The authentic Hindu religious tradition prescribed a much more austere anointing procedure. The Sanskrit scripture Mathamnaya Upanishad clearly lays down the shankaracharyas’ selection process and in Mahanushashan Upanishad are listed the rules
for eligibility. It is a foolproof process. The tradition is that shankaracharyas anoint their successors during their lifetime; following which the anointed person is granted recognition by the Kashi Vidvat Parishad. This is a 150-year-old organisation with 35 living members -- most of them eminent Sankrit scholars. So how come things have gone so horribly wrong? For, barring minor disputes over posts and perks, there seems nothing much wrong with the KVP’s activities. The rot that has set in is entirely due to various vested interests, which have raised at least three similar sounding committees like the Varanasi Vidvat Parisgad, the Varanaseya Vidvat Parishad and the Akhil Bhartiya Vidvat Parishad. And bodies like these have been covertly selling degrees and posts – with the result that dozens of self-styled shankaracharyas have sprung up in different parts of the country.
The life sketches of the likes of Sudhakar Dwivedi show how these nondescript people, who somehow found the money to buy their grandiloquent titles, came to sully and ultimately criminalise the faith. Dwivedi, the son of a police sub-inspector (who retired early this month) quit his job in 1993 to become Swami Amritanand. And then, along with his friend Rajesh Pachauri, he set up the Sharda Sarvagyapeeth in 1999. In 2003 he moved to
Kashmir where he declared himself a shankaracharya.
The septuagenarian Shastri vividly remembers the 2003 developments. “KVP vice- president Ram Yatna Shukla and its spokesman Shivji Upadhyaya came to me with Pachauri to say they had convened a meeting of the KVP executive to anoint Amritanand as shankaracharya of Jammu. And they claimed to have the support of other KVP members like Adya Pradas Mishra, Rammurthy Chaturvedi, Rajeshwar Upadhyay, Vashishtha Tripathi and Paras Nath Tripathi. I objected on two counts. One, Jammu isn’t a peeth. The northern seat of Shankaracharya is in Badrinath. And two, I came to know that Dwivedi had two wives and that the matter was in court.”...Continue
for eligibility. It is a foolproof process. The tradition is that shankaracharyas anoint their successors during their lifetime; following which the anointed person is granted recognition by the Kashi Vidvat Parishad. This is a 150-year-old organisation with 35 living members -- most of them eminent Sankrit scholars. So how come things have gone so horribly wrong? For, barring minor disputes over posts and perks, there seems nothing much wrong with the KVP’s activities. The rot that has set in is entirely due to various vested interests, which have raised at least three similar sounding committees like the Varanasi Vidvat Parisgad, the Varanaseya Vidvat Parishad and the Akhil Bhartiya Vidvat Parishad. And bodies like these have been covertly selling degrees and posts – with the result that dozens of self-styled shankaracharyas have sprung up in different parts of the country.The life sketches of the likes of Sudhakar Dwivedi show how these nondescript people, who somehow found the money to buy their grandiloquent titles, came to sully and ultimately criminalise the faith. Dwivedi, the son of a police sub-inspector (who retired early this month) quit his job in 1993 to become Swami Amritanand. And then, along with his friend Rajesh Pachauri, he set up the Sharda Sarvagyapeeth in 1999. In 2003 he moved to
Kashmir where he declared himself a shankaracharya.The septuagenarian Shastri vividly remembers the 2003 developments. “KVP vice- president Ram Yatna Shukla and its spokesman Shivji Upadhyaya came to me with Pachauri to say they had convened a meeting of the KVP executive to anoint Amritanand as shankaracharya of Jammu. And they claimed to have the support of other KVP members like Adya Pradas Mishra, Rammurthy Chaturvedi, Rajeshwar Upadhyay, Vashishtha Tripathi and Paras Nath Tripathi. I objected on two counts. One, Jammu isn’t a peeth. The northern seat of Shankaracharya is in Badrinath. And two, I came to know that Dwivedi had two wives and that the matter was in court.”...Continue
asically two schools of thought that revolve around the future prospects of the two candidates. One school of thought says that Obama has a better chance to defeat a Republican candidate. There are two reasons behind this logic. The first is that Obama offers a vision for real change while Hillary practices a middle of the road kind of politics that embraces many Republican themes. Second and more important is the deep resentment and even hatred that the Clintons trigger amongst Neo-cons and the deeply conservative Americans who detest the very thought of another Clinton in the White House. There is a strong chance that Hillary as the Democratic candidate will attract an avalanche of sleazy allegations, a tidal wave of Monica Lewinsky jokes and a lot of mud thrown at the alleged peccadilloes of the former occupants of the White House. Some of the mud might stick and sink the Hillary candidacy. This school of thought thinks that most Democratic voters are smart and seem to realise this fact.
of the company. The charter for the then – proposed gas corporation was: “to create necessary infrastructure for transport, processing and distribution of gas, to set up facilities for segregating natural gas into different components by a process called fractionation. Secondly, to acquire gas assets of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Oil India Limited. And lastly to act as coordinator for gas sector to ensure proper utilisation of gas.” Judge the significance of the words ‘proper utilisation’ that mentioned in the last line against the backdrop of the fact that gas flaring was then rampant in both onshore and offshore fields. This burning issue figured regularly in Parliament in the form of written questions. But things have changed today. There are hardly any questions that are asked about flaring. The new questions now primarily relate to supply, shortage and the price of gas that’s being supplied by various producers.
of its mash-ups have failed to either see the light of day or lost their sheen within a few months, just like web accelerator, Google Catalogue, Google video Player, Google answers, Orkut (it’s popular only in Brazil and Asia, and is a distant loser to facebook and MySpace in US). A fair criticism of Google as per Clayton Moran, Stanford Financial Group is that “It is only strong in one area – search advertising. In order to succeed in video and display, it has bought YouTube and DoubleClick. As such, Google has yet to successfully develop any other advertising service outside search. And, this creates some uncertainty around whether Google can build competitive businesses in mobile, radio, TV and print.”