Telugu gets Classical Language Status

Yesterday (One day before the formation day of Andhra Pradesh), Telugu got Classical Language Status. The same day, Kannada also got Classical Language status. Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, and Tamil already got Classical Language status.

Initially, to get the Classical Language status, the language should be of atleast 1000 years. But, after giving classical status to Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, and Tamil, the time period is increased to 2000 years. After trying for almost 3 years, Telugu and Kannada got classical status.

Telugu was mentioned first time in 500 B.C., in Aithareya Brahmanam, which was around 2500 years back. At the time of British rule, on one rupee coin, it is mentioned in English and Telugu only. Indian National Congress thought of making Telugu as National Language. Freedom fighters like Dr.Pattabi Sitaramayya tried hard for that. But, later congress selected Hindi as the National Language.

After Hindi, Telugu is the most spoken language in India. Telugu is spoken by more than 15 crore people. Around 8 crore people in Andhra Pradesh, and 2.8 crore in Tamilnadu speak Telugu.

After Telugu got classical language status, Tanikella Bharani wrote the following poem.




Ottu! Naakanipisthondi ....
Nannayya okkasari ammayya anukunnattu ....
peddana thambulamlo 'telugu vakka palukulu' vesukunnattu ....
Srinathudu kanakabhishekam chesochchi telugu thalli padhalu muttukunnattu ....
Sri Sri Gatuga rendu dhammulu laginattu ....
Chalam gaddanni savarinchukunnattu .....
Iha ... Vishwanatha! Mana bhashaki ohallichedhemit hodha! Ani garjinchinattu ....
Oka sanathana parimalam avarinchi telugu nela pulakarinchinattu ....
E Santhosha sambramamlo na kallu chemarinattu ....
Pranthiya Bhedhalu marachi telugollantha kalasikattuga cheyyeththi jaikottinattu ....
Ottu! Naakanipisthondi ....

- mee Thanikella Bharani

My Country My Life Review

I have finished reading My Country My Life by L.K.Advani. It was one great book that I read in the recent time.

In the book, he explained his life and the political situation of India. Most of the information is new, and it is little difficult to find the same elsewhere. He discussed many issues from 1947 to 2005, from Partition of India to his Pakistan Yatra.

Partition of India : He explained the effects of Partition of India, and all the problems that India faced because of that. However, he did not explain anything about the reasons or background behind the partition of India. While researching that, I learned many new things. Unfortunately in India, we don't have freedom to tell that publicly. By the way, the plea of Nathruam Godse during the trial on the charges of killing Gandhi was banned in India. (I don't know whether it is still banned or not). Two books about Nehru are banned. We can find many interesting things, if we do further research on the same.

Bhartiya Jana Sangh and Dr.Shyama Prasad Mookerjee : He explained the formation of Bharatiya Jana Sangh. But, he did not explain much about Dr.Shyama Prasad Mookerjee. After reading about him, I understood his greatness. Since 1952 till now, Leaders of BJS (and present BJP) had the same vision, and they are following same kind of path. I don't see that much difference between Dr.Shayama Prasad Mookerjee and Vajpayee.

Emergency : He gave so much information about Emergency, what all happened during the emergency, and he explained all the changes in the Constitution during that time. After reading that, I realized why Emergency is called as the Darkest Period in India's History. (On a side note, after the emergency, Congress(I) lost badly everywhere. But, in Andhra Pradesh, it won 41 out of 42 seats.)

Morarji's Government : This is where he started explaining the real politics (For example, One person offers special favor to another person in the opposition. Once there is split in the opposition, the first person withdraws the favor). He explained many politics done by many people and why Morarji's government failed.

Formation of BJP and it's First elections : After the collapse of Morarji's government, and the politics in that, Bharatiya Jana Sangh came out of Janatha Party, and formed Bharatiya Janatha Party. In 1984, When Indira Gandhi was killed, BJP Contested in 224 constituencies and it won only 2 seats, one in Andhra Pradesh, another one in Gujarat (It won 90 in 1977). Because of sympathy, Congress won with a great triumph. (On a side note, In Andhra Pradesh it got only 6 seats out of 42, quite contrary to what happened in 1977. TDP got 30 seats and became the Chief Opposition Party in it's inauguration to the Loksabha.) By the second elections, it became very strong by securing more than 80 seats.

Ayodhya Movement and Ratha Yatra : He explained Ayodhya in 50 pages with complete information from Nehru's age till now. He gave so much information about Ayodhya, which a comman man does not know. If anyone thinks that, all parties except BJP are secular, then they must read this chapter. This chapter explained and gave examples of the communal behavior of the so-called secular parties. To know whether BJP is secular or communal, there are examples in the entire book. (Yes. BJP is more secular than any other party.)

P.V.Narasimha Rao : I explained about P.V.N.Rao more in my previous article. Advani praised P.V.Narasimha Rao as the best Prime Minister after Lal Bahadur Sastry. One mistake in the book was, he thought P.V.N.Rao won with great majority because of malpractices in the election. (P.V.Narasimha Rao won in Nandyala with more than 5.5 Lakh votes, and it is still a record.) The fact was, N.T.Rama Rao, then leader of Telugu Desam party, did not put any contestant against him, because he was the first Prime Minister from Andhra Pradesh (and South India). Because of that, he had opposition only from minor parties and independents. That's why he could win with such a huge margin.

Review of the Working of the Indian Constitution : Vajpayee formed a committee to review the constitution for better development. He explained most of the review comments. Vajpayee government implemented many. Because of the procedure of taking acceptance from Parliament, Vajpayee could not implement everything. The most powerful act, Right to Information Act (RTI) was proposed in that. Vajpayee implemented the basic version of the same, and Manmohan Singh enhanced it, and made RTI. This is one good chapter for understanding the constitution and policies. After reading that, I understood, from where Dr.Jayaprakash Narayana started getting the ideas. ;) (On a serious note, Dr.JP had many of these ideas even before, and he discussed few of those with Rajiv Gandhi.)

K.R.Narayanan : Advani says, then President K.R.Narayanan was very biased. Till Shankar Dayal Sharma, the president used to invite the largest party to form the government and then prove the majority. But, K.R.Narayanan refused to do that, and only after furnishing the letters of support from the parties in NDA, he invited to form the government. In many occasions, he acted with bias towards Congress party. But, Advani did not give many incidents about K.R.Narayanan and his biased nature. My understanding for not giving those reasons was, the incidents require in-depth understanding to decide what needs to be done. Without that, one may think that, K.R.Narayanan did correct, where as it is not the case. Advani might not wanted to fill many pages in explaining the issues in Bihar and at some random place to prove the biased nature of K.R.Narayanan.

Relationship with Pakistan : He explained the relationship between India and Pakistan in the tenure of different Prime Ministers. His interaction with Britain's High Commissioner became true in BJP's rule. He explained about Kashmir issue in detail. Jawaharlal Nehru made Sardar Vallabhai Patel as the Home Minister and asked to merge all the provinces except Kashmir to Indian Union. Nehru had taken the ownership of Kashmir, and he collapsed it, and we are still facing the problem with it. Had it been given to Sardar Patel then itself, we would not have faced any issue with Kashmir now. BJP could not revoke the special status to Kashmir, because few parties in NDA did not support that idea.

Pakistan Yatra : In 2005, Advani went to Pakistan. After visiting Jinnah's Mausoleum, he gave speech about Jinnah, and it became most controversial. Media published it as, Advani said, Jinnah is secular, and it did not publish the context. It created many problems for him from all the political parties. RSS criticized him for praising Jinnah. Other pseudo secular parties criticized him for praising Jinnah to get Muslim votes. Advani had to resign from President post after all those. Advani explained the context in his book. Jinnah was in Congress and he was a secular initially. Then, later on he moved to Muslim League and started fighting for separate country for Muslims. In the speech in Pakistan Assembly, Jinnah explained about Secular and Democracy. Advani explained all those incidents. But, our great media took only two words, Jinnah, and Secular, and started criticizing him.

The above topics are only few, and there are many more issues that Advani dealt in his book. He dedicated special chapters to Vajpayee, and Deendayal Upadhyaya, and wrote about them.

I expected to have more information about NDA's rule, and the changes they brought to India. I wanted to have information everything which is even remotely related to Advani in this book. But, without all these, the book has more than 950 pages. If he includes everything, it will be of multiple volumes. He included only the relevant information which one cannot find elsewhere easily.

After researching more about politics, I became a big fan of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. I have been a fan of Vajpayee since 1996. But, after learning about his policies, and the development that he had done to India, I became a big fan of him. Let's hope that L.K.Advani performs better than Vajpayee.

Google Calendar in Gmail

I have been using Google Calendar for a long time. But, for the last few months, it became very unreliable. It does not send remainders for all the events in my calendar. It sends remainders for few events that it likes. Because of that, I moved to BirthdayAlarm.

Few days back, Gmail Labs introduced a nice feature by which, we can put google calendar gadget in gmail. In Gmail, if we go to Settings -> Labs, and enable "Google Calendar gadget", it will add Google Calendar gadget in the left hand side below the chat and label windows. There are two other features in gmail labs, by which we can move chat and label windows to the right side. I enabled all, and the experience is very nice. Because, the chat window is on right side, it got more space, and is showing more no.of contacts. On left hand side, I can see the events for today and the next few days from google calendar.

After a very long time, I got one good feature in google. If they fix the bugs in Google Calendar, I would be very happy.

Operation Duryodhana - Movie

After a long time, I have seen one good movie about politics. Till now, all the movies that dealt with politics, shown that, politicians are very bad, and hero comes and changes many things. But, this movie dealt with the role of the voter. Most of the voters do not vote for a good person, and then cribs that, the system is bad. There are many good people who are in politics, and want to change the system. But, most of the voters do not vote for them giving reasons like,

• Others will not vote for them
  
• They will not win, even if I vote for them
  
• They cannot win, because they are not spending money
  
• Even if they win, they cannot change the system. Because politics is like that
  

They give all these reasons, and then they vote for one corrupted person. And, they get corrupted system. We get what we deserve.

Situation of India - Ant and Grasshopper

An Old Story:

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks that Ant is a fool and laughs, dances, and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

Indian Version :

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks that Ant is a fool and laughs, dances, and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant's house.

Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Mayawati states this as 'injustice' done on Minorities.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance).

Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for 'Bengal Bandh' in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry. CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the 'Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act' [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes 'Special Reservation' for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions & in Government Services.

The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, it's home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it 'A Triumph of Justice'.

Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'.

CPM calls it the 'Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden'

Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.


Many years later...

The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley ,

100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India.
.
.
..AND

As a result of loosing lot of hard working Ants and feeding the grasshoppers,

India is still a developing country...!!!