Anatta and Meditation
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com This article aims to describe how the central Buddhist doctrine of anatta or ‘egolessness’ relates to meditative practice and experience through a survey of meditative teachings by meditation masters in Buddhism. Anatta, often translated in English as ‘non-self’ or ‘egolessness’, is regarded by both Buddhist practitioners and scholars alike as being one of the essential kernels of the vast edifice of Buddhist thought and practice. The title of Anatta-vadi conferred upon the Buddha by Theravada Buddhists and the testimonies of meditation teachers all bear witness to the centrality of the doctrine of anatta. In particular, Buddhist meditators have often described anatta as the single most profound discovery of the Buddha and that an insight into anatta is crucial for attaining that utter liberation of the mind which is the summum bonum of Buddhist praxis. In the Theravada or ‘Way of the Elders’ tradition, a very important doctrine is that of the Three Characteristics of Existence, namely anichcha (impermanence), dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), and anatta (non-self). Both in theory and practice, insight into the Three Characteristics is considered of paramount importance in the realisation of Nibbana, the ultimate state of freedom from all suffering. Bhikkhu Nyanaponika describes the heart of Buddhist meditation as the simple but effective method of bare attention which he defines as ‘the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us, at the successive moments of perception’. Bare attention consists in the bare and exact registering of the object of perception through the six senses (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind) before associative and abstract thinking takes place. Sustained and diligent application of bare attention to the four domains of mindfulness, namely the body, feelings, mind, and mental objects, is thought to lead the meditator to the realisation that nowhere behind or within the psychophysical continuum can any individual agent or abiding entity called the ‘self’ be detected. Bhikkhu Nyanaponika also emphasises the usefulness of anapanasati or mindfulness of breathing in enabling the meditator to see the conditioned nature of the body by virtue of the very fact that the breathing process is dynamic, essentially linked to existence and dependent on the efficient functioning of certain organs. The nature of the body as activated by impersonal processes, and thus without any substance, thus becomes evident. Dhiravamsa, another contemporary meditation teacher in the Theravada tradition, advocates the practice of non-attached awareness, which consists in the dynamic and alert observation of all sensations, emotions and thoughts. He emphasises the need to spontaneously observe and investigate one’s experience free from the grip of authority – be they some teacher’s words or one’s preconceived ideas. According to him, meditation can be found by looking, listening, touching, tasting, talking, walking, standing, in all movements and in all activities. For example, when one is able to look or listen with great attentiveness, clarity and without a single thought, one can then experience the flow of awareness that is without any reactivity, reasoning and sense of self. In talking about hearing with awareness, he says: If there were myself acting as the hearer apart from the hearing, then "I am" would be separated from "myself" which has no corresponding reality. For "I am" and "myself" is one and the same thing. Hence I am hearing. In this experience of the non-duality of subject and object, there is a realisation of the absence of any permanent and independently existing ‘experiencer’ apart from the experience. This state is characterised by tremendous joy and bliss, a great clarity of understanding and complete freedom. Ajahn Sumedho, a foremost Western disciple of the famous Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah, speaks about the silent observation of all that arises and passes away in one’s body and mind in an open spirit of ‘letting go’. The gentle calming and silencing of the mind is encouraged so as to create a space in which to observe the conditions of the body and mind. In particular, meditation on the body is done with a sweeping awareness of all the various sensations that arise throughout the body, for example the pressure of one’s clothes on the body or the subtle vibrations on the hands and feet. This awareness can also be concentrated in a gentle and peaceful way on any particular area of the body for further investigation. The mind, consisting of feelings (vedana), perceptions (sanna), mental formations (sankhara) and consciousness (vinnana), is also observed with a silent awareness. As Ajahn Sumedho says: Investigate these until you fully understand that all that rises passes away and is not self. Then there is no grasping of anything as being oneself and you are free from that desire to know yourself as a quality or a substance. This is liberation from birth and death. Another technique advocated by Ajahn Sumedho is that of listening to one’s thoughts. The meditator is asked to allow mental verbalisations and thoughts to arise in the mind without suppressing or grasping them. In this way, what is normally held below the threshold of consciousness is made fully conscious. Verbalisations associated with pride, jealousy, meanness or whatever emotions are seen for what they are – impermanent, selfless conditions arising and passing away. The thought "Who am I?" is purposefully generated to observe its arising from and dissolving into the empty space of the mind. By doing this, one realises the lack of a substantial and existing self within the processes of one’s thought. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who represents a confluence of both the Theravada and Mahayana (literally ‘Great Vehicle’) Zen tradition, is a well-known peace activist as well as a respected meditation teacher who leads retreats worldwide on the ‘art of mindful living’. In his teachings, Thich Nhat Hanh emphasises the twin practices of ‘stopping’ or concentration and ‘observing’ or insight. In ‘stopping’, one practices conscious breathing in order to come back to oneself and to regain composure of body and mind. In ‘observing’, one illumines one’s body and mind with the light of mindful awareness in order to see deeply their true nature. Through the simple practice of consciously following one’s breath and attending to one’s body in the process of breathing, there comes a time when the breath, body and mind very naturally become unified. One is then ready to clearly observe and look deeply into feelings (vedana), mental formations (sankhara) and mental objects (dhamma) that arise in the field of awareness. In this process of looking, Thich Nhat Hanh says that to observe is to be one with the object of observation. The subject of observation is not one’s self but the faculty of mindfulness which has the function of illuminating and transforming. As Thich Nhat Hanh says: Mindfulness is the observing mind but it does not stand outside of the object of observation. It goes right into the object and becomes one with it. Because the nature of the observing mind is mindfulness, the observing mind does not lose itself in the object but transforms it by illuminating it just as the penetrating light of the sun transforms trees and plants. This method of penetrative observation leads one to realise deeply that behind the illumination, there is neither one who illumines nor one who is illumined. In short, the observer is the observed: If we continue our mindful observation, there will be no longer a duality between observer and observed. In this respect, Thich Nhat Hanh is articulating an insight essentially similar to that of Dhiravamsa. But Thich Nhat Hanh goes further than that. He says that there comes a point in time at which, when one’s observation of the body and mind becomes sufficiently deep, one realises directly the essential interdependence of oneself with all beings and, indeed, with all things. In this experience of insight, which he calls ‘interbeing’, there is no longer any separation between an independently-existing self and all that is external to it – in fact, one is the world. To experientially understand this profound truth is to have penetrated into the core of anatta.
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Skilful Means in Theravada Buddhism
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com The early Buddhist scriptures (Pali Suttas) record that at the time of His enlightenment – when Siddhattha Gotama attained Nibbana and therefore freed Himself from the wheel of death and rebirth (Samsara) – He initially hesitated to teach His experience to other people. Lord Buddha, or ‘Awakened One,’ as He was henceforth known, felt that His teaching (Dhamma) was too difficult for a generation that ‘delights in worldliness’ to understand, and that its realisation lay beyond their spiritual grasp: ‘Those dyed in lust, wrapped in darkness, Will never discern this abstruse Dhamma Which goes against the worldly stream, Subtle, deep, and difficult to see.’ At this point, however, He saw a lotus pond with some of the lotuses in bloom above the water surface and some lotus buds, submerged, and yet to rise above the water surface. Seeing this, Lord Buddha pondered, surveyed the world with His spiritual eye and saw that there were indeed people of different predilections – ‘some with little dust in their eyes and with much dust in their eyes, with keen faculties and with dull faculties … easy to teach and hard to teach.’ His deep compassion (Karuna) stirred by this vision, Lord Buddha resolved to teach the Dhamma to all: ‘Open for them are the doors to the deathless, Let those with ears now show their faith …’ Having taken the decision to teach the Dhamma to the world, Lord Buddha was faced with the daunting task of rendering the Dhamma accessible to everyone – of devising a teaching strategy which could equally accommodate pupils ‘with keen faculties and with dull faculties.’ His solution to this problem was the practice of ‘skilful means’ (Upaya-Kosalla). Starting from the conviction that Nibbana was beyond thought and linguistic expression, Lord Buddha asserted that His spiritual teaching was only a useful ‘pointer’ to the truth – not the truth itself. This meant that the Dhamma – because merely provisional - was neither fixed nor dogmatic. Rather, being an expedient ‘means’ (Upaya) to an end, this teaching was dynamic and contextual. This pragmatic philosophical stance gave Lord Buddha enormous flexibility – it meant He was free to adjust or change His teaching to suit the level of His audience. In its basic form, ‘skilful means’ appears in the early Buddhist texts as simply a progressive or ‘gradual instruction’ (Anupubbi Katha) on the Dhamma. When teaching to spiritually mature pupils, Lord Buddha directly explains complex philosophical aspects of His doctrine. To beginners, however, He offers preparatory lessons on general spiritual virtues before moving to advanced topics. This process is clearly illustrated in the account of His teaching to Upali: ‘Then the Blessed One gave the householder Upali progressive instruction, that is, talk on giving, talk on virtue, talk on the heavens; He explained the danger, degradation and defilement in sensual pleasures and the blessing of renunciation. When He knew that the householder Upali’s mind was ready, receptive, free from hindrances, elated, and confident, He expounded to Him the teaching special to Lord Buddha: suffering, its origin, its cessation and the path.’ In its more advanced guise, ‘skilful means’ assumes forms that in other contexts could be construed as contradictory or even heretical. For example, in the Tevijja Sutta, two young Brahmins (followers of the Vedic tradition) cannot decide which Vedic teacher offers the correct path to ‘union’ with the aforementioned god, Brahma. Having heard of Lord Buddha’s wisdom, they approach Him for advice on the matter. Lord Buddha, though, does not accept ‘union with Brahma’ as the final goal of salvation - for Him salvation is Nibbana. However, recognising the Brahmins’ sincerity and spiritual potential, He retains their religious terminology and through a progressive question-answer session seeks to wean them from their theism. Firstly, He points out that because the Vedic sages have not seen Brahma ‘face to face,’ they cannot guarantee Brahma’s ultimate ontological status. He then points out that, unlike Brahma, these sages are ‘encumbered’ by the five hindrances and therefore lack the moral purity to achieve ‘communion’ with Him after death. In contrast, because He is ‘unencumbered’ by the five hindrances, Lord Buddha claims that He possesses genuine spiritual knowledge. In deference to the spiritual level of the two Brahmins, however, He presents this transcendent knowledge using Vedic terminology: ‘…I know Brahma and the world of Brahma, and the way to the world of Brahma, and the path of practice whereby the world of Brahma may be gained.’ The young Brahmins, won over by Lord Buddha’s arguments, now ask Him to teach this way to ‘union with Brahma.’ Lord Buddha, though, changes tack and introduces them to His ‘holy life’ – in particular the purifying meditation on the ‘divine abodes’ (Brahma-Vihara). Through this exercise, He points out that the practitioner cultivates the moral virtues of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, and psychically transmits them to the four points of the compass. Lord Buddha assures them that this is the correct ‘way to union with Brahma’ – a ‘way’ which by now has subtly morphed into a preparatory stage on the path to Nibbana. The two Brahmins, grateful for this illuminating teaching, praise Lord Buddha’s ‘gradual instruction’ and its revelatory power: ʻExcellent, Reverend Gotama, excellent! It is as if someone were to set up what had been knocked down, or to point out the way to one who had got lost, or to bring an oil-lamp into a dark place, so that those with eyes could see what was there. Just so the Reverend Gotama has expounded the Dhamma in various ways.’ Similarly, it is well known that Lord Buddha emphatically denied any notion of a permanent soul (Atta). Instead, He maintained that the human being is comprised of five impermanent ‘aggregates’ (Khandha). When, though, Lord Buddha is confronted with a Charvaka (materialist) who believes that the human being is comprised only of the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) and that there is no moral mechanism of kamma and rebirth, He recognises that strong ‘medicine’ is required. To wean the Charvaka from His extreme materialism, Lord Buddha therapeutically presents Him with the opposite extreme - the idealist belief in a permanent soul (Atta). While, in Lord Buddha’s view, this Vedic doctrine is also false because a permanent soul contradicts the evidence of experience, He deems it preferable to materialism because it recognises a moral dimension of reality. That is, if the soul is an enduring entity, then it is a morally responsible agent. According to the Vedic law of kamma, the everyday actions of the human being determine his or her soul’s destiny. Also, Lord Buddha judges that at this stage of the Charvaka’s instruction, the ‘permanent soul’ is easier to grasp intellectually than His empirical theory of the ‘aggregates.’ Then, when He is satisfied that the Charvaka is sufficiently cured of his nihilistic beliefs, and that his mind is clear and receptive, Lord Buddha sets the soul-doctrine aside and advances His own theory of the human personality. The foregoing paradigm of ‘skilful means’ pioneered by Lord Buddha in the early Suttas provided a template for all future developments in Buddhist pedagogy. A Buddhist Ecumenical Declaration
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) (Jadavpur), MTech (Civil) (IIT Kharagpur), PhD (Civil) (IIT Kharagpur), Cert.MTERM (AIT Bangkok), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com This Buddhist Ecumenical Declaration is adapted from the one prepared by Venerable Walpola Sri Rahula in 1981. 1. Whatever our sects, denominations or systems, as Buddhists we all accept the Buddha as our Master who gave us the Teaching. 2. We all take refuge in the Triple Jewel: the Buddha, our Teacher; the Dhamma, his teaching; and the Sangha, the Community of holy ones. In other words, we take refuge in the Teacher, the Teaching and the Taught. 3. We do not believe that this world is created and ruled by a god at his will. 4. Following the example of the Buddha, our Teacher, who is embodiment of Great Compassion (mahakaruna) and Great Wisdom (mahapanna), we consider that the purpose of life is to develop compassion for all living beings without discrimination and to work for their good, happiness and peace and to develop wisdom leading to the realisation of Ultimate Truth. 5. We accept the Four Noble Truths taught by the Buddha, namely, Dukkha, the fact that our existence in this world is in predicament, is impermanent, imperfect, unsatisfactory, full of conflict; Samudaya, the fact that this state of affairs is due to our egoistic selfishness based on the false idea of self; Nirodha, the fact that there is definitely the possibility of deliverance, liberation, freedom from this predicament by the total eradication of the egoistic selfishness; and Magga, the fact that this liberation can be achieved through the Middle Path which is eight-fold, leading to the perfection of ethical conduct (sila), mental discipline (samadhi) and wisdom (panna). 6. We accept the universal law of cause and effect taught in the Patichchasamuppada (Conditioned Genesis or Dependent Origination) and accordingly we accept that everything is relative, interdependent and interrelated and nothing is absolute, permanent and everlasting in this universe. 7. We understand, according to the teaching of the Buddha, that all conditioned things (sankhara) are impermanent (anichcha) and imperfect and unsatisfactory (dukkha) and all conditioned and unconditioned things (dhamma) are without self (anatta). 8. We accept the Thirty-seven Qualities conducive to Enlightenment (bodhipakkhiyadhamma) as different aspects of the Path taught by the Buddha leading to Enlightenment, namely: Four Forms of Presence of Mindfulness (satipatthana); Four Right Efforts (sammappadhana); Four Bases of Supernatural Powers (iddhipada); Five Faculties (indriya: saddha, viriya, sati, samadhi, panna); Five Powers (bala, same five qualities as above); Seven Factors of Enlightenment (bojjhanga); Eight-fold Noble Path (ariyamagga). 9. We admit that in different countries there are differences with regard to the ways of life of Buddhist monks, popular Buddhist beliefs and practices, rites and rituals, ceremonies, customs and habits. These external forms and expressions should not be confused with the essential teachings of the Buddha. Buddhist Meditation
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com Man's quest for an end to his suffering has led him into an exploration of his inner self, its working and its dysfunctional behaviour under certain circumstances. Under such conditions,a radical shift in consciousness, perception and attitude is the only succour for a tormented mind. This process, involving the destruction of suffering, is based on the Four Noble Truths enunciated by the Buddha which are as follows: 1. Life contains suffering. 2. Suffering has a cause, and the cause can be known. 3. Suffering can be brought to an end. 4. The path to end suffering has eight parts. The Buddha also laid out the Noble Eightfold Path which is given below: Right view Right intention Right speech Right action Right livelihood Right effort Right mindfulness Right concentration As a Buddhist, the author is an “insider” and though he is well conversant with Buddhist tenets, his purpose here is not to explain them. Rather he would prefer to deal with meditation which lies at the heart of the spiritual practice of dharmic ( spiritual, Sanskrit dharma, Pali dhamma ) people. Atma dwipa bhava (Be your own island, that is,refuge) : this saying of the Buddha resonates among His followers whose number and geographical spread has made Buddhism a world faith. Named Siddhartha by His parents when He was born, the Buddha was the only founder of a faith who claimed He was a human being, pure and simple. He always denied that He was divine. His family name was Gautama ( Pali Gotama ). However, His encounter with Angulimala, the robber, reveals to us who He really was. According to the Buddha, man sits in command over his destiny; he is however unaware of this fact and abdicates his responsibility of controlling his future, even death. This is so because man is, in a deep philosophical sense, deluded, asleep and unaware of his true nature. He normally identifies himself with his body, which was born and hence will die, some day. This gives rise to vices, insecurity and belief in that what is not. He also believes that he has relatives and friends and, if he clings onto them tightly enough, he will one day, after death, go to the nebulous place called heaven. But it is not true. The lacuna in man's thinking becomes disturbingly clear to him when he finds that he is suffering. Man needs to be awakened and when this awakening process is complete, man will rise from the ashes of the world of the senses that he has just burnt to the world of pure consciousness. Buddhism is a journey where a man starts asleep and wakes up awake. In doing so, he sheds aside nothingness to awaken to a single state of Being. The process by which this takes place is meditation. Books have been written on meditation and it would be futile for the author to be didactic; so he will try to be brief. But one thing must be said. Buddhism represents the crème de la crème of Indian religious thought and philosophy. The Buddha, unlike Christ, did not project Himself as a saviour of man. The Buddha did not refer to God either, as a supreme dispenser of justice and did not claim to be a son or some other relation of God. Rather, His title, Buddha, means one who is awake. He is considered to be the messiah who showed the path to eternity. The Buddha gave his teaching 'for the good of many, for the happiness of many, for showing compassion to the world, for realising the spiritual purpose of life' ( bahujanahitaya bahujanasukhaya lokanukampaya, arthaya hitaya ). He told man that though he is asleep, the capacity to be awakened is in him and also taught man the path to awakening. But man must walk that path himself, alone. Man must realise that he is always alone, whether it be high atop the mountains, in the company of his relatives or in the morning crowd in the downtown of a metropolitan city. A positive attitude to aloneness can develop in man when he can take a mental sword and cleave a distinction between aloneness and loneliness. Loneliness has a negative connotation in the sense that it implies a craving for company of other human beings, the exact opposite of the self-sufficiency implied by aloneness. The capacity to tread the path to nirvana ( Pali nibbana ), which means freedom, is already in man, he just has to use it. He searched, He meditated, He found: this aptly summarises the awakening of the Buddha. When a man suffers, it is useless for him to talk of God, or to fast and otherwise to torture his body if his suffering is not reduced by any or all of these. The Buddha realised this fact and after His awakening promulgated the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. What is required of man is to effect a radical shift in consciousness from the finite to the infinite using right concentration. The concentrated focus is always on suffering and its elimination. The law of cause and effect is at work here too. If one is deluded, one suffers. If one studies the Four Noble Truths, one sees that man should identify the cause of suffering and systematically go about destroying it using the Noble Eightfold Path. The result of meditation is tremendous. One transcends the boundaries of his body; he senses that the entire universe has become his body. He senses that he has exchanged a weak mind for a strong one. He senses that though he may continue to reside in his mortal body, his consciousness has become irreversibly altered. He feels himself being pervaded by peace. He does not become a bird soaring in the sky; he becomes as boundless as the sky itself. He becomes awakened; prabuddha. The Buddha did not give His doctrine for strong wills only; His statements are just as applicable to weaker minds provided they have the determination to follow Him. He asked for nothing more than courage and promised eternity. In response to questioning by devotees in the kingdom of Kosala as to the importance or unimportance of belief, the Buddha pointed out the distinction between knowing and believing. Believing always connotes a second-hand approach to Truth; knowing about something through the experience of someone else. Knowing means a first-hand direct knowledge of Truth and the result of this distinction is that the modicum of doubt that always accompanies belief is absent in knowledge. Freedom of thought is permitted by the Buddha to His devotees so that they can discriminate and find Truth. Thoughts flow like an endless stream in the mind of man. Several of these are highly disturbing and cause a man to become restless or worse. There is absolute tranquillity in meditation because the suffering has been clinically identified, its cause clinically identified and now the sole mission is to remove both the cause and the effect. It must be remembered that cause and effect are not meant here in the Christian sense of the term with a benign God sitting and evaluating each thought or action of a man and delivering an effect of each cause. According to Buddhism, the universe is in a state of flux and, in Japan, a circle or ensho is drawn to represent this eternal rule of cause and effect. Modern science and technology liberate but also trap man in fields such as astrophysics. When one looks up at the night sky, one is looking backwards in time because light has a finite speed however great that speed may be. However, we cannot see the extremities of the universe and logic tells us that the universe cannot have a spatial extremity. Similarly, the universe cannot have a zero-time extremity. Man lives in a space-time frame. An explanation as to the types of meditation in vogue is in order here. Vipashyana ( Pali vipassana; passana means seeing ) meditation is practised in south Asia and other countries which practice Theravada Buddhism ( literally, the way of the Elders ), which is also called Hinayana Buddhism. Zen meditation is practised in East Asia, that is China, Korea and Japan, which are among the countries that practice Mahayana Buddhism ( literally, the greater vehicle ). Meditation is something that cannot be fully explained in words, it has to be experienced to be understood completely. Knowing about meditation is one thing; knowing meditation is quite another. A man can sit alone, cross-legged, in a quiet room in the full lotus posture ( padmasana ) or, failing that, in the half-lotus posture ( bhadrasana ) and try to enter into vipashyana meditation ( the third posture of sitting is called sukhasana )and yet there may be something in the world of the senses lurking in the mind that must be thrown aside from the mind before he can meditate. In zen meditation ( the Sanskrit word dhyana means the same thing as the Pali word jhana, the Chinese word chaan and the Japanese word zen ), one can take the help of koans or spiritual puzzles, which are in prevalence in China, Korea and Japan, on which he can ruminate just prior to meditation in an attempt to propel the mind to a transcendental state in which he can meditate. If one is unable to start doing meditation oneself, one should take the help of a guru ( literally, one who dispels darkness ) who will guide him in the initial stages. One must sit, preferably, in the lotus posture with one's spine erect. There must be no slumping of the back, the head should be straight as if suspended by means of a string. Another analogy adopted is that the head should be straight as if bearing the sky on its top. The hands may be placed in the bhumisparsha mudra ( bhumisparsha gesture ), a mudra in which we find so many statues of the Buddha. This gesture is also called sakshi ( Sanskrit for witness ) mudra. Alternatively, a man's hands may be placed on his lap, all fingers except the thumbs interlocked and the thumbs touching each other. This gesture is very popular in East Asia, that is, in China, Korea and Japan. Yet another mudra consists of the hands straight, placed on the knees, and the thumb and the next finger touching each other with the other fingers straight. This gesture of the hands is called jnana mudra. After one has sat correctly, he must close his eyes and focus on the inhalation and exhalation of his breath. In all meditation, the next step is samadhi, which is a transcendental state. It may be described by sat( being ), chit ( consciousness ) and ananda ( bliss ). In vipashyana meditation, he must then enter into vipashyana in which awareness is focussed on all parts of the physical body in turn and the sensations felt by those parts of the body are consciously sensed. Awareness and equanimity together, symbolise vipashyana meditation. If either part is missing, one cannot attain enlightenment. Zazen ( the practice of zen meditation ) also leads to enlightenment but by a somewhat different procedure. Zen has always positioned itself as quintessential Buddhism, implying that what is not zen is not Buddhism. This position of zen is untenable but it is undeniable that prajna ( wisdom ) and samata ( equanimity ) are essential in zen. Zen poses spiritual puzzles called koans to its followers; spiritual puzzles verging on the nonsensical. At the usual existential level, koans cannot be said to have any coherence and an existential leap is needed to bring harmony. This usually involves satori ( another word is kensho which means seeing into one's own nature ). The spiritual puzzle posed by a koan may be such that even a strong will may be unable to go to the transcendental plane. The role of the zen master is important here. He can deliver a shock, an emotional one usually suffices but a physical blow or other corporal shock may be needed so that the spiritual aspirant is propelled into a higher level of consciousness. The author's feeling is that if one is able to reside in kshana ( this moment ), that is, the 'now' prolonged forever,that is, in an infinite series of 'nows', man would be much happier. Vipashyana also leads to enlightenment. Meditation is ultimately a do-it-yourself project where a man must shed his ego and much else and discover at the end of his solitary journey that he is awake. In this context, it would be in the fitness of things to look at the Yoga Sutra ( method of Yoga ) written by Patanjali in India, who came a few centuries after the Buddha, in the light of the teachings of the Buddha. The Yoga Sutra deals with meditation leading to samadhi. It has eight steps, the first three of which are preparatory and the next five of which gradually lead to meditation. The eight steps are yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. The first two steps deal with a clean and virtuous lifestyle. The third step is taking a seat and a posture conducive to meditation. After one has sat correctly, he must close his eyes and do pranayama which is focussing on the inhalation and exhalation of his breath. The next steps lead to samadhi. It is evident that the writer of this Sutra was heavily influenced by Buddhism and may have been a Buddhist. The focus on attentiveness towards breath, the description of the state of samadhi, the absence of any reference to God or any superhuman power, the stress on one's own effort to attain liberation, the focus on prajna ( wisdom ) and samata ( balance ) and some other facets in the Sutra are in accordance with the teachings of Buddhism. Ordinarily, animal instincts bind a man to the world of the senses. Man lacks the initiative to free himself from them. Rather, he reposes his faith on some superhuman power whom he tries to propitiate in the hope that he may be rescued from his troubles. Patanjali does not theorise much; rather he goes straight to the action of meditation. Meditation may also be described as a tapasya ( a Sanskrit word whose root lies in the Sanskrit word tapah which means heat ), a burning of the impurities in the mind. In medieval India, the great scholar Shankaracharya has been described as a prachchhanna ( Sanskrit 'in essence' ) Buddhist. Before the advent of Buddhism in China, the teachings of Confucius and Lao-tzu were mainly prevalent and and while they gave a certain moral order, true spirituality was absent. This inchoate body of teachings had and still has many followers. However, the arrival of Buddhism in China from India resulted in a spiritual awakening in the Chinese hsin ( mind ). The result of the awakening of man due to meditation is drastic. It is as if the universe had always existed but one had been going about with his eyes closed and has now suddenly opened them. In the plane of the senses, his external world does not change but his way of processing his external world undergoes a drastic change. He becomes more peaceful with himself and with others. This is the significance of the koan uttered in zendos ( temples and other places where zen is performed ): Before enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water; After enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water. An awakened person feels that he is surrounded by peace at all times. It is important to understand that nobody tells him this; he feels it himself. He goes about doing his daily activities, but his way of processing his world has fundamentally altered for the better. He realises that he cannot and need not control all aspects of his external physical world. He realises that he gains more by letting go. He becomes aware of the non-peaceful moments in his life. He opts for shifting his consciousness to his mind and becoming aware of his internal mental processes when waiting, for example, in a traffic jam or while waiting in a queue. He opts for harmony in his mental processes rather than chaos. Genjo Hsuan-tsang, the great Chinese monk who visited India during the time of Emperor Harshavardhana, once made the following remark about the state of realisation : 'It is like a man drinking water; he knows by himself whether it is cold or hot'. Buddhism disagrees with Christianity on the issue of birth-and-death. Since it does not believe in zero-time, it does not believe in the Christian perception of creation. Also, the two world faiths differ, as has been mentioned and implied before, on their views regarding a supreme God and the presence or absence of a soul ( Sanskrit atman, Pali atta ). Christianity believes in the presence of an individual soul inside each man; Buddhism does not. Meditation has been performed by theoreticians and philosophers as well as by rank empiricists. While their emphasis may have been different, it has been universally recognised that they have all contributed to the dharma. Also, meditation is now spreading to the West as well. It is said that Buddhism can be taught to people of any cultural background. That is why in spite of not having any tradition of meditation, the knowledge and traditions of the East are now spreading to the West. Westerners are learning that meditation is not a kind of mental suicide, as some were ought to believe, but an active mental process. Buddhism transformed the life of Emperor Ashoka of India. The greatest Indian Emperor ever, ruling over a territory much larger than the current Republic of India, he did much to spread Buddhism. In his younger days, he was a warrior and conquered many territories. After he conquered Kalinga, or the modern east Indian state of Orissa, he was moved by the suffering of the people. Mentally tormented, he found peace after embracing Buddhism. Emperor Kanishka of the Kushan dynasty was another great Buddhist ruler whose vast empire encompassed a large part of India as well as a vast territory in western China ( modern Sinkiang ) and Central Asia. One dictum in Chinese summarises the essence of zen: wu shih yu hsin, wu hsin yu shih. The meaning which is very deep is “Be business-less in mind, be mind-less in business”. The sentence is self-explanatory. The Buddha showed how man can integrate himself to the cosmos. In this and in many other aspects, He was a student of life and a leader of men. In a caste-ridden society, the Buddha strove to establish the equality of all men. In this, He was the world's first great socialist. Lao-tzu of ancient China in his book Tao Te Ching ( The Way ) described the qualities a true leader should have; leaders tread fresh grass amongst other things. The Buddha possessed all of them and much more. He was the ultimate tyagi, that is, renunciant; renouncing a throne, comforts of a palace, a wife and a son to leave his palace on horseback in search of Truth at night. In this, He showed Himself to be an exemplar of Holiness inspiring millions of others to follow suit. He elevated Himself to the level of a Purushottama (Sanskrit a Superhuman Man ). Buddhism preaches ultimate tolerance to all faiths, even those which are incoherent and self-contradictory. A Buddhist hates none, loves all. The overarching philosophy of Buddhism encompasses love for all creatures on earth. Once, the Buddha said 'Whoever sees me, sees the teaching'. That is the reason why it is invigorating to keep a statue of the Buddha in one's place of meditation just as a Christian keeps a crucifix in his room. Buddhism is particularly relevant in the violence-ridden world today. As said before, Buddhism treats all men as equal. Faith in justice; faith in the power of reason; faith in the bona-fide standing of any petitioner in a court of law; faith in the ability of people to govern themselves ensuring equality of every human being; faith in glasnost, that is openness, are the premises on which a civilised society is built. The unpleasant truth is that these premises are now under assault in some parts of the world from some quarters. As a Buddhist, the author feels that mankind can do much better. The Buddha preached sometimes through formal sermons and also sometimes through answers to questions posed by devotees. Some non-Buddhists have sought to attack His teachings on the ground that He was silent on the issue of presence or absence of God. These people fail to realise that if the Buddha was silent on the issue of God, He was only reposing His faith in man and man's ability to gain enlightenment through his own efforts. With sambodhi ( supreme enlightenment ) of a man, he realises that death can be defeated only if it can be made unreal. His false self, or nothingness, dissolves into a vibrant awakened being. Reflections on India
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com "Of all the dangers facing India today, by far the severest is the presence of criminals in Government service. One does not have to look very far. Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, have criminal records." Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya Some time back, Dr Sudhir Jain, who is the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, requested me to write something about the true state of India at this moment bereft and devoid of the hype that certain misguided and misinformed Indians continually indulge in. After writing to Dr. Jain, wherein I placed India in the context of the broader community of modern nations, I decided to make some unpalatable facts regarding India today available to the public. It is a virtue to be a straight-talker and to clearly say that India’s track record since independence has been dismal, to say the least, and that India has turned out to be a banana republic. I belong to a Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. My family has been ( unwelcome? ) guests of the Government of India since 1947. To put matters in perspective, the Pala dynasty of Bengal was the last Buddhist Dynasty in India. Neither the Arab invasion of Sind nor the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni had any effect on Bengal and the Pala dynasty ruled uninterruptedly until 1162 AD when they were overthrown by the Hindu Sena dynasty. Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD. A few years later, one of Muhammad Ghori's generals swept across the plains of northern India and Lakshmana Sena, the last ruler of the Sena dynasty, fled without giving a fight on hearing the Muslim forces approaching. Bengal came under Muslim rule and remained so until the victory of the British at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 AD. By the time Muslim rule ended in Bengal in 1757 AD, most Bengalis had converted to Islam due to various reasons. Under Muslim rule, an influx of Arabic and Persian words into the Bengali language took place but, crucially, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims continued to speak and write in a common Bengali language with an Indo-Aryan script except for a few words which are still different for Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims. The local dialect of Bengali in East Bengal is different from the local dialect of Bengali in West Bengal, but again this is not based on religious lines. For centuries, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims lived side by side and in harmony, everyone practising his own religion. It is to be noted that my ancestors lived for centuries under Muslim rule. My family has its ancestry in the Chittagong area of East Bengal and has been practising Buddhism since ancient times, probably from even before the birth of Jesus Christ. Since my family was in the extreme South-east of Bengal, near the border with Burma ( now Myanmar ), they have retained their Buddhist religion up to this day. My great great-grandfather Rai Bahadur Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya was a noted Buddhist scholar. He divided his time between Chittagong and Rangpur. He was renowned for his erudition of Pali and Sanskrit and also for his refinement and nobility. He wrote a commentary on the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. His speciality was the study of the Pali Tipitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, the Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. He was conservative to the core, reticent, ascetic, austere and puritan ( like everyone in my family including myself he too was a non-smoker and non-drinker ). He once cautioned my great-grandfather saying 'It is my conviction that Hindus can never be your friends. I have tried all my life and failed. How can you trust people who will not allow you into their temples? There is no place for you in their society.' My great-grandfather was Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. He was the Diwan of Tripura when Tripura was a princely state and was a close friend of Bengali poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore called him 'Diwan Bahadur ji' as a mark of respect. My great-grandfather was the inspiration behind Rabindranath Tagore's writing the atmospheric novel 'Rajarshi' in which Rabindranath Tagore condemned the practice of many Hindus of sacrificing animals before wrathful deities. My great-grandfather was fluent in Sanskrit, Pali and Arabic, among other languages A very erudite person, he wrote and published several books on Buddhism. Among his books, 'Buddhist Civilisation in Asia' stands out. One of his pioneering thesis was that the Caspian Sea was named after Mahakashyapa, a direct disciple of Lord Buddha. Apart from the similarity in names, he based his thesis on the presence of Kalmyk Buddhists in Kalmykia, a part of Russia to the north-west of the Caspian Sea. After retiring from the Tripura Court, he settled in Chittagong where he built a huge Zamindari house. My great-grandfather wrote 'The India of today is hard to define. It is not historical India. Being multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic, unlike France or Germany for instance, it is not a nation state in the Western sense. From ancient times, there have been two terms, 'Bharatiya' ( Indian ) and 'Bharatvasi' ( people who live in India ), implicitly implying that not all people who live in India are Indians. For almost all of its history, India has been a geographical entity rather than a political one. Perhaps the best definition is that the India of today is a union of a number of Indian states on the continent of Asia.' My great-grandfather was an orthodox and puritan Buddhist. He was uncompromisingly opposed to idolatry. He believed that since the majority of Bengalis were Muslims, Bengali non-Muslims had their only future in living in harmony with Bengali Muslims. However, he was acutely aware of an abnormality in Hindu psychology. He used to say 'Hindus are afraid of Muslims and Hindus suffer from an inferiority complex. They constantly remember that Muslims defeated them. They say that one Muslim equals three Hindus.' He also believed that Hindu icon Swami Vivekananda lacked the intellectual ability to grasp Lord Buddha's teachings. He dismissed outright Swami Vivekananda's thesis that Buddhists introduced idolatry and the tantras. He wrote 'Vivekananda was totally wrong. Hinduism introduced idolatry and the tantras. Mantras can be found even in the Vedas.' It may be mentioned that my great-grandfather was vehemently opposed to the tantras which he dismissed as a degenerate cult. The attitude of my great-grandfather towards Hinduism bordered on the hostile. He famously refused to eat from the hands of any Hindu and employed a Muslim cook to cook his meals. He asked a Muslim gentleman to teach Arabic and Urdu to my grandfather and his siblings. As a result, my grandfather also became fluent in Arabic and Urdu. Unfortunately for our family, he passed away before 1947. Were he alive, he would not have taken a decision to migrate to Kolkata on the spur of the moment. He was not a man to take rash decisions. Gifted with penetrating insight, an acute sense of justice, level-headedness and possessing an optimistic and inclusive outlook about the future of humanity, my great-grandfather could have foreseen that East Pakistan would last for only 24 years. My grandfather, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned by the British before his Matriculation Examination. He wrote his examination in prison. He was tortured by the British every time he was imprisoned by them. Educated under Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan, he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi whom he met several times. He took my father, a young boy at that time, to meet Mahatma Gandhi at Barrackpore in the northern suburbs of Kolkata when Mahatma Gandhi was residing there. My father recalled that when he bent down to pay his respects to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi put his hand on my father's head and said in Hindi 'Beta, sachcha patriot bano' which means 'Son, be a true patriot.' However, my grandfather was deeply dismayed by the acrimony between Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. He agreed with Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose that India, in its illiterate state, could not function as a true democracy and a period of benevolent dictatorship was needed after freedom from the British to uplift India after which India could transition to a democracy. He proposed to Mahatma Gandhi that there should be a social revolution to accompany the attainment of freedom from the British. My grandfather was greatly influenced by the French Revolution. Mahatma Gandhi told my grandfather that the social revolution would take place after India had obtained its freedom from the British. He said that he had already started the social revolution in a small way by calling untouchable Hindus 'Harijans' ( at present Harijans are called 'Scheduled Castes' ). As things transpired, after India became free from British colonial rule, the 1950 Constitution was promulgated and the social revolution never took place. My grandfather founded the House of Labour in East Bengal to encourage youths towards business and enterprise. Being a businessman, my grandfather travelled extensively to all parts of undivided India on business. He stayed at Lahore for two years. He also visited Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi and Hyderabad in Sind. My father recalled that, as a young boy, my grandfather took him to Jammu via Sialkot, the normal route in those times. It could not have escaped my grandfather's notice that the language divide between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was too great to be bridged as Bengali Muslims considered Bengali to be their mother tongue and non-Bengali Muslims considered Urdu to be their mother tongue. This very fact would lead to the break-up of Pakistan, with an Indian victory, in 1971. Surprisingly, my grandfather failed to factor the language difference between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims in his prediction of the future of the Indian sub-continent. He failed to realise that any alliance between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was bound to be temporary in nature and that a split was inevitable sooner or later. For a man to travel all over India and not to develop an incisive judgement of the situation was truly extraordinary. Acting impulsively, in 1947 he took a decision to abandon East Bengal and come to Kolkata leaving all his property in East Bengal behind. He came to Kolkata as a refugee and as a pauper. This caused my family great hardship at the time. Surely, the ephemeral nature of East Pakistan should have been obvious to any discerning observer. Soon after defecting to Kolkata in 1947, my grandfather realised that he had been chasing a mirage. Strongly disillusioned, he severed all ties with politics and with the Indian National Congress. Dissatisfied with the way independent India was going, he used to repeatedly say 'I committed a historic blunder by defecting from East Bengal. This is not the independence I fought for.' My grandfather was deeply disillusioned with Nehru and his policies and with India's deteriorating relations with China. He said 'India must not forget that Chinese monks Faxian, Xuanxang and Yijing are considered to be great Acharyas by us. India must cultivate good relations with China. Otherwise, it will be defeated in war.' In 1962, India was trounced in a war by China who won a decisive victory. In 1953, my grandfather could garner enough money to build a house in south Kolkata but his money was exhausted before he could finish the building. It was left to me to finish the construction of our home, my father and paternal uncles having added nothing to what my grandfather had done. Realising and recognising that Independence was a pyrrhic victory for him, he developed an ailment of the heart. He passed away in 1959 deeply regretting his hasty decision to migrate to Kolkata. East Pakistan would last for just 12 more years after his death giving birth to Bangladesh. In hindsight, it is abundantly clear that it was not a correct decision for my grandfather to migrate to Kolkata. He not only discarded the material inheritance of his property in Chittagong but also the intellectual inheritance of the legacy of my great-grandfather. My father, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, now deceased, had much the same kind of career as I am having. Possessing several degrees, professional memberships, and a connoisseur of fine arts and literature, he travelled extensively throughout the world. Amongst his several achievements, the development of a management institute stands out. A Rotarian till his demise, he promoted fine arts by making several donations to deserving organisations. Though my father fully shared my grandfather's views as regards the state of India, it was too late for him to reverse my grandfather's mistake. My father was in Times Square in New York when news broke out that Lee Harvey Oswald had assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. He recalls the dazed appearance on the faces of New Yorkers on receiving the news. ‘A successful democracy needs a literate society – illiterate people cannot make informed and considered choices while voting’ said my father later. ‘Eradicating illiteracy should be India’s prime concern. Side by side, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices, particularly in government offices, should be rooted out. Why should one have to pay bribes to multiple people in order to get a new electricity connection for his newly-constructed house? There is enough for man’s needs but not enough for man’s greed. What matters is not what one has but what one is.’ Though my father was a staunch Buddhist, he had to pay extortion money during Hindu festivals to slum-dwellers who still live near our house. Though my house is a posh area of south Kolkata, there is a big slum close to it. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that Kolkata is littered with similar slums everywhere. The slum-dwellers are mostly illiterate and unemployed and are, naturally, full of vices. The government has failed to uplift these people and eradicate the slums even though decades have passed since independence. Uncle Aziz was a very close friend of my father. He and my father met in the United States. He had his ancestry in Comilla. He settled in Dhaka where he built a house in the Bonani area. He visited our home in Kolkata several times. He used to visit India often for professional purposes and never failed to drop in on us. I also visited Dhaka to present a paper at an International Conference and visited his home. On that occasion, I travelled throughout the length and breadth of Dhaka and saw everything that Dhaka has to offer. The friendship between my father and Uncle Aziz percolated to our extended families. My grandmother, Premlata Bhattacharya, looked upon Uncle Aziz as her own son. My paternal uncles and their families also became close friends of Uncle Aziz and his family and extended family, particularly one of Uncle Aziz's brothers, who was a doctor of international repute. Uncle Aziz's brother and his family also visited our house in Kolkata. On one particular occasion, during dinner at our home, Uncle Aziz told my father and my paternal uncles 'Why did your father come to Kolkata in 1947? Our country is poorer because of your leaving it. Many of us in Bangladesh feel this way.' My father took great care to see that I had exposure to all religions. When I was five years old, he got me admitted to Don Bosco School in Kolkata run by Roman Catholic missionaries where I got to study the Bible. During the twelve years that I studied in that school, certain aspects of Christianity like its monotheism and its opposition to idolatry left a deep, vivid, lasting and permanent impression on my mind. When I was nine years of age, my father took me to Murshidabad, an event that is engraved in my mind. At Murshidabad, he took me to a mosque built hundreds of years ago. He showed me all the details; the minarets, the calligraphy and so on. It was a memorable visit for me. At Don Bosco School and during my higher education, I was following in the footsteps of my ancestors, picking up an excellent education and all the other things needed to be a complete man. Later on, in my professional career, in the midst of my travels in various countries of the world spanning almost the entire globe, I have seen the unity of man. Memories stand out, sometimes instilling a sense of déjà vu in me; the view of the Pacific in Singapore and of the mountains and moraines from the top of Mount Säntis in Switzerland, the flight over Iran slicing between Tehran to the north and Qom to the south and over Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Bangkok’s wats, Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka, Dubai, Jordan’s northwest, sunset at Hardwar, Bremen and Berlin in Germany, Dilli Haat in Delhi and the Marina Beach in Chennai. It is an inconvenient truth that independent India has let down its own freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and my grandfather. Most people in India now seem to have a perverted view of being avant-garde. Sacrificing the values and traditions held dear by our ancestors, our glorious inheritance is thrown to the winds. Parvenus cannot be expected to appreciate the truism of Ich Dien. Ersatz culture proliferates with the concept of life avec plaisir. The scramble for lebensraum degenerates people to fall prey to rampant greed. Having achieved its independence way back in 1947, India has failed to become a developed country. India is still a developing country and an emerging market. India is rampant with idolatry, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices. In India, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The government has failed to give even the basic necessities to all Indians. If the dictum, 'justice delayed is justice denied' is to be held as valid, my mother, Sheila Bhattacharya, who is a retired Head of the Department of English of a college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, was denied justice as she received her retirement dues four years after she had retired. Of the many countries that I have visited in the world, India is the only country I know of where a government employee has been threatened with death by a colleague ( who is also a government employee ) and has been forced to resign and the government has not done anything whatsoever for the victim. Steeped in bribery, the immediate bosses of the victim ( all of whom are government employees ) have supported and are continuing to support the criminal who happens to have considerable money-power. The victim is yet to receive a single paisa of even his own money kept in the custody of the government during his years in government service. This very recent incident presents a shameful picture of India in front of the civilised world. I have founded the Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation for uplifting street-children and slum-children of Kolkata. The Government of India has to do the following cleaning-up on a war-footing. The Government of India has to 1. Root out government servants having a criminal record. To start with, the government should dismiss and try Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, and all of whom have criminal records. 2. Root out bribery and corruption in government offices. Only a very small fraction of government servants are honest. 3. Demolish the conception, prevalent among most Indians, that government service implies the right to take bribes. While punishing the guilty, the government should laud the very small minority of government servants who are honest. 4. Make an earnest effort to uplift the suffering villagers of India. 5. Make sincere efforts to remove slums and ghettos in Indian cities and towns. 6. Build a government based on trust, not suspicion. At least four identity documents are prevalent in India today - Passport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card and Voter's Identity Card. Since, excepting a Passport, an Indian does not really need the rest, the government should abolish the unnecessary documents. Different sets of government servants are currently issuing different identity documents and taking bribes for issuing the same. 7. Recognise that widespread rigging takes place in Indian elections and make sincere efforts to root-out the same. In view of the widespread rigging prevalent now with local toughs ruling polling booths, Indian election results are devoid of any relation to the will of the people. 8. Ensure that a son inherits his father's property. This usually does not happen now unless the son pays hefty bribes to government servants. The government must do some soul-searching and feel ashamed that a son currently finds great difficulty in inheriting his father's shares and electricity connection - just to cite two examples. 9. Eradicate the current habit of government servants taking bribes to, for example, sanction a building plan, mutate a landed property and provide an electricity connection. 10. Simplify the procedure for getting Indian Passports. The government servants at the Regional Passport Offices must be courteous and helpful and not harass citizens as is the case today. 11. Ensure that retirement benefits are released immediately after retirement and not after four or five years. Many people get their retirement benefits between four and six years after retirement. My mother received her retirement benefits four years after her retirement. The government must punish government servants who withhold retirement benefits of retired citizens. 12. Eliminate feudalism. Corrupt government servants have taken the place of erstwhile zamindars in rural areas. 13. Eliminate the current 'trickle-down' economy. The government must ensure that the lower strata of Indian society is also a beneficiary of economic progress and is not left behind. 14. Remove the criminal-government servant-politician nexus. This is extremely important if India is to progress. 15. Remove the difference between 'the rulers' and 'the ruled'. The government must ensure that democracy does not remain a sham and that government is truly 'of the people, for the people and by the people'. 16. Place a greater value on human life. The government must not think that, simply because India is a populous country, a few lives lost in an accident, for example, a bridge collapse - such as the one that happened in Howrah some time back - does not matter. The government must acknowledge that every single human life is valuable. 17. Eliminate tokenism. 18. Eliminate window-dressing before a politician visits an area. The government must be sincere in its development efforts and ensure that not a single development project announced turns out to be an eyewash designed to fool the population. 19. Ensure internet access and continuous power supply in rural areas. Internet access outside of the metropolises is pitiful and power outages are common. Yesterday evening, there was a power outage at my office in Kolkata. 20. Be sensitive to the suffering of the people. The length and breadth of Kolkata is flooded during the monsoon season and no regime has done anything about it. 21. Understand that slogans like 'Bekari hatao' and 'Roti, kapra aur makaan' are useless if they remain mere slogans without any attempt to implement them. The government must ensure that the fundamental needs of the people are fulfilled. Three Proven Ways to Position a Professional Services Firm
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com The decision of how to position a professional services firm is actually a collection of decisions made over time. These choices become more strategic and more expensive as the firm grows but they are made at thousands of points along the way nonetheless. The question really is: are they made proactively or reactively? How Positioning Evolves Within a Firm It starts at the firm's founding when the principal makes the decision to hang out a "shingle" and attracts his first client. The nature of these early client relationships establishes a precedent for the type of work and type of clientele the firm continues to service for years to come. And, rarely are those first client decisions strategic choices. In fact, usually the early clients of the firm are not really selected and attracted; they are pursued and sold in a desire to survive. Over time, the firm grows - adding new clients in new industries and applying new service remedies which require different people and different skills. Along the way, the firm tells itself that it is highly differentiated and well positioned - after all the firm is growing and winning new clients. "We have better client service," it says. "We do things better (faster or cheaper) than the big boys! We are more accommodating! We are more flexible!" One day, twenty or thirty years hence, the firm leadership looks around and asks itself a few difficult, yet fundamental questions. The questions themselves are never quite the same but generally speaking they sound something like this: How did we get in THIS business? Why are we providing THAT service? Why are we pursuing THOSE clients? The amount of time it takes to get here varies and the size of the firm at this point is largely irrelevant. Regardless, this is the moment when positioning stops being reactive and starts being proactive. Three Fundamental Positioning Models At this point, the task of positioning moves from being a situational one (how can we win this piece of business with that client?) to being a strategic one (what business are we actually in?). The decision becomes a matter of strategic focus and is about directing the firm's expertise in a given direction such that it can attract a selection of high-value clients. Ultimately, the firm realises that it can only truly own one simple idea in the minds of its clients. Generally speaking, that simple idea is the collective expertise the firm offers to the market. Deciding what that expertise is becomes the fundamental task of positioning. While generally the decision is not quite this simplistic, there are three simple ways to think about positioning a firm. #1 - Horizontal Positioning Generally the simplest approach to position a firm is by building deep expertise in a relatively narrow service offering that has high value to a wide range of clientele across a variety of industries. I say this approach is the simplest positioning strategy because it doesn't necessarily ask the firm to radically change itself. The professionals in the firm are asked to deepen their knowledge in a topic they presumably love - some narrow portion of the profession they have set out to do. That said, if the fundamental goal of positioning is to attract high-value clients, then it has become increasingly difficult to do this solely by positioning around a narrow service offering. As an example, perform a Google search on the topic of "analytics and data mining consulting." The resulting string yields over 25M hits. One of the subsequent links provides over 150 firms claiming competency in this somewhat narrow IT service offering. Despite all the noise, it is possible to identify firms having success with this strategy. If you perform a Google search on the topic, "salesforce consulting firms" you’ll find about 1.2M hits. While this is still a daunting list, after clicking through a few firms the user quickly finds out that most firms offering this service are just IT generalists trying to express some modest expertise in this area. After a few clicks, one finds Red Sky Solutions (www.redskysolutions.com), a Los Angeles-based firm that specialises in sales automation specifically utilising the Salesforce platform. The message is clear and simple, "We partner with clients to implement and customize the following salesforce.com offerings..." The proof is equally clear and simple - 250 Salesforce projects within just the first 2 years of operations (and that was 7 years ago). Most attempts to proactively position a professional services firm take this first approach, though few do it as well as Red Sky Solutions. #2 - Vertical Positioning The second approach to positioning is to align the firm’s resources to serve a range of needs for clients within one or a handful of select industry verticals. Generally speaking, this is a market-based strategy. The firm effectively owns the market it serves in the minds of its clients. One of the best single examples of this is the power-focused engineering firm, Sargent & Lundy. Sargent & Lundy can describe its expertise in simple yet meaningful units of measure: it has led the design of 927 power plants totalling 135,643 MW of energy. This experience is tangible and real to the client. It's worth noting that the firm has ridden this single market focus for over 120 years and has derived ~$500M in revenue annually from this strategy (equivalent to ~8-10% of the US market for these services). While this method to positioning is generally the most successful one, less than 5% of professional service firms in a given industry has the courage to position itself in this manner. This is due to the fact that it requires the professionals in the firm to learn quite a bit about something they often do not care much about - their clients. While all firms talk about how well they understand a client's business, very few actually commit themselves to building deep expertise through the methods of listening to clients, reading their industry publications and attending their relevant professional conferences. Even if they do all these things, few have built systematic approaches to sharing this insight firm-wide to build the collective knowledge of the firm's people to truly be experts. #3 - Positioning Through Business Model Innovation The third approach to positioning is to innovate an entirely new business model to serve clients in a new or novel way. Since this is a bit more difficult to wrap your head around, I shall offer a more detailed example. QStart Labs At first glance, QStart Labs is just another software development firm. But, as you look more closely, you realise that the firm has created an entirely new business model for providing this service. Essentially, it is part developer, part investor and part entrepreneur. The firm contracts with venture-backed startups over multi-year terms through revenue-share arrangements. That sounds confusing, but it is really quite simple - the firm knows a boat load about how to get a new software product to market so they are willing to share in the risk (and reward) of a new venture. Now, the interesting part is that while the revenue share model was built to serve the needs of startup companies, it has enabled the firm to open relationships with companies of all sizes and types that are interested in a unique type of relationship with a software development firm. While this approach to positioning generally creates the most value for the client and has potential to create the most growth, it is by far the most difficult path. The skill sets required to innovate a business model generally start with the difficult decisions made to build deep, meaningful expertise in a narrow area of service or a narrow market. The folks at QStart Labs built significant chops by working closely with a number of VCs to take products to market over a number of years - skill sets you do not just build overnight. A Fourth Approach for the Remaining 0.5% - "The Big Idea" Wait a minute. Isn’t the title of the article, "Three Proven Ways to Position a Professional Services Firm?" In actuality, there is a fourth way to position a firm but it is reserved for a very small collection of very well established firms in a marketplace. These are the firms that have already risen above the noise and grown to a significant level of status in the marketplace. They are seen as leaders and the phrase, "nobody ever got fired for hiring [insert firm name]" is a phrase used regularly in the space. Many of these firms are quite generalist in nature but grew at a time when demand for their expertise far exceeded the available supply of it. They exploited this opportunity by being the most professional consultants in the room. This 0.5% of firms in any professional category has already been defined. There is no room for additional firms to join this rank. For this small set of firms, it is quite effective to position around "the big idea." The firms that have been most successful with this approach are, of course, Accenture and IBM. Accenture has done it by positioning itself as "the firm to achieve high performance." And IBM has followed with its campaign "for a smarter planet." Both approaches position around a "big idea" that is much greater than the underlying expertise of the collective resources within either firm. That said, it is the collective expertise and talent of each firm that enables it to deliver on the lofty message declared through the positioning. This approach to positioning could best be described as "do not try this at home." Positioning any firm in the remaining 99.5% in this way sets the firm up for disappointment when marketing initiatives fail to deliver the outcomes sought by the firm leadership. Dhyana Paramita: The Perfection of Meditation
Shamatha, Vipashyana, Buddhanupashyana and Buddhanusmriti Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com This article deals with Dhyana Paramita ( the Perfection of Meditation ). In this article, I am striving to present the essence of Dharma ( Dharma-Dhatu ) in my own way. Although my family has its ancestral roots in Chittagong ( Chattagram – in Bengali ), Bangladesh and, naturally, follows Theravada Buddhism, I am trying to be as comprehensive as possible in my exposition of the Dharma. Sanskrit has been used as the default classical language of this article. Pali has also been extensively used and Chinese, Japanese and Korean have been used, where appropriate. Diacritical marks have been omitted as some knowledge of Sanskrit and Pali on the part of the reader is assumed. Buddhism, a major world faith, was founded by Lord Buddha in India over two thousand five hundred years ago. It has spread peacefully over much of Asia and also to Kalmykia in eastern Europe and has millions of adherents in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, China ( including Tibet ), Taiwan, Mongolia, North and South Korea, Japan, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and also in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia and Russia ( Buryatia and Tuva in Siberia and Kalmykia in eastern Europe ). The northern extremity of Buddhism in Asia is the Ivolga Monastery in Siberia, Russia. This article is an exposition of Buddhism and in it, the word “faith” is used as a synonym of the word “religion”. Buddhism is also called Saddharma ( the true faith ) or Dharma. The Sanskrit word “Dharma” literally means “Property”. For example, one says that the Dharma of fire is to burn. This means that the property of fire is to burn. The fire cannot be separated from its capacity to burn. Similarly, the literal meaning of Dharma ( Dhamma – in Pali, Fa – in Chinese, Ho – in Japanese ) of man is the basic property of man from which he cannot be separated. This means the spirituality inherent in man. The objective of Buddhism is Nirvana ( liberation, Nibbana – in Pali, Gedatsu – in Japanese ) and Bodhi ( Enlightenment, P'u-ti – in Chinese, Bodai – in Japanese ). The word Buddhi means intellect and the word Bodha means to understand; it is from these words that the word Bodhi is derived. Who is it that seeks Nirvana, Bodhi, and to understand? It is “I” ( Aham ), who is writing right now. Understanding sharpens me, refines me, contextualises me, and keeps me on the path to Bodhi and Nirvana. I shall have an opportunity to delve deeply into the issue of “I” in Buddhism later. Deep understanding ( Anubodha ) is the context of Bodhi, and Nirvana. Rephrasing Nagarjuna, the founder of the Madhyamika school of Mahayana Buddhism, Shunyata ( emptiness, Sunnata – in Pali, K'ung – in Chinese, Ku – in Japanese ) is the absence of ignorance. Avidya Paramam Malam ( Avijja Paramam Malam – in Pali, Ignorance is the greatest impurity ) is what Lord Buddha said. Nagarjuna can be further re-interpreted to give to me the understanding that Nirvana is not only available for a man in Samsara ( empirical and phenomenal world ) but, as I am immersed in Samsara, it is only possible within it, subject to the condition that the Arya Ashtanga Marga ( Noble Eightfold Path ) is rigorously followed. The conclusion Nagarjuna reached, in his seminal work Mula Madhyamaka Karika, is that all things lack a fixed essence ( Swabhava, Sabhava – in Pali, Zi-xing – in Chinese ) or a fixed individual character (Swalakshana ) and that is why they are amenable to change. In other words, change is possible only if entities are devoid or empty ( Shunya ) of Swabhava. The Madhyamika school of Mahayana Buddhism split into the Prasangika Madhyamika ( as represented by Chandrakirti ) and the Swatantrika Madhyamika ( as represented by Bhavaviveka ). Buddhism has two main branches, Theravada and Mahayana, the difference between the two will be explained in due course. Man's quest for an end to his suffering ( Duhkha, Dukkha – in Pali ) has led him into an exploration of his inner self ( Wo – in Chinese ), its working and its dysfunctional behaviour under certain circumstances. Under such conditions,a radical shift in consciousness, perception and attitude is the only succour for a tormented mind ( Chitta, Manas, Hsin or Xin – in Chinese, Kokoro – in Japanese ). This process, involving the destruction of suffering, is based on the Four Noble Truths ( Chaturaryasatya, Chattari Aryasachchani – in Pali ) enunciated by Lord Buddha which are as follows:
Lord Buddha also laid out the Noble Eightfold Path ( Arya Ashtanga Marga, Arya Atthangika Magga – in Pali ). The Noble Eightfold Path is given below:
This Path is also known as The Middle Path ( Madhyama Pratipada, Majjhima Patipada – in Pali ) because it is neither too easy nor too difficult. The first five parts of the Path involve maintaining a lifestyle full of virtue ( Shila, Sila – in Pali ) while the last three pertain to the practice ( Patipatti – in Pali ) of meditation. The Path is called The Way ( Tao – in Chinese, Do, Michi – in Japanese ) in the Far East. The practice of meditation lies at the heart of the spiritual practice of Dharmic ( spiritual ) people. To be a Buddhist means to distinguish between Buddhist and non-Buddhist acts, between ignorance and Enlightenment, between Samsara and Nirvana. Pancha Shila is for householders; Ashta Shila is for householders practising Brahmacharya, that is celibacy; and Dasha Shila is for monks. According to Lord Buddha, man is his own master. “Atta hi attano natho” are the exact words of Lord Buddha. He also said “Atmadvipa viharatha, atmasharana ananyasharana” meaning “Dwell making yourself your island ( that is refuge ), and not anyone else as your refuge”. Man is however unaware of this fact and abdicates his responsibility of controlling his future, even death. This is so because man is, in a deep philosophical sense, deluded ( Mohagrasta ), asleep and unaware of his true nature. He normally identifies himself with his body, which was born and hence will die, some day. This gives rise to vices, insecurity and belief in that what is not. Man lives in illusions ( Moha ); the illusion that he will never fall sick, the illusion that no harm will ever befall him. He also believes that he has relatives and friends and, if he clings onto them tightly enough, he will one day, after death, go to the nebulous place called heaven. But it is not true. The lacuna in man's thinking becomes disturbingly clear to him when he finds that he is suffering. When a man suffers, the world seems to collapse around him. Man needs to be awakened and when this awakening process is complete, man will rise from the ashes of the world of the senses that he has just burnt to the world of pure consciousness. Buddhism is a journey where a man starts asleep and ends up awake. In doing so, he sheds aside nothingness to awaken to a single state of Being. The process by which this takes place is meditation. Lord Buddha's title means one who is awake. He is the messiah who showed the path to eternity. Lord Buddha gave His teaching “for the good of many, for the happiness of many, for showing compassion to the world” ( Bahujanahitaya, Bahujanasukhaya, Lokanukampaya ). He told man that though he is asleep, the capacity to be awakened is in him and also taught man the path to awakening. But man must walk that path himself, alone. Man must realise that he is always alone, whether it be high atop the mountains, in the company of his relatives or in the morning crowd in the downtown of a metropolitan city. A positive attitude to aloneness can develop in man when he can take a mental sword and cleave a distinction between aloneness and loneliness. Loneliness has a negative connotation in the sense that it implies a craving for company of other human beings, the exact opposite of the self-sufficiency implied by aloneness. The capacity to tread the path to Nirvana is already in man, he just has to use it. In the Dharmachakrapravartana Sutra ( Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta - in Pali ), Lord Buddha said that Nirvana is not subject to grief, defilement ( Klesha, Kilesa – in Pali, Bonno - in Japanese ), disease ( Vyadhi ), decay ( Jara ), and death ( Mrityu, Marana ). In other words, Nirvana is beyond cause and effect, that is, it transcends conditioned phenomena. Lord Buddha also said “Nirvanam Paramam Sukham”. Nirvana is Apratitya-samutpanna and Asamskrita ( unconditioned, Apatichcha-samuppanna and Asankhata – in Pali, Wu-yin – in Chinese ) and, according to Vasubandhu of the Yogachara ( the practice of Yoga ) school of Mahayana Buddhism, is the Parinishpanna Swabhava ( true self-nature of Being, Zhen-shi-xing – in Chinese ). It is interesting to note that in the Lankavatara Sutra, a Mahayana Sutra associated with the Yogachara school, Nirvana is described as the seeing of everything as it is. Nirvana is a positive Absolute and is Nitya ( without beginning and end, Nicca – in Pali ). Nirvana means a state of Mukti ( Mutti – in Pali )which means freedom or Vimukti ( Vimutti – in Pali ) which means absolute freedom. Nirvana also denotes Satya ( Sacca – in Pali ) which means Truth and Shanti ( Santi – in Pali ) which means Peace. A synonym for Nirvana is Moksha ( liberation, Mokkha – in Pali ). Nirvana is a state of absolute perfection. Shariputra, the famous historical disciple of Lord Buddha, described Nirvana as the extinction of desire, hatred and illusion. In mystical language, Nirvana is the experience of standing face-to-face with Reality ( Shi – in Chinese ). Nirvana is equated with Bodhi and is the Paramartha-Satya. Nirvana is sometimes expressed as negative of negative such as the cessation of suffering, of craving, of aversion, etc. This need not result in any confusion. In Sanskrit, sometimes positive things are expressed as negatives of negatives as the word “Arogya” which means recuperation from illness and the word “Amrita” which means immortal. Further, as mathematics proves, negative of negative is always positive. Nirvana is a freeing from the chains of a false sense of individuality. Nirvana is a state of non-duality ( Advaita or Advaya ); a state where the illusion of a false sense of “I” ( Parikalpita Swabhava, Fen-bie-xing – in Chinese ) does not exist. Expressed differently, liberation from the illusion of separateness of the individual Self from the Whole is Nirvana. Freedom is, Nirvana is, Truth is. According to Buddhism, everything is relative and impermanent ( Anitya, Anicca – in Pali ) in the empirical, conditioned world. Lord Buddha told Rashtrapala “The world is in continuous flux and is impermanent”. In this context, I can correctly say that one cannot step twice into the same river because although I may continue to see the same river externally from a gross point of view, the water molecules I am seeing at a particular location at any moment are different from the water molecules the moment before and the moment after. One thing disappears, conditioning the appearance of the next in a series of cause and effect. Everything is in a state of becoming something else the next moment. A wheel cannot be separated from its movement. There is no static wheel “behind” the wheel in motion. Things change over time. Everything originates dependent on other factors. That is, all things come into existence as the result ( Phala ) of an interaction of various causes ( Hetu ). Each entity is Pratitya-samutpanna ( conditioned, Patichcha-samuppanna – in Pali ) as well as Pratitya-samutpada ( conditioning, Patichcha-samuppada – in Pali ). The Law of Dependent Origination is central to Buddhism. For example, anger cannot arise by itself without a cause. The five aggregates, Rupa, Vedana, Sangya, Samskara and Vigyana ( Rupa, Vedana, Sanna, Sankhara and Vinnana - in Pali ), all of which are identified as Anatma ( non-Soul ) by Lord Buddha in the Anatmalakshana Sutra, are called the Pancha Skandha ( the five aggregates, Pancha Khandha – in Pali ). Sensations ( Vedana ) of the physical world of forms ( Rupa ) are received by the five physical sense organs ( Indriya ) such as the nose. The mind feels the mental world. The five physical sense organs and the mind are called the six sensory bases. Sensations lead to perceptions ( Sangya ), which in turn lead through pre-dispositions ( Samskara ), to consciousness ( Vigyana ). In Theravada Buddhism, the concept of Bhavanga ( stream of thought ) is introduced while in the Yogachara school of Mahayana Buddhism, the concept of Alaya-Vigyana ( literally, the abode of consciousness, but commonly translated as store-consciousness ) is introduced. The Alaya-Vigyana ( Ariyashiki – in Japanese ), which maintains the continuum of consciousness, is the mind; hence this school is also called the Chittamatratavada school. Other names of the same school are Agamanuyayi Vigyanavada and Vigyaptimatratavada. The Vigyanavada school is further divided into the Nirakaravadi Vigyanavada ( as represented by Asanga ) and the Sakaravadi Vigyanavada ( as represented by Gyanashri Mitra ).The fundamental concept of the Yogachara ( Wei Shi – in Chinese, Yuishiki – in Japanese ) school may be expressed by the proposition that the Parinishpanna Swabhava is realised when man pierces ( Patibheda ) through his Parikalpita Swabhava and Paratantra Swabhava ( conditioned self-nature, Yi-ta-xing – in Chinese ). The Alaya-Vigyana, as conceived in Mahayana Buddhism, is a permanent entity. The Alaya-Vigyana contains all impressions of past actions and all future potentialities. It is also the Tathagatagarbha ( Buddha-Matrix, Ru-lai-zang – in Chinese, Nyoraizo – in Japanese ), the basis on which a man can become a Buddha. So, latent in every man is a Buddha-like faculty called Buddha-Dhatu ( Buddha-Nature, Fo-hsing or Fo-xing – in Chinese ). Right meditation leads to spiritual Enlightenment, which is nothing but the full manifestation of the Buddha-Dhatu ( or Tathagata-Dhatu ) in man. Thus, any man can develop himself through appropriate practice, that is meditation, and become a Buddha. Anyway, for an average man, the summation of all physical and mental processes, processes in constant flux, is perceived empirically as “I”. The empirical “I” is ephemeral and impermanent, and is Samvriti-Satya ( conventional truth ). Conscious of something, one reacts mentally. The mental reactions are of two types : craving and aversion. Craving ( Trishna, Tanha – in Pali, Raga, Lobha – in Pali ) and aversion ( Dvesha, Dosa – in Pali ) both lead to suffering; it is self-evident that aversion results in suffering and craving results in suffering because if the object of craving remains out of reach, there is suffering. Thus, ultimately, whatever is impermanent is Duhkha or suffering. Trishna Nirodha, Upadana ( clinging ) Nirodha ( With the extinction of craving comes the extinction of clinging ). The renowned sage Buddhaghosa, the writer of the Visuddhimagga ( Vishuddhi Marga, The Path of Purification ), has dwelt elaborately on suffering. Taking the lead from Nagarjuna, I posit that Duhkha is transient; it arises dependent on something else and also decays into extinction. Duhkha is not self-determining; its existence and character are attributable to factors that condition its origin and subsequent transformation. Coming into existence and dying out of existence, Duhkha lacks any trace of permanence.Thus, it may be said that Duhkha lacks a Swabhava or Swalakshana and is characterised by Nihswabhava ( absence of Self-Nature ). Thus Duhkha is empty ( Shunya ). I am, therefore, led to formulate the proposition: Duhkhameva Shunyam. Because Duhkha is ephemeral, I can expand the Sanskrit sentence to this: Duhkhameva Anityam evam Shunyam The perception of the emptiness of Duhkha allows one to let go of Duhkha and thus be released of the hold that Duhkha has on him. This is, of course, intended as a Mahayana Buddhist theoretical complement to Shamatha and Vipashyana meditation and is in no way a substitute for Shamatha and Vipashyana meditation. I also hold that the notion of Buddha-Dhatu is a very productive concept. Any meditator's meditation is bound to become better if he remembers during meditating that he has Buddha-Dhatu in him. It may be mentioned, at this stage, that practitioners who are extremely advanced spiritually are called by the name Arhat ( Arahant – in Pali, A-han – in Chinese, Arakan, Rakan – in Japanese ) in Theravada Buddhism and Bodhisattva ( Bodhisatta – in Pali, Bosatsu – in Japanese ), or aspirants to Buddhahood ( Buddhatva, or as is rather more commonly termed Buddhata ) in Mahayana Buddhism. A Bodhisattva is any man who has taken a vow to follow the path to Buddhatva taking all other sentient beings with him. A monk ( Bhikshu, Bhikkhu – in Pali ) and a lay disciple ( Upasaka ) are both Bodhisattvas. Sattva means a sentient being. In response to questioning by devotees in the kingdom of Kosala as to the importance or unimportance of belief, Lord Buddha pointed out the distinction between knowing and believing. Believing always connotes a second-hand approach to Truth; knowing about something through the experience of someone else. Knowing means a first-hand direct knowledge of Truth and the result of this distinction is that the modicum of doubt that always accompanies belief is absent in knowledge ( Gyana ). Freedom of thought is permitted by Lord Buddha to His devotees so that they can discriminate and find Truth. Nirvana cannot be had via someone else's knowledge. A contemporary scholar Kazuaki Tanahashi describes an incident in Japan where a Buddhist monk illustrated to his disciples the power of what might be called “positive emptiness” in the mind. A void in the mind can be filled with spirituality by virtue of positive thinking. A Korean monk, Kyong Ho, echoed this feeling when he advised one to accept the anxieties and difficulties of this life. He also advised people to use their will to bring peace between peoples. This is particularly relevant in the modern world where democracy and egalitarianism are taken for granted. The great Japanese Zen Buddhist monk Dogen said that Samadhi ( which is a transcendental state of mind ) led to Enlightenment of those who found Enlightenment in India and China. Buddhism also strongly believes in the theory ( Pariyapti, Pariyatti – in Pali ) of Karma ( as you sow, so shall you reap ) and in the concept of rebirth. Lord Buddha said “Monks, I say that volition is action. Having thought, one acts through body, speech and mind.” ( Chetana 'ham bhikkhave kammam vadami. Chetayitva kammam karoti kayena vachaya manasa. – in Pali ). Body ( Kaya Vajra ), Speech ( Vak Vajra )and Mind ( Chitta Vajra ) are called Tri Vajra in a certain school of Mahayana Buddhism ( Vajra can mean both thunderbolt and diamond ). There are two types of Karma, Kushala Karma ( Kusala Kamma – in Pali ) or good actions and Akushala Karma or bad actions. Kushala Karma is Dharmic while Akushala Karma is Adharmic. The result of both types of Karma are called Karma Phala, which correspond to the type of Karma performed. He searched, He meditated, He found: this aptly summarises the awakening of Lord Buddha. When a man suffers, it is useless for him to talk of God, or to fast and otherwise to torture his body if his suffering is not reduced by any or all of these. Lord Buddha realised this fact and after His awakening taught the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. Meditation is one form of mental culture ( Bhavana ). In meditation, what is required of man is to effect a radical shift in consciousness from the finite to the infinite using right concentration. Concentration is called Chittaikagrata in Sanskrit ( Chittekaggata – in Pali ). The concentrated focus is always on the elimination of suffering. The law of cause and effect is at work here too. If one is deluded, one suffers. If one studies the Four Noble Truths, one sees that man should identify the cause of suffering and systematically go about destroying it using the Noble Eightfold Path. The result of meditation is tremendous. One transcends the boundaries of his body; he senses that the entire universe has become his body. He senses that he has exchanged a weak mind for a strong one. He senses that though he may continue to reside in his mortal body, his consciousness has become irreversibly altered. He feels himself being pervaded by peace. He becomes awakened; Prabuddha. Lord Buddha did not give the Dharma for strong wills only; His statements are just as applicable to weaker minds provided they have the determination to follow Him. He asked for nothing more than courage and promised eternity. An explanation as to the types of meditation in vogue is in order here. Shamatha ( Samatha – in Pali ) and Vipashyana ( Vipassana – in Pali, Kuan or Guan – in Chinese, Kan – in Japanese ) or Vidarshana ( Pashyana or Darshana means to see in an ordinary way; Vipashyana or Vidarshana means to see in a special way, that is, with Insight ) meditation are practised in south Asia and other countries which practice Theravada ( meaning, the way of the Elders ) Buddhism. Lord Buddha presented the technique of Vipashyana meditation in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta ( Mahasmritipratishthana Sutra ) / Satipatthana Sutta ( Smritipratishthana Sutra ). Lord Buddha delivered this Sutra in Kammassadhammam near Delhi. The Mahasatipatthana Sutta is found in the Digha ( Dirgha ) Nikaya and the Satipatthana Sutta is found in the Majjhima ( Madhyama ) Nikaya. Zen Buddhist practice is performed in East Asia, that is, in China, North and South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, which are among the countries that practice Mahayana ( meaning, the great vehicle ) Buddhism. In fact, Zen is one of the eight schools of Mahayana Buddhism. Meditation is something that cannot be fully explained in words, it has to be experienced to be understood completely. Knowing about meditation is one thing; knowing meditation is quite another. A man can sit alone, cross-legged, in a quiet room in the full lotus posture ( Padmasana or Dhyanasana or Vajraparyankasana ) or, failing that, in the half-lotus posture ( Bhadrasana ) and try to enter into Vipashyana meditation ( the third posture of sitting is called Sukhasana, literally meaning “the posture that gives happiness” ). If one is unable to start doing meditation oneself, one should take the help of a Guru ( literally, one who dispels darkness ) who will guide him in the initial stages. One must sit, preferably, in the lotus posture with one's spine erect. There must be no slumping of the back, the head should be straight as if suspended by means of a string. Another analogy adopted is that the head should be straight as if bearing the sky on its top. The hands may be placed in the Bhumisparsha Mudra ( Bhumisparsha gesture ), a Mudra ( Inzo – in Japanese ) in which I find so many statues of Lord Buddha. Bhumisparsha literally means “ touching the ground”. This gesture is also called Sakshi ( Sanskrit for witness ) Mudra or Bhusparsha Mudra ( the gesture of touching the earth ). Alternatively, a man's hands may be in the cosmic Mudra with the left hand on top of the right, middle joints of middle fingers together and the thumbs touching each other. The hands should be held against the body, with the thumbs at about the height of the navel. This gesture is very popular in East Asia. The Samadhi Mudra consists of the right hand placed on top of the left hand with the tips of the two thumbs touching each other. Yet another Mudra consists of the hands straight, placed on the knees, and the thumb and the next finger touching each other with the other fingers straight. This gesture of the hands is called Gyana Mudra. Other gestures are the Dharmachakra Mudra, Varada Mudra, Abhaya Mudra, Vajrahumkara Mudra and the Samaya Vajra Mudra. The Dharmachakra Mudra can be seen in the famous Sarnath statue of Lord Buddha. This gesture is also called the Bodhyangi or Vyakhyana Mudra. The Varada Mudra is the genture of giving boon with the right hand while the Abhaya Mudra is the gesture of giving protection with the right hand. The Vajrahumkara Mudra, also called the Trailokyavijaya Mudra, consists of placing both hands crossed over one's chest with the right hand over the left hand and with both the palms facing the chest. A much less common Mudra is the Samaya Vajra Mudra which consists of the right thumb touching the right little finger with the middle three fingers of the right hand suggesting the shape of a thunderbolt. A meditator may also hold a Vajra in his right hand - if he does so, he is called Vajradhara ( holder of the Vajra ). After one has sat correctly, he must close his eyes and focus on the inhalation and exhalation of his breath ( Anapana-smriti or Anapana-sati ). Anapana ( An-pan – in Chinese ) means respiration. There must be no tampering with the natural respiration, a meditator's job is simply to focus his attention on his nostrils and observe the natural flow of breath. Respiration is natural, one has no craving or aversion towards it, it is always in the present ( Nitya ) and, since one breathes from the moment of one's birth to the moment of one's death, it is in fact a convergence of the past, present and future. Further, it is within the physical framework of the body. Respiration is thus an appropriate object for concentrating the mind, something that is not too easy. The mind does not usually want to stay in the present moment; it resides either in the past or in the future. A little effort is needed to prevent the mind from wandering about. This is called Right Effort. At this stage, there may be strong distractions in the mind that prevent the mind from concentrating. Sometimes these distractions appear to be overwhelming. The effort to focus on respiration should be continued in such cases. The key is never to give up. A learner soon discovers one thing ; meditation is hard work for a beginner. Right Mindfulness, which is mindfulness of breathing, follows Right Effort immediately. Right Concentration leading to Samadhi ( San-mei – in Chinese, Sanmai, Zanmai – in Japanese ), which is a transcendental state, follows. It may be described by Sat ( being ), Chit ( consciousness ) and Ananda ( bliss, happiness ). Sometimes, in lifting the mind to Samadhi, hurdles appear in the form of distractions in the mind. These distractions may be latent feelings of anger, craving, sadness, and so on. The remedy, in such cases, is to return back to Anapana-sati and try to lift the mind to Samadhi again. Shamatha meditation is an absorptive meditation whose object is to calm the mind. Vipashyana meditation is an analytical meditation. Shamatha meditation may be an end in itself or it may be a prelude to Vipashyana meditation. It is also possible to perform Vipashyana meditation without performing Shamatha meditation first. There are four parts to the practice of Vipashyana meditation. Kaya anupashyana ( Kayanupassana - in Pali ), Vedana anupashyana ( Vedananupassana - in Pali ), Chitta anupashyana ( Chittanupassana - in Pali ), and Dharma anupashyana ( Dhammanupassana - in Pali ). Anupashyana ( Anupassana - in Pali ) means to see minutely, that is, to scrutinise Here, Dharma indicates the contents of the mind ( Chaitasika, Chetasika – in Pali ). Each of the four, Kaya ( body ), Vedana ( sensations ), Chitta ( mind ) and Dharma ( mental contents ), must be subjected to Anupashyana. The true nature of all four of these reveal themselves to the meditator and he is able to remove defilement from the innermost recesses of his mind ( Anushaya, Anusaya – in Pali ). Awareness and equanimity ( Upeksha, Upekkha – in Pali ), together, symbolise Vipashyana meditation. If either part is missing, one cannot attain Enlightenment. Vipashyana leads to clear insight into the physical and mental structure and thus leads to Bodhi. The complete knowledge of my physical and mental structure is called Sampragyana ( Sampajanna – in Pali ), if I have it I am called a Sampragya. In some forms of Mahayana Buddhist meditation, meditation on Lord Buddha ( Buddhanupashyana ) is performed. Bodhyangas ( Bojjhangas – in Pali ) are factors contributing to Enlightenment. There are seven Bodhyangas: Smriti, Dharma-chayana, Virya ( courage ), Priti ( rapture and bliss ), Prashiddhi ( deep tranquility and calmness ), Samadhi, and Upeksha. The Four Sublime States ( Brahmavihara ) are Maitri, Karuna ( compassion ), Mudita and Upeksha. Meditation entails making a conscious and free choice to withdraw from the affairs of the mundane world to pursue spiritual ends; one of the objectives being the subsequent re-establishment of contact with the conditioned world as a purer and wiser man. The decision to meditate is itself an act of freedom. We have, in life, the freedom to pursue an ethical way of living. This freedom leads us to Bodhi and Nirvana and thus sets us free. Meditation is a pursuit of liberation, realisation is the end result. Post-realisation, one feels that one had been going about with his eyes closed and has now suddenly opened them. In the plane of the senses, his external world does not change but his way of psychologically processing his external world undergoes a drastic change. He becomes more peaceful with himself and with others. An awakened man, possessing an Enlightened mind ( Bodhichitta ), feels that he is surrounded by peace at all times ( the process of developing an Enlightened mind is called Bodhichittodpada ). It is important to understand that nobody tells him this; he feels it himself. He goes about doing his daily activities, but his way of processing his world has fundamentally altered for the better. He realises that he cannot and need not control all aspects of his external physical world. He realises that he gains more by letting go. He becomes aware of the non-peaceful moments in his life and tries to reduce their frequency and intensity. He opts for shifting his consciousness to his mind and becoming aware of his internal mental processes when waiting, for example, in a traffic jam or while waiting in a queue. He opts for harmony in his mental processes rather than chaos. Ordinarily, animal instincts bind a man to the world of the senses. Man lacks the initiative to free himself from them. Rather, he reposes his faith on some superhuman power whom he tries to propitiate in the hope that he may be rescued from his troubles. Meditation may also be described as a Tapasya ( a Sanskrit word whose root lies in the Sanskrit word Tapah which means heat ), a burning of the impurities in the mind. Zen Buddhism originated in China and is in vogue in East Asia. As mentioned before, it is a school of Mahayana Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhism was propagated in China by Indian Buddhist monks like Kumarajiva ( 344-413 C.E. ), son of Kumarayana, who went to China in 401 C.E., and Buddhabhadra ( 359-429 C.E. ), who went to China in 408 C.E., and by Chinese Buddhist monks who came to India, like Fa-hsien ( or Fa-xian ), who came to India between 399 and 414 C.E., and Hsuan-tsang ( or Xuan-zang ) ( 600-664 C.E. ), who came to India between 629 and 645 C.E. Also, Gunabhadra translated the Lankavatara Sutra into Chinese and Paramartha was another noted translator. Mahayana Buddhism developed in India a few centuries after the Parinirvana of Lord Buddha. Emperor Kanishka convened the Fourth Buddhist Council, held probably at Jalandhar, in which the scholar Vasumitra was President and another eminent scholar Asvaghosha, the author of Buddha Charita, was Vice-President. In this assembly, Buddhists became divided into Mahayana Buddhists and Theravada Buddhists. The Pali word Thera is derived from the Sanskrit word Sthavira which means Elder. Theravada Buddhism is the most orthodox form of Buddhism and has preserved the historical teachings of Lord Buddha in its Pali Canon. The Theravada Sutras ( Suttas - in Pali ) are the earliest available teachings of Lord Buddha, are in Pali, and are fully historical. The Pali Canon is called the Tripitaka in Sanskrit and the Tipitaka in Pali; Sutra-Pitaka ( Sutta-Pitaka - in Pali ), Vinaya-Pitaka and Abhidharma-Pitaka ( Abhidhamma-Pitaka - in Pali ) forming the three parts of the Tripitaka. Abhidharma means detailed philosophical discourses. The Sutta-Pitaka has five parts - the Digha Nikaya, the Majjhima Nikaya, the Khuddaka Nikaya, the Samyutta Nikaya and the Anguttara Nikaya. Mahayana is a way of Buddhism followed widely across India and northern and eastern Asia. I have written before that in Mahayana Buddhism, individuals strive to take all others along with them to the ultimate goal of liberation. Mahayana Buddhism emerged in the context of the development of a different disposition towards Buddhism by some Buddhists; in terms of concepts relating to the Sangha, the Dharma and Lord Buddha. Firstly, schisms occurred on the level of “Sangha”. The primary concern of several venerated Buddhist monks was to keep the Dharma and discipline ( Vinaya ) pure. They felt that this was the only way to sustain Buddhism in the long run. These Buddhist monks became some of the most sophisticated theoreticians in the Indian intellectual world. Certain other monks wanted the Vinaya to be flexible. The case of the Mahasanghika monks is the best example to show the conflict between these two viewpoints. These monks had added ten minor precepts for their group , for example, monks could get, keep and use money. In the Second Buddhist Council, held at Vaishali, they were called “Papishtha bhikshus” (the sinful monks). Their behaviour was unacceptable from the viewpoint of the orthodox Buddhists. These monks established their own tradition and called themselves “Mahasanghikas” ( the monks of the Great Sangha ). In this connection, it may be mentioned that there were as many as eighteen early schools including the Sarvastivadins, the Pragyaptivadins, the Sautantrikas, the Vatsiputriyas, the Sammitiyas, the Dharmaguptakas, the Lokottaravadins ( an offshoot of the Mahasanghikas who carried the notion of the transcendental nature of Lord Buddha to the greatest extent among all the early schools ), etc. It would not be out of place to mention that certain typical similes were employed by some schools as also by a monk like Nagasena who said that a chariot is merely a designation ( Pragyapti, Pannatti - in Pali ) depending on its own parts. The Vatsiputriyas, also called the Pudgalavadins because of their belief in a Pudgala ( Puggala - in Pali ) as a transmigrating entity, utilised the simile of fire and fuel and the Sautantrikas utilised the simile of seed and sprout. Nagarjuna's claim that anything that is Pratityasamutpanna is a Pragyapti indicates that he conceived the meaning of Pragyapti differently from Nagasena. Fissures also occurred on the level of “Dharma”. Three months before Lord Buddha’s Parinirvana at Kusinagara, He declared in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra that the monks and the laity would have the Dharma and the Vinaya as their leaders in the future. However, some Buddhists, mostly the Mahasanghikas, found themselves having no shelter left except the Dharma. So they searched for the true Dharma. The statement of Lord Buddha, “He who sees the Dharma, sees me; he who sees me, sees the Dharma”, also supported their quest. If one uses logical arguments to judge this sentence, an interesting question emerges. How must one see the Dharma so that one also sees Lord Buddha? For some Buddhist scholars, even today, Dharma is not merely the sermons of Lord Buddha. His life contains more latent implications, for example, the implications of His silence in certain contexts as in His silence in response to questions by Vacchagotra. Thus, for the Buddhist scholars alluded to above, Dharma is something more and wider than the speech of Lord Buddha. The sermons are merely a part of Him, not the totality. When I return back to the context of the emergence of Mahayana Buddhism, I find that the Buddhists referred to above had shifted the ethical facet of Buddhism to a metaphysical focus. And what they did was to seek out the truest Dharma; one which also revealed the status of Lord Buddha after His Parinirvana. Simultaneously, the assumption that Lord Buddha still existed pervaded and caught the faithful minds of Buddhists. Dharma turned out to be a means to reach the state of Buddhatva. If man realises the ultimate truth of all things, he is sure to free himself from all types of bondage. To see Dharma is to see the truth of phenomena. When the truth of phenomena is seen, the wisdom of Lord Buddha is fulfilled within oneself. That is the reason why when one sees the Dharma, he also sees Lord Buddha. Further, the state of the mind is linked to liberation. The state of liberation is conceived to be the same as the pure mind. A human mind, that is pure and detached from all types of impurities, is synonymous with the state of liberation. Also, there were groups that defined “Dharma” as the Ultimate Truth of Lord Buddha. The more these Buddhists investigated His life, the less they believed that He had gone away. Hence, to see Dharma is to see Lord Buddha’s power penetrating through all things. These groups also tended to relate Dharma to Lord Buddha’s great compassion ( Mahakaruna ) and felt that to see Dharma is to see the Buddha-Dhatu within oneself. Mahakaruna is Karuna ( compassion ) combined with Pragya ( wisdom, Panna – in Pali, Zhi Hui, Pan-jo, Po-jo – in Chinese, Hannya – in Japanese ). Clearly, the most important duty of man is to live and spend his life in accordance with Lord Buddha’s intention. As His intention was to liberate all sentient beings from suffering, in order to realise the Buddha-Dhatu within oneself, it is crucial that one has to assist other sentient beings and take them along on the way to liberation. Pragya is required, in fact it is vital, because different Upaya ( expedient means ) should be deployed to bring different sentient beings on the path to Bodhi. The notion of Bodhisattva sprang up from this attitude. Bodhisattvas are perfect in Dana ( charity ), Shila, Kshanti ( perseverence, Khanti - in Pali ), Virya ( Viriya - in Pali ), Dhyana and Pragya. These are called the six perfections ( Paramita, Parami - in Pali ) of a Bodhisattva. Sometimes, ten perfections ( Dasha Paramita ) are considered ( Maharatnakuta Sutra, Sutra 45, Taisho 310, pages 648 to 650. Translated into Chinese by Bodhiruchi ) wherein perfection of ingenuity ( Upaya ), power ( Bala ), volition and knowledge ( Gyana ) are added to the usual six perfections. Also, fault-lines occurred on the level of “Buddha”. When the Vinaya and the Dharma showed fault-lines, the only way out for unenlightened Buddhists was to go back to Lord Buddha as apart from Him, there is no other refuge. At that time, many Buddhists conceived the existence of Lord Buddha in the transcendental state. The Saddharma Pundarika Sutra ( or The Lotus Sutra ), a Mahayana Sutra, conceives of a transcendental Lord Buddha. Lord Buddha had returned to His universal form after His Parinirvana and He still existed. Lord Buddha had Three Bodies (Trikaya). The first and most fundamental body is called the Cosmic Body ( Dharmakaya, Hosshin – in Japanese ). The conceptualisation of Lord Buddha's All-Pervading, Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipresent and Radiant Dharmakaya provided for a more intense and immersive spiritual experience. The nature of the Dharmakaya is called Dharmakaya-Dhatu. When meditating, the state of Lord Buddha is the Blissful Body ( Sambhogakaya, Hojin – in Japanese ). The third body is the Constructed Body ( Nirmanakaya, Keshin – in Japanese ), which signifies the historical Lord Buddha. The Nirmanakaya of Lord Buddha had come and gone under the Will of the Dharmakaya. He was born to fulfil His human functions in leading human beings to liberation. It is believed that as long as humans do not realise the true Dharma, the anguish of departure from Lord Buddha takes place and that when the human mind is able to make a distinction between the pure mind and Klesha, the truism of Buddha-Dhatu becomes clear. In the conception of the Mahasanghikas, the concept of Rupakaya existed and Rupakaya was later split into Nirmanakaya and Sambhogakaya in Mahayana. Mahayana Buddhism combines the emotion of devotion ( Shraddha, Saddha – in Pali ) with the wisdom of logical reasoning. This is the appeal of Mahayana ( Ta-sheng – in Chinese, Daijo – in Japanese ) Buddhism. The primary devotional school of Mahayana Buddhism is the Pure Land School of the Far East, where the Sanskrit “Namah Amitabha Buddha” is translated into the Chinese “Namo Amito Fo” and the Japanese “Namu Amida Butsu”. The practice of invoking Lord Buddha's name is known as Buddhanusmriti ( Nien Fo – in Chinese, Nenbutsu – in Japanese ). Devotion is also directed towards the Saddharma Pundarika Sutra ( The Lotus Sutra ) with the invocation “Namo miao fa lien hua ching” in Chinese and “Namu myoho rengekyo” in Japanese. A certain school of Mahayana Buddhism conceives of four centres called Chakras located at different levels of the spine ( the spine itself is called Avadhuti in this school ). At the level of the navel is the Nirmana Chakra. At the level of the heart is the Dharma Chakra. At the level of the neck is the Sambhoga Chakra and at the level of the head is the Mahasukha Chakra ( Mahasukha means great happiness ). Meditation may also be initiated by focussing on the Nirmana Chakra with progressive focus on higher Chakras with the last focus being on the Mahasukha Chakra. In addition, while the meditator is focussing on the Dharma Chakra, he may imagine a five-pronged white thunderbolt ( Vajra ) emitting beams of light on the Dharma Chakra. At this stage, the meditator imagines himself to be Vajrasattva ( thunderbolt being or diamond being ). After the last focus on the Mahasukha Chakra, the meditator can perform Shamatha meditation. If he so wishes, the meditator may conclude his meditation by performing Vipashyana meditation after Shamatha meditation. Reverting back to Zen Buddhism, we find that although Zen Buddhist experts were found amongst the laity, Zen Buddhism's greatest geniuses were found in the highly regulated life of the monasteries. Zen Buddhism spread to Korea and Japan from China. In Japan, circular brushworks called enshos are calligraphic motifs often used in Zen Buddhism. In Zen Buddhist practice ( the Sanskrit word Dhyana is a synonym of the Pali word Jhana, the Chinese word Ch'an, the Vietnamese word Thien, the Korean word Son and the Japanese word Zen ), one can take the help of Koans ( Japanese, Kung-an – in Chinese, Kongan – in Korean ) or spiritual puzzles with the aid of which he can propel the mind to a transcendental state in which he can meditate. Zazen ( Japanese, Tso-ch'an – in Chinese, the practice of Zen Buddhist meditation ) leads to Enlightenment. At the usual existential level, Koans cannot be said to have any coherence and an existential leap is needed to bring harmony. The spiritual puzzle posed by a Koan may be such that even a strong will may be unable to go to the transcendental plane. The role of the Zen Buddhist master is important here. He can deliver a shock, an emotional one usually suffices, but a physical blow or other corporal shock may be needed so that the spiritual aspirant is propelled into a higher level of consciousness. The fundamental viewpoint of Zen Buddhism is that one is to point directly to one's mind, see it as it is ( Yatha Bhutam ) and become a Buddha. A very important difference between Theravada Buddhism and Zen Buddhism is that the former believes that Enlightenment is obtained slowly ( or gradually ) by means of practice while the latter is a believer in sudden Enlightenment ( Tun-yu – in Chinese ). I give below an example of a Koan: Before Enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water; After Enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water. The meaning is self-explanatory. Bodhi does not change the Samsara I am immersed in but it does change and completely restructures my attitude towards that Samsara. Hsuan-tsang, the great Chinese monk who visited India during the time of Emperor Harshavardhana, once made the following remark about the state of realisation : “It is like a man drinking water; he knows by himself whether it is cold or hot.”. Once, Hui-hai Tai-chu came to the Zen master Ma-tsu Tao-i, the first of possibly the four greatest Chinese Zen masters. Ma-tsu asked him: “Why are you here searching when you already possess the treasure you are looking for?”. “What treasure?”, his interlocutor asked. Ma-tsu replied: “The one who is questioning me right now.”. Ma-tsu had an unswerving ability to bring the empirical “I” into focus at just the right moment. On another occasion, when asked, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from India?”, Ma-tsu replied with a classic answer: “What is the meaning of your asking this at precisely this moment?”. Ma-tsu followed the Hung-chou style of Zen. Ma-tsu Tao-i's disciple ( Dharma heir, Fa-ssu – in Chinese ) was Pai-chang Huai-hai. Pai-chang Huai-hai's disciple was Huang Po Hsi-yun whose disciple was Lin-chi I-hsuan, the founder of Rinzai Zen. Soto Zen is the other major form of Japanese Zen. Because contact of the six sensory bases with the external world do not result in any reactions in a liberated man, he is free. His mind is like a lamp that does not flicker. Non-attachment towards all beings and everything including the concepts of “I” and “Mine” is a characteristic of a liberated mind. The absence of ego in an Enlightened man leads him to adopt an attitude of dispassion and selflessness towards everything in his physical and mental world. He is virtuous. Temptations do not affect him. He is always cheerful, happy and optimistic. He radiates light wherever he goes. He is wise and compassionate ( Mahakarunika ) and does everything for the good of the world. He has risen above his previous mental conditioning ( Samskara ). He has risen above craving and aversion. It must be remembered that in Buddhism, the only valid reason for waging a war is to fight evil forces. Any other war is unjust. Lord Buddha went to the field of battle and intervened to stop a war between the Shakyas and their neighbours and his words stopped King Ajatashatru of Magadha from attacking a neighbouring kingdom. Taking a life unjustly defiles a man. However, there is no sin in Buddhism, only delusion. Severely deluded men are unlikely to find cessation ( Nirodha, Nivritti ) from suffering ( Shoka, Soka – in Pali ) in this birth and the wheel of birth and death will roll on for them. In India and China, legends surround Lord Buddha. A legend in India believes that the Hindu god of creation, Brahma, requested Lord Buddha to teach the Dharma. A legend in China says that a great Buddhist sage named Bodhidharma brought Buddhism from India to China. Another legend in China, recorded in the text Jen-t'ien-yien-mu, says that Lord Buddha explained the Dharma to his historical disciple Mahakashyapa by silently holding up a flower and Mahakashyapa ( Mahakassapa – in Pali, Mahakasho – in Japanese ) merely smiled, having understood the meaning. The sound of silence has a distinguished place in Buddhism, from Lord Buddha onwards stretching right upto the mythological householder disciple Vimalakirti. Historically, Emperor Ashoka was the first Indian emperor to spread Buddhism outside India. He sent his son, Mahendra ( Mahinda – in Pali ), and daughter, Sanghamitra ( Sanghamitta – in Pali ), to Sri Lanka. Lord Buddha showed how man can integrate himself to the cosmos. In this and in many other aspects, He was a student of life and a leader of men. In a caste-ridden society, Lord Buddha strove to establish the equality of all men. In this, He was the world's first great socialist. Lao-tzu of ancient China in his book Tao Te Ching described the qualities a true leader should have; leaders tread fresh grass amongst other things. Lord Buddha possessed all of them and much more. He was the ultimate Tyagi, that is, renunciant; renouncing a throne, comforts of a palace, a wife and a son to leave his palace on horseback in search of Truth at night. In this, He showed Himself to be an exemplar of Holiness inspiring millions of others to follow suit. He elevated Himself to the level of a Purushottama and a Mahapurusha ( Superhuman Man ). Buddhism preaches ultimate tolerance to all faiths. A Buddhist hates none, loves all. Lord Buddha's love for man was like a father's love for his sons. The overarching philosophy of Buddhism encompasses loving-kindness ( Maitri, Metta – in Pali ) for all sentient beings. Buddhists co-exist peacefully with all religions on earth. It is invigorating to keep a statue of Lord Buddha in one's place of meditation just as a Christian keeps a crucifix in his room. It is not idolatry. Buddhism is particularly relevant in the violence-ridden world today. As a Buddhist, I feel that mankind can do much better. Pacifism and non-violence ( Ahimsa – Sanskrit and Pali, Avihimsa – Pali ) are fundamental tenets of Buddhism. However, this does not mean that a man should not resist aggression. If an evil power engages in aggression, then a man should resist it with all powers at his disposal. Something called “Engaged Buddhism” is emerging in the West now. In this, Buddhists take up environmental and social issues as a part of their practice of the Dharma. A radical indeterminacy underpins and permeates human existence. Things happen that we do not want; things that we do not want happen. To bravely work out our way through to emancipation, to bring order in place of chaos, to face life with fortitude requires immense Enlightened courage. In this context, Buddhism enables us to reach salvation. That is the raison d'être of Buddhism. The essence of Buddhism, as summed up by Lord Buddha Himself, is: To cease from all error, To get virtue, And to purify the heart. With Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi ( supreme and perfect Enlightenment, Anuttara Samma Sambodhi - in Pali ) of a man, he realises that death can be defeated only if it can be made unreal. His false self, or nothingness, dissolves into a vibrant awakened being. Bibliography
The Difference Between an Intern and an Employee
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com The desire to help up-and-coming professionals often creates an interest in developing Internship programmes. However, there is a lot of misinformation about Internships in the marketplace. Companies Train Interns and Hire Employees In other words, be clear about the outcomes you expect from your Internship programme. There are six criteria from the U.S. Department of Labor to help guide the analysis of whether the Intern must be paid: 1. The Internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment; 2. The Internship experience is for the benefit of the Intern; 3. The Intern does not displace regular employees but works under close supervision of existing staff; 4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the Intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded; 5. The Intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the Internship; and 6. The employer and the Intern understand that the Intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the Internship. If you determine that you do in fact want to create an Internship programme, here are some pointers: The outcome of an Internship programme should be solely based on training of the Intern according to a pre-defined curriculum. If you want to hire an individual to temporarily perform a specific job function within your organization, then that individual should be considered an employee, not an Intern. As such, all employment related rules apply. And, as an employee, that individual cannot agree to waive their rights, especially not in writing. If you have an unpaid Intern temporarily working within your company to perform a specific job or role, this “unpaid Internship” role poses a long term liability exposure for your business, creating issues with wage and hour regulations, workers’ compensation and welfare benefit. There are limited circumstances when an Intern is unpaid. However, if your situation meets the criteria below, the individual could be considered unpaid and not an “employee” per se. How does an Unpaid Internship Programme Work? It involves training an individual based on a curriculum you establish. A company provides training to an Intern similar to that which would be provided in a vocational school even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer. In other words, every Internship programme needs to be based upon a curriculum. Company provided training is for the benefit of the Intern, not the business. Interns do not displace regular employees, but rather work under close supervision. In other words, Interns do not perform a job function which could be identified as a job function of a staff position. The company providing the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the Intern, and on occasion, the company’s operations may actually be impeded. In other words, Interns do not produce work product or otherwise contribute to the outcome of the service or product produced by the company. The Intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the completion of the Internship programme; and The company and the Intern understand that the Interns are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training. At a time when so many companies are streamlining work processes and maintaining lean teams, it is challenging for any business to meet the criteria established for “unpaid Internship” programmes. A Suggested Approach for how a Paid Internship Programme could Work It involves hiring an individual for a designated period of time. The company agrees to hire an individual for a definitive period of time, clearly identified with a starting and ending date. The company pays the individual minimum wage (or more). The company creates a structured programme that benefits both the Intern and the company, including hands-on work and specific vocational training. The company makes no commitment to hire Interns that complete the Internship programme. A Lost Victory
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com Some time back, Dr Sudhir Jain, who is the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, requested me to write something about the true state of India at this moment bereft and devoid of the hype that certain misguided and misinformed Indians continually indulge in. After writing to Dr. Jain, wherein I placed India in the context of the broader community of modern nations, I decided to make some unpalatable facts regarding India today available to the public. It is a virtue to be a straight-talker and to clearly say that India’s track record since independence has been dismal, to say the least, and that India has turned out to be a banana republic. I belong to a Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. My family has been ( unwelcome? ) guests of the Government of India since 1947. To put matters in perspective, the Pala dynasty of Bengal was the last Buddhist Dynasty in India. Neither the Arab invasion of Sind nor the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni had any effect on Bengal and the Pala dynasty ruled uninterruptedly until 1162 AD when they were overthrown by the Hindu Sena dynasty. Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD. A few years later, one of Muhammad Ghori's generals swept across the plains of northern India and Lakshmana Sena, the last ruler of the Sena dynasty, fled without giving a fight on hearing the Muslim forces approaching. Bengal came under Muslim rule and remained so until the victory of the British at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 AD. By the time Muslim rule ended in Bengal in 1757 AD, most Bengalis had converted to Islam due to various reasons. Under Muslim rule, an influx of Arabic and Persian words into the Bengali language took place but, crucially, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims continued to speak and write in a common Bengali language with an Indo-Aryan script except for a few words which are still different for Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims. The local dialect of Bengali in East Bengal is different from the local dialect of Bengali in West Bengal, but again this is not based on religious lines. For centuries, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims lived side by side and in harmony, everyone practising his own religion. It is to be noted that my ancestors lived for centuries under Muslim rule. My family has its ancestry in the Chittagong area of East Bengal and has been practising Buddhism since ancient times, probably from even before the birth of Jesus Christ. Since my family was in the extreme South-east of Bengal, near the border with Burma ( now Myanmar ), they have retained their Buddhist religion up to this day. My great great-grandfather Rai Bahadur Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya was a noted Buddhist scholar. He divided his time between Chittagong and Rangpur. He was renowned for his erudition of Pali and Sanskrit and also for his refinement and nobility. He wrote a commentary on the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. His speciality was the study of the Pali Tipitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, the Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. He was conservative to the core, reticent, ascetic, austere and puritan ( like everyone in my family including myself he too was a non-smoker and non-drinker ). My great-grandfather was Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. He was the Diwan of Tripura when Tripura was a princely state and was a close friend of Bengali poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore called him 'Diwan Bahadur ji' as a mark of respect. My great-grandfather was the inspiration behind Rabindranath Tagore's writing the atmospheric novel 'Rajarshi' in which Rabindranath Tagore condemned the practice of many Hindus of sacrificing animals before wrathful deities. My great-grandfather was fluent in Sanskrit, Pali and Arabic, among other languages A very erudite person, he wrote and published several books on Buddhism. Among his books, 'Buddhist Civilisation in Asia' stands out. One of his pioneering thesis was that the Caspian Sea was named after Mahakashyapa, a direct disciple of Lord Buddha. Apart from the similarity in names, he based his thesis on the presence of Kalmyk Buddhists in Kalmykia, a part of Russia to the north-west of the Caspian Sea. After retiring from the Tripura Court, he settled in Chittagong where he built a huge Zamindari house. My great-grandfather was an orthodox and puritan Buddhist. He was uncompromisingly opposed to idolatry. He believed that since the majority of Bengalis were Muslims, Bengali non-Muslims had their only future in living in harmony with Bengali Muslims. However, he was acutely aware of an abnormality in Hindu psychology. He used to say 'Hindus are afraid of Muslims and Hindus suffer from an inferiority complex. They constantly remember that Muslims defeated them. They say that one Muslim equals three Hindus.' He also believed that Hindu icon Swami Vivekananda lacked the intellectual ability to grasp Lord Buddha's teachings. He dismissed outright Swami Vivekananda's thesis that Buddhists introduced idolatry and the tantras. He wrote 'Vivekananda was totally wrong. Hinduism introduced idolatry and the tantras. Mantras can be found even in the Vedas.' It may be mentioned that my great-grandfather was vehemently opposed to the tantras which he dismissed as a degenerate cult. The attitude of my great-grandfather towards Hinduism bordered on the hostile. He famously refused to eat from the hands of any Hindu and employed a Muslim cook to cook his meals. He asked a Muslim gentleman to teach Arabic and Urdu to my grandfather and his siblings. As a result, my grandfather also became fluent in Arabic and Urdu. Unfortunately for our family, he passed away before 1947. Were he alive, he would not have taken a decision to migrate to Kolkata on the spur of the moment. He was not a man to take rash decisions. Gifted with penetrating insight, an acute sense of justice, level-headedness and possessing an optimistic and inclusive outlook about the future of humanity, my great-grandfather could have foreseen that East Pakistan would last for only 24 years. My grandfather, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned by the British before his Matriculation Examination. He wrote his examination in prison. He was tortured by the British every time he was imprisoned by them. Educated under Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan, he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi whom he met several times. He took my father, a young boy at that time, to meet Mahatma Gandhi at Barrackpore in the northern suburbs of Kolkata when Mahatma Gandhi was residing there. My father recalled that when he bent down to pay his respects to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi put his hand on my father's head and said in Hindi 'Beta, sachcha patriot bano' which means 'Son, be a true patriot.' My grandfather founded the House of Labour in East Bengal to encourage youths towards business and enterprise. Being a businessman, my grandfather travelled extensively to all parts of undivided India on business. He stayed at Lahore for two years. He also visited Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi and Hyderabad in Sind. My father recalled that, as a young boy, my grandfather took him to Jammu via Sialkot, the normal route in those times. It could not have escaped my grandfather's notice that the language divide between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was too great to be bridged as Bengali Muslims considered Bengali to be their mother tongue and non-Bengali Muslims considered Urdu to be their mother tongue. This very fact would lead to the break-up of Pakistan, with an Indian victory, in 1971. Surprisingly, my grandfather failed to factor the language difference between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims in his prediction of the future of the Indian sub-continent. He failed to realise that any alliance between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was bound to be temporary in nature and that a split was inevitable sooner or later. For a man to travel all over India and not to develop an incisive judgement of the situation was truly extraordinary. Acting impulsively, in 1947 he took a decision to abandon East Bengal and come to Kolkata leaving all his property in East Bengal behind. He came to Kolkata as a refugee and as a pauper. This caused my family great hardship at the time. Surely, the ephemeral nature of East Pakistan should have been obvious to any discerning observer. Soon after coming to Kolkata in 1947, my grandfather realised that he had been chasing a mirage. Strongly disillusioned, he severed all ties with politics and with the Indian National Congress. Dissatisfied with the way independent India was going, he used to repeatedly say 'I committed a historic blunder by leaving East Bengal. This is not the independence I fought for.' In 1953, my grandfather could garner enough money to build a house in south Kolkata but his money was exhausted before he could finish the building. It was left to me to finish the construction of our home, my father and paternal uncles having added nothing to what my grandfather had done. Realising and recognising that Independence was a pyrrhic victory for him, he developed an ailment of the heart. He passed away in 1959 deeply regretting his hasty decision to migrate to Kolkata. East Pakistan would last for just 12 more years after his death giving birth to Bangladesh. In hindsight, it is abundantly clear that it was not a correct decision for my grandfather to migrate to Kolkata. He not only discarded the material inheritance of his property in Chittagong but also the intellectual inheritance of the legacy of my great-grandfather. My father, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, now deceased, had much the same kind of career as I am having. Possessing several degrees, professional memberships, and a connoisseur of fine arts and literature, he travelled extensively throughout the world. Amongst his several achievements, the development of a management institute stands out. A Rotarian till his demise, he promoted fine arts by making several donations to deserving organisations. Though my father fully shared my grandfather's views as regards the state of India, it was too late for him to reverse my grandfather's mistake. My father was in Times Square in New York when news broke out that Lee Harvey Oswald had assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. He recalls the dazed appearance on the faces of New Yorkers on receiving the news. ‘A successful democracy needs a literate society – illiterate people cannot make informed and considered choices while voting’ said my father later. ‘Eradicating illiteracy should be India’s prime concern. Side by side, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices, particularly in government offices, should be rooted out. Why should one have to pay bribes to multiple people in order to get a new electricity connection for his newly-constructed house? There is enough for man’s needs but not enough for man’s greed. What matters is not what one has but what one is.’ Though my father was a staunch Buddhist, he had to pay extortion money during Hindu festivals to slum-dwellers who still live near our house. Though my house is a posh area of south Kolkata, there is a big slum close to it. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that Kolkata is littered with similar slums everywhere. The slum-dwellers are mostly illiterate and unemployed and are, naturally, full of vices. The government has failed to uplift these people and eradicate the slums even though decades have passed since independence. Uncle Aziz was a very close friend of my father. He and my father met in the United States. He had his ancestry in Comilla. He settled in Dhaka where he built a house in the Bonani area. He visited our home in Kolkata several times. He used to visit India often for professional purposes and never failed to drop in on us. I also visited Dhaka to present a paper at an International Conference and visited his home. On that occasion, I travelled throughout the length and breadth of Dhaka and saw everything that Dhaka has to offer. The friendship between my father and Uncle Aziz percolated to our extended families. My grandmother, Premlata Bhattacharya, looked upon Uncle Aziz as her own son. My paternal uncles and their families also became close friends of Uncle Aziz and his family and extended family, particularly one of Uncle Aziz's brothers, who was a doctor of international repute. Uncle Aziz's brother and his family also visited our house in Kolkata. On one particular occasion, during dinner at our home, Uncle Aziz told my father and my paternal uncles 'Why did your father come to Kolkata in 1947? Our country is poorer because of your leaving it. Many of us in Bangladesh feel this way.' My father took great care to see that I had exposure to all religions. When I was five years old, he got me admitted to Don Bosco School in Kolkata run by Roman Catholic missionaries where I got to study the Bible. During the twelve years that I studied in that school, certain aspects of Christianity like its monotheism and its opposition to idolatry left a deep, vivid, lasting and permanent impression on my mind. When I was nine years of age, my father took me to Murshidabad, an event that is engraved in my mind. At Murshidabad, he took me to a mosque built hundreds of years ago. He showed me all the details; the minarets, the calligraphy and so on. It was a memorable visit for me. At Don Bosco School and during my higher education, I was following in the footsteps of my ancestors, picking up an excellent education and all the other things needed to be a complete man. Later on, in my professional career, in the midst of my travels in various countries of the world spanning almost the entire globe, I have seen the unity of man. Memories stand out, sometimes instilling a sense of déjà vu in me; the view of the Pacific in Singapore and of the mountains and moraines from the top of Mount Säntis in Switzerland, the flight over Iran slicing between Tehran to the north and Qom to the south and over Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Bangkok’s wats, Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka, Dubai, Jordan’s northwest, sunset at Hardwar, Bremen and Berlin in Germany, Dilli Haat in Delhi and the Marina Beach in Chennai. It is an inconvenient truth that independent India has let down its own freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and my grandfather. Most people in India now seem to have a perverted view of being avant-garde. Sacrificing the values and traditions held dear by our ancestors, our glorious inheritance is thrown to the winds. Parvenus cannot be expected to appreciate the truism of Ich Dien. Ersatz culture proliferates with the concept of life avec plaisir. The scramble for lebensraum degenerates people to fall prey to rampant greed. Having achieved its independence way back in 1947, India has failed to become a developed country. India is still a developing country and an emerging market. India is rampant with idolatry, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices. In India, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The government has failed to give even the basic necessities to all Indians. If the dictum, 'justice delayed is justice denied' is to be held as valid, my mother, Sheila Bhattacharya, who is a retired Head of the Department of English of a college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, was denied justice as she received her retirement dues four years after she had retired. Of the many countries that I have visited in the world, India is the only country I know of where a government employee has been threatened with death by a colleague ( who is also a government employee ) and has been forced to resign and the government has not done anything whatsoever for the victim. Steeped in bribery, the immediate bosses of the victim ( all of whom are government employees ) have supported and are continuing to support the criminal who happens to have considerable money-power. The victim is yet to receive a single paisa of even his own money kept in the custody of the government during his years in government service. This very recent incident presents a shameful picture of India in front of the civilised world. I have founded the Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation for uplifting street-children and slum-children of Kolkata. The Government of India has to do the following cleaning-up on a war-footing. The Government of India has to 1. Root out government servants having a criminal record. To start with, the government should dismiss and try Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, and all of whom have criminal records. 2. Root out bribery and corruption in government offices. Only a very small fraction of government servants are honest. 3. Demolish the conception, prevalent among most Indians, that government service implies the right to take bribes. While punishing the guilty, the government should laud the very small minority of government servants who are honest. 4. Make an earnest effort to uplift the suffering villagers of India. 5. Make sincere efforts to remove slums and ghettos in Indian cities and towns. 6. Build a government based on trust, not suspicion. At least four identity documents are prevalent in India today - Passport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card and Voter's Identity Card. Since, excepting a Passport, an Indian does not really need the rest, the government should abolish the unnecessary documents. Different sets of government servants are currently issuing different identity documents and taking bribes for issuing the same. 7. Recognise that widespread rigging takes place in Indian elections and make sincere efforts to root-out the same. In view of the widespread rigging prevalent now with local toughs ruling polling booths, Indian election results are devoid of any relation to the will of the people. 8. Ensure that a son inherits his father's property. This usually does not happen now unless the son pays hefty bribes to government servants. The government must do some soul-searching and feel ashamed that a son currently finds great difficulty in inheriting his father's shares and electricity connection - just to cite two examples. 9. Eradicate the current habit of government servants taking bribes to, for example, sanction a building plan, mutate a landed property and provide an electricity connection. 10. Simplify the procedure for getting Indian Passports. The government servants at the Regional Passport Offices must be courteous and helpful and not harass citizens as is the case today. 11. Ensure that retirement benefits are released immediately after retirement and not after four or five years. Many people get their retirement benefits between four and six years after retirement. My mother received her retirement benefits four years after her retirement. The government must punish government servants who withhold retirement benefits of retired citizens. 12. Eliminate feudalism. Corrupt government servants have taken the place of erstwhile zamindars in rural areas. 13. Eliminate the current 'trickle-down' economy. The government must ensure that the lower strata of Indian society is also a beneficiary of economic progress and is not left behind. 14. Remove the criminal-government servant-politician nexus. This is extremely important if India is to progress. 15. Remove the difference between 'the rulers' and 'the ruled'. The government must ensure that democracy does not remain a sham and that government is truly 'of the people, for the people and by the people'. 16. Place a greater value on human life. The government must not think that, simply because India is a populous country, a few lives lost in an accident, for example, a bridge collapse - such as the one that happened in Howrah some time back - does not matter. The government must acknowledge that every single human life is valuable. 17. Eliminate tokenism. 18. Eliminate window-dressing before a politician visits an area. The government must be sincere in its development efforts and ensure that not a single development project announced turns out to be an eyewash designed to fool the population. 19. Ensure internet access and continuous power supply in rural areas. Internet access outside of the metropolises is pitiful and power outages are common. Yesterday evening, there was a power outage at my office in Kolkata. 20. Be sensitive to the suffering of the people. The length and breadth of Kolkata is flooded during the monsoon season and no regime has done anything about it. 21. Understand that slogans like 'Bekari hatao' and 'Roti, kapra aur makaan' are useless if they remain mere slogans without any attempt to implement them. The government must ensure that the fundamental needs of the people are fulfilled. In hindsight, my grandfather could have won a victory due to the expulsion of the British from his homeland but he lost the victory by defecting to Kolkata from East Bengal. India Today
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com "Of all the dangers facing India today, by far the severest is the presence of criminals in Government service. One does not have to look very far. Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, have criminal records." Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya Some time back, Dr Sudhir Jain, who is the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, requested me to write something about the true state of India at this moment bereft and devoid of the hype that certain misguided and misinformed Indians continually indulge in. After writing to Dr. Jain, wherein I placed India in the context of the broader community of modern nations, I decided to make some unpalatable facts regarding India today available to the public. It is a virtue to be a straight-talker and to clearly say that India’s track record since independence has been dismal, to say the least, and that India has turned out to be a banana republic. I belong to a Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. My family has been ( unwelcome? ) guests of the Government of India since 1947. To put matters in perspective, the Pala dynasty of Bengal was the last Buddhist Dynasty in India. Neither the Arab invasion of Sind nor the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni had any effect on Bengal and the Pala dynasty ruled uninterruptedly until 1162 AD when they were overthrown by the Hindu Sena dynasty. Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD. A few years later, one of Muhammad Ghori's generals swept across the plains of northern India and Lakshmana Sena, the last ruler of the Sena dynasty, fled without giving a fight on hearing the Muslim forces approaching. Bengal came under Muslim rule and remained so until the victory of the British at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 AD. By the time Muslim rule ended in Bengal in 1757 AD, most Bengalis had converted to Islam due to various reasons. Under Muslim rule, an influx of Arabic and Persian words into the Bengali language took place but, crucially, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims continued to speak and write in a common Bengali language with an Indo-Aryan script except for a few words which are still different for Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims. The local dialect of Bengali in East Bengal is different from the local dialect of Bengali in West Bengal, but again this is not based on religious lines. For centuries, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims lived side by side and in harmony, everyone practising his own religion. It is to be noted that my ancestors lived for centuries under Muslim rule. My family has its ancestry in the Chittagong area of East Bengal and has been practising Buddhism since ancient times, probably from even before the birth of Jesus Christ. Since my family was in the extreme South-east of Bengal, near the border with Burma ( now Myanmar ), they have retained their Buddhist religion up to this day. My great great-grandfather Rai Bahadur Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya was a noted Buddhist scholar. He divided his time between Chittagong and Rangpur. He was renowned for his erudition of Pali and Sanskrit and also for his refinement and nobility. He wrote a commentary on the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. His speciality was the study of the Pali Tipitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, the Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. He was conservative to the core, reticent, ascetic, austere and puritan ( like everyone in my family including myself he too was a non-smoker and non-drinker ). He once cautioned my great-grandfather saying 'It is my conviction that Hindus can never be your friends. I have tried all my life and failed. How can you trust people who will not allow you into their temples? There is no place for you in their society.' My great-grandfather was Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. He was the Diwan of Tripura when Tripura was a princely state and was a close friend of Bengali poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore called him 'Diwan Bahadur ji' as a mark of respect. My great-grandfather was the inspiration behind Rabindranath Tagore's writing the atmospheric novel 'Rajarshi' in which Rabindranath Tagore condemned the practice of many Hindus of sacrificing animals before wrathful deities. My great-grandfather was fluent in Sanskrit, Pali and Arabic, among other languages A very erudite person, he wrote and published several books on Buddhism. Among his books, 'Buddhist Civilisation in Asia' stands out. One of his pioneering thesis was that the Caspian Sea was named after Mahakashyapa, a direct disciple of Lord Buddha. Apart from the similarity in names, he based his thesis on the presence of Kalmyk Buddhists in Kalmykia, a part of Russia to the north-west of the Caspian Sea. After retiring from the Tripura Court, he settled in Chittagong where he built a huge Zamindari house. My great-grandfather wrote 'The India of today is hard to define. It is not historical India. Being multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic, unlike France or Germany for instance, it is not a nation state in the Western sense. From ancient times, there have been two terms, 'Bharatiya' ( Indian ) and 'Bharatvasi' ( people who live in India ), implicitly implying that not all people who live in India are Indians. For almost all of its history, India has been a geographical entity rather than a political one. Perhaps the best definition is that the India of today is a union of a number of Indian states on the continent of Asia.' My great-grandfather was an orthodox and puritan Buddhist. He was uncompromisingly opposed to idolatry. He believed that since the majority of Bengalis were Muslims, Bengali non-Muslims had their only future in living in harmony with Bengali Muslims. However, he was acutely aware of an abnormality in Hindu psychology. He used to say 'Hindus are afraid of Muslims and Hindus suffer from an inferiority complex. They constantly remember that Muslims defeated them. They say that one Muslim equals three Hindus.' He also believed that Hindu icon Swami Vivekananda lacked the intellectual ability to grasp Lord Buddha's teachings. He dismissed outright Swami Vivekananda's thesis that Buddhists introduced idolatry and the tantras. He wrote 'Vivekananda was totally wrong. Hinduism introduced idolatry and the tantras. Mantras can be found even in the Vedas.' It may be mentioned that my great-grandfather was vehemently opposed to the tantras which he dismissed as a degenerate cult. The attitude of my great-grandfather towards Hinduism bordered on the hostile. He famously refused to eat from the hands of any Hindu and employed a Muslim cook to cook his meals. He asked a Muslim gentleman to teach Arabic and Urdu to my grandfather and his siblings. As a result, my grandfather also became fluent in Arabic and Urdu. Unfortunately for our family, he passed away before 1947. Were he alive, he would not have taken a decision to migrate to Kolkata on the spur of the moment. He was not a man to take rash decisions. Gifted with penetrating insight, an acute sense of justice, level-headedness and possessing an optimistic and inclusive outlook about the future of humanity, my great-grandfather could have foreseen that East Pakistan would last for only 24 years. My grandfather, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned by the British before his Matriculation Examination. He wrote his examination in prison. He was tortured by the British every time he was imprisoned by them. Educated under Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan, he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi whom he met several times. He took my father, a young boy at that time, to meet Mahatma Gandhi at Barrackpore in the northern suburbs of Kolkata when Mahatma Gandhi was residing there. My father recalled that when he bent down to pay his respects to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi put his hand on my father's head and said in Hindi 'Beta, sachcha patriot bano' which means 'Son, be a true patriot.' However, my grandfather was deeply dismayed by the acrimony between Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. He agreed with Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose that India, in its illiterate state, could not function as a true democracy and a period of benevolent dictatorship was needed after freedom from the British to uplift India after which India could transition to a democracy. He proposed to Mahatma Gandhi that there should be a social revolution to accompany the attainment of freedom from the British. My grandfather was greatly influenced by the French Revolution. Mahatma Gandhi told my grandfather that the social revolution would take place after India had obtained its freedom from the British. He said that he had already started the social revolution in a small way by calling untouchable Hindus 'Harijans' ( at present Harijans are called 'Scheduled Castes' ). As things transpired, after India became free from British colonial rule, the 1950 Constitution was promulgated and the social revolution never took place. My grandfather founded the House of Labour in East Bengal to encourage youths towards business and enterprise. Being a businessman, my grandfather travelled extensively to all parts of undivided India on business. He stayed at Lahore for two years. He also visited Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi and Hyderabad in Sind. My father recalled that, as a young boy, my grandfather took him to Jammu via Sialkot, the normal route in those times. It could not have escaped my grandfather's notice that the language divide between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was too great to be bridged as Bengali Muslims considered Bengali to be their mother tongue and non-Bengali Muslims considered Urdu to be their mother tongue. This very fact would lead to the break-up of Pakistan, with an Indian victory, in 1971. Surprisingly, my grandfather failed to factor the language difference between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims in his prediction of the future of the Indian sub-continent. He failed to realise that any alliance between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was bound to be temporary in nature and that a split was inevitable sooner or later. For a man to travel all over India and not to develop an incisive judgement of the situation was truly extraordinary. Acting impulsively, in 1947 he took a decision to abandon East Bengal and come to Kolkata leaving all his property in East Bengal behind. He came to Kolkata as a refugee and as a pauper. This caused my family great hardship at the time. Surely, the ephemeral nature of East Pakistan should have been obvious to any discerning observer. Soon after defecting to Kolkata in 1947, my grandfather realised that he had been chasing a mirage. Strongly disillusioned, he severed all ties with politics and with the Indian National Congress. Dissatisfied with the way independent India was going, he used to repeatedly say 'I committed a historic blunder by defecting from East Bengal. This is not the independence I fought for.' My grandfather was deeply disillusioned with Nehru and his policies and with India's deteriorating relations with China. He said 'India must not forget that Chinese monks Faxian, Xuanxang and Yijing are considered to be great Acharyas by us. India must cultivate good relations with China. Otherwise, it will be defeated in war.' In 1962, India was trounced in a war by China who won a decisive victory. In 1953, my grandfather could garner enough money to build a house in south Kolkata but his money was exhausted before he could finish the building. It was left to me to finish the construction of our home, my father and paternal uncles having added nothing to what my grandfather had done. Realising and recognising that Independence was a pyrrhic victory for him, he developed an ailment of the heart. He passed away in 1959 deeply regretting his hasty decision to migrate to Kolkata. East Pakistan would last for just 12 more years after his death giving birth to Bangladesh. In hindsight, it is abundantly clear that it was not a correct decision for my grandfather to migrate to Kolkata. He not only discarded the material inheritance of his property in Chittagong but also the intellectual inheritance of the legacy of my great-grandfather. My father, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, now deceased, had much the same kind of career as I am having. Possessing several degrees, professional memberships, and a connoisseur of fine arts and literature, he travelled extensively throughout the world. Amongst his several achievements, the development of a management institute stands out. A Rotarian till his demise, he promoted fine arts by making several donations to deserving organisations. Though my father fully shared my grandfather's views as regards the state of India, it was too late for him to reverse my grandfather's mistake. My father was in Times Square in New York when news broke out that Lee Harvey Oswald had assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. He recalls the dazed appearance on the faces of New Yorkers on receiving the news. ‘A successful democracy needs a literate society – illiterate people cannot make informed and considered choices while voting’ said my father later. ‘Eradicating illiteracy should be India’s prime concern. Side by side, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices, particularly in government offices, should be rooted out. Why should one have to pay bribes to multiple people in order to get a new electricity connection for his newly-constructed house? There is enough for man’s needs but not enough for man’s greed. What matters is not what one has but what one is.’ Though my father was a staunch Buddhist, he had to pay extortion money during Hindu festivals to slum-dwellers who still live near our house. Though my house is a posh area of south Kolkata, there is a big slum close to it. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that Kolkata is littered with similar slums everywhere. The slum-dwellers are mostly illiterate and unemployed and are, naturally, full of vices. The government has failed to uplift these people and eradicate the slums even though decades have passed since independence. Uncle Aziz was a very close friend of my father. He and my father met in the United States. He had his ancestry in Comilla. He settled in Dhaka where he built a house in the Bonani area. He visited our home in Kolkata several times. He used to visit India often for professional purposes and never failed to drop in on us. I also visited Dhaka to present a paper at an International Conference and visited his home. On that occasion, I travelled throughout the length and breadth of Dhaka and saw everything that Dhaka has to offer. The friendship between my father and Uncle Aziz percolated to our extended families. My grandmother, Premlata Bhattacharya, looked upon Uncle Aziz as her own son. My paternal uncles and their families also became close friends of Uncle Aziz and his family and extended family, particularly one of Uncle Aziz's brothers, who was a doctor of international repute. Uncle Aziz's brother and his family also visited our house in Kolkata. On one particular occasion, during dinner at our home, Uncle Aziz told my father and my paternal uncles 'Why did your father come to Kolkata in 1947? Our country is poorer because of your leaving it. Many of us in Bangladesh feel this way.' My father took great care to see that I had exposure to all religions. When I was five years old, he got me admitted to Don Bosco School in Kolkata run by Roman Catholic missionaries where I got to study the Bible. During the twelve years that I studied in that school, certain aspects of Christianity like its monotheism and its opposition to idolatry left a deep, vivid, lasting and permanent impression on my mind. When I was nine years of age, my father took me to Murshidabad, an event that is engraved in my mind. At Murshidabad, he took me to a mosque built hundreds of years ago. He showed me all the details; the minarets, the calligraphy and so on. It was a memorable visit for me. At Don Bosco School and during my higher education, I was following in the footsteps of my ancestors, picking up an excellent education and all the other things needed to be a complete man. Later on, in my professional career, in the midst of my travels in various countries of the world spanning almost the entire globe, I have seen the unity of man. Memories stand out, sometimes instilling a sense of déjà vu in me; the view of the Pacific in Singapore and of the mountains and moraines from the top of Mount Säntis in Switzerland, the flight over Iran slicing between Tehran to the north and Qom to the south and over Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Bangkok’s wats, Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka, Dubai, Jordan’s northwest, sunset at Hardwar, Bremen and Berlin in Germany, Dilli Haat in Delhi and the Marina Beach in Chennai. It is an inconvenient truth that independent India has let down its own freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and my grandfather. Most people in India now seem to have a perverted view of being avant-garde. Sacrificing the values and traditions held dear by our ancestors, our glorious inheritance is thrown to the winds. Parvenus cannot be expected to appreciate the truism of Ich Dien. Ersatz culture proliferates with the concept of life avec plaisir. The scramble for lebensraum degenerates people to fall prey to rampant greed. Having achieved its independence way back in 1947, India has failed to become a developed country. India is still a developing country and an emerging market. India is rampant with idolatry, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices. In India, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The government has failed to give even the basic necessities to all Indians. If the dictum, 'justice delayed is justice denied' is to be held as valid, my mother, Sheila Bhattacharya, who is a retired Head of the Department of English of a college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, was denied justice as she received her retirement dues four years after she had retired. Of the many countries that I have visited in the world, India is the only country I know of where a government employee has been threatened with death by a colleague ( who is also a government employee ) and has been forced to resign and the government has not done anything whatsoever for the victim. Steeped in bribery, the immediate bosses of the victim ( all of whom are government employees ) have supported and are continuing to support the criminal who happens to have considerable money-power. The victim is yet to receive a single paisa of even his own money kept in the custody of the government during his years in government service. This very recent incident presents a shameful picture of India in front of the civilised world. I have founded the Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation for uplifting street-children and slum-children of Kolkata. The Government of India has to do the following cleaning-up on a war-footing. The Government of India has to 1. Root out government servants having a criminal record. To start with, the government should dismiss and try Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, and all of whom have criminal records. 2. Root out bribery and corruption in government offices. Only a very small fraction of government servants are honest. 3. Demolish the conception, prevalent among most Indians, that government service implies the right to take bribes. While punishing the guilty, the government should laud the very small minority of government servants who are honest. 4. Make an earnest effort to uplift the suffering villagers of India. 5. Make sincere efforts to remove slums and ghettos in Indian cities and towns. 6. Build a government based on trust, not suspicion. At least four identity documents are prevalent in India today - Passport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card and Voter's Identity Card. Since, excepting a Passport, an Indian does not really need the rest, the government should abolish the unnecessary documents. Different sets of government servants are currently issuing different identity documents and taking bribes for issuing the same. 7. Recognise that widespread rigging takes place in Indian elections and make sincere efforts to root-out the same. In view of the widespread rigging prevalent now with local toughs ruling polling booths, Indian election results are devoid of any relation to the will of the people. 8. Ensure that a son inherits his father's property. This usually does not happen now unless the son pays hefty bribes to government servants. The government must do some soul-searching and feel ashamed that a son currently finds great difficulty in inheriting his father's shares and electricity connection - just to cite two examples. 9. Eradicate the current habit of government servants taking bribes to, for example, sanction a building plan, mutate a landed property and provide an electricity connection. 10. Simplify the procedure for getting Indian Passports. The government servants at the Regional Passport Offices must be courteous and helpful and not harass citizens as is the case today. 11. Ensure that retirement benefits are released immediately after retirement and not after four or five years. Many people get their retirement benefits between four and six years after retirement. My mother received her retirement benefits four years after her retirement. The government must punish government servants who withhold retirement benefits of retired citizens. 12. Eliminate feudalism. Corrupt government servants have taken the place of erstwhile zamindars in rural areas. 13. Eliminate the current 'trickle-down' economy. The government must ensure that the lower strata of Indian society is also a beneficiary of economic progress and is not left behind. 14. Remove the criminal-government servant-politician nexus. This is extremely important if India is to progress. 15. Remove the difference between 'the rulers' and 'the ruled'. The government must ensure that democracy does not remain a sham and that government is truly 'of the people, for the people and by the people'. 16. Place a greater value on human life. The government must not think that, simply because India is a populous country, a few lives lost in an accident, for example, a bridge collapse - such as the one that happened in Howrah some time back - does not matter. The government must acknowledge that every single human life is valuable. 17. Eliminate tokenism. 18. Eliminate window-dressing before a politician visits an area. The government must be sincere in its development efforts and ensure that not a single development project announced turns out to be an eyewash designed to fool the population. 19. Ensure internet access and continuous power supply in rural areas. Internet access outside of the metropolises is pitiful and power outages are common. Yesterday evening, there was a power outage at my office in Kolkata. 20. Be sensitive to the suffering of the people. The length and breadth of Kolkata is flooded during the monsoon season and no regime has done anything about it. 21. Understand that slogans like 'Bekari hatao' and 'Roti, kapra aur makaan' are useless if they remain mere slogans without any attempt to implement them. The government must ensure that the fundamental needs of the people are fulfilled. India: The Reality
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com Some time back, Dr Sudhir Jain, who is the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, requested me to write something about the true state of India at this moment bereft and devoid of the hype that certain misguided and misinformed Indians continually indulge in. After writing to Dr. Jain, wherein I placed India in the context of the broader community of modern nations, I decided to make some unpalatable facts regarding India today available to the public. It is a virtue to be a straight-talker and to clearly say that India’s track record since independence has been dismal, to say the least, and that India has turned out to be a banana republic. I belong to a Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. My family has been ( unwelcome? ) guests of the Government of India since 1947. To put matters in perspective, the Pala dynasty of Bengal was the last Buddhist Dynasty in India. Neither the Arab invasion of Sind nor the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni had any effect on Bengal and the Pala dynasty ruled uninterruptedly until 1162 AD when they were overthrown by the Hindu Sena dynasty. Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD. A few years later, one of Muhammad Ghori's generals swept across the plains of northern India and Lakshmana Sena, the last ruler of the Sena dynasty, fled without giving a fight on hearing the Muslim forces approaching. Bengal came under Muslim rule and remained so until the victory of the British at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 AD. By the time Muslim rule ended in Bengal in 1757 AD, most Bengalis had converted to Islam due to various reasons. Under Muslim rule, an influx of Arabic and Persian words into the Bengali language took place but, crucially, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims continued to speak and write in a common Bengali language with an Indo-Aryan script except for a few words which are still different for Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims. The local dialect of Bengali in East Bengal is different from the local dialect of Bengali in West Bengal, but again this is not based on religious lines. For centuries, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims lived side by side and in harmony, everyone practising his own religion. It is to be noted that my ancestors lived for centuries under Muslim rule. My family has its ancestry in the Chittagong area of East Bengal and has been practising Buddhism since ancient times, probably from even before the birth of Jesus Christ. Since my family was in the extreme South-east of Bengal, near the border with Burma ( now Myanmar ), they have retained their Buddhist religion up to this day. My great great-grandfather Rai Bahadur Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya was a noted Buddhist scholar. He divided his time between Chittagong and Rangpur. He was renowned for his erudition of Pali and Sanskrit and also for his refinement and nobility. He wrote a commentary on the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. His speciality was the study of the Pali Tipitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, the Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. He was conservative to the core, reticent, ascetic, austere and puritan ( like everyone in my family including myself he too was a non-smoker and non-drinker ). He once cautioned my great-grandfather saying 'It is my conviction that Hindus can never be your friends. I have tried all my life and failed. How can you trust people who will not allow you into their temples? There is no place for you in their society.' My great-grandfather was Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. He was the Diwan of Tripura when Tripura was a princely state and was a close friend of Bengali poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore called him 'Diwan Bahadur ji' as a mark of respect. My great-grandfather was the inspiration behind Rabindranath Tagore's writing the atmospheric novel 'Rajarshi' in which Rabindranath Tagore condemned the practice of many Hindus of sacrificing animals before wrathful deities. My great-grandfather was fluent in Sanskrit, Pali and Arabic, among other languages A very erudite person, he wrote and published several books on Buddhism. Among his books, 'Buddhist Civilisation in Asia' stands out. One of his pioneering thesis was that the Caspian Sea was named after Mahakashyapa, a direct disciple of Lord Buddha. Apart from the similarity in names, he based his thesis on the presence of Kalmyk Buddhists in Kalmykia, a part of Russia to the north-west of the Caspian Sea. After retiring from the Tripura Court, he settled in Chittagong where he built a huge Zamindari house. My great-grandfather wrote 'The India of today is hard to define. It is not historical India. Being multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic, unlike France or Germany for instance, it is not a nation state in the Western sense. From ancient times, there have been two terms, 'Bharatiya' ( Indian ) and 'Bharatvasi' ( people who live in India ), implicitly implying that not all people who live in India are Indians. For almost all of its history, India has been a geographical entity rather than a political one. Perhaps the best definition is that the India of today is a union of a number of Indian states on the continent of Asia.' My great-grandfather was an orthodox and puritan Buddhist. He was uncompromisingly opposed to idolatry. He believed that since the majority of Bengalis were Muslims, Bengali non-Muslims had their only future in living in harmony with Bengali Muslims. However, he was acutely aware of an abnormality in Hindu psychology. He used to say 'Hindus are afraid of Muslims and Hindus suffer from an inferiority complex. They constantly remember that Muslims defeated them. They say that one Muslim equals three Hindus.' He also believed that Hindu icon Swami Vivekananda lacked the intellectual ability to grasp Lord Buddha's teachings. He dismissed outright Swami Vivekananda's thesis that Buddhists introduced idolatry and the tantras. He wrote 'Vivekananda was totally wrong. Hinduism introduced idolatry and the tantras. Mantras can be found even in the Vedas.' It may be mentioned that my great-grandfather was vehemently opposed to the tantras which he dismissed as a degenerate cult. The attitude of my great-grandfather towards Hinduism bordered on the hostile. He famously refused to eat from the hands of any Hindu and employed a Muslim cook to cook his meals. He asked a Muslim gentleman to teach Arabic and Urdu to my grandfather and his siblings. As a result, my grandfather also became fluent in Arabic and Urdu. Unfortunately for our family, he passed away before 1947. Were he alive, he would not have taken a decision to migrate to Kolkata on the spur of the moment. He was not a man to take rash decisions. Gifted with penetrating insight, an acute sense of justice, level-headedness and possessing an optimistic and inclusive outlook about the future of humanity, my great-grandfather could have foreseen that East Pakistan would last for only 24 years. My grandfather, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned by the British before his Matriculation Examination. He wrote his examination in prison. He was tortured by the British every time he was imprisoned by them. Educated under Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan, he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi whom he met several times. He took my father, a young boy at that time, to meet Mahatma Gandhi at Barrackpore in the northern suburbs of Kolkata when Mahatma Gandhi was residing there. My father recalled that when he bent down to pay his respects to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi put his hand on my father's head and said in Hindi 'Beta, sachcha patriot bano' which means 'Son, be a true patriot.' However, my grandfather was deeply dismayed by the acrimony between Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. He agreed with Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose that India, in its illiterate state, could not function as a true democracy and a period of benevolent dictatorship was needed after freedom from the British to uplift India after which India could transition to a democracy. He proposed to Mahatma Gandhi that there should be a social revolution to accompany the attainment of freedom from the British. My grandfather was greatly influenced by the French Revolution. Mahatma Gandhi told my grandfather that the social revolution would take place after India had obtained its freedom from the British. He said that he had already started the social revolution in a small way by calling untouchable Hindus 'Harijans' ( at present Harijans are called 'Scheduled Castes' ). As things transpired, after India became free from British colonial rule, the 1950 Constitution was promulgated and the social revolution never took place. My grandfather founded the House of Labour in East Bengal to encourage youths towards business and enterprise. Being a businessman, my grandfather travelled extensively to all parts of undivided India on business. He stayed at Lahore for two years. He also visited Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi and Hyderabad in Sind. My father recalled that, as a young boy, my grandfather took him to Jammu via Sialkot, the normal route in those times. It could not have escaped my grandfather's notice that the language divide between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was too great to be bridged as Bengali Muslims considered Bengali to be their mother tongue and non-Bengali Muslims considered Urdu to be their mother tongue. This very fact would lead to the break-up of Pakistan, with an Indian victory, in 1971. Surprisingly, my grandfather failed to factor the language difference between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims in his prediction of the future of the Indian sub-continent. He failed to realise that any alliance between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was bound to be temporary in nature and that a split was inevitable sooner or later. For a man to travel all over India and not to develop an incisive judgement of the situation was truly extraordinary. Acting impulsively, in 1947 he took a decision to abandon East Bengal and come to Kolkata leaving all his property in East Bengal behind. He came to Kolkata as a refugee and as a pauper. This caused my family great hardship at the time. Surely, the ephemeral nature of East Pakistan should have been obvious to any discerning observer. Soon after defecting to Kolkata in 1947, my grandfather realised that he had been chasing a mirage. Strongly disillusioned, he severed all ties with politics and with the Indian National Congress. Dissatisfied with the way independent India was going, he used to repeatedly say 'I committed a historic blunder by defecting from East Bengal. This is not the independence I fought for.' My grandfather was deeply disillusioned with Nehru and his policies and with India's deteriorating relations with China. He said 'India must not forget that Chinese monks Faxian, Xuanxang and Yijing are considered to be great Acharyas by us. India must cultivate good relations with China. Otherwise, it will be defeated in war.' In 1962, India was trounced in a war by China who won a decisive victory. In 1953, my grandfather could garner enough money to build a house in south Kolkata but his money was exhausted before he could finish the building. It was left to me to finish the construction of our home, my father and paternal uncles having added nothing to what my grandfather had done. Realising and recognising that Independence was a pyrrhic victory for him, he developed an ailment of the heart. He passed away in 1959 deeply regretting his hasty decision to migrate to Kolkata. East Pakistan would last for just 12 more years after his death giving birth to Bangladesh. In hindsight, it is abundantly clear that it was not a correct decision for my grandfather to migrate to Kolkata. He not only discarded the material inheritance of his property in Chittagong but also the intellectual inheritance of the legacy of my great-grandfather. My father, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, now deceased, had much the same kind of career as I am having. Possessing several degrees, professional memberships, and a connoisseur of fine arts and literature, he travelled extensively throughout the world. Amongst his several achievements, the development of a management institute stands out. A Rotarian till his demise, he promoted fine arts by making several donations to deserving organisations. Though my father fully shared my grandfather's views as regards the state of India, it was too late for him to reverse my grandfather's mistake. My father was in Times Square in New York when news broke out that Lee Harvey Oswald had assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. He recalls the dazed appearance on the faces of New Yorkers on receiving the news. ‘A successful democracy needs a literate society – illiterate people cannot make informed and considered choices while voting’ said my father later. ‘Eradicating illiteracy should be India’s prime concern. Side by side, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices, particularly in government offices, should be rooted out. Why should one have to pay bribes to multiple people in order to get a new electricity connection for his newly-constructed house? There is enough for man’s needs but not enough for man’s greed. What matters is not what one has but what one is.’ Though my father was a staunch Buddhist, he had to pay extortion money during Hindu festivals to slum-dwellers who still live near our house. Though my house is a posh area of south Kolkata, there is a big slum close to it. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that Kolkata is littered with similar slums everywhere. The slum-dwellers are mostly illiterate and unemployed and are, naturally, full of vices. The government has failed to uplift these people and eradicate the slums even though decades have passed since independence. Uncle Aziz was a very close friend of my father. He and my father met in the United States. He had his ancestry in Comilla. He settled in Dhaka where he built a house in the Bonani area. He visited our home in Kolkata several times. He used to visit India often for professional purposes and never failed to drop in on us. I also visited Dhaka to present a paper at an International Conference and visited his home. On that occasion, I travelled throughout the length and breadth of Dhaka and saw everything that Dhaka has to offer. The friendship between my father and Uncle Aziz percolated to our extended families. My grandmother, Premlata Bhattacharya, looked upon Uncle Aziz as her own son. My paternal uncles and their families also became close friends of Uncle Aziz and his family and extended family, particularly one of Uncle Aziz's brothers, who was a doctor of international repute. Uncle Aziz's brother and his family also visited our house in Kolkata. On one particular occasion, during dinner at our home, Uncle Aziz told my father and my paternal uncles 'Why did your father come to Kolkata in 1947? Our country is poorer because of your leaving it. Many of us in Bangladesh feel this way.' My father took great care to see that I had exposure to all religions. When I was five years old, he got me admitted to Don Bosco School in Kolkata run by Roman Catholic missionaries where I got to study the Bible. During the twelve years that I studied in that school, certain aspects of Christianity like its monotheism and its opposition to idolatry left a deep, vivid, lasting and permanent impression on my mind. When I was nine years of age, my father took me to Murshidabad, an event that is engraved in my mind. At Murshidabad, he took me to a mosque built hundreds of years ago. He showed me all the details; the minarets, the calligraphy and so on. It was a memorable visit for me. At Don Bosco School and during my higher education, I was following in the footsteps of my ancestors, picking up an excellent education and all the other things needed to be a complete man. Later on, in my professional career, in the midst of my travels in various countries of the world spanning almost the entire globe, I have seen the unity of man. Memories stand out, sometimes instilling a sense of déjà vu in me; the view of the Pacific in Singapore and of the mountains and moraines from the top of Mount Säntis in Switzerland, the flight over Iran slicing between Tehran to the north and Qom to the south and over Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Bangkok’s wats, Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka, Dubai, Jordan’s northwest, sunset at Hardwar, Bremen and Berlin in Germany, Dilli Haat in Delhi and the Marina Beach in Chennai. It is an inconvenient truth that independent India has let down its own freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and my grandfather. Most people in India now seem to have a perverted view of being avant-garde. Sacrificing the values and traditions held dear by our ancestors, our glorious inheritance is thrown to the winds. Parvenus cannot be expected to appreciate the truism of Ich Dien. Ersatz culture proliferates with the concept of life avec plaisir. The scramble for lebensraum degenerates people to fall prey to rampant greed. Having achieved its independence way back in 1947, India has failed to become a developed country. India is still a developing country and an emerging market. India is rampant with idolatry, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices. In India, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The government has failed to give even the basic necessities to all Indians. If the dictum, 'justice delayed is justice denied' is to be held as valid, my mother, Sheila Bhattacharya, who is a retired Head of the Department of English of a college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, was denied justice as she received her retirement dues four years after she had retired. Of the many countries that I have visited in the world, India is the only country I know of where a government employee has been threatened with death by a colleague ( who is also a government employee ) and has been forced to resign and the government has not done anything whatsoever for the victim. Steeped in bribery, the immediate bosses of the victim ( all of whom are government employees ) have supported and are continuing to support the criminal who happens to have considerable money-power. The victim is yet to receive a single paisa of even his own money kept in the custody of the government during his years in government service. This very recent incident presents a shameful picture of India in front of the civilised world. I have founded the Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation for uplifting street-children and slum-children of Kolkata. The Government of India has to do the following cleaning-up on a war-footing. The Government of India has to 1. Root out government servants having a criminal record. To start with, the government should dismiss and try Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, and all of whom have criminal records. 2. Root out bribery and corruption in government offices. Only a very small fraction of government servants are honest. 3. Demolish the conception, prevalent among most Indians, that government service implies the right to take bribes. While punishing the guilty, the government should laud the very small minority of government servants who are honest. 4. Make an earnest effort to uplift the suffering villagers of India. 5. Make sincere efforts to remove slums and ghettos in Indian cities and towns. 6. Build a government based on trust, not suspicion. At least four identity documents are prevalent in India today - Passport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card and Voter's Identity Card. Since, excepting a Passport, an Indian does not really need the rest, the government should abolish the unnecessary documents. Different sets of government servants are currently issuing different identity documents and taking bribes for issuing the same. 7. Recognise that widespread rigging takes place in Indian elections and make sincere efforts to root-out the same. In view of the widespread rigging prevalent now with local toughs ruling polling booths, Indian election results are devoid of any relation to the will of the people. 8. Ensure that a son inherits his father's property. This usually does not happen now unless the son pays hefty bribes to government servants. The government must do some soul-searching and feel ashamed that a son currently finds great difficulty in inheriting his father's shares and electricity connection - just to cite two examples. 9. Eradicate the current habit of government servants taking bribes to, for example, sanction a building plan, mutate a landed property and provide an electricity connection. 10. Simplify the procedure for getting Indian Passports. The government servants at the Regional Passport Offices must be courteous and helpful and not harass citizens as is the case today. 11. Ensure that retirement benefits are released immediately after retirement and not after four or five years. Many people get their retirement benefits between four and six years after retirement. My mother received her retirement benefits four years after her retirement. The government must punish government servants who withhold retirement benefits of retired citizens. 12. Eliminate feudalism. Corrupt government servants have taken the place of erstwhile zamindars in rural areas. 13. Eliminate the current 'trickle-down' economy. The government must ensure that the lower strata of Indian society is also a beneficiary of economic progress and is not left behind. 14. Remove the criminal-government servant-politician nexus. This is extremely important if India is to progress. 15. Remove the difference between 'the rulers' and 'the ruled'. The government must ensure that democracy does not remain a sham and that government is truly 'of the people, for the people and by the people'. 16. Place a greater value on human life. The government must not think that, simply because India is a populous country, a few lives lost in an accident, for example, a bridge collapse - such as the one that happened in Howrah some time back - does not matter. The government must acknowledge that every single human life is valuable. 17. Eliminate tokenism. 18. Eliminate window-dressing before a politician visits an area. The government must be sincere in its development efforts and ensure that not a single development project announced turns out to be an eyewash designed to fool the population. 19. Ensure internet access and continuous power supply in rural areas. Internet access outside of the metropolises is pitiful and power outages are common. Yesterday evening, there was a power outage at my office in Kolkata. 20. Be sensitive to the suffering of the people. The length and breadth of Kolkata is flooded during the monsoon season and no regime has done anything about it. 21. Understand that slogans like 'Bekari hatao' and 'Roti, kapra aur makaan' are useless if they remain mere slogans without any attempt to implement them. The government must ensure that the fundamental needs of the people are fulfilled. A Banana Republic
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com Some time back, Dr Sudhir Jain, who is the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, requested me to write something about the true state of India at this moment bereft and devoid of the hype that certain misguided and misinformed Indians continually indulge in. After writing to Dr. Jain, wherein I placed India in the context of the broader community of modern nations, I decided to make some unpalatable facts regarding India today available to the public. It is a virtue to be a straight-talker and to clearly say that India’s track record since independence has been dismal, to say the least, and that India has turned out to be a banana republic. I belong to a Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. My family has been ( unwelcome? ) guests of the Government of India since 1947. To put matters in perspective, the Pala dynasty of Bengal was the last Buddhist Dynasty in India. Neither the Arab invasion of Sind nor the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni had any effect on Bengal and the Pala dynasty ruled uninterruptedly until 1162 AD when they were overthrown by the Hindu Sena dynasty. Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD. A few years later, one of Muhammad Ghori's generals swept across the plains of northern India and Lakshmana Sena, the last ruler of the Sena dynasty, fled without giving a fight on hearing the Muslim forces approaching. Bengal came under Muslim rule and remained so until the victory of the British at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 AD. By the time Muslim rule ended in Bengal in 1757 AD, most Bengalis had converted to Islam due to various reasons. Under Muslim rule, an influx of Arabic and Persian words into the Bengali language took place but, crucially, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims continued to speak and write in a common Bengali language with an Indo-Aryan script except for a few words which are still different for Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims. The local dialect of Bengali in East Bengal is different from the local dialect of Bengali in West Bengal, but again this is not based on religious lines. For centuries, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims lived side by side and in harmony, everyone practising his own religion. It is to be noted that my ancestors lived for centuries under Muslim rule. My family has its ancestry in the Chittagong area of East Bengal and has been practising Buddhism since ancient times, probably from even before the birth of Jesus Christ. Since my family was in the extreme South-east of Bengal, near the border with Burma ( now Myanmar ), they have retained their Buddhist religion up to this day. My great great-grandfather Rai Bahadur Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya was a noted Buddhist scholar. He divided his time between Chittagong and Rangpur. He was renowned for his erudition of Pali and Sanskrit and also for his refinement and nobility. He wrote a commentary on the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. His speciality was the study of the Pali Tipitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, the Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. He was conservative to the core, reticent, ascetic, austere and puritan ( like everyone in my family including myself he too was a non-smoker and non-drinker ). My great-grandfather was Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. He was the Diwan of Tripura when Tripura was a princely state and was a close friend of Bengali poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore called him 'Diwan Bahadur ji' as a mark of respect. My great-grandfather was the inspiration behind Rabindranath Tagore's writing the atmospheric novel 'Rajarshi' in which Rabindranath Tagore condemned the practice of many Hindus of sacrificing animals before wrathful deities. My great-grandfather was fluent in Sanskrit, Pali and Arabic, among other languages A very erudite person, he wrote and published several books on Buddhism. Among his books, 'Buddhist Civilisation in Asia' stands out. One of his pioneering thesis was that the Caspian Sea was named after Mahakashyapa, a direct disciple of Lord Buddha. Apart from the similarity in names, he based his thesis on the presence of Kalmyk Buddhists in Kalmykia, a part of Russia to the north-west of the Caspian Sea. After retiring from the Tripura Court, he settled in Chittagong where he built a huge Zamindari house. My great-grandfather was an orthodox and puritan Buddhist. He was uncompromisingly opposed to idolatry. He believed that since the majority of Bengalis were Muslims, Bengali non-Muslims had their only future in living in harmony with Bengali Muslims. However, he was acutely aware of an abnormality in Hindu psychology. He used to say 'Hindus are afraid of Muslims and Hindus suffer from an inferiority complex. They constantly remember that Muslims defeated them. They say that one Muslim equals three Hindus.' He also believed that Hindu icon Swami Vivekananda lacked the intellectual ability to grasp Lord Buddha's teachings. He dismissed outright Swami Vivekananda's thesis that Buddhists introduced idolatry and the tantras. He wrote 'Vivekananda was totally wrong. Hinduism introduced idolatry and the tantras. Mantras can be found even in the Vedas.' It may be mentioned that my great-grandfather was vehemently opposed to the tantras which he dismissed as a degenerate cult. The attitude of my great-grandfather towards Hinduism bordered on the hostile. He famously refused to eat from the hands of any Hindu and employed a Muslim cook to cook his meals. He asked a Muslim gentleman to teach Arabic and Urdu to my grandfather and his siblings. As a result, my grandfather also became fluent in Arabic and Urdu. Unfortunately for our family, he passed away before 1947. Were he alive, he would not have taken a decision to migrate to Kolkata on the spur of the moment. He was not a man to take rash decisions. Gifted with penetrating insight, an acute sense of justice, level-headedness and possessing an optimistic and inclusive outlook about the future of humanity, my great-grandfather could have foreseen that East Pakistan would last for only 24 years. My grandfather, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned by the British before his Matriculation Examination. He wrote his examination in prison. He was tortured by the British every time he was imprisoned by them. Educated under Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan, he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi whom he met several times. He took my father, a young boy at that time, to meet Mahatma Gandhi at Barrackpore in the northern suburbs of Kolkata when Mahatma Gandhi was residing there. My father recalled that when he bent down to pay his respects to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi put his hand on my father's head and said in Hindi 'Beta, sachcha patriot bano' which means 'Son, be a true patriot.' My grandfather founded the House of Labour in East Bengal to encourage youths towards business and enterprise. Being a businessman, my grandfather travelled extensively to all parts of undivided India on business. He stayed at Lahore for two years. He also visited Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi and Hyderabad in Sind. My father recalled that, as a young boy, my grandfather took him to Jammu via Sialkot, the normal route in those times. It could not have escaped my grandfather's notice that the language divide between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was too great to be bridged as Bengali Muslims considered Bengali to be their mother tongue and non-Bengali Muslims considered Urdu to be their mother tongue. This very fact would lead to the break-up of Pakistan, with an Indian victory, in 1971. Surprisingly, my grandfather failed to factor the language difference between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims in his prediction of the future of the Indian sub-continent. He failed to realise that any alliance between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was bound to be temporary in nature and that a split was inevitable sooner or later. For a man to travel all over India and not to develop an incisive judgement of the situation was truly extraordinary. Acting impulsively, in 1947 he took a decision to abandon East Bengal and come to Kolkata leaving all his property in East Bengal behind. He came to Kolkata as a refugee and as a pauper. This caused my family great hardship at the time. Surely, the ephemeral nature of East Pakistan should have been obvious to any discerning observer. Soon after coming to Kolkata in 1947, my grandfather realised that he had been chasing a mirage. Strongly disillusioned, he severed all ties with politics and with the Indian National Congress. Dissatisfied with the way independent India was going, he used to repeatedly say 'I committed a historic blunder by leaving East Bengal. This is not the independence I fought for.' In 1953, my grandfather could garner enough money to build a house in south Kolkata but his money was exhausted before he could finish the building. It was left to me to finish the construction of our home, my father and paternal uncles having added nothing to what my grandfather had done. Realising and recognising that Independence was a pyrrhic victory for him, he developed an ailment of the heart. He passed away in 1959 deeply regretting his hasty decision to migrate to Kolkata. East Pakistan would last for just 12 more years after his death giving birth to Bangladesh. In hindsight, it is abundantly clear that it was not a correct decision for my grandfather to migrate to Kolkata. He not only discarded the material inheritance of his property in Chittagong but also the intellectual inheritance of the legacy of my great-grandfather. My father, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, now deceased, had much the same kind of career as I am having. Possessing several degrees, professional memberships, and a connoisseur of fine arts and literature, he travelled extensively throughout the world. Amongst his several achievements, the development of a management institute stands out. A Rotarian till his demise, he promoted fine arts by making several donations to deserving organisations. Though my father fully shared my grandfather's views as regards the state of India, it was too late for him to reverse my grandfather's mistake. My father was in Times Square in New York when news broke out that Lee Harvey Oswald had assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. He recalls the dazed appearance on the faces of New Yorkers on receiving the news. ‘A successful democracy needs a literate society – illiterate people cannot make informed and considered choices while voting’ said my father later. ‘Eradicating illiteracy should be India’s prime concern. Side by side, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices, particularly in government offices, should be rooted out. Why should one have to pay bribes to multiple people in order to get a new electricity connection for his newly-constructed house? There is enough for man’s needs but not enough for man’s greed. What matters is not what one has but what one is.’ Though my father was a staunch Buddhist, he had to pay extortion money during Hindu festivals to slum-dwellers who still live near our house. Though my house is a posh area of south Kolkata, there is a big slum close to it. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that Kolkata is littered with similar slums everywhere. The slum-dwellers are mostly illiterate and unemployed and are, naturally, full of vices. The government has failed to uplift these people and eradicate the slums even though decades have passed since independence. Uncle Aziz was a very close friend of my father. He and my father met in the United States. He had his ancestry in Comilla. He settled in Dhaka where he built a house in the Bonani area. He visited our home in Kolkata several times. He used to visit India often for professional purposes and never failed to drop in on us. I also visited Dhaka to present a paper at an International Conference and visited his home. On that occasion, I travelled throughout the length and breadth of Dhaka and saw everything that Dhaka has to offer. The friendship between my father and Uncle Aziz percolated to our extended families. My grandmother, Premlata Bhattacharya, looked upon Uncle Aziz as her own son. My paternal uncles and their families also became close friends of Uncle Aziz and his family and extended family, particularly one of Uncle Aziz's brothers, who was a doctor of international repute. Uncle Aziz's brother and his family also visited our house in Kolkata. On one particular occasion, during dinner at our home, Uncle Aziz told my father and my paternal uncles 'Why did your father come to Kolkata in 1947? Our country is poorer because of your leaving it. Many of us in Bangladesh feel this way.' My father took great care to see that I had exposure to all religions. When I was five years old, he got me admitted to Don Bosco School in Kolkata run by Roman Catholic missionaries where I got to study the Bible. During the twelve years that I studied in that school, certain aspects of Christianity like its monotheism and its opposition to idolatry left a deep, vivid, lasting and permanent impression on my mind. When I was nine years of age, my father took me to Murshidabad, an event that is engraved in my mind. At Murshidabad, he took me to a mosque built hundreds of years ago. He showed me all the details; the minarets, the calligraphy and so on. It was a memorable visit for me. At Don Bosco School and during my higher education, I was following in the footsteps of my ancestors, picking up an excellent education and all the other things needed to be a complete man. Later on, in my professional career, in the midst of my travels in various countries of the world spanning almost the entire globe, I have seen the unity of man. Memories stand out, sometimes instilling a sense of déjà vu in me; the view of the Pacific in Singapore and of the mountains and moraines from the top of Mount Säntis in Switzerland, the flight over Iran slicing between Tehran to the north and Qom to the south and over Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Bangkok’s wats, Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka, Dubai, Jordan’s northwest, sunset at Hardwar, Bremen and Berlin in Germany, Dilli Haat in Delhi and the Marina Beach in Chennai. It is an inconvenient truth that independent India has let down its own freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and my grandfather. Most people in India now seem to have a perverted view of being avant-garde. Sacrificing the values and traditions held dear by our ancestors, our glorious inheritance is thrown to the winds. Parvenus cannot be expected to appreciate the truism of Ich Dien. Ersatz culture proliferates with the concept of life avec plaisir. The scramble for lebensraum degenerates people to fall prey to rampant greed. Having achieved its independence way back in 1947, India has failed to become a developed country. India is still a developing country and an emerging market. India is rampant with idolatry, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices. In India, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The government has failed to give even the basic necessities to all Indians. If the dictum, 'justice delayed is justice denied' is to be held as valid, my mother, Sheila Bhattacharya, who is a retired Head of the Department of English of a college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, was denied justice as she received her retirement dues four years after she had retired. Of the many countries that I have visited in the world, India is the only country I know of where a government employee has been threatened with death by a colleague ( who is also a government employee ) and has been forced to resign and the government has not done anything whatsoever for the victim. Steeped in bribery, the immediate bosses of the victim ( all of whom are government employees ) have supported and are continuing to support the criminal who happens to have considerable money-power. The victim is yet to receive a single paisa of even his own money kept in the custody of the government during his years in government service. This very recent incident presents a shameful picture of India in front of the civilised world. I have founded the Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation for uplifting street-children and slum-children of Kolkata. The Government of India has to do the following cleaning-up on a war-footing. The Government of India has to 1. Root out government servants having a criminal record. To start with, the government should dismiss and try Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, and all of whom have criminal records. 2. Root out bribery and corruption in government offices. Only a very small fraction of government servants are honest. 3. Demolish the conception, prevalent among most Indians, that government service implies the right to take bribes. While punishing the guilty, the government should laud the very small minority of government servants who are honest. 4. Make an earnest effort to uplift the suffering villagers of India. 5. Make sincere efforts to remove slums and ghettos in Indian cities and towns. 6. Build a government based on trust, not suspicion. At least four identity documents are prevalent in India today - Passport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card and Voter's Identity Card. Since, excepting a Passport, an Indian does not really need the rest, the government should abolish the unnecessary documents. Different sets of government servants are currently issuing different identity documents and taking bribes for issuing the same. 7. Recognise that widespread rigging takes place in Indian elections and make sincere efforts to root-out the same. In view of the widespread rigging prevalent now with local toughs ruling polling booths, Indian election results are devoid of any relation to the will of the people. 8. Ensure that a son inherits his father's property. This usually does not happen now unless the son pays hefty bribes to government servants. The government must do some soul-searching and feel ashamed that a son currently finds great difficulty in inheriting his father's shares and electricity connection - just to cite two examples. 9. Eradicate the current habit of government servants taking bribes to, for example, sanction a building plan, mutate a landed property and provide an electricity connection. 10. Simplify the procedure for getting Indian Passports. The government servants at the Regional Passport Offices must be courteous and helpful and not harass citizens as is the case today. 11. Ensure that retirement benefits are released immediately after retirement and not after four or five years. Many people get their retirement benefits between four and six years after retirement. My mother received her retirement benefits four years after her retirement. The government must punish government servants who withhold retirement benefits of retired citizens. 12. Eliminate feudalism. Corrupt government servants have taken the place of erstwhile zamindars in rural areas. 13. Eliminate the current 'trickle-down' economy. The government must ensure that the lower strata of Indian society is also a beneficiary of economic progress and is not left behind. 14. Remove the criminal-government servant-politician nexus. This is extremely important if India is to progress. 15. Remove the difference between 'the rulers' and 'the ruled'. The government must ensure that democracy does not remain a sham and that government is truly 'of the people, for the people and by the people'. 16. Place a greater value on human life. The government must not think that, simply because India is a populous country, a few lives lost in an accident, for example, a bridge collapse - such as the one that happened in Howrah some time back - does not matter. The government must acknowledge that every single human life is valuable. 17. Eliminate tokenism. 18. Eliminate window-dressing before a politician visits an area. The government must be sincere in its development efforts and ensure that not a single development project announced turns out to be an eyewash designed to fool the population. 19. Ensure internet access and continuous power supply in rural areas. Internet access outside of the metropolises is pitiful and power outages are common. Yesterday evening, there was a power outage at my office in Kolkata. 20. Be sensitive to the suffering of the people. The length and breadth of Kolkata is flooded during the monsoon season and no regime has done anything about it. 21. Understand that slogans like 'Bekari hatao' and 'Roti, kapra aur makaan' are useless if they remain mere slogans without any attempt to implement them. The government must ensure that the fundamental needs of the people are fulfilled. India
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com Some time back, Dr Sudhir Jain, who is the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, requested me to write something about the true state of India at this moment bereft and devoid of the hype that certain misguided and misinformed Indians continually indulge in. After writing to Dr. Jain, wherein I placed India in the context of the broader community of modern nations, I decided to make some unpalatable facts regarding India today available to the public. It is a virtue to be a straight-talker and to clearly say that India’s track record since independence has been dismal, to say the least. I belong to a Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. My family has been ( unwelcome? ) guests of the Government of India since 1947. To put matters in perspective, the Pala dynasty of Bengal was the last Buddhist Dynasty in India. Neither the Arab invasion of Sind nor the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni had any effect on Bengal and the Pala dynasty ruled uninterruptedly until 1162 AD when they were overthrown by the Hindu Sena dynasty. Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD. A few years later, one of Muhammad Ghori's generals swept across the plains of northern India and Lakshmana Sena, the last ruler of the Sena dynasty, fled without giving a fight on hearing the Muslim forces approaching. Bengal came under Muslim rule and remained so until the victory of the British at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 AD. By the time Muslim rule ended in Bengal in 1757 AD, most Bengalis had converted to Islam due to various reasons. Under Muslim rule, an influx of Arabic and Persian words into the Bengali language took place but, crucially, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims continued to speak and write in a common Bengali language with an Indo-Aryan script except for a few words which are still different for Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims. The local dialect of Bengali in East Bengal is different from the local dialect of Bengali in West Bengal, but again this is not based on religious lines. For centuries, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims lived side by side and in harmony, everyone practising his own religion. It is to be noted that my ancestors lived for centuries under Muslim rule. My family has its ancestry in the Chittagong area of East Bengal and has been practising Buddhism since ancient times, probably from even before the birth of Jesus Christ. Since my family was in the extreme South-east of Bengal, near the border with Burma ( now Myanmar ), they have retained their Buddhist religion up to this day. My great great-grandfather Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya was a noted Buddhist scholar. He divided his time between Chittagong and Rangpur. He was renowned for his erudition of Pali and Sanskrit and also for his refinement and nobility. He wrote a commentary on the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. His speciality was the study of the Pali Tipitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, the Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. He was conservative to the core, reticent, ascetic, austere and puritan ( like everyone in my family including myself he too was a non-smoker and non-drinker ). My great-grandfather was Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. He was the Diwan of Tripura when Tripura was a princely state and was a close friend of Bengali poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore called him 'Diwan Bahadur ji' as a mark of respect. My great-grandfather was fluent in Sanskrit, Pali and Arabic, among other languages A very erudite person, he wrote and published several books on Buddhism. Among his books, 'Buddhist Civilisation in Asia' stands out. One of his pioneering thesis was that the Caspian Sea was named after Mahakashyapa, a direct disciple of Lord Buddha. Apart from the similarity in names, he based his thesis on the presence of Kalmyk Buddhists in Kalmykia, a part of Russia to the north-west of the Caspian Sea. After retiring from the Tripura Court, he settled in Chittagong where he built a huge Zamindari house. My great-grandfather was an orthodox and puritan Buddhist. He was uncompromisingly opposed to idolatry. He believed that since the majority of Bengalis were Muslims, Bengali non-Muslims had their only future in living in harmony with Bengali Muslims. However, he was acutely aware of an abnormality in Hindu psychology. He used to say 'Hindus are afraid of Muslims and Hindus suffer from an inferiority complex. They constantly remember that Muslims defeated them. They say that one Muslim equals three Hindus.' He also believed that Hindu icon Swami Vivekananda lacked the intellectual ability to grasp Lord Buddha's teachings. He dismissed outright Swami Vivekananda's thesis that Buddhists introduced idolatry and the tantras. He wrote 'Vivekananda was totally wrong. Hinduism introduced idolatry and the tantras. Mantras can be found even in the Vedas.' It may be mentioned that my great-grandfather was vehemently opposed to the tantras which he dismissed as a degenerate cult. The attitude of my great-grandfather towards Hinduism bordered on the hostile. He famously refused to eat from the hands of any Hindu and employed a Muslim cook to cook his meals. He asked a Muslim gentleman to teach Arabic and Urdu to my grandfather and his siblings. As a result, my grandfather also became fluent in Arabic and Urdu. Unfortunately for our family, he passed away before 1947. Were he alive, he would not have taken a decision to migrate to Kolkata on the spur of the moment. He was not a man to take rash decisions. Gifted with penetrating insight, an acute sense of justice, level-headedness and possessing an optimistic and inclusive outlook about the future of humanity, my great-grandfather could have foreseen that East Pakistan would last for only 24 years. My grandfather, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned by the British before his Matriculation Examination. He wrote his examination in prison. He was tortured by the British every time he was imprisoned by them. Educated under Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan, he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi whom he met several times. He took my father, a young boy at that time, to meet Mahatma Gandhi at Barrackpore in the northern suburbs of Kolkata when Mahatma Gandhi was residing there. My father recalled that when he bent down to pay his respects to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi put his hand on my father's head and said in Hindi 'Beta, sachcha patriot bano' which means 'Son, be a true patriot.' My grandfather founded the House of Labour in East Bengal to encourage youths towards business and enterprise. Being a businessman, my grandfather travelled extensively to all parts of undivided India on business. He stayed at Lahore for two years. He also visited Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi and Hyderabad in Sind. My father recalled that, as a young boy, my grandfather took him to Jammu via Sialkot, the normal route in those times. It could not have escaped my grandfather's notice that the language divide between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was too great to be bridged as Bengali Muslims considered Bengali to be their mother tongue and non-Bengali Muslims considered Urdu to be their mother tongue. This very fact would lead to the break-up of Pakistan, with an Indian victory, in 1971. Surprisingly, my grandfather failed to factor the language difference between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims in his prediction of the future of the Indian sub-continent. He failed to realise that any alliance between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was bound to be temporary in nature and that a split was inevitable sooner or later. For a man to travel all over India and not to develop an incisive judgement of the situation was truly extraordinary. Acting impulsively, in 1947 he took a decision to abandon East Bengal and come to Kolkata leaving all his property in East Bengal behind. He came to Kolkata as a refugee and as a pauper. This caused my family great hardship at the time. Surely, the ephemeral nature of East Pakistan should have been obvious to any discerning observer. Soon after coming to Kolkata in 1947, my grandfather realised that he had been chasing a mirage. Strongly disillusioned, he severed all ties with politics and with the Indian National Congress. Dissatisfied with the way independent India was going, he used to repeatedly say 'I committed a historic blunder by leaving East Bengal. This is not the independence I fought for.' In 1953, my grandfather could garner enough money to build a house in south Kolkata but his money was exhausted before he could finish the building. It was left to me to finish the construction of our home, my father and paternal uncles having added nothing to what my grandfather had done. Realising and recognising that Independence was a pyrrhic victory for him, he developed an ailment of the heart. He passed away in 1959 deeply regretting his hasty decision to migrate to Kolkata. East Pakistan would last for just 12 more years after his death giving birth to Bangladesh. In hindsight, it is abundantly clear that it was not a correct decision for my grandfather to migrate to Kolkata. He not only discarded the material inheritance of his property in Chittagong but also the intellectual inheritance of the legacy of my great-grandfather. My father, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, now deceased, had much the same kind of career as I am having. Possessing several degrees, professional memberships, and a connoisseur of fine arts and literature, he travelled extensively throughout the world. Amongst his several achievements, the development of a management institute stands out. A Rotarian till his demise, he promoted fine arts by making several donations to deserving organisations. Though my father fully shared my grandfather's views as regards the state of India, it was too late for him to reverse my grandfather's mistake. My father was in Times Square in New York when news broke out that Lee Harvey Oswald had assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. He recalls the dazed appearance on the faces of New Yorkers on receiving the news. ‘A successful democracy needs a literate society – illiterate people cannot make informed and considered choices while voting’ said my father later. ‘Eradicating illiteracy should be India’s prime concern. Side by side, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices, particularly in government offices, should be rooted out. Why should one have to pay bribes to multiple people in order to get a new electricity connection for his newly-constructed house? There is enough for man’s needs but not enough for man’s greed. What matters is not what one has but what one is.’ Though my father was a staunch Buddhist, he had to pay extortion money during Hindu festivals to slum-dwellers who still live near our house. Though my house is a posh area of south Kolkata, there is a big slum close to it. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that Kolkata is littered with similar slums everywhere. The slum-dwellers are mostly illiterate and unemployed and are, naturally, full of vices. The government has failed to uplift these people and eradicate the slums even though decades have passed since independence. Uncle Aziz was a very close friend of my father. He and my father met in the United States. He had his ancestry in Comilla. He settled in Dhaka where he built a house in the Bonani area. He visited our home in Kolkata several times. He used to visit India often for professional purposes and never failed to drop in on us. I also visited Dhaka to present a paper at an International Conference and visited his home. On that occasion, I travelled throughout the length and breadth of Dhaka and saw everything that Dhaka has to offer. The friendship between my father and Uncle Aziz percolated to our extended families. My grandmother, Premlata Bhattacharya, looked upon Uncle Aziz as her own son. My paternal uncles and their families also became close friends of Uncle Aziz and his family and extended family, particularly one of Uncle Aziz's brothers, who was a doctor of international repute. Uncle Aziz's brother and his family also visited our house in Kolkata. On one particular occasion, during dinner at our home, Uncle Aziz told my father and my paternal uncles 'Why did your father come to Kolkata in 1947? Our country is poorer because of your leaving it. Many of us in Bangladesh feel this way.' My father took great care to see that I had exposure to all religions. When I was five years old, he got me admitted to Don Bosco School in Kolkata run by Roman Catholic missionaries where I got to study the Bible. During the twelve years that I studied in that school, certain aspects of Christianity like its monotheism and its opposition to idolatry left a deep, vivid, lasting and permanent impression on my mind. When I was nine years of age, my father took me to Murshidabad, an event that is engraved in my mind. At Murshidabad, he took me to a mosque built hundreds of years ago. He showed me all the details; the minarets, the calligraphy and so on. It was a memorable visit for me. At Don Bosco School and during my higher education, I was following in the footsteps of my ancestors, picking up an excellent education and all the other things needed to be a complete man. Later on, in my professional career, in the midst of my travels in various countries of the world spanning almost the entire globe, I have seen the unity of man. Memories stand out, sometimes instilling a sense of déjà vu in me; the view of the Pacific in Singapore and of the mountains and moraines from the top of Mount Säntis in Switzerland, the flight over Iran slicing between Tehran to the north and Qom to the south and over Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Bangkok’s wats, Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka, Dubai, Jordan’s northwest, sunset at Hardwar, Bremen and Berlin in Germany, Dilli Haat in Delhi and the Marina Beach in Chennai. It is an inconvenient truth that independent India has let down its own freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and my grandfather. Most people in India now seem to have a perverted view of being avant-garde. Sacrificing the values and traditions held dear by our ancestors, our glorious inheritance is thrown to the winds. Parvenus cannot be expected to appreciate the truism of Ich Dien. Ersatz culture proliferates with the concept of life avec plaisir. The scramble for lebensraum degenerates people to fall prey to rampant greed. Having achieved its independence way back in 1947, India has failed to become a developed country. India is still a developing country and an emerging market. India is rampant with idolatry, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices. In India, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The government has failed to give even the basic necessities to all Indians. If the dictum, 'justice delayed is justice denied' is to be held as valid, my mother, Sheila Bhattacharya, who is a retired Head of the Department of English of a college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, was denied justice as she received her retirement dues four years after she had retired. Of the many countries that I have visited in the world, India is the only country I know of where a government employee has been threatened with death by a colleague ( who is also a government employee ) and has been forced to resign and the government has not done anything whatsoever for the victim. Steeped in bribery, the immediate bosses of the victim ( all of whom are government employees ) have supported and are continuing to support the criminal who happens to have considerable money-power. The victim is yet to receive a single paisa of even his own money kept in the custody of the government during his years in government service. This very recent incident presents a shameful picture of India in front of the civilised world. I have founded the Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation for uplifting street-children and slum-children of Kolkata. The Government of India has to do the following cleaning-up on a war-footing. The Government of India has to 1. Root out government servants having a criminal record. To start with, the government should dismiss and try Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, and all of whom have criminal records. 2. Root out bribery and corruption in government offices. Only a very small fraction of government servants are honest. 3. Demolish the conception, prevalent among most Indians, that government service implies the right to take bribes. While punishing the guilty, the government should laud the very small minority of government servants who are honest. 4. Make an earnest effort to uplift the suffering villagers of India. 5. Make sincere efforts to remove slums and ghettos in Indian cities and towns. 6. Build a government based on trust, not suspicion. At least four identity documents are prevalent in India today - Passport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card and Voter's Identity Card. Since, excepting a Passport, an Indian does not really need the rest, the government should abolish the unnecessary documents. Different sets of government servants are currently issuing different identity documents and taking bribes for issuing the same. 7. Recognise that widespread rigging takes place in Indian elections and make sincere efforts to root-out the same. In view of the widespread rigging prevalent now with local toughs ruling polling booths, Indian election results are devoid of any relation to the will of the people. 8. Ensure that a son inherits his father's property. This usually does not happen now unless the son pays hefty bribes to government servants. The government must do some soul-searching and feel ashamed that a son currently finds great difficulty in inheriting his father's shares and electricity connection - just to cite two examples. 9. Eradicate the current habit of government servants taking bribes to, for example, sanction a building plan, mutate a landed property and provide an electricity connection. 10. Simplify the procedure for getting Indian Passports. The government servants at the Regional Passport Offices must be courteous and helpful and not harass citizens as is the case today. 11. Ensure that retirement benefits are released immediately after retirement and not after four or five years. Many people get their retirement benefits between four and six years after retirement. My mother received her retirement benefits four years after her retirement. The government must punish government servants who withhold retirement benefits of retired citizens. 12. Eliminate feudalism. Corrupt government servants have taken the place of erstwhile zamindars in rural areas. 13. Eliminate the current 'trickle-down' economy. The government must ensure that the lower strata of Indian society is also a beneficiary of economic progress and is not left behind. 14. Remove the criminal-government servant-politician nexus. This is extremely important if India is to progress. 15. Remove the difference between 'the rulers' and 'the ruled'. The government must ensure that democracy does not remain a sham and that government is truly 'of the people, for the people and by the people'. 16. Place a greater value on human life. The government must not think that, simply because India is a populous country, a few lives lost in an accident, for example, a bridge collapse - such as the one that happened in Howrah some time back - does not matter. The government must acknowledge that every single human life is valuable. 17. Eliminate tokenism. 18. Eliminate window-dressing before a politician visits an area. The government must be sincere in its development efforts and ensure that not a single development project announced turns out to be an eyewash designed to fool the population. 19. Ensure internet access and continuous power supply in rural areas. Internet access outside of the metropolises is pitiful and power outages are common. Yesterday evening, there was a power outage at my office in Kolkata. 20. Be sensitive to the suffering of the people. The length and breadth of Kolkata is flooded during the monsoon season and no regime has done anything about it. 21. Understand that slogans like 'Bekari hatao' and 'Roti, kapra aur makaan' are useless if they remain mere slogans without any attempt to implement them. The government must ensure that the fundamental needs of the people are fulfilled. An Indifferent Spectator
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com Some time back, Dr Sudhir Jain, who is the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, requested me to write something about the true state of India at this moment bereft and devoid of the hype that certain misguided and misinformed Indians continually indulge in. After writing to Dr. Jain, wherein I placed India in the context of the broader community of modern nations, I decided to make some unpalatable facts regarding India today available to the public. It is a virtue to be a straight-talker and to clearly say that India’s track record since independence has been dismal, to say the least. I belong to a Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. My family has been ( unwelcome? ) guests of the Government of India since 1947. To put matters in perspective, the Pala dynasty of Bengal was the last Buddhist Dynasty in India. Neither the Arab invasion of Sind nor the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni had any effect on Bengal and the Pala dynasty ruled uninterruptedly until 1162 AD when they were overthrown by the Hindu Sena dynasty. Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD. A few years later, one of Muhammad Ghori's generals swept across the plains of northern India and Lakshmana Sena, the last ruler of the Sena dynasty, fled without giving a fight on hearing the Muslim forces approaching. Bengal came under Muslim rule and remained so until the victory of the British at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 AD. By the time Muslim rule ended in Bengal in 1757 AD, most Bengalis had converted to Islam due to various reasons. Under Muslim rule, an influx of Arabic and Persian words into the Bengali language took place but, crucially, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims continued to speak and write in a common Bengali language with an Indo-Aryan script except for a few words which are still different for Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims. The local dialect of Bengali in East Bengal is different from the local dialect of Bengali in West Bengal, but again this is not based on religious lines. For centuries, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims lived side by side and in harmony, everyone practising his own religion. It is to be noted that my ancestors lived for centuries under Muslim rule. My family has its ancestry in the Chittagong area of East Bengal and has been practising Buddhism since ancient times, probably from even before the birth of Jesus Christ. Since my family was in the extreme South-east of Bengal, near the border with Burma ( now Myanmar ), they have retained their Buddhist religion up to this day. My great great-grandfather Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya was a noted Buddhist scholar. He divided his time between Chittagong and Rangpur. He was renowned for his erudition of Pali and Sanskrit and also for his refinement and nobility. He wrote a commentary on the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. His speciality was the study of the Pali Tipitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, the Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. He was conservative to the core, reticent, ascetic, austere and puritan ( like everyone in my family including myself he too was a non-smoker and non-drinker ). My great-grandfather was Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. He was the Diwan of Tripura when Tripura was a princely state and was a close friend of Bengali poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore called him 'Diwan Bahadur ji' as a mark of respect. My great-grandfather was fluent in Sanskrit, Pali and Arabic, among other languages A very erudite person, he wrote and published several books on Buddhism. Among his books, 'Buddhist Civilisation in Asia' stands out. One of his pioneering thesis was that the Caspian Sea was named after Mahakashyapa, a direct disciple of Lord Buddha. Apart from the similarity in names, he based his thesis on the presence of Kalmyk Buddhists in Kalmykia, a part of Russia to the north-west of the Caspian Sea. After retiring from the Tripura Court, he settled in Chittagong where he built a huge Zamindari house. My great-grandfather was an orthodox and puritan Buddhist. He was uncompromisingly opposed to idolatry. He believed that since the majority of Bengalis were Muslims, Bengali non-Muslims had their only future in living in harmony with Bengali Muslims. However, he was acutely aware of an abnormality in Hindu psychology. He used to say 'Hindus are afraid of Muslims and Hindus suffer from an inferiority complex. They constantly remember that Muslims defeated them. They say that one Muslim equals three Hindus.' He also believed that Hindu icon Swami Vivekananda lacked the intellectual ability to grasp Lord Buddha's teachings. He dismissed outright Swami Vivekananda's thesis that Buddhists introduced idolatry and the tantras. He wrote 'Vivekananda was totally wrong. Hinduism introduced idolatry and the tantras. Mantras can be found even in the Vedas.' It may be mentioned that my great-grandfather was vehemently opposed to the tantras which he dismissed as a degenerate cult. The attitude of my great-grandfather towards Hinduism bordered on the hostile. He famously refused to eat from the hands of any Hindu and employed a Muslim cook to cook his meals. He asked a Muslim gentleman to teach Arabic and Urdu to my grandfather and his siblings. As a result, my grandfather also became fluent in Arabic and Urdu. Unfortunately for our family, he passed away before 1947. Were he alive, he would not have taken a decision to migrate to Kolkata on the spur of the moment. He was not a man to take rash decisions. Gifted with penetrating insight, an acute sense of justice, level-headedness and possessing an optimistic and inclusive outlook about the future of humanity, my great-grandfather could have foreseen that East Pakistan would last for only 24 years. My grandfather, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned by the British before his Matriculation Examination. He wrote his examination in prison. He was tortured by the British every time he was imprisoned by them. Educated under Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan, he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi whom he met several times. He took my father, a young boy at that time, to meet Mahatma Gandhi at Barrackpore in the northern suburbs of Kolkata when Mahatma Gandhi was residing there. My father recalled that when he bent down to pay his respects to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi put his hand on my father's head and said in Hindi 'Beta, sachcha patriot bano' which means 'Son, be a true patriot.' My grandfather founded the House of Labour in East Bengal to encourage youths towards business and enterprise. Being a businessman, my grandfather travelled extensively to all parts of undivided India on business. He stayed at Lahore for two years. He also visited Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi and Hyderabad in Sind. My father recalled that, as a young boy, my grandfather took him to Jammu via Sialkot, the normal route in those times. It could not have escaped my grandfather's notice that the language divide between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was too great to be bridged as Bengali Muslims considered Bengali to be their mother tongue and non-Bengali Muslims considered Urdu to be their mother tongue. This very fact would lead to the break-up of Pakistan, with an Indian victory, in 1971. Surprisingly, my grandfather failed to factor the language difference between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims in his prediction of the future of the Indian sub-continent. He failed to realise that any alliance between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was bound to be temporary in nature and that a split was inevitable sooner or later. For a man to travel all over India and not to develop an incisive judgement of the situation was truly extraordinary. Acting impulsively, in 1947 he took a decision to abandon East Bengal and come to Kolkata leaving all his property in East Bengal behind. He came to Kolkata as a refugee and as a pauper. This caused my family great hardship at the time. Surely, the ephemeral nature of East Pakistan should have been obvious to any discerning observer. Soon after coming to Kolkata in 1947, my grandfather realised that he had been chasing a mirage. Strongly disillusioned, he severed all ties with politics and with the Indian National Congress. Dissatisfied with the way independent India was going, he used to repeatedly say 'I committed a historic blunder by leaving East Bengal. This is not the independence I fought for.' In 1953, my grandfather could garner enough money to build a house in south Kolkata but his money was exhausted before he could finish the building. It was left to me to finish the construction of our home, my father and paternal uncles having added nothing to what my grandfather had done. Realising and recognising that Independence was a pyrrhic victory for him, he developed an ailment of the heart. He passed away in 1959 deeply regretting his hasty decision to migrate to Kolkata. East Pakistan would last for just 12 more years after his death giving birth to Bangladesh. In hindsight, it is abundantly clear that it was not a correct decision for my grandfather to migrate to Kolkata. He not only discarded the material inheritance of his property in Chittagong but also the intellectual inheritance of the legacy of my great-grandfather. My father, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, now deceased, had much the same kind of career as I am having. Possessing several degrees, professional memberships, and a connoisseur of fine arts and literature, he travelled extensively throughout the world. Amongst his several achievements, the development of a management institute stands out. A Rotarian till his demise, he promoted fine arts by making several donations to deserving organisations. Though my father fully shared my grandfather's views as regards the state of India, it was too late for him to reverse my grandfather's mistake. My father was in Times Square in New York when news broke out that Lee Harvey Oswald had assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. He recalls the dazed appearance on the faces of New Yorkers on receiving the news. ‘A successful democracy needs a literate society – illiterate people cannot make informed and considered choices while voting’ said my father later. ‘Eradicating illiteracy should be India’s prime concern. Side by side, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices, particularly in government offices, should be rooted out. Why should one have to pay bribes to multiple people in order to get a new electricity connection for his newly-constructed house? There is enough for man’s needs but not enough for man’s greed. What matters is not what one has but what one is.’ Though my father was a staunch Buddhist, he had to pay extortion money during Hindu festivals to slum-dwellers who still live near our house. Though my house is a posh area of south Kolkata, there is a big slum close to it. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that Kolkata is littered with similar slums everywhere. The slum-dwellers are mostly illiterate and unemployed and are, naturally, full of vices. The government has failed to uplift these people and eradicate the slums even though decades have passed since independence. Uncle Aziz was a very close friend of my father. He and my father met in the United States. He had his ancestry in Comilla. He settled in Dhaka where he built a house in the Bonani area. He visited our home in Kolkata several times. He used to visit India often for professional purposes and never failed to drop in on us. I also visited Dhaka to present a paper at an International Conference and visited his home. On that occasion, I travelled throughout the length and breadth of Dhaka and saw everything that Dhaka has to offer. The friendship between my father and Uncle Aziz percolated to our extended families. My grandmother, Premlata Bhattacharya, looked upon Uncle Aziz as her own son. My paternal uncles and their families also became close friends of Uncle Aziz and his family and extended family, particularly one of Uncle Aziz's brothers, who was a doctor of international repute. Uncle Aziz's brother and his family also visited our house in Kolkata. On one particular occasion, during dinner at our home, Uncle Aziz told my father and my paternal uncles 'Why did your father come to Kolkata in 1947? Our country is poorer because of your leaving it. Many of us in Bangladesh feel this way.' My father took great care to see that I had exposure to all religions. When I was five years old, he got me admitted to Don Bosco School in Kolkata run by Roman Catholic missionaries where I got to study the Bible. During the twelve years that I studied in that school, certain aspects of Christianity like its monotheism and its opposition to idolatry left a deep, vivid, lasting and permanent impression on my mind. When I was nine years of age, my father took me to Murshidabad, an event that is engraved in my mind. At Murshidabad, he took me to a mosque built hundreds of years ago. He showed me all the details; the minarets, the calligraphy and so on. It was a memorable visit for me. At Don Bosco School and during my higher education, I was following in the footsteps of my ancestors, picking up an excellent education and all the other things needed to be a complete man. Later on, in my professional career, in the midst of my travels in various countries of the world spanning almost the entire globe, I have seen the unity of man. Memories stand out, sometimes instilling a sense of déjà vu in me; the view of the Pacific in Singapore and of the mountains and moraines from the top of Mount Säntis in Switzerland, the flight over Iran slicing between Tehran to the north and Qom to the south and over Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Bangkok’s wats, Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka, Dubai, Jordan’s northwest, sunset at Hardwar, Bremen and Berlin in Germany, Dilli Haat in Delhi and the Marina Beach in Chennai. It is an inconvenient truth that independent India has let down its own freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and my grandfather. Most people in India now seem to have a perverted view of being avant-garde. Sacrificing the values and traditions held dear by our ancestors, our glorious inheritance is thrown to the winds. Parvenus cannot be expected to appreciate the truism of Ich Dien. Ersatz culture proliferates with the concept of life avec plaisir. The scramble for lebensraum degenerates people to fall prey to rampant greed. Having achieved its independence way back in 1947, India has failed to become a developed country. India is still a developing country and an emerging market. India is rampant with idolatry, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices. In India, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The government has failed to give even the basic necessities to all Indians. If the dictum, 'justice delayed is justice denied' is to be held as valid, my mother, Sheila Bhattacharya, who is a retired Head of the Department of English of a college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, was denied justice as she received her retirement dues four years after she had retired. Of the many countries that I have visited in the world, India is the only country I know of where a government employee has been threatened with death by a colleague ( who is also a government employee ) and has been forced to resign and the government has not done anything whatsoever for the victim. Steeped in bribery, the immediate bosses of the victim ( all of whom are government employees ) have supported and are continuing to support the criminal who happens to have considerable money-power. The victim is yet to receive a single paisa of even his own money kept in the custody of the government during his years in government service. This very recent incident presents a shameful picture of India in front of the civilised world. I have founded the Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation for uplifting street-children and slum-children of Kolkata. The government must not remain an indifferent spectator to the plight of the suffering people. Advanced Guidelines for Choosing a Stream After the JEE and for Preparing for GATE and CAT12/5/2017 Advanced Guidelines for Choosing a Stream After the JEE and for Preparing for GATE and CAT
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com Choosing a Stream After the JEE After the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for Engineering, several successful students having various ranks are confused about which stream and which college to take admission to. Such students would do well to keep certain facts in mind: 1. There may a trade-off between the desired stream and the desired college. 2. If in doubt, give preference to the college. The brand equity counts. 3. Keep in mind that sectors like Information Technology are more susceptible to fluctuations in demand than Civil or Mechanical Engineering. 4. You should also realise that a BE degree is usually not sufficient for career progression. Thus, the prospects for higher study of a stream should also be kept in mind. 5. If forced to enter a college and/or stream against your choice, try to accept it gracefully and concentrate on your career progression. Preparing for GATE The Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) is a requirement for admission to post-graduate courses in engineering and technology in India. It is thus imperative that one scores well in this examination to get in the institution and course of his choice. Candidates will find the following points helpful:
Preparing for CAT The Common Admission Test (CAT) is a requirement for admission to post-graduate programmes in management in the Indian Institutes of Management. Candidates will find the following points helpful:
You can get further counselling from me by writing to me at dramartyakumar@gmail.com or by phoning me at 89024 94161. MultiSpectra Consultants IES, IAS Classes in Kolkata
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com MultiSpectra Consultants announces the commencement of IES, IAS Classes in Kolkata for undergraduate and other interested students with immediate effect. This programme is being offered under the overall ambit of MultiSpectra Edge. Students wishing to attend the Classes may apply by e-mailing me at dramartyakumar@gmail.com attaching their current CV to the e-mail. MultiSpectra Consultants 10th Standard, 12th Standard, IIT-JEE, PMT, SAT Classes in Kolkata12/5/2017 MultiSpectra Consultants 10th Standard, 12th Standard, IIT-JEE, PMT, SAT Classes in Kolkata
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com MultiSpectra Consultants announces the commencement of 10th Standard, 12th Standard, IIT-JEE, PMT, SAT Classes in Kolkata for students with immediate effect. This programme is being offered under the overall ambit of MultiSpectra Edge. Students wishing to attend the Classes may apply by e-mailing the undersigned at dramartyakumar@gmail.com attaching their current CV to the e-mail. MultiSpectra Consultants GATE, CAT, GRE, GMAT, TOEFL, IELTS Classes in Kolkata
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com MultiSpectra Consultants announces the commencement of GATE, CAT, GRE, GMAT, TOEFL, IELTS Classes in Kolkata for undergraduate and other interested students with immediate effect. This programme is being offered under the overall ambit of MultiSpectra Edge. Students wishing to attend the Classes may apply by e-mailing me at dramartyakumar@gmail.com attaching their current CV to the e-mail. Six Simple Steps to SEO Success
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com There is a saying “It’s only quality content, if Google says it is.” The reasons for this are many, but the story in short is this:
But, of course, SEO has become one of the most noisy topics in existence. If you’re like me, you literally receive 2-3 inquiries each week from someone asking you to “outsource some SEO work” to them with the promise of “1st page results.” While there might have been a time when you could just hire one of these “SEOs” to do some technical wizardry and forget about it, that time has long since passed. By and large, SEO is no longer a technical endeavour. These days, SEO simply requires a commitment from senior members in the marketing team to understand a handful of fundamentals and make sure they’re diligently applied with frequency and regularity. The foundation of modern search engine optimization is, of course, high quality content. Despite that, we see way too many firms with exceptional thought leadership (think published books and industry articles) that simply aren’t getting their fair share of search. This article is really for those folks. It’s not intended to be an exhaustive explanation of how to develop thought leadership. Nor, is it a technical explanation of all the inner workings of Google. In fact, we’re purposefully leaving out much of the rationale for why these things are important. Rather, it’s designed as a step-by-step “how to” guide for firms with high quality thought leadership who feel like they’re simply not getting their fair share of search traffic for concepts they’d like to own. The six steps at a glance:
#1 - Develop a List of Big Topics If you’d like to get found online, it’s important that you start at the beginning. What are the macro problems you know how to solve that you’d like to get found for? Don’t confuse this exercise with developing a keyword list — that will come later. In almost every instance imaginable, keywords should never drive strategy. Rather, identify 3-4 big ideas that you’d really like to be known for — things like organizational design, leadership development, etc. Ideally these topics can then be framed as a client’s problem statement — how do I develop the right organizational structure? how do I cultivate the next generation of leaders? Don’t worry too much about language just yet (how someone might search for this concept). Rather, just focus on the intent. #2 - Develop a Content Strategy Your content strategy should spell out the specific pieces of content you expect to develop underlying those big ideas. Ideally, it includes some combination of original primary research, a mix of short- and longer-form content, and a handful of case stories you will use to demonstrate the impact of your work. Your strategy should outline who’s going to do what by when and be documented as an editorial calendar that defines what you hope to publish by when. Ideally, your content strategy provides a list of headlines for articles you’re going to publish. You’re probably not a publisher so things don’t need to be set in stone. But, you shouldn’t give yourself too much leeway either. For each big topic you’d like to own, your content strategy should enable you to self-publish 3k+ words of original, search-indexable content per month. #3 - Build a Keyword List Now, is the time to start thinking about keyword lists. Make a list of potential search phrases that you might use to find those macro topics and the articles that underly them. Simply think like a searcher. If I had this question, how might I search for it? From there, you can use a combination of free tools (Google “Auto-Suggest” and “Searches Related To” and Google Keyword Planner) or paid tools (KeywordTool.io) to identify how people tend to search for these topics and which phrases appear to be most or least competitive based on how expensive they’d be to “buy” via Google AdWords. #4 - Search Optimize All Content Along Those Lines The next step is simply to search optimize all the content you self-publish using this list of potential keyword phrases. The important step here is to take the time to optimize all the key elements of each page individually. Take the time to “triangulate” around the concept underlying each article by providing independent Page Titles, URLs and Headlines for each one. #5 - Identify Critical Content and Build Internal Links Revisit the existing content on your site and the content you plan to develop within your planned content strategy. Then, ask yourself which content from this list is most important? From this moment forward, make it your mission to look for ways to point to these content assets from elsewhere in your site. Whenever you write a short-form article on this topic, see if there’s some way to naturally embed a link to those important content assets within the body of the page. Don’t do it robotically. Do it in a way that helps the reader. But, also do it using the natural language of the article wherever possible. Use the “anchor text” of the link to provide a short snippet of information about what that other content asset is really about. Google will use this information to understand that other article. And, it will recognize that content assets that you point to more frequently within your site you deem to be more important than others. #6 - Build External Links Pointing to those Same Assets Here’s where those external SEO consultants have paid their way over the years — building “back links” to your site. And, here’s where you have to be careful. Yes, you’d love it if lots of high quality websites linked to your content because it would confer a lot of “search engine street cred” on what you just wrote. But, not all links are created equal. Comment stuffing does you next to no good. So, if you’re paying one of those “SEOs” to post comments on other high quality sites to link to your articles, save your money. Also, publishing lots of links from low quality websites doesn’t do you a whole lot of good either. Rather, what you’d really like to do is get external articles published on high quality sites that point back to your site in one way or another. So, dial back to step 2 (your content strategy) and ask yourself, could any of these articles be published elsewhere? Could we identify an industry trade journal or two that might be interested in an external submission on these topics? Reach out to the editor and see if you can get an article placed (before you publish it on your own site, obviously). Then, when you write look for ways to link back to content on your site (while operating within the editorial guidelines of the publication). Whenever possible, make the first organic text link within that article point back to your site (again, as long as you’re operating within the expectations of the publisher — a lot of sites will frown upon this because you’re pulling their audience away from them. But you can always ask). Closing Thoughts My hope is that this article will provide you with some practical advice to earn your fair share of search traffic. I’ve said this before (and I’m sure I’ll say it again), as a marketing medium Google is the closest thing a professional services firm has to SuperBowl advertising. So, you better do everything you can to make the most of it. Your Three Phase Marketing Model To Deliver New Clients
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com There is one fundamental truth to any new client relationship in 2017 and beyond. I don’t care what type of firm you have. I don’t care if you have 2 people or 20,000. I don’t care if you’ve been around 5 years or 50. I don’t care if you’re headquartered in Manhattan, New York or Manhattan, Kansas. Every single new client you win today and for the foreseeable future will go through your website. I don’t care how they originally came to find you. I don’t care if they read a print ad in a trade journal, found an article from one of your practice leaders in HBR, searched for answers to a problem on Google, or were referred to you by their most trusted senior advisor. They will still go through your website. Like it or not. It’s an indisputable fact. Now keep in mind, I’m not talking about new projects from existing clients. I’m talking about the coveted new/new of your business model — the new seed projects you’ll win with new clients this year that will comprise little more than 20% of your revenue now, but will blossom into 70-80% of your revenue 3-4 years from now. I like to call these new/news. And, there are 3 phases of marketing required to capture them: Attract as many of the right visitors to your website as you can. Convert them into leads for follow-on marketing and selling. Nurture them towards a conversation for your senior partners. #1 - Attract Visitors Your goal in the first phase of marketing is simply to consistently grow both the quantity and quality of visitors to your site. Your job is to go out into the market and bring people back in some way, shape or form. The best way to do this is to consistently publish high quality content that maps your firm’s expertise to your clients’ problems. That said, there are hundreds of ways for you to attract clients to your site. From onsite publishing and search engine optimization, to social media and offsite publishing in 3rd party journals, speaking at industry events, and buying digital or offline media. But, what works best? Our research consistently tells us that personal referrals and publishing in leading industry journals are generally the most important ways clients find firms so they tend to be your two most effective techniques to attract new clients. That said, in most instances those two tactics will yield a minority of the visitors to your site. For the typical firm in our client set these two lead sources constitute <30% of total site traffic. So, they’re a minority of total traffic. We would go as far to suggest that while personal referrals are your best lead source they should only constitute a total of 3-5% of your total leads because they’re inconsistent and unreliable. If personal referrals represent a large percentage of your leads you clearly have a lead generation problem. Search, by contrast represents 50-60% of total site traffic across our professional service firm clients — contrast this number to the broader Internet where collective traffic from search is ~30% and this metric becomes remarkable. If there were a Super Bowl for advertising your firm’s services, Google is it. So, if you care about bringing new clients into your practice you better care about content and search. #2 - Convert Them Into Leads Your goal in the second phase is to convert as much of that site traffic into leads as you can. We find it is reasonable for a professional services firm to convert 2-4% of its site traffic into leads. In my experience a lot of firms have flawed definitions of a lead. So, let me be clear on what I mean by a lead. For some firms, a lead is a potential project. It’s not. A lead is a person. In other firms, a lead is seen very narrowly — only people who’ve contacted us to talk about our services. It’s not. It’s more broad than that. Of all the leads that enter your system in a given year, less than 1% will likely meet this strict definition. A lead is anyone who has entered your marketing model that might be able to hire you today, tomorrow, or in the future. So, in addition to people you’ve identified as clients you’d like to work with anyone who visits your site and registers for a webinar or subscribes to your newsletter is a lead. Ultimately, converting a visitor into a lead is usually that first point in the potential business relationship where you earn some trust. The potential client is simply giving you the right to market to them. They’re saying, what you have to say is valuable and I’d like to get more of it delivered to me in a timely, relevant fashion. So, you need to be purposeful about how you will convert your site traffic by developing thoughtful user flows. A user flow represents what you hope to do with visitors once they arrive at your site. Applying your user flow to your site requires thoughtful design and well placed calls-to-action that guide people through their journey at each step of the way. #3 - Nurture Them Towards Conversations Your goal in the third phase is to qualify and nurture your leads towards a conversation with senior partners and ultimately into a business relationship with your firm. In our experience, it is reasonable to expect that 8-10% of all the leads you generate will initiate a conversation with you (either by directly asking to do so or with a little nudge from your business development folks). The moment someone trusts you with their information they’re opening a small crack in the door and giving you the right to market to them. Your job is to slide through that door and to delicately open it wide. You do this through systematic lead nurturing. An effective lead nurturing program shapes the clients’ buying journey by delivering them an ongoing stream of useful content that’s mapped to their interests. You can gauge their interests by simply asking them (3-5% will probably tell you). And, you can identify their interests by grouping people into segments based on what they’ve read (these are called behavioural segments within your marketing automation system). An effective nurturing program creates a bridge between thought leadership (educational content) and marketing content (services, case studies, and other practice information). Closing Thoughts As you read other content on our site, you’ll see us reference this model frequently. To start, your goal is simply to understand the three phases so you can assign marketing resources to each one and identify activities that might help you move the needle in your business. Over time, your goal is to assign metrics to each step in the model so you can become more effective at delivering clients into your practice. Getting a Job using Your Failed Startup
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com If you are a young engineer or an engineering student, this piece of writing has been written with you in mind. Failure does not mean that you have inability to do something. Especially in the tricky waters of entrepreneurship, an unsuccessful attempt in business cannot be linked to the incompetence of the initiator. When people start a business and for some reason they fail, they think of it as a stigma on their career and feel that it will barricade their chances of success in their future. I, however, think just the opposite. Initiating an entrepreneurial endeavour takes a lot courage and commitment. Also, the success of a startup banks on a number of factors that may or may not include the entrepreneur himself. In this article, I am going to discuss as to how you can use your failed attempt at a business startup to convince a potential employer of your abilities while applying for a job. 1. You have got unique experience The world out there is full of experienced professionals looking for a job and many of them have an experience much greater than yours. However, when you go out into the job market there will be only a handful of people ( and in some cases, none at all ) who can match the kind of experience you have in starting a startup. You can highlight the fact that unlike other applicants, your experience goes beyond coming to office in the morning to do the same job every day. Your experience is rather versatile owing to entrepreneurial responsibilities you undertook while establishing your startup. Your potential employer would see your overlapping experience of, for instance being an engineer and a financial manager and a creative professional at the same time, as evidence of your being a multi-tasker and poly-skilled professional. 2. You are a go-getter I have heard many employers and business managers complain as to how their employees lack the ability to take an initiative. Peeping into the psychology of business owners, it is found that most of them are go-getter types and so they appreciate the people who like to take initiatives. Coming from an entrepreneurial background, you are automatically characterised as someone who had the guts to start a business, regardless of its failure. If you highlight this point, your potential employer could take you as a professional who would welcome new ideas and business initiatives as compared to other employees. 3. You are reasonably resourceful Establishing a startup involves tapping a number of resources. You connect with people in the niche market and work with different professionals like communication designers, corporate lawyers, secretarial staff, etc. So, even though the enterprise you establish does not go as it should, you make a good number of contacts along the way. Your potential employer could see you as a resourceful and well-connected person as compared to rest of his employees. Although business owners and employers are quite sufficient in their own resources, however, it is always good to have a few more, through you. 4. You can put yourself in their shoes Employees cannot understand the position of the business owner and the difficult decisions he has to make daily - not unless someone has been into almost the same situation as the business owner. This is something that makes you, a former entrepreneur, different than other run-of-the-mill employees. If, for instance, your boss takes a certain decision that apparently seems bad to the employees, you will be able to see through things and have a better understanding about the decision because you may have been in a similar position previously as an entrepreneur. This aspect of yours, if marketed correctly, is something that your potential employer would really like. 5. You are accustomed to work challenges In the life of an entrepreneur every single day is a challenge, especially when you are trying to build a business. The whole process runs like an obstacle course. These inter-laced tasks brush up your problem solving skills as well as the ability to work under pressure and these are the exact characteristics job opening advertisements ask for in the applicant. Being through the process of establishing a business, your potential employer would see you as one who is accustomed to professional challenges and would not hesitate to take up new ones. 6. You are not the ‘giving up’ sort To start a business with great zeal and then see your dream fall apart is a matter of great psychological pain. Besides, there is a great loss of time and money. Even after such a disappointment, if a person gathers himself up and shows willingness to take part in other endeavours, it certainly shows that he is not ready to drop out of the race as yet. Willingness to start over is considered a valuable feature in an employee and this is what you show when you apply for a job after having a failed startup. You can convince your potential employer that when you did not stop working after such a major set-back, you will certainly not stop when trying to overcome the obstacles in your job. To conclude After experiencing a failed startup, when you go out looking for a job, you should have no reason to shy away from your entrepreneurial attempt. You should rather build on this experience and make the most of it. After all, a startup can fail to take off for any reason. There are many cases in which the person who initiated the startup was hardworking and visionary - however he may not have been able to get suitable people to help him or he may have faced a lack of resources and so the business landed in a pitfall. Therefore, when applying for a job, you can take your unsuccessful attempt at entrepreneurship as a blessing in disguise because unlike other applicants, your cover letter would not just ‘say’ such things as "multi-tasker", "team player" and "can work under pressure". Your entrepreneurial background would certainly vouch for it too. Eight Traits of Exceptionally Motivated Entrepreneurs
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com The highly motivated live for more than just earning money; they live to have an impact. Money can only be so motivating before it becomes shallow and meaningless. The highly motivated feel a deep sense of purpose and are compelled to manifest what they feel, vision and seek. It is this deep feeling which fuels their motivation; after all, e-motion equates to energy in motion. 1. Take full responsibility. In a society quick to make excuses where people blame everything from their childhood to the government for their lack of success, the highly motivated refuse to buy into any type of mentality that would make someone other than themselves responsible for their success or lack of it. The highly motivated never give their power over to outside people, events for circumstances. Motivated individuals live by the simple mantra “it is up to me.” They understand that other opinions do not have to become their reality and make the choice to lay the future of their success completely within their own grasp. The idea of being fully responsible may be daunting, but more than daunting, the highly motivated find this pressure inspiring. Certainly, there will be things in life they cannot control, such as nature, the past and other people but it is for this reason they take full responsibility for directing their thoughts, emotions, choices and actions. 2. Live with clear intent. The key ingredient which sets the highly motivated apart from others is they live their lives intentionally. They are doing what they believe they were placed upon this earth to do. They know their purpose and they live it on purpose. Having a sense of purpose in life is one of the most important elements in becoming a fully evolved human being. The exceptionally motivated feel the most alive when they are doing what they love. Because they live on purpose, their entire life is directed towards doing their job right and to the very best of their ability. They love what they do and it shows. Their conviction is as evident as it is persuasive. It helps them draw the right people into their lives to partner with. Because they live with clear intention, with their focus largely on bringing value into the lives of others, the money takes care of itself. 3. Willingness to sacrifice. The highly motivated rarely question if they are willing to pay the price to get them the success they seek. The greatest difference between the successful and unsuccessful is finding out what it will cost them to make their goals a reality. The successful are relentless in their efforts to making their dreams a reality and they will not be heard complaining about the effort or time it takes to do what they need to do. The successful are clear on the why’s of what they do. Their why’s provide the deeper meaning responsible for sustaining their motivation. They understand they can get practically anything they want out of life - if they are willing to pay the price. 4. Stay focused. All of us are overloaded with tasks, messages and emails vying for our time. This is why the ability to stay focused is essential for achievement. All things are important and love should always come first, which is why the highly motivated remain clear on their priorities. They know where and how to invest their time to achieve their big pay-offs down the road. They organise their time in a way which allows them to focus on their passions while also being able to sustain the support they need. Motivated individuals create a supportive team to keep them focused and pointed in the direction of their larger purpose. Again, motivation is contagious so it doesn’t matter who it is - everyone becomes an essential part of their journey. The highly motivated stay close to their goals, involve those closest to them in their passions and create a crusade. They spend a significant amount of time focusing on and visioning their bigger picture making it reality. Like any habit, staying focused becomes easier the more it is practised. 5. Become an expert. The highly motivated study their field with fervour and passion. They know it better than anyone else and are on the continual search for knowledge. Many of these individuals find a way to share their purpose in whatever forum best suited for them; coaching, mentoring, speaking, teaching, blogging, writing, TV, radio, etc. They make it a point to share their information with as many as possible. The exceptionally motivated believe in education and in the idea that people need to learn and love to learn. 6. Written and spoken maps. The highly motivated put their dreams into written form. In doing this they create an action plan which puts them on the path to where they want to go. They are well aware that goals which are not written down are most often not achieved. When goals are written they become real as if writing them down creates a signed contract. Not only are they writing their goals down but the highly motivated also make use of “auto suggestion” and read their goals out loud daily. Speaking them serves to reprogramme their unconscious mind re-directing their thinking towards their bigger picture. As they communicate their goals, their goals become real and they develop a deeper belief in them, thereby, increasing their motivation to achieve them. 7. Keep going. Passion drives perseverance. It may sound simple but the highly motivated are truly passionate about what they have set out to achieve because they can see the value it will have on those whom they seek to benefit. Because the deeper purpose of their mission has the potential to bring value to the world, thoughts of stopping or giving up never enter as ideas for consideration. The highly motivated hold a vision of what they want and do all they can to ensure their vision is bulletproof to frustration, doubt, confusion, rejection and failures. The road to success is not an easy one but nor does it have to be arduous. The exceptionally motivated live for their mission which makes each part of their journey useful and worth it. 8. Don’t delay. The highly motivated are acutely aware that time is limited. They understand they do not have forever to live and manifest their dreams. The clock is ticking - the time is now - there are no time-outs and sooner or later their number is going to be called. Motivated individuals know this but rather than seeing this as something negative or depressing they use it to spur them on to go after what they want as energetically and as passionately as possible. Success is one thing, and for the exceptionally motivated it is a great thing, but what is even more important to these individuals is having an impact. They are driven by a deeper emotional component of serving a purpose larger than themselves. Having an impact is what drives the desire to turn their purpose into a crusade. For this reason, they are willing to suffer, sacrifice and succeed as long as their success brings value. It is their primary motivation to be free in advancing their own lives and those of others. It is their desire to live uninhibited and to express and fulfil their purpose. It is this deeply felt purpose which drives their motivation. They seek to leave a legacy of great significance. MultiSpectra Spark
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS, MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com MultiSpectra Spark is meant for senior engineers, technologists and scientists. This complements MultiSpectra Edge, the integrated programme offered by MultiSpectra Consultants for students and young engineers which has been a thundering success. ( http://tinyurl.com/MultiSpectraEdge ). A brief outline of MultiSpectra Spark is given below. MultiSpectra Spark allows senior engineers, technologists and scientists to be affiliated to MultiSpectra Consultants on a profit-sharing or commission basis, not on a salaried basis. Such senior engineers, technologists and scientists will be expected to be involved in lead-generation as well as in project execution. As is well known, MultiSpectra Consultants has carved out a niche for itself for finding research-based solutions to Civil Engineering problems. In addition, MultiSpectra Consultants has a vibrant educational programme for students and young engineers and senior engineers, technologists and scientists can be associated with that. Just as one of the objectives of MultiSpectra Edge is to develop a spirit of entrepreneurship among students and young engineers, one of the objectives of MultiSpectra Spark is to develop a spirit of entrepreneurship among senior engineers, technologists and scientists. MultiSpectra Consultants is also developing an online platform for Civil Engineers and Architects to interact in view of the fact that such a platform does not exist so far and is necessary and will have considerable market traction if the success of healthcare, property, e-commerce, travel and hospitality online platforms is any indication. Senior engineers, technologists and scientists are welcome to participate in the building of the platform. Senior engineers, technologists and scientists may apply for MultiSpectra Spark by e-mailing the undersigned at dramartyakumar@gmail.com attaching their current CV to the e-mail. A Banana Republic
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com Some time back, Dr Sudhir Jain, who is the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, requested me to write something about the true state of India at this moment bereft and devoid of the hype that certain misguided and misinformed Indians continually indulge in. After writing to Dr. Jain, wherein I placed India in the context of the broader community of modern nations, I decided to make some unpalatable facts regarding India today available to the public. It is a virtue to be a straight-talker and to clearly say that India’s track record since independence has been dismal, to say the least, and that India has turned out to be a banana republic. I belong to a Buddhist family having my ancestry in the Chittagong region of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. My family has been ( unwelcome? ) guests of the Government of India since 1947. To put matters in perspective, the Pala dynasty of Bengal was the last Buddhist Dynasty in India. Neither the Arab invasion of Sind nor the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni had any effect on Bengal and the Pala dynasty ruled uninterruptedly until 1162 AD when they were overthrown by the Hindu Sena dynasty. Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in 1192 AD. A few years later, one of Muhammad Ghori's generals swept across the plains of northern India and Lakshmana Sena, the last ruler of the Sena dynasty, fled without giving a fight on hearing the Muslim forces approaching. Bengal came under Muslim rule and remained so until the victory of the British at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 AD. By the time Muslim rule ended in Bengal in 1757 AD, most Bengalis had converted to Islam due to various reasons. Under Muslim rule, an influx of Arabic and Persian words into the Bengali language took place but, crucially, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims continued to speak and write in a common Bengali language with an Indo-Aryan script except for a few words which are still different for Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims. The local dialect of Bengali in East Bengal is different from the local dialect of Bengali in West Bengal, but again this is not based on religious lines. For centuries, Bengali Muslims and Bengali non-Muslims lived side by side and in harmony, everyone practising his own religion. It is to be noted that my ancestors lived for centuries under Muslim rule. My family has its ancestry in the Chittagong area of East Bengal and has been practising Buddhism since ancient times, probably from even before the birth of Jesus Christ. Since my family was in the extreme South-east of Bengal, near the border with Burma ( now Myanmar ), they have retained their Buddhist religion up to this day. My great great-grandfather Rai Bahadur Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya was a noted Buddhist scholar. He divided his time between Chittagong and Rangpur. He was renowned for his erudition of Pali and Sanskrit and also for his refinement and nobility. He wrote a commentary on the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. His speciality was the study of the Pali Tipitaka, the Sutta Pitaka, the Vinaya Pitaka and the Abhidhamma Pitaka. He was conservative to the core, reticent, ascetic, austere and puritan ( like everyone in my family including myself he too was a non-smoker and non-drinker ). My great-grandfather was Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. He was the Diwan of Tripura when Tripura was a princely state and was a close friend of Bengali poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore called him 'Diwan Bahadur ji' as a mark of respect. My great-grandfather was the inspiration behind Rabindranath Tagore's writing the atmospheric novel 'Rajarshi' in which Rabindranath Tagore condemned the practice of many Hindus of sacrificing animals before wrathful deities. My great-grandfather was fluent in Sanskrit, Pali and Arabic, among other languages A very erudite person, he wrote and published several books on Buddhism. Among his books, 'Buddhist Civilisation in Asia' stands out. One of his pioneering thesis was that the Caspian Sea was named after Mahakashyapa, a direct disciple of Lord Buddha. Apart from the similarity in names, he based his thesis on the presence of Kalmyk Buddhists in Kalmykia, a part of Russia to the north-west of the Caspian Sea. After retiring from the Tripura Court, he settled in Chittagong where he built a huge Zamindari house. My great-grandfather was an orthodox and puritan Buddhist. He was uncompromisingly opposed to idolatry. He believed that since the majority of Bengalis were Muslims, Bengali non-Muslims had their only future in living in harmony with Bengali Muslims. However, he was acutely aware of an abnormality in Hindu psychology. He used to say 'Hindus are afraid of Muslims and Hindus suffer from an inferiority complex. They constantly remember that Muslims defeated them. They say that one Muslim equals three Hindus.' He also believed that Hindu icon Swami Vivekananda lacked the intellectual ability to grasp Lord Buddha's teachings. He dismissed outright Swami Vivekananda's thesis that Buddhists introduced idolatry and the tantras. He wrote 'Vivekananda was totally wrong. Hinduism introduced idolatry and the tantras. Mantras can be found even in the Vedas.' It may be mentioned that my great-grandfather was vehemently opposed to the tantras which he dismissed as a degenerate cult. The attitude of my great-grandfather towards Hinduism bordered on the hostile. He famously refused to eat from the hands of any Hindu and employed a Muslim cook to cook his meals. He asked a Muslim gentleman to teach Arabic and Urdu to my grandfather and his siblings. As a result, my grandfather also became fluent in Arabic and Urdu. Unfortunately for our family, he passed away before 1947. Were he alive, he would not have taken a decision to migrate to Kolkata on the spur of the moment. He was not a man to take rash decisions. Gifted with penetrating insight, an acute sense of justice, level-headedness and possessing an optimistic and inclusive outlook about the future of humanity, my great-grandfather could have foreseen that East Pakistan would last for only 24 years. My grandfather, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned by the British before his Matriculation Examination. He wrote his examination in prison. He was tortured by the British every time he was imprisoned by them. Educated under Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan, he came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi whom he met several times. He took my father, a young boy at that time, to meet Mahatma Gandhi at Barrackpore in the northern suburbs of Kolkata when Mahatma Gandhi was residing there. My father recalled that when he bent down to pay his respects to Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi put his hand on my father's head and said in Hindi 'Beta, sachcha patriot bano' which means 'Son, be a true patriot.' My grandfather founded the House of Labour in East Bengal to encourage youths towards business and enterprise. Being a businessman, my grandfather travelled extensively to all parts of undivided India on business. He stayed at Lahore for two years. He also visited Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi and Hyderabad in Sind. My father recalled that, as a young boy, my grandfather took him to Jammu via Sialkot, the normal route in those times. It could not have escaped my grandfather's notice that the language divide between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was too great to be bridged as Bengali Muslims considered Bengali to be their mother tongue and non-Bengali Muslims considered Urdu to be their mother tongue. This very fact would lead to the break-up of Pakistan, with an Indian victory, in 1971. Surprisingly, my grandfather failed to factor the language difference between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims in his prediction of the future of the Indian sub-continent. He failed to realise that any alliance between Bengali Muslims and non-Bengali Muslims was bound to be temporary in nature and that a split was inevitable sooner or later. For a man to travel all over India and not to develop an incisive judgement of the situation was truly extraordinary. Acting impulsively, in 1947 he took a decision to abandon East Bengal and come to Kolkata leaving all his property in East Bengal behind. He came to Kolkata as a refugee and as a pauper. This caused my family great hardship at the time. Surely, the ephemeral nature of East Pakistan should have been obvious to any discerning observer. Soon after coming to Kolkata in 1947, my grandfather realised that he had been chasing a mirage. Strongly disillusioned, he severed all ties with politics and with the Indian National Congress. Dissatisfied with the way independent India was going, he used to repeatedly say 'I committed a historic blunder by leaving East Bengal. This is not the independence I fought for.' In 1953, my grandfather could garner enough money to build a house in south Kolkata but his money was exhausted before he could finish the building. It was left to me to finish the construction of our home, my father and paternal uncles having added nothing to what my grandfather had done. Realising and recognising that Independence was a pyrrhic victory for him, he developed an ailment of the heart. He passed away in 1959 deeply regretting his hasty decision to migrate to Kolkata. East Pakistan would last for just 12 more years after his death giving birth to Bangladesh. In hindsight, it is abundantly clear that it was not a correct decision for my grandfather to migrate to Kolkata. He not only discarded the material inheritance of his property in Chittagong but also the intellectual inheritance of the legacy of my great-grandfather. My father, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, now deceased, had much the same kind of career as I am having. Possessing several degrees, professional memberships, and a connoisseur of fine arts and literature, he travelled extensively throughout the world. Amongst his several achievements, the development of a management institute stands out. A Rotarian till his demise, he promoted fine arts by making several donations to deserving organisations. Though my father fully shared my grandfather's views as regards the state of India, it was too late for him to reverse my grandfather's mistake. My father was in Times Square in New York when news broke out that Lee Harvey Oswald had assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. He recalls the dazed appearance on the faces of New Yorkers on receiving the news. ‘A successful democracy needs a literate society – illiterate people cannot make informed and considered choices while voting’ said my father later. ‘Eradicating illiteracy should be India’s prime concern. Side by side, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices, particularly in government offices, should be rooted out. Why should one have to pay bribes to multiple people in order to get a new electricity connection for his newly-constructed house? There is enough for man’s needs but not enough for man’s greed. What matters is not what one has but what one is.’ Though my father was a staunch Buddhist, he had to pay extortion money during Hindu festivals to slum-dwellers who still live near our house. Though my house is a posh area of south Kolkata, there is a big slum close to it. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that Kolkata is littered with similar slums everywhere. The slum-dwellers are mostly illiterate and unemployed and are, naturally, full of vices. The government has failed to uplift these people and eradicate the slums even though decades have passed since independence. Uncle Aziz was a very close friend of my father. He and my father met in the United States. He had his ancestry in Comilla. He settled in Dhaka where he built a house in the Bonani area. He visited our home in Kolkata several times. He used to visit India often for professional purposes and never failed to drop in on us. I also visited Dhaka to present a paper at an International Conference and visited his home. On that occasion, I travelled throughout the length and breadth of Dhaka and saw everything that Dhaka has to offer. The friendship between my father and Uncle Aziz percolated to our extended families. My grandmother, Premlata Bhattacharya, looked upon Uncle Aziz as her own son. My paternal uncles and their families also became close friends of Uncle Aziz and his family and extended family, particularly one of Uncle Aziz's brothers, who was a doctor of international repute. Uncle Aziz's brother and his family also visited our house in Kolkata. On one particular occasion, during dinner at our home, Uncle Aziz told my father and my paternal uncles 'Why did your father come to Kolkata in 1947? Our country is poorer because of your leaving it. Many of us in Bangladesh feel this way.' My father took great care to see that I had exposure to all religions. When I was five years old, he got me admitted to Don Bosco School in Kolkata run by Roman Catholic missionaries where I got to study the Bible. During the twelve years that I studied in that school, certain aspects of Christianity like its monotheism and its opposition to idolatry left a deep, vivid, lasting and permanent impression on my mind. When I was nine years of age, my father took me to Murshidabad, an event that is engraved in my mind. At Murshidabad, he took me to a mosque built hundreds of years ago. He showed me all the details; the minarets, the calligraphy and so on. It was a memorable visit for me. At Don Bosco School and during my higher education, I was following in the footsteps of my ancestors, picking up an excellent education and all the other things needed to be a complete man. Later on, in my professional career, in the midst of my travels in various countries of the world spanning almost the entire globe, I have seen the unity of man. Memories stand out, sometimes instilling a sense of déjà vu in me; the view of the Pacific in Singapore and of the mountains and moraines from the top of Mount Säntis in Switzerland, the flight over Iran slicing between Tehran to the north and Qom to the south and over Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Bangkok’s wats, Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka, Dubai, Jordan’s northwest, sunset at Hardwar, Bremen and Berlin in Germany, Dilli Haat in Delhi and the Marina Beach in Chennai. It is an inconvenient truth that independent India has let down its own freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and my grandfather. Most people in India now seem to have a perverted view of being avant-garde. Sacrificing the values and traditions held dear by our ancestors, our glorious inheritance is thrown to the winds. Parvenus cannot be expected to appreciate the truism of Ich Dien. Ersatz culture proliferates with the concept of life avec plaisir. The scramble for lebensraum degenerates people to fall prey to rampant greed. Having achieved its independence way back in 1947, India has failed to become a developed country. India is still a developing country and an emerging market. India is rampant with idolatry, corruption, bribery, criminality and malpractices. In India, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The government has failed to give even the basic necessities to all Indians. If the dictum, 'justice delayed is justice denied' is to be held as valid, my mother, Sheila Bhattacharya, who is a retired Head of the Department of English of a college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, was denied justice as she received her retirement dues four years after she had retired. Of the many countries that I have visited in the world, India is the only country I know of where a government employee has been threatened with death by a colleague ( who is also a government employee ) and has been forced to resign and the government has not done anything whatsoever for the victim. Steeped in bribery, the immediate bosses of the victim ( all of whom are government employees ) have supported and are continuing to support the criminal who happens to have considerable money-power. The victim is yet to receive a single paisa of even his own money kept in the custody of the government during his years in government service. This very recent incident presents a shameful picture of India in front of the civilised world. I have founded the Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation for uplifting street-children and slum-children of Kolkata. The Government of India has to do the following cleaning-up on a war-footing. The Government of India has to 1. Root out government servants having a criminal record. To start with, the government should dismiss and try Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya and Koustuv Debnath, all of whom are employed as teachers at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, and all of whom have criminal records. 2. Root out bribery and corruption in government offices. Only a very small fraction of government servants are honest. 3. Demolish the conception, prevalent among most Indians, that government service implies the right to take bribes. While punishing the guilty, the government should laud the very small minority of government servants who are honest. 4. Make an earnest effort to uplift the suffering villagers of India. 5. Make sincere efforts to remove slums and ghettos in Indian cities and towns. 6. Build a government based on trust, not suspicion. At least four identity documents are prevalent in India today - Passport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card and Voter's Identity Card. Since, excepting a Passport, an Indian does not really need the rest, the government should abolish the unnecessary documents. Different sets of government servants are currently issuing different identity documents and taking bribes for issuing the same. 7. Recognise that widespread rigging takes place in Indian elections and make sincere efforts to root-out the same. In view of the widespread rigging prevalent now with local toughs ruling polling booths, Indian election results are devoid of any relation to the will of the people. 8. Ensure that a son inherits his father's property. This usually does not happen now unless the son pays hefty bribes to government servants. The government must do some soul-searching and feel ashamed that a son currently finds great difficulty in inheriting his father's shares and electricity connection - just to cite two examples. 9. Eradicate the current habit of government servants taking bribes to, for example, sanction a building plan, mutate a landed property and provide an electricity connection. 10. Simplify the procedure for getting Indian Passports. The government servants at the Regional Passport Offices must be courteous and helpful and not harass citizens as is the case today. 11. Ensure that retirement benefits are released immediately after retirement and not after four or five years. Many people get their retirement benefits between four and six years after retirement. My mother received her retirement benefits four years after her retirement. The government must punish government servants who withhold retirement benefits of retired citizens. 12. Eliminate feudalism. Corrupt government servants have taken the place of erstwhile zamindars in rural areas. 13. Eliminate the current 'trickle-down' economy. The government must ensure that the lower strata of Indian society is also a beneficiary of economic progress and is not left behind. 14. Remove the criminal-government servant-politician nexus. This is extremely important if India is to progress. 15. Remove the difference between 'the rulers' and 'the ruled'. The government must ensure that democracy does not remain a sham and that government is truly 'of the people, for the people and by the people'. 16. Place a greater value on human life. The government must not think that, simply because India is a populous country, a few lives lost in an accident, for example, a bridge collapse - such as the one that happened in Howrah some time back - does not matter. The government must acknowledge that every single human life is valuable. 17. Eliminate tokenism. 18. Eliminate window-dressing before a politician visits an area. The government must be sincere in its development efforts and ensure that not a single development project announced turns out to be an eyewash designed to fool the population. 19. Ensure internet access and continuous power supply in rural areas. Internet access outside of the metropolises is pitiful and power outages are common. Yesterday evening, there was a power outage at my office in Kolkata. 20. Be sensitive to the suffering of the people. The length and breadth of Kolkata is flooded during the monsoon season and no regime has done anything about it. 21. Understand that slogans like 'Bekari hatao' and 'Roti, kapra aur makaan' are useless if they remain mere slogans without any attempt to implement them. The government must ensure that the fundamental needs of the people are fulfilled. Inde
Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya BCE (Hons.) ( Jadavpur ), MTech ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), PhD ( Civil ) ( IIT Kharagpur ), Cert.MTERM ( AIT Bangkok ), CEng(I), FIE, FACCE(I), FISH, FIWRS, FIPHE, FIAH, FAE, MIGS,MIGS – Kolkata Chapter, MIGS – Chennai Chapter, MISTE, MAHI, MISCA, MIAHS, MISTAM, MNSFMFP, MIIBE, MICI, MIEES, MCITP, MISRS, MISRMTT, MAGGS, MCSI, MMBSI Chairman and Managing Director, MultiSpectra Consultants, 23, Biplabi Ambika Chakraborty Sarani, Kolkata – 700029, West Bengal, INDIA. E-mail: dramartyakumar@gmail.com Il y a quelque temps, le Dr Sudhir Jain, qui est le directeur de l'Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, m'a demandé d'écrire quelque chose sur le véritable état de l'Inde en ce moment privé et sans le battage médiatique que certains Indiens égarés et mal informés se livrent continuellement. Après avoir écrit le Dr Jain, dans lequel j'ai placé l'Inde dans le cadre de la communauté plus large des nations modernes, je décidai de faire quelques faits désagréables au sujet de l'Inde d'aujourd'hui à la disposition du public. Il est une vertu d'être une droite causeur et de dire clairement que la piste record de l'Inde depuis l'indépendance a été lamentable, pour dire le moins. Je fais partie d'une famille Bouddhiste ayant mes ancêtres dans la région de Chittagong du East Bengal, aujourd'hui le Bangladesh. Ma famille a été (importune?) invités du gouvernement de l'Inde depuis 1947. Pour mettre les choses en perspective, la dynastie Pala du Bengale a été la dernière dynastie Bouddhiste en Inde. Ni l'invasion Arabe du Sind, ni les invasions de Mahmud de Ghazni ont eu un effet quelconque sur le Bengale et la dynastie Pala régné sans interruption jusqu'à 1162 AD quand ils ont été renversés par la dynastie Hindoue Sena. Muhammad Ghori a battu Prithviraj Chauhan en 1192 AD. Quelques années plus tard, l'un des généraux de Muhammad Ghori balayé à travers les plaines du nord de l'Inde et Lakshmana Sena, le dernier souverain de la dynastie Sena, ont fui sans donner un combat en entendant les forces Musulmanes qui approchent. Bengal est venu sous la domination Musulmane et le resta jusqu'à la victoire des Britanniques à la bataille de Plassey en 1757 AD. Par la règle Musulmane de temps terminé au Bengale en 1757 AD, la plupart des Bengalis avaient converti à l'Islam pour des raisons diverses. Sous la domination Musulmane, un afflux de mots Arabes et Persans dans la langue Bengali a eu lieu, mais, surtout, Musulmans Bengalis et Bengalis non-Musulmans ont continué à parler et à écrire dans une langue Bengali commune avec un script Indo-Aryenne, sauf pour quelques mots sont encore différents pour Musulmans Bengalis et Bengalis non-Musulmans. Le dialecte local de Bengali à East Bengal est différent du dialecte local du Bengali au West Bengal, mais encore une fois ce ne repose pas sur des lignes religieuses. Pendant des siècles, les Musulmans Bengalis et Bengalis non-Musulmans vivaient côte à côte et en harmonie, tout le monde à pratiquer sa propre religion. Il est à noter que mes ancêtres ont vécu pendant des siècles sous domination Musulmane. Ma famille a son origine dans la région de Chittagong du East Bengal et a été la pratique du Bouddhisme depuis les temps anciens, probablement même avant la naissance de Jésus Christ. Comme ma famille était dans le sud-est extrême du Bengale, près de la frontière avec la Birmanie (aujourd'hui Myanmar), ils ont conservé leur religion Bouddhiste jusqu'à ce jour. Mon grand-grand-père Kumar Chandra Bhattacharya était un érudit Bouddhiste noté. Il partage son temps entre Chittagong et Rangpur. Il était réputé pour son érudition de Pali et Sanskrit et aussi pour son raffinement et de noblesse. Il a écrit un commentaire sur le Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta. Sa spécialité était l'étude du Tipitaka Pali, le Sutta Pitaka, le Vinaya Pitaka et l'Abhidhamma Pitaka. Il était conservateur à l'âme, réticente, ascétique, austère et puritain (comme tout le monde dans ma famille moi-même y compris lui aussi était un non-fumeur et non buveur). Mon grand-père était Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra Bhattacharya. Il était le Diwan de Tripura quand Tripura était un état princier et était un ami proche du poète Bengali et lauréat du prix Nobel Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore appela «Diwan Bahadur ji» comme une marque de respect. Mon grand-père parlait couramment en Sanskrit, Pali et Arabe, entre autres langues. Une personne très érudit, il a écrit et publié plusieurs livres sur le Bouddhisme. Parmi ses livres, «Buddhist Civilisation in Asia» se démarque. Une de sa thèse de pionnier était que la mer Caspienne a été nommé d'après Mahakashyapa, un disciple direct du Lord Buddha. Mis à part la similitude des noms, il fonde sa thèse sur la présence de Kalmouk Bouddhistes en Kalmoukie, une partie de la Russie au nord-ouest de la mer Caspienne. Après sa retraite de la Cour Tripura, il se fixa à Chittagong où il a construit une grande maison Zamindari. Mon grand-père était un orthodoxe et puritain Bouddhiste. Il était résolument opposé à l'idolâtrie. Il croyait que, puisque la majorité des Bengalis étaient Musulmans, Bengali non-Musulmans avaient leur seul avenir à vivre en harmonie avec les Musulmans Bengalis. Cependant, il était très conscient d'une anomalie dans la psychologie Hindoue. Il avait l'habitude de dire «Hindous ont peur des Musulmans et Hindous souffrent d'un complexe d'infériorité. Ils se souviennent constamment que les Musulmans les vaincus. Ils disent que l'un Musulman équivaut à trois Hindous.» Il croyait aussi que l'icône Hindou Swami Vivekananda manquait la capacité intellectuelle à saisir les enseignements du Lord Buddha. Il a rejeté la thèse de pure et simple Swami Vivekananda que les Bouddhistes introduit l'idolâtrie et les tantras. Il a écrit «Vivekananda était totalement faux. Hindouisme introduit l'idolâtrie et les tantras. Mantras peuvent être trouvés même dans les Vedas.» Il convient de mentionner que mon grand-père était farouchement opposé aux tantras qu'il rejeté comme un culte dégénéré. L'attitude de mon grand-père vers l'Hindouisme bordé à l'hostile. Il célèbre refusé de manger des mains de toute Hindoue et employait un cuisinier Musulman pour cuisiner ses repas. Il a demandé à un homme Musulman d'enseigner l'Arabe et l'Ourdou à mon grand-père et ses frères et sœurs. En conséquence, mon grand-père est également devenu couramment l'Arabe et l'Ourdou. Malheureusement pour notre famille, il est décédé avant 1947. Etiez-il vivant, il ne serait pas pris la décision de migrer vers Kolkata sur l'impulsion du moment. Il ne fut pas un homme à prendre des décisions irréfléchies. Doué d'une pénétrante intuition, un sens aigu de la justice, le niveau de tête et possédant une vision optimiste et inclusive de l'avenir de l'humanité, mon grand-père aurait pu prévoir que le Pakistan oriental devait durer seulement 24 ans. Mon grand-père, Jitendra Chandra Bhattacharya, était un combattant de la liberté qui a été emprisonné par les Britanniques avant son examen d'immatriculation. Il a écrit son examen en prison. Il a été torturé par les Britanniques à chaque fois qu'il a été emprisonné par eux. Formé sous Rabindranath Tagore à Santiniketan, il est venu sous l'influence du Mahatma Gandhi qu'il a rencontré à plusieurs reprises. Il a pris mon père, un jeune garçon à l'époque, pour rencontrer Mahatma Gandhi à Barrackpore dans la banlieue nord de Kolkata où Mahatma Gandhi a été il résidait. Mon père a rappelé que quand il se pencha pour payer ses respects à Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi a mis sa main sur la tête de mon père et dit en hindi «Beta, sachcha patriot bano » qui signifie « Fils, être un vrai patriote.» Mon grand-père a fondé la House of Labour dans le East Bengal pour encourager les jeunes vers les entreprises et de l'entreprise. Être un homme d'affaires, mon grand-père a beaucoup voyagé à toutes les parties de l'Inde indivise sur les entreprises. Il est resté à Lahore pendant deux ans. Il a également visité Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sialkot, Karachi et Hyderabad dans le Sind. Mon père a rappelé que, comme un jeune garçon, mon grand-père l'a emmené à Jammu via Sialkot, la voie normale en ces temps. Il ne pouvait pas avoir échappé à mon grand-père que la fracture linguistique entre Musulmans Bengalis et les non-Musulmans Bengalis était trop grand pour être comblé comme Musulmans Bengalis considérés Bengali être leur langue maternelle et les non-Musulmans Bengalis considérés Ourdou comme leur langue maternelle. Ce fait même conduirait à l'éclatement du Pakistan, avec une victoire Indienne, en 1971. Étonnamment, mon grand-père a omis de tenir compte de la différence linguistique entre Musulmans Bengalis et les non-Musulmans Bengalis dans sa prédiction de l'avenir du sous-continent Indien. Il n'a pas réussi à se rendre compte que toute alliance entre les Musulmans Bengalis et les non-Musulmans Bengalis devait être temporaire dans la nature et que la scission était inévitable tôt ou tard. Pour un homme de voyager dans toute l'Inde et de ne pas développer un jugement incisif de la situation était vraiment extraordinaire. Agissant impulsivement, en 1947, il a pris une décision d'abandonner le East Bengal et de venir à Kolkata en laissant tous ses biens à East Bengal derrière. Il est venu à Kolkata en tant que réfugié et comme un pauvre. Cela a causé à ma famille de grandes difficultés à l'époque. Certes, la nature éphémère du Pakistan oriental aurait dû être évident pour tout observateur averti. Peu après son arrivée à Kolkata en 1947, mon grand-père a réalisé qu'il avait été la poursuite d'un mirage. Fortement désabusé, il a rompu tous les liens avec la politique et avec le Indian National Congress. Insatisfait de la façon dont l'Inde indépendante allait, il sert à plusieurs reprises dire «Je commis une erreur historique en quittant East Bengal. Cela ne veut pas l'indépendance je me suis battu pour.» En 1953, mon grand-père pourrait recueillir assez d'argent pour construire une maison dans le sud de Kolkata, mais son argent a été épuisé avant qu'il ne puisse terminer la construction. Il a été laissé à moi de terminer la construction de notre maison, mon père et ses oncles paternels avoir rien à ce que mon grand-père avait fait ajouté. Réalisant et reconnaissant que l'indépendance était une victoire à la pyrrhus pour lui, il a développé une maladie du cœur. Il est décédé en 1959 regrettant vivement sa décision hâtive de migrer vers Kolkata. Pakistan oriental devait durer seulement 12 années après sa mort en donnant naissance au Bangladesh. Avec le recul, il est clair qu'il n'a pas été une décision correcte pour mon grand-père à migrer vers Kolkata. Il n'a pas seulement jeté l'héritage matériel de sa propriété à Chittagong, mais aussi l'héritage intellectuel de l'héritage de mon grand-père. Mon père, Arun Chandra Bhattacharya, aujourd'hui décédé, avait beaucoup le même genre de carrière que je vais avoir. Possédant plusieurs degrés, affiliations professionnelles, et un connaisseur des beaux-arts et de la littérature, il a beaucoup voyagé à travers le monde. Parmi ses nombreuses réalisations, le développement d'un institut de gestion se démarque. Un Rotarien jusqu'à sa mort, il a promu les beaux-arts en faisant plusieurs dons à des organismes méritants. Bien que mon père partageait pleinement les vues de mon grand-père en ce qui concerne l'état de l'Inde, il était trop tard pour lui de renverser l'erreur de mon grand-père. Mon père était à Times Square à New York quand les nouvelles éclaté que Lee Harvey Oswald avait assassiné le président John F. Kennedy à Dallas. Il rappelle l'aspect hébété sur les visages des New Yorkais en recevant les nouvelles. «Une démocratie réussie a besoin d'une société alphabétisée - les personnes analphabètes ne peuvent pas faire des choix éclairés et considérés alors que le vote dit mon père plus tard. L'éradication de l'analphabétisme devrait être la principale préoccupation de l'Inde. A côté, la corruption, la criminalité et les malversations, notamment dans les bureaux du gouvernement, devrait être éradiquée. Pourquoi devrait-on avoir à payer des bribes à plusieurs personnes afin d'obtenir une nouvelle connexion de l'électricité pour sa maison nouvellement construite? Il est suffisant pour les besoins de l'homme, mais pas assez pour la cupidité de l'homme. Ce qui importe est pas ce que l'on a, mais ce que l'on est.» Bien que mon père était un Bouddhiste fervent, il a dû payer de l'argent d'extorsion pendant les fêtes Hindoues habitants de taudis qui vivent encore près de notre maison. Bien que ma maison est un quartier chic du sud de Kolkata, il y a un grand bidonville près de lui. Il est un triste commentaire sur l'état des choses que Kolkata est jonché de bidonvilles similaires partout. Les habitants des bidonvilles sont pour la plupart analphabètes et chômeurs et sont, naturellement, plein de vices. Le gouvernement n'a pas réussi à élever ces personnes et d'éradiquer les bidonvilles, même si des décennies se sont écoulées depuis l'indépendance. Oncle Aziz était un ami très proche de mon père. Lui et mon père a rencontré aux Etats-Unis. Il avait son ascendance à Comilla. Il se fixa à Dhaka où il a construit une maison dans la région de Bonani. Il a visité notre maison à Kolkata plusieurs fois. Il avait l'habitude de visiter l'Inde souvent à des fins professionnelles et ne manquait jamais de tomber sur nous. J'ai également visité Dhaka pour présenter un exposé à une conférence internationale et a visité sa maison. A cette occasion, je me suis rendu sur toute la longueur et la largeur de Dhaka et a vu tout ce que Dhaka a à offrir. L'amitié entre mon père et Oncle Aziz percolé à nos familles élargies. Ma grand-mère, Premlata Bhattacharya, regarda Oncle Aziz comme son propre fils. Mes oncles paternels et leurs familles sont aussi devenus des amis proches de Oncle Aziz et de la famille et de sa famille élargie, en particulier l'un des frères de Oncle Aziz, qui était un médecin de renommée internationale. Le frère de Oncle Aziz et sa famille ont également visité notre maison à Kolkata. À une occasion particulière, pendant le dîner à notre maison, Oncle Aziz a dit à mon père et mes oncles paternels «Pourquoi votre père venu à Kolkata en 1947? Notre pays est plus pauvre à cause de votre quitter. Beaucoup d'entre nous au Bangladesh se sentent de cette façon.» Mon père a pris grand soin de voir que je devais l'exposition à toutes les religions. Quand j'avais cinq ans, il m'a admis à l'école Don Bosco de Kolkata géré par les missionnaires Catholiques où j'ai eu à étudier la Bible. Pendant les douze années que j'ai étudié dans cette école, certains aspects du Christianisme comme son monothéisme et son opposition à l'idolâtrie ont laissé une impression profonde, vivante, durable et permanente dans mon esprit. Quand j'avais neuf ans, mon père m'a emmené à Murshidabad, un événement qui est gravé dans mon esprit. A Murshidabad, il m'a emmené dans une Mosquée construite sur des centaines d'années. Il m'a montré tous les détails; les minarets, la calligraphie et ainsi de suite. Ce fut une visite mémorable pour moi. À l'école Don Bosco et au cours de mes études supérieures, je suivais les traces de mes ancêtres, ramasser une excellente éducation et toutes les autres choses nécessaires pour être un homme complet. Plus tard, dans ma carrière professionnelle, au milieu de mes voyages dans divers pays du monde couvrant presque tout le monde, je l'ai vu l'unité de l'homme. Les souvenirs se distinguent, parfois instiller un sentiment de déjà vu en moi; la vue sur le Pacifique à Singapour et sur les montagnes et moraines du sommet du mont Säntis en Suisse, le vol de l'Iran à trancher entre Téhéran au nord et à Qom au sud et à l'Arabie Saoudite et la Turquie, les Wats de Bangkok, Ahsan Manzil dans Dhaka, Dubai, au nord-ouest de la Jordanie, coucher de soleil à Hardwar, Brême et Berlin en Allemagne, Dilli Haat à Delhi et Marina Beach à Chennai. Il est une vérité qui dérange que l'Inde indépendante a laissé tomber ses propres combattants de la liberté comme Mahatma Gandhi et mon grand-père. La plupart des gens en Inde semblent maintenant avoir une vision pervertie d'être d'avant-garde. Sacrifier les valeurs et les traditions chères à nos ancêtres, notre glorieux héritage est jeté aux vents. Parvenus ne peut pas attendre d'apprécier le truisme de Ich Dien. Culture ersatz prolifère avec le concept de la vie avec plaisir. La ruée pour lebensraum dégénère les gens à tomber en proie à la cupidité rampante. Ayant atteint son chemin l'indépendance en 1947, l'Inde n'a pas à devenir un pays développé. L'Inde est encore un pays en développement et un marché émergent. L'Inde est endémique à l'idolâtrie, la corruption, la criminalité et les malversations. En Inde, les riches deviennent plus riches et les pauvres deviennent plus pauvres. Le gouvernement n'a pas donné même les nécessités de base à tous les Indiens. Si le dicton, «justice différée est justice refusée» est d'être tenue comme valide, ma mère, Sheila Bhattacharya, qui est un chef retraité du Département d'Anglais d'un collège affilié à l'Université de Calcutta, a été refusée la justice comme elle a reçu sa retraite Cotisations quatre ans après avoir pris sa retraite. Parmi les nombreux pays que j'ai visités dans le monde, l'Inde est le seul pays que je connaisse où un employé du gouvernement a été menacé de mort par un collègue (qui est aussi un employé du gouvernement) et a été contraint de démissionner et le gouvernement a pas fait quoi que ce soit pour la victime. Ancré dans la corruption, les patrons immédiats de la victime (qui sont tous des employés du gouvernement) ont soutenu et continuent de soutenir le criminel qui arrive à avoir de l'argent-pouvoir considérable. La victime n'a pas encore reçu un seul paisa de même son propre argent sous la garde du gouvernement pendant ses années au service du gouvernement. Cet incident très récent présente une image honteuse de l'Inde devant le monde civilisé. J'ai fondé la Bhattacharya Buddhist Foundation pour élever les enfants des rues et des bidonvilles enfants de Kolkata. Le Gouvernement de l'Inde doit faire le nettoyage à la suite sur le pied de guerre. Le Gouvernement de l'Inde doit 1. Racine des fonctionnaires du gouvernement ayant un casier judiciaire. Pour commencer, le gouvernement devrait rejeter et essayer Salil Haldar, Sujay Kumar Mukherjea, Basudeb Bhattacharyya et Koustuv Debnath, qui sont tous employés comme professeurs à Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, West Bengal, et qui ont tous criminelle enregistrements. 2. Racine sur la corruption dans les bureaux du gouvernement. Seule une très petite fraction des fonctionnaires du gouvernement sont honnêtes. 3. Démolir la conception, répandue chez la plupart des Indiens, que le service du gouvernement implique le droit de prendre des pots de vin. Alors que punir les coupables, le gouvernement devrait glorifier la très petite minorité de fonctionnaires gouvernementaux qui sont honnêtes. 4. Faites un effort sérieux pour élever les villageois qui souffrent de l'Inde. 5. Faire des efforts sincères pour éliminer les taudis et les ghettos dans les villes indiennes. 6. Construire un gouvernement basé sur la confiance, et non pas les soupçons. Au moins quatre documents d'identité sont répandues en Inde aujourd'hui - Passeport, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card et la carte d'identité de l'électeur. Depuis, à l'exception d'un passeport, un Indien n'a pas vraiment besoin du reste, le gouvernement devrait abolir les documents inutiles. Différents ensembles de fonctionnaires du gouvernement sont actuellement émettent différents documents d'identité et de prendre des pots de vin pour délivrer le même. 7. Reconnaître que le gréement généralisé a lieu dans les élections indiennes et faire des efforts sincères pour extirper-la même chose. Compte tenu du gréement largement répandue maintenant avec toughs locales au pouvoir des isoloirs, des résultats des élections indiennes sont dépourvues de tout rapport à la volonté du peuple. 8. Assurez-vous que le fils hérite de la propriété de son père. Cela ne se produit habituellement pas maintenant à moins que le fils paie des pots de vin lourdes aux fonctionnaires du gouvernement. Le gouvernement doit faire un peu d'introspection et avoir honte qu'un fils trouve actuellement de grandes difficultés à hériter des actions de son père et d'une connexion d'électricité - pour ne citer que deux exemples. 9. Éradiquer l'habitude actuelle des fonctionnaires du gouvernement qui prennent des pots de vin, par exemple, sanctionner un plan de construction, muter une propriété foncière et de fournir une connexion électrique. 10. Simplifier la procédure pour obtenir les passeports indiens. Les fonctionnaires du gouvernement dans les bureaux régionaux de passeport doivent être courtois et serviable et pas harceler les citoyens comme cela est le cas aujourd'hui. 11. Veiller à ce que les prestations de retraite sont libérés immédiatement après la retraite et non pas après quatre ou cinq ans. Beaucoup de gens obtiennent leurs prestations de retraite entre quatre et six ans après la retraite. Ma mère a reçu sa retraite profite quatre ans après sa retraite. Le gouvernement doit punir les fonctionnaires du gouvernement qui refusent les prestations de retraite des citoyens retraités. 12. Eliminez la féodalité. Fonctionnaires gouvernementaux corrompus ont pris la place de zamindars autrefois dans les zones rurales. 13. Eliminer l'économie actuelle «trickle-down». Le gouvernement doit veiller à ce que les couches inférieures de la société indienne est également bénéficiaire du progrès économique et ne sont pas laissés pour compte. 14. Retirer le criminel-gouvernement serviteur-politique nexus. Cela est extrêmement important si l'Inde est de progresser. 15. Retirer la différence entre «les dirigeants» et «gouvernés». Le gouvernement doit veiller à ce que la démocratie ne reste pas une imposture et que le gouvernement est vraiment «du peuple, pour le peuple et par le peuple». 16. Placez une plus grande valeur à la vie humaine. Le gouvernement ne doit pas penser que, simplement parce que l'Inde est un pays très peuplé, quelques vies perdues dans un accident, par exemple, un effondrement du pont - comme celui qui est arrivé dans Howrah quelque temps - n'a pas d'importance. Le gouvernement doit reconnaître que chaque vie humaine est précieuse. 17. Eliminez tokenism. 18. Éliminez window-dressing avant un politicien visite une région. Le gouvernement doit être sincère dans ses efforts de développement et de veiller à ce que pas un projet de développement unique annoncé se révèle être un collyre destiné à tromper la population. 19. Assurer l'accès à internet et l'alimentation continue dans les zones rurales. L'accès à internet en dehors des métropoles est pitoyable et les coupures de courant sont fréquentes. Hier soir, il y avait une panne de courant à mon bureau à Kolkata. 20. Soyez sensible à la souffrance du peuple. La longueur et la largeur de Kolkata est inondé pendant la saison de la mousson et aucun régime n'a rien fait à ce sujet. 21. Comprendre que des slogans tels que «Bekari hatao» et «Roti, kapra aur makaan» sont inutiles si elles restent de simples slogans sans aucune tentative de les mettre en œuvre. Le gouvernement doit veiller à ce que les besoins fondamentaux du peuple sont remplies. |
I am the Chairman and Managing Director of MultiSpectra Consultants, MultiSpectra Global, MultiSpectra Consultants Asia, MultiSpectra Technologies, MultiSpectra Aqua, MultiSpectra, Inc., MultiSpectra Bangladesh, MultiSpectra Tripura, MultiSpectra H2O and MultiSpectra SkyHawk. MultiSpectra Consultants, MultiSpectra Global, MultiSpectra Consultants Asia, MultiSpectra Technologies, MultiSpectra Aqua, MultiSpectra, Inc., MultiSpectra Bangladesh, MultiSpectra Tripura, MultiSpectra H2O and MultiSpectra SkyHawk constitute the Diwan Bahadur Banga Chandra - Dr. Amartya Kumar Bhattacharya Group of Companies. My work profile includes Civil Engineering consultancy, research and teaching. I am Vice President (East) of the Association of Consulting Civil Engineers (India). I am also Past Vice President (East) (2001 - 2005) of the Association of Consulting Civil Engineers (India). I am also a Visiting Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, an Honorary Professor of Water Engineering and Management at the Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India, and a Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, Howrah, West Bengal, India.
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