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Religious belief is viewed as "a private eccentricity" and the voice of faith groups is marginalized, he says.
Britain, the cardinal adds, is now showing signs of degenerating into a country free of morals, because of its rejection of traditional values and its new emphasis on the rights of the individual.
The book, called Faith in the Nation, is published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), with the backing of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. more
At the core of the story is the shocking episode of caste atrocity that happened in Khairlanji on 29 September, 2006, but came to light only a month later. The entire family of Bhaiyalal Bhotmange, a Dalit farmer of the Mahar caste –– comprising his wife, two sons and a daughter –– were lynched by a mob of caste Hindus of the village. The lynching was preceded by dastardly acts of sadism towards the victims, including thrashing, sexual abuse, gang-rape and mutiliation of parts of their bodies. The bodies of the four persons were dumped, following the massacre, into a canal that irrigated the farmlands of Khairlanji.
Teltumbde’s project is to put in perspective the Khairlanji massacre by reading it as a paradigmatic event of violence against Dalits in post-Independent India. Thus, after listing the notable cases of anti-Dalit violence in India since 1947 –– Kilvenmani (44 Dalits burnt alive in Tamil Nadu, 1968), Belchi (14 Dalits burnt alive in Bihar, 1977), Morichjhanpi (hundreds of Dalit refugees massacred by the state in Sunderbans, West Bengal, 1978), Karamchedu (6 Dalits murdered, 3 Dalit women raped and many more wounded, Andhra Pradesh, 1984), Chunduru (9 Dalits killed and dumped in a canal, Andhra Pradesh, 1991), Melavalavu (an elected Dalit panchyat leader and 5 Dalits done to death, Tamil Nadu, 1997), Kambalapalli (6 Dalits burnt alive, Karnataka, 2000) and Jhajar (5 Dalits lynched near a police station, Haryana, 2003) more
Kluge Prize for Romila Thapar
Special Correspondent
CHENNAI: Historian Romila Thapar has been chosen for the 2008 Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity instituted by the United States Library of Congress. Dr. Thapar, who is Emeritus Professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, will receive the $1 million prize along with Peter Robert Lamont Brown, Professor of History at Princeton University, in a ceremony on December 10 at the Library of Congress.
Endowed by Library of Congress benefactor John W. Kluge, the Kluge Prize is for a wide range of disciplines, including history, philosophy, politics, anthropology, sociology, religion, criticism in the arts and humanities, and linguistics, as well as a variety of cultural perspectives in the world. Each awardee will receive half of the $1 million prize.
According to a media release from the Library of Congress, both Dr. Brown, 73, and Dr. Thapar, 77, brought “dramatically new perspectives to understanding vast sweeps of geographical territory and a millennium or more of time in, respectively, Europe and the Middle East, and in the Indian subcontinent.”
Dr. Thapar, it said, “created a new and more pluralistic view of Indian civilisation, which had seemed more unitary and unchanging, by scrutinising its evolution over two millennia and searching out its historical consciousness.” more
After his now-famous The World is Flat, which he wrote for the corporate world, Friedman turns to green consciousness hoping that the executive world, which patiently gave its ears to his views on globalisation, will now be ready audience for his anxiety and warning about global warming and the acceleration of the melting of glaciers. It is in view of this urgency that Friedman’s book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, comes as one more addition to the increasing literature on climate change, a bold and decisive step to raise an environmentally conscious public and shake off any complacency.
A sincere diagnosis of the ecological problem facing humanity, Friedman’s book uses opinions of various experts in the field of environment whom he has interviewed or has had serious discussions with. He is, indeed, deeply concerned with the fatal tampering with nature and the reckless misuse of our surroundings and draws the reader’s attention to the contamination of soil, water and air, affecting vegetation, birds and wildlife, and also to those who have the arrogance to refuse to be persuaded.
Capitalism's unequal distribution of wealth and resources necessarily engenders economic "winners" and "losers." But the poor in the United States are often described solely in terms of moral failures: they're lazy, irresponsible and just don't want to work hard for success. Indeed, openly blaming the poor for poverty has been en vogue since Reagan's acidic "welfare queen" remarks. However, in A People's History of Poverty in America, Stephen Pimpare takes a decidedly less accusatory look at the history of poverty in our country. Told from the perspective of the poor themselves, the moving stories of hard work, bad luck, and almost insurmountable institutional inequalities brim with a quiet dignity.
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(born Nov. 7, 1913, Mondovi, Alg.—died Jan. 4, 1960, near Sens, France) French novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for such novels as L'Étranger (1942; The Stranger), La Peste (1947; The Plague), and La Chute (1956;The Fall) and for his work in leftist causes. He received the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature. Early years Less than a year after Camus was born, his father, an impoverished worker of Alsatian origin, was killed in World War I during the First Battle of the Marne. His mother, of Spanish descent, did housework to support her family. Camus and his elder brother Lucien moved with their mother to a working-class district of Algiers, where all three lived, together with the maternal grandmother and a paralyzed uncle, in a two-room apartment. Camus's first published collection of essays, L'Envers et l'endroit (1937; “The Wrong Side and the Right Side”), describes the physical setting of these early years and includes portraits of his mother, grandmother, and uncle. A second collection of essays,Noces (1938; “Nuptials”), contains intensely lyrical meditations on the Algerian countryside and presents natural beauty as a form of wealth that even the very poor can enjoy. Both collections contrast the fragile mortality of human beings with the enduring nature of the physical world. In 1918 Camus entered primary school and was fortunate enough to be taught by an outstanding teacher, Louis Germain, who helped him to win a scholarship to the Algiers lycée (high school) in 1923. (It was typical of Camus's sense of loyalty that 34 years later his speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature was dedicated to Germain.) A period of intellectual awakening followed, accompanied by great enthusiasm for sport, especially football (soccer), swimming, and boxing. In 1930, however, the first of several severe attacks of tuberculosis put an end to his sporting career and interrupted his studies. Camus had to leave the unhealthy apartment that had been his home for 15 years, and, after a short period spent with an uncle, Camus decided to live on his own, supporting himself by a variety of jobs while registered as a philosophy student at the University of Algiers. At the university, Camus was particularly influenced by one of his teachers, Jean Grenier, who helped him to develop his literary and philosophical ideas and shared his enthusiasm for football. He obtained a diplôme d'études supérieures in 1936 for a thesis on the relationship between Greek and Christian thought in the philosophical writings of Plotinus and St. Augustine. His candidature for the agrégation (a qualification that would have enabled him to take up a university career) was cut short by another attack of tuberculosis. To regain his health he went to a resort in the French Alps—his first visit to Europe—and eventually returned to Algiers via Florence, Pisa, and Genoa. source | ||||||||
