, in the respective schools.

According to an official notification, CBSE will increase the number of competency-based questions by 10 percent for the students of classes 10 and 12. With this, the board will also introduce improvement exams from 2021 onwards.

Last year, CBSE introduced the MCQs or application-based questions. And, from this year, CBSE has decided to increase the number of MCQs. Further, the board has also reduced the syllabus by up to 30 percent for the 2020-2021 academic session for classes 9 to 12.

New National Program Framework ( NCF) fundamentals will be released and should be developed during the next academic session i.e. 2021-2022. The level of these MCQs are expected to be tougher in the exam

CBSE will provide more internal options in the question paper. As per information, these internal options in all sections have been increased by 33%.

CBSE will also offer Mathematics and Hindi in two levels to reduce stress for students, but for the academic year 2021-2022, they will introduce English and Sanskrit language papers in two levels.

The skill test will begin on March 1, giving students plenty of time to prepare. However, the council has yet to release the date sheet.

Read: Schools to reopen for classes 9 to 12 in Jammu divisions summer zone from February 1

Read: Maharashtra board exams 2021 to be held in April, May for classes 10 and 12

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CBSE to increases number of competency-based questions by 10 percent - India Today

Your debut novel, The Illuminated (published by HarperCollins), is out this year. What is it about?

It is the story of two women, mother and daughter, who are forced to see the world anew in the wake of a personal tragedy. The husband/father figure, a renowned architect and an all-round giant of a man around whom their lives revolve, dies on page one.

The world the characters inhabit is changing rapidly. There is a rising tide of religious fundamentalism, among other things. The two women harbour very different world views and the novel attempts to explore these tensions.

The Illuminated is scheduled to be published in July so I dont want to give away too much but Id say its a novel about perception. When the light shifts, you see the world differently.

A lot of recent books by women, from Girl in White Cotton to These, Our Bodies, Possessed by Light, to Women, Dreaming have delved into fraught mother-daughter relationships with absent father figures. Why do you think this is so?

That is an interesting observation and its something Ive given a lot of thought to. Weve all grown up consuming the minutiae of the lives of middle-aged men as literature. Like the protagonist in The Sense of An Ending getting his trousers repaired or the inner dialogue of the protagonist in Desire to cite a few examples dont get me wrong, I love Julian Barnes and JM Coetzee. But thats been the dominant nature of literature for a while now, hasnt it? In the last few years, more and more South Asian writers are writing layered female characters. And when women begin to write about women, how can the mother-daughter relationship be far behind? Its the primary relationship a woman has with another woman.

However, my book is not about the mother-daughter relationship really but about how these two women, and several others around them, respond to the world around them. I doubt any novelist wants to be part of a trend. No one spends years of their life to cash in on a trend. It is simply a happy coincidence albeit a much delayed and welcome one.

As a debut author working with a literary agency, what would be your advice to aspiring writers? How has having an agent shaped your literary journey and how, in your opinion, is the publishing industry in India changing?

Im a big champion of getting yourself an agent. Even half a decade ago, the scene was very different domestically. You either got yourself an international agent or worked directly with a publisher. But now there are at least 8-10 Indian agencies if not more, so there are lots of options. I must confess, I often hear horror stories from my writing peers so its important to vet your agent and ensure you align on your vision. You want an agent who is in it to support your writing career not just making a quick commission off one book.

For me, I cant imagine the journey of this book without Hemali Sodhi of A Suitable Agency, which represents me in the Indian subcontinent. We were acquaintances but we got seriously talking at the Mountain Echoes festival in Bhutan in August 2019 and she became a champion of my book even before she knew she was going to start an agency. So when the time came for it, I followed my instincts and went with her.

In the book, Tara is a Sanskrit scholar while Shashi is immersed in philosophy. Having studied linguistics yourself, did that come into play while shaping these characters? What were the books you imagined your characters would be well acquainted with?

I have a Masters degree in linguistics but I never studied Sanskrit formally. An interest and immersion in both the poetry and mathematics of language is common to both. Since my characters are rather scholarly in their inclination, I decided to read everything I thought they would be reading. So for Tara, I read a lot of Bhartrhari and Bilhana and Kalidasa in translation she would be reading them in Sanskrit though. And for Shashi, Hegel and Sri Aurobindo. As a result, I hadnt caught up on new books in the last few years at all! Im reading them all now.

In what ways has your experience as a journalist and editor helped in developing your fiction?

It hasnt necessarily helped except that it taught me how to respect deadlines.

In fact, being an editor was often detrimental to drafting because I would constantly self edit. I frequently fantasized whether it would have been more pleasurable to write fiction had my day job not involved writing and editing. Like, if I was a banker or an architect, would I be welcoming the chance to work with words at the end of the day?

Fiction demands an entirely different approach and sometimes the rationality and urgency of journalistic writing can come in the way. I know its romantic to say I woke up at 4 am to write but my daytime attention had to be devoted to the jobs I held so I would write from midnight to 2 am whenever I could and through the day most weekends. That way, I had some sense of a shift from one to the other.

Im quite irritated by the impulses of journalism in the Twitter era, which is so much about a this or that culture, so much about virtue signalling and sparring with people who dont wholly align with you. I feel fiction has the opposite impulse, to inhabit characters without judgement.

You were also a Hawthornden Fellow. How did your experience at a writing residency shape your book and would you recommend the same for other first time writers?

Oh, it was a transformative experience. I always thought writing residencies were pretentious. Any writer knows that actual writing happens in your pajamas in solitude under extremely unglamorous circumstances. But Hawthornden was important for me; it completely upended my daily routine and forced me to look at everything differently. It was five of us and the administrator (who is a poet himself) and the cook (who is a cookbook author herself) isolated for a month in a medieval castle with poor internet and the rule of silence between 9 am-6 pm. You dont picture that kind of thing very often, do you? The castle grounds were stunning with deer and beautiful birds I couldnt name. I took long walks, long bubble baths, went to the local bar once a week to check the status of the magazine I edited, but I still managed to go from 50% to 90% of the novel in my time there. It was the most productive one month of a five year journey. I would very much recommend a residency if one has the opportunity and kind bosses whod give them leave.

How has the pandemic altered your reading and writing schedules?

I finished my first draft just weeks before the lockdown. It felt like a cruel joke because Id been desperately trying to carve out periods of isolation for the last couple of years, then I got done, and the whole world went into isolation. I felt like I had been in preparatory mode. As for right now, the diminished social life makes for good, uninterrupted reading time.

What would you wish to write on next? Any genres that you would like to experiment with in your next literary venture?

Im at the starting stages of my next work of fiction and also writing my first screenplay, which has been a whole new experience for me, exploring a different kind of skill set. It is a collaboration with two New York-based writers and an international producer and filming will begin mid year. Yes, Im looking forward to 2021.

Simar Bhasin is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.

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Interview: Anindita Ghose on her debut novel, The Illuminated - Hindustan Times

Mantra therapy for health, peace and protection

Published on: Sunday, January 17, 2021

By: Dr T Selva

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Every individual should know the efficacy of mantras, as sound is the link between man and God.

Mantras create waves and the more times a mantra is chanted, the more powerful the wave it generates.

I was fortunate to be initiated into mantra therapy under a renowned Sanskrit scholar, Prof Dr R. Thiagarajan from Chennai, India. Learning the hymn under an expert is regarded as being blessed by divine forces.

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Anyone who wants to harness spiritual power should chant the sacred Sanskrit recitals.

This is because when a mantra is chanted, cosmic rhythm and order come into play and its vibrations bring tremendous benefits to the chanter.

In Vasthu Sastra, chanting mantras in a house is highly recommended because it removes negative entities and energises in the enclosed space. It is important to choose the correct chant so as to experience the desired benefits.

How do mantras work?

Mantras work directly upon our karma, the accumulated latencies and tendencies with which we are born.

The vibrations of these ancient formulas work through the chakras to increase the flow of beneficial energy throughout the subtle body, where our past inclinations are stored.

Mantra therapy starts by increasing the total amount of energy available for all of our activities.

Certain mantras, used singly or in combination, can greatly accelerate the quality and quantity of energy used in the healing process.

However, if the karmic inclination for a given condition is overwhelming, mantra therapy will not remove the difficulty any more than conventional therapy will.

In such a case, mantra therapy can lessen the karmic baggage an individual takes into his future lives.

The energy created through chanting mantras may lead a person to forms of therapy that are quite different from those used initially.

Thus, some unexpected new form of treatment may appear as the fruit of mantra practice.

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Spiritual guru Amma

Results from dedicated mantra practice can take time to manifest.

Minor difficulties might be cleared within two weeks, but more deeply rooted problems may take longer to solve.

A guru or spiritual leader like Mata Amritanandamayi better known as the hugging saint Amma should initiate the mantra process for an individual and if he or she gives a particular mantra to the follower, the latter must not share it with others.

Mantras should be chanted 108 times during each daily therapy session. Have the practice every day for a minimum of two weeks and a maximum of 40 days.

The full 40-day chanting process produces the best results. For tougher problems, a 120-day programme is recommended. At the end of each session, the individual should stop daily chanting and take a break for at least one week.

Mantra is an invocation or a mystical formula that helps the person release the self and attain bliss and ultimate fulfilment. The sounds involved in a mantra are significant as they generate an unusual mystic power in the individual.

Mantras produce vibrations in the surrounding atmosphere and their force depend on the attitude of the chanter as well as the intensity of his concentration.

As mantras are performed through faith, their results cannot be analysed, measured, weighed, or seen.

The force of a mantra can be only felt thus it should be performed with complete faith and according to all the rituals.

The individual should know the meaning of the mantra he is reciting and follow the prescribed methods. He will then experience sensation and vibrations during or at the end of the mantra.

How and when to chant mantras?

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A person who chants aloud will see the effects faster than one who plays chants on an audio system. Observing a vegetarian diet is encouraged.

Besides the three transaction periods sunrise, mid-day and sunset the mantra can be sung anywhere in a house and at any hour of the day as long as the person feels he needs to connect to a higher energy level.

Such activities are ideal in the prayer room located in the north-east of the house, so that divinity can be felt easily. And all mantras should be chanted with the holy sound of Aum (pronounced as Om).

There are three ways to perform a mantra. The first is to do it very slowly so that nobody else can hear. There should only be lip movement.

The second way is in the heart, without any sound or lip movement.

And the final method is to recite the mantra in a low, medium or high tone.

The king of all mantras is the Gayatri mantra, which focuses on polishing the chanters intellect. It can be chanted any time of the day.

The science of mantra says that whatever sound comes out of the mouth is the outcome of the interaction of various organs such as the wind-pipe, tongue, teeth and lips.

The different parts of the mouth are interconnected with various parts of the body and chanting specific mantras can help in healing any ailing organ.

- Dr T. Selva is a speaker and author of the bestseller book Vasthu Sastra Guide. To get a copy contact 012-3299713. He can be contacted at [emailprotected] Facebook: Vasthu Sastra and Website: http://www.vasthusastra.com

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Mantra therapy for health, peace and protection - Daily Express

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New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has initiated reforms in board exams in line with the new National Education Policy (NEP), and will introduce an improvement exam from the academic session 2021-22, the education ministry has said.

The improvement exam, which gives students an opportunity to improve their scores, will be a permanent feature from the coming academic session.

The board is also going to introduce two difficulty levels of question papers for English and Sanskrit subjects, similar to the ones that it currently offers for Mathematics, the ministry said.

There will be a tough and an easy version of all these subjects and students will be free to opt for the level they feel comfortable with.

CBSE will introduce improvement examination from the year 2021 and will introduce English and Sanskrit in 2 levels from the session 2021-22 (already offers Mathematics and Hindi at two levels), read the NEP action plan shared by the ministry Monday evening.

The action plan also mentioned that the board will ensure 10 per cent of the questions in Class 10 and 12 question papers are competency based. The idea is to decrease the burden on students and break away from rote learning.

Also read: CBSE practical exams from 1 March, schools want states to allow offline classes before that

Professor R. Govinda, former vice-chancellor, National University of Educational Planning and Administration, said the improvement exam is a good idea, but expressed concern over the increasing pressure to score that necessitated the move.

I think an improvement exam is a good idea, but we have to understand why it has been introduced in the first place it is because of the high stake board exams. Because we link the board exams to admission in colleges, students are naturally under pressure to score more and thus have a psychological pressure, he explained.

Ashok Pandey, director, Ahlcon Group of Schools, Delhi, also supported the idea of an improvement exam.

If the child has not been able to perform as per his/her expectations, a chance should be given. That is what a compassionate evaluation system is all about. We are talking about doing away from an examination system that appears to be punitive, so it has to be more with empathy and compassion and people should get chances to improve.

Sunita Salve, who teaches Class 12 students at a private school in Ahmedabad, also agreed that the exam would ease the pressure on students. I think if board students get another chance to improve their performance, they will be under less pressure.

According to the ministry note, bringing reforms in CBSE is one of the many areas in school education where the implementation of NEP has begun. These include the one year of Balvatika for children, which is the pre-school stage, being introduced in many states; introduction of the National Mission of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, meant to improve numeral literacy among students; as well as bag-less days, and internships for school students.

To achieve the goals and objectives of NEP 2020, the Department of School Education and Literacy has prepared a draft implementation plan with tasks linking each recommendation with tasks, responsible agencies to carry out the task, timelines and outputs, the note read.

The task list was shared with states in September last year.

Also read: Govt wants panel to study, mitigate impact of delayed board exams on college schedules in 2021

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CBSE improvement exam for Class 10, 12 board students a permanent feature from this year - ThePrint

Debroy said that that he wrote this book to get millennials to read the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit (Pic: Express)

God might be an English word but its roots can be traced back to Sanskrit, said Bibek Debroy, author of the recently released The Bhagavad Gita for Millennials. He is more popularly know as an economist and the Chairman of the PM's Economic Advisory Council but he is considered an authority when it comes to Sanskrit texts. Debroy was speaking at TNIE's DakLF 2020 about his new bookThe Bhagavad Gita for Millennials. He was in conversation with senior journalist and author Kaveree Bamzai.

"I am averse to using words that are imported and implanted from the West, including a word like God," said Debroy. "The word God has different meanings. When someone uses the word God, they intend a certain meaning. The word God etymologically is cognate with a Sanskrit root Hutam, someone you offer oblations to. It's is a tragedy and travesty that millennials do not know this. If at the time of the Rajasuya Yagna, the first arghya was offered to Krishna in the Mahabharata, then, in some sense, Krishna was the Hutam. But I would not like to use the word, God," he added.

There is not one but many Gitas, said Debroy and added that there are more than 20 of them in Mahabharata itself. "Gita is anything that is sung or chanted. Here there is an adjective, Bhagavad, which automatically suggests that there must be other Gitas as well. There are around 60 different Gitas depending on how you define a Gita. Some of them, people are familiar with, like the Ashtavakra Gita," said Debroy. "There are texts like the Uddhava Gita which is from the Puranas. The two from the Mahabharata that people are probably most familiar with are the Dharma Vyadha Gita and the Anu Gita. There are things that are not directly referred to as Gitas but are very much on the same lines, for example, the Yaksha Prashna," he added.

Talking about whether the COVID-19 has made people realise the importance of the Gita, Debroy said that the Bhagavad Gita has always been there but due to COVID-19 people have much more free time they are not going to the multiplex and thus they have time to dip into the texts. "The Bhagavad Gita has always been there. If you are interested in it you will find the time, COVID or no COVID," he added.

Debroy said that that he wrote this book to get millennials to read the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit. "Which is why there is a chapter on Sanskrit, and one on poetry because all of these texts are poetry. I wanted people to get sufficiently familiar to read the text of the Bhagavad Gita in Sankrit and then read translations and commentaries. To appreciate the Bhagavad Gita, one has to understand the Mahabharata and the role of Krishna. So I have put in all of that explanatory stuff in chapters so that people get interested," he added. "My intention, in this particular book, was not to do a translation. I have done that in the past. it was to get the so-called millennials interested in the Bhagavad Gita. For the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita, my plea to the younger generation would be not to decide what kind of individual Krishna was on the basis of what one has picked up from a 144 character Twitter narration or television serials or from abridged tellings," Debroy added.

Answering Bamzai's question on whether one can learn Sanskrit with the help of his book, Debroy added that he has given tips on the Sanskrit alphabet. "Can one learn Sanskrit on one's own at home? Of course one can. I have no formal training in Sanskrit. My entire learning of Sanskrit has been self-taught at home. And one of the points that are made in the book is that the Sanskrit of the Bhagavad Gita is relatively simple. It is not the Sanskrit of Kalidasa. For the average person who is familiar with the Devnagari script, understanding the Bhagavad Gita is no big deal once you have done the two obvious things that happen in Sanskrit thesandhi thepadachhedand theanway. It seems complicated because Sanskrit is a language that flows freely," said Debroy.

No discussion about Gita feels complete without Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. "These are regarded as the four objectives of human existence. It is impossible to translate the word Dharma into English and it should not be translated to English without the context. There is a shloka which tries to define Dharma it says, whatever holds (things) up is Dharma. Different things hold up the fabric of society, so Dharma is a task, it is a duty and it is what we imperfectly translate into English as religion. Moksha is emancipation and liberation from Samsara, the cycle of worldly existence the cycle of birth death and rebirth. But the Bhagavad Gita itself says that Moksha is not for everyone and that only a few get Moksha while for the rest it is just Dharma, Artha and Kama. The Kama is the pursuit of sensual pleasures. It is invariably interpreted as sexual pleasures but the Kama is not just sex. Artha is the pursuit of material well-being and prosperity," he added.

But will the Bhagavad Gita help us find happiness? "If you expect the Bhagavad Gita to tell you to wake up in the morning and tell you to do three Suryanamaskars and you will be happy, then you will be disappointed. In the Bhagavad Gita, you will find what you wish to find. So it will have different lessons for different people. The word happiness is one that should not be bandied around without a care. What makes a person happy? What I am happy with right now, I won't be happy with a half-hour later. Most times when we interpret the word happiness we define it in terms of things that are completely temporary and transient. The message of the Bhagavad Gita is to focus on what is permanent," said the author.

Link:

Bibek Debroy at DakLF 2020: Even the word 'God' comes from Sanskrit - EdexLive

Four years ago, while looking at search analytics of our travel blog, we found that people were searching Hindi terms and that too in Devanagari, but they were obviously landing on an English page. This led us to launch our Hindi Travel blog that soon garnered a compact but loyal readership without much marketing. The marketing spends on the Hindi media and I assume other Indian languages stay negligible.

Things are changing fast though. Instagram recently announced that Instagram Lite would be available in several Indian languages. Google just announced that it would show relevant content in compatible Indian languages that include major Indian ones. I can already see my Google Adsense account in Hindi; Google Maps should soon follow.

The Facebook app already picks up a default local language for me based on my base location. The Jio browser for Android phones supports eight Indian languages. One of the big reasons for the success of video content is that it breaks the language barriers. It can be created without worrying about the grammar rules in the language or a dialect that you are most comfortable in.

As content is being translated and published in different languages around the country and the world, it opens up translation as a career opportunity for a large number of people. Perfect for those who want to live a flexible life with a laptop as office. This in turn is an opportunity for trainers who train people in different languages, either in online or offline classrooms or through mobile apps. I am reminded of my visit to Matturone of the rare Sanskrit-speaking villages in Karnataka.

While I was amazed to hear the fluent conversational Sanskrit, I was equally delighted to see them using basic technology to teach Sanskrit around the world. Translation may seem like a freelancers domain but there are big projects like the Murty Classical Library of India that is translating ancient Indian classics into English to make them available to the world. Given the number of manuscripts across the country and the world classics that we need to read in India, there is an opportunity for many more such projects.Mumbai-based Indus, through its App Bazaar, is creating Indias own version of Playstore to host mobile applications by leveraging the language advantage.

It offers over four lakh apps in 12 Indian languages. Currently it is the default app store on about hundred million Samsung devices in India. It offers localisation support to any developer who wants to create an Indian language mobile app or port any existing app in Indian languages along with helping them with distributiona great move that would help local language users as well as open up opportunities for those who want to build local and hyperlocal apps in these languages.

Induss technical support though still remains global, be it device partners Samsung or cloud partners Amazon web services. The company is yet to be profitable but its pioneering investment in languages will hopefully soon take it there. Those working on natural language processing (NLP) have been trying to bridge the gap between human and machine learning. If you have ever wondered how your mobile phone creates your version of a dictionary on your device or how it converts text to speech taking care of the nuances of your pronunciation, or how Gmail suggests possible replies for your emails, its NLP at work. Machine translation is part of its portfolio.

It is an area that has seen limited yet extremely usable success. You cannot yet trust the machine translations to have literary quality, but for all practical purposes they work. Google just launched its made in India, free and open-source machine learning tool for Indian languages called Multilingual Representations for Indian Languages or MuRIL for researchers, students, and start-ups who want to create local language technologies.

IBMs Watson Discoveryan artificial intelligence-based discovery toolnow supports Hindi, which is one of the 10 languages that they support worldwide. Simply put, this means that all the content available in these supported languages can now be searched for and translated to the language searched in. The impact of this is multi-dimensional. English would cease to be a necessary condition for both employers as well as employees, sharpening the focus on the core competencies and widening the net at both ends. Not to miss the opportunities in building more such technology tools.

A Gujarati reader once reported that he translates my posts using Google translate and gets confused, urging me to write in Gujarati. It told me about the need or market for local languages, the adaptation of latest technologies in remote areas, and the knowledge and hence opportunities gap that a better solution can plug for the user.

For the longest time we have seen digital nomads travelling the world teaching spoken English in non-English speaking regions. Would we see people travelling around to teach yoga or music speaking their own languages and using technology to communicate?

AnuradhaGoyal (Tweets @anuradhagoyal) Author and founderof IndiTales (https://www.inditales.com/)

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Making use of the language landscape diversity - The New Indian Express

Gurugram: On the auspicious occasion of Geeta Jayanti, Amity School of Liberal Arts, Amity University Haryana is organizing its 2nd International Conference on Relevance of Ka:rmik and Indic Studies to Contemporary Education on 24-25 December 2020 at its Gurugram Campus. The prime objective of the conference is to understand the relevance of Ka:rmik and Indic Studies and to incorporate Indic values and knowledge system in contemporary education for harmonious living. The Chief Guest of the Conference, Prof Sushma Yadav, Vice Chancellor, Bhagat Phool Singh Mahila Vishwvidayala emphasized on Ka:rmik and Indic Studies and its relevance in all the times. She emphasized on Sat Karma, Dushkarma and Punya Karma which play vital role in growth, leadership and sustainability of one and all. Encouraging the speakers and participants of the Conference, she emphasized over the need of conducting similar events in future with mutual collaboration. On this occasion, the Vice Chancellor of Amity University Haryana, Prof P. B. Sharma said, The concept of righteousness in society will be visible if we follow the concepts of the Gita and its action-oriented philosophy. He emphasized on Self Discipline, Purity of Mind, Harmony with Nature, Strict Adherence to Truth, Integration of Gyana and Vigyana as in the Bhagwat Gita. He, further, stated that human life will be full of Divine Bliss and Happiness if we go along with the reservoir of our rich philosophical spiritual heritage and Indic knowledge system. Prof. Padmakali Banerjee, the Pro Vice Chancellor of Amity University Haryana stated that, Modern world is looking forward to Sanskrit as a language and literature for playing a vital role in wellbeing and happiness of society. She emphasized on assimilating thoughts with actions in human life. She also encouraged ka:rmik and Indic researchers to take their research works further and disseminate the findings of their Indic research works for the well-being of our society. In his welcome address, the Chief Convener of the conference and Director (Liberal Arts), Prof. S. K. Jha, voiced over the needs of adopting and adapting to age-old Indic values and knowledge system. He advocated that Sanskrit will ensure our Sanskar (good conduct), and Sanskar will ensure our Sanskriti (Good Culture). Paying a tribute to Prof. C. Bhuvaneswar, Prof. Jha released his edited book The Rise of Karmikology with 18 selected papers of Karmik researchers. The enlightening ceremony was attended by eminent academicians like, Prof. Kamdev Jha, Principal, DAV College, Pehowa, Kurushetra, Haryana, Prof. Ashutosh Dayal Mathur, Head, Department of Sanskrit, St. Stephens College, University of Delhi. Delhi, Prof.Ashutosh Angiras, S.D. College, Ambala, Haryana; Prof. Girish Chandra Pant, Former Head, Department of Sanskrit, JMI, New Delhi; Mr.Shaalan Najem Abdullah (Iraq), Ms. Shaima Yousif Alzaidy (Iraq),Prof Udaya Narayana Singh, Dr Supriya Sanju, Dr Sunil Mishra, and Dr Shradhanvita and many others.

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2nd International Conference on Relevance of Ka:rmik and Indic Studies to Contemporary Education - India Education Diary

Dec 28, 2020

The author of numerous bestselling espionage novels, died on December 12, 2020 in Cornwell, England.

Karnataka's renowned Sanskrit scholar and Kannada poet Bannanje Govindacharya died at the age of 84.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist known for "The War Between the Tates" and the comedy of Americans abroad "Foreign Affairs," died on December 3, 2020 at age 94.

The popular Telugu poet, writer and journalist succumbed to ill health in a Hyderabad hospital on 21 November 2020.

The veteran Marathi writer and playwright passed away on May 18 2020 at the age of 81. The author is considered a pioneer of the children's drama movement in Marathi.

Three weeks after the eminent Malayalam poet was conferred with the Jnanpith award, he passed away at a hospital on October 15 morning, said family sources.

The celebrated journalist, historian, world traveler and fiction writer who in middle age became a pioneer of the transgender movement, has died at 94 on 20 November 2020.

Author of the vastly popular Magic School Bus book series, passed away on 12th July 2020 at the age of 75.

The eminent Delhi-based activist, writer, columnist, filmmaker passed away on August 5, 2020 after a two-year long brave battle with metastatic breast cancer.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer whose stories and novels told of both the dark secrets and the beauty of the Deep South died. on August 3, 2020. She was 91.

The noted Urdu poet and lyricist passed away on August 11, 2020 after testing positive for COVID-19 a day before. At 70, with a career spanning over five decades, Indori was best known for his Bollywood songs.

The Spanish novelist best known for The Shadow of the Wind passed away on 19 June 2020 at 55.

The guiding light of Indian sociology, passed away on May 10, 2020. He was 87. Singh played a seminal role in reorienting and modernising Indian sociology as a discipline.

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December 24, 2020 Zehra Jumabhoy on Tantra at the British Museum

IF YOU WENT TO THE BRITISH MUSEUM EXPECTING SEX,youd be disappointed, says Conor Macklin, director of Londons Grosvenor Gallery. He sounds a little disappointed. After all, if one braved Covid-19 to see a British Museum extravaganza, titillatingly titled Tantra: enlightenment to revolution, then surely sex was part of the deal? Curator Imma Ramos begs to differ. Ramosthe guiding light behind the show (which opened on September 24, 2020 and runs through January 24, 2021)hopes to uncouple Tantra from cheesy associations with carnal black magic.

Ramoss spiritual nemesis was Tantra: The Indian Cult of Ecstasy, staged at Londons Hayward Gallery in 1971. Equating Tantrawith sexual deviancy, Haywards survey propounded stereotypes that Ramos strove to subvert. Her show seeks to present the first historical exploration of tantric visual culture from its origins in India to its reimagining in the West.1 It does so by collating over one hundred and thirtyartifacts sourced across a vast geographical terrain (India, Nepal, Tibet, Japan, and the United Kingdom), hopscotching from the seventh century to the present day. Museumgoers journey from the earliest tantric texts in existence (such as the Nectar of the Thunderbolt Tantra, a palm leaf from Nepal dated to 1162) to a medieval sculpture of the Goddess Chamunda: Her face skeletal, her eyes staring, she wields a sword to battle the forces of darkness. She finds her counterpart in a nineteenth-century statue of a dancing Kali, also adorned with human heads. Visitors learn that this dark-skinned Hindu Goddess already enjoys a fan base in Britain: Kalis bloodied protruding tongue was repurposed by Mick Jagger as the Rolling Stones logo. At the heart of the show is a womblike atrium suffused with violet light, a recreation of a tenth-century Yogini temple in Odisha. Such sites are usually roofless, open to the heavens to facilitate divine visitations. The British Museums ceiling assumed the guise of a star-spangled sky, emblazoned with projected images of soaring Yoginis.

In Ramoss chronicle of corporeal spirituality, women are generally on top. The Sanskrit tan means to weave, extend or compose, so Tantra denotes an interweaving of rituals and practices associated with Goddess worship. As this valorization of divine feminine power (Shakti) swept across India, it enabled the ascendency of women as deities and gurus. Images of tantric goddesses combine references to motherhood and death. Such a conflation made them potent symbols for Indian revolutionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, encouraging a form of devotional nationalism in which the body politic was configured as a terrifying Mother Goddess who required the martyrdom of her sons. Intriguingly, the exhibition explored Shaktis subversive role in the subcontinents Independence movements, as Kali became a mascot for anticolonial resistance, particularly in Bengal. In nationalist propaganda, she appears on the rampage: her mouth full of blood, her neck decorated withsevered male heads, dripping gore.The Black Goddess of Deathinfamous for trampling her consort, Lord Shiva, during her frenzied dance of destructionis also a figurehead for South Asian feminists. In British artist Sutapa Biswass painting Housewives with Steak-Knives, 1985, the gigantic Bringer of Bedlam sports four muscled arms (sprouting armpit hair), one of which clutches the head of a hapless male. She is flanked by another tantric heroine: Bharti Khers All theWhile the Benevolent Slept,2008, a fiberglass mock-up of the decapitated Goddess Chinnamasta. Her neck spurting jets of coppery blood, Khers dark dame holds a porcelain teacup in one hand, a grinning skull in the other. Is she innocently enjoying a cuppa, or contemplating carnage? Is she reminding visitors that Britains genteel predilection for teatime is a relic of a ruthless imperial past?

In fact, Ramos uncovers the British Museums complicity in Empires rapacious distortions of Tantra. The institution holds one of the worlds largest collections of tantric objects, many of them courtesy of Britains imperial adventure. Some of this booty was hidden by the squeamish Victorians in The Secretumcreated in 1865 to store obscene artifacts. Among those secreted away was an eleventh-century maithuna sculpture (the Sanskrit term refers to sexual coitus). Until the 1960s, it was kept under lock and key and available only to a chosen few (read: male, white) to have a scholarly peep. Though visitors can now gaze freely at the copulating couple, the story of their acquisition, possibly from Maharashtras Elephanta Caves (now protected by UNESCO), remains shrouded in mystery. Will they ever go home?

The path to liberation is a tricky trek. How to treat the once-colonized Other as an equal? A currently popular method within Euro-American institutions is to allow them entry into a redefined notion of modernism as a global (rather than a Western) category. This is the route Ramos took. Indian abstract painters who were beguiled by Tantras sacred geometrythink kundalini circles, throbbing vermillion mandalas and yonic triangleswere lumped together as flag bearers of global modernism. The museum already possessed Neo-Tantric paintings by G.R. Santosh and Biren De, but acquired two more by London-based Prafulla Mohanti and Munich-based Mahirwan Mamtani especially for the show. According to Ramos, these artists were influenced by the writings of collector Ajit Mookerjee in the 1970s, and valiantly sought to reclaim Tantra from its colonial-era association with hedonism and black magic. But Ramos spin glosses over the fact that the Neo-Tantrics never established a coherent, self-consciously modernist movement with a revisionist agenda (in the way that Bombays Progressive Artists Group did in 1947). De and Santosh belonged only to what can at most be deemed a fairly typical trend in Indian painting spanning the 1960s to the 80s. Moreover, the doyenne of Indian art history, Geeta Kapur, cast aspersions on their doingsmocking the so-called neotantrics for peddling a pastiche of the rhetoric of Indianness, and many of the tendencys most prominent exponents (including De himself) distanced themselves from the activities of their brethren.2 Thus Ramoss shoehorning runs counter to Des own wishes but, more importantly, it evades the question of the Neo-Tantrics status within Indian Modernismeven as it unwittingly rubberstamps market-driven categories.3 Artistic practices organized into identifiable collectivesespecially those sheltered under the banner of modernism (a term associated in Indian art history, thanks to Kapur, with an avant-garde)are safe commercial bets. So excited was Sothebys by Ramoss assemblage of Neo-Tantrics that a 2020 auction in New York beat her to the punch by inducting Santhosh, De, and Mamtanis pulsing paintings into a section called Neo-Tantra as Liberation.

One could argue that Ramoss inability to account for the complexities of Indian modernismand the place that Tantra played within itare forgivable given the ambitious remit of this blockbuster exhibition, which covers everything from the medieval to the modern. But then, why aspire to such a feat? Century-spanning extravaganzas revealing the colonial spoils of Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism are par for the course in Anglo-American intuitions. Are such showshowever sophisticatedthe product of a neocolonial tendency to subsume the Other under the banner of inclusive programming? However, it seems unfair to rebuke Tantra for exhibiting a propensity that is prevalent in Western museums, and it is certainly better for these institutions to try to represent the multitudinous cultural production of the formerly colonized world, despite the attendant problems and pitfalls, rather than ignore them. In any case, Ramoss daredevil path to Moksha deserves applause. Her nods to Tantras syncretic history as a conjoining of the mystical strains of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism provide a vital counternarrative to the chauvinism of Indias right-wing politicians. Thanks to the rise of the Hindu Right, Tantra has been stuffed into a straightjacket, its multireligious antecedents obliterated as Hindu fundamentalists don the garb of Orthodox tantric monks. Tantra was never a monolithic religion, but rather an adaptable sacred tradition that was incorporated into and appropriated by other belief systems, Ramos bravely insists. As her dancing Devis, menacing Mothers, and skull-sporting Goddesses alternately berate and beguile, we must concede that Ramoss rebellious beauties do enlighten us, dispelling some murky misconceptions along their way.

Zehra Jumabhoy is an art historian and curator specializing in modern and contemporary South Asian art.

NOTES

1. Email Interview by the author with Imma Ramos, 9/11/20.

2. Geeta Kapur, When Was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India, Tulika Books: New Delhi, 2007, pp. 307-309.

3. Interview by the author with Siddhartha V.Shah, Curator of South Asian art, at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, 16/11/20. The museum contains De, Santosh, and Mohanti as part of the Chester and Davida Herwitz Collection, renowned as one of largest collections of modern Indian art in the world. Shah has currently been researching these holdings for a rehang of the Herwitzs bequest in PEMs new South Asia Galleries. According to Shah, who interviewed Des wife, the artist steered clear of the term Neo-Tantric.

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Zehra Jumabhoy on Tantra at the British Museum - Artforum