Permanent Black at Orient Blackswan and Western aesthetic of drabness where dull, bland colours are revered

Joya di's 77th Birth Anniversary - Sri Aurobindo Institute of Culture

2.Feb.2013 Joya di' Birthday celebrations - Special Assembly, Rangoli tribute, Inter-school Flower-arrangement and Painting competition...

Failure of the Ordinary View of Karma « Sri Aurobindo Studies

We generally approach the world and life with an overlay of the moral and ethical viewpoint that we would like to see operative there. We tend to try to shape the ...

The Ignorance Of Reality - Sri Aurobindo - The God Light - Spiritual ...

The ignorance in which we live is a sevenfold self-ignorance; an ignorance of the Absolute and knowledge only of the relations of being and becoming; ... Ignorance is an initial state of knowledge the essence of which is to create a sense of limitation and division; it is this which we have to overcome and transcend without creating an opposite self-limitation. The integral aim of our existence can only be the possession and power and joy of our integral self-knowledge. Words By Sri Aurobindo Arya. 02.1916 / 04.1917

Comment on Sri Aurobindo on Nationalism by Sandeep

These are Sri Aurobindo’s reflections on his Karmayogin writings, including the pieces seen above: Conversation dated 28 Jan, 1926

Sri Aurobindo: It is always very disappointing to read one’s own writing. One feels how ignorant one was! (A B Purani, Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, vol 1 p 259)

Are You Waiting For Godot? from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

The only means to “increase economic output” is by visible humans using capital and knowledge in some known productive processes in pursuit of objectives that supply real wealth – the annual output of “necessaries, conveniences and amusements”, as Smith called it, to consumers. 

The most satisfactory ways to organize such activities is by entrepreneurial-led endeavours in markets and their very visible prices (if possible) or by state-sponsored activities if necessary. (Markets cannot operate outside a system of justice. No people will be enjoy opulence for long or at all without stable government and its essential services). Waiting for “invisible hands” to carry out these activities is akin to the watching ‘Waiting For Godot”.

Coming to like modern India from Love of All Wisdom by Amod Lele

The English-speaking world has what appears to me as an unfortunate aesthetic of drabness, where dull, bland colours are revered in the name of “restraint” and “subtlety” and “good taste”… I’m perhaps most annoyed in the West by the drabness of men’s clothing. 

Routledge's Twain Cabin from Taylor & Francis India Blog by Rimina - Feb 3, 2013

Among early bestsellers were: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) ­— of which nearly 500,000 copies were sold during the time — and about 1,060 volumes in the Railway Library series (1848).  Also noteworthy were Mark Twain’s Roughing It (1872), illustrating many of Twain's early adventures through the Wild West, including a ‘visit to Salt Lake City, gold and silver prospecting, real-estate speculation, a journey to the Kingdom of Hawaii, and his beginnings as a writer’, and A Curious Dream, and Other Sketches (1872) ­— both of which predate the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)…

Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group will be at the World Book Fair, Hall 6, Stalls 101–8, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India, 4–10 February 2013.   

Believe it or not: French Bistro at the Delhi Book Fair ... from permanent black 

We've been told there will be French food and French films (and books) at the bookfair. Plus all the usual suspects -- Permanent Black included. Come and see all we've published since you last visited! It only happens for one week in the year so don't miss it. Who knows what friends, bargains and books you will find.

As usual our stand will be a part of the Orient Blackswan stall. Details below. NEW DELHI WORLD BOOK FAIR 2013 Pragati Maidan Hall 4, Stall Nos 164–175 (Entry from Gate No. 2, Bhairon Marg) February 4–10 2013 11:00 a.m. to 8 p.m.

web version You are invited: Visit SAGE at the 21st New Delhi World Book Fair 2013 at Hall No 1R, Stall No B15 – 28. Best entry from Gate No 2 on Bhairon Road and Gate No 5 on Mathura Road. SAGE is inviting applications for The Tejeshwar Singh Memorial Fellowships 2013. The last date for submission is 31st March 2013! APPLY NOW! 

February 6 & 7, 2013 New Delhi Centre for Indian Classical Dances, Dr. Sonal Mansingh present the XIth Jivan Pani Memorial Festival. Sonal Mansingh has fondly kept alive the memories of Jivan Pani, a scholar, poet and authority on Indian traditions of performing arts, who was her mentor, guru and guide since 1972. Until his untimely death in 1998, her development and original work in Odissi was largely due to his guidance. Therefore, as an expression of eternal gratitude, she personally and Centre for Indian Classical Dances started the Jivan Pani Memorial Festival as a tribute to this unassuming man but one rich in knowledge. 6th Feb JIVAN RATANA SAMMAN award to an eminent Guru Shri Banamali Maharana - Aditi Mangaldas, Kathak (Lucknow) - Kalamandalam Gopi, Kathakali (Kerala) 7th Feb Swapana Sundari, Vilasini Natyam (Andhra Pradesh) - Pallavi Saran Gujral, Bharatanatyam (Tamil Nadu) At: India Habitat Centre Info: sonaldances@yahoo.com

Study Camps 2013 at Madhuban - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Sri Aurobindo Ashram -Delhi Branch founded on 12 Feb 1956. The Mother had once called the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry a veritable laboratory to ...

SELF-Shelf Entry Pageviews

Vivekananda’s doctored picture of Ramakrishna 13 Jan 2013 583

Sri Aurobindo cannot be held accountable for the b... 4 Jul 2012 248

Western learning ignited the pioneers of Indian na... 25 Jan 2013 183

Dr. Karan Singh, Prof. Makarand Paranjape, Richard... 14 Jan 2013 118

Albuquerque's Imaginary Dialogue with Sri Aurobind... 12 Sep 2007 118

Gandhian ideals are plain stupid; Bankim and Sri A... 30 Jan 2013 108

Hind Swaraj's children vs. Labourers in the quarri... 21 Jan 2013 108

Creative sleep and transformative death 6 Jan 2013 102

Sri Aurobindo's messianism was based on his teleol. .. 22 Jan 2013 102

We sing, cry, laugh, and love in Hindi, Urdu, and ... 24 Jan 2013 97

Hayek, Zizek, Heehs and Elst

Sri Aurobindo: A Contemporary Reader Sachidananda Mohanty - 2012 - Preview - I believe that Peter Heehs is right in his analysis and observations. While the intersection of religion and nationalism remains an unresolved issue and Heehs has not ventured 'to set forth in systematic form', his own vision of Sri Aurobindo's views—he does it elsewhere—his point about the existing prejudice and misunderstanding against Sri Aurobindo is a valid one. What I propose to do next is to underline key aspects of Sri Aurobindo's social vision that make him a front-ranking thinker of contemporary culture.

Aurobindo's Philosophy of Brahman - Page 132 - Stephen H. Phillips - 1986 - Preview - I think that the case for the interpretation that his overriding motive is empiricist is a good one. My chief reason for identifying this additional affinity is, as before, to try to comprehend his positions as fully as possible, ...

While mystic experience does stand out not only justificationally but in his idea of the nature of divine life, Aurobindo's stress is on a continuity, mutual value, and mutual reality obtaining between the mystical and and our more ordinary ... 

An Indian Sceptic – Philosophy of Daya Krishna from from Centre Right India by Koenraad Elst - Dec 28, 2012. Daya Krishna (1924-2007) had been a member of the Changers’ Club, the debating circle of friends at Delhi University, featuring the later journalist Girilal Jain, economists Ram Swarup and Raj Krishna and historian Sita Ram Goel.  

Daya Krishna wisely avoids pronouncing on the difficult question of their absolute chronology… Briefly, Daya Krishna was a Hindu philosopher who knew his classics very well, and who took a questioning position. He was not a secularist, the kind who know next to nothing of their tradition yet condemn it out of hand anyway. But he was not a believer either, aware as he was of the contradiction between the common beliefs about Vedic literature and what the Vedas themselves say.

The Enduring Relevance of Koenraad Elst from The Rediscovery of India by Sandeep B.

One of the defining sentences in the various analyses of post-Independence Hindu revivalism, which is also original is this: Hindus have been playing the game by the rules set by their enemies. [Ed: Paraphrased] Elst wrote this in his masterful Decolonizing the Hindu Mind in 2001. More than a decade ago. As we see, very little has changed since then. If anything, it’s gotten worse in several respects… The Intellectuals: The widely travelled, well-read, and smart ones. The ones who (rightly) want to change the narrative, who point out the inherent bias in our discourse about India and Hinduism.

A Day in the Life of a Sikh Prejudice: Pukhraj Singh DECEMBER 29, 2012 from Kafila Guest post by PUKHRAJ SINGH

“The very ink with which history is written,” allegorised Mark Twain, “is merely fluid prejudice.” By that rationale, religion can often be the quill which defaces the truth with its broad strokes, perverting history than promulgating it. And like the bastard child of these perversions, a few counter-narratives manage to wade through the tides of public opinion, carrying the dim outline of the ossified ideas that led to its tragic pursuit. But one has to have the right kind of eyes, says Hunter S. Thompson, to “see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” 

Why Zizek doesn’t have a political program from An und für sich by Adam Kotsko

From Less Than Nothing, pp. 1007-1009 (yes, I’ve finished the thing):

“Faced with the demands of the protestors, intellectuals are definitely not in the position of the subjects supposed to know: they cannot operationalize these demands, or translate them into proposals for precise and realistic measures. With the fall of twentieth-century communism, they forever forfeited the role of the vanguard which knows the laws of history and can guide the innocents along its path. The people, however, also do not have access to the requisite knowledge–the “people” as a new figure of the subject supposed to know is a myth of the Party which claims to act on its behalf…

There is no Subject who knows, and neither intellectuals nor ordinary people are that subject. Is this a deadlock then: a blind man leading the blind, or, more precisely, each of them assuming that the other is not blind? No, because their respective ignoance is not symmetrical: it is the people who have the answers, they just do not know the questions to which they have (or, rather, are) the answer…. 

Claude Levi-Strauss wrote that the prohibition of incest is not a question, an enigma, but an answer to a question that we do not know. We should treat the demands of the Wall Street protests in a similar way: intellectuals should not primarily take them as demands, questions, for which they should produce clear answers, programs about what to do. They are answers, and intellectuals should propose the questions to which they are answers. The situation is like that in psychoanalysis, where the patient knows the answer (his symptoms are such answers) but does not know what they are the answers to, and the analyst has to formulate the questions. Only through such patient work will a program emerge.” 

(title unknown) by enowning

In Al Jazeera, Santiago Zabala on the thinker of our age. 

[His ability to fuse together Martin Heidegger's "fundamental ontology", Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" and Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" in order to undermine our liberal and tolerant democratic structures is a practice few intellectuals are capable of.]

A Must Read New Book on Friedrich Hayek from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Eamonn Butler: “Friedrich Hayek: the ideas and influence of the libertarian economist”

It is in his accounts of why markets flourish naturally that Hayek is most persuasive, and Butler is at his best in showing the importance of this side of Hayek’s work.  This means discussing socialism, which at first glance is a debate about a past that is now over. However, lessons from the endemic failures of socialism are in excellent contrast to the superior results of market capitalism, and Butler develops the contrast clearly, highlighting the untold damage done by the rising tide of deliberate rule changes that eventually clog the operations of markets, restraining them from their full potential.

Socialism is a mistaken response to how societies evolve and work.   The “battle lines” may have changed from what they were in the 19^th century when socialism was an untried idea, but having been tried and failed in the 20^thcentury, the central problem remains today: how does a central agency manage a complex economy? Socialism necessarily means dispensing with an existing market capitalism, which whatever else is regarded as dispensable, the visible success of markets that grew within the margins of the millennia-old human experiences since our ancestors left the forest and plains to become shepherds and farmers 10,000 years ago, suggests that markets are dispensed with at an enormous cost.  

We can contrast the experience of China and Britain since the 15^th century; China’s government deliberately ended foreign trade despite its massive technological lead. Meanwhile individuals in Britain continued trading and eventually re-discovered the ‘lost’ technologies of China which led to the spread of local markets, science and unheard of new technologies.  Market capitalism flourishes under conditions of constitutional liberty more than totalitarian socialism can flourish by destroying markets. Gavin Kennedy Emeritus Professor, Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University