Monday, April 30, 2007

Mother Teresa


INTRODUCTION
Mother Teresa once made me cry. The year was 1988 - I was on one of my frequent holidays or visits to Calcutta from Britain, where I had moved to in 1985. I was standing by the kerb-side in Gariahat Morr, munching on a famous 'mutton roll'. I was looking at scenes I had grown up with - pavements almost obliterated by shops, people having to weave their way through hawkers peddling their fares; buses tilted to one side by the sheer weight of passengers and belching out black diesel smoke, trams waiting for a manual change of tracks before they could turn, the familiar neon sign of an astrologer.
In the midst of all this I remembered the 'Calcutta' of the West - Calcutta the metaphor, not the city. In my three years in the West I had come to realise that the city had become synonymous with the worst of human suffering and degradation in the eyes of the world. I read and heard again and again that Calcutta contained an endless number of 'sewers and gutters' where an endless number of dead and dying people lay - but not for long - as 'roving angels' in the shape of the followers of a certain nun would come along looking for them. Then they would whisk them away in their smart ambulances. As in my twenty-seven years in Calcutta I had never seen such a scene, (and neither have I met a Calcuttan who has), it hurt me deeply that such a wrong stereotype had become permanently ingrained in world psyche. I felt suddenly overwhelmingly sad that a city, indeed an entire culture should be continuously insulted in this way.
I am Calcuttan born and bred, and our family has lived in the city for as long as can be traced. I know Calcutta well, and many people who matter there, and many more who do not. I do not have Calcutta 'in my blood', but the place has definitely made me what I am, warts and all. My mother tongue is Bengali, the language of Calcutta, but I speak Hindi passably, which is spoken by a large number of the destitutes of Calcutta.
I had no interest whatsoever in Mother Teresa before I came to England. Difficult it may seem to a Westerner to comprehend, but she was not a significant entity in Calcutta in her lifetime; paradoxically posthumously her image has risen significantly there - primarily because of the Indian need to emulate the West in many unimportant matters.
I had had some interest in the destitutes of Calcutta during my college days, when I dabbled in leftist politics for a while. I also took a keen interest in human rights issues. Never in the course of my (modest) interaction with the very poor of Calcutta, did I cross paths with Mother Teresa's organisation - indeed, I cannot ever recall her name being uttered.
After living for some time in the West, I (slowly) realised what Mother Teresa and Calcutta meant to the world. It shocked and saddened me. In India itself, to say you come from Calcutta is considered trendy, as Calcuttans are considered, wrongly, 'brainy and dangerous'. The Bombayite Gokhle is still widely quoted, 'What Bengal [Calcutta's state] thinks today, that India thinks tomorrow.' In India, Calcutta is - not entirely wrongly - stereotyped as a seat of effete culture and anarchic politics. There is an Indian saying that goes thus: 'If you have one Calcuttan you have a poet; with two you have a political party, and with three you have two political parties.'
The Calcutta stereotype in the West did not irk me as much as did the firmly held notion that Mother Teresa had chosen to live there as its saviour. I was astonished that she had become a figure of speech, and that her name was invoked to qualify the extreme superlative of a positive kind; you can criticise God, but you cannot criticise Mother Teresa - in common parlance, doing the unthinkable is qualified as 'like criticising Mother Teresa'. The number of times I have heard expressions such as 'So and so would try the patience of Mother Teresa', I have lost count. Such expressions would cause amazement and curiosity in Calcutta, even amongst Mother Teresa's most ardent admirers.
Why I decided to do 'something about it' I cannot easily tell. As a person I am flawed enough to understand lies and deceit. Why certain people, themselves no pillars of rectitude, decide to make a stand against untruth and injustice is a very complex issue. Also, my wife, brought up (a Roman Catholic) in Ireland on Teresa mythology, felt angry and cheated when she went to Calcutta and saw how the reality compared with the fairy tale; she has encouraged me in my endeavours.
In February 1994, I rang, without any introduction, Vanya Del Borgo at the television production company Bandung Productions in London. She listened to my anguished outpourings and, to cut a long story short, eventually Channel 4 decided to undertake Hell's Angel (shown on Britain's Channel 4 television on 8 November 1994), the very first attempt to challenge the Teresa myth on television. Ms Del Borgo chose Christopher Hitchens as the presenter, knowing him as she did from their days together at The Nation in the United States. I am not happy with how Hell's Angel turned out, especially its sensationalist approach, such as Mr Hitchens's calling Mother Teresa 'a presumed virgin'. The film however caused some ripple, in Britain and also internationally.
Mother Teresa, one could argue in her favour, is dead and therefore would be unable to defend herself against my charges. Criticisms of her however peaked during her lifetime; apart from the November 1994 documentary, there was a stringent (and quite detailed) attack on conditions in her orphanages in India that was published in The Guardian of London (14 October 1996) - charges of gross neglect and physical and emotional abuse were made. The article alleged her own complicity and knowledge in the unacceptable practices that went (go) on in her homes. During January 1997, a documentary - entitled Mother Teresa: Time for Change? - critical of her working methods and accusing her of neglect, was shown on various European television channels.
It was up to Mother Teresa to have defended herself against such criticisms during her lifetime. She did not. Her supporters (and others) would of course say that she was like Jesus; that she would not demean herself by protesting against muck raking - she would merely turn the other cheek. Notwithstanding her image, she was a robust protester whenever she had a case. Shortly before she died she got involved in legal wrangles with a Tennessee bakery over the marketing of a bun; and more seriously, with her one time close friend and ally, the author Dominique Lapierre, over the script of a film on her life.
On both occasions her Miami based solicitor got properly involved. And then, there is that well-known letter of protest she wrote to Judge Lance Ito protesting at the prosecution (she perceived it as persecution) of her friend Charles Keating, the biggest fraudster in US history.
After her death, her order continues with the litigious tradition - less than a year after her death it was involved in a court case with the Mother Teresa Memorial Committee, a Calcutta based organisation.
The German magazine Stern (10 September 1998) published a devastating critique of Mother Teresa's work on the first anniversary of her death. The article, entitled 'Mother Teresa, Where Are Your Millions?', which took a year's research in three continents, concluded that her organisation is essentially a religious order that does not deserve to be called a charitable foundation. No protest has been forthcoming from her order.
To the charges of neglect of residents, indifference to suffering, massaging of figures, manipulation of the media and knowingly handling millions of dollars of stolen cash, Mother Teresa never protested. Her responses were 'Why did they do it?', 'It was all for publicity.' She was perturbed by the criticisms - so much so that after the 1994 documentary she cancelled a religious mission to the Far East.
During her lifetime I wrote to Mother Teresa numerous times asking for a formal interview with either her or one of her senior deputies. I had agreed to meet her in Calcutta, or at the Vatican - mindful her frequent trips there - or indeed, at any other place in the world. Despite her image - carefully nurtured by her own self - of one who shunned the media and publicity, she had always bent over backwards to give interviews to sympathetic world media (in other words, all the world's media). In 1994 she spent a whole day talking to Hello! magazine; the same magazine ran a lengthy interview with her successor in 1998. She however never even acknowledged any of my many requests for an interview. I had met her briefly on occasions in the company of a roomful of worshipful admirers, but I did not feel that was the time or the place to ask uncomfortable questions.
After two years of trying, when I failed to elicit any response from her or her order, I contacted her official biographers to ask whether they would answer some of the serious question marks hanging over her operations. All of them, bar one, replied, but only to turn me down. All of this happened while Mother Teresa was alive.
Many people tell me that Mother Teresa should be left alone because she did 'something' for the underprivileged. I do not deny that she did. However her reputation, which was to a good extent carefully built up by herself, was not on a 'something' scale. More importantly, that 'something', at least in Calcutta, was quite little, as my book will show. Even more importantly, she had turned away many many more than she had helped - although she had claimed throughout her life that she was doing everything for everybody. My brief against her is not that she did not address the root or causes of suffering and I am not for a moment suggesting that she ought to have done so, as I understand the particular religious tradition she came from - I am saying that there was a stupendous discrepancy between her image and her work, between her words and her deeds; that she, helped by others of course, engaged in a culture of deception.
On a superficial level, I need to tell the truth about Teresa because I feel humiliated to be associated with a place that is wrongly imagined to exist on Western charity. Perhaps the main reason why I want to tell this story is because, I believe, each of us has a duty to stand up and protest when history is in danger of being distorted. In a few years' time Mother Teresa will be up there, glittering in the same galaxy as Mozart and Leonardo.
I wish to convey my thanks to the some of the world's most powerful publishing firms who put up obstacle after obstacle in the path of this book. Indeed, the British arm of a multinational publishing house signed me up and then cancelled the contract nine months later by sending me a half-page fax. My resolve to get the book published grew all the more stronger by such obstacles.
I know I cannot change 'history' as pre-ordained by the powerful world media, but I can attempt to put a footnote therein.
I would disapprove of my book being called 'controversial', as I see it as a book of hard facts, albeit disturbing sometimes.
Calcutta has recently been renamed Kolkata by its rulers and a section of its citizens. The new name, which is politically correct and is closer to the vernacular pronunciation, has caught on faster than expected. In this book, I have exclusively used 'Calcutta', partly because to me it makes more historical sense, and also because to tell the story of Mother Teresa, 'Calcutta' to me seems more appropriate.
Aroup Chatterjee
London and Calcutta, 1996-2002
PREFACE
by Joe Winter
Calcutta has recently renamed itself Kolkata, in line with the Bengali pronunciation and with a renaming in the case of two other Indian metropolises. The touch of colonialism, still felt after its death, is shaken off a little by the gesture, many would say, shrugged free of; but it is only a gesture. The battle for internal independence for India is a deadlier business, the touch of the past still a dead weight, and a new nationalism beginning to take a very ugly form. Kolkata's acquiescence as a passive player in the charity charade, the part it continues to take in the Mother Teresa phenomenon, makes a mockery of the symbol of self-determination in the change of name. It is only too clear to a resident that the city is thrilled by the approaching sainthood. Its victimhood itself is to be canonised. It is a form of Western recognition, that elusive holy grail of the Indian psyche. By comparison, Asian recognition is a non-starter. It is in this perspective that Dr Chatterjee's illuminating analysis appears. Here are the hard facts behind the phenomenon. What did Mother Teresa really achieve?
A lot less than she said, that much is clear. But does it do any harm for her memory to be cherished, this indomitable old lady bent with devotion? Bengal has its saints - Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Rabindranath. Why not a woman too, in the capital of mother worship, the great spiritual home of the goddess Durga? Why not indeed? - but in the marketplace of values to be set on display for the eyes of later generations, let not an affinity for purity, that so charges the popular mind, blind its gaze to the mixing-in of a baser metal. There was something wonderful in Mother Teresa - and something not so wonderful.
Princess Diana died a few days before her, to an extraordinary if short-lived global reaction. The world it seems needs fairy tales. The came the Mother's death and a myth was sealed. We need our myths too and not only in literature; but where there are facts to be stated alongside them they must surely be stated. There is a syndrome in the West's thinking about the less economically developed world; one might call it the sincerity syndrome. It relies on not looking too closely at whatever myths and legends are spun by those with a vested interest.
How much 'conscience money' has been paid out, in the last hundred years, by the affluent in their blind sincerity, to what used to be known as the Third World! Yet there is an alternative to misty-eyed shelling out, and it is not to turn one's back. First and foremost let us open our eyes. There is a story behind the popular version of Mother Teresa's life - the story of facts - from which we can all learn.
(Joe Winter is an English poet who lives in Calcutta)

Shivaji and James Lain's book

The Mother Principle - By Balbir PunjAn evangelist is Calcutta's mascot, even though more authentic figures abound.
Naqvi Bhaumik's is lavish in its adulation of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity for 'Indianisation of Christianity'. Not caring much for rationality and its precepts, it eulogises Pope John Paul II's 50th 'miraculous' canonisation ceremony and his concerted effort to repackage Christianity for Asia. All that she says is completely true but not the complete truth. She does not quote the chief pontiff's November 1999 call in New Delhi for the "evangelisation of Asia in the 3rd millennium AD, on the lines of Europe in the 1st and Americas in the 2nd". Bhaumik's contention that the spread of Christianity in India can't be linked to the British also doesn't hold water. Elizabeth Susan Alexander, in her The Attitude of British Protestant Missionaries Towards Nationalism in India, says: "The evangelical revival of Christianity that swept Britain from the last decades of 18th century changed the situation completely. The Company had to cede entry rights to British missionaries in its controversial Charter Act 1813, paving the way for intensive activities by British Protestant missionaries."Historian R. C. Mazumdar, while dwelling on the pre-1857 period in his History and Culture of Indian People, Vol. IX, observes: "Some schools, mainly supported by the government, were actually run by clergymen on a strictly Christian basis. About the modus operandi of conversion through these schools, it's sufficient to note that the pupils were asked such questions as 'Who's your God?' and 'Who's your redeemer?'. The inevitable reply, as a result of regular coaching was, of course, Jesus Christ."The Church uses "miracles" to impress and draw innocents to its fold. But why should the media, with claims to secularism and rationality, glorify them?
I can, in fact, give instances of three born Catholics—David Frawley from the US, Koenrad Elst from Belgium and Francois Gautier from France—who are truly immersed in this spirit of Indophilia. These lovers of India are working silently with no reward or hype, the kind which attends the Teresa myth. Is it because they are enamoured with the soul of India and thoroughly oppose evangelisation? Even in Calcutta, leave alone India, never was she the only philanthropist. One can, without reflection, name the Ramakrishna Mission, Bharat Seva Ashram Sangha, Chinmaya Mission, Satya Sai Baba Trust among the organisations engaged in doing hands-on social work. But thanks to figures like Malcolm Muggeridge and Dominique Lapierre, in the western consciousness Calcutta is synonymous with Mother Teresa.
What a tragedy this, for a city that is regarded as the cultural capital of India! Calcutta has produced many luminaries who could claim its brand ambassadorship better than Mother Teresa—Raja Ram Mohun Roy, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Sir J.C. Bose, Nirad C. Chaudhuri and Satyajit Ray—to name a few.
Should Calcutta be associated with them or Mother Teresa, who portrayed the city as an overgrown slum?Does the name Sister Nivedita, aka Margaret Noble, ring a bell in the historical memory of Indians fawning over Agnes Bojaxhiu, better known to them as Mother Teresa?
Nobel, an Irish, belonged to a family of Catholic priests. Her father Samuel Nobel had returned from preaching in India and had told little Margaret: "India, my little one, is seeking her destiny. She called me once and will perhaps call you, too, some day. Always be ready for her call." The national destiny that the priest was referring to was perhaps no different from the one envisaged by Pope John Paul II. Margaret did adhere to her father's word, but very differently. Her meeting with Swami Vivekananda in 1895 in Dublin had a strong impact on her. She came to Calcutta the following year and the Swami consecrated her to the nation as Nivedita (the dedicated one). Unlike Teresa, who spent 50 years in this country, Nivedita mastered Bengali and Sanskrit. Braving the hostilities of an orthodox Hindu society, she started her first school for girls in 1898. When a plague epidemic broke out in Calcutta in 1899, Nivedita set an example by cleaning the roads and scavenging garbage around the clock. She had the physical characteristics of a Celt, but the soul of an Indian. She accompanied Vivekananda on his 1899 America tour, preaching about India's rich contribution to world civilization and human thought.But the Church functions like a multinational company for souls and continues to repackage itself for target consumers. Adoption of Hindu symbols is a similar acculturation strategy on its part. We, on our part, have to decide on our role model: Mother Teresa or Sister Nivedita?
(source: The Mother Principle - By Balbir Punj - outlookindia.com - December 1, 2003.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Who is a Hindu?

dattadokfode.rediffiland.com/
Monday 30 April, 2007
09:21 15/Apr/2007 2 Comment(s)
Who is a Hindu
Due to the wide diversity in the beliefs, practices and traditions encompassed by Hinduism, there is no universally accepted answer to the question, "Who is a Hindu?", or even agreement on whether Hinduism represents is a religious, cultural or socio-political entity. In 1995, Chief Justice P. B. Gajendragadkar was quoted in an Indian Supreme Court ruling:[4]When we think of the Hindu religion, we find it difficult, if not impossible, to define Hindu religion or even adequately describe it. Unlike other religions in the world, the Hindu religion does not claim any one prophet; it does not worship any one God; it does not subscribe to any one dogma; it does not believe in any one philosophic concept; it does not follow any one set of religious rites or performances; in fact, it does not appear to satisfy the narrow traditional features of any religion of creed. It may broadly be described as a way of life and nothing more.Thus some scholars argue that the Hinduism is not a religion per se but rather a reification of a diverse set of traditions and practices by scholars who constituted a unified system and arbitrarily labeled it Hinduism.[5] The usage may also have been necessitated by the desire to distinguish between "Hindus" and followers of other religions during the periodic census undertaken by the colonial British government in India. Other scholars, while seeing Hinduism as a 19th century construct, view Hinduism as a response to British colonialism by Indian nationalists who forged a unified tradition centered on oral and written Sanskrit texts adopted as scriptures.[6]A commonly held view, though, is that while Hinduism contains both "uniting and dispersing tendencies", it has a common central thread of philosophical concepts (including dharma, moksha and samsara), practices (puja, bhakti etc) and cultural traditions.[7] These common elements originating (or being codyfied within) the Vedic, Upanishad and Puranic scriptures and epics. Thus a Hindu could :* follow any of the Hindu schools of philosophy, such as Advaita (non-dualism), Dvaita (dualism), Dvaitadvaita (dualism with non-dualism), etc.[8][9]* follow a tradition centered on any particular form of the Divine, such as Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Shaktism, etc.[10]* practice bhakti (devotion) or any of the other yoga systems in order to achieve moksha.In 1995, while considering the question "who are Hindus and what are the broad features of Hindu religion", the Supreme Court of India highlighted Bal Gangadhar Tilak's formulation of Hinduism's defining features:[4]Acceptance of the Vedas with reverence; recognition of the fact that the means or ways to salvation are diverse; and the realization of the truth that the number of gods to be worshipped is large, that indeed is the distinguishing feature of Hindu religion.Some thinkers distinguish between the concept of Hinduism as a religion, and Hindu as a member of a nationalist or socio-political class. Veer savarkar in his book Hindutva considered geographical unity, common culture and common race to be the defining qualities of Hindus; thus Hindu was a person who saw India "as his Fatherland as well as his Holyland, that is, the cradle land of his religion".[11] This conceptualization of Hinduism, has led to establishment of Hindutva as political movement in the last century.[12][edit] Origins of the word HinduSee also: Etymology of the names of IndiaRiver Sindhu, Ladakh This image has an uncertain copyright status and is pending deletion. You can comment on the removal.River Sindhu, Ladakh This image has an uncertain copyright status and is pending deletion. You can comment on the removal.Hindu is derived from the Persian pronunciation of the Sanskrit word Sindhu (Sanskrit: सिन्धु, the name for the Indus River), located in what is now Pakistan.[13] The Persians, using the word "Hindu" for "Sindhu", referred to the people who lived near or across the Sindhu River as "Hindus", and their religion later became known as "Hinduism." The religion had previously been known as Sanātana dharma (the eternal law), Vaidika dharma (law of the Vedas), Arya dharma (the noble religion), or Mānava dharma (the religion of mankind). Eventually the word "Hindu" came into common use among Hindus themselves,[2] and was adopted into Greek as Indos and Indikos ("Indian"), into Latin as Indianus.[14] and into Sanskrit, as Hindu, appearing in some early medieval texts (e.g. Bhaviṣya Purāṇa, Kālikā Purāṇa, Rāmakośa, Hemantakavikośa and Adbhutarūpakośa)[15]
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Pope's speech on Islam


APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of RegensburgTuesday, 12 September 2006

Faith, Reason and the UniversityMemories and Reflections

Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies,Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.[1] It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor.[2] The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to some of the experts, this is probably one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”[3] The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".[4]
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.[5] The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.[6] Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.[7]
At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.
In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply asserts being, "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy.[8] Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity.[9] A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.
In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazm and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul - "λογικη λατρεία", worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).[10]
This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.
The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.[11]
Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.
The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue,[12] and I do not intend to repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization. Harnack's central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw it, restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield decisive certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.
This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.
I will return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.
Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was an initial inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not simply false, but it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.
And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically falsifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss".[13] The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.
[1] Of the total number of 26 conversations (διάλεξις – Khoury translates this as “controversy”) in the dialogue (“Entretien”), T. Khoury published the 7th “controversy” with footnotes and an extensive introduction on the origin of the text, on the manuscript tradition and on the structure of the dialogue, together with brief summaries of the “controversies” not included in the edition; the Greek text is accompanied by a French translation: “Manuel II Paléologue, Entretiens avec un Musulman. 7e Controverse”, Sources Chrétiennes n. 115, Paris 1966. In the meantime, Karl Förstel published in Corpus Islamico-Christianum (Series Graeca ed. A. T. Khoury and R. Glei) an edition of the text in Greek and German with commentary: “Manuel II. Palaiologus, Dialoge mit einem Muslim”, 3 vols., Würzburg-Altenberge 1993-1996. As early as 1966, E. Trapp had published the Greek text with an introduction as vol. II of Wiener byzantinische Studien. I shall be quoting from Khoury’s edition.
[2] On the origin and redaction of the dialogue, cf. Khoury, pp. 22-29; extensive comments in this regard can also be found in the editions of Förstel and Trapp.
[3] Controversy VII, 2 c: Khoury, pp. 142-143; Förstel, vol. I, VII. Dialog 1.5, pp. 240-241. In the Muslim world, this quotation has unfortunately been taken as an expression of my personal position, thus arousing understandable indignation. I hope that the reader of my text can see immediately that this sentence does not express my personal view of the Qur’an, for which I have the respect due to the holy book of a great religion. In quoting the text of the Emperor Manuel II, I intended solely to draw out the essential relationship between faith and reason. On this point I am in agreement with Manuel II, but without endorsing his polemic.
[4] Controversy VII, 3 b–c: Khoury, pp. 144-145; Förstel vol. I, VII. Dialog 1.6, pp. 240-243.
[5] It was purely for the sake of this statement that I quoted the dialogue between Manuel and his Persian interlocutor. In this statement the theme of my subsequent reflections emerges.
[6] Cf. Khoury, p. 144, n. 1.
[7] R. Arnaldez, Grammaire et théologie chez Ibn Hazm de Cordoue, Paris 1956, p. 13; cf. Khoury, p. 144. The fact that comparable positions exist in the theology of the late Middle Ages will appear later in my discourse.
[8] Regarding the widely discussed interpretation of the episode of the burning bush, I refer to my book Introduction to Christianity, London 1969, pp. 77-93 (originally published in German as Einführung in das Christentum, Munich 1968; N.B. the pages quoted refer to the entire chapter entitled “The Biblical Belief in God”). I think that my statements in that book, despite later developments in the discussion, remain valid today.
[9] Cf. A. Schenker, “L’Écriture sainte subsiste en plusieurs formes canoniques simultanées”, in L’Interpretazione della Bibbia nella Chiesa. Atti del Simposio promosso dalla Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, Vatican City 2001, pp. 178-186.
[10] On this matter I expressed myself in greater detail in my book The Spirit of the Liturgy, San Francisco 2000, pp. 44-50.
[11] Of the vast literature on the theme of dehellenization, I would like to mention above all: A. Grillmeier, “Hellenisierung-Judaisierung des Christentums als Deuteprinzipien der Geschichte des kirchlichen Dogmas”, in idem, Mit ihm und in ihm. Christologische Forschungen und Perspektiven, Freiburg 1975, pp. 423-488.
[12] Newly published with commentary by Heino Sonnemans (ed.): Joseph Ratzinger-Benedikt XVI, Der Gott des Glaubens und der Gott der Philosophen. Ein Beitrag zum Problem der theologia naturalis, Johannes-Verlag Leutesdorf, 2nd revised edition, 2005.
[13] Cf. 90 c-d. For this text, cf. also R. Guardini, Der Tod des Sokrates, 5th edition, Mainz-Paderborn 1987, pp. 218-221.

© Copyright 2006 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Plain Speaking : A Sudra's Story


BOOKS: New book - "Plain Speaking: A Sudra's Story"
Uttara Natarajan, a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London has edited a new book that sheds light on the struggles for equality among the lower castes in southern India. The book, "Plain Speaking: A Sudra’s Story - Memoirs and Lectures of A.N. Sattanathan (1905-1990)," is described thus:
Sattanathan’s autobiographical fragment is a unique record of non-Brahmin low-caste life in rural South India, where the presence of poverty and caste prejudice is the more powerful for being understated. As the experience – sparsely and beautifully rendered – of the low-caste but not stereotypically ‘untouchable’ villager, it is, quite simply, revelatory, and will make an impact as such on the English-educated reader, to whom that experience has been so far unavailable.
See below for the publicist's contact for review copy and interview info. Tell 'em SAJA sent you. Post your reax in the comments section.
[Press release]PR contact: Kartik S. Natarajan, 860-561-2971, kartik.natarajan@gmail.com.
Plain Speaking: A Sudra’s Story Memoirs and Lectures of A.N. Sattanathan (1905-1990)edited by Uttara NatarajanDelhi, Permanent Black, 2007, x, 238 p., ISBN 81-7824-181-1.
The book
The memoirs and lectures of A.N. Sattanathan (1905-1990), presented here in a fully annotated edition, with a critical introduction, constitute a key literary-historical document of the caste struggle. Sattanathan’s autobiographical fragment is a unique record of non-Brahmin low-caste life in rural South India, where the presence of poverty and caste prejudice is the more powerful for being understated. As the experience – sparsely and beautifully rendered – of the low-caste but not stereotypically ‘untouchable’ villager, it is, quite simply, revelatory, and will make an impact as such on the English-educated reader, to whom that experience has been so far unavailable. In a complementary narrative, Sattanathan's lectures – on ‘The Rise and Spread of the Non-Brahmin Movement’ as ‘the most outstanding event in South Indian History in the twentieth century’ – offer a lucid summary of the cultural and historical conditions that find more personal and immediate expression in the memoirs.
The receptionPlain Speaking was launched at the British Council in Chennai on 5 January 2007. The launch was attended by the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, Dr. M. Karunanidhi, and the Union Minister, Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar. In the Deccan Chronicle (29-12-06), Dr. Karunanidhi commented, ‘Of all the books I read this year, what touched my heart the most was A.N. Sattanathan’s Plain Speaking: A Sudra's Story […]The author has vividly brought out all the pains and realities of being born a Sudra in a caste-dominated rural Tamil Nadu. The book moved me very much.’ Other responses have been equally laudatory: ‘Plain Speaking is the powerful, moving account of one man’s struggle for a better life and a more equal society’ (Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta in The Indian Express, 14-1=07); ‘This is one of the most moving and riveting books I have read in recent times’ (Sushila Ravindranath in New Indian Express on Sunday, 21-1-07); ‘its spartan prose […] is free of rancour […] his “aham” (interior/mindscape) and his “puram” (exterior/political space) constantly exchange places to bring out the living conditions of the majority of the people during the larger part of the last millennium’ (A.S. Paneerselvan in The Hindu, 6-2-07).
The authorA.N. Sattanathan had a distinguished career in the all-India services. He was Collector of Customs and Central Excise, Calcutta, and in later life wrote and published widely on politics and economics in India. In 1969 he was appointed Chairman of the first Tamilnadu Backward Classes Commission and made a lasting impact on the state's policy of affirmative action towards lower castes
The editorUttara Natarajan is Senior Lecturer in English at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where she teaches and researches in nineteenth-century English literature. Her publications include Hazlitt and the Reach of Sense (Oxford University Press, 1998) and The Romantic Poets: A Guide to Criticism (Blackwell, 2007). Uttara expects to visit the United States in the summer of 2007. She can be contacted at u.natarajan@gold.ac.uk.
Availability; PRPR contact: Kartik S. Natarajan, 860-561-2971, kartik.natarajan@gmail.com.
The book is available in all of the leading bookshops in India, and can also be ordered from a number of online booksellers, including http://www.vedamsbooks.com/, http://www.bagchee.com/ http://www.aggarwaloverseas.com/, http://www.bibliaimpex.com/.
Posted by Sree Sreenivasan at 05:51 PM in Books

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I have not read "Plain Speaking," but from the synopsis given above, I think Deepa Mehta may want to turn this book into another heartrending movie. Stories of struggles of a mass group of people should not be forgotten, especially since the caste system still prevails in India. When we expose the weaknesses of a society, we are ready to have discussions on the subject until we finally come up with answers to solve deep societal problems. Sometimes we forget, rich or poor, in God's eyes we are all equal.
For example, I have appealed to the Sindhis (my community) worldwide to eliminate the medieval "dowry system" because it brings with it a lot of evils, and have also suggested that they lift the status of women and ensure they are well educated.
That does not mean these social issues will be resolved overnight, but at least we will have brought more awareness to them, and not have swept them under the rug.
Jaya Kamlani
Posted by: Jaya Kamlani February 12, 2007 at 01:20 PM
Reflecting on my last comment, I wanted to accurately quote what I had learned/recall from my convent school days in Bombay: “Rich or poor, great or small, in the eyes of the Lord we are all equal.”
In other words, the Sudras should be treated with as much respect and human dignity as we afford the upper caste. That can never happen you may say. Yet, what we desperately need in India are human rights and social reforms. If not, in time we will see social chaos. I believe India is going through its "Great Gatsby" days now: the rich are making all the hay, while the poor and the low-caste are forgotten. I feel strongly about this issue, more so today, since I recently visited the Carter Center in Atlanta. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter have spent tireless years in promoting human rights all over the world.
Jaya Kamlani
Posted by: Jaya Kamlani February 12, 2007 at 02:16 PM
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Plain Speaking : A Sudra's Story/A.N. Sattanathan. Edited by Uttara Natarajan. Delhi, Permanent Black, 2007, x, 238 p., $22. ISBN 81-7824-181-1.
Contents: Acknowledgements. Introduction. I. An exercise in biography (1958): 1. A house of women. 2. My father. 3. Experiments with schools. 4. A school escapade. 5. Three years in English school. 6. Change of name and school. 7. A year without school. 8. Two years in high school. 9. I feel my way. 10. I graduate. 11. Searching for employment: Madura. 12. Some more job-hunting: history repeats itself in Trichy. II. The Dravidian Movement in Tamil Nadu and its legacy (1981) : Three lectures delivered at the University of Madras: Preface. Lectures: i. The Dravidian Movement in Tamil Nadu and its emergence as a political force. ii. The Varying political phases of the Dravidian Movement. 3. Castes as pressure groups. Explanatory notes.
"The memoirs and lectures of A.N. Sattanathan (1905-1991), presented here in a fully annotated edition, with a critical introduction, constitute a key literary-historical document of the caste struggle. Sattanathan's autobiographical fragment is a unique record of non-Brahmin low-caste life in rural South India, where the presence of poverty and caste prejudice is the more powerful for being understated.
As the experience--sparsely and beautifully rendered--of the low-caste but not stereotypically 'untouchable' villager, it is, quite simply, revelatory, and will make an impact as such on the English-educated reader, to whom that experience has been so far unavailable.
In a complementary narrative, Sattnathan's lectures--on 'The Rise and Spread of the Non-Brahmin Movement' as 'The most outstanding event in South Indian History in the twentieth century'--offer a lucid summary of the cultural and historical conditions that find more personal and immediate expression in the memoirs." (jacket)
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January 04, 2007

Plain Speaking
And here I am, back again where I was born: Chennai where sari-clad ladies look down fetchingly from billboards, for the formal release of Plain Speaking: A Sudra's Story (Permanent Black, 2007). The book is by my grandfather, A.N. Sattanathan, and was edited and annotated by my cousin, Uttara Natarajan. The release (scroll down to second item) is at the British Council in Chennai, 6pm on Friday January 5. Maybe you'll be there too.
11:53 PM permalink
Comments:
On January 05, 2007 12:36 AM, Rahul wrote: Doubt I can make it, but I'll certainly look out for the book, or order it online. Next time you're in town we should meet, or maybe I'll show up in Mumbai before that...