Experts Exchange vs. Stack Overflow

Well well well. It's well known that stackoverflow.com is this and that
and everything else. But there is one thing that it is not. It's not a good
platform to "discuss" a question.

You ask a question and people "answer" it. The best answer is voted up. There
is not an easy way, that you could ask something again in the same thread.
If you feel the need to discuss it, you have to ask a separate question and hope
that people answer that one too.

Experts Exchange does it well. In fact, that's what it does.

Uganda blues

One of our neighbors married their daughter in Uganda. The guy is from Jodhpur,
as are we and our neighbors. It happened around an year back. The couple is in
Jodhpur right now for a wedding in the family. I had a chance to meet her today
and find out about the life after marriage and in Uganda.

Her in-laws are here in Jodhpur, so in a way she is free from some unnecessary
chores. But the time she is spending with them right now is pretty much same
as that of an average Indian daughter-in-law : rather bad. I wouldn't dwell
on that though.

Before marriage, she was told that her husband would settle back in India
in an years' time. And that's why she and her parents said yes. But now
he seems to have changed his mind, or may be it was that way already, who knows?

In Uganda, they live on the second floor of a building. In the basement there is a pub.
Couple of months ago, 6 people were shot dead by a soldier in that pub. In another
incident, a thief was lynched by the mob in the main market.

Talking of food, it's the same old story for Indians. Vegetarians continue to suffer
outside India.

Among the Indians living there, which are predominantly Gujjus and South Indians,
unity is conspicuous by its absence. Factionalism rules the day for Indians. Anyone
not belonging to these communities is bound to fend for himself. And a Marwari couple
like them is neither in this group nor in that group. Hence "hum to beech mein latak
gaye yaar".
(There is a lone Sindhi shopkeeper too, who runs a grocery shop. A Gujju, just besides
him runs a grocery shop too. The Gujju's shop is always busy, as opposed to his
neighbor.)

Medical and educational facilities are pathetic there. Weather isn't very kind either.
You could sometimes see three seasons in a single day. It rains a lot there. And the
rain follows its own rules. For 3 months it rains in the morning, for next 3 in the
afternoon, and in the night for another 3 months. Malaria is the name of the game.

Elections are due in Uganda in 2011. And the Asians(Indians and Chinese) have started
to get the threats already. In the time of Edi Amin, the Indians were chased away.
This time "you will be killed", say the political goons.

All in all, she just wanted to come back to India anyhow. Given her husband's inclination,
it doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon. As he would like to "save some more",
before "settling" in India.

Tehelka's BJP Rescue Mission

Govindacharya Interview

I am quoting from Kulkarni’s article that a lot of the BJP’s allies went away because of Gujarat. Do you agree?
I don’t agree with it. Because the allies have come closer to the BJP for two reasons. One, when they don’t have to protect a Muslim base because there is no Muslim vote base in their state, be it Orissa, Punjab, Haryana or even Tamil Nadu. Two, when they think that the BJP’s vote share is more than the Muslim vote in their state, they just measure it in terms of loss and profit and then they ally, like in Bihar.

Tehelka's BJP Rescue Mission

Source

"The Hindutva project was constructed on tapping into and fostering fear and a siege mentality within Hindus: a sense of being a minority in a country in which they are clearly a numerical majority. In itself, this was not a bad thing. You need a political party to ‘summit’ these emotions so you can manage them."

Tehelka's BJP Rescue Mission

Another Article

"Most people forget, the Congress Party, the original party of the freedom movement, allowed many of its members to simultaneously belong to both the Congress and the Hindu Maha Sabha or other Hindu nationalist formations. This was very prevalent in Bengal because a huge proportion of Bengali freedom fighters came from a background of Hindu nationalism."

"Veer Savarkar, the Hindutva fountainhead, insisted that Hindus must not read the Vedas and Upanishads but read science and technology and western political theory, this is what he had in mind."

"Few people remember that Savarkar was very secular in his personal life – in the western sense. He refused to have his funeral rights according to Hindu custom; he wanted his body taken for cremation in a mechanised vehicle rather than the shoulders of relatives. He also refused to give his wife a Hindu funeral though women members of the Hindu Mahasabha sat in front of his house on a dharna."

"Savarkar’s main criticism of Gandhi, in fact, was that he was unscientific, irrational and illiterate in modern political theory. He was wrong about that. Gandhi did understand political theory, but it had deeper roots, taken not only from Indian society but from the dissenting West.

Gandhi did not believe in the modern nation state or in conventional ideas of nationality, nation and nationalism. He went on record to say that armed nationalism is no different from imperialism. At that point in our history, he seemed a romantic fuddy duddy. The fact is, he was way ahead of his time.

He understood that India was particularly well-equipped to craft its own version of a modern nation state. It was under no obligation to follow European textbook definitions of the nation state. The irony is that today many western nations are moving away from the old model and becoming more flexible: 14 countries in Europe do not maintain any armies and have opened their borders to become the European Union. On the other hand, because of our colonial past, India and China are two of the purest forms of 19th century nation states you can find in the world today"

"The current upheaval could be a creative moment both for the BJP and the RSS. Unlike the RSS heads that have gone before him, Mohanrao Bhagwat is not a very conspicuous ideologue. Nobody expects anything out of him. Because of this, he has the opportunity to be truly creative. But westernised Brahmins and modernity can be a lethal combination. It cuts you off from your native Indian genius. So will they be able to spot the moment?"

Tehelka analyzes the past,present and future for BJP

Excerpts from the latest edition of Tehelka :|

Interview of RSS Spokesman Ram Madhav
The RSS ideologues say they’re against violence, but they create an environment that fosters violent reactions. For instance, you always invoke Aurangzeb as a black mark against Muslims. How does he pertain to 21st century Muslims?
If we say Raja Jai Singh — who joined hands with Akbar to defeat Maharana Pratap — is a traitor, does it mean Hindus get offended? Just because Muslims get offended, should we project Aurangzeb as a great secular leader?


MS Golwalkar, who was the head of the RSS, wrote that Nazism was something Hindustan needed to learn from. That Nazi Germany was proof that a nation cannot accommodate races of different cultural roots.
You have frozen your mind in a 1938 book. Have you read what Guruji Golwalkar said in his 1972 book, India and the Minority Question? In 1938, people were glamorising Hitler. Golwalkar never said a word admiring Hitler. He only said that Nazism shows that through one nationalist sentiment you can mobilise people as one nation. But after the holocaust, Guruji didn’t subscribe to it. Nazism has nothing akin to RSS ideology. We praise how the Jews rose as a nation after Hitler’s crimes against them. We teach our people about Israel as the experience of how a nation can reemerge.

Tehelka

Recently I recommended this magazine named Tehelka to some of my friends.
I told them the articles/essays in this magazine are very well written, informative
and thought provoking.
But a lot of them have an image of Tehelka as a sensational magazine, which
has been established since Tehelka broke the defense scandal.
Even I had the same conception earlier, but reality is different.
I just wish more and more people read this magazine, even online.

Another Suicide by an IIT Student (Kharagpur)

Source

"According to institute sources, Kumar was an average student who had failed to clear one of the semester papers. “It is possible that he had stayed back because he had a backlog to clear but his department has not been able to confirm it,” said U.P. Singh, the security officer of the institute."

"Kumar’s suicide is the second in the institute in two months. On April 24, fourth-year student Ramananda Rao K. from Andhra Pradesh was found hanging in his room in the Nehru hostel."

Rebirth

One theory regarding reincarnation is that souls come back to the earth
in a physical body to complete their unfulfilled wishes. So, for example,
if I wished to and couldn't top my college, in my next life, my soul would try to take
birth in a family, where the chances of becoming a college topper are higher.

Or, if I missed out on the luxuries of an all-American lifestyle in this life,
my soul could choose to be born to a wealthy American couple in the next
birth, and so on..

This theory sounds very soothing and comorting :-), but the problem is there
would be many more souls like my own competing out there in the higher space
for choosing the right place and person to be born as. So, competition would
remain an inseparable fact of the afterlife as well. And who, but the fittest
will survive even there :-) So, no comforts even in the afterlife :-(

ExpertsExchange Vs. StackOverflow

Snapshot taken today at Alexa
Here is a traffic comparison between Experts-Exchange and Stackoverflow over past few months. As one of stackoverflow's founders said, stackoverflow was sort of anti-experts-exchange, it's interesting to note that their traffic seems to be reaching at the same level in
a very short span of time. Strangely enough, the peek that is visible in SO's traffic, is coincident
with the sharp decline in EE's traffic.

Game

Life is a game. So we're all competing against each other,
though in a healthy manner. During any game, people
keep competing, and shake hands and pat each other
only after the game is over.

So, all of us should keep competing against each other
till the life is over, and only then should we shake
hands, be friendly to each other.

Till then, .......

Racial attacks on Indians in Australia

No Education : Indian student Sravan Theerthala, who hails from a poor farmer family in Andhra Prades. He was attacked with a screw-driver by a group of Australian bastards.
Photo: REUTERS

Tank Man

Tank Man — This famous photo, taken on 5 June 1989 by photographer Jeff Widener, depicts an unknown man halting the PLA's advancing tanks near Tiananmen Square.