Happy Leap Day!

Tomorrow is 29th February, a leap day in the leap year of 2008. 

Refreshing the logic for determination for leap year:

If a year is divisible by 4 but not by 100 --> Leap year

If a year is divisible by 400 --> Leap year 

The Gregorian calendar has 365 days in a year. But a solar year has 365 plus a little less than 1/4th day (i.e. 365 days + little less than 6 hours) in a year. In four years, the Gregorian calendar would fall behind by almost 1 day. Thus, it compensates for that "loss" by adding an extra day (29th February) every four years. However, on this pace Gregorian calendar would move ahead of solar year because it's adding more (1 year) than it should (little less than 1 year). So to compensate for that, it does not add 1 additional day after every 100 years (except for every 400 years!).

Even after doing all these adjustments, it doesn't completely match up to the solar cycle. But it's close enough, we will be off by 1 day in about 8000 years!

Why in February? March 21st is the common date for vernal equinox. This happens when the Sun is positioned directly in front of the Earth's equator (No shadow at noon on the Equator). The vernal equinox marks the beginning of Spring in the Northern hemisphere. To make sure that the vernal equinox happens exactly on (or as close to as possible) March 21st, the leap day is added in the prior month (i.e. February).

The Hindu calendar, which follows the Lunar year/cycle, has similar mechanism to compensate for the "lost" days. The lunar year is around 10 days shorter (approximately 355 days). The Hindu Calendar adds an extra month (called Adhik Maas) after every 3 years to match with the Lunar year. 

The Islamic calendar, on the other hand, leap years or months are not used as they are forbidden by the Qur'an.

Indian media biased?

There is some sort of "media bias" e-mail being circulated on the net. It is declared, without any citation or references, that mostly all of the media groups and agencies in India (NDTV, Times of India group, Indian Express group, CNN-NBC etc.) are owned by non-Hindu organizations. And that is given as a reason for why these media groups have (allegedly) become "hindu bashers". Here're some excerpts:

NDTV: A very popular TV news media is funded by Gospels of Charity in Spain Supports Communism. Recently it has developed a soft corner towards Pakistan because Pakistan President has allowed only this channel to be aired in Pakistan. Indian CEO Prannoy Roy is co-brother of Prakash Karat, General Secretary of the Communist party of India. His wife and sisters.

India Today which used to be the only national weekly who supported BJP is now bought by NDTV!! Since then the tone has changed drastically and turned into Hindu bashing.

I think this is utter B.S. (Yes, it is true that NDTV is the only Indian channel that is currently being broadcasted in Pakistan. But I don't see why that would suddenly make them anti-hindu. By the way, I don't think "co-brother" even means anything.)

I spent some time online and googled these alleged connections but didn't find any authentic information. The only sites where this "media ownership alignment politics" is mentioned are on-line discussion forums, blogs and some religious fundamentalists' web-portals. Barring the last one, most questioned the validity of these fragile allegations. Here's some more:

Gujrat riots which took place in 2002 where Hindus were burnt alive, Rajdeep Sardesai and Bharkha Dutt working for NDTV at that time got around 5 Million Dollars from Saudi Arabia to cover only Muslim victims which they did very faithfully. Not a single Hindu family was interviewed or shown on TV whose near and dear ones had been burnt alive, it is reported.

Tarun Tejpal of Tehelka.com regularly gets flat check from Arab countries to target BJP and Hindus only, it is said.

(Emphases mine)

Does someone really have to be a genius to see right through these?

I have made a rule of thumb long time ago: Do not trust ANY forwarded e-mail at once. Most of them are nonsensical twaddles. A little research can easily reveal the truth.

The last line of this forwarded e-mail reads "PONDER OVER THIS. NOW YOU KNOW WHY EVERY ONE IS AGAINST TRUTH, HOW VERY SAD."

Really, how very sad!

Jodhaa Akbar disappoints

Just watched Jodhaa Akbar yesterday. It was disappointing. Stunning landscapes, spectacular forts, beautiful costumes and commendable acting by Hritik couldn't save the story and screenplay which lacked a cohesive thread. The story kept swinging back and forth between a historical anecdote and a love affair. And ended up doing full justice to neither. The extras (in battle scenes) seemed to be hugely underpaid (even more so than those in Mahabharata!). Action scenes were lousy. Overplayed melodrama and lack of humor made the 3+ hours almost difficult to endure.

The movie had its moments, but there were very few.

I didn't like the execution of Khwaja Mere Khawja song. An emotional devotion was either missing or half-heartedly performed.

If you must, watch it for (a) ARR's background score, (b) Hritik's acting (and flexing!) skills, and (c) astounding visuals. 

Cause and Effect and Self Fulfilling Prophecy

I have been thinking about the "cause-and-effect" phenomenon in the social context. Simply put, an event-A happens, which causes or triggers event-B. Newton's Third Law (Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.) can be explained in laymen's term as: Every action has consequences. Interestingly, the Hindu philosophy takes this scientific rule and apply it to everyday life. The laws of karma imply that your current living conditions (good or bad) are actually caused by your karma (deeds, or actions) from your early life or even from your previous birth.

The situation that interests me particularly is: Cause (Event A) --> Effect (Event B) --> Cause (Event A). In other words, Action-A triggers Action-B. But then Action-B becomes trigger for Action-A. The consequence reinforces the original cause. And the wheel can keep turning forever.

I can think of a hypothetical example of a husband and wife. The husband thinks that his wife is not treating him with respect (Event A). Disappointed, he starts drinking and coming home late every day (Event B). But this just makes things worse, and his wife now actually disrespects him (Event A, again). Once this kind of rather vicious cycle is in motion, it becomes impossible to tell where exactly it started. Did the wife not treat her husband well in the beginning? Or was it just a wrong assumption on the husband's part? 

Other examples comes to mind. A minority group in a society finds it difficult to get jobs in spite of having a good level of education (being discriminated and all). So they become less interested in getting college degrees and more involved with petty jobs and joining street gangs and criminal activities. This reinforces the majority group's discriminatory feelings towards the minority. Which, in turn, makes it more difficult for minority folks to get a job. And the vicious cycle continues!

Let's say you hear somewhere that road accidents are more likely to happen when you change lanes. So you try to be extra careful while changing lanes. This wavers your normal driving sense, and you become more likely to make a mistake. An accident happens. And this validates your initial belief (which might not have been true to begin with!).

These example are also related to a phenomenon called "Self fulfilling prophecy".  As explained by the Thomas Theorem: 

"If men defined situations as real, they are real in their consequences."

Take the story of Krishna for example. The king of Mathura, Kansa, hears a prophecy that he will be killed by his sister Devaki's son. So he puts her behind bars and plans to kill all her sons. (Don't ask me why he put both Devaki and Vasudeva in the same cell!) So Kansa kills Devaki's first six children. But the seventh (or was it 8th?) child Krishna was smuggled out of the prison. And eventually, Krishna grows up to kill Kansa. End of story. Now the question is: Was Kansa's death bound to happen by Krishna? or was it Kansa's attempts to prevent the prophecy that actually led to Krishna's birth who eventually killed him?

By the way, isn't Lord Voldermort and Harry Potter's story is somewhat similar to Kansa and Krishna's? Both have similar prophecy of antagonist's death, and the opposing characters have blood relationships.

Lord Macaulay "chaar sau bees"

I received a forwarded e-mail, titled "See what was [sic] India at [sic] 1835", from one of my friends. The e-mail included the following quote that was supposedly spoken or written by Lord Macaulay.

"I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."

The validity of this quote is quite unclear. I tried to look up on-line and see if I can find any authentic source, but I found none. There are many who claim this quote as false, but none of these sources look authentic too. In any case, a quick look at Macaulay's writings and thoughts would make it clear that this man is very unlikely to utter such words of glory for anything that is Indian. 

Anyway, I found couple of interesting things about Macaulay. He came to India in 1934 to serve in Supreme Court and spent about 4 years there. During his tenure in India, he made two major contributions. He created the criminal law system that was enacted in India after the Great Mutiny of 1957. This code was soon to be reproduced in many other British colonies. It was Section 420 of this code, that became a very popular cultural reference. Even today, after more than 150 years of its creation, tricksters are called chaar sau bees (Four Hundred Twenty in Hindi) in India. His second contribution is quite controversial. In 1835, he convinced the Governor General to replace Sanskrit (and Arabic) with English as the medium of higher education (6th year of schooling onwards). He wrote a well-known article called Minute on Indian Education, which played a pivotal role in convincing the British government to implement this change. [The full text can be found here]

A century and a half later, one can make an arguement that the software revolution might have never happened if it wasn't for Macaulay.

Looking at this article more closely, many of his quotes look highly dramatized and controversial. Here's one for example: "... a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.". This is an exaggerated statement at its best. The whole article is full of many such false claims and justifications, but I think there are few points that are worth giving some thought. While I strongly disagree with the construct and reasoning of his argument, I tend to agree with the core reason to opt for English because it had the necessary vocabulary to explain modern science and medicine. What makes his argument difficult to digest is his prolix claims about Sanskrit/Arabic being useless languages 

"... the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India, contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are, moreover, so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them."

On the other hand, I think there's some fact in his proposition that there's very little historical information in the books written in Sanskrit (most of them are fables, poems, and shlokas), but again, his proclamation about this [read the entire text here] is full with spurious nonsensical comparisons.

Here's another interesting quote from Minute on Indian Education:

"...it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect."

This passage gave birth to the term Macaulay's Children, which is used (often in derogatory fashion) to refer to any Indian born individual who has adopted Western culture or lifestyle or values (Anglophiles that are not loyal to their own Indian heritage).

There are different school of thoughts in India that either revile or revere to Macaulay's impact on education in India. There are some dalit activists that believe that it was because of the introduction of English medium that the lowest strata of the Indian society could become even eligible to get eduction. Their claim is based on the postulation that Sanskrit was considered a sacred language, and only the upper caste Hindus were entitled to learn the scriptures and texts written in Sanskrit. Once English became lingua franca in schools, that bar was removed. [Source] And on then there are protectionists who think that Macaulay's actions was a severe blow to the native languages as well as culture. To them Macaulay has become  synonymous with cultural estrangement of Hindus. [Here is an article, with saffron color sprinkled all over, on Hindu Jagruti web-site.] According to such measures, the four biggest enemies of Hindu Dharama are: Muslims, Missionaries, Marxists and Macaulayites... known as the 4 M's!

For further reading, here's a link to Ramachandra Guha's take on Macaulay's Minute. And the Wikipedia link.