Pictorial Biography of the Founder of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Publisher : Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Pages : 64 Price : Rs. 100 Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi was a multifaceted personality. Founder of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, he was also a lawyer, a freedom fighter, writer, administrator, maker of the constitution, educationist, champion of Indian culture and much more. In the 125th year of his birth and in the 75th year of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, this pictorial biography has been produced which is a source of inspiration to many. The book will inspire the readers as it shows him as a normal flesh and…
Author: oiop
An imposing symbol of righteousness (1920-2005) Umrao Singh, son of Mohar Singh, was born on 21 November, 1920 in Palra village, Jajjhar district in Haryana. He attended a local school and joined the army in 1939, a tradition in Palra. He was promoted to the rank of Havaldar in Royal Indian Artillery. He served in Africa and later in Burma (now Myanmar). Captain Singh was Detachment Commander of a field gun in 30 Mountain Battery in Burma; it was supporting the 8th Gold Coast Regiment in 81st West African Division. They were facing the 28th Japanese Army commanded by Lt…
What began as an unplanned vacation going sour with no reservations available at Somnath and Gir – the mainstays of Saurashtra tourism; turned out to be a blessing in disguise as Akul Tripathi got to explore the wild side of Saurashtra’s land, water and air – rich, feisty, raw and splendid beyond his expectations. On the map of modern day India, this name is all but forgotten. Yet, since the time of the Mahabharat to the modern era as recently as 1956, Saurashtra was a name well known across the inhabited world. The crab-claw shaped region between the Gulf of…
Suman Barua, is a teacher at ‘Teach for India’. He gave up a full time corporate life to take up the social responsibility of teaching children who are not entitled to right to education as they belong to the lower strata of the society. I face two kinds of regular problems, first “What should I wear today?”, and second “My students are beaten up everyday at home. What should I do, so that my kids know that violence is a bad thing and when they grow up they shouldn’t use it to control their children or family?” Most of my…
Nalanda Univesity was an extraordinary centre of excellence for learning, and remained so for nearly 700 years. B.M.N. Murthy takes us through the inception, the rise of this world renowned institution and the scope to revive it. Right from the Vedic Age, ancient India has been a trend setter and role model in moulding the character of its citizens by training them in established universities of excellence called ‘Gurukulas’, analogous to modern universities. In fact, the very first university in the world was founded at a place called Takshashila (now in Pakistan, about 35 Kms from Rawalpindi), followed by the…
Get set for some awesome figures… seven manuals, 1,439 stop keys, 1,255 speaking stops, 455 ranks, and 33,112 pipes! They are the various parts of the Midmer-Losh pipe organ in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall (USA), acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest pipe organ and the biggest and loudest musical instrument ever constructed. It also boasts of the world’s largest stop, its 4.87m Ophicleide which has six times the volume of the loudest train whistle. Weighing 150 tons, the massive organ was built between 1929 and 1932 at the cost of $400,000. It is housed…
Bharata Natyam, the glorious dance style from Tamil Nadu is designed as a votive offering to be placed at the feet of the lord. It is Devadasis and their great spirit which have perpetuated this art, writes Dr. Kanak Rele. Bharata Natyam is the glorious dance style from the southern state of Tamil Nadu. One cannot hazard a guess as to when it arose out of the soil of the Dravida culture. One finds references dating from the first few centuries of the Christian era to a very vigorous system of dance and music being practiced at the highest professional…
A capseller stopped for a nap under a tree. When he awoke, he found that the monkeys living in the tree had taken his caps and each of them was wearing one. He clapped his hands to draw their attention. The monkeys clapped back. The man stomped his feet in frustration. The monkeys chattered happily and stamped their feet too. The capseller was a clever man. Realising that the monkeys were imitating all his actions, he removed the cap from his head and flung it down. All the monkeys did the same and the capseller got his caps back. When…
Reclusive diva of Indian cinema (1931 – 2014) Suchitra Sen is no more. The greatest staractress of Bengali cinema who ruled the industry for 26 years passed away from complications of respiratory problems in a Kolkata nursing home on 17 January 2014. Born in Pabna, currently in Bangladesh, on 6 April 1931, she chanced upon films as a career after marriage and motherhood brought her to Calcutta. Her husband, Dibanath Sen took her to audition for a playback for a film but instead of a career in singing, she landed the lead role in a film Shesh Kothai (1952), which…
Right decisions taken by policy makers at the right time, could have avoided catastrophes in the Himalayan region, which have escalated of late. Recent years have witnessed a spate of disasters in Himalayan region, in which the damage from adverse weather was greatly accentuated by man-made factors. We need to draw some essential lessons from these in the form of important changes in development policies and priorities for the entire Himalayan region. Let’s consider what a high-level appraisal committee of the Environment Ministry said about the Tehri Dam Project (TDP) in Uttarakhand, “Taking note of the unacceptable risk involved, extremely…