We regret that we could not bring out the Jan-March 2009 issue and hence this issue is being produced as a combined Jan-March and April-June 2009 issue. Our entire team is dedicated to producing a quarterly magazine of high quality with lofty aims of enlightenment, as we set out to do in the beginning. It is not an easy task and we appreciate your cooperation, contribution and patience.
We regret that we could not bring out the Jan-March 2009 issue and hence this issue is being produced as a combined Jan-March and April-June 2009 issue. Our entire team is dedicated to producing a quarterly magazine of high quality with lofty aims of enlightenment, as we set out to do in the beginning. It is not an easy task and we appreciate your cooperation, contribution and patience.
The Indian mind seems to have approached the material world with a great deal of humility and child-like wonder, engaging in a never ending journey of discovery, revelation and darshan. Many a time this has been labeled as languorous, serendipitous, other worldly and even fatalist, especially by Eurocentrics. Thus the relative validity of one’s own point of view or even contemporary knowledge, acceptance of differing viewpoints or paths has been built into the system. This is not to say that absolutist, tyrannical trends that propagated certainty and denied the right to conscience did not exist in India. However the Indian mind did not accept these as legitimate and constantly rose up in rebellion against the tyranny of absolutism whenever and wherever it arose.
Such an approach is in a sense the Indian contribution to world philosophy. Not only the conquistadors and colonizers like Macaulay, Hastings, Cornwallis and Dalhousie found it perplexing, more than two millennia ago even Alexander found it mysterious. There is an apocryphal story of some camp followers of Alexander reporting to him about some strange naked Indians arguing in caves near their camp. On Alexander’s orders they were closely investigated and the learned among his followers told him that actually the naked Indians seemed to have been engaged in a deep philosophic discussion and it appeared that they were using a peculiar logic. Alexander having been a disciple of Aristotle found it intriguing and invited some of these Indians to Greece. Whatever be the veracity of this story most likely these rishis were digambar Jains discussing some fine point of syadvada or saptabhangi, and the Greeks familiar with Aristotlean binary logic found this way of looking at the material world “peculiar”.
The Cover Story, Conversations (Peepul ke Neeche), and Perspectives included in this issue have all explored this aspect of the Indian mind, which relished plurality, humility towards the external material world and its phenomena, and acknowledged the relativity of truth and the right to dissent and the right to conscience.
Pages of History deals with the struggle of Indian immigrants in Canada and the passenger of the kamagata Maru, which merged with the anti-colonial struggle. Reading in the media everyday about racist attacks on Indians in Australia makes one wonder whether things have changed at all since Komagata Maru.
There is a brief profile of Nammalwar, a very important figure from the early Bhakti movement in the land of the Tamils. His works of the early 10th century have been hailed as Tamil Veda. In the jatra festivals of important deities in Tamil Nadu the works of these bhakti saints are recited in front of the deity followed by those who chant the vedic hymns!
The section Sanskriti carries two contributions this time. In one an Indian immigrant in UK describes how he faced imperial Ist propaganda about India as a child and what motivated him later to investigate Indian history and social reality. The other contribution in this section
is a travelogue. The writer transports us to the Kala pani of the Andamans and its association with the anticolonial struggle against the British.
A distinguished material scientist has reviewed for us two recent books which have brought to light some important aspects of the history of iron and steel making in India.
We hope you will enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together. As always we await your feedback and contributions.