Discovery of India Building Dr. Annie Besant Road, Worli, Mumbai - 400 018. Phone : 2496 4676 Fax : 2497 3827 E-Mail: [email protected] Newsletter Website: www.nehru-centre.org Vol. 15 Issue 9 SEPTEMBER 2014 Price Rs. 10/- Per Copy Annual Subscription Rs. 100 Events At a Glance... “Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on Democracy” Library The power of the written As a homage to Pandit opportunities for every individual word Jawaharlal Nehru in his 125th and for the greater freedom of the Creative writing workshops birth anniversary year, we are country has to be drawn up and by Ms Riya Kartha publishing some excerpts from drawn up with the framework of his speeches on Parliamentary political democracy. Political on Fridays 12th September & 26th September 2014 Democracy. Some excerpts democracy will only justify itself if Timings: 2.30 pm to 5.30 pm were published in the monthly it ultimately succeeds in producing Venue: Nehru Centre Library Newsletter of June, July and these results. If it does not, it will Age Group: 18 years and above August 2014. Some more have to yield to some-other kind of excerpts are included in the economic or social structure which Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Storyteller present issue. we may or may not like. Ultimately, it is the result that decide the An initiated discussion ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY structure a country will adopt. by Vispi Balaporia When we talk of political We want our people to have democracy, we must remember on Tuesday, 23rd September 2014 greater opportunities, not only Time: 4.30 p.m. that it no longer has the particular from an economic or material Venue: ‘Who Are We’ Hall significance it had in the 19th point of view but at other levels Discovery of India Building, century, for instance. If it is to have Dr. A. B. Road, Worli, also. We have seen in other any meaning, political democracy Mumbai - 400 018. countries that economic growth must gradually or, if you like by itself does not necessarily Open to all r a p i d l y l e a d t o e c o n o m i c mean human growth or even democracy. If there is economic national growth. We have to inequality in the country, all the keep this in mind and also Cultural Wing political democracy and all the remember that the growth of a adult suffrage in the world cannot nation has little to do with the INDRADHANUSH bring about real democracy. shouting to be heard in the Therefore, your objective must be Nehru Centre is organizing 18th market places and the stock to put an end to all differences Theatre Fesrival (Retrospective of exchanges of the country. So, an Theatre in India) showcasing the work between class and class, to bring integrated plan for the of eminent theatre directors of India. out more equality and a more economic growth of the unitary society - in other words, to 16th to 23rd September 2014, country, for the growth of the Nehru Centre Auditorium i n d i v i d u a l , f o r g r e a t e r contd. on page 2 Nehru Centre Newsletter - September 2014 1 1 strive for economic democracy. We State pressure or by law. Nothing may well be that, in the course of have to think in terms of ultimately should be allowed to come the next ten or twenty years, this developing into a classless society. between you and the achievement technological advance might That may still be a far-off idea!, I do of that social objective. A plan of change the whole aspect of the n o t k n o w . B u t w e m u s t , this type does not merely mean world and that will naturally have a nevertheless, keep it in view. establishing a number of factories tremendous effect on the life of or increasing production in some human beings. It will affect their We, in this country, must not think instances. That, of course, is thinking, their economic structure, of approaching our objectives necessary but something with a their social structure and ultimately through conflict and force. We have deeper significance, something their political structure also. achieved many things by peaceful that aims at the gradual Anything may happen. We cannot means and there is no reason why development of a particular bind the future. We can only deal we should suddenly abandon that structure of society has to be with facts as they are. method and take to violence. There achieved. Of course, you and I is a very special reason why we cannot lay down what the next I mention these broad factors, should not do so. I am quite generation must do nor can we because I feel that our minds must convinced that, if we try to attain predict what the next generation have that dynamic quality, that our ideals and objectives, however will be like. In these days of rapid quality of vision, that revolutionary high they may be, by violent technological advance, no man quality which even our experts methods we shall delay matters knows what the world will be like lack, not to speak of the average greatly and help the growth of the in the future. Because India is layman. For instance, our very evils we are lighting. India is technologically backward, we economists and our planners have not only a big country but a country sometimes discuss our big become very static in their with a good deal of variety; and if problems in a rather static way, approach. We talk of revolutions, anyone takes to the sword, he will forgetting that the very ground believing all the time that a inevitably be faced with the sword under our feet is always changing revolution is merely a process in of someone else. This clash between and may be slipping away. Unless which you can break one another’s swords will degenerate into we change with it, we may heads. That is not a revolution. fruitless violence and, in the stumble or be left behind. The fact Good or bad, a revolution is process, the limited energies of the that technological advance has something that fundamentally nation will be dissipated or, at any moved at an enormous pace since changes the political and economic rate, greatly undermined. the Industrial Revolution is well structure of the existing society. It is known; even so, we are not with this kind of background that Now, the method of peaceful emotionally aware of what is we must consider this first attempt progress is ultimately the method happening from day to day. It of ours at planning. of democratic progress. Keeping in to be contd.... mind the ultimate aim of democratic thought, it is not enough that we should simply give What Nehru said... our votes and leave everything else to look after itself. The ultimate aim COMPENSATION FOR COMPULSORY ACQUISITION OF PROPERTY is economic democracy. The ... As wise people, the duty of the judges is to see that in a moment of passion, ultimate aim is to put an end to the in a moment of excitement, the representatives of the people do not go differences between the rich and wrong; there is, of course, the possibility that they might. In the detached the poor, between the people who atmosphere of the courts, they should see to it that nothing is done that is have opportunities and those who against the Constitution, that may be against the good of the country, that have very few or none. Every may be against the community in the larger sense of the term. obstacle in the way of that aim must be removed, whether it is in a September 10, 1949 friendly and cooperative way or by Nehru Centre Newsletter - September 2014 2 SKY SHOWS : ‘Ancient Skies & Ancient Mysteries’ Timings 12 noon (Hindi) 1:30 pm (Marathi) 3:00 pm (English) 4:30 pm (Hindi) NEHRU PLANETARIUM MONDAY CLOSED A Special Astrophysics Lecture A Special Astrophysics Lecture “Twists and Turns in the Waves of the Big-Bang” by Prof. C. S. Unnikrishnan, Department of High Energy Physics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai was organized on Saturday, 26 April 2014 .We bring you the final part of his talk. Even the detection of gravitational waves from relatively nearby sources, like orbiting binary neutron stars or black holes in their final phase of life together when they spiral towards each other in a violent merger, require kilometer size interferometer detectors like the advanced LIGO, and the planned LIGO-India detector to come up in India is similar (see figure). Primordial gravitational waves from big bang can only be seen indirectly, by their twisty tattoos on the polarization of the microwave background radiation. Hence, finger printing the CMBR has become the most exciting and rewarding aspect of observational cosmology today. Detecting and analyzing the streaming CMBR, reaching us from the universe of 14 billion years ago, using detectors and devices deployed in ground-based and space-based telescopes, have allowed us in the recent past to build a credible model of the expanding big- bang universe that consists of matter, radiation, dark matter, dark energy etc. One crucial observable is the patterns of polarization of the radiation - how the electric field of the microwave radiation is oriented in the sky. While density fluctuations of matter generates one kind of LIGO Detector polarization (called the E-mode), gravitational waves from the early universe and inflation imprints on the CMBR another distinct kind of curly polarization pattern, called the B-mode.