I know about poverty, illiteracy, corruption and not-so-up-to-the-mark politicians. Yet I remain confident in India’s future as a significant force on future world stage.
I am not saying “superpower”, because clearly US is already there and China is ahead of us in the race. The place on top is very small. Also being a superpower has it’s own price tags. Life in a superpower country is not always the greatest one. So let’s just be happy to be strong enough to protect our interests and achieve our objectives.
So inspite of all these problems and lack of chance to be the world dominant power, why am I so bullish on India’s future? Because we have paid the premium.
We have paid the premium. One entire generation of people who were born about the time we got independence has done nothing their whole life but pay this premium. We have laid solid structural foundations of our institutions. Democracy has taken deep roots and is not going anywhere. Private sector has found it’s nerve and is making progress inspite of lacking favorable policies in many cases. Educational insitutions have established their credentials across the country and around the globe. Press is indeed free and keeping an watchful eye on affairs.
Demographics is going to be in our favor for next 30 years or so. A large percent of our polulation will be in the productive range of 18 to 45 for coming decades. No resource beats human resources.
And biggest of all, we have leaders like A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who have capibility of projecting a coherent national vision encompassing science, economy, humanity and spirituality. Like United States, the future vision of our nation is based on scientific pragmatism.
Yet the road ahead is long and ardous. The beginning should be emptying our minds of age old notions that will not longer be useful. We must reinterpret the relegion and customs. We must readjust our expectations. We must find synergy and areas of common interest among ourselves and work to make these areas grow. We must introspect. We must let go some things. We must find creative solutions to our problems.
We must reinvent ourselves. We must change the world by changing ourselves.
The whole point is changing the world. I am just blogging to change the world.
🙂 🙂 🙂
The Eastern Horizon 
Hey You —
Thanks sooo much for your suggestion on my website.
I certainly hadn’t heard of Prosper.com before and I’ll now be looking into it.
Thank you!
Danya
Hi ,
based on your genre I guess these can provide some food for your thoughts
http://hitxp.wordpress.com/hitxp-table-of-contents/
Blogging to change the world. Sounds impressive.
And I believe its possible too, coz I blog for the same reason 🙂
Good Luck
Kedar,
Namaskaars!! Great historical lesson about DOGGED PERSISTENCE in the FACE OF OVERWHELMING ODDS & DANGER – i’m talking about the 27 yr old Mughal – Maratha war which the Maratha empire won hands down!! Your section on ‘Why am I blogging?’ is very practical and inspiring as well.
Keep up the good work. b t w – of all the Maratha royalty – Peshwa Bajirao, Kanhoji Angre, Mahadji Shinde & Rani Ahilyabai remain favourites after Chh. Shivaji Maharaj!
Vannakkam (Tamil for Thank you).
I am from Cuba and I am blogging for similar reasons, good blog, wish you good luck
wonderful work Kedar!! and I liked your target which is big and nobel!! — change the world… And liked your articles on “The 27 Year War That Changed Course Of Indian History”
keep it up.
Nitin
“Thus no magnificent monuments like Taj Mahal or Royal Mughal gardens were built….”
Dear Mr Kedar Soman
In the closing paragraphs of part VI of your series at
on
http://voi.org/history/general/the27yearwar,partvi.html
you have made the above statement (quoted at start) implying Shah Jehan ‘built magnificent monuments like Taj Mahal…”.
Nothing could be farther from truth.
This is as inaccurate as stating “Prophet Muhammad built Kaba”. If you check ‘Hagia Sofia’ in Istanbul, you would see that ‘usurping existing grand buildings for use as mosque and/or molesting them by burying their dead has been long-running ‘Muslim tradition’.
There has been historic evidence on Rajput construction and pre-Shah-Jahan origin of the ‘Raja Man Singh’s Summer-Palace in Agra’ in books by Mr P N Oak, Dr V S Godbole of UK and on Setephen Knapp website at:
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/was_the_taj_mahal_a_vedic_temple.htm
Please be careful about what you write on this sensitive subject in a ‘patriotic long-essay’ as the uninitiated would accept it as fact!
Deshbondhu
Personally, I believe Taj Mahal was a ‘summer palace’.
On page 598 [1876 Ed.] of his book “History of Indian & Eastern Architecture” James Fergusson admits the true origin and purpose of Taj Mahal: [observations supplied]
“As it is no words can express the chastened [= molested or ‘Islamized’ to submission!] beauty of that central chamber, seen in the soft gloom of the subdued light that reaches it through the distant and half-closed openings that surround it. When used as Barrah Durrie, or pleasure palace, it must always have been the coolest and the loveliest of garden retreats, and now that it is sacred to the dead it is the most graceful and the most impressive of the sepulchres of the world.
[Here Fergusson, a Christian imperialist, sympathetically condones ‘Muslim vandalism’ for the reason of ‘burial of the dead’, which is the practice in common with all three Semitic religions; Judaism, Christianity and Islam].
So there is no dispute that Taj Mahal was a Rajput summer palace & the Qutub complex was Jain temple.
But to create the myth of Mughal/Islamic Architecture to appease the Mussulmans, James Fergusson has gone to ludicrously absurd explanations:
“The celebrated mosque at Canouge is undoubtedly a Jaina temple… another mosque at Dhar, …without doubt, …of a Jaina temple, …Jaunpur, many other mosques at Ahmedabad and elsewhere show the same system of ‘taking down and re-arranging’** the materials on a different plan (!*!)” James Fergusson: (p 501).
Most BBC documentaries make us believe that all culture, art and architecture & medicine came to India from Greeks or Arabs, while it is in fact the other way round!
But it is far-fetched and ‘over-patriotic’ to suggest the name Taj Mahal is a corruption of ‘Tejo-Mahalaya’, because it is impossible for an usurper-molester vandal to let the original name of the building survive by minor change to it! More likely is that the palace was called as such “Taje Mohall”, and the name survived even after Begum Zamani, who had died at Burhanpur 6 months earlier and buried in another Hindu palace even there, was exhumed and re-buried in the Man Singh Palace.
It would have been impossible to build Taj Mahal in 6 -8 months right? That much time would be taken just to cut & inlay the black-marble Quranic inscriptions onto it and tidy the gardens!
Even the official chronicle of Shah Jahan called ‘Badshahnama’ does not claim he built it, or mention the words ‘Taj Mahal’!
Brilliant work….keep blogging…
Hello Kedar,
Just found your blog from Game Theory and The Battle of Sinhgad article link, also one on afzal khan. Looking for more such articles.
It would be really nice if you have archive section on your blog, as I can’t find old articles except for search. Please consider adding it so people can see list of old articles.
Thanks.
Hi,I found your blog helpful to me in gaining some ideas about the Radha-Krishna Myth; if i want to reference some of your ideas in a work i am composing, how do you wish for them to be credited? i can’t find any names or information on the site.
thanks for your help
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Well said! Loved your ending about what we should do…introspect and find creative solutions. Blogging to change the world…seems like we are on the same page, sir.