Sunday, June 16, 2019
Friday, June 14, 2019
A small success
A small success. I visited Heal Paradise a few times and once invited Aruna Tella to visit the place. Recently, she tried to send two children of one of the persons in Swadhar Greh to Heal Paradise since the lady is destitute and lame and has no resources to look after them. Though the institute was started with the idea of serving India (there are also artificial limb section and one for the deaf), some bureaucrat decided that these institutes should serve only the districts where they were located. Aruna contacted the organisers and told them that it is privately funded autonomous institute and cannot be dictated by bureaucrats and they offered to take up the fight. Meanwhile she phoned one of the bureaucrats concerned and told him how unjust his attitude was and also contacted some local child welfare organisers and requested them to protest. All this happened in a few hours and now the children are offered schooling there. Except for the initial medical check ups, the schooling with all the residential facilities will be free. I am very pleased that I have been supporting Aruna impressed by her altruism and courage and what all I did in the episode is suppling a few phone numbers. Even from abroad, it seems possible to help the poor in India a little if one knows some good local organisers like Aruna Tella and Rahul Banerjee.
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Heal Paradise
Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy
The untold story of Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy with glimpses of Abdul Salam along the way
Sunday, June 09, 2019
Janaki Ammal
A glorious yellow bloom in honour of botanist E.K. Janaki Ammal in passing, the article says “Records of her life available publicly note that caste and gender discrimination forced her move to the U.K. where she joined the John Innes Institute, Norwich, as a cytologist. ”
A long write up about her Gender, race and science in twentieth-century india: e. K. JanaKi ammal and the history of science by Vinita Damodaran gives more details. A shorter version here. Some excepts from Vinita Damodaran’s article:
“Born on 5 November 1897 to a lower caste family of North Malabar, Ammal had a chequered ancestry. Her mother was the illegitimate child of John Child Hannyn- gton of the Madras Civil Service, a member of a well known imperial family who had resided in India for some generations.24 Her father, who retired as a sub-judge of the Tellicherry Court, came from an educated family of the Tiyya caste; he was an employee of Hannyngton and had chosen to marry his illegitimate daughter once his first wife died. The elder daughter of Hannyngton from his Indian mistress was married to an Anglo-Indian and became Martha Feukes.25 The younger daughter, who retained her Indian name Devayani, married E. K. Krishnan in 1878. Hannyngton clearly led the double life of many British civil servants in India. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it had been a regular practice for East India Company officials to have Indian wives.”
One of the early references to brahminism is by J.C. Bose in a 1917 letter”“you know that Brahmanism and priestcraft are not unknown in English science. The evil is far more accentuated here [in India] where the number of scientific men are few, and where wire pullers have succeeded in securing positions of authority”
And “Darlington was typical of the scientific mentors of his period in that in extending his largesse to female employees under him, he often formed intimate relationships with them, if only briefly. Janaki was to prove no exception and in three of her let-ters written in the 1930s she indicates her emotional involvement with him. This was only to be a brief interlude but the relationship was one that was to dominate her life. “
A long write up about her Gender, race and science in twentieth-century india: e. K. JanaKi ammal and the history of science by Vinita Damodaran gives more details. A shorter version here. Some excepts from Vinita Damodaran’s article:
“Born on 5 November 1897 to a lower caste family of North Malabar, Ammal had a chequered ancestry. Her mother was the illegitimate child of John Child Hannyn- gton of the Madras Civil Service, a member of a well known imperial family who had resided in India for some generations.24 Her father, who retired as a sub-judge of the Tellicherry Court, came from an educated family of the Tiyya caste; he was an employee of Hannyngton and had chosen to marry his illegitimate daughter once his first wife died. The elder daughter of Hannyngton from his Indian mistress was married to an Anglo-Indian and became Martha Feukes.25 The younger daughter, who retained her Indian name Devayani, married E. K. Krishnan in 1878. Hannyngton clearly led the double life of many British civil servants in India. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it had been a regular practice for East India Company officials to have Indian wives.”
One of the early references to brahminism is by J.C. Bose in a 1917 letter”“you know that Brahmanism and priestcraft are not unknown in English science. The evil is far more accentuated here [in India] where the number of scientific men are few, and where wire pullers have succeeded in securing positions of authority”
And “Darlington was typical of the scientific mentors of his period in that in extending his largesse to female employees under him, he often formed intimate relationships with them, if only briefly. Janaki was to prove no exception and in three of her let-ters written in the 1930s she indicates her emotional involvement with him. This was only to be a brief interlude but the relationship was one that was to dominate her life. “
Born on 5 November 1897 to a lower caste family of North Malabar, Ammal had a chequered ancestry. Her mother was the illegitimate child of John Child Hannyn-gton of the Madras Civil Service, a member of a well known imperial family who had resided in India for some generations.
24
Her father, who retired as a sub-judge of the Tellicherry Court, came from an educated family of the Tiyya caste; he was an employee of Hannyngton and had chosen to marry his illegitimate daughter once his first wife died. The elder daughter of Hannyngton from his Indian mistress was married to an Anglo-Indian and became Martha Feukes.
25
The younger daughter, who retained her Indian name Devayani, married E. K. Krishnan in 1878. Hannyngton clearly led the double life of many British civil servants in India. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it had been a regular practice for East India Company
officials to have Indian wives.
Born on 5 November 1897 to a lower caste family of North Malabar, Ammal had a chequered ancestry. Her mother was the illegitimate child of John Child Hannyn-gton of the Madras Civil Service, a member of a well known imperial family who had resided in India for some generations.
24
Her father, who retired as a sub-judge of the Tellicherry Court, came from an educated family of the Tiyya caste; he was an employee of Hannyngton and had chosen to marry his illegitimate daughter once his first wife died. The elder daughter of Hannyngton from his Indian mistress was married to an Anglo-Indian and became Martha Feukes.
25
The younger daughter, who retained her Indian name Devayani, married E. K. Krishnan in 1878. Hannyngton clearly led the double life of many British civil servants in India. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it had been a regular practice for East India Company officials to have Indian wives.
Saturday, June 08, 2019
Friday, June 07, 2019
Some articles on Indian languages from Mint
Konkani: a language in crisis “Konkani became the first Asian language ever printed, in the first volume published by the first press set up in the continent, in Goa in 1556. Later, the first modern grammar book of any Indian language was Arte da Lingoa Canarim, published in 1640 by pioneering English Jesuit Thomas Stephens. By the middle of the 17th century, there was a substantial body of Konkani literature in print, described by Fordham University’s late polymathic linguist and scholar Jose Pereira as “a great achievement...far in advance of any modern Indian tongue".”
How a Bihari lost his mother tongue to Hindi
“Your Tamil pain
How a Bihari lost his mother tongue to Hindi
“Your Tamil pain
In neighbouring Assam, it was Kamrup—meaning Lower Assam and North Bengal, not the Ahom territories of Upper Assam—where the early stalwarts of Assamese culture did their life’s work. Assam from ancient times was known as Kamarupa till the end of Koch rule in the 17th century, according to the renowned Assamese linguist Upendranath Goswami.”
Thursday, June 06, 2019
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