The library foundation announced Tuesday, Dec. 8, it has selected JLG Architects to be the project's architect of record and JE Dunn to serve as construction manager. JLG was founded in Grand Forks and now has offices in North Dakota, Minnesota and South Dakota, while JE Dunn, headquartered in Kansas City, has a large footprint across the country, including offices in Dickinson and Williston, N.D. Contract negotiations with both companies are underway, according to a news release.

In September, the foundation picked Norwegian-American architecture firm Snhetta to design the high-profile project. However, library CEO Ed O'Keefe said "its important to have a North Dakota firm take the lead" that's where JLG comes in. The company's "critical role" will involve holding all of the contracts for Snhetta and its subcontractors while working with JE Dunn to "realize the vision of the project," O'Keefe said.

This is a North Dakota initiative bringing North Dakota jobs, said Ken Vein, the library's director of design and construction. The Architect of Record and Construction Manager are just the start of what will be a multi-year, multi-million-dollar investment in North Dakota.

The foundation also announced Tuesday it is adding new offices in Bismarck and Medora, as well as two new full-time staffers in the state. Tony Erickson, of Grand Forks, will serve as the associate director of design and construction, and Amy McCann, of Medora, joins as the administrative director of design and construction, according to the release.

The project has picked up steam in the last six months, culminating in October when the foundation announced it had reached a goal of raising $100 million in private donations, including $50 million from Rob and Melani Walton of the Walmart fortune. The milestone came with the promise of public funding as the foundation unlocked an endowment that Gov. Doug Burgum and the state Legislature approved last year.

As part of the deal to receive public money, the foundation will pay $300,000 to the city of Dickinson as reimbursement for planning on the library that was previously slated for the city. The foundation announced it will also set aside $10 million by the end of 2021 to be given to Dickinson State University to establish a digital archive of Roosevelt-related documents.

The proposed library is meant to honor and recount the complex story of Theodore Roosevelt, the one-time governor of New York who became the 26th president of the United States. As a young man, Roosevelt spent parts of three years hunting and ranching in present-day western North Dakota before his career in national politics took off.

O'Keefe said the foundation hopes to have the library open to the public by 2024 or 2025.

Contact Jeremy Turley at jturley@forumcomm.com or on Twitter at @jeremyjturley.

See the rest here:
North Dakota architecture, construction firms hired to help build Roosevelt library - Grand Forks Herald

Qatar National Library is taking a leading role in preserving the culture and history of Qatar, the Gulf, and the Arab and Islamic worlds. To fulfil this important mission, the Librarys facilities are equipped with the resources, technology and infrastructure to provide the highest quality digitization of heritage items, preserving them and making them accessible to researchers for generations to come, while also making them freely available to the entire world.

Digitization describes a process where physical materials are converted into digital versions which can be understood and stored by computers.The Library has, at the time of writing, digitized over 10 millionpages from various collections including 5 millionArabic pages from Qatar National Librarys Heritage Collection and nearly 2.8 millionpages from the Arabic Collection of New York University.

Digital conversion of materials has advanced rapidly in the past few years, with Qatar National Library at the forefront of this process in the Middle East and on the world stage.The Library digitizes information via Optical Character Recognition (OCR), the technical practice of extracting text from images. The process itself is becoming popular in terms of usage and research, as it spans multiple areas of science, including image processing, machine learning, information retrieval and artificial intelligence.

Hany Abdellatif, Head of Digitization Services at Qatar National Library, is responsible for overseeing the Librarys huge digitization efforts:

Using OCR images brings the documents to life and allows users to discover every bit of information stored within. At the Library, we have mastered multiple techniques and algorithms to capture text; these methods include both human and automated process.

The marriage of human interaction with technological advances, he says, is vital to ensuring the success of the process:

We have built an accurate system which streamlines our work, and harmonizes the roles and responsibilities between humans and machines to reach the maximum quality of the extracted text. With the proper tools and algorithms, the Librarys digitization team has built a system which covers 99% of printed Arabic text based on shape, quality and size. Its a process which has taken some time to master, but we now have a system that is accurate and reliable.

The Librarys digitization technicians scan a wide variety of heritage items, including rare manuscripts, books, maps, newspapers, magazines, photos and microfilms. Technicians then go through each individual item to ensure its quality is controlled, performing tasks such as colour curve correction, editing resolution settings, image compression and noise removal.

Nasser Al-Ansari, Director of IT Operations and Infrastructure at Qatar National Library says the Librarys digitization processes tie inwith its overall mission to preserve Islamic history and culture, and technological advances are making this vision become reality.

The Library is committed to the preservation of heritage items not only in our region, but across the entire Islamic world. We have come a long way in building a reliable process to digitize content for the benefit of spreading rich Arabic knowledge, and we are committed to working harder to fulfil that goal. Having access to the latest technology at the Library enables us to realise this ambition.

In addition to ongoing efforts to digitize the Librarys collections of rare books, manuscripts, maps and photographs, the Librarys Digitization Center works on digitization projects with other heritage collections in Qatar and international institutions. These include projects at New York University (NYU) of more than 8,000 Arabic books in NYU library collections, which will also be available on Qatar National Librarys online platforms.

Nasser Al-Ansari adds: Our teams goals are numerous; we want to increase and enhance the visibility, accessibility and usability of the Librarys collections, and those of other organizations, including unique and rare materials that meet research and educational needs. We also want to provide access to collections at the Library which can no longer be physically available due to their fragile condition.

Preservation has developed into a critically important part of managing Qatar National Librarys most precious assetsits collection. Digitization is a key cog in this process, and the Librarys digitization technicians are acutely aware of the importance of their role.

Hany Abdellatifsays:We also hope to encourage the creation of digital Arabic content, while protecting the original materials by reducing frequent handling during reference use, and maintain important Arab and Islamic heritage and historical materials, preserving our history for many years to come.

Nasser Al-Ansari also sees digitization as complimenting other preservation and conservation services:

Digitization is part of a package of long-term investment for our heritage items, and an important section of our preservation and conservation services. Unlike microfilm, digital images dont help to preserve the original; digitization assists us by reducing physical wear and tear on the original. Its therefore vital that we see digitization not as replacement for a proper preservation program, based on conservation treatments or improved storage conditions, but as part of this holistic process of conservation of our treasures.

Read this article:
Qatar National Library Making Sense of the Past in a Digital World - Al-Bawaba

I am one of the frequent users of the National Library in Jalan Tun Razak, Kuala Lumpur. I have been using this library for decades. Im extremely disappointed that the National Library has chosen to remain closed for CMCO for several months now.

I, among other users, demand for the management of the National Library to justify its decision to not allow the public to borrow its books as usual. If F&B businesses, retail outlets, and offices are operating as usual, with stringent SOPs such as masks and social distancing, why cant the National Library do the same? After all, that was precisely the SOP that the libraries took between the MCO and CMCO!

I made several trips to the National Library during the several months that it was open this year, and I did not see anything peculiar or risky at all. After all, this is the new norm.

And just how long will the National Library remain closed? Until the end of Covid? Until the vaccine comes?

I thank the National Library for being generous in not issuing fines for books that are returned late due to its closure. However, I am afraid the National Libraries simply does not understand the very trait of its core customers WE WANT TO READ BOOKS! Not just online ones!

Besides, the online books offered by the National Library are extremely limited.

To the National Library (as well as community libraries), please understand your customers!

A VERY FRUSTRATED CUSTOMER

Kuala Lumpur

See the article here:
The National Library does not understand its customers - The Star Online

By Tara OConnor, Local Democracy Reporter

Dozens of families came out to support their local library amid fears council cuts could see it closed for good.

The future of five Croydon libraries has been left hanging in the balance as the council works to close a 67m gap in the budget.

Croydon council has said Broad Green, Bradmore Green, Sanderstead, Shirley and South Norwood libraries could all be lost.

As part of a 500,000 council plan, South Norwood Library was due to move from its current outdated and inaccessible Lawrence Road site into a new space in Station Road, on the ground floor of Brick by Brick development Pump House.

However, a year after it was set to open, building delays mean that the transition is yet to happen. And now the council says it is one of the five in Croydon that may close.

More than 100 protesters gathered outside Pump House on Saturday.

Libby Hamilton, whose petition to save the library has gained 2,600 signatures, said: There was one little kid holding a sign saying whats a library mummy? we really want our children to know what a library is and appreciate it.

Ms Hamilton, who has lived in the area since 2007, works in childrens publishing and regularly takes her two-year-old son Jacob to the library.

She added: We wont find out until January what is being proposed, but whatever happens with the building as a whole, we need a library within that building staffed by librarians.

We are really in danger that the council suggests we have a room full of books managed by volunteers.

It is like saying we can have a disco but no DJ or a church without a pastor.

Childrens author Laura Henry, creator of Jo Jo and Gran Gran on CBeebies, attended the protest.

Afterwards, she tweeted: I lived in South Norwood for 10 years. My sons and I practically lived in this library.

Libraries are the heart of a community and books and reading are super important.

A public consultation on the plans is set to take place, where proposals for the libraries will become cleared.

Last week, cabinet member for leisure, Councillor Oliver Lewis, said: The following factors have been taken into account in our decision making. Things like footfall, book issues, PC sessions, geography, cost of repairs and maintenance.

On that basis we will be going out on consultation on the closure or alternative cost neutral models of operation of five libraries.

The new Friends of South Norwood Library is looking for volunteers to join the group and has planned a zoom meeting for anyone interested on Thursday at 7.30pm.

For more details click here.

Pictured top, and inset, protesters out on force at the weekend

Please make cheques payable to MSI Media Limited and send by post to South London Press, Unit 112, 160 Bromley Road, Catford, London SE6 2NZ

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick has encouraged everyone in the country who can afford to do so to buy a newspaper, and told the Downing Street press briefing recently: A free country needs a free press, and the newspapers of our country are under significant financial pressure.

So if you have enjoyed reading this story, and if you can afford to do so, we would be so grateful if you can buy our newspaper or make a donation, which will allow us to continue to bring stories like this one to you both in print and online.

See more here:
Dozens of families come out in support of five Croydon libraries threatened with closure - London News Online

Only those who are passionate about art can understand the magnetic pull that demands you to pursue your dreams in this exquisite subject. A journey in the field of art is unlike any other industry, owing to its subjective and emotionally charged nature. Here are a few tips for those art enthusiasts trying to make inroads into this enchanting, but daunting field.

Here are 5 tips to embark on a career in art:

When embarking on a journey in the business of art, its crucial to build the discipline of remaining true to ones craft. Being so deeply immersed in ones craft that one ignores what the market wants is the responsibility of every creator.

Taking a cue from our Bhagavad Gita, where Shri Krishna famously says Whatever the result of the action, calmly do your duty without seeking a reward. Right action is bound to bring the right result, so it is not necessary to run after it. If you create what inspires you, the success is bound to follow.

The length and breadth of art spans limitless genres, mediums, eras and styles. Thus, its crucial for every artist and art business to have an artistic voice that is unique and focused.

It could be a distinct style, or a particular medium or even a rare subject that immensely inspires you. Without an artistic voice, one could be lost at sea in an industry that is brimming with competitive talent.

Through every stage of building your business, immerse yourself in the world of art. Understanding the landscape of any industry is crucial to businesses, but few are as pleasurable as viewing art.

Take every opportunity to attend museums, architectural masterpieces, galleries- travel and collect a wealth of inspiration.

In a world run by social media, art businesses stand at a natural advantage. With all businesses striving to create beautifully designed feeds filled with riotous colours, the nature of the art businesses effortlessly allows you to accomplish this.

Building a community of patrons can kick-start your dream in the art world. Ensure every aspect of your branding and social media is as stunning as your art.

Let your workspace serve as a source of inspiration. A creative flow is extensively influenced by your surroundings and can breathe life into your work. Make sure to fill your studio with natural light, greens, colours and everything that drives and motivates your creative process.

Creativity takes immense courage, but the pursuit of your dreams in art will undoubtedly be a colourful and rewarding journey. In the words on Van Gogh, If you hear a voice within you say You cannot paint, then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

- Article by Amrita Deora, Founder & CEO, The Designera

Read: Career in Animation: Skills needed, job roles, salary and companies hiring

Read: Want to build your career in Video Animation? Here are 6 job roles for animators

Read: Be a game artist and turn your gaming love into a career: Know about skills, salary and job prospects

Continued here:

5 tips to embark on a career in art - India Today

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, December 6

Karnal Smart City Limited (KSCL), a special purpose vehicle looking after the Smart City project, has chalked out a plan to develop a heritage corridor on a stretch of around 4 km between Shrimad Bhagavad Gita Dwar near Baldi Bypass and Clock Tower Chowk in the city.

Set up in 1808 and one of the oldest in the country, the 200-year-old Christian cemetery, Cantonment Church Tower, old court building, record room built in the British era, Victoria Memorial Hall and Kos Minar will be part of the corridor in the first phase. Meanwhile, in the second phase, during the expansion of the corridor, the century-old buildings of Civil Hospital and Karnal Club will be included.

CONSTRUCTION IN TWO PHASES

The plan will be tabled in the meeting of the Board of Directors of the KSCL on December 11 for the final approval. Once approved, the work on the corridor is expected to be completed by April 2021.

Karnal has a rich legacy of heritage and has proposed to develop this corridor, which will act as a city-level attraction for tourists. Besides, it will help facelift these sites along with preserving heritage and providing information about the culture, said Nishant Kumar Yadav, DC and CEO, KSCL.

As per historians, Karnal was captured in 1805 by the Britishers and was made into an Army Cantt in 1806. More than 500 graves of European soldiers and their family members are buried in this cemetery. However, due to the lack of maintenance, wild grass has now grown over the graves.

Earlier known as St James Church, the Cantonment Church Tower will also be beautified. Broken links in the pathway will be connected for making surrounding areas more accessible. Architecture lighting will also be taken care of for safety concerns,

The buildings of old court and record room along with the Victoria Memorial Hall, all built in the British era, will also be developed as heritage buildings. Ancient structures are mostly in the Victorian architecture style. Facade restoration will be the main component and the internal part will be painted keeping the original texture intact. The restored building will be reused as a public building. Thematic lights will be added to the old ones. Work will be done on the entry plaza to make it more inviting. The beauty of the Kos Minars will also be visibly enhanced, he added.

Link:

Heritage corridor likely in Karnal by April next - The Tribune India

Last month, Collins Dictionary unveiled its word of the year: lockdown, defined as the imposition of stringent restrictions on travel, social interaction and access to public spaces. As Collins explained: We have chosen lockdown as our word of the year because it encapsulates the shared experience of billions of people who have had to restrict their daily lives in order to contain the virus. Meanwhile, Merriam-Webster went with pandemic, with runners-up quarantine and asymptomatic. And the Oxford English Dictionary, instead of choosing a single word, issued a 38-page report analyzing the use of dozens of words, including coronavirus, doomscrolling, social distancing and systemic racism. Given the phenomenal breadth of language change and development during 2020, the report explains, Oxford Languages concluded that this is a year which cannot be neatly accommodated in one single word.

I disagree. There is a single word that sums up 2020 and does encapsulate, in a deeper sense, the shared experience of billions of people this year. That word is resilience. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity. Its that quality that allows us to overcome challenges, obstacles, hardship and adversity, instead of being defeated by them.

The reason resilience is my word of the year is because, unlike quarantine and coronavirus and social distancing, resilience is the only one thats going to be just as relevant when the pandemic is over. Resilience is the quality that was summoned in us by all the challenges of 2020. And its also the quality thats going to carry us forward into 2021.

Resilience is often spoken about including in the Oxford dictionary definition in terms of navigating or simply getting through challenges. But the key part of resilience isnt about bouncing back, its about bouncing forward. Its about using adversity as a catalyst to get better and become stronger.

Of course, weve always needed resilience. But what weve learned in 2020, at both the individual and collective levels, is that at a time of so many losses and such deep uncertainty and anxiety, we simply cant do without it. Right now were all waiting for a vaccine to bring the pandemic to an end. But our challenges wont end when the pandemic does. And resilience is the vaccine we already have its our immune system for the inevitable ups and downs of life. Just as with our bodys immune system, the hostile agents are always there and always coming at us. Resilience allows us to tap into deeper resources in ourselves we didnt even know we had, not just to overcome the obstacles but to be transformed by them.

Certainly its not hard to see the urgent need this year for resilience. According to a recent C.D.C. report, 41% of Americans have struggled with mental health issues, like anxiety, depression or substance abuse related to the pandemic. The American Psychological Associations Stress in America report found that nearly 8 in 10 adults say the pandemic is a major source of stress, and 60% are overwhelmed by the issues currently facing America. And suspected overdoses went up 18% in March, 29% in April and 42% in May.

These are depressing numbers, but an important thing to remember is that though our need for resilience is endless, so is our capacity for it. Its not a finite resource, or a quality we are born with that we cannot develop later in life. But as Norman Garmezy, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota and a pioneer in studying resilience, found there are protective factors that make some people better able to handle adversity than others. Indeed, Emmy Werner, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, followed high-risk children for 32 years and found that the resilient children, even as toddlers, tended to meet the world on their own terms. However, as Maria Konnikova wrote in The New Yorker, some people who werent resilient when they were little somehow learned the skills of resilience. They were able to overcome adversity later in life and went on to flourish as much as those whod been resilient the whole way through.

So the power to build resilience is within us; just as we can learn other skills through practice, we can teach ourselves to be more resilient. We can make ourselves more or less vulnerable by how we think about things, George Bonanno, a clinical psychology professor at Columbia Teachers College, said. Events are not traumatic until we experience them as traumatic.

You can let your loss and pain be the catalyst that divests you of whatever is not needed and takes you to the core of who you are.

Though the science unpacking the psychological and neural mechanisms of resilience may be recent, in many ways, its confirming a concept thats been at the heart of spiritual and philosophical traditions for millennia. In the Bible, were told that God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love. Lao Tzu, the 6th century B.C. founder of Taoism, taught us that if you correct your mind the rest of your life will fall into place, and that knowing others is knowledge, knowing yourself is wisdom, while in the Bhagavad Gita, were reminded that happiness arises from the serenity of ones own mind.

Stoic philosophers understood this well. As they have taught us, while we cant control what happens in the external world, we do have control over our inner world and how we respond. For Epictetus, this meant that men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things. In other words, do we see crises solely in terms of the havoc they have wrought, or also as opportunities to get stronger and grow?

Science has confirmed everyday ways to nurture our resilience through sleep, taking time to unplug and recharge, gratitude, social connection and the belief in something larger than ourselves. In an interview about her work on resilience, Emmy Werner talked about the role spirituality plays in cultivating greater resilience. Its not about any one organized religion, but what faith provides for you as an emotional support, as a way indeed of making sense of your life and your suffering, and also as a way to help you become a chain that you yourself give back something to others who have given to you. Thats a very, very important part of the community of faith that should be more appreciated by people that either want to foster resilience or study it. In other words, we draw strength and support the community, and also from giving back, which studies have shown creates a helpers high that has a powerful impact on our resilience and well-being. There is a lot of evidence that one of the best anti-anxiety medications available is generosity, Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, said. The great thing about showing up for other people is that it doesnt have to cost a whole lot or anything at all, and it ends up being beneficial to the giver.

If youll forgive a proud mother moment, my daughter Isabella has written about the connection between pain, resilience and spirituality in her first book, Map to the Unknown, which was released as an Audible Original last week. It chronicles the story of what happened after she was hit by a bike in the streets of New York. What began as a concussion became three years of debilitating pain, but also a transformative emotional and spiritual journey of learning to trust the universe and her inner voice. When something senseless happens that our minds cant explain or justify or control, its a fork in the road, a moment of choice, she writes. One fork is to go into despair and cynicism and raging at the universe (which is the route I first chose), or if you never believed in anything as amorphous as God or the universe, you can double-down on how meaningless life is. Or you can choose the other fork: starting the journey to finding deeper meaning in even the most senseless events in your life. You can let your loss and pain be the catalyst that divests you of whatever is not needed and takes you to the core of who you are.

This has been a tragic year for so many a year of so many losses and so much grief. And yet, what the science and wisdom of resilience show us is that, as horrible as this year has been, the long-term impact on both our individual and our collective lives as a society is not predetermined or fixed. Its no coincidence that the group of people whose lives were shaped by the Great Depression and World War II were branded The Greatest Generation. This has been a year in which weve learned what we need and what we dont need, what adds value to our lives and makes us stronger, and what depletes us. By tapping into those parts of our lives that many of us were ignoring or not tending to before this year, we can nurture our resilience and create a new normal for 2021 one thats not simply going back to the pre-pandemic status quo, but one thats a better normal. Its our resilience that offers us a chance at true transformation, allowing us to go deeper, connect with what we truly value, grow and expand.

Its a common refrain on social media to want to say goodbye to 2020. But our goal should be more than to just get through 2020, which will pass no matter what we do. The new year will inevitably come, but what kind of year will it be? What lessons will we carry with us to shape it into a year of hope and possibility? How will we have been transformed based on what we have experienced? That is up to us. And the more we summon and strengthen our resilience, the more we can bounce forward into a new and better year.

Subscribe here for Ariannas On My Mind Newsletter, where youll find inspiration and actionable advice on how to build healthy habits, resilience and connections in our unprecedented times.

Read more from the original source:

Arianna Huffington: Why Resilience Is My Word of the Year for 2020 - Thrive Global

Earlier this week, a video of a Shiv Sena leader promising to organise an Azaan recitation competition for Muslim children went viral on the internet. The proclamation drew severe flak from netizens on social media websites and invited criticism from the opposition parties like the BJP.

Several social media users criticised Shiv Sena for its brazen pandering to the minorities. The BJP, on the other hand, accused Shiv Sena of bartering Hindutva for minority votes. One of the BJP leaders slammed Shiv Sena for its decision to organise an azaan recitation competition and alleged that the only thing left for Shiv Sena now is to carry a green flag on its shoulders.

Unnerved by the criticism his announcement garnered, Shiv Sena leader Pandurang Sakpal, who had claimed that Shiv Sena would organise an azaan recitation competition on the lines of Bhagavad Gita recitation and even reward the winners, made an about-turn, stating he has no plans on conducting such an event.

However, it appears that the party is bent on tying itself in knots as it tries to defend the indefensible. Earlier today, an editorial was published in party mouthpiece Saamana, lambasting the critics for Senas contentious announcement of organising an azaan recitation competition.

In its bid to criticise the detractors accusing the party of courting minorities, Shiv Sena leader and Rajya Sabha MP, Sanjay Raut, who is also the editor of Saamana, proffered a bizarre and ambiguous analogy in the editorial that lends itself to multiple interpretation.

Dragging Shiv Sena through the mud on the issue of azaan recitation competition is akin to calling protesting farmers in Delhi Pakistani terrorists, the editorial published in Saamana said. This ambivalent parallel drawn by Sanjay Raut in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece can mean a host of things. Here are the four things that Raut could have meant with this absurd comparison.

The most basic interpretation of the aforementioned analogy in Saamana could mean that Shiv Sena agrees that the protests carried out in Delhi are done by Pakistani terrorists. This assertion may not be far-fetched as the protests convulsing the national capital region and the Punjab-Haryana border has seen participation from pro-Khalistani elements.

At the very least, it would seem like political parties, Khalistani elements etc have come together to mislead farmers, spread misinformation, and ensure that the country burns.

Deep Sidhu, a Punjabi actor, became the face of the protests after his video threatening a security official manning a barricade went viral on the internet. Subsequently, Sidhu was offered a platform by Barkha Dutt and Shekhar Gupta to come clean on the allegations of him being a Khalistani supporter. However, Sidhu dug his heels in, hailing Khalistani terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as a revolutionary fighter who fought for a strong federal structure and refusing to condemn him as a terrorist.

It is an established fact that Khalistanis, in their heydays during the 1980s, were morally and financially supported by Pakistan. The ulterior motive of Pakistanis then was to dismember India as a retributory action for the secession of Bangladesh back in 1971 by aiding the Khalistanis. In this context, Pakistan had waged a proxy war on India with the help of Khalistanis. The Khalistan supporters and sympathisers can therefore be effectively compared to Pakistani terrorists, who are trying to revive militancy and stoke unrest in India.

If Sanjay Raut did not mean that the protesters thronging the national capital are terrorists, then the corollary that naturally follows it would imply that for Shiv Sena and Sanjay Raut, Khalistanis are not terrorists, since the protests were decidedly hijacked by Khalistani proponents.

The protests and blockades carried out by the so-called protesters saw posters of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale being raised at various places. On other instances, protesters could not hide their Khalistani impulses. The demonstrators gloated on former PM Indira Gandhis assassination and threatened PM Modi with a similar fate. Pro-Khalistan slogans were also raised by the protesters who were apparently demonstrating against the three new agriculture laws.

Since Shiv Sena has a history of trading their ideology for petty political gains, it remains to be seen what is Sanjay Rauts stand on Khalistanis who had taken over the farmers protests. Would Shiv Sena condemn the protests or will it, like its alliance partnersNCP and Congresscontinue to turn a blind to the Khalistani presence in the ongoing protests?

Another interpretation that the ambivalent analogy lends itself to is that Shiv Sena is being humanitarian in respecting azaan and minority sentiments. However, admitting to this would effectively mean that Shiv Sainiks in the past were cruel ruffians who allegedly targeted and harassed the states Muslim populace.

Ironically, Sanjay Raut which claims Sena of being a secular party, had in the past asked for disenfranchisement of Muslims. In an editorial published in Saamana in 2015, Raut had called for barring of Muslims from voting, stating that the masks of the secularists will come off if Muslims are disenfranchised. For a long time now, Shiv Sena had preened itself on being a party whose members played an instrumental role in levelling the controversial Babri structure in Ayodhya. Shiv Sena leaders have also been convicted of orchestrating the riots in 1992 in which several Muslims were killed.

The partys past antecedents do not jibe with this interpretation of Shiv Sena being an inclusive and pluralistic party in organising the azaan recitation competition. Nonetheless, if Shiv Sena still persists with this outlook, it would mean denouncing its past and therefore implicitly admitting that it was a party of radical fundamentalists earlier.

The last interpretation that emerges from Rauts absurd comparison is that whoever does not agree with Shiv Sena is a terrorist and must be treated as one. This appears to be the most likely case when Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said that criticising Shiv Sena for keeping Azaan recitation competition is tantamount to calling protesters in Delhi terrorists.

This stance was evident in its full glory when the Uddhav Thackeray government relentlessly pursued Republic TV, just because it asked uncomfortable questions of the Uddhav Thackeray government.

Ever since Arnab Goswami criticised the state government on its handling of Palghar lynching of Hindu sadhus, the Maharashtra government, of which Shiv Sena is a part, carried out a relentless witch hunt against the journalist and his channel Republic TV. Multiple FIRs were lodged against him. Republic TV employees were routinely harassed. A Republic TV crew was unlawfully jailed when they were pursuing an investigative story in Navi Mumbai.

Mumbai Police commissioner called out a press conference to allege that Republic TV had indulged in manipulating TRPS. Later, it was found that the complaint had mentioned India Today and not Republic TV. The culmination of this witch hunt resulted in the arrest of Arnab Goswami, who was arrested by a phalanx of armed police officials and lodged in the Taloja jail. Mr Goswami had claimed that he was treated like a terrorist and not allowed to meet his lawyers.

Similarly, actor Kangana Ranaut was also attacked by Shiv Sena after she likened Mumbai to Pakistan occupied Kashmir after Azaadi graffiti had defiled the streets of the city. In response to her remarks, BMC demolished her office. The Bombay High Court recently slammed that BMC, stating that the demolition was carried out with malafide intent and directed the corporation to compensate the actor for her loss.

We really have no idea what Sanjay Raut really meant, but that is ok. We are used to it. Arent you yet?

Visit link:

Raut gives bizarre analogy trying to defend party after Azan row: Here are 4 things that he could have meant - OpIndia

More News 08 Dec 2020 | 10:54 PM

Ranchi, Dec 8 (UNI) The Coronavirus tally in the state on Tuesday reached to 1,10,639 as 182 cases were detected across 20 districts of Jharkhand.

Shillong, Dec 8 (UNI) Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma is scheduled to meet Governor Satya Pal Malik on Wednesday to discuss the Inner Line Permit and Meghalaya Resident Safety and Security (Amendment) Bill, 2020 (MRSSA).

Agartala, Dec 8 (UNI) A day after his own party men raised slogans demanding his removal in front of BJP national secretary and central observer for Tripura Vinod Kumar Sonkar, Chief Minister of Tripura Biplab Kumar Deb on Tuesday invited people of the state to assemble next Sunday at Stable Ground here to decide whether he should continue in the office.

Ranchi, Dec 8 (UNI) The Bharat bandh, called on Tuesday by the farmers unions, hit the normal life in many districts across the state.

Patna, Dec 08 (UNI) The nationwide shutdown call of the farmers on Tuesday against the Centre's new farm laws evoked mixed response in Bihar where road and train services, which were disrupted by the protestors, gradually resumed in the afternoon.

Link:

Dhankhar remembers freedom fighter Khudiram Bose on his birth anniversary - United News of India

Voices of Dissent: An Essay. Romila Thapar. Seagull Books. 2020. Pages 164. Rs 374.

Writer Romila Thapar would have made a great environmental activist. She believes in recycling.

Unfortunately, she is a historian and she recycles the same old propaganda lines in style and, more importantly, with authority, which stems more from her ideological network than genuine scholarship.

In her latest book, Voices of Dissent: An Essay, she promises to take her readers on a journey into the history of dissent in India from Vedic times to Mahatma Gandhis satyagraha and "places in context the recent peaceful protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens.

The book has a narrative that has been told right from the day when the first Protestant missionary started exhibiting its despise for Hindu Dharma "the Brahminical priestcraft" oppressing the people.

Since then, this evangelist theme has resurfaced many times and in different jargons such as Indological, Marxist, Post-Modern and so on. Here, Thapar provides the same old opiate of the colonised academics, though packed in a new wrapper.

In the first section of the long essay, the villains of the narrative are outlined. Her word jugglery could be admired but for the boring repetition of the same old yarn she weaves.

For instance, she acknowledges that it is incorrect to speak of an Aryan race that is the escape window but discusses about the Other of the Arya which she identifies as those who could not speak the Vedic language.

So, throughout the first section of the essay, she presents the typical Aryan-Dasyu/Dasa binary with Vedic religion practising uniconic ritualism and the Dasas/Dasyus, phallic worship as they could not speak the Vedic language properly etc.

She even distorts the elevating episodes of Kavashaka and Satyakama. A reading of Kavashaka and Satyakama stories show that while the Vedic society was as hierarchical as any contemporary society with social exclusions, the Vedic values were against both social stratification and exclusion.

If one is to find a continuity for satyagraha and dissent then one can find that right in the soulful protests of Kavashaka, which in turn resulted in the Brahmins asking for his forgiveness.

In Satyakama being admitted to the school of sacred learning there is social emancipation. Even Thapar is forced to acknowledge that, when she says, "here the Varna identity gave way to an ethical qualification.

But then she asks her readers not to accept this as positive aspect of the Vedic culture but to see a hint of a subtle and new socio-religious interface of a more complex kind. Worse, she tells her readers how to read the Vedic texts with a prejudiced framework: "The dasas is the culture of the Other.

Then come the Shramanas whom she considers as possessing social good at their heart, but persecuted by adherents of Brahminism. Though today, this theory itself has been questioned heavily, she happily repeats the same lines.

Later, when it comes to the Islamist times the Other becomes more nuanced. Those rebelling against the sultanate and Mughal empire, including the collaboration between the forest-dwelling and urban-rural warrior communities, acquire a new label and even a motive. The covet reference is obviously to the Bhil-Rajput cooperation and resistance to Mughal onslaught.

So she speaks of "the few cases where the adivasi clans had assisted adventurers to acquire political power" and then of "some concessions of status" by the rulers like applying tilak by the "adivasi chief" at the time of coronation of Rajput kings.

But, here, one should note the language. The vanvasi-Rajput cooperation amounts to assisting adventurers, and liberation from the empire is portrayed as "acquiring political power". More importantly, freedom fighters, true rebels like Rana Pratap Singh, become "adventurers". Rituals that came into existence in recognition of the sacrifices of vanvasi communities are relegated to "concessions".

While Thapar wants to present an alluring narrative that flows seamlessly from Shramanas to satyagraha, she meets a problem in Gandhis satyagraha being rooted in his reading of Bhagavad Gita. She tries her best to somehow disconnect Gandhi from traditional Gita but fails pathetically.

However, for the faithful and the establishment, this may appear like an academic miracle whereas any true Gandhian scholar would see only a clumsy sleight of hand.

The whole exercise by Thapar is to fabricate a historical continuity to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) agitations. The true implications of the continuity is the slow but sure destruction of Hindu communities in India right from the day of the first Islamist marauders slaughter of Hindus because they were Hindus to the 1971 East Pakistan genocide, where the countrys army was given written orders to account for the number of Hindus they killed.

The real democratic dissent has its roots in Vedic literature where a Kavashaka, taunted for being born to a dasi woman, would summon the river Saraswati. In a remarkable continuity of this assertion of spiritual oneness of all traditions and divine equality, Ravidas would summon river Ganga. Later, Sreedara Iyyavaal in southern Tamil Nadu, when ostracised by the Brahmin community for giving the ritual food to a socially excluded person, would make Ganga flow out of his well.

In all these traditional narratives beyond or bereft of the supernatural elements, there is dissent against social stagnation and a push towards social emancipation. That force for that push comes from the values which continue as invisible strands right from the Vedas.

Mahatma Gandhi himself defined swarajya as a Vedic concept no less and considered his satyagraha as being derived from his Vaishnavism. And coming to civil disobedience, the most visible democratic form of dissent in modern times, the most comprehensive and detailed study of its traditional roots in Indian context has been done decades before Romila Thapars present book by Dharampal a really dissenting historian dissenting to the established power structures of academia and media.

The book Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition was first published in 1971 by Varanasi-based Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, now it forms the second volume of the collected works of Dharampal.

The foreword was written by Jayaprakash Narayan, another dissent in the truest and most honest sense of the term. The book explores the protest movements by Indian people in the beginning of the nineteenth century decades before the 1857 uprising.

In both the books, (Dharampal (1971) and Thapar (2020) one can find superficially strikingly similar passages but there are crucial, basic differences.

Thapar follows the Marxist model (which is also subtly Eurocentric) where the dissent is traced to a particular group or ideology and set against the other. In this case, it is Brahminical versus the non-Brahminical.

The pre-modern society is depicted as having marginalised or subjugated dissent but it was always present. Then whatever ideological movement with which Thapar aligns herself with in this case anti-CAA movement, is shown to be a continued but conscious evolved form of that historical dissent.

Dharampal bases his book on empirical data. He does not have binaries. Then from the data, he points out the alternative ways of looking at history different from the establishment history. Unaffected by colonisation of the brain, he points out how the colonial raj with its inherent infallibility of the state created a disruption in the traditional way in which people and the rulers were related.

This can be illustrated by two quotes from each of the books. The first is from Thapar:

Read the original here:

Romila Thapars Latest Is Recycled Work Of An Evangelist Theme Brahminical Oppression - Swarajya