Excerpts from Nathuram Godse’s speech

Nathuram Godse assassinated Gandhi on January 30, 1949. I came across a mention of Godse’s  speech in the court in Chapter 1 of Ramachandra Guha’s book “India after Gandhi”. I became interested in reading the speech and understanding Godse’s motivation behind the assassination. A quick google search will take you to several web pages that contain the full speech. Here, I would like to present some excerpts which I thought are important.

But first, I would like to say that it does not seem to me that Godse merely pulled the trigger in an assassination planned by bigger players. He seems to be a well-read man, who had convinced himself by several reasons that it was time for Gandhi to go; he says in his speech, “After having fully considered the question, I took the final decision in the matter..”.

His motivations and reasons fall in two distinct categories: (a) bigoted Hindu fanaticism, made worse by the troubled times of 1947, and (b) pragmatic political reasons against Gandhi’s dominance of the Indian political scene. Personally, I have no take on Godse. To me, his Hindu doggedness seems as foolish as his political acumen seems praiseworthy.

The main reasons seem to be (a) Gandhi’s defence of Muslims under attack from Hindus and Sikhs in India and (b) Gandhi’s acceptance of the partition. Here are some excerpts:

• “Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture… I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and caste system based on birth alone.”

• “Since the year 1920, after the demise of Lokmanya Tilak, Gandhiji’s influence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme…”

• “it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of mankind is, or can become capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty principles (of truth and non-violence)”

• “in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action”

• “In condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit”

• “The accumulating provocation of 32 years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately”

• “If the country wanted his leadership, it had to accept his infalliability; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on his own way… Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity…or it had to carry on without him… Thus the Mahatma became the judge and jury of his own cause”

• “When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country which we consider a deity of worship, my mind was filled with direful anger”

• “…when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned”

• “I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan…. His doctrine of non-violence crumbled before Jinnah’s iron will”

• “I felt that Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces.”

• “I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy, which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims”

Kajari : A feeling of Timelessness Classic soundpiece.

I was listening to some of the classical music and happens to like one of the genre of Hindustani classical Music. I read about it and wanted to share few things.

According to a folk tale of Mirzapur, there was woman called Kajli whose husband was in a distant land. Monsoon arrived and separation became unbearable. She began to cry at the feet of the Kajmal Goddess and these cries took the form of the popular Kajri songs.
Come monsoon... and it brings relief from the sizzling hot summer.
Come the black clouds... and separation from the beloved become unbearable.
Each bolt of lightning hits straight at the heart and makes it beat faster.
Kajri, the songs of longing are the outbursts of a woman overwhelmed by desire.

Derived from the word Kajal meaning Kohl, Kajris are sung by classical and semi classical musicians. There are two forms of Kajri singing in UP, one that is sung on a performance platform and the other sung by women dancing in a semi-circle, the 'Dhunmuniya Kajri'.

Noted Singers of Kajari are : 

Girija Devi 

(A small introduction to a living legend)

Girija Devi (b. May 8, 1929, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India) is an Indian singer and represents the Banaras Gharana of singers. She is adept at different genres of Hindustani vocal music including Khyal, Thumri, Dadra, Chaiti and Kajari, but she excels in the Poorab ang Thumri. She has been described as the last living queen of thumri. Her father Ramdeo Rai was a local Zaminadar and interested in classical Indian music. He initiated his daughter's musical training when she was five years old. Her gurus were Pandit Sarju Prasad Mishra and Shrichand Mishra. Her first public recital (1949) from All India Radio, Allahabad, followed by recitals from stage at Arrah, Bihar, were highly appreciated. During her active singing career, she has rendered her recitations in several parts of India, as also in other parts of the world, including the U.S., the former USSR, and several countries of Europe. Girija Devi was rendered Padma Shree in 1972, and the Padma Bhushan in 1989, which are among the highest civilian awards of the Republic of India. A documentary - Girija, has also been made in her honour by the government of India.

Litsen to this classic timeless music of all time

Channulal Mishra

If you have seen Aarakshan and liked this Song:

then may be you know, Who is Channulal Mishraji. Pandit Chhannulal Mishra is one of the greatest and most gifted classical vocalists of India. He can be reckoned among the all time great vocalists to hail from the ancient city of Varanasi, Playing on the ‘Swarmandal' Shri Mishra holds his audience spell-bound with his mellifluous rendition, He has the distinction of being a Versatile Vocalist, equally proficient in classical and light classical music such as Khayal, Dadra, Thumri, Chaiti, Kajri, Sawani, Holi and Bhajan.

Pt. Chhannulal Mishra was born on the third of August 1936. He had his first lessons of classical music from the late Pt. Badri Prasad Mishra, his father, Having been initiated into the nuances of music by his father, he moved from his place of birth (Village Hariharpur in district Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh), to learn music at the feet of Ustad Abdul Ghani Khan of the Kirana gharana until the renowned musicologist, the late Padmabhushan Thakur Jaidev Singh offered to groom his adolescent prodigy into the subtleties of Indian Classical music. This bond of the teacher and the taught, the master and the pupil was nurtured in the time honoured tradition of Guru-shishya parampara'. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandit_Channulal_Mishra)

Indian Government needs to spend more on classical music academy and its training. Our culture and past is subliming into the broad lightening of modern advancement. Despite new toys like computers, space missions and Cellular phones, our inner self doesn't changes. Our classical music has been more Divine! 

to be continue....

Randomness & Psyche

This article describes how, in our search for order and purpose in life, people sometimes assign meaning to events that are objectively random and devoid of meaning. Consider these two images — one dot pattern is random, the other isn't:

Sample A

   

  

Sample B

One of the two images above shows a random pattern of dots, the other has been manipulated to resemble a random pattern but isn't really random. Which image is random?

In perception studies, most people choose Sample A because Sample B shows tight clusters of dots that don't really seem random. But it turns out that Sample A has been artificially arranged to avoid normal clustering, and Sample B shows a truly random ordering of dots.

The meaning of this experiment is that, when people see tight clusters of dots (or of events), they conclude it isn't a chance grouping but has special significance. But in reality and in nature, events often cluster purely by chance.

The following sections show examples where, for psychological reasons, people assign meaning to meaningless groupings, significance to insignificant coincidences, even invest in outright frauds based on mistaken perceptions of reality.