FischerTal Posted November 22, 2014 Author Share Posted November 22, 2014 Why don't you enlighten us? Learning Urdu is secular. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hhunaeh Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 not really. If anything Marathi is more sanskirt oriented than hindi. Ie it has many more sanskirt words as part of common vocabulary than hindi. Ditto Bengali. You do realise many lanugages in India do share the devnagri script with hindi right? A tamil speaker of sanskirt will find it much easier to learn marathi than hindi. As a south indian learning to read sanskrit, would make mean i will be easily able to read hindi. If you mix that with a little hindi you hear here and there, it will make you well versed in hindi. I don't know anything about marathi. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hhunaeh Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 Hindi is watered down version of urdu, or the other way round, nobody cares, it is the same to most people down south. So you wonder how sickular hindi is? :giggle: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moniker Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 Hindi was created during partition from Hindustani, which had borrowed vocabulary from both Persian and Sanskrit. Many of the Persian words were replaced with Sanskrit words when Hindi was created. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FischerTal Posted November 22, 2014 Author Share Posted November 22, 2014 Inheritance tax proposed for those with more than 25 crores wealth. On twitter, most Modi supporters seem to be against it. What do you guys think? :hmmm: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeautifulGame Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 Fears grow about Hindu 'Modi-fication' of education Indians were flying aeroplanes, carrying out stem cell research and may even have been using cosmic weapons 5,000 years ago, according to the chairman of India's leading historical organisation.* Professor Y Sudershan Rao, the head of the Indian Council of Historical Research, has been criticized by fellow historians for comments that Hindu epics are adequate to understand the ancient world, rather than relying on evidence or research.* The BJP government appointed Rao to the prestigious academic post soon after winning the biggest landslide in three decades, fuelling concerns of a push to teach the superiority of Hindu values and mythology at the cost of academic rigour, and cutting against the grain of secularism that runs through multi-faith modern India.* "We have so many proofs that these events happened," Rao, 69, said in an interview, describing events in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epics about love and war, truth and deceit, feature characters using inextinguishable fire and weapons with the destructive power of a nuclear arsenal.* Similar views have won support from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and in part reflect a belief that India's history books are beholden to colonial powers, foreign invaders and Marxists. While there is debate over the exact age of the Hindu epics, historians say they were probably written at least two millennia ago. Rao says this in itself is proof the texts are factual because humans did not develop the art of fiction writing until a few centuries back.* Many academics are horrified by such views, and describe his appointment as a blow for the history organisation set up four decades ago to guide research and hand out grants. They point to signs of a broader plan to bring more Hinduism to the classroom through changes to the curriculum.* Two states run by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have recruited controversial Hindu nationalist Dinanath Batra to advise on writing textbooks.* In June, thousands of schools in Gujarat were given textbooks by Batra that claimed cars were invented in ancient India and told children to draw an enlarged nation to include countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.* Teachers at Batra's organisation say they want the books to be in every school.* "The lessons from today's history books are that Indians are nothing and good for nothing," said Atul Kothari, secretary of Batra's Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, or Save the Education Movement. "The truth is that historically we have been a far superior race."* Union HRD minister Smriti Irani declined to comment on what revisions will be included in a review of the curriculum planned next year.* The last time the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was in power a decade ago, it began to rewrite school books in line with Hindu-nationalist orthodoxy.* When the Congress party came back to power, it rewrote the books again. Academics say the loser in all this are confused, and sometimes ill-informed, schoolchildren.* Modi is the first Prime Minister to publicly back the view that holy texts show many discoveries of modern science were made by ancient Indians. He told an audience of doctors last month that the Hindu god Ganesh's head was evidence of ancient plastic surgery. A warrior the Mahabharata describes as born outside his mother's womb was a test-tube baby, Modi said.* "These claims can be interpreted as signs of an inferiority complex," said Romila Thapar, a leading scholar on ancient India. "The most disturbing thing is that many people accept this without questioning it," said Thapar, whose books one BJP leader has said should be burned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Precambrian Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 Fears grow about Hindu 'Modi-fication' of education Nonsensical stuff if true. But then Romila Thapar and her ilk have not exactly covered themselves in glory when it comes to telling history either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surajmal Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti on Saturday took the argument further when she said Sanskrit could, in course of time, replace English as a link language which everyone in India would understand. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/now-umas-wisdom-sanskrit-can-replace-english-as-link-language/ :agree: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkt.india Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 Sanskrit is a very difficult language to learn. Have studied it till class 12th. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeautifulGame Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 There is more chance of india dividing up as separate entities than ever Sanskrit becoming the link language to replace English Bjp if they continue this brahmin hindutva agenga of forcing Sanskrit on everyone they are going encourage the hatred feelings in the southern parts which has been dead for 40-50 years . For all the finger pointing at Pakistan situation the only time their country was actually divided was when they enforced their language not religion . BJP need to seriously realize that they won't regularly repeat the clean sweep of Hindi heartlands with modi way always in the future. If they want to grow into a pan India party and grow into south India they need to stop with this Sanskrit crap Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surajmal Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 :hysterical: Dravidian pride! When North India is the third largest economy in the world, everyone and their mothers will be getting master's degrees in Sanskrit (or Hindi). Take your pick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surajmal Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 For all the finger pointing at Pakistan situation the only time their country was actually divided was when they enforced their language not religion . Marginal political rights, disproportionate division of funds, cultural discrimination, GENOCIDE etc clearly had nothing to do with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surajmal Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 DgtJYeYaOI8#t=240 Swamy on the dravidian anxiety.:giggle: (4:00 onwards) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surajmal Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 a language has five possible reasons for it to be valuable to a populace: • A transactional language • A literary language • A liturgical language • A cultural language • A conquering language German would be a transactional language or lingua franca with only a limited set of people: Germans, some Swiss, some Dutch, I believe. It is a good literary language, but it does not jell greatly with the Indian ethos. It is clearly not a liturgical language. A cultural language is one that resonates with the culture of the people: for instance, if you read Guenter Grass’s magnificent works such as The Tin Drum and The Flounder, you can see it is replete with details of the history, the cuisine, and even the crops and fish of Kashubia (a land I have never read about elsewhere) and specifically of Danzig, now Gdansk. English is the typical conquering language, which is imposed on (and eventually, as is evident, internalized by) the conquered – as in India, Ireland, Scotland, and elsewhere. Germans didn’t conquer India, so it is not a conquering language either. If you look at Sanskrit carefully, you can see that it is many of the above: a lingua franca for most of India’s history, undoubtedly the greatest literary language of India and almost certainly of the entire classical world, the liturgical language of Hindus, and the cultural language that links the conceptual entity of Bharat. Was Sanskrit also a conquering language? Some, still harboring notions about the Aryan Invasion Fantasy, would say so, but it is increasingly evident that it was the language of the natives, not imported by some "Aryans thundering down the Khyber Pass in their horse-drawn chariots" in the bizarre imaginations of certain "eminent historians" who are past their shelf-lives. One of the (intentional) mistakes people make is in imagining that Sanskrit was only a Hindu liturgical language. Far from it. As this tweet suggests, the body of non-religious literature in Sanskrit, including everything from texts for metallurgy to off-color jokes about bodily functions, is immense. For instance there was the beautiful erotic poetry written by one Dharmakirti; it turned out the same Dharmakirti was a severe Buddhist logician! 1. संस्कृतसंवर्धनम् retweeted Hashmi Shams Tabreed @hstabreed Critics of Sanskrit hate it for its religious association not realizing its richness. Music, Science, Arts Sanskrit Literature has it all Sanskrit’s other claim to fame is that it is the most scientific human language of all time. I will have to delve into my computer science background and formal language theory to explain this. I have heard people say, "XYZ says Sanskrit is the best language to do Artificial Intelligence with" or words to that effect. This is not strictly speaking true: for AI, you need logic-based languages such as LISP or Prolog. Paninian or Classical Sanskrit (as contrasted with Vedic Sanskrit) is the most refined and precise human language ever invented. It has an astonishing property known as a "context-free grammar", and so far as I know, it is the only human language that has ever had this. Context-free means that the language is utterly unambiguous, and every sentence in it can be derived precisely from a set of rules. In Paninian Sanskrit, as embodied in the Ashtadhyayi, there are 3959 rules. Its context-free nature comes from an audacious attempt by Panini to encapsulate the infinite variety of expression in language in a finite number of rules. Even now, it is difficult to imagine that somebody, 2,500 years ago, had the chutzpah to attempt to condense infinity into a finite set of rules. This idea could have only arisen in ancient India, with its familiarity with the mathematical notion of infinity. This idea, that Panini codified, was independently re-discovered in the 1950s by IBM engineers, as they tried to figure out a way to communicate with computers. What they needed was to find a way to instruct computers in totally unambiguous fashion. So Backus and Naur came up with context-free grammars (there was some work by Noam Chomsky at MIT in this area), and lo and behold, they were astonished to find out Panini had anticipated them by two and a half millennia! The human-programmable computer languages that exist today, say C++ or Java or Ruby, can be described precisely in a few hundred rules. This precision allows these languages (and Paninian Sanskrit) to be lexically analyzed by a parser, which can then create a semantic tree structure that encodes the underlying 'meaning' of the statement (or program). That semantic tree than then be translated precisely into machine code (binary, ie 0 and 1, or hexadecimal, ie 16 characters, 0123456789ABCDEF) which will then run on the machine.The above is what compilers do – the programs that translate human-readable languages into the incomprehensible machine code (or slightly less obscure Assembly Language) that machines can understand. I worked on compiler construction for several years, and they are among the most sophisticated software in regular use. So what exactly does "context-free" mean? It means that the meaning doesn’t depend on contextual knowledge or common sense. Obviously human languages are context-sensitive: you just have to know certain things as a user of the language or else you will be confused. Here is an example of two sentences in English: 1. Fruit flies like an apple 2. Time flies like an arrow The two sentences are lexically identical, but to the human reader, based on contextual knowledge, they are vastly different. But to a computer, which has no context, they are identical. If the computer is fed the first and told that fruit flies are a kind of fly and that apples are fruits, it will create certain semantic model. Then, when given the second sentence, it will conclude that 'time flies' are a kind of fly and that arrows are fruits! It is essentially impossible to write such ambiguous sentences in Paninian Sanskrit. That is one of the reasons why word order doesn't matter in Paninian Sanskrit, as it does in English (imagine "Rama killed Ravana" and "Ravana killed Rama" as examples). That someone millennia ago was able to conceptualize, and even more astonishingly, create a Grand Unified Theory of Language is simply stunning. Let us note that even a widely acknowledged genius like Albert Einsten failed to come up with a Grand Unified Theory of Physics, even though he tried hard. Arguably, Panini’s successful effort then was the greatest accomplishment of a single mind in all of recorded history: creating something so advanced that it took 2500 years to figure out how to use it! There is another reason for the perfection of Sanskrit, and that is the logical nature of Devanagari. There is no other alphabet that so scientifically orders different sound families horizontally, and the associated types (dental, retroflex etc.) horizontally. Just consider the Roman script – it has a randomly assembled set of sounds, in no particular order, in stark contrast to the rigorous order of Devanagari. Many of us have studied another rigorously ordered scientific table that has horizontal families and vertical variants or types: that is the Periodic Table of Elements of Mendeleev, which was also so advanced that he was able to group the elements and suggest that there were gaps where new elements, yet to be discovered, belonged. The resemblance is no coincidence: Mendeelev was strongly influenced by Devanagari, and he acknowledged as much in his terminology. Where there were gaps, he would call the missing, to-be-discovered elements eka-boron, or dvi-silicon or tria-carbon, consciously using the Sanskrit words for one, two, three etc. Later, these anticipated elements were indeed discovered and given new names. So here’s an example of what Rajiv Malhotra might call "digestion" of Indic ideas into western memes, although, to be fair, there is indirect credit. From several points of view, thus, Sanskrit is not only the one candidate that deserves to be the national language – much as Israelis resurrected the once-moribund Hebrew – but it is by many measures the most perfect language ever invented: truly samskrt or civilized. There should be no reason to fuss even if it is imposed; much less when it is merely being put back into the syllabus where it used to be. http://www.firstpost.com/india/the-sanskrit-non-controversy-why-it-is-indeed-a-superior-language-1813201.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surajmal Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 Alright, last words This Sanskrit issue, is really a non issue (atleast it would be in any other part of the civilized world). Unfortunately, India has a large case of gungadeens and Dravidian flag bearers - legacy of 200 years of Raj. My hope is Namo and co. will continue their hindutva by stealth, deliver on economy and let the dogs bark. 10 straight years of BJP and majority of the presstitutes will be singing bhajans to Savarkar, anyways. Beyond that, it is all Maya. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G_B_ Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 Inheritance tax proposed for those with more than 25 crores wealth. On twitter' date=' most Modi supporters seem to be against it. What do you guys think? :hmmm:[/quote'] for Seems rich indians dont want to pay any tax. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G_B_ Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 There is more chance of india dividing up as separate entities than ever Sanskrit becoming the link language to replace English Bjp if they continue this brahmin hindutva agenga of forcing Sanskrit on everyone they are going encourage the hatred feelings in the southern parts which has been dead for 40-50 years . For all the finger pointing at Pakistan situation the only time their country was actually divided was when they enforced their language not religion . BJP need to seriously realize that they won't regularly repeat the clean sweep of Hindi heartlands with modi way always in the future. If they want to grow into a pan India party and grow into south India they need to stop with this Sanskrit crap you do realize that pakistan has enforced urdu over local languages like punjabi/sindhi right? Secondly more than language it was an ethnic issue when Mujibur Rehman won the election. That was unacceptable to west pakistani elite. It was this ethnicity. Thirdly i dont understand your point. Nobody is stopping people of TN from learning tamil as a first language. i myself am interested in learning tamil. Is there a law which says you can learn only one language? Sanskirt like Latin is a gateway language to multiple languages such as Gujarati Marathi and Bengali. All of whom i assure you are not in the Hindi belt. The very fact that the BJP are in power in Goa tells me that days of them being a hindi belt party are over. The RSS itself is more Marathi in its upper management than Hindi anyways. Due to being based in Nagpur. Is this some sort of Dravidian propaganda that the RSS is a north Indian phenomenon? Let me lay it down you you straight. The bulk of the RSS leaders of the past from Gowalkar to Bhagwat (currently) are all Maharashtrian. They are not hindi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeautifulGame Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 you do realize that pakistan has enforced urdu over local languages like punjabi/sindhi right? Secondly more than language it was an ethnic issue when Mujibur Rehman won the election. That was unacceptable to west pakistani elite. It was this ethnicity. Thirdly i dont understand your point. Nobody is stopping people of TN from learning tamil as a first language. i myself am interested in learning tamil. Is there a law which says you can learn only one language? Sanskirt like Latin is a gateway language to multiple languages such as Gujarati Marathi and Bengali. All of whom i assure you are not in the Hindi belt. The very fact that the BJP are in power in Goa tells me that days of them being a hindi belt party are over. The RSS itself is more Marathi in its upper management than Hindi anyways. Due to being based in Nagpur. Is this some sort of Dravidian propaganda that the RSS is a north Indian phenomenon? Let me lay it down you you straight. The bulk of the RSS leaders of the past from Gowalkar to Bhagwat (currently) are all Maharashtrian. They are not hindi The ethnicity and language were as much intertwined in east Pakistan as it is prevalent in south India As for the 3rd point why should we burden ourselves with a language we don't have any need .If we have any necessity they learn by their own accord . Its about freedom of choice we don't like a language we have no need for enforced on us and under Indian constitution the people have every right to oppose it As for the perception of RSS in Tamil nadu it is considered as a party of brahmin and north india frankly has been the case since rajaji time. RSS fierce support to imposition Hindi as national language and into us , their fierce support to gurukul schooling in 1950s etc .It was not about their leaders but about their agendas then.And of course dravidan parties stoked those I'll feelings greatly in the past Obviously all these perceptions have been on the wane and actually in the recent survey BJP is the 3rd largest party here with 10% vote share.But all these controversies will only harm them Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeautifulGame Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 HRD minister Smriti Irani turns down demands to make Sanskrit compulsory Taking on her critics, human resource development (HRD) minister Smriti Irani on Sunday dismissed charges that education was being saffronized even as she turned down demands that Sanskrit be made compulsory in the curriculum. "Those who accuse me of being a RSS mascot or RSS representative possibly want to deflect the attention from the good work that we have done... this agenda will be flagged and I will be whipped for as long as there is a need to keep attention diverted away from the good work. I am ready for it. I have no problem," she told PTI journalists at the agency headquarters here. Answering questions on the controversial decision to replace German with Sanskrit as the third language in some 500 centrally-run Kendriya Vidyalayas, Irani said that teaching of German under an MoU signed in 2011 had been in violation of the Constitution. An investigation has already been launched to find out how the MoU came to be signed. Responding to demands that Sanskrit be made a compulsory language, the minister said that the three language formula was very clear that any of the 23 Indian languages listed in Schedule 8 of the Constitution could be opted for. But she reiterated that German will continue to be taught as a foreign language. "...we are teaching French, we are teaching Mandarin, we teach German in the same way. For the life in me, I can't understand why people are not understanding what I am saying," she said. Irani had earlier strongly defended the decision to replace German with Sanskrit as the third language, saying the existing arrangement was in violation of the Constitution. Dismissing charges that efforts were being made to saffronise education, the minister said she has never tried to explain herself on the "basis of secularism with respect to saffronization in terms of education" while citing examples of choosing heads of institutions irrespective of their religion. Irani said while rolling back the Four Year Undergraduate Programme of Delhi University, she never had in mind which region or religion they (the students) had come from.* In this context, she defended the decision to roll back the programme, saying the degrees offered had no "legal sanction".* "My endeavour is whatever I do should be done so that it is within law and favours the students", she asserted while rejecting the notion that education is being politicized in the country.* Talking about the moves to have a new national education policy, the deliberation of which would start next year, she said the exercise would be exhaustive in nature and involve all stakeholders, besides academicians and experts, who are directly impacted by it.* "For the first time, in the history of our nation, an initiative will be undertaken where the citizen will also be engaged on this policy because education policy when we arrive upon it will have an impact for generations.* "So to ensure that those who will be impacted most also considered in terms of their views...something which I am currently structuring within the Ministry", she said.* A methodology is being prepared wherein the stakeholders apart from private sector, academicians, institutional experts and policy experts could also be engaged in drafting the policy.* It will be deliberated upon in the Ministry and in Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) which is the highest decision-making body on education in the country.* http://m.timesofindia.com/india/HRD-minister-Smriti-Irani-turns-down-demands-to-make-Sanskrit-compulsory/articleshow/45247989.cms Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G_B_ Posted November 23, 2014 Share Posted November 23, 2014 Its about freedom of choice we don't like a language we have no need for enforced on us and under Indian constitution the people have every right to oppose it and prevent it like like it was the case in 60s so you like german? is there a mass poll saying you like german? The youth in germany and austria speaks english as their second language. I have traveled there with my friends on short breaks for close to 10 years now. Barring France countries like Spain holland Italy etc all the youth speak English to varying degrees. More than Hindi, English is the snake in the grass when it comes to eroding local languages. If anything one oktoberfest i heard the Bavarians like to talk to other Gemrans in English. apparently cause their language is different from standard German. If i learn sanskirt, i can go and communicate with 70% of the indian population on atleast a basic level. (this includes the hindi belt maharashtra guj bengal goa etc etc). Who are you going to talk in German with? Where is the practicality? German is spoken by barely 2% of the world (120 million approx) . I can understand if the language in question is French or Spanish which is spoken by many countries. On top of which due to a low birth rate the number of German speakers will be in terminal decline. As i have said time and time before, the RSS does not have Brahmin ethos. The core message of the RSS is based on the teachings of Sawarkar who considered himself a hindu atheist and had little time for rituals and even temples. There are stories of him beating up priests because they spread superstition. You have to read into the Hindu mahasbha for that. They believe in a hindu cultural identity and nationalism. As for the BJP in tamil nadu, this remains one issue. The very fact the Modi is an OBC and Tamilisai is also an OBC should in itself dispel the notion that somehow BJP are just a Brahmin/upper caste party. The new defense minister is an OBC. Amit shah is not even out and out hindu, he is a Jain. In neighboring Karnataka Yeddy is a Lingayat. If a Lingayat whose religious dogma is even more distant to mainstream Hinduism can become CM in a southern state neighboring TN, there is nothing stopping the RSS from becoming a pan India organisation encompassing various national identities into it. The BJP will campaign on issues of providing better support to Tamil fisherman against SL and development. These will be the two planks. The aim will be to come second and have a post of leader of opposition. If that happens remains to be seen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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