CHARVAKA DESK
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Identity to the Fore
Ram Puniyani Parliament was rocked (May 2012) with the discussion on the alleged insult of Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar in the cartoon in NCERT text book for standard XI. The MHRD Minister immediately declared the withdrawal of the book and asked for review of all books for which a committee has been appointed. This is…
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Miracles in Religion
B Premanand No religion would be accepted by people unless the gods of these religions are shown to have supernatural powers. Their faith in god is not because they love god, but because they have been made to believe that god is ail-powerful. Though it is argued that faith in god turns people from materialism…
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Business and Politics of Blind Faith
Ram Puniyani Sanal Edamaruku, a rationalist is facing the legal trap for abusing others’ faith. (April 2012) At the same time in another event, Nirmal Baba, who is supposed to be having divine powers and who has been flashing his paid programs in over 40 TV channels, advising people on solving their problems with various’…
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Are Natural Foods Always Non-toxic?
Radha Gopalan No. There are several naturally occurring toxins in plant and animal foodstuffs. Toxins are poisonous substances of natural origin and can be harmful to human beings. But food poisoning, in our mind, is usually associated with microbes or environmental contaminants. A foodstuff is not always safe just because it is natural. Concern about…
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Were Our Ancient Ancestors Scientifically Advanced?
J V Narlikar [This essay, written by the eminent Cosmologist Jayant V Narlikar, first appeared in the April 1985 issue of Science Age, a magazine now defunct, brought out by Nehru Centre, Bombay. Though the essay is almost three decades old, it continues to be as relevant as most of the criticisms on pseudoscience are. While…
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Kṛṣnamiṡra’s Prabodhacandrodya – A Critical Introduction
Sita K Nambiar We earlier posted certain sections of Krsna Misra’s 11th century allegorical drama, Prabodhacandrodya, in which the character Cārvāka makes an appearance. Though Prabodhacandrodaya does caricature Carvaka/Lokayta philosophy, the play is an important source of our present day knowledge about materialist philosophy in ancient India. We now reproduce parts of the critical introduction…
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Carvaka Philosophy in Prabodhacandrodaya
Almost all of what we know today about Cārvāka/Lokāyata philosophy comes from secondary sources, most of which quote the philosophy’s opponents, who aimed to refute or even ridicule its arguments. Unsurprisingly, these works tended to caricature the philosophical stance of these ancient Indian materialists. Yet, as the only materials available to reconstruct this tradition, these…
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India Untouched – A Documentary
[It is a widely held belief among the ruling, upper caste circles that the question of caste is no more an issue in India. We have chanced upon a documentary that unmasks this myth articulated by the very same people who practise casteism in a myriad of ways . This documentary is directed by Stalin,…
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Rationalism in Bengal: An Overview
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya The Concise Oxford Dictionary (on CD-Rom, 11th ed. 2004) defines rationalism as “the practice or principle of basing opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response.” This is not the only meaning of the word. In philosophy the same term suggests “the theory that reason rather…
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Politics through Food Habits
Ram Puniyani In the middle of April 2012 Osmania University (OU) witnessed an unusual violence on the issue of eating beef. A section of dalit students’ were demanding that University Hostels should have beef on the menu. They also organized a beef festival in which a large number of students ate beef biryani. The festivity…
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Federation of Karnataka State Rationalist Associations: First State Conference
We reproduce below a communication received from Karnataka Rajya Vicharavadi Okkootta (Federation of Karnataka State Rationalist Associations): Federation of Karnatka State Rationalist Associations (Karnataka Rajya Vicharavadi Okkootta) is organizing the 1st state level rationalist conference at SHRAVANABELOGOLA on 18th & 19th of May 2012. As you are aware, a get-together of more than 100 rationalist and…
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India’s Blasphemy Law: Section 295A of IPC
Narendra Nayak Section 295A. Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs [295A. Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.— Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of…
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Savarkar: Was He a Rationalist?
R.A. Jahagirdar We publish this essay by Justice RA Jahagirdahr (1927-2011) on the Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in the context of the 8th National Conference of Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations (FIRA) held in Nagapur on 11-12 February 2012. The official souvenir brought out during the conference had a photograph of Vinayak Savarkar with the astonishing…
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Electoral Equations and Secular Values
Ram Puniyani The UP Assembly elections results (Feb 2012) gave a clear mandate to theSamajvadi Party of Mulayam Singh. Congress was claiming that the results of UPwill be a shocker, meaning a surprisingly better performance of Congress. Asresults came through Congress was nowhere close the claims it made or theresults it expected were nowhere close…
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The Materialism of the Samkhya Philosophy
V. Brodov The founder of the Samkhya1 philosophical system and the author of the Samkhya-sutra was, as is generally believed, Kapila (c. 6th-5th centuries B. C.). The Samkhya-sutra was lost, so that we have to use later sources – Isvarakrishna Samkhya Karika (3rd-4th centuries C. E.), Vacaspati Misra’s Samkhya Tattva Kaumudi (9th century), and others.…
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Cārvāka Miscellany
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Elements of Materialism in the Nyaya and Vaisesika Philosophy
V. Brodov Elements of Materialism in the Nyaya Philosophy The Nyaya (Sanskr. “rule”, “substantiation”, “method”, “logical inference”, “introduction to a subject”, “deduction”, “logic in general”) is a philosophical system or school that took shape approximately at the end of the 1st century C. E. Gotama (c. 3rd century B. C.) is regarded as the originator…
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Manufacturing a Riot
Ram Puniyani In Saidabad and Madannapeth areas of Hyderabad (April 1st week, 2012) violence was unleashed against the local Muslims. In this violence several houses were damaged, many a people were injured and women were raped. Just before the incident Praveen Togadia had given an inflammatory speech in the area. There was news that fundamentalists…
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The Materialism of the Charvakas Lokayatikas
V Brodov Brhaspati (c. 7th-6th century B. C.) is believed to be the founder of the Charvaka Lokayatika School and the author of its Sutras. The Charvakas Lokayatikas are materialist philosophers. It would be a rude error, however, to restrict the Brhaspati line to the materialism of the Charvakas Lokayatikas. That would mean narrowing down…
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Sleeping On a Bed of Nails
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Abraham Kovoor’s Case Diary: Submarine Telepathy
Abraham Kovoor On September 17th 1963, the ‘DAILY SKETCH’ (London) carried an article by one Leslie Mallory, headed ‘NEW SCIENCE BACKS THE MIND-READER’, dealing mainly with the claims of the Russian Professor Leonid Vasiliev, who regularly put men and women to sleep by telepathy and awakened them at set intervals”. But the professor, we are…
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Abraham Kovoor’s Case Diary: Extra-Sensory Perception
Abraham Kovoor Perception is the process by which an organism becomes aware of its environment. Normally perceptions are of five types – all of a stimulus-response pattern. The five sensory stimuli in man and other highly evolved animals are the senses of touch, smell, sight, taste and hearing. In some animals like the homing pigeons,…
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The Heterodox Schools of Indian Thought
Donald H Bishop Donald H Bishop wrote this essay as an introduction to the section, The Heterodox Schools, of the book Indian Thought – An Introduction, edited by him and published in 1975. At the time of the publication of the book, the author was with College of Sciences and Arts, Washington State University. We upload this essay as…
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Bridges for Harmony
Ram Puniyani Life is full of paradoxes, and not all of them are intriguing. Some of them give a pleasant cozy feeling too. Recently (25 March, 2012) people saw the Pakistan’ Deputy Attorney General, Muhammad Khurshid Khan, Polishing the shoes of devotees in Gurudwara Rakab Ganj Delhi. This work is part of Seva (service) in…