Om gate gate paaragate paarasamgate bodhi svaaha
I always wake up around 4 AM on Buddha Purnima — perhaps because of the bright moonlight streaming in through the window. And now I am listening to the Perfection of Wisdom Heart Sutra aka “Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra“.

Arun Jaitley, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, in an interview he gave to rediff.com said that “it was evident that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has the capacity to damage institutions to remain in power.” Not a very nice thing to say. But then, when talking of not nice people, one cannot say very nice things. Actually, Jaitley understates — perhaps deliberately — how despicably Mr Singh has behaved. Mr Singh has clearly overused his capacity to do damage.

Sorry people I have not been in touch. A bit of traveling and a lot of reading is taking up time. I will be back soon, just in case you were wondering. Until then, remember that tomorrow, May 20th, is the big day for supporting the right to free expression — which as Bill Maher puts it, is non-negotiable. The video embedded below the fold reminds us that some cultures are not only different but are better than one that makes death threats to cartoonists.

My colleague Rajesh Jain in the second part of a series “It’s Up to Us Now” notes, that “even after 63 years, India is in many senses worse off than it was in 1947. We have to understand the whys and hows of India’s failure to develop. That’s the unavoidable first step to putting India on a path to recovery. We cannot fix problems that we don’t understand the causes of, or worse yet, if we don’t even admit that we have problems.”

In the face of all that is grim and distressing, there’s always the relief of reading the TOI — affectionately referred to by its admirers as TOI-let paper or the Slimes of India. This hot Summer Sunday morning was brightened by an article, “The Benefits of Surya Namaskar.”

Faisal Shahzad’s bomb bombed. I have a few questions for you, dear reader.

Two facts are undisputed: first, the US is the richest, most powerful nation on earth; second, that it has been an occasional victim of Islamic terrorism. I believe that there is another fact that is not widely appreciated but which explains to a large degree the where, how and whys of Islamic terrorism. That fact is that the US funds global Islamic terrorism. That not only explains why there’s so much of it around these days, but also gives us hope that there is a way out of this insanity. …

I have not had an opportunity to read A New History of India by Francois Gautier (Har-Anand Publications, 2008) but I intend to since I got this brief review of the book in an email from a colleague. I post it below the fold with permission.

Pakistan is back in the news for what it is best known in the world — Islamic terrorism. It has been the epicenter of global terror for a while, and also a front line ally of the US in its so-called “war against terror.” Talk about making an alliance with the fox to guard the hen house. Pakistan and terrorism is old hat. Anything written about that is apparently eternally relevant. This is what I had written in October 2009 — but it would be relevant in any month of …

Thus spake Heinlein. “The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories.”

That’s what the Buddha reportedly said.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction by Murray Rothbart to Étienne de La Boétie’s Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (1576). It’s important for us to understand this because India is under “voluntary servitude” to the corrupt few, namely the politicians that Indians elect.

Actually, have your best running shoes on when you start telling people what they don’t want to hear. What they generally don’t want to hear is anything that shows them up to be boobs. They don’t want to hear that they are being screwed over by the government. Add to that the fact that they are also very proud of being a “democracy.” Which makes it especially painful for them because if you tell them that their government is raping them, they don’t want to know it because it would …

“Give a man a reputation as an early riser, and he can sleep until noon.” Mark Twain’s pithy remark is illustrated most forcefully in the case of Mr Manmohan Singh and his integrity. In his case, give the man a reputation as an honest person, and he can rob the country blind with impunity.

First of May always reminds me of that song. It is one of my all-time favorite love songs. And like the best love songs, it is exquisitely sad.

There are few leaders of the contemporary world that I admire more than former Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. Actually, strike that. I admire Lee Kuan Yew more than any other living world leader.