What Joseph Lelyveld Said About Gandhi

I have not read Joseph Lelyveld’s book on Gandhi. Of course, neither have any of those who are heaping invective upon Lelyveld’s head for having written the book. I will probably borrow the book from the library one of these days but for now, it is good to hear the man himself explain what he attempted to do in the book. Michael Krasny’s Forum on KQED had him on in the second hour of the show today. It was enlightening, as Forum almost always is. Check it out.
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Anna Hazare Has Painted Himself into a Corner

Anna Hazare in the context of rural development praised the work of chief ministers Nitish Kumar and — here’s where he slipped up and deviated from the script — Narendra Modi. That’s going to cost him. But Narendrabhai is a master strategist. He promptly — at 5 AM in the morning — wrote an open letter to Anna Hazare.
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Old Story: NREGA Causes Inflation

Just thought that an old post from over three years ago in Jan 2008 is worth revisiting since it appears that some idiots people in India are waking up finally to the truth of how NREGA causes inflation. “Does the NREGS Cause Inflation?”
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We All Are Worldly Philosophers

How should we live, how should we treat others, and how should we govern our society. Normative questions like those keep philosophers busy. To that extent we are all philosophers. Our society is a reflection of our collective philosophizing on those concerns. So therefore for society to change, our answer to the question — “What’s the right thing to do?” — has to change.
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Anna Hazare Goes to New Delhi

Anna Hazare’s indefinite fast for getting the “Jan Lokpal Bill” passed has met with almost universal approval. The media frenzy has caught the Indian public’s attention to an extent that they generally reserve for more important matters such as a cricket match. One could argue that both the public obsession with cricket and the current spectacle of a public fast share a common origin, the deep-seated desire of the people to participate in what they believe are events of great significance. Mob hysteria is awesome to behold but rarely if ever leads to beneficial outcomes.
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Big Ideas for India Contest at Rajesh Jain’s Blog

My colleague Rajesh Jain has a “Big Ideas Contest” going on at his blog. Here are the details:
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An Era of Darkness Under Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi

‘Italian by birth and Catholic by baptism‘ is the title of a very brief item by John Maclithon in DNA. It can be best characterized as a confession. He was the only foreign journalist to be awarded the Padma Shri, and that too by the Congress party, which he says was surprising since he has “always been a vocal critic of the Nehru dynasty.” Indira Gandhi, he claims, wanted to throw him in jail during the Emergency. He goes on to confess that he was wrong about India — and how.
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Ban on the Gandhi biography in Gujarat

The chief minister of Gujarat, Shri Narendra Modi, is a hero of mine. That does not mean that I approve of every position he holds. In the case of the banning of Joseph Lelyveld’s book, “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India,” I most certainly do not agree with Narendrabhai. What is more, I will not hesitate to tell him so. I am a free speech fundamentalist. Banning expression is the start of a journey the destination of which is something akin to an Islamic state which orders the murder of novelists and cartoonists.

Listen: Joseph Lelyveld talking about his book on KQED Forum.

Banning a Book on Gandhi — Part 2

The freedom of speech and expression is not only a good in itself but it is also instrumental in human civilizational progress. It is therefore puzzling that quite a significant segment of humanity is ever ready to ban expression whenever there’s something said or written that goes against their cherished beliefs. What makes it worse is that another segment which does not fully comprehend what freedom of expression actually means. Usually they go, “I am for freedom of speech but . . . ”
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