DOCSLIB.ORG

July-September 2016, Volume 18 No. 1

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
July-September 2016, Volume 18 No. 1 DIALOGUE QUARTERLY Volume-18 No. 1 July-September, 2016 Subscription Rates : For Individuals (in India) Single issue Rs. 30.00 Annual Rs. 100.00 For 3 years Rs. 250.00 For Institutions: Single Issue Rs. 60.00 in India, Abroad US $ 15 Annual Rs. 200.00 in India, Abroad US $ 50 For 3 years Rs. 500.00 in India, Abroad US $ 125 All cheques and Bank Drafts (Account Payee) are to be made in the name of “ASTHA BHARATI”, Delhi. Advertisement Rates : Outside back-cover Rs. 25, 000.00 Per issue Inside Covers Rs. 20, 000.00 ,, Inner page coloured Rs. 15, 000.00 ,, Inner full page Rs. 10, 000.00 ,, DIALOGUE QUARTERLY Editorial Advisory Board Mrinal Miri Jayanta Madhab Editor B.B. Kumar Consulting Editor J.N. Roy ASTHA BHARATI DELHI The views expressed by the contributors do not necessarily represent the view-point of the journal. © Astha Bharati, New Delhi Printed and Published by Dr. Lata Singh, IAS (Retd.) Secretary, Astha Bharati Registered Office: 27/201 East End Apartments, Mayur Vihar, Phase-I Extension, Delhi-110096. Working Office: 23/203 East End Apartments, Mayur Vihar, Phase-I Extension, Delhi-110096 Phone : 91-11-22712454 e-mail : [email protected] web-site : www. asthabharati.org Printed at : Nagri Printers, Naveen Shahdara, Delhi-32 Contents Editorial Perspective 7 Intellectual mercenaries, the Post-Independence Avataras of the Hindu Munshis 1. North-East Scan Assam Floods: Another Perspective 11 Patricia Mukhim Manipur: Maintaining Sanity in the Times of Chaos 14 Pradip Phanjoubam 2. Pre-Paninian India Linguistic Awareness from Rig Veda to Mahabharata 17 Dr. Damodar Thakur 3. The Preliminary Research of Hindu Sculptural Artifacts of Vijaya Period in Champa in Binh Ðinh Province 28 Phan Anh Tu 4. In Favour of Freedom of Expression 49 Koenraad Elst 5. Is ‘Dalit’ Activism Just Propaganda by Other Means? 64 Rajeev Srinivasan 6. Indian History and the Colonial Historiography 75 Makkhan Lal 7. Colonial Imprint on Historiography in India 92 Navaratna Rajaram 8. New Perspective on Ancient Indian History in the Context of Emerging Insights 100 Come Carpentier de Gourdon 9. Stupidity in the Garb of Scholarship 108 B.B. Kumar 10. Wendy Doniger’s Vulgar Hindu History 124 Shankar Sharan 11. Sati Evangelicals, Baptist Missionaries, and the Changing Colonial Discourse 145 Meenakshi Jain 12. Sub-regionalism in South Asia: Potentials and Prospects of BBIN 155 Mohammad Monirul Islam 13. Energy Scarcity and Ambiguity making India Vulnerable against Non-Traditional Security Threats 172 Prabhavit Dobhal 6 DIALOGUE, Volume-18 No. 1 Editorial Perspective Intellectual mercenaries, the Post-Independence Avataras of the Hindu Munshis India is a vast country, and, as is expected, it also has its problems, as any country of its size and complexity is expected to have. Unfortunately, such problems are often aggravated by a section of our intellectuals and the media. Spoiled by the political patronage, they simply raise the issue at the high emotional pitch; create confusion, rather than suggesting remedies, whenever there is change of guard. Presently, two issues, rather two critical problems related to Kashmir and cow-protection, are being hotly debated in the Indian press. One finds a lot of empty perverted rhetorical discourse in the same. Many good Samaritans advise soft human approach in case of Kashmir. But how, when one confronts the cruel face of a terrorist? Indian Express has published the papers of Harvansh Mukhia, Kancha Illaiyah, and many others. Most of the papers writers indulge in empty perverted rhetorical discourse. Mukhia, a retired Marxist professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, as usual, cannot free himself from colonial Marxist paradigm. According to his paper, The pseudo alternative, “The Sangh Parivar has furthered the colonial understanding of India’s past.” He further writes: “Even as it hopes to divide and rule by pitting gaurakshaks against the beef eaters, the Parivar’s agenda of rewriting history and bringing back the glories of ancient India remains a pipe dream. It’s not for nothing that there has not been a single book or even an article from its historians that has been under discussion on any platform, right wing or left wing over the past few decades.” Here, it needs mention that Mukhia is wrong on many counts. He is not only giving a political statement, rather indulging in sloganeering, but also lacks professional honesty. At least none can blame RSS of intra-Hindu social divide, and for the oppression of a section of the Hindus. And again only the Marxists accept the equation of caste and class; and it DIALOGUE, Volume-18 No. 1 7 is not RSS, but the Marxists, who are responsible for retention of colonial constructs, such as ‘Aryan Aggression Theory’ (now Aryan Migration Theory) in our curricula. Mukhia is dishonest that he brings to reference the names of Prime Minister Modi and Smriti Irani, rather than that of Dharmpal, Ram Swarup and others in a discourse of historical nature. Persons like Kancha Illaiyah with the agenda of intra-Hindu divide, or those who are incapable of feeling the pain of those who revere the cow and equally feel the pain of our Dalit brothers have deep-rooted bias and agenda. Unfortunately, some newspapers and channels have become willing partners in such nefarious game. Anyway, what is going on is not an innocent phenomenon. Input of investigative journalism, may perhaps help in finding the reality. Elliot and Dowson’s massive eight-volume History of India as Told by its Own Historians, wrote about a strange Indic phenomenon related to Indian history writing. It was about the attitude, the mindset, of the Hindu Munshis writing about the Muslim rulers in India, who, as we know, mostly employed Muslim Munshis for recording the happenings/developments during their rule. The Muslim Munshis recorded with utmost joy the defeat of the Hindu rulers by the Muslim ones, massive Hindu massacre and their enslavement, and the destruction of their temples and settlements. The Hindus, killed in the war, were always dispatched to hell; this being so even in the case of one commanding a Muslim army. On the other hand, if a Muslim lost his life, he was a martyr, and has his place reserved in the heaven. Strangely, and to his extreme surprise, Sir H.M. Elliot found even the Hindu Munshis sharing the same attitude towards the Hindus. He labelled such Hindu Munshis as the “slavish crew;” Ram Swarup, a well-known scholar and thinker, just called them ‘Hindu Munshis.’ Sir H. M. Elliot found that some of the annalists, the chroniclers of events employed by foreign Muslim kings in India were Hindus also. But the results were no better. He observed that ‘‘from one of the nation we might have expected to have learnt what were their feelings, hopes, faiths, fears, and yearnings, of his subject race,’’ but this was not to be. He further wrote: “not one of this slavish crew who treats the history of his native country subjectively, or presents us with the thoughts, emotions, and raptures which is a long oppressed race might be supposed to give vent to.” Ram Swarup observes: “This tribe of Hindu Munshis or the ‘slavish crew’ of Elliot have a long life and show a remarkable continuity. Instead of diminishing, their number has 8 DIALOGUE, Volume-18 No. 1 multiplied with time. Today they dominate the universities, the media and the country’s political thinking.” Thus, the Hindu Minshis of the Saltnat or Mughal period did not vanish from the Indian scene; their progeny, or better to say they themselves appeared in their avatara, as the intellectual mercenaries or the intellectual sepoys. We find all the myths, distortions and hypotheses of the colonial days, as well as present day Western and Marxist, or even Stalinist distortions in their writings. Irfan Habib, in an earliest debate on History writing, declared that “Stalin’s classic essay on dialectical and historical materialism” was nothing less than “undoubtedly an advance over Marx’s own early ideas.” For him the caste system of Indian society “so well bears out the Marxist conception of a class society.” Habib glorified the Turkish invasion of India as it ‘‘freed the artisans from certain old restraints’’ and “laid a new basis for the growth of trade and commerce.’’ Facts have secondary importance for Irfan Habib; as the fixed conclusions were already drawn when he was 31 years old. All he wanted was “to apply the Marxist method” for which he needed “particular kind of facts.” (Irfan Habib, Marxist interpretation, in Seminar, New Delhi, Nov. 1962). Today, 85, Habib, along with other Stalinists like Romila Thapar et al., has hardly changed his stance, except a necessary disguise of terminology, forced by the demise of Soviet imperialism. Another difficulty with such scholars is their arrogance, which they share with some Western scholars. When confronted by some rival scholar, they simply refuse discourse. As for example, when Rajiv Malhotra, a well-known scholar, raised certain questions about the writings of Wendy Doniger about India; she refused to discuss the same with him and wanted to meet him as a scholar meeting a native informer. The same kind of arrogance was shown by Romila Thapar to Sita Ram Goel, who sent a questionnaire, given below to her along with his book in which he had pressed the Marxists to supply the relevant information about the destruction of the temples by the Hindus, claimed by the Marxists on the same line as the record of the destruction of Hindu temples by Muslims exists. So he requested the Marxist professors to produce the relevant information as per the following questionnaire: 1) A list of epigraphs which record the destruction of Buddhist and Jain monum ents and Animist shrines by any Hindu, at any time; 2) C itations from H indu literary sources describing destruction of Buddhist and Jain m onum ents and Animist shrines by any H indu, at any time, at any place; DIALOGUE, Volume-18 No.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Secrets of RSS
    Secrets of RSS DEMYSTIFYING THE SANGH (The Largest Indian NGO in the World) by Ratan Sharda © Ratan Sharda E-book of second edition released May, 2015 Ratan Sharda, Mumbai, India Email:[email protected]; [email protected] License Notes This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-soldor given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person,please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and didnot purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to yourfavorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hardwork of this author. About the Book Narendra Modi, the present Prime Minister of India, is a true blue RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or National Volunteers Organization) swayamsevak or volunteer. More importantly, he is a product of prachaarak system, a unique institution of RSS. More than his election campaigns, his conduct after becoming the Prime Minister really tells us how a responsible RSS worker and prachaarak responds to any responsibility he is entrusted with. His rise is also illustrative example of submission by author in this book that RSS has been able to design a system that can create ‘extraordinary achievers out of ordinary people’. When the first edition of Secrets of RSS was released, air was thick with motivated propaganda about ‘Saffron terror’ and RSS was the favourite whipping boy as the face of ‘Hindu fascism’. Now as the second edition is ready for release, environment has transformed radically.
    [Show full text]
  • JNU, the Headquarters of the Breaking India Enterprise by Saumya Dey
    JNU, the Headquarters of the Breaking India Enterprise By Saumya Dey There is a bundle of bile and toxicity, namely, a book, available in the market. It is somewhat pompously titled as What the Nation Really Needs to Know – The JNU Nationalism Lectures. This book contains, between two covers, nearly all the opinions and propaganda used by the breaking India protagonists on the JNU campus. Understanding the Breaking India Enterprise We owe the phrase ‘breaking India’ to that wonderfully insightful book co-authored by Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan (Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines). I am rounding it off by adding the word ‘enterprise’ to it, for it is an activity, pursued by a nexus of church groups, private think tanks, academics and NGOs, that employs and provides a livelihood to a lot of people within and outside India (as we see in the book). What is this enterprise’s objective? Well, as Messrs. Malhotra and Neelakandan have demonstrated, it primarily seeks to promote and exploit faultlines in Indian society in order to breed various kinds of separatist identities (Dravidian or Dalit), presumably to further the disintegration of India. There is, however, another aspect to the breaking India enterprise. Many of its votaries seek to alienate Indians from the Indian state through persistent conversations about its oppressiveness. They also harp on the artificiality of the Indian nation that serves as its basis. Their intention perhaps is to ensure that the average Indian ceases to be emotionally invested in the Indian nation-state so that it can be easily undone.
    [Show full text]
  • Caste Versus Class: Social Mobility in India, 1860- 2012
    Caste versus Class: Social Mobility in India, 1860- 2012 Gregory Clark, University of California, Davis Zach Landes, UCLA, Anderson School1 September, 2012 Using surname distributions, we compare long run social mobility rates for elite and underclass groups in India 1860-2012, with those of other societies such as Sweden and the USA. It is not clear whether recent social mobility rates in India should be higher or lower than in the West. The caste system notoriously embedded privilege in elite castes. But since Independence a quota of places in higher education, and in government jobs, have been reserved for the former lower castes. These quotas are now as great as 50% of such positions. Social mobility rates in India, however, prove to be extremely low, and not any higher now than under the Raj. Despite extensive social engineering India seems to be an unusually immobile society. We hypothesize that this immobility stems from continued strong marital endogamy in India. Introduction India is an interesting society in which to study rates of social mobility. On the one hand it entered the modern era with the legacy of the Hindu caste system, which found echoes also in Muslim society, which limited intermarriage, and even social intercourse, between those of different castes. This system of exclusion was so powerful that different castes and sub-castes, even within small geographic areas, have distinct DNA profiles. 2 There is the underfunded and poorly functioning primary and secondary public education system, which those of means have largely abandoned in favor of private schooling. Further many of the poor are located in rural areas for which educational provision is particularly poor, and private 1 With thanks to Lincoln Atkinson for his great help in digitizing the 2.2 million names of the Kolkata voters roll of 2010.
    [Show full text]
  • Hindutva and Anti-Muslim Communal Violence in India Under the Bharatiya Janata Party (1990-2010) Elaisha Nandrajog Claremont Mckenna College
    Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CMC Senior Theses CMC Student Scholarship 2010 Hindutva and Anti-Muslim Communal Violence in India Under the Bharatiya Janata Party (1990-2010) Elaisha Nandrajog Claremont McKenna College Recommended Citation Nandrajog, Elaisha, "Hindutva and Anti-Muslim Communal Violence in India Under the Bharatiya Janata Party (1990-2010)" (2010). CMC Senior Theses. Paper 219. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/219 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you by Scholarship@Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in this collection by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CLAREMONT McKENNA COLLEGE HINDUTVA AND ANTI-MUSLIM COMMUNAL VIOLENCE IN INDIA UNDER THE BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY (1990-2010) SUBMITTED TO PROFESSOR RODERIC CAMP AND PROFESSOR GASTÓN ESPINOSA AND DEAN GREGORY HESS BY ELAISHA NANDRAJOG FOR SENIOR THESIS (Spring 2010) APRIL 26, 2010 2 CONTENTS Preface 02 List of Abbreviations 03 Timeline 04 Introduction 07 Chapter 1 13 Origins of Hindutva Chapter 2 41 Setting the Stage: Precursors to the Bharatiya Janata Party Chapter 3 60 Bharat : The India of the Bharatiya Janata Party Chapter 4 97 Mosque or Temple? The Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi Dispute Chapter 5 122 Modi and his Muslims: The Gujarat Carnage Chapter 6 151 Legalizing Communalism: Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act (2002) Conclusion 166 Appendix 180 Glossary 185 Bibliography 188 3 PREFACE This thesis assesses the manner in which India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has emerged as the political face of Hindutva, or Hindu ethno-cultural nationalism. The insights of scholars like Christophe Jaffrelot, Ashish Nandy, Thomas Blom Hansen, Ram Puniyani, Badri Narayan, and Chetan Bhatt have been instrumental in furthering my understanding of the manifold elements of Hindutva ideology.
    [Show full text]
  • The Imperial and the Colonized Women's Viewing of the 'Other'
    Gazing across the Divide in the Days of the Raj: The Imperial and the Colonized Women’s Viewing of the ‘Other’ Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Vorgelegt von Sukla Chatterjee Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Hans Harder Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Benjamin Zachariah Heidelberg, 01.04.2016 Abstract This project investigates the crucial moment of social transformation of the colonized Bengali society in the nineteenth century, when Bengali women and their bodies were being used as the site of interaction for colonial, social, political, and cultural forces, subsequently giving birth to the ‘new woman.’ What did the ‘new woman’ think about themselves, their colonial counterparts, and where did they see themselves in the newly reordered Bengali society, are some of the crucial questions this thesis answers. Both colonial and colonized women have been secondary stakeholders of colonialism and due to the power asymmetry, colonial woman have found themselves in a relatively advantageous position to form perspectives and generate voluminous discourse on the colonized women. The research uses that as the point of departure and tries to shed light on the other side of the divide, where Bengali women use the residual freedom and colonial reforms to hone their gaze and form their perspectives on their western counterparts. Each chapter of the thesis deals with a particular aspect of the colonized women’s literary representation of the ‘other’. The first chapter on Krishnabhabini Das’ travelogue, A Bengali Woman in England (1885), makes a comparative ethnographic analysis of Bengal and England, to provide the recipe for a utopian society, which Bengal should strive to become.
    [Show full text]
  • Trends in Indian Historiography
    HIS2B02 - TRENDS IN INDIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY SEMESTER II Core Course BA HISTORY CBCSSUG (2019) (2019 Admissions Onwards) School of Distance Education University of Calicut HIS2 B02 Trends in Indian Hstoriography University of Calicut School of Distance Education Study Material B.A.HISTORY II SEMESTER CBCSSUG (2019 Admissions Onwards) HIS2B02 TRENDS IN INDIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY Prepared by: Module I & II :Dr. Ancy. M. A Assistant Professor School of Distance Education University of Calicut. Module III & IV : Vivek. A. B Assistant Professor School of Distance Education University of Calicut. Scrutinized by : Dr.V V Haridas, Associate Professor, Dept. of History, University of Calicut. MODULE I Historical Consciousness in Pre-British India Jain and Bhuddhist tradition Condition of Hindu Society before Buddha Buddhism is centered upon the life and teachings of Gautama Buddha, where as Jainism is centered on the life and teachings of Mahavira. Both Buddhism and Jainism believe in the concept of karma as a binding force responsible for the suffering of beings upon earth. One of the common features of Bhuddhism and jainism is the organisation of monastic orders or communities of Monks. Buddhism is a polytheistic religion. Its main goal is to gain enlightenment. Jainism is also polytheistic religion and its goals are based on non-violence and liberation the soul. The Vedic idea of the divine power of speech was developed into the philosophical concept of hymn as the human expression of the etheric vibrations which permeate space and which were first knowable cause of creation itself. Jainism and Buddhism which were instrumental in bringing about lot of changes in the social life and culture of India.
    [Show full text]
  • Temple and Songs Links
    TEMPLE AND SONGS LINKS This is a modest attempt to explore the famous temples of India and post songs composed in praise of each of them culled out form many sites . I've never come across a site that provides such information. Of course, there are close to 30000 temples in Tamil Nadu alone and it would take a long time to even cover 1% of these but it never hurts to start! I hope this information will be useful to carnatic music lovers of our group . I for one is a buffllo when it comes to carantic music ragas . but documented information is power hence this documentation . Meenakshi Sundareshwarar Temple (Madurai) The Meenakshi Amman Temple at Madurai is one of the most famous temples in South India as this is where, according to Hindu legends, Lord Shiva appeared on Earth in the form of Sundareshwarar to marry Pandya King Malayadwaja Pandya's daughter, Meenakshi (believed to be an incarnation of Hindu Goddess Parvati). A detailed article on this divine marriage can be found here http://templenet.com/Tamilnadu/Madurai/legend3.html. As mentioned in the article, the legend of Meenakshi Kalyanam brings together four of the six main streams in popular Hinduism - Shaiva, Shaktha, Vaishnava, and Skanda faiths. Before describing this beautiful temple in detail, I' d like to share a recording of a wonderful song composed by Sri Papanasam Sivan, in praise of the Goddess Meenakshi at Madurai. The song is 'Devi Neeye', rendered by the late M.S.Subbulakshmi. According to legend, Lord Sundareshwara (as Sundara Pandya) and his consort Goddess Meenakshi ruled over Madurai for a long period of time.
    [Show full text]
  • Impact of Spirituality on Thousand Years Old Cuttack City in Business
    American International Journal of Available online at http://www.iasir.net Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences ISSN (Print): 2328-3734, ISSN (Online): 2328-3696, ISSN (CD-ROM): 2328-3688 AIJRHASS is a refereed, indexed, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary and open access journal published by International Association of Scientific Innovation and Research (IASIR), USA (An Association Unifying the Sciences, Engineering, and Applied Research) Impact of Spirituality on Thousand Years Old Cuttack City in Business Management and Communication Pintu Mahakul Doctoral Candidate, Department of Business Administration Berhampur University, Bhanja Bihar, Berhampur-760007, Odisha, INDIA Abstract: This is true that human beings live with many hopes and attitudes in society and cooperation, integration, business and exchanging services become inevitable parts of life. Management of social affairs and communication become main aspects of society and thousand years old Cuttack city stands to witness success where people of many languages, caste, colours, religions and ideologies unite for brotherhood. Keeping great cultural and spiritual heritage of this city ahead and observing continuous degradation of values in modern society this study comes within mind to know about impact of spirituality on city which binds people in one thread of love and teaches values and ethics for management of society and business. Skill of effective communication is the medium of interaction and we learn values of communication having this study. This again keeps importance for developing new theories of communication for business management basing on spiritual perspectives and values drawn from Cuttack city. Reviewing historical literature and going deep to this study we know that spiritual movement positively impacts people and spiritual environment is field of sustainable development.
    [Show full text]
  • A Thesis Submitted for the Award of the Ph.D. Degree of UNIVERSITY of KOTA in the Faculty of Arts by TANU RAJPAL Under the Supe
    MYTHOLOGICAL AND FOLK ELEMENTS: A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE SELECTED NOVELS OF RAJA RAO AND R.K.NARAYAN A Thesis Submitted for the Award of the Ph.D. degree of UNIVERSITY OF KOTA in the Faculty of Arts By TANU RAJPAL Under the supervision of Dr. (Mrs.) Jatinder Kohli Department of English Government College Kota, Kota. UNIVERSITY OF KOTA, KOTA 2017 (i) Dedicated to my Father & Mother, For their ceaseless Love and Inspiration. (ii) DECLARATION I, Ms. Tanu Rajpal D/o Sh. Anil Rajpal resident of Vigyan Nagar, Kota, hereby, declare that the research work incorporated in the present thesis entitled Mythological and Folk Elements: A Critical Study of Selected Novels of Raja Rao and R. K. Narayan is my own work and is original. This work (in part or in full) has not been submitted to any University for the award of a Degree or a Diploma. I have properly acknowledged the material collected from secondary sources wherever required. I solely own the responsibility for the originality of the entire content. Date: Signature of the Candidate Place: Kota (iii) SUPERVISOR'S CERTIFICATE I feel great pleasure in certifying that the thesis entitled Mythological and Folk Elements: A Critical Study of Selected Novels of Raja Rao and R. K. Narayan embodies a record of the results of investigations carried out by Ms Tanu Rajpal for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English, Govt. College, Kota, Kota (Rajasthan) under my guidance. I am satisfied with the analysis of data, interpretation of results and the conclusions drawn. It is an original piece of research carried out by the candidate under my supervision.
    [Show full text]
  • Missionary Position: the Irony of Translational Activism in Colonial Orissa Debendra K
    Document generated on 09/29/2021 9:26 a.m. TTR Traduction, terminologie, re?daction Missionary Position: The Irony of Translational Activism in Colonial Orissa Debendra K. Dash and Dipti R. Pattanaik Traduction engagée Article abstract Translation and Social Activism Translating was crucial to the missionary project everywhere, especially after Volume 18, Number 2, 2e semestre 2005 the Protestant Reformation. In their competition to expand their reach, various denominations of missionaries not only translated the Scriptures into the URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/015766ar various local languages where they went, but also mediated various modern DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/015766ar institutions like the school system, health-care and print-technology in those traditional societies. These institutions and the activity of translation were often the means to achieve the ultimate goal of proselytization. Their rate of See table of contents success in achieving their goal in different places varied for several reasons. In places like Orissa where there was a deep-rooted cultural and religious tradition, their rate of success was very low. Even the forces of modernity they Publisher(s) tried to mediate were regarded with suspicion for a long time on account of the peculiar political condition prevalent in Orissa at that time. Their activism in Association canadienne de traductologie Orissa during the early part of 19th century was conflated with colonial hegemony. Moreover, the racial and cultural pride of missionaries prevented ISSN them from respecting the local condition and culture. Therefore, the 0835-8443 (print) translations they undertook were perceived as ridiculous and were summarily 1708-2188 (digital) rejected.
    [Show full text]
  • William Carey: Did You Know? Little-Known Or Remarkable Facts About William Carey
    Issue 36: William Carey: 19th c. Missionary to India William Carey: Did You Know? Little-known or remarkable facts about William Carey Dr. R.E. Hedland is missionary lecturer for the Conservative Baptist Fellowship Mission Society in Mylapore, India. He is the author of The Mission of the Church in the World (Baker, 1991). William Carey translated the complete Bible into 6 languages, and portions into 29 others, yet he never attended the equivalent of high school or college. His work was so impressive, that in 1807, Brown University conferred a Doctor of Divinity degree on him. William Carey is often called the Father of Modern Protestant Missions. But the first European Protestant missionaries to Asia arrived almost a century before he did. By the time Carey established his mission community, there were thousands of Christians in a Pietist-led settlement in southern India. William Carey’s ministry sparked a new era in missions. One historian notes that his work is “a turning-point; it marks the entry of the English-speaking world on a large scale into the missionary enterprise—and it has been the English-speaking world which has provided four-fifths of the [Protestant] missionaries from the days of Carey until the present time.” Due to an illness, Carey lost most of his hair in his early twenties. He wore a wig for about ten more years in England, but on his way to India, he reportedly threw his wig in the ocean and never wore one again. This famous phrase is the best-known saying of William Carey, yet Carey never said it this way.
    [Show full text]
  • By Koenraad Elst
    History of Hindu India for everyman By Koenraad Elst Nowadays, multiculturalist state authorities in Western countries encourage the newer and more exotic religious denominations to produce textbooks explaining in simple language their own traditions and doctrines. While formally serving as textbooks for the religion’s own followers and their children, their interest for the authorities lies in the religion’s self-presentation to society at large. This way they know what gestures to make and what gaffes to avoid, and what holidays to acknowledge in the official calendar. An additional benefit is that it streamlines the religions’ self- understanding in a multiculturalism-friendly sense: even religions with a record of intolerance find they cannot get away with a straightforward restatement of their monopolistic claims on truth, and end up teaching pluralism to their children in spite of their inherited dogmas. This latter consideration is really quite unnecessary in the case of Hinduism, because the Hindus never needed any prodding from outside to take a pluralistic view of religion. Hinduism itself is already a commonwealth of communities, doctrines and practices, so it is thoroughly comfortable with peaceful co-existence in spite of differences. The Dutch, British and American textbooks of Hinduism that we have seen are simply being authentic when they declare unisono that Hinduism has a hoary tradition of heartfelt pluralism. Thus also the latest Hinduism textbook, under review here, The History of Hindu India from Ancient to Modern Times, by the editors of Hinduism Today magazine (Kauai, Hawaii) and Prof. em. Shiva Bajpai. It says: “Hinduism does not dictate one way as the only way.
    [Show full text]