Your Child Can't Be Anything.

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup


Your Child Can't Be Anything.

 

Many Parents as well as some books say to children that " you can be anything if you put you mind to it wholeheartedly.

What could possibly be wrong with telling our kids they can be anything? Plenty.

 First, studies show that pursuing overly-ambitious goals can be harmful. When researchers study organizations that set stretch goals for employees–goals intended to motivate high performance–they find that these lofty goals often have significant negative side effects. In particular, they find that when people are focused on a goal, and failure to achieve that goal has high costs, unethical behavior increases. Many kids report feeling intense pressure to achieve in school and beyond, and many more kids say they have cheated. 

 Some attentive parents may rightly emphasize the role of imagination :"What you can achieve is limited only by your imagination!". Some may also say that more important than imagining a goal is working hard to achieve it. True, but even if the message “You can do anything!” is broadened to include hard work, it still falls short.

This is because telling kids that they can do anything—whether fueled by imagination or hard work—obscures the critical role of chance in success. Not every child who wants to be a surgeon or sports star can become one, even if they work hard at it. At the same time, in every success story there is the grace of good fortune. Our futures are shaped by many forces beyond our control, including chance, genetics, and other accidents of birth. Then too, statistically speaking, most of us will be average

 This is not to say that parents shouldn’t expect their children’s best or encourage them to work hard and persevere, just that a focus on achievement per se ultimately does kids (and ourselves) a disservice. When we create a mindset that high achievement is better than being average–that high achievers are more special or deserving–we diminish kids’ ability to value both themselves and others. 





Annotated:www.washingtonpost.com

The Modern Micro Mahishaasuras of JNU

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup


 The Modern  Micro Mahishaasuras of JNU

Those who want to hard sell JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, especially the anti-Modi -anti-BJP media lobby,  and see him as a lathi to charge the government, should  realize that the fellow  is a one-day summer sparrow  which doesn't make a profitable political summer for this media brigade.  I saw  Rajdeeep Sardesai and also the devil's advocate, Karan Thaper straining  their neck muscles hard   and turning blue in  face arguing that the learned lady judge of the Delhi High Court, Pratibha Rani,  has lesser wisdom than them and even lesser judicial acumen. How dare she depart from mundane legal jargon and write a powerful, evocative, and resounding judgment, which as another panel member in the discussion did maintain that it might well go down as one of a memorable and historic judgment that might one day become a text for the law students,  seemed to be their line!

These days the media is brain-starved of meaningful quotes, and so pitiably feed on whatever crumbs of banalities their blue boys mouth or eject as pearls of wisdom. Thus Rohit Vemula's parting lament cursing his Dalit birth as his only unwitting  crime, became instantly hailed as a pithy expression of anguish at caste-suppression. While I have every sympathy for the tender sensibilities he had which unfortunately the lad couldn't overcome, I am of opinion that Rohit should have realized that caste suppression was not a suddenly developed feature of universities or elsewhere but had centuries of history of condemnable ubiquitous practice in India. I would have been proud of him had he decided to live and fight the menace.

The latest is the hot selling quote of Kanhaiya 's "profound" revelation that, by shouting "Azaadi" amidst other references to Kashmir, and milling round and round like in an African tribal ritual, - which he must have been familiar with as the guy is said to be a  researcher in African studies, - he and his fellow leftist tribals  meant only (on second thoughts),  azaadi IN India and not from India. How sagaciously convenient!

And pray, let us know what kind of a "kaidi"( prisoner) he was when he , the son of a farm laborer earning just Rs. 3000 a month according to his own statement, could get admission to the country's prestigious Central university of JNU and also thereby getting his study expenses subsidized to the extent of over Rs. 3 lakhs per annum, with a fellowship to boot ( which he did literally)? What kind of a state prisoner he was when he could organize Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon days in the university campus, and in all probability could have got away with it scot-free but for the obnoxious slogans tantamount to biting the hands that feed him and his ilk?

Kanhaiya typifies that young impressionable generation coming from families of  poor to moderate means, and therefor harboring a deep- rooted grouse about their social strata, resenting their chick and well-off compatriots flaunting their opulence, and tit for tat desperately wanting  to overshadow the latter by taking the leftist union route. In the process they become leftist suckers rebelling indiscriminately against all that is conventional, established, prevalent and proper. Before they even realize it, their sense of patriotism becomes a casuality in that metamorphosis.

Tipu Sultan the Tyrant King :-E

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup

Tipu Sultan the Tyrant King :-E

Most historians will vouch for the fact that viewed from any angle Tipu was a tyrant. His great ambition was to become an emperor of India from his relatively small-time position of being just a king of the principality of Mysore. He then wanted to convert Hindustan into an Islamic empire. His fight against the British was a part of this design and not out of any patriotism. For that purpose,he is said to have even consulted Brahman astrologers and thanthrics and then faithfully carried out all the rituals prescribed by them in Sree Ranganatha Swami Temple which fact leading some historians to see him as secular.


Historian Lewis B. Boury had described Tipu’s violence against Hindus in and around Malabar as way more ferocious than atrocities committed by Mahmud of Ghazni, Nadir Shah and Alauddin Khalji against Hindus in Hindustan. William Logan has mentioned in the “Malabar Manual” that Thalipparampu and Thrichambaram temples of Chirackal Taluqa, Ponmeri Temple of Badakara, and Thiruvangatu of Tellicherry were among the major temples smashed by Tipu Sultan

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Fra Bartolomeo in “Voyage to East Indies” describe Tipu Sultan’s military operations and portray him as a cruel and intolerant Muslim ruler. On occasions, he converted lots of Hindus into Mohammedans against their will. It is reported that he captured over one thousand Hindus in Coorg, forcibly converted them to Islam, and imprisoned them in the Sreerangapatanam fortress. All Coorgi Hindu prisoners successfully escaped during the last battle between the British and Tipu Sultan. So you understand the immense feeling of resentment  and consequent protest against the official celebration of Tipu's Jayanti in Coorg.


Report by Colonel Fullarton, the then in-charge of British forces in Mangalore, Tipu Sultan committed the worst possible brutalities on Brahmans during his acquisition of Palghat Fort in the year 1783. His soldiers scared Hindus by exposing the heads of all innocent Brahmans that were brutally killed by them from the fort Zamorin. The Zamorin then decided to abandon the fort, so that he and his Hindu followers didn’t have to witness more such brutalities.


Muslim historians such as Kirmani, and Ghulam Muhammad, Tipu Sultan’s own son, revealed numerous shocking facts and realities associated with Tipu Sultan in their writings. Since he wanted to give most things around him a Muslim touch, he got several Hindu names of places replaced with Muslim names.
For example, Mangalore or Mangalapuri was changed to Jalalabad, Mysore to Nazarabad, Bepur to Sultanpatanam, Cannanore to Kusanabad, Gooty to Faiz-Hissar, Dharwar to Quarshed-Sawad, Dindigul to Khaliqabad, Ratnagiri to Mustafabad, Kozhikode to Islamabad, and Dindigul to Khaliqabad. The local residents of all these places could revert to old names only after Tipu Sultan’s death!


If a section of Karnataka Muslims consider Tipu Sultan as a role model king and thereby they had got immense sense of power during his regime and want to celebrate its memory, this land being extremely tolerant, will have no objection. I understand that they have been doing this quietly for some years. But the moment the government confers official sponsorship and patronage to such sectarian expressions which run counter to the common milieu then then it becomes a fissiperous issue and acquire communal and contentious overtones.. By this act of minority appeasement for which the Congress is notorious to which even in this late hour they cling desperately hoping that it may bring some redemption to them from their abysmal political predicament they are not only clueless how to go about it, but also in the process, doing incalculable harm to the secular fabric of this country.

The Award Return Drama: Politics by Other Means.

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup

The Award Return Drama: Politics by Other Means.

 Many observers of the debate on intolerance in India, have scoffed at the melodrama of returning the awards by,  first, the Sahitya Akademi clan of favored writers, then by the  historians, then by Bollywood and other-wood film directors, and now incongruously, of all people, by scientists. Of the latter, being one belonging to the fraternity, I am flabbergasted to see eminent scientists like Bhargava forsaking the scientific method of testing their contrived hypothesis of prevailing intolerance in India by proper analysis of data.. Let them analyze the supporting data and establish the hypothesis before others follow suit. Having betrayed the scientific community by hastily and unscientifically drawing from unsubstantiated data such a momentous conclusion, it is for him and his ilk to prove and establish their misconstrued contention. Others can act emotionally but scientists cannot and should not.

What are the evidences for an unprecedented state of intolerance now in India which can be solely attributed to acts of commission or omission by the Modi government, so that these people shed their medals at its doorstep? They have not particularly enumerated the episodes of "intolerance' but prefer to be vague by design, using the term "climate", inappropriately because climate is not man-made. So, judging from the general phobia that can be seen in media one may list them down to 3 murders of writers, the Dadri lynching, the Dalit children burning, Shiv Sena shooing away the ghazal singer Ghulam Ali, black-painting the face of erstwhile BJP loose cannon Sudheendra Kulkarni. and the independent MLA of J&K, Engineer Rashid, eight in all, but, by any means, add 2 more and make it a round figure of 10.

Even if these are 24 karat incidents of intolerance, which they are not , do they form a big deal? The glaring fact is that they have nothing to do with the Modi government, in fact not even with the respective state governments, all non-BJP. They are all fundamentally criminal acts the likes of which have happened sporadically in the past and are likely to occur in future too as anywhere in the world. They should be dealt with as such. Let us take them one by one...........

The murders of writers:The rationalist Mr. MM Kalburgi was shot dead in Karnataka, a Congress ruled Government. Mr. N. Dabholkar, another rationalist, was shot down on 20th August 2013 in Maharashtra at that time ruled by the Congress and the NCP; where were these writers at the time? Both incidents need to be condemned in no uncertain terms. It is the responsibility of the State government to maintain law and order and provide security to a vulnerable target of attack. .....Bleach no. 1 for the intolerance brigade.

Similarly, the Dadri incident took place in Uttar Pradesh, which is ruled by the Samajwadi Party. UP police in its interim  report says that Dadri lynching was a spontaneous, isolated, case, and they do not see any conspiracy. ....Bleach no. 2 for the intolerance brigade.

Then the Dalit children burning case: The forensic division of the Haryana Police has in their report to CBI, revealed their findings that the fire was an inside job The house was found locked, and empty fresh kerosene bottle was retrieved  from under the cot and matchstick from window sill. So it was not even the upper caste to blame for the arson, least of all any government. ....Bleach no. 3 for the intolerance brigade.

Now the Gulam Ali blocking. It was Shiv Sena at it and the BJP took steps against it, offered security for smooth running of the function. The BJP fought its alley to protect freedom. ....Bleach no.4 for the intolerance brigade.

Inking episodes: Well known that it was the work of misguided Shiv Sainiks, BJP condemned it and arrested the culprits. On Engineer Rashid,  it was by an obscure Hindu Sena and the culprit was booked. In fact ink throwing and slipper throwing at leaders have been galore in the past.across parties: Yoga guru Baba Ramdev, Lal Krishna Advani, Ex PM Mohan Sing, Sharad pawar, ex Finance minister Chidambaram, Omar Abdullah, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, AAP leaders Kejriwal,Yogendra Yadav, Kumar Vishwas,  all have been the targets of either ink throwing, shoe throwing or even downright slapping of face. ....Bleach no. 5 for the intolerance brigade.

So it is total bleaching of the Intolerance brigade, lock stock and barrel!

Even without all these glaring facts staring at every one with eyes to see, one can leave aside the writer-historian section of the brigade.  Because writers are, if any thing, highly subjective people where stark objectivity takes lesser precedence. History is always his or her story of history. But not the scientists, for whom the empirical factor must be proved and repeatably provable. How 'Dr' P M Bhargava is going to escape from his self-closed closet of a bloomer political commitment and remedy his self ejection from the real scientific community is something he has to grapple with the rest of his life.

And now pit these few unreal, nonissues, with the 5000 sikhs who were massacred in the one and only genocide in Independent India in the wake of Indira Gandhi's murder, the hundreds who perished in riots during Congress regimes, the more than 30 books banned, including the Satanic Verses by  Salman Rushdie, and An Area of Darkness by  V. S. Naipaul and The Lotus and the Robot by Arthur Koestler, the thousands of Kashmiri pundits driven away from Kashmir, the hand chopping of TJ Joseph in Kerala, and a lot lot more, all in Congress led regimes! And speaking of bans, the cow slaughter and beef eating were banned by the Congress much earlier. Were these hypocrites hiding their conscience in their pockets to conveniently take it out now?

 "Politics by other means" now dictates an alternative strategy. Combine the three crimes, camouflage the truth and throw all of them in the basket of present Central Government," - so aptly and succinctly summarized Arun Jaitley.

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The Executive versus Judiciary

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup

 The Executive versus Judiciary

 Independence of the judiciary means that the judiciary as an organ of the government should be free from influence and control of the other two organs i.e. the executive and the legislature of government. The doctrine of Separation of Powers provides for a responsibility to the judiciary to act as a watchdog.

Our constitution  just talks of the independence of the judiciary but it is no where defined what actually is the independence of the judiciary. Art. 50ays down that the state shall take steps to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services of the state, but how exactly is unstated.

The independence of the judiciary, raises concern about the latent dangers of the judicial independence and there arises the importance of “Judicial Accountability”. Law Commission had recommended for the inclusion of a whistleblower provision, aimed at protecting those making complaints against judges, also dealing with the removal of judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts. Judicial Accountability and Judicial Independence have to work hand in hand to ensure the real purpose of setting up of the institution of judiciary.

Accountability of judiciary also evokes the question of supremacy. Only one that is supreme to the other can enforce accountability. Who is supreme, out of the commonly mentioned: the Constitution, the Parliament, or the Judiciary? The answer is none. The real power is that of the people who are therefor the supreme.The Constitution is a creature of the people. In fact the preamble of the Constitution starts with the words; " We the people of India" have resolved to have this Constitution. .".

People are, in a democracy represented by the  elected members of the Parliament and not by the selected members of the judiciary. It is because of this overriding factor that Arun Jaitley characterized the recent judgement overturning the National Judicial Appointments Commission as unconstitutional, as " tyranny of the unelected"

The Constitution of India,  makes a distinction between statutory law and constitutional law and prescribes a special procedure for amending the latter as incorporated in Article 368. The Supreme Court held ( in Keshavananda Bharati v. the State of Kerala ) that Article 368 does not enable Parliament to alter the ‘basic structure’ or framework of the Constitution. The term basic structure is a vague and general term and the Judges themselves did not offer a common agreed meaning.
    Some included Fundamental Rights and federation in the concept of basic structure while others saw no limit to the amending power of Parliament. The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, provided that Parliament had full power to amend the Constitution and no amendment made under Article 368 could be questioned in any Court on any ground. However the latest position is that the validity of the Forty-second Amend­ment was questioned and in May 1980, and the Supreme Court struck it down. There are many who see this as judicial activism

Together with the independence of the judiciary, there must also be accountability and restrictions   In order to ensure smooth functioning of the system there must be a right blend of the two. There has to be  a more explicit definition of what is basic structure of Constitution, in the light of which the latter judgement needs to be reviewed.

The 'Cold Start' and the Stupid Start

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup

 The 'Cold Start' and the Stupid Start

 

 India has adopted dangerous military doctrines. This will compel Pakistan to take several counter measures to preserve credible deterrence, says Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif

What this means ,or portends for India, can be seen in the statement of a senior Pakistani official earlier in the build up to Obama- Sharif meeting,  according to which Pakistan’s battlefield tactical nuclear weapons were aimed at offsetting India’s “cold start” military doctrine of lightning fast, all-in offensive using its overwhelming conventional warfare advantage. That was the context of  Sharif’s reference to “credible deterrence.

Whether this, together with his warning of real possible escalation of hostility by India, was an overshot or crying-wolf antic, to push Obama in to mediation between the two countries, India cannot dismiss the mindset of Pakistani establishment which can air such a threat.

We have to constantly remind ourselves of the jihadic growth and spread of Islam and the culture of violence as a means of reacting to situations not to that faith's liking, or for achieving its thoughtless aspirations that are driven by sheer bigotry. A good chunk of the heartland of Arab world is engulfed in internecine and civil wars. If such a calamitous situation has not yet befallen Pakistan,  but it merely remains the epicenter of terrorism of kinds good to them, but bad for India, and bad to them and all the rest, the reason lies in Pakistan's original Indian ethos that in its  dna,  to a considerable extent. Due to centuries of cohabitation with the Hindus  and the derivation of the bulk of Muslim population from conversions of ethnic Hindus, the Islam jihadic temperament, and violence that also deflects in to fissiparous internecine and civil wars have been tempered. Tempered but not conquered, leaving the core susceptible to mutation back to the original bizarre. To the original single pointed blind violence, unheeding of consequences, of the soldier of Allah kind.

A Semitic theocratic state by implication is autocratic, and in the case of Islamic one, driven by Sharia law which is despotism by the clergy. Modern principles of statehood become subservient to Sharia, leading to lopsided  and dangerous policies. That, it might have the seeds of self-destruction never enters in to reckoning so long as it is seen as bidden duty dictated by faith. That is the ominous foreboding plausibility that lurks in such utterances. This mindset has to be factored in to India's counter strategy.

The bottom line is that we have to keep our powder dry, more explicitly
, our atoms alert. Pakistan by reliable accounts is the fastest growing atomic weapon power and is headed to the 5th position in the world. The Indian government over the years has never taken the people in to confidence on this issue. It is time that they do that to a great extent.

China Bans Islam.

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup


 China Bans Islam

China, all of a sudden is getting a bitter taste of renewed terrorism. Its Xinjiang and Quinghai provinces in the west are  the hotbeds of rising Islamist fundamentalism manifesting in intolerance of ethnic habits and practices. The fundamentalists  try to impose the Sharia driven agenda on the public. In Qinghai province on Friday, an angry crowd of Muslims smashed windows of a supposedly halal store in Xining city, after pork sausages and ham were found in a delivery van. The sharia based prohibition of alcohol and smoking and insistence on halal food were sought to be imposed on the local people and commercial establishments through such vandalism and force. Many local shopkeepers had stopped selling alcohol and cigarettes since 2012 because they feared public scorn, while many locals had decided to abstain from drinking and smoking as a result of Sharia pushers.

Earlier there was relatively normal religious freedom for the Islamic way in China even though it is a communist country. Muslims were allowed to pray, fast, and go to the mosques with the restriction that they do not preach towards non-Islamic villages.  Chinese imams were allowed to lead congregational prayers and there was  room for Muslims to gather, break their fast together, and pray. And then the jihadists came.

The modus operandy of the jihadists every where is the same. Before a community gets into jihad mode, the first thing they do is call on all Muslims to repent from alcohol, pork and tobacco. It is this spark which begins the process rolling, as small groups of Muslims begin to push that agenda on Muslim communities by using peer-pressure. When this happens, it is a sign that trouble is ahead. Pretty soon they begin to demand a change in laws in order to force the mainstream to acquiesce to their demands. The ball gets rolling and clamor for giving more religious freedom grows, but soon Islam’s ethics begin to come into  conflict with the majority community. The conflict arises because, first, Islam focuses on the outward forms of holiness: Hijabs, beards, no drinking, no pork and no smoking. Secondly, Islam’s concept of ‘peace is different. It is the Muslim understanding of 'justice' and can occur only when Sharia reigns supreme. China understands that spreading Islam starts by peer pressure for observing outward manifestations of religious identity and public scorn towards its violators.

With the spurt in Sharia induced violence and trouble, the reaction by the Chinese government was swift, specific and measured. In China, unlike in India or the west they get it. In the case of alcohol and smoking,  it ordered the freedom and also insisted for the shopkeepers to carry cigarettes and alcohol which gives them the excuse to tell the Sharia mafia ‘sorry’ but that it is a government mandate to allow smoking. The Chinese authorities launched a series of “strike hard” campaigns to weaken the hold of the drug of Islam in China’s western region. Not only  they ordered Muslim shopkeepers and restaurant owners in its troubled Xinjiang region to sell alcohol and cigarettes, but also to  even promote them in “eye-catching displays,”  Alcohol and tobacco, while it is a problem, to the Chinese is the lesser of the two evils. So now establishments that failed to comply were swiftly dealt with and were threatened with closure and their owners with prosecution. So while some might think that China is imposing on freedoms, Chinese government is only  thwarting the jihadist's attempts of imposing their Sharia driven agenda on the public

Muslim government employees and children are also barred from attending mosques and are even prohibited from observing the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. By that China is telling jihadists that if you want to fast Ramadan, it is fine, but if you want to push your revolution, then a Ramadan-ban is added as a bonus punishment. And in many places, women have been barred from wearing Hijabs and the men are discouraged from growing long beards. China has added several bonus-punishments. In addition to the ban on fasting, China has ordered restaurants to stay open all day during Ramadan . Even wearing the hijab in public, including on public transportation and when getting married in a religious ceremony, was banned in 2014, with fines of about $353 for wearing a hijab in public. In reality, China is cracking down on jihadists who apply peer pressure, and public scorn towards Muslims who decided to smoke or drink alcohol, in order  to promote Islamic revolution.This sends a message, you push your Islamic revolution on us and we will push back to say no Islam altogether. Wherever there is a Muslim revolution, there is a ban on Islam. It does not give a darn to  all the cry babies who complain.